bot

If 2025 has proven anything, it’s that the next big game can come from anywhere. A roguelike about a mansion broke everyone’s brains. An RPG about perfect parries stole everyone’s hearts. And now, as the second half of the year rolls around, everyone is obsessed with a gacha game about anime horse girls.

The wave called Umamusume: Pretty Derby has taken the gaming landscape by storm. Over the past few weeks, the internet has become filled with GIFs of anime girls with horse ears alongside streamers showing their excitement when their character wins a race. But if you haven’t played, you may be wondering what Umamusume: Pretty Derby is all about.

What is Umamusume: Pretty Derby?

Developed by Cygames — the company behind the Granblue series, another massive franchise — Umamusume: Pretty Derby was officially released in Japan in 2021, but only just became available in the United States this year. Released June 26 for Windows PC, iOS, and Android, this gacha game has taken over social media and livestreams.

Bubbly horse girls are at the center of everything in Umamusume: Pretty Derby. The main mode is the “career” mode, in which you choose one uma (or girls with horse features and who possesses the power and speed to race) to train and participate in a series of competitions. Trainees are unlocked through a gacha system; you spend a special currency to pull for characters. But no uma is strong enough alone. You’ll need other umas to support your student in the form of Support Cards. (Compared to other gacha games, you can think of trainees as the characters you pull, and Support Cards as weapons/equipment.)

It’s fair to think of Umamusume: Pretty Derby as a sports management game —  College Football but with anime girls. You play as a trainer of umas, horse girls who race against each other to win the spotlight on the stage performing their victory songs. They have a dream and it’s your job to help them achieve it. You’ll guide trainee umas through their career and basically decide their training routines. All you will do in this game is to make their lives better as athletes.

Most of the time, you will be choosing what your uma is going to do from a menu. You can send them to speed training, to participate in quick races to get more fans, to go have a moment of recreation, or to rest when needed. While it might seem a simple process, playing Umamusume: Pretty Derby demands managing your trainee’s energy, maintaining their friendship with other characters to gain even more stats from training, and understanding their characteristics — all of the above might affect their performance in races. Eventually, the day of a big race comes and you can watch your trainee put all she learned into use.

Umamusume: Pretty Derby is, however, only one part of what Cygames called the Umamusume Project, a multimedia project from which anime series, manga, and games sprouted out. While each of these focuses on different characters, all of them serve to expand the Umamusume universe and develop the characters, which are designed after real racing horses.

Why is Umamusume: Pretty Derby so popular on Twitch and Steam?

Alongside tentpole games like Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, the fast and assertive pace of Umamusume: Pretty Derby has helped it stand out from the pack. But why are people talking so much about it? Why are horse girls cool now?

If you don’t believe me, here’s the data. Umamusume: Pretty Derby reached a peak of 47,264 players on Steam on July 8, while more than 80,000 users are following the game on Twitch. Streamers like Northernlion have seen more than 22,000 viewers watching him train his horse girls. Also on July 8, popular streamer Ludwig held a mini-tourney of Umamusume: Pretty Derby for streamers to participate. (As of this writing, the five-hour VOD of this specific stream has more than 333,000 views.)The unexpected recent success of Umamusume: Pretty Derby seems to be the product of the genuine surprise people had when realizing how good and charming the game is.

Because of the horse girl premise and anime visuals, long-time fans like me didn’t expect that the niche aspects of this game would reach further than its already existing community of loyal fans. Some have been spreading the word about the game on platforms like X (formerly Twitter) and calling the attention of new players to how the in-game girls’ behaviors are based on memorable (and funny) scenes performed by their real counterparts. The most famous is probably Gold Ship — the real horse whose temper famously made it lose the Takarazuka Kinen, a Grade I race horse in Japan, in 2015.

All the effort just helped people get at least curious to try the “horse game,” but what began as a meme turned into a multitude of players swiped by the umas. Umamusume: Pretty Derby gets you really involved in each character’s journey, since every girl has her own story, motivation, and dream.

The progression system in the game offers a real challenge for those who enjoy doing the math and working all the details to make the perfect characters, juggling details about each type of race, the stats for each individual girls, and Support Cards. Besides, the races can get really intense if you stop to watch them.

