If you were eagerly hoping that Diablo 4 (opens in new tab) would feature an overlay map when it releases in June, it’s bad news. It’s been confirmed that there are no current plans to add what has traditionally been a series staple to its newest iteration.

It’s safe to say that Diablo 4’s beta back in March was a huge success. Not only did over a million people hit level 20 (opens in new tab) during the early access period—somewhat making us question the definition of “closed beta”—but player feedback was pretty damn positive across the board. 

Of course, there’ll always be criticism. The majority of it was valid concerns around quality-of-life features, and one I consistently saw was the disappointment around the lack of a map overlay. Your only options were to rely on the minimap, locked to the top-right corner of the screen, or to open the fully opaque map and cause your character to stand still if you dared look at it for more than a second. There were hopes that the feedback would be considered and we’d be given a map overlay for the full release. Unfortunately, that doesn’t look to be the case.

When asked if Blizzard would be adding the handy feature to the game, Diablo general manager Rod Fergusson replied that there were “no plans at the moment.” Considering the developer has made a ton of other feedback-related tweaks such as dungeon layout (opens in new tab) revamps, class tweaks, and changing its much-maligned font choice, it seems strange that such a small change hasn’t been implemented. 

Replies to Fergusson’s tweet were largely ones of disappointment. “Weird hill to die on and remove a hallmark of how ARPGs are played,” one user replied. Another said they “would strongly reconsider,” adding that the “current map feels very alien and clunky.” Some welcomed the choice, however. One reply said “This way you don’t just stare at a 2D map all day,” while another said “I actually like not having the overlay. With [Diablo] 2 I have it always on and I miss all the beauty the team puts into the world. I say keep it off.”

I’m definitely team map overlay, and it seems a shame that Blizzard is missing what many have deemed an essential quality-of-life feature of the genre. With a developer livestream taking place on April 20 at 11 AM PT / 2 PM ET / 7 PM BST, hopefully some clarification will be offered during that. 


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On hearing there’s a new horror western movie called Organ Trail, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was based on the Flash game that became a Steam game (opens in new tab) in which a station wagon full of survivors have to travel westward across the zombie-infested United States.

And before you “um actually” me, yes, I am aware that game was based on the educational game called The Oregon Trail, although it took until I watched our video (opens in new tab) about it to realize in certain American accents the two sound almost identical.

It was apparently the original Oregon Trail game that provided the nugget of inspiration that became this movie. As screenwriter Meg Turner explained on Twitter (opens in new tab), “I was looking for the original video game and forgot an e in Oregon. The script was essentially born out of the best typo I’ve ever made.”

Organ Trail the movie is set in Montana in 1870, and stars Zoé De Grand Maison (Riverdale, Orphan Black) as a young woman on the run from a gang of bandits in the midst of a harsh winter. Based on the Organ Trail trailer (opens in new tab), it seems like dysentery will be the least of her problems. Honestly, it looks a bit reminiscent of the excellent Guy Pearce/Robert Carlyle movie Ravenous from 1999.

Organ Trail also stars Olivia Grace Applegate (Love & Death), Clé Bennett (The Man in the High Castle), and Sam Trammell (True Blood). It’s in cinemas now, and will be streaming on Paramount+ from May 12. If it’s The Oregon Trail educational games you’re interested in, here’s our list of (almost) every version of The Oregon Trail ranked.



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Improve your daily Wordle (opens in new tab) guesses with our guides and tips, take a look at a hint for today’s game designed to give you a nudge in the right direction, or skip straight to the best part and read the answer to the April 15 (665) game—however you want to win today’s Wordle, we can help.

The answer to today’s puzzle was an obvious one… eventually. I had all the information I needed quite early on, but this was one of those days where I couldn’t see what I had until I was in danger of running out of guesses. It was frustrating, but at least I got today’s Wordle answer in the end.

Wordle hint

(Image credit: Josh Wardle)

A Wordle hint for Saturday, April 15

If someone was in an extreme and most likely prolonged level of physical or mental pain, today’s word would be a good way to describe their suffering. You’ll need to find two different vowels to solve this one.

