The best roguelike games offer a serious but rewarding commitment, inviting you to lose time and time again until you reach new heights. And then you get to repeat the process while retaining knowledge that shapes your future sessions, improving your skills with each subsequent run.The best roguelike games follow the philosophy of randomizing existing game elements and providing a different experience every time you start a new run, with the condition that a game over screen means restarting from scratch. The roguelite distinction is similar, but it involves permanent progression, be it in the form of story, unlockable paths, items, and so on.Our selection of the best roguelike games has something for every player, regardless of platform and subgenre of choice. Our picks intersect with rhythm, deckbuilding, platforming, puzzle, and shooter games, to name a few. The roguelike and roguelite genres keep gaining more ground as pillars for design choices, meaning that some of the games on this list will ring familiar with the selections in our best PS5 games and best PC game lists. You'll also find some overlap with our recommendations for the best indie games to play right now.As the middle of 2025 draws near, choosing the best roguelike games becomes tougher with each passing day. The likes of Nuclear Throne, The Binding of Isaac, and Enter the Gungeon progressively marked their place in the genre years ago. Now, roguelikes and roguelites are in abundance, with game developers coming up with novel spins and pushing the genre forward.Whether you're looking for something more traditional or a unique take on a genre that is brimming with creativity, our best roguelike games list is bound to add a few new experiences to have on your radar. BalatroDeveloper: LocalThunkRelease Date: February 20, 2024Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, Android, iOS, PCIf you've seen your loved ones spending way too much time on their phones during the past year, it's likely due to LocalThunk's engrossing take on poker. Balatro is deceptively simple: Look at your hand, think of the combination that will net you the most points, and see the numbers go up.As you slowly make your way to tougher levels, gaining additional cards that multiply said score while granting an array of often absurd bonuses, you'll immediately understand the appeal. Balatro is not about poker, nor is it just a roguelike. It's a numbers game where you can rig the rules in your favor. Its challenges are hypnotizing, but once you achieve victory for the first time, it'll take you a while to play anything else. See at Amazon Pacific DriveDeveloper: Ironwood StudiosRelease Date: February 22, 2024Platforms: PlayStation 5, PCPacific Drive is not technically a roguelite, even if it shares quite a few similarities in how you navigate its world, picking up key items and tackling objectives as you escape from weather anomalies from the inside of your car. The Endless Expeditions update, however, does push the game toward that direction.Released on April 3 of this year, Expeditions takes you outside of the campaign and into a randomized map with modifiers and rewards, the latter including cosmetics and unique tools. The trick is that you won't be able to stock up on resources, as you're forced to scavenge and build your inventory from scratch each time.Expeditions only end once you've collected enough anchors on a map. The longer this takes, however, the harder the task will become, with anomalies gearing up in difficulty. If you're looking for an extra challenge or an interesting twist on the Pacific Drive formula, Expeditions is the answer.Fanatical and GameSpot are both owned by Fandom. See at Fanatical Dead CellsDeveloper: Motion TwinRelease Date: August 6, 2018Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, Android, iOS, PCDead Cells is one of the pioneers of the new wave of roguelites of the past few years. Ever since its conception, developer Motion Twin set out to build an ambitious foundation--prioritizing a breakneck rhythm and flow in movement and attacks, rewarding fast reflexes and improvisation on the spot.The team continued to work on the game over the years, delivering a total of 35 major updates, expanding and ironing out possibly every element inside out. If at some point you think the base game doesn't have enough to offer, there are five DLCs (one of them free), including the Return to Castlevania expansion. As it stands, there might never be another game like Dead Cells, and that's okay. We'll still be playing it for years to come, while also witnessing the team trying out new ideas, such as the co-op roguelite Windblown, which is an early access game to watch. See at Fanatical Deep Rock Galactic: SurvivorDeveloper: Funday GamesRelease Date: February 14, 2024Platforms: PCIf you're a Left 4 Dead 2 fan, chances are that you've heard of Deep Rock Galactic, which takes the structure of the zombie-driven shooter and takes it in a different direction, featuring dwarves in space, alien monsters, and destructible environments. Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, however, takes things even further.Released in Steam early access back on February 14, 2024, you're taken onto increasingly harder levels where your dwarf of choice attacks automatically. The Survivor-like is presented in a top-down perspective, with the mining mechanic taking center stage to unlock upgrades during runs and improve your chances.There have been four sizable updates, but even in its infancy, developer Funday Games struck gold when mining for resources. The combination of its existing setting with the roguelike genre is an enticing one. See at Steam Hades 2Developer: Supergiant GamesRelease Date: May 6, 2024Platforms: PCDeveloper Supergiant Games has famously never done sequels before--until Hades 2. The sequel follows the events of the first game, in which Zagreus, son of the Greek god of the underworld, fought his way to the surface. Now, his sister Melinöe is tasked with defeating Chronos, the god of time itself, who's posing a threat unknown to everyone to this point.The roguelite is similar in nature to its predecessor, advancing the story with each victorious or failed run, gradually uncovering layer upon layer of new characters, powers to combine and grow stronger with, and even more features to further customize your experience. Hades 2 is still in early access, but there's a ridiculous amount of story and challenges to go through. Plus, the sequel is one of the first games confirmed for the Nintendo Switch 2. The 1.0 release date is yet to be confirmed, but Supergiant is targeting 2025. See at Steam Darkest Dungeon 2Developer: Red Hook StudiosRelease Date: May 8, 2024Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, PCDarkest Dungeon 2 entered early access in October 2021, with the full launch taking place on May 8. It had a tall order--surpassing the inimitable Darkest Dungeon, a tough roguelike centered around stress as a mechanic, with characters being driven mad or, on occasion, becoming inspired by the embrace of darkness and presence of heinous monsters.The sequel moves away from the structure of its predecessor, where you explored different biomes while managing resources and upgrading a home base. Now, it follows a structure similar to modern roguelite conventions, where you choose from different paths that are labeled with the rewards and challenges awaiting on the roads.While the combat shares some similarities, many new features shake up previous foundations, from playable origin stories for each hero to the affinity system, which takes the stress mechanic of the first game and adds a communal element to it by leading to different relationship archetypes between party members. Despite the change in presentation with