The Conjuring: Last Rites

The Conjuring: Last Rights is basically the perfect example of how to not make a AAA horror movie. As I do every year around my birthday, I crashed at @torstenvblog house, ordered pizza, and we watched movies. Nine this year to be exact, and I am sure you will be reading about the rest soon enough from him. This one, however, I insisted on writing about myself.

The movie itself mostly revolves around the Warren family and how Ed and Lorrain had a daughter, Judy. They had stopped their investigations for years by the time the Smurl family haunting had taken place, and they were focusing on Judy’s upcoming wedding.

This obviously has nothing to do with the Smurl house, but they did shoehorn Judy having visions and whatnot into this about the Smurl house and the demon that is haunting the family; they came from a mirror shown earlier in the movie connecting the Warrens and Smurls. This never happened in real life, by the way.

In fact, the entire movie never even bothers to make you care about the Smurl family. You spend very little time with them. The little kids are mostly shown running around, playing. The older kids scream a bit about how they can’t keep living like this, but outside of a few scenes, they never really show what this even is. We do get a couple of great scenes towards the end where one daughter finds a video from her birthday and is chased by a crazy ghost with an axe, and this is the same night we see the father molested by one. This, however, is after she screams about living like this; what was going on before then is very little that is even mentioned.

Even ignoring that I come from the same area as this Smurl house (I’ve literally driven past it more than once in my travels) and shared emails with people who lived there while working on a book and helping a friend with a podcast (decades of people who lived there have denied anything happening there, going all the way back to the 1980s) and even ignoring the fact I personally think the Warrens are probably frauds, the potental for this to be a good movie exist. The first two Conjuring movies are good. This movie, however, does everything wrong, and nobody should ever watch this pile of garbage. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Blumhouse Games Reveals New Trailer for Grave Seasons During PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted

I honestly don’t know too much about Grave Seasons aside from the fact that it is a cozy horror game where you can fill your day getting to know the townspeople, fishing, farming, and doing all the things you would expect to do. The town also appears to have a serial killer on the loose. You can wishlist the game on Steam now, and it will be released on PS5, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch. Enjoy the Trailer, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

MIO: Memories In Orbit Sets Course to Launch on January 20, 2026

MIO: Memories In Orbit is developed by Douze Dixièmes, a small French studio previously known for their acclaimed debut, Shady Part of Me. True to their creative philosophy, the team has crafted MIO in a deeply artisanal way, building the entire experience atop a proprietary, in-house engine developed specifically for the project. This approach has allowed the studio to shape every aspect of the game’s mechanics, art direction and atmosphere with complete freedom.

Douze Dixièmes also maintains a seasonal (quarterly) blog where the team shares insights into studio life, their evolving creative process, and behind-the-scenes making-of content. Follow their journey here.

Cast light into an obscured past

Showcasing more of its unforgiving danger and atmospheric wonder, MIO: Memories In Orbit’s new trailer delves further into the game’s mesmerizing sci-fi world, which blends a mysterious narrative, challenging action gameplay, and a spellbinding art direction.

Come January 20, players will uncover it all as MIO, a nimble robot who awakens alone aboard the Vessel — a vast, drifting spaceship left in ruin. Once maintained by AI caretakers known as the Pearls, the Vessel is now overrun by wild vegetation and malfunctioning machines. With the ship facing imminent shutdown, MIO must explore its labyrinthine depths, recover its lost memories, and uncover the truth behind the collapse.

Start your journey now with the acclaimed demo

MIO: Memories In Orbit’s 2-3-hour-long demo is still live on Steam and the Microsoft Store. Experience the game’s beginning, with a secret area to discover and a major challenge to overcome.

MIO: Memories In Orbit launches on Jan. 20, 2026, on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2. Pre-orders are live today on Steam, Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 — with a 10% discount* available on all platforms. Pre-orders on Nintendo Switch 2 will open on December 22.

Pathea Unveils New Action RPG ‘The God Slayer’ in WORLD FIRST Gameplay Video

Pathea Games, the studio behind the beloved life-sim series My Time, is delighted to unveil ‘The God Slayer’ – a new third-person, open-world steampunk fantasy, roleplaying game in development for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox platforms.

Enter an Eastern-inspired steampunk metropolis where gods known as Celestials reign with a divine fist! In this premium open-world RPG, you are an Elemancer who refuses to bow to his creators. Infused with elemental powers and a heart of vengeance, you will dethrone them all. You will rise to be The God Slayer.

