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Downwell can be easy to dismiss at first glance. Its retro graphics and seemingly basic roguelike gameplay don’t immediately appear to be anything worth writing home about, but as you delve deeper into Downwell (literally), you’ll find something wholly addicting and satisfying about its gameplay loop.

With Downwell having just arrived on Apple Arcade, making it free for subscribers to the service, now is a better time than ever to give the game a go. If you’re a fan of spelunking (be it in Spelunky or in real life), this particular cavernous adventure is definitely up your alley.

You’ll play as Welltaro, a curious little character that starts his time in Downwell stumbling through the countryside. When he encounters a dark, bottomless well, he does something out of the ordinary (unless you’re into caving regularly); he straps on his Gunboots and dives right into the darkness. And the darkness has so many monsters — and treasure — for Welltaro to seek out.

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It's that time of the month: Xbox has announced the next round of Game Pass games coming to the subscription service throughout December.

While we already knew that Remnant 2 and its prequel were available today on Game Pass, Xbox Wire has shared its latest blog post going into all of the titles coming to Game Pass in December's batch of games. First up, tomorrow (December 1) we've got Spirit of the North, an adventure game inspired by the landscapes of Iceland where you solve puzzles as a fox. Plus, there's SteamWorld Build, a steampunk city builder from The Station, with both of these titles available on cloud, console, and PC.

Then, on December 5, Lara Croft fans will be able to dive into Rise of the Tomb Raider, the second game in the Survivor Trilogy, available on cloud, console, and PC. On the same day, Clone Drone in the Danger Zone is coming to Game Pass, a "robot voxel slice ‘em up where any part of your body can be sliced off." This one's playable on cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X/S. That's not all for December 5 though, as While The Iron's Hot, a game that follows a "journeyman blacksmith on a quest to become a master and restore a ruined village," is also arriving that day, alongside World War Z: Aftermath, which, you guessed it, are both available on cloud, console, and PC.

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The more time passes after the unceremonious execution of the Batgirl movie, the less convincing Warner Bros. Discovery’s reasoning sounds. CEO David Zaslav is making things noticeably worse every time he opens his mouth too.

During this year’s DealBook Summit, organized by The New York Times, we heard Disney boss Bob Iger contradict himself regarding the sequelization of every IP under the sun. If your day wasn’t terrible enough already in regard to art-turned-into-content, here comes Warner head-honcho David Zaslav with the worst entertainment take you’re going to read this week: “What content is going to help us win? The content that wasn’t, we made a strategic decision on. It was difficult and it was painful. But I think it was the right decision for the company and it was necessary.” It’s all numbers on a spreadsheet, and you can’t expect these people to treat artists and their work with respect.

Of course, this guy likes to throw well-calculated adjectives into his comments, trying to soften a blow that never affected the people he usually talks to anyway. Axing a movie which audiences haven’t even had a chance to look at and judge doesn't take "courage." It’s quite the opposite. With most comic book adaptations facing a downturn, could Batgirl have made its money back? Who knows, maybe not, but it deserved its shot. The fact alone that executives who are disconnected from whatever goes down in the ‘content mines’ can turn the labour of love of countless artists into a tax write-off is gross, and makes you wonder what hope there’s left for the monster Hollywood has become.

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She’s not done yet. After farming over $240 million worldwide (and counting), Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour Concert Film will arrive to digital and streaming platforms before Christmas.

The artist took to X/Twitter to share the news, revealing the long-anticipated release will hit households on December 13. Yup, that’s her birthday. Fitting and perfectly timed to make a second killing before the year ends.

This cut of the film includes three songs - ‘Wildest Dreams,’ ‘The Archer,’ and ‘Long Live’ - which weren’t present in the theatrical release, almost assuredly taking The Eras Tour over the three-hour mark. Sorry if your swiftie friends and/or relatives haven’t shut up about it, but there’s more coming your way. Fans should rejoice at this news though.

