Tag:

narrative

Pera Coda Is A Narrative Mystery Set In Istanbul About A Man Trapped In A Loop Between Life And Death

by admin June 26, 2025

Pera Coda is a newly announced narrative adventure game blending time-looping puzzle solving with psychological storytelling. Set in Istanbul, Turkey, it stars a man trying to solve a mystery while trapped in purgatory.

Protagonist Deniz is an attorney trapped in a looping plane of existence between life and death. Unable to live or die, he must escape by confronting his traumatic memories to find hidden truths, engage in choice-driven branching dialogue exchanges, and solve various mysteries of the world to make emotional breakthroughs and break the cycle. The isometric point-and-click adventure promotes complex interactions through accessible mechanics, and draws inspiration from acclaimed titles like Disco Elysium and Outer Wilds. Check out the teaser trailer below.

“This is both a love letter to our city and a universal human story about guilt, regret, and the search for peace,” says art director Ahmet Kazanci in a press release. He adds that Pera Coda is “rooted in a surreal reimagining of Istanbul, real locations, rich with local nuance and emotional texture that are rarely seen in games. Istanbul becomes both a stage and a mirror, where East meets West, chaos meets calm, and each district reflects a piece of your fragmented self.”

Pera Coda is being developed by Turkish indie studio Falan, itself an internal developer within indie studio/publisher Elyzio. Pera Coda does not have a release window, but it’s slated to launch for PC via Steam. You can check out a batch of screenshots in the gallery below.

Source link

June 26, 2025 0 comments

NFT Gaming

Will the ‘Digital Oil’ Narrative Fuel ETH’s Rally to New Highs Despite Middle East Turmoil?

by admin June 16, 2025

Ether (ETH)

is trading above $2,540, showing strong resilience in the face of market turbulence fueled by heightened geopolitical risk. After briefly dipping to $2,491.72, ETH recovered swiftly, closing higher on above-average volume and validating key support near $2,500, according to CoinDesk Research’s technical analysis model.

Technical indicators suggest renewed momentum, supported by a double-bottom formation and heavy intraday buying near $2,530. ETH open interest stood at $35.36 billion as of 6:05 p.m. UTC on June 16, per CoinGlass data, indicating active institutional positioning.

However, U.S.-listed spot Ethereum ETFs saw $2.1 million in net outflows on Friday, ending a record-setting 19-day inflow streak, according to data from Farside Investors. Despite that, ETH continues to hold its range between $2,500 and $2,800, suggesting bullish sentiment is intact for now.

Helping to support this narrative is a press release issued on Thursday by Etherealize, a group focused on bridging institutional finance and Ethereum. The statement announced the publication of “The Bull Case for ETH,” a comprehensive report backed by ecosystem leaders like Danny Ryan, Grant Hummer, Vivek Raman, and others. The report argues that Ethereum is becoming the essential foundation for a digitally native global financial system.

According to the report’, the global economy is undergoing a generational shift, with financial assets increasingly moving onchain. Ethereum is positioned as the primary settlement layer enabling this transformation due to its decentralization, security, and uptime. The reports says that Ethereum already powers over 80% of all tokenized assets and is the default infrastructure for stablecoins and institutional blockchain deployments.

ETH, the native asset of Ethereum, is described not just as a store of value but also as programmable collateral, computational fuel, and yield-bearing infrastructure. The report claims ETH is vastly underpriced compared to its long-term utility and describes it as “digital oil” — a productive reserve asset underpinning a composable, global financial ecosystem. It argues ETH should be a core holding in any institution’s long-term digital asset strategy, complementing bitcoin’s role as digital gold.

In sum, while macro conditions remain volatile, Ethereum’s market behavior —combined with continued institutional engagement and its growing role as financial infrastructure — suggests ETH could be forming a durable base for a future breakout.

Technical Analysis Highlights

ETH traded between $2,500.43 and $2,554.69, closing near session highs at $2,542.
A double-bottom structure developed near $2,495–$2,510, supported by above-average volume.
Resistance was tested at $2,553, but a strong hourly close on 158,553 ETH volume signals renewed momentum.
A V-shaped bounce followed a low at $2,529, driven by spikes at 13:43 and 13:46.
Continued buying could push ETH toward $2,575–$2,600 short term.

