Vivid Storm Interactive, developers of the Combat Extended mod for RimWorld, have been working on a colony sim game called Ascent of Ashes for a while now. The game is set in a post-apocalyptic dystopia where you take on the role of leader of a team of survivors, busy with various tasks. "Build and defend your base. Manage your survivors. Engage raiders, aliens, Remnant soldiers and other factions in real-time-with-pause combat. Or use stealth to outwit them. Explore the massive world. Survive at all costs," reads the game description. Unlike other games in the genre, in Ascent of Ashes, you are capable of restoring and driving vehicles, which are helpful tools to help you move faster and explore more efficiently in the expansive, procedurally generated world, filled with rich biomes and points of interest. The enemies in the game, powered by dynamic AI, will have different levels of intelligence. "Taking on a disorganized band of raiders will play very differently from fighting a squad of well-trained Remnant soldiers." Your role not only tests your ability to win in deep tactical combats, but also to properly find and recruit survivors who can strengthen your team to deal with challenges, and remember to keep everyone happy, secure, and motivated along the way. As a team that "has its roots in mod-making," they've created the game with an engine that’s highly extendable and mod-friendly to provide the support that modders need. "Ascent of Ashes is a game developed by modders, for modders."The developers have been synchronizing development progress through monthly updated dev logs on Steam, so if you're curious about what's going on in the game and what to expect next, don't hesitate to check it out.Ascent of Ashes will be released in Early Access on July 21. To learn more about the game and watch more gameplay footage, check it out on Steam and the official account on X/Twitter. Join our 80 Level Talent platform and our new Discord server, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, TikTok, and Threads, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.

Next week, the former president of “Grant Theft Auto” maker Rockstar North launches his first title since leaving the Take-Two Interactive-owned video game developer and opening his own studio, Build A Rocket Boy: the AAA narrative-driven action-adventure thriller “MindsEye.” Published by IOI Partners, the team behind the “Hitman” franchise, the Unreal Engine 5-built game will debut June 10 across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and on PC via Steam and Epic Games Store with a $59.99 price tag for the standard edition. Related Stories Set in the near-futuristic city of Redrock, “MindsEye” puts players into the role of Jacob Diaz, a former soldier haunted by fragmented memories from his mysterious MindsEye neural implant, as he uncovers a conspiracy involving rogue AI, corporate greed, an unchecked military, and a threat so sinister that it endangers the very survival of humanity. Popular on Variety But the base story isn’t the biggest draw for “MindsEye,” which includes Build A Rocket Boy’s proprietary Game Creation System, that enables players to, well, “craft anything in their minds eye.” Per the studio, “Players can craft their own experiences using all of the ‘MindsEye’ assets, creating everything from custom missions to entirely new scenarios within the game’s expansive, richly detailed world. Whether you’re designing a high-speed chase through Redrock’s bustling cityscapes or a stealth mission in its industrial outskirts, it is designed to be intuitive and easy to use, ensuring that players of all skill levels can bring their imagination to life.” Benzies’ Edinburgh-based Build A Rocket Boy has promised “fresh premium content” will rollout monthly for the game, including regular releases of new missions, challenges and game assets. While “MindsEye” is the first title from Benzies since he launched BARB after leaving Rockstar in 2016 (Benzies was the lead “Grand Theft Auto” developer across the third through fifth games in the franchise, as well as “Grand Theft Auto Online,” and was in a legal battle with parent company Take Two over unpaid royalties from 2016 until 2019), it’s just step one in the prolific producer’s plan to shake up the gaming industry. “At Build A Rocket Boy, our vision goes far beyond a single title,” Benzies told Variety. “‘MindsEye’ is the first episode and central story around which ever-expanding interconnected episodes will span. We’re already working on future episodes, which will introduce alternate realities while maintaining it’s core themes of hope, redemption, and the intrigue of civilizations past and future, drawing from the lore and multiverse concepts.” See Variety‘s full interview with Benzies below, including the inevitable comparisons that will be drawn between “MindsEye” and the aesthetic of the “GTA” franchise, and his hopes for Rockstar Games’ highly anticipated and much-delayed “GTA 6.” Where did the concept for “MindsEye” come from? I pull a lot of inspiration from the real world. Watching the actions of humans – their foibles and their virtues. Watching the advancement of technology and how we adapt, or indeed, do not adapt. We’ve been moving to an automated world for many years now, and the impact on humans, especially with recent advancements in AI, which serves as