For five years the indie designer known as Pizza Pranks has been publishing Indiepocalypse, a monthly “bundle-zine” of 10 experimental indie games by different developers. They’re always a bit off-kilter, and they come with a helpful pdf zine where the creators of each one do a postmortem on their inspirations. It’s also full of handy links to other places you’ll find niche games, like the interactive fiction zine ChoiceBeat.
The latest issue of Indiepocalypse is #63, and as always it’s a zip file full of surprises. Among them is Wizard Party, a point-and-click adventure where you navigate a house party where ideas manifest as interactable objects once they’re mentioned in conversation, which you can then use to solve puzzles.
There’s also Sarpedon, a first-person Groundhoglike where you wash up on an island full of Greek mythology with only the instructions SLAY THE BEAST and RETURN WITH HER HEAD. Should you die on this perilous quest, you awaken on the beach to try again. And again.
These strange delights and eight others make up the contents of Indiepocalypse #63. All the creators are paid for their inclusion, and earn royalties on subsequent sales. Which is nice. You can find the complete back catalogue of Indiepocalypse at itch.io and with 62 back issues to work through, the odds of finding something you like are pretty decent.
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https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/1743945562_Party-with-wizards-and-get-stuck-in-a-Medusa-timeloop.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-04-06 07:10:122025-04-06 07:10:12Party with wizards and get stuck in a Medusa timeloop in Indiepocalypse’s latest anthology of unusual games
However you want to win today’s Wordle, we’ve got the tools to make it happen. Keep things light with our general tips, dive a little deeper with our clue for the April 6 (1387) game, or make a sprint for a win by clicking your way to today’s answer. It’s your game, and your win.
Wordle seemed to be playing with me today, rather than the other way around. That letter didn’t go there? Really? I didn’t actually mind all the twists and turns I had to take to reach today’s answer in the end, because my reward for persevering was a fantastic “Got it!” moment (and an overwhelming sense of relief).
Wordle today: A hint
(Image credit: Josh Wardle)
Wordle today: A hint for Sunday, April 6
Once the preserve of wealthy Romans, these days today’s answer can refer to any type of luxury house somewhere hot and European—perfect for a nice break.
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’ve decided to play Wordle but you’re not sure where to start, I’ll help set you on the path to your first winning streak. Make all your guesses count and become a Wordle winner with these quick tips:
A good opener has a mix of common vowels and consonants.
The answer could contain the same letter, repeated.
Avoid words that include letters you’ve already eliminated.
You’re not racing against the clock so there’s no reason to rush. In fact, it’s not a bad idea to treat the game like a casual newspaper crossword and come back to it later if you’re coming up blank. Sometimes stepping away for a while means you can come back with a fresh perspective.
Today’s Wordle answer
(Image credit: Future)
What is today’s Wordle answer?
We’re happy to help. The answer to the April 6 (1387) Wordle is VILLA.
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Previous Wordle answers
The last 10 Wordle answers
Previous Wordle solutions can help to eliminate guesses for today’s Wordle, as the answer isn’t likely to be repeated. They can also give you some solid ideas for starting words that keep your daily puzzle-solving fresh.
Here are some recent Wordle answers:
April 5: FOAMY
April 4: KRILL
April 3: SHEAR
April 2: CURSE
April 1: JEWEL
March 31: BOOTY
March 30: QUOTA
March 29: SORRY
March 28: VERSE
March 27: SHEET
Learn more about Wordle
(Image credit: Nurphoto via Getty)
There are six rows of five boxes presented to you by Wordle each day, and you’ll need to work out which five-letter word is hiding among them to win the daily puzzle.
Start with a strong word like ALIVE—or any other word with a good mix of common consonants and multiple vowels. You should also avoid starting words with repeating letters, so you don’t waste the chance to confirm or eliminate an extra letter. Once you’ve typed your guess and hit Enter, you’ll see 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 first, using another “good” word to cover any common letters you might have missed on the first row—just don’t forget 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 correct word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words and don’t forget letters can repeat too (eg: 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.
It’s no secret that Assassin’s Creed has been stuck in a bit of a rut for a while. While the series’ use of wildly different historical time periods helps add a lot of variety, it’s struggled to marry its many disparate systems in a cohesive way. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla makes this more obvious than ever with a wealth of issues, chief of which are a bloated open world and meandering story. That’s exactly what makes Assassin’s Creed Shadows such a pleasant surprise—it feels like a complete course correction.