more bells and whistles, Darkest Dungeon 2 retains the spirit of the first game--it's a visceral, tough-as-nails adventure that demands patience to overcome. See at Fanatical Rogue Legacy 2Developer: Cellar Door GamesRelease Date: April 28, 2022Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, PCWhen the original Rogue Legacy launched in 2013, its combination of metroidvania with roguelite elements was already promising. Yet, it pushed things further with a genius feature where, each time you die, one of your children succeeds you. The trick? Everybody has unique traits, from gigantism and baldness to color blindness and dyslexia, which would have gameplay impacts from the beneficial to the hilarious.Rogue Legacy 2 pushes the novelty with even more traits and classes, including a bard and a dragon lancer. The metroidvania aspect has also been improved with the addition of unique items that permanently unlock abilities to further explore the world and unveil its secrets. It's a sequel that successfully ticks every box a sequel must, and does so with a familiar grace and humor that still has a lot to offer over a decade later. See at Steam Spelunky 2Developer: Mossmouth and BlitWorksRelease Date: September 29, 2020Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, PCSpelunky is the classic go-to recommendation for a roguelike with ironclad design. The platformer with an Indiana Jones spirit made for one of the most challenging roguelites out there, requiring patience and the willingness to study every possible enemy pattern, trap, and miscalculation that can end your run, and then memorize it all for the next attempt.Spelunky 2 is a showcase of refinement upon refinement. Sure, it's touted with a bigger world with new areas to study, multiple routes to find and take advantage of, and an assortment of features meant to subvert long-standing fans' expectations. The sequel's greatest trick, however, is once again proving that meticulously thought design can elevate good ideas to admirable heights. The only way to improve is to keep trying, over and over, until surpassing the obstacles in your way becomes second nature. And then you get to do it all over again in the following area. See at Steam Slay the SpireDeveloper: Mega CritRelease Date: January 23, 2019Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, Android, iOS, PCDeck-building has become a popular marriage candidate for roguelites, and Slay the Spire might be one of the games responsible for its popularity. The premise is simple: You pick a character who has a predefined card deck and jump into a procedurally generated run. The rewards, obstacles, and challenges roaming your chosen paths are always different, demanding different strategies.As you make your way through a game session, you'll collect more cards for your deck, slowly customizing the options available to fit different playstyles and adapt yourself to the danger at hand. Do you invest in dealing as much damage as possible, neglecting your defense? Do you try to come up with different synergies to create a jack-of-all-trades card deck? There's always something to learn and discover, and the number of combinations available to experiment with is seducingly daunting. The best part? There's a sequel in the works, slated for 2025. See at Steam Risk of Rain 2Developer: Hopoo GamesRelease Date: August 11, 2020Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, PCRisk of Rain 2 is one of the few roguelites that explored the idea of taking the often pixel art, 2D-driven presentations of the genre and experimenting with 3D instead. Taking the elements that made its predecessor great, from enemy design to the different survivors you control, the change of perspective led to a breath of fresh air in the genre, and one of the most entertaining online games out there.The 1.0 release on August 11, 2020 has been followed up with hefty updates and paid DLC since. You can spend hours just fooling around with friends and seeing how far you can go. Once you get invested in the game's most intricate secrets and mechanics, however, you'll find out that the thrill comes down to becoming an unstoppable force challenged by a dynamic difficulty meter that's constantly keeping you on your toes. The use of 3D, then, isn't a mere novelty--it literally shines a new light on what roguelites can achieve when looked at from a different perspective, adding a different sense of movement and scale to the usual roguelite chaos. See at Steam Crypt of the NecrodancerDeveloper: Brace Yourself GamesRelease Date: April 23, 2015Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Android, iOS, PCCrypt of the Necrodancer might be one of the oldest picks of our best roguelike games list, but the reason is simple: No other roguelite has managed to combine the genre conventions with the mechanics of a rhythm game to such success. Every movement and action in the game is tied to the beat of the soundtrack blasting in the background.Enemies have different patterns that you must learn, all while carefully moving on tiles as if you were tapping the floor with your foot following a song. Even if you're not rhythm game savvy, the mix of both genres is accommodating enough to make you a believer--right until you meet a dragon for the first time, that is. After the original release, Cadence of Hyrule followed up on the concept, with the studio collaborating with Nintendo for a different take on The Legend of Zelda. But Crypt of the Necrodancer remains a worthy rogue classic. See at Steam Into the BreachDeveloper: Subset GamesRelease Date: February 27, 2018Platforms: Nintendo Switch, Android, iOS, PCThe alien invasion grows in numbers. You must assemble a squad of a handful of units and try to beat the odds. When you inevitably meet your demise, the last person standing creates a rift and travels to a different timeline. Time to start again.Into the Breach has a steep learning curve. Its design conventions, however, make it worth the effort to learn how to best use the space given to you and how your units can counterattack the alien push. The game is clear about the consequences of your movements on each map grid--whether or not you'll be able to land an attack, if one of your mechs will be caught in a tidal wave or an enemy projectile, and so on.Often, playing the strategy roguelike feels like a series of elaborate board games, where you carefully move pieces and spend your time thinking of the best possible plan. When it all comes together, the satisfaction is unparalleled. But even when you fail and you're sent to another timeline to commence anew, there's a thrill in knowing that next time might be the one if you take the time to analyze your movements and execute with care.Into the Breach is also the rare game to receive a 10/10 from GameSpot. See at Steam Loop HeroDeveloper: Four QuartersRelease Date: March 4, 2021Platforms: Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, Android, iOS, PCThe concept of loops and the repetitive nature of roguelites are a natural pairing. Loop Hero not only understands it, but extends it further by turning you into a dungeon master of sorts. You're given the choice of a hero and a map layout, as well as a deck of cards. You can place different types of terrain and structures, each having its own pros and cons. But you also need to place enemies, slowly making each loop--where the character walks a full cycle of the map--more intricate to navigate.The randomized nature of roguelites is heightened by giving you agency over the dangers that your hero will have to overcome. With a large number of unlockables to pursue after each session, as well as a captivating presentation, Loop Hero is one of the most inventive roguelites out there. See at Fanatical ReturnalDeveloper: HousemarqueRelease