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Like big Cyberpunk 2077 updates with the number two in their name? Well, you’re getting another one in the form of Update 2.1 next week, CD Projekt has revealed.

Yup, you probably thought they were done with the massive 2.0 that arrived alongside the Phantom Liberty, but it seems there’s still some more cool stuff that the game’s developers have been planning on adding to Night City. And you’ll be able to get a look at some of it in a Twitch stream featuring some of them.

“On December 5th, the same day Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition hits the shelves,” a tweet from the game’s official account revealed, “we’ll release a free Update 2.1 introducing new and hotly anticipated gameplay elements.”

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Huge advances in CGI have, in theory, unlocked boundless creative freedom for scifi and fantasy shows – if a writer can imagine it you can get it on screen. Though,in practice, that potential has been tempered by late stage capitalism and its propensity to devalue everything that doesn’t throw a 600% return up to a bunch of vampiric ghouls who lack the basic human capacity for joy.

The upshot of this is that the genre TV boom of the nineties, encompassing everything from Star Trek to The X Files, is very much a thing of the past. The current economics of television rarely (never) account for large ensembles, 26 episodes per season, and an art budget that can stretch to more than one set. Hugh Howey’s acclaimed short-story collection Beacon 23, then, must seem like a gift from heaven for the producers of its MGM+ adaptation.

This is the story of a space lighthouse and its various keepers, whose tenures span a couple of centuries and are intertwined in a number of ways. Primarily, we are concerned with the interplay between street-smart corporate saboteur Aster (Headey) and troubled soldier Halan (played with deft versatility by Homecoming’s Stephan James). The pair’s motivations and reasons for being on Beacon 23 in the first place are all wrapped up in this show’s neatly unravelling mystery box, which batters along at such a healthy pace that in the space of each of the first three 50 minute episodes, your impression of them and knowledge of how they fit into this universe changes vastly.

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Capcom's upcoming and long awaited sequel Dragon's Dogma 2 will seemingly be the developer's first $70 title.

Since the launch of the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, developers have slowly been transitioning from a $60 to a $70 price tag, often citing increased development costs as the reason behind the change. Looking at listings of Dragon's Dogma 2 on the PlayStation and Microsoft stores, it appears that Capcom is finally embracing that change right before it heads into a new fiscal year. Last night, Capcom officially confirmed that the game would be launching March 22, one of the studio's last big releases before the 2024-25 financial year kicks off.

Now, to be clear, yes it's annoying that games are getting more and more expensive, especially when a lot of us are having to pinch our pockets a bit more. At the very least, though, Capcom does often hold some pretty hefty sales for its games post launch - Resident Evil 4 Remake, which only released back in March, was as much as 50% off for Black Friday, which you certainly can't be too upset about considering it's up for game of the year at The Game Awards.

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One of the many interesting Fallout modding projects currently in the works is Nuevo México, with the team behind it having just put out a cool new teaser.

If you’re unfamiliar with Fallout Nuevo México, it’s a mod that was originally announced back in 2021 and is set to take players on a fresh adventure set just five years after the events of Black Isle’s original Fallout game. Think something like Fallout: London, but maybe a little bit smaller, using New Vegas’ engine instead of Fallout 4’s, and with the countryside of the American southwest replacing the ruined urban sprawl.

After putting out a big gameplay trailer back in July, the team behind the mod have been a bit quiet, but they’ve now put out a fresh mini-teaser for fans to check out, as well as offering a bit of a roadmap for their plans going forwards. The teaser video is dubbed ‘Four Corners States’, likely due to the fact the first thing it shows is Nuevo México’s rendition of the Four Corners Monument, a real life landmark that marks the spot where the states of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah meet.

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Today marks the return of Diablo 4's Campfire Chat, the more relaxed/casual developer-lead livestream. The subject of today's show is twofold, and it's one both casual players and those already deep into the endgame will care about.

This Campfire Chat will discuss the Abattoir of Zir, as well as Diablo 4's first-ever limited-time event, Midwinter Blight.