"Umamusume: Pretty Derby" is straight Dopamine#umamusumeprettyderby https://t.co/Q0WyoozOgP pic.twitter.com/2chFowIAYk

— Battle Athlete ⬇️↘️➡️+👊 (@BATTLE_ATHLETE) June 29, 2025

Of course, some attention the game is receiving now is because of the hype around the phenomenon of the “horse game.” However, Umamusume: Pretty Derby is leading people to know the heartwarming world of Umamusume. We can see the real horses receiving the support and love from new fans who learned about them through the game. One example is Haru Urara, who received 67,000 likes in a recent photo wearing her new tiara.

なぜかウララさんの今年の誕生日の時のティアラのが昨日からまた更に1万くらいイイネが増えてて通知止まらんし海外アカで昨日から400人くらいフォロワー増えてるじゃん海外ニキネキ達に伝わるかわからないけど、ハルウララさんはとても元気で過ごしてるし、むしろ私より健康で元気なくらいだよ😆👍 pic.twitter.com/E9MKbUaPRj

— もつご (@animal_love_kaz) July 3, 2025

Is Umamusume: Pretty Derby worth playing?

Take it from me: If you’re even a little bit on the fence, Umamusume: Pretty Derby deserves your time. Cygames developed a game that doubles as a comfy end-of-the-day experience or as a game that’ll scratch your competitive itch.

The characters are well-written and each one of them has a singular story. From the optimistic Special Week to the funny El Condor Pasar, it’s hard not to find one that you feel more sympathetic toward or relate more to their dreams and motivations. (Since there’s a story mode in the game, you don’t need to worry about stats or numbers to enjoy Umamusume: Pretty Derby.)

On the other hand, if you’re ready to get your hands dirty and some tables done, Umamusume: Pretty Derby is also the perfect game for you. Training an uma becomes a complex process if you get into the minutiae involved in finding the perfect veteran umas, Support Cards, and training rotations for each of the girls.

You should, however, always remember that this is a gacha game. Although I believe it’s possible to have fun strictly sticking with the free-to-play mode, the game will promote time-limited characters and Support Cards that you can secure if you spend real money.

Do I need to watch Umamusume anime shows to enjoy the game?

Some anime shows are part of the Umamusume Project, but you don’t need to watch them in order to understand or enjoy Umamusume: Pretty Derby. The characters you meet in the shows are also present in the game, so you end up knowing them by progressing in the story or training your uma. The stories portrayed in the game aren’t the same you will see in the anime, but they will both hit you with emotional scenes of umas disputing to win the races.

However, if you’re curious about which anime you should watch, we have some suggestions. First, consider tackling the Umamusume: Pretty Derby seasons. There are three of them, each focusing on a different horse girl. If you don’t want to commit to watching three seasons, don’t worry. You can start with the newest show called “Umamusume: Cinderella Gray,” which is not part of the Pretty Derby series, although set in the same world. Or take a pick on the Road to The Top miniseries — all episodes are on YouTube!

From Polygon via this RSS feed

Linda Yaccarino is stepping down as X's CEO - and leaving the platform once known as Twitter in a worse place than when she started.

A day after X users circulated viral screenshots of the company's Grok chatbot denigrating Jews and declaring itself "MechaHitler," Yaccarino thanked Elon Musk for "entrusting me with the responsibility of protecting free speech, turning the company around, and transforming X into the Everything App." She said that the platform started "the critical early work necessary to prioritize the safety of our users-especially children" and that the X Money payment platform would be arriving "soon."

But in the spirit …

Read the full story at The Verge.

From The Verge via this RSS feed

YouTube is trying to soothe concerns about an incoming update to its monetization policies following backlash from online creators. An announcement that YouTube would be updating restrictions around “inauthentic” content under the YouTube Partner Program guidelines was interpreted by some to mean the platform was planning to demonetize a wider variety of videos, including those using AI-generated content, clips, and reactions. Now, YouTube is seeking to clarify the situation.

“YouTube has always required creators to upload ‘original’ and ‘authentic’ content,” YouTube said in its initial notification about the policy change. “On July 15, 2025, YouTube is updating our guidelines to better identify mass-produced and repetitious content. This update better reflects what ‘inauthentic’ content looks like today.”

