When it comes to cozy gaming, Stardew Valley is the holy grail, and Haunted Chocolatier is looking to continue this tradition of excellence. Being developer Eric Barone's second game, audiences can expect Haunted Chocolatier to take some greater risks than its predecessor, sticking to many of its core mechanics while iterating upon them in unique ways.

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Hello,Im developing Aftermath, a post-apocalyptic strategy game inspired by the mechanics of OGame. Players manage resources (metal, water, and oil), construct buildings, conduct research, and lead units to survive and compete in a devastated world.Project StatusThe backend has core functionalities implemented and is hosted on a cloud-based test server.The Unity client includes ess

December wrapped up another fun year of gaming. What did you enjoy most about last months title lineup?How does it work? At the end of every month, PlayStation Blog will open a poll where you can vote for the best new game released that month. After the polls close we will tally your votes, and announce the winner on our social channels and PlayStation.Blog.What is the voting criteria? Thats up to you! If you were only able to recommend one new release to a friend that month, which would it be? Note: re-released games dont qualify, but remakes do. We define remakes as ambitious, larger-scale rebuilds such as Resident Evil 4 (2023) and Final Fantasy VII Remake.How are nominees decided? The PlayStation Blog editorial team will gather a list of that months most noteworthy releases and use it to seed the poll.

Some movie and TV stories, described to someone who hasnt seen them, invariably sound cooler than they are. (Just try to sum up the plot of Disney Plus The Acolyte without sounding like youre trying to sell it.) Others are just never going to sound like good ideas, no matter how well theyre executed. Scott Manns 2022 horror-thriller Fall, newly arrived on Hulu, is one of the latter theres just no way to avoid how cheesy the premise sounds. Two women climb a TV tower and get stuck at the top sounds like an unlikely premise for a heart-stopping adventure movie.But execution is everything. If you can get past that premise and a few early, mild narrative missteps, Fall is surprisingly terrifyinga truly vertiginous, visceral experience designed to bring out the latent acrophobe in everyone.Grace Caroline Currey (Shazam! / Shazam!: Fury of the Gods) stars as Becky Connor, a former free-climbing enthusiast whos still reeling from the death of her husband Dan (Mason Gooding, of the new batch of Scream movies) during a climb. On the one-year anniversary of his death, shes drinking herself into a stupor and contemplating suicide when her best friend Hunter (Virginia Gardner, F*** Marry Kill) shows up to try to lure her out of isolation and drag her back to their hobby.Hunter, an enthusiastic daredevil trying to build a following as a YouTube star, has a new stunt in mind: a climb up a 2,000-foot decommissioned TV antenna, described as the former tallest structure in America. She wants Becky to come along, face her (entirely reasonable!) fears about climbing, and scatter Dans ashes from the top of the tower as a step toward emotional closure.Obviously, things go wrong, and obviously, once the two women get stuck on the tower, they cant get phone reception to call for help. Fall mostly operates along broad, familiar beats, though Mann and co-writer Jonathan Frank use viewers familiarity with those beats to goose the tension: With every step Becky and Hunter take up the dilapidated, fragile-feeling tower, it seems more and more inevitable that theyre putting themselves in lethal danger, with no plausible way out once the crisis hits. A lot of the rest of the films run time plays out like 10 Cloverfield Lane, The Shallows, or other standout small-scale thrillers, where the protagonists have to get inventive about staging their own rescue with minimal resources and a ticking clock.But while Becky and Hunter are resourceful, and come up with some clever ideas, Falls real tension isnt in their escape attempts or even in the personal grievances that emerge once theyre in a life-threatening situation. Its all in Tim Despics queasy cinematography, which makes the danger seem plausible and immersive from the opening sequence on. Stuck on top of a tower just doesnt sound as dangerous as Stranded in shark-infested waters or Locked in a bunker with an unpredictable psychopath, but Despic and Mann make the isolated location, the harsh desert conditions, and the creaky tower feel terrifyingly oppressive. What The Descent did for oppressive depths, Fall does for heights.Falls unlikely premise even winds up working for it. Horror fans have seen plenty of victims stranded in the woods or wilds, stuck at sea or trapped deep underground. But Falls setting feels unique, and it lends itself readily to breathless visuals and heart-stopping plunges. The deep irony is that Becky and Hunter are high enough to see where help might come from, and yet theyre completely isolated: The movie plays with that in a variety of ways, exploring how easy it is to seem beyond other peoples reach even in a populated setting.Fall isnt a perfect little thriller. The setup mixes Beckys real anguish with some questionable plot devices: Shes just starting to