The Pump Room is a room in Blue Prince that can control the water flow around the Mt. Holly estate.

By accessing the control panel and pumps inside the Pump Room, you can fill and drain water sources like the pool and kitchen. However, controlling the water flow is a puzzle in itself. Similar to water jug puzzle from Die Hard With A Vengeance (just without the bomb), you’ll need to raise and drain water sources and tanks to get the perfect amount of water.

Here’s how to use the Pump Room in Blue Prince.

How to use the Pump Room in Blue Prince

Before using the water pumps, first, brush up on the items you’ll find in the Pump Room and how they work:

Mt. Holly Pump Control Panel. This controls which water source will be adjusted. There are six buttons labeled “Fountain,” “Reservoir,” “Aquarium,” “Kitchen,” “Greenhouse,” and “Pool.” Above each button, you’ll find a set of bars that indicates how much water is in each area. If the bars are completely blue, that water source is full of water. If the bars are completely gray, that water source is empty.Pipes. There are six pipes connected to the wall with each pipe tied to one of the water sources on the control panel. The pipes on the wall will match the same order found on the control panel, with the first pipe being the Fountain, the second being the Reservoir, and so on.Pumps. There are four pumps that connect the pipes to the tanks. The pump levers will control the water flow direction.Tank Switch. This controls which tank Pump 2 will pump or drain water to. It can be found on the pipe connecting Tank 1 and Tank 2.Tanks. There are three tanks, two holding four units of water and one being a reserve tank that must be powered by the Boiler Room.

To pump or drain water, follow these steps:

Select a water source on the control panel by pressing its respective button.Follow its respective pipe to its pump.Change the direction of water flow by raising or lowering the pump lever.

It’s important to note that any changes made to water sources around the estate will last to the next day. For example, if you’ve drained the pool, it’ll stay drained until you change it in the Pump Room.

For more Blue Prince guides, see our full walkthrough on how to reach Room 46, or solve other room-specific puzzles such as the Laboratory and Utility Closet.

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Tarkir: Dragonstorm, the latest expansion for Magic: The Gathering, has finally arrived. Dragonstorm returns players to Tarkir, a dimensional plane where dragons live alongside five rival houses, each with their own ideologies and relationships to the chaotic, and occasionally benevolent reptiles. The new expansion is currently available to purchase online in the usual formats. However, the availability and price of certain products may fluctuate based on demand.

Dragonstorm Commander Decks

Tarkir: Dragonstorm won’t launch with a Starter Kit like some previous expansions, which makes Commander Decks the logical jumping-off point for anyone new to Magic: The Gathering. These pre-built, 100-card decks include 98 non-foil cards in addition to a pair of exclusive, traditional foil Commander cards, and two randomly selected cards pulled from Collector Booster Packs. Each Commander Deck is focused on a different house or land from the plane of Tarkir, like the Jeskai or Abzan. Single Commander Decks are currently available to buy from Amazon for $44.99 or from Best Buy for $47.99 each.

Dragonstorm Bundle

The $53.99 bundle for Tarkir: Dragonstorm includes nine, 14-card Play Booster packs in addition to a single, foil alternate-art card, 40 Basic Land cards, and a Spindown life-counter die. The Dragonstorm Bundle is a great way to quickly expand your collection with a variety of cards from the new set, and is currently available to buy on Amazon, Best Buy, and GameStop for around $50.

Dragonstorm Play Boosters

The most common way to expand any Magic: The Gathering collection is through Play Boosters. Play Boosters for the new Tarkir: Dragonstorm set are available to buy in 30-pack boxes for around $129 from Amazon, while Best Buy and GameStop have Booster Boxes available for around $150. Each 14-card pack contains a spread of one rare or Mythic rare, three uncommon, and seven common cards in addition to a single Land card, a traditional foil card, and a card of a random rarity. Of the 14 cards included in each pack, one is also guaranteed to be a traditional foil card.

Dragonstorm Collector Boosters

Collector Booster packs are the only way to get some of the coolest alternate-art cards from the new expansion, and are available to buy in boxes of 12 packs for $299.99 from Amazon, while Best Buy and GameStop have boxes available for $279.99. Each Collector Booster pack contains 15 Magic: The Gathering cards along with a single foil double-sided token. Every pack contains a spread of two foil and two non-foil rare or Mythic rare, eight foil common or uncommon cards, and a Tarkir: Dragonstorm Commander card, along with a single Land card.

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Up until recently, the only Black Mirror episode I’ve watched in full was “San Junipero,” where two queer women find unexpected love in a simulation and decide to remain there together. It’s famously known as one of the only Black Mirror episodes with a happy ending. I don’t think I’m the only person out there who is a fan of that episode of Black Mirror and that episode only.

I have good news for the dozens of us out there: This season of Black Mirror has an episode that’s basically a spiritual companion to “San Junipero” — albeit with more of a bittersweet tinge to it. “Hotel Reverie” had me on the edge of my seat from the beginning and tugged on my heartstrings by the end.

[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for the third episode of Black Mirror season 7.]

Like “San Junipero,” “Hotel Reverie” follows two women who fall in love in a simulated reality. But the setup is intriguingly different. The episode follows Brandy (Issa Rae), an actress who gets the chance of a lifetime to star in a remake of Hotel Reverie, her favorite old romance movie — with a twist. The remake is being done in ReDream, a software that recreates the entirety of an old movie in a virtual reality, populated by AI characters. Brandy locks into the VR like she’s entering the Matrix, with her consciousness uploaded into the simulation while her body lies comatose.

She’s taking on the male lead role, Dr. Alex Palmer; in the original, he’s the white British doctor who romances an heiress named Clara (Emma Corrin). In reality, Clara was played by a troubled actress named Dorothy Chambers. Brandy researches her before showing up on set, and finds herself charmed by some old test footage of Dorothy. So, when she comes face to face with Clara in the simulation, she’s understandably a bit flustered.

Which makes sense, given how disorienting and fascinating the mechanics of this world are. The film begins in stasis, with all the characters suspended in time, before the title sequence rolls. Then, like a play, it proceeds sequentially. Brandy fills in the lines of the character she’s replacing and everyone more or less accepts that she’s Dr. Alex Palmer. Brandy starts off hitting all her lines and beats, but after a kerfuffle with a piano, the movie starts to veer off script. The characters react accordingly, which throws a wrench into the plot. On the outside, the filmmakers scramble to find a solution to get the movie back on track. They monitor data points like romantic interest and narrative tension and direct Brandy via an earpiece.

Like Yorkie and Kelly’s love story in “San Junipero,” Clara and Brandy are brought together by the impossible, their connection heightened by the fabricated reality they inhabit. And as Brandy forces the movie off-book, Clara follows, a juicy element of an AI slowly realizing her own personhood. Clara draws on not just the character as she appears in the movie, but also on Dorothy’s lived experiences as a closeted queer woman in the 1940s. Even though she’s just a simulation, she gives Dorothy a chance to live a life — just as Yorkie was able to fully fall in love with Kelly after dealing with a homophobic family in her real life. The parallels are clear (and maybe even purposeful by the production team, as we learn through some mail that Brandy lives on “Junipero Road”).

Though Hotel Reverie is a fictional movie, it represents queer subtext woven into real films from the same time period, where plenty of queer people worked behind the scenes and on camera. In the 1990s, it became popular for the LGBTQ community to reedit classical Hollywood scenes in order to highlight and emphasize the queer themes present in the movies. The episode is a fictional sort of reedit; the movie itself might not be real, but the idea of digging into queerness already on screen and bringing it to light is.

Without spoiling much, the ending gives Clara — the character, the AI, and even the actress behind her — some agency to choose how her story ends, letting her step outside what society (and her programming) dictated she could do. It’s not quite a happy ending, but it’s not a typically bleak Black Mirror ending either. Instead, it’s bittersweet, a quiet sort of reclamation for Clara, and by extension Dorothy.

Black Mirror season 7 is streaming on Netflix now.

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What’s the best movie I can watch on Netflix? We’ve all asked ourselves this question, only to spend the next 15 minutes scrolling through the streaming service’s oddly specific genre menus and getting overwhelmed by the constantly shifting trend menus. Netflix’s huge catalog of movies continues to expand day by day, week by week, month by month. This makes keeping up to date with best the service has to offer — let alone finding something to watch after a long day — a task that feels herculean at best and impossible at worst for someone not plugged into its inscrutable rhythms.

We’re here to help. For those suffering from choice paralysis, we’ve narrowed down your options to not only our favorite current movies on the platform, but the best movies Netflix has to offer.

If you’re looking for a specific genre, we’ve got the best action movies on Netflix, the best horror movies on Netflix, the best thrillers on Netflix, the best sci-fi movies on Netflix, and the best comedy movies on Netflix ready for you.

We’ll be updating this list as Netflix cycles movies in and out of its library, so be sure to check back next time you’re stuck in front of the app’s home screen.

How we pick the best movies on Netflix

Polygon’s staff consistently keeps up with new Netflix originals and titles added to the streaming platform, adding to this list with the best movies across both Netflix productions and library titles. We prioritize quality, unique artistic vision, and variety — different genres, different eras, different vibes, different filmmaking nations — to make sure every reader finds multiple options that interest them, as well as movies they may have never encountered before.

Athena

Director: Romain GavrasCast: Dali Benssalah, Sami Slimane, Anthony Bajon

One of the very best movies of 2022, Athenais an intense action thriller about the uprising of a French banlieue after repeated police harassment and violence. Told through the eyes of three brothers with very different perspectives on the conflict and how it should be resolved, Athena is a powerful story. But where it really shines is in its technical acumen. Music video director Romain Gavras, making his feature debut, brings breathtaking tracking shots, intricately choreographed blocking, and an absolutely electric energy. I have qualms with the ending, but I’ll never forget the jaw-dropping experience of watching Gavras cook on this movie. Whatever he does next, I’m there. —Pete Volk

Atlantics

Director: Mati DiopCast: Ibrahima Traoré, Mame Bineta Sane, Amadou Mbow

It’s hard to talk too much about Atlantics without giving away what makes the experience of watching it so special. It’s a beautiful, haunting love story with a tangibly beating heart, touching on romance as well as grief, class, labor, and the lingering effects of oppression. Shot gorgeously by director Mati Diop and cinematographer Claire Mathon, it was the first movie directed by a Black woman to be featured in competition in Cannes (it won the Grand Prix award, losing out on the Palme d’Or to Parasite), and is one of the most remarkable feature film debuts for a director in recent memory. —PV

Carol

Director: Todd HaynesCast: Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Sarah Paulson

Todd Haynes’ most recent movie was the straight-to-Netflix gem May December, one of the best releases of 2023 and another movie on this very list. But this month, one of Haynes’ other masterpieces returns to Netflix after being away from the service for most of the year.

Adapted from Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt, Carol follows an affair between two women at very different points in their lives. Therese (Rooney Mara) is an aspiring photographer who works at a department store, where she meets Carol (Cate Blanchett), a gorgeous older woman going through a difficult divorce. The two fall deeply in love in this lushly drawn, beautifully shot period romance that earned six Oscar nominations and kickstarted a stretch for Haynes of releasing a new movie every other year since. Haynes is an essential part of the New Queer Cinema movement, and Carol is an essential piece of 21st-century queer filmmaking. During this Pride month, or any other, don’t miss it. —PV

Do the Right Thing

Director: Spike LeeCast: Spike Lee, Danny Aiello, John Turturro

Taking place over the course of a swelteringly hot day in Bed-Stuy neighborhood of Brooklyn, Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing follows a rotating cast of characters as it traces the fault lines of racial tension between the neighborhood’s African-American locals and the Italian-American owner of a local pizzeria. From the film’s iconic shadowboxing opening featuring Rosie Perez, the beautiful and intimate cinematography of frequent Lee collaborator Ernest Dickerson, to its explosive and heart-wrenching finale, Do The Right Thing is unquestionably not only one of the greatest films the director has ever produced, but one of the most essential entries in the canon of American cinema. —Toussaint Egan

Emily the Criminal

Director: John Patton FordCast: Aubrey Plaza, Theo Rossi, Gina Gershon

One of the smartest movies about the gig economy and our modern money struggles, Emily the Criminal was criminally (ayyy) underappreciated when it came out in 2022. The movie follows a debt-ridden woman (Aubrey Plaza) who gets involved in a credit card scam to pay off her student loans. This pulls her in the orbit of charismatic ringleader Youcef (the reliably handsome Theo Rossi), and also deeper and deeper into the world of crime, as she looks for a way out of her difficult situation.

It’s a career-best performance from Plaza, who is as funny and dry as ever, but Emily the Criminal’s script allows her to use her dramatic chops in ways we’ve rarely seen outside of White Lotus and Ingrid Goes West (and even those are primarily comedies with dramatic elements). Relentlessly paced, constantly tense, and always centered on the terrific leading performance at its core, Emily the Criminal is one of the best American films of the decade, and its potency will only grow as the problems it shines a light on continue to be exacerbated. —PV

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Director: George MillerCast: Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Burke

In 2015, George Miller released Mad Max: Fury Road, a post-apocalyptic tour de force that rocketed to the heights of the box office and reasserted Miller’s status as an action auteur of the highest caliber. Nearly a decade later, Miller released Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, a prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road, to a comparably tepid and muted response. In spite of this, I believe time will be kind to Miller’s follow-up, which deftly builds upon the framework of the previous film to weave together an origin myth worthy of its titular protagonist.

The film is not only an explosive spectacle, but a lesson in the futility of revenge for revenge’s sake, the redemptive power of love, and the indomitable will to survive in a world rife with senseless cruelty and barbarism. I think that’s a sentiment worthy of holding on to, now more than ever, and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga communicates that in spectacular fashion. —TE

Ghosts of Sugar Land

Director: Bassam Tariq

Director Bassam Tariq recently got replaced on Marvel’s upcoming Blade movie, and it’s as good a reason as any to catch up with his masterful 2019 short. Best known for the hip-hop drama Mogul Mowgli starring Riz Ahmed, Tariq’s previous movie is an enthralling documentary well worth the 21-minute running time.

Ghosts of Sugar Land is about a young group of friends in the suburbs of Texas, and what happens when one of them becomes radicalized by ISIS. A compelling portrait of an America we don’t often get to see depicted on screen, Tariq offers no easy answers, instead leaning on the shock and despair of the friends left behind, and on the dangers of isolation and loneliness in a country that often seems on the brink of collapse. A winner of multiple festival awards, including the 2019 Sundance Short Film Jury Award, Ghosts of Sugar Land is not to be missed. —PV

Godzilla Minus One

**Director:Takashi YamazakiCast:**Ryunosuke Kamiki, Minami Hamabe, Hidetaka Yoshioka

This month, one of 2023’s best movies is finally available to stream for Western audiences. Takashi Yamazaki’s Godzilla Minus One takes the franchise back to its roots: the disillusionment of Japan’s postwar era. The King of the Monsters is once again a metaphor for atomic weapons, but where Minus One really makes its mark is with the human characters who strive again annihilation.

