It’s been 5 days since I shared the last of these - where I share a roundup of all the interesting things I have spotted in gaming news. There’s a lot of different topics this week, but as always it remains Steam Deck, Linux, GOG, emulation, Switch and gaming in general!

My aim is to format these posts in a more personal manner than most gaming sites do now. Cozier? My ever-lasting inspo is the old, old video game sites, blogs and magazines that I never had the privilege of being alive for:

  • image/gif/link heavy (I’m a big GIF fan – and I pronounce it with a hard ‘g’)
  • personal voice (I can’t write professionally with hard-news style to save me)
  • mostly news or articles or points you won’t find on normal gaming sites, these are the smaller, lesser things that I’m drawn to. I know you’ll have spotted the big news articles, so I’m hoping some of these smaller ones might have been missed by you.

So grab a coffee? Or a tea? Or a fresh juice? And enjoy <3

Black Mesa – Resonance Decade Update:

You’ll no doubt know that Black Mesa itself is is a fan-made, far-higher-graphic’d-than-the-original remake of the classic 1998 first-person shooter Half-Life, developed by Valve. Originally created as a free mod by Crowbar Collective, it was later officially approved and released as a standalone commercial title in 2020.

These days it goes on steep discount quite often, plays really well on Steam Deck, and has just announced a huge update:

In celebration of our ten year anniversary on Steam, we’ve pushed our longstanding public beta to mainline. This update includes substantial improvements including:

  • Fixes to startup related crashes
  • Fixes to physics engine related crashes
  • Steam Deck Improvements
  • Linux Improvements

You can read the full (and extensive) patch notes on Steam with this link right here

And you can find the game for -90% off right now on Steam too, with this link to their page

GTA IV Remaster?

I know, I know, there’s announcements regarding Rockstar games every two weeks or so predicting the fans great dreams…which end up as tears in the rain because they’re just that – rumors and nothing more.

Well, I’ll add another to the unending procession and let you know that the rumor mill (with great sources…as always) is saying that GTA IV is on its way “says Rockstar insider”.

And here’s an article detailing what’s going on, which refuses to embed as a link in my post for some reason, so you have to look at the long, ugly link instead: https://rockstarintel.com/gta-4-remaster-could-release-this-year-says-rockstar-insider/ https://rockstarintel.com/gta-4-remaster-could-release-this-year-says-rockstar-insider/)

IF it does come to fruition, I hope it gets the same treatment as say…the recent Tomb Raider remasters, or Crash Bandicoot/Spyro…not like the weird A.I. nonsense Rockstar got a phone game company to whip up for them with the trilogy semi-recently.

Space Marine 2 – Modded:

The game takes on a new life. Honestly, not that it slowed down much, this game has had a lot of support and reviewed so nicely!

Last update that came out was about a month ago and added prestige for each class including 5-6 unlockable new perks each, unlockable free cosmetics, a new weapon, a new operation and the paid content included even more cosmetics for customisation.

And now, Saber releases the entire toolset to make modding the game easier for fan:

“As of today, we’re releasing the official Integration Studio for public use,” Space Marine 2 director Dmitry Grigorenko says. “This is the exact same editor we use internally for all gameplay development. No more editing files in Notepad and praying you didn’t miss a bracket. Integration Studio makes editing anything… ten times faster, safer, and more intuitive.”

Integration Studio gives Space Marine 2 modders access to the game’s A.I. behavior trees; its level scenario editor; the tools for creating game modes and adjusting melee combat; and the means to tweak the AI director, UI and HUD elements, and visual effects. Saber says more functionality is still to come.

“This is only the beginning,” Grigorenko continues. “Not long ago, I promised we would support the modding scene, and we meant it. Watching this community grow, push boundaries, and create incredible experiences has been both inspiring and humbling. We’re excited to see what you build next, whether it’s a cinematic campaign, wild new game mode, or something we never saw coming.”

You can find the modding kit right here if you want it – sadly it’s a Discord link, but…its still here for you if you want it!

Gothic 1 Remake:

It’s a long road for this game, and the game itself is quite niche to most (funnily enough the game is so well known and regarded in Poland – like a mini cultural phenomenon there, basically national treasures), but Alkima Interactive is taking the process of remaking the first Gothic game quite seriously.

The fans who have been following along with the project and updates have had the rare events of devs taking their feedback and changing direction or making changes because of their feedback and criticisms.