Date: April 30, 2021Platforms: PlayStation 5, PCHousemarque's expertise lies in games with an arcade nature, from Resogun to Nex Machina. At first glance, Returnal seems different--its presentation is powered by a level of production that screams AAA game. Initially introduced as a PlayStation 5 exclusive, the third-person shooter makes an interesting use of the roguelite concept, intertwining story events with each death. Similarly to Hades, meeting your demise rarely means taking a step back.Don't let its prestigious look deceive you, though--Returnal is the living proof of a modern arcade game, taking cues from the bullet hell genre. This means that you must be in constant movement, carefully timing dodges and narrow jumps to avoid a barrage of projectiles coming your way from all directions. A sequel is slated for 2026, but the first game deserves all of your attention. It's one of the best games in the PlayStation catalog, and a thrilling showcase of how a roguelite structure can inform a story, blending into one coexisting vehicle for a narrative that wouldn't work elsewhere. See at Fanatical Shogun ShowdownDeveloper: RoboatinoRelease Date: September 5, 2024Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, PCDeveloper Roboatino saw the synergy of roguelike and deck-building elements and decided to add turn-based combat to the mix. You command a lone hero who must take positioning and time into consideration to defeat multiple enemies and make it out unscathed.Using an inventive mechanic regarding the tiles you set foot on, Shogun Showdown hides a surprising level of depth, which you gradually uncover the more time you spend with it. You can upgrade and sacrifice different movements and skills in between battles, and as you die, you'll unlock new characters and attacks to experiment with. If you want to test the game's combat by yourself, there's a free prologue available on PC. See at Fanatical Blue PrinceDeveloper: DogubombRelease Date: April 10, 2025Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PCIn Blue Prince, you're a fourteen-year-old boy next in line for an inheritance. The catch is that you first need to explore a manor that changes its inner structure each day, hiding access to the elusive room 46 somewhere within its bowels. Dogubomb's title is part puzzle game, part roguelite, part investigative game.When you start a new day, you're given a number of steps that you can take inside the manor. Upon interacting with a door, the game grants you a random selection of rooms, each containing a puzzle, resource items, or a clue to a larger mystery. Sometimes all three of them. The deeper you plunge into Blue Prince, the higher the chances of becoming engrossed by the sheer amount of layers upon layers of puzzles to solve. See at Fanatical Caves of QudDeveloper: Freehold GamesRelease Date: December 5, 2024Platforms: PCDevelopment for Caves of Qud began back in 2007, with the first public beta being released to the world in 2010. Then, after almost a decade in Steam early access, the game was fully launched on December 5, 2024. The science-fantasy roguelike is brimming with emergent stories, offering a deeply simulated world where you can shape the environment as you see fit, join one of over 70 factions, or simply get lost in the overwhelming number of possible actions and outcomes available.In Caves of Qud, every NPC and monster is as fully simulated as you, meaning that they all have their own skills, equipment, body parts, and levels. The body parts are important, as there are multiple mutations at play, from two heads to the power of cloning oneself. The sandbox nature and painstaking level of detail have added an unmatched identity to the roguelike over its long lifespan. Now, there's never been a better time to take a plunge and become a part of its labyrinthine systems and intricate synergies that are happening in the game without your input. See at Steam FTL: Faster Than LightDeveloper: Subset GamesRelease Date: September 14, 2021Platforms: iOS, PCCommanding a party is a classic go-to for roguelites. Being the captain of a spaceship where you must attend to your crew and rooms individually, however, is an idea that is still novel to this day. Before Into the Breach, developer Subset Games came up with a different adventure in outer space.Presented with randomly generated galaxies, you must pick different paths to warp to, taking care and managing your spaceship in your ventures. Everything from the state of the hull to the level of oxygen must be accounted for. While you might be lucky with the galaxy destinations you pick, your crew will inevitably have to confront other ships.It's during these moments that FTL: Faster Than Light showcases its exhilarating mix of mechanics, forcing you to act fast by putting up fires, deciding which rooms to open and which ones to close, and sending crew members to repair the ship, all while using similar strategies on the enemy at hand. There's no other game like FTL. See at Steam InscryptionDeveloper: Daniel Mullins GamesRelease Date: October 19, 2021Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, PCThe creator of the eerie Pony Island took a stab at the roguelike genre in 2021 with Inscryption. At first, you don't know where you are--all you can see is the inside of a dark cabin, and a strange figure that invites you to play a card game. The creepiness sets in more and more over time, as you use cards depicting animals that seem to be alive, trying to make progress in the game while also looking for an opportunity to try and figure out how to escape the cabin.Inscription has multiple twists that are best left as a secret. If you want a general indication of what to expect, however, this roguelike pulls you into an obscure setting that becomes darker the more time you spend with it, subverting existing genre conventions and familiar mechanics with a horror twist. See at Fanatical Dome KeeperDeveloper: BippinbitsRelease Date: September 27, 2022Platforms: PCDome Keeper is a great game for people who enjoy multitasking. As the name implies, you must protect a dome from enemy attacks. In order to do so, you must dig underneath the surface to search for resources and artifacts, which are used to choose upgrades and different ways to defend your base.Enemies won't just sit and wait, however. You only have a limited time to dig in between attack waves. Picking your upgrades carefully will make or break your chances of survival to gain another chance at plunging through the surface and build better defenses. Dome Keeper is an ambitious survival game that takes cue from roguelikes and tower defense games to create a different kind of challenge to overcome. See at Fanatical Monster TrainDeveloper: Shiny ShoeRelease Date: May 20, 2020Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, iOS, PCMonster Train is the distant cousin of Slay the Spire. You're given a deck of cards that you slowly grow during runs, as well as different paths to choose from. The twist is how combat encounters are structured, turning elements like positioning and card strategies on their head.Whenever you face enemies, you're presented with a large vertical structure that has three play fields. You must carefully plan where to place your cards to defend the train's core. It's an idea that's pushed to its limit time and time again with the cards available and the ways in which enemies can also strategize around your defenses. Monster Train is a prime example of how much innovation is still in the genre. See at Fanatical Vampire SurvivorsDeveloper: PoncleRelease Date: October 20, 2022Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, Android, iOS, PCTaking inspiration from a mobile game called Magic Survival, in which the main character attacked automatically