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When the air ambulance brought Jim Ashworth-Beaumont to King’s College hospital in south-east London, nobody thought he had a hope. He had been cycling home when a lorry driver failed to spot him alongside his trailer while turning left after a set of traffic lights. The vehicle’s wheels opened his torso like a sardine tin, puncturing his lungs and splitting his liver in two. They also tore off his right arm. Weeks after the accident, in July 2020, Ashworth-Beaumont would see a photo of the severed limb taken by a doctor while it lay beside him in hospital. He had asked to see the picture and says it helped him come to terms with his loss. “My hand didn’t look too bad,” he says. “It was as if it was waving goodbye to me.”

Ashworth-Beaumont, a super-fit and sunny former Royal Marine from Edinburgh, would go on to spend six weeks in an induced coma as surgeons raced to repair his crushed body. But as he lay on the road, waiting for the paramedics, his only thoughts were that he was dying. He did not have the wherewithal to consider the irony of his predicament.

In the late 1990s, after he had left the marines, Ashworth-Beaumont, now 59, studied for a degree in prosthetics and orthotics at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. Clinicians in these disciplines help patients with pain, function and mobility by making and fitting devices such as prosthetic limbs and orthotic braces. He had written research papers and trained prosthetists while specialising as an orthotist at the Royal National Orthopaedic hospital (RNOH) in north-west London. “Now I was the patient,” he says.

I meet Ashworth-Beaumont for the first time in Greenwich Park, near the south London home he shares with his wife, Keri, a solicitor he met on a night out in 2002. It’s early summer 2024, almost four years after the accident in nearby Catford. He speaks softly through a smile that cracks only when he considers how far he has come and the support he has had: “Without Keri, I think I would have sat in a corner and wasted away.”

At first, his missing arm was a low priority for Edmund Fitzgerald O’Connor, the plastic surgeon who attended to his horrific abdominal injuries. But, by another twist of fate, the ambitious surgeon, who is 47, had a particular interest in limb loss. For years, he had been searching for the perfect candidate for a radical procedure he wanted to begin offering to amputees.

Osseointegration (OI), or direct skeletal fixation, is a relatively new way to attach prosthetic limbs. Rather than rely on a socket moulded to fit over a residual limb or stump – a method that dates back centuries – arms or legs are attached to a titanium implant inserted into the surviving bone (“osseo” means bone). Fixing a prosthesis to the implant, which emerges from the stump like a little tusk, is as easy as changing a camera lens.

OI patients need no longer tolerate irritation or infection where the socket rubs against skin and flesh. They gain a fuller range of motion and improved control and proprioception – the innate sense of where we and our extremities are in space. A prosthesis becomes part of the body rather than an awkward appendage. “It feels like I’ve got my own leg back,” Hanneke Mooij, a Dutch secretary, tells me three years after receiving an implant following decades of torment from ill-fitting sockets.

At the same time, rapid advances in electronic limbs mean surgeons can now effectively wire them into the brain. Taken together, OI and the latest prosthetics appear to bring a bionic future within reach. But the technique’s evolution has also been fraught, limiting its adoption. In a small number of cases, implants or bones have cracked. Painful infections have taken hold in the fleshy hole that surgeons must create around the implant. OI is also very expensive at a time when amputees struggle to access basic prosthetics care.

Fitzgerald O’Connor is convinced more of the 25,000 patients seen by the NHS prosthetics service each year could benefit from OI. When we first meet, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), the body that issues guidance on NHS treatment and funding, is reviewing OI. “When you’re doing 15 to 20 amputations a year and you have patients coming back with recurrent problems with their stump, it’s saddening to know there’s a viable alternative they can’t access,” he says.

The surgeon had been building a team to start offering OI, in the private sector at first, when he got the call from King’s. He had been searching for a patient who was resilient and in good health, who could help drive wider acceptance of the technique. If Ashworth-Beaumont could fund his treatment, his professional knowledge of what it takes to come back from a traumatic amputation would be a bonus. “You couldn’t have made up a better candidate,” Fitzgerald O’Connor says. “The conversation started in my mind the day he came in, but I wasn’t going to bring it to him until I knew he would survive.”