Ryunosuke Kamiki plays Kōichi Shikishima, a former kamikaze pilot buried under a mountain of survivor’s guilt, with Minami Hamabe as Noriko, the woman he can’t bring himself to marry. Rounding out the cast are more adventure staples, like the trio of loyal and comedic co-workers, including the older scientist who has the right plan to defeat the monster (Hidetaka Yoshioka). The key to Godzilla Minus One isn’t that the ingredients are unusual, but in Yamazaki’s presentation and execution of this full-throated anti-war, pro-hope, anti-military, throwing-shade-on-America war blockbuster.

Minus One accomplishes the rare feat of making the human drama of a Godzilla movie as compelling as the monster action — and the monster action is really, really good. Godzilla Minus One was the best time many Polygon staffers had in a movie theater in 2023, and now we can finally watch it at home. —Susana Polo

Grave of the Fireflies

Director: Isao TakahataCast: Tsutomu Tatsumi, Ayano Shiraishi, Yoshiko Shinohara

Grave of the Fireflies is unlike any other film Studio Ghibli has produced to date. It is a war story, though not in the fantastical sense like Howl’s Moving Castle or The Boy and the Heron: It’s a tragedy about a pair of siblings who labor under the devastation brought about by the conclusion of the Pacific War, and who are faced with the absolute worst that humanity has to offer yet still manage to eke out a few precious, albeit fleeting, moments of happiness and love. It is, without question, one of the most affecting, bittersweet, and beautiful anti-war dramas ever produced, and a bona fide gem in a filmography studded with treasures.

Isao Takahata’s body of work may not be as highly lauded as that of Hayao Miyazaki’s, but his animation is not any less impactful, poignant, or transcendently moving. Grave of the Fireflies is not a film for the faint of heart. It is, however, a movie that I maintain every serious appreciator of the medium of animation, let alone anime, should see at least once in their life, if only for the fact that neither your life nor your understanding of animation will ever be the same after having watched it. —TE

Heat

Director: Michael MannCast: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Val Kilmer

Michael Mann’s 1995 crime-thriller stars Al Pacino as Vincent Hanna, an eccentric and hyper-competent police detective caught in a tense cat-and-mouse struggle, and Robert De Niro as Neil McCauley, a career criminal. It’s a film made of moments and set-pieces that could comprise an entire third-act finale in a lesser movie. Here, they exist in a triumphant assemblage of carefully interlocking components; working in concert with the precision of a Swiss timepiece.

Pacino and De Niro deliver two of their greatest performances as a pair of obsessive workaholics whose razor sharp proficiency at their trades comes at the cost of all they otherwise love or hold dear. Dante Spinotti’s cinematography transforms the vast cityscape of Los Angeles into a shimmering expanse of lights strobing across the surface a sea of pitch darkness, a den of moral inequity from which no soul emerges wholly clean or unscathed. —TE

Hit Man

Director: Richard LinklaterCast: Glen Powell, Adria Arjona, Austin Amelio

Richard Linklater returns with this Netflix Original that is at once one of his most straightforwardly enjoyable and commercial films since School of Rock, and one of his slipperiest. Adapted by Linklater and star Glen Powell from a magazine article about a Texan professor who moonlit for the police as a fake contract killer in a quasi-entrapment scheme, Hit Man takes this unbelievable truth and spins it into a shaggy-dog story that’s at once romantic, hilarious, broad, philosophical, and quietly dark. The film’s as elusive as its shape-shifting subject and will leave you with plenty to think about — but not before you’ve laughed, clapped, and marveled at a showstopping rom-com climax that puts Powell and costar Adria Arjona right at the peak of the genre. —Oli Welsh

Jigarthanda DoubleX

Director: Karthik SubbarajCast: Raghava Lawrence, S.J. Suryah, Nimisha Sajayan

Movies about the Power of Cinema™ can be self-important, saccharine, and worst of all, boring. Jigarthanda DoubleX is none of those things. A sprawling tale of gangsters, movie stars, politicians, and the people caught between them, it’s one of my favorite movies of 2023, and a truly special film.

It’s the 1970s, and a coward who believes it’s his destiny to become a cop gets framed for a quadruple murder. He gets released from prison by a corrupt movie star/politician on the condition that he kills one of the lieutenants of that movie star/politician’s rival. Naturally, our coward poses as a movie director, because his target (a notorious gangster who loves Clint Eastwood) has made it his new mission in life to be the first dark-skinned movie star in India. While making their silly movie (a biopic of the gangster, of course), they fall in love with the magic of cinema and its transformative power on a personal and societal level.

Jigarthanda DoubleX is firing on all cylinders throughout its nearly three-hour run time, with superb direction, complex characters fully embodied by terrific actors, thrilling action sequences, and a surprising amount of emotional depth for a movie with this outlandish of a premise. Don’t miss it. —PV

The Killer

Director: David FincherCast: Michael Fassbender, Tilda Swinton, Sala Baker

The Killer is too good to fit into any specific boxes. David Fincher’s latest movie, once again a Netflix-only release like Mank, feels distinctly post-genre. Sure, technically it’s a thriller about an assassin who botches a hit and has to deal with the consequences, which include a price on his head too. But it’s so much more than, like a comedy about one bad day of work, or a tragedy about a guy who loves The Smiths too much. Fincher’s real flex in The Killer is to present all of these seemingly competing genres and styles as one consistent tone where no moment ever feels out of step with another, whether it’s jokes about McDonald’s or bone-crunching fights.

Aside from Fincher’s technical skills, the other thing that makes The Killer’s dexterity possible is Michael Fassbender’s terrific performance as the assassin at the movie’s center. Fassbender goes from a winding monologues about the requirements of precision in every aspects of one’s life, to lamenting his latest fuck up in a moment’s notice without ever losing his put-on bravado. And it’s hilarious every single time.

This constant snapping between self-serious thriller and parody keeps every second of the movie fresh and makes it one of the best that Netflix has to offer. —AG

The Man from UNCLE

Director: Guy RitchieCast: Henry Cavill, Armie Hammer, Alicia Vikander

Director Guy Ritchie is experiencing a bit of a renaissance thanks to his Netflix series The Gentlemen, which premiered on the platform in 2024. The Gentlemen is a perfect showcase for Ritchie’s talent for writing fast-talking British criminals, but it’s another movie on Netflix that might be his high-water mark for purely fun filmmaking: The Man from UNCLE.

Loosely adapted from the television series of the same name, the movie follows two competing spies, one an American (Henry Cavill) and the other from Russia (played by Armie Hammer), facing off in a clandestine mission in the midst of the Cold War. Of course, as with any great espionage movie, especially an action comedy like this one, there are plenty of wild ruses and ridiculous twists along the way.

While certain metatextual elements of the film (namely Armie Hammer’s involvement) have aged somewhat poorly, the movie remains a tremendously fun time, with some of Ritchie’s funniest writing ever bolstered by Cavill and an incredible supporting cast that includes Alicia Vikander, Elizabeth Debicki, Jared Harris, and Hugh Grant. On top of all that, The Man from UNCLE also makes a pretty excellent pairing with Apple TV Plus’ Slow Horses, if you want a double dose of spying. —AG

May December

Director: Todd HaynesCast: Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore, Charles Melton

The Oscars are this weekend (or, at least, they are when I’m writing this), so I thought it would be fitting to recommend one of the bigger Oscar snubs of the year. Yes, May December got nominated for its (great) screenplay, but it is also one of the best films of 2023 and features three of the most outstanding performances of the year, none of which had room in a stacked nominations list.

The latest film from New Queer Cinema icon Todd Haynes (Carol, Safe) sees the legendary director reunite with frequent collaborator Julianne Moore for one of their most intriguing projects yet. May December follows an actor, Elizabeth (Natalie Portman), who travels to Georgia to prepare for a role based on Gracie (Julianne Moore), a woman who became a focus of national attention after sleeping with (and eventually marrying) Joe, a 13-year-old boy when their relationship first started.

It’s an uncomfortable setting, and Haynes leans into that discomfort, both through the patience of his camera and the excellence of his lead actors. As Gracie and Elizabeth attempt to suss each other out, their identities fluctuating and blending with each other (Haynes has been very vocal about the influence of Ingmar Bergman’s Persona on this film), caught in the middle is Joe. Melton’s performance is haunting, a boy in a man’s body still caught in his teen years, closer in age to his children than to his wife. It’s the kind of adult drama we don’t get enough of anymore, and I’m glad Haynes is still here to make these kind of movies. —PV

My Oni Girl

Director: Tomotaka ShibayamaCast: Kenshô Ono, Miyu Tomita, Shintarô Asanuma

The latest anime movie from the director of the charming 2020 film A Whisker Away(also on Netflix) starts in a place that’s going to seem mighty familiar to longtime anime viewers: A shy, uptight boy has his world upended by a loud, cheerfully demanding girl, and adventures ensue. But My Oni Girl writer-director Tomotaka Shibayama and co-writer Yûko Kakihara (Trapezium,Apothecary Diaries, the 2020s Urusei Yatsura) subvert the usual script pretty quickly, making it a sweet, rewarding surprise.

The film has some fairly fuzzy story logic that may keep viewers guessing or discussing: What the heck is an oni in this movie, anyway? When a girl with purple-pink hair and a single delicate horn drops into the life of Hiiragi Yatsuse, a quiet boy whose schoolmates frequently take advantage of his polite eagerness to please, they end up on an episodic cross-country road trip together to look for her mother.

Along the way, Hiiragi finds out that his tendency to repress and hide his emotions is turning him into an oni, too — though in this world, oni just seem to be people with horns, and there’s no sign that any of the rest of them repress their emotions. The oni girl, Tsumugi, is certainly unrepressed — and a role model for Hiiragi in many ways.

My Oni Girl owes a clear debt to Studio Ghibli — not just in the extended shout-out to Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away(which Shibayama worked on as a digital ink-and-paint artist), but in the character dynamics, and some of the spookier supernatural imagery. As Hiiragi supports, saves, and grows fond of his upbeat new friend, they both become targets for creatures they don’t understand, and unraveling what’s going on and what they need to do about turns what starts as a small domestic film into a big, winning adventure. —Tasha Robinson

The Night Comes for Us

Director: Timo TjahjantoCast: Joe Taslim, Iko Uwais, Julie Estelle

The Night Comes for Us just fucking whips, OK? Why waste time on subtlety and preamble; the film certainly doesn’t! Indonesian action thrillers have been enjoying a renaissance period ever since Gareth Evans’ 2011 film The Raid kicked the door down and mollywhopped everything else in sight. Timo Tjahjanto’s 2018 film certainly follows in the footsteps of Evans’ own, with The Raid star Joe Taslim starring here as Ito, a gangland enforcer who betrays his Triad crime family by sparing the life of a child and attempting to flee the country.

Fellow The Raid star Iko Uwais shows up here as Arian, Ito’s childhood friend and fellow enforcer, who is tasked with hunting down Ito and recovering the girl. The action comes fast and frenzied here, with kinetic choreography and dazzling handheld cinematography that makes every punch, fall, and stab count. If you need to get your adrenaline pumping, throw this one on. —TE

Parasite

Director: Bong Joon HoCast: Song Kang-ho, Choi Woo-shik, Cho Yeo-jeong

Bong Joon Ho’s Oscar-winning film Parasite is a many-featured organism as terrifying as it is darkly hilarious. Song Kang-ho (Memories of Murder) stars as Kim Ki-taek, the patriarch of an impoverished family just barely making a living out of the basement apartment they live in. When his son Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik) gets a job as an English tutor for a wealthy family living in an extravagant modern home, the two families slowly yet surely intertwine in a symbiotic spiral of greed, exploitation, and class before exploding into a shockingly unpredictable finale. Trenchant social commentary combined with a breadth of memorable performances culminate in a remarkable film that’s more than the sum of its parts. —TE

Psychokinesis

Director: Yeon Sang-hoCast: Ryu Seung-ryong, Jung Yu-mi, Park Jeong-min

From Korean animator Yeon Sang-ho — best known for his jump to live action, 2016’s zombie knockout Train to Busan (also on Netflix) — Psychokinesis follows Shin, a bumbling, borderline-alcoholic security guard who drinks from a mountain spring recently infected by a meteorite and gains telekinetic powers. Ryu Seung-ryong is a joy as the oaf, who’s learning to control his abilities just as his estranged daughter re-enters his life and sucks him into a real-estate-driven class war. Psychokinesis plays Shin’s “fighting style” for laughs, and while it’s not as cartoonish as Chinese director Stephen Chow’s genre hybrids, the movie can make the flying object mayhem both cheeky and thrilling. The political edge gives weight to Shin’s superpowered decisions, but Sang-ho never loses sight of why everyone showed up: to push the psychic conceit to bigger and bigger heights. —Matt Patches

Space Sweepers

Director: Jo Sung-heeCast: Song Joong-ki, Kim Tae-ri, Jin Seon-kyu

Set in the year 2092, Jo Sung-hee’s Space Sweepers follows the crew of freelance garbagemen in space who discover a strange childlike robot named Dorothy containing a nuclear device. Hoping to ransom Dorothy in exchange for enough money to escape their poverty-stricken lives, their plan quickly escalates into a chase to stay one step ahead of the military force of a corrupt corporation. Though it’s far from the most original of sci-fi premises, Space Sweepers is still a visually impressive film with great action and a likable cast of dysfunctional characters with great chemistry. —TE

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Directors: Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. ThompsonCast: Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Oscar Isaac

2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was a genuine before-and-after moment in the history of American animation. The film not only introduced a new generation of audiences to Miles Morales, but sent a shockwave through the entire industry through its pioneering approach to CGI animation that drew heavily from the texture and techniques of comic book storytelling. In short, it was a bona fide cultural phenomenon. How exactly do you top that?

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse feels like an answer to that question on several fronts; visually, tonally, and technically. Miles is faced with a personal and moral dilemma in the form of the Spot, a dimension-hopping supervillain whose vendetta against Spider-Man threatens to endanger the entire multiverse. If that weren’t enough, Miles inadvertently runs afoul of Miguel O’Hara (Oscar Isaac), the leader of a group of Spider-People from alternate universes, who believes Miles himself is the source of the problem.

