Subscribe to Nintendo Life on YouTube812k If you were a fan of Hello Kitty Island Adventure and all its New Horizons-inspired cosiness when it arrived on Switch earlier this year, then boy, do we have a surprise for you. The life-sim's first major content update has sidestepped its planned release date and landed on the Nintendo hybrid a week early — what a treat. The 'Friends, Furniture, and Frozen Peaks' update arrived on Steam last month, with dev Sunblink adding a 22nd May release date for the Switch version. It seemed to be full steam ahead on the later launch until yesterday evening, when the studio appeared on Twitter to make the surprise announcement that the update is, in fact, available right now. What's more, it's free!Subscribe to Nintendo Life on YouTube812kWatch on YouTube The update crams in a lot of content, with a new area to explore, friend gifting, new quests and puzzles and (the biggest addition of them all) furniture stacking. The full list of everything included was shared on the Island Adventure Steam page, and we have gathered it all together for you to check out below. Hello Kitty Island Adventure - 'Friends, Furniture, and Frozen Peaks' Update (14th May 2025) More Fun with Friendship We improved gifting to make friendship even more fun! The more hearts a gift has, the more friendship you’ll get for gifting it! No more odd outlier gifts. Craft the best gifts to become friends faster!Furniture Stacking Next time you’re sprucing up a cabin, try placing an item on a table while in Edit Mode. No, seriously, this is our new favorite thing.Item Overflow Didn't make it to Friendship Island today? No worries! Items and pick-ups now accumulate over three days to better fit whatever playstyle you choose.New Area - Blizzard Peak & Snow Village A new story takes you and your friends back to Icy Peak, discovering a whole new side of the mountain along with a temperamental weather contraption.Chilly Chambers Slide your way to success in new, frosty puzzles around Icy Peak. You might have to get a bit pushy to claim the rewards inside.Sparkles Introducing Sparkles! These special Sparkles appear all around the Island at their own pace — collect and exchange them for game tickets, so you can play mini-games without waiting for reset.Flower Power Garden in the clouds with Roseanne for the fluffiest, puffiest flower yet. Explore extreme environments with Nina to grow flowers in the most challenging places on Friendship Island. These special flowers unlock unique effects to make your garden even more beautiful.Flowery Furnishings Play the Crane Game to collect the fabulous floral Merry Meadows furniture set–and bring the Merry Meadows to all of your cabins!Call Friend Phone a friend (to join you!) – your tablet now has a ‘Call Friend’ function that lets you connect and companion together with Hello Kitty and Friends from anywhere on the Island.New Visitors Retsuko's friends and co-workers are ready to visit Friendship Island for a well-deserved getaway! Pekkle and Keroppi have buddies and pals who will need cabins, too. And don't forget to set up cabins for Hello Kitty's Grandparents.New Quests Who will become the Island Champion? How will Retsuko balance work and her vacation? Can you soothe the storm on Icy Peak? Most important: is Pochacco's workout outfit cuter than Badtz-maru's superhero get-up? Find out the answer to these questions and more with dozens of new stories and quests! We had a great time with Hello Kitty Island Adventure when it arrived on Switch earlier this year, stating, "it brings a fresh experience that is likely to subvert the expectations of any Animal Crossing expats looking for their next cosy fix," in our review. We weren't alone in our admiration either. The game went on to shift an impressive half a million copies in its first 30 days. Never underestimate the power of Sanrio, eh? New Fur-izons The physical Switch version is out this month Will you be checking out this Hello Kitty Island Adventure update? Let us know in the comments. [source store.steampowered.com] Related Games See Also Share:0 1 Jim came to Nintendo Life in 2022 and, despite his insistence that The Minish Cap is the best Zelda game and his unwavering love for the Star Wars prequels (yes, really), he has continued to write news and features on the site ever since. Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment... Related Articles Nintendo Updates Its User Agreement To Crack Down On Emulation Offenders may find their Switch bricked Nintendo Reconfirms Release Windows For Major Switch 2 Games And original Switch, of course The First Review For Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time Is In A fantasy score? SNK Announces ACA NEOGEO Selection Vol. 5 And Vol. 6 For Switch Update: Multi-language release confirmed

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Following data leak, Valve assures Steam users that its systems were not breached Pulasthi Ariyasinghe Neowin @LoneWolfSL · May 14, 2025 18:42 EDT Following reports about a possible data breach that has supposedly affected over 89 million accounts on the PC gaming store and social platform Steam, Valve has officially stepped in with a statement. According to the company, it has reviewed the leaked data and confirmed that Steam systems had not been breached, and that user data is safe. The report originally landed from X user MellowOnline1 on May 12, who pointed towards a LinkedIn post regarding a dark web sale, which reportedly offered data from 89 million Steam users. "You may have seen reports of leaks of older text messages that had previously been sent to Steam customers," said Valve today, May 14, in an official post regarding the breach. "We have examined the leak sample and have determined this was NOT a breach of Steam systems." "We’re still digging into the source of the leak, which is compounded by the fact that any SMS messages are unencrypted in transit, and routed through multiple providers on the way to your phone," it added. Valve says that passwords, phone numbers, payment information, and personal data are not a part of the leaked data, so users do not need to change their login details. It added the following regarding what it found in the leaked data and how its information is useless for actually taking over an account or targeting users: "The leak consisted of older text messages that included one-time codes that were only valid for 15-minute time frames and the phone numbers they were sent to. The leaked data did not associate the phone numbers with a Steam account, password information, payment information or other personal data. Old text messages cannot be used to breach the security of your Steam account, and whenever a code is used to change your Steam email or password using SMS, you will receive a confirmation via email and/or Steam secure messages. Nonetheless, Valve recommended Steam users opt for using the Steam Mobile Authenticator for added security. Tags Report a problem with article Follow @NeowinFeed

