Grab your satchel, sharpen your blade, and dust off your negotiating skills—Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault is officially set to open its doors in Summer 2025! The upcoming action-RPG from Digital Sun, creators of the beloved indie hit, Moonlighter, and published by 11 bit studios, returns with even grander adventures and deeper shopkeeping mastery. Step into the dual life of Wil—a shopkeeper-turned-hero—as he balances dangerous expeditions alongside the hustle of keeping his business thriving in a reality where fortune favors those bold enough to venture beyond the boundaries of what they know.

As you venture into the unknown, you'll clash with fearsome foes and gather precious loot in sprawling, dynamic dungeons. Take risks and reap rewards with the game's new layer of tactical depth—inventory management is no longer just about saving space. Relics carry special properties, adding tension and strategy to every expedition. On the shopkeeping side of things, you'll keep your store bustling by harnessing powerful boosts and charms to maximize sales and keep customers lining up at your door. And while you're stuck in Tresna for now—a brand-new location in the series, born from a dimensional mash-up—you might as well try to prosper together with the local townsfolk. Invest in the flourishing village of Tresna, shape its future, and unlock new opportunities for your own success.

Assassin's Creed Shadows, launching on March 20, will continue the series' tradition of bringing players closer to history with a section of its database titled "Cultural Discovery." As part of the in-game Codex, this feature offers players carefully selected encyclopedic entries on the history, art, and culture of the Azuchi-Momoyama period. This cultural encyclopedia was written by historians and includes images from museums and institutions. Similar to the History of Baghdad feature in Assassin's Creed Mirage, Cultural Discovery will be integrated into the main game of Assassin's Creed Shadows, and is tied to player progression. Cultural Discovery contains almost two times as many entries as the History of Baghdad, with more than 125 entries at launch, and more to come.

As players visit sites that provide a historical and cultural exploration of 16th-century Japan, they will unlock articles on the economy, castles, military affairs, daily life, historical figures, and events. One notable cultural codex entry, shown above, features an exclusive replica of a Kabuto, or Japanese war helmet, that symbolizes the first contact between Japan and Spain. The original Kabuto is part of one of the oldest collections of Japanese armor in Europe, and is kept at the Royal Armory in Madrid. This Kabuto had been almost entirely damaged during the fire suffered by the Royal Armory on July 10, 1884. Ubisoft, Patrimonio Nacional, and Spanish company Factum Arte joined forces to recover what was left of this Feudal Japan relic, create a faithful physical reconstruction of it, and make it accessible to people around the world through its inclusion in Assassin's Creed Shadows. The physical replica from Factum Arte will become part of the Royal Armory of Madrid's collection.

Blades of Fire takes place in an age of petrified steel. An all-powerful witch queen's spell turns all the world's steel into stone, apart from that wielded by an army of brainwashed minions who once served her father. This one small technological twist changes everything for this unique fantasy world. Granted a legendary hammer, Aran de Lira is the only one who can forge new weapons and fight back, becoming an unwilling hero on an unlikely quest. MercurySteam's much-anticipated follow-up to Metroid Dread, Blades of Fire is a brand-new IP that aims to reforge the action adventure genre with strategic combat, the debut of a rich sword-and-sorcery fantasy world, and a deep weapon forging system that hopes to deliver unlimited customization. Each weapon you forge is one-of-a-kind, ready to carve out its own destiny. You don't build a character—you build an arsenal. We recently played the opening stages of Blades of Fire and spoke to the team about how they're reforging the action adventure and making players think about weapons from a fresh perspective.