without the player's input, developer Poncle leaned on a fascination for Castlevania's aesthetic to iterate on the concept. The simple idea led to an absurd amount of characters, levels, and items to unlock--including, of course, an official collaboration with Konami to include more than just indirect references to the Castlevania series.Playing a Vampire Survivors stage can last anything from 15 to 20 or 30 minutes--if you can survive long enough with the items you've acquired. Even if you fail, however, you're constantly unlocking items, characters, and stages to explore in subsequent runs. It's a game that's best described as a Pandora's Box equivalent. Especially considering the chaos that it will likely inflict on your schedule. See at Steam Hitman World of Assassination: Freelancer ModeDeveloper: IO InteractiveRelease Date: January 26, 2023Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PCThe Hitman series has always excelled in presenting puzzle boxes that double down as playgrounds to blend in, follow your target, and take them down in increasingly ridiculous ways. Freelancer Mode, introduced to Hitman World of Assassination on January 26, 2023, adds a different spin to the premise with a persistent and highly replayable experience.In this mode, targets are always random, and you're given access to different bonus objectives. Making use of a hub exclusive to Freelancer, Agent 47 must choose a crime syndicate to pursue, which sets the mood of the campaign, and then get started without any equipment or weapons. If you've already mastered the classic Hitman levels or you just want a different, ridiculously polished roguelike experience, Freelancer Mode is a distinct and ambitious take on the genre. Worth mentioning that Hitman World of Assassination is also slated to launch on Nintendo Switch 2. See at Steam InkboundDeveloper: Shiny ShoeRelease Date: April 9, 2024Platforms: PCFrom the makers of Monster Train comes Inkbound, a turn-based tactical roguelike that offers co-op, and synergies that are heightened by coordinating with others online. Players can move freely and act simultaneously in multiplayer, picking from eight different classes to try out different combinations.There's also a deck-building element of sorts involved in the vein of draftable abilities, upgrades, and an array of items to use in-game. It's an intriguing blend of genres that might take some time to get used to. Once things click, however, you and the rest of the party will be working in tandem to see how far you can push your strategies. See at Steam God of War Ragnarok: ValhallaDeveloper: Santa Monica StudiosRelease Date: December 12, 2023Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PCGod of War Ragnarok is a behemoth of an action-RPG, featuring a lengthy campaign across open areas with side quests, collectibles, and dozens of corners to explore. If you're looking for a break from the main story or just want to try a new roguelite that elevates some of the game's strengths in a different structure, the free Valhalla DLC is a must play.Taking place after the events of the main story (although you can jump into it at any point from the main menu without worrying about spoilers of the main campaign), Valhalla has Kratos going through a series of punishing trials, which slowly serve as a therapy session of sorts as he reminiscences of the events that happened during the original trilogy of God of War games.The bite-sized rendition of combat encounters shines a different light on combat mechanics that you may already be familiar with. And, taking cues from the likes of Hades and Returnal, each death pushes the story forward in meaningful ways. Valhalla is a rare combination of genres that shouldn't work as well as they do, and it deserves your time before the next adventure of Kratos inevitably rolls in. See at Fanatical NoitaDeveloper: Nolla GamesRelease Date: October 15, 2020Platforms: PCAfter a short early access period in 2019, Noita was fully released in October 2020, and provided an escape from the horrors of that year with, well, more horrors. Its punishing difficulty and procedurally-generated worlds provide deep and engaging gameplay. Noita places you in the shoes of a wand-wielding alchemist navigating a deadly, destructible world. The seemingly simple pixel art style leads to complexity where water flows, acid burns, fire spreads, and cave-ins can be triggered by a single misplaced explosive.Unlike many roguelikes that focus on stat-based progression, Noita appeals to player creativity and experimentation. The game's wand crafting system is a particular highlight, allowing you to mix and match spells, modifiers, and triggers to create devastating effects or strange contraptions that alter the way the game plays with every decision. The fun of Noita is learning how to break it in delightfully chaotic ways. This customization means each run feels unique, not just because of the randomized levels, but because the tools at your disposal and the way you choose to implement them define each playthrough. Noita is deeper than it first appears, with plenty of secrets and mysteries to uncover. Its expansive hidden world and lore begs to be uncovered, and the community engagement and conversation around it continues even half a decade on from its release. Experiment with fire, mess around with slime, and Noita will reward your curiosity. You'll find that, most of the time, death in Noita stems from your own creation, giving the game a cruel sense of irony and punishment. Despite that, or perhaps even because of that, Noita is a beautiful experience. See at Steam

Le réalisateur et superviseur VFX Seb Caudron nous présente son dernier projet : le clip Lunae Veritatis (Stay). Réalisé pour The Avener. Un projet qui a demandé trois mois de travail à l’équipe impliquée. La production s’est appuyée sur

Balls, Dice & Stickers asks you to launch a ball at some dice that trigger a ton of ridiculous effects each time you hit them. I am not sure what I did to upset paperclips, mice, and the manifestations of the past, but they’re all here to give me a hard time unless I beat them up with some damaging dice. I won’t be rolling those dice, though. That would be a little too straightforward in this delightfully chaotic game. Instead, I’ll be launching a ball at the dice and trying to get the ball to bounce around the room, hitting the dice as much as possible before the ball pings out the bottom of the screen. Except THAT is also not all there is to it. Each round, you get a sticker you can apply to one of your dice. These stickers cause wildly varied effects that often build off of the other stickers. For instance, you can add a beehive to one of the dice. This can spawn a bee, which in turn will shoot needles at certain things and will like other objects. Tape adds a banana to the playing field which can provide you points. The Pub spawns a drunk driver, and that drunk driver might get caught by the police car that you spawn from landing on another die. And these dice effects all stack on top of one another as you progress through the rounds, resulting in a bustling field of dozens of bizarre, silly effects all working in tandem with one another. Balls, Dice & Stickers is really something to behold after you’ve got a few rounds under your belt. Describing it really doesn’t do justice to how much fun this game is once it gets rolling, so I highly recommend trying out the alpha build on itch.io. I can’t even imagine how much sillier it’s going to get in its full release. Balls, Dice & Stickers is availble now (in an alpha format) on itch.io. You can add the future full release of the game to your Wishlist on Steam. About The Author

