Why is the old Path of Exile more popular than the sequel right now? How does co-op horror game Mimesis copy teammates’ voices? And what’s the real difference between a remake and remaster these days? It’s the latest edition of Morning Checkpoint, Kotaku‘s daily roundup of gaming news and culture. Digital Foundry has a new retro gaming podcast. It’s very good and you should go check it out.
Where are all the puzzle award categories for games?
It’s a question bubbled up across my feed over the weekend. The Game Awards has genre shout-outs for role-playing games, action games, and even family games, whatever that means (it’s usually shorthand for whatever Nintendo put out that year). But other popular genres like horror and even shooters don’t get any special consideration. With puzzle games, that short shrift feels especially acute, however.
That’s because there are lots of great puzzle games lately that just don’t usually have a shot of winning Best Game or the indie categories they’re otherwise most often represented in, like “Games for Impact.” A puzzle category in 2025 would be full of strong contenders, including Blue Prince, The Roottress are Dead, and the recently launched The Séance of Blake Manor.
Even Double Fine’s excellent Keeper might be more likely to get an honorary mention with a best puzzle category than awkwardly shoving it into best indie game (that happens to be published by the largest game publisher in the world).
Fans discuss whether to boycott Hyper Light Drifter dev’s next game after layoffs
“Hard to support devs when they can no longer see a cent from a game,” wrote one user on the Steam discussion page for Possessor(s), PC Gamer reports. Heart Machine has undergone multiple rounds of layoffs over the last year and put its Early Access action-RPG Hyper Light Breaker on ice. But publisher Devolver Digital said laid off staff are still eligible for revenue sharing from the game’s sales, and “As a developer who is slated for lay off—PLEASE BUY THIS GAME,” former narrative director Tyler Hutchinson told Steam players.
This same issue has come up recently with news of alleged union busting at Rockstar Games. Some fans have immediately called for a boycott of Grand Theft Auto 6, despite no indication from any of the fired developers that that’s what they want to happen in response. Consumers can choose to spend their money however they want, but it’s usually good to check with the people you’re trying to support before launching a boycott in their name.
Remasters sell, but remakes sell better
That’s according to new research from Ampere Analysis as reported by VGC. The data firm counted 15 remakes and 27 remasters released between January 2024 and September 2025. It found that remakes generated 2.2 times the revenue of remasters, despite only being released half as often. Of course, the Ampere also counted games like Oblivion Remastered as, well, a remaster, even though it certainly veers more into the territory of a remake.
Peak is getting a new Kashyyyk biome
It’s called Roots. It’s full oe redwood trees. And it seems like there will be lots of spiders.
Mimesis is a new co-op horror game that copies your voice
That’s one of the ways its enemies try to trick players into thinking they’re on the same team. It’s the latest crew-like to quietly have a big week on Steam after arriving in Early Access on October 27.
“It’s pretty much a Lethal Company clone but with an LLM mimic feature that actually tries to make sense out of the voice clips it gets per session,” is how one user described it. There’s no generative-AI disclosure on Steam page so it’s unclear how the whole thing works.
The original Path of Exile has exploded on Steam again thanks to a new update
Patch 3.27 is called Keepers of the Flame and arrived on November 1. The action-RPG hit over 180,000 concurrents on Steam over the weekend after it went live. The massive update focuses on an invasion of Breach Monster and includes tons of changes to skills, characters, and everything else in the game for what is essentially it’s next big season.