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Osseointegration relies on a process that was discovered by accident. In the 1950s, Per-Ingvar Brånemark, a Swedish scientist based in Gothenburg, put optical devices housed in titanium into the legs of rabbits to observe the way bones heal. Once the study was over, the metal had fused to the bone and couldn’t be removed, defying conventional wisdom about the body’s tendency to reject foreign objects.

The discovery inspired Brånemark, who died in 2014, to invent dental implants, first used in the 1980s, that fuse to the jaw with titanium screws, removing the need for dentures. Wondering if the bond could hold larger devices, Brånemark and his son, Rickard, an engineer training as an orthopaedic surgeon, designed a larger implant. In 1990, they screwed two into the above-knee stumps of a woman who had been run over by a tram.

The procedure was eye-catching, evoking scenes from science fiction – Star Wars or The Six Million Dollar Man. It was also divisive. “I remember lecturing in the US in the late 90s when this senior professor stood up and said, ‘Only an idiot can believe this will ever work,’” says Rickard Brånemark, 65, who founded Integrum, the first OI company, in 1998. But a handful of enterprising surgeons saw an irresistible logic in bone-anchored prosthetics. Integrum soon had competition.

In Sydney, Australia, Munjed Al Muderis, an Iraqi-born orthopaedic surgeon who had fled Saddam Hussein’s regime after refusing to cut off the ears of draft dodgers, developed his own device, which he first implanted in 2008. He says patients have received more than 2,000 of his implants, which are hammered rather than screwed into bone. (Brånemark says surgeons have installed more than 700 Integrum devices.)

Al Muderis, 52, is the technique’s most bullish advocate. He is now offering it to victims of vascular conditions including diabetes, the biggest cause of leg amputations. (Other surgeons typically turn down such candidates, fearing their rehabilitation could be hampered by lifestyle factors.) “There is a big opportunity for this technology to take over from the traditional socket-mounted prosthesis,” Al Muderis insists via Zoom as he changes out of his scrubs.

The surgeon tells me about a current case he says demonstrates OI’s potential – a seven-year-old Iraqi orphan who lost an arm in a roadside dog attack while he slept. He was later adopted by a wealthy Chinese family. In the coming months, Al Muderis plans to fit the boy with an implant, which will need to be replaced as he grows. Unlike other OI surgeons, he argues that children can be suitable candidates despite the need for further operations. In the case of leg amputees, he says, OI gets children walking again sooner. “It’s all a balance,” he adds, pointing out that sockets in children need changing a lot more often than OI implants.

The boy will also undergo a procedure called targeted muscle reinnervation (TMR), which involves rerouting amputated nerves. This can help relieve pain in the stump, where the severed nerves can thicken into tumour-like neuromas. Remarkably, it can also help amputees control prosthetic limbs with their minds.

To achieve this, Al Muderis will surgically attach the severed nerves, which had travelled to muscles in the boy’s arm and hand, to small, inessential sections of muscle in his chest instead. Tiny electrodes implanted under the skin will connect these muscle sites to the prosthetic arm via eight cables wired through the body and the titanium implant. When the boy moves to grab a water bottle, his brain will activate the chest muscles, which will forward the signal to the corresponding motors in his arm and hand. “It’s amazing because the transmission is instant,” Al Muderis says of TMR, which he adds is not yet widely available.

Integrum has also adapted its implants to allow amputees to upgrade to TMR and other advanced control systems in the future. Yet Al Muderis – who, like Brånemark, has been to Ukraine to offer OI to injured soldiers – says scepticism holds back the technique, including in the UK. He partly blames regulations and resistance to the idea of an implant that perforates the skin: “This is a completely revolutionary technology which violates many of the principles of orthopaedics.”

Brånemark is more conservative but also thinks far more amputees could benefit than the few thousand globally who have implants. When Fitzgerald O’Connor told him about his plans and the unlikely case of the one-armed prosthetist, the Swedish surgeon agreed to back his British OI team and oversee its first operation. “A lot of people still don’t know about OI, even in Sweden,” Brånemark says. “As someone who also works in the field, Ashworth-Beaumont can be a really good advocate.”