The Abattoir of Zir, and Midwinter Blight were both announced at BlizzCon earlier this month, right alongside Diablo 4's Vessel of Hatred expansion.

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Things aren’t good at Disney right now, that much we can tell from recent box office bombs that have affected even their biggest IPs, and release calendars which are anything but stable following internal struggles and the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes. Well, it seems Disney CEO Bob Iger is only partially aware of what the public thinks.

During The New York Times’ DealBook conference (via Variety), Iger talked about where they’re at and what the plan is to float the Disney boat, which hasn’t stopped taking on water ever since the other Bob (Chapek) stepped in and focused way too much on the Disney Plus side of the business. Even though he was kicked out of the company one year ago and Iger returned with a “quality over quantity” mandate, things haven’t improved magically in such a short period of time. But of course, they didn’t expect 2023 tentpoles such as Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and The Marvels to underperform so badly.

While Iger said (via Deadline) he doesn’t “want to apologize for making sequels,” he acknowledged the appeal of some brands might’ve suffered because of a lack of restraint and proper quality control: “Some of them have done extraordinarily well. And they’ve been good films too. I think there has to be a reason to make it, beyond commerce. You have to have a good story. And we have made too many.”

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Apple announced its App Store Award winners yesterday, rounding up the best apps and games from across 2023, with Honkai Star Rail coming out on top.

Another year, another batch of games to give awards to. This time, specifically for games on Apple's App Store, which had 40 finalists selected for its best apps and games of the year. On the iPhone game of the year front, Honkai Star Rail was up against Vampire Survivors and Afterplace, but it took home the gold as the best mobile game of the year. Of course, Apple has a few other platforms its games are available on, which had their own respective winners.

The iPad game of the year went to Lost in Play, a picture-book-like adventure game from Snapbreak Games, beating out Eggy Party and Pocket City 2. Slightly higher in profile is Pinocchio Souls-like Lies of P, from Neowiz, which took home the award for best Mac game of the year (an award our review might disagree with, though I personally can see why). Lies of P managed to beat out games like Elex 2 and Return to Monkey Island, so it did have a bit of competition. Lastly, the best Apple Arcade game of the year is Hello Kitty Island Adventure from Sunblink, an Animal-Crossing-esque title.

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Only a few weeks ahead of its launch, Denuvo Anti-Tamper has been added to the Steam version of Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney trilogy.

This was first spotted by eagle-eyed fans, who spotted an update to the title on SteamDB. This website, a database that tracks stacks and data throughout the largest gaming platform on the PC, clearly shows the addition of Denuvo Anti-Tamper mere hours ago.

This software, added to many games in an attempt to prevent manipulation of game data, is infamous for causing performance issues despite its popularity among various game developers and publishers across the world. While creators of the software Irdeto have denied such claims, various tests including one from Digital Foundries' Rich Leadbetter has proven otherwise in some cases.

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Following substantial backlash from players, Destiny 2’s recently released Starter Pack DLC has been yanked from storefronts.

The add-on, which arrived alongside the game’s latest update, had drawn the ire and mockery of players across Reddit and Twitter in recent days, with most suggesting they didn’t think it was good value for money. Is $15/£12.99 too much for a bundle of okay-ish items designed to help give newbies a leg up or veterans more kit to hoard? Well, it kind of doesn’t matter now.

As spotted by Kotaku’s Ethan Gach, the Starter Pack has now been rendered unpurchasable via Steam, Xbox and PlayStation storefronts, in a move that’s come from Bungie itself. The Steam listing for the add-on, for example, now displays the message “Notice: Destiny 2: Starter Pack is no longer available on the Steam store.”

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It seems Microsoft listened to our suggestion to add something big to Game Pass for the holidays, except it may have done it a tiny bit early. Xbox Game Pass was just updated with two surprise additions, available right now for all members.

Those being this year's excellent Remnant 2, as well as its predecessor Remnant: From the Ashes.

