Latest news with #Panic
The Verge
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Verge
The Playdate is getting folders.
The Playdate has been out since April 2022 — here's how it's going See all Stories Posted Jul 28, 2025 at 10:48 PM UTC The Playdate is getting folders. System update 3.0, which Panic says is coming later this year, will let you make folders for your games, adds a Game Library app, and brings support for 'storing hundreds of games on your Playdate.' Seems like a great update, especially if you have a lot of titles from the Catalog or need to organize after finishing the second season of games. Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates. Jay Peters Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All by Jay Peters Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Gaming Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All News
The Herald Scotland
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Together X Together interview: K-pop group on new music, world tour
"The Star Chapter: TOGETHER" is a bookend, building upon EP "The Star Chapter: SANCTUARY", released on Nov. 4, 2024, and its themes of salvation, empathy and connection. "This was a pretty long series," Taehyun, 23, tells USA TODAY. "Sometimes we did question ourselves, 'Are we taking it too long?' But now that we are coming to a close, I felt a little bit sad that we had to say goodbye." "The Star Chapter: TOGETHER" marks the group's first studio album release in nearly two years, and it reveals Tomorrow X Together's artistic growth and emotional depth. "This album is really about us and 'you' together striving toward a better tomorrow, and it means so much to us because 'together,' which is part of our very name and essence, is included in the title," Beomgyu, 24, says. How 'togetherness' shaped TXT's new album The ethos of Tomorrow X Together's recent release is found in the latter half of its title. "Without togetherness, we wouldn't have come this far with the story," says Taehyun. "When we think about togetherness, it could mean the five of us, but I think it also includes MOA (the group's fans), because without MOA, this wouldn't have been possible." "The Star Chapter: TOGETHER" accompanies the five members through a track list of transformation. "Because we have solo tracks in this album, a lot of the members wanted to really show their true colors by participating in many aspects of the album creation," Hueningkai, 22, says. "I think this album really shows how we have grown as artists." Tomorrow X Together talks 'minisode 3': 'Never expected' fans to show 'this much love' TXT's inspiration for 'The Star Chapter: TOGETHER' Tomorrow X Together's past installments were "a big inspiration to writing tracks in this album," because the storytelling and narrative continues from them, Taehyun shares. "When I look back on the past installments that I was part of creating, I think I get inspiration from a lot of different things," says the group's leader Soobin, 24. "It could be the members, my family members, the fans ... the themes that we talk about in our songs are something that's very everyday and something that everyone can really relate to." For this album, the guys worked on solo tracks - a first for some, but not for members Yeonjun and Beomgyu. The former released his first mixtape "GGUM" on Sept. 19, 2024, while the latter dropped his solo project "Panic" on May 15. "My solo work 'Panic' was one of my favorite genres. I thought it was really my vibe," says Beomgyu. "(For) 'Take My Half', which is my solo track in this album, I wanted to stick with my own vibe, but add a new twist to it." "For 'GGUM', I focus mostly on rap and dance for that track, but for 'Ghost Girl', it's more about vocals," says Yeonjun. "This time around, it's a rock genre, and YUNGBLUD produced it for me. I really wanted to live up to his vibe. It wasn't very easy, but it was a very exciting challenge I was willing to take on." As for the album's lead single "Beautiful Strangers," Hueningkai says "it's really about conveying the message that 'I can grow thanks to the power that you gave me.'" "I think this was the perfect song that would really convey the message of the entire album and really wrap up and seal the narrative of 'The Star Chapter'," he adds. 'Where I live my dream': Tomorrow X Together on Madison Square Garden shows, tour-day-in-the-life TXT's fourth world tour and hopes for the future To accompany the album, Tomorrow X Together will embark on their fourth world tour, "ACT: TOMORROW." It kicks off on Aug. 22 in Seoul, South Korea, and the guys will set out for the States starting Sept. 9. "We're going to meet MOA in the States, as well as all across the globe," Soobin says. "We're really, really looking forward to that." Tomorrow X Together will make stops across seven US cities, including Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and Newark, NJ. As for Tomorrow X Together's future, the group hopes their music can continue to be a guiding light for those experiencing growing pains. "We've been spending the past six, seven years singing about the growth of these boys and the circumstances that they face and the emotions that they experienced," says Taehyun. "There were times when I sung a song first, and then later that experience happened to me, or the other way around." "This might be a little bit personal, but I just hope that we are seen as artists that give positive impact to people," Hueningkai adds.
