• A player with the nickname Busy-Shallot-3550 shared his city from Manor Lords on Reddit. He spent between 50 and 70 hours to create a settlement with over 4.5 thousand inhabitants.
• Such a large city made Manor Lords unplayable. Thus, loading a save on SSD takes 20 minutes, and during gameplay the frame rate does not rise above 2 fps.
• One of the main reasons for such poor performance with such a large settlement is memory leakage, which can reach 75 gigabytes.
• Strategy developer Greg Stichen was impressed and promised in comments on Reddit that he will continue to work on optimizing Manor Lords.
• Sales of the strategy by mid-May have already exceeded two million copies. The game is available not only in Steam Early Access, but also on Game Pass subscription.

• According to journalist Jeff Grubb and Eurogamer, Dragon Age Dreadwolf is set to release before the end of 2024.
• On May 15, Ubisoft announced that Assassin's Creed Shadows will be released on November 15. According to analysts' predictions, this will be one of the biggest game releases in 2024.
• November is often chosen for AAA game releases, and players believe that EA and BioWare are tagging along with Dragon Age Dreadwolf. However, insider Shinobi602 has hinted that the action-RPG won't be clashing in November after all.
• Judging from the hint, EA is going to release BioWare's RPG in a different month rather than November. Previously, Shinobi602 also said that the publisher was going to run a fairly short advertising campaign after the game's summer reveal, so players were already beginning to suspect that the release could be in October.
• EA and BioWare have not yet confirmed when exactly they will hold a Dragon Age Dreadwolf reveal, but the publisher has been announced as a partner for the upcoming Summer Game Fest event in June.

I'm thinking of buying some game for my Steam Deck, I think Hades might be a good choice. What do you think?

• Jake Solomon, designer and creative director of both XCOM from Firaxis, revealed in an interview with MinnMax that he consciously doesn't play tattles that are clearly inspired by modern XCOM - Phoenix Point, for example.
• Solomon has nothing against such games, but he finds the idea of spending time in them "excessive" and not very exciting. There is only one exception to this rule - 2018's Into the Breach.

"I love that game," Solomon said during an episode of MinnMax. "I don't really see the XCOM [inspiration,] but I saw somewhere they told a friend 'oh yeah we were inspired by XCOM'. I was like 'really? I'll put that on my resume, because Into the Breach is incredible.'"

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• Solomon noted that it's not essentially much like XCOM, but he's heard from people he knows that the developers were supposedly inspired by the series. The developer also called the game's design "elegant."
• Solomon noted that he played a bit of Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle back in the day and liked how the developers simplified mechanics from turn-based tactical games.Earlier, Solomon shared his thoughts on the failure of Marvel's Midnight Suns, leaving Firaxis, and starting his own studio.

The creators of the Delta emulator abandoned the former logo after Adobe threatened them with legal problems. This was reported by the developers of the program, as noted by The Verge.

According to the authors of Delta, at first Adobe sent a letter in which they gently hinted that the logo should be changed. The next day, however, the company sent a more aggressive warning that the application "may be at risk" because it violates Adobe's intellectual property rights.

Delta's developers said that their logo is simply a stylized Greek letter "delta" that has nothing to do with Adobe products. Nevertheless, the creators of the emulator decided to change the icon to avoid possible problems.

The creators of Delta have already changed the logo of the emulator in the App Store. According to them, for now it is a temporary option, which will soon be replaced with another one.

"I don't even know what I'm looking at," wrote one action-RPG fan.

• FromSoftware studio has published an image of one of the bosses of the upcoming Shadow of the Erdtree add-on. On the illustration you can see a creature with gray hair, horns and wearing a mask. The boss holds rounded blades in his hands and, judging by his pose, moves in a half-bent position.
• The authors of Elden Ring signed the message with the words: "Fearsome foes of unfathomable power await you in the Realm of Shadow". The developers did not specify details about this monster, which players will have to meet in the add-on.
• Bandai Namco Games and FromSoftware will soon hold a special event for journalists and content creators to play a preview version of Shadow of the Erdtree. This was previously announced by streamer Emiru, who received an invitation to the event. Apparently, gameplay previews of the DLC will appear online afterward.
• The Shadow of the Erdtree add-on will be released on June 21, 2024. DLC will be the largest in the history of FromSoftware studio games, which was previously announced by the head of the studio Hidetaka Miyazaki. Among other things, the add-on will feature more than 10 bosses and eight new weapon categories.

Data miner and insider under the nickname Gabe Follower has shared details about Valve's next game. Previously, he has faithfully shared details about the company's products multiple times before the official announcement.