Who knows where branding will go in the future? However, for many of us working in the creative industries, it's our job to know. So it's something we need to start talking about, and Frontify Futures wants to be the platform where that conversation unfolds. This ambitious new thought leadership initiative from Frontify brings together an extraordinary coalition of voices—CMOs who've scaled global brands, creative leaders reimagining possibilities, strategy directors pioneering new approaches, and cultural forecasters mapping emerging opportunities—to explore how effectiveness, innovation, and scale will shape tomorrow's brand-building landscape. But Frontify Futures isn't just another content platform. Excitingly, from a design perspective, it's also a living experiment in what brand identity can become when technology meets craft, when systems embrace chaos, and when the future itself becomes a design material. Endless variation What makes Frontify Futures' typography unique isn't just its custom foundation: it's how that foundation enables endless variation and evolution. This was primarily achieved, reveals developer and digital art director Daniel Powell, by building bespoke tools for the project. "Rather than rely solely on streamlined tools built for speed and production, we started building our own," he explains. "The first was a node-based design tool that takes our custom Frame and Hairline fonts as a base and uses them as the foundations for our type generator. With it, we can generate unique type variations for each content strand—each article, even—and create both static and animated type, exportable as video or rendered live in the browser." Each of these tools included what Daniel calls a "chaos element: a small but intentional glitch in the system. A microstatement about the nature of the future: that it can be anticipated but never fully known. It's our way of keeping gesture alive inside the system." One of the clearest examples of this is the colour palette generator. "It samples from a dynamic photo grid tied to a rotating colour wheel that completes one full revolution per year," Daniel explains. "But here's the twist: wind speed and direction in St. Gallen, Switzerland—Frontify's HQ—nudges the wheel unpredictably off-centre. It's a subtle, living mechanic; each article contains a log of the wind data in its code as a kind of Easter Egg." Another favourite of Daniel's—yet to be released—is an expanded version of Conway's Game of Life. "It's been running continuously for over a month now, evolving patterns used in one of the content strand headers," he reveals. "The designer becomes a kind of photographer, capturing moments from a petri dish of generative motion." Core Philosophy In developing this unique identity, two phrases stood out to Daniel as guiding lights from the outset. The first was, 'We will show, not tell.' "This became the foundation for how we approached the identity," recalls Daniel. "It had to feel like a playground: open, experimental, and fluid. Not overly precious or prescriptive. A system the Frontify team could truly own, shape, and evolve. A platform, not a final product. A foundation, just as the future is always built on the past." The second guiding phrase, pulled directly from Frontify's rebrand materials, felt like "a call to action," says Daniel. "'Gestural and geometric. Human and machine. Art and science.' It's a tension that feels especially relevant in the creative industries today. As technology accelerates, we ask ourselves: how do we still hold onto our craft? What does it mean to be expressive in an increasingly systemised world?" Stripped back and skeletal typography The identity that Daniel and his team created reflects these themes through typography that literally embodies the platform's core philosophy. It really started from this idea of the past being built upon the 'foundations' of the past," he explains. "At the time Frontify Futures was being created, Frontify itself was going through a rebrand. With that, they'd started using a new variable typeface called Cranny, a custom cut of Azurio by Narrow Type." Daniel's team took Cranny and "pushed it into a stripped-back and almost skeletal take". The result was Crany-Frame and Crany-Hairline. "These fonts then served as our base scaffolding," he continues. "They were never seen in design, but instead, we applied decoration them to produce new typefaces for each content strand, giving the identity the space to grow and allow new ideas and shapes to form." As Daniel saw it, the demands on the typeface were pretty simple. "It needed to set an atmosphere. We needed it needed to feel alive. We wanted it to be something shifting and repositioning. And so, while we have a bunch of static cuts of each base style, we rarely use them; the typefaces you see on the website and social only exist at the moment as a string of parameters to create a general style that we use to create live animating versions of the font generated on the fly." In addition to setting the atmosphere, it needed to be extremely flexible and feature live inputs, as a significant part of the branding is about the unpredictability of the future. "So Daniel's team built in those aforementioned "chaos moments where everything from user interaction to live windspeeds can affect the font." Design Process The process of creating the typefaces is a fascinating one. "We started by working with the custom cut of Azurio (Cranny) from Narrow Type. We then redrew it to take inspiration from how a frame and a hairline could be produced from this original cut. From there, we built a type generation tool that uses them as a base. "It's a custom node-based system that lets us really get in there and play with the overlays for everything from grid-sizing, shapes and timing for the animation," he outlines. "We used this tool to design the variants for different content strands. We weren't just designing letterforms; we were designing a comprehensive toolset that could evolve in tandem with the content. "That became a big part of the process: designing systems that designers could actually use, not just look at; again, it was a wider conversation and concept around the future and how designers and machines can work together." In short, the evolution of the typeface system reflects the platform's broader commitment to continuous growth and adaptation." The whole idea was to make something open enough to keep building on," Daniel stresses. "We've already got tools in place to generate new weights, shapes and animated variants, and the tool itself still has a ton of unused functionality. "I can see that growing as new content strands emerge; we'll keep adapting the type with them," he adds. "It's less about version numbers and more about ongoing movement. The system's alive; that's the point. A provocation for the industry In this context, the Frontify Futures identity represents more than smart visual branding; it's also a manifesto for how creative systems might evolve in an age of increasing automation and systematisation. By building unpredictability into their tools, embracing the tension between human craft and machine precision, and creating systems that grow and adapt rather than merely scale, Daniel and the Frontify team have created something that feels genuinely forward-looking. For creatives grappling with similar questions about the future of their craft, Frontify Futures offers both inspiration and practical demonstration. It shows how brands can remain human while embracing technological capability, how systems can be both consistent and surprising, and how the future itself can become a creative medium. This clever approach suggests that the future of branding lies not in choosing between human creativity and systematic efficiency but in finding new ways to make them work together, creating something neither could achieve alone.