Is there a double letter in today’s Wordle?

No, there is no double letter in today’s puzzle.

Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day

If there’s one thing better than playing Wordle, it’s playing Wordle well, which is why I’m going to share a few quick tips to help set you on the path to success:

  • A good opener contains a balanced mix of unique vowels and consonants.
  • A tactical second guess helps to narrow down the pool of letters quickly.
  • The solution may contain repeat letters.

There’s no time pressure beyond making sure it’s done by midnight. So there’s no reason not to treat the game like a casual newspaper crossword and come back to it later if you’re coming up blank.

Today’s Wordle answer

(Image credit: Future)

What is the #665 Wordle answer?

Start your weekend with a win. The answer to the April 15 (665) Wordle is AGONY.

Previous answers

The last 10 Wordle answers

The more past Wordle answers you can cram into your memory banks, the better your chances of guessing today’s Wordle answer without accidentally picking a solution that’s already been used. Past Wordle answers can also give you some excellent ideas for fun starting words that keep your daily puzzle solving fresh.

Here are some recent Wordle solutions:

  • April 14: THIEF
  • April 12: BORAX
  • April 11: QUALM
  • April 10: UNDER
  • April 9: SNAFU
  • April 8: LEDGE
  • April 7: LOCUS
  • April 6: LEAFY
  • April 5: SMASH
  • April 4: RATIO

Learn more about Wordle

(Image credit: Nurphoto via Getty)

Every day Wordle presents you with six rows of five boxes, and it’s up to you to work out which secret five-letter word is hiding inside them.

You’ll want to start with a strong word (opens in new tab) like ALERT—something containing multiple vowels, common consonants, and no repeat letters. Hit Enter and 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.

You’ll want your second go to compliment the first, using another “good” word 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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Remember LawBreakers (opens in new tab), the ill-fated competitive FPS that closed down (opens in new tab) a few months after its developer went defunct? It might not be as dead as you thought. So says Cliff Bleszinski, the game’s director, who’s been teasing upcoming news about the game over on Twitter (opens in new tab).

“Just got a text from my lawyer about… LawBreakers,” Bleszkinski wrote, imploring curious onlookers to “Stay tuned” for news about the game’s future. Of course, the fact that LawBreakers has any future at all is a bit of a shock. It closed down five years ago alongside Radical Heights, Boss Key Productions’ battle royale, and took the developer with it.

It’s unclear just what is happening with LawBreakers from Bleszinski’s tweets, which are all we have to go on right now, so it’s uncertain if he’s teasing the game’s return, a sequel, a spiritual successor, or something far more minor and underwhelming, but it’d be a treat to see the game come to life again in some form. 

Although it never accumulated the playerbase necessary to keep it running long-term—something Bleszinski eventually attributed to it being too “political,” (opens in new tab) which is almost assuredly not actually why it failed—it was a smartly-designed and enjoyable thing. In his LawBreakers review (opens in new tab), PCG’s Evan Lahti scored the game 84%, praising it as a “complex, physical, and deep competitive shooter”. A revival would give it another shot at securing the audience it failed to find back in 2017. Or perhaps Fortnite will eat its lunch much as Overwatch and PUBG did back then.

I think it would do better this time, though: Bleszinski’s tease has gained a fair bit of interest, something which seems to have perplexed the man himself. “It confuses the hell out of me how people were rooting for the game to fail,” he tweeted, “and when it did now there’s a ton of support for it”. “Gamers are weird, yo”.

Bleszinski’s final tweet in the thread addressed Boss Key’s closure: “the team worked their ASSES off on it,” he wrote, “I relocated many people from other parts of the world for it and the internet was like HAR HAR IT DOESN’T HAVE ENOUGH PLAYERS. Meanwhile, studio craters and I have to deal with a year of crippling depression out of guilt”. Perhaps whatever news he has in store for the game will give him a chance to right some wrongs.