good fodder for a story and even better for a video game. I think we all have this little nagging feeling about how humans and AI will blend together in the future—will it go smoothly, or will it turn sinister? We’re fans of all different types of media, and we’ve drawn influence from cinematic visionaries like Ridley Scott, Paul Greengrass, Christopher Nolan, and J.J. Abrams, and films like “The Bourne Identity,” “Memento,” and TV series “Lost” — they’re all exploring memory, perception, and control in their own ways. So, while we nod to those influences here and there, we wanted to build something that feels fresh, grounded in today’s world, but still asking the kinds of questions that have always made this genre powerful. With your “GTA” roots, obvious comparisons are already being drawn between the style and aesthetic of that franchise and “MindsEye.” Comparisons will always be made—it’s the way human beings pigeonhole concepts. But “MindsEye” isn’t built to fit into anyone else’s box. Many games share the same core elements: cars, guns, cities, and charismatic characters, and differentiation is even tougher in today’s entertainment landscape. Streaming, social media, and on-demand binge culture have fractured attention spans, and consumer mindshare is a brutal battlefield for all IP. Our industry continues to celebrate each other’s breakthroughs, and I’m proud that our collective innovation is advancing the medium of gaming, even if our paths diverge. As an independent studio we have the freedom to break ground in experimental new ways and the challenge is balancing innovation with familiarity—too much “new” risks alienating fans, too much “same” feels stale. It’s about nailing what makes your game’s world feel alive and urgent. “MindsEye” is about consequence and connection—it’s cinematic, reactive, and meant to feel like a world you’re not just playing in, but able to create in it too. We’re excited to see what they’ve crafted with “GTA VI ,” and I can’t wait to play it as a consumer for the first time. They’re always delivering something new, unique and at a scale that very few can pull off. What does MindsEye represent in BARB’s larger vision and long-term strategy? Are you plotting this out as a multi-game franchise or your first standalone? At Build A Rocket Boy, our vision goes far beyond a single title. “MindsEye” is the first episode and central story around which ever-expanding interconnected episodes will span. We’re already working on future episodes, which will introduce alternate realities while maintaining it’s core themes of hope, redemption, and the intrigue of civilizations past and future, drawing from the lore and multiverse concepts. It’s the future of entertainment to allow active participation so players feel like they have agency and can immerse themselves in our world as they want to. We are introducing three products in one game that will revolutionize AAA-quality interactive gaming and storytelling: “MindsEye” narrative story, Play.MindsEye, and Build.MindsEye. In our tightly crafted action-noir, “MindsEye” narrative story we have rips in time accessed through portals at strategic points throughout the game – so while you play as Jacob Diaz on his personal journey, players can also explore side stories and delve deeper into the backstories of characters they encounter along the way. In this way we are delivering companion content at the same time as the anchor content, weaving a rich narrative tapestry which will continue to evolve and expand giving greater depth to characters so you understand their personality and motivations. How do digital products Play.MindsEye (formerly named Arcadia) and Build.MindsEye (formerly Everywhere) tie in to plans for “MindsEye” and what BARB wants to offer gamers? In this new era of entertainment, where streaming platforms, boom-and-bust games, and an on-demand culture dominate, we’re pushing things in a new direction—with an interface that simplifies how we consume not just games, but all forms of entertainment. Consumers are moving away from 2D browsing into fully 3D, immersive experiences. Put simply, we’re shifting from passive interaction to active participation. As with all new products, things evolve. Arcadia was originally envisioned as our creation platform, but as we continued developing “MindsEye” and building out BARB’s ecosystem, it naturally grew into something more focused— Play.MindsEye and Build.MindsEye. Play delivers cinematic, high-intensity gameplay with missions and maps that constantly evolve. Build gives players intuitive tools to create their own content—no technical skills required, just imagination and intent. For BARB to fully realize our vision, we had to beta test our creation system with a community of builders in real-time and started with Everywhere while we were in stealth mode developing MindsEye. How did you settle on IOI as publishing partner? We’ve always found the way IOI handled the “Hitman” franchise interesting. They are one of the few publishers that have taken their single-player IP and increased their player count and amplified their community culture over time. From a technology point of view, their one executable approach for all of their content is very smart, and we always planned to have a similar approach, which encouraged us to join forces. This interview has been edited and condensed.