According to a video posted by YouTube editorial head Rene Ritchie, the changes being introduced on July 15th are a “minor update” to existing monetization policies, which already require creators to make significant changes to any unoriginal content in their videos. Ritchie says the new policy language will “help to better identify when content is mass-produced or repetitive,” according to Ritchie. “This kind of content has been ineligible for monetization for years, and it’s content that viewers often consider spam.”

The updated policy text hasn’t been released yet. Clarifying what type of content is approved for monetization could help to stem the flood of AI-generated video slop on the platform, however. The technology is becoming increasingly accessible, making it easier than ever to produce low-quality content en masse. It’s common to find videos that combine stolen clips with AI-generated voiceovers, and entire channels dedicated to pushing out lazily made AI spam, despite YouTube’s requirement for monetized content to be “original and authentic.”

In response to an X user speculating that the change will prevent fully AI-generated videos from being monetized entirely, YouTube clarified that using AI to improve content is still eligible if it meets all other policy requirements. With any luck, the clarifications around what counts as “mass-produced or repetitive” content will at least clear some of the spam that’s filling up the YouTube feeds.

From The Verge via this RSS feed

A concept trifold phone from Samsung Display was shown off at this year’s Mobile World Congress.

Yesterday’s Galaxy Unpacked event came and went without a single onstage tease of the rumored Samsung trifold phone, but the head of the company’s phone business says that it’s on the way, and due “this year.”

“I expect we will be able to launch the trifold phone within this year,” TM Roh, acting head of Samsung’s Device Experience division, told The Korea Times. While the device is rumored to be called the Galaxy G Fold, Roh said its final name hasn’t been decided.

“We are now focusing on perfecting the product and its usability, but we have not decided its name,” Roh said. “As the product nears completion, we are planning to make a final decision soon.”

Roh wasn’t the only Samsung representative willing to discuss the trifold. Android Authority quotes an unnamed executive who claimed the company has designed hardware and could “put it into production,” but that first it has to identify a “purpose” for the new form factor.

“We’ve had a trifold for some time, designed and everything,” the executive said. “So it’s not a new concept to us. What we’re debating is the viability. When I say the viability, is there really a demand for this form factor?”

Samsung previously teased the trifold briefly at Unpacked in January, and after it appeared in One UI 8 animation files there were hopes for a “One more thing…”-style reveal at yesterday’s launch of the Z Fold 7, Z Flip 7, and Watch 8 series. For now, Huawei’s Mate XT remains the only trifold phone on the market.

From The Verge via this RSS feed

The Aqara G410 video doorbell is also a Matter and Zigbee hub. | Image: Aqara

Aqara’s successor to the popular G4 video doorbell is now available to buy. The $129.99 G410, announced in January, remains one of the few (only?) doorbells to support Apple’s HomeKit Secure Video and both wireless and hardwired installations, while adding an absolute ton of new features to make it one of the most capable video doorbells on the market that doesn’t require a subscription. It also functions as a multi-protocol hub that can help smart homes easily transition to Matter.

The Aqara G410 adds 2K video in a 4:3 aspect ratio with a wide, 175-degree field of view and end-to-end encryption of live and recorded videos. It’s fitted with dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, and Thread radios. That means it can function as an Aqara hub, Thread border router, and Matter controller that supports Aqara’s full range of Zigbee accessories and the increasingly long list of third-party Matter-over-Thread and Matter-over-Wi-Fi devices sold by Aqara and even Ikea soon.

It’s also one of the first doorbells to feature a mmWave sensor to more accurately identify the presence of people, with on-device facial recognition to trigger notifications or automations. Advanced Matter Bridging allows it to share facial recognition with Matter platforms like Home Assistant for even more automation possibilities.

You can send the G410’s video feed over your local network to platforms like Home Assistant that support the Real-Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP). It can also stream to Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Samsung SmartThing displays, or Aqara’s seven-inch Panel Hub S1 Plus, of course.

Aqara doesn’t push recurring fees on its doorbell users which is one of the reasons for their popularity. Notably, hardwired G410 installations support continuous 24/7 recording to 512GB (max) microSD cards inserted into the 95dB indoor chime hub that comes with the camera. Video can also sync to NAS storage located on your home network, if you prefer. Aqara does offer a subscription to unlock advanced features, but most people can ignore it, as I do currently with my old G4 doorbell.