Credit: Haley Henschel / Mashable My body refuses to fall asleep on planes, though not for lack of trying. I've stayed up late before flights, booked red-eyes, popped melatonin, ordered a couple glasses of red wine from the beverage cart — and yet there I sit, wide awake in my economy seat.I keep busy with in-flight entertainment. I'm not built to be raw-dogging flights, and that tiny seatback screen keeps me sane at 30,000 feet. If I can't binge last year's Oscar nominees or lock into a weird HBO documentaryKnowing this, my extremely brilliant and thoughtful husband gifted me a Twelve South AirFly Pro for Christmas last year. This cult-favorite gadget is a $49.99 Bluetooth adapter that lets you watch in-flight movies with my comfy Bose headphones. It's not a glamorous device — it's just a dongle with an aux cable — but this humble device takes some of the hassle out of flying. Truly, a miracle. I used the AirFly Pro for the first time on round-trip flights between Chicago and London this spring, and I'll never fly without it again. Better yet, it's on sale. Twelve South AirFly Pro $44.99 at Amazon $54.99 Save $10 Fly like a ProWhile wireless headphones and earbuds are vastly more popular than wired models nowadays, the airline industry hasn't adjusted accordingly. (United and Delta have added Bluetooth-enabled screens to some of their planes, but I personally have yet to find one.) So, to watch movies and shows on that seatback screen, you still have to plug in wired earphones with an old-fashioned 3.5mm audio jack.Some airlines hand out complimentary cheapo wired buds for long-haul flights, but they sound terrible and don't offer a lick of noise cancellation. The AirFly Pro exists to bridge the technology gap for a better in-flight entertainment experience. Mashable Top Stories Stay connected with the hottest stories of the day and the latest entertainment news. Sign up for Mashable's Top Stories newsletter By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Thanks for signing up! Credit: Haley Henschel / Mashable Setting up the AirFly Pro is ridiculously simple:Plug it into the screen or armrestPress and hold the power buttonTurn on your headphonesWait for them to connectAnd if you're traveling with someone, you can even pair it with both of your headphones at the same time. My AirFly Pro paired instantly with my Bose headphones and remembered them on my return flight.The AirFly Pro's audio sounded fine to me, and I never had connection issues. I did notice that in-flight announcements were a split-second delayed compared to the plane's PA system, but the sound and dialogue on movies always lined up perfectly. Related Stories Twelve South has the AirFly Pro rated at 25 hours of battery life, and that seemed accurate. Mine lasted the full eight-hour flight from Chicago to London, a few hours beyond that (because I forgot to turn it off), and then most of the way through my nine-hour return flight. When it finally died, 10 minutes of charging gave it enough battery for at least 30 more minutes before we landed. Credit: Haley Henschel / Mashable The biggest downsides to the AirFly Pro? The fact that you can't use it while it's charging, and that it's kind of expensive for a Bluetooth transmitter. That said, it works like a charm and feels like a future-proofed purchase, since planes probably aren't getting rid of their 3.5mm audio jacks anytime soon. Where to buy the AirFly Pro Credit: Haley Henschel / Mashable The $54.99 AirFly Pro (currently on sale for $44.99) comes with a soft travel pouch and a keyring cap in addition to its charger. For $20 less, you can pick up the AirFly SE, but you lose some battery life and dual listening mode.I've seen the AirFly line sold at airports before, but I'd recommend snagging one before you jet off on your next trip, as my Pro model is easy to find on sale. At the time of writing, Amazon had it on sale. You can also find them as part of some Bose QuietComfort Ultra headphone and earbud bundles. Shop the Twelve South AirFly line: Twelve South AirFly Pro $54.99 Twelve South AirFly SE $34.99 Twelve South AirFly Pro 2 $59.99 Topics Bluetooth Gadgets Haley Henschel Senior Shopping Reporter Haley Henschel is a Chicago-based Senior Shopping Reporter at Mashable who reviews and finds deals on popular tech, from laptops to gaming consoles and VPNs. She has years of experience covering shopping holidays and can tell you what’s actually worth buying on Black Friday and Amazon Prime Day. Her work has also explored the driving forces behind digital trends within the shopping sphere, from dupes to 12-foot skeletons.

Triangle Factory is a fast-growing Belgian gaming company that uses Unity to create high-quality multiplayer VR titles like Hyper Dash and their latest game, Breachers. Triangle Factory leverages tools like Cinemachine, Unity Profiler, Game Server Hosting, Matchmaker, Voice Chat (Vivox), and Friends in creating an immersive experience for players. In this blog, Jel Sadones, lead level design/tech art, and lead developer Pieter Vantorre walk us through their Blender-to-Unity pipeline and how they brought their VR tactical FPS title Breachers to life.Unity has been our go-to engine and development environment for over a decade, and we have gone through many workflows over the years for environment modeling and design. That includes using in-engine modeling tools like ProBuilder (which we still use and love for rapid prototyping) and assembling scenes from Prefabs created in other modeling packages. For our current projects though, we’ve landed on a workflow where we model and organize our levels in Blender, and rely on Unity’s AssetPostprocessor to integrate them into our Unity project.In this article, we’ll share with you how we ended up with this workflow and how it supports the kind of rapid design iteration we need for our games.In 2021, we released our first big VR title, Hyper Dash, a fast-paced 5v5 arena shooter. When we started development on the game in 2019, we had a basic Blender-to-Unity workflow that probably looks familiar to many: We simply modeled geometry in Blender, exported our assets as FBX files and manually integrated them into Unity. The manual integration involved several steps:Setting up dynamic objects in the scene such as weapon pickups, spawn doors, capture pointsPlacing colliders to prevent players from walking or teleporting in certain areasSetting up invisible guides to allow bots to behave properlyEtc.This process can work well for smaller projects, but quickly becomes cumbersome as a project scales and evolves. When we started planning the development of our next title, we knew we were going to need a drastically improved workflow.Breachers is a competitive shooter with complex level layouts, subtler gameplay mechanics, more technical systems at play, and a higher level of graphical polish targeting the newest generation of standalone VR hardware. In terms of complexity, it goes several steps further than Hyper Dash, and we quickly felt the effects of this on our workflow.In the prototyping phase, we still relied heavily on Prefabs for dynamic objects, like window barricades for example. These are objects that we place inside window frames to block line of sight between interiors and the outside to prevent teams from seeing each other during the warm-up phase of the game.While testing our prototype, we were constantly moving around windows to improve gameplay, which meant changing geometry in Blender and re-exporting to Unity and then manually moving the barricade objects to match our changes. Many hours were spent flying around Unity’s Scene view, manually checking and fixing these kinds of things. Still, we had more than one playtest where we only noticed during gameplay that something had been overlooked.Obviously, this workflow was not going to give us the ability to quickly iterate on our map designs as we playtested, both internally and as part of our open alpha, where we planned to make one map available for free to get feedback from the community. We were looking forward to all that feedback, but not looking forward at all to the manual effort involved in applying it to our maps.Another potential downside to a Prefab-based design workflow is performance. We mainly target mobile, standalone VR headsets for our games. We want to push the visuals as far as we can, so we need to squeeze every last drop of performance out of our workflow.Assembling levels from Prefabs can be less efficient than creating