We’ve got a clue written especially for today’s Wordle ready and waiting to help you win, and a great selection of top tips to polish up your guesses. You’ve got this in three easy-breezy rows for sure. Want to see what a win in one looks like? We can help with that, just scroll down until you see the January 23 (1314) answer.
With two yellow letters and one very awkward green showing up on my opening line, I had nowhere else to go but straight to today’s answer. It looks like a win in two, and I’m feeling pleased with myself about it—I’ll just not mention the yawning chasm of time between them as I scratched my head and wondered how the heck I was supposed to rearrange them into a winning word.
Today’s Wordle hint
(Image credit: Josh Wardle)
Wordle today: A hint for Thursday, January 23
This word distinguishes some sort of higher part, component, or place from whatever’s below it.
Is there a double letter in Wordle today?
Yes, there is a double letter in today’s puzzle.
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 today’s Wordle answer?
Need a little help? The answer to the January 23 (1314) Wordle is UPPER.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
Previous Wordle 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:
January 22: REACH
January 21: ICING
January 20: SQUID
January 19: ROWER
January 18: SILLY
January 17: PROSE
January 16: FLINT
January 15: KNACK
January 14: FANCY
January 13: CLOAK
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 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, 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, 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, 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. Surely it’s only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes.
Every so often I’ll be sitting on my couch playing Balatro on Steam Deck and have an unwanted thought: I should really play something other than Balatro once in a while. So, I take a look through Steam to see what other games aren’t Balatro but are still pretty muchBalatro so I don’t have to stop playing Balatro even when I’m not playing Balatro.
And there are quite a few! Balatro introduced us all to the magic of a poker roguelike last year, and since then we’ve seen a bunch of other efforts to combine a traditional game with the deckbuilder formula. There’s Balatro but it’s blackjack, Balatro but it’s pachinko, Balatro but it’s solitaire, even Balatro but it’s Scrabble.
And arriving on Steam this week in early access, it’s Balatro but it’s Mahjong—and it has an actual name, too: Aotenjo: Infinite Hands. Of the various Balatro-likes I’ve played so far, I think I like it best. It’s not trying to be Balatro in the most obvious ways: it’s not slick or flashy, there’s not a ton of animation, and visually it looks like it’d be right at home next to Solitaire on Windows 95. But I’m into that low-key vibe, free of exploding booster packs and flying tiles.
I should point out here that I’m not much of a Mahjong guy: I know I’ve learned to play it multiple times in my life, and I’ve had to do that because once I learn it I don’t play it again until I’ve forgotten how to play it. But there’s a nice tutorial in Aotenjo that reacquainted me with the basics, and it wasn’t long before I was playing comfortably and diving into the Balatro-ness of it all.
Once again you’re building hands against an ever-rising point total, and taking on intermittent bosses who do tricksy things like disabling certain suits. Between rounds you spend the coins earned from wins to enchant your tiles. There are all sorts of clever ways to change your hands, like swapping their numbers using a little set of tweezers, or even hiding a dot on a tile by using a grain of rice to change its value. You can also apply various buffs, increase your multipliers, and make the ever satisfying number-go-up happen. It doesn’t give me quite the casino-like high Balatro does, but there’s still an understated pleasure in putting together an enchanted hand that racks up megapoints.
Is it going to replace Balatro on my Deck most evenings? I doubt it. But Aotenjo has been a quiet pleasure so far and I think it’ll only get better as I get a bit better at understanding the ins and outs of mahjong in general. You’ll find it right here on Steam in early access, where it’s 12% off until February 2.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1737593082_Of-all-the-Balatro-likes-on-Steam-I-think-Im-enjoying.jpg6711200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-01-22 23:33:322025-01-22 23:33:32Of all the Balatro-likes on Steam, I think I’m enjoying this Mahjong version best
Released to critical acclaim almost one year ago on the PlayStation 5, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’s port to the PC is unlikely to achieve the same accolades in the PC gaming community. Not because it’s a bad conversion and not because the game itself is poor—Square Enix has done an excellent job of making the Windows version run very well, if the PC meets certain requirements. And on maximum quality, it does look better than the PS5 version.
But if you were hoping the developers would use Unreal Engine 5, perhaps to shoehorn in some fancy virtual geometry or ray-traced Clouds… err, clouds, then you’re going to be somewhat disappointed. Rebirth on the PC is based on UE4 and there’s a dearth of modern graphics technology involved. Yes, upscaling is an option, and it even uses DirectStorage to ease the load on the CPU while streaming assets and reduce loading times, but that’s about it for tech.
