There is a lot of change coming to Balatro, including four video game crossovers in the free Friends of Jimbo update announced during the August 2024 Indie World Showcase. You can get these new card skins starting on Tuesday.
The popular poker roguelike is getting new cosmetic card skins from The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Dave the Diver, Vampire Survivors, and Among Us. We already knew about one of these since a trailer unveiled at Gamescom 2024 last week announced a number of Dave the Diver crossovers, including Balatro, but we weren’t expecting the chance to see Geralt, Yennefer, and Jaskier as the king, queen, and jack face cards or vampire and monster cards from Vampire Survivors.
Each of the crossovers adds new face cards, but they’re optional and can be turned off in the new deck settings menu. It’s unclear if these cards will have any other effects. The press materials don’t mention anything, but we’re curious.
“It was surreal having these conversations. Some of the biggest names in gaming praising my little project and wanting to collaborate — absolutely wild. I’m glad we made it happen!” developer LocalThunk said in a press release.
This is the second of three big updates publisher Playstack Games teased for Balatro, which launched in February and became a massive hit thanks to its satisfying gameplay loop that combines the adrenaline rush of playing poker with the randomness of jokers, which can add special boosts to each run. The first was the announcement that it would be getting a big free update in 2025, although neither the developer, nor the publisher have revealed any details on what that could entail just yet.
Either way, Playstack promises the final reveal is “going to be a banger.” There will also be more cards added to the game later in 2024.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.