Lego reveals spooky new freebie, and it's the perfect addition to the…

Lego just revealed a creepy free set to go with its Fall collection, and it's the icing on one of the best Halloween ranges we've had in years. orlando-books.blog

As its name would suggest, Lego Scary Haunted Tree looks as though it'd be more at home in a graveyard than your garden; it's all claws and wicked grins, with an obligatory crow to hammer home the eeriness of it all. (Its smile even glows thanks to a light-up brick.) While you won't be able to buy the model by itself, it's slated to be a 'gift with purchase' – in other words, you get it for free if you spend a certain amount at the Lego store. Reliable source Bricktap and user itsjustajoe on reddit suggest this Halloween set will be available with purchases totalling $100+ between September 21-30.

Because there are so many good spooky kits this year, I fear that'll be all too easy. For starters, Lego's rolled out a host of dangerously cheap yet very atmospheric sets… including a Lego pumpkin someone managed to turn into the Millennium Falcon. As if these weren't dangerous enough for our wallets, Lego has also started a new 'Halloween village' range. If you aren't familiar, Lego traditionally produces Christmas-themed sets for the Holiday season so that fans can make their own winter displays – and they're all kinds of heartwarming. Now it's doing the same for Halloween with the 'Midnight Valley' collection, and the first kit is Mayor Manor. This thing is wonderfully off-kilter like a Tim Burton movie, with an ominous but crumbling facade and a tree growing through the roof. It's also staffed by ghostly, glow-in-the-dark minifigures who look as though they want to invite you inside for dinner and a side of doom.

With the new Scary Haunted Tree, this year's Lego Halloween offerings are really testing my willpower like the best Lego sets before them.

Want to check the collection out for yourself? Here's everything in the 2026 Lego Halloween range so far.

BlogCricket-Technik meistern: Der Schlüssel liegt in der täglichen ÜbungDas Bild des modernen Cricketspielers hat sich in den letzten Jahren stark gewandelt. Wo früher oft rohe Kraft und reine Instinkte ausreichten, stehen heute Präzision, beständig...Öffnen →

LEGO®

Halloween Pumpkin Lantern

UK: £24.99 at Lego

This is one of the smallest and most affordable sets at just 323 pieces, but it makes every single brick count. This just screams Halloween with that wonky Jack-o-Lantern smile, spider, and ghost. I'm really tempted to add this to my office desk.

If you can't wait for spooky season, there's plenty to get you in the mood; the Pokemon Halloween merch is super-effective, and Disney Halloween merch has been resurrected early.

• See all the latest seasonal sets at Lego

Balatro creator LocalThunk has leaked a few substantial details about his poker deck-builder's upcoming 1.1 update, which he admits has gone way past its initial 2025 due date, assuming one can truly leak information about their own beloved game.

Let LocalThunk have this, though – "I'm going to give a real honest to goodness leak," he announced to Discord on September 14, "a proper 1.1 leak." Highlights include more Jokers, more vouchers, and a new voucher system fine-tuning how often Tier 2 vouchers appear. The developer apparently has "the current iteration of 1.1" downloaded on his phone, so he should know.

"If people will indulge me," he begins to say about his new voucher system. The current version of Balatro includes 32 total vouchers, half of which are considered strong Tier 1, while the other half is an even stronger Tier 2 that corresponds to the first type of card. So, "if you take a tier 1 vouchers in ante 1 (say, paint brush)," says LocalThunk, "you would have a 1 in 16 chance of finding the corresponding tier 2 in ante 2 (palette)."

But, "If I were to add 32 more vouchers (not a leak, for arguments sake)," the developer continues, "you'd have a 1 in 32 chance of finding palette in ante 2"

"NO BUENO," he continues. "So what if there was a system that kept track of all the tier 1 vouchers you’ve taken and it rolls an N in 16 chance (N being the number of tier 1 vouchers you have without their corresponding tier 2) to spawn the upgraded tier 2 voucher? That way, if you take paint brush in shop 1 you still have a 1 in 16 chance to get palette shop 2." Hm, what if!

As for what new Tier 2 vouchers will be available, LocalThunk gives only a tiny leak – a sprinkle. The developer shares art for the new Tier 2 voucher called Lunker, whose card is emblazoned with a powerful green fish flapping its tail while fighting off the hook stuck in its mouth.

"This fish is my proof of life, yes I'm still working on 1.1!" LocalThunk says. "I'm not leaking the effect btw." Similarly, the developer reveals a new blue stake – currently, the difficulty modifier enforces -1 Discard – but, "Dw I'm not leaking it."

Except, LocalThunk can't help himself from teasing, "It's pretty interesting, and there are some weird implications I would love to break into a blog post. I had to use the quadratic formula ona whiteboard to solve something to implement it." Ah, yes. I'll pretend to understand the implications of using the quadratic formula here.