You get four options for the frame rate cap, with the maximum being 120 fps. Got a 144 or 240 Hz gaming monitor, and you want to match the frame and refresh rates for smoothness? You’re out of luck. Well, possibly not, but more on that later. Even if you could go higher, the cinematics run at 30 fps and in-game cutscenes at 60 fps, and jumping between those and 120 fps gameplay is very jarring.
Do you want to have the game operating in exclusive fullscreen mode, to get the best possible performance? No chance, I’m afraid: It’s windowed or borderless fullscreen only, and the latter can be very twitchy about being forced to use a different resolution. It’s almost like Square Enix is trying to remake 1997 PC gaming, not a 1997 game.
When it comes to graphics options, you only get three presets (Low, Medium, and High) and although there are individual options you can tweak, many of them just have two settings. Just to top it all off, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth uses the DirectX 12 Ultimate API and Shader Model 6.6, so if your operating system and graphics card don’t support them, then you won’t be able to play the game full stop—in other words, if you have a GeForce GTX or a pre-RDNA 2 AMD card, then no Rebirth for you.
The only thing to relieve all of this grim news is that the game performance is generally pretty good and relatively stutter-free, unlike FF7 Remake. However, both of those aspects come with some major caveats, so they might not be much of a relief at all.
Test PC specs
Benchmark runs were taken just outside the town of Kalm, running about in the open world and conducting a few battles. It’s worth noting that in busy urban locations, the performance is lower on systems with weaker hardware—but given that you spend a lot of time out in the wild, it made sense to measure the frame rates in that area.
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Low quality preset
Image 1 of 6
(Image credit: Square Enix)
(Image credit: Square Enix)
(Image credit: Square Enix)
(Image credit: Square Enix)
(Image credit: Square Enix)
(Image credit: Square Enix)
As mentioned earlier, there are just three quality presets and Low sets everything to the lowest value. All three presets apply dynamic upscaling by default. For the above results, this was disabled by setting the maximum and minimum render resolutions to 100%. The anti-aliasing option was set to TAAU (temporal AA, with upscaling), though you can use DLSS if you wish.
That brings me to the first major issue I have with Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. There is no option to use FSR and XeSS upscaling, just the game’s native TAAU system or Nvidia’s DLSS. Why Square Enix feels this is acceptable in today’s GPU market is beyond me, but perhaps someone with more inside knowledge could shed light on the matter.
While the performance figures displayed above are mostly very good, the Low preset isn’t worth using. Shadows and environmental detail pop into view at a shockingly close distance to the player, and while one is still treated to sweeping vistas in this mode, most fine detail is stripped away leaving far scenery looking stark and bare.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth can run faster than this but the highest frame rate limit of 120 removes any chance of that occurring. I did experiment with a lower cap on the weaker test systems, in the hope that it might produce a more consistent frame rate, but it doesn’t—it simply prevents the fps from going any higher than the chosen limit.
Steam Deck fans might be worried that the Asus ROG Ally X in 17 W mode couldn’t achieve an average of 25 fps, especially since the game is verified for the Deck, and those 1% low figures are awful. Upscaling comes to the rescue here but it can’t fix everything.
It’s interesting to note that using 4K resolution takes a large bite out of the performance for almost all of the tested GPUs, even at Low. Sorry, did I say interesting? I meant rather concerning. Square Enix does state in its PC system requirements for Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth that an RX 7900 XTX or RTX 4080 is required for 4K High but I didn’t think it meant 4K Everypreset.
Medium quality preset
Image 1 of 6
(Image credit: Square Enix)
(Image credit: Square Enix)
(Image credit: Square Enix)
(Image credit: Square Enix)
(Image credit: Square Enix)
(Image credit: Square Enix)
Switching to the Medium preset significantly improves the overall looks of the game. Object and shadow pop-in is greatly reduced, though it’s still present, and there is far more environmental detail to enjoy. Oddly, though, the main characters don’t look massively better, even though their textures are more detailed, as they always display an overly smooth, glamour-shot haze on their faces. Still, at least the combat effects and animations are nice.
The Medium preset marks a cut-off point for certain graphics cards, namely those with less than 8 GB of VRAM. The RTX 4050 laptop used in the tests copes with the setting well enough, but it stutters badly when moving through the open world after a while, or if you spin the camera about and suddenly fill the screen with a lot more content. It’s also quite bad just after a save game has loaded, regardless of how much VRAM you have.
