Obviously, those people who post things on Insta like “It’s Fri-yay!” shouldn’t be allowed near technology of any sort, but those posts do signal the arrival of the weekend and some lovely downtime for many of us, so here’s a suggestion of how to waste some of it this week.

Super Battle Golf from developer Brimstone and publisher Oro Interactive is out now on Steam, and it’s less “gentle afternoon on the green” and more “eight idiots firing orbital lasers at each other while screaming in voice chat”.

If that sounds familiar, it should. We covered Super Battle Golf back when it was announced, and even then, it was clear this thing was being engineered in a lab to get streamers over-excited. Since then, it’s racked up over 100,000 wishlists in just four weeks, powered by clips of “influencers” absolutely losing control of situations that went wrong in seconds. That energy carries straight through to launch.

At its core, Super Battle Golf is golf in the loosest possible sense. Up to eight players all take their shots at the same time, racing toward the hole while actively trying to ruin each other’s lives. Courses are packed with hazards like sand traps, water, vegetation, and mines, but the real danger is the other players – isn’t it always?. You’re not just lining up your swing; you’re watching for incoming golf carts, sniper shots, and whatever unholy power-up just came off cooldown for that fool you are playing with.

And yes, golf carts matter here. They’re drivable. They can carry everyone. They can be weaponised.

Matches are scored on speed, disruption, and survival, which neatly explains why “playing well” often means doing something deeply unfair. Smack opponents with your ball. Ram them into a lake. Fire an orbital laser from the other side of the map. What would Tiger Woods do?

If you somehow get tired of tormenting friends, there’s also a point-based solo mode, though even that feels like training for future multiplayer crimes. Across 27 courses, Super Battle Golf constantly escalates, adding just enough chaos to keep things unpredictable without tipping into total noise.

A special mention has to go to the cosmetics. This is a game that lets you swing a chicken leg, launch a billiard ball, and wear a giraffe head tall enough to be a navigational hazard.

At $7.99 with a 20% launch discount, Super Battle Golf isn’t asking for much but it’s obviously one of those games that is better with friends rather than creepy internet randos.

The post Something for the weekend – Super Battle Golf arrives on Steam appeared first on The Escapist.

We probably don’t cover enough virtual reality here on the Escapist, despite covering plenty of games at the niche end of the spectrum. Maybe it’s because anything multiplayer is just kids running around yelling numbers at you and genuinely being annoying.

I’ve been into my VR since I had an Oculus Rift Dev kit to play Elite Dangerous on, and have had some amazing experiences within VR – they just don’t tend to be the ones Meta would like to push you towards. Maybe it will change when (if) the Steam Frame ever comes out.

Which is why, until now, I was probably unaware of the breakout VR hit, Cave Crave, which is now adding to its 2025 content with a pinpoint accurate virtualisation of Tham Luang cave, or, where you are more likely to know it as where that kid’s soccer team got trapped, and subsequently rescued from, back in 2018.

There was a right old hoo-hah back in the day. Musk got involved and was ultimately useless (who woulda thought?), but ultimately all the boys survived, although two rescue divers lost their lives in the operation.

Anyway, after virtualising Nutty Putty in 2025 with Brandon Kowallis on board the VR recreation team, 3R Games has invited two experts to collaborate on this project: Vern Unsworth, an experienced cave diver directly involved in the 2018 rescue effort, and Roo Walters, a 3D cave-scanning specialist.

“Our goal remains the same,” says 3R Games CEO Piotr Surmacz. “We want to let players experience the scale, atmosphere, and complexity of iconic underground spaces from the inside – without turning real-life events into gameplay.”

The cave will arrive as the second real-life map in Cave Crave’s Tourist Mode, offering a faithful, non-gamified VR recreation. A release date will be announced soon.

The post VR spelunking game Cave Crave is getting the most infamous cave on the planet as its next virtual dive appeared first on The Escapist.