From its spectacular fight sequences to its gorgeous multiversal vistas to its absolutely bangin’ soundtrack, Across the Spider-Verse steps up to the challenge of following up one of most acclaimed American animated films in years and nails it out of the park. It’s a genuine sight to behold. With one more movie on the way, the question circles back: How exactly are they gonna top this? —TE

The Summit of the Gods

Director: Patrick ImbertCast: Lazare Herson-Macarel, Eric Herson-Macarel, Damien Boisseau

This 2021 French-language animated drama centers on Makoto Fukamachi, a tenacious reporter who accidentally stumbles upon the biggest mountaineering story of the century: Proof that George Mallory and Andrew Irvine, not Sir Edmund Hillary, were the first climbers to reach the peak of Mount Everest in 1924. However, his only lead to break the story — an elusive mountain climber known as Habu Joji — has been missing for several years. Poring over the details of Joji’s life in the years preceding his disappearance, Makoto finds himself inadvertently drawn by the very same sense of accomplishment and meaning that has compelled countless climbers to crest Everest themselves.

Based on Jiro Taniguchi’s 2000 manga series, The Summit of the Gods is a gorgeously animated drama about the elusive quest for personal and professional validation and the perils of hubris and selfishness. The backgrounds are spectacular, the character animation is impressive, and the film’s final moments are as exhilarating as they are profoundly edifying. Brace yourself for a film that exemplifies “adult animation,” not as a juvenile display of hyper-violence and superficial titillation, but as a story about what it means to move through the world as an adult and find one’s place and purpose in it. —TE

They Cloned Tyrone

Director: Juel TaylorCast: John Boyega, Jamie Foxx, Teyonah Parris

If a pulp mystery-thriller that plays out like a Blaxploitation-style take on Jordan Peele’s Us by way of the anti-authority storytelling of Boots Riley sounds enticing to you, They Cloned Tyrone is an absolute must-watch.

John Boyega stars as Fontaine, a streetwise hustler who is gunned down after an altercation with a rival drug dealer. Miraculously, Fontaine wakes up the next morning completely unharmed with no memory of the confrontation whatsoever. Together with the help of local pimp Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx) and a retired sex worker Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris), Fontaine stumbles upon a terrifying secret: His neighborhood is the site of a clandestine government operation experimenting with cloning technology and subliminal manipulation. Faced with the existential terror of this revelation, the trio must either expose this conspiracy or surrender to the roles ordained to them.

Sharply well written, brilliantly performed, and studded with satisfying surprising and twists up to its very last minutes, They Cloned Tyrone is a standout of recent Netflix movies. —TE

Upgrade

Director: Leigh WhannellCast: Logan Marshall-Green, Betty Gabriel, Harrison Gilbertson

Sci-fi dystopias are rarely as fun as Leigh Whannell’s fiendishly gory cyberpunk film. Set in the not-so-distant future, Upgrade centers on the story of Grey, an auto mechanic who is rendered a quadriplegic after suffering a near-fatal gunshot from a gang of men responsible for murdering his wife. Now, I know what you’re thinking, that doesn’t sound fun at all; it isn’t.

The fun part actually kicks in when Grey is implanted with an experimental AI-assisted prosthesis that, in addition to restoring his ability to walk, also grants him the power to kick some serious ass — though at the expense of granting the AI complete, albeit momentary, control over his body. The real shining quality of Upgrade is not just its production design, with futuristic interior architecture juxtaposed with dilapidated urban environments and abandoned factory floors, but its inventive fight cinematography and camerawork using a smartphone and an ARRI ALEXA Mini camera. It’s certainly not a joyful film by any stretch of the imagination, but Upgrade’s action sequences alone are exhilarating and entertaining enough to make it worth watching the entire film as a whole, which I gotta say, is not bad at all. —TE

Wingwomen

Director: Mélanie LaurentCast: Mélanie Laurent, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Manon Bresch

There’s a place for movies like Alien, where a script written for a male lead character was left unchanged when a woman was cast in the role. But there’s also a place for movies like Wingwomen, an action comedy that thrives in its specificity around its characters and their experiences as women in our world.

In Wingwomen, Carole (director-star Mélanie Laurent of Inglourious Basterds) has a very close and protective relationship with younger Alex (Adèle Exarchopoulos) — a found family situation. They are both caught in the web of crime lord Marraine (Isabelle Adjani) and looking for a way out. When they meet a new member of their team — skilled racer Sam (Manon Bresch) — they see an opportunity for one last score to break away from their life of crime and live peacefully together.

Fun, exciting, and endearing, you will not have more fun at the movies than watching Wingwomen. I wish for 20 more years of Laurent directing and starring in fun genre pictures — especially if they also star Exarchopoulos, who between this and Passages delivered two of the most memorable performances of 2023. —PV

From Polygon via this RSS feed

In 2014, Magic: The Gathering had an irrefutable hit on its hands. Khans of Tarkir, the card game’s 65th expansion, introduced players to a realm at war, as five distinct clans fought for power and glory. In less than a year, one time traveler’s cosmic intervention completely reshaped the world of Tarkir, and canonically erased the very thing that Magic players loved most about it — the clans.

One decade and 39 more expansions later, players are finally invited back to the war-torn plane in Magic’s latest set, Tarkir: Dragonstorm. And according to members of Magic’s game design and world-building teams, Wizards of the Coast has spent these last 10 years in part figuring out how to recapture the lightning in a bottle that it inadvertently released when Tarkir’s original 2014 story played out.

“It was not our intent to do this, but we ended up, through the way the [Tarkir] block went, kind of destroying the thing players loved the most,” said Aaron Forsythe, vice president of design at Wizards of the Coast and a 23-year veteran of Magic.

“We [originally] wanted to tell a time-travel story, and when we first came to Tarkir the dragons [were] long dead,” he continued. “And we thought, [with Tarkir: Dragonstorm] we’ve [finally been able to] set the groundwork for this amazing third set where the dragons are brought back through time travel and that’s the thing players would get super excited about and celebrate.”

Unlike Magic’s current release structure, in 2014 the game produced expansions in a so-called block — three consecutive and narratively linked sets that told the story of a single world. As part of that structure, Khans of Tarkir was the first set in a back-to-back trilogy known as the Khans block, which told the story of how Tarkir’s past and future was rewritten, replacing the once-ruling clans with the return of tyrannical dragons.

Looking back, there are many defining characteristics across the Khans block. Its second and third sets, Fate Reforged and Dragons of Tarkir, certainly led to a lot of excitement for some players as they opened booster packs in search of epic new dragons that were absent in the block’s first set. But in the years since, it was Khans of Tarkir that seemed to linger longest in the imagination and nostalgia of casual and competitive players alike — largely thanks to the unique abilities and identities of the now iconic clans, such as Abzan, Sultai, and Temur, who were defined by three-color combinations that didn’t even have official names prior to the set’s release.

“They fell in love with Khans of Tarkir,” Forsythe recalled. “And now we were stuck with a world that wasn’t the best version of what that world was. And it took us several years of ruminating on that problem to figure out how exactly we could solve for that without retconning things.”

Though the set’s ongoing legacy may have been unpredictable at the time, as Forsythe puts it, Tarkir’s trajectory wasn’t even that unique as Magic stories go.

“We were in a phase there for a while where we were destroying our worlds at the ends of blocks,” he said. “That turned out to be very unwise, as each world is somebody’s favorite and players are always hoping to go back somewhere that they liked.”

With all that baggage behind them, it’s easy to see how revisiting Tarkir created a unique problem for Magic’s design teams. But galavanting through Tarkir is far from the franchise’sfirst time returning to a once beloved world. In the game’s more than 30-year history, in fact, most of its worlds have been revisited at least once. And with each return to places like Ravnica, Mirrodin, Eldraine, and so on, the designers are faced with a new set of creative challenges meant to keep the game fresh while acknowledging player expectations for a given place.

“With any return set, you’re trying to strike that balance of something that people are really familiar with, they’ve come to love it, so you really want to deliver on those expectations, especially nostalgic expectations, which sometimes are hard to meet,” said Athena Froehlich, principal product designer at Wizards of the Coast, during a recent press Q&A following the Tarkir: Dragonstorm preview panel at February’s MagicCon in Chicago. “The trick we’ve learned… redo the stuff that worked great and make new things to replace the stuff that didn’t. And that’s kind of the recipe of a return.”

Though Froehlich may make the recipe sound easy, according to Mark Rosewater, Magic’s head designer, return sets do provide inherent shortcuts that would otherwise have to be made from the ground up when designing a brand-new world.

“When you make a brand-new set and there’s no rules, that’s a lot harder because you have to figure out what you’re doing,” Rosewater explained at the same press event. “One of the things about a return is, I have a lot of things that I know. Like [In Tarkir: Dragonstorm] we’re doing clans, we’re doing dragons. That speaks about a lot. A lot of the structure of the set is: How do we make clans and dragons work? We have to solve that problem, but at least it’s a defined, known problem.”

But, according to Forsythe, even the timing of a return set can contribute to the ease or difficulty in executing on players’ expectations and a set’s overall success.

“Ten years is kind of the sweet spot for how we can return somewhere and mostly execute how we did it the first time,” Forsythe explained. “Ten years is like a generation of players, a generation of improved design work, and we can deliver on a similar thematic set in a way that feels current and modern, and hits all the right nostalgia notes for people that were there the first time.”

While the game designers have access to a lot of insight into a set’s success, including sales, player sentiment, and competitive play rates, Magic’s world-builders and storytellers also leverage those inputs to inform the narrative direction that serves as the backbone of an expansion.

The same way that the cards in a return set try to simultaneously create fresh gameplay and a nostalgic experience for the most invested players, the storytelling experience has to thread that needle in a narratively satisfying way too. Retelling the same tales doesn’t make for a compelling backdrop on Magic cards. For the game’s world-builders, return sets such as Tarkir: Dragonstorm provide a new opportunity to modernize, if not improve, previous narrative decisions.

“We definitely saw the possibility of a more modern version of Tarkir […] with a more experienced world-building team, with a greater sense of the impact of our creative decisions,” said Doug Beyer, creative director for world-building on Magic. “We knew there was going to be a revolutionary feel to Tarkir: Dragonstorm, because part of the premise is throwing off the dragonlord oppressors, and a revival of these ancient clans. That naturally pointed to a version of Tarkir that was more steeped in the identities of those clans. Not necessarily being beholden to every detail of the way the clans were before.”

Where previous Magic stories may have used narrative devices to inform gameplay mechanics, the impact of consultants that represent different Asian and Middle Eastern cultures that inspired the world of Tarkir now help the design team to also make the backdrop more lived-in and authentic.

The result is a story told through gameplay, one that feels organic and more rich. Among the most eye-catching updates players will see among the old clans is the treatment of zombies by the cunning and decadent members of the Sultai Brood.

“The undead, within the Sultai, has changed massively since the last time we saw them. The undead were nothing but servants in prior continuity. Now the undead have much more of a revered role,” Beyer said. “Their bodies are rotting, but they have identity, they have personalities, their rotting flesh is patched over with gold and jade.

“We heard from consultants that rituals revering the dead actually are an important part of some culture practice for the inspiration cultures for the Sultai,” he added. “We still want the undead to be a big part of the Sultai, that is part of their core identity that we don’t want to lose, so what’s a new way to portray that […] and give them a fresh new unlife in the revamped version of Tarkir?”

With the full card image gallery for Tarkir: Dragonstorm now live, players can finally see the complete range of reimagined depictions across Tarkir’s familiar characters, clans, and in-game cultures. The full play experience of this set remains to be seen, though expectations are particularly high following the original Tarkir block’s commercial success and sheer number of game-defining cards.

Tarkir: Dragonstorm officially arrives in stores worldwide on April 11.

From Polygon via this RSS feed

It doesn’t feel quite right to call Warfare a war movie. At least not in the traditional sense. War movies generally have arcs and scope; they search for meaning in the violence. Warfare’s aims are more direct. According to co-directors Alex Garland (Civil War, Annihilation, Ex Machina) and ex-Navy SEAL Ray Mendoza, the goal of the film was to put viewers in the shoes of its soldier characters, and communicate the real experience of modern warfare as much as possible. The best sign that the pair succeeded in their mission is that Warfare feels far more like a horror movie than like a regular war movie.

Warfare is based on Mendoza’s real experiences in Iraq during the Battle of Ramadi — more specifically, a single mission where a platoon of Navy SEALs were supposed to provide overwatch from inside an Iraqi home. The opening few minutes of the film let us see the methodical process as the squad breaches the house, taking it over from the two Iraqi families who live there. Then the grueling part of the mission begins, as one member of the team keeps watch on a market across the street, and the rest simply sit by and wait for something to go wrong.

When we award the Polygon Recommends badge, it’s because we believe the recipient is uniquely thought-provoking, entertaining, inventive, or fun — and worth fitting into your schedule. If you want curated lists of our favorite media, check out What to Play and What to Watch.

It does, eventually, when the SEAL presence attracts the attention of insurgent fighters, who ambush the house, then essentially lay siege to it, trapping the squad inside. From there, the film becomes a life-or-death fight for survival, as the squad attempts to both escape and save several wounded members of the team.

But to communicate all of this effectively, the audience needs to feel the same tension and dread that the soldiers would have felt in real life. To do that, Garland and Mendoza cleverly turn to the mechanics of the film genre that does those feelings best: horror. Garland’s career as a director has always been on the periphery of horror, with 2022’s confusing provocation Men being his most overt attempt at the genre and his worst film by far. Meanwhile, this is Mendoza’s first outing as a director, but he’s mostly worked as an advisor on other war movies in the past. But both directors dive all the way into the horror genre here.

Warfare is full of jump scares, punctuated by gunshots and explosions instead of bursts of strings on the soundtrack. The movie is made up of the same kind of anticipation that a slasher movie might build as the main characters peer into a seemingly empty stretch of woods. The camera lingers on these kinds of potentially threatening spaces — in this case, alleyways and streets rather than a dark forest — with the constant threat of sudden attacks building the tension to nearly unbearable levels. Meanwhile, the perspective we get is always carefully fixed on the soldiers we follow, with danger seemingly lurking around every corner, and threatening sounds coming from every direction.

As clever as using this cinematic language is, however, it’s easy to imagine how it could slip into some unfortunate, ugly implications. If Warfare communicates its tension and horror like a monster movie, what does that say about the people the SEALs are fighting? Thankfully, Mendoza and Garlandavoid this comparison in a few different ways. For one thing, there’s never a doubt about the movie casting the SEALs as an invasive force, both to this house and the country as whole. The movie frequently cuts back to the captive Iraqi families who live in the besieged house, and notes the SEALs’ general indifference to the civilians’ fear of both the gunfire and the U.S. forces themselves.

Further, the movie constantly underscores the strange pointlessness of the conflict it’s depicting. In fact, the whole movie seems tailored to be a perfect metaphor for the invasion of Iraq — a difficult, dangerous, expensive occupation that largely led to a difficult, dangerous, and expensive retreat. It’s a strong stance, particularly for someone who fought in the conflict, but it also lets Garland and Mendoza focus on the horror of the SEALs’ experiences while keeping the movie buoyed above the gross dehumanization that plagues movies like American Sniper.