From the Ashes has been on Game Pass before, of course, but this is Remnant 2's first go on the subscription service. Weirdly, the two games joined with no proper announcement, and they certainly weren't expected to be among the next batch of November games to join Game Pass.

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If you hadn't already played Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition, and you have Netflix, you'll soon have your chance to.

It is not controversial to say that 2021's GTA: The Trilogy remaster was not great at best, downright bad at worst. There were bugs galore, it was pulled from sale on PC for a while, and Rockstar's own graphics comparison between the original and remastered versions of the games wasn't even that convincing. Despite all of that, they're currently the easiest way to play GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas, and soon to be even more so. Yesterday, Netflix announced the trio of games would be added to its service as of December 14, on both the Google Play Store and the App Store, as well as in the Netflix mobile app itself.

Interestingly enough, last month The Wall Street Journal had actually reported that Netflix wanted to add a GTA game to its service. GTA has a lot of draw as a name, even if these remasters weren't the best received, and Netflix clearly wants to get its foot in the games space (something it's struggled to do so far). Over the past few years, the streaming giant has acquired a number of development studios, including Oxenfree developer Night School Studio, and as well as Boss Fight Entertainment.

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A 20th Anniversary Edition of Beyond Good & Evil is slated to be released in 2024, news of which comes after the game was mistakenly posted to some storefronts overnight.

The title was available on the Xbox Store and to some Ubisoft+ subscribers, which the company assured was not indicative of the final game.

According to Ubisoft, what was released was an early development version of the game.

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Larian Studios has announced Patch 5 for Baldur's Gate 3 will feature an epilogue for the game.

What will be included in the epilogue wasn't shared, but it should be interesting. Larian used an image of Withers to announce the news, but whether the character has some hand in it is to be determined.

If you haven't played the game, you are likely unfamilair with Withers. The character allows you to resurrect allies, hire help, and change your class. He can also be a Camp Follower, characters that travel with you and mainly stick around camp.

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A new month means new PlayStation Plus monthly games are coming to subscribers.

December's titles are Lego 2K Drive, Powerwash Simulator, and Sable. The games will become available on Tuesday, December 5 through Monday, January 1.

Lego 2K Drive will be available for PS4 and PS5. In this open-world Lego driving adventure, you can race anywhere, play with anyone, build your own rides brick by brick, and race against rivals across streets, seas, and sands for the Sky Trophy. The game also features a story mode, and you can play with a friend at home or with up to five others online in crossplay.

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I never thought I’d be writing this, but the idea of building a new PC is nowhere near as exciting to me as it used to be. Putting together the right build, taking the budget as far as it could, hunting for deals, buying from different retailers just to save a bit of money (and the act of opening so many Chrome tabs that precedes all that) have always brought me so much joy.

Even down to building the PC myself, refusing to ever let someone else do it (even when it’s free) was something I took pride in. I don’t want to skip harvest day; I want to pick out the fruits of my labour, and put them all together to turn them into something more.

But it’s getting harder and harder to justify doing all that.

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While Japan has been getting fresh episodes of Pokemon Horizons since April, the new anime will finally be released in English next year, exclusively on Netflix.

Earlier today, The Pokemon Company announced through a new trailer that Pokemon Horizons: The Series will be coming to Netflix on February 23 in the US, complete with the English dub. Oddly enough, if you're over here in the UK you'll actually be able to watch it as soon as this Friday, December 1, where it will be airing exclusively on BBC iPlayer and CBBC. Still, for those of you in the US, you can check out the trailer for the dub below ahead of its February release date.

Pokemon Horizons has obviously made a major change compared to previous seasons of the anime, that being the fact that Ash Ketchum is no longer the series' protagonist. Last year, Ash's story wrapped up where he was officially dubbed the world's best Pokemon trainer, a fitting if maybe undeserving end for a character that's been a constant throughout many people's childhoods. Unsurprisingly, Horizons will continue to feature Pikachu, but this time round it'll star Captain Pikachu, who is in fact a different electric rat from the one that accompanied Ash, and also has a cute little captain's hat.

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