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For weeks, HIs life hung in the balance. He had lost almost all liver and kidney function. Sepsis set in as he lay in a coma. His first wife and their two grown-up children came down from Scotland to say goodbye. “The first thing I remember, coming out of the coma, was my daughter’s face; it’s still a really strong image in my mind,” Ashworth-Beaumont says. He thinks he inherited his fighting spirit from his father, a docker’s son from Liverpool, who worked as a bellboy before becoming a successful restaurateur. His mother still runs a gift shop in her 80s. He also has childhood memories of a cousin who lost his legs in a car crash. “I guess amputation was always on my radar,” he says.

After struggling to focus at school, at 16 he joined the marines, where he excelled. Fitness was a passion, and he became skilled in mechanical and electronic engineering, which led to his prosthetics career. In the final year of his degree, begun in 1996, he worked at Steeper, a British prosthetics firm that would one day supply his motorised elbow. He joined the RNOH in 2005 while racing in triathlons and moonlighting as a personal trainer. He was at peak fitness when the lorry hit him.

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While amazed to be alive, Ashworth-Beaumont realised his limitations as soon as he tried to shift his weight around in his hospital bed. “I knew these things professionally, but it really brings it home when you first try to move your shoulder and nothing happens.” As his vital organs rallied, he became determined to return to work. He would need a highly functional prosthesis; his job is physical, requiring the manipulation of limbs, as well as the making and fitting of devices. He was all ears when Fitzgerald O’Connor shared his plans. He also knew it would take time, and that the advice in prosthetics care is to try standard devices first.

It was almost a year after his accident, when he was about to return to work, that Ashworth-Beaumont received a body-powered arm on the NHS. These mechanical devices are a step up from static prostheses, which can incorporate hooks or skin-coloured hands. By rounding his shoulders, he could open a metal claw attached by a cable to a back harness: “It works, but the technology has been around for hundreds of years.”

Socket attachments date back to the 16th century or earlier. Designs and materials have changed, but the principle is the same: a socket must grip the stump for good function but not so tightly as to cause discomfort. Suction helps keep a socket on, but Ashworth-Beaumont needed strapping to pull his against his short stump, which further limited comfort and mobility. He ended up wearing the arm for just a few hours a day at work, and describes a circular problem for arm amputees. The motivation to use a prosthetic leg is high, to avoid relying on crutches or a wheelchair: “But there’s so much we can still do with one arm.” Patients tend to get frustrated with prosthetic arms, often stashing them away and making do. Ashworth-Beaumont says this partly explains a reluctance in the NHS to offer advanced devices, particularly early on. “But the problem is they’re also not giving people the opportunity to try these components when so many of us would benefit.”

He went private to get a better arm sooner, using money raised from a legal settlement with the lorry company and a family crowdfunder. Working with Alan McDougall, a prosthetist at Proactive, a private clinic in Surrey, he upgraded to a stealthy black electric device with motors in the elbow, wrist and hand. He learned to flex his residual biceps and triceps independently to activate the motors, via sensors built into the socket. Subtle hand movements allowed him to adopt different grips. It’s a step below TMR, but it works: I see it in action when we next meet and Ashworth-Beaumont gives me one of the firmest handshakes I’ve had.

The electric arm, which is worth more than £100,000, meant he could do more, but it further exposed his socket’s shortcomings. It was heavier than the NHS device, requiring a tighter, less comfortable fit. He could pick up a mug, say, but the flesh interface also made it hard to position the hand precisely, creating a lag between brain and hand. OI increasingly felt like the solution. Ashworth-Beaumont considered himself an overqualified guinea pig with an opportunity to highlight his profession and widen access to the latest tech. “I see it almost as a duty to explore the possibilities,” he told me in 2021, when I first got in touch.

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Ashworth-Beaumont would not be the first British amputee to receive an Integrum implant. Starting in the late 90s, Brånemark’s new devices were used in a trial involving 18 patients at Queen Mary’s hospital in Roehampton, south-west London, where the modern British prosthetics industry emerged after the first world war. While the trial had some success and provided valuable data, the experience of its least fortunate participants still reverberates around the field and the debate about NHS provision.

Gemma Trotter, a fitness instructor from south London, was 16 when she had a leg amputated above the knee after a car crash. Held back for years by uncomfortable sockets, she set aside her reservations about OI, which she had viewed as “crackers”, and joined the trial in 2003, aged 21. It was transformative. “Suddenly I could feel the floor through my leg again. If I wore jeans, a lot of people didn’t even know I was an amputee,” she says. “I got married, had a baby … they were the best nine years of my life.”

