You know when you’re playing around with a new recipe and you fall in love with one particular spice? Call it cumin. You find every recipe that makes sense with cumin, and eventually, you grow so obsessed with it that you just keep adding it to all of your dinners for a month straight, until the rest of your family is…

The first Dragon Quest Builders was an underrated gem, a delightful game that proved that Dragon Quest and Minecraft go together as nicely as peanut butter and pickles. The second game, which comes out Friday, is even better.

It’s a good thing you have to beat a level before uploading it in Super Mario Maker 2, or else who knows what kind of twisted horrors longtime player PangeaPanga would be coming up with?

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Fans are upset that an upcoming new game is an Epic Games Store exclusive, and the developers have to react. This time it’s Shenmue III, whose creators said today that any Kickstarter backers displeased with the state of things will be able to get a refund.

You have not truly lived until you’ve watched speedrunner MitchFlowerPower play through Grand Poo World 2, one of the most brilliant and devious takes on Super Mario World I’ve ever seen. Mitch’s genius platforming was just one highlight of this year’s excellent Summer Games Done Quick marathon.

Outer Wilds may be the best game we’ve played this year, but it can be tough to get into—allow us to offer some tips on this week’s Kotaku Splitscreen.

David Kushner’s fantastic book Masters of Doom, about John Romero and John Carmack founding id Software, is getting a pilot on USA, to be produced by the Franco brothers and executive produced by prolific writer Tom Bissell (who, full disclosure, is a good friend of mine). Here’s to video game books turning into TV…

One Friday afternoon a few weeks ago, the developers at Treyarch held a happy hour event to welcome the summer interns. There was pizza, beer, and jubilation for everyone at the studio behind Call of Duty: Black Ops 4—except the quality assurance testers, who had to leave shortly after they got there.

Anyone who saw the glimpse of Respawn’s upcoming Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order at E3 earlier this month and thought it was disappointingly linear may be far more interested in this new footage, which demonstrates more of the game’s Metroidy influences.

If you put me in a room with ten executives and asked me to pitch Outer Wilds, here is what I would say: “It’s got the exploration of a Metroid game and the structure of Majora’s Mask crossed with the interstellar wonder of No Man’s Sky and the narrative framework of Return of the Obra Dinn.”

The smart moves for Destiny 2 continue. Starting this fall, Bungie will be converting all of the Eververse armor (the stuff you buy with real money) into Universal Ornaments that can be added to the armor you earn, allowing you to customize gear without worrying about Eververse perks. More on that (and other Eververse…

How is Baldur’s Gate 3 going to implement the modern rules of Dungeons & Dragons? Last week in Los Angeles, we sat down with creative director Swen Vincke and D&D head honcho Mike Mearls on a bonus episode of Kotaku Splitscreen to discuss. One thing you can definitely expect: the ranger is getting some changes.

Breath of the Wild is getting a sequel because the team had too many ideas for downloadable content, Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma told me last week in Los Angeles. We also talked about how the Link’s Awakening remake came about, why Zelda games haven’t offered button remapping, and work conditions at Nintendo.

How does the Chicago-based studio Iron Galaxy maintain a healthy work-life balance for all of its employees? On Kotaku Splitscreen, we talk to founder and Giant Bomb jokeman Dave Lang about his leadership philosophies and how Iron Galaxy avoids crunch.

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has thoughts on the video game industry: “The video game industry made $43 billion in revenue last year. The workers responsible for that profit deserve to collectively bargain as part of a union.” Come on Splitscreen, Bernie.

One of the most surprising announcements at E3 last week was Trials of Mana, a remake of an older entry in Square Enix’s once-popular series of action-role-playing games. It looks to be the first proper Mana game in a very long time. The hope, the developers say, is that this will lead to a resurgence for this…

If you fall into the category of people who believe that 2010’s Fallout: New Vegas was the best game in the series, then The Outer Worlds might be for you. Last week at E3, I spoke to the game’s co-director, Leonard Boyarsky, for a bonus episode of Kotaku Splitscreen digging deep into this cyberpunky role-playing game.

Yesterday, as the video game industry’s attention was focused squarely on the final day of the E3 convention in Los Angeles, Amazon’s video game division quietly laid off dozens of employees.