Andrew Webster | The Verge

Amazon’s short story collections are one of the best reasons to own a Kindle

2026-07-29T15:06:24-04:00

Over the last few years, I’ve gradually shifted away from ebooks. It’s been part of a general return to physical media, an attempt to create a deeper sense of ownership over the art I love and collect. A Kindle is obviously more convenient than a paperback: It’s tiny, holds a huge library, and you can purchase new books instantly. But, much like with retro game cartridges, I find there’s a deeper connection formed with a book dug out of a stack in a used book shop versus simply choosing the next thing in a series from a menu on an e-reader. But I haven’t completely given up on my Kindle, and there’s one big reason — actually, there are lots of smaller reasons why.

Amazon’s Original Stories publishing imprint has steadily curated a huge collection of short story collections, which often feature big-name authors and are particularly great if you’re a fan of genre fiction. The most recent, which came out this week, is called “Magic and Mystery,” and it gathers a bunch of fantasy authors together and has them tackle puzzle box mystery stories, most of which involve a murder of some sort.

Like past collections — which have explored everything from the vast expanse of space to straight-up horror — the stories here are incredibly varied, and explore the theme in different and often clever ways. Travis Baldree’s Miss Gentle and the Case of the Very Flat Monk, for instance, introduces a detective character that I absolutely need to see solve other mysteries: an old woman who wears a full suit of armor covered in enchanted human appendages, and who never shows her face. Robert Jackson Bennett’s The Lion’s Tusk, meanwhile, involves a gruesome murder at a royal wedding, and features a clever and incredibly bizarre murder weapon unlike anything I’ve ever seen or read before.

Some of the most impressive stories manage to cram a whole bunch of worldbuilding into a short you can finish in one sitting. Heather Fawcett’s A Labyrinth of Honeybees introduces a fantasy realm rich with a long history of gods and competing religions, while The Wizard Who Kept Himself Suspicious by Scott Lynch convincingly presents an ancient order of magic users who have been friends for centuries, and meet up every 13 years to hang out and show off their skills.

There are two great things about these collections. One, obviously, is the stories themselves. I’d recommend all seven shorts in “Magic and Mystery,” and some of my favorite authors have contributed to collections in the past. That includes the likes of Min Jin Lee (Pachinko), Lauren Beukes (The Shining Girls), N. K. Jemisin (The Inheritance Trilogy), and Jeff VanderMeer (the Southern Reach series). There’s even an original six-part story from Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan that Netflix is turning into a movie. Short stories are an oft-neglected form that both let you discover new authors and give established writers a space to get weird and experimental. Often, this results in some of an author’s most memorable work. Arthur C. Clarke published a lot of novels, but nothing has stuck with me quite like the haunting short The Star.

But what’s also great about these series from Amazon is the freedom they offer. Historically, short stories have been available either in magazines or as part of large collections. But on a digital platform like the Kindle, you have more choice for how you engage with the stories. While I think each story in “Magic and Mystery” is worth checking out, you don’t have to buy the whole thing at once. Each short is available individually, giving the collection a sort of episodic feel. It’s like watching an anthology like Black Mirror, where as soon as one episode is done, you can decide where you want to go next, or if you want to continue at all. The stories are also cheap enough — usually running a buck or two — that they stray easily into impulse purchase territory.

The drawback is that these shorts are largely exclusive to Amazon. There’s at least one exception — del Toro’s The Boy in the Iron Box is getting a physical release — but otherwise digging into these collections necessitates owning a Kindle, or reading through the app on your phone. For me at least, that’s been reason enough to keep my e-reader charged even as my shelves become stuffed with physical books.

SDCC 2026’s best trailers are heavy on cyberpunk and sci-fi

2026-07-28T04:45:38-04:00

San Diego Comic-Con took place over the weekend, and as per usual it was full of tidbits of news across film, TV, and gaming. Marvel revealed the next Ghost Rider (Ryan Gosling) and Black Panther (David Jonsson), while we also got release dates for God of War: Laufey (February 16th) and the fourth and final season of Silo (summer 2027).

But the best part of SDCC each year, at least for those following along at home, are the trailers. And 2026 did not disappoint: We got first looks at highly anticipated cyberpunk shows Blade Runner 2099 and Neuromancer, along with a new take on a Stephen King classic and the return of some animated favorites.

Here’s all of the best stuff in one handy place.