Starsand Island is a cozy farming and life sim built around rebuilding your home, exploring the Moonlit Forest, and forming bonds with island residents. With vehicles, mounts, combat, and seasonal farming systems, it’s natural to ask whether you can experience it with friends.

If you’re searching for Starsand Island multiplayer support,  including co-op or crossplay,  here’s what is currently available, what is confirmed for the future, and what the official roadmap says.

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The Escapist recaps

• Starsand Island is currently a single-player game.
• There is no co-op or crossplay support in the live Early Access build.
• Multiplayer is listed on the official roadmap for June 2026.
• The developer has stated they are exploring multiplayer during Early Access.

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Is Starsand Island multiplayer right now?

No, Starsand Island does not currently support multiplayer.

Both the Steam and Xbox store listings identify the game as single-player, and there is no active co-op mode in the Early Access version. You cannot invite friends, join shared worlds, or visit other players’ islands at this time.

All farming, building, quest progression, and exploration systems are designed for solo play in the current build.

Is co-op coming to Starsand Island?

What’s great is that even though there is no multiplayer right now, co-op is officially planned for a future update.

According to the Early Access roadmap published on Steam, multiplayer gameplay is scheduled for June 2026, with the roadmap specifically mentioning cooperative play with friends and island visits.

Because the game is still in Early Access, this is a development plan rather than a guaranteed release date, so do keep that in mind. 

Will Starsand Island have crossplay?

While the roadmap mentions multiplayer and cooperative island visits, there is no official confirmation that cross-platform play will be supported between Steam and Xbox.

Starsand Island is available on PC (Steam) and Xbox Series X|S, but until multiplayer launches,  and unless crossplay is explicitly confirmed, you should not expect cross-platform support.

Why doesn’t Starsand Island have multiplayer yet?

The developer has stated that Early Access is being used to refine core systems like farming, building, quests, vehicles, and save stability before expanding features.

Recent updates have focused heavily on bug fixes, performance improvements, and save protection systems. Multiplayer is listed as a later-stage addition on the roadmap rather than a launch feature.

When is multiplayer expected to release?

The current roadmap lists multiplayer for June 2026.

That timing comes from the official Early Access development plan. However, roadmap items can shift depending on development progress and player feedback. There is no confirmed release date beyond the roadmap window.

Until that update arrives, Starsand Island remains a single-player experience.

Ask The Escapist

Other Starsand Island pages you may like:

• How to get iron ore
• Navigating the Starsand Island save system is key, and here’s how it works
• The curious case of reverse review bombing on Starsand Island, and have Steam reviews had their day?

The post Does Starsand Island have multiplayer? Here’s what we know appeared first on The Escapist.

This job puts me in contact with a lot of tech I’d probably never ordinarily come across. Most of it adds nothing to my life, but looks cool sitting on my desk or around the house. For example, I have curtains in the lounge that open and close by themselves, and when we have had people around, and they have started moving autonomously, I’ve got looks like it is some kind of witchcraft.

So when a box containing the BenQ ScreenBar Halo 2 arrived, I was very much of the line of thought of “Yeah, this looks like a nice piece of kit, but what’s the actual point?” I was about to be as wrong with a first impression as I have been in all my years doing this for a living.

So, what is the Screenbar Halo 2?

If you were being disingenuous, you could pass off the ScreenBar Halo 2 as nothing more than an expensive desk lamp and be done with it. That would be a terrible mistake.

Firstly, it is a nice-looking “thing” that consists of an aluminium bar around two feet in length with a monitor mount you will have seen the likes of on a webcam. So, place it on your monitor – and mine is on a 49″ curved ultrawide from Innocn with no problems and power it via a USB-C. My monitor actually has a USB-C power out on the back as well, so for me it was simply a case of plugging it in there.

The other part of the setup is a beautifully, and I mean beautifully, crafted space grey aluminium puck with a touch-sensitive screen consisting of seven icons and a BenQ logo. In the center is an information panel that tells you how bright the Halo 2 currently is.