Anyway, the latest of their update videos showing progress with their Gothic 1 Remake demo is here

And you can also find the changelog to Nyras’ Prologue (the demo) here with this link to THQNordic’s site

And finally,

The Steam page for it is here, if you want to check it out

A Webbing Journey:

I found a cute game from FireTotemGames called, you guessed it, A Webbing Journey. I’ve not got much to say on this one besides the fact it is ADORABLE, and has full Linux + Steam Deck support.

Sadly their GIFs are quite large in size, so I’m writing this while I save them, then I’ll try resize them – hope they don’t end up looking like low-res playdough blobs being animated, then hope I remember to take this paragraph out when I post this on Lemmy.

It releases soon (into my nemesis – Early Access) on May 19th – so let’s hope it is as good and cute as it looks?

Adorable spider chaos! Swing around the house, weave crazy structures, play with physics-based objects, and pull off chores with nothing but your webs and your wits in this madcap sandbox adventure.

Swing from place to place, crawl over every surface (even upside down!) and weave crazy webs in this adorable spider sandbox.

Silky is a tiny hero on a big mission - to help their favourite humans! Baking cookies? Doing dishes? Watering plants? No task is too big if you’ve got the imagination (and the spiderwebs!) to pull it off!

The link to their Steam store page is right here, if you want to look!

Junk Store Teaser:

The developer of Junk Store (who happens to be a good friend of mine!) has shared a ‘next gen sneak peek’ for what’s coming next for Junk Store on Steam Deck. I’ll just copy what he wrote, then I’ll link the video!

While things might appear calm on the surface, I’ve been working intensely behind the scenes to get Junk Store ready for launch. Right now, there’s only one known bug left to fix on my end. The rest is mostly polish—help screens, UI touch-ups, and general quality-of-life improvements.

The core systems seem stable, but of course, we’ll see what happens when the software makes contact with actual users. Here’s a sneak peek at some of the new systems I’ve added. When testing the extension generator, I realized it was just too complicated for most users—so I built this instead. The video’s rough, but it should give you something to speculate about while I finish up the last bits. Hope you enjoy it—can’t wait for you all to try it out.

You can find the video here, if you’d like to see what features he teased will be available and able-to-be-generated for the next iteration of Junk Store

Unity Still Quite Awful:

RocketWerkz, an independent game studio founded by Dean Hall (creator of DayZ), is facing a serious licensing dispute with Unity Technologies. On May 9th, Unity sent a vague compliance warning threatening to revoke the studio’s license access by May 16th, citing improper use of Unity Personal licenses instead of Pro licenses. When RocketWerkz requested clarification, Unity responded with a list of alleged violations—including names and emails of individuals who either don’t work on Unity projects, already have Pro licenses, or are entirely unaffiliated with RocketWerkz. Two names belonged to employees at a different local company, raising serious concerns about how Unity collects and applies its data.

Dean Hall has criticized Unity’s enforcement tactics as flawed, opaque, and aggressive, warning it reflects a worrying trend in the company’s direction. Although RocketWerkz has moved away from Unity for future projects—favoring Unreal Engine and their own BRUTAL engine—the issue still affects two active games: Stationeers and the unreleased Torpedia. Despite having spent over $300,000 on Unity since 2014, including a recent $43,000 payment in December 2024, RocketWerkz now faces a potential halt to ongoing development based on what appears to be faulty or misattributed data.

I’d encourage you to read through the entirety of it. Sadly it is on Reddit, but you can find it here in the r/gamedev sub-reddit with this link

Black Salt Games:

The developers to one of my favorite games ever (DREDGE) shared a post detailing the fact that:

Last year, we donated $100,000 to the NZ Whale and Dolphin Trust for a new boat, truck and other costs. They have sent us some photos of their boat “Pahu” in action which will help to aid their important conservation work, researching and protecting marine species all around Aotearoa.

They further detailed their beliefs in another post:

We are proud to support The Whale and Dolphin Trust in their mission and encourage fans of DREDGE to learn more about our oceans and conservation efforts. In the wise words of the great David Attenborough " the most important place on Earth is not on land, but at sea."

I love them, and this is why I support independent developers.

Here are just a few images they shared of the Pahu!