Coupled with the minimum requirement of Shader Model 6.6 support in the GPU (i.e. AMD RDNA 2 or newer, Intel Alchemist or newer, and Nvidia Turing or newer), the minimum hardware requirements are really a bit narrower than Square Enix states.
That stuttering isn’t shader compilation running in the background (that’s all done when firing up the game for the first time or updating the game or GPU drivers), just an issue with how well the game manages assets and the VRAM. I solved the RTX 4050’s chronic case of hiccups by dropping the texture and background model details settings to Low, leaving the rest to that set by the Medium preset.
High quality preset
Image 1 of 6
(Image credit: Square Enix)
(Image credit: Square Enix)
(Image credit: Square Enix)
(Image credit: Square Enix)
(Image credit: Square Enix)
(Image credit: Square Enix)
Naturally, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth looks its best when using the High preset but it does incur a sizeable performance hit, though mostly at 4K. At least you get to wave goodbye to almost all pop-in and the level of foliage and overall environmental detail do make the world nice to explore and spend time staring at.
And while the performance impact can be quite large, getting just under 90 fps at 1440p with an RX 7800 XT and RTX 4070 is pretty darn good. This is where the PC port of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is at its best and if you’re fortunate enough to have the right hardware in your gaming rig, it will run pretty smoothly for the most part. You won’t need vast amounts of VRAM either, as 12 GB is enough, even at 4K High.
What isn’t good enough, though, is the native temporal anti-aliasing and the upscaling implementation. The former casts a rather obvious fuzziness to most things in view and objects in motion exhibit blurring and streaking. The latter, though, is reminiscent of when DLSS first appeared in games.
On a final note about performance, one can see just how much Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth doesn’t like Intel’s GPUs, with the Arc A770 running almost 40% slower than the RX 6750 XT on average. To be fair, Square Enix did warn us by stating that an Arc B580 is only good enough to meet the minimum system requirements.
Upscaling performance
(Image credit: Square Enix)
Before we take a look at how upscaling can improve the performance of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, I need to get something off my chest. This is, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the worst upscaling systems I’ve seen in a game for a good few years. It’s not that it doesn’t work but rather getting it to is more hassle than it should be and it’s far too limited in scope.
Most games these days will let you activate your choice of upscaler (DLSS, FSR, XeSS), then select what quality you want it at (which affects the render resolution) and many will even provide you with a sharpening scaler so you can tweak the final result to your taste. Here, you get a choice of three anti-aliasing options (yes, AA—not upscaling): TAA, TAAU, and DLSS if you have an Nvidia RTX GPU.
Then you have a choice of four values to set the maximum and minimum scaling used for the dynamic resolution system: 100%, 66%, 50%, and for some reason that utterly eludes me, 33%. Those figures roughly equate to Quality, Performance, and Ultra Performance. Want to use an equivalent for Balanced or fine-tune it to your exact needs? Tough luck.
But let’s say you pick 66% for the minimum and 100% for the maximum. The game will now dynamically adjust the render resolution on the basis of the current frame rate and what setting you’ve picked for the frame rate cap. So if you’ve picked a 120 fps limit and you’re running at 82 fps, the game will almost constantly use a render scale of 66% of your monitor’s resolution.
That’s fine when the frame rate is consistently well below the limit, but should it rise nearer to it, then not only is the resolution change very obvious, but you also get extra little hiccups in the frame rate. That’s a shame because, for the most part, Rebirth doesn’t exhibit anywhere near as much stuttering as Final Fantasy 7 Remake does.
You’re far better off sticking the maximum and minimum scale to the same value, which effectively disables the dynamic system. Something else you might want to do is apply DLSS 66% (aka DLSS Quality), even if you don’t need the extra frame rate. You get a far superior level of anti-aliasing compared to TAA/TAAU, which makes it all the more disappointing that AMD and Intel GPU owners can’t use their respective upscalers.
TAAU 66% upscaling Asus ROG Ally X (17 W mode), 1080p with Low preset
The Ally X handheld gaming PC absolutely needs upscaling, even at 1080p Low, to achieve a comfortable 30 fps but while you might be tempted to use a 50% render scale, it just makes things far too blurry. So stick to 66% and accept the fact that, at times, the frame rate will drop below 20 fps. That doesn’t bode well for the Steam Deck, despite Rebirth being verified for that platform.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth could really do with one more graphics preset, specific for handheld gaming PCs, that focuses on reducing the shader load a bit further.