Fruit flies don't naturally enjoy the taste of cocaine. Credit: Deposit Photos Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. In a world first, scientists at the University of Utah have engineered fruit flies susceptible to cocaine addiction. But as strange as it sounds, there are potentially life-saving reasons for genetically altering the insects to crave the drug. The novel biological model could help addiction treatment therapies development and expedite research timelines. The findings are detailed in the Journal of Neuroscience. As surprising as it may sound, humans have a lot in common with fruit flies. In fact, we share around 70–75 percent of the same genes responsible for various diseases, as well as many of the same vital organs. Researchers have relied on the insects for genetic studies for years, especially for investigating the biological roots of certain addictions like cocaine abuse. This is due in large part to the fruit fly’s quick life cycle and its comparatively simple genetic makeup. But while scientists have administered the drug to the bugs in the past, there’s always been a small problem. “Flies don’t like cocaine one bit,” Adrian Rothenfluh, the study’s senior author and an associate professor of psychiatry, said in a statement. Even when previously introduced to cocaine, Rothenfluh’s team noted that the insects routinely opted for pure sugar water over sugar water laced with cocaine. Study first author Travis Philyaw theorized the reason may reside in a fly’s sense of taste that is found on their legs. “Insects are evolutionarily primed to avoid plant toxins, and cocaine is a plant toxin,” Philyaw explained. “They have taste receptors on their ‘arms’—their tarsal segments—so they can put their hand in something before it goes in their mouth, and decide, ‘I’m not going to touch that.'” After confirming that cocaine activates a fruit fly’s bitter-sensing taste receptors, Rothenfluh and Philyaw switched off those nerves. Once deactivated, there was little to stop the flies from developing a cocaine habit. These modified flies were subsequently introduced to sugar water infused with a low concentration of cocaine. Within 16 hours, the insects indicated a preference for the drug-laced drink. “At low doses, they start running around, just like people,” said Rothenfluh. “At very high doses, they get incapacitated, which is also true in people.” Now that researchers know how to breed the modified fruit flies, they can more easily study how cocaine addiction evolves in the body. Not only that, but they can do so on a much faster timeline by analyzing hundreds of genes at a time. “We can scale research so quickly in flies,” said Philyaw. “We can identify risk genes that might be difficult to uncover in more complex organisms, and then we pass that information to researchers who work with mammalian models.” From there, scientists can identify treatment targets that help link to human therapy options. “We can really start to understand the mechanisms of cocaine choice, and the more you understand about the mechanism, the more you have a chance to find a therapeutic that might act on that mechanism,” explained Rothenfluh.