More than just familiar cinematic tricks, however, what really crosses Warfare into horror territory is its focus on the body. All horror, from zombie movies to slashers to psychological horror, is inherently rooted in the characters’ physical beings. Sometimes that means watching them get hacked into pieces by a Jason Voorhees type, get possessed by a demon, or undergo a more literal transformation in a body horror film. But no matter where the horror starts, it always ends with the body.

Warfare is no different. Garland and Mendoza choose to use the war on terror as their animating supernatural force, but in this movie, they’re just as focused on the physical effects of that force as any other horror movie might be. Both before the conflict and more pointedly during it, Garland and Mendoza are obsessed with showing us their characters’ bodies and the physical toll of the war on terror.

In one scene, early in the movie, we see a soldier providing intel via overwatch, lying prone on top of a stack of cushions for hours, staring into a sniper scope and reporting the smallest movements of people in a market. It’s a wonderfully dreadful scene, with more careful and effective tension-building work than nearly any horror movie this year so far. But that’s more like a side effect to what the movie’s really trying to show us: how hard this day-to-day soldiering really is. After what seems like hours in this position, the soldier finally asks someone else to take over so he can work the cramps out of his legs. Meanwhile, everyone around him looks battered, sun-worn, dehydrated, and utterly exhausted. And that’s before a single shot has been fired.

When the combat kicks off, though, all of this starts to take on a more familiar horror movie shape. Wounded characters slow the group down and need constant care, trapping the squad inside the house they’ve commandeered. And once again, the filmmakers smartly borrow from horror, giving us a setup that feels perfectly familiar. Tensions rise and tempers begin to fray; some of the soldiers lose their cool and panic, while others shut down completely. If you strip away all the guns and air support (as the movie eventually does), this is a classic horror movie setup: a few scared teens, stuck in a place they never should have entered.

In the wounds themselves, Mendoza and Garland double down on their emphasis on bodies and the physical toll of war. Whether from bullets or explosions, the injuries in Warfare could rival the gore of any horror movie. The makeup and effects look stomach-churningly convincing, and do an excellent job of selling the true danger of the SEALs’ situation and the real physical damage of war.

But Mendoza and Garland don’t limit these physical signifiers to the men who’ve taken hits or lost limbs. Instead, they let the boom of explosions ring in our ears for full minutes after they happen, and show us soldiers breaking down as they listen to their friends and squadmates scream on the ground. There’s even a character who goes through a kind of slow-motion panic attack, wonderfully communicated with both a fantastic performance by Will Poulter and a barely perceptible, but incredibly jarring, shaking of the camera when we see him in close-up.

What separates Warfare from other horror movies somewhat is that most of them would play these moments for quick shocks and terrifying scares. But Garland and Mendoza’s goal is to transport us into this world, to give us some approximated version of these soldiers’ real experiences. So they smartly make us sit with all of it, letting the noises and the blood seep in and wash over us. The constant ringing in the characters’ ears, the screaming that never stops or fades into the background, the misery of the heat as every character pours sweat, the hammer of gunfire just outside the walls of the house — they all combine into an ever-present thrum that’s undeniably effective at fraying nerves and disorienting viewers.

Garland and Mendoza’s simulacrum of combat was always going to have limits around how close it could bring us to real war. As the movie itself makes clear, there’s no experience in the world quite like this kind of combat. But by smartly leaning on the tools of horror movies rather than war movies, the co-directors have made one of the most tense and scary movies of the year so far, along with some of the most harrowing cinematic combat ever put to film.

Warfare is in theaters now.

From Polygon via this RSS feed

Fortnite isn’t a battle royale anymore; it’s a Sabrina Carpenter simulator. Gangs of players wearing the recently released skin are setting aside their weapons and dancing together. TikTok is packed with clips of players pacifying enemies with the power of pop.

As soon as one Sabrina Carpenter starts dancing to “Espresso” or “Please Please Please,” more and more show up until it’s a whole party.

Fortnite Sabrina Carpenter doesn’t discriminate either. Everyone can join in on the fun, including Batman.

@malcomwhoo

How the new sabrina carpenter update is going #sabrinacarpenter #sabrina #fortnite #fortniteclips #fortnitejamstage #fortniteupdate #fort #foryoupage #fyp #gaming

♬ original sound – MalcomWhoo

Hatsune Miku, too.

@yrplayer2

IF YOU SEE ANOTHER SABRINA PLS BE FRIENDLY!!!! Also this new dance emote where you can synce any emote is SO GOOD omg we don’t have to worry about syncing emotes anymore! Yay! @Fortnite Official @FNFestival @Sabrina Carpenter #fortniteclips #fortnitememes #fortnitebr #fortnitecreative #fortnite #fnfestival #fortnitefestival #sabrinacarpenter #emotes #emotes #fortnitecollab #fortnitedance #itemshop

♬ Taste – Sabrina Carpenter

No, not that one.

@finzys

Sabrina carpenter in Fortnite #fortnite #finzy

♬ original sound – Finzy

OK, well now Godzilla is here.

@kingz.vfx

RANDOMLY JOINED ME LOL #SABRINACARPENTER #sabrina #carpenter #fyp #foryou #foryoupage #trending #viral #FORTNITE #godzilla

♬ Taste – Sabrina Carpenter

Teammate dead? Doesn’t matter. Dance.

@lii.xing

making friends w all the sabrina skins in the lobbies rn i love it #fortnite #sabrinacarpenter #gaming

♬ Taste – Sabrina Carpenter

Oh no, not the worm emote.

@etherealfay

have you ever tried this one😏 use code etherealfay😛 @𝐬𝐚𝐤𝐮𝐫𝐚𐙚˙❀ @sana♡ @𝐥𝐮𝐥𝐮 🧸ྀི #fortnite #fortniteupdate #fortniteitemshop #sabrinacarpenter #viral #fyp

♬ original sound – 𝚊𝚕𝚏𝚒𝚎 𐙚 🫀

This is the most I’ve seen at once.

@yourboujeegal

Where the Fortnite girlies are meeting up! 🫶🏻 See you on the dancefloor Sabrina! 💕@Sabrina Carpenter #fortnite #fortnitegirl #fortnitegirls #fortnitememes #fortnitefunny #fortnitelife #fortniteclip #fortniteitemshop #fortniteskins #fortniteskin #sabrinacarpenter #fortnitecommunity #fortnitelovers #gaming #GamerGirl #gamergirls #gamingcommunity #gaminglife #gamingmemes

♬ original sound – NANCY 💖

“Ok fine I’ll reinstall Fortnite,” TikTok user SpaceBunny wrote.

@ulusoka

@Sabrina Carpenter is healing @Fortnite Official 💋 #fortnite #fortnitememes #fortniteclips #fortnitebr #fortnitefunny #fortnitedance #fortnitetips #fortnitepro #fortniteog #fyp #fypシ #fortnitereload #fortnitebattleroyale #sabrinacarpenter #fortnitefestival #sabrina #sabrinacarpenteredit #polytiktok🇦🇸🇼🇸🇹🇴🇫🇯 #viral

♬ original sound – Xen Ulusoka

“Girls taking over Fortnite with Sabrina Carpenter skins is my fav part of 2025 so far,“ wrote TikTok user amy.1345.

@bollilodecrema

Me and my lovely duo had a lot of fun today , THANKS FORTNITE 💋💕 #sabrinacarpenter #sabrinacarpentervideos #fortnitesabrinacarpenter #sabrinacarpenterfortnite #fortnite #tastefortnite #girlies #fortnitegirl #girlypop

♬ original sound – lexie ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟ

From Polygon via this RSS feed

The Masters Tournament, the emerald jewel in the crown of professional golf, begins this week. That’s a statement I’m reasonably confident about, but not totally, because I know almost nothing about professional golf. But not completely nothing. I know that in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, it was invented by hobbits.

Oh, you may be thinking, is the connection between hobbits and golf some kind of oblique reference to one line deep in an appendix, or perhaps a silly inference one could make from movie dialogue? But, no, it’s nothing of the sort.

Tolkien just… says it in the first chapter of The Hobbit.

It comes in a moment when Gandalf — who has taken into his head that it would be good for Bilbo (constitutionally) and Gandalf’s dwarven allies (logistically) if the meek hobbit were to embark on the dwarves’ expedition to the Lonely Mountain. He insists to Thorin and co. that though Bilbo may seem fussy and faint-hearted, he is “as fierce as a dragon in a pinch.”

Tolkien immediately follows this by mentioning that this statement could never apply to any hobbit except by “poetical exaggeration” — not even to the fiercest hobbit who ever lived. That is, to Bilbo’s great-great-grand-uncle Bandobras “Bullroarer” Took, “who was so huge (for a hobbit) that he could ride a horse,” Tolkien writes. “He charged the ranks of the goblins of Mount Gram in the Battle of the Green Fields, and knocked their king Golfimbul’s head clean off with a wooden club. It sailed a hundred yards through the air and went down a rabbit-hole, and in this way the battle was won and the game of Golf invented at the same moment.”

(A mere hundred yards is not particularly impressive for a golf swing, but then, most modern golfers have almost 2 feet on Bullroarer, and are merely hitting a small ball that isn’t even attached to the tee — not beheading a goblin via blunt force.)

The human sport of golf was named after the death of a goblin named Golfimbul? you may be thinking. That’s a little sillier than I expect from Middle-earth lore. And you’d be right.

The secret of The Hobbit is that when Tolkien wrote it, it wasn’t set in Middle-earth. To him, his personal epic saga of elven and human dynasties, The Silmarillion, was an entirely separate project intended for an adult audience, while The Hobbit was just a publishable version of the kind of ongoing bedtime stories he habitually invented for his children. It wasn’t until JRRT started writing a sequel to The Hobbit that he realized he could retrofit Bilbo’s story into his Middle-earth project. About halfway through writing what was eventually published as The Fellowship of the Ring, he renamed his Hobbit sequel The Lord of the Rings, and the rest is history.

There’s some evidence that Tolkien may have intended to remove the “invention of golf” story from The Hobbit in a new revision of the book that he worked on in the 1960s. John D. Rateliff’s The History of the Hobbit describes an incomplete draft that shows Tolkien planned, at least at that time, to change Golfimbul’s name to Gulfimbul, thus eliminating the “golf” pun. But the revision was never finished, and the change was never implemented.

And so all of The Hobbit’s more irreverent and anachronistic trappings — the Shire’s tea times and dressing gowns and house keys and sets of The Good Silverware — still exist alongside Middle-earth’s wider world of guttering torches, wizard towers, elven cloaks, and kingly speech. And I, for one, think the story is the stronger for it. It’s certainly the stranger for it, but also, dare I say, more human, more handmade, and more personal. Middle-earth isn’t a perfect work, even to its own creator, but who cares about perfection, anyway?

P.S. I asked Polygon’s resident sports gamer, Samit Sarkar, to tell me some things about the Masters Tournament, and it seems to have a number of parallels to The Lord of the Rings, what with an all-male group of heroes battling to win a precious, worn object that has known many bearers over its long history. Honestly, that all sounds very tiring — maybe someone should just cast it into a fire.

From Polygon via this RSS feed

Usada Pekora is one of the biggest Vtubers in the world, but even she can’t withstand the might of Nintendo.

【お知らせ】ガイドライン違反を疑われるゲーム配信への対応に関するお知らせhttps://t.co/VadVl9BCec

— カバー株式会社 (@cover_corp) April 9, 2025

According to a report from Automaton, Nintendo recently contacted Cover Corporation, owner of the Vtuber talent agency Hololive Japan, over concerns Pekora may have used a hacked Pokémon Emerald cartridge during a March 29 broadcast. As modifying video game saves can be a serious crime in Japan and Nintendo’s streaming guidelines reserve the company’s right to “object to any content that we believe is unlawful,” Cover decided the best course of action would be to take down the stream archive and issue an apology on April 9.

“OK, but what the hell happened?” I can almost hear you all asking your computer screen. Let’s get into it.

The offending broadcast involved Pekora buying and investigating a bunch of used Pokémon Emerald cartridges in the hopes of finding one that contained a super rare item known as the Old Sea Map. The item, which provides access to a special area of the game wherein the player can track down and catch Mew, was distributed in 2005 at a handful of live events throughout Japan and as a gift for purchasing a ticket to the movie Lucario and the Mystery of Mew in Taiwan. During the stream, Pekora kept a running tally of the number of carts she checked, and wouldn’t you know it, the save on #22 had an Old Sea Map in its inventory.

Apologies in advance for the screaming.

Someone attended an event in Japan 2o years ago, got the Old Sea Map, for some reason never used it to acquire Mew, and Pekora was lucky enough to find this mystery person’s copy of Pokémon Emerald without having to dig through hundreds of cartridges. Pekora’s fans saw this as merely a stroke of luck, but others pointed out how odd it was all of these unlikely events managed to line up for a perfect stream moment. Her supposedly outsized good fortune, combined with some apparent irregularities in the item’s in-game text, led some viewers to believe the Old Sea Map may have been hacked into the game rather than obtained legitimately.

Pekora addressed the growing controversy on April 3. She explained the situation to viewers as a “gray zone” and announced she wasn’t going to continue her hunt for a shiny Mew, which after finding the Old Sea Map was the ultimate goal of her Pokémon Emerald streams.

“There’re suspicions that the ROM has been modified,” Pekora said in a video. “Pekora doesn’t want to do it if it’s fake, too. I won’t do it. So I put the Mew stream on pause. Who is right? I don’t know anymore. It’s honestly too suspicious so I don’t know. It will be meaningless if it’s fake. So I just won’t do it. That’s the decision I ended up with. I apologize for causing a fuss over this. I’m really sorry. I won’t be catching Mew anymore.”

In its apology letter, Cover promised to be more cautious as well as educate staff and talent to prevent a similar occurrence in the future. Neither Cover nor Nintendo have confirmed whether or not the cartridge was actually hacked.

From Polygon via this RSS feed

Two well-known creators in the miniatures gaming space are suddenly getting way into nail art — you know, the other painting hobby enjoyed by millions of people around the world. Brent Amberger of Goobertown Hobbies fame and Casey, the creator of eBay Miniatures Rescue, showed up at this year’s AdeptiCon convention with a clever new way to paint your miniatures — and it could make one of the hobby’s most hated features a thing of the past.