DLSS 66% upscaling GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop, 1080p with custom Medium preset
Truth be told, the little RTX 4050 laptop GPU doesn’t need upscaling at 1080p, as the average frame rate is more than acceptable with the Medium preset. However, the 6 GB of VRAM does cause problems and no degree of render scale will counter the paucity of RAM. This is evident in the above results—note how the 1% low figures improve far less than the average frame rates.
I experimented with the settings and eventually found a good combination of DLSS 100% on the Medium preset, with the texture and background model detail settings dropped to Low and Medium respectively (used for the video capture).
With those settings, and DLSS 66%, the average frame rate was 81 fps and the 1% low figure was 29 fps—not perfect, but not far off.
Returning to the point of using DLSS 100%, it’s worth noting that the TAAU algorithm is much quicker than DLSS, and irrespective of how many tensor cores your RTX GPU has, TAAU 100% will produce a higher frame rate than DLSS 100%. It doesn’t look half as good, though.
DLSS 66% upscaling GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, 1440p with High preset
The RTX 3060 Ti and RX 6750 XT are both capable of running Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth at 1440p with the Medium or High preset. It just comes down to what kind of performance you want and as you can see in the above charts, upscaling lifts the average frame rate nicely enough but doesn’t do an awful lot for the 1% lows.
Neither card is running into any VRAM issue here, unlike the RTX 4050, so this is more likely to be a system limitation. For the RX 6750 XT, I recommend avoiding the use of upscaling and just using the High preset and a 1080p resolution. That said, TAAU at 66% scale isn’t too bad.
TAAU 66% upscaling Radeon RX 7800 XT, 4K with High preset
The RTX 4070 and RX 7800 XT, and especially the RTX 4080 Super, don’t need upscaling unless they’re forced to cope with 4K and the High preset. Just apply TAAU 66% or DLSS 66% (max and min), and leave the frame rate cap at 120 fps. You get the best balance between graphical fidelity and performance, though the 1% low frame rate won’t improve as much as the average rate will.
While you can enjoy 4K Rebirth-ing with an RX 7800 XT, with TAAU set to 66%, you’re better off using 1440p instead. The 1% lows are much better and the GPU will have room to cope with more demanding areas.
Best settings
(Image credit: Square Enix)
Best settings summary: Start with the Medium quality preset. If the performance is close to being acceptable, reduce Shadow quality and Background model detail to increase the average and 1% low frame rates to the desired level.
If you have performance to spare, change the preset to High but avoid using it with a resolution of 4K, unless you have a reasonably high-end graphics card.
Background model detail: Low, Medium, High, Ultra
Ocean detail: Low, Medium, High
Character model detail: Low, High
Effect details: Low, High
Texture resolution: Low, Medium, High
Shadow quality: Low, High
Fog quality: Low, High
Textures: Adjusts the quality of textures
Characters displayed: 0 to 10
Character shadow display distance: 0 to 10
The graphics options listed above are the ones that affect how Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth will look and run after you’ve configured the resolution, frame rate limit, and anti-aliasing.
With the Low preset, they’re all set to their lowest values, except the final two options, which both get a figure of 2. Switching to the Medium preset changes everything to ‘High’, apart from texture resolution (which is set to ‘Medium’) and the last two options, which are 5 and 8 respectively. Finally, the High preset puts everything to its maximum setting.
In terms of performance, the two options that have the biggest impact are background model detail and shadow quality, though fog quality and character count will affect lower-end systems in certain areas.
To be honest, it’s not really worth spending much time tweaking the settings, as your PC will either cope with a preset or not. If it does, then you’re good to go, and if it doesn’t, then you’ll just have to switch to a lower preset. The exception to this would be where you have a GPU that’s capable of managing the Medium or High preset but doesn’t have enough VRAM for them.
For those situations, which are going to be mostly limited to laptops, drop the background model and texture resolution values a notch.
Final thoughts
(Image credit: Square Enix)
Compared to Remake, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is a good console port but that doesn’t make it a good port for PC gamers. From limited graphics options from the dark ages of PC gaming to the clunky mouse+keyboard implementation and miserable upscaling options, Square Enix has demonstrated with Rebirth that it still doesn’t quite understand the PC gaming market.
Personally, I’m okay with the fact there are just three quality options—ideally, it would have been better to have two more, one each for handhelds and top-end GPUs, but it doesn’t help that what few graphics options there are have such a limited range of settings.