The brightness can either be adjusted by pressing the Auto icon, which will adapt it to your current surroundings, or by rotating the dial on the edge of the puck. This is one of the smoothest actions I can recall. It is just lovely, and sci-fi and cool af.

The puck itself is recharged by USB, so it has no wired connections, and it just worked out of the box with the Halo 2 – no pairing or anything. It was like magic. You can adjust the brightness and the temperature of the light (all white, no RGB, it’s worth pointing out) and set a memory for a setting you find yourself coming back to. In truth, I generally leave it to auto and I just forget it is even there.

To eliminate glare at the source, ScreenBar Halo 2 is engineered with an 8-section reflector, 12 precision lenses, and an 18° cut-off angle which directs light precisely onto your desk and not your eyes. This research-driven design minimizes reflections and glare, reducing unnecessary pupil dilations to deliver lasting visual comfort, even during extended work sessions.

BenQ

Presence detection

I alluded above as to how the ScreenBar Halo 2 has actually changed how I play games and how wrong I was initially and presence detection on the device is a big part of that. The Halo 2 knows when you are there and when you are not, and activates and switches off accordingly.

You set it up from the puck, it takes two seconds, and forget about it. Now, when you leave your desk, after a few seconds the bar turns off, and when you return it lights up your space with its glow.

This has been a real game-changer for me. As I get older and my eyes fail, the glare from a 49″ monitor when working or playing at night, I have no qualms, is hurting my eyes. Since using the Halo 2 for around a month now, I have noticeably had less eyestrain and tired eyes, and I would anecdotally argue I have slept better.

If you stare at screens all day, this is an upgrade that quietly makes late nights less brutal.

A large part of this is down to the presence detection, because, at my core, I am a lazy bastard as well as being forgetful, and if I had to constantly turn the system on and off, I have no doubts it would not be permanently in use as it is. The fact that it is just fire and forget once and just works thereafter means the Screenbar Halo 2 is intrinsically linked to my working space, and it is beautiful.

Lighting options

Somehow, the light beaming down at your screen and desk space doesn’t reflect at all on your monitor. That’s great, but there is also another icon on the puck that, when tapped, fires off a second light I didn’t even realise was there at the back of the Halo 2 that lights the area behind your monitor, providing even more light to the space. You can have that light on with the screen light, on without the screen light or off, just by cycling through three presses on the icon.

Do you need the ScreenBar Halo 2 in your life?

If there is an elephant trying to get in the room, it has a price tag around its leathery neck. In the UK, the Halo 2 costs £149, which, potentially, if you are a fool, is more expensive than the cheap monitor you are currently straining your eyes on.

Don’t be under any illusions that this is just a desk lamp though, it is much more than that. Whereas before at night I may find myself switching my overhead light on – which is a smart bulb and dimmable at that, my space still always felt lit “wrong”. With the Screenbar Halo 2 operating it seems “right”, which is weird and not very technical I know.

Do you need the Halo 2? Well, it’s easy to say obviously not, but you might actually be wrong, as it may change your life as it has mine. I know that sounds dramatic, and I don’t mean it’s changed my outlook in any way – I haven’t found religion because of BenQ and its posh lamp, but it has definitely changed my quality of life as somebody who works all day, every day at a computer. Look, we are all adults here, it’s not cheap, but we work hard to buy nice things when we can. Most of the time, that money is spent on extravagance, but here, there is genuine upside to your peepholes.

The Halo 2 certainly isn’t just useful for working. If you game a lot in a dim, dark room as I do, then I think you will find it will actually quickly become essential to your activity.

