Weekend PC Game Deals is where the hottest gaming deals from all over the internet are gathered into one place every week for your consumption. So kick back, relax, and hold on to your wallets. The Humble Store's latest bundle is for fighting game fans. The Badass Brawlers bundle begins with Final Vendetta, Full Metal Furies, and Double Dragon Neon for $6. Going up a tier gets you River City Girls and Young Souls, with the price jumping up to $10. The complete bundle costs $16, and it adds River City Girls 2 and Dawn of the Monsters to all the previous games. The bundle has a three-week counter before it goes away. The Epic Games Store's mystery freebies promotion continued this week. The double giveaway was revealed earlier this week to be Tiny Tina's Wonderlands and Limbo. From the duo, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands comes from Gearbox Software. The title is a spin-off from the Borderlands franchise, adding in RPG elements, magic, and a fantasy storyline into the mix. Next, the award-winning puzzle platformer Limbo puts you into the shoes of a nameless boy looking to find his missing sister, with plenty of env Limbo and Tiny Tina's Wonderlands giveaways are slated to run until Thursday, June 5, which is when the next round of mystery freebies will be revealed. Free Events A single free event is running this weekend for any PC gamer to jump into, and it's coming from Ubisoft's coffers. The cooperative third-person shooter The Division 2 is currently available to try out from the Ubisoft Connect client, letting you jump into the complete edition of the looter shooter RPG until June 2. Big Deals Massive specials from series like The Elder Scrolls and Dragon Quest are currently having discounts, which are joined by zombie festivals, an Activision publisher sale, and more. With highlights from those and more, here's our hand-picked big deals list for this weekend: Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 – $38.49 on Steam Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 – $35.99 on Steam DayZ – $24.99 on Steam DRAGON QUEST BUILDERS 2 – $24.99 on Steam Dying Light 2 Stay Human: Reloaded Edition – $23.09 on Steam They Are Billions – $20.99 on Steam DRAGON QUEST XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age™ - Definitive Edition – $19.99 on Steam My Time at Sandrock – $19.99 on Steam Call of Duty: Modern Warfare® – $19.79 on Steam Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver 1-2 Remastered – $18.84 on Indiegala Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy – $15.99 on Steam Tony Hawk's Pro Skater™ 1 + 2 – $15.99 on Steam Warhammer 40,000: Darktide – $15.99 on Steam Football Manager 2024 – $14.99 on Steam The Talos Principle 2 – $14.99 on Steam HUMANITY – $14.99 on Steam The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR – $14.99 on Steam Red Dead Redemption 2 – $14.99 on Steam Spyro Reignited Trilogy – $13.99 on Steam Project Zomboid – $13.39 on Steam Tiny Glade – $12.74 on Steam Ravenswatch – $12.49 on Steam Detroit: Become Human – $11.99 on Steam Escape Simulator – $11.99 on Steam Jurassic World Evolution 2 – $11.39 on Gamebillet Viewfinder – $11.24 on Steam Gas Station Simulator – $10.99 on Steam Boxes: Lost Fragments – $10.49 on Steam Superliminal – $9.99 on Steam The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition – $9.99 on Steam Unpacking – $9.99 on Steam TimeShift – $9.99 on Steam World War Z – $9.89 on Steam Singularity – $9.89 on Steam Dorfromantik – $9.79 on Steam Dying Light – $8.99 on Steam Storyteller – $8.99 on Steam The Evil Within 2 – $7.99 on Steam Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege – $7.99 on Steam The Wolf Among Us – $7.49 on Steam A Little to the Left – $7.49 on Steam The Evil Within Bundle – $6.24 on Steam Back 4 Blood – $5.99 on Steam The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind Game of the Year Edition – $5.99 on Steam FEAR Complete Pack – $5.49 on Steam Zombie Army 4: Dead War – $4.99 on Steam Beyond: Two Souls – $4.99 on Steam The Pedestrian – $4.99 on Steam The Elder Scrolls Online – $4.99 on Steam The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Game of the Year Edition Deluxe (2009) – $4.99 on Steam Sticky Business – $4.99 on Steam Prototype – $4.99 on Steam Pharaoh + Cleopatra – $4.99 on Steam Gorogoa – $4.94 on Steam Graveyard Keeper – $3.99 on Steam Heavy Rain – $3.99 on Steam Streets of Rogue – $3.99 on Steam FEZ – $3.99 on Steam Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura – $3.89 on Steam Caesar 3 – $3.89 on Steam Plague Inc: Evolved – $3.74 on Steam SUMMERHOUSE – $3.74 on Steam Ryse: Son of Rome – $3.49 on Steam 20 Minutes Till Dawn – $3.49 on Steam Death Road to Canada – $2.99 on Steam Killing Floor 2 – $2.99 on Steam SpeedRunners – $2.99 on Steam Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 – $2.99 on Steam An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire – $2.39 on Steam The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard – $2.39 on Steam Portal – $1.99 on Steam Left 4 Dead 2 – $0.99 on Steam DRM-free Events The GOG store's own DRM-free sales are going strong too, including discounts for big Atari classics. Here are some highlights from its weekend specials: System Shock - $14.79 on GOG Alpha Protocol - $13.39 on GOG Terra Nil - $12.49 on GOG Cold Waters - $9.99 on GOG Streets of Rage 4 - $9.99 on GOG Overcooked! 2 Gourmet Edition - $9.71 on GOG Weird West: Definitive Edition - $5.99 on GOG The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind GOTY Edition - $5.99 on GOG The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - Game of the Year Edition Deluxe - $4.99 on GOG Assassin's Creed: Director's Cut - $4.99 on GOG Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen - $4.79 on GOG Tomb Raider GOTY - $2.99 on GOG Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition - $2.99 on GOG Far Cry - $2.99 on GOG Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Director’s Cut - $2.99 on GOG I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream - $2.69 on GOG Blade Runner - Enhanced Edition - $2.49 on GOG Blood: Fresh Supply - $2.49 on GOG SiN Gold - $1.99 on GOG The Wheel of Time - $1.49 on GOG RollerCoaster Tycoon Deluxe - $1.19 on GOG Pirates! Gold Plus - $1.19 on GOG Sid Meier's Colonization - $1.19 on GOG Keep in mind that availability and pricing for some deals could vary depending on the region. That's it for our pick of this weekend's PC game deals, and hopefully, some of you have enough self-restraint not to keep adding to your ever-growing backlogs. As always, there are an enormous number of other deals ready and waiting all over the interwebs, as well as on services you may already subscribe to if you comb through them, so keep your eyes open for those, and have a great weekend.