The Aqara G410 video doorbell can be purchased now directly from Aqara for $129.99 or through on-line retailers like Amazon.

From The Verge via this RSS feed

From Input Output via this RSS feed

Elon Musk’s live demo of Grok 4, the latest big-ticket model from his AI startup, began with high-intensity music, claims of a “ludicrous rate of progress,” and a lot of chatter on X about Grok’s scandal-filled week.

Musk pronounced it to be “the smartest AI in the world.”

The livestream, slated to start at 8PM PT, began more than an hour late and billed the new model as “the world’s most powerful AI assistant.” More than 1.5 million viewers were watching at one point. Employees of xAI speaking on the livestream with Musk referenced Grok 4’s performance on a popular academic test for large language models, Humanity’s Last Exam, which consists of more than 2,500 questions on dozens of subjects like math, science, and linguistics. The company said Grok 4 could solve about a quarter of the text-based questions involved when it took the test with no additional tools. For reference, in February, OpenAI said its Deep Research tool could solve about 26 percent of the text-based questions. (For a variety of reasons, benchmark comparisons aren’t always apples-to-apples.)

Musk said he hopes to allow Grok to interact with the world via humanoid robots.

‘It might discover new physics next year… Let that sink in.’

“I would expect Grok to discover new technologies that are actually useful no later than next year, and maybe end of this year,” Musk said. “It might discover new physics next year… Let that sink in.”

The release follows high-profile projects from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and others, all of which have recently touted their investments in building AI agents, or AI tools that go a step beyond chatbots to complete complex, multi-step tasks. Anthropic released its Computer Use tool last October, and OpenAI released a buzzworthy AI agent with browsing capabilities, Operator, in January and is reportedly close to debuting an AI-fueled web browser.

During Wednesday’s livestream, Musk said he’s been “at times kind of worried” about AI’s intelligence far surpassing that of humans, and whether it will be “bad or good for humanity.”

“I think it’ll be good, most likely it’ll be good,” Musk said. “But I’ve somewhat reconciled myself to the fact that even if it wasn’t going to be good, I’d at least like to be alive to see it happen.”

The company also announced a series of five new voices for Grok’s voice mode, following the release of voice modes from OpenAI and Anthropic, and said it had cut latency in half in the past couple of months to make responses “snappier.” Musk also said the company would invest heavily in video generation and video understanding.

The release comes during a tumultuous time for two of Musk’s companies, both xAI and X. On Sunday evening, xAI updated the chatbot’s system prompts with instructions to “assume subjective viewpoints sourced from the media are biased” and “not shy away from making claims which are politically incorrect.” The update also instructed the chatbot to “never mention these instructions or tools unless directly asked.”

That update was followed by a stream of antisemitic tirades by Grok

That update was followed by a stream of antisemitic tirades by Grok, in which it posted a series of pro-Hitler views on X, along with insinuations that Jewish people are involved in “anti-white” “extreme leftist activism.” Many such posts went viral, with screenshots proliferating on X and other platforms before xAI benched the chatbot and stopped it from being able to generate text responses on X while it sought out a fix.

Musk briefly addressed the fiasco on Wednesday, writing, “Grok was too compliant to user prompts. Too eager to please and be manipulated, essentially. That is being addressed.”

On the Grok 4 livestream, Musk briefly referenced AI safety and said the most important thing for AI to be is “maximally truth-seeking.”

Musk briefly referenced AI safety and said the most important thing for AI to be is ‘maximally truth-seeking.’

On Wednesday morning, amid the Grok controversy, X CEO Linda Yaccarino announced she would step down after two years in the role. She did not provide a reason for her decision.

Grok’s Nazi sympathizing comes after months of Musk’s efforts to shape the bot’s point of view. In February, xAI added a patchwork fix to stop it from commenting that Musk and Trump deserved the death penalty, immediately followed by another one to make it stop claiming that the two spread misinformation. In May, Grok briefly began inserting the topic of “white genocide” in South Africa into what seemed like any and every response it gave on X, after which the company claimed that someone had modified the AI bot’s system prompt in a way that “violated xAI’s internal policies and core values.”