take a whole bottle of prescription medicine when Hunter unexpectedly arrives, which seems both melodramatic and in questionable taste. More ridiculous is the conceit that has her calling Dan just to hear his voicemail message again, and pretend shes talking to him (shes still paying for his account after a year?), then dramatically calling him again minutes later after another emotional setback, only to find the numbers suddenly been disconnected. (So she isnt paying for his account but it took a year to disconnect? What exactly is the idea here?)But the film is full of small character touches that make Becky and Hunter realized enough characters for their drama to matter. The same early setup has Hunter cheerfully putting on a ditzy persona for her YouTube followers, then exulting when one of her posts gets 300 likes. The last decade or so of horror movies has been brutal about would-be influencers, making a running joke out of victims who get themselves in deep trouble while pursuing the footage that will launch them to viral fame. Fall follows suit, but has some seeming sympathy for Hunters small-scale ambitions, and the way shes trying to make a business out of adventures she already loves, instead of faking a fandom for clicks.Still, Fall isnt ultimately about the plotting or the characters. Its about the physical sensations it evokes, the effective and startling imagery of great heights and dramatic falls. If you white-knuckled your way through Free Solo or parts of Man on Wire, this ones guaranteed to tap into that same sense of anxiety. Its even a movie designed for streaming, with an immediately grabby opening sequence setting up how the rest of the film will feel. Dont judge it from the plot description, just give it a couple minutes of your streaming time and its likely to lure you in.Fall is streaming on Hulu and Peacock, and is available for digital rental or purchase on Apple TV, Fandango at Home, and other digital platforms.

Recursive Destruction allows you to restore terrain and objects to their original form in Marvel Rivals.Recursive Destruction is a new feature that is unique to the Midtown map, and you must trigger it to complete a mission from the Midnight Features seasonal event. As its a new and unique feature, it can be quite confusing trying to figure out how to prompt it, so well make it a little easier for you.Heres how to trigger Recursive Destruction in Marvel Rivals.How to trigger Recursive Destruction in Marvel RivalsFirst things first, youll need to play on the new map, Midtown, which is only available in quick match. Luckily, there is a limited-time mode that is Midtown only, so, if youre looking to complete the Recursive Destruction mission as fast as possible, make sure to queue for Midtown!While youre playing on Midtown, use your Chrono Vision, which is defaulted to B on PC and right d-pad on console, to see destructible terrain. Usually, youll only see walls and objects highlighted in yellow, but on Midtown, there is terrain highlighted in red.To trigger Recursive Destruction, youll need to deal damage to the objects highlighted in red. Once youve dealt enough damage, the terrain will restore itself through Recursive Destruction.There are two locations to trigger Recursive Destruction on Midtown:The giant pile of rubble inside the station after the first check pointThe collapsed buildings after the second check pointIt is important to note that you can only trigger Recursive Destruction at the designated locations after youve reached their respective check points. If you try to deal damage to the objects before then, nothing will happen, so make sure to push the convoy to each check point!

As multiple wildfires rage around the Los Angeles area, the Final Fantasy 14 team has decided to delay the games automatic housing demolition on North American servers so that players affected by the disaster, and therefore unable to log into the game, wont lose their digital homes.The auto-demolition counter was suspended for the Aether, Crystal, Dynamis, and Primal data centers on Jan. 9 at 8:20 p.m. PT, and the devs plan to monitor the situation in Southern California for the foreseeable future before reactivating it. Under normal circumstances, Final Fantasy 14 players lose their housing after 45 days of not accessing the property due to its high demand within the community.Final Fantasy 14 has previously frozen regional auto-demolition for other natural disasters, including the 2018 Japanese floods, Hurricane Michael, the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquakes, the 2024 Noto earthquake, and Hurricane Helene.From all of us on the Final Fantasy 14 development and management team, our hearts go out to those who were affected by the mountain fires that occurred around Los Angeles in North America, Square Enixs most recent message reads. It is our sincere hope that recovery is swift, and those of you who were affected will be able to rejoin us in FF14 soon.The Los Angeles Times reports at least 10 people have died, over 100,000 residents have been forced to evacuate, 9,000 structures have been destroyed, and tens of thousands of acres have been burned by the several massive wildfires affecting the area. If youre willing and able to support the affected, the LA Times has also collected a large list of organizations accepting donations here.