While there are still some frustrating issues that continue to plague the series, it feels like Shadows might have stumbled onto a winning formula that could carry the series forward—a true fusion of the newer RPG games and the classic Assassin’s Creed formula.
(Image credit: Ubisoft)
The 2017 release of Assassin’s Creed Origins changed the series’ entire trajectory, and that new RPG formula has been iterated on ever since. But Valhalla, arguably, took that formula too far, and became too gratuitous in trying to be an expansive open-world RPG, shunting sneaky, assassin shenanigans off to the side.
Valhalla’s real downfall is that it’s simply trying to do too much, it’s butter spread too thin over a piece of toast. It’s a decades-spanning Viking epic; a free-form open world full of icons, activities and things to collect; an action RPG with the vestiges of a stealth system; and then there’s the sections where you’re not even playing Eivor.
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed—the dozens of icons and color-coded spheres on your map, the intricate web of hundreds of abilities, and the meandering plot lines that feel like five seasons of a TV show crammed into a game.
(Image credit: Ubisoft)
More often than not these activities and stories don’t feel like they’re contributing to the core narrative. They feel separate, and unfortunately because of that, like a waste of time. By trying to maximize all of the RPG elements of Origins and Odyssey, Valhalla ended up feeling unfocused and scattered, and that’s a real shame considering there’s some strong story moments near the end—it’s just the 100 hours to get there don’t feel worth it.
Coming into Shadows, that created a major question: would Assassin’s Creed continue down the RPG path or go back to basics? The answer’s a bit complicated, and while Shadows doesn’t fix all of the problems that have been there in the past few games, it provides a blueprint for how the series can, and should, evolve.
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Shadows feels like it directly addresses that unconnected feeling of Valhalla—there’s a deliberateness behind Shadows that gives it an edge. Exploration activities like shrines give you knowledge points to unlock more skills. Side quests can lead to new allies joining your forces, hints to uncover assassination targets, resources to expand your base. Shadows focuses on a core set of ideas and mechanics, and makes sure to expand everything out of those handful of concepts. This even applies to the combat itself.
(Image credit: Ubisoft)
In Valhalla, there were dozens of abilities you could unlock, and upgrades to strengthen those abilities—but you had to find hidden books to do so. But in Shadows those ideas are streamlined. Most abilities specifically apply to particular weapons, meaning you can sink ability points into the murderous tools you enjoy using the most. But the use of knowledge points means you can have a more satisfying progression by simply exploring the world and engaging in its activities as you come across them. You don’t need to seek out specific objects to unlock abilities, and smaller skill trees mean you won’t get locked out of some upgrade because you’ve only been investing in one side of the network of skills.
Even the way the story plays out feels more thoughtful—a clear expansion of ideas that were introduced in Assassin’s Creed Mirage.
Even the way the story plays out feels more thoughtful—a clear expansion of ideas that were introduced in Assassin’s Creed Mirage. Instead of the normal quest log you have a network of character icons, laying out a clear map of who’s involved in this story and what their role is.
Quests are then attached to these portraits, letting you select quests by who’s involved—whether that’s an ally you want to help, or a member of the shadowy organization you’re hunting down. These assassinations take you to the various regions of Shadow’s feudal Japan, creating a sense of the main story progressing while you uncover more of the world. You can tangibly feel the narrative progression accompanying the exploration.
(Image credit: Ubisoft)
Even the likes of Origins and Odyssey struggled to keep that sense of momentum up—those games had all these interesting systems and assassination targets, but they didn’t feel intrinsically linked to that main experience. They were simply side objectives, plain and simple.
While it’s a clear step in the right direction, there’s still a handful of troublesome elements that Shadows can’t seem to drop. An explosive opening hour moves into a surprisingly slow Act 1—with one of the game’s dual protagonists, Yasuke, not even appearing again for nearly six hours. It’s a bizarre choice that halts the momentum set up by the opening, and a lot of those compelling exploration elements, and the variety offered by two characters, don’t become apparent until you’ve played quite a bit of the game. It feels like a hump you have to get over, in order to get to the good stuff.