GEX:

The GEX Trilogy releases on June 16th. From what I can gather (aside from the fact that I learned Glen Schofield of Dead Space fame directed the third game) the wise-cracking one liners might have aged poorly, but then again I don’t expect this trilogy is aimed at my generation, but from a few before me:

In addition to revealing the game’s release date, we’ve also announced that GEX 2 and GEX 3 will be playable in native widescreen with all-new analog control, letting you experience GEX like never before! Now that’s what I call getting some tail!

We also revealed some new artwork by famed Japanese artist, Yoshitaka Amano! You might know him from his work on a lesser known Square Enix franchise, so it made sense to finally give him the opportunity to illustrate their best one – GEX!

The link to that announcement is here if you want to see it!

Palworld Disappointed:

Nintendo is, as ever, a shitty company for the community. I understand that they hold the nostalgia carrot over everyone’s head (or at least those over a cetain old age), but their practices lately have been a little more than shitty.

Palworld developer Pocketpair has confirmed significant game changes which were forced by the ongoing lawsuit from Nintendo. [Nintendo and The Pokemon Company filed a lawsuit against Pocketpair last year, seeking an injuction and damages, and all Hell broke loose when we all saw that Nintendo was trademarking nonsense to inflict damage

I’m going to copy the statement that Pocketpair made, and just paste it here, because I think this one should be read in full. So what follows isn’t my words, but theirs:

We would like to express our sincere gratitude and appreciation for the continued support of our fans over the past few months. We apologize for not being able to share as much information as we would like, but we trust our fans understand how difficult it is to be fully transparent while litigation is ongoing.

Currently, we remain involved in prolonged legal proceedings regarding alleged patent infringement. We continue to dispute these claims and assert the invalidity of the patents in question. However, we have had to make certain compromises in order to avoid disruptions to the development and distribution of Palworld.

On November 30th, 2024, we released Patch v0.3.11 for Palworld. This patch removed the ability to summon Pals by throwing Pal Spheres and instead changed it to a static summon next to the player. Several other game mechanics were also changed with this patch. As many have speculated, these changes were indeed a result of the ongoing litigation. Everyone here at Pocketpair was disappointed that this adjustment had to be made, and we fully understand that many players feel the same frustration. Unfortunately, as the alternative would have led to an even greater deterioration of the gameplay experience for players, it was determined that this change was necessary.

Furthermore, we regret to inform our players that with the implementation of Patch v0.5.5, we must make yet another compromise. From this patch onward, gliding will be performed using a glider rather than with Pals. Pals in the player’s team will still provide passive buffs to gliding, but players will now need to have a glider in their inventory in order to glide. We understand that this will be disappointing for many, just as it is for us, but we hope our fans understand that these changes are necessary in order to prevent further disruptions to the development of Palworld.

We also want to extend our apologies to our fans for the discomfort and concern this ongoing litigation has caused. We remain committed to developing Palworld and delivering exciting new content to our fans.

On behalf of everyone at Pocketpair and Team Palworld, thank you again for your continued support.

Expedition 33 #1:

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s soundtrack has hit number one on Billboard’s classical album charts!

After selling over two million copies in under two weeks, Emmanuel Macron hailed it as “a shining example of French audacity and creativity”, and with 48,502 reviews on Steam holding a Very Positive rating, the achievements clearly haven’t stopped.

The soundtrack for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has achieved over 18 million track streams since its release on April 24. With the soundtrack being made up 154 tracks, making for 8 hours of music.

If you’d like to get a taste, then follow this YouTube link and see the full orchestra session for Session 33’s music!

Crow Country:

If you know me well enough, you’ll know I hate the old before-my-time ‘tank controls’, I’ve experienced the excitement on seeing the original Resident Evil games on GOG – then the subsequent hatred of tank controls. The same with Dino Crisis (can they PLEASE remake that in modern style for me?!) and…now Crow Country.

But for some reason, Crow Country has charmed me enough to look past the bane of my existence and love it anyway. Go figure.

Crow Country

The year is 1990. It’s been two years since the mysterious disappearance of Edward Crow and the abrupt closure of his theme park, Crow Country. But your arrival has broken the silence, Mara Forest. If you want answers, you’ll have to venture deep into the darkness of Crow Country to find them…

It is pure nostalgia for the old survival horror games on the PS1 (Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Dino Crisis), and it’s beautiful. So very, very atmospheric and also so reasonably priced for what it is!

What I do not like is seeing fucking stupid reviews like this one I found on GOG upon release:

You should check it out, you can find the GOG page link here, if you’re up to being kinda scared and love theme parks, but also if you’re wondering whether you should dye your hair purple and cut it shoulder-length like the adorable protagonist…or maybe that’s just me?