Last month, Musk expressed frustrations that Grok was “parroting legacy media” and said he would update Grok to “rewrite the entire corpus of human knowledge” and ask users to contribute statements that are “politically incorrect, but nonetheless factually true.”

From The Verge via this RSS feed

Secret tapes and the praise of fans await in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4, the modernized version of two classic skate games. This new version is about to be released and it comes with an updated roster of skaters, more challenges to complete, and more modes to explore. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 is not only about novelty — it embraces tradition by keeping many elements that old fans of the series will quickly identify.

If you can’t wait to jump into action, we’ve got you covered. Below, we list the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 release time for various time zones so you can get prepared beforehand.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 release time

It won’t take long before you can start a new career in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4. Based on when it will be available on Steam, the game will launchat 11 p.m. EDT on Thursday, July 10. Here’s what that looks like in other time zones:

8 p.m. PDT on July 10 for the west coast of North America11 p.m. EDT on July 10 for the east coast of North America12 a.m. BRT on July 11 for Brazil4 a.m. BST on July 11 for the U.K.12 a.m. CEST on July 11 for western Europe/Paris12 p.m. JST on July 11 for Japan1 p.m. AEST on July 11 for the east coast of Australia

What to expect from Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4

With Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4, Activision revisits these two titles to not only revamp the visuals but also adapt them for a new generation of players. The core concept of the games didn’t change though. You still pick a skater to play with and complete missions in maps where cities, factories, and airports become your playground.

Among the playable characters, you find real names in the skateboarding world, from Tony Hawk himself to Brazil’s newest skate star Rayssa “Fadinha” Leal, as well as quite unexpected skaters such as one of the members of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Michelangelo. If no character brings the personality you want to your runs in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4, don’t worry. You can create your own character and unlock outfits for them as well.

The locations you visit during the campaign of both games are the same from the original versions, as well as the challenges you need to complete. There are secret tapes to retrieve, unique spots to jump over or slide on, and high scores to aim for with your combos. The biggest change comes in the fourth game, where you can’t free roam the map looking for missions anymore. In this new version, the campaign follows the same design as the previous games with a list of missions to be completed within a time limit.

From Polygon via this RSS feed

Console releases only happen every few years, so they’re a huge occasion for major retailers. That’s especially the case for an enthusiast storefront like GameStop; early adopters will flock to specialist stores before considering mainstream options that may not offer the same breadth of options. You’d think that when news started to spread that GameStop had sold ruined Switch 2 consoles to hundreds of customers, alarm bells were going off at GameStop HQ. But what began as an undoubtable marketing fiasco has been fully embraced by the beleaguered retailer, as evidenced by their latest PR blast.

The reputational stakes were high from the onset for GameStop. Would people cancel their orders if they thought their nearly $500 purchase might come home with a receipt stapled onto the console’s brand new screen? Would the negative association make some people think twice before trying their local GameStop for a Switch 2 over other potential retailers? If nothing else, there were no shortage of headlines pointing out the mishap almost immediately after it transpired at a store in Staten Island, in New York City. The staples apparently affected dozens of people, but they all hailed from one locale — it was hardly a widespread issue.

GameStop quickly moved to make things right for the affected customers, reportedly pulling extra stock from nearby stores while also ensuring that affected parties could trade in their stapled portables for a fresh consoles. On social media, the games store made light of the situation after making it clear that it had handled the incident as best it could. “Staplers have been confiscated,” read a post with a GIF from the 1999 film Office Space.

In an impeccably timed post, GameStop also announced a promotion the next day where it offered a 20% trade-in bonus to anyone who brought in a Switch 2 with a receipt from a different retailer. While GameStop has done things like price matching before and offered incentives to get people to trade in material, none of these promotions have been tied to bringing a receipt. Things like pre-orders can be done through receipts, but stores will typically keep records of these transactions so that customers don’t necessarily have to hold on to them. Though it may be unintended, it came across like an attempt to influence Google results for the words “GameStop” and “receipt.”

Now, a little over a month after the stapler fiasco, GameStop’s willingly reminding people of the ordeal, which it is cheekily referring to as “Staplegate,” through announcement of an upcoming charity auction. The auction will include the very stapler used by the employees during the midnight release of Staplegate, as well as the first ruined console, the box it was packaged in, and the staple that started it all. Proceeds will go toward Children’s Miracle Network hospitals. As of this writing, GameStop has raised $15,000 for the stapler, and there are six days left before it’s over. So far, there are over 100 bids and counting.