With Queens of the Dead, Tina Romero, daughter of the legendary filmmaker George A. Romero, is set to make her first directorial outing, premiering the feature at the Tribeca Film Festival June 7. The filmmaker recently spoke to Entertainment Weekly and reflected on her father’s influence. “I am his kid. There’s no denying it. And he has influenced me greatly.” Romero said. Queens of the Dead will feature Easter eggs to honor her father’s legacy. “And this is his monster, this is his genre. I had fun doing my little Romero nods throughout the film, and we have some good ones,” she shared, including appearances by notable figures such as makeup artist and actor Tom Savini and Dawn of the Dead star Gaylen Ross.  “The zombie apocalypse is such a rich sandbox to play in when it comes to social commentary. I can’t be my dad’s daughter without making an attempt at saying something with zombies,” Romero told the magazine. “I did want this to be a film in which I am paying homage to the world and the monster he created, but I’m also introducing my own voice. It’s very much not a film he would make, but it is using his vocabulary and is playing by his rules. As far as the queer element, on one hand, I just feel like the gays need a zombie film. It’s time that we get to have a big gay zombie movie.” “I didn’t want to touch the genre unless it felt authentic to me,” Romero emphasized. Queens of the Dead revolves around a night in the queer party scene when the nightlife vibes at a warehouse drag show get interrupted by the zombie apocalypse. The inspiration came from intense conflict on social media among party promoters during her stint as a DJ. Romero recounted,  “The original promoter posted this manifesto begging the question, ‘When will the queer community stop devouring its own?’ And it hit me like a bolt of lightning. I was like, ‘Oh my God! This would be how I want to explore the zombie genre in this world of queer nightlife.’” The Mandalorian baddie Katy O’Brien plays the fictionalized promoter who leads the film; Romero noted that there’s a special thanks to Tom Cruise in the credits for letting them take the time off their Mission: Impossible shoot to film the horror flick. Romero hopes the film will shine a light on the hunger for more genre films that represent an intersection of gay scream queens with that familiar flair for horror and dark comedy from her father’s roots. The legendary filmmaker didn’t get to see a completed script but mentored his daughter during the development process. Romero shared, “He said, ‘I love it! Run with it. Go for it.’ Unfortunately, he never got to read the completed script because it took me about seven years to get this developed… but I did have this blessing.” Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

“Was your interior designer Ayn Bland?” Barely ten minutes into Mountainhead, the first feature film from Succession creator Jesse Armstrong, the viewer is confronted with one of the film’s central tenets: beige is bad.Articulated by Jeff (Ramy Youssef), the movie does a lot to engage this train of thought. Its central characters—tech bro founders Randall (Steve Carrell), Hugo (Jason Schwartzman), and Venis (Cory Michael Smith)—are pitted against not just each other, but the world writ large as it begins to crumble around them, mostly thanks to their own machinations.But when did our current beige malaise set in? Much of the recent divisiveness might be attributed to the Kardashians, whose homes are synonymous with muted putty tones: “less is more” taken to its only logical conclusion—least is best. The aesthetic has occasionally gone viral, with the TikTok account Sad Beige even garnering notoriety for documenting the lifelessness of children’s retail offerings in the voice of German documentary filmmaker Werner Herzog.Warner Bros.The cast of Mountainhead, the new HBO Original film from Succession creator Jesse Armstrong.Social media is as much a progenitor of the trend as it is the platform to document it and repackage it for frictionless consumption. Beige is safe, easy, legible—if your entire house has been unpacked from Amazon boxes, why fight the natural inclination to just live in one? The Mountainhead home might be the lair of a fictional tech boss, but the aesthetics remain the same up and down the corporate ladder.The color family has its own troubled history: “khaki,” which is derived from the Urdu term for “dusty,” originated in mid-19th-century colonial India, as the critic and author Andrea Codrington noted in an eerily prescient 2001 essay for Cabinet magazine that further elaborates on beige’s latent potential for evil. Mountainhead, then, sees the hue returning to its roots, becoming shorthand for what Armstrong sees as everything that’s wrong with the world: complacency, exhaustion, and boredom.MACALL POLAY. SMPSPAnother beige couch in the Mountainhead