This is a slightly short and sweet entry this week because I’m out and above for work reasons, but still a few things to catch you guys up on. We’ll be cooling it a bit with Harry Potter content unless some news pops up and I’ve got nothing better to do, although I plan to look more into the Auto Chess stuff as it seems more our speed.

We’ve got more reviews coming as well, so don’t worry about that – most new, a few we missed from last month, and then looking at trying to keep things dynamic with more features etc… I’d especially be interested in what you thought about the Brave Exvius guide we ran. I’ve always wondered if there was room for content that’s on trying to ride the ‘free’ part of Free-to-play for as long as possible, making the most of what free resources one can get. I know plenty of people are turned off by the grind-mechanics themselves, but plenty do enjoy having something to whittle away idle time and I’m hoping this helps with that somewhat.

Meanwhile, in mobile gaming…

Out Now

LEGO Tower (iOS & Android)

We reported on this a week or two ago, but the LEGO themed Tiny Tower spin-off is finally here. If you played the original game (or Tiny Death Star) you’ll know what to expect, but for anyone not in the know this is a free-to-play experience where you need to build and manage a tower complex. LEGO figurines will come to work and live in your tower depending on what you build, and you can keep going as high as you can.

Standard Free-to-play warning applies with premium currencies and timers, although Tiny Tower never had a reputation for being that bad with its monetisation. Still, this isn’t going to sway anyone who’s definitely anti-F2P, but it might be a nice distraction for anyone else looking for something to idle some time away without much thought. Plus, LEGO!

Chess Rush (iOS & Android)

Tencent is a Chinese company you may have heard off because they’re kinda buying stakes in, like, everyone right now. I think they own a share of Paradox Interactive now? Perhaps I’m mis-remembering that, but they definitely own an interest in Riot Games, makers of League of Legends. Recently, they’ve done two things: The first is to partner with Drodo Games and Dragonest to help publish Auto Chess: Origin in China, the second is to just go ahead and launch their own similar game, Chess Rush.

I tried to fire it up for a spin but it couldn’t get it get past the ‘checking for update’ screen. It also asked for access to my microphone, to which I was like ‘hell no’. It’s mean’t to be a more fast-paced take on the genre though, with quicker matches lasting no more than ten minutes. I’ve always thought this was something that mobile-facing auto-battlers should try to deal with, as 30-40 minute matches that you can’t leave are problematic for a game that can be played on the go. If I can get it to work I’ll report back and most likely update our master list of Auto Chess games.

Sales

There’s still a fair few sales going on at the moment since it’s ‘the season’, and a few more interesting ones have popped up that you may be interested in:

Seen anything else you liked? Played any of the above? Let us know in the comments!

YoyoGames have just released GameMaker 2.2.3.  If you have the Mobile version of GMS, you can now target the tvOS platform.  The release also contains a number of new features including DND (drag and drop) programming support for comments, several fixes and more.

Summary of the 2.2.3 release:

2.2.3 introduces tvOS as a new export target if you have the Mobile licence, the ability to add comments to your DnD projects (and lots of other DnD fixes), the option to turn off the file system sandboxing on Desktop platform, support for exporting asset packages locally so you can share with your team more easily, and better communication of when your licences are to expire. Plus, this release has a whole bunch of major stability fixes to stop startup crashes and various other issues whilst using the Windows IDE, and issues with keychain certificate trust settings and building for Ubuntu on the Mac IDE.

We have also changed the way we handle startup crash messages on Windows, so that now (should you even see issues after all the fixes in this release…) it’s a one-click report submission tool which automatically gets all the info we require for us to fix your issue and sends it directly to us without you having to file a Helpdesk ticket.

Be sure to check the full release notes available here for in-depth details of this release.  If you want to learn more about GameMaker Studio 2, be sure to check out our Closer Look available here or watch the video available here and embedded below.

GameDev News Engine 2D

Yesterday saw the launch of the third season of Netflix’s Stranger Things – we haven’t quite finished binging our way through it yet so no spoilers, please! As well as the official Stranger Things 3: The Game release landing on the same day, the much-loved series is also festering its way into Fortnite (because super-popular plus super-popular probably equals ridiculously popular, right?).

