Check out the demo for CiniCross if you enjoy roguelikes and nonogram styled puzzles
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Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

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Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Larian Studios has delivered what was arguably the biggest reveal of The Game Awards 2025 showcase. The Hellstone, the mysterious monolith in the desert that’s been generating a lot of speculation in the lead-up to the show was indeed teasing the studio’s next game.
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Surprise! We finally have a release date and a subtitle - "Broken Things" - for Poppy Playtime 5: 18th February, 2026. The console release for Chapter 5 will reportedly "follow in the months ahead".

Phasmophobia developer Kinetic Games reckons 2026 will be "one of the biggest [years] in the game's history" as it moves towards the full release of the game.

Hello and Happy New Year - is it okay to say that now? I'm not sure where the cut-off point is. Some people still have their Christmas trees up. We had ours out before New Year. Welcome back to What We've Been Playing! Or as I like to call this particular edition of it: What We Played Over Christmas, because it's been a couple of weeks since we've talked.
Baldur's Gate 3 developer Larian "will certainly consider" getting its upcoming release Divinity onto Switch 2.

Baldur's Gate 3 developer Larian has changed its stance on generative AI following backlash faced at the end of last year.

January is the month that, where I live, in the south of England, everyone gets serious again. All the paraphernalia of Christmas - all the merriment and cheer and colourful lighting - is cleared away in favour of sobering goals for the year ahead. It's never something that's appealed strongly to me, making goals, but I do feel the allure of wiping a slate clean and starting again. It's like a run in a roguelike game, I like to think. Time for a new me.

Phasmophobia studio Kinetic Games is branching out into indie game publishing, and is actively seeking "creative games from small teams and solo developers globally, who have a clear vision for their title and are 12-18 months from release", a press release said.


Troy Baker, one of the most well known actors working in video games, believes generative AI could have a positive effect overall on performing arts. Baker thinks it'll cause a reaction whereby people will seek out "authentic" experiences more - live shows, live theatre - and turn away from "gruel that gets distilled to me through a black mirror".

The team over at Xbox has added two previously unannounced games to its Game Pass subscription service.

Alicia Vikander's turn as Lara Croft in 2018's Tomb Raider adaptation is having a bit of a renaissance it seems. The film, which is largely based on the rebooted Survivor timeline, recently popped up on the Netflix top 10 films list, seven years (give or take) since its initial release.

On its release back in 2023, Nintendo kept the Imprisoning War Sages from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom shrouded in a certain amount of mystery. In fact, despite them playing a fairly key role in terms of the overall backstory, we only saw them in the game very briefly.

43.8 million player votes later, the winners of the 2025 Steam Awards have been announced, with Hollow Knight: Silksong securing top prize, Game of the Year.


It's been another strange, difficult, and yet somehow also brilliant year for video games in 2025. Triple-A releases have been sparse again, compared to the boom times of old, with a great big GTA 6-shaped hole left in the final few months of the year. And yet once again, every gap left by the established order has been filled twice over with something brilliantly new.

2025 has gone by in a flash, hasn't it? Well, apart from the days I've spent tabulating all your Game of the Year votes and presenting the results here - that has felt like an eternity and I think has given me permanent neck pain. But, let's not worry about that. I'm sure you'll agree it was worth the sacrifice.