And I’m not in the least bit okay with the frame rate limiter (and the hard limits on cutscenes and FMV scenes), the absence of FSR and XeSS, and the total lack of an exclusive fullscreen mode, buffer options, FOV settings, mouse support for the main and pause menus, and so on.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake had many of these issues too but thanks to the modding community, two small files and a handful of coding lines were all that was needed to bring some joy. It should be possible for this to happen again with Rebirth, as it’s still an Unreal Engine 4 game, so I should imagine it won’t be long before we see FSR and XeSS mods, plus others to allow players to tweak the graphics settings with more freedom.
It’ll be worth doing, because not only is Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth huge, with lots to explore and discover, but the game is also more fun and engrossing than Remake (in my humble opinion, at least). Well, as long as you have half-decent, modern PC hardware and, if you want the best anti-aliasing and upscaling, one of Jen-Hsun’s GPUs.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1737557023_Final-Fantasy-7-Rebirth-PC-performance-analysis-Runs-well-and.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-01-22 14:01:002025-01-22 14:01:00Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth PC performance analysis: Runs well and looks good, but the tight system requirements and dearth of PC-centric options spoil the show
Solve your daily Wordle game in seconds. One click is all you need to see the January 22 (1313) answer. Is it all a bit too much, too soon? Then why not spend a little time with our general tips, or read through today’s hint and see how you get on first? However you want to win, we’ve got something here that’ll help.
Some days I carefully weigh up my options, crafting a strong opening guess based on a variety of intelligent factors. And then there are days like today, when my fingers run off before I’ve had a chance to even think up the most basic plan. Somehow, my fingers knew exactly what they were doing, and I solved this Wordle in just two lightning fast guesses.
Today’s Wordle hint
(Image credit: Josh Wardle)
Wordle today: A hint for Wednesday, January 22
If you had to lean or stretch to grab something, you’d do this. Today’s answer can also refer to the extent of something or someone’s influence, too.
Is there a double letter in Wordle today?
No, there is not 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: Future)
What is today’s Wordle answer?
Hey, this is for you. The answer to the January 22 (1313) Wordle is REACH.
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Previous Wordle 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:
January 21: ICING
January 20: SQUID
January 19: ROWER
January 18: SILLY
January 17: PROSE
January 16: FLINT
January 15: KNACK
January 14: FANCY
January 13: CLOAK
January 12: TOTAL
Learn more about Wordle
(Image credit: Nurphoto via Getty)
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 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, 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, 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, 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. Surely it’s only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes.
According to an investor analysis report from Zeus Capital, Planet Coaster 2 hasn’t lived up to expectations when it comes to revenue and reception from the playerbase, and it doesn’t look like anyone’s too surprised.
Despite selling over 400,000 units within two months of release and earning over £10 million, “cash flows are still negative,” an excerpt from the report says (via Reddit). “This is considerably better” than Warhammer [Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin] “that was impaired,” but even still [Planet Coaster 2] “has had relatively poor reviews on platforms such as Steam (60% positive) and PlayStation (3.69/5). Frontier will be working on free updates and fixes to improve player sentiment which likely comes at the expense of developing and releasing PDLC in H2 2025.”
Analysts expect a “lower revenue sustain rate” than some of Frontier’s previous releases, driven by mixed reviews, the existence of console releases, and the fact that it was put on sale just a month after release, and the lower that rate goes, “the greater the importance of the success of [Jurassic World Evolution 3], which is licenced-IP and therefore lower gross margin than own-IP games.”
The hope is that the revenue brought in by Jurassic World Evolution 3 will eventually offset the loss of revenue incurred from Planet Coaster 2. It also appears that revenue estimates for older games like Planet Coaster and Elite Dangerous have been increased, as the hope is that players will carry on spending money on older games.
The report also mentions that Frontier’s sales and marketing expenses have been lowered, as the second half of 2025 “is expected to see a lower proportion of development spend being capitalised because of the time spent on updates and fixes to Planet Coaster 2.”
Despite having some impressively powerful creation tools in Planet Coast 2, many players seemed less than happy with the lack of content available at launch. “Many customizable options that existed in Planet Coaster are now missing, along with a large number of themes,” one negative Steam review says. “The thing that bothers me most is how much of the available scenery is very theme-specific. Many Viking pieces, for example, have textures that are difficult to use in other themes. In contrast, the original themes in Planet Coaster felt more generic or multi-purpose.”
All of this is to say some players really aren’t surprised that Planet Coaster 2 was something of a financial flop. “It didn’t seem different enough from Planet Coaster, in my opinion,” another player says. “Water parks, for example, was an expansion for Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 (which was also from Frontier).”