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The latest expansion for Total War: Warhammer 3 is here, and Forge of the Chaos Dwarfs brings a variety of big, excellent hats with it. New DLC time is also new update time, taking the perilous fantasy grim-em-up to version 3.0. Tucked away in the “general updates” section of the patch notes (opens in new tab) is a mention this update has “introduced a new pack file limit that increases the number of mods that can be hypothetically run simultaneously (barring any cross mod issues).”

That’s a boring way of saying what William Håkestad, a Creative Assembly designer working on Total War: Warhammer 3 DLC, announced to the Total War modding Discord (opens in new tab) in a more exciting fashion: “The new packfile limit is 65,534 simultaneously. Your move.”

Each mod is a separate packfile, and as Håkestad went on to explain, these games used to have a much lower packfile limit. “This was set to 256 at some point during the age of the dinosaurs due to being stored in 8 bit,” he said. That included the game’s own packfiles, making the number you could pile on even less. Having too many wouldn’t automatically crash your game, but the results wouldn’t be good. “The game was intended to fail when this limit was exceeded, but a bit of a fluke occasionally allowed the game to continue to function, however, only 256 of your packfiles would actually be running, and the game’s stability would be severely affected.”

Even at the height of my mania for modifying the original Total War: Warhammer with beer-throwing catapults (opens in new tab) and HeroQuest goblins (opens in new tab) I don’t think I even made it as high as 50. Still, for those who like to go mod wild, having the number of working packfiles boosted will be a blessing. And, Håkestad said, “If you somehow, manage to exceed the new 65,534 limit (we’re storing in 16 bit now!), you will now get a popup telling you to please reduce your packfile count below that number. Just in case.”

Given that there are less than 10,000 mods for Total War: Warhammer 3 on the Steam Workshop (opens in new tab) so far, you might have some trouble managing to hit the new limit. Maybe modders will see this as a challenge?

Response to the other changes in update 3.0 seem positive, with players praising improvements to unit behavior (opens in new tab) like pursuers chasing down enemies that rout and single-entity units engaging lords, better siege AI (opens in new tab), and a small but welcome change to diplomacy making distant lands more likely to settle for peace (opens in new tab). Early testing makes it seem like the new line-of-sight changes, like decorative objects no longer impeding gunners (opens in new tab), will finally make things better for units with firearms too. Which is nice, because the Chaos Dwarfs sure have some big guns to go with their big hats.


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Get a helpful clue for today’s Wordle (opens in new tab), maintain your daily win streak no matter how your guesses go with our quick-click access to the April 13 (663) answer, or simply stay a while and browse our convenient range of tips, archives and guides. Whatever you need, you’ll find all the Wordle help right here.

I spent a lot of time staring at the yellow I unearthed on my second guess today, trying to imagine how it was supposed to fit with the pair of greens I’d revealed with my opener. The good news is I locked that in place soon enough. The bad news is this unlocked a rich seam of potential answers, and I just had to work through them until I found the correct Wordle answer—one guess away from the end.

Wordle hint

(Image credit: Josh Wardle)

A Wordle hint for Thursday, April 13

The answer today is a unit of measurement, specifically for precious gemstones such as diamonds—the Hope Diamond weighs over 45 of these. There’s only one vowel to find today. 

Is there a double letter in today’s Wordle? 

Yes, a vowel is used twice in today’s Wordle. 

Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day 

If you’re new to the daily Wordle puzzle or you just want a refresher after taking a break, I’ll share some quick tips to help you win. There’s nothing quite like a small victory to set you up for the rest of the day. 

  • A mix of unique consonants and vowels makes for a solid opening word. 
  • A tactical second guess should let you narrow down the pool of letters quickly.
  • There may be a repeat letter in the answer.

You’re not up against a timer, so you’ve got all the time in the world—well, until midnight—to find the winning word. If you’re stuck, there’s no shame in coming back to the puzzle later in the day and finishing it up when you’ve cleared your head. 

Today’s Wordle answer

(Image credit: Future)

What is the #663 Wordle answer?

Here’s your win. The answer to the April 13 (663) Wordle is CARAT.