A dirty con

As this is a review, I need a complaint to balance it out, beyond prodding at price, but the only thing that annoys me about Halo 2 and its wonderful puck is actually its wonderful puck. Well, more accurately, the surface of the touch screen, which keeps greasy fingermarks like nothing I have ever seen on its gloss coating. Then, of course, because it is touch sensitive, you can’t just wipe the marks off without affecting the light and causing yourself to have a fit as the brightness goes up and down as you try to clean. You can turn the puck off and do it, of course, but the second you turn it back on again, there is another fingerprint on it already.

Maybe I have greasy hands – I don’t think I do particularly, but it also attracts dust. It’s such a small thing about a great product, but it does annoy me because everything else looks so beautiful that to have something in front of my keyboard that looks like a 2 two-year-old has smeared its rusks all over it is a shame.

But that’s a minor gripe that irritates me, and maybe not you. Can I recommend the BenQ ScreenBar Halo 2 – absolutely, unequivocally. If you work with a screen for the majority of your time, it will absolutely benefit you.

Yes, you might be able to get cheap monitor bar knockoffs from Amazon or Ali for a fraction of the price, and depending on your use case, you may get some of the benefits. That’s for you to decide, but personally I wouldn’t look any further than the Halo 2 going forward.

Quick Specs & Core Tech

Lighting & Performance

• Dual-colour LED with stepless brightness control from 0–100%.

Colour temperature range: 2700 K to 6500 K — warm to cool lighting for different moods/workflow.

Center illuminance ~1000 lux at 50 cm — plenty of punch for desk tasks.

Color Fidelity Index Rf ≥ 96 up front, giving accurate colour tone reproduction.

Zero-glare asymmetric lighting to cut reflection on the screen.

Design & Build

• Sleek aluminium + PC/ABS construction feels premium and robust.

New tri-zone backlight expands ambient coverage by a claimed ~423% vs first-gen Halo.

Patented clamp fits most monitors: 0.43–6 cm thickness, curved (1000–1800R) or flat.

Front edge designed not to block built-in webcams, with optional webcam mount included.

Controls

• Rechargeable wireless controller puck with numeric touch panel — brightness & colour temp shown on screen.

Auto-on/off based on motion (ultrasonic sensor detects you approach or leave).

Memory for preferred lighting settings.

Power & Fit

• USB-C powered — simple single cable setup.

Works with curved monitors and ultra-thin bezels; doesn’t block webcams or add bulk.

The post The BenQ ScreenBar Halo 2 has added something to my gaming space that I never expected appeared first on The Escapist.

Terrible news reaching us at The Escapist this evening as we hear of the passing of popular retro gaming legend Nick Thorpe, long-time Features Editor of the bastion of the scene, Retro Gamer. Nick was just 38 at the time of his death.

Nick had worked on Retro Gamer for the last decade and was pivotal to its standing and appeal. Retro Gamer is, and remains, one of the mainstream successes of an entire gaming movement, in no small part due to the efforts of Nick.

News of his death was broken by Retro Gamer’s Editor Darran Jones on Bluesky.

This is absolutely heartbreaking news. Nick Thorpe @hkt3030.neocities.org our incredible features editor, sadly passed away yesterday. He was an incredible asset to the magazine and a compassionate and fantastic friend. My thoughts go out to his friends and family. I just can’t believe he’s gone

— RetrogamerDaz (@retrogamerdaz.bsky.social) 2025-12-02T18:22:59.745Z

All at The Escapist will keep Nick and his family and friends in our thoughts this evening and beyond.

The post UK Retro gaming legend Nick Thorpe has passed away appeared first on The Escapist.

ZeniMax Online Studios (ZOS) has responded to community feedback by announcing a sweeping overhaul of Elder Scrolls Online’s (ESO) current class systems.

This was delivered to the EOS community as the Class Identity Refresh. The initiative aims to restore what ZOS is calling “The power fantasy” and the purpose of ESO’s original classes.

The devs are hoping to do this while the game is turning, which is a massive undertaking to address years of feedback on balance, subclass dominance, and the stacking of these issues across years of releases in the long-running MMORPG.