Blade Runner 2099

Amazon first revealed that it was working on a series set in the Blade Runner universe in 2022, but it took a few years before we got a glimpse at it. 2099 is set 50 years after the last film and stars Michelle Yeoh and Hunter Schafer as a blade runner and replicant who are forced to work together. The show is a limited series — don’t expect a season 2 — and all episodes will be streaming on November 25th.

Carrie

Mike Flanagan had a solid run at Netflix through series like The Haunting of Hill House and The Fall of the House of Usher, but Amazon poached him a few years back for its own streaming service. He’s starting out with a series based on Stephen King’s classic Carrie. This isn’t Flanagan’s first King adaptation — see also Doctor Sleep and The Life of Chuck — and it starts streaming on October 7th.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

Elsewhere on Prime Video, the service’s big fantasy epic The Rings of Power is coming back for a third season on November 11th. Perhaps the biggest addition in season 3 is that Simon Pegg is joining the cast as the voice of a demonic Balrog creature.

Neuromancer

Apple TV has steadily become the preeminent home of streaming sci-fi, and so an adaptation of William Gibson’s seminal cyberpunk novel Neuromancer seems like a perfect fit. The new series stars Callum Turner as “a damaged, top-rung super-hacker,” and it starts streaming on January 22nd.

Dark Matter

Speaking of sci-fi on Apple TV, season 2 of Dark Matter starts streaming on August 28th, and a new trailer reveals just how complex its story is becoming, with a family searching for safety amid a multiverse of infinite worlds.

Futurama

Futurama’s latest revival has been hit or miss, but the next season — we’re at 14, if you’re counting — at least looks jam-packed with everything from pop stars to vampires. It starts streaming on Disney Plus and Hulu on August 3rd.

Common Side Effects

The first season of Adult Swim’s Common Side Effects was an excellent surprise, an animated series that both looked incredible and explored the real-world dangers of the US healthcare system. And season 2 looks like it’s going to continue that when it premieres in 2027.

Lanterns

If you ever wondered what True Detective would be like if it featured space cops, the DC universe has you covered. HBO’s Lanterns follows a pair of intergalactic investigators — played by Aaron Pierre and Kyle Chandler — who become “drawn into a dark, earth-based mystery with cosmic ties” while looking into a murder. It premieres on August 16th.

Onslaught

A24 isn’t exactly known for action movies, but that could change with Onslaught, the latest from Adam Wingard, director of the last two Godzilla vs. Kong movies. It’s about a mother trying to protect her daughter from “a rogue squad of genetically engineered super soldiers,” and it hits theaters on September 4th.

Queen of the Damned

The show formerly known as Interview With the Vampire (and The Vampire Lestat) is coming back for the next chapter of Anne Rice’s saga. Queen of the Damned introduces the vampire progenitor Akasha to the series, though there’s no word yet on when the new season will premiere.

Transformers: The Movie

Okay, this one isn’t actually new, but the classic animated film is getting a 4K re-release for its 40th anniversary. It’ll be in theaters on September 17th.

Blade Runner 2099’s moody dystopia streams on Amazon in November

2026-07-24T13:43:50-04:00

After teasing the series with some first-look images yesterday, Amazon is finally properly unveiling its Blade Runner streaming series. Called Blade Runner 2099, the show hits Prime Video on November 25th with all eight episodes dropping at once. We also got the first trailer for the series, which is full of Blade Runner staples: a bleak futuristic LA, dramatic narration, and some really good coats.

The show is helmed by Silka Luisa, previously showrunner on Apple TV’s adaptation of Shining Girls, while original Blade Runner director Ridley Scott is signed on as an executive producer. 2099 stars Michelle Yeoh and Hunter Schafer and, as the name implies, takes place a few decades after Denis Villeneuve’s film Blade Runner 2049. Here’s the official premise:

Fifty years after the events of Blade Runner 2049, Los Angeles has been reborn, just not by humanity. Cora, a fugitive in a final bid to stop running, takes on one last identity: a Blade Runner. Forced to partner with Olwen, a Replicant days from dying, she hunts down a runaway hiding a truth that could collapse their fragile city.

It’s been a long time coming for Blade Runner 2099, as Amazon first revealed it was working on the series back in 2022. But it’s coming at what could be a good time for cyberpunk television, as Apple is also working up an adaptation of William Gibson’s Neuromancer.