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It seems like Frontier will have to deal with a similar situation to what Paradox faced after the disappointing launch of Cities: Skylines 2. After a bunch of complaints from players, Colossal Order CEO Mariina Hallikainen said that there would be no paid DLCs, under all the performance issues were fixed. Over a year later, after updates, patches, and some new content (some of which was refunded) the devs are still working to regain the trust that was lost amid the messy release. Planet Coaster 2 will probably take a similar amount of work if the devs want to push its Steam review rating up from 60% which is mixed and towards something a bit more positive.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1737484925_Planet-Coaster-2-isnt-the-financial-success-that-Frontier-needed.png6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-01-21 18:36:062025-01-21 18:36:06Planet Coaster 2 isn’t the financial success that Frontier needed, according to a report, which means there’s more pressure on Jurassic World Evolution 3 to bring in the big bucks
When TikTok was temporarily blocked in the US at the weekend, one of the unexpected knock-on effects was the simultaneous blocking of Marvel Snap, a CCG starring the usual gaggle of buoyant American superheroes. TikTok access was reinstated after 12 hours, but the game remained offline for another 12 hours.
Now it’s back (on PC at least: it’s still absent on smartphones at time of writing) which is good news for its California-based studio Second Dinner, and fans of card games and superheroes in general. But it may not be good news for Marvel Snap publisher Nuverse, which is a subsidiary of TikTok owner ByteDance and, as a result, clearly the source of this card game getting caught up in the mess.
In its announcement on X, Second Dinner was unusually straight-to-the-point: “MARVEL SNAP is back online in the U.S. But to make sure this NEVER happens again, we’re working to bring more services in-house and partner with a new publisher,” the official Second Dinner account tweeted.
“This is the start of a new era for MARVEL SNAP. We know this probably leaves you with even more questions than answers. We appreciate your patience, but in the meantime enjoy playing MARVEL SNAP.”
(Image credit: X)
Maybe it’s just me, but it’s very unusual for a studio to signal its intent to leave a publisher when it is still—given the wording—in a working relationship with that publisher. These are unusual circumstances, though, and Nuverse and ByteDance haven’t been let off the hook yet: US President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social yesterday that TikTok’s US return is merely an extension of “the period of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect”.
During this extension, President Trump is seeking a “50% ownership position” for the US in TikTok. If a deal isn’t cut—and we currently have no idea what kind of deal this could be, whether between a private US company and ByteDance, or the US government itself—there’s every chance TikTok could disappear again, and thus, anything else that falls under the Nuverse mantle.
Marvel Snap is playable, but at the time of writing, in-app purchases “remain unavailable”, though these are expected to return shortly.
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https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1737448861_Marvel-Snap-is-back-online-after-falling-afoul-of-TikToks.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-01-21 04:21:012025-01-21 04:21:01Marvel Snap is back online after falling afoul of TikTok’s temporary ban, and unsurprisingly, its creators are on the search for a new publisher
Shit is indeed about to get real, but separate from all that Valve has kicked off the first Steam sale of 2025 in the form of the Real-Time Strategy Fest, a week-long extravaganza of deals, demos, and free stuff in the Steam Points Shop, all of it geared at—you guessed it—real-time strategy games.
It’s not all RTS games, to be clear. If grand strategy is your thing, Europa Universalis 4 is 90% off ($5/£4/€5) and Victoria 3 is half price ($25/£21/€25). If you enjoy misery and don’t especially care for children, Frostpunk 2 is down to $35/£30/€35—that’s 22% off the regular price—or you can do some medieval city building with Manor Lords, 30% for the duration of the RTS Fest ($28/£24.49/€28). There’s 4X games (Stellaris at 75% off is a good choice), tower defense, at least one typing game—if there’s some kind of strategy connection, then it’s probably in this sale.
Naturally, there’s plenty see in the way of conventional RTS games too:
If you want to get in on the big sale action but aren’t sure where to start, take a dive into our list of the best strategy games on PC. And if all you’re really after is some free stuff, head over to the Steam Points Shop and claim a couple avatar frames and a nice “RTS Tank” animated avatar.
Steam’s Real-Time Strategy Fest is live now and runs until 10 am PT/1 pm ET on January 27.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1737412795_Sts-about-to-get-real-The-first-Steam-sale-of.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-01-20 20:55:042025-01-20 20:55:04‘S**t’s about to get real’: The first Steam sale of 2025 is live, and it’s all about strategy games
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