Giant Squid’s upcoming title, Sword of the Sea, is a well-crafted union of all the titles the studio and Game Director Matt Nava have worked on. The aquatic wonder of Abzû, The Pathless’s sense of adventure, and Journey’s beautiful desert world. Sword of the Sea weaves those influences together so skillfully that it feels like this atmospheric surfing adventure was the goal all along.  I got a chance to go hands-on with Sword of the Sea and talk with Giant Squid about the new game, coming day one to PlayStation Plus Game Catalog on August 19. Surfing across the sands and sea The game begins as the player awakens as The Wraith, a vessel waiting to be filled, who is given the task of bringing the oceans back to the world. Appearing to be the last being left alive to get the job done, you receive a mystical surfboard and hit the dunes.  The starting area is a vast playground where you can get accustomed to the board, perform tricks, and learn how to interact with the world. As you zoom across the desert, you come across different nodes known as Ocean Seeds that allow you to cleanse the land and restore parts of the ocean and marine life.  Beyond pleasing aesthetics, water and sea life directly impact gameplay. The Wraith is significantly faster on water, leading to greater speed for bigger jumps and more tricks. Some sea life create new paths, like buoyant jellyfish that make great jump pads and long strands of climbable seaweed. Watching the landscape terraform was a highlight, as was searching for all the land’s secrets.  “Sword of the Sea is really all about the spiritual magic of surfing,” Nava explains. “ It’s inspired by my own experiences snowboarding, skateboarding, and surfing throughout my life. When you think of these extreme sports, the first thing that comes to mind is probably the high speed and the danger. But there’s more to it than just an adrenaline rush. When you are surfing on waves in the ocean, you are literally on the boundary between our world and the world beneath the waves, a world beyond our understanding.”  Golden triangles known as Tetra populate the world, acting as currency you can trade to mysterious vendors to learn more tricks, acquire skills, and open new paths. Want to see it all? You’ll have to detour off the main path to see and afford it all. Different vendors, triangles, and Trick Attack arenas are hidden throughout the world.  Show off your tricks and feel the terrain Pulling off stylish moves in Sword of the Sea is straightforward. When surfing, once you jump you can press X again to perform a variety of double jump tricks. Once you acquire advanced tricks from the vendor, you hold L1 and press Triangle, Square, Circle, or X to do special grabs, flips, and spins. They score more points, and combining grabs and flips in different ways create new tricks. While the timing is a little trickier, you can give yourself a much-needed jump boost and score high-point combos when performed just right.  Sword of the Sea constantly keeps score of the tricks you pull and how advanced they are. Hidden Trick Attack arenas let you put those skills to good use. What does racking up a high Trick Score lead to? Yet another mystery we’ll have to wait to uncover. Though the game takes place in the desert, there are plenty of different objects to grind on besides sea and sand. I came across ruins, ceramic tile roofs, and helpful aquatic life. The team at Giant Squid takes full advantage of the DualSense controller haptics to ensure every surface feels and sounds distinct. As I surfed along rooftops, I could hear the melodic tones of tiles underneath and the tingle in my fingers. The sand offers a coarse sensation, and you feel and hear the rushing water as you speed through on the makeshift highways parts of the ocean create. “The haptic feedback of the DualSense controller reacts to each surface differently so you can feel it when you cross from one to the next,” says Nava.  “Combined with special sound effects that play from the controller, it gives a very realistic sense of touching the surfaces you see in the game. We are very excited by the extra layer of detail the haptics adds to the experience of surfing in Sword of the Sea.” You’re free to explore in any given direction, and hard-to-reach places usually reward you with something appropriate for the time and skill it takes to reach them. However, as you explore, you will discover murals and other environmental elements that keep the story ever-present. A tale of loss and destruction, and trying to find out how you fit into it all is an intriguing thread to follow. Especially since at the end of my session, it was clear that a mysterious character was following me. It appeared to be another wraith, but whoever the pursuer was didn’t give vibes of good intentions.  