The new Halo remake is a reminder of what Xbox used to be

2026-07-23T12:43:08-04:00

It’s impossible to talk about a new Xbox game without also talking about the state of Xbox. Microsoft’s gaming division is in freefall: Recent headlines are dominated by extensive layoffs, decimated studios, and confusing strategies, most of which stem from years of bad decisions and expensive acquisitions. But it wasn’t always that way. Through its first two generations of existence, Xbox held its own against its more established rivals Nintendo and Sony, and a big reason for that was Halo. Bungie’s shooter coupled a grand sci-fi story with nearly pitch-perfect action and single-handedly created a reason to buy an Xbox. Now, the game has gotten a full remake, reimagining the same core experience for modern audiences. In a testament to the original design, Halo remains a thrilling game more than two decades after it debuted. But the remake is also a reminder of just how far Xbox has strayed from its initial promise.

Called Halo: Campaign Evolved, the remake is exactly what it sounds like: a modern overhaul of the original game’s story campaign. That means you still take on the role of supersoldier Master Chief as he leads human forces in a war against an alien alliance known as the Covenant, before eventually being pulled into a much bigger conflict with the fate of the galaxy on the line. Halo’s story was never the most original, pulling from obvious influences, most notably Aliens, but it’s well crafted, with dramatic twists and turns that give you an incentive to push through its many battles. The game is especially great at switching tones throughout. Initially Halo puts you on the front lines of a large-scale war on an alien world before later shifting to something that approaches horror, with cramped shootouts against unsettling monsters. Campaign Evolved makes the story a touch more cinematic with expanded cutscenes that flesh out the backstory and characters, but which are still relatively short and concise.

The most notable difference in the remake is its upgraded visuals. Campaign Evolved was built using Unreal Engine 5, and it looks, well, like a first-person shooter from 2026. Everything is much more detailed and the levels are grander in scope. When you’re out on the Halo’s surface, it really feels like you’re in the midst of a huge battle, with explosions all around you and the wreckage of downed vehicles and ships dotting the landscape. That extra level of detail really enhances the game midway through when you encounter the Flood, a race of parasitic aliens that turn corpses into zombies. Now those close-quarters battles are much scarier, as the aliens explode in gruesome ways, the walls are covered with oozing growths, and you see the flash of gunfire lighting up dark spaces and the horrors lurking within. You can quibble with some of the artistic decisions — I personally miss the more brutalist alien architecture of the original — but overall the game looks great.

There are changes to the gameplay as well. Some are relatively small, like the new ability to hijack enemy vehicles or the larger arsenal of weapons at your disposal. The biggest change, though, is something that seems small: the addition of a sprint button. Early Halo games didn’t let Master Chief sprint, and the addition to Campaign Evolved makes the action feel much faster and more fluid. It’s especially useful if, like me, you spend a lot of time running away from the bigger enemies. Campaign Evolved also introduces a trio of new missions while making some changes to existing ones. Unfortunately, I don’t have the kind of encyclopedic Halo knowledge to pinpoint exactly what has changed, but I will say this: Much like the remakes of Shadow of the Colossus and Resident Evil 4, Campaign Evolved plays the romanticized version of Halo from my memory, which is exactly what you want from a project like this. The changes enhance something that was already great and smooth over (most of) the rough spots. And while I played through all of it solo, the game also supports co-op for up to four players.

While the remake is excellent, it’s unfortunately launching at a very awkward time, just a few weeks after new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma kicked off a “reset” that will eventually see more than 3,000 people laid off over the next year and iconic studios like Doom developer id Software dramatically scaled down. In many ways, Halo as a franchise is illustrative of Xbox’s fall from grace. Since Microsoft assumed full responsibility for the series through its internal Halo Studios (formerly known as 343 Industries), the gap between new releases has become larger and larger, while at the same time the company has tried to broaden Halo through mostly ill-fated ventures like a streaming TV series and a live-service push. Campaign Evolved itself represents some of this disorder. Not only is it the first new Halo game since 2021, it’s also coming to the PS5 in addition to Xbox and PC as part of Microsoft’s consistently confusing console exclusivity strategy.

So as much as I’ve enjoyed fighting off the hordes of the Flood once again, I can’t help but see Campaign Evolved within the larger context of Xbox. The original Halo felt daring, proving that action and narrative could be complementary strengths, and it went on to influence a generation of first-person shooters. In the years since, the franchise’s prominence has steadily diminished, to the point that now Microsoft is trying to reinvigorate it by going back to the beginning instead of doing something actually new. Five years after Halo Infinite, instead of the next entry in the franchise, Xbox has opted for the safe choice with a remake. And Campaign Evolved comes at a time when the future of the Xbox lineup looks increasingly murky given the dramatic studio cuts.

