Ethyrial: Ehoes of Yore Hit With Hack That Sees 17K Accounts Deleted

Some Doctor Who fans think Jodie Whittaker is set to make an appearance in the upcoming Christmas special 'The Church on Ruby Road'.

Dead Cells developer Motion Twin is set to deliver another helping of lightning-fast battles and breathtaking visuals next year with its new game Windblown, and if you simply cannot wait, fear not, as this stunning 2D action roguelike is here to fill the void. 

Terra Nil, the «reverse city builder» from developer Free Lives and publisher Devolver Digital, is coming to Switch next week. More specifically, it will hit the Nintendo console on December 18, as revealed in a new trailer you can watch below. 

Ten years ago, at Geoff Keighley's awards show (then known as the VGX Awards), the development team at Hello Games revealed No Man's Sky. The ambitious space-exploration title promised a universe of possibilities and has since become the poster child for bouncing back from a challenging launch period.

I'm typically sceptical of trailer scrubbers—and there are a hell of a lot of them with Grand Theft Auto 6. Can't blame them, obviously, it's been 10 whole years since we last got a GTA game. 

2023 has been dominated by an endless news cycle of widespread layoffs across the entirety of the games industry, and that is continuing even as we move into the final weeks of the year. The most recent studio to have suffered cutbacks is Codemasters, the developer of EA Sports WRC and F1 23, among many other racing games.

Pax Dei wrapped up its Home Valley alpha last week, which the developer claims saw over 12 thousand players take part. The test, by all outside metrics, was a success, and the Mainframe team shared some stats from the test with a set of handy infographics.

Epic combat, fantastical spells, nail-bitingly tense stealth: these are all fine, I guess, but I want to hear about your RPG's fishing minigame. Thankfully, in the upcoming, solo-developed action RPG Mortal Crux, you get all of the above and then some. We got a peek at fishing and some of Mortal Crux's other new features in a fresh trailer at the PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted showcase. Mortal Crux is a weird gem of a game I've been looking forward to for almost two years now, ever since its Resident Evil-style fixed camera interiors and Soulslike take on overhead, hack 'n slash combat first caught my eye. Solo developer Jesse Walker has only shown more and more since that time, and Mortal Crux is shaping up to be quite the kitchen sink RPG. There's a real Larian quality to its attention to detail and focus on systems: fire propagates in a realistic manner, frozen enemies can be shattered for an instant kill, and you can even block spells in midair with a well-timed thrown weapon (and vice versa). Mortal Crux's addition of fishing is definitely a crowd pleaser, but I felt a real sick thrill at the reveal of a stealth system in this new trailer. I'm a big fan of being a sneak-bastard in an RPG, but only when it's fun, and Walker seems committed to getting the feel right, telling me that «Those who are careful will often be able to remain undetected while eliminating entire camps of enemies if they stake out patrol routes and patiently take them down one at a time.» Stealth won't just be an appetizer to combat, and to that end Mortal Crux's system is almost entirely sound and line of sight based⁠—it won't be like The Elder Scrolls where you get spotted from a mile away when you've got ten points in sneaking, but can literally bump into people without them noticing at 100. Investing in a stealthy character will mean faster crouched movement and the ability to sneak past enemies with superhuman senses, all with ample reward: «Whether it's the first goblin you encounter on the journey or a powerful archmage 40 hours in,» Walker asserts, «if you can get a dagger to their throat, each die in a single slice.»

Unity are chopping 265 jobs - around 3.8% of their global workforce - and ending an agreement with digital effects company Wētā FX as part of a company "reset", following an awful year for the game engine provider. Unity also plan to close offices in 14 locations, including Singapore and Berlin, and cut costs at offices in San Francisco and Bellevue, Washington.

Unity has announced another wave of layoffs as it ends its agreement with Lord of the Rings VFX studio as part of a company "reset," according to its current CEO.

Unity is making further cuts to its workforce as it ends an agreement with Weta FX.

Ethyrial: Echoes of Yore had a rocky launch earlier this year, and while many players were likely up in arms over some of the issues it had out of the gate, news of a ransomware attack that saw over 17 thousand accounts deleted might be the last straw.