Closing the circle
It was a long path to get here for Enric Alvarez, MercurySteam Co-Founder, CEO, and Game Director. Just as the age of iron and steel was preceded by 2,000 long years of the Bronze Age, Blades of Fire is the culmination of a 24-year journey, a period the Madrid-based studio spent sharpening their skills and burnishing a prestigious reputation. In 2001, the founding members of MercurySteam worked at Rebel Act. The studio only released one game: Blade of Darkness, a PC cult classic sometimes regarded as a precursor to the Souls games for its minimalist storytelling, challenging stamina-driven combat, and a dark fantasy world beyond redemption. The influence of Conan and The Lord of the Rings (pre-Peter Jackson adaptations, as The Fellowship of the Ring came out that December) was strong, pairing exhilarating sword-and-board action with epic grandeur. Perhaps too ahead of its time, Rebel Act closed its doors after Blade of Darkness failed to find a sufficient audience.

Back in 2021, award-winning development studio MercurySteam and publisher 505 Games announced an official partnership that would bring their latest title (codenamed Project Iron) to life. For several years, the talented team at MercurySteam have been hard at work forging their next adventure. The time has come to finally unveil what they've been up to behind closed doors.

FORGE YOUR LEGEND
Introducing Blades of Fire, an all-new action-adventure that takes you across a beautiful world full of uncertainty and challenge. You take on the role of Aran de Lira, firstborn of the King's Ward. The newly crowned Queen Nerea has cast a powerful spell that turns steel into stone and only her arms of abominations wield the divine metal against which other blades shatter. Get ready to forge your own weapons and put them to the test in a unique combat system, as you work towards becoming a master in forging. Develop your skills and craft weapons that suit your preferable fighting style. Remember, when facing your foes, your choice of weapon will be key to success! Only the right weapons will allow you to take down certain enemies.

The 63rd edition of the TOP500 reveals that Frontier has once again claimed the top spot, despite no longer being the only exascale machine on the list. Additionally, a new system has found its way into the Top 10.

The Frontier system at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, USA remains the most powerful system on the list with an HPL score of 1.206 EFlop/s. The system has a total of 8,699,904 combined CPU and GPU cores, an HPE Cray EX architecture that combines 3rd Gen AMD EPYC CPUs optimized for HPC and AI with AMD Instinct MI250X accelerators, and it relies on Cray's Slingshot 11 network for data transfer. On top of that, this machine has an impressive power efficiency rating of 52.93 GFlops/Watt - putting Frontier at the No. 13 spot on the GREEN500.

The HPC research projects DEEP-SEA, IO-SEA and RED-SEA are wrapping up this month after a three-year project term. The three projects worked together to develop key technologies for European Exascale supercomputers, based on the Modular Supercomputing Architecture (MSA), a blueprint architecture for highly efficient and scalable heterogeneous Exascale HPC systems. To achieve this, the three projects collaborated on system software and programming environments, data management and storage, as well as interconnects adapted to this architecture. The results of their joint work will be presented at a co-design workshop and poster session at the EuroHPC Summit (Antwerp, 18-21 March, www.eurohpcsummit.eu).

Creatures of Ava was announced during Xbox Partner Preview, and we're excited to confirm that it is arriving on Xbox Series X|S and PC in 2024. That's why we at Inverge Studios wanted to use this opportunity to tell you more about the beautiful world of Ava. Creatures of Ava is a Creature Saver game in which you will have to help creatures escape from an infection that is rapidly growing on the planet Ava, threatening to wipe out all living beings. Your goal is not to collect the creatures for your amusement nor hurt them—your goal is to save them.

One of our overarching goals when developing the game was to make it non-violent while remaining really fun to play. From the outset, we've been captivated by the notion of saving creatures from a distant planet, not for any utilitarian purpose, but simply because they're sentient beings deserving of compassion. With that vision in our mind creating a non-violent game was essential. However, this initially proved to be one of our biggest challenges, until we settled on the flute as one of the key mechanics in the game—that really helped us realize our goal. Let me explain….

Samsung Electronics is making 2024 the year of the AI PC with the release of its most powerful and intelligent Galaxy Book product line yet, the Galaxy Book4 series. This latest lineup—consisting of the Galaxy Book4 Ultra, Galaxy Book4 Pro and Galaxy Book4 Pro 360—offers intelligent performance, enhanced security and a vivid, interactive display, all in an ultra-portable design. From the new Intel Core Ultra Processor to the suite of AI features, the Galaxy Book4 series is packed with cutting-edge technology that aims to not only simplify but amplify users' computing experience.