Campaign Evolved does a remarkable job of re-creating the experience of playing Halo for the first time. But that’s not enough to make Halo — or Xbox, for that matter — feel as essential as it once was.

_{Halo: Campaign Evolved launches on the Xbox, PS5, and PC on July 28th, with early access on July 23rd for those who preordered.}

Nintendo keeps making shooters more friendly and approachable

2026-07-21T08:22:25-04:00

Nintendo does a lot of weird things, but Splatoon might just be one of the strangest — or at least the boldest. The series started as an attempt to muscle into the ultra-competitive online shooter space, but in a way that feels a world away from the violence and bombast of Call of Duty or Battlefield. Splatoon is essentially candy-coated paintball starring a race of skate punk squid creatures, and across three entries Nintendo has just about perfected the formula. The series introduced the idea of competitive shooters to whole new audiences, and now it’s expanding: Splatoon Raiders takes it in a different direction, but with the same focus on making shooters more approachable.

As opposed to past entries, which primarily revolved around team-based competitive matches, Raiders is what’s known as a looter shooter. Think games like Destiny or Borderlands where you take on missions and explore dungeons in order to earn new gear and skills, which in turn let you take on more challenging missions and dungeons. It’s a genre where repetition is inherent in the premise as you replay levels over and over again in search of the best loot. This means that the moment-to-moment experience — how fun the weapons are to use, how interesting the levels are to explore, how much incentive there is to get new gear to play around with — has to be enjoyable enough to encourage those replays. And that’s exactly where Splatoon excels.

In terms of how it plays, Raiders is nearly identical to its predecessors. You still control a squid-like kid that can wield various weapons, ranging from guns that look like Super Soakers to gigantic paint rollers. Splatoon’s defining characteristic is ink: It’s what you shoot at enemies, but you can also transform from a humanoid into a squid in order to swim through it. Immersing yourself in ink lets you move more quickly through a level, replenish your health, and refill your ammo supply. The result is shooter action where you’re constantly moving, because standing still means death (or, in the parlance of Splatoon, getting splatted).

That all remains true in Raiders. But here you’re using those skills while traveling to various levels in order to defeat enemies and find treasure. The story has you playing the role of a mechanic aboard a craft that crash-lands on a mysterious chain of islands. Unable to leave, you and your fellow crew — which consists of members of the in-universe Splatoon pop group Deep Cut — set about building a rickety base and then exploring the islands in search of treasure and, hopefully, a way home.

Like most looter shooters, the gameplay cycle works like this: You gear up at base, head into a level, return home with some improved loot, and then do it all over again. There are a few types of levels in Raiders, which get progressively more challenging, and they mostly involve either defeating a huge horde of enemies before a clock winds down or collecting a large amount of fish eggs that drop from downed foes. Some levels are brief, lasting just a few minutes, while others require more exploration. There are also boss fights against some gigantic creatures that remind me a bit of the elaborate battles in Monster Hunter games.

Essentially, Raiders takes Splatoon’s core gameplay and transposes it into a new genre. And it remains a blast, with levels that have an incredible sense of tension; there were many times when it came down to the last few thrilling seconds, which determined whether or not I’d beat a level. And while you can play through the whole thing by yourself, Raiders also supports co-op play for up to four people.

What really makes Raiders work, though, is that it also constantly encourages you to experiment. One way it does that is through the sheer amount of customization options. There is a huge range of different weapons to use — my favorite is a katana made of sponge that can splash ink — and each one can be leveled up and tweaked by adding parts that can alter its abilities, making it faster or stronger. You also have multiple powers that unlock over time, each of which provides a different benefit, like a spinning top that explodes on impact or a turret that provides cover in a heated shootout. Finding what works for you means trying out a lot of ideas. But the game also goes a step further. In order to fully level up your abilities, you actually have to try out different items and use them for a prolonged period, and some stages even have different treasure depending on what you have equipped. This keeps you from finding one kind of playstyle and sticking with it through the whole game.