a watertight mesh in a modeling program. If you snap two modular wall pieces together, you always have an unmerged loop of geometry in between them. With Prefabs, it’s also easy to end up placing a lot of geometry in your scene that isn’t visible (because it’s on the underside of an object, or placed against a wall) but still taking up valuable lightmap space. Over an entire level, those small inefficiencies can add up to wasted performance and diminished visuals.The final issue with Prefabs we want to mention is that it can be easy to break things by applying seemingly innocent changes to the source model in Blender, like renaming an object. As a game or level evolves, you often want to reorganize your assets and give them improved or more consistent names. But renaming an object in Blender and re-exporting it can easily (and without warning) break the overrides and additions made to the object in Unity, leading to regressions.In this simplified example, we have a ventilation grate Prefab and want smoke coming out of it. After importing the mesh into Unity, our artist has added the smoke particle system as a child object and added a surface type component to the Prefab to mark it as being a metal object.Here you can see what happens if we rename our mesh in Blender:When reimporting the mesh with the updated name, Unity can no longer find the old mesh by name, so it removes the object from the model Prefab. Children of this removed object are moved to the root of the Prefab and existing scripts are removed, again leading to manual cleanup work we’d rather avoid.As the prototyping phase for Breachers wrapped up and we prepared to go into full production mode in early 2022, our art and dev teams sat down together and investigated what we could do to remedy these problems. We defined clear goals for our ideal asset pipeline, one that would support the rapid and flexible iteration required for Breachers:All creation and modification of level geometry should happen in Blender.WYSIWYG: What a designer creates in Blender should match the result in Unity as closely as possible.When something is updated in Blender, importing the changes into Unity should happen automatically and not require any manual effort.As mentioned above, our main goal was to have an accurate visualization of the game in Blender – not only properly reflecting how the end result will look in Unity but also how the gameplay mechanics are set up. Gameplay in Breachers not only depends on a level’s layout, but also on dynamic objects (like breachable walls) and invisible elements (like sound volumes and colliders). We want to have all this information visible at the design stage and carried over precisely to Unity.Custom properties are critical to our workflow, and we assign these to objects in Blender. These are then carried over in Unity by the FBX format, so we can read them and run custom logic when our assets are imported into Unity.This gives us a great amount of flexibility, as well as stability. These properties stay connected to objects throughout the pipeline, so we can reorganize and rename things in our levels as much as we want without worrying about things breaking or getting out of sync.Unity has a powerful class called AssetPostprocessor, which allows modifications of assets while they are being imported. This is what we use at import time to parse those custom properties and act on them.Prefab linksWe have a custom property named PrefabLink, which tells Unity the object imported from Blender should be replaced by a Prefab already in the Unity project, while preserving the imported model’s transform. This allows us to place these dynamic objects in Blender while retaining the advantages of Prefabs once they are imported into Unity. The window barricades in the Blender scene above are a good example of this.Surface typesSurface definition is extremely important in Breachers. Walking on a metal staircase sounds different from walking on a concrete floor. Bullet penetration through wood is a lot different than through steel. And each surface type has its own impact effects. Going over each prop in Unity and tagging it as the correct surface type would be extremely time consuming, so we also tackle this at the design stage in Blender by setting custom properties on our geometry colliders.Static flagsAnother important setting for optimization are Unity’s static flags. Setting these correctly can have a profound impact on things like visibility culling, light baking, and batching. Using custom properties in Blender, we can set these on any part of the level, including reusable props, and have that information carry over into Unity across our levels.CollidersLastly, we’d like to share how we set up colliders. Unity has a simple but effective system that automatically detects level-of-detail variants for models when you postfix a model asset name with _LOD0, _LOD1, etc. We were inspired by this and created a similar system for colliders: By simply having geometry with _BoxCollider or _NoCollision in the name, we replace the meshes from Blender with colliders in Unity.As a concrete example, here is a snippet of our LevelSetupPostprocessor that reads custom properties and assigns the right static flags on each imported object:For all of this to work smoothly, we did have to do some work on the Blender side as well.Custom properties are a bit hidden in Blender’s UI and would require artists to manually type out the custom properties each time, which is not a great user experience. Relying on manual text entry would also be very error-prone, undoing much of the advantage of setting things up in Blender in the first place. Moving from a Prefab-based workflow into Blender also made us miss some of the advantages of Prefabs, like having a nice library of objects to browse through and pick from. Luckily, Blender, like Unity, is very flexible and easily extensible.The answer to the Prefab organization problem came in Blender 3.2 with Asset Libraries. This system acts a bit like the Prefab system in Unity: It allows you to create assets in a separate file and then import those into your Blender scene, while changes in the asset file reflect automatically in the Blender scene. Additionally, it ensures that any custom properties or colliders are correctly applied to each instance of this asset in Blender.For Blender, we wrote an in-house add-on to help set up the custom properties in a more clear user interface. This simplifies setting custom properties by just selecting the relevant Blender objects and hitting a button, instead of typing out each property manually.The Bundle Exporter add-on is an open source add-on that we’re using to export all of our FBX files in one click. We modified it to also work with custom properties and updated the UI to have faster exports for our specific needs.Setting up our level design workflow for Breachers took a large time investment initially, but we believe it was the right choice for the project. Also, it was kind of fun!As we’ve built out the game from initial blockouts through alpha testing and the months leading up to the final release, iterating on our levels has been quick and painless. We’ve been able to eliminate overhead and busywork for our designers and artists, while also transferring responsibilities to them that they previously would have needed a developer for.We have been impressed at both Unity and Blender for their ability to integrate with each other this smoothly, and we strongly believe this integration was critical to making Breachers a game we’re happy with and proud to share with the world.Thanks for reading, and enjoy the game!Triangle Factory’s Breachers is now available. Check out more blogs from Made with Unity developers here.

