In ON3 we want to showcase and mentor 6 new voices in 1000 word features. We champion long form videogame journalism, the future of print and give freelancers a fair deal. Email [email protected] by the 8/2/26 with an example of your writing and your experience to apply. on.games #GamesJournalism

Do you care about how chicken plumage factors into game design? This, and many other insights from Warhorse, are covered in my making of Kingdom Come: Deliverance II in Edge 420. Huge thanks to @edwardsmithwriter.bsky.social, Warhorse and their team for giving their time and bearing with me.

Apparently, Thief VR is "relevant" to me because I've played a lot of Dishonored. Fair enough. But I've also played all the Thief games... Steam algorithms are weird

I wrote a thing about Pathologic 3, which I think is largely a brilliant game. To be clear, "critique" is here meant in the sense of a sustained, detailed examination, not necessarily in the sense of a criticism (although the ambiguity is probably apt, giving we're dealing with Pathologic)

I'm enjoying Fallout Season 2, but largely by reconciling myself to the fact that it's not really anything like the Fallout I remember. The Legion is a case in point: they're absurd and funny in New Vegas, but they are also sinister, menacing, and very dangerous. In the show they are just the former

Could someone who actually knows stuff about K-Pop please explain how many of the songs in K-Pop Demon Hunters are actually K-Pop? I don't know anything, but a lot of them just sound like....I dunno, pop without the "K", I guess

My 4yo binned her sandwich then lied and told us she had eaten it. But at least she put it in the composting bin, so we're doing something right, I guess

I have a preview and a review in this one. As ever, I provide zero prizes if you guess which ones are mine.

I've had 1 full week off this year. Bits of long weekends here and there, occasional day off to make time for a review, but that week was the only consistent time off. So I can't overstate how much I'm looking forward to 10 days off with the kids, and possibly a videogame, over the holidays

Nothing unexpected here, I guess, but this is grim reading nonetheless.

There was a guy at the gym who looked like if Gene Wolfe and Dr Robotnik had a baby, the baby grew up, and got really stacked

Welcome Ice-Pick Lodge to the Hooded Horse family! They're making Darkwood 2: a sequel to the unforgiving survival horror game originally created by Acid Wizard. We'll be publishing Darkwood 2 in consultation with the Acid Wizard team. Read more: store.steampowered.com/news/app/370...

Clearly the password they should have used is 0451

My wife and I have been together for 20 years. We spent the anniversary looking after vomitting children, frantically washing sick-covered bedding, and vomitting ourselves

Nothing like trying to do a review for a large-ish game while your daughter and then your wife are sick with a vomitting bug...on the other hand, who needs more than 4 hours' sleep anyway?

There is some especially potent lurgy wandering around this autumn. I've had two pretty nasty throat infections in the last 4 weeks (or possibly one that just never went away) and lost a kilogram. Hopefully that's the end of it

When you ask your mate, who is a networking expert, which router to buy and you get a lecture about different systems without any recommendations regarding what to actually get

There is a release date

One of my favourite things to do is get screamed at by middle-aged men. Here are Blood Incantation, Oranssi Pazuzu, and Sijjin screaming at the Albert Hall last night. Blood Incantation played the whole of the brilliant Absolute Elsewhere, plus a bunch of deeper cuts. It was all very enjoyable

Without Rebecca there would be no Fallout, amongst many other excellent things 🙏

Hey, look, I'm in this one with a review

Read an article about how AI might be like the dot com bubble. At the end it said it was written by AI and then checked and refined by a journalist. I can't work out if that's ironic, or depressing, or good productivity, or what

We have 007: First Light at home

My daughter's school awards points on an app for good behaviour. One half of me hates the gamefication and metricisation of everything, especially my children. The other half is imagining shoving other parents' faces into the app while screaming, "I am going to bury you underground"

Hot take: the golden age of TV drama is over; the golden age of TV science fiction has begun

One of the great things about listening to game soundtracks is that you will hear some amazing bit of composition, then you'll look up the title and it'll be called "Sewers" or "E3 Trailer Music"

If the Luddites were today, I wonder if they would have to put up with dozens of LinkedIn posts each day explaining how good and how terrible power looms are

Are you a game developer who, when faced with the prospect of making layoffs, found another way forward for their studio instead? If so, I'd love to speak to you for GamesIndustry.Biz. We're working on an article with the working title, 'You don't always have to make people redundant'. Get in touch!