The remarkable thing about the original Splatoon was how it took one of gaming’s most intimidating genres — competitive online multiplayer — and turned it into something incredibly approachable. Raiders does the same thing for looter shooters. It’s not a never-ending grind where you feel forced to play levels repeatedly in order to see any progress, nor is it a live-service experience intent on sucking up all of your free time and money. It takes the basic elements that have made the genre so popular — exciting gunplay, challenging levels, fine-tuned customization — and puts them in a package that respects the player and their time. At a moment when the live-service space is imploding, and new shooters fail with alarming regularity, Raiders is a reminder of why these games are so popular in the first place — as well as a sign that Splatoon still has plenty of room to grow.

_{Splatoon Raiders launches on the Nintendo Switch 2 on July 23rd.}

Bethesda teases Fallout 5 soon after Xbox’s mass layoffs

2026-07-17T11:30:07-04:00

The Fallout TV series. | Image: Amazon

Xbox is currently in a “reset” period that includes laying off around 3,200 employees over the next year, involving deep cuts at beloved studios like id Software and Obsidian Entertainment. Now, in an attempt to show that things are still running fine, the company has announced a slate of upcoming projects at Bethesda Game Studios — which itself was hit with layoffs — including official confirmation that Fallout 5 is in the works.

“We’re investing more deeply in the worlds players love, giving creators a bigger role in shaping their experiences, and bringing our teams closer together so we can get our games into your hands sooner, support them longer, and continue building them alongside you for decades to come,” Bethesda director Todd Howard said in a statement.

There are no details yet on the next Fallout, and it sounds like the project is currently a ways off. Howard says simply that “Fallout is one of our biggest priorities today” and “Fallout 5 remains our long-range destination,“ while the game is described as being in a preproduction phase. The confirmation of the game’s existence comes more than a decade after the launch of Fallout 4, the last mainline entry in the series. Since then, the franchise has expanded with the online spinoff Fallout 76 and a live-action TV series.

Howard also revealed that a new Fallout game is in development at Obsidian, which developed 2010’s Fallout: New Vegas — “We’ll have more to share in the future,” he says — and that remasters of both Fallout 3 and New Vegas are in development, though neither has a release date.

As for The Elder Scrolls VI — which was announced way back in 2018 — Howard didn’t provide a release window but said that the game will utilize the same technology platform as Fallout 5. He says that the game is “our primary development focus today, with the majority of our team currently working on the next chapter of the franchise.” Howard added that “we’re where we planned to be, loving how it looks, and playing it every day.”

Oh, and for those wondering about the fate of Starfield, Howard noted that the franchise “remains an important part of our future.”

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma previously said that, as part of the upheaval at Xbox, the brand was going to focus more on its most bankable franchises, with the eventual — and questionable — goal of being “one of the few companies that entertains more than a billion people each day.” This new slate of announcements from Bethesda, which Xbox acquired along with its parent company ZeniMax for $7.5 billion in 2021, certainly fits within that model.

However, the timing of the announcements — especially considering Xbox just had a big showcase event in June — also makes it clear that this is a form of damage control, as the company attempts to show that the future isn’t as bleak as it seems following those deep cuts. Bethesda’s new game reveals are coming the same week that ZeniMax employees held a rally in Maryland to protest the layoffs.

Netflix tries to recapture Stranger Things magic with nostalgic re-release

2026-07-15T12:37:08-04:00

Netflix just can’t let Stranger Things go. Since the final episode aired on New Year’s Eve there’s been a behind-the-scenes documentary, an animated series that expands the story, and now, on the 10th anniversary of the show’s original release, Netflix has released a new version of the show’s first season. The episodes have all been rendered through a VHS-style filter to make it feel like a true product of the ’80s, and it’s surprisingly convincing — if you’re looking to re-watch the show from the beginning, this might be the best way to do it.

Netflix calls the new version of the show the “VHS Special Edition” and offers the following description on its site: “rewind and relive the first season with a video store vibe that’s glitchy, grainy, and gloriously vintage — just like you’d have rented it in 1983.” And I have to say, that’s pretty accurate. It’s not clear exactly how Netflix achieved the effect — it appears to be some combination of filters and cropping — but it’s effective. The scanlines, occasional crackle and visual glitch, and nearly square aspect ratio give off definite ’80s vibes, building on top of everything that already exists in Stranger Things.