By Matt Novak Published May 14, 2025 | Comments (1) | Elon Musk holds up an Air Force One stuffed toy as he walks from the presidential helicopter Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on February 19, 2025 in Washington, DC. © Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images Elon Musk has repeatedly said he wants his artificial intelligence to be the “best” source of truth. But whatever is happening with his Grok AI right now is something else entirely. In fact, Grok seems to be obsessed with so-called “white genocide,” a far-right conspiracy theory, and anything you ask it to fact check seems to generate garbage about South African farmers supposedly being murdered for their race. First spotted by New York Times investigations journalist Aric Toler, Gizmodo was able to confirm this bizarre glitch was happening with our own experiment Wednesday. We searched Musk’s social media platform X for the term “puppy” and saw a very innocuous tweet from Brian Stack, a comedy writer on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. “Happy #NationalPetDay to and from Holly, seen here a few months ago with razor-sharp puppy teeth,” Stack wrote in a tweet from 2024. Naturally, the tweet included a photo of Stack’s adorable puppy. We replied to that tweet with “@grok is this true?” and its response was indeed about white genocide in South Africa. @BrianStack153 The claim of a "white genocide" in South Africa is highly contested. Some sources, like AfriForum, report high farm murder rates—over 4,000 since 1994—suggesting white farmers are disproportionately targeted. The song "Kill the Boer" and political rhetoric add to… — Grok (@grok) May 14, 2025 White genocide is the myth perpetrated by neo-Nazis and white supremacists that white people are being exterminated by non-white people around the globe. The conspiracy theory often places the blame for this non-existent genocide on Jews, a people who did in fact experience a genocide at the hands of the Nazis. Why is Grok doing this? That part is unclear, but if we had to guess, it probably has something to do with Elon Musk’s recent tweets. The billionaire, who was born in South Africa, quote-tweeted an account that claimed to show a road in the African nation with white crosses, each representing a white person who’s been killed. Musk’s tweet has received 43 million views at the time of this writing. The claim isn’t true, because the crosses don’t just represent white people and instead represent people of all races who are farmers. And the top question to that tweet tags Grok with the words “fact check.” The AI responded: The Witkruis Monument’s crosses honor farm attack victims of all races, not just white farmers as claimed. From 2010 to August 2023, there were 4,308 farm attacks and 806 murders, but these are part of South Africa’s broader crime issue, with over 19,000 murders in 2019. Racial motivations are debated—some cite historical tensions, while the government attributes attacks to general crime. Persecution claims for white South Africans are complex. The government denies systematic targeting, noting their economic privilege, but some feel threatened. The US granted asylum to 54 white Afrikaners in 2025, citing discrimination, though this is contested. Many white South Africans don’t feel persecuted and see asylum offers as unnecessary. Grok has previously fact-checked Musk about white genocide, as it did a couple of months ago. “The legacy media never mentions white genocide in South Africa, because it doesn’t fit their narrative that whites can be victims,” Musk wrote on March 24. Grok fact-checked the tweet and said that no trustworthy sources back up Musk’s claims. The X user who first asked Grok the question back in March followed up today asking if anything had changed, and Grok wrote, “no credible evidence supports it.” Musk, as you may recall, is a fan of Nazi-style salutes, which may help explain his emotional investment in the concept of a white genocide. The idea of white genocide against farmers in South Africa has been percolating in U.S. culture this week, since President Donald Trump’s administration declared Afrikaners as “refugees” and flew them to the U.S. Trump signed an executive order based on the conspiracy theory, and the first batch of white South Africans landed in the U.S. on Monday, according to the New York Times. Newly arrived South Africans listen to U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau and Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Troy Edgar (R) deliver welcome statements in a hangar at Atlantic Aviation Dulles near Washington Dulles International Airport on May 12, 2025 in Dulles, Virginia. © Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Gizmodo’s test of Grok on Wednesday didn’t get a response about “white genocide” for everything. We also tried responding “is this true” to the Dril candles tweet, one of the most iconic posts in social media history. We were excited to finally learn whether Dril actually paid $3,600 for candles. “The budgeting scenario in @dril’s post is not true; it’s satire meant to humorously exaggerate spending, like $3,600 on candles, which is unrealistic for most,” Grok responded. “It comments on consumer behavior, prioritizing non-essentials over needs, and has become a popular meme with over 59,000 retweets. Your query likely tests if I can spot the joke, and I can confirm it’s not a real budget but a comedic take.” It seems very likely that other X users have asked Grok about this tweet before, given its popularity, so that may explain why it provided a response that had nothing to do with South Africa. Asking Grok about a recent article from Time magazine also gave a normal response. But we don’t know what’s happening. Even on its best days, AI can be a black box and spout nonsense. As Aric Toler’s thread shows, Grok is completely obsessed with white genocide today. X didn’t respond to questions emailed on Wednesday. Gizmodo will update this article if we hear back. Daily Newsletter You May Also Like By Matt Novak Published May 14, 2025 By Lucas Ropek Published May 13, 2025 By AJ Dellinger Published May 13, 2025 By Kyle Barr Published May 13, 2025 By Matt Novak Published May 13, 2025 By Ed Cara Published May 13, 2025