Previous answers

The last 10 Wordle answers 

Keeping track of the last handful of Wordle answers can help to eliminate current possibilities. It’s also handy for inspiring opening words or subsequent guesses if you’re short on ideas for the day.

Here are the last 10 Wordle answers:

  • April 12: BORAX
  • April 11: QUALM
  • April 10: UNDER
  • April 9: SNAFU
  • April 8: LEDGE
  • April 7: LOCUS
  • April 6: LEAFY
  • April 5: SMASH
  • April 4: RATIO
  • April 3: FLORA

Learn more about Wordle

(Image credit: Nurphoto via Getty)

Wordle presents you with six rows of five boxes every day and the aim is to figure out the correct five-letter word by entering guesses and eliminating or confirming individual letters.

Getting off to a good start with a strong word (opens in new tab) like ARISE—something containing multiple vowels, common consonants, and no repeat letters—is a good tactic. 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 guess should compliment the starting word, using another “good” word 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. With a bit of luck, you should have some coloured squares to work with and set you on the right path.

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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NEED TO KNOW

What is it? A sequel to Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One that sees the famous detective investigating the weirdness and horror of the Lovecraft Mythos.
Release date April 11, 2023
Expect to pay $40/£40
Developer Frogwares
Publisher Frogwares
Reviewed on AMD Ryzen 9 5900X, 32GB RAM, Nvidia Geforce RTX 3080
Steam Deck Playable
Link Official site (opens in new tab) 

It’s impossible to review Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened without addressing its circumstances. Caught in the chaos of Russia’s attempted invasion of Ukraine, developer Frogwares decided to crowdfund a project that might be quickly achievable amid regular powercuts, internet outages, and worse disruption (opens in new tab): a remake of its 2008 Sherlock Holmes/HP Lovecraft mash-up (opens in new tab).

The surprise, then, is that the resulting game doesn’t feel troubled by its fast and difficult development. Far from a rushed retread of the original game, Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened feels fully reimagined with care and polish, and the result is an impressive, modern detective game that will feel fresh for longtime fans, but also requires no nostalgia or knowledge of the original to enjoy.

(Image credit: Frogwares)

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It helps that it’s a killer premise: iconic detective Sherlock Holmes taking on the strangeness of the Lovecraft Mythos. The man who never stops digging and always finds a rational explanation meets a world where the more you investigate the more bizarre and horrifying the answers become, until you go mad for lack of any rationality at all. It’s an unstoppable force hitting an immovable object, and the resulting sparks make for not only a compelling story, but an interesting poke around Sherlock’s own psyche—already a mind in some ways adrift from normal thinking, in Frogwares’ interpretation. 

The game starts out on the streets of London with a cheekily mundane mystery—who stole Sherlock’s morning newspaper?—and unfolds into a grand conspiracy of eldritch cults, profane rituals, and betentacled gods that sends Watson and Holmes off on a grand journey. Unlike the studio’s previous Sherlock Holmes game, Chapter One, this is a linear adventure rather than an open world, but it has no lack of variety, taking you to a foreboding Swiss asylum, the sunny streets of New Orleans, crocodile-infested swamps, and more. 

Each location is a beautiful diorama, and holds its own set of mysteries for you to solve. As Sherlock, and occasionally Watson, your job is to collect clues and ultimately connect them into conclusions that will allow you to progress. The systems are largely ported over directly from Chapter One—presumably a choice made to save on time and resources, but it works in the game’s favour because they’re still great mystery-solving mechanics. 

Clues are recorded in your casebook for reference, and will be marked with icons suggesting how they might be expanded on or used to gain new clues. If you find a sketch of a person’s face, for example, it might make sense to ask bystanders if they recognise them, or look them up in the archives, while a set of footprints can be followed back to their source to discover more evidence of who caused them.

(Image credit: Frogwares)

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As you progress through a case, you unlock questions, which you can attempt to answer by connecting relevant clues. How did the victim die? Connect your description of his wounds with the nearby candlestick, and you may be one step closer to finding out if the butler did it. You can also visually reconstruct scenes, moving through the space placing ghostly representations to recreate past events, and interrogate, profile, and accuse suspects. 