Rumors strongly suggest that Apple will be overhauling the MacBook Pro in 2026, marking five years since the previous redesign that we know and love today. There are three key rumors to follow with this redesigned MacBook Pro, and we’ll be delving into them here. OLED display After debuting in the iPad Pro in 2024, Apple is expected to introduce OLED display technology to the MacBook Pro for the very first time with the redesign in 2026. This’ll provide higher brightness, better contrast ratios, and nicer colors to the MacBook Pro lineup for the very first time. Plus, according to TheElec, Apple will be using the same Tandem OLED display tech as the aforementioned iPad Pro: The OLED MacBook Air is also expected to get a standard single-stack display, rather than the more sophisticated Two-Stack Tandem displays we reported on for the MacBook Pro. Single-stack displays have one red, green and blue layer, while two-stack tandem OLED has a second RGB layer. Two layers stacked in tandem increases the brightness of the screen, while also increasing longevity. While transitioning to OLED, Apple may also ditch the notch, in favor of a smaller camera hole cutout. This information comes from Omdia, who describes it as a “rounded corner + hole cut.” The report doesn’t specify whether or not it’ll be a single hole punch, or something more similar to Dynamic Island on the iPhone. Either way, there won’t be as chunky of a cutout in your MacBook Pro display once the redesign arrives. Thinner design According to Bloomberg, Apple will be adopting a new, thinner design with the 2026 MacBook Pro. There aren’t many other details specified, so it’s unclear if the overall chassis design will change: Though Apple has continued to enhance the product with new chips and other internal improvements, the MacBook Pro probably won’t get another true overhaul until 2026. The company had once hoped to release this new version in 2025 — with a thinner design and a move to crisper OLED screens — but there were delays related to the display technology. Cutting-edge M6 chip Apple will also debut the M6 family of chips in this new MacBook Pro redesign. Currently, M6 is anticipated to be the first generation of Apple Silicon to adopt TSMC’s 2nm technology, alongside the A20 chip for iPhone. As per usual, we should see M6, M6 Pro, and M6 Max versions of the MacBook Pro, in both 14-inch and 16-inch sizes. With a new process node, we should see noticeable performance and efficiency gains. Wrap up Overall, the biggest feature of this upgrade is certainly the fact that the MacBook Pro will be adopting OLED. That said, I’ll certainly appreciate the thinner design – particularly on the 16-inch MacBook Pro, which currently comes in at 4.7 pounds. In case you aren’t too fond of waiting around a year and a half to buy a new MacBook Pro, there are some good discounts on the current M4 MacBook Pro models now that they’re around halfway through their lifespan. You can pick up an M4 14-inch for $1429, an M4 Pro 14-inch for $1779, or an M4 Pro 16-inch for $2249. These are all around $200 off compared to their typical prices. My favorite Apple accessory recommendations: Follow Michael: X/Twitter, Bluesky, Instagram Add 9to5Mac to your Google News feed.  FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.You’re reading 9to5Mac — experts who break news about Apple and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Mac on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. Don’t know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel

In our newest showcase, the FLIP Fluids Addon takes on a face that feels familiar – a chaotic canvas inspired by the Joker. Vibrant fluid simulations bring emotional depth and striking transitions, as color flows across skin with cinematic precision. 🎨 Using the Color Attribute in tandem with our Mixing Plugin, we craft mesmerizing blends that dance over the surface. Surface Tension and Sheeting enhance realism, allowing liquid trails to cling and slide in perfect harmony. 💧 A boosted friction value on the skin lets the fluid settle in haunting detail, while ShaderPLUS gives it a glossy, almost surreal look. Hair collisions? Solved via Geometry Nodes, converted to volumes and optimized meshes. And thanks to flip_color and Dynamic Paint, a vibrant wetmap forms – right where emotion meets simulation. 🛍️ FLASH SALE ALERT! From May 30 – June 2, FLIP Fluids is part of the FlippedNormals FLASH SALE – grab it now alongside other top Blender tools at a beautifully chaotic discount. #b3d #blender3d #motiondesign #vfx #jokerface #fluidsimulation #blenderaddons #3dart #digitalart #cgivfx #visualeffects #flippednormals #blendercommunity #shorts

After the Nintendo Switch, the Steam Deck might be the most impressive gaming handheld of the last decade. It brings Steam games—most of which were initially designed to run on Windows PCs—to a remarkably designed portable device. The only problem? Battery life can be rough on some games. If you're struggling to stay charged, here are some tips to help you out.When it comes to your Steam Deck's battery life, you're going to notice a lot of variability, even from one game to another. AAA games that rely on high-end GPUs will typically guzzle power. On laptops or desktops, that's usually not as much of a concern, but on the Steam Deck—when those games run at all—they can burn through the battery quickly.So, while we have plenty of tips to get the best battery life, it's important to keep in mind some games will simply burn through your power no matter what. Fortunately, SteamOS is already pretty power efficient (at least compared to other operating systems), and there are several handy tools to help.First, learn what, exactly, is draining your batteryThere are a few common culprits for battery drain in games, and it's helpful to understand them before diving into solutions. This is because what works for one game with minimal performance impact, could make another game unplayable. With that in mind, here are a few key things that drain your battery:Your hardware settings. The display on your Steam Deck is always a pretty big battery drain, and turning down the brightness can help. Wireless radios like wifi or Bluetooth are always sipping power, even if you're not using them, so you can sometimes turn these off if you don't need them.Your refresh rate and FPS. Your Steam Deck has to update the screen dozens of times every second, and for some games it might be way more than necessary. 