Gen Con 2023 Recap – The Games, News, and Staff Picks

While most find the games by FromSoftware extremely hard, a few others seek even more challenge. These daredevils will do whatever it takes to add an extra layer of difficulty to the game. This week, one brave Armored Core 6: Fires Of Rubicon player and YouTuber by the name of ZeroLenny beat the game with no weapons, simply by punching and kicking his enemies into piles of rubble with his fists and feet in Armored Core.

It’s been a whirlwind of a week for us at TSA, with a big part of that down to two of us being at Gamescom. We’ve played so many games that it’s hard to pick the best ones out, but I’m very excited for Bellwright, Mudrunner Expeditions and Mortal Kombat 1.

Another weekend means we're back with another batch of streaming recommendations – and it's been a bumper week of new releases.

By Jay Peters, a news editor who writes about technology, video games, and virtual worlds. He’s submitted several accepted emoji proposals to the Unicode Consortium.

Teravision Games’ asymmetrical multiplayer title Killer Klowns from Outer Space: The Game was announced last year for release in early 2023. It’s not out yet, but IllFonic (of Friday the 13th: The Game fame) is confirmed to co-develop and publish the title, taking over from Good Shepherd Entertainment.

Diablo 4 players are busy chasing down the best loot to help clean out dungeons and beat Uber Lilith in record time, but sometimes even the most valuable of items can be a letdown.

On Saturday, Walmart loss prevention employees watched as Calhoun County correctional officer Josh Hardy, who was still in uniform, opened several Pokemon packs and pocketed individual cards within direct eye line of them. He then left the store without paying, only to be confronted by those same employees. Instead of fessing up, Hardy fled the scene.

The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department has reportedly identified two of the persons of interest allegedly involved in the theft of $300,000 worth of TCG cards from Gen Con 2023 as board game designers.

One fan creating a new fantastic-looking romhack for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time appears to have learned the right lessons from past fangames, as this developer has chosen to stay anonymous for now.

As of this coming weekend Magic: The Gathering, arguably the world’s most popular trading card game, has a new competitor. Ravensburger’s Disney Lorcanalaunches on Aug. 18 and, after its debut at Gen Con in Indianapolis, a lot of heads are being turned by the new hotness. It’s a potent mix of classic animated characters like Cinderella, Stitch, and Frozen’s Elsa that has Disney fans and TCG collectors both lining up for product. That’s what makes Magic’s latest set so very conspicuous — it’s also chockablock with fantastical royalty and fairy tale characters.

Darrington Press owes its position in the tabletop industry to the ubiquitous popularity of Dungeons & Dragons, the tabletop role-playing game equivalent to delivery pizza — inoffensive, widely available, and reliable in a pinch. Of late, the company behind actual play phenomenon Critical Role has tried to move beyond slinging cheap pies by releasing a tidy range of board games and, most recently, the cinematic-minded, magical-noir tabletop role-playing game Candela Obscura.

Thieves took off with “upwards of $300,000” worth of Magic: The Gathering cards days before the start of major tabletop convention Gen Con, according to Indianapolis police. Two unidentified men walked off the Indiana Convention Center floor in Indianapolis, where Gen Con was held, with a pallet full of boxes. Pastimes Comics & Games manager Zack Reiter told Polygon the cards were Magic: The Gathering cards from the Niles, Illinois store.