The hated feature in question is the humble waterslide decal, which hobbyists across dozens of different franchises have come to loathe over the years. Done well, using something like Microscale Industries’ Micro Sol and Micro Set, decals can look great. But it can be incredibly challenging to get a decal to lay flat on a curved surface — you know, stuff like shields and the shoulder pauldrons on Space Marines. Even if you’ve mastered the process, which is ably described in the Winterdyne Commission Modeling Blog guide to Waterslide Decals (included as part of our larger miniatures painting guide), it can still go pear-shaped on you if your surface isn’t properly prepared. The result? A ghostly white outline surrounding the art on the decal itself.

Brent and Casey, partners in the newly formed Goblin Hobbies, recently discovered nail art stamping plates. These chemically etched metal plates can be made to feature any kind of two-dimensional art that you like. Drop a little paint on the plate, wipe it smooth, and you can pick the image up off the plate with a silicone pad. Just gently press the pad onto your miniature, and Bob’s your uncle. Their silicone pads are even transparent, so you can see your model through the handle to line things up perfectly.

The technology to do this kind of thing with ink and paint has been around for centuries. I’m sure my grandfather had something similar for his basement printing business in the 1940s. But its application to nail art is relatively new. Goblin Hobbies hopes to bring it even further, into the mainstream of hobby miniatures gaming. They even have dreams of licensed kits for your favorite factions from universes like BattleTech and Warhammer 40,000.

The first batch of starter kits recently showed up at their distribution hub. They include compatible paint and two plates filled with useful designs — including that notoriously challenging checkerboard pattern common on many miniatures. Sets start at $50.

From Polygon via this RSS feed

The Laboratory in Blue Prince is home to two puzzles: the periodic table puzzle and the machine puzzle.

Both puzzles are intertwined with one another — you’ll need to solve the periodic table puzzle in order to adjust the electricity on the machine.

Below, in this Blue Prince guide, we’ll tell you how to solve both Laboratory puzzles, including how to get the period table code and how to power up the Laboratory machine.

How to solve the periodic table puzzle in the Laboratory

There are two things you’re looking for in the Laboratory to solve the first puzzle and get a hint for the second: the code (a blank periodic table with numbers) and a copy of the periodic table.

The code is on the bulletin board next to the machine with all the levers in one corner (first image above). The periodic table is in the opposite corner above a bench with a microscope (second image).

Once you have both, you can start to piece together the answer. Take the numbers in order from the code sheet and match them to the atomic symbols (one- or two-letter abbreviations) on the filled-in periodic table.

Do that, and you’ll get a sentence (after adding some spaces): PUSH THREE UP AFTER NINE.

How to power the machine in the Laboratory

Before adjusting the electricity levels on the machine, you need to turn it on first.

To power the machine found in the Laboratory in Blue Prince, you’ll need to connect a powered Boiler Room to the Laboratory. This can be done by connecting a Boiler Room directly to the Laboratory or through the ducts that can be found on the ceiling. These ducts will carry steam to each room that its connected to — as long as the room has ducts. A few examples of rooms with ducts include the Security Room, Passageway, and Archives.

Once the Laboratory has been powered by the Boiler Room, you can now use the solution from the periodic table puzzle on the machine.

First, pull lever #9 and then pull lever #3 to power and unlock the Blackbridge Grotto, a permanent addition that allows you to access one offline terminal from the network each day.

For more Blue Prince guides, here’s our full walkthrough on how to reach Room 46, plus how to unlock another permanent room with the Orchard, open the West Gate through the Garage, or how to solve the dart puzzle in the Billiards Room.

From Polygon via this RSS feed

I originally had a good deal of skepticism when Sony announced a film based on Helldivers 2, simply because it’s hard to imagine how the game can translate into a movie. Someone’s already made Starship Troopers, after all, and it’s hard to imagine the antics that emerge from your typical match translating to the big screen. Over time, my position has softened, and a large part of that is because of the phenomenal work fans are doing in creating their own cinematics inspired by Arrowhead’s work.

One fan, posting on Reddit under the name Sad-Needleworker-590, posted his own trailer using a few clips of in-game cutscenes, voice lines from the game, and footage filmed from his own games. The end result is chilling; some of the shots of a lone Helldiver jogging through a blood-red sunset or preparing to face off against an Automaton Factory Strider genuinely gave me goosebumps. There are also some great action scenes, cut short enough to provide thrilling glimpses into the action-packed, lethal life of a Helldiver.

The trailer took about four days to put together. “I like Helldivers because it brought back to me that forgotten feeling of a good video game,” Sad-Needleworker-590 told Polygon via direct messages. “Even if it uses same game mechanic in every mission it still really fun to play with random people, or friends. And the game looks really good, each shot is cinematic masterpiece itself.”

I’ve also enjoyed following Martechi on YouTube, who creates works in the Warhammer 40K and Helldivers 2 universes alongside his own setting. Martechi creates videos that look like they could exist in some theoretical, wildly ambitious update from Arrowhead themselves. Using the mechanical context of his user ID and the Super Destroyer HUD, this cinematic space battle between Automatons and Illuminate looks real enough to fool the unwary observer.

While some fans don’t care to fight the Illuminate, YouTuber EPG-6 created an animation called “Showdown” in which a Helldiver uses a hatchet and a shield to go head-to-head with an Illuminate Overlord. I, for one, absolutely hate fighting the Overlords because they can take so many shots, so it’s satisfying to see one in such a tense tussle with a Helldiver.

Lumis Entertainment is another YouTube channel with some intriguing teasers for upcoming projects. One video is called Helldivers 2 – Teaser and shows glimpses of an upcoming animated fan film. In a longer crossover animation called Helldivers 40,000, a Helldiver is on the rocks against an oncoming Terminid swarm. Just when hope is lost, drop pods arrive, bringing Space Marines. As a fan of both franchises, I feel comfortable agreeing that these two would get along famously.

There’s no news on the upcoming film, besides knowing that Arrowhead itself won’t be too involved in the production. “We’re not Hollywood people, and we don’t know what it takes to take a movie,” Arrowhead Game Studios creative director Johan Pilestedt said back in January. PlayStation Productions and Sony Pictures will be at the helm, but if these fan creations prove anything, it’s that the gameplay can nicely translate into cinematic snippets.

From Polygon via this RSS feed

“Chicken jockey,” take a step back — it’s time for the official music video of “Steve’s Lava Chicken” to have a moment in the Minecraft movie spotlight. And by “official music video,” we mean “The Warner Bros. folks have released a 50-second clip from A Minecraft Movie and comically labeled it as an official music video.”

As Steve, Jack Black sings a few little songs in A Minecraft Movie, but the “Steve’s Lava Chicken” song has gotten the most buzz, with clips turning up online even ahead of this “official” release. Steve breaks into song repeatedly in the movie, but none of those songs are full-fledged musical numbers. Also, none of the other characters have similar musical moments. So it’s just Steve singing to himself about whatever’s going on, which honestly sounds a lot like what hanging out with Jack Black would be like.

But considering Jack Black’s prior over-the-top movie musical performances, like Bowser crooning a melody to Peach in The Super Mario Bros. Movie or the “…Baby One More Time” cover in the credits of Kung Fu Panda 4 or the entirety of School of Rock and Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny… Well, the official music video for “Steve’s Lava Chicken” seems a bit toned down for him. We have thoughts about it. Probably way more thoughts than a 50-second clip warrants. Let’s dig in.

Petrana: Not gonna lie… after the huge spectacle that was the official “Peaches” music video — wherein Jack Black wears an elaborate Bowser-evoking costume, plays a peach-colored grand piano, and dramatically twirls around and flops across the floor — I was kinda expecting more from an “official” Jack Black music video!

Tasha: Yeah, this is just straight-up a clip from the movie, no additional music or context or footage. I admit that when you sent this to me, I was hoping for a full-length band rendition of this little ditty. I had that reaction throughout the movie — every time Jack Black started to sing, I was surprised at how quickly he stopped. It isn’t like A Minecraft Movie is a committed musical; it’s more like Steve’s just the kind of guy who randomly sings little songs about whatever’s going on. (Um, relatable, honestly.) Then the Minecraft Overworld magically supplies him with background music. (Where do I sign up for that?)

Petrana: It definitely feels like Steve just improvises everything on the spot. Sorta reminds me of the scene in School of Rock where Jack Black’s character makes up a song about learning math. But that one is fun because the other characters join in. Or, in the case of Principal Roz Mullins (Joan Cusack), look completely dubious. In the Minecraft Movie clip, Jason Momoa’s character clowns on the quality of Steve’s chicken jingle, but does anyone else in the movie go, “Oh my God, Steve, shut up”?

Tasha: They really don’t acknowledge that he’s singing! It’s kinda weird — but again, maybe relatable. People sometimes politely avert their eyes when I burst into random spontaneous song, too.

Look, Steve just breaking into song in A Minecraft Movie kinda seems like a reasonable character beat, even though no one else ever sings. (Well, until the epilogue, when he and Momoa’s character form a band. Spoilers, sorry.) Steve broke from the real world a long time ago to go hang out in the Minecraft world, where he’s surrounded by creepy, blocky, bug-eyed pink sheep and villagers who only speak in murmur-burbles. One of the big threads in this movie is that he’s kind of a maniacal weirdo who isn’t used to being around other people, which lets Jack Black act freaky a lot. I can absolutely believe Steve made up a little jingle for lava chicken and is happy to share it with his new friends.

I can also believe that the folks behind A Minecraft Movie saw that “Peaches” video and wanted some of that “video game-derived movie with a Jack Black song” virality for themselves, but also didn’t want to turn the movie into a full musical. So we get this weird compromise, where he sings, but only in tiny bursts. You haven’t seen the movie — how does this scene/song/plea for TikTok virality play for you?

Petrana: Hmm, with the knowledge that it’s a character beat, it feels a little more cohesive. But on its own it just feels weird! I think in the greater context of the movie, I probably would’ve laughed, because I, too, burst into random songs to narrate what’s going on in my life.

On its own, though, it feels a little too “primed for social media.” I feel like there’s enough pause between the singing and any other dialogue to perfectly cut for viral clips. Also — he’s squarely in the middle of the frame for most of the song, which makes it ideal for translating the movie into a vertical format for TikTok or Instagram!

Tasha: Yeah, the framing and the length both feel very conscious and preplanned. So does the emphasis on a product that didn’t exist in Minecraft until the movie integration add-on dropped, for a little cross-promo energy. (At least it’s a free add-on and not a monetization ploy.)

Here’s the thing, though: I just find Jack Black fun. At this stage of his career, he feels like he’s embracing everything about his energy and his physicality and making it into a gag we can all share. He’s like a wholesome, welcoming, upbeat version of Chris Farley who has no interest in the self-hatred humor that’s so often a core value for rotund comedians. Whenever I want a pick-me-up, I go back to his go-for-broke performance in “Weird Al” Yankovic’s “Tacky” video and just revel in how much and how well Jack Black projects self-ownership and pride.

So I’m kinda primed to enjoy this “video,” no matter how short, weird, and media-calculated it is. I guess I’m the target audience for this kind of nonsense.

Petrana: I also like Jack Black’s whole schtick! I just wish the “official music video” went a bit harder. Like I said, I expected a whole production, not just a clip. Maybe this is less a fault of Jack Black and more on the Warner Bros. social media accounts. They should know better! Label it an “official clip” and set those expectations low.

Tasha: Here’s the important question that the characters in A Minecraft Movie have to face immediately after this clip, though. Would you eat the lava chicken?

Petrana: I can’t front; it looks real good, even in its blocky shape. The sizzle and the juice drippings… mmmmm. Then again, it is lunchtime for me right now.

Tasha: You do you, but I tend to avoid square food. Too many corners. Now that’s what this little ditty needed — a second verse about how Steve goes about navigating a messy meal with sharp edges. Maybe for the sequel?

From Polygon via this RSS feed

Honkai: Star Rail’s 3.0 update added a new type of collectible to the game: nymphs in Amphoreus. These critters are scattered around the maps, with each map featuring a “Garmentmaker” looking to find them. Help the “Garmentmaker” out and you’ll be able to get Stellar Jade and other goodies for your time.

These little bugs work similarly to the origami birds from Penacony. There are a bunch of them scattered around each map, and once you find them, you’ll need to report to the “Garmentmaker” in each area to get your reward. If you don’t know which nymphs you’re missing from the map, you can trade Memory Crystal Shards in exchange for a hint on where one of the missing nymphs is. (However, if you use our guide, you shouldn’t have to do this, and you can use your shards on loot from Janus’ Steed in Okhema instead.)

These bugs are also chatty, so if you’re having a hard time finding them, you can keep your eyes peeled for text bubbles that will show up, as they seem to have a lot to say.

Unlike with the origami birds, finding nymphs doesn’t reward you with light cones. Instead, you get Celestial Ambrosia, which you’ll need to rank up the Tidal Bounty in the Vortex of Genesis. There are also additional puzzles that you can complete once you get the nymphs in specific areas (and we’ll detail that process, too).

Below, we list where to find all nymphs in Amphoreus with both a map and a description of where to look.

Update (April 10): We’ve updated this guide with the new locations from the 3.2 version update.

‘Eternal Holy City’ Okhema nymph locations

There are 20 nymphs total in Okhema, and they look like butterflies. Once you find all 20, you’ll get a text from Aglaea to return to the “Garmentmaker.” You’ll get Stellar Jade and Celestial Ambrosia for finding them.

After collecting all 20, the “Garmentmaker” will move near the elevator, pointing you towards a puzzle that reward you with a precious chest and the achievement “Chirping Secret: Golden Journey.” You’ll need to use the fountains in Okhema to solve the nymph’s secret message.

‘Eternal Holy City’ Okhema, Marmoreal Palace F2

On the “Garmentmaker.”On some flowery bushes.Blending in to the butterfly mural on the wall.At the top of the ramp on the curved structure above.

‘Eternal Holy City’ Okhema, Marmoreal Palace F1

Laying on the center water fountain.Sitting upright on a chair.Sleeping in the towels by your bath.On the edge of the stage.On the potted plant on the table. It’ll fly away to another pot and you’ll need to catch it a few times.On the walls of the lift. You may need to take it up and down a few times to grab it, but the final spot will be at the top of the lift.Hiding among the stuffed seals on the shelf.Flying above the pool.

‘Eternal Holy City’ Okhema, Marmoreal Market F2

In the prayer fountain.In a basket on the edge of the building.

‘Eternal Holy City’ Okhema, Marmoreal Market F1

On the golden wall structure.On the forge inside the smithy.High up on the pillar.Inside the dinosaur’s feeder.On the guard’s head.On the bell at the Droma’s station.

‘Bloodbathed Battlefront’ Castrum Kremnos nymph locations

There are 20 nymphs in the “Bloodbathed Battlefront” and they’re depicted as red-orange beetles. Once you find all 20, you’ll get a text from Aglaea. For your troubles, you’ll get the “Portentous Goldwoven: Bloodbathed Battlefront” quest item, Stellar Jades, and Celestial Ambrosia.