Imagine playing Fortnite, but instead of fighting other players, all you want to do is break into houses to look for caches of slurp juice. Yes, the storm is closing in on you, and there’s a bunch of enemies waiting to kill you, but all you want to do is take a walking tour of Tilted Towers. Then when the match is over, instead of queueing again, you start reading the in-game lore for Peely and Sabrina Carpenter. You can count your number of player kills on one hand meanwhile your number of deaths is in the hundreds. You’ve never achieved a victory royale, but you’ve never had more fun.That’s how I play Elden Ring Nightreign.Nightreign is FromSoftware’s first Elden Ring spinoff, and it’s unlike any Souls game that the developer has done before. Nightreign has the conceit of so many battle royale games — multiplayer combat focused on acquiring resources across a large map that slowly shrinks over time — wrapped in the narrative, visual aesthetics, and combat of Elden Ring. Instead of the Tarnished, you are a Nightfarer. Instead of the expansive Lands Between, you are sent to Limveld, an island with an ever-shifting landscape. And instead of becoming the Elden Lord, your goal is to defeat the Night Lord and end the destructive storm that scours the land.Elden Ring Nightreign aura-farming exhibit A.In Nightreign, gameplay sessions are broken up into expeditions, each of which is divided into three day-night cycles. During the day, you — either solo or with two other players — explore the world looking for weapon upgrades and fighting bosses for the enhancements they reward. You’ll be forced to move as the deadly Night’s Tide slowly consumes the map, whittling your health to nothing if you’re caught in it. When the map is at its smallest, you face a tough midboss. Defeat it to commence day two of the expedition or die and start it all over. Then, on the third day, you face the expedition’s final boss. There are several expeditions to conquer each with different bosses, mid-bosses, weapons to collect, and all kinds of events that make each run unique.I had the opportunity to play Nightreign once before earlier this year (and during a more recent network test) , and it wasn’t the best preview, as the game was plagued with all kinds of issues that didn’t allow me to experience it the way the developers intended. Those technical issues have been ironed out but I still haven’t completed the game’s most basic objective: beat the first expedition. This isn’t because of any technical or gameplay issues I had. For the times I wanted to play as intended, my colleague Jay Peters stepped in to help me and I had no problem finding party members to tackle expeditions with on my own… I just never really wanted to. And part of the reason why I’m enjoying Nightreign so much is because the game lets me play it in a way that’s completely counterintuitive – slowly and alone.Collaborative gaming doesn’t always feel good to me. I want to take things at my own pace, and that’s hard to do when there’s a group of people frustrated with me because they need my help to kill a boss while I’m still delving into a dungeon a mile away. But the ability to solo queue does come with a significant catch – you’re not gonna get very far. I died often and to everything from random enemies to bosses. It’s not often that I even make it to that first boss fight without dying to the warm-up battles that precede it. This should frustrate me, but I don’t care in the slightest. I’m just so pleased that I can go at my own pace to explore more of Elden Ring’s visually gorgeous and narratively sumptuous world.You get by with a little help from your friends. I, however, am built different. Image: FromSoftwareWhich brings me to my favorite part: its characters. Nightreign has eight new classes, each with their own unique abilities. The classes can still use every weapon you find (with some locked behind level requirements) so there’s an option to tailor a character to fit your playstyle. There are certain kinds of classes I gravitate toward, specifically ranged combat, but for the first time in a class-based game, I love every one of them. It is so much fun shredding enemies to ribbons with the Duchess, using her Restage ability to replay the attacks done to an enemy essentially doubling the damage they receive. I love the Raider’s powers of just being a big fuckin’ dude, slamming things with big ass great weapons. And true to my ranged combat loving heart, Ironeye’s specialty with bows makes it so nice when I wanna kill things without putting myself in danger.Then there’s the Guardian. Look at him. He’s a giant armored bird-person with the busted wing and the huge-ass halberd and shield. His story involves being a protector who failed his flock and has found a new one in the other Nightfarers. I fell to my knees reading one of his codex entries and seeing how the Recluse, the mage character, helped him with his damaged wing. Every character has a codex that updates with their personal story the more expeditions you attempt. This is the shit I get out of bed for. The Guardian is the coolest FromSoftware character since Patches and I have a crush on him. Image: FromSoftwareI thought I was going to hate the concept of Nightreign. I want more Elden Ring: I love that world, so any chance I can have to go back, I’ll take but… I just don’t like multiplayer games. Describing Nightreign makes it sound like the reason why it exists is because an out of touch CEO looked at the popularity of Elden Ring and at all the money Fortnite prints and went “Yeah, let’s do that.” Even if that’s the case, Nightreign has been constructed so that it still appeals to lore freaks like me and I can ignore the less savory bits around multiplayer with relative ease. If I can take a moment and borrow a pair of words from my Gen Z niblings to describe Nightreign it’d be “aura” and “aura farming.” Aura is used to describe a person’s general coolness or badassery while aura farming is the activities one can engage in to increase one’s aura. John Wick has aura. In the first movie, when he performs his monologue about getting back in the assassin business spitting and screaming – that’s aura farming.And between the cooperative nature of the game, its rapid-paced combat, and the new characters, abilities, and story, Elden Ring Nightreign has a ton of aura that I’m having a lot of fun farming – just not in the way I expected.Elden Ring Nightreign is out now on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC.See More:

Plagun is a fast-paced pixel-art roguelike shooter where you fight off waves of plague-mutated enemies using infected weapons called Plagun and skull masks that alter your stats and abilities. Each run offers different builds, corrupted bosses, and deadly environments. Inspired by Hell is Other Demons and Risk of Rain, it blends brutal action, decay-heavy atmosphere, and progression based on the corpses you leave behind. Posted by Talkinguns on May 18th, 2025 Plagun is a fast-paced 2D roguelike shooter with a decayed pixel-art aesthetic. You play as a reanimated doctor who channels a deadly regenerative plague to fight back against grotesque enemies born from a failed immortality vaccine. Every run takes you deeper into a world corrupted by rot, bone, and betrayal. Equip powerful Plagun weapons, switch between cursed animal skull masks to alter your abilities, and adapt your playstyle across multiple stages filled with environmental hazards, relentless enemies, and narrative fragments. Inspired by the visual impact of Hell is Other Demons, the pressure curve of Risk of Rain, and the mechanical precision of Downwell, Plagun blends brutal action with evolving builds and a corrupted world full of secrets. Features Mask system: Swap skull masks to change abilities, stats, and passives Unique weapon system: Plagun fire virus-infused projectiles with diverse effects Run-based progression: Unlock upgrades, discover secrets, and build your playstyle Bone-chilling bosses with personal connections to your character Mutating enemies and a dynamic difficulty that scales with time and aggression A dark, minimal palette of red, black, white, and plague green