A little treat from Family Video 📼

Stranger Things VHS Special Edition is now playing on Netflix! pic.twitter.com/kx1ZyMYoZ7
— Netflix (@netflix) July 15, 2026

It works especially well with Stranger Things’ first season, which is small in scale — at least compared to later seasons — and is absolutely dripping in influences from the decade. The first episode alone features references to everything from Dungeons & Dragons to Poltergeist. There are two things that stand out rewatching the show this way. One is that, at least early on, the production design is so accurate that it really helps create the convincing retro effect. If you didn’t know any better, you might believe this is actually an ’80s production. The other is that the filters actually help mask some of the CG effects, which haven’t aged especially well, but now can hide under a retro glaze. That goes for the slimy, filthy Upside Down as well as that terrifying original Demogorgon that stalks Hawkins, Indiana.

Watching this version of Stranger Things reminds me of playing old games using a CRT filter through gadgets like the Analogue 3D. It’s not exactly the same as popping a tape into a VCR, but the vibes are close enough. And for a show that tries so desperately to replicate the energy of films from the era, it’s especially fitting. It’s impressive just how much of an impact a simple filter can have. Nothing else about the show is changed aside from the visuals, and yet the experience is markedly different. The difference really hit home when a full-screen ad-break appeared with crisp and colorful visuals that are definitely from 2026, providing a stark contrast.

The release does raise some questions about the future of Stranger Things at Netflix. The franchise is still limping along with an impending season of Tales from ’85 and, presumably, an eventual streaming debut for the stage show prequel The First Shadow. Series creators the Duffer brothers, meanwhile, seem to have largely moved on. It’s not clear if anything post-season 1 will be getting VHS-ified, though I would guess that later seasons — particularly the set-piece-filled final season — won’t work quite as well given their much larger scale. It’s hard to imagine a shootout with a skyscraper-sized beast looking like a remnant from the ’80s. What is clear, though, is that despite Netflix largely moving on from the tentpole strategy that defined its early years, the streamer isn’t quite ready to let go of its biggest hit.

The tiniest MMO

2026-07-15T08:29:09-04:00

At its peak, around 12 million people subscribed to World of Warcraft so that they could explore the realm of Azeroth together. The audience for PointlessQuest is quite a bit smaller. On launch day, the game hit a peak of 15 concurrent players… and no, that sentence isn’t missing a word. Then again, basically everything about PointlessQuest is intentionally tiny. It’s a game that was developed as a side project by designer Gareth Williams, and it’s available on just about the least likely platform to house an MMO: the Playdate. Yet it has garnered a small group of hardcore players who are working together to burn through the early game experience. “The support from the community has been and continues to be amazing,” Williams tells me.

Despite its small scale, PointlessQuest has many of the hallmarks of an MMO. There are characters that give you quests, a fantasy landscape filled with monsters, and lots of loot and experience to gather. Your early tasks involve slaying slime balls and collecting chicken eggs, and if you play long enough you can unlock a bow and arrow. But things are also simplified for the platform. The world is rendered in black-and-white pixel art, and battles happen automatically when you bump up against an enemy. The game does support in-game communication — including both text and voice chat — but I’ve yet to actually see someone online at the same time as me to test it out.

Williams is no stranger to the Playdate. He previously released the old-school dungeon crawler Legend of Etad and the 3D space shooter Tau on the handheld, and he says that they “were wildly successful in the context of the Playdate.” But the origin of PointlessQuest actually predates Panic’s little yellow gizmo. Back in 2008, Williams started developing the concept as a web-based multiplayer game that was only ever played by a small group of friends. “Then it was forgotten about,” he explains, “saved only to a ‘projects’ backup folder that has moved with me across USB sticks, cloud storage, and various PCs over the intervening years.”

Years later, when he learned that the Playdate software development kit was getting networking capabilities, Williams decided to resurrect the idea as an experiment. He says that he had no idea if it would even work, so he utilized Claude to generate a “modernized” version of the codebase, which he says took a few hours. From there, he went about redesigning the game, doing everything from introducing maps and quest dialogue to creating pixel art. He notes that, while the codebase is largely LLM-generated, “all of the game content is 100 percent made by hand.” The final product took around six weeks to complete, and he estimates it would have taken at least a year if it was hand-coded. “Basically, PQ would not exist without Claude,” Williams says. “Whether that is a good thing or not, I leave to the community to decide.”

