Everyone loves doing challenge runs of FromSoftware games, and none is more repeatable than an Elden Ring randomizer that switches up the locations of every item and boss in the game.Streamer Bushy decided to do a deathless, randomized run of Elden Ring where he could only progress to the next region of the map once he’d fully cleared out the one preceding it. That’s 207 bosses with just a single life, and if he dies the randomizer gets reset. This effectively turns Elden Ring into a roguelike – it’s Nightreign before Nightreign has come out.His five-hour-long YouTube video properly starts with attempt nine, where Bushy gets the dragon katana early. It’s a solid weapon that comes with a lightning buff, and his strategy is to loot graveyards and find merchants, as that’s how he can sort through the most items in as short a time as possible.The first boss he fights is right outside castle Stormveil, Watchdog the Fell Omen. It’s a nice touch that the randomizer keeps part of the nam…

There’s one demo trending on Steam Next Fest that’s a magical combination of several things you’d never predict. But it’s not “eye of newt and toe of frog,” the way Shakespeare imagines in Macbeth. It’s PS1 Harry Potter graphics and a ton of bombs. Co-op multiplayer Secret Agent Wizard Boy and the International Crime Syndicate is the first game from all three Szymanski brothers — that’s David, who made first-person shooter Dusk, and his brothers John and Evan, who both worked on the survival horror game My Friendly Neighborhood. “Secret Agent Wizard Boy must go undercover to topple Grumblemort’s evil crime syndicate, hidden beneath his wizarding school,” says the game’s Steam description. “Learn spells, engage in espionage, and spread utter lore-unfriendly chaos.” Though Secret Agent Wizard Boy is an obvious parody of early 2000’s Harry Potter action games, like the Philosopher’s Stone, which makes Ron look like he eats twigs, the Szymanskis are clearly in love wit…

It’s not often that you get to see video games when they’re so early in development that they more closely resemble messy amalgamations of cubes and shapes than anything you’d actually expect to grace your screen, but thanks to this yearly trend, we can all be given a glimpse into the unknown.The trend in question is Blocktober, which opens the door for developers and designers to show how their games looked before all the shiny textures and trimmings were put on top. Started in 2017, it encourages creators to share old blockmesh designs used while their games were still coming together – doing so really helps highlight the hard work that goes into bringing projects to life. This year, we’ve seen submissions from the devs behind Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, Apex Legends, God of War: Ragnarok, and many more. Santa Monica Studio senior level designer Jon Hickenbottom has shared an early behind-the-scenes look at Svartalfheim’s Nidavellir Port in God of War: Ragnarok, and t…

I’ve just handed my financial records over to a dishwasher aptly named Dishy in Date Everything. Sassy Chap Games’ co-creative lead and voice actor Robbie Daymond prefaces my meet-cute with the kitchen appliance by calling him the “closest thing we have to a villain” in the studio’s debut dating sim, so you could argue this is quite a rash move. But hey, sometimes you have to take risks to find out if you can make a love connection, right? I can talk to the dishwasher and give him what I’m sure is very necessary information thanks to a magical pair of glasses known as “dateviators”. The special shades make the house I’m in come alive, and I mean that in the literal sense, as I can essentially fire hearts at objects to transform them into anthropomorphized versions before my eyes.Producer and voice actor Amanda Hufford says the dishwasher is “a little unhinged”, and I soon discover what that actually means. Dishy begins downloading my own “dishwashing experience”, which begins with the …