More straightforward is the new "when card is drawn to hand" mechanic, which "also applies when you open tarot or spectral packs," says LocalThunk. There's a 1.1 content checkbox you can toggle so that 1.0 modders can retain their work, and LocalThunk says he'll "add a new branch on steam well ahead of launch for current 1.0 version."

This last piece of information made everyone on Discord freak out – "I thought [the] lunker was the big ticket item," says a confused LocalThunk – but LocalThunk has one more announcement before taking his last bow: "at least 4 new jokers in 1.1," he writes in a September 15 Discord post.

By now, you're probably frothing under your Joker mask with anticipation for the long-awaited 1.1 update, but you should grab a handkerchief and prepare for more sitting around. LocalThunk says, "I'm happy the leaks are going over so well," but "I never should have given a release window."

"I don't want this to be half baked and wreck Balatro," LocalThunk continues. "I love the game too and I want to play a fun game not a rushed botch job." At the moment, he can only promise more progress updates and the occasional leak or 15, and let you know he's grateful.

"This past year of dev has been probably the most fulfilling work I've ever done," LocalThunk concludes.

Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 adds Balatro's Jimbo in a surprise new quest with a huge addition to the RPG's best minigame.

A few weeks ago, we learned that Terranigma would finally get a modern re-release, bringing the classic Super Nintendo JRPG out in North America for the very first time. Today, remaster dev Clear River Games has confirmed that the new edition of Terranigma will launch on January 14, offering a host of details on the in-game updates and the first look at a super-deluxe $200 collector's edition.

Terranigma was originally developed by Quintet, a now-defunct studio responsible for numerous SNES classics like ActRaiser and Illusion of Gaia. Like many of those games, Terranigma was published by Enix – now one half of Square Enix – and has seemingly been trapped in some kind of licensing limbo ever since. Now it's finally coming out of the vault in style.

The Terranigma remaster launches across PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, Switch, and PC via Steam and GOG on January 14, with physical editions available for all current console platforms. You can put $200 into the Gaia Edition, if you're so inclined, netting you a Yomi figure, music box, art book, cloth world map, soundtrack CD, and more. Pre-orders are available through Limited Run Games in the US or straight from developer Clear River Games in Europe.

But for me, the real news today is the remaster itself. Terranigma will feature an "original mode" offering "untouched balance" and the "original save system" for the classic experience. Even in this mode, however, there's a new sidebar alongside the 4:3 game window that shows your current money and experience, as well as a new set of quick access controls letting you quickly swap equipped items.

You can also swap to the "arranged mode," which promises "enhanced progression" and "adjusted difficulty," along with modern retro gaming conveniences like quick saves and rewinds. Best of all is a new minimap that shows your position in the current location.

These are the kinds of features I wish Square Enix itself would invest in for games like the OG Final Fantasy titles. The Pixel Remasters have turned out to be decent ways to play the originals, but those games have aesthetic and gameplay "improvements" that are questionable at best, and even the upgrades don't go as far as Terranigma's minimap and new inventory controls do. Getting the option of going back to the original experience and game balance offers the best of both worlds.

I'd be happy enough getting an official US release of Terranigma in just about any condition, but the remaster devs here are clearly going above and beyond to make sure this will be worth the three-decade wait.

These are the best SNES games of all time.

Microsoft, at this point, drips gore from head to toe. The megacorp has made a hobby of shuttering studios and laying off thousands of devs, in attempt after attempt to right the listing ship of its games business. No luck yet, on that front.

You might wonder how Playground's upcoming Fable reboot, in the works for a decade now, has evaded its parent company's reign of terror. In a chat with The Guardian, Playground co-founder and Fable director Ralph Fulton offered up a pretty simple explanation: Fable's just that important.

"I genuinely think Fable is an important game," said Fulton. "What has protected us over a long development cycle is that so many people within Xbox view Fable as vital to the DNA of the platform." That is to say, Fable is a potent Xbox brand, like Halo or Gears of War, and that's protected it from the chop.

It fits the pattern of Microsoft's studio closures. Though the end of studios like Arkane Austin (rest in peace), Tango Gameworks (before it was picked up by Krafton) and others felt brutal, they didn't strike at the heart of that amorphous thing you might call the Xbox brand. It did not claim the life of any character you might see plastered on a banner or standee at a Microsoft Gamescom booth.

Honestly? I might not have instinctually put Fable in that bracket, but I can see why you might, and in that light I can believe that Xbox execs would be timid about hurting it. Fulton, mind you, doesn't just think Fable's importance starts and stops at Xbox: "I would go a step further and say it’s important to video games as a whole. It offers a combination of elements that simply doesn’t exist anywhere else." Ironically, I suspect that wider importance matters less to games industry execs.