Then the implant broke and became infected. By then the trial team had disbanded, limiting follow-up care. Trotter, now 42, has endured more than a decade of pain and attempted fixes by surgeons including Brånemark. She is waiting to have her third implant removed after more problems, and won’t risk having another. (Brånemark tells me that, while there is a risk of failure with any implant, Integrum’s success rate has significantly improved since the Roehampton trial.)

Trotter remains one of only a few dozen patients in the UK who have had OI, which is more widely available in countries with insurance-based health systems. Hanneke Mooij, the Dutch patient, is surprised to hear OI is hard to access in the UK. She received an Integrum device in 2022, 36 years after losing her leg in a motorbike crash. She is part of a Dutch group of 20 one-legged female friends who call themselves “the flamingos”, half of whom have had OI surgery in the past few years. “I’m convinced this is the future,” she says.

Most British OI recipients are patients at Relimb, a private clinic founded at the Royal Free hospital in north-west London in 2018. Its directors, Norbert Kang and Alex Woollard, use Al Muderis’s implants and have about 60 patients on their books, almost all funded by legal settlements after traumatic accidents. Partly with the Roehampton trial in mind, they do not think the NHS has the resources to offer the skilled and long-term care required to make OI successful. “No matter how beneficial it is and how well we can do it now, we’re not going to change health economics,” Woollard says.

He and Kang are not alone in having doubts. Nicky Eddison, chair of the British Association of Prosthetists and Orthotists, says the professions are already facing a staffing and recruitment crisis, and some NHS trusts are making do with just two specialists. “Whatever technical advances you make, we can’t deliver them without skilled clinicians,” she says.

Yet proponents of OI make a case for long-term cost savings. Stephen Cruse, founder of the Amputation Foundation, a charity in Merseyside, had OI surgery with Al Muderis in 2016, eight years after losing his legs in a car crash while in Australia. After returning to the UK, he convinced an Australian government compensation scheme to fund his surgery after calculating it would save money in five years. “They were paying about £30,000 a year on sockets, liners and maintenance,” says Cruse, who had a “nightmare” with sockets but now rarely needs to see his prosthetist.

Last December, Nice published new guidelines. It now recommends that OI can be used in the NHS but only by multidisciplinary teams with specific training, and the NHS tells me its policy – not to offer it widely – isn’t changing, based on the risks and its funding priorities. Fitzgerald O’Connor says there may be ways to secure funds in exceptional cases, and he will continue to push for wider access as evidence of OI’s efficacy grows. “To leave it in a silo, where it’s only accessible with vast amounts of money, does a disservice to patients who are suffering,” he says.

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After long delays caused by Covid and post-Brexit paperwork, Ashworth-Beaumont finally gets a date for his private surgery: a Saturday in October 2024. “I tend to take things in my stride, but it feels like jumping out of a plane,” he tells me a few weeks before the operation. “You know the systems are there to protect you, but there’s always that 1% chance things could go awry.”

The day before the surgery, which will take place at St Thomas’s hospital in central London, I join Ashworth-Beaumont at a private clinic farther up the Thames at Battersea power station. Fitzgerald O’Connor and Aaron Saini, an orthopaedic surgeon who is also part of the new OI team, have gathered amputees and professionals to discuss this case and prosthetics technology more widely. The subject of NHS care keeps cropping up.

Craig Mackinlay, a former Conservative MP from Kent, lost all four limbs to sepsis in 2023. Five months later, he received a standing ovation when he strode into the House of Commons wearing prostheses. Fitzgerald O’Connor, who performed the amputations, looked on from the public gallery. It was a triumphant comeback, but Mackinlay has since highlighted NHS shortcomings, including long waits and early black rubber prostheses that resembled “clubs … I couldn’t see what they’d be good for apart from breaking windows or pub fights.”

Mackinlay, now a life peer, has since gone private, with support from device firms and his own money. In a debate in the Lords this May, he said he would still be in a wheelchair had he not accessed better legs sooner. “The technology is out there and the NHS will give some of it to you, but it takes years,” he says. “Why are we holding people back?” In response, Baroness Merron, a health minister, announced a review of the provision of advanced prostheses. In a statement, an NHS spokesperson insists that it “provides a comprehensive package of care and support for people who have lost limbs, including a range of prosthetics”.