The crossover had been teased for a little while before yesterday’s big launch with some very strange things appearing in the game’s ever-changing world, but we now know exactly what the collaboration provides. You can get your hands on Chief Hopper and Demogorgon outfits from the Item Shop as well as a new Vines wrap.

If you happen to be a fan of the show, bumbling around as good ol’ Hop and pretending to shoot the living daylights out of anyone threatening to steal Eleven’s precious Eggos sounds like a ton of fun. If that sentence went completely over your head, you should absolutely get around to watching the show.

Are you a keen Fortnite player? Will you be treating yourself to these new items? Tell us below.

Good Smile has teased a prototype for an upcoming Nendoroid figure for none other than the Princess of Hyrule, Zelda.

The design was revealed at this year’s Anime Expo and is based on Zelda’s appearance in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. You can see the prototype figure in full below – as you’d expect, it features the series’ signature large head and small body style for maximum cuteness.

Naturally, we don’t have any release date or pricing information just yet, but we’re sure everything will be revealed in due time. For those wondering, Nendoroids have now been around for almost 15 years and usually focus on characters from gaming, anime and manga. There have been plenty of Nintendo-based releases in the past, including Breath of the Wild’s Guardian and plenty of other franchises, too.

Do you collect Nendoroids? Will you be keeping an eye out for this one? Let us know in the usual place.

At E3, we unveiled a brand new way to fight the Swarm in Gears 5: Escape. We wanted to show how we’re pushing the envelope by doing new things never seen in a Gears game before, and that throughout the summer, we’ll reveal more about Gears 5 ahead of its September 10 release. We said that we’d talk more about the Versus Multiplayer Technical Test in July, and today we’re happy to provide more details on how you can be among the first to play Gears 5 and help create the future of Versus multiplayer.

Multiplayer fans of all types can enjoy these weekend test sessions, as you’ll get to play Escalation (our updated competitive gametype) along with Arcade (a new and approachable multiplayer gametype) and a longtime fan favorite: King of the Hill. For players new to Gears or those that want to practice their skills and learn new mechanics we’ve added our new training mode – Bootcamp. The Tech Test also features a short Tour of Duty, which is a series of challenges for players to earn content – completing all of these challenges unlocks an exclusive Tech Test Banner. Players can also unlock three Versus Weapon Skins by completing some additional challenges. For a closer look at Escalation, be sure to check out the ELEAGUE Invitational next weekend (July 13-14) and stay tuned for additional details about Arcade next week.

Included with your Xbox Game Pass membership or as part of your Gears 5 pre-order (whether as a separate 5×5 code from a participating retailer or bundled in your digital pre-order), the Tech Test will be available to download starting July 17 with online play being active from July 19 (starting at 10 a.m. PDT) through July 21, and then active again on July 26 (at 10 a.m. PDT) through July 29.

As mentioned earlier, starting on July 17 at 10 p.m. PDT, you can search for “Gears 5” to pull up the Technical Test on your Xbox One console or Windows 10 PC. If you’re an Xbox Game Pass member, you will see the Tech Test available to download in your library – same as any of the 100+ great games in the catalog. Note that between the weekend test periods, the Tech Test itself will be available for download, but servers will be offline. We also wanted to remind you that online multiplayer will require Xbox Live Gold on console, and that because this Tech Test is to help test our servers, you might encounter some queueing as you start to play. We hope to make Gears 5 a great online experience for all players and Xbox Game Pass members on launch, and this Tech Test will help.

For players on Windows 10 PC, we have the below chart that outlines minimum and recommended specs for the Tech Test:

Thanks for your support and we look forward to seeing you online starting July 19 ahead of sharing more about Horde and Campaign in the months to come!

Visit www.gears5.com and follow @GearsofWar on Twitter to keep up-to-date with the latest information about Gears of War.

Gears 5 will release on September 10 for Xbox One, Windows 10, and with Xbox Game Pass. Pre-order details here on the Microsoft Store.