While large reasoning models (LRMs) have shown impressive capabilities in short-context reasoning through reinforcement learning (RL), these gains do not generalize well to long-context scenarios. Applications such as multi-document QA, research synthesis, and legal or financial analysis require models to process and reason over sequences exceeding 100K tokens. However, RL optimization in such regimes is plagued by slower reward convergence, unstable policy updates due to KL divergence fluctuations, and reduced exploration resulting from entropy collapse. These bottlenecks reveal a fundamental gap in transitioning LRMs from short-context proficiency to long-context generalization. QwenLong-L1: A Structured RL Framework for Long-Context Adaptation To address these limitations, the Qwen Research team introduces QwenLong-L1, a novel RL framework designed to adapt LRMs to long-context reasoning tasks. The framework is structured into three key stages: Warm-up Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT): Provides a stable initialization for the policy model by training on curated question-context-answer triplets, ensuring basic competence in contextual comprehension and answer extraction. Curriculum-Guided Phased Reinforcement Learning: Introduces a staged training process with gradually increasing context lengths. This progression enables the model to incrementally acquire long-context reasoning behaviors without destabilizing policy updates. Difficulty-Aware Retrospective Sampling: Enhances exploration by maintaining and reusing hard examples from previous phases, weighted by their difficulty, to encourage deeper reasoning and robustness across diverse inputs. These stages are complemented by hybrid reward mechanisms—combining rule-based exact match verification with semantic evaluation by a lightweight LLM—ensuring both precision and recall during policy training. Technical Design and Methodological Advantages QwenLong-L1 integrates recent advances in group-relative RL optimization, specifically GRPO and DAPO, to mitigate the computational overhead associated with long-context value estimation: GRPO estimates advantage by normalizing rewards within sampled groups, eliminating the need for a separate value network and encouraging diverse generation patterns. DAPO incorporates mechanisms such as dynamic sampling, overlength penalty shaping, and asymmetric clipping thresholds to prevent entropy collapse and mitigate length biases during training. The reward function is defined as the maximum of two signals: a deterministic rule-based match and a semantic judgment from a compact evaluator model (e.g., Qwen2.5-1.5B). This hybrid approach avoids overfitting to rigid formats while maintaining answer correctness across varied notations and phrasings. Moreover, the framework is optimized via progressive context scaling, where the RL process transitions from 20K-token to 60K-token input lengths in controlled phases, stabilizing training dynamics and facilitating policy generalization. Experimental Results and Benchmark Performance QwenLong-L1 was evaluated on seven long-context document QA benchmarks, including DocMath, Frames, 2WikiMultihopQA, HotpotQA, Musique, NarrativeQA, and Qasper. The 32B variant, QwenLong-L1-32B, demonstrated strong empirical performance: It outperformed baseline models such as R1-Distill-Qwen-32B by 5.1 points and exceeded leading proprietary systems like OpenAI-o3-mini and Qwen3-235B-A22B. Its performance was comparable to Claude-3.7-Sonnet-Thinking, indicating competitive reasoning capabilities under extreme context lengths. Pass@K analysis revealed consistent improvements with increased sampling, achieving a Pass@2 average of 73.7, surpassing DeepSeek-R1 and OpenAI-o1-preview, even at low sampling rates. Ablation studies further validated the individual contributions of SFT, phased RL, and retrospective sampling. Notably, RL played a decisive role in enabling emergent reasoning behaviors such as grounding, subgoal setting, verification, and backtracking—traits not effectively induced by supervised fine-tuning alone. Conclusion QwenLong-L1 represents a systematic approach to equipping LRMs with robust long-context reasoning capabilities through reinforcement learning. Its design effectively bridges the gap between short-context expertise and the demands of information-dense environments by combining supervised initialization, curriculum-driven context scaling, and hybrid evaluation strategies. The framework not only achieves state-of-the-art results across long-context benchmarks but also demonstrates the emergence of interpretable reasoning patterns during training. Check out the Paper, Model on Hugging Face and GitHub Page. All credit for this research goes to the researchers of this project. Also, feel free to follow us on Twitter and don’t forget to join our 95k+ ML SubReddit and Subscribe to our Newsletter. Asif RazzaqWebsite |  + postsBioAsif Razzaq is the CEO of Marktechpost Media Inc.. As a visionary entrepreneur and engineer, Asif is committed to harnessing the potential of Artificial Intelligence for social good. His most recent endeavor is the launch of an Artificial Intelligence Media Platform, Marktechpost, which stands out for its in-depth coverage of machine learning and deep learning news that is both technically sound and easily understandable by a wide audience. The platform boasts of over 2 million monthly views, illustrating its popularity among audiences.Asif Razzaqhttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/6flvq/NVIDIA Releases Llama Nemotron Nano 4B: An Efficient Open Reasoning Model Optimized for Edge AI and Scientific TasksAsif Razzaqhttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/6flvq/A Coding Implementation to Build an AI Agent with Live Python Execution and Automated ValidationAsif Razzaqhttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/6flvq/Step-by-Step Guide to Build a Customizable Multi-Tool AI Agent with LangGraph and Claude for Dynamic Agent CreationAsif Razzaqhttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/6flvq/A Comprehensive Coding Guide to Crafting Advanced Round-Robin Multi-Agent Workflows with Microsoft AutoGen

The big Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 interview: Sandfall and Kepler on team size, the return of AA games, and what's next Plus: how Kepler plans to be the A24 for games, and why a follow-up to Clair Obscur won't involve a big studio expansion Image credit: Sandfall Interactive Feature by Lewis Packwood Contributor Published on May 27, 2025 The success of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – which sold 2 million copies within 12 days of launch – has meant all eyes are now on its developer, Sandfall Interactive. As the games industry mulls how to move forward, faced with a saturated market, widespread layoffs and spiralling development costs, the fact that an original title made by a relatively small team could see such massive success gives hope to everyone. It's also an emphatic validation of the strategy of Clair Obscur's publisher, Kepler Interactive, which since its formation in 2021 has focused on original titles with eye-catching art styles and mould-breaking gameplay, including Sifu, Tchia, Scorn, Pacific Drive, Ultros, Bionic Bay, and the upcoming Rematch. "They respect creativity and innovation in games, they have a very high standard in choosing games to publish, and they are very fun people to work with," enthuses Shuhei Yoshida, former president of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios, and now a freelance