While Valhalla’s scattershot approach was detrimental, games of this scale still need a lot of variety to justify their immense size, they just need to be cohesive. Shadows has that cohesion, but it can also feel repetitive. The map is, once again, vast, and Ubisoft just hasn’t created enough distinct diversions to fill it. Rhythm minigames and optional treasures break up the flow at first, but after you’ve done those a dozen times across 60 hours, it doesn’t feel fresh anymore.
(Image credit: Ubisoft)
Instead of doing the exact same thing in a dozen locations, there could be variation layered into each one—whether that’s in the form of more narrative context, or slightly different gameplay mechanics.
The same can be said for Shadow’s approach to assassination. There’s a ton of targets to take down, but the formula, over and over, is infiltrate a castle and take the target down, either with strength as Yasuke or stealth as Naoe. The two playable characters should add variety to these hunts, but it pales in comparison to the black box design of assassination missions in previous games. The foundations of a new formula is there in Shadows, but it could be drastically improved upon with more hand-designed assassination missions that have unique settings, mechanics, or objectives.
(Image credit: Ubisoft)
Shadows drastically improves the problems of Valhalla by making its world and activities feel more united and relevant to each other, but rather than finding perfection, it feels like this is the starting point of something that needs to be refined moving forward.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows doesn’t redefine the franchise like some may have wanted, but it does feel like Ubisoft is trying to find a middle ground that can appeal to both camps of players. Valhalla veered too far into RPG territory, and Assassin’s Creed Mirage went back to basics to middling results. This time, Ubisoft has tried to keep the issues inherent in both games in mind, and while it still has issues, it finally feels like Assassin’s Creed knows what it wants to be again.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/ASSASSINS-CREED-SHADOWS-7-YASUKE-WHAT-WE-DISCOVER.jpg7201280DecayeD20https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngDecayeD202025-04-05 15:00:202025-04-05 15:00:20ASSASSIN’S CREED SHADOWS #7 | YASUKE | WHAT WE DISCOVER IS CRAZY
Why not start your weekend with a guaranteed win? Click or scroll straight to the answer to today’s Wordle and enjoy watching your first row fill with green letters. We won’t tell anyone, promise. You could also spend a while with our clue for the April 5 (1386) puzzle if you prefer, or check out our everyday tips.
It was my grey letters that helped out more than anything today, shutting down so many potential guesses before I’d even had the chance to make them. I didn’t exactly cheer when another row was mostly wrong, but it helped me out in ways I didn’t quite appreciate at the time.
Today’s Wordle hint
(Image credit: Josh Wardle)
Wordle today: A hint for Saturday, April 5
Frothy. Bubbly. Coffee, beer, and even the sea can all be this.
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
A good starting word can be the difference between victory and defeat with the daily puzzle, but once you’ve got the basics, it’s much easier to nail down those Wordle wins. And as there’s nothing quite like a small victory to set you up for the rest of the day, here are a few tips to help set you on the right path:
A good opening guess should contain a mix of unique consonants and vowels.
Narrow down the pool of letters quickly with a tactical second guess.
Watch out for letters appearing more than once in the answer.
There’s no racing against the clock with Wordle so you don’t need to rush for the answer. Treating the game like a casual newspaper crossword can be a good tactic; that way, you can come back to it later if you’re coming up blank. Stepping away for a while might mean the difference between a win and a line of grey squares.
Today’s Wordle answer
(Image credit: Future)
What is today’s Wordle answer?
One weekend win. The answer to the April 5 (1386) Wordle is FOAMY.
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Previous Wordle answers
The last 10 Wordle answers
Past Wordle answers can give you some excellent ideas for fun starting words that keep your daily puzzle-solving fresh. They are also a good way to eliminate guesses for today’s Wordle, as the answer is unlikely to be repeated.
Here are some recent Wordle answers:
April 4: KRILL
April 3: SHEAR
April 2: CURSE
April 1: JEWEL
March 31: BOOTY
March 30: QUOTA
March 29: SORRY
March 28: VERSE
March 27: SHEET
March 26: ELBOW
Learn more about Wordle
(Image credit: Nurphoto via Getty)
Wordle gives you six rows of five boxes each day, and you’ll need to work out which secret five-letter word is hiding inside them to keep up your winning streak.
You should start with a strong word like ARISE, or any other word that contains a good mix of common consonants and multiple vowels. You’ll also want to avoid starting words with repeating letters, as you’re wasting the chance to potentially eliminate or confirm an extra letter. Once you hit Enter, you’ll see which ones 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.
