The film studio behind Get Out and The Purge is going to make ‘original, horror-themed’ games

Blumhouse, the production studio behind legendary films like Get Out, M3GAN, and Tooth Fairy starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (opens in new tab), is getting into videogames. The company’s new division, Blumhouse Games, will “partner with independent game developers to bring their creative vision to life via original, horror-themed games” (via VG247 (opens in new tab)).

The new games division will focus on “indie budget” titles, which translates to games with a budget under $10 million, in keeping with the “spirit of its film business”. The company has named Zach Wood—who has games like Hohokum, Twisted Metal, and Prey: Mooncrash under his belt—as president, and ex-Sony finance and operations executive Don Sechler as CFO.

Everyone involved has put out statements saying they’re various flavours of “thrilled” and “excited” to be part of the new division, which I’ll spare you. But it is interesting how much the people involved are emphasising the horror theme of their upcoming gaming projects. Alongside Blumhouse’s statement about “original, horror-themed games” I mentioned earlier, Wood mentioned the “unique opportunity for horror and genre in the indie game space” in his own statement. To its credit, Blumhouse seems to have a pretty clear idea of what it wants to do with its new division.

Blumhouse said it’ll focus on “original” games, but that doesn’t mean its own stable of horror properties is off-limits. After all, the studio has made a staggering number of scary films of varying quality over the years. Dare I hope for a videogame version of The Purge? Will the studio perform the obvious slamdunk of putting Oculus (opens in new tab) on the Oculus Rift? Will John Carpenter somehow manage to wangle another paycheque (opens in new tab) from this? We’ll just have to wait and see.


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Intel’s reported 3nm chip deferment hints at a delay to Arrow Lake CPUs

Could Intel’s next-gen Arrow CPU family be delayed to 2025? That’s the latest speculation born of Taiwan. 

More specifically, Digitimes (opens in new tab) (via Techpowerup (opens in new tab)) reckons Intel has pushed out its orders for 3nm wafers from TSMC to the final quarter of of 2024. Those 3nm wafers are supposed to contain the graphics tiles for the future CPUs sporting the Arrow Lake architecture.

Realistically, if TSMC doesn’t start fabbing the 3nm iGPU tiles until the end of 2024, and Arrow Lake depends on those same 3nm GPU tiles, there’s little chance of actual Arrow Lake CPU availability until well into 2025. Meanwhile, Arrow Lake currently appears on Intel’s public roadmaps for 2024, as do 3nm GPU tiles sourced from TSMC.

And so the expectation is now that Arrow Lake is to be delayed until 2025. The catch is that Intel doesn’t necessarily need to source 3nm GPU tiles for Arrow Lake. Could it just use 5nm tiles? Either way, if the 3nm order has indeed been delayed, something has definitely changed compared with Intel’s official roadmap. Which begs the question, why has that 3nm order been pushed out?

Of course, Intel isn’t saying anything about a delay to Arrow Lake. At its most recent earnings call in January, the company doubled down on its commitment to begin manufacturing its first chips using Intel 4 silicon later this year (opens in new tab).

Those early Intel 4 models will be Meteor Lake CPUs, thought to be closely related to Arrow Lake. Indeed, Arrow Lake CPU tiles are set to be produced on essentially the same internal Intel production node as Meteor Lake.

However, where Meteor Lake runs 5nm TSMC silicon for its GPU tile, Arrow Lake has been publicly listed as upgrading that to 3nm. It’s currently unclear which nodes Intel is targeting for each respective generation’s SoC and IO tiles.

Anywho, as things stand there is a potential conflict between Intel’s official stance that Intel 4 and production of retail Meteor Lake chips—be they for desktop or mobile (opens in new tab)—is just around the corner and the idea that somehow Arrow Lake is delayed until 2025.

Intel’s current roadmaps clearly indicate Arrow Lake is a 2024 chip. So, a 2025 launch would definitely constitute a delay. (Image credit: Intel)

Intel certainly has form in this area. It rolled out two generations of 10nm mobile CPUs in Icelake and Tiger Lake before it transitioned its desktop line to 10nm, the node now known as Intel 7.

So, could the same thing be happening with Intel’s 7nm node, branded Intel 4? Could it be proving sufficiently problematic that Intel is forced to limit its roll out to mobile CPUs for an extended period, just as it did with 10nm? Or has it just scaled back its GPU plans for Arrow Lake and put the GPU tile onto 5nm?