A Community-Driven Shift

Developers reacting to community feedback can be unpredictable. Poorly handled, it can lead to knee-jerk alterations that undermine the aspects of a game players have poured hundreds of hours into.

Change isn’t easy, and can force loyal players to walk away if they aren’t taken seriously or nerf abilities in some way, but the ZOS’s dev team has gone into great detail about ESO classes, and some fans are cautiously optimistic.

“We used to have class identity. That is now gone. I welcome any effort to bring it back,” said one on the EOS message boards.

ZOS’s statement delves into design philosophy, long-term class vision, and what the team calls ESO’s identity framework.

Dragonknight power gap

Most players are bracing for the first major overhaul: Dragonknight. As the inaugural class to receive the refresh, it will likely enjoy a temporary advantage across ESO’s PvE, PvP, and dungeon content until other classes are brought up to code.

The first class to have this boon will feel comparatively stronger, which is a dynamic ZOS is writing cheques to navigate as their release schedule plays out.

The Elder Scrolls release schedule from ZOS reads:

• Dragonknight
• Warden
• Sorcerer
• Templar
• Nightblade
• Necromancer
• Arcanist

Rebuilding “Class Identity”

At the core of the refresh is a return to class identity, a longstanding element of the fantasy genre.

“For example, Nightblades rely on cunning and shadow to stay elusive in battle, striking while the moment is right, while Templars draw on divine energy for more zealous and direct combat,” the developers explain.

Each class is meant to represent a specific power fantasy, something many felt had been diluted as subclassing and hybridisation stacked on character builds with each new release.

The refresh signals a potential shift toward purer, more thematic builds, reducing reliance on subclassing or cross-skill-line combinations to remain viable.

“As it stands, subclassing is objectively stronger than ‘pure’ classing by a large margin for several reasons. This is mostly caused by the vast differences in individual skill line designs,” says ZOS..

It’s a polite way of saying they have some major work ahead to take the game back to pure fantasy tropes and then tweak accordingly as the roster of refreshed classes takes hold.

Reining in Subclass Dominance

One of ZOS’s central goals is preventing subclassing from dominating the existing meta, which has intensified with every new expansion added to the game.

“Our aim isn’t necessarily to nerf, though. While in some instances nerfs may be necessary,” the team notes. “We’ll be using values and specific effects to create more powerful or punchy abilities and passives, but with greater nuances that prevent subclassing from completely dominating the meta.”

Refining a class system without weakening players or stripping away fantasy-RPG flexibility is a vast undertaking.

ESO’s current system allows every possible build within the established boundaries, but some players want to be Conan the Barbarian mixed with Corvo Attano, and others want to be a pure version of Grognak.

Still, there has been more positive feedback from the community than anticipated, with one user summarizing the model response.

“Doing it one at a time is smarter as well, even if it might lead to inconsistency in style/effectiveness/etc, it’ll allow ZOS to see how one singular updated class affects the environment, and properly compensate/fix/etc when they’ll need to. Instead of unleashing hell all at once.”

This approach will take years, not months, to implement. One thing is clear: an incoming meta shift will rise and fall with each class refresh, but it seems to be a path back to established RPG builds.

The post Elder Scrolls Online devs talk Classes Refresh after community feedback appeared first on The Escapist.

From competitive spreadsheeting to office-skill tournaments, everyday tasks are being gamified. Is this playful innovation, cultural burnout — or both?

Maths, math or mathematics, depending on where you are from or how much of a geek you are, is not fun. If you have a maths (math or mathematics) problem to solve, there is generally an underlying bigger world issue at hand – do I have enough money to get the car fixed this month, I quite fancy a long weekend on a beach, can I afford that horse armor? You are never adding up too much money. Even if you have too much money and it has long surpassed common sense (yes, Elon), somebody else adds it up for you.