house. Armstrong’s camera treats the home, designed by local Utah firm Upwall Design, as a character in and of itself, with lingering shots of quietly humming servers, spiraling staircases and vacant driveways presenting solitude and menace as two sides of the same coin. Town & Country reported that production designer Stephen Carter liked the property for its The Shining-esque vibes. He wasn’t wrong. “There’s a solitary nature to that house, too,” star Steve Carrell told The Salt Lake Tribune. “You feel like you’re away from everything.”Another word for that feeling—articulated by scenes of the men laying about the home glued to their phones as scenes of worldwide terror stream in—would be dissociation. Think home is where the heart is? Mountainhead makes a compelling case that it's often just another a bad trip.Sean SantiagoDeputy EditorSean Santiago is ELLE Decor's Deputy Editor, covering news, trends and talents in interior design, hospitality and travel, culture, and luxury shopping. Since starting his career at an interior design firm in 2011, he has gone on to cover the industry for Vogue, Architectural Digest, Sight Unseen, PIN-UP and Domino. He is the author of The Lonny Home (Weldon Owens, 2018), has produced scripted social content for brands including West Elm and Streeteasy, and is sometimes recognized on the street for his Instagram Reels series, #DanceToDecor

Longchamp has reintroduced its iconic SoHo flagship, unveiling a bold new chapter in its architectural and artistic journey. Nestled in the heart of downtown Manhattan, the La Maison Unique boutique has been transformed into a space that merges retail with an immersive cultural experience – offering more than shopping, but a deep dive into the brand’s design philosophy, legacy, and creative ambition. At the core of this reimagining is the rekindled collaboration between Longchamp and celebrated British designer Thomas Heatherwick. Nearly two decades after his original work on the space, Heatherwick returns to re-envision the site with a fresh narrative. The result is a compelling blend of artistry, innovation, and Parisian warmth, translated into architectural form. The redesign honors the bones of the original building while elevating its purpose. One of the most striking updates is the reinterpreted central staircase. Originally made of steel ribbons, it has been reborn in Longchamp’s signature green – a vibrant pathway of swooping planes that guides visitors up from the ground floor, like ascending a hill. The dramatic feature sets the tone for the boutique’s organic, flowing atmosphere. Above, the retail space has been crafted to feel less like a store and more like an upscale, lived-in loft. Round rugs in rich green tones spill from carpeted columns across warm wood floors, creating a dynamic interplay of texture and form. Vintage and bespoke furnishings – like a 1970s croissant sofa by Raphaël Raffel and sculptural works by David Nash – anchor the room with both history and originality. Longchamp’s ties to the art world are on full display throughout the store. The brand’s private collection, along with newly commissioned pieces, gives the space a gallery-like feel. Highlights include ceramics and sculptures from artists such as Dorothée Loriquet, Bobby Silverman, and Tanaka Tomomi. Their works echo Longchamp’s commitment to natural materials, tactile surfaces, and organic design. In a deliberate shift from traditional retail layout, the central area has been opened to encourage conversation. Instead of focusing solely on product display, the well-lit space invites guests to linger and connect, mirroring the rhythm of a Paris apartment transplanted to a New York context. The visual storytelling continues with intentional quirks: neon signage, hand-drawn graffiti by artist André, and archive objects that trace Longchamp’s early heritage as a maker of leather tobacco accessories and travel games. These nostalgic elements add to the space, providing a bridge between past and present. This revitalization is part of a larger movement within the brand to reshape the in-store experience. It reflects a shift in luxury retail – from transactional to experiential. By creating a space where design, storytelling, and sensory detail converge, Longchamp is championing a new kind of flagship – one rooted in memory and human connection. “Retail moves fast, but architecture should last. We wanted to create something bold and joyful, yet warm and timeless – an apartment-like space that invites people to stay,” Heatherwick Studio partner Neil Hubbard says. “From the swirling green rugs under green-carpeted columns to curved furniture that feels custom but lived-in, everything was designed to feel unified and human. Even the red brick walls downstairs, set to host rotating installations, help ground the space in SoHo’s industrial roots while creating room for surprise.”

