This Week’s PC Game Releases: Beast of Reincarnation, Big Walk, Marvel Tōkon, a Round Table RPG, Flammable Robots, and Lovestruck Pigeons

Occasionally I will see a game that opts for an artstyle so complex and involved that will clearly take years to make, leaving me with an unbridled fear of the gamey part being not very good. I’m talking about games like Harold Halibut, where the entire thing is stop-motion. Do you know how long stop-motion takes! A while, I’ve heard. I feel similarly about Scarlet Deer Inn, a Slavic-folklore inspired platformer where every single sprite is made from embroidery that’s out today.

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**Media Company with Integrated Focus to Acquire Playstack: A New Chapter in Game Publishing**

Integrated Media Company (IMC), the parent entity of notable brands such as GameSpot, Fandom, and Curse, is poised to broaden its portfolio with the intended acquisition of Playstack, the publisher of the well-known game Balatro. This major initiative follows an announcement made on May 21, 2023, stating that Trufin Holdings plans to divest 84.5 percent of its stake in Playstack to VantageCo Limited, a fully owned subsidiary of IMC, for around £112.4 million (approximately $151 million). The acquisition is still contingent on a shareholder vote and has yet to be concluded.

In an official communication shared on Playstack’s website, CEO Harvey Elliott spoke about the prospective alterations, assuring stakeholders that despite the change in ownership, “Our team, our strategy, and our commitment to publishing superior indie games remain precisely the same. For now, it’s business as usual.” Playstack has effectively published various acclaimed titles throughout its history, including The Case of the Golden Idol, The Rise of the Golden Idol, Ak-xolotl, Unbeatable, and About Fishing. The company has built a reputation for its impressive “hit ratio,” exceeding 85%, signifying that more than 85% of its releases achieve a favorable return on investment. Balatro, one of its leading titles, has sold over five million copies as of January 2025 and has received multiple awards, including honors for Best Independent Game and Game of the Year at esteemed industry events.

Integrated Media Company, which is backed by private equity firm TPG Inc., oversees a varied assortment of 15 media and entertainment brands. Prominent entities within IMC include Fandom, Curse, Screen Junkies, and GameSpot, which was purchased by Fandom in 2022. VantageCo, the newly formed subsidiary targeting acquisitions, is currently assessing its role within IMC’s framework.

The acquisition of Playstack signifies a significant trend within the gaming sector, where established media firms are progressively seeking to strengthen their ties with the gaming community. Similar actions have been seen in the industry, such as when IGN acquired Humble Bundle, a seller and publisher of charity game bundles. Nonetheless, this situation also highlights the potential obstacles of integration, as revealed by IGN’s reorganization of Humble Games in 2024, which resulted in layoffs and a pause in game publishing.

As Integrated Media Company gears up for this new phase with Playstack, the gaming community remains attentive, eager to see how this partnership could affect the dynamics of indie game publishing and the larger gaming landscape. For the time being, it is business as usual for the Playstack team, as they persist in their dedication to providing quality gaming experiences.

One of the first “moving pictures” ever created is a moving picture of a horse. In the late 1870s, the photographer Eadweard Muybridge produced a series of “chronophotographs” of horses and riders, including the famous 12-frame sequence Sallie Gardner at a Gallop. I know about Muybridge’s work thanks to Jordan Peele’s film Nope, which considers the historical erasure of Sallie Gardner’s Black jockey, whose identity is disputed. Another thing that easily gets overlooked when considering these images is their contribution to the practice of horse-breeding.

Muybridge – who, incidentally, murdered his wife’s lover, which doesn’t seem wholly irrelevant here – captured the images after many years of tinkering with shutters, triggers and emulsions, but they were commissioned by the industrialist Leland Stanford, founder of the university of the same name. Stanford kept racehorses, and wanted a more precise understanding of their movements, with the obvious wider motive of being able to raise more champions; nowadays, gait analysis by means of video capture is commonplace among breeders. Muybridge’s breakthrough in terms of photographic reproduction is thus an important development in control of equine reproduction. To stretch that point a little, you could argue that the moving picture has always been a way of disciplining sex – and one animal may seem much like another, once reduced to a quantity of frames.

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