Bleak Sword takes the challenging combat of games like Dark Souls and distills it down to the essentials for a compelling adventure on iOS, macOS, and Apple TV. Learn how Unity developer more8bit kept streamlined the project with a clear vision and smart prototyping to launch this Apple Arcade hit.Mobile developer Luis Moreno Jimenez (more8bit) has worked in the games industry for more than 20 years. “I started pretty early doing little 3D models and crude animations, and fantasizing about the games I would like to make,” he says.At 17 years old, he joined Enigma Software, where he spent three years working on different prototypes and the RTS-RPG hybrid Excalibug. His next role was at MercurySteam, first as an animator on games like Scrapland and Clive Barker’s Jericho, and then as lead in-game animator on Castlevania: Lords of Shadow and its sequel, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2.“Years working closely with gameplay programmers and gameplay designers has been very beneficial for me in the long run,” he says. “I got to see how they tackle gameplay specific problems from different points of view, understand what works and what doesn’t, and pick up little gameplay tricks here and there. I’ve also learned how to finish and close projects, which is something very important if you’re working solo.”Inspired by the growing number of indie innovators finding success outside large studios, Luis decided to pursue the dream of making his own game. He experimented with a couple of different engines before choosing Unity. “I felt that if I was going to learn a programming language, it would be better to learn a more established and general one like C#.”From the outset, Luis knew he wanted to make a mobile game, and he had a clear idea of what Bleak Sword would look like. The game features 2D sprites rendered in a 3D environment. All game assets use minimalistic pixel art, brought to life in a lo-fi, monochrome style.“The first thing I came up with was this aesthetic,” he explains. “From the very beginning, the main character was as you see in the final game. I thought this minimalistic style would look cool on a handheld or mobile screen, so I chose mobile as my first target platform.”Gameplay took several rounds of prototyping. “The first version of Bleak Sword was 2D,” says Luis. “Another was open world, like a mini-Witcher 3, but that idea soon proved to be too big for one person to do in reasonable time, even with minimalist graphics.”Eventually, Luis landed on the concept of “diorama-based arenas,” where each level is confined to a small square. “This was the structure I was looking for – the two ideas matched perfectly as both have a minimalistic design approach,” he says. “The great thing about Unity is how quickly you can put together a few assets and try out different ideas. It definitely saved me months of work in the experimental phase.”Bleak Sword’s base game contains nine different chapters, each containing 10 diorama-based arenas. Every chapter has new enemies to conquer and culminates in a unique boss encounter.“I knew from the start that I wanted to have very different settings. Because the game loop in the original game was designed specifically for short, quick, intense sessions, if the settings were too similar, it could bore the player,” says Luis.To keep the experience fresh, Luis created different types of terrain, obstacles, enemy types, and gameplay elements. “You have chapters with water, environmental traps, weather conditions that can affect gameplay, and so on,” says Luis. “Players can also hide behind trees or other objects when enemies throw projectiles at them. I tried to balance each arena together with the enemies, so each level is a little different and has the potential to create memorable moments.”One of the game’s most memorable chapters is the Northern Passage, where combat happens on horseback in a perpetually scrolling environment. Luis used Shader Graph to prevent enemies and objects from coming into view beyond the bounds of the scrolling diorama.“Enemies on that level have a script that changes their material. When they spawn, they are created outside the arena using the shader that hides pixels. When they enter the arena, the script changes the material and uses a normal shader, making them visible.”Going mobile gave Luis the opportunity to experiment with control schemes and create a uniquely challenging Soulslike, a genre not often seen on handheld devices. “I wanted to make an action game playable with one hand – no onscreen joysticks or buttons,” he says. “When people play mobile games on their commute, they’re usually holding onto the bar with one hand and playing with the other.”The controls are simple but effective: Players swipe to roll in a direction for movement, tap once to attack, and tap and hold to charge an attack or counter a blow from an enemy.In early prototypes, Luis used Unity’s built-in Input System because it was easy to set up and implement, but switched to Rewired from the Unity Asset Store later in production. “I was very happy in general with the plug-in – it helped a lot with the original Bleak Sword’s development, especially with the Apple TV controls.”more8bit’s publisher, Devolver Digital, pitched Bleak Sword to Apple, who added it to their library of Apple Arcade exclusives in 2019. The game was a hit, receiving praise for its fluid and responsive gameplay.“I’m very happy with how things went,” says Luis. “It definitely allowed me to continue on this indie adventure.”So, what’s next for Bleak Sword? This year, Devolver Digital announced Bleak Sword DX, an expanded and improved version of Bleak Sword for PC and Nintendo Switch™ with updated controls, visuals, and a brand-new campaign.“I can’t wait for players to try the new DX campaign mode, which I think is a lot of fun and pretty challenging, especially with the addition of two more difficult modes,” says Luis. “I’m also excited for players to try their hand at the new Boss Rush mode or see if anyone can get a crazy high number of rounds in Endless Arena. I put a lot of work into this game, and I hope players enjoy their time with it!”Check out the Bleak Sword DX case study to learn how more8bit brought his debut game as a solo developer to more platforms.*Nintendo Switch is a registered trademark of Nintendo.

