After what feels like quite a long wait, Wave 1 of the Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity – Expansion pass is now available.

If you’ve already pre-ordered the expansion pass ($19.99 USD), your game should auto-update. Pre-orders also include a special bonus in the form of an extra costume and weapon for Link. These items are Prototype Ancient Gear and a Sword.

Wave 1 – “Pulse of the Ancients” adds a new playable character, new weapon types, another difficulty level, new challenges and tougher enemies.

“Stop by the Royal Ancient Tech Lab to test yourself with new challenges to unlock weapons and new helpful features! Then, dominate the battlefield as the new playable Battle-Tested Guardian or try out the added weapon types—the Flail for Link and Master Cycle for Zelda. These new combat styles will come in handy in the new Apocalyptic difficulty and against added enemies like the bomb-throwing Moblin and a Giant Chuchu.”

Wave 2 – “Guardian of Remembrance” will arrive this November – and includes new character vignettes, new stages, an “expanded roster” and new battle skills for existing characters.

Will you be returning to Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity to try out this new DLC? Leave a comment down below.

Now in its second year, Apple’s gaming subscription service Apple Arcade has been like riding a rollercoaster blindfolded. There have been ups, there have been downs, and for the most part you never know when any of them are coming. It burst onto the scene in 2019 with a huge initial library, but then would go weeks or more with hardly any new releases, updates, news, or anything. Then this past April out of nowhere Apple majorly expanded the service with a ton of high-profile original games as well as a new strategy of bringing existing App Store greats to the service as special “+” versions. For example, all Apple Arcade subscribers can enjoy Zach Gage’s fantastic SpellTower as SpellTower+. Today another major classic has been given the “+” treatment as Kairosoft’s game-making simulation game Game Dev Story is now available on Apple Arcade as, you guessed it, Game Dev Story+.

When it comes to Game Dev Story it holds a special place in my heart. It’s a game I came across more than a decade ago, when I was still in my first year of working for TouchArcade. Our wonderful community posted it to our forums, I decided to give it a go, and before I knew it it was 2 in the morning and I was furiously writing a review of the game on the brink of delirium after playing for hours and hours on end. It was such a brilliant blend of light simulation and copious amounts of video game pop culture that worked perfectly as a mobile game. Over the past decade Kairosoft has done a great job of keeping the game maintained and updated for all the newfangled hardware and software that Apple released, and now all Apple Arcade subscribers can take Game Dev Story for a spin for themselves if they somehow haven’t done so previously.

Scott Cawthon, best known as the creator of the indie breakout Five Nights at Freddy’s, has announced in a post on his website that he is retiring from his current role in the series. This announcement follows the recent surfacing and criticism of Cawthon’s monetary political contributions.

Cawthon starts the post by reminiscing about fans having sent him letters and fan art over the years. Five Nights at Freddy’s released almost seven years ago and, in that time, many fans of the series connected with the characters, games, and even Scott Cawthon himself. “I’ve had a blessed, fulfilling, and rich career. I’ve been shown great kindness and I’ve tried to show great kindness in return,” Cawthon writes in his retirement post.

Scott continues the post by talking about the passage of time and how creating games has transitioned from something he would do in his free time for fun and for his kids. Getting to the crux of the announcement Cawthon says, “All of this to say that I am retiring. I have been shown tremendous love and support over this last week, a lot of which has come from the LGBTQ community. The kindness shown to me has been surreal.”

While he mentions the LGBTQ community, Scott has been strongly criticized recently over his contributions to politicians who have supported legislation or have views that many believe do not favor this marginalized group. A list of Cawthon’s donations in recent years made its rounds not long ago. Some of the campaigns he supported include Devin Nunes, Ben Carson, Tulsi Gabbard, and former President of the United States Donald Trump. Cawthon’s retirement post doesn’t mention that these donations are connected to his retirement, but he has recently defended his actions in a lengthy Reddit post titled “My response, and maybe last post.” That title and the contents within his response point strongly at the recent backlash being the cause of Cawthon’s departure from the Freddy’s series.

“Even if there were candidates who had better things to say to the LGBT community directly, and bigger promises to make, I believed that their stances on other issues would have ended up doing much greater harm to those communities than good,” Cawthon wrote on Reddit after listing candidates he supported and why. Further in, Scott says, “I’ve always been supportive of creators, and have tried to treat everyone fairly, and treat everyone with dignity and respect. I’ve never cared about anyone’s race, religion, gender, or orientation. I just treat people as people, everyone the same, and because of that, I’ve ended up with a very diverse group of people that I’ve worked with over the years.”

Cawthon might have even foreshadowed his retirement post from Wednesday night: “If I get cancelled, then I get cancelled. I don’t do this for the money anymore; I do it because I enjoy it. If people think I’m doing more harm than good now, then maybe it’s better that I get cancelled and retire. I would accept that. I’ve had a fulfilling career.”

Though Cawthon is resigning as the head of the Five Nights at Freddy’s, the series will continue with someone he chooses and can trust as a successor. Cawthon says he has one wish as he gives up control of the property he created, “I only ask that my fanbase respect my decision. I will still be around, just not in the capacity that I used to be. What a blessed career I’ve had; what wonderful people I’ve met; and what a tremendous blessing to have been able to know all of you. Thank you so much.”

There’s currently no word on what this announcement means for the previously announced Five Nights at Freddy’s: Security Breach from Steel Wool Studios which is scheduled to release on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, and PC sometime in 2021.

GOG.com has a free game available for the next two days, and it’s a pretty good one: Absolute Drift: Zen Edition, by Funselektor, whose follow-up Art of Rally launched in September.

Absolute Drift, for Windows PC is a series of drifting/gymkhana challenges raced from a stylized, top-down perspective, somewhat resembling a Micro Machines racing game. Absolute Drift launched on Windows in 2015, and then on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in August of 2017. It launched at the beginning of 2021 for Nintendo Switch, too. Absolute Drift is ordinarily $11.99; it has a “Very Positive” user rating on Steam.

We were enamored of Funselektor’s Art of Rally, which is a different type of racing but has similar stylish visuals. This video gives a better idea of what Absolute Drift entails.

Players have until Saturday afternoon to claim Absolute Drift. All they need is a free GOG.com account and to opt-in to CD Projekt’s marketing notices.