By Malcolm Owen
Friday, July 05, 2019, 12:45 pm PT (03:45 pm ET)

Details of a now-patched bug in iMessage have been revealed by a Google Project Zero researcher, a problem that could have forced users to wipe and restore their iPhones to get them working again, if they received a malformed message.

Released by Google Project Zero, the search company’s bug and vulnerability-discovery team, the issue relates to a specific type of malformed message that is sent out to a victim device. As per usual disclosure rules, the bug was held from public view until either 90 days had elapsed or a patch had been made broadly available to the public, with Apple’s release in an iOS 12.3 update fixing the bug and allowing for it to be revealed.

Specifically, the message contains a property with a key value that is not a string, despite one being expected. Calling a method titled IMBalloonPluginDataSource _summaryText, the method assumes the key in question is a string, but does not verify it is the case.

The subsequent call for IMBalloonPluginDataSource replaceHandlewithContactNameInString calls for im_handleIdentifiers for the supposed string, which in turn results in a thrown exception.

While the message can affect both Mac and iPhone, they do so in different ways. For macOS, the error causes “soagent” to crash and respawn, making it a relatively brief issue where, at worst, the Messages app stops working.

On iPhone, the code is in Springboard, and will repeatedly load, crash, and reload itself to a point that the UI cannot be displayed and the iPhone ceases to respond to input by the user. As the problem survives a hard reset, and starts occurring again after unlocking the iPhone, the only known solution is to reboot into recovery mode and restore the device.

As part of the disclosure, Google Project Zero has also released instructions to reproduce the issue.

AppleInsider recommends users keep their iPhones up to date where possible, and to retain backups of their devices and stored data.

Malformed messages have been the source of some issues for iMessage users in the past. One major example is the “Black Dot” Unicode bug from 2018 that abused invisible characters to crash the app on iPhones and iPads running iOS 11.3.

Another 2018 “text bomb” exploited unoptimized rendering processes for OpenGraph page titles to create excessively long tags, again causing crashes. Another from 2015 used a single line of Arabic script to consume iOS resources when rendering, but only when it appeared as a notification.

If you’re still dancing to the rhythm of the beat weeks after the release of Cadence of Hyrule, you’ll be pleased to hear a new update for the game is now available. While the game was actually updated to version 1.0.1. last week, it wasn’t until a few days later the patch notes were discovered over on the Brace Yourself Games Discord channel.

While it’s not much, it’s always nice to see a developer ironing out game bugs to enhance the overall experience.

We had a small bug fix update for Cadence of Hyrule yesterday, containing:

• fixed a crash that could occur after dying in Permadeath Mode (or Daily Challenge)
• fixed an issue that could place wind turbine crates in front of doors in dungeons, blocking progression

More “bug fixes” will be released in the future.

Have you been enjoying Cadence of Hyrule on your Nintendo Switch? Tell us down in the comments.

With the game’s latest update, data miners discovered evidence of a potential Team Rocket and ‘Shadow Pokémon’ appearance in Pokémon GO. Since then, developer Niantic has teased the iconic evildoers through its AR photo mode and artwork, but this latest stunt is the biggest tease so far.

During Pokémon GO Fest in Dortmund, Germany – an event hosted by Niantic which has drawn in players from all over the world – a hot air balloon featuring Team Rocket’s letter ‘R’ logo was spotted, most likely acting as a nod to the Meowth-shaped balloon that Jessie and James use in the franchise’s anime series. Eurogamer reports that players in attendance were encouraged to gather for an event photo when it flew overhead.

So what does this all mean? Well, the data mined evidence suggests that there will a new achievement relating to battle encounters with Team Rocket grunts and that you’ll be tasked with purifying the aforementioned Shadow Pokémon. Several monsters have reportedly been given Shadow versions according to the data, but it would be wise to wait until Niantic officially releases the new content before getting too excited over the possibilities.

It was also recently confirmed that Armoured Mewtwo would be appearing in Raid Battles for a limited time.

A decent way to add something new and fresh to the game? Are you excited to see Team Rocket appear? Let us know in the comments below.