Visitors discovered the Galaxy Book4 series' full capabilities inside Samsung's booth at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2024, the world's largest mobile exhibition held from February 26-29 in Barcelona, Spain. Samsung Newsroom sat down with Mincheol Lee, Head of Galaxy Eco Biz Team, Mobile eXperience Business at Samsung Electronics, and David Feng, Vice President of Client Computing Group and General Manager of Client Segments at Intel, to explore how the advancements in the Galaxy Book4 series can enrich the lives of users.

Supermicro, Inc. (NASDAQ: SMCI), a Total IT Solution Provider for AI, Cloud, Storage, and 5G/Edge, delivers an expanded portfolio of purpose-built infrastructure solutions to accelerate performance and increase efficiency in 5G and telecom workloads. With one of the industry's most diverse offerings, Supermicro enables customers to expand public and private 5G infrastructures with improved performance per watt and support for new and innovative AI applications. As a long-term advocate of open networking platforms and a member of the O-RAN Alliance, Supermicro's portfolio incorporates systems featuring 5th Gen Intel Xeon processors, AMD EPYC 8004 Series processors, and the NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchip.

"Supermicro is expanding our broad portfolio of sustainable and state-of-the-art servers to address the demanding requirements of 5G and telco markets and Edge AI," said Charles Liang, president and CEO of Supermicro. "Our products are not just about technology, they are about delivering tangible customer benefits. We quickly bring data center AI capabilities to the network's edge using our Building Block architecture. Our products enable operators to offer new capabilities to their customers with improved performance and lower energy consumption. Our edge servers contain up to 2 TB of high-speed DDR5 memory, 6 PCIe slots, and a range of networking options. These systems are designed for increased power efficiency and performance-per-watt, enabling operators to create high-performance, customized solutions for their unique requirements. This reassures our customers that they are investing in reliable and efficient solutions."

Slimbook Spain has presented its "KDE Slimbook V" model to the public—the company has collaborated with KDE, an international free software community. The latter's Plasma 6 open-source desktop environment is due to launch next week (according to Phoronix), so it is encouraging to see partner hardware appear beforehand. The Spanish tech company specializes in Linux-loaded laptops and notebooks—their "KDE V" collaborative variant seems to be an offshoot of an already released Slimbook Excalibur model, bearing a full "refined" aluminium chassis. The KDE Slimbook V is hyped as offering: "outstanding Performance—slender laptop that packs a punch. At the heart of the svelte KDE Slimbook beats the AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS processor, one of the most powerful CPUs for portable computers in the range. With its 8 cores and 16 threads, it can run your whole office from home and on the go, render 3D animations, compile your code and serve up the entertainment for your downtime." The KDE Slimbook V's full specification page can be found here.

A Slimbook Manjaro gaming-oriented laptop was revealed last week—again, this seems to be another rejigged model. An earlier "Hero" version shares the same spec sheet; notable parts include an Intel Core i7-13620H CPU and NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4060 Mobile GPU. The Slimbook and Manjaro partnership provides an almost Valve Steam Deck-esque user experience, albeit in non-handheld form—with support for Steam, Heroic Games Launcher, ProtonUp-QT, OBS, and Lutris platforms. Returning to the Slimbook V—its upcoming deployment of KDE's Plasma 6 desktop simply replaces the Excalibur model's standard installation of Linux or Windows OS options (dual boot is also available). Slimbook has set a starting price of €999 for a basic configuration—customers can select various upgrade options (RAM, storage, USB-C adaptors, power bricks etc.).