Of course, you might need to add up other stuff. How many different ways can you spell esport, for example (although never being sure what the correct spelling is, without offending somebody, is actually the fundamental problem)?

Yesterday we covered the world of competitive spreadsheeting – nope, we aren’t talking about spending a couple of hours trying to get Næstved BK out of the Danish Second Division in Football Manager 2026 – this is the nerd-eat-nerd world where you are judged on your Microsoft Excel Conditional Formatting. There is nothing more (I would imagine) gratifying than shouting “Boo-Yah” in the face of your opponent as you watch your rows turn into alternating shades of brown. In your face.

=IF(spelling=”esports”,”correct”,IF(spelling=”e-sports”,”esports_anger”,IF(spelling=”eSports”,”internet_fight”,”total_online_apocalypse”)))

If you know, you know.

But I can only imagine the shame when a single wrong click turns your dignity to #REF!. An existential crisis expressed only in #DIV/0!.

The SUM of all parts

While esports aficionados argue (sometimes with weapons, albeit ones they have bought from the Fortnite store as part of a bundle) whether adding up in a spreadsheet is an esport or not, to most of us, that misses the point. That the finals of the MEWC (Microsoft Excel World Championships) are currently playing out in Vegas, known for its Mike Tyson fights and people biting each other’s faces off in the UFC, in front of big crowds, means the competition is real, and people want to watch the gamification of something so mundane. Call it hell in (a1) cell.

We probably all watch cooking competitions on TV. Who hasn’t wanted to also Boo-Yah in Paul Hollywood’s face when he loves somebody’s gingerbread house against all the odds? Sewing competition? Pottery competitions. Yes, these don’t use a computer, which negates the e part of it, but I also don’t class “Is It Cake?” as a competitive sport with chefs who think they are athletes. Although I do enjoy the despair when somebody cuts into a real suitcase with a knife. It really is the halcyon days of TV.

So, can you gamify anything?

Gaming, especially video gaming, is such a huge part of culture and society; it’s no surprise that execs are trying to create games and competition out of the mundane things in everyday life. If you aren’t into video games but are an accountant, maybe the idea of watching people really good at Excel interests you. Maybe in ten years, you will be able to get loot boxes in Excel that give you the chance to unlock a pro formula to add up all those rolls of 3D printer filament you bought on impulse that time on Black Friday (cough), without doing any of the work yourself.

We are seeing more crossovers even within video games. The success of games like Balatro and CloverPit, which take the addictive qualities of casino games and perfectly blend them with non-traditional gambling mechanics to create multi-million-selling games, has been apparent in 2025. We’re not expecting games with Office-based options to take over anytime soon, although there are niche things like Dragon Tax Return Simulator, where you are tasked with keeping the books for a, er, Dragon already out there, but the point is, you can turn pretty much anything into a game, and the corpo boardroom can apply the formula =IF(player_spend>0, encourage, ignore).

Spare a thought for poor Google Sheets?

If Excel is Valve’s Steam, does that mean Google Sheets is the Epic Games Store? Desperately trying to attract attention by waving free copies of indie games at you every Thursday afternoon? While still a spreadsheet, the fundamental differences between the two mean that anybody who has trained on Sheets is at a huge disadvantage when the Microsoft Office 365 logo appears during loading.

Indeed, some of your formulas could (probably) cause your computer to burst into flames if you tried to cross-pollinate them. Using Sheets to train for the Excel World Championship is like showing up to a sword fight with a wet noodle; collaborative, but still a noodle.

Trying to hone your skills on Google Sheets would be like Mr Miyagi teaching the Karate Kid to wallpaper his kitchen when painting the fence would have been much more useful. No, Excel is where it’s at, so if you have a kid who, against all the odds, is great at maths, maybe you can point them in the direction of the latest professional sport.

At the end of the day, life is just one big spreadsheet. Some people just format it better.

The post Gamifying everyday life – existence is just one big pivot table now appeared first on The Escapist.