It’s easy to compare Sword of the Sea to its predecessors, but the game truly feels like an evolution of everything the Giant Squid team has worked on to this point. The game’s sights, sounds, and feel connected me with the land, and I can’t wait to hop on the board again and see what’s really out there.  “Our games have a really recognizable and unique art style, and tell atmospheric stories with their bold color and music,” says Nava. “We start with a feeling, an experience, and a message that we want the player to feel. Really, all our games are all about movement, and how it can connect you with nature and the world in different ways. Sword of the Sea builds on the ideas in all our previous games to create something that is both very Giant Squid and an exciting new adventure.” Looking to reel in more Sword of the Sea details? Check out the latest trailer and more details from State of Play. More from June’s State of Play State of Play June 2025: all announcements, trailers 

Image: Zion Grassl / Nintendo LifeAnd we're back, once again, on the road to Mario Kart World - and we're in the final stretch. On the two previous laps we've looked at every console Mario Kart game from the Super NES up to the Wii. For this final go-round, we're looking at two console entries which span a massive 14-year period. MK8 got some significant expansions across two consoles, so we've split that into two separate sections. And if you're keen to hear more about Mario's non-console karting exploits, we'll take a quick look at those next week before starting our engines up for Mario Kart World on 5th June.Subscribe to Nintendo Life on YouTube813kWatch on YouTube This week's Nintendo developer interviews delved into the game in much more depth than the lacklustre Mario Kart Direct back in April, firing up our excitement once more. Once we've been able to leave the tracks, we wonder what it'll feel like to return to the restrictive circuits in these past games...but that's another article. Let's kick off this final lap with lucky number seven... Lap 1 - SMK, MK64 & Super Circuit Double Dash, DS, Wii Mario Kart 7 (2011) Image: Zion Grassl / Nintendo Life Ah yes, seven entries in and we finally arrive at the first numbered game in the series (pipe down, MK64). There was always something that made me laugh about this being called 'Mario Kart 7', made all the more hilarious by Mario Kart World not being called 'Mario Kart 9'. After cool names like Super Circuit and Double Dash!!, '7' felt decidedly uncool. Which is ironic because the game was anything but. Image: Nintendo Sure, it lacked the local multiplayer pull of the home console releases, but I got to drive a kart that could fly and go underwater, which I'd say is a fair trade-off. I distinctly remember driving around Cheep Cheep Lagoon for the first time and its aquatic appeal blowing my little mind. I played with the 3D slider cranked up to the max, you see, and drifting around that seaweed felt like the future. You know what else was cool? Customisable karts. I didn't particularly care for stats at the time and would instead set out to build the most horrific abomination ever committed to the track. Not getting to see my masterpiece was one of the main reasons why I rarely used the game's first-person driving mode — that and the fact that I tried it out in the back of the car once and it made me sick. - Jim Norman Standout tracks: DK Jungle, Rock Rock Mountain, Cheep Cheep Lagoon Fun fact: Despite the Nintendo Network servers shutting down in April 2024, it wasn't until November that year that the final Mario Kart 7 player finally crashed out of the last-standing game lobby. That's quite the victory lap! What does Mario Kart World take from this? Gliding has had a winged makeover in World, but it's the same fundamentals that we first saw in MK7. Underwater driving is another obvious one, although from what we've seen so far, racing atop the waves is the only option in MKW. The Fire Flower appears to still be going strong after making its series debut in the 3DS entry, though. What score would you give Mario Kart 7 (3DS)? (1,329 ratings) 10 - Outstanding14%9 - Excellent28%8 - Great35%7 - Good17%6 - Not Bad5%5 - Average1%4 - Poor1%3 - Bad  0%2 - Terrible  0%1 - Abysmal1% Mario Kart 8 (2014) Images: Gavin Lane / Nintendo Life, Nintendo There was an audible gasp when I told my colleagues that I'd spent more time playing Mario Kart 8 on Wii U than I have 8 Deluxe. It has nothing to do with preference — Deluxe is clearly the version to play now. But my life was pretty different between 2014 and 2017. Other than a few Virtual Console RPGs and Xenoblade X, Mario Kart 8 was one of the few games I actually played on the Wii U, a console I don't have a lot of love for otherwise. I was at university and barely in my 20s at that point; I also preferred playing stuff on the big screen, so I'd sort of skipped