Slimbook, a Spanish tech company, is a self-described pioneer in the GNU/Linux hardware ecosystem—specializing in laptops and notebooks. Their latest offering is a gaming-oriented model that packs a typical modern day specification sheet: Intel Core i7-13620H CPU, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 integrated graphics, and a 15.6 inch, 2560 x 1440 pixel 165 Hz display. A previously released Hero model sports the same specs, although it is sold with "Windows, Linux, or both (Dual Boot)" options. Beyond the usual gaming hardware credentials, a unique selling point is signified by its name: Slimbook Hero Manjaro—this Linux distribution was previously sighted on Orange Pi Neo handheld demo units.

Linux's popularity in gaming circles has grown since the launch of Valve's Steam Deck handheld—its Proton software layer grants access to roughly 4400 compatible Windows titles (at the time of writing). Valve's Deck Verified operation will continue on its quest to add even more titles in the near future. By all indications, the Manjaro Linux team and its hardware partners have been taking notes—while most gaming handhelds manufacturers have sided with Microsoft's Windows 11 OS, the Orange Pi Neo team has opted to go open source. Slimbook's selection of a community-backed Manjaro OS is certainly quite distinctive in the world of GNU/Linux gaming laptops/notebooks—customers are treated to a wide selection of ecosystems: Steam, Heroic Games Launcher, ProtonUp-QT, OBS, and Lutris.

Blasphemous set itself apart in 2019's crowded indie scene thanks to a firm belief in its roots. Developed in Spain, it was clear from the beginning that The Game Kitchen would have to adapt itself to an international audience—but even if the game released with an English demographic in mind, the art direction and overall tone were uniquely Spanish.

With the sequel, the team was adamant that they preserve that identity in the writing as well, regardless of which language you choose to play in. For Enrique Cabeza, Creative Director at The Game Kitchen, the development of Blasphemous 2 felt sentient. It continued to shift and morph of its own volition, almost as if providing guidance to the team about where to go next. "You have to make mistakes and realize when it's time to change course to avoid paths you shouldn't take," he said.

The AMD Radeon RX 7600 8 GB GPU debuted in late May, with an official MSRP of $269 for North America, and €299 for European territories. The lower than expected entry price point for US customers came as a surprise to some media outlets—launch MSRP was expected to be closer to $299, but Team Red allegedly made some last minute adjustments. Board partners often charge more for their custom designs—with beefier heatsinks, extra cooling fans and RGB lighting zones adding to costs. Acer seems to be taking quite a bold approach with their Southern European pricing strategy for two new Radeon RX 7600 Predator BiFrost models.

Potential customers in the States seem to be getting a slightly better deal—the Predator BiFrost Radeon RX 7600 8 GB card is reported to retail for roughly $274 while its overclocked sibling could cost around $290. Acer Spain has stated in official press material that their Radeon RX 7600 Predator BiFrost series will start at €399 (~$448), and confirmed to local tech site El Chapuzas Informatico that this higher than expected figure was not a typo. Retailers in the region have had a difficult time shifting units, and implemented price cuts shortly post launch time—the current cheapest custom RX 7600 card on the market is going for €259. It will be interesting to see whether the rest of Europe will be treated to the €399 starter prices for Acer's debut foray into Radeon graphics technology.

A tipster/YouTuber familiar with goings-on at Spanish development studios believes that next generation Nintendo development kits have arrived in the southern European country. Nash Weedle is reported to have a good track record with their predictions—most notably outing Madrid-based MercurySteam as a contract developer on the high profile Metroid Dread project. Weedle did not implicate this particular team with his social media declaration, but it is the only organization in the region that has assisted Nintendo EPD on multiple first-party titles.

A translation of Weedle's tweet states: "The Switch 2 development kit has arrived in Spain. The fact that a Spanish studio already has the kit, given Nintendo's private/secrecy policy, is a boost in their relations and indicates that we are in the last stages before the console's presentation." The relationship between the two companies could sour following these emerging leaks—Nintendo is notorious for its extremely guarded approach to software and hardware reveals. Company president, Shuntaro Furukawa, told shareholders (two months ago) that a Switch successor is marked for a vague launch somewhere in FY2024 - 2025.