Disclaimer: Parts of this article were generated with the assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk’s full AI Policy.

Source link

June 16, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Herdling is a strangely captivating narrative herding simulator with a new demo you can check out now

by admin June 10, 2025

Herdling is an odd little game. How do you begin to sell the idea that a (presumably emotional) herding simulator might be quite interesting? Yes, people love their farming sims as a band aid form of escapism, but a lot of those games are in the first instance much more about farming and not farm animals, nor the way you interact with said animals. Herdling is all about that, as the whole goal is to guide a group of strange horned beasties up a mountain.

The demo, which just launched this weekend on Steam after a recent trailer at the Future Games Show, certainly left me a lot to think about. In the first instance, I feel that it’s a game that could quite easily fit into the PS3 era of indie games quite specifically – think something along the lines of Journey, or Limbo, games where you’re just kind of heading forward because that’s the thing you’re doing. What you make of it along the way is therefore up to you. What do I make of the little bit I’ve played of Herdling?

Watch on YouTube

Well, for starters, it’s a little bit janky. To start with, anyway, guiding the actually quite sweet Calicorns is a bit awkward, at least up until the breadth of the game’s controls are properly explained to you. After spending a short stint in a city, Herdling quite literally opens up into massive, sweeping fields, giving you a much freer reign to roam with your newfound herd. Just simply making a turn offers a challenge due to its slowness, but I got the hang of it quite quickly.

You have to be thoughtful in doing so, though. There are dangers to be met with that can hurt your Calicorns (and I believe in kill them, if the game’s immortality setting means what I think it does), so you can’t just wave them around willy nilly. The slow moving nature of the beasts then means you have to keep yourself on your toes to avoid any morbid fates. To add on to the weight of being responsible for their lives, you can name each Calicorn too. You are the one guiding them, so you must get to know them, and look after them.

I admit there is the possibility that Herdling could end up falling into the trope of overly emotional indie game. Still, I find the idea of having such a leadership role over animals that don’t quite have as much autonomy and safety as its world might allow to be an interesting one, so consider this a demo that has successfully caught my intrigue. There’s no exact release date just yet, but it is expected to release this summer.

Source link

June 10, 2025 0 comments

Vice Undercover - a retro computer interface for solving a crime

Product Reviews

This narrative thriller takes place in a fictional ’80s OS, and the devs obsessed over keeping just the right amount of old school jank: ‘We did retain the dial-up modem’

by admin May 29, 2025

Few games commit to building an alternate reality like Vice Undercover. Much of the game is played on the fictitious Amigo OS, an amalgam of Windows 3.1 and early Apple operating systems with a dozen built-in applications, a boxy media player, and even a persistent Clippy pastiche with all sorts of eager advice for you. But this isn’t a starry-eyed trip down memory lane—it’s a “narco-thriller” where you poke around in drug cartel communications, careful not to get caught.

“Paranoia is one of the core emotions we were going for. That fear of being caught, the moral ambiguity of what you’re doing, and sort of questioning what is right and wrong when you’re combating something like this,” said Cos Lazouras, co-CEO of indie dev Ancient Machine, in an interview with PC Gamer. “That kind of thing is part and parcel with the core of the gameplay.”

In Vice, which takes place in 1980s Miami, you play as an undercover cop with an hour a day to access a cartel-run computer. It looks to be informed by synthwave and neo-noir as much as it is by actual history, and Lazouras said that’s no mistake; there are plenty of treats for web historians and true crime buffs alike.

Bitcoin cements its haven asset reputation. Is the “means of exchange” narrative still alive?

by admin May 28, 2025

Bitcoin has always been compared to gold. As time went by, the safe haven reputation of Bitcoin only strengthened. However, Bitcoin was conceived as an alternative cash system, and Bitcoin enthusiasts still greet businesses that have started accepting bitcoins. What are the chances that Bitcoin will eventually become a regular means of exchange?