When I ask Ashworth-Beaumont if everything is starting to feel a bit real, he takes a deep breath. “This is all positive,” he says, his voice cracking. “Sorry, I’m just thinking about the last four years.” Fitzgerald O’Connor places a hand on his shoulder. “It was tough, but you made it,” he says. The next morning, Brånemark, Fitzgerald O’Connor and Saini screw the Integrum implant into Ashworth-Beaumont’s humerus, carefully rebuilding his soft tissue around it. “I’ve been walking around like I’m made of crystal,” he tells me two days later via Zoom as he waits for bone and metal to bond.

Not long after Christmas, he is ready for an arm. McDougall has adapted Ashworth-Beaumont’s body-powered device so he can attach it to his implant. Even with the encumbrance of the cable and harness needed to move the hand, he is struck by the enhanced control of a firmly anchored limb. “I went out for dinner with Keri for my birthday and used a knife and fork properly,” he says. “I feel more competent as an individual.”

By early March he is ready to go full bionic, connecting his heavier electric arm. At Proactive, plaster casts of stumps stand like sculptures in the workshop. As well as adapting the more advanced arm, McDougall has added a small cuff to house the muscle sensors that used to sit inside Ashworth-Beaumont’s socket. The arm would look at home in a sci-fi props department, with its carbon fibre-effect shell and translucent glove, which reveals some of the hand’s moving parts. Then there’s the gap in the upper arm, where only the titanium implant links flesh to hardware. Yet when the prosthesis hangs from Ashworth-Beaumont’s shoulder, it somehow looks like part of him. Without the socket and straps, his silhouette is symmetrical: he is whole again.

Soon motors whirr as he tests his bionic joints, raising his arm above his head in a way he hasn’t been able to do since the accident. McDougall adjusts it using a Bluetooth-connected iPad app. “This is really good,” Ashworth-Beaumont says as he picks up a stray screw from a workbench. Within days, he’s performing tasks previously beyond him. Hoovering feels like a privilege.

Five years after his old arm appeared to wave goodbye, Ashworth-Beaumont is as aware as anyone of the limitations of the health service. “I’ve spent, what, five hours with Alan today, there’s no way you’d get that time in the NHS,” he says. While he watches the OI debate continue, returning to his own NHS job has felt like his biggest achievement. As well as being able to meet the physical demands of his work, his ordeal has changed his relationship with patients. “I was quite emotional about it after my first few appointments,” he says. “I really did know how they felt.”

Researchers have discovered microplastics in a remote, mountainous area of Greece.

What’s happening?

A new study, presented at the 17th International Congress of the Geological Society of Greece in May, found a “significant” amount of blue and transparent microplastics present in the Gourgouthakas and Liontari caves.

Scientists sampled various water sources from the caves, which are located in the White Mountains of Crete. They discovered plastic “fibers and fragments” measuring less than 5 millimeters in diameter.

These areas are isolated and rarely see human activity. To conduct their research, scientists took a trip in August 2024 that required “hours of hiking and complex equipment transport,” according to Greece-based outlet Ekathimerini.

“This practically means that microplastic pollution can exist even in remote places,” Christos Pennos, a visiting professor at Aristotle University, told the publication.

Researchers believe that the microplastics may have been transported to the region by wind.

Why is this discovery concerning?

Microplastics are an increasingly worrisome problem. Plastic does not decompose well in nature; instead, it breaks apart into smaller and smaller pieces over time, forming tiny microplastics. Some particles are also manufactured to these sizes intentionally for use in consumer goods, such as cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.

At such sizes, microplastics can be challenging to identify and completely remove from the environment. They can infiltrate soil and food systems. They can inhibit plant growth, putting crops at risk. And they can make their way into waterways and even the air. This form of plastic pollution is also being found in the bodies of animals and humans at record levels.

The full impact of microplastics on human health remains largely unexplored. However, several studies have found toxic microplastics in the brain, urine, lungs, and more. These particles could increase the risk of health issues such as cancer and neurological diseases.

What’s being done about microplastics?

The presence of microplastics in the Gourgouthakas and Liontari caves suggests that the issue is widespread and difficult to contain.