60 to 90 frames per second might be necessary for a fast-paced game like Doom Eternal, but it's overkill for Stardew Valley.Your processor's TDP. Thermal Design Power (or TDP) is a complicated metric, but it serves as a shorthand for how much power your processor is using. On the Steam Deck, you can limit this directly, which is a blunt way of saving battery, but it can help sometimes.The most useful tool to help you diagnose your biggest battery drains is the Performance Overlay. Press the three-dot menu button while in a game and navigate to the Performance section and you'll see an option to enable this overlay. There are several levels of detail, ranging from a simple frame rate counter, to real-time power consumption and temperature readouts. The Performance tab is also where you'll find several useful features we'll discuss (under Advanced View), so it's good to make friends with this tab.Dive into your game's display settingsWhile the Steam Deck has a lot of useful features for managing battery life, you're still going to find some of your best options in your game's settings. Most games have presets to lower graphics settings with one quick toggle—like switching from Ultra to Medium—and some have even more advanced settings.This is particularly important to keep in mind if you play Steam games on multiple devices. Some games will try to sync settings between them, which can lead to your game rendering at a higher resolution or frame rate than the Steam Deck is even capable of displaying.In general, here are a few settings you should take a look at:Resolution: The Steam Deck has a 1280x800 resolution, so unless you're using an external monitor, there's no reason to set your game to a higher resolution. Most games won't let you go higher anyway, but it's worth it to double check. You can also go lower for some games, if you don't need as much detail.Frame rate: Many games offer the ability to cap how many frames the game generates, even if your display is capable of showing more. This can have a substantial impact on your battery life, especially for games that need to perform a lot of complex calculations (like graphics-heavy shooters) for every new frame.Graphical presets: If your game has a preset slider, try starting on the lowest preset and working your way up to see how the game performs. The Performance Overlay can be a huge help here, to see how much power your system is drawing on different presets. If your eye can't tell the difference, but your battery can, drop the settings.You can play around to find the right balance for you, and it will vary greatly by game. In some games, you might want more graphical detail, but fewer frames per second, while others would benefit from the exact opposite. Try a few options to see what works best.Adjust your refresh rate and FPS in tandem with the Frame Limit sliderAs mentioned above, the number of times your game updates the screen per second can be a huge factor in battery drain. This is affected by both the screen's refresh rate (how many times the display physically updates the pixel you see) and your game's frames per second (or FPS, the number of times the GPU generates a new frame per second). To complicate matters further, your refresh rate can have an effect on your input latency, meaning it's important to strike a delicate balance.To simplify this, the Steam Deck has a slider called Frame Limit that can impose a limit on how many frames your game displays and strike that balance for you. It automatically adjusts your refresh rate to be evenly divisible by the FPS limit, avoiding unnecessary (and asynchronous) refreshes, while still maintaining the highest refresh rate possible to reduce input lag.It's a workaround that's placed somewhat late in the pipeline, and it's sometimes better to adjust your game's settings directly, but it simplifies a complicated process. If you'd rather adjust your display's refresh rate directly, you can toggle Disable Frame Limit and adjust the refresh rate from 45Hz to 90Hz directly. Keep in mind, though, you might still need to adjust some game settings to avoid generating frames your display will just throw out.Put a cap on your Thermal Design Power (TDP), if you mustTweaking your game's graphics settings can adjust your power consumption with scalpel-like precision. By comparison, the TDP limit is a hammer. But even hammers have their uses. By design, the TDP slider on the Steam Deck will put a hard limit on how much power the CPU/GPU can draw from the battery. You can't get much more direct battery savings than that.The problem is that games typically, you know, need power. And even games with really fine-grain settings don't generally ask the user to decide how much electricity to draw. For some, especially graphics-heavy games, putting a hard limit on TDP can cause massive performance drops or even game crashes.Less demanding games, though, can benefit from playing with this setting. A useful rule of thumb is that if the game you're playing is already struggling to maintain a consistent frame rate, try something else before touching TDP. But for games like Stardew Valley, where you're never really concerned with frame rate, you can experiment with lowering the TDP limit to 10W or even 5W to see how well the game performs.Of course, setting a TDP limit only matters if it's below what your game was using in the first place. This is another area where the performance overlay comes in handy. You can get a sense of how much power your system is drawing during your games, and use that to gauge how low you want your TDP limit to be.Don't forget per-game battery setting profilesOn top of all these settings, you can also set game-specific profiles to change your battery settings automatically based on the title you're playing. I can't recommend this feature enough, especially if you tend to play games with very different power demands. Few things are more annoying than forgetting you set a low TDP limit for a simple game, then launching a more demanding game that strains against that limit.To use this, it's one simple toggle on the Performance tab. Enable "Use per-game profile" and the Steam Deck will automatically create a profile for every game you use. You can disable this toggle to switch back to the default, if you ever decide you prefer one consistent profile.Keep in mind the profiles only account for the Steam Deck's settings itself, not any game-specific settings. But it's still a handy tool. It can be overwhelming to keep track of all the different buttons and knobs you can fiddle with to get extra battery life, but the Steam Deck manages to balance a ton of customization options with the simplicity of straight-forward, user-friendly tools so you can game longer.

