Punch the monkey, an adorable macaque born last July in Japan, captured the world's attention recently. He was abandoned by his mother and rejected by his community, only to find solace and comfort in a $20 orangutan plush toy from IKEA. His story tugged on the heartstrings of people worldwide who felt bad for the little guy and wanted him to find companionship.

He eventually did, and Punch's prospects are seemingly better now. But Punch still lives in a zoo--the Ichikawa City Zoo--and that's not sitting well with everyone. A new video game, Zoo Fighter, has players taking on the role of Punch and ... punching bullies away with his fist or a swift kick. Knock out 100 and Punch gets to go to a sanctuary, instead of a zoo. And that's the point of the video game.

"This game is a love letter to all animals doing a bid at the zoo. Animal sanctuaries are often better for primates than zoos because they put the animals' well-being first instead of public display," reads a line from the game's description. "They offer larger, more natural spaces and rescue animals from neglect or captivity rather than breeding them," the description goes on. "The focus is on lifelong care and less human interferecne, giving primates a safer, less stressful place to live."

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Welcome to Sand Seeker, an exploration adventure set in an ancient desert city on the edge of the pyramids. Roam sunlit streets, sandstone buildings, hidden alleys, and open desert paths as the great pyramids loom in the distance. Search for lost locations scattered throughout the city and surrounding sands. Every corner tells a story shaped by time, sand, and history. Sand Seeker focuses on atmospheric exploration - no rush, no pressure - just discovery in a timeless desert world.

Nintendo loves to build on what it has already created. Donkey Kong Bananza, a game that mixes 3D platforming with freeform destruction, began as a prototype that built on ideas featured in Super Mario Odyssey, and the prototype featured a Goomba with giant fists.

Super Mario Odyssey’s Luncheon Kingdom, among other areas, featured breakable structures scattered throughout the environment. These objects could be smashed into pieces using many of the special abilities Cappy gave Mario. Nintendo producer Kenta Motokura and programmer Tatsuya Kurihara explained how that mechanic eventually helped inspire the creation of Donkey Kong Bananza during a talk at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this week.

After Odyssey was complete, Kurihara put together a simple prototype using assets from the game. He strapped two giant fists onto a Goomba to test how it would feel to smash through walls and even grab debris from those walls to throw. You can see our rendition of what that may have looked like above.

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There aren't alien robots descending from the sky in Planet of Lana II: Children of the Leaf. Instead, the opening of this sequel is much more somber than the first game, beginning with the exploration of a crashed spaceship and the discovery of a more human-driven enemy. Protagonist Lana and her cat-like companion Mui don't seem like they're standing against an impossible threat this time around. They're older, and the world around them feels a bit smaller. But this planet is no less fantastical, and remains filled with unexplained questions. Planet of Lana II doesn't grow much beyond the mechanically simple, 2.5D puzzle-platformer formula of its first game, but it builds on the mystique of its predecessor to deliver a wondrous story.

Taking place two years after the events of the first game, Planet of Lana II sees the titular Lana adapting to a changed world where her people and the robots that once tried to collect the entire planet's inhabitants now live side-by-side, with the former using the latter as tireless beasts of burden. However, when the new technologically savvy Dijinghala tribe from the north starts pushing further south, their environmentally destructive practices start to negatively impact the lives of Lana and her people.

The biggest issue with Planet of Lana II's story is that it presents two problems in its first hour, and it follows the less interesting of the two for the first three hours of the five-hour story. The escalating efforts of the Dijinghala tribe lead to them dropping a crystal that's leaking a deadly green gas--this poisons Lana's adoptive little sister. To cure her, Lana sets out to collect the three ingredients needed to craft medicine. That's the inciting incident that gets her back out on the road and leaving home for another adventure.

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Games industry veteran Jeff Kaplan, the former Blizzard boss who is now making a new FPS called The Legend of California, has shared his thoughts on artificial intelligence in gaming.

Speaking to Lex Fridman, Kaplan said the technology, as it exists today, is "mostly a hot mess" when it comes to trying to integrate it into development pipelines.

He said AI may have a role to play in game development, but in its current state, he feels it's "overconfident in what it tries to deliver."

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Weeks after his detainment by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), fighting game community member Ludovic Mbock is going home after being granted a low bond at a hearing.

According to Mbock's friends and family in a GoFundMe update post, around 20 people were in the courtroom at the hearing, with over 20 other people showing support online. "The judge was clearly moved," the post read. "Everything he said was in favor of Ludovic." Per Aftermath, Mbock was moved to facilities in Louisiana and then Georgia during his detention.

Friends and peers quickly took to social media to celebrate, with one post from fighting game community member Fem!Shep noting that Mbock's team is "optimistic" about a forthcoming hearing set for May.

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If Donkey Kong Bananza is a game all about destruction, then the feature that allows for the most destruction could arguably be the best part of the game. According to a developer who worked on the game, the most destructive transformation for Donkey Kong might have gone too far, but that isn't a bad thing.

Speaking to Game Informer at GDC, Donkey Kong Bananza programmer Tatsuya Kurihara spoke about DK's Elephant Bananza transformation, which lets the primate inhale a large volume of destructible terrain and store chunks of it to throw. "I think we can agree the most destructive transformation is the Elephant Bananza, and honestly speaking, it probably went too far," Kurihara said. "But at the same time, it's fun, it feels good. And that's what matters most."

It's hard not to agree with that sentiment--the Switch 2 game practically invites you to wreak as much havoc as possible, and if you want to strip an entire layer of all its terrain, sucking it all up with the Elephant Bananza is the most efficient and satisfying way to do so.

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Prime Video has announced a price increase for the subscription service, and it means the best way to watch Fallout--or anything else on the service--will soon be more expensive.

What we're talking about here is the ad-free version of Prime Video. Currently, it costs $3/month extra to watch content without ads. Starting April 10, however, the fee is going up to $5/month extra, and the tier is being re-branded as "Prime Video Ultra" (via The Hollywood Reporter).

Prime Video Ultra includes access to 4K/UHD streaming--and paying the $5/month extra is the only way to get this. Additionally, Prime Video Ultra supports up to five concurrent streams, which is up from three. Subscribers can also download up to 100 titles at once, up from 25.

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Patrick Söderlund, the head of Arc Raiders studio Embark, has once again defended how the studio uses AI and revealed that the game now has fewer AI lines after the team re-recorded some parts.

Like Embark's previous game, The Finals, Arc Raiders uses an AI-powered text-to-speech system. A lot of people took issue with this, and Söderlund has now clarified how Embark pays the actors and revealed that Arc Raiders has removed AI voice lines since launch.

"We pay our actors for all time spent with us in the booth and continue to bring many of them back as we carry on updating the game," the developer told GI.biz. "For select usage, we also pay them for the approval to license their voices through text-to-speech for lines that aren't as essential to the immersion of the experience, mostly ping system audio."

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Data firm NewZoo's annual PC and console gaming report reveals an interesting fact about Roblox and Minecraft players: They're far less likely to engage with popular AAA titles like Ghost of Yotei or Assassin's Creed: Shadows because they aren't too picky about realistic, lifelike graphics in games.

"I think there's been a shift in the last 10 years where the idea of chasing graphics has kind of faded and now you see the most popular games on the planet are not the most graphically high-fidelity games," NewZoo director of consulting Ben Porter explained at GDC (via gamesindustry.biz).

Per Porter, Roblox is leading the pack when it comes to massively popular but visually underwhelming games.

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