over MK7. Image: Nintendo 8's extravagantly bright courses and colourful worlds were like revisiting my childhood, except now we have anti-gravity and huge courses that look like they stretch for miles and miles. Gorgeous sky-high races and crowded city streets were back on the menu, and I got that old Mario Kart Wii feeling back. The biggest thing I remember was the downloadable content. Nintendo had been dabbling in DLC for a few years then, but I was still a sceptical student who only wanted to spend money on things I thought I would love. Then, Mario Kart 8 dangled the ol' Animal Crossing carrot. Oh gosh. Look, a free Mercedes-Benz was all well and good (though a bit weird), but Zelda, Animal Crossing, and F-Zero courses coming to a Mario Kart game? It's like Smash Bros. but Mario Kart. Oh, Baby Park's back? No, thank you - Hyrule Circuit awaits. I really like all of the DLC courses, but I admit I was a little disappointed by the Animal Crossing one. It's a little basic and while the seasonal changes are beautiful, I'd have loved a little more variety in the course obstacles per season. The big surprise were the F-Zero ones, a series I never really got into. It took Mario Kart to make me want a new F-Zero game. Big Blue on 200cc? It's pure magic. - Alana Hagues Standout tracks: Toad Harbour, Sunshine Airport, Cloudtop Cruise, Big Blue (DLC) Fun fact: Firehopping, or frogging, was a common technique used online to maintain longer boosts from a mini-boost. Nintendo removed this in Deluxe, meaning it was probably an unintentional glitch. What does Mario Kart World take from this? Hmmm... okay, well, since 8 Deluxe is essentially MK8 but better, maybe let's save this... Second Lap It's natural that the Switch version has totally supplanted the original in most players' memories - which is why I was keen to break out the Wii U version in its own section here. Besides disappointment around the Battle offering, this was a substantial, massively satisfying racer with a fun anti-grav hook, and there's something homely and attractive about MK8 on that chunky GamePad minus the bloat and the 'more, more, MOAARRRR'. I say 'bloat' - the Deluxe additions were great, I just quite enjoy the comparative simplicity and 'strangeness' of this version after eight long years with the upgrade. Deluxe is better, but it was all armour over this game's brilliant body. Gavin Lane Editor, Nintendo Life What score would you give Mario Kart 8 (Wii U)? (1,085 ratings) 10 - Outstanding33%9 - Excellent42%8 - Great18%7 - Good5%6 - Not Bad1%5 - Average1%4 - Poor  0%3 - Bad  0%2 - Terrible  0%1 - Abysmal1% Mario Kart 8 Deluxe & Booster Course Pass (2017, 2022-2023) Image: Zion Grassl / Nintendo Life It's the best-selling game on the Switch, although I wonder where it stands in the Most Played rankings. Even if you were one of the Nintendo faithful who'd bought a Wii U and unlocked every Cup, got the DLC, and played MK8 to absolute death, you still had to buy 8 Deluxe. The proper Battle Mode and the ability to hold two items were major boons (although I still miss the strategy that comes with being able to switch between the items à la Double Dash), but it was really the convenience of having full-fledged Mario Kart on the go with two pads that made MK8D indispensable for any Switch owner. You just had to have it. Image: Zion Grassl / Nintendo Life It was interesting to hear the devs discuss "kicking the can down the road" and using the Booster Course Pass as a stopgap. Still, what a stopgap! 48 new tracks, with returning courses, some reimagined, some borrowed from Tour, a couple of totally new ones - with so many new courses, it was tough to get upset with the odd dud, especially if you were getting access to all these via an Expansion Pack sub. And the real-world locales added a different flavour to the mayhem - they generally weren't up there with the best of the other courses, but I liked seeing Nintendo's take on London and Madrid. Throw in all the oddities from before (I loved the amiibo Mii outfits), plus a host of new ones (Labo controls, anyone?) and no wonder it's taken Nintendo eight years to come up with a sequel. - Gavin Lane Standout tracks: Bone-Dry Dunes, Mount Wario, Yoshi's Island (DLC) Fun fact: As of 31st March 2025, this has sold 68.2 million copies and is Switch's best-selling game - that's 59.74 million copies more than the original sold on Wii U, although MK8 was also that system's bestseller. What does Mario Kart World take from this? In some ways it feels like the end of the road for old-style Mario Kart on self-contained tracks - MK8D's completeness gave Nintendo the impetus to push beyond the bounds of the circuits into a bigger world. You might even say a Mario Kart W— *blue shell explodes* What score would you give Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Switch)? (2,863 ratings) 10 - Outstanding43%9 - Excellent34%8 - Great17%7 - Good4%6 - Not Bad1%5 - Average  0%4 - Poor  0%3 - Bad  0%2 - Terrible  0%1 - Abysmal1% Image: Nintendo And that brings us up to date!... Or does it? In fact, there are a few byways to travel before we hit the highway in Mario Kart World. Join us next week for a lap of honour where we take a quick look at the side-games and also-rans in the Mario Kart series. The sweat, the tears, the evil babies Related Games See Also Share:0 1 Gavin first wrote for Nintendo Life in 2018 before joining the site full-time the following year, rising through the ranks to become Editor. He can currently be found squashed beneath a Switch backlog the size of Normandy. Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment... Related Articles Shigeru Miyamoto Explains Why Donkey Kong Has Been Redesigned You want expressive? You got it Here's A Look At The Size And Inside Of Switch 2 Game Cases Arriving in store next month Talking Point: The Switch 2 Pre-Order Situation Sucks, But Can Nintendo Do Anything About It? 503sier said than done Random: Miyamoto Can't Talk About Switch 2, Talks About Switch 2 Anyway I do what I want, bruv!

Nature, Published online: 23 May 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-01577-zAmenipa Kyando supports coastal communities to enhance their livelihoods while protecting their environment.

V&A Dundee’s new exhibition starts before you get up to the first-floor gallery. As visitors enter the main hall of Kengo Kuma’s 2018 waterfront building, they’re confronted by 11 big white flowers dangling from the double-height ceiling. Called Shylight and created by Amsterdam’s Studio DRIFT, the floral forms slowly rise and fall courtesy of robotics, with their silk petals folding inwards, mimicking those flowers which close up at nightfall. Thought-provoking and visually pleasing, it sets the tone for Garden Futures: Designing With Nature, the exhibition which opened last week and runs until 25 January. It also hints that not everything in the garden (exhibition) is rosy. Beyond horticulture, there’s also technology – starting with those Shylight robotics – and art. That’s quite a juggling act. As a long-standing allotment holder, it was the horticulture content which drew me in. If I hadn’t had that focus, the exhibition could have been overwhelming: so many topics, so many ideas, so many things to take in. This is the touring show’s only UK stop, having debuted at Vitra Design Museum in Germany’s, before appearing across various European venues. Vitra Design Museum’s deputy director Sabrina Handler claims it’s the first major exhibition on the history of modern garden design. An image from Andrew Buurman’s photo project Allotments. An image from Andrew Buurman’s photo project Allotments. The original show comprised 300 objects. V&A Dundee has an extra 200m2 of space to play with, and has added another 130 objects to give it their own spin and highlight some Scottish contributions to the topic. Msoma Architects were brought in to reimagine the show for Dundee, building on Formafantasma’s original concept for the Vitra Design Museum. The graphics were handled by Boris Meister. In terms of the gardens on show here, they vary from productive spaces for work, rest and play, to places representing spiritual, cultural and political ideas. What they have in common is that they’re all designed spaces. Like a virulent form of bindweed, this show is covering a lot of ground. Its material is grouped in sections themed as Paradise, Sanctuary, Retreat and Labour of Love. It’s Paradise that makes the strongest impression – and rightly so – with its ice-cream-pink structure. Garden Futures at the V&A. Photo by Grant Anderson. The overarching aim is to demonstrate how garden design impacts us both functionally – providing food, hence Birmingham’s Uplands Allotments and seed companies – and aesthetically – hence William Morris wallpaper and the naturalistic planting of Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf. It combines factual photos with artworks, and roams from floral tile panels from 17th Century Persia to a Chinese garden inspired by a video game, and from vast landscapes to hand tools. The two wall displays of the taxonomy of tools will add to the dwell time of any visitors who actually garden or grow. Biome’s Garden installation But for those after interaction, Dundee-based creative studio Biome Collective has created Garden, a video game that allows players to create a virtual musical garden. They’re also behind the Pollinator Pathway digital tool that creates a planting design tailored for the maximum benefit of pollinating insects. And then there’s the smell trail – little wooden boxes whose lids lift to give off a specific scent, such as a cypress tree. The image of Prospect, Derek Jarman’s Dungeness house