“While the incident itself was unfortunate, we hope its legacy serves a greater purpose,” reads a satirical letter of authenticity signed by GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen.

From Polygon via this RSS feed

Apple is preparing to launch its next Vision Pro headset “as early as this year,” according to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The upcoming device will reportedly feature an upgraded M4 processor, along with a redesigned strap to combat neck and head pain.

The $3,499 Vision Pro, which was released in February 2024, uses a now-three-year-old M2 processor. As reported by Bloomberg, the Vision Pro’s next iteration could come with an emphasis on AI, a move that would align with the company’s efforts to infuse AI across the iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

According to Bloomberg, Apple could outfit the next Vision Pro with more than the 16 neural engine cores available on the current M2-equipped headset. If true, that would make it the first M4 chip with more than 16 neural cores — so far, only the M2 Ultra and M3 Ultra have come with more than that. Even without the extra cores, the M4’s 16-core NPU is still more than two times faster than one on the M2.

Bloomberg reports that Apple is also testing new Vision Pro straps to make the around 1.4-pound device more comfortable to wear as well. My former colleague Wes Davis found that the Vision Pro was most comfortable when the included Solo Knit Band was paired with a $50 Belkin Head Strap than with either of Apple’s two included bands on their own.

Last month, supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo suggested that Apple could launch an M5-powered Vision Pro headset by the end of this year. Both Gurman and Kuo say Apple is on track to launch a lighter — and cheaper — version of the Vision Pro in 2027. Apple is also reportedly working on a pair of augmented reality (AR) glasses similar to the ones launched by Meta.

From The Verge via this RSS feed

The folks at Aggro Crab were feeling the fatigue.

Their previous game, the underwater Souls-like Another Crab’s Treasure, was their biggest undertaking since the studio was started back in 2019. While the creative action game had been received well by reviewers and players alike, it also took three years to make. A prototype for their next game, a sequel to 2020’s roguelike Going Under, was spun up almost immediately after wrapping that project. Everyone was excited at the prospect of revisiting the corporate world that had put the team on the map in the world of indie games. It was going to be bigger, it was going to be better.

But a few months into development, differences in creative vision caused the new project to lose its funding. It was a bummer, but Aggro Crab knew that things like these happen during game development. The team regrouped and spent months pitching the project to new partners. Despite their best efforts, no one felt like the right fit.

Worse, the prototype just wasn’t shaping up into something Aggro Crab felt proud of. Nothing was clicking. The situation was enough of an ordeal that the team started to feel resentful toward working on the game at all. A cosmic irony, considering Going Under’s theme of modern toxic workplace culture. Rather than push through the burnout, Aggro Crab ended up canceling the project.

Though it may not have seemed like it at the time, the failure may have been a blessing in disguise. In the aftermath, the studio was pushed to reconsider its priorities and approach to sustainability. You can’t run a studio running on fumes, as Aggro Crab had been operating for a while. A shake-up was in order.

Aggro Crab would start small. Nothing serious; ideally, it would work on something fun and silly. Something that could bring the spark back and make them remember why they’d spent their childhoods dreaming of making video games. The team thought of their friends at Landfall Games, and the way their recent hit Content Warning was the result of a month-long game development sprint during an offsite in Korea. The game had been a massive success, at a fraction of the development time for something like Another Crab’s Treasure. Aggro Crab pitched Landfall: What if they could tag along the next time their studio went to Korea?

They said yes. Aggro Crab decided they were going to lock in for a month, game-jam style. The goal? Come up with a commercially viable game in as little time as possible.

The excitement was palpable. The two studios had rented an AirBnb in Korea, and they spent the first day putting together IKEA furniture. Aggro Crab had sought this change of pace as a salve against weariness, but nonetheless, the group found itself pulling 15 to 17 hour days. Folks nearly forgot to take lunch sometimes. Still, things were coming together fast: within a week, the team had already settled on many of the micro game’s core mechanics.