That’s possible, but then you’d have to ask what Intel was planning to make on TSMC 3nm that has now been delayed, according to the 3nm delay rumour.

Ultimately, we’ll know when we know, as with any speculative rumour. If that’s what is happening, if Arrow Lake is delayed, Intel isn’t going to advertise the fact until the last possible moment. If it is true, it’s both a pity and a major problem for Intel given its well publicised woes with 10nm.

7nm or Intel 4 was supposed to be the node that got Intel back on track. Indeed, Intel has aggressive plans for follow up 20A and 18A nodes (opens in new tab), after which the company is supposed to be back on top, leading the world in terms of chip production tech.

But if Arrow Lake is indeed pushed out to 2025, all of that comes into question. Hopefully, there’s something missing here and Arrow Lake is indeed still on track for 2024.


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Wordle hint and answer #613: Wednesday, February 22

Take a look at the clue for today’s Wordle (opens in new tab) if you’d like to give your guesses a little direction, find more general help designed to make every day a winner with our general tips, guides, and advice, or skip straight to the good stuff and win Wordle in a flash with the February 22 (613) answer.

Finding the first green on my first go gave me a helpful anchor to base the following guesses on, but I still struggled until my fourth attempt, which left me with four greens… and a grey hole in the middle. Luckily for me, I’d just ruled out the obvious answer, so there was really only one winning possibility left.

Wordle hint

A Wordle hint for Wednesday, February 22

Today’s answer is a comparative word. If one piece of fruit is soft, sweet, and ready to be eaten, but another one is even more so, the latter could be referred to as the _____ of the two.  

Is there a double letter in today’s Wordle? 

Yes, there is a double letter in today’s puzzle. 

Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day 

Playing Wordle well is like achieving a small victory every day—who doesn’t like a well-earned winning streak in a game you enjoy? If you’re new to the daily word game, or just want a refresher, I’m going to share a few quick tips to help set you on the path to success: 

  • You want a balanced mix of unique consonants and vowels in your opening word. 
  • A solid second guess helps to narrow down the pool of letters quickly.
  • The answer could contain letters more than once.

There’s no time pressure beyond making sure it’s done by the end of the day. If you’re struggling to find the answer or a tactical word for your next guess, there’s no harm in coming back to it later on. 

Today’s Wordle answer

(Image credit: Josh Wardle)

What is the Wordle 613 answer?

Time for a Wednesday win. The answer to the February 22 (613) Wordle is RIPER.

Previous answers

The last 10 Wordle answers 

Knowing previous Wordle solutions can be helpful in eliminating current possibilities. It’s unlikely a word will be repeated and you can find inspiration for guesses or starting words that may be eluding you. 

Here are some recent Wordle answers:

  • February 21: RUDDY
  • February 20: SWEAT
  • February 19: KIOSK
  • February 18: AVAIL
  • February 17: CACHE
  • February 16: MAGIC
  • February 15: SALSA
  • February 14: SOUND
  • February 13: USAGE
  • February 12: GIANT

Learn more about Wordle 

Wordle gives you six rows of five boxes each day, and it’s your job to work out which five-letter word is hiding by eliminating or confirming the letters it contains.

Starting with a strong word (opens in new tab) like LEASH—something containing multiple vowels, common consonants, and no repeat letters—is a good place to start. Once you hit Enter, the boxes will show you which letters you’ve got right or wrong. If a box turns ⬛️, it means that letter isn’t in the secret word at all. 🟨 means the letter is in the word, but not in that position. 🟩 means you’ve got the right letter in the right spot.

Your second go should compliment the starting word, using another “good” guess to cover any common letters you missed last time while also trying to avoid any letter you now know for a fact isn’t present in today’s answer.  After that, it’s just a case of using what you’ve learned to narrow your guesses down to the right word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words (so no filling the boxes with EEEEE to see if there’s an E). Don’t forget letters can repeat too (ex: BOOKS). 

If you need any further advice feel free to check out our Wordle tips (opens in new tab), and if you’d like to find out which words have already been used, you can scroll to the relevant section above.

Originally, Wordle was dreamed up by software engineer Josh Wardle (opens in new tab), as a surprise for his partner who loves word games. From there it spread to his family, and finally got released to the public. The word puzzle game has since inspired tons of games like Wordle (opens in new tab), refocusing the daily gimmick around music or math or geography. It wasn’t long before Wordle became so popular it was sold to the New York Times for seven figures (opens in new tab). Surely it’s only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes. 