and garden, might feel over-familiar to some. Likewise architect Stefano Boeri’s Bosco Verticale, the residential skyscraper covered in greenery in Milan – but an exhibition like this has to cater to all knowledge levels. Stefano Boeri’s Bosco Verticale Specific V&A Dundee content includes Seeds of Scotland in the Highlands, which produces resilient seeds. The company’s utilitarian packaging sits alongside photos of vegetables and the seeds themselves – another stop to linger for any growers in the audience. There’s also Oban’s Seaweed Gardens, a community-led project, and the garden designed by Arabella Lennox-Boyd for cancer patients at Maggie’s Centre, Dundee. On a smaller scale, there are origami-inspired self-watering plant pots made from marine waste, the brainchild of Glasgow-based company POTR. And when it comes to Dundee’s own garden future, things could be looking up. The Eden Project has a scheme to transform a defunct gasholder into a vast glasshouse. It’s got planning permission, and the 2025 model of architecture firm Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios brings the £130million idea to life. POTR’s self-watering plant pots There’s something counter-intuitive about going indoors to experience gardens. But this isn’t the only show tackling that problem. Gardens and gardening are having a moment. The exhibition Soil, which explored soil’s vital role in our planet’s future, finished at London’s Somerset House in April, getting 50,000 visitors in three months. Now Garden Futures is off the ground, V&A Dundee will be thinking about how to spend the £2.6million of government funding which was confirmed in February. The plan is to improve the permanent Scottish galleries. The museum’s director, Leonie Bell says there’s demand for them to be bigger. Her ideas so far include expanding the time frame to go as far back as Skara Brae, the prehistoric village on Orkney, and to explore Scotland’s influence on global design, for example in fashion. Exhibition designers, watch this space. Garden Futures at the V&A. Photo by Grant Anderson. Arabella Lennox-Boyd’s garden for Maggie’s Centre, Dundee.

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. A smelly, sometimes toxic “killer belt of seaweed” might put a damper on Floridians’ Memorial Day weekend plans. Sargassum is back just in time for the unofficial start of summer and this year’s influx of the brown algae would be record breaking at 31 million tons.  What is Sargassum? Sargassum is a genus of large brown seaweed. As a seaweed, it is also a type of algae. It floats along the ocean in island-like masses and does not attach to the seafloor the way that kelp does.  According to NOAA, this brown algae is abundant in the world’s oceans. It has many leafy appendages, branches, and its signature berry-like structures. These round “berries” are actually gas-filled structures called pneumatocysts. They are primarily filled with oxygen and add buoyancy to the plant structure and allow it to float on the surface of the water, similar to a life jacket.  Importantly, Sargassum provides food and a floating habitat for several marine species including various fishes, sea turtles, marine birds, crabs, and shrimp. Some animals, like the sargassum fish will spend their whole lives around Sargassum’s gas-filled floats and the seaweed is a nursery area for some commercially important fishes, including mahi mahi, jacks, and amberjacks. Smaller fishes, such as filefishes and triggerfishes, reside in and among brown Sargassum. CREDIT: NOAA/Life on the Edge Exploration. Is it harmful to humans? When Sargassum washes up on shore, it begins to rot. That rotting triggers the production of hydrogen sulfide gas, which smells like rotten eggs. These odors themselves are not harmful to humans when inhaled in well ventilated areas like the beach. But the gases can accumulate enough to cause harm if they are breathed in within enclosed spaces.  “Hydrogen sulfide can irritate the eyes, nose, and throat,” writes Florida’s Department of Health in St. John’s County. “If you have asthma or other breathing illnesses, you will be more sensitive to hydrogen sulfide. You may have trouble breathing after you inhale it.” Coming into contact with the jellyfish or other stinging organisms embedded in the rotting seaweed can cause rashes on the skin. Any workers for volunteers collecting and transporting the seaweed should wear gloves, boots, and gas-filter half masks for protection. 2025’s mega bloom In Florida and the Caribbean, Sargassum season runs from April to August, with June and July as the peak months for setting in along the shoreline. However, the blobs have been spotted along shorelines since March this year. The bloom has already broken its own size record set in June 2022 by 40 percent–and is still growing. The annual bloom now stretches over 5,500 miles of ocean between Africa and the Caribbean and weighs an estimated 31 million tons.  “Sargassum goes from being a very beneficial resource of the North Atlantic to becoming what we refer to as … a harmful algal bloom, when it comes ashore in excessive biomass,” Brian LaPointe, a research professor at Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, told CNN. “What we have seen since 2011 are excessive inundation events all around the Caribbean region, the Gulf, as well as the South Florida region.” Why is this year’s bloom so big? Increasing ocean temperatures due to climate change is one of the reasons for such a large bloom. The Atlantic and waters around Florida have seen record-breaking high temperatures in recent years, creating ideal conditions for the seaweed to thrive. The excess nitrogen in the water from the burning of fossil fuels or dust from the Sahara is believed to be one of the forces behind this supercharged bloom. An experimental tracking map from NOAA for May 6 through 12, showing where sargassum is likely to wash ashore in Florida. CREDIT: NOAA Scientists can use satellites to track the seaweed and issue warnings if needed. The CariCOOS Sargassum map shows that the bulk of the bloom is currently east of Puerto Rico, but it has already been spotted along Florida’s Atlantic coast. NOAA encourages anyone who encounters Sargassum on the beach to report it with this form.

Much has been made of the fact that the year’s most recent breakout hit, an idiosyncratic role-playing game called Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, was made by a small team. (It has just sold its two-millionth copy). It’s a tempting narrative in this age of blockbuster mega-flops, live-service games and eye-watering budgets: scrappy team makes a lengthy, unusual and beautiful thing, sells it for £40, and everybody wins. But it’s not quite accurate.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more.Sandfall Interactive, the game’s French developer, comprises around 30 people, but as Rock Paper Shotgun points out, there are many more listed in the game’s credits – from a Korean animation team to the outsourced quality assurance testers, and the localisation and performance staff who give the game and its story heft and emotional believability.Compared to the enormous teams who make the Final Fantasy games – a clear inspiration for Sandfall – Clair Obscur’s team is minuscule. The more interesting achievement isn’t that a small team has made a successful game – it’s that a small team has made the most extravagantly French thing any of us will ever play. Much to my partner’s annoyance, I’ve set the voice language to French with English subtitles, just to enhance the immersion.In Clair Obscur’s belle époque-inspired world, a sinister entity called the Paintress daubs a number on a distant totem every year, descending from 100 – and every person of that age dissolves heartbreakingly into petals and dust, leaving behind devastated partners and orphaned children. (This and Neva are the only games in recent memory to make me shed a tear at their beginning.) The game starts as the Paintress counts down from 34 to 33, and an expedition of brave and slightly magic thirtysomethings from the dwindling population sets out, as they do every year, to sail across to the Paintress’s continent and try to kill her and stop the cycle. I was sad to leave this opening area, because the city was so beautiful, and everyone was impeccably dressed. Also, nothing was trying to kill me every few minutes.The most French thing you’ll ever play … Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Photograph: Sandfall InteractiveMany expeditions have gone before. You find their grisly remnants all over the place as you explore, their recorded diaries left to help whoever comes next. You start off in a kind of ravaged Paris, the Eiffel Tower distorting towards a distant horizon like a Dalí painting. The game looks like a waltz through a distinguished art museum that’s about to get sucked into a black hole. One early area of the continent is a waterless ocean, the wrecked vessel of one expedition wrapped around a dead leviathan of a sea creature, fronts of seaweed waving in the nonexistent currents. It’s beautiful but extremely dangerous: you quickly have to get the hang of a pretty complicated combat system to survive even the first few boss fights.Clair Obscur’s fighting is inspired by classic and modern Japanese RPGs: rhythmic and flashy, it lets you supercharge a fireball or dodge the fist of a stone automaton with a well-timed button press. Combining your unusually distinctive characters’ abilities is the key. One of them wields a rapier and changes stance every attack, another attacks with an impenetrable system of sun and moon tarot cards, a third mostly with a gun and a sword. If