Smart move to thoroughly ground Season 2 in the world building of the best "modern" Fallout game

Some of the best prose I've ever come across in a videogame, and some captivating world-building. Well deserved

OpenAI: ChatGPT-5 is PhD-level smart. Me, struggling to open a packet of crisps: yeah, that sounds about right.

Is Clair Obscur an allegory for the generations that laid their lives down in the World Wars? Someone "paints" a conscription order and an entire generation is written out of existence. (This thought prompted by Vasily Grossman's For a Just Cause)

I preferred it when they were called expansion packs, rather than DLC

In the gym. Someone is setting up their phone on a tripod. Didn't think this actually happened in real life, never mind in budget gyms...

Whoever is responsible for the fabric animations deserves a raise youtu.be/ybhy197kCUU?...

A wasp flying through your eye line during a video call with people you've never met before is one of the worst first world problems to have

Oooh, Neverwinter Nights 2 is finally on Steam, including Mask of the Betrayer! store.steampowered.com/app/2738630/...

The new Pocketmags app is amazing. Obviously I prefer the printed Edge, but at least the digital version is now a genuinely viable alternative

I'm back in Edge today with a review and a feature on the making of STALKER 2. I wrote this to work in complement with GSC's own War Game documentary, covering more of the design and engineering side. Enormous thanks to GSC Game World and the PR team for their candour and access to materials

There is always a lighthouse, there is always a man

In other news, I think it might be time to finally quit Dune: Awakening. I don't have the energy to grind for another ornithopter

I wrote a thing about Dune: Awakening for Eurogamer. TLDR: very faithful to the lore, but struggles with the themes and philosophy of the books. Huge thanks to the editors for giving me the space to, essentially, get my Dune nerd soapbox out.

Saw Nine Inch Nails on Tuesday. One of the best shows I've been to. Incredible sound quality, clever staging, and a set list full of hits, deep cuts, and interesting remixes. £45 for a t-shirt and £100 for a hoodie is daylight robbery though 😭

One thing I really appreciate about Dune: Awakening is the way the tips menu ties things back to the lore. Wait, Frank Herbert didn't have sandbikes, did he? That's just some videogame nonsense. Well, ack-tually, Dune explicitly refers to a "one-man groundcar"

"While exploring recent academic contributions, your work stood out to me as especially impactful" Mate, I've had literally 3 citations...

The joys of attempting to play an MMO in its first 24 hours...🙄 Even took a day off for this, like a mug

Alan Wake II crashing ceaselessly on my PC, apparently due to a GPU error (driver is up to date, nothing is overclocked, etc). Particularly galling given I have a 4080S - like I'm being punished for my graphical extravagance. Worse, apparently this is a well known issue that's been around for months

It's a new Thief game, which is almost as rare and precious as a Half-Life at this point (with all the Alyx parallels of doing a new installment in VR). But the font and footage suggest it's a successor to the extremely disappointing 2014 reboot... youtu.be/xrtbCcnZEhQ?...

If you're going to send a very friendly email about a vacancy to arrange an "informal chat", please don't then run the chat like it's a formal job interview. Not cool

So I'm looking to ramp up my freelance work after my hours for a client got slashed. 💀 I'm available for reviews, mock reviews and guides, as well as LGBTQ+ and HoH consultation. I'm an award-winning writer with experience in narrative design and PR. aimeehart.journoportfolio.com RTs appreciated.