Safe haven assets: Bitcoin and gold

Gold has been recognized as a safe haven for a long time, meaning that it successfully preserves value in times of financial turbulence, serving as a strong hedge against inflation. Bitcoin, sometimes referred to as digital gold, is something new in this regard. Multiple investors and financial experts went so far as to call Bitcoin a better version of gold.

Both assets are scarce and hard to produce. Gold is finite, and Bitcoin has a hard cap of 21 million, most of which is already in circulation and around three million are lost forever.

As for the advantages of Bitcoin over gold, cryptocurrency is extremely easy to manage. Gold bars need special storage. Maintenance of gold bars is demanding and costly. More than that, gold needs space. Bitcoin is much more comfortable as you may always have it with you as long as you obtain a seed phrase of your wallet or private and public keys. Bitcoin can be stored in a trustless manner. For gold, you will probably have to trust professionals. Sending gold is way harder and more expensive than sending a Bitcoin transaction.

Another characteristic that makes Bitcoin way different from gold is value dynamics. Bitcoin has an element of gambling to it, as its price is pretty volatile. However, as institutional investors and governments are joining the hunt for Bitcoin, the price stabilizes without losing its upward direction. Many say that this cycle will be different from the previous ones, meaning that major ups and downs of Bitcoin will probably become a thing of the past.

Gold has a long-term price appreciation, too, and does not have the volatility of Bitcoin. More than that, during the economic turmoil triggered by Donald Trump’s tariff policies, gold spiked immensely, not Bitcoin. It signals that investors trust gold more than Bitcoin.

Gold slipped after Trump softened EU tariff threats — a reminder that its haven status now bends to politics.

Meanwhile, $BTC held steady amid rising deficits, rating downgrades, and macro chaos (even touching new ATH’s along the way)

Is Bitcoin the new flight to safety?

— Bitcoin.com News (@BTCTN) May 26, 2025

One of the reasons behind gold’s strength is that its price doesn’t correlate with the stock market movements but rather grows slowly and intensifies when people expect hard times. Bitcoin is tied to stock prices more clearly. Finally, gold is familiar to most people and leans to more established regulations. Uncertainty in Bitcoin regulation is turning some of the potential investors away.

Bitcoin as a means of exchange

While some insist that Bitcoin is not good for payments but great as a savings currency, many in the crypto community argue that Bitcoin derives its value from being used as a means of exchange. In 2021, Tesla made a revolutionary step when it announced that its vehicles could be purchased for Bitcoin. However, soon after, the company withdrew its decision, citing the environmental impact of Bitcoin as the reason.

In the U.S., many big and small businesses accept Bitcoin. Notable examples are Apple, Microsoft, Starbucks, PayPal, Netflix, and many others.

The idea that you should not spend Bitcoin and only spend fiat is a fallacy made by state spooks to stop bitcoiners from using it as MoE.

You can simply buy Bitcoin with your fiat and spend that Bitcoin when you need it.

It does not matter for your wealth whether you spend fiat…

— Sina 🗝️⚡ 21st Capital (@Sina_21st) May 22, 2025

However, despite various advantages, Bitcoin’s use as a means of exchange is limited by a relatively small share of merchants accepting BTC. According to Bitdegree, Bitcoin is accepted by 15,000 businesses around the world, of which over 2,000 are based in the U.S. On top of that, the network capacity of Bitcoin is too small for a means of exchange used by the masses. It can process only up to seven transactions per second. For comparison, Visa is capable of processing over 65,000 transactions per second. It is accepted in over 46 million merchant locations.

Nevertheless, the Bitcoin community was never going to get over it. For years, developers have been working on solutions to scale Bitcoin up for higher adoption as a means of exchange.

The most well-known project aimed at solving Bitcoin’s scalability issues is Lightning Network. LN is a layer-2 protocol that enables fast and cheap transactions using off-chain transactions for this purpose.