After collecting all 20 nymphs in this area, the aforementioned quest item will give you hints about getting the precious chest for this area. You’ll need to walk forward towards the center of the round 3D room on B1 at dawn. (It’s a little fiddly, so you may need to walk a bit or try backing up and walking in again.) If done correctly, a nymph will appear, asking you a question — to which you should answer “Four warriors,” to get the chest and the “Chirping Secret: Blemish of Light” achievement.

‘Bloodbathed Battlefront’ Castrum Kremnos F2

On the wall in the room with the two enemies.On the edge of the walkway.On the edge of the walkway.On the wall decor.On the walls. We used a ranged character to hit the structures to reveal the critter.On top of the large sword structure in the area. Use the hand mechanism to grab it.On the ledge above the pathway.On the ground in front of the ball. We accidentally squashed it with the ball, which counted as collecting it, but we’re not sure if you have to squash it to collect it.

‘Bloodbathed Battlefront’ Castrum Kremnos F1

At the entrance of the area behind the doorway to “Strife Ruins.”In the fire (ouch!).Rolling a ball up the side of the steps.On the edge of the ornamental structure.On the pile of blue cubes.On the edge of the platform.On the edge overlooking the area.By the boxes on the ground.High up on the wall. This one actually gets captured by a Spirithief.

‘Bloodbathed Battlefront’ Castrum Kremnos B1

On the curved structure above the path.Sitting on the sword of the giant statue. Use the floating hand mechanism to grab it.Standing next to the hidden passage machine.

‘Strife Ruins’ Castrum Kremnos nymph locations

There are 20 nymphs in the “Strife Ruins” and they appear as blue beetles. Once you find them, you’ll get Stellar Jade, the “Portentous Goldwoven: Strife Ruins” item, and Celestial Ambrosia.

Once you have all 20 nymphs, you can head to the Kremnos Arena (the northern part within the huge circle on F2), and walk forward into the arena. (Just like the Bloodbathed Battlefront instance, it may be fiddly, so you may need to try multiple times to walk in to the area.) If done correctly, a nymph will appear at the north of the map, asking you a question. Answer “13 flames” and you’ll get a precious chest and the achievement “Chirping Secret: Fleetfoot Paradox.”

‘Strife Ruins’ Castrum Kremnos F3

On the wall.

‘Strife Ruins’ Castrum Kremnos F2

In the pile of boxes.Attack the shields on the wall to get this nymph.On the railing.On the edge of the structure.On the lip of the bowl-like decor.On the mural.

‘Strife Ruins’ Castrum Kremnos F1

On the wall carving.Near the rubble.Overlooking the edge of the chain bridge.On the sword in the base.On the floor.Very high up on a light fixture. Use the hand mechanism to grab it.At the top of the center structure.Next to the space anchor.

‘Strife Ruins’ Castrum Kremnos B1

In the fire.On the door.On the floor.On the blue light fixture.On the round structure. Use the hand mechanism to grab it.

‘Abyss of Fire’ Janusopolis nymph locations

There are 10 nymphs in the “Abyss of Fire” Janusopolis and they appear as teal beetles. Once you find them all, you’ll get Stellar Jade, the “Portentous Goldwoven: Abyss of Fate” item, and Celestial Ambrosia.

After grabbing all the nymphs, the quest item you get will reveal a fourth of the puzzle solution for the tablet in the southeast corner of Janusopolis F2. Once you correctly input the solution to the “Crrk?” prophecy tablet, you’ll get a precious chest and the achievement “Chirping Secret: Many-Faced.”

‘Abyss of Fire’ Janusopolis F2

On the broken pillar (evernight).On the wall (evernight).On the bridge (dawn).On the edge of the path.Under the pillar on the ground.On the left scale (dawn).On the floor (dawn).In the back compartment behind the right scale on the third floor (dawn).On the top of the center part of the scales. Use the hand mechanism to grab it.In the hood of the tall statue.

‘Sanctum of Prophecy’ Janusopolis nymph locations

There are 10 nymphs in “Sanctum of Prophecy” Januospolis, and they’re orange with blue detailing. Once you find them all, you’ll get Stellar Jade, the “Portentous Goldwoven: Sanctum of Prophecy” item, and Celestial Ambrosia.

Once you have the aforementioned item, you can complete a puzzle that involves driving the giant hand through specific circles on the B2 floor of this area. You’ll need to use the circles to represent pi, to the seventh digit. (What? I know.) You can see a video of this puzzle solution in action here. You’ll get a precious chest and the achievement “Chirping Secret: Law of Passage” for your time.

‘Sanctum of Prophecy’ Janusopolis F1

On the edge overlooking the sky.On the light holder in the back (dawn).Sitting on a chair (dawn).Hanging from the tapestry.Looking at the calyx.On the curtain at the top of the room (dawn).

‘Sanctum of Prophecy’ Janusopolis B1

On the floor looking at the scrolls.

‘Sanctum of Prophecy’ Janusopolis B2

In front of the ram head puzzle.High up on a part of the bridge. Use the giant hand to float up and grab it.

‘Sanctum of Prophecy’ Janusopolis B3

On the table.

‘Murmuring Woods’ Grove of Epiphany nymph locations

There are 20 nymphs in “Murmuring Woods” Grove of Epiphany and they appear as green beetles. Once you find them all, you’ll get Stellar Jade, the “Portentous Goldwoven: Murmuring Woods” item, and Celestial Ambrosia.

With the aforementioned item, you can unlock a precious chest by doing a relatively complex puzzle around this map. It involves destroying and rewinding specific sage statues. We recommend using this guide by KyoStinV. Once you finish setting all the statues, you can go back to the “Garmentmaker” for your chest, as well as the achievement “Chirping Secret: Lattice of Wisdom.”

‘Murmuring Woods’ Grove of Epiphany F4

Looking at the mural.On the side of the throne.

‘Murmuring Woods’ Grove of Epiphany F3

On the orange growth coming out of the wood.On the wood near the butterflies.On the topmost floor in the flowers (evernight).On the wall by the stairs (dawn).

‘Murmuring Woods’ Grove of Epiphany F2

On the edge of the walkway.Inside the building on the window.In the pond.On the wall.

‘Murmuring Woods’ Grove of Epiphany F1

In the lap of the statue.Next to the floating scroll.On the outer edge of the structure.On the center tree cocoon.On the railing.On the ground by the tree roots.On the water wheel. You’ll need to wait for the specific platform with the beetle to rotate around before you can grab it.On the edge of the fountain.On the wall.

‘Murmuring Woods’ Grove of Epiphany B1

On the edge of the pool of water (evernight).

‘Demigod Council’ Dawncloud nymph locations

There are 10 nymphs in this map and they appear as red butterflies. As usual with these, you’ll get Stellar Jade, and Celestial Ambrosia, though this time you won’t get any key item.

The puzzle for these nymphs actually lies in the melody the collected nymphs play when you “investigate” them at the “Garmentmaker.” You’ll need to interact with specific points of the map to “offer greetings to Kephale” to get the special treasure chest to appear. You can see all the locations in action here. Completing this and opening the chest will reward the achievement “Chirping Secret: Path of Pilgrimage.”

Above the fire.In the center of the mural.On the tip of the vessel.Riding on the nose of one of the pig speed vessels flying around. Wait for it to come by at this spot and use a ranged character to hit it.On the column.High up on the cliff on the bird mural’s head (requires giant hand mechanism to reach).On the trees.On a broken portion of the stone arch (requires giant hand mechanism to reach).On the chimes.Low on the waterfall (requires giant hand mechanism to reach).

‘Dragonbone City’ Styxia nymph locations

There are 10 nymphs in this map and they look kind of like… light blue fireflies? They’re kind of beetle-like, but not the stag beetles from the other maps. Finding them all will reward you with the usual Stellar Jade, Celestial Ambrosia, and the key item “Portentous Goldwoven: Dragonbone City.”

After finding them, you can complete a complex puzzle that has to do with the giant stone balls on the second floor of the area. You can see a solution for the puzzle here. Completing it and opening the chest will give you the achievement “Chirping Secret: Lost Prayers.”

‘Dragonbone City’ Styxia F1

Floating over the railing.On the edge of the walkway. Requires the rune to make the surrounded area day.Atop the platform on the edge near the water. Requires the rune to make the surrounded area day.

‘Dragonbone City’ Styxia F2

Sitting on the flying pig speed vessel. Stand around where our marker is and use a ranged character to hit the pig.By the fallen pot near the door.Floating along the path.Floating over the railing. Use a ranged character to hit it several times to catch it.Looking at the scrolls on the shelf.

‘Dragonbone City’ Styxia F3

On top of the floating scroll.Flying by some debris.

From Polygon via this RSS feed

There are two kinds of messy big-budget movies, and as of 2025, Ryan Coogler has made them both. There’s the Marvel kind (seen in Coogler’s Black Panther and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever), where directorial vision comes second to the studio machine, and to shared-universe requirements, VFX constraints, notes from audience test screenings, and a restrictive house style. And then there’s the Sinners kind, where no matter the studio process, the result is stamped with the artist’s signature through and through. His vampire-gangster-Western — and occasional musical! — is chaotic not for its lack of ideas and influences, but for their overabundance. It’s surprising that it holds together, given the sheer number of tones on display. What’s practically a miracle, however, is that it’s also one of 2025’s most sharply conceived works of popcorn entertainment.

When we award the Polygon Recommends badge, it’s because we believe the recipient is uniquely thought-provoking, entertaining, inventive, or fun — and worth fitting into your schedule. If you want curated lists of our favorite media, check out What to Play and What to Watch.

Set in Clarksdale, Mississippi, in 1932, Sinners unfolds over a single day, as notorious local brothers the SmokeStack twins (Michael B. Jordan in a dual role) return home from Prohibition-era Chicago and the employ of Al Capone. Elijah, known as Smoke, is the hardheaded, no-nonsense brains of their operation, while Elias, aka Stack, is the slimier and more seductive front.

The former is stiff in posture, while the latter smiles with bejeweled teeth. Together, they lure former friends and colleagues to work for them during the grand opening night of their ramshackle juke joint. They hope to make it a center for food, libations, blues music, and merrymaking for Black folks in the segregated South, but mostly, they just want to make money. Their recruitment scenes take up nearly half of the film’s 137-minute run time, and in the process, endear us to the brothers’ dynamic with each other.

With their younger cousin Sammie (Miles Caton) in tow — the guitar-strumming son of a preacher, framed by the voice-over as so talented that he conjures up spirits of the past and future — the twins begin their venture without a hitch, until a trio of unwanted white guests shows up at their door. Little by little, familiar genre tropes begin to emerge, like the strangers specifically requesting to be “invited” inside.

After a steady, character-centric intro, Coogler further builds momentum by cutting between moments of intense bodily motion, then charges headfirst into vampire movie territory. His script assumes his audience is familiar enough with the genre’s conventions, so he never slows down to explain them. But when the drama and environment are this absorbing, it’s hard not to come along for the ride.

Coogler’s last three films have been part of major franchises — after the indie biopic Fruitvale Station, he directed the seventh Rocky movie, Creed, and the two Black Panthers. Here, though, he pivots toward a wholly original piece of pop-horror, with B-movie influences befitting of grindhouse cinemas (and with one particularly amusing nod to John Carpenter’s The Thing). It’s a spiritual splatter film, with intimate dilemmas concerning greed and temptation giving way to spurts of practical, orange-brown blood, the kind you’d likely find in a George Romero film. Sinners is a vampire movie, but it’s practically structured like a zombie feature, with a compact cast of characters trying to survive the night as ghouls overtly embodying deep societal malaise creep toward them.

On one hand, the vampires represent the racial animus of the casually violent Jim Crow 1930s (some of them are literal Klan members), but on the other hand, the movie cuts deeper with its monster metaphors and its supernatural goings-on. Before long, the villains’ offers of eternal life (and much more; these vampires have some fun twists) not only begin to read as preferable alternatives to the Black community’s struggle for equality and survival, but as mirrors to the vices Smoke and Stack brought back with them from the big city.

The undead are just one of several mystical elements in Sinners; the others include Sammie’s spiritually tinged crooning, and the spiritual practices of Smoke’s ex Annie (Lokiand Lovecraft Country’s Wunmi Mosaku), all of which eventually come together, albeit in bumpy ways.

For instance, Coogler imbues Sammie’s music with rousing physical form, connecting genres and influences across time in magnificent long takes that look like psychic visions and feel like magic. Caton even sounds a little like the director when he speaks, making Sammie a self-reflection of sorts, intentional or otherwise. Sammie is a young creator trying to make art that speaks to a larger legacy, while also having to contend with the sins of his rich benefactors — his twin cousins — who tempt his fellow artists with devilish deals. It’s hard not to wonder whether Coogler has been dealing with the same pull and push of temptation, as a sought-after studio filmmaker who sparked a global conversation on the legacy of museums.

Coogler may be free from the more restrictive form of filmmaking other Marvel directors have chafed under — he recently described his Marvel stint as an “open directing assignment” — but even throwing himself into this new original IP, under the Warner Bros. umbrella, runs the risk of starting that cycle anew. (There’s no Sinners sequel on the horizon yet, but who’s to say?) Sammie’s ability to connect people to their ancestors makes him a particular object of desire to the movie’s villains. The purity of what he creates is fragile, and can easily be corrupted; as it happens, the vampires sing appropriated folk songs of their own, but use the appearance of sincerity as a hilarious facade. It’s goofy and chilling all at once.

The small group trying to survive these bizarre events includes Sammie, the twins, Annie, alcoholic blues musician Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo), Chinese American business owners Grace (Li Jun Li) and Bo Chow (Yao), and Stack’s former flame Mary (Hailee Steinfeld) — a white-passing woman who gets a little too close to the nefarious newcomers. As it happens, several of these characters are in the throes of grief, whether over the deaths of loved ones or the loss of their past connections to one another, making them particularly susceptible to the evil forces outside. On paper, Sinners seems like a rather straightforward creature feature, but its cheap thrills come wrapped in prestigious studio packaging, in a way only Jordan Peele has seemed capable of in recent years.

From an aesthetic standpoint, the film is incredibly self-assured — much of which is owed to cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw and her use of celluloid contrast. It has the deepest shadows you’ve ever seen during daylight, injecting each scene with a sense of mystery. But the way its skin tones and physical environments pop without overwhelming one another grant the movie’s setting a distinct lived reality. Clarksdale is a sharecropping town, introduced through shots of its Black workers toiling in cotton fields. These images evoke the past horrors of slavery, the same way Slim and Sammie’s toe-tapping blues performances bear the influence of African American spirituals. (Sammie has a background as a church singer, after all.)

