I should probably turn this extension off already.

​Why Board Games Are Beautiful

The best thing about board games, hands down, is the people. I don’t just mean the sorts of people who play board games, I mean that more broadly: Playing a tabletop or board game means spending time with your friends, your family, your loved ones. Board games are about people. This video, from Shut Up…

9 Games About Ghosts You Can Play For Free

Ghosts! They’re cute and spooky and a little bit dead. And now here are a bunch of free games you can play about them. The group Devchat had a game jam recently and the theme was g-g-g-g-ghosts. More specifically “ghost wheel?”. The games were all made in a 48-hours span. Carnighoul Take Space Invaders, and…

Big-Time Doom Fans React To Yesterday’s Doom Reveal

We didn’t see the new Doom that was shown exclusively to Quakecon attendees in Dallas this week. You probably didn’t either. But all the people in a video shot by the folks at the unofficial Quakecon Forums did. They just saw it minutes before this video was recorded, and they were pumped. Skip to 50…

You’ll finally be able to buy games and add-ons for your Xbox when you’re away from the console. Mobile purchasing via SmartGlass or Xbox.com is one of the features coming to the Xbox ecosystem in a future update, which will roll out next week in early-access form to select XB1 owners.

Watch Dota 2’s Biggest Tournament of the Year, Right Here

The main event for The International starts today, with ViCi Gaming facing NewBee in the first upper bracket match, followed by Evil Geniuses versus Team DK. You can watch it all go down here. The International, as you might recall, is a tournament with humongous prize pool. $10,850,749, to be exact. It’s kind of incredible,…

Highlight Reel: Any Landing You Can Walk (Or Swim) Away From

Today’s gaming highlights: Casually landing a plane on a boat in a warzone, jumping over buildings like Superman, an incredible sniper shot, and more! War Thunder Reptile almost gets shot down, and has nowhere to go… until he spots a landing boat on its way to shore. Titanfall Thomas Hall is playing a round of…

Deals: Civilization: Beyond Earth, Goat Simulator, 1960s Batman, Dune

The only thing better than digitally tripping people with goats is tripping real people with real goats, but at least you can do the former for under $6 today. [Goat Simulator] Ready to go to space? Preorder your flight for 20% off with code P36EYA-K5JYKT-ABO7X9 today. [Civilization: Beyond Earth] Some days you just can’t get…

Nintendo, Your Cat Mario Show Is Weird

Yesterday Nintendo premiered the Cat Mario Show on the eShop in Europe. It’s an edutainment show aimed at kids who want to learn facts about Nintendo properties. It’s also mildly terrifying for reasons I can’t quite explain. Here are some things I learned from The Cat Mario Show 1. Cat Mario and Cat Peach are…

Paintball Can Be Badass With A Counter-Strike Sniper Rifle

The Asiimov skin for the AWP sniper rifle in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive can be a pricey one, $30 or a lot more if you’re not lucky. So buying one might not be the best idea. But modifying a generic paintball marker to match the one in CS:GO? That’s much better. Gaboer did just that and…

How BioWare Plans Who You Can Romance In Their Games

Creating romances in a BioWare game isn’t just a matter of writing and art. It’s also a matter of math. That’s one of several insights in a really good 48-minute talk delivered by the writers of Dragon Age Inquisition at last week’s GaymerX2 convention. The topic was romance (read: who your character can eventually have…

Today’s selection of articles from Kotaku‘s reader-run community: Those Somewhat Silent Protagonists • Every Game Wants to Be Half-Life • Stop With The Elitism! TAY Classic—TAY Open Forum—Beginner’s Guide To TAY Follow them here.

Make A Career Out Of Building (And Blowing Up) Spaceships

With the help of Kerbal Space Program’s new First Contract update. The update massively expands the game’s career mode by introducing contracts—basically missions. Now, instead of launching your custom-built ships into orbit just for fun, you can actually make money by completing specific objectives, and use it to expand your space agency’s arsenal of spaceship…

No PC Gaming For Me This Morning

Someone was using my computer.

Alien Isolation’s Worst (Best) Aspect: The Unpredictable Alien

One thing I noticed playing Alien Isolation was its unpredictability. Multiple replays showed the alien and other characters never did the same thing twice, which is entirely the point, explains creative lead Alistair Hope. This post originally appeared on Kotaku UK “We realised early on that if you could learn its behavior then it would…