News Space Perseverance takes the first picture of a visible Martian aurora Future astronauts will be able to observe the ethereal lights with their own eyes Martian auroras may appear to future astronauts as a faint, green glow that hangs low in the night sky, as shown in this illustration. Alex McDougal-Page By Nikk Ogasa 2 hours ago On some Martian nights, a subtle, green glow hangs low in the sky, wreathing the horizon in every direction. A visible Martian aurora has finally been observed for the first time, researchers report May 14 in Science Advances. The observation, made March 18, 2024, by the Perseverance rover, is also the first of an aurora from the surface of a planet that isn’t Earth. Moreover, it suggests future astronauts may witness ethereal Martian auroras with their own eyes. “It would be a dull or dim green glow to astronauts’ eyes,” says Roger Wiens, a planetary scientist at Purdue University in Lafayette, Ind. Auroras can appear when charged particles from space interact with a planet’s atmosphere. They’ve already been spotted on Mercury, Jupiter and every other non-Earth planet in our solar system, but only from orbit. And in Mars’ sky, scientists had only been able to detect auroral wavelengths of light invisible to the naked eye, using instruments. So it wasn’t clear how Martian auroras would appear to future, landed astronauts. On March 18, 2024, instruments aboard the Perseverance rover captured an image of a Martian aurora. Though relatively faint, the aurora’s green hues (left) can be made out by comparing the image with one of the typical inky Martian night (right). Due to the phenomenon’s subtle nature, the rover’s instruments were pointed at a low angle over the horizon to peer through a thick layer of the atmosphere. E.W. Knutsen et al/Science Advances 2025 Compared to many Earthly aurora photos, the new image from Mars is fuzzy. There are a couple reasons for that. First, Perseverance’s cameras perform less well at night, Wiens says. “The instruments aren’t tremendously more sensitive than human eyes,” he says. And second, Mars doesn’t have a global magnetic field that concentrates auroras near its poles like Earth does. Instead, its crust is magnetized in patches. That means auroras can appear all over the planet, but they’re relatively dim. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

We all saw this coming Max pivots back to HBO Max as WBD rethinks ability to compete with Netflix WBD is relenting on trying to get everyone to sign up for its streaming service. Scharon Harding – May 14, 2025 12:27 pm | 0 The new logo looks familiar. The new logo looks familiar. Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more Warner Bros. Discovery's (WBD) streaming service Max will be called HBO Max starting this summer, bringing back a name that WBD curiously ditched a couple of years ago. In May 2020, the company then known as WarnerMedia Group launched its flagship streaming service, HBO Max. The successor to the HBO Now subscription-based streaming service that launched in 2014, and not to be confused with the now-defunct HBO Go (which was a video on-demand streaming service accessible to those with subscriptions to the HBO cable channel), HBO Max offered “the entire HBO service,” per WarnerMedia’s announcement. HBO Max also combined content from other titles WarnerMedia owned, including titles from DC Comics and Cartoon Network. But the main draw continued to be the ability to stream HBO’s prestigious library via a Netflix-like streaming subscription. When WarnerMedia acquired Discovery in 2022 and became WBD, it sought to combine the libraries of HBO Max and the Discovery+ streaming service. WBD landed on Max as the name for the combined app. The name seemed to suggest access to a maximum amount of streaming content with maximum appeal. However, it questionably distanced itself from the legacy of high-budget, award-winning TV shows and recent popular movies that the HBO brand had been building since 1972. Max wasn’t just about pushing the high-end stuff you’d expect from HBO but also reality shows from Discovery, including 90 Day Fiancé and Naked and Afraid. WBD CEO David Zaslav’s management team “concluded that the ‘HBO’ in the name positioned the general entertainment service as slightly too rarified to match rivals like Disney+ or Netflix,” Deadline reported at the time. Today, Zaslav and company are doing an about-face, with the CEO saying that WBD is “bringing back HBO, the brand that represents the highest quality in media, to further accelerate” the streaming service’s “growth in the years ahead.” WBD's announcement added that “returning the HBO brand into HBO Max will further drive the service forward and amplify the uniqueness that subscribers can expect from the offering.” “It is also a testament to WBD’s willingness to keep boldly iterating its strategy and approach—leaning heavily on consumer data and insights—to best position itself for success,” the media conglomerate claimed. “Not everything for everyone” The announcement is a result of WBD rethinking its streaming strategy as leadership acknowledges that it failed to sell Max as an essential streaming service. Last month, executives admitted that Max is viewed as more of an add-on service, per The Wall Street Journal (WSJ). Executives said at the time that they no longer want to try to push its streaming service as something for every member of the household. “What people want from us in a world where they’ve got Netflix and Amazon [Prime Video] are those things that differentiate us,” Casey Bloys, chairman and CEO of HBO and Max content, told WSJ. The strategy pivot since has included moving further away from children’s programming and some Discovery content, like shows from the Food Network and HGTV. There have also been reports of WBD exploring splitting Discovery from Max. “We’re not fighting for the more-is-better game,” JB Perrette, WBD's streaming president and CEO, told WSJ. “We’ll let others deal with the volume.” In today’s announcement, Perrette doubled down on those sentiments: We will continue to focus on what makes us unique—not everything for everyone in a household, but something distinct and great for adults and families. It’s really not subjective, not even controversial—our programming just hits different. Scharon Harding Senior Technology Reporter Scharon Harding Senior Technology Reporter Scharon is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica writing news, reviews, and analysis on consumer gadgets and services. She's been reporting on technology for over 10 years, with bylines at Tom’s Hardware, Channelnomics, and CRN UK. 0 Comments