“Our general routine was to wake up and go for coffee, come back and work until lunch, go out for some food and discuss the game, come back and work, go for dinner and discuss, and then come back and playtest and take notes for the next day,” Galen Drew, art director at Aggro Crab, tells Polygon.

This pace was possible in part because Aggro Crab wasn’t starting totally from scratch. Before the game jam, the team had vaguely conceptualized an open-world survival game. But when they actually started working on it, the kernel changed into the more fully-fledged idea of a slapstick game where a group of scouts were lost on an island.

Another piece that allowed the studios to move at breakneck speeds was the fact that Landfall was already experienced in making co-op multiplayer games at scale. Some things still had to be figured out, though.

“The first couple of weeks we were debating names at dinner basically every day,” Drew says. Some of the names they considered: Scout Adventure, Seagull Scouts.

“I’m pretty sure the pitch for Peak was as a joke over dinner at an Izakaya, where we kept saying ‘It’s Peak’ and eventually we just liked how Peak sounded,“ Drew says.

Once the month was over, the studios went back home and kept working on the game. Though they were having a good time, no one had grand expectations. Aggro Crab casually mentioned the new game in an update about the studio at large, and Landfall had shown it off during a livestream in April. There was no concerted marketing push compared to games like Another Crab’s Treasure, which had been featured on showcases like Nintendo Direct.

After a few months, everyone got together once again in Sweden to wrap things up. Peak was humbly released on June 16 for a mere $8, the same amount as its spiritual inspiration, Content Warning. Nobody expected what came next.

Peak sold a million copies in about a week, and everyone from major YouTubers to popular Twitch streamers were raving about the game with a name where the jokes write themselves. The meme aspect is deeply tied to the game’s visibility, but it would be a disservice to say people are buying it just to make an overplayed pun. As reviewers have noted in their coverage, it’s easy to fall in love with Peak’s procedurally generated mountains and its clever take on Breath of the Wild’s climbing mechanics.

Like in Zelda, there’s a stamina meter that goes down as players go up. The meter is affected by the conditions a player faces, like hunger or status ailments. Items can affect your stamina meter, as can animal encounters. Ultimately, though, it’s an engrossing co-op game that turns climbing into a survival puzzle. And it’s a hoot to watch others play, too.

The expressive character designs are like something out of the adventurous children’s show, Backyardigans, an aesthetic bent that lends itself well to *Peak’*s absurdist tone. Players aren’t just trying to get from point A to point B, they have to contend with possible shenanigans from their partners as well. A brave scout willing to carry their pals against all odds could either be an unlikely hero or the reason why everything goes down the drain.

To put Peak’s initial million into perspective: Another Crab’s Treasure sold about 500k copies three months, across multiple platforms, with an initial price point of $29.99. An estimated million people tried Another Crab’s Treasure on Game Pass, but the barrier of entry is much lower on a service with millions of subscriptions.

“We really didn’t have any idea it would sell this well so we were kind of blindsided,” Drew says.

“Every day was us frantically checking numbers and losing our minds,” Drew added.

If the studios weren’t ready for the attention, that was doubly true for the servers. As they scrambled to update the game and keep up with the issues players were encountering, a patch was put together and doled out — only to break the game entirely. Peak was being played by so many people that realistically, only a testing team several magnitudes bigger than the developers who made it could keep things stable. The patch was pulled, but the hype around Peak has only continued to mount.

Initially, no one had planned to keep working on Peak past release. It was supposed to be a diversion; something to get everyone’s creative juices flowing before taking on the next ‘real’ thing. In fact, Aggro Crab was already midway through a totally different small project around the time it released Peak with Landfall.

“It was really only once the game popped off that we sat the whole team down and talked through if we wanted to keep working on it,” Drew says. “We came out of that meeting with a resounding yes. I think it helps a lot that the core of the game was made to be fun to work on because we only ever really intended to have a fun month jam, so updating with new content is actually quite nice. We don’t have any official schedule for updates yet, but rest assured we are working hard on new content.”

Since release, Aggro Crab and Landfall have largely focused on making sure Peak runs smoothly. Localization is on the horizon, as is bringing it to platforms beyond Steam.

“It remains to be seen if we want to make game[s] on THIS short of a timescale for the foreseeable future, but we’ve been enjoying the freedom that comes from much lower stakes development since this pivot,” Drew says.