USA Today
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Tomorrow X Together talks new music, upcoming US tour and closing 'The Star Chapter'
Storytelling acts as the foreground to the global icons Tomorrow X Together's discography. The K-pop quintet has forged a narrative from release to release, with each album and EP underscoring direct life experiences. From detailing the coming-of-age process to highlighting harsh realities, the group tells their own story. And on July 21, Tomorrow X Together is back to close the chapter on their latest installment, "The Star Chapter" series. "The Star Chapter: TOGETHER" is a bookend, building upon EP "The Star Chapter: SANCTUARY", released on Nov. 4, 2024, and its themes of salvation, empathy and connection. "This was a pretty long series," Taehyun, 23, tells USA TODAY. "Sometimes we did question ourselves, 'Are we taking it too long?' But now that we are coming to a close, I felt a little bit sad that we had to say goodbye." "The Star Chapter: TOGETHER" marks the group's first studio album release in nearly two years, and it reveals Tomorrow X Together's artistic growth and emotional depth. "This album is really about us and 'you' together striving toward a better tomorrow, and it means so much to us because 'together,' which is part of our very name and essence, is included in the title," Beomgyu, 24, says. How 'togetherness' shaped TXT's new album The ethos of Tomorrow X Together's recent release is found in the latter half of its title. "Without togetherness, we wouldn't have come this far with the story," says Taehyun. "When we think about togetherness, it could mean the five of us, but I think it also includes MOA (the group's fans), because without MOA, this wouldn't have been possible." "The Star Chapter: TOGETHER" accompanies the five members through a track list of transformation. "Because we have solo tracks in this album, a lot of the members wanted to really show their true colors by participating in many aspects of the album creation," Hueningkai, 22, says. "I think this album really shows how we have grown as artists." Tomorrow X Together talks 'minisode 3': 'Never expected' fans to show 'this much love' TXT's inspiration for 'The Star Chapter: TOGETHER' Tomorrow X Together's past installments were "a big inspiration to writing tracks in this album," because the storytelling and narrative continues from them, Taehyun shares. "When I look back on the past installments that I was part of creating, I think I get inspiration from a lot of different things," says the group's leader Soobin, 24. "It could be the members, my family members, the fans ... the themes that we talk about in our songs are something that's very everyday and something that everyone can really relate to." For this album, the guys worked on solo tracks – a first for some, but not for members Yeonjun and Beomgyu. The former released his first mixtape "GGUM" on Sept. 19, 2024, while the latter dropped his solo project "Panic" on May 15. "My solo work 'Panic' was one of my favorite genres. I thought it was really my vibe," says Beomgyu. "(For) 'Take My Half', which is my solo track in this album, I wanted to stick with my own vibe, but add a new twist to it." "For 'GGUM', I focus mostly on rap and dance for that track, but for 'Ghost Girl', it's more about vocals," says Yeonjun. "This time around, it's a rock genre, and YUNGBLUD produced it for me. I really wanted to live up to his vibe. It wasn't very easy, but it was a very exciting challenge I was willing to take on." As for the album's lead single "Beautiful Strangers," Hueningkai says "it's really about conveying the message that 'I can grow thanks to the power that you gave me.'" "I think this was the perfect song that would really convey the message of the entire album and really wrap up and seal the narrative of 'The Star Chapter'," he adds. 'Where I live my dream': Tomorrow X Together on Madison Square Garden shows, tour-day-in-the-life TXT's fourth world tour and hopes for the future To accompany the album, Tomorrow X Together will embark on their fourth world tour, "ACT: TOMORROW." It kicks off on Aug. 22 in Seoul, South Korea, and the guys will set out for the States starting Sept. 9. "We're going to meet MOA in the States, as well as all across the globe," Soobin says. "We're really, really looking forward to that." Tomorrow X Together will make stops across seven US cities, including Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and Newark, NJ. As for Tomorrow X Together's future, the group hopes their music can continue to be a guiding light for those experiencing growing pains. "We've been spending the past six, seven years singing about the growth of these boys and the circumstances that they face and the emotions that they experienced," says Taehyun. "There were times when I sung a song first, and then later that experience happened to me, or the other way around." "This might be a little bit personal, but I just hope that we are seen as artists that give positive impact to people," Hueningkai adds.