Surprisingly, even the name of the smallest denomination of Bitcoin became the battleground within the crypto community. Originally, the one hundred-millionth particle of Bitcoin was called Satoshi (or sats), after Satoshi Nakamoto, a mysterious creator of Bitcoin. A new proposal suggests that the name “bits” will fit better.

Prepaid crypto debit cards are moving Bitcoin spending forward. They allow clients to hold BTC right on the banking card and spend it anywhere where the cards are accepted. Bitcoins are turned into fiat money automatically and exchanged. As prepaid cryptocurrency cards continue to occur and more businesses jump on the Bitcoin train, BTC will become an easier choice as a means of exchange. However, its role as capital or savings money will persist.

Source link

May 28, 2025 0 comments

GameFi Guides

Jupiter rallies 15%, reclaims May highs as DeFi narrative heats up

by admin May 27, 2025

Jupiter token rebounded to its highest levels in months as traders react to the upcoming launch of a decentralized lending platform.

The Solana-based DeFi protocol Jupiter (JUP) is back in the spotlight. On Monday, May 26, Jupiter token was trading gained 15% in 24 hours. Trading at $0.61, the token rebounded to the levels last seen in March, as traders reacted to the protocol’s expansion plans.

The primary catalyst behind JUP’s rise is the anticipated launch of Jupiter Lend, a decentralized lending platform set to go live in the summer of 2025. Announced on Thursday, May 22, the platform aims to become “the most advanced money market on Solana.”

According to the protocol, Jupiter Lend will offer a loan-to-value ratio of up to 90%, significantly higher than the 75% offered by most crypto lending platforms. Platform fees are expected to be as low as 0.1%.

Jupiter rises on DeFi growth on Solana

As the largest dApp on Solana, Jupiter DEX aggregator benefits significantly from Solana’s (SOL) growing ecosystem. Notably, by July, 42% of all Solana DEX transactions are routed through Jupiter. At the same time, the platform has 95% of the DEX aggregator market share.

For this reason, the latest increase in Solana’s DeFi metrics also contributed to Jupiter’s growth. Specifically, the value of all memecoins on Solana has reached $14 billion, significantly higher than the July low of $6 million.

Solana’s network activity is also accelerating. Weekly transactions rose 7.3% to 462.5 million, while active addresses climbed above 34.7 million. Notably, Solana now processes more weekly transactions than all other chains combined. In terms of active addresses, it leads by a wide margin, with Base in second place at 9.2 million.

Source link

May 27, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Lightyear Frontier will be getting a much bigger world, a narrative rework, hazards, and more in an update next month

by admin May 25, 2025

Lightyear Frontier launched into early access a little over a year ago, and it generally seems to have trudged along reasonably well since then. It’s not quite ready for 1.0 just yet, but a new update was announced by developers Frame Break and Amplifier Studios earlier this week that sounds like it’ll be bringing in some much needed changes.

Appropriately titled the Shifting Gears Update, there’s two big things it’s changing. For one, the world itself is about to get a lot bigger. The devs explained that while a lot of people liked the “lush nature of the game world,” it was also just a bit too small. So, the map is increasing in size for “large-scale farming”, with the main progression system receiving a rework for “higher emphasis on farming.”

Hazards like tornadoes have been added in too to make getting around this bigger world a bit more challenging (but you can also just turn that off if you’re just in it to relax).

Plus, as previously mentioned by the devs, the narrative is getting reworked, namely mostly cutting out the character PIP-3R as a constant voice in your ear. Jay Castello called this one quite accurately in their early access review of the farming sim last year.

The narrative isn’t going away completely, and PIP-3R may appear again further down the line. But for now the way you’ll learn about the story is through Inspection Points, which are just bits of flavour text that appear in certain areas, and Artifacts Findings, which are also just bits of flavour text from artifacts you find.

On top of all of that, there’s a lot more features coming like a new mod chip system to upgrade your mech, automated drone watering, and a lot more. You can check out the full list of additions over on Steam.

The Shifting Gears update isn’t too far away either, as it’s currently due out June 4th, just under a couple of weeks away.

Source link

May 25, 2025 0 comments