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After Elden Ring released, The Lords of the Fallen devs realized one of their bosses was ‘nearly identical to Malenia’

2014 action RPG Lords of the Fallen was obviously inspired by FromSoftware games, and so is its upcoming reboot, The Lords of the Fallen (opens in new tab) (a name that will torment Google searchers forever). According to creative director Cezar Virtosu, however, while it might look like they cribbed certain ideas directly from Elden Ring for the new game, they were as surprised as anyone by them.

Development of The Lords of the Fallen began before Elden Ring was revealed, and Virtosu recently told our friends at Edge Magazine (opens in new tab) (via our other friends at GamesRadar (opens in new tab)) that the studio “braced for impact” when details about FromSoftware’s open world RPG started to appear. Sure enough, there was overlap.

“Our breakthrough weapon, the flail, was showcased in the Elden Ring trailer, and that killed us inside,” said Virtosu. “And we saw that one of our bosses was nearly identical to Malenia.”

The director didn’t say whether the studio made any changes to the boss as a result of the similarity, but it’s not as if he’s shy about the FromSoftware influence guiding The Lords of the Fallen—”Miyazaki is our daddy and granddaddy,” he said—so maybe it’ll stick around as an accidental homage. (I’ve asked a PR rep and will update this article if I hear more.)

The Lords of the Fallen executive producer Saul Gascon also acknowledged that their studio, a new offshoot of publisher CI Games called HexWorks, exists in the shadow of FromSoftware, but he doesn’t think that’s an unambitious place to be. 

“We want the studio to become a reference in the genre,” Gascon told Edge.
We want to be the second reference [after From], because right now there is no clear second reference.”

I appreciate the honesty of aspiring to be the second most notable dark fantasy action RPG developer, which of course would be a big achievement with FromSoft at the top, although I’m not sure the position is actually vacant: Some would say that Nioh 2 is that second reference, so that’s what The Lords of the Fallen has to beat.

As for the title, senior brand manager Ryan Hill told Edge that it’s not a direct sequel to Lords of the Fallen—which was made by a different developer—but not really a spin-off, either, so they went with the ‘The’ approach.

“It might not be the clearest route forward,” said Hill, “but I think by the time we’ve launched, everyone will be educated on what this is.”

There’s a lot more about The Lords of the Fallen and what it is to be found in issue 381 of Edge Magazine, which is available to purchase from our shared publisher here. (opens in new tab) For the short version, Virtosu offered this summation: “Our strategy was that, yes, we will be Dark Souls 4.5. We will be that semi-open world that people crave, that more vertical level design—because that’s what we want, too.”


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Minecraft sniffer: what we know about the new forager friends

Grab your gear and visit with the Minecraft sniffer, the latest and ancient-est of new mobs coming in the Minecraft 1.20 update. While the sniffer is a bit weird compared to some of the other residents of Minecraft’s many fantastical biomes, they’re certainly friendly enough. In fact, if you manage to befriend one, they’ll do more than hang out around your builds looking like a mobile grass block—sniffers can actually get you rare seeds. So whether you’re a botanical expert or just like more decorations for your garden, there’s good reason to be excited for the latest adorable animal addition to Minecraft.

What do Minecraft sniffers do? 

Besides beating out the tuff golem and rascal in mob votes, the sniffer has some other handy skills—and an unusual method of discovery.

Unlike most of Minecraft’s cast of reputable mobs, the sniffer is from an ancient era and no longer spawns naturally. Instead, you’ll have to use the new Minecraft archaeology feature to brush off suspicious sand until you find your very own sniffer egg. In the past, Mojang has also said that sniffer eggs could be found in underwater ruins—so it’s likely there will be another path to take to your very own gardening assistant. As for how you’ll get the egg to hatch, we don’t know quite yet. At the moment the sniffer egg is only available in creative mode, where you can spawn them the same as you would any other mob.

Once you’ve got a sniffer, they’re a passive mob that spends a lot of time wandering around or competing with the Minecraft camel for the derpiest sitting stance. Besides that, if you can befriend one, Mojang has said that they’ll sniff out and dig up ancient and rare seeds for you to grow. So far the only specific plant seeds we know the sniffer can dig up are for the new torchflower. We also know that you can breed the sniffer with torchflower seeds, which is rather convenient of them.