A Microsoft employee interrupted an address being given by AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman as part of the company’s 50th anniversary event, demanding the company “stop using AI for genocide.”
The disruption was first reported by The Verge, which also shared video of the incident. It can also be heard in The Verge’s full coverage of Microsoft’s Copilot presentation, although Ibtihal Aboussad, reportedly the employee who interrupted Suleyman, is out of view.
Microsoft employee disrupts 50th anniversary and calls AI boss ‘war profiteer’ – YouTube
“You are a war profiteer,” Aboussad says as she’s escorted out of the room. “Shame on you. You are a war profiteer. Stop using AI for genocide, Mustafa. Stop using AI for genocide in our region. You have blood on your hands. All of Microsoft has blood on its hands.”
A February 2025 report by AP said the Israeli military’s use of Microsoft and OpenAI technology “skyrocketed” following the Hamas attacks of October 2024, to nearly 200 times higher than what it was the week before the attack. It also notes that Israel’s Ministry of Defense is Microsoft’s second-largest military customer, behind only the US military.
The Verge shared a copy of an email Aboussad sent to Microsoft employees via numerous internal mailing lists saying that it was that relationship that prompted her to take action.
“My name is Ibtihal, and for the past 3.5 years, I’ve been a software engineer on Microsoft’s AI Platform org,” Aboussad wrote. “I spoke up today because after learning that my org was powering the genocide of my people in Palestine, I saw no other moral choice. This is especially true when I’ve witnessed how Microsoft has tried to quell and suppress any dissent from my coworkers who tried to raise this issue.
“For the past year and a half, our Arab, Palestinian, and Muslim community at Microsoft has been silenced, intimidated, harassed, and doxxed, with impunity from Microsoft. Attempts at speaking up at best fell on deaf ears, and at worst, led to the firing of two employees for simply holding a vigil. There was simply no other way to make our voices heard.”
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Later in her email, Aboussad said she was initially excited to move to Microsoft’s AI platform for the potential good it offered in areas like “accessibility products, translation services, and tools to ’empower every human and organization to achieve more’.”
“I was not informed that Microsoft would sell my work to the Israeli military and government, with the purpose of spying on and murdering journalists, doctors, aid workers, and entire civilian families,” Aboussad wrote. “If I knew my work on transcription scenarios would help spy on and transcribe phone calls to better target Palestinians, I would not have joined this organization and contributed to genocide. I did not sign up to write code that violates human rights.”
Microsoft’s military entanglements have been met with pushback in the past: In 2019, for instance, a group of Microsoft employees protested the company’s $479 million contract to develop HoloLens technology for the US Army; shareholders expressed similar concerns in 2022. But concerns about Israel’s ongoing attacks in Gaza are not hypothetical: More than 50,000 Palestinians are estimated to have been killed since October 2023, although that’s merely an estimate—researchers say the actual number could be much higher.
Aboussad’s email urged employees to speak out by signing a “No Azure for Apartheid” petition, urging company leadership to end contracts with the Israeli military, and ensuring others at the company are aware of how their work could be used.
“Our company has precedents in supporting human rights, including divestment from apartheid South Africa and dropping contracts with AnyVision (Israeli facial recognition startup), after Microsoft employee and community protests,” Aboussad wrote. “My hope is that our collective voices will motivate our AI leaders to do the same, and correct Microsoft’s actions regarding these human rights violations, to avoid a stained legacy. Microsoft Cloud and AI should stop being the bombs and bullets of the 21st century.”
Not long after Abbousad’s protest, a second employee staged a similar disruption during a separate talk being held by current and former Microsoft CEOs Satya Nadella, Steve Ballmer, and Bill Gates.
“Shame on you all. You’re all hypocrites,” Vaniya Agrawal said. “50,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been murdered with Microsoft technology. How dare you. Shame on all of you for celebrating their blood. Cut ties with Israel.”
Some in the audience booed, while Nadella, Ballmer, and Gates sat in awkward silence while Agrawal was escorted out of the room. Agrawal also sent an email to company executives, viewed by CNBC, in which she said she’s “grown more aware of Microsoft’s growing role in the military-industrial complex,” and that Microsoft is “complicit” as a “digital weapons manufacturer that powers surveillance, apartheid, and genocide.”