CES 2025 is nearing a close, and I couldnt be more excited. Not because I dislike the show floor or meeting face-to-face with people I usually only see online, but because Ive been spending the week in a hotel room with a broken heater. Thats why, when I got to try Razers concept heating and cooling gaming chair today, I was just about ready to stage a heist.Dubbed Project Arielle, the chair isnt confirmed for market yet, instead simply demonstrating an idea Razer is considering. But its an idea I fully support. Using the companys existing Fujin Pro chair as a base, Project Arielle includes a heater and a bladeless fan, turning its mesh back into a temperature control system. Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt The way it works is that the fan draws in air from the bottom of the device, which then gets filtered through vents on the sides of the chairs back and exhausted over your neck. Your butt and arms dont get any climate control, at least for now, but it still felt like a literal breath of fresh air.I was a bit skeptical going in, unsure if the Arielle was really going to be much different from sitting a few feet away from a fan. But the breath of cool air on the nape of my neck was undeniably refreshing after walking around the crowded show floor.For my money, though, I preferred the heating, which plays to the strengths of a mesh back by keeping your back warm without getting it sweaty. It's a little less innovative than the cooling mode, but while heated gaming chairs do exist right now, they rarely have as much coverage as the Arielle, and often use materials that can get stuffy after a while.According to Razer, the chairs heater can warm you up to about 86 degrees Fahrenheit, while its fan can reduce your perceived temperature by nine degrees. Why perceived temperature and not actual temperature? Well, if a fan is blowing right on your neck, you might feel a bit chillier than a thermometer would indicate. Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt As for controls, theres a small panel located on the seat that lets you switch from heating to cooling as well as change fan speeds, but granular temperature settings arent possible for the moment. Theres also orange lighting to indicate when the device is warming and blue for when its cooling, but those are the only colors it can show for now.Anyway, Im about to go bury myself under some blankets, waiting for the day that this thing comes out for real. Last years Razer concept, Project Esther, did eventually make its way to market as the Razer Freyja, so its not out of the question.

In the event of severe weather and natural disasters that may require everything from preparation to evacuation, having reliable, up-to-date reports about conditions is essential. For those affected by wildfires in California (and other states across the West), Watch Duty is the go-to service for this critical information. Watch Duty collects wildfire information from 911 dispatch calls and government agencies and relies on volunteers to monitor ongoing activity via radio scanners, wildfire cameras, and satellite data as well as reports from law enforcement and fire services. The volunteer teammade up of active and retired firefighters, dispatchers, and first responders as well as reporterscontinues to collect, vet, and relay information about incidents with notifications to the public in the event that life or property are threatened. Credit: Emily Long What makes Watch Duty worth using is its robust, reliable, and real-time data. It collates more official sources than individual agencies like CalFire, and its volunteers fact-check rather than publishing unverified, crowdsourced or social media reports (which may perpetuate misinformation). How to use Watch DutyWhen you open Watch Duty, you can view the fire map or search for a specific incident, address, or place. Click on the fire icon to pull up information about the incident, including verified updates, evacuation orders, and shelter locations for both people and animals. You can also turn on notifications and scroll through the news feed, which may include photos, weather and air quality reports, road closures, and updates on fire-fighting efforts. Credit: Emily Long Watch Duty covers 22 states in the western and midwestern U.S. (including Hawaii). The appwhich is available for iOS and Android as well as via web browserand its essential features are free to use, and you don't need to sign up for an account. There are additional paid membership options, which give access to extras like fire-fighting flight tracking, additional alerts, and more detailed data points. But fire monitoring and evacuation orders are available to everyone at no charge.