Fortunately, researchers are exploring methods to mitigate microplastic contamination in key areas of concern. Some teams have investigated methods for filtering microplastics from water. Others are experimenting with ways to remove the contaminants from soil.

Individuals can make a difference by reducing their use of plastic in daily life. For example, swapping single-use plastic items for reusable products — such as glass water bottles, cotton bags, and stainless steel food containers — can save consumers money while preventing new plastic pollution from entering landfills.

Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don’t miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.

Welcome to our latest recap of what’s going on in the indie game space. A bunch of new games dropped this week that are more than worthy of your attention, including a modern take on an old-school Ninja Gaiden side-scroller and a joyful (perhaps even profound) puzzler about the life of a housefly.

By far the biggest story in indie games over the last few weeks concerns payment processors pressuring the likes of Steam owner Valve and Itch to remove or de-index games that feature adult, NSFW and LGBTQIA+ themes. Under the guise of helping to protect women and children, an conservative activist group in Australia has taken credit for the delistings, as well as stricter rules regarding adult-themed games that Steam and Itch have implemented. But some affected developers suggest this is a smokescreen to push forward an agenda of anti-LGBTQIA+ censorship.

This week, Engadget senior editor Jess Conditt spoke with solo developer Cara Cadaver of Final Girl Games about the impact of the censorship campaign. Valve permanently banned Cadaver’s new game, VILE: Exhumed, from Steam for allegedly depicting “sexual content with depictions of real people,” though the developer says that assessment is inaccurate. While Cadaver and publisher DreadXP are working on alternative distribution for VILE: Exhumed, Steam is the go-to marketplace for many PC gamers and the ban cuts off what surely would have been a critical source of revenue for the game.

For its part, Itch has started reindexing free adult-themed games on its platform. The company has relied on Stripe and Paypal for processing payments. It has suspended payments via Stripe for 18+ content and it’s talking to other potential payment partners “that are more willing to work with this kind of content.” In any case, payment processors should not be the arbiters of morality, and they certainly should not be helping activists restrict access to perfectly above-board works of art.

One other piece of news that caught my eye this week is about a game jam that’s taking place this month. Participants will have just over three weeks to make games based on real-life investigative reporting. According to Global Game Jam, the teams will gain access to exclusive reporting on organized crime and corruption from around the world and be able to ask journalists behind those stories questions about their work. It’s a fascinating idea, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what the developers that get involved come up with.

New releases

Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound is what I like to call a “hell yeah” game. There are few purer joys than getting about 15-20 minutes into a new game and thinking “hell yeah, this rules.” Even better, that feeling lasted through the other four hours or so I spent with Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound.

This is a throwback 2D hack-and-slash platformer from The Game Kitchen — the studio behind the Blasphemous series — and publisher Dotemu, which is building quite the reputation for itself as a purveyor of retro-style games (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, the upcoming Marvel Cosmic Invasion). Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound looks and sounds sumptuous, with gorgeous pixel art and stellar level, character and audio design. It’s got combat that’s somehow both sticky and slick, and it’s challenging without being too frustrating.

I’ve had a tremendous time with this one, which, if memory serves me correct, is the first Ninja Gaiden game I’ve played. I can’t really find any notable faults with Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound. It’s well worth checking out. It’s out now on Steam, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch.

Here’s another “hell yeah” game. I’ve been looking forward to Time Flies ever since I clapped eyes on it during a Day of the Devs showcase a couple of years ago. You play as a fly and the goal is to check off a bucket list of items before the insect perishes (their lifespan equates to the average life expectancy of a country of your choosing but in seconds).

It’s a clever, funny and slightly rude — in a playful, Thank Goodness You’re Here sort of way — blend of exploration and puzzle game that makes a strong case as to why we should make the most of our limited time. It’s a short game, as it took me about 90 minutes to roll credits. That’s pretty much the ideal length for this one.

The controls are simple (only a D-pad, pause button and a way to call up the bucket list are required) and the aesthetic, which features hand-drawn art, is delightfully low-key too. In fact, this would be a perfect fit for the Playdate, which just happens to come from Panic, the publisher of Time Flies. For now, though, you can check out this lovely little game from the team at Playables on Steam, PS5 and Nintendo Switch.