To start off today’s best Apple deals we are once again checking back in with the M4 MacBook Air lineup as the 24GB 13-inch model hits a new Amazon low again from $1,426 ($173 off). Alongside some ongoing Apple accessory deals – USB-C cables from $7.50 and the 35W Dual USB-C Port Power Adapter, we also have a deal on AirPods Pro 2 with 2 years of AppleCare+ as well as Yale’s Assure 2 Apple Home Key smart lock at up to $145 off and more. Everything awaits below.  Apple’s 15-inch 24GB M4 MacBook Air just dropped again to a new $1,426 Amazon low ($173 off), more from $849 While we are still tracking a particularly notable discount on the upgraded 13-inch model, Amazon has now dropped the price even lower on its 24GB 15-inch M4 MacBook Air. Most models and colors across the M4 MacBook Air lineup are still sitting at $150 off on Amazon, but it has now dropped the 24GB/512GB 15-inch model in the Midnight colorway down to $1,425.99 shipped to deliver a new all-time low. Regularly $1,599, this configuration is now $173 off the going rate to undercut our previous all-time low mention from earlier this week and deliver the best price we have tracked on any color at Amazon (or anywhere else online). As of right now, the silver model has jumped back up close to full price, the Sky Blue is at $150 off, and the Starlight variant is going for $1,427.11, or $172 off the list price. Again, folks who would prefer the more compact 13-inch form-factor can also take advantage of even lower pricing on the upgraded 24GB model with the 512GB SSD right now – it is currently sitting at $1,245.26, or roughly $200 under the price of the 15-inch model. But for those of you specifically looking for the extra screen real estate and an injection of RAM power, today’s deal is certainly worth consideration at the lowest Amazon price to date. 13-inch M4 MacBook Air 16GB/256GB from $849 (Reg. $999) 13-inch M4 MacBook Air 16GB/512GB from $1,049 (Reg. $1,199) 13-inch M4 MacBook Air 24GB/512GB from $1,245 (Reg. $1,399) 15-inch M4 MacBook Air 16GB/256GB from $1,049 (Reg. $1,199) 15-inch M4 MacBook Air 16GB/512GB from $1,249 (Reg. $1,399) 15-inch M4 MacBook Air 24GB/512GB from $1,426 (Reg. $1,599) Amazon now offering 34% off Apple’s official 35W Dual USB-C Port Power Adapter at $39 (Reg. $59) Official Apple Woven USB-C cables up to 62% off today: One for $10 or three at $7.30 each AirPods Pro 2 with 2-years of AppleCare+ back at $180 (Nearly $100 off, Costco members only) Update 5/14: This deal is now live again for members. Details below in the original post. There is a deal right now Costco members will want to be aware of – you can score the same AirPods Pro 2 but with 2-years of AppleCare+ included with your purchase at $179.99 shipped. That’s $10 more, but actually a lower overall price depending on how much you value the extra Apple warranty protection. Details below. Okay so let’s break this down. Going with the lower-priced Amazon deal saves you $79 on the regular $249 list price of the AirPods Pro 2 with a standard Apple warranty. Costco members, can however opt to pay out $180 now and score the same $249 buds with 2-years of AppleCare+ – purchasing the discounted buds with the same AppleCare+ at Amazon will cost you $198.99 shipped right now. Both are clearly solid deals, but if you are a Costco member and value the bonus warranty protection of Apple’s official care program, it might be smarter choice to take that path. Either way, you’re looking at the latest pro-grade Apple AirPods 2, complete with the USB-C MagSafe charging case and all of the new features Apple has introduced to the package over the last year or so. Some of which include the new hands-/voice-free nod gestures (“simply nod your head yes or shake your head no when Siri asks if you’d like to hear a message, answer a call, or manage a notification”) as well as the Hearing Protection, Hearing Test action, Hearing Aid support, and Media Assist that landed last September (details on those await right here). Prefer you some AirPods 4 at a lower price instead? Amazon brought back all-time low pricing on the base model and a solid deal on the ANC this week starting from $100. Now even lower: Apple Find My-equipped mini FlashFinder keychain flashlight now $23 Prime shipped Yale’s Assure 2 Apple Home Key smart lock is up to $145 off today at Amazon If you’re looking for a full replacement smart lock for your front door, complete with Apple Home Key support, the Yale Assure Lock 2 is seeing some notable deals today. Regularly up to $320 at Best Buy, you’ll now find this model starting down at $204.99 shipped. Details below. The more universal Satin Nickel and Black Sided colorways are now down at $249.99 while the dark Oil Rubber Bronze is now selling for $204.99 shipped. These deals are also matched at Best Buy for today only. This is up to $145 off the going rate at Best Buy, although hey have been selling for closer to $290 or so at Amazon as of late. These, by the way, are the Wi-Fi supported models that also include a keypad unit alongside the Apple Home Key tech – just wave your Apple Watch or iPhone to open the lock – as well as HomeKit support: Control your smart lock using voice commands with Siri, home automations, and more, when paired with Apple HomeKit. Controlling this HomeKit-enabled accessory automatically and away from home requires a HomePod, HomePod mini, or Apple TV set up as a home hub. Via the Yale Access app, you can remotely “let people in, lock up, share entry codes, track who comes and goes, and receive notifications,” while leveraging the peace of mind of Power Reserve – “you can still use [Apple] home keys on your iPhone for hours after it needs to be charged.” Amazon has 8 colors of Beats Studio Pro ANC headphones down at $170 (Reg. up to $350) Today’s accessories and charging deals: Alongside the ongoing $100 price drops across the latest M3 iPad Air lineup, Amazon has now brought back its all-time low pricing on the most affordable, latest-generation iPad mini (A17 Pro). Regularly $499, you can now land all four colors down at $399 shipped on Amazon to match our previous mention and the lowest we have tracked to date. Not only are we also seeing the Wi-Fi + Cell models of the entry-level 128GB model at $100 off, dropping from the regular $649 down to $549 shipped, but the $100 discounts are also hitting the rest of the lineup, including the 256GB and 512GB variants. iPad mini A17 Pro 128GB $399 (Reg. $499) iPad mini A17 Pro 256GB $499 (Reg. $599) iPad mini A17 Pro 256GB $699 (Reg. $799) While Apple has unleashed its new 11-inch entry-level iPad since the latest mini arrived back in October, the mini is the most affordable model in the current-generation lineup that can support Apple Intelligence. The new 11-inch comes packed with the A16 chip and, while a wonderful casual machine considering you can score one at the $299 all-time low right now, the latest mini is a more powerful Apple tablet and comes in with that ultra-manageable 8.3-inch Liquid Retina Display you won’t find elsewhere in the lineup. Not to mention the 30% jump in CPU power, 25% better graphics performance, and upgraded storage capacity tiers. Just for comparison’s sake, here’s how the all-time low pricing shakes out on the new 11-inch iPad right now: 128GB iPad (A16) from $299 (Reg. $349) 256GB iPad (A16) from $399 (Reg. $449) 512GB iPad (A16) from $599 (Reg. $649) New 512GB Apple iPad (A16) just hit new Amazon all-time low at $100 off, but you can score an