consultant for Kepler. Yoshida has been helping to evaluate game pitches for the publisher since he left Sony in January, as well as helping to promote Bionic Bay and Clair Obscur. "They have a great balance in looking for innovation in games and investing in commercially viable projects," he says. "I think the way Kepler chooses games and supports developers is a great example of sustainable indie publishing. I expect many companies in the industry will look for inspiration from what Kepler is doing." Coop mode One thing that immediately marks out Kepler as different is its structure. "Kepler is co-owned by a group of studios, but they all operate autonomously," explains portfolio director Matthew Handrahan, who joined Kepler from PlayStation in 2022 (before that, he was editor-in-chief of this very site). "They make a lot of their own choices creatively and commercially in terms of the direction of their business. But there is a collaborative aspect that they can draw upon if they feel they need it. The thing that we definitely are very clear on is Kepler is not sitting here telling anyone what to do." The idea is that Kepler can provide support into each studio in terms of things like HR, legal teams, and IT. "And each one of them can draw on that to the degree that they want to, in the belief that if you give people that solid base, they can just focus more on being creative," says Handrahan. Image credit: Sandfall Interactive But the plan was always for Kepler to become a third party publisher, he continues. So in addition to publishing games from its own studios, since 2024 Kepler has started releasing games from outside developers, like Pacific Drive, Clair Obscur, and the newly signed PVKK from Bippinbits, the creators of Dome Keeper. "As we go forward, what we really hope is that people can spot a Kepler game," says Handrahan. So what marks out a Kepler title? CEO Alexis Garavaryan has previously emphasised the publisher champions games with "bold art direction and innovative game design" that avoid familiar influences like Star Wars and superheroes. Handrahan says this is essential in today's market. "I remember writing about Steam being overcrowded for GamesIndustry.biz 10 years ago, and saying, 'Oh, there's too many games'," he says. "Well there's five times more games being released now. So if you are coming to market with a game, it had better be doing something genuinely fresh." What Kepler definitely isn't doing is chasing trends, which Handrahan says is a dangerous strategy. He gives the example of Balatro imitators. "If you're making something hot on the heels of that, by the time you get to market, there'll probably be 150 other alternatives." One can't help thinking, too, of the expensive failure of Concord at PlayStation, which proved to be one hero shooter too many. The next expedition Sandfall's COO and producer François Meurisse says that the fact that studio head Guillaume Broche was deliberately avoiding chasing trends with Clair Obscur was what attracted him to join in the first place. "Some people predicted to us that it was a tricky [sector] when we started development, and there could be kind of a curse on AA games" François Meurisse, Sandfall Interactive He was immediately on board with Broche's passion for revitalising the kind of flashy, 3D, turn-based JRPGs that had long gone out of fashion. That passion came first: the strategy came later. "A bit after, when we tried to rationalise that yearning he has for this kind of game, we realised that it wasn't addressed as much in the market, and maybe there was a place for it," says Meurisse. The end result went beyond their wildest dreams. "The game has had success to an extent that we didn't imagine," he says. "We smashed our forecasts pretty fast." Naturally, thoughts are already turning to a follow-up. "There will be another video game, for sure," says Meurisse, adding that it's a little early to say exactly what form it will take. "I can't wait to dig more into the ideas we already have for the next game," he says. "Plus the team has grown up, has acquired new skills throughout production," he says. "Many of them were junior when we started. We learned to work together. So I can't wait to get to the next project, because we'll start from a more efficient position than when we started the company five years ago. And that [comes] with higher expectations as well, so it will be challenging. But I can say that we have – and Guillaume in particular has – great ideas for the next game." AA comeback Image credit: Sandfall Interactive The success of Clair Obscur has led many to herald the comeback of AA games, a sector that has shrunk significantly over the past couple of console generations – even if it's a harder category to define in 2025 based on a lack of publicly available budget numbers. "Some people predicted to us that it was a tricky [sector] when we started development, and there could be kind of a curse on AA games," remembers Meurisse. "But from our perspective, we didn't care too much about market considerations. […] In a sense, A Plague Tale or Mortal Shell or Hellblade, games like those were already proof for us that small teams of less than 50 people could have great games and great execution." Speaking of team size, much was made of the claim that Clair Obscur was created by a team of around 30, although many were quick to point out that the credits include dozens more people than that, working on things like QA, localization and voice production, as well as a ‘gameplay animation' team in Korea. "These kinds of games did exist in much greater numbers about 15 years ago, and I think there are some threads that the AAA industry lost as they grew and grew and grew" Matt Handrahan, Kepler Interactive So was the game mis-sold? "I don't think so," says Handrahan. "I think that the creative engine of the game was that group of 30. […] In terms of what the game is – the vision of it and the way in which it's executed – [that] does come from that nucleus of staff that is at Sandfall." "In terms of main credits over the four years of production, we were on average about 30 people," clarifies Meurisse. "We started with less than 10 people, scaled up until 30, and close to 40, and then scaled a little bit down. You mentioned Korean animators, but it's important to mention that none of them were full time. They were doing some extras beside some other jobs of animation. So the core team was on average 30 people in the home studio, plus privileged contractors like the lead writer or the composer, for example: I include them in that core team." "But of course, we had a galaxy of partners revolving around the project. Kepler in the first place – and I want to really pinpoint that they were really key in the success of the game – plus some other creative people as well, like musician players, translators, QA testers also. And that definitely extends the team, and I'm super grateful we could work with all those super […] passionate partners from all over the world." "I think people fixated on this number," adds Handrahan, "but actually the more useful thing that was being said was that this is not a AAA game, right? You can look at those credits, and it's still definitely not a AAA game." "These kinds of games did exist in much greater numbers about 15 years ago, and I think there are some threads that the AAA industry lost as they grew and grew and grew, and brought in different ways of monetising," he continues. "We have to remember there was a time when AAA companies were making games like Vanquish and Mirror's Edge and Kane & Lynch, and all of these really cool, interesting, not small games, but much smaller scale games. And you've seen the number of releases from AAA publishers dwindle and dwindle and dwindle. Now there's an opportunity for teams like Sandfall to come in and give players something