If youve ever worried about your heart rate during exercise being too high or too low, youll want to read this. Your "heart rate zones" might be completely wrong. Not only are zones defined differently in different apps, they are also usually calculated based on your maximum heart rate. And that maximum heart rate calculation? Its incorrect for huge swaths of the population.What does it mean to know your maximum heart rate?Your maximum heart rate is, by definition, the fastest your heart can possibly beat. If a watch tells you that your max is 180 beats per minute, and then you go for a run and your heart is beating at 190 beats per minute, you havent gone over your max. You have simply found out that 180 isnt your max at all. Your actual max must be at least 190.The only way to truly know your max heart rate is to test it with intense exercise. Ill give you some ways to do that below. Fitness gadgets and apps (and books and other sources of fitness advice) try to skip that step by using a formula that estimates your maximum heart rate based on your age. The most popular formula simply subtracts your age from 220.But there are problems with that formula, and even with the alternative equations that have been proposed to replace it. There is no formula that can tell you what your own personal max heart rate actually is.Why you shouldnt trust any max heart rate formulaThese formulasno matter which one you chooseare one-size-fits-all calculations that will be roughly accurate for finding the average max heart rate of people of a given age. But it doesnt matter what the average is, if youre trying to figure out the max heart rate for you as an individual.Think about how you shop for shoes. You dont tell an app that youre 5 feet 6 inches tall, and then trust it if it says that the average 5-foot-6 person wears a size 8 shoe. You need to try on different shoes, or at least measure your feet. Maybe youre a size 6. Maybe youre a size 9. It doesnt matter at all what size the average person wears, because plenty of people will have larger or smaller feet than the average.Its the same for max heart rates. The idea of calculating a max heart rate has become so widespread that people assume the calculation is correct, or at least very close. But check out this graph from a 2012 study where researchers measured the actual maximum heart rates of over 3,000 people. (The lines represent two of the supposedly more accurate max heart rate formulas.) Credit: Nes et al, 2012, Age-predicted maximal heart rate in healthy subjects: The HUNT Fitness Study If youve ever been confused about your own max heart rate, this will make you feel validated. For example, Im 44, and the 220 minus your age formula would have me believe my max is 176. But my harder workouts tend to see my heart rate reach the 190s, and Ive clocked over 200 several times with a chest strap (the most accurate way to measure). Looking at this graph, heart rates of 200+ are certainly high for 44-year-olds, but theyre not unheard of and I wouldn't even call them rare.The same study also found that the formulas get even further from accurate as you get older. Check out the averages they found for different age groups:Age 19 to 29: 195 plus or minus 9.9Age 30 to 39: 189 plus or minus 10.1Age 40 to 45: 183 plus or minus 10.9Age 50 to 58: 176 plus or minus 11.6Age 60 to 69: 171 plus or minus 12.3Age 70+: 164 plus or minus 12.4The plus or minus in this sense refers to a standard error, meaning that most people will fall within that range, but by no means all. So even the formula that is supposed to find the average for a given age is not keeping up with how peoples heart rates actually change with age.For example, the entry for my age group says that my heart rate is likely to be between 172-194 (rather than the standard prediction of 176). But I know that my max heart rate is 202.And while I have a higher max heart rate than most people my age, there are also plenty of folks who have a lower heart rate than the formulas would predict. Bottom line: Not only is there a wide range in whats normal, but the common formulas get less and less accurate the older people get. I would not consider any heart rate calculation to be accurate enough for setting your own personal zones or exercise targets.How can the formula be so wrong?The 220 minus age formula was based on observations from sparse data, as detailed in this paper on the history of the formula. That same paper notes that all of the formulas developed since then have error bars that are just as bad (plus or minus 10 beats per minute, or more in many caseswhich matches the data from the 2012 study I highlighted above). Currently, there is no acceptable method to estimate HRmax, they wrote in 2002, and thats still true today.I feel like I should say something here about the mysteries of the heart being unknowable. (Surely some poet has beaten me to it.) The truth is that age alone doesnt determine a persons max heart rate, so no matter what numbers you use to create an age-based formula, youre just not going to get a useful result. If there were other obvious relationships, like if your weight or exercise habits affected your max, surely a more accurate formula would be possible. But people differ in their max heart rates for reasons we don't entirely understand, just like they differ in their shoe sizes, so this doesnt seem to be a problem that math can solve.Unfortunately, the makers of smartwatches and other devices want to have some default zones to present when you begin using their products, even if youve never done a max-effort sprint in your life. That's why we keep seeing these flawed numbers over and over again. I can