So far PointlessQuest has been a modest success. Williams says that more than 400 players have made a character and earned at least a single experience point, and the pay-what-you-want donation structure has earned enough to fund the game’s servers “indefinitely.” More than sheer numbers, though, Williams says he has been elated with the sense of community the game has garnered. “I’ve heard tales of epic group boss fights, fan art on Reddit (I commissioned the new title screen and logo from a player that has made a bunch of cartoons), to a potential poetry reading session in the game’s village library,” he says. “It’s been a blast so far.” The community has a wholesomeness to it that’s on clear display in this Reddit thread.

In fact, hardcore players burned through the game’s early content so quickly that Williams had to release an expansion — called “The Armpit of the World” — soon after launch that gave them more to do after level 10. A second expansion is currently in the works, aimed at those who hit the level 20 mark. The future of the game beyond that depends both on Williams’ ability to keep updating PointlessQuest alongside his day job and how the community continues to develop. He’s hoping to eventually get the game on Panic’s Catalog shop, which does currently accept games with AI-assisted code, to ensure the future of the tiny MMO is just a little bit bigger. “A Catalog release would vastly expand the player base and give me and the existing players even more reason to keep coming back,” he explains.

A tasty RPG that will make you very hungry

2026-07-11T08:37:53-04:00

Roleplaying games are often defined by excess. Storylines that span dozens of hours, side quests so big they could be their own game, massive worlds that require complex maps to explore, and casts so big you start forgetting character names. That’s part of what makes these games feel like epic adventures, but it can also make them intimidating, particularly if you have limited spare time. Dosa Divas, on the other hand, manages to capture much of that same feeling in a package that spans less than 10 hours. And it does it with a bold sense of style and a story that seamlessly flits between big themes and personal drama. There’s just one big drawback: This game will make you very hungry.

Dosa Divas takes place across a small collection of towns that have been overrun by a single corporation that has made cooking illegal, giving it a monopoly with its food-like nutrient paste. This is problematic not just from a financial perspective, but also a cultural one, as these places all have deep histories connected to food. What are the residents of a traditional fishing village to do when they can’t fish anymore? You play as a pair of sisters named Samara and Amani who join forces to take down the evil corporation, which just so happens to be run by their little sister Lina. So it’s a story about saving the world from capitalism, a story about the cultural importance of food, and also a story about how hard families can be. Also, there are sentient mech suits, including one that’s in your party through the whole game.

This all plays out like a fairly traditional turn-based RPG. You travel the world fighting enemies — they range from pesky lawyers to, uh, your own parents — leveling up and getting stronger along the way. There’s a timing element to battles reminiscent of Mario & Luigi where you have to hit a button at the right time to defend or attack, and Dosa Divas adds some interesting elements like cooking, which lets you both create healing items and feed hungry citizens by completing brief minigames. It’s a fun twist on the standard “item” in an RPG, and reminds me a bit of taking a break to cook in Final Fantasy XV. The game’s slick, stylized graphics also make the meals look particularly appetizing, so I wouldn’t recommend playing Dosa Divas on an empty stomach.

What’s remarkable about the game is that it crams all of this — interesting world, satisfying gameplay, rich story — into a comparatively small package by streamlining things in smart ways. You only learn a couple of abilities over the course of the game, for instance, but they’re all important for battle strategy. Similarly, while you can customize your characters somewhat each time you level up, you can only choose between improving their strength, health, and special abilities. This structure gives you a lot of the same satisfaction of playing an RPG without all of the busywork. And best of all: no grinding!

The story hides its depth in a similar way. On the surface, it’s an occasionally silly, frequently straightforward critique of capitalism. You hear growling stomachs to alert you there’s someone in need of a meal, and you can tear down corporate propaganda to improve your status in each town. But Dosa Divas is at its best when the story gets personal. Through flashbacks and candid conversations, you really come to learn the complex familial relationships that define Samara, Amani, and Lina, and just how integral food has been in their lives, beyond simply being a source of sustenance. No one is a pure villain or hero in this game. The boss battle with their parents is a particular highlight, as it feels like a real, raw argument between people who love each other but can’t always accept the ways others change and grow. It might hit a little close to home for some players. Aside from the mech suits, of course.

In many ways Dosa Divas is a careful balancing act. It’s a roleplaying game that shrinks down an epic quest, and a raw and personal story that isn’t afraid to get silly or tackle larger themes. The most impressive part of the game is that it manages to be all of those things without feeling bloated or unwieldy. It takes just as much time as it needs to — which is a good thing, because now I have lots of cooking to do.