GOG’s Dynamic Pricing:

No one can explain this better than GOG themselves (I feel like I’m doing very little of my own writing for this News Post!), so I’ll paste their announcement here for you:

"Hello everyone!

We’ve just launched the first batch of bundles with fully functioning dynamic pricing. It’s a feature many of you might recognize from other platforms, but for those who don’t, here’s how it works:

When purchasing a bundle, you only pay for the items you don’t already own, making it easy to complete your collection without spending more than necessary.

We know this has been a long-requested feature, and that the lack of it has been frustrating for many of you. That’s why we’re super excited to finally start introducing it to the store, and we hope you’re just as happy to see it live.

Now, what do we mean by “start introducing” and “first batch of bundles”?

Well, right now this dynamic pricing system is available for 24 bundles in the store (you’ll find the full list in my comment below). We’ll continue expanding this feature to more and more bundles – new and old – with the goal of eventually covering the vast majority (if not all) of them. You’ll know a bundle has dynamic pricing from the information displayed under its price on the game page.

Note: If you already own all components of a dynamically priced bundle, you’ll be able to “claim” that bundle in the store so it shows as owned.

You might also be wondering: What about various game editions that include base games + DLCs?

We completely agree that bringing dynamic pricing to those would be a huge improvement, for both you and us. It’s something we’re actively looking into, and we hope to expand the system in that direction. We can’t promise an ETA just yet, but we’re optimistic it’ll happen sooner rather than later.

That’s all for now! Give this new system a try, see how it works for you, and let us know what you think.

Thank you all for your support! :)"

I can say that there’s been some issues, but it’s a big task, so they are working so hard on ironing these out. You can read it best in this post they made on their GOG forum – with users chiming in with the issues they might have encountered

Irrespective, I’m so happy to see this has arrived on GOG!

Silent Hill 2 (Remake) on GOG:

More GOG news (with one more to follow this one!) in that in a surprise announcement without preamble, Silent Hill 2 released on GOG! There’s nothing I can say here that you don’t already know I’m sure, but it was nice seeing a bit of a ‘shadow drop’ for a game, especially one of such calibre.

It’s also great seeing Konami being more and more open to DRM-free gaming in recent times. If you want to support this (it sounds crass, but only by buying the games on GOG can we show the companies that it is a viable idea), then you can find the link:

Here! On GOG’s page

Old Skies:

I can’t be the only one who thinks the character design from Old Skies is totally copying Remedy’s Control with Jesse Faden, right?

Quick Fire News:

Emulation/Retro Gaming-ish News:

Sega Saturn turns 30:

Two days ago the Sega Saturn officially turned 30 years old, in North America anyway. Ironically, the beginning of the end of Sega’s hardware efforts, not that anyone knew it at the time. Seen as a fair misfit, it’s a pretty impressive library of games when you look back on it now – but it was the release of this, the Sega CD and the 32X all within a year that threw things into a spin.

Still, happy birthday, Saturn.

Eden Emulator:

Another (yes, I know) Nintendo Switch emulator for Android phones has hit the scene. Still in pre-alpha (though they released another version a number of hours ago with a fair changelog for their short time as testament to their efforts.

It’s yet another Yuzu fork, so I won’t hold my breath, but it has the Android emulation scene in a bit of a buzz, so it has to be doing some things right.

  • Much of the team come from Citron

  • The team has already reached out to Sudachi developer Jarrod Norwell to collaborate.

  • It has a new UI

The GitHub is here

Nintendo’s Account Agreement:

This one has people in a bit of a panic, but Nintendo has updated its Account Agreement to crack down on piracy and emulation. Basically, unauthorised use of digital products may now render them—or even your device—unusable. This however has been done before in the past by Nintendo (most notably and similarly with their 3DS line-up), and really means little. It is scare tactics only, and quite impossible to enforce.

To reiterate: Nintendo’s new terms warn that violating usage rules could let them 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘭𝘺 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘢𝘤𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵, 𝘴𝘰𝘧𝘵𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘦, 𝘰𝘳 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘦 - effectively bricking it. Or, again, that’s what they’re saying can happen (as someone with extensive Switch modding experience, I say ‘good luck’)

But if you’d like more on this – you can read it here on this link to eurogamer’s article on it

Mario Party 4 Decompiled:

Mario Party 4 becomes the first decompiled Mario Party and Game Cube game – and there is a PC port in the works!