“Even if we don’t work directly in AI or Azure, our labor is tacit support, and our corporate climb only fuels the system,” Agrawal wrote. Like Abbousad, she also called on employees to sign the No Apartheid for Azure petition.
It seems likely that this protest will cost Aboussad and Agrawal their jobs: In 2024, Microsoft fired two employees who organized a vigil at the company’s headquarters for Palestinians killed in Gaza.
I’ve reached out to Microsoft for comment and will update if I receive a reply.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/1743801306_Microsoft-employee-escorted-out-of-50th-anniversary-event-after-protesting.jpg6761200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-04-04 21:32:022025-04-04 21:32:02Microsoft employee escorted out of 50th anniversary event after protesting sales to Israel: ‘You have blood on your hands. All of Microsoft has blood on its hands’
Despite its unsubtle name and clear love of exploding buildings, Disaster Blaster is actually something of a slow burn. It took me several runs to fully understand what kind of game was tucked under its candy-colored, retro-graphics, planet-destroying facade. Once you start to peel back its layers, there’s entertaining depth tucked within its deceptively simple systems.
Despite looking like a frenetic action game, Disaster Blaster actually strips you of all direct control. Your character, a twitchy little shock-haired weirdo with a penchant for destruction, automatically sprints and leaps to the right, blazing rounds at everything that stands in his path, from snapping cyan sharks to looming skyscrapers. Your task is to choose upgrade cards for your blaster, which determine everything from how much damage it does to how quickly it fires, as well as adding elemental boosts or other effects.
As you begin to learn how cards work together and amplify each other, you’ll discover combinations that turn your blaster from an underpowered pea-shooter into a world-destroying weapon of mass destruction. It’s deeply satisfying to watch your character go from taking multiple pot shots to dispatch tiny enemies to firing incinerating bolts that engulf entire city blocks in nuclear fire.
Like Oppenheimer, you’ll unleash world-ending annihilation through the magical power of math. By combining base damage increases, multipliers, and recursive cards that repeat the effects of previous cards in the sequence, you’ll begin to turn out astonishing amounts of carnage with every shot.
The game gives you a hand by showing you a preview of how much placing a card in a certain slot will affect your total damage. Late in runs, the numbers can grow so high that the preview changes from a number to just giant text that says “REALLY??”. Now that’s satisfying.
That said, the game has systems in place to ensure that you can’t just steamroll every planet. Sometimes when your character gets hit, instead of deducting a heart, one of your cards will be randomly shattered. This is especially punishing if the card in question is a crucial multiplier or repeat card, which can immediately strip multiple digits off of your damage number.
There’s also enough enemy variety to demand that you vary up your tactics as you make your way through each level. While a rapid fire blaster with bullets that pass through and damage multiple enemies is a good fit when you’re getting swarmed, it’s next to useless against a few larger enemies. Conversely, a blaster that spews powerful single shots may have the opposite problem.
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You’ll stack points as you make your way through each level, which are then translated into currency when you finish a run (whether you were successful or not). You can spend your cash to unlock new planets to dominate, upgrade existing characters or purchase new ones, or buy access to new skill cards that will then appear in subsequent levels.
The downside of this system is that it’s mostly random. You won’t see any details of new characters before you unlock them, and skills are unlocked blind box style, so you never know what you’re going to get. In fact, other than a suggestive icon, you won’t be able to see what the skill you’ve unlocked does until it shows up in a run.
Disaster Blaster also has a number of other rough edges, particularly around presentation. It’s hardly a looker, with graphics reminiscent of the Commodore 64 era, minus the retro charm. Also, the music is completely unbearable. After one full run of listening to its carnival-style thumping and wheezing, I was hustling to the settings menu to find the mute option.