Altogether it’s simple but elegant. The process of examining crime scenes, reading through evidence, and ultimately figuring out the connections between people, objects, and places strikes a wonderful balance—making you feel like you’re doing real detective work without ever leaving you to flounder when you haven’t made the right connection yet. As ever, Sherlock is the perfect avatar for this kind of play, because he’s the man who can believably spot any clue and call on any piece of knowledge to explain it. He does the hard work of identifying what might be important and what it might mean, and you luxuriate in assembling the puzzle, feeling like a genius all the while.

(Image credit: Frogwares)

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If it has a flaw, it’s that it’s easily brute-forced—if you get a bit lazy, it’s often possible to just bash together wrong answers until eventually you find the right one by process of elimination. But that does feel like a small price to pay, because the flip side of it is that it’s hard to get truly stuck—usually the bane of detective games. Outside of a couple of awkward puzzles, Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened always keeps things moving gently along, giving it a slow but considered pace that never feels stodgy. 

It’s a pleasant surprise, too, how much the game simply focuses on that core experience. Previous games from Frogwares have attempted to mix in action sequences and combat for a more blockbuster feel, typically to poor result, while the original 2008 version of The Awakened is full of lengthy, awkward puzzles to accomplish simple tasks. There’s almost none of that here, and it’s welcome that the game sticks to what it’s best at.

What it does do, however, is sometimes bend its clues system towards point-and-click-esque problem solving—for example, treating “How do I sneak past this guard?” as a mystery to solve, with a solution involving combining unlikely items. These moments work well enough to move the plot forward without disrupting the flow of play, but they’re undeniably less satisfying than simply dissecting a crime scene.

(Image credit: Frogwares)

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The focus on clue-hunting and mystery solving suits the Lovecraftian narrative down to the ground. The Awakened is the rare game that uses the Mythos as a source of subtle, building tension and atmosphere, instead of an excuse for tentacles bursting out of everything. A few hallucination sequences, in which you solve obtuse puzzles in a strange void, miss the mark by shining too close a light on the weirdness, but outside of those the game has a wonderful, creeping sense of dread. Human evil is always at the forefront, rather than cosmic monsters crawling out of portals, and the game is all the more unsettling for that—particularly in its bleak final confrontation.  

Frogwares has always seemed to me to take a special pleasure in the grisly and occult. Even its more straight-laced Sherlock games revel in moments of creepiness and strange occurrences. In The Awakened, you can practically see the developers’ eyes twinkling every time you discover some grim new scene, and the enthusiasm shows through in all sorts of creative moments.

(Image credit: Frogwares)

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And yet there’s enough restraint to the discoveries they throw in Sherlock’s path to just about keep it ambiguous whether truly supernatural forces are at work or not. Holmes’ own deteriorating sanity and the cult’s expertise with mind-bending substances offer just enough plausible deniability in the game’s more surreal moments to allow players to draw their own conclusions—one last mystery where the solution is up to you, given a satisfying pay-off either way in the game’s final dialogue choices. 

Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened is an impressive detective game by any metric. Factoring in that it was developed in an active warzone, it’s a small miracle. Cleverly designed, atmospheric, and polished, the only sign it shows of being compromised by its circumstances is its short length. At about 12 hours, it did leave me wanting more, and perhaps more importantly it will feel slight for some compared to its $40/£40 launch price tag. It’s hard to ignore that you can play more than twice that amount in Chapter One for the same price, and the fact that all the game’s side quests have to be bought separately as DLC leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. 

But if you’re happy to accept that as throwing a bit of financial support behind a developer fighting to keep doing what it does in impossible circumstances, your reward is some of the best work Frogwares has done yet. An opening message from the team describes The Awakened as “our own act of resilience against the chaos and horror the enemy tried to impose on our livelihood”. This tale of a stuffy Victorian detective couldn’t be a more unlikely form of defiance, but in its confident craftsmanship it stands testament to the extraordinary fortitude of its developer.


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