understand the smartwatch makers' dilemma: On the one hand, only an intense test of a workout will find your actual max. But on the other, most beginners wont want to do an intense test and probably may not have enough experience to be able to pace themselves appropriately to reach their max in a test. People with cardiovascular, metabolic, or renal diseases shouldnt do all-out exercise unless they check with a doctor first, anyway.What to do instead of relying on a max heart rate calculationBecause of the problems above, reputable organizations have mostly backed away from the idea of calculating your max heart rate. Runners World took down its target heart rate calculator. The American Council on Exercise, one of the major organizations that issues personal training certifications, instructs trainers not to use max heart rate calculations, but to do real-world tests to help clients match their own heart rates to appropriate intensities of exercise. (Im certified through ACE, and can confirm that this is whats in the textbook.)If youre a beginner, you dont need a heart rate goal at all. If you can exercise without getting out of breath, youre in a good zone for steady state exercise. No need to overthink it.If you want to put a number on that, you can do a submaximal talk test. The informal way is to just notice what number you see on your watch when you can no longer speak comfortably; the more formal way is this treadmill test.If you really truly want to know your max HR, you can test it. Id only recommend this for relatively experienced folks, and obviously skip this if a medical professional has ever told you to stick to lower-intensity exercise. Instructions are below.How to test your max heart rateFIrst, I'll tell you how you don't find it: you don't start cold and then attempt to sprint at max effort until you gas out 10 seconds later. Your heart rate will spike, but it won't get anywhere near your max in such a short effort. Your heart needs time to get up to speed, and once you really start pushing you need that hard effort to be sustained for at least a few minutes, as you push harder and harder.With that in mind, here are a few different ways of finding your real-world max heart rate. Warm up, and then run up a big hill three timesHeres the usual protocol, most famously shared by Pete Pfitzinger in Advanced Marathoning:Jog for 10 to 15 minutes to warm up.Run hard up a moderately steep hill that is at least a quarter-mile long (Pfitzinger recommends a 600-meter hill).As soon as you get to the top, jog back down and repeat.After three repeats, the test is over. The highest number your watch recorded is your new max.If you dont have a smartwatch, you can measure your pulse with two fingers on your neck at the top of each hill repeat. The highest number you see is your max.Warm up, and then do three four-minute intervalsThis test works similarly, but doesn't require a hill, and doesn't need to be running. It comes from the Cardiac Exercise Research Group at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, the same group that popularized the Norwegian 4x4 workout. Here's how they describes it: Warm up thoroughly ("so you start sweating," they say). A 10 to 15 minute warmup as above should do the trick.Work hard for four minutes (running, cycling, etc) and then give yourself three minutes of active recovery like brisk walking.Repeat the four-minute hard interval again, and then another three minutes of active recovery. Finally, start another four-minute interval. This time, once you're two minutes in, sprint as hard as you can. Or as they put it: "increase your speed even further and run until you're too exhausted to continue."The highest number you see on your heart rate monitor (or, again, what you measure by hand at the end) is your max.If you're experienced, use a race to estimate your max heart rateYou can probably skip the field tests if you've run some all-out races. But a word of caution: it helps to be experienced at running races if you're going to rely on this. If you intend to run a fast mile, but you go too hard at the start and slow down by the end, your heart rate may never hit a true max. But if you've run some well-paced races, you'll see some of your highest heart rates at the end. (My own current max of 202, I've seen twice: once at the end of a graded exercise test that was pushing me harder and harder until I couldn't continue; and once at the end of a 1-mile time trial that I ran on the track.)If you start at a challenging pace and then push the pace slightly as you go, finishing in an extended near-sprint as you approach the finish line, youre likely to hit your max or something pretty close to it. An FTP test on a bike or a 5K race will often look exactly like that, so if youre an experienced runner or cyclist, you can probably just look at the heart rate from your last hard race, and consider that number to be more or less your max.Note that your max heart rate for running may be different from your max heart rate for other sports, like cycling and, most notoriously, swimming. Your heart has to work harder to pump blood around when youre upright versus horizontal. If you determine your max heart rate with a running test, then use that to guide pool workouts, youll be chasing numbers you cant actually achieve in the pool.All that said, heart rate numbers are only as good as the training they guide you to do, so whether you should use heart rate percentages to run your workouts depends on whether those mathematically guided workouts are helping you get faster, stronger and healthier. If you work best without numbers, thats fine; if you do use numbers, make sure theyre accurate.