Whatnot Games released the 1.0 version Star Racer on Steam this week after over a year of early access. This is a retro racer very much in the vein of the F-Zero series that features local multiplayer (here’s hoping for online multiplayer at some point) and music from Grant Kirkhope of Banjo-Kazooie and GoldenEye 007 fame. You can also create your own tracks and share them with others online.

I love the launch trailer for Star Racer, which blends gameplay with ’80s-style animation. I also adore that — per Rock Paper Shotgun — one of the characters is a “detective-looking fella called Thrash Whiplash.” If that’s not in the running for the best video game character name of the 2020s, we’re all going to need to take a long, hard look in the mirror.

We have yet another flavor of pretty, retro-tinged pixel art this week thanks to developers Ancient Corporation and Bitwave Games, as well as publisher Limited Run Games. Their 16 bit-style shoot-’em-up Earthion landed on Steam this week.

It features music from legendary composer Yuzo Koshiro (Streets of Rage, ActRaiser, Shenmue and many more games). That probably should not come as a huge shock given that he co-founded Ancient.

Earthion is also slated to hit consoles starting in September. Being a Limited Run title, physical editions are of course on the way for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X and Nintendo Switch. Expect those later this year. A physical version is also expected for Sega Genesis/Mega Drive in 2026.

Surgent Studios went in a completely different direction for its follow-up to its well-received Metroidvania from last year, Tales of Kenzera: Zau. Its latest project (released with the help of the publishing arm of Palworld creator Pocketpair), Dead Take, is a first-person psychological horror about an actor who is looking for a friend who has vanished after a Hollywood party.

There’s top-tier videogame acting talent here, with Neil Newbon (Astarion in Baldur’s Gate 3) and Ben Starr (Clive Rosfield in Final Fantasy XVI) taking on the lead roles, and a litany of other well-known performers — from Laura Bailey to Sam Lake — also making appearances. That cast alone makes this worthy of attention. Dead Take is out now on Steam and the Epic Games Store.

It feels like we’ve been waiting forever for Hobbit life sim Tales of the Shire: A The Lord of the Rings Game to drop and, following some delays, it’s now available on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch and Steam. (This is now technically an indie game because Take-Two sold off publisher Private Division last year.)

I love games that tell you exactly what they’re about in their title and A Game About Digging A Hole sure is one of those. You dig a hole, find buried goodies, and sell them to help you buy better gear.

Developer DoubleBee and publishers Rokaplay and Headup brought this exploration game to iOS and Android this week after a hugely successful debut on Steam earlier this year. A Game About Digging A Hole has now sold more than 1 million copies.

Perhaps you’re looking for a different digging game to check out this weekend. In that case, Mashina may be worth considering. The titular character is a robot that searches for valuable minerals to help repair and expand her community. Mashina can also use the minerals to build machines that can help with her digs, while she can use items she stumbles upon for base decoration.

Developers Jack King-Spooner and Talha Kaya (who previously released Judero) used traditional stop-motion techniques to animate Mashina. This charming-looking puzzle/exploration game is now available on Steam.

Let’s wrap up this section with a short, experimental game about anxiety. A Dream About Parking Lots has been out on Steam for a few months and the aptly named Interactive Dreams (with the help of Take It Studio!) brought it to PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch this week. It’s said to be based on real dreams and will see you looking for your car among parking lots and mazes while chatting with a therapist.

Upcoming

Wander Stars — from Paper Castle Games and publisher Fellow Traveller — was supposed to be arriving this week, but the developers have pushed the release date back until September 19. The team wants to carry out some changes to improve the game following feedback from an open beta.

I really like the look of this one, and though turn-based combat isn’t usually my cup of tea, I’m very intrigued by the system that’s in use here. You’ll find and combine words into phrases that convert into devastating attacks. There are more than 200 words and they have cooldowns, so combining them in smart ways will be a key to success. Using words “with honor” can seemingly help you unlock more useful phrases too. Very curious to see how all of that works in practice. We’ll get a better idea next month, when Wander Stars lands on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch and PC.

Speaking of games with a killer look, a gameplay trailer for I Hate This Place hooked me in this week. This is an isometric survival horror game that pulls from the visual stylings of its comic book origins. Crafting is vital here, both in terms of your arsenal and strengthening your shelter before nightfall. This stylish title from Rock Square Thunder and publisher Broken Mirror Games is bound for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch later this year.

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