You can watch a video on YouTube about this here, made by MattKC Bytes

LACED:

I found this lovely statement recently, retro enthusiast Lorentio Brodesco developed what they call ‘LACED’, a low-cost method to delayer and reverse-engineer vintage console PCBs using tools like a 5W laser engraver and common chemicals — all for under €200. This technique, accurate to 3–10 microns, helps preserve the inner workings of classic hardware that are often undocumented or deteriorating. The full method is open-source and available on GitHub to support restoration, cloning, and historical preservation in the retro gaming community.

The statement made has a few lovely quotes, but I’ll just share my fav:

A little over a year ago, I started a journey to understand and preserve the inner workings of retro consoles — beginning with a PlayStation 1 motherboard I literally sanded by hand to expose its inner copper layers.

No microscope. No budget. Just curiosity, paper, and a dream.

That project evolved. I wanted something more precise, more replicable, and open to anyone with passion and patience.

You can find the GitHub here with this link!

Calibre:

This comment just made my day. If you have an e-reader, and don’t use Calibre, then you need to follow this link and change that fact. I utterly swear by it

Anyway, I just wanted to leave this here because they’re using RSS to read what I post on their Kobo, and that’s amazing to me!

What have you been playing?:

I like to ask this off and on, because my fav thing is matching game choices to usernames. Some of your names I recognize from commenting on posts I make here (which is rather lovely), and some are new…one thing remains – I love hearing what you’ve been playing!

I recently picked up a Japanese OLED Switch on my travels (in Thailand!), and took it along with me when I then skipped to Malaysia, and in Plaza Low Yat I found someone who had the equipment and let me use it (for a fee) to mod my OLED. Happily, I’m well and truly back into Switch gaming (and those sweet, sweet custom firmware themes I can use).

I’ve been playing modded Breath of The Wild for the 70928753753457th time on there. But its still such fun.

On my Steam Deck I’ve started BioShock: Infinite (my fav of the three), but might leave that for later and go replay Control.

But that’s unimportant, because what is important is you sharing what you’ve been enjoying! AAA? AA? (UbiSoft’s short-lived AAAA?). Emulation? Indies? Let us all know!!!

What I have been up to:

I recently shared on Lemmy an interview I did with Mathieu Comandon, whom you might know as the one responsible for Lutris!

You can find the link to that interview here, if you haven’t read through and would like to!

I’ve had a developer friend help me contact the team behind The RomM Project and I’m hoping to soon do the same style and kind of interview with them, and share it with you all here! Very much looking forward to this, since RomM is so utterly unique in this gaming space.

I also shared an interview recently with the entire team who are behind Heroic Games Launcher, again if you haven’t read through – you can find it right here with this link to it on Lemmy

Further:

If you’d like to reach me, I wrote a handy little post on Mastodon recently with my contact details. Just the (very few) FOSS spaces I occupy these days

Lastly:

I have been asked quite often here, and on Mastodon, and on Matrix (which surprises me to no end, each and every time that this even gets asked!) how can I support you?

I’m making a back-up of my posts, and I will host them somewhere else. But as I say each time, I like to think of this as my way of contributing to Lemmy, FOSS and open-source social spaces. I love that my words and posts are in one place – that it has a slight chance of making someone stick around.

I’ve no interest in making a Patreon (I loathe news and review sites who offer this, but that’s my own personal view), or a Ko-Fi. I do these because I love to.

That said, as someone whose Steam library is 40-ish games big, and you’ve got to send me something?

Send a worldwide (since I am not in the ‘States!) Steam key to me!

My Steam Deck has existed almost entirely as a GOG Deck, and I’ve recently been looking at Steam games again (I have to say, the cloud saves and shader cache is worth its weight in gold sometimes)

BUT - remember, I do this because I love writing them, not for some Machiavellian plot to pivot and benefit. I’m just glad you’re all here, and reading these :)

My Previous News Posts:

My Mastodon:

  • Abnorc@lemm.eeEnglish
    4·
    14 hours ago

    I agree on that character design. Control came to mind as soon as I saw it.

    • PerfectDark@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      1·
      13 hours ago

      Each time I see it!

      But…Control is one of my fav games of all time, so I can’t help but make the connection when I see someone stealing Faden’s hair and pose!!!