this all sounds needlessly extravagant, it is – and I love it. The combat menus are a tinkerer’s dream, letting you pore over and combine characters’ esoteric powers and skills to create interesting combo attacks.What I enjoy most about this game is that it doesn’t look like everything else or, indeed, anything else. The majority of games riff on the same few predictable references: Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Marvel. Instead it draws from completely different aesthetic and thematic sources; this is a baroque fantasy that tells a story about fatalism and love and death and legacy, a European-style tale with Japanese-style action and flair. It plays very differently, but its distinctiveness and determination to actually say something with its story reminds me of last year’s excellent Metaphor: ReFantazio. (There is a strong correlation between intellectually ambitious RPGs and baffling titles, it seems.)Clair Obscur also illustrates just how good game development tools are now: if you’re wondering how a smallish team could create something that looks this high-end, that’s a large part of the answer. This makes me feel pretty optimistic about the future of this middle sector of game development, in between blockbuster and indie. In the 00s and 2010s, that was where many of the most interesting games could be found. I can imagine several large publishers deeming this game simply too French to be marketable, but Sandfall was able to make it anyway. Expedition 33 is an encouraging commercial success that will be cited all year as a counternarrative to the games industry’s prevailing doomsaying, but it’s a creative success, too.What to playA thrill a minute … Doom: The Dark Ages. Photograph: BethesdaA new Doom game is out very shortly and reviews suggest that it is a glorious heavy-metal orgy of violence. It has you massacring hordes of gross demons at once, impaling them with spikes, shredding them with a chainsaw-shield, even punching gigantic hellspawn from within a giant robot or shooting at them from the back of a mecha-dragon. Doom: The Dark Ages is slower than the other modern games in the series, with more up-close combat and (as the title suggests) a vaguely medieval flavour to its aesthetic, but it’s still thrill-a-minute.Available on: Xbox, PS5, PC Estimated playtime: What to readChaos machine … Grand Theft Auto VI. Photograph: Rockstar Games Grand Theft Auto VI, which is delayed until next May, left a crater in the 2025 release schedule that other game companies are scrambling to fill, reports Bloomberg (via Kotaku). Expect some serious rescheduling to be going on behind the scenes before the summer’s glut of game announcements. The Strong National Museum of Play in the US has inducted four new games into its Hall of Fame: Defender, GoldenEye 007, Quake and the (IMO) equally deserving Tamagotchi. They beat contenders from Age of Empires to Angry Birds. After last week’s industry media drama, long-established podcast-video collective Giant Bomb has bought itself out and gone independent, joining a growing stable of worker-owned and reader-supported games outlets. skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Pushing ButtonsFree weekly newsletterKeza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gamingPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionWhat to clickQuestion Block‘Read a book, rube’ … Bioshock Infinite’s Elizabeth. Photograph: 2K GamesReader Travis sent in this week’s question:“I’m planning to start a book club-style video game club. Two questions: what should I call it and what game would you love to share and discuss in such a setting?”This is an excellent idea, and you’ve reminded me that I tried to do something like this a million years ago as a podcast on IGN, but I cannot for the life of me remember what we called it. Press Pause? Save Point? LFG? I would pick shorter games for a book club-style group (so that everyone could actually play them through), and I’d want ones that leave room for people’s personal histories to inform how they respond to it. I’d love to hear other people talk about Neva’s environmentalist and parental themes, or any Life Is Strange game’s mix of emerging-adulthood drama and quasi-successful supernatural storytelling, or even a game like While Waiting, what it made them think about. That would surely be more interesting than simply arguing about whether the latest Assassin’s Creed is any good.I asked my partner what he’d call a video game book club, and he suggested Text Adventure, which is annoyingly better than anything I can think of. My pal Tom suggested Pile of Shame, One More Go and Shared Worlds. Readers: can you think of any more?If you’ve got a question for Question Block – or anything else to say about the newsletter – hit reply or email us on pushingbuttons@theguardian.com.