that they really have not been given for quite a long time." Which leads us to ask, if Clair Obscur can't be classed as a AAA game, how much did it cost, exactly? Neither Handrahan nor Meurisse is willing to disclose the true figure. "I would say that I've seen a lot of budget estimations that are all higher than the real budget," muses Meurisse. Handrahan agrees. "Everybody's desperate to know what the budget is, and I won't tell them, but I would guarantee if you got 10 people to guess, I think all 10 wouldn't guess the actual figure," he says. "I'm sure Mirror's Edge and Vanquish cost more, put it that way." Keeping the team small Image credit: Sandfall Interactive With a success like Clair Obscur, the temptation might be to scale up the studio for a blockbuster sequel: a pattern we've seen with successful franchises many times before. But Meurisse says that's something Sandfall wants to avoid. "For now, our vision would be to stick to a close team working in the same city with less than 50 people on board, focusing on one project after another, and keeping this agility, and this creative strength, and smartness of a small group of passionate people wanting to do something big," he says. "That's how video games were made for years," he continues. "The team that made Ocarina of Time or Half-Life 2, I think those were max 60 or 70 people*, and that kind of size allows for good decisions and great creativity." He adds that the studio might recruit a few more members, but it won't start working on multiple projects simultaneously, and they will deliberately avoid growing too big and unwieldy. "We want to keep the organisation that made us successful," he says. Handrahan notes that because game making is an iterative process, maintaining only a small permanent team makes sense. "I think keeping a core team to hold the vision and to build out what the game is, and then expanding as you need to through things like outsourcing, is a very smart and sustainable way to manage game development," he says. "I think that there's been a lot of irresponsible practices in the industry," he continues, referring to the inherent risks involved in ballooning AAA budgets and team sizes. "Some games can make it work. Grand Theft Auto 6 is going to make it work, I think we can all say with great confidence. But there are plenty of games made with very large teams and for huge amounts of money that don't land, and there is a human cost to running things that way. People lose their jobs. God knows how many layoffs there's been in the industry over the last few years." He worries that the temptation to scale up is too great. "I do see a lot of developers who ship a game and then get some level of success – even very small levels of success or on very small budgets – and then almost instinctively feel like they need to double or triple the budget of the next game. And that is something I definitely question." No bloat He also questions the need to make games bigger. "One of the things that's great about Expedition 33 is it really respects the player's time. It gives them plenty to do, and it gives them plenty of satisfaction, but it isn't arbitrarily 500 hours of gameplay. It's impactful because it's scoped correctly. […] It doesn't have any sense of bloat or extraneous things that are put there just to make it larger and larger and larger." "Brevity should be more of a virtue in gaming," he adds. "Something can be better by being shorter – something that's being discussed in film at the moment. Every film seems to be two and a half hours long, and I think most people are like, 'Can they all be a bit shorter, please? Because we have other things to do with our lives'." Meurisse notes that the focus for Clair Obscur was always on quality over quantity. "From the beginning, we wanted to do an intense and short experience," he says. "The first length estimates of the game were closer to 20 hours for the main quest. I think we ended up closer to 30, even 40 hours if you take a bit of time. As a player, there are so many great games out there that I want to experience, [and] what's important to me is the level of excitement and fun I get from a game, rather than how long it is." He also questions the link between game length and price. "The value that players get from games does not align systematically with the length of the game," he says. "For example, one of my favourite games of all time is Inside, which lasts about two hours, but it's one of the most polished, and intense [experiences] – and even life changing for some people." What are games worth? Notably, Clair Obscur launched at a price point of $50/$45, at a time when the standard price for big-budget games is creeping up to $80. "I think as that AAA price goes up, I think it creates more of an opportunity to be launching games – more sensibly scoped games – [and] pricing them at that $40–50 range," says Handrahan. "And I don't think anyone that played Expedition 33 would think they didn't get their money's worth out of that." "When we announced the pricing at $50 we did actually have a little of a backlash online," adds Meurisse, "with people fearing it would be a 12-hour-long game with unfinished content, and that it was suspicious to have a $50 game that was looking like this in the trailers. But in the end we stuck with the price, we doubled down on it, [and] we provided some context about the fact that it wasn't a AAA." "In the end, it was a win-win situation, because it was a way to attract more players towards the game, to have good player satisfaction about their buying [decision], and it could actually end up doing more sales. So maybe players' perception can change a bit about that kind of price [point]." The Kepler brand Image credit: Sandfall Interactive Clair Obscur has obviously provided a huge boost for Kepler as a publisher, and Handrahan says the plan now is for Kepler to build a brand as the home for high-quality, mid-sized games with a unique vision. He gives the newly signed PVKK as an example. "The art direction is very high quality, it's very, very bold. It has a strong narrative component. It has innovative gameplay design. It speaks to wider culture, it's not an insular vision for a game. I think you get a lot of games that are kind of just about other games, and that is not something we're interested in necessarily." It's a model that he thinks others could follow. "We definitely want there to be strong associations with the games we do, so if that is something that other publishers could imitate or follow along from, then all the better," he says, adding that it makes little sense for publishers to cast a broad net of styles and genres in such a crowded market. But of course, there is a risk to championing unique, untested visions. So what does Kepler do to mitigate that risk? "We definitely do market research," says Handrahan – although he adds that ultimately the process is subjective. "I came to this company because I really trusted the taste of the people that I work for. I have always felt that if I'm really excited by a game, there will be other people out there who are excited by it. Yes, you can test that against market research, and that is definitely a function that we have in the company, and we use it. But our litmus test is a subjective level of excitement and belief in the vision and creativity that we see in the games that we sign." He points to companies in other media, like A24 or Warped Records, that have taken a similar approach with great success. "We want to be that in games." *Fact check note: Valve's core team was actually 84 for Half-Life 2, without including the many people involved in voice acting, QA, IT, legal, and so on. The team behind Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time numbered around 66, although the people involved in QA testing aren't listed individually in the credits.