That said, if you’re looking for a quick hit of dopamine by way of planetary destruction, and especially if you like the idea of exploiting mathematical synergies to achieve it, Disaster Blaster presents a satisfying roguelite loop designed to feed your brain a steady drip of delicious chemicals. It’s available on Steam now, and there’s even a free demo if you want to give it a try.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/1743765256_Build-guns-that-can-bathe-entire-cities-in-nuclear-fire.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-04-04 12:01:152025-04-04 12:01:15Build guns that can bathe entire cities in nuclear fire using the power of math in this explosive roguelike
What is it? A Southern Gothic action-adventure. Release Date: April 8, 2025 Expect to pay: $30 / £35 Developer: Compulsion Games Publisher: Xbox Game Studios Reviewed on: Windows 11 Pro, RTX 4080, AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, 64GB RAM Multiplayer? No Link:Official Site
Around 20 minutes into playing South of Midnight, I had to stop and take a moment. Not because I’d taken offense to its portrayals of the American South—that’s something you learn to brace for growing up in Mississippi—but the opposite. The Southern Gothic action-adventure had me feeling disarmed and sentimental over, of all things, a shed. Not the part where I tussled with the supernatural manifestation of a man’s innermost fears, the Rougarou, and forced him to reckon with the pain, but a shed.
In my defense, South of Midnight’s headstrong and compassionate protagonist, Hazel Flood, is just that good. Perhaps it’s less about the shed and more about her casual grief for that rickety thing’s existence, mourning it long before the impending hurricane even has a chance to wash it away. But her fleeting prayer, a simple “I hope it’s still standin’ after tonight,” hit me with all the force of that storm.
Living in the Deep South—in those places where it’s humid enough to drown a man and they’ve as many churches as people—is a lot like that. There’s not enough time to stop and mourn anything, not your shed or your neighbor. It’s a constant churn of brace, endure, and rebuild as best you can.
Much to my relief, South of Midnight gets that, too. It’s not a few hours of kitschy antebellum aesthetics, sanitized bedtime stories, or exploitative violence. It’s a supernatural tale with magic powers and creatures, but that doesn’t stop it from being an earnest, empathetic look at that often-forgotten stretch of land between eastern Texas and the Atlantic seaboard by a team that truly must give a damn.
(Image credit: Compulsion Games)
How’s your momma ‘n’ em?
Hazel’s violent encounters with angry spirits aren’t difficult, but they are fun—I especially liked the sequences where her only option was to run (lest the past catch up to her). The action isn’t the main attraction, though. It’s the details like that shed and other remnants of poverty and grief that really affected me, and on more than one occasion I stopped dashing through the bayous or swinging over muddy obstacles to inspect a fantastically familiar vision of the South.
Hazel’s initial routine may seem a tad mundane to the unfamiliar, but every piece of its opening vignette is placed with an impossible attention to detail and care. It’s in a lot of little things, like photos from state fairs, a social worker’s paperwork, and the familiar blare of severe weather warnings. Then there’s the more subtle pieces, like her momma Lacey’s slight don’t-sass-me tone change and the way Hazel is so endeared to her neighbors.
I suspect some of those folks, like the nearby Mrs. Pearl, are the type to give you the last five dollars to their name or maybe open your front door unannounced. The latter isn’t a degree of familiarity I’d endorse, but the rest has a charm that leaves me longing. South of Midnight is full of those unexpected idiosyncrasies I adore—like listening to a Southerner’s inexplicable and excessive use of the word “done,” or hearing the way we can take a string of words and turn them into one.
Some of those folks, like the nearby Mrs Pearl, are the type to give you the last five dollars to their name.
The whole journey is a tapestry of Deep South born and raised, but there’s a lot of hurt in becoming acquainted with some of those mannerisms, too. They aren’t all forged by some innate Southern goodness, but by places where you better learn to save yourself (and each other) because there sure as hell ain’t no one else coming.
And after the game’s hurricane churns through, separating Hazel from her mother, South of Midnight hammers that sentiment home. If Hazel wants to find her ma’, she’s going to have to do it without the folks who should be first in line to offer help. I reckon it wouldn’t be news to her, Hazel’s probably known since birth, but some of that Southern hospitality is just for show.
(Image credit: Compulsion Games)
A Haint ‘n’ a holler
In those first couple of chapters, where South of Midnight introduces Hazel’s supernatural abilities as a Weaver, combat assumes the pace of a slow Southern drawl. The fights don’t have much depth, and Hazel sort of meanders between smaller enemies in some of the game’s oversized arenas.
There’s definitely a learning curve to figuring out what parts of the world are safe or a hazard too, and its action isn’t always explained very well. Thankfully, the occasionally clunky transition isn’t a very long one, and after a few deaths to a single toe in the water, the game gets its point across.