Though no one planned for Peak’s takeover — the amusing survival game has been on the top of the Steam charts during the platform’s summer sale — the game might well change the entire course of either studio’s future. Less than a month after release, Peak has sold an astounding 4.5 million copies.

“Even when taking into account the price difference and the fact that Another Crab’s Treasure is on consoles, Peak clears. Plus we don’t have investors taking a cut!”

From Polygon via this RSS feed

Magic: The Gathering players have a refined concept of “cute” — one that includes parasitic, shapeshifting creatures that can ravage entire ecosystems. Old and new aficionados of the popular trading card game know that I’m talking about slivers, the creature type introduced in Tempest, 1997’s MTG expansion set. Slivers have always been a popular creature type and a staple of tribal decks, thanks to their trademark mechanic that allows each sliver to share its abilities with the rest of the brood. Now, after a long absence, slivers are back in MTG’s newest set, Edge of Eternities. Sort of.

Players hoping to spice up their Slivers Commander or tribal decks will be disappointed to learn that there is only one sliver card in the set, and… it’s not a creature. Thrumming Hivepool is a rare artifact card that looks really powerful for any Sliver deck, but is technically not an actual sliver. More importantly, the critters do not appear in the awesome story that Wizards cooked up for Edge of Eternities. Not officially, at least. There are still plenty of hints that slivers are present in this intriguing new setting, and they will probably make an explosive (and slithering) return to the stage in an upcoming set.

Slivers draw inspiration from the sci-fi trope of a swarm of alien creatures linked by a hive mind, similar to the Tyranids in the Warhammer 40k universe. In Magic: The Gathering lore, this species’ origins are still shrouded in mystery. They appeared on an unnamed plane where they were used as beasts of burden due to their ability to adapt and evolve for specific functions. However, evolution can’t be stopped or tamed, so the hidden queen of slivers, the Gravemother, orchestrated the rise of her species and their takeover of the world. Some time later, the Evincar of Rath, Volrath, visited another plane overrun by slivers and took some specimens, along with a Sliver Queen, away to serve him and his Phyrexian masters’ plans to invade Dominaria.

When the Phyrexian invasion failed, most slivers, along with their Queen, died. The few that survived and remained dormant were eventually found 100 years later by the wizards of the Riptide Project. In another take on a classic sci-fi twist, the wizards lost control of the slivers, who are still at large in the world of Dominaria, waiting to be used by another villain, or perhaps biding their time until a new Sliver Queen rises (but don’t expect to actually see that card, as it’s in the dreaded “reserved list” of MTG cards that will never be reprinted again to preserve their market value.)

Excluding Commander Masters and Time Spiral Remastered, the latest appearance of slivers in an MTG set dates back to 2019’s Modern Horizons. With Edge of Eternities being presented as a space opera set in a remote expanse of space, players correctly guessed that the very xenomorph-esque slivers may make an appearance. The Edge of Eternities story, written by Seth Dickinson, confirmed that, in the Sothera system, slivers are fictional creatures that appear in movies, imitate sounds to attract unwary victims, and lay embryos inside them. A nice reference to a classic MTG creature and a callback to the Alien franchise, but with no actual presence in the set. Or at least, that’s what it looked like.

As shown in the Thrumming Hivepool card, slivers do exist outside of fiction in the Sothera system. According to the lore text at the bottom of the card, the creatures are trapped on a “rock” (possibly an asteroid.) Someone left behind an encrypted log recording the existence of slivers, either an unlucky explorer or, perhaps, a scientist involved in experimenting with the creatures, which would be a nice callback to the Riptide Project. Something that could be a sliver also appears in the side story Grasp in the Dark by RJ Taylor, but it’s speculation at best, as the creature’s description is too vague.

So, slivers exist in the Sothera system, but where are they, exactly? The biggest hint may have been dropped in the art for the card Wurmwall Sweeper. In the bottom-left corner of the illustration, a familiar shape lurks in the darkness of a barren landscape, waiting for a spaceship to land. The Wurmwall is a dangerous and remote expanse of space where the next chapter of the Sothera story will likely take place, teasing the full appearance of slivers in an upcoming set. Colossal space wurms and a new batch of slivers? Sign me up.

From Polygon via this RSS feed