For a more complete feature rundown please see below:

  • A Reactive Steampunk Metropolis 
    Lose yourself in a unique fantasy steampunk setting, enhanced with Eastern flair. Set foot in the capital city of the Zhou Kingdom, an urban metropolis that is experiencing a technological revolution, with an assortment of airships, steamboats, monorails, and steam vehicles. A fortunate few in the upper class savor the miracle of air-conditioned homes and mechanical washing drums, while in the poor neighborhoods the vast majority still toil in soot-blackened factories or bow beneath the weight of noble privilege. 
  • Customisable Elemental Combat
    Combine water, earth, metal and fire to create powerful attacks and weaponry. Use these abilities to bend the environment to your whim and in direct combat. Experiment with different strategic options and create your own fully customisable fighting style to dominate enemies big and small. Every encounter is a challenge, every battle a chance to unleash thrilling elemental combos that scratch your creative itch.
  • Confront Challenges Your Way
    Missions in The God Slayer will allow players to approach them in multiple ways. For instance, players are free to attack all enemies head-on, they can bribe guards to look the other way, they can activate elemental powers to create diversions / distract enemies, they can pathfind usually hidden side routes and utilize other means to achieve their objective.
  • A Story of Vengeance
    Embark on a thrilling story-driven campaign filled with interesting characters and intriguing twists and turns. Choose your allies, inspire people across the city, and overthrow scheming gods to bring justice to the world.

My Wife Threw Out My Card Collection (So I Bought a Dump to Find Them All) Steam Review

My Wife Threw Out My Card Collection (So I Bought a Dump to Find Them All) might be the game with the longest name I’ve ever reviewed, and was sent to me by the nice people over at Polden Publishing.

The game is quite simple, your wife tossed out your prized card collection, so now you are combing through the garbage dump you bought to find them all. So you spend your time filling a garbage bag with bottles, ammo boxes, and various other garbage, then tossing them into what appears to be a mimic for money. When you run out of energy, you grab some beer from a nearby vending machine to get more.

Every so often, you will come across something of real value that you can sell in the online store for a bit more money than the garbage sells for. This can be used to buy various upgrades, such as a bigger bag, more energy, better beer, or even a dog. This will let you rummage through your garbage piles faster, so you can find more cards or valuables.

You can also occasionally find birds and return them to their nest. The game loop can be fun, and honestly, for $8, you will get some decent time and laughs out of it. Nothing about the game is groundbreaking, but it is still a fun little title. Graphically, it is cute, and the sound isn’t bad at all. It is a solid 7/10 title that will give you a good bit of fun for the money you spend, and that is really all you can ask for. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders PS5 launch delayed

Indie team Megagon have announced a delay to the upcoming launch of their PC & Game Pass hit Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders on the PS5. Originally slated to launch on December 3rd, the title will now be pushed back – but the good news is, it shouldn’t take long.

‘We were very set on the December 3rd date, but unfortunately a last minute bug has forced us to delay,’ said Megagon co-founder Daniel Helbig. ‘Me and the team are truly sorry for the disappointment. Rest assured we are working hard on a fix, and are optimistic that the game will be released the following week.’

We will be back with the official release date ASAP!

Thankfully, the delay shouldn’t be long. Until then, enjoy the trailer, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Blumhouse Games Psychedelic Horror SLEEP AWAKE Now Available

From Blumhouse Games and developer EYES OUT, led by Cory Davis (Spec Ops: The Line) and Robin Finck (Nine Inch Nails), SLEEP AWAKE blurs the boundaries between sleep and death.

 In a desperate attempt to remain awake, the denizens of the last known city on Earth are reaching a panic crisis of reckless experiments in their effort to avoid The HUSH, the inexplicable disappearance of those who sleep. Playing as Katja, players must survive the devotees of various depraved death cults, try to stay awake and solve the puzzles of this mysterious world.

 Key features include: 

  • A psychedelic trip of the senses: Hand-crafted environments combine with a stunning color palette, unique FMV integration, and bending light to submerge the player in a cosmic horror like they’ve never seen before.
  • A world where sleep means extinction: Step into a unique setting, where an unfathomable phenomenon means that humans are disappearing when they fall asleep. The result is a warring world where dogmatic factions insist they have the one true solution for staying awake.
  • Arresting audio experience: Musician Robin Finck of Nine Inch Nails has crafted an auditory experience to create heart-pumping moments and exhilarating dream-like sequences.
  • Survive to save the ones you love: Stealth and wits are your only weapons against the warped minds and bodies of humanity’s last remaining citizens. Avoid their twisted experiments, solve the puzzles of a distorted reality, and save the remaining good in the world.