I never found myself overly frustrated or severely punished, and outside of some of those finicky moments, I had a mighty good time with Hazel’s magical weaponry. Her kit is an ethereal arsenal of beloved trinkets, like a darling childhood doll and a literal bottle to capture emotional pain. Along with her enchanted Hooks, those knickknacks are an important part of the whole Weaver responsibility. Wielding one in each hand, Hazel can rip through enemy Haints—angry spirits spawned by a trauma-fueled rot setting into the world.
South of Midnight knows that festering despair as Stigma and warns it thrives where folks wept their hardest tears. Those formulaic encounters with tortured ghosts in their suspiciously open arenas remind me of Alice: Madness Returns. It gets a little repetitive, even with newfangled upgrades Hazel makes to some of her weapons along the way, but I never really mind it.
That’s mostly thanks to the game always sewing something thematically better in the background. There’s a big-picture perspective on combat that’s often far better than any singular piece. If you stick around long enough to learn how to fight, South of Midnight transitions into even better lessons on how to heal.
(Image credit: Compulsion Games)
A bottle for your thoughts
It’s not enough to destroy the rotting sources of Stigma’s roots, but you can’t really fix things back to how they were either. A lot of Hazel’s journey is about wrestling with that. It’s fixing through listening. Acknowledge the hurt, share the pain, then stitch whatever remains back together. As a Weaver, she’s one of the only few in the world who can. It’s not a fair ask, but the Deep South’s never cared much about fairness, anyway.
It’s a process leading to plenty of encounters with broken people, sometimes easy to hate and hard to love. The expectation, from both myself and the game’s most troubled souls, is that the world will laugh or look away, but South of Midnight never does that. It doesn’t distill places still haunted by the Confederacy, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow into a palatable nothing, and nor does it reduce that residual pain into cheap sentimentality.
(Image credit: Compulsion Games)
Tending the Deep South’s wounds looks different from chapter to chapter. Some are gentle whispers of shared generational wisdom, while others are pleas for mercy after unimaginable sin. When I see Hazel carry all that—still loving so fiercely and fighting so hard—the bitter, redneck chip on my shoulder grows a little lighter and I’m thankful for its thoughtful reminders of resilience.
There’s a moment in the game’s later chapters I won’t spoil, but one line still sits with me, even days after wrapping up Hazel’s journey. In a rush to protect the more vulnerable, Hazel declares, “These creatures aren’t monsters, they’re just waiting for someone who cares to come along.”
It’s grounding, really. It’s given me this feeling I can only describe as what must be the videogame equivalent of a really big hug. I don’t know if I’ve ever experienced something so sincerely devoted to the people and places I call home, but I’ll be damned if this isn’t my new bar for how it should look.
If you’re searching for Monster Hunter WildsTitle Update 1 release times, you’re likely as excited to fight Mizutsune as I am. This beloved bubble-blasting fox is returning to the game as part of the first free content drop, alongside Zoh Shia arriving as a repeatable hunt, and a Grand Hub where you can gather with friends to wave your tankards around and listen to a Wyverian diva belt out some ballads.
Later in the month, we’re also getting our springtime-themed event, and an extra challenging monster in Arch-Tempered Rey Dau, for all you hardcore hunters that found the base game a little too easy. Check below for Title Update 1 release times in each region to find out when you can get playing.
What time does Monster Hunter Wilds Title Update 1 release?
Capcom has said that Title Update 1 for Monster Hunter Wilds will release on April 4, though this will vary based on your timezone. Maintenance for the update is due to start at 10 pm UTC on April 3 and proceed till 3 am on April 4, after which you’ll be able to download the latest version and hop into the update.
The release times for each region are as follows:
April 3
West Coast North America: 8 pm PT
East Coast North America: 11 pm ET
April 4
United Kingdom: 4 am BST
Europe: 5 am CET
Japan: 12 pm JST
If you haven’t been keeping up with the recent showcases, Title Update 1 kind of has a rolling release in terms of content. The initial update will add Mitzutsune, Zoh Shia as a repeatable hunt, and the Grand Hub gathering area, but then on April 22, we’ll get our first event with the Festival of Accord: Blossomdance (a spring-themed event if the name wasn’t clue enough).
As mentioned, we’ll also get to fight our first super hard monster with Arch-Tempered Rey Dau on April 29 as part of a MH Wilds event. For details on future updates, such as the return of Lagiacrus in the summer, see our Monster Hunter Wilds roadmap.
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