Word and puzzle games have quietly become the biggest habit in mobile gaming New York Times Games alone were played 11.2 billion times in 2025, and that figure does not count the dozens of independent word and puzzle apps competing for the same five minutes of attention. Most of that traffic is repeat behavior: over … Read more
The Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series defined a particular kind of early-2000s gaming — fast, musical, technically rewarding, and broadly accessible. The 2020 remake of Pro Skater 1 + 2, handled by Vicarious Visions, was received well enough that a follow-up felt inevitable. That follow-up arrived in July 2025, developed this time by Iron Galaxy … Read more
Gaming has its own language, and not knowing it can make reviews, online discussions, and other players harder to follow than they need to be. This guide explains the most common terms you will encounter, grouped by topic. No prior knowledge is assumed. Health and Progression HP stands for hit points, sometimes called health points. … Read more
In April 2025, four figures from India’s gaming and esports industry gathered at what appears to be a business conference to discuss where the sector is heading. The panel includes Wamsi Krishna, founder of The Esports Club; Anurak Kurana, founder and CEO of New Gen Gaming; VJS, a legal professional working in gaming policy; and … Read more
At CONvergence 2025, the Talking Cardboard channel hosted a 45-minute panel with four working tabletop game designers: Jeremy and his collaborators from Sophisticated Cardboard, the studio behind horror game Stifling Dark; Liz, a designer and former public school teacher whose games include Night Witches and Queen of Spies; Adam, a former Fantasy Flight and Asmodee … Read more
The Nintendo Switch 2 has more built into it than the menus suggest at first glance. Taking 20 minutes to go through System Settings properly will surface several features you would otherwise stumble across months later. Here are the ones worth finding early. Protect your battery from day one Nintendo has built in a setting … Read more
Free-to-play has a credibility problem. Years of games that offered a free entry point and then charged for everything that mattered have made players understandably cautious. The titles below earned inclusion by offering a complete experience at no cost, with any paid elements limited to cosmetics or optional convenience. None require spending money to be … Read more
Hollow Knight: Silksong launched in September 2025, crashed every major digital storefront on day one, sold seven million copies, and won awards at the Golden Joysticks, The Game Awards, and the Steam Awards. That part of the story is settled. What is new is what comes next — and there is enough of it to … Read more
Pokémon GO launched on July 6, 2016. In the summer that followed, people walked into traffic, trespassed on private property, and organized mass gatherings in public parks in the middle of the night. It was the first time augmented reality gaming had broken through to a general audience, and the scale of the cultural moment … Read more
The best board game apps share one quality: they disappear once you are using them properly. A good companion app reduces setup time, handles fiddly scorekeeping, or adds something genuinely impossible with physical components alone — and then gets out of the way so the game stays on the table rather than on a screen. … Read more