The Days of Play celebration comes to PlayStation Store, featuring numerous games all available at discount for a limited time*, starting May 28! You can get a preview of just some of the titles** that’ll be included ahead of the promotion’s go-live time right here. The full list will include the likes of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 – Cross-Gen Bundle (45% off), WWE 2K25 Standard Edition (30% off), Astro Bot (15% off), The Last of Us Part II Remastered (20% off) and Red Dead Redemption 2 (75% off).  The full list will include the likes of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 – Cross-Gen Bundle (45% off), WWE 2K25 Standard Edition (30% off), Astro Bot (17% off) and The Last of Us Part II Remastered (20% off).  The full list will include the likes of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 – Cross-Gen Bundle (45% off), WWE 2K25 Standard Edition (30% off), Astro Bot (17% off) and The Last of Us Part II Remastered (20% off).  And there are many more games beyond the titles listed below. When the dedicated promotion page goes live on PlayStation Store on May 28, head there to see the full list and find out your regional discount pricing.  And there’s plenty more Days of Play related-celebrations to enjoy! Check out the full range of activities, offers and more in the Days of Play announcement post.  A Plague Tale: Innocence A Plague Tale: Requiem After the Fall® – Complete Edition Agatha Christie – Murder on the Orient Express Age of Mythology: Retold Standard Edition Age of Wonders 4 AI LIMIT AI LIMIT Deluxe Edition AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES – nirvanA Initiative Airport Police Contraband Simulator – Border Patrol Akimbot Alan Wake 2 Deluxe Edition Alan Wake Remastered Alien: Isolation – THE COLLECTION Alien: Rogue Incursion VR Deluxe Ambulance Life: A Paramedic Simulator Amerzone – The Explorer’s Legacy ANIMAL WELL Another Crab’s Treasure Arcade Paradise Arizona Sunshine® 2 Deluxe Edition Arizona Sunshine® Remake Arma Reforger Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Deluxe Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Ragnarök Edition Assassin’s Creed® IV Black Flag™ Assassin’s Creed® Mirage Deluxe Edition Assassin’s Creed® Odyssey Deluxe Edition Assassin’s Creed® Odyssey Gold Edition Assetto Corsa 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Ex: Mankind Divided – Digital Deluxe Edition Devil May Cry 5 Deluxe + Vergil Devil May Cry 5 Special Edition Devil May Cry HD Collection & 4SE Bundle Dishonored 2 Dishonored® Definitive Edition Dishonored®: Death of the Outsider™ – Deluxe Bundle Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed DISSIDIA® FINAL FANTASY® NT DOOM DOOM Eternal Standard Edition Dragon Age™: The Veilguard DRAGON QUEST BUILDERS DRAGON QUEST BUILDERS 2 DRAGON QUEST III HD-2D Remake DRAGON QUEST XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age – Definitive Edition DREDGE DREDGE: Expansion Bundle Duke Nukem 3D: 20th Anniversary World Tour Dungeons 4 Dying Light Dying Light 2 Stay Human EA SPORTS FC™ 25 Standard Edition EA SPORTS™ Madden NFL 25 EARTH DEFENSE FORCE 5 EARTH DEFENSE FORCE 6 EARTH DEFENSE FORCE: WORLD BROTHERS 2 Deluxe Edition Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes Empire of the Ants ENDER LILIES: Quietus of the Knights ENDER MAGNOLIA: Bloom in the Mist Endling – Extinction is Forever Eternights Expeditions: A MudRunner Game Expeditions: A 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Shark Cash Card Guilty Gear -Strive- Hades Harold Halibut Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions Have a Nice Death Heavenly Bodies Heavy Cargo – The Truck Simulator Hell Let Loose High On Life High On Life + DLC Bundle Highway Police Simulator HITMAN 3 – Trinity Pack HITMAN World of Assassination – Deluxe Edition Horizon Chase 2 Horizon Forbidden West™ Complete Edition HOT WHEELS UNLEASHED™ 2 – Turbocharged HOT WHEELS UNLEASHED™ 2 – Turbocharged – Deluxe Edition HOT WHEELS UNLEASHED™ 2 – Turbocharged – Legendary Edition HUMANITY Immortals of Aveum™ Deluxe Edition Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Premium Edition INDIKA Infernax Infinity Strash: DRAGON QUEST The Adventure of Dai Insurgency: Sandstorm Insurgency: Sandstorm – Gold Edition It Takes Two Jak and Daxter Bundle Jurassic World Evolution: Return to Jurassic Park Kena: Bridge of Spirits Kentucky Route Zero: TV Edition Killer Klowns From Outer Space: Digital Deluxe Edition Killer Klowns From Outer 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Noire LEGO® Harry Potter™ Collection LEGO® 2K Drive LEGO® 2K Drive Awesome Rivals Edition LEGO® Batman™ 3: Beyond Gotham LEGO® Harry Potter™ Collection LEGO® Horizon Adventures™ LEGO® Star Wars™: The Skywalker Saga LEGO® Star Wars™: The Skywalker Saga Galactic Edition Life is Strange: Double Exposure Deluxe Edition Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth Ultimate Edition LIVE A LIVE Lords of the Fallen Lorelei and the Laser Eyes Made in Abyss: Binary Star Falling into Darkness Mafia: Definitive Edition Mafia: Trilogy Maneater Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Marvel’s Midnight Suns Enhanced Edition Marvel’s Midnight Suns Legendary Edition Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 Digital Deluxe Edition Master Detective Archives: RAIN CODE Plus