You can now sign up to playtest the genre-bending Pony Island 2: Panda Circus, and while you're at it the original is free for a few days too

Heartopia’s My Little Pony collaboration is close, and the pre-launch event has already kicked off. Heartopia has officially shared initial details about its first-ever collaboration event. The game, which launched a month ago to great success on mobile, as well as Steam on PC, has already been a staple among fans of Animal Crossing and The Sims.

The world is often said to be smaller than ever due to the Internet, but the country hasn't gotten any smaller physically. Australian pro cyclist Lachlan Morton rode the route of the Pony Express last week in 6 days, 21 hours and 15 minutes. His run bested the 1861 record set by the riders that relayed Abraham Lincoln's inaugural address to California by 19 hours and 45 minutes. The 1,966-mile odyssey was Morton's farewell from EF Education-EasyPost, the only American team on the UCI World Tour For those of you who fell asleep in U. S. history class, the Pony Express was a mail service that carried letters between St. Joseph, Missouri and Sacramento, California in ten days or less by horseback. When the service was founded in 1860, St. Joseph was the westernmost point in the country accessible by rail. Anyone who wanted to cross the Missouri River and go further west overland had to do so on foot, on horseback or via stagecoach.

When the major AI models updated in September, it seemed to usher in a tide of vibe coded havoc. The use of it in the modding community was divisive enough. Now dedicated platforms have been flushed and flustered by this new unprecedented wave. One popular platform, decomp.dev, has opted to throw in the towel. Not just because of how pervasive AI entries have become in their space, but for more philosophical reasons. They are a decompiling community, and they feel AI does not foster community. “It is now clear that, with the right guidance, human input, and code reviews, AI can expedite the decompilation process in a significant way,” writes the site’s farewell message. “What is also now clear is that the community aspect of decompilation has been broken.” Founded in 2024, the site became a popular destination in the rapidly accelerating modding space. New tools and growing communities have made the rate of long-awaited translation patches and decompiles far more frequent, but the invasion of AI-generated decomps have fractured the scene. Decomp.dev’s reasoning isn’t anti-AI per se, but mournful in nature. Decompiling, in short, means disassembling and reassembling a game’s code.

Austin Manchester is a writer and editor living in New York City. At Polygon, he covers gaming and entertainment news, reviews new video games, interviews behind-the-scenes talent, and more. He enjoys discovering hidden gems and sharing them with Polygon's audience. Previously, he was the gaming editor for AIPT Comics and has written for other outlets like XDA, How-To Geek, and The List. He enjoys soulslikes, character-driven RPGs, and third-person shooters plucked straight out of the Xbox 360 era. He also likes to flex his non-video game nerdy knowledge sometimes, whether that's explaining who's who in the new Wolverine game or recommending a comic book series about a sentient sword.

Silent Hill developer Bloober Team wants to make physical versions of its games "for as long as possible. "Studio CEO Piotr Babieno opened up about the company's appreciation for physical media and collectibles during an interview with GamesRadar. He started his thoughts by touching on how the gaming landscape and player desires have changed as technology has advanced over the years, explaining that "we have reached a moment where you can't really do much more" in terms of visual and auditory fidelity. "Like, OK, the game can have a slightly higher resolution and maybe better lighting and whatever, but will it make it a more engaging game? I don't think so," Babieno said. The CEO for the studio behind the Silent Hill 2 remake and its in-development original Silent Hill remake also talked about how stats show "the majority of players are playing on hardware which is five, seven years old, if not older. " He continued, saying, "But are they less interested in games because of that? I don't think so. "As AI shapes a new, controversial future in the gaming industry, the Bloober executive seems to be more interested in "thinking about other senses.