Steam Next Fest 2026 has more than double the number of demos than last year, but how much of it is generative 'AI slop'?

Good news, people who figure they are going to die of old age before they get another Dino Crisis! Good news also, people who can't get enough throwback immersive sims! Even as Capcom forge ahead with their Resident Evil remake ouroboros, plucky Momentum Games and horror publishers Black Lantern Collective are releasing Athanasia - a first-person homage to both Dino Crisis and System Shock, in which you play intrepid researcher Carmen Flores, who has been sent to one of gaming's many ominous abandoned scientific facilities in South America. One of these days, I'm going to turf up to a collapsing laboratory complex in a game and discover nothing but stationery, old rubber gloves, and unfiled expense claims. I imagine a lot of laboratories are abandoned not due to (for example) gene-modded dilophosaurus outbreaks, but because the funders got cold feet long before Project X reached the prototyping stage. But that day is not this day. Today, there are dinosaurs! Argh, my face and/or intestines! Here's a trailer.

Next year's Call of Duty game will not be part of any of the franchise's existing sub-series. In an interview with The Game Business, Activision confirmed it's finally ready to create a new sub-series. "We've already kind of stated that a future title is going to be a new sub-franchise and we've already kind of laid the groundwork there," Activision chief marketing officer Tyler Bahl said.

Foundational genre books that have shaped horror over the years Horror books are gateways to chilling worlds. These stories vary in theme and intent, with some set in the distant future, while others reflect day-to-day anxieties in a relatable way. Sometimes, literal monsters become metaphors for pestilence and xenophobia in classics like Dracula. In other cases, the source of fear is intangible, like in The Last House on Needless Street, where trauma shapes an unreliable protagonist.

Ever since Wordle exploded in popularity at the turn of the decade, all manner of daily puzzle games have followed suit, including plenty with a Pokémon theme. From guessing the Pokémon based on its color palette and playing Pokémon-themed sudoku to daily battles against the iconic Red, there are loads of options for every budding trainer. While a true Poké nerd will find enjoyment in every daily Pokémon game, the vast array on offer could also consume hours of your day. So we've narrowed it down to the seven best, in no particular order. First up is one of the newest daily Pokémon games, Daily Red. This is a battle simulator where you get to fight Red and his Mt. Silver team from Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver. All of his Pokémon are level 100, and so are yours. The challenge lies in the fact that the team you're battling with is randomized each day. Daily Red uses the rules from the third generation of Pokémon games, and it runs on Pokémon Showdown's battle simulator. You can switch out your Pokémon whenever you like, but you cannot use items. Everyone gets the same team, and while you can do as many practice runs as you like, you only get one shot at the proper battle.

Updated: Oct 19, 2026 10:56am UTCGoogle researchers have released a paper claiming that four Google Gemini 4 Argon AI agents just beat Minecraft without any help from humans. It took them just over 27 hours to take down the Ender Dragon in what is believed to be a world first. Of course, it’s not as simple as just turning up and firing arrows at the thing. To reach The End and defeat the Ender Dragon in Minecraft, there are a series of trials you have to complete. You have to get Ender Pearls, Ender Rods, and craft Eyes of Ender, before tracking down a Stronghold and completing a puzzle. This takes a fair bit of farming and requires you to work up through the basic Minecraft tools. To start the test, Google placed a team of four agents into a random Minecraft seed with a goal of defeating the Ender Dragon. According to Google, the agents used in-game chat to coordinate but otherwise had no strategy assigned going in — just a goal. "Each agent controlled a player via an open-source library called Mineflayer and coordinated with its teammates through in-game chat and shared memory," the researchers said. "No one assigned roles or wrote game logic.

"We cannot sustain the size and structure required during peak development. " Norwegian developer Funcom, creator of Dune: Awakening and Conan Exiles - and many other games - is entering a period of restructuring and bracing for layoffs as a result. You may remember the company making a similar move this time last year, months after the initial PC release of Dune: Awakening.