Master Detective Archives: RAIN CODE Plus – Digital Deluxe Edition Matchbox™ Driving Adventures Metaphor: ReFantazio Metro Awakening Metro Awakening + Arizona Sunshine® 2 Metro Exodus: Gold Edition Metro Saga Bundle Minecraft Dungeons: Ultimate Edition Minecraft Legends Minecraft Legends Deluxe Edition MLB® The Show™ 25 Monster Energy Supercross 25 – Special Edition Monster Energy Supercross 25 – The Official Video Game Monster Energy Supercross 25 X Monster Jam™ Showdown – Dirt Master Edition Monster High™ Skulltimate Secrets™ Monster Jam™ Showdown Monster Jam™ Showdown – Big Air Edition Moonlighter Moonscars Mortal Kombat™ 1 Mortal Shell Mortal Shell: The Virtuous Cycle MotoGP™25 Moving Out MudRunner – American Wilds Edition MX vs ATV Legends MX vs ATV Legends – 2024 AMA Pro Motocross Championship My Friend Peppa Pig My Little Pony: A Zephyr Heights Mystery NARUTO X BORUTO Ultimate Ninja STORM CONNECTIONS NARUTO X BORUTO Ultimate Ninja STORM CONNECTIONS Ultimate Edition NBA 2K25 All-Star Edition NBA 2K25 Tournament Edition Need for Speed™ Unbound Need for Speed™ Unbound Ultimate Collection NEO: The World Ends with You Neon White Neva New Tales from the Borderlands Nick Jr. Party Adventure Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3: Slime Speedway NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139… NieR: Automata™ Game of the YoRHa Edition Nine Sols No Man’s Sky Nobody Wants to Die OCTOPATH TRAVELER II Oddworld: Soulstorm Enhanced Edition ON THE ROAD – The Truck Simulator Onee Chanbara Origin Outer Wilds Overcooked! All You Can Eat Pacific Drive PAW Patrol Mighty Pups Save Adventure Bay PAW Patrol: Grand Prix PAYDAY 3 PGA TOUR 2K25 PGA TOUR 2K25 Legend Edition Phasmophobia Planet Coaster 2: Deluxe Edition Police Simulator: Patrol Officers: Gold Edition Quake 1 & 2 Bundle Railway Empire 2 Ravenswatch Red Dead Online Red Dead Redemption Remnant II® – Standard Edition Remnant II® – Ultimate Edition Remnant: From the Ashes REVEIL REVEIL – Funhouse Edition Rez Infinite RIDE 5 RIDE 5 – Special Edition Riders Republic™ 360 Edition Riders Republic™ Skate Edition Risk of Rain Risk of Rain 2 Road Maintenance Simulator 2 + Winter Services Road Redemption Robin Hood – Sherwood Builders Rogue Waters Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven Romancing SaGa -Minstrel Song- Remastered Rugby 25 Saints Row Saints Row Gold Edition SAMURAI MAIDEN SAND LAND Deluxe Edition Sayonara Wild Hearts Sea of Thieves Sea of Thieves: 2025 Premium Edition SEASON: A letter to the future SHADOW OF THE COLOSSUS Shadow of the Tomb Raider Definitive Edition Shadow Tactics: Aiko’s Choice Shadow Tactics: Aiko’s Choice – Deluxe Edition Shredders Shredders – 540INDY Edition Sid Meier’s Civilization VI Sid Meier’s Civilization® VII Sid Meier’s Civilization® VII Deluxe Edition Sifu Skull and Bones Premium Edition SKULL AND BONES™ Skyrim Anniversary Edition + Fallout 4 G.O.T.Y Bundle Sledders Slime Rancher Slime Rancher 2 Slitterhead Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 Complete Edition Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts Full Arsenal Edition SnowRunner – 2-Year Anniversary Edition SnowRunner – 4-Year Anniversary Edition Solar Ash Songs of Conquest SOUTH PARK: SNOW DAY! 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Digital Deluxe SpellForce III Reforced SpellForce III Reforced: Complete Edition SpongeBob SquarePants™: The Patrick Star Game STAR WARS Jedi: Survivor™ Star Wars Outlaws Star Wars Outlaws Ultimate Edition STAR WARS™ Battlefront™ Ultimate Edition STAR WARS™ Battlefront™ II STAR WARS™ Jedi Cross-Gen Bundle Edition STAR WARS™: Dark Forces Remaster STAR WARS™: Squadrons Starship Troopers: Extermination Stellaris: Console Edition Still Wakes the Deep Stranded Deep Stray Subnautica Subnautica: Below Zero Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League Surviving Mars Survivor – Castaway Island SWORD ART ONLINE Fractured Daydream SWORD ART ONLINE Fractured Daydream Premium Edition SYNDUALITY Echo of Ada SYNDUALITY Echo of Ada Ultimate Edition Taiko no Tatsujin: Rhythm Festival The Setlist Edition Tails of Iron 2: Whiskers of Winter Tales of Graces f Remastered Deluxe Edition Tales of Kenzera™: ZAU Taxi Life – Supporter Edition Tchia Teardown Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge TEKKEN 8 TEKKEN 8 Season 2 Ultimate Edition Temtem Terminator: Resistance Terminator: Resistance Enhanced Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown – Gold Edition Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown – Silver Streets Edition Tetris® Effect: Connected Thank Goodness You’re Here! 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Untitled Goose Game V Rising Legacy of Castlevania Edition Viewfinder Visions of Mana Way of the Hunter Welcome to ParadiZe – Zombot Edition What Remains of Edith Finch Wolfenstein: The Two-Pack Wolfenstein® II: The New Colossus™ World War Z World War Z: Aftermath Worms Armageddon: Anniversary Edition Worms W.M.D Wreckfest – Complete Edition WrestleQuest WWE 2K25 Standard Edition WWE 2K25 The Bloodline Edition Ys Origin Zero Escape: The Nonary Games *The Days of Play 2025 promotion on PlayStation Store starts May 28 at 00.00AM PDT/BST/JST and ends June 11 at 23:59 PDT/BST/JST.**Games and discounts may differ by region. Please check your local PlayStation Store page at go-live. 