It's no secret that 28 Years Later used iPhones to shoot parts of the film. Now its director, Danny Boyle, has discussed the use of iPhones for the film in more detail with IGN. The first film in the franchise, 28 Days Later, was shot on digital video, giving it a homemade feel. Boyle explained that he and writer Alex Garland got the idea from the fact that home video cameras were common at the time, and people would've shot videos with them if an apocalypse had indeed happened. Those cameras, of course, have since been replaced by smartphones. The movies used three special rigs for the iPhone sequences: One for eight cameras that one person can carry, another with 10 and another with 20. "I never say this, but there is an incredible shot in the second half [of the film] where we use the 20-rig camera, and you'll know it when you see it," Boyle told IGN. He described the 20-iPhone rig as "basically a poor man’s bullet time," which is a visual effect that uses multiple cameras to freeze or slow down time. Think the scene in The Matrix, wherein Neo dodged bullets in super slow motion.  Doyle said that the 20-camera rig can be attached to cranes or dollies and give you 180 degrees of vision of an action. In editing, you can choose from any of the footage each iPhone takes to, say, move between perspectives or jump forward and backward. For 28 Years Later, the team used the rig for violent scenes to emphasize their effect. "For a moment the audience is inside the scene, the action, rather than classically observing a picture," Doyle explained. In addition to the iPhones, the filmmakers also used drones, cameras attached to actors and even farm animals to achieve an immersive feel for its 2.76:1 widescreen aspect ratio. They decided on the aspect ratio to create a sense of unease, since you'd have to keep scanning the screen to see potential threats coming from the sides.  Sony This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/28-years-later-used-20-iphones-in-tandem-for-some-wild-shots-130043338.html?src=rss

Scientific research across fields like chemistry, biology, and artificial intelligence has long relied on human experts to explore knowledge, generate ideas, design experiments, and refine results. Yet, as problems grow more complex and data-intensive, discovery slows. While AI tools, such as language models and robotics, can handle specific tasks, like literature searches or code analysis, they rarely encompass the entire research cycle. Bridging the gap between idea generation and experimental validation remains a key challenge. For AI to autonomously advance science, it must propose hypotheses, design and execute experiments, analyze outcomes, and refine approaches in an iterative loop. Without this integration, AI risks producing disconnected ideas that depend on human supervision for validation. Before the introduction of a unified system, researchers relied on separate tools for each stage of the process. Large language models could help find relevant scientific papers, but they didn’t directly feed into experiment design or result analysis. Robotics can assist in automating physical experiments, and coding libraries like PyTorch can help build models; however, these tools operate independently of each other. There was no single system capable of handling the entire process, from forming ideas to verifying them through experiments. This led to bottlenecks, where researchers had to connect the dots manually, slowing progress and leaving room for errors or missed opportunities. The need for an integrated system that could handle the entire research cycle became clear. Researchers from the NovelSeek Team at the Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory developed NovelSeek, an AI system designed to run the entire scientific discovery process autonomously. NovelSeek comprises four main modules that work in tandem: a system that generates and refines research ideas, a feedback loop where human experts can interact with and refine these ideas, a method for translating ideas into code and experiment plans, and a process for conducting multiple rounds of experiments. What makes NovelSeek stand out is its versatility; it works across 12 scientific research tasks, including predicting chemical reaction yields, understanding molecular dynamics, forecasting time-series data, and handling functions like 2D semantic segmentation and 3D object classification. The team designed NovelSeek to minimize human involvement, expedite discoveries, and deliver consistent, high-quality results. The system behind NovelSeek involves multiple specialized agents, each focused on a specific part of the research workflow. The “Survey Agent” helps the system understand the problem by searching scientific papers and identifying relevant information based on keywords and task definitions. It adapts its search strategy by first doing a broad survey of papers, then going deeper by analyzing full-text documents for detailed insights. This ensures that the system captures both general trends and specific technical knowledge. The “Code Review Agent” examines existing codebases, whether user-uploaded or sourced from public repositories like GitHub, to understand how current methods work and identify areas for improvement. It checks how code is structured, looks for errors, and creates summaries that help the system build on past work. The “Idea Innovation Agent” generates creative research ideas, pushing the system to explore different approaches and refine them by comparing them to related studies and previous results. The system even includes a “Planning and Execution Agent” that turns ideas into detailed experiments, handles errors during the testing process, and ensures smooth execution of multi-step research plans. NovelSeek delivered impressive results across various tasks. In chemical reaction yield prediction, NovelSeek improved performance from a baseline of 24.2% (with a variation of ±4.2) to 34.8% (with a much smaller variation of ±1.1) in just 12 hours, progress that human researchers typically need months to achieve. In enhancer activity prediction, a key task in biology, NovelSeek raised the Pearson correlation coefficient from 0.65 to 0.79 within 4 hours. For 2D semantic segmentation, a task used in computer vision, precision improved from 78.8% to 81.0% in just 30 hours. These performance boosts, achieved in a fraction of the time typically needed, highlight the system’s efficiency. NovelSeek also successfully managed large, complex codebases with multiple files, demonstrating its ability to handle research tasks at a project level, not just in small, isolated tests. The team has made the code open-source, allowing others to use, test, and contribute to its improvement. Several Key Takeaways from the Research on NovelSeek include: NovelSeek supports 12 research tasks, including chemical reaction prediction, molecular dynamics, and 3D object classification. Reaction yield prediction accuracy improved from 24.2% to 34.8% in 12 hours. Enhancer activity prediction performance increased from 0.65 to 0.79 in 4 hours. 2D semantic segmentation precision improved from 78.8% to 81.0% in 30 hours. NovelSeek includes agents for literature search, code analysis, idea generation, and experiment execution. The system is open-source, enabling reproducibility and collaboration across scientific fields. In conclusion, NovelSeek demonstrates how combining AI tools into a single system can accelerate scientific discovery and reduce its dependence on human effort. It ties together the key steps, generating ideas, turning them into methods, and testing them through experiments, into one streamlined process. What once took researchers months or years can now be done in days or even hours. By linking every stage of research into a continuous loop, NovelSeek helps teams move from rough ideas to real-world results more quickly. This system highlights the power of AI not just to assist, but to drive scientific research in a way that could reshape how discoveries are made across many fields. Check out the Paper 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. NikhilNikhil is an intern consultant at Marktechpost. He is pursuing an integrated dual degree in Materials at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. Nikhil is an AI/ML enthusiast who is always researching applications in fields like biomaterials and biomedical science. With a strong background in Material Science, he is exploring new advancements and creating opportunities to contribute.Nikhilhttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/nikhil0980/This AI Paper Introduces ARM and Ada-GRPO: Adaptive Reasoning Models for Efficient and Scalable Problem-SolvingNikhilhttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/nikhil0980/This AI Paper Introduces WEB-SHEPHERD: A Process Reward Model for Web Agents with 40K Dataset and 10× Cost EfficiencyNikhilhttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/nikhil0980/This AI Paper Introduces MMaDA: A Unified Multimodal Diffusion Model for Textual Reasoning, Visual Understanding, and Image GenerationNikhilhttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/nikhil0980/This AI Paper Introduces Differentiable MCMC Layers: A New AI Framework for Learning with Inexact Combinatorial Solvers in Neural Networks