Steam PS5 XBOX

Pirates Outlaws 2: Heritage Steam Review

Pirates Outlaws 2: Heritage is an upcoming deckbuilder from Fabled Game Studios, for which they were kind enough to send me an early copy. You play as a young child who survived a catastrophe and is following in the footsteps of their parents to be a famous pirate adventurer.

Your first test, fight chickens

All the usual tropes of these games are here: build a deck, travel on a map to different locations, fight monsters that grow stronger over time, and try not to die. This time, it is all pirate-themed. Of course, you will eventually die, and when you do, you can spend gold on perks to come back stronger than ever and do better on your next run.

There are some added things this time around, however. You can get some different companions to help out, for example, my first one was a chicken. I picked him because he was cute. There is a black market that allows you to ban cards you don’t like using, or a workshop that enables you to upgrade cards, making your starting cards stronger.

Another nice touch to the game is that you have to manage supplies throughout your run as you sail around. This isn’t some huge issue; it isn’t a survival game after all. Pay attention and make stops here and there to restock, and you are fine. You can also heal in much the same way. The downside to doing this is that it takes time, and elite enemies can disappear while you do this, costing you valuable rewards.

The biggest downside to this game, honestly, is that it is fun and can be challenging. The game doesn’t really bring anything new to the table or do anything we haven’t seen before. It also doesn’t do anything better than any of the other 50 games in the genre already available. To give credit where it is due, it also doesn’t do any of it worse. The game is fun, and I would definitely recommend it to fans of the first game in the series or the genre as a whole. It also isn’t a bad starting point for people wanting to get into the genre. But if you are specifically looking for something new and fresh within the genre, this isn’t it. It is still a solid 7/10 game that’s worth playing. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Vaesen: Castle of Gyllencreutz

As some of you may be aware, not long Free League Publishing sent me a PDF of their Starter set for Vaesen. If you want more details about what is in that, you can read about it here. A few weeks after that, I got home from work to a package on my doorstep, and it was the physical version of that same starter set and the core rule book. Now it is an excellent starter set, but I got to wondering, can someone with no experience playing this game, truly get a group together and play this game? So I gathered the women in my life together, a case of our prefered alchol, and got started.

Beautiful cover art for the core rule book. I didn’t use this for my experiment

The first thing I did was have everyone blindly choose one of the 5 playable characters that the set came with. My daughter decided to play as a rugged Soldier named Fronz who couldn’t read. I don’t know why she decided he couldn’t read, but I just went with it. The other ladies chose the 2 ladies in the group; they have names, but admittedly, that isn’t important. By not important, I mean I forgot their names.

The starter set we used

Now, the Castle of Gyllemcreutz story that comes with the set is a great starting point that introduces you to the basics of the game. I don’t want to get too in-depth with what is involved with this story because it is easy to give too much away. Much of the story involves investigating a large castle to find clues on how to solve the mystery involving ghostly lights and missing people.

Dice rolls are all based on rolling a D6; players need to roll a certain number of 6’s to succeed. How many completely depends on how difficult the task is. There is also very little combat in this module, but the person running it could easily change that if they chose to. Nothing is stopping them, and all the information needed to do it is included.

But how did my players do? Well, they never were confused on how to play; they made their way through the castle with very little coaching besides trying to get them to stop goofing off, and the big finale of the whole thing was figured out before we figured out how to finish off a case of alcohol in 2 hours between the 4 of us.

I would absolutely say this starter kit provides everything you need to get you started playing Vaesen with limited or no experience. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Forever Skys PS5 Review

Forever Skys was released by Far From Home earlier this year on consoles after being in early access on Steam. They were nice enough to send me a copy recently to check out, and I have to say it is one of the more original survival games I have played.

All the typical survival types are here: gather food and water so you don’t die, build a bed so you can sleep. The usual suspects. Even having a special gun and scanner to discover new things to build isn’t new. It is all very well done, however, which is important.

What is new, however, is that instead of building just a base somewhere, you are building an airship. Yes, it is fully functional, needs engines and fuel, etc, to fly, and you will fly it yourself. It can be damaged, and you can fall off of it. You also gather food by fishing off the side of it.

The game really picks up when you have to find bigger and better things in the underworld. See, the game does have a story, and that story is basically to save humanity. And while you are pretty much safe while flying through the sky on your ship, traveling below the clouds is when it gets dangerous. This will require special preparation, because most things down there want you dead.

This brings me to my only real complaint about the game: getting around can be annoying if you are an idiot like me and don’t put the radar somewhere easy to see while flying. Don’t worry, I fixed it. Even then, a lot of the map looks the same regardless of where you go, and I just wish there was some sort of variety. The game is still an 8/10 survival game, and the ability to build and fly a ship from the start is nice. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.