  • Where do you find sniffers? From their eggs, via archaeology or in underwater ruins.
  • Can you breed sniffers? Yep! So far sniffers are bred with the seeds from the new torchflower.
  • Are sniffers hostile? Nope. They’re big snuggly grass blocks.
  • Can sniffers be tamed? So far no, you cannot tempt or tame a sniffer, only breed them.
  • Can you ride sniffers? Doesn’t seem like it, though they’re certainly big enough.

When will the sniffer get added to Minecraft? 

You can play with the sniffer right now, with no waiting necessary, and you won’t even have to do any digging around in the dirt. With snapshot 23w07a sniffers are in along with the cherry blossom forest biome and archaeology, though they’re only enabled via their creative mode eggs at the moment. That won’t stop you from spawning in an entire field of them to befriend, though.


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How to solve the Great Blizzard gem puzzle in Disney Dreamlight Valley

Now that he’s been added to the game, unlocking Olaf in Disney Dreamlight Valley is mostly pretty simple. There’s just one tricky step: getting the right gems to place on the pillars in The Great Blizzard quest. You may have flown past the clue during Olaf’s dialogue which tells you that you’ll need to “channel all the colors of the rainbow“.

If that’s all the reminder you needed, get back to guessing those gems. Of course you can also just brute force your way through by trying every single gem you’ve got. For the full answer though, we’ve got you covered below.

Which gems do you need for Olaf in The Great Blizzard quest?

To solve the secret chamber gem puzzle you’ll need:

  • Amethyst (purple)
  • Citrine (orange)
  • Emerald (green)

You’ll need to place them in the correct order of the rainbow, so the citrine should go on the left side between the red and yellow gems. The emerald should be in the back right corner and the amethyst should be in the front right.

If you don’t have precious stones lying around in your chests, here’s a reminder on where to mine for each of them:

  • Amethyst: Frosted Heights or Forgotten Lands
  • Citrine: Glade of Trust or Sunlit Plateau
  • Emerald: Forest of Valor or Glade of Trust

After placing all three gems, the portal will fire up and you’ll be able to continue on with the final steps of Olaf’s quest. 


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How to unlock Mirabel in Disney Dreamlight Valley

If you’re trying to figure out how to unlock Mirabel in Disney Dreamlight Valley, your first order of business is to find her golden doorknob in the peaceful meadow. Like some other character quests, this new item should just be lying on the ground somewhere in your peaceful meadow area south of the plaza, marked by golden sparkles. Pick it up to begin the quest The Golden Doorknob.

When you take the gold, engraved clue to Merlin, he’ll explain that Mirabel’s house has a mind of its own. Mini-Casita spirited her away to another dimension when the Forgetting began and you’ll need to convince the house it’s safe to return to Dreamlight Valley. Encanto doesn’t have its own realm at the castle like some other characters. Instead it’s a bit like unlocking Stitch (opens in new tab) where you have to follow a short quest around the valley to bring her back.

(Image credit: Gameloft)

The Golden Doorknob Quest: Unlocking Mirabel 

Luckily, Mirabel’s quest is one of the easier fetch quests in the game—no iron ingots required, thank goodness. Here’s the short to-do list you’ll need to complete and just a few tips on each task down below: 

  • Take 3 pictures with villagers 
  • Give 2 villagers their favorite gifts
  • Have 2 daily discussions with villagers
  • 500 dreamlight

These are all things that you’ll have already done quite a lot of around the valley. As a quick tip on those favorite gifts you may not have clocked, you can navigate to the “characters” tab of the “collection” menu to see which three items each villager wants for the day without actually finding them to ask first. You can hang about in your house snatching stored items from your chests before going out to deliver gifts.

Daily discussions and pictures are easy too. Just make sure to get any character in frame with you while snapping a selfie. With the discussions, those will always be the dialogue option marked by a chat bubble as you’re speaking to a villager.

After that, return to Merlin and hand over 500 dreamlight. That’s a much smaller dreamlight total than unlocking some of the biomes around the island, so you’ll more than likely already have plenty stored up. He’ll tell you to place Mirabel’s house, though Mini-Casita takes up way more space than its name implies so be ready to shuffle some of your other decorations around. With her home officially installed, Mirabel will join you at the plaza fountain. 


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Survival game Sons of the Forest shows off co-op base-building, fleshy nightmares



Survival game Sons of the Forest (opens in new tab) launches into early access on February 23, and as you explore, craft, build, and fight against a horrifying cannibalistic tribe on a mysterious island, take some small comfort in the fact that you won’t have to do it alone.