The Verge
12-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Verge
Playdate's second season sucked me back into the little yellow handheld
The Playdate is easy to forget about. It's colorful and weird, but it's also tiny. Like the Game Boy Micro before it, sometimes I toss it in a bag and then can't remember where I put it. But over the past few weeks, the yellow handheld has been in constant rotation in my house, despite being up against big distractions like Mario Kart World and Death Stranding 2, thanks to the Playdate's now-complete second season of games. The seasonal structure is one of the unique aspects of the Playdate. When the handheld first launched in 2022, owners got access to a curated selection of 24 games that were released over time. It was a great introduction to the device and its unique features — the crank, the little display, the black-and-white graphics — but it wasn't until earlier this year that a second season kicked off. (I should note that this doesn't mean there weren't any new games for the Playdate, as a digital shop launched in 2023, and there are plenty of titles to sideload from marketplaces like Season 2 kicked off in May, and while it's smaller — you get 12 games for $39, plus whatever the heck the FMV-based Blippo Plus is — it also got off to a very good start. And since then it's expanded with quite a variety of games. There's a post-apocalyptic adventure called The Whiteout, and a point-and-click exploration game called Shadowgate PD, which is actually a remake of a game from the '80s. The dozen titles in season 2 do a solid job of showing off the range of possibilities on the Playdate. But what has struck me most are the games that make clever use of the handheld's signature feature: its crank. For instance, Tiny Turnip is a climbing game where you play as a turnip with arms. Getting around means using the face buttons for grabbing on to things, and then moving your body around with the crank. It felt a little awkward at first, probably because I hadn't played anything quite like it before, but eventually I was able to get into a solid rhythm of cranking my way across perilous terrain. It's really satisfying smoothly moving your way through the world by twisting a crank around. Taria & Como offers something similar within a more typical side-scrolling platformer. You can move and jump through a pixel art world, but in order to navigate the most perilous areas, you're aided by a sort of drone / grappling hook that's aimed with the crank. You fire it off and then swing yourself where you need to be. You can also use the crank to pull yourself up or down. Taria & Como is a relatively slow-paced physics-based platformer with some challenging puzzles, and the inclusion of the crank adds a satisfying layer of tactility to the experience. Perhaps my favorite game is also arguably the strangest. It's called Long Puppy, and it's almost like a spiritual successor to Noby Noby Boy (albeit one not developed by Keita Takahashi, who is off doing his own weird stuff). The goal is simple: you are a dog who needs to fetch a ball. But it always seems to be in some hard-to-reach spot, and the only way to get to it is to stretch. In order to stretch longer, you need to eat lots of food. And so each level becomes a race to eat as much as you can so you can get to the ball before a weirdly angry ghost dog shows up. Naturally, you use the crank to both grow and shrink, so even though Long Puppy is a game about a pup, you move more like a caterpillar inching its way through the levels to gobble up everything they can quickly. Again, it takes some getting used to, but the time limits forced me to get really good at stretching and it was a blast. Also, at the end of each level you use the crank to go poo. Of course, these games would've still been enjoyable if I stumbled across them in the Catalog store. But there's something exciting about the big moment the Playdate seasons create. Each week I anticipate something new, and am never really sure what it will actually be. It could be more channels for a bizarre fictional television service, or it could be the most challenging (and adorable) game of fetch I've ever played. That steady cadence of weird and fun makes the Playdate much harder to forget about.
Engadget
06-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Engadget
Playdate Season 2 review: Taria & Como and Black Hole Havoc
We've officially made it to the end of Playdate Season Two, and what a season it's been. Despite having half the number of titles as Season One, this latest round of weekly game releases has made a much stronger impression (on me, at least). If nothing else, it's just been cool to experience the new games in real time with other Playdate owners all at once, which the staggered rollout of the console didn't really allow for with the first season. In an email ahead of the final release, the team at Panic noted that Season Two has sold 12,000 units. It ends on a high note with Taria & Como and Black Hole Havoc , the former an emotional physics-based platformer and the latter an action-puzzle game about blasting black holes with black holes. While the weekly game drops may be over, we still have several weeks left of new Blippo+ content to help fill the void (not to mention the reruns, once it all wraps up). Popseed Studio Inc/JuVee Productions Taria & Como would surely resonate no matter when it were released, but at a time in the US when families are being forcibly separated and access to adequate healthcare for millions of people is under threat — an issue that comes on top of the many existing flaws of the system — it hits particularly hard. The pace of this puzzle platformer is relatively chill, but the journey it takes you on is really moving. You play as Taria, a girl whose parents have been kidnapped by the medtech company and apparent authoritarian overlord, Toxtum Inc. Taria uses a couple of mobility aids to get around, including