_{Dosa Divas is available now on the PC, Switch, and PS5.}

Xbox’s bold plan for the future sounds nearly impossible

2026-07-06T20:17:59-04:00

It’s another bad week for the video game industry. Microsoft outlined a series of layoffs on Monday that Xbox CEO Asha Sharma described as “the most significant restructure in Xbox history.” But buried in Sharma’s memo was a curiously optimistic statement: “I want Xbox to be one of the few companies that entertains more than a billion people each day and gives everyone the opportunity to create and connect,” she wrote.

Xbox has been a shambling mess after Microsoft spent billions of dollars with little to show for it, and now it aims to reach a much bigger audience with a much smaller team, amid one of the most challenging times in the industry’s history. Sharma’s billion-person goal would sound outlandish at the best of times. Right now it sounds nearly impossible.

The job cuts will see Xbox laying off 1,600 employees this summer, with another 1,600 expected over the next year. This is all part of broader restructuring at Microsoft, though the gaming division has been hit particularly hard. Four internal Xbox studios — Double Fine, Compulsion Games, Undead Labs, and Ninja Theory — are also being spun out as independent developers, which is perhaps the one bit of good news. Those studios were acquired over the years primarily to bolster the offerings on Game Pass, Microsoft’s subscription gaming service, but now it seems that the company is moving in a different direction.

What is that direction? Well, it isn’t entirely clear. (Confusing strategies are pretty standard for Xbox of late.) Xbox has been losing a lot of money — Sharma claims that “in a typical year, we lost 64 cents for every dollar we invested” — and now it seems like the goal is to focus entirely on major properties that have a better chance of being blockbuster hits. Sharma says the teams that remain at Microsoft will “focus on higher priority projects.” That means not just those closely associated with the brand, like Halo and Gears of War, but also massively popular franchises under the Xbox umbrella, most notably Minecraft and Candy Crush.

In fact, as part of the most recent restructuring, Helen Chiang — who previously oversaw the Minecraft franchise — has been promoted to a new role as Xbox’s chief operating officer, reporting directly to Sharma. “She will bring our businesses together under one operating model, making sure we make clear investment decisions, learn from our successes and failures, and hold ourselves accountable for results,” Sharma said of Chiang’s upgraded role.

With that focus on bigger projects, some of the changes at Xbox make a certain sense. If your goal is to reach a billion people each day, a game from a quirky studio like Double Fine about a sentient lighthouse probably won’t move the needle in comparison to expanding Minecraft or Candy Crush.

But the reasoning for other cuts is much more opaque. If your goal is to lean into big games, why would you also be “making reductions” at places like Bethesda (Fallout, Elder Scrolls), id (Doom), and, perhaps Xbox’s most prolific studio, Obsidian (Avowed, The Outer Worlds)? It seems more like those teams would need further investment — and at the very least, to not have to spend the next year wondering if they’ll be hit by the next wave of layoffs — to create a major blockbuster at a time when the industry is as volatile and unpredictable as ever.

You only need to look at the sorry state of the live-service space to see how poorly things can go when companies are simply chasing big numbers. The entire industry saw Fortnite become a money-printing cultural phenomenon and hoped to re-create it for themselves, collectively spending billions of dollars in the process. The result was a graveyard of canceled games and studio closures. In 2026, even Fortnite itself is struggling.

This all makes Sharma’s goal of eventually reaching “a billion people each day” seem all the more absurd. It’s not clear what metric she is using to measure that number. It’s extremely unlikely Xbox will reach that in terms of daily players even if you factor in mobile games and an expansion into China and emerging markets like India, which Sharma is planning to do. King says that its lineup of games attracts more than 200 million monthly players, so you’d need quite a few Candy Crush apps to even get close. And that’s assuming that follow-ups will be as successful as the original, which is rarely the case (just ask Niantic). Sharma really wants to continue to push the Xbox brand into Hollywood, so maybe Fallout viewers — Amazon says 100 million people watched the first season — will count toward that goal. But even if you add up games, TV shows, and Game Pass subscribers, 1 billion people a day is a very large number.

So instead of a clear path forward at a time of heightened uncertainty, Xbox has a vague and seemingly unattainable goal in front of it. And it’ll be doing that with a team that is smaller and will continue to shrink. “These changes are about a bigger future for Xbox,” Sharma claims, “not a smaller one.” But it’s hard to see how that’s the case. Xbox was already experiencing an identity crisis heading into these layoffs, and this lack of vision isn’t making things any clearer.