Everything that appears on screen is wrapped up in larger echoes of American history, and its original sin of subjugation and slavery. But at the heart of these evils lies a more fundamental desire, which even its Black characters can’t escape: the allure of money and wealth. The vampires know this, too, and tempt their targets not just with eternal life, but with gold.

The film is dialogue-heavy in its explanations, though it remains emotionally convincing. Much of this comes down to Jordan’s debonair dual performances. The SmokeStack twins are ruthless in their pursuit of wealth, but never unlikable (they’re also quite funny at times), ensuring that when tragedy befalls them, it evokes sympathy and dramatic irony in equal measure. A question always looms over the movie’s horrors: Do Elias and Elijah deserve this?

Even as Sinners accelerates toward its climax, none of it feels wasted. Its action is explosive, and while Coogler’s vicious momentum can be visually disorienting at times, the adrenaline and the way he tethers each character to a distinctly spiritual question ensure that the movie’s strengths far outweigh its flaws. It’s a very strange movie at times, right down to its lengthy mid-credits epilogue. But it’s also a major swing for big-budget genre cinema, and a deeply personal one at that, with surprising introspections about artistic inheritance nestled among cartoonish gore. It’s hardly the gonzo combination expected from a sanitized studio product. Instead, it feels like the outpouring of a genre filmmaker liberated from constraints, as he tells a story about what liberation could even mean in a system where every possible alternative is awash in sin.

Sinners opens in theaters on April 18.

From Polygon via this RSS feed

This week, Nintendo fans received two important pieces of information about GameCube controller functionality on the Switch 2, both of which suggest the original Switch could have better GameCube controller support.

Here’s the first one: The Switch 2 GameCube controller will only work with games in the upcoming console’s GameCube library for the Switch Online service. Video Games Chronicle spotted this piece of information in the fine print of the UK version of an advertisement for the controller, but it’s not in other versions of the ad; we’ve reached out to Nintendo to clarify the situation and have yet to hear back. Secondly, the original Switch’s GameCube controller adapter — which plugs in via USB port — will still be compatible with the Switch 2.

Keep in mind, we have yet to hear any information about a Switch 2 update for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, a game for which many people prefer to use the GameCube controller over Joy-Cons. The game will still work on Switch 2 without an official update, but in terms of GameCube controller functionality, you’d probably have to use the original Switch’s adapter. Furthermore, the GameCube’s Super Smash Bros. Melee — which remains popular and has its own competitive scene to this day, despite the game’s age and lack of support from Nintendo — has yet to be confirmed to be included in the Switch 2 GameCube lineup, but that does seem at least somewhat plausible to this author. That would be one way for Nintendo to make the Switch 2 GameCube controller seem quite useful, actually.

Regardless, it seems that Switch 2 Smash fans may be in a bit of a bind this upcoming console cycle when it comes to organizing their GameCube controller accessories. There will be a new Switch 2 controller, but it’s not going to work on Smash Ultimate; you’re going to have to keep your GameCube adapter close at hand for that purpose. As for whether the Switch 2 GameCube controllers will even work with that adapter, that’s also not clear (again, Nintendo has yet to respond to Polygon’s questions about this). One could only hope the adapter would work with the new controllers, though.

All that said, Smash fans are an enterprising bunch, and they’ve been keeping the GameCube controller alive for years despite the hurdles along the way. So I’m sure they’ll put up with this. It does seem a bit strange to not just have a Switch 2 GameCube controller that works for games outside of the GameCube library, though, and to require an original Switch accessory in order to allow for that, but at least there still appears to be a way to use GameCube controllers across the new system.

From Polygon via this RSS feed

A new Bloomberg report suggests Nintendo will be able to “build a stockpile of millions of consoles” shipped from Vietnam to the United States ahead of June’s Nintendo Switch 2 launch. That’s based off data provided by global trade data and customs analysis company NBD, which showed Nintendo shipped more consoles from Vietnam in February than it had “in the previous six months combined,” Bloomberg reported.

Nearly all of the output from Hosiden Corp. — one of three Nintendo Switch 2 assembly companies — was sent to the United States beginning in January, per Bloomberg’s data. The jump was from 11% to “two-thirds over the previous 12 months.” That’s good news for Nintendo, which, up until Wednesday, was facing President Trump’s 46% tariff on imports from Vietnam. Those tariffs are on a 90-day hold, save for a universal 10% tariff; that hold may not last forever, but it gives Nintendo time to ship tons of consoles to the United States. Bloomberg said “roughly a third” of Switch 2 consoles are assembled in Vietnam.

Indeed, Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser told CNBC this week that a number of Switch 2 consoles are already in the United States and ready to go.

Nintendo moved some its console production out of China and into Vietnam and Cambodia during the first Trump administration — a move that will protect the company from Trump’s 125% tariffs on Chinese imports. Trump’s announcement of 46% tariffs on items from Vietnam threw Nintendo’s pre-order plan into a frenzy; the day Nintendo announced the console’s price at $449.99, the Trump administration announced tariffs on dozens of countries, including Vietnam. Pre-orders were set to begin April 9, but by April 4, Nintendo had delayed the process indefinitely.

“Pre-orders for Nintendo Switch 2 in the U.S. will not start April 9, 2025 in order to assess the potential impact of tariffs and evolving market conditions,” Nintendo said in a statement provided to Polygon. “Nintendo will update timing at a later date. The launch date of June 5, 2025 is unchanged.”

With the tariffs on pause — for now — Nintendo has time to build up its stockpile; Bernstein analyst Robin Zhu told Bloomberg that if tariffs stay at 10%, he doesn’t believe Nintendo will up its price. Nintendo hasn’t yet announced a new date for pre-orders.

From Polygon via this RSS feed

Amphoreus is the fourth planet in Honkai: Star Rail that you’ll visit. Just like all the other areas, it’s filled with loot. You’ll need to scour the maps out completely to get some exclusive rewards, so to help you hunt them down, we’ve compiled the maps and loot locations in our guide.

Most maps have loot hidden around and this loot expands beyond just treasure chests. When you open the map, you’ll notice a chest icon in the top left corner with numbers next to it. This indicates how many of the different types of loot you’ve found. However, this counter only lists treasure that isn’t locked behind puzzles or formidable foes (the powerful monsters that guard chests), as well as Spirithiefs, a new type of treasure-rewarding minigame for Amphoreus.

How Amphoreus treasure chests work

Opening chests will give you Celestial Ambrosia, which you can give to the Tides of the Basin in the Vortex of Genesis. Giving up these collectables will level up the basin, allowing you to get rewards like Stellar Jade and the item to increase the Trailblazer’s Remembrance Eidolon. (This is pretty much the same thing as the Clock Credits and Clockie Statue situation from Penacony’s treasure chests.)

Amphoreus doesn’t have Warp Trotters, trash cans, or any of the previously seen collectables on other planets, but you do have to watch out for Spirithiefs, who will show up and yoink your chest before you grab it. Sometimes the Spirithief will challenge you to a battle, too, so make sure you’re ready to fight. That said, our map marks the Spirithiefs on the map with their respective icon, but most spirits give you both a reward for thwarting them and a chest, so they are counted twice in the treasure tracker in the corner of your map.

This new area has some unique maps, sprawling over many floors. It does have rooms with 3D maps, though there’s no wall-walking or anything like that. The rooms switch between dawn and evernight, subtly changing the map and making different enemies and chests appeared. For the sake of keeping things clean, we’ve displayed all the chests on one map, though you will have to swap between the two time settings to find them all.

‘Eternal Holy City’ Okhema chest locations

Okhema is huge, so we’ve broken up the maps, separating the right side (Marmoreal Palace) from the left side (Marmoreal Market).

‘Eternal Holy City’ Okhema, Marmoreal Palace (right side) F1

‘Eternal Holy City’ Okhema, Marmoreal Palace (right side) F2

‘Eternal Holy City’ Okhema, Marmoreal Market (left side) F1

‘Eternal Holy City’ Okhema, Marmoreal Market (left side) F2

‘Bloodbathed Battlefront’ Castrum Kremnos chest locations

‘Bloodbathed Battlefront’ Castrum Kremnos F3

‘Bloodbathed Battlefront’ Castrum Kremnos F2

‘Bloodbathed Battlefront’ Castrum Kremnos F1

The Spirithief in the hall before the 3D room does not appear as a chest. It’ll show up after you try to pick up a nymph that’s sitting on the wall in the marked location. Though you won’t get a treasure chest from thwarting this Spirithief, you will get the usual rewards, and it still counts towards the treasure tracker in the corner.

‘Bloodbathed Battlefront’ Castrum Kremnos B1

The 3D map room in the north (the round one) has a secret elevator that opens up and gives you four chests (one in the center of the room and three below it). To access it, you need to do the side quest “I Once Was in Arcadia.”

‘Strife Ruins’ Castrum Kremnos chest locations

‘Strife Ruins’ Castrum Kremnos F3

‘Strife Ruins’ Castrum Kremnos F2

‘Strife Ruins’ Castrum Kremnos F1

‘Strife Ruins’ Castrum Kremnos B1

‘Abyss of Fate’ Janusopolis chest locations

‘Abyss of Fate’ Janusopolis F2

In the large northern 3D room, you’ll need to use the scales to go up to the third floor. Use the giant hand to pick up the sphere against the wall during dawn and place it on the right side of the scale. Stand on the left scale to be lifted up. After navigating this top floor, you can activate the lift to go around the different floors freely.

‘Abyss of Fate’ Janusopolis F1

Vortex of Genesis chest locations

‘Sanctum of Prophecy’ Janusopolis chest locations

This area was added in version 3.1.

Notably, there are a ton of chests (that don’t get counted by the on-map chest counter) that appear as part of the “Janus’ Maze” quest, which unlocks via the northeast library area of F1. The quest will be marked on your map with a blue symbol.

‘Sanctum of Prophecy’ Janusopolis F1

This floor is where a bulk of the loot is, so make sure you’re thoroughly searching using our map. We recommend sweeping through the 3D rooms completely during dawn or evernight before swapping to the other setting to make the search easier.

‘Sanctum of Prophecy’ Janusopolis B1

‘Sanctum of Prophecy’ Janusopolis B2

‘Sanctum of Prophecy’ Janusopolis B3

‘Murmuring Woods’ Grove of Epiphany treasure chests

This area was also added in version 3.1.

‘Murmuring Woods’ Grove of Epiphany F4

‘Murmuring Woods’ Grove of Epiphany F3

‘Murmuring Woods’ Grove of Epiphany F2

Note that the Spirithief in the southern area doesn’t steal a chest, but rather steals one of those huge blocks you can rewind and use to clear paths. Using it after taking down the Spirithief will allow you to unlock the door on F1 as well as get the nearby chest.

‘Murmuring Woods’ Grove of Epiphany F1

‘Murmuring Woods’ Grove of Epiphany B1

‘Demigod Council’ Dawncloud treasure chests

This very long area was added in version 3.2.

Note that the northern Spirithief actually steals the floating scroll in the marked location, not a chest.

‘Dragonbone City’ Styxia treasure chests

This area was also added in version 3.2.

‘Dragonbone City’ Styxia F1

The 3D room is more complicated than it looks. After you initially make your way through towards the space anchor inside, make sure to use the controllable giant hand to break any boxes around the map. This will effectively let you explore the full area, using the spotlight mechanism to grab all the chests during day and night.

‘Dragonbone City’ Styxia F2

This 3D room is much more annoying than the previous one. You’ll need to use the hidden passage mechanisms to fully explore it all.

‘Dragonbone City’ Styxia F3

If you’re looking for more chests and loot in Honkai: Star Rail, you can check out our complete maps of the Herta Space Station, the Xianzhou Luofu, Jarilo-VI, and Penacony.

From Polygon via this RSS feed

Ahead of the Marathon gameplay reveal on April 12, developer Bungie has promised that folks on non-PlayStation platforms won’t need a PlayStation Network account to play.

“Marathon will not require a PlayStation Account for players on PC and Xbox,” Bungie said in a post to the game’s official Discord channel Wednesday afternoon. The announcement prompted excited emoji reactions from players in the form of dozens of flames, a few hearts, and, inexplicably, a pregnant man. “This is the biggest news for me!” the user who started the conversation said. “It feels like now I can truly feel excited for the game!”

It sounds like a weird concern, needing a PlayStation Network account on Windows PC and Xbox Series X, but players have learned to worry about such a condition thanks to a fiasco last year involving Helldivers 2. Three months after the game launched, publisher Sony Interactive Entertainment informed Steam players that continuing access would require linking a PlayStation Network account.

“Due to technical issues at the launch of Helldivers 2, we allowed the linking requirements for Steam accounts to a PlayStation Network account to be temporarily optional,” Sony’s announcement said. “That grace period will now expire.”

Helldivers 2 players were, naturally, upset by this news. Not only was this requirement an unnecessary hassle, it had the potential to bar folks altogether if they lived in countries without PlayStation Network access. The outcry was so large — perhaps because players were using tactics they learned in-game — that Sony backtracked after just three days. Despite this blip, Helldivers 2 continued to be a massive success.

Fast-forward to today, and it’s obvious why people looking forward to Marathon — which, while not technically published by Sony, is still under the company’s purview due to its ownership of Bungie — were wondering that it might suffer the same fate. But everyone can breathe a sigh of relief knowing they won’t need an account on an entirely different platform if they want to play on Xbox or PC.

Bungie has yet to announce a release window for Marathon, but we may find out more information during Saturday’s stream.

From Polygon via this RSS feed

The sticker shock of Nintendo’s $449.99 pricing for Switch 2 has not yet subsided — and it could yet get even worse, if Nintendo decides to increase the price further in response to President Donald Trump’s tariffs. But the high price for Nintendo’s new console might have an unexpected consequence for its old one.

The original Nintendo Switch has sold 150 million units, making it the third-best-selling console of all time. Ahead of it are Nintendo DS, at 154 million units, and PlayStation 2, at over 160 million, according to Sony. My assumption had been that the Switch would be able to claim second place from the DS, but that the all-time console crown would probably elude it. Now, I’m not so sure.

Let’s look at the math. Nintendo predicted it would sell 11 million Switches during its most recent fiscal year, which just ended. This represents a very steep 30% drop from the previous year’s sales — a trend that, I assumed, would get even worse once the Switch 2 was on sale.

Regardless, it’s a given that the Switch will eventually sell enough to outstrip the DS; if, as Nintendo predicted, 1.5 million Switches were sold in the first quarter of 2025, then it’s already up to 152 million in lifetime sales. But that means to surpass PS2, Nintendo would have to sell 8 million more units after the Switch 2 is released on June 5. It would take, perhaps, two years of steady sales to shift that many, and it was hard to imagine the aging console maintaining that kind of momentum.