a prosthetic leg that allows her to jump and a flying health robot, Kit, that has a tether so she can swing. But after a disaster one day, Taria wakes up in a Toxtum facility to find that her younger sister Como is gone, her prosthetic leg has been taken and replaced with one that cannot jump (the Toxtum-approved design), and her healthbot has been swapped with one that's programmed to do everything in its power to restrict her freedom. The subsequent adventure is Taria's quest to find her sister, no matter what it takes. There is a lot to love about this game, but there's one silly little thing at the beginning that needs a shoutout: an unexpected folder in Kit's files labeled "Ferrets." Inside that folder? Two pictures of ferrets wearing bonnets. As a longtime ferret owner, all I have to say is hell yeah . Anyway, the game. Taria & Como is a wonderful experience from start to finish. Each chapter is preceded by a beautifully illustrated crank-to-scroll comic that moves the story forward, and the game's unique mechanics overall made this a really compelling play for me. Since Taria can't jump post-disaster, most of the game is spent swinging (and arguing with the new, not-cool healthbot). Moving around this way requires some planning, as the platforms Taria can stand on are often separated by walls and other obstacles, and some surfaces aren't safe for landing. You use the crank to aim the bot at a grabbing point, and you can crank forward/backward to reel Taria in and out. Swinging left and right will give you momentum to launch yourself farther so you can cross bigger gaps, and you can kick off of walls. I had so much fun with this, and loved how the design of it all slowed me down and made me think a little harder. As you progress, you'll collect pieces from Como's diary as well as Tuxtum files and codes to hijack the healthbot in your favor. The means by which you access these files is one of my favorite parts of the game. There are kiosks scattered throughout the map and they all contain a single minigame, which features a turtle wearing a top hat. Crank to make the turtle dance — and crank really fast, so he can't keep up, and the whole thing will glitch out and bring you to the system files. I was perhaps too excited the first time I encountered that, and enjoyed it every time after that too. Over the course of her adventure, Taria runs into other people who have also been failed by the system: someone who can no longer take the medication they need because it isn't "company approved," someone whose has been waiting in vain to be reunited with their wheelchair, etc. All the while, the healthbot talks down to Taria with the most painfully infantilizing rhetoric. The commentary here is pretty blatant, and I can't say I didn't appreciate it as someone who has been burned by the healthcare system many times over my lifetime of trying to manage chronic illnesses. There were a few hiccups in my playthrough. The game seemed to lag a lot with every chapter change, briefly making me worry each time that it was going to crash. And my Playdate didn't always respond properly to certain actions, like when you want to just look around to survey Taria's environment. You need to dock the crank to do that, which in itself felt a little disruptive, and I often found myself just launching Taria into the unknown to find out what was down there the hard way instead. On several occasions when I did dock the crank, my Playdate didn't register that I'd done so, especially toward the end of the game, so I had to repeatedly dock and undock it until it eventually worked. These things ultimately didn't detract much from my enjoyment of the game, though. Taria & Como is definitely one of my favorites from this season. It's a beautiful story, and it couldn't have come at a better time. Years of playing the Neopets game Faerie Bubbles has prepared me for this moment. The story behind Black Hole Havoc is pretty easy to glean from the title — black holes are popping up everywhere and threatening civilization, and you have to stop them. Thankfully, you and your pal are equipped with just the right equipment to generate black holes of your own, which you can fire from a cannon at the evil black holes to cancel them out. But they have to be the right size or they won't effectively vanquish their targets. You aim using the D-pad and pump with the crank (or A/B) to adjust the size of your own black holes before shooting them out. Hit a black hole with another of the wrong size and you'll take damage. Initially, it all seems fairly easy. You'll have aim assist for the first few levels, which provides a clear visual indicator of the path and size of your black holes. But after that, you're on your own to line everything up right (you can turn aim assist back on in the settings, if need be). The further you get, the more obstacles are thrown your way. The black holes start growing in numbers; space tourists show up and get in the way of everything; the ceiling starts collapsing, pushing the black holes down onto you; blocks of ice will send black holes bouncing back your way if you hit them; weird giant bugs. It all goes from chill to extremely un chill pretty fast. The Story Mode is great, with 80 levels and fun cutscenes (which are skippable if you're impatient, but they really are worth watching) to introduce the new areas you'll have to clear. That sounds like a lot of levels, but I was absolutely flying through them and was 40 levels deep before I knew what was happening. There have been a few games this season that I've found to be super addicting, but Black Hole Havoc kind of takes the cake for me in that category. It just ticks all the right boxes. There's also an Arcade Mode if you want to just jump right in and chase after higher and higher scores. From the art and animations to the music, developer Cosmic Bros really knocked it out of the park with this one. Not a bad way to finish a fantastic season.