To match or not to match? That is the question that plagues homeowners the world over. A certain degree of matching is expected and should be prioritized for a cohesive palette—designers always emphasize that a home should be “in conversation” with itself. But how far does that matchy-matchy mentality really need to go? Recently, homeowners and design lovers on Reddit have debated one specific match, and it has the internet divided: Should you match the tile of your kitchen backsplash to your bathroom tile? To get to the bottom of it, we spoke with designers and, well, the answer might surprise you. For More on Kitchens:Should Your Kitchen and Bathroom Tile Match?In short, probably not. While there is no hard-and-fast rule, all the designers I spoke with said they would not match them unless they were intentionally going for a wholly cohesive look. “Rarely would I match a kitchen and bathroom tile, or use the same tile in both places,” says designer and pro-renovator Christina Salway. “There are just too many beautiful options to do the same thing twice.” Designer Amanda Lantz echoed Christina’s sentiment: “The options of tile are so endless that I love giving each room its own character by changing it up in some way.” For More on Bathrooms:What Should You Do Instead?If you like a cohesive look but don’t want to match, take Amanda's advice: “Lean into the differing textures, but stay in the same color palette,” she says. “It brings enough variation to make it interesting and give each space some personality.” If you prefer something that feels more organic, focus on crafting a diverse palette. “Frequently, people think of a room as an isolated experience, but I like to think about how a person moves through a house,” says Christina. “You have to weave the colors from one room into the next.” Designer Annie Downing agrees, suggesting that you shouldn’t get too hung up on exact matches and instead focus on the common language they share. “Tile [all through a house] should feel like it’s from the same family, even if the patterns, colors, or materials vary slightly,” she says. This can feel like pulling at threads, but it’s ultimately the most rewarding way to craft a colorful home that feels wholly unique to you. If you’re worried about the space feeling overwhelmed with color, don’t. There’s an easy fix. “You can always tone a bathroom down with white paint and a white shower curtain, but tile is a marvelous opportunity to choose something that really enlivens the space and makes it yours,” says Christina. “Don’t panic and just go all white unless that’s what makes your heart sing!” For More on Tile:Anna LoganSenior Homes & Style EditorAnna Logan is the Senior Homes & Style Editor at Country Living, where she has been covering all things home design, including sharing exclusive looks at beautifully designed country kitchens, producing home features, writing everything from timely trend reports on the latest viral aesthetic to expert-driven explainers on must-read topics, and rounding up pretty much everything you’ve ever wanted to know about paint, since 2021. Anna has spent the last seven years covering every aspect of the design industry, previously having written for Traditional Home, One Kings Lane, House Beautiful, and Frederic. She holds a degree in journalism from the University of Georgia. When she’s not working, Anna can either be found digging around her flower garden or through the dusty shelves of an antique shop. Follow her adventures, or, more importantly, those of her three-year-old Maltese and official Country Living Pet Lab tester, Teddy, on Instagram.  

Recap: Although the Cybertruck began missing CEO Elon Musk's stated goals as soon as it launched in late 2023, the odd-looking electric pickup truck sold well out of the gate. However, the vehicle's commercial performance has tanked over the last few months. Musk's political activities have soured public opinion on the company and contributed to declining global sales. Multiple signs from the last two quarters indicate that sales of Tesla vehicles are declining more sharply than ever. The company is struggling to sell the Cybertruck in particular, as its perceived value has started to plunge. In the first quarter of 2025, Tesla saw the biggest sales decline in its history. A January report showed that its year-over-year sales fell by half in Europe overall and by 70 percent in Germany despite rising sales of other EV brands. In February, sales dropped by 49 percent in China as the company reported its lowest numbers since 2022. Last month, Chinese EV automaker BYD outsold Tesla in Europe for the first time. Meanwhile, data from multiple analysts shows that unsold Cybertruck inventory has grown dramatically over the past few weeks. In early May, listings exceeded 10,000 vehicles, totaling around $808 million in value and signaling low demand. Furthermore, the Ford F-150 Lightning surpassed the Cybertruck as the most popular all-electric pickup truck in March and Q1 2025. However, newly reported trade-in values are the worst sign of the Tesla vehicle's performance over the last few months. The company only recently began accepting Cybertruck trade-ins, and a user on a Cybertruck owners forum reported receiving a $65,400 estimate on a 2024 all-wheel drive model with 6,211 miles, a roughly 34 percent depreciation rate in just one year. CEO Elon Musk's close association with US President Donald Trump and his actions as the head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency are likely the primary cause. The group has slashed government spending and laid off thousands of government employees, sparking a sharp political backlash. Tesla vehicles have been boycotted and vandalized in recent months, and drivers have begun displaying bumper stickers professing their disapproval of Musk to avoid being targeted. // Related Stories Although the Cybertruck initially attracted strong enthusiasm, problems have plagued it since the beginning. It suffered multiple delays before launching in late 2023 with a price tag above Musk's original estimates. Since then, numerous recalls have hit the Cybertruck due to safety issues with components, including exterior panels, electric inverters, and acceleration pedals.