That doesn’t seem so hard to imagine now. Consider the pricing tiers of what Nintendo likes to call “the Nintendo Switch family of consoles.” The Switch Lite is $199.99. The Switch is $299.99. The OLED Switch is $349.99. And now we know that the Switch 2 will cost $449.99 (at least).

Only the OLED Switch, the current premium offering, looks like it no longer has a place in that lineup. The other models all occupy markedly different price points and value propositions. The Switch 2’s price point is high enough to put it in a different class altogether, competing with PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and the new wave of PC handhelds.

Consider, too, the kind of people who buy Nintendo Switch consoles who aren’t gaming enthusiasts. They are families, parents, casual gamers. The family angle is particularly pertinent. At $449.99, the Switch 2 is nobody’s idea of My First Game Console. But new gamers are born every year, and their sixth and seventh and eighth birthdays and all those Christmases are still going to roll around, regardless of whether there’s a new Nintendo console at an appropriate price to fill that need. Those kids’ parents are probably going to opt for an older-model Switch and not worry about the fact that it has few new games coming out, when their little ones have eight years’ worth of one of the deepest back catalogs in gaming history to dig into. (Trust me on this — I’m one of those parents.)

It’s also likely that none of these price points are changing even after the Switch 2 comes out. Nintendo didn’t lower the Switch’s price at all during its lifespan, and the same is likely to be true of the Switch 2. So it’s reasonable to think that a $199.99 Switch Lite might still look like a tempting proposition to a new gamer in two years’ time.

In this scenario, the biggest challenge Nintendo faces in racking up further Switch sales is software. Consoles do need new games to survive, and the Switch’s release schedule is bound to dry up somewhat once Nintendo’s in-house studios move on to the new hardware and third-party publishers have an excuse not to worry about its weak tech specs anymore.

But the Switch does have two major system-selling releases for the 2025 holiday season, in the form of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond and Pokémon Legends: Z-A. And Nintendo has even announced two 2026 games for the console, Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream and Rhythm Heaven Groove, indicating that it’s prepared to keep supporting the Switch for a while yet. Indie developers whose games don’t require much graphical horsepower will probably continue to publish on the Switch, too. Thanks to its gigantic install base, the Switch might enjoy a longer period of cross-gen releases than you’d typically expect — in line with the unusually long transitional period from PS4 and Xbox One to PS5 and Xbox Series X that we’ve just seen.

All of which is to say, I think the Switch could still stick around for another two years at least, selling 1-2 million consoles per quarter and more around the holidays. This would give it just enough momentum to rack up those 8 million sales and reel in PS2 — which, by the way, itself enjoyed a very long sales tail after the PS3 was released at a then-eye-watering $499.

Nobody is happy about the Switch 2’s pricing — not even Nintendo, I suspect, which might have preferred to price it at $399 if inflation, the cost of components, and those dreaded “evolving market conditions” had allowed. But nobody can deny that the Switch is one of the all-time great video game consoles, and that it deserves a long victory lap — and a chance to take a pop at the king.

From Polygon via this RSS feed

Amazon is currently offering a great opportunity to stock up on some of our favorite board games for less.

Right now, if you add two games participating in the sale to your cart, Amazon will knock 50% off one that’s of equal or lesser value. And that’s after the sales price — many of our favorites are already a few bucks off at the moment.

The list of eligible titles isn’t massive but features many games that we consider to be an essential part of any collection, including Ticket to Ride, Catan, Azul, and Pandemic, but if you’re looking for more suggestions, we’ve assembled a short list of our recommendations below.

From Polygon via this RSS feed

Black Mirror’s strain of science fiction is known primarily for three things: a bleak tone, twist endings, and a point to make about the current moment.

How creator Charlie Brooker checks those boxes isn’t always unpredictable; with a freshly released seventh season on Netflix, Black Mirror fans certainly know there’s something coming, and part of the trick to a good Mirror episode is how it feels like it boxes a central character in. That’s what makes “Common People,” the first episode of season 7, feel like one of the show’s best installments in years: While it goes exactly where you’d expect, where it winds up is worse than anything you could possibly imagine.

“Common People” starts simple: Mike (Chris O’Dowd) and Amanda (Rashida Jones) are just regular people living an uncomplicated life. He’s a welder, she’s a teacher, and they’ve been married for three years; the biggest thing in their life is trying for a baby and their annual anniversary trip to a shitty lodge in a different county. At least until Amanda collapses and gets diagnosed with a brain tumor. Mike, totally unmoored, gets approached by Gaynor (Tracee Ellis Ross). She works for Rivermind, a company that offers to host cancer-infected parts of the brain in the cloud so a patient can go on living life with “synthetic receiver tissue.”

Only this is Black Mirror, not Happy Miraculous Cures Mirror. So as you might expect, Mike’s choice to sign Amanda up for Rivermind’s treatment comes at a cost. The thing is, the cost is only barely science fiction: It costs the couple a shit ton of money.

“Common People” is pure sci-fi, but is far more upsetting for just how plausible it all feels. The way Tracee Ellis Ross’ Rivermind character greets Amanda and Mike isn’t that far off from an insurance representative cheerfully informing me in an email that they’ve approved a prescription my doctor gave me for coverage. The company’s copywriters might feel like they’ve dialed in the perfect degree of pep, but it rings hollow; I don’t really want to have to think about why my doctor’s assessment of my needs might not be enough for them to cover me under the insurance plan I already pay for.

It’s not that far off of what Mike and Amanda deal with in “Common People.” The basics are always shifting; the “Plus” program is now the “Standard,” as they’re constantly reminded — but don’t worry, that’s still better than the inferior “Common level of treatment.” Just not as good as “Lux.” After all, only one lets Amanda travel where she wants, actually rest, and not just speak ads into everyday life. Slowly but surely, their quality of life gets peeled back. They may not be dealing with health issues, but the health care coverage issues are just as bad.

Obviously this isn’t a problem confined to either just Amanda and Mike or me and my insurance company. Health care costs continue to be a major concern for most Americans, and resentment that the system feels irreparably broken is boiling over. While Black Mirror often aims to feel topical, it rarely taps into consensus this well.

That seems to be what makes “Common People” feel so effortlessly chilling in a way Black Mirror hasn’t in a while. Even before moving to Netflix from Channel 4, Black Mirror put a high premium on feeling “topical.” In order to achieve that, it looked for some sort of twist it could put on pressing issues of the moment: social media dogpiling, racism, sexism, or just the general frenzy technology stirs up in humanity. Black Mirror hasn’t felt as buzzworthy lately, often because its aims have felt a little more mechanical — if it’s all leading up to that big Black Mirror gut punch, it’s a lot easier to steel yourself for the blow.

“Common People,” by contrast, is made of sterner stuff. Its tragedy is laid bare, meaning all it has to do is let us follow it down. It doesn’t have to worry about the same concerns as a typical episode. Black Mirror characters are often a bit flimsy, more in service of episodic ideas with a twist than as nuanced personalities in their own right. “Common People” — as the name implies — makes that a feature, not a bug. We don’t know much about Mike and Amanda beyond the fact that they had a happy, normal life before a random health incident caught them blindsided. There’s not much more to them or their story; they could be anyone. That’s the really scary part.

Black Mirror season 7 is now streaming on Netflix.

From Polygon via this RSS feed

The weekly GTA Online update for April 10, 2025, is live with reward events, discounts, prizes, and classic heists.

Our GTA Online weekly update guide will tell you everything happening in Los Santos this week.

GTA Online special events

This week is all about the thrill of the Heist. You’ll get 2x GTA$ and RP when you take on:

The Fleeca JobThe Prison BreakThe Humane Labs RaidSeries A FundingThe Pacific Standard Job

You’ll need a High-End Apartment, but they’re 30% off at Dynasty 8 all week to help you get started.

Complete any two heist finales, and you’ll get the Weekly Challenge reward of GTA$ 100,000.

What are the 3x GTA$ events in GTA Online this week?

The big bonus this week is for a new round of Community Series events. To earn 3x GTA$ and RP, look for:

Panto Power Pipes by lukemac1994****EKU – VineWeed by Ujamino***A2 – THE QUARRY** by Andruk22**[- FATAL SHØØT -]** by The-_FiienD****Jump’hit by JeeVeePee**[M]-Parkour#gauntlet** by M-a-r-c-i-o**#RMX – H200 2023** by Eyzixio

What are the 2x GTA$ events in GTA Online this week?

Head to any Pizza This location this week to take on Pizza Delivery jobs for 2x GTA$ and RP all week.

You can also take on Hasta la Vista on a bicycle while dodging truckers for 2x GTA$ and RP.

What vehicles are for sale in GTA Online this week?

You can get new vehicles weekly from Premium Deluxe Motorsports and the Luxury Autos Showroom.

What’s in Premium Deluxe Motorsports Showroom this week?

Head to Simeon’s Premium Deluxe Motorsports showroom for:

Declasse TulipCoil VolticWestern Rat BikeLampadati Michelli GTCoil Raiden

What’s in the Luxury Autos Showroom in GTA Online this week?

At Luxury Autos over in Rockford Hills, you can pick up the following:

Vapid Clique Wagon****Canis Terminus

What’s the Lucky Wheel prize car in GTA Online this week?

At the Diamond Casino, spin the wheel for a chance to win the Karin Previon.

What are the Salvage Yard Robbery targets in GTA Online this week?

If you’ve set up a Salvage Yard to make money, you’ll be looking for:

Benefactor Stirling GTGrotti CheetahPegassi Toros

Which vehicles and properties are discounted in GTA Online this week?

High-end Apartments are 30% off at Dynasty 8 this week to help you get started on heists.

What is the Gun Van selling in GTA Online this week?

Track down the Gun Van this week to pick up:

El Strickler military rifle (free with GTA+)Heavy rifle (40% off with GTA+)Military rifle (50% off)Stun gunHeavy sniperMarksman pistolKnifeMolotovsGrenadesTear gas

And if you’re playing the main game, don’t miss our list of GTA 5 cheats.

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It’s been quite the season for suspending cards from play in popular trading card games. While Magic: The Gathering continues to grapple with the fallout from last year’s bans in the Commander format, Disney Lorcana made its first suspension by tossing beloved toymaker Hiram Flaversham (The Great Mouse Detective) out of the competitive play circuit. Now it’s Fantasy Flight Games’ turn to wield the ban hammer in Star Wars: Unlimited, which falls this time on none other than Jango Fett. He, along with two other popular cards, are now suspended from play — the same fate that recently befell his beloved son, Boba.

Gone, these Mandalorians are, from the game’s Premier format. On Wednesday, in a blog post, designers detailed exactly why.

Jango Fett (Concealing the Conspiracy) is a leader card with an unique ability to exhaust enemy units. Played well alongside other cards from the newly released Jump to Lightspeed expansion set, designers say he can repeatedly exhaust all enemy units on the table, thereby leaving opponents critically exposed. That, alongside his hefty seven defense, makes him “very difficult to defeat in combat” — which, yeah, that checks out.

Triple Dark Raid, a tactic used in close concert with Jango as a deck’s leader, is also out.

“Given the absolute dominance that Jango Fett and Triple Dark Raid have demonstrated in such a short amount of time after Jump to Lightspeed‘s release, claiming 15 out of 24 of the Top 8 spots in our Sector Qualifiers and representing 5 of the 6 finalists,” designers wrote Wednesday, “we feel that quick and aggressive action is required to preserve the health of the competitive landscape for future Qualifiers.”

Also added to the ban list, which Fantasy Flight refers to as the suspended list, is DJ (Blatant Thief). This one, however, sounds like more of an oopsie than anything else. DJ can smuggle, a mechanic introduced with the Shadows of the Galaxy expansion set. But he can also just take control of enemy resources and make them his own.

“DJ’s ability to permanently steal resources with such ease was simply not an intended use of his mechanic,” the design team admitted in the blog post, and while suspension isn’t the best solution, if is effectively the only option they’re willing to take. “We do not intend to errata cards for balance purposes in any capacity; the card you pull from a booster pack should, if at all possible, do what the card says.”

As a result, you’ll still be able to play DJ — and Jango, and Boba, and Triple Dark Raid for that matter — in casual games. It’s just that they won’t be allowed in proper organized play any longer.

The next set for Star Wars: Unlimited, titled Legends of the Force, is expected in July.

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Knowing the date and time can help you solve certain puzzles while exploring the manor in Blue Prince, including the Shelter’s time-lock puzzle.

This guide will show you how to tell the date and time in Blue Prince.

How to tell the time in Blue Prince

You can tell the time in Blue Prince by looking at any clock! That’s all there is to it. You just gotta know how to read an analog clock.

Some rooms that have such clocks include the Entrance Hall (where you start each day) and the Den. There are loads of decorative, old-school analog clocks around the house. Just walk around until you find one if you need to check the time.

How to tell the date in Blue Prince

There are several ways to tell the date in Blue Prince. But first, you’ll need to figure out the day Simon started his journey at Mt. Holly.

There are two ways to find Simon’s start date: via the Drafting Studio or on a computer terminal.

In the Drafting Studio, look around until you see a calendar hanging on the wall. The calendar shows the date Simon started at Mt. Holly with a note that says “First Day.”On a computer terminal, you’ll need the terminal password, but once you have it select the option to “Connect to the Network,” then access the menu labeled “Staff Services.” From there, select “Staff Announcements” and you will see a digital announcement addressed to Simon from the Mt. Holly staff. That also contains his start date.

Once you have the start date from either the Drafting Studio or from a computer terminal, you must add the number of days you have been exploring to that start date. We get into more details about how to apply this info in the section below, but bear in mind that it covers the exact start date for Simon — so if you want to figure it out own without that info, don’t read on!

What is the date in Blue Prince?

Simon started exploring Mt. Holly on Nov. 7. You need to add the number of days you have been exploring (shown on the pause screen) to that start date to figure out the date in Blue Prince.

For example, if you are on “Day 22” of exploration, then the current date in the game would be Nov. 28. If you don’t want to count up the days yourself, you can use a website like Date Calculator to do the math for you. When you use the calculator, you need to subtract one day because Blue Prince includes Nov. 7 in the way it calculates the date.

So in the “Day 22” example, the calculator would say 22 days after Nov. 7 is Nov. 29. Subtract one day to get the correct date, Nov. 28.

If you don’t want to fuss with adding dates and numbers, there’s another way to figure out the date outside of these two options: Draft the Library blueprint and order a book to check out.

The next time you draft the Library, the book you ordered will be there sitting on the main table in the room. You can find the current date in the game by looking at the date listed on the checkout slip next to the name Simon P. Jones. In this case, it’s Nov. 28, 1993.

For more Blue Prince guides, see our full walkthrough on how to reach Room 46, or go piecemeal by learning how to solve the breaker box puzzle, where to find all sheet music pages, and how to use the Secret Garden Key.

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