A bread made from ancient grains is rising again in Turkey, and it's a big hit.

In “The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future,” Wall Street Journal reporter Keach Hagey examines our AI-obsessed moment through one of its key figures — Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI. Hagey begins with Altman’s M

During most of the introduction to the Wake Up Dead Man portion of Saturday night’s Netflix Tudum event, writer-director Rian Johnson and his starry cast, led by a folksy Daniel Craig, had fun hiding what the third Knives Out mystery is about. In fact we really don’t know. But as judged by the first teaser trailer for the movie, it is going for a darker and more oblique tone than the general playfulness viewers remember from Knives Out and Glass Onion, marketing included. In the teaser, a church bell ominously sounds in the distance as images suffused in shadow and nocturnal rains cascade down around Craig’s unexpectedly stoic Benoit Blanc. Without a charming witticism or visual gag in sight, Blanc tersely intones during the trailer, “The impossible crime. For a man of reason this is the Holy Grail.” Through it all, a haunting hymn plays as an elegiac and Southern voice cries, “O Death, O Death, Won’t you spare me over til another year.” While we still know relatively little about the plot of Wake Up Dead Man beyond its terrific ensemble—which includes Glenn Close, Kerry Washington, Jeremy Renner, Josh Brolin, Andrew Scott, and Cailee Spaeny—the song choice might tell us a lot about the film’s setting, and possibly the dark places it intends to go. Initially speculation regarding the third Knives Out picture assumed that it would be set in England where most of the film’s production occurred. And while that might still be the case, we suspect the English countryside might be used to substitute for something a little closer to home for American viewers—and distinctly Southern. Indeed, many fans of the Coen Brothers likely recognize the song “O, Death” used in the trailer, for it is the exact version sung by the late bluegrass artist Ralph Stanley in Joel and Ethan Coen’s O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000). Stanley, it should be stressed, is a legend in the bluegrass and folk sound of music who won a Grammy for this version of “O Death.” However, his vocals were used in O Brother (and now Wake Up Dead Man) to send a chill up the spine when sung a cappella style in the third act of the Coens’ Mississippi-set Depression fable. After all, on screen the song is being sung not by a simple musician, but by the grand wizard of a Ku Klux Klan chapter which has gathered to lynch and murder a young Black man on a trumped up accusation based in superstition. The Coens’ choice of this song to be sung by the KKK in the 1930s is probably not accidental either. The standard version of the song’s origin is that it’s a traditional Appalachian folk song written by Baptist preacher Lloyd Chandler. Chandler certainly performed the song in the 1920s in North Carolina, allegedly after receiving a vision from God of the song in 1916. However, further research has proven that Chandler’s composition bears an uncanny similarity to a 1913 printed version of a folk song (that is therefore likely much older) in Journal of American Folklore. The journal asserted the song was sung by “Eastern North Carolina Negroes.” Which is all to say, the song’s ambiguous origin is rooted in the cultural milieu and tensions of the American South during the days and decades of Jim Crow and after the Civil War. It was used by the Coens as a disturbingly beautiful song of annihilation put in the mouths of mass murdering racists, and it is now used to signal what appears to be the first Benoit Blanc mystery to return to the region of Benoit’s home: the American South. (This setting is seemingly further verified by the fact that one of the film’s law enforcement figures is dressed like someone from an American sheriff’s office as opposed to an English village.) This is all of course speculation, but to use this song and Stanley’s Grammy-winning version of it specifically is likely a deliberate choice on Johnson’s part. And given how Johnson is unafraid to use what on the surface appear to be cozy murder mysteries to interrogate larger issues of social rot and inequality in the modern world via both Knives Out and Glass Onion, we are left to wonder just how deeply Southern the roots of his third murder mystery will run. Wake Up Dead Man premieres on Dec. 12 on Netflix.