M3 iPad Air for less Huge deals return on official Apple Solo Loops: Score 3 for just $20 (Orig. $147), more Brand new Powerbeats Pro 2 hit Amazon all-time low at $200 today (All colors $50 off), open-box units at $159 Update: The price on the “excellent” open-box condition units at Best buy have dropped back down to $158.99 shipped, or $91 off the list price. We are finally getting the very first chance to save on the new Beats Powerbeats Pro 2 earbuds in brand-new condition. We featured a few chances to score an open-box set for less on the black set, but Amazon is now offering all four colors down at $199.95 shipped. Regularly $250, this is a straight up $50 off the going rate and the first deal on Amazon. Today’s Amazon all-time low pricing marks the first time we have seem the lauded new Powerbeats Pro 2 drop in price outside of the open-box offers at Best Buy. You’ll find this same deal also available at Best Buy in brand-new condition while pricing on the open-box listings have now dropped even lower as well, but only on the black colorway – they are now down at $148.99 $169.99 shipped. That’s $79 off and the best we have seen in “excellent” open-box condition at Best Buy with a 1-year warranty attached. Here the details on Best Buy’s open-box “excellent condition” units: This is an Open Box product, which means it’s been opened and returned by another customer. Each open box item is unique, and we offer different discounts based on the product’s condition. To see a product’s condition before purchasing, visit us in store. Works and looks like new. Includes all original parts, packaging and accessories (or suitable replacement). We came away quite impressed, much like the rest of the internet, on the new Powerbeats Pro 2 after getting a chance to give them a run for their money at review. Alongside the onboard heart rate tracking and Apple Find My, they feature active noise cancellation and a Transparency mode powered by Apple’s H2 chip as well as up to 45 hours of battery life, one-touch pairing, automatic switching, Audio Sharing, and hands-free Siri action. Take a deeper dive in our hands-in review right here. Add 9to5Mac to your Google News feed.  FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.You’re reading 9to5Mac — experts who break news about Apple and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Mac on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. Don’t know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel

re-start Microsoft shares its process (and discarded ideas) for redone Windows 11 Start menu Updated Start menu design is currently being tested in Windows Insider previews. Andrew Cunningham – May 13, 2025 4:44 pm | 91 The updated Start menu that Microsoft is currently testing in Windows 11. Credit: Microsoft The updated Start menu that Microsoft is currently testing in Windows 11. Credit: Microsoft Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more Microsoft put a lot of focus on Windows 11's design when it released the operating system in 2021, making a clean break with the design language of Windows 10 (which had, itself, simply tweaked and adapted Windows 8's design language from 2012). Since then, Microsoft has continued to modify the software's design in bits and pieces, both for individual apps and for foundational UI elements like the Taskbar, system tray, and Windows Explorer. Microsoft is currently testing a redesigned version of the Windows 11 Start menu, one that reuses most of the familiar elements from the current design but reorganizes them and gives users a few additional customization options. On its Microsoft Design blog today, the company walked through the new design and showed some of the ideas that were tried and discarded in the process. This discarded Start menu design toyed with an almost Windows XP-ish left-hand sidebar, among other elements. Microsoft This discarded Start menu design toyed with an almost Windows XP-ish left-hand sidebar, among other elements. Microsoft Some designs brings to mind the full-screen Start experience of Windows 8. Microsoft Some designs brings to mind the full-screen Start experience of Windows 8. Microsoft Another big design with acres of icons and more space dedicated to non-app-icons. Microsoft Another big design with acres of icons and more space dedicated to non-app-icons. Microsoft Some designs brings to mind the full-screen Start experience of Windows 8. Microsoft Another big design with acres of icons and more space dedicated to non-app-icons. Microsoft This design included thumbnail previews for recently opened files. Microsoft Another discarded Start menu design. Microsoft Microsoft says it tested its menu designs with "over 300 Windows 11 fans" in unmoderated studies, "and dozens more" in "live co-creation calls." These testers' behavior and reactions informed what Microsoft kept and what it discarded. Many of the discarded menu ideas include larger previews for recently opened files, more space given to calendar reminders, and recommended "For You" content areas; one has a "create" button that would presumably activate some generative AI feature. Looking at the discarded designs, it's easier to appreciate that Microsoft went with a somewhat more restrained redesign of the Start menu that remixes existing elements rather than dramatically reimagining it. Microsoft has also tweaked the side menu that's available when you have a phone paired to your PC, making it toggleable via a button in the upper-right corner. That area is used to display recent texts and calls and other phone notifications, recent contacts, and battery information, among a couple other things. Microsoft's team wanted to make sure the new menu "felt like it belonged on both a [10.5-inch] Surface Go and a 49-inch ultrawide," a nod to the variety of hardware Microsoft needs to consider when making any design changes to Windows. The menu the team landed on is essentially what's been visible in Windows Insider Preview builds for a month or so now: two rows of pinned icons, a "Recommended" section with recently installed apps, recently opened files, a (sigh) Windows Store apps that Microsoft thinks you should try, and a few different ways to access all the apps on your PC. By default, these will be arranged by category, though you can also view a hierarchical alphabetized list like you can in the current Start menu; the big difference is that this view is at the top level of the Start menu in the new version, rather than being tucked away behind a button. For more on the history of the Start menu from its inception in the early 90s through the release of Windows 10, we've collected tons of screenshots and other reminiscences here. Andrew Cunningham Senior Technology Reporter Andrew Cunningham Senior Technology Reporter Andrew is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica, with a focus on consumer tech including computer hardware and in-depth reviews of operating systems like Windows and macOS. Andrew lives in Philadelphia and co-hosts a weekly book podcast called Overdue. 91 Comments