WASP, an Italian manufacturer of large-scale 3D printing systems for sustainable construction, has partnered with Columbia University’s Natural Materials Lab to support the fabrication of Earthen Rituals, a clay-based installation presented at the 19th Venice Biennale of Architecture. The piece is located in the Arsenale’s “Natural” section and will be accessible to visitors until November 23. Earthen Rituals installation on display at the 19th Venice Biennale of Architecture. Photo via WASP. Columbia’s Natural Materials Lab has been using WASP’s 40100 LDM ceramic 3D printer as part of a research project funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). The research focuses on earth and fiber-based building materials. For this latest installation, the lab relied on WASP’s Residency Program to carry out production under a tight schedule. Researchers used the WASP 40100 Production system, designed for continuous custom manufacturing, and the 3MT LDM system equipped with a high-density continuous feeding unit. The project involved the 3D printing of hundreds of earth tiles, made from a mixture of construction waste soils and agricultural by-products. The formulation process drew on a “kitchen approach” informed by vernacular construction methods, including Terracruda (Italian), Lehm (German), Toub Laban (Arabic), and Udongo (Swahili). A digitized process converted earthen textures into printable code. Visual and structural references in the installation include techniques such as rammed earth, weaving, basketry, and figurine-making. Lighting and olfactory elements were integrated into the structure. WASP 40100 LDM extrudes earthen paste during tile fabrication. Photo via WASP. Earthen Rituals is framed by its authors as a response to extractive practices, colonial legacies, and global environmental crises. The project outlines three methodological approaches: ceremonial (relating to the interaction between hands, tools, and machines), radical (accepting the variable and porous characteristics of raw materials), and devotional (linking scientific rigor with critical design methods). Project lead Lola Ben-Alon is affiliated with Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP). Additional contributors from the Natural Materials Lab include Associate Research Scientist Olga Beatrice Carcassi and Adjunct Research Scientist Penmai Chongtoua. Graduate assistants who participated in the project are Keenan Bellisari, Christopher Tillinghast Sherman, Trella Isabel Lopez, Kelechi Iheanacho, Neil Potnis, Sherry Aine Chuang Te, Nikoletta Zakynthinou Xanthi, and Amani Makee Hill. WASP acted as the technical collaborator, hosting the team at its facility in Italy and providing access to its latest 3D printing technologies. Detail of 3D printed earthen tiles showing layered textures and voids. Photo via WASP. WASP’s prior applications in sustainable and architectural 3D printing At Formnext 2024, WASP introduced a range of technologies focused on material reuse and large-scale additive manufacturing. Highlights included a recycling station for plastics, a multicolor extrusion system, and geopolymer-based construction modules developed with Eindhoven University. The company also presented a 100 m² low-carbon building prototype created by the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) using a Crane WASP 3D printer and locally sourced soil. Additional displays featured coral reef restoration modules 3D printed in collaboration with rrreefs using the WASP 40100 Production system and Liquid Deposition Modeling (LDM) technology. These modules were printed live at the event. In early 2025, Japanese architecture studio Aki Hamada Architects constructed a 3D printed rest facility for Expo 2025 in Osaka using WASP’s Crane Stand Alone system. The installation, one of 20 rest stations commissioned for the event, included prefabricated panels, cylindrical washbasins, and planter-benches made from a mixture of clay, straw, seaweed glue, pigments, and magnesium oxide hardener. Stone shapes from across Japan were 3D scanned to generate the printed geometries, which were tested for stability and adjusted to meet overhang tolerances. Production took place in Toyama, with elements transported to the Expo site and installed onto timber frameworks using embedded wooden inserts. Ready to discover who won the 20243D Printing Industry Awards? Subscribe to the 3D Printing Industry newsletter to stay updated with the latest news and insights. Featured image showcase Earthen Rituals installation. Photo via WASP. Coral reef 3D printing in alliance with rrreefs. Photo via WASP. Anyer Tenorio Lara Anyer Tenorio Lara is an emerging tech journalist passionate about uncovering the latest advances in technology and innovation. With a sharp eye for detail and a talent for storytelling, Anyer has quickly made a name for himself in the tech community. Anyer's articles aim to make complex subjects accessible and engaging for a broad audience. In addition to his writing, Anyer enjoys participating in industry events and discussions, eager to learn and share knowledge in the dynamic world of technology.