• The name of the game is Deadlock. It was previously known as Neon Prime and Citadel.
• Deadlock is a competitive third-person hero shooter. In it, players will fight in a 6-on-6 format on large-scale maps with four lines. Characters will have unique abilities and will be able to use items.
• Players will be able to quickly move around the map using rails similar to those in Bioshock Infinite. You will need to move in order to defend buildings, as the game will have tower defense mechanics.
• Valve is creating a game in a fantasy setting mixed with steampunk. Deadlock will feature "strange magical creatures" as well as robots.
• Originally, the game was supposed to feature sci-fi elements in the vein of Half-Life and Portal. However, after bad feedback from testers, Valve abandoned them and focused on fantasy.
• Dataminer called Deadlock a mix of Dota 2, Team Fortress 2, Overwatch, Valorant, Smite and Orcs Must Die. The game will feature dynamic and even somewhat chaotic gameplay.
• When creating characters, the developers were largely inspired by Dota 2.

Data miner did not reveal any information about the possible release date of Deadlock. Other insiders and journalists have not confirmed information about the game yet. Valve has also not made any announcements related to their future projects.

In March 2022, Valve said that the company is working on several games at once. Counter-Strike 2 was released in September 2023.

Ghost of Tsushima was released on PC on May 16, 2024, almost four years after its release on PlayStation consoles. The "director's cut" version of the game with all the add-ons became available on PC.

Ghost of Tsushima is set on the island of Tsushima in the late 13th century. According to the game's plot, the brave samurai Jin Sakai tries to save his people from destruction by the Mongol Empire, which seeks to subjugate the East.

The PC version of Ghost of Tsushima received a number of improvements over the console version.

• Unlimited frame rate.
• Additional graphics options designed for different PC configurations.
• Compatibility with UltraWide (21:9), Super Ultrawide (32:9), and triple-monitor (48:9) displays.
• Support for NVIDIA DLSS 3, AMD FSR 3, Intel XeSS, NVIDIA Reflex and NVIDIA DLAA technologies.

Sony previously removed Ghost of Tsushima from sale on Steam in countries without the ability to register a PSN account. At the time of this post, the game could not be purchased in those regions.

• A Reddit user showed a photo where you can see that when buying currency for Minecraft, the system specifies the Steam store among the platforms of Minecraft: Bedrock Edition.
• Minecraft has never been on Steam - even though Microsoft has been releasing its games on the store for quite some time.

• Players aren't yet sure if this is a mistake or a hint that the sandbox game from Mojang will finally be coming to Steam.
• The release of Minecraft on Steam may be related to Microsoft's initiative to increase profits in all divisions. As part of it, the company started releasing its games on other platforms, including the console of its direct competitor.

You're okay, Ubisoft?

• Epic Games Store mega-sale starts on May 16 and ends on June 13. According to the verified insider billbil-kun, four AAA games will be given away during the sale - one title per week.
• The first game, according to billbil-kun, will be the GOTY edition of Dragon Age: Inquisition. It is likely that the giveaway is also timed to coincide with the soon-to-be-released Dragon Age: Dreadwolf.
• What other games will be included in the giveaway is unknown. It is likely that Epic Games, as before, will teaser them, giving users the opportunity to guess the title.

I'm feeling a bit tired of games like RDR2 and Cyberpunk. Just to give you an idea, my favorite AAA developers are Fromsoft and Team Ninja. I'm not really into games that are so obscure or niche that they're only good for the sake of being different or nostalgic. Something in between a widely regarded top-tier indie game and a hidden gem sounds about right.

Here are some recent games I've found and loved that fit this criteria:

- Slay The Spire
- Outer Wilds
- OneShot
- Disco Elysium
- SOMA (not sure if it counts as AAA)

The PPSSPP emulator for iPhone and iPad was officially released on May 15. It is available in the App Store in the standard free version and in the premium Gold version, which costs five dollars. Previously, the utility could only be launched using a jailbreak.

Enthusiast Henrik Rydgård said that the program currently works on Apple mobile devices with some limitations. It does not support:

• Vulkan in the MoltenVK library,
• The Magic Keyboard,
• Synchronization with the RetroAchievements website.

In the future, the author of the emulator will release several updates to fix the shortcomings he listed. He also noted that in most cases, games running in PPSSPP will show good results on iOS and iPadOS - even despite the inability to implement JIT recompilation, which improves performance.

Delta emulator, which supports games for the NES, N64, DS and Game Boy, among others, was previously released on the iPhone. According to media reports, it was downloaded more than three million times in the first few days.