Even if you’re tackling Sons of the Forest in singleplayer you’ll be joined by an AI-controlled companion, Kelvin, who can perform tasks like chopping wood, gathering rocks and sticks, and catching fish. But you can also play Sons of the Forest in co-op with up to eight players (and yes, Kelvin will still be along for the ride in multiplayer). IGN (opens in new tab) has a new trailer showing a bit of co-op play, including exploring, building, combat, and of course the inevitable chopping of trees.



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Microsoft announces 10-year deal with Nvidia to bring Xbox PC games to GeForce Now

At a press conference in Brussels, Microsoft announced that it had signed a 10-year licensing deal with Nvidia to have its Xbox PC games stream on GeForce Now (opens in new tab). If the $69 billion Activision Blizzard acquisition continues, Xbox will also bring Activision Blizzard games to Nvidia’s cloud gaming service. 

The news comes one day after Microsoft signed a 10-year deal with Nintendo to bring future Xbox games like Call of Duty to Nintendo (opens in new tab) once the Activision Blizzard deal goes through. Microsoft had offered the same deal to Sony, which Sony reportedly rejected. Activision’s Chief Communications officer shared their thoughts on Sony’s move with a meme (opens in new tab) posted on Twitter. 

According to Reuters (opens in new tab), Microsoft President Brad Smith said he was more confident of the acquisition going ahead after the announcement of both deals. Smith tweeted (opens in new tab), “With today’s agreements with Nvidia and Nintendo, we will bring Call of Duty to 150 million new devices. That will serve consumers AND advance competition.”

These deals are an attempt by Microsoft to satisfy regulators’ concerns that the Activision Blizzard acquisition could take games like Call of Duty off competitors’ platforms and make them exclusive to Xbox. Microsoft has promised the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) that Call of Duty will remain available on other platforms after the acquisition. 

Now in favor of the acquisition, Nvidia said in a press release (opens in new tab) that the new deal “delivers the increased choice to gamers and resolves Nvidia’s concerns with Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard.” 

Following the announcement, Xbox boss Phil Spencer tweeted (opens in new tab), “We’re committed to bringing more games to more people – however they choose to play.” Nvidia says Call of Duty won’t be available on GeForce Now until the Activision deal is closed, but Microsoft’s first-party games are immediately covered under the new 10-year agreement. 



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Hogwarts Legacy Accio Masochism mod makes everything a chore

Hogwarts Legacy isn’t a hard game even on its hardest difficulty setting. As long as you learn how to block and parry with Protego, you’re nearly untouchable in combat. And the rest of the game’s puzzles and beast catching are just as simple, if a little grindy.

The Accio Masochism (opens in new tab) mod pack wants to make it all much, much worse.

Modder MBiggs2334 says Accio Masochism is aimed at making “the combat a little more Soulslike and the general pacing of the game a little slower.” It includes 14 categories of mods, each tackling different parts of the game, including challenges, economy, creatures, enemies, experience, and spells. All of them make everything weaker and harder to obtain, which, if you ask me, isn’t actually very Soulslike, but the creator encourages you to pick and choose which mods to enable.

The individual changes are granular. The enemy mods can make enemies attack more frequently, deal more damage, have more health, scale above your current level, and come in larger packs. And spells can be tweaked to have longer cooldowns, deal less damage, and stun enemies for a shorter period of time. Almost every part of the game can be turned against you.

“So I read diligently through the fixes this mod does and a big majority of them simply just make the game more grindy instead of challenging,” NexusMod commenter Swordy22 (opens in new tab) wrote. “Now I would be fine with a little more grind IF the reward was more substantial.”

MBiggs2334 replied to Swordy22’s pretty fair criticism of the mod—difficulty should be more interesting than punishing, as far as I’m concerned—and said that they will consider that as they continue to develop the mods. Swordy22 suggested having powerful potions drop from enemies, which, according to MBiggs2334, isn’t feasible with modding tools at the moment. They did say they’ll look into removing the dodge and parry alerts to make combat slightly more unpredictable.

To install the mod, you need download the mod pack and move the .pak file into a mod folder in the Hogwarts Legacy directory. MBiggs2334 recommends starting a new character or using one that is close to the start of the game so you don’t find yourself underpowered and under-geared.

It’s not a bad start for a difficulty mod, but I would like to see tweaks that add complexity to spell combinations and potions to give the combat more weight. Ruthless difficulty with nothing to strategize with is about as boring as easy combat. Hogwarts Legacy has a list of almost interesting talents (opens in new tab) and spells that a mod like this could make a lot more satisfying to use.


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