There has been a lot of bad news around the world already this year, but one good part has been this stirring performance of Bread and Roses by Lucy Dacus during the inauguration of Zohran Mamdani that’s been stuck in my head for days.
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News Tower, is it SimTower Plus… Journalism?
I took a look at News Tower today which will soon exit Steam’s Early Access program. The easy answer is that yes, News Tower is indeed Sparrow Night’s Sim Tower plus journalism, with a side hint of „oh… that’s the direction you chose to go in.“
If you’re not familiar with SimTower, it was a 2D, side-on view of a skyscraper that you fill with colorful shops, and homes, and more, originally made in Japan as The Tower in 1994 and re-localized for the United States under Maxis’ Sim… lineup. With only one sequel and few other games in this genre, people who enjoyed SimTower haven’t had a lot of choices for anything similar.
In News Tower you’ve inherited the “publisher” role from your Uncle who left your father’s newspaper (that you name…) in a bad way. Unlike a real publisher who shouldn’t be making editorial decisions, or managing individual reporters, you hire all of the staff, furnish and build their offices, and pick which stories they pursue. This is in addition to building (or ruining) relationships with in-game factions, managing the layout of the paper to a limited extent, and even building out the printing press and paper supplies that the newspaper needs to get into the hands of your readers.
Some of the choices the News Tower developers made are odd. Instead of using a fictional world, the game takes place in the real world United States during the 1930. Though, with maybe a romanticized viewpoint where there is almost 0 inequality in the publication you run (should you choose to staff it that way), but there are reports of very real and sometimes horrible incidents that actual people had to deal with at the time.
There’s a stark contrast between unrealistic 2D animated and almost cartoonish mobsters beating your newspaper staff up for not fulfilling the goals of the local Mafia (publish more crime stories, they demand) and then seeing potentially real headlines about lynchings while your security personal go outside to push protesters further down the street so that your reporters can get inside to publish their reports.
All of this at a newspaper I foolishly and unseriously named The Nuclear Times, before realizing what an odd contrast News Tower is, so far.
This isn’t a review, because I’ve only played the first three hours of News Tower so far and the developers say the game lasts about 20 hours. I want to play more News Tower because there are so few games in the genre of 2D games where you build up towards some goals. Most people today might think of games like Fallout Shelter, or the somewhat recent Tiny Tower games from NimbleBit, but News Tower doesn’t have any microtransactions, enticements to watch an advertisement in order to skip time, or other nonsense from those. News Tower is just one purchase and doing its own thing with the journalism bent. More importantly, I haven’t seen enough of the game to fully judge where it is going.
News Tower is on $25 Steam for Windows. The 1.0 release will be available on the 18th of November, 2025.
The News Tower build I had access to was a pre-release of 1.0 and was offered as a review version that’s more complete than the News Tower that has been available for the past 18 months in Steam’s Early Access program. Some aspects of the game may change from what I experienced, but none of the notes I received indicate that there will be any changes to the tone of the game.
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SteamOS for ARM, Running Android Games, and using x86-64 to ARM Translation Layer called FEX
Jacob Ridley for PC Gamer has a ton of new details on Valve’s announcements, including this bit that confirms a hardware translation layer for running x86-64 games on ARM64 using a translation layer:
Though if a game isn’t natively developed for Android/Arm, there’s a chance it’ll still run on the Steam Frame through a translation layer called FEX. In a similar way to what Proton does for Windows games, in order to run them on Linux, FEX takes x86 games and emulates them on Arm chips. There’s a performance hit from this conversion, some games more so than others, and Valve tells me it will create something aking to a Frame Verified program similar to the Steam Deck’s Deck Verified program to make game support as clear as possible for users.
Also in the article are details on Valve’s SteamOS for ARM and that Valve will allow developers to ship Android apps on Steam. This could mean that games for Oculus/Meta headsets will have an easier time to run on the Steam Frame.
Updating here to note that the translation layer isn’t exclusive to Valve, FEX has been in development for years now and you can find it at this website and the source code is here.
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New Steam Hardware (Controller, VR Headset, Steam Machine) in “Early” 2026
Valve has announced three new hardware products they say are coming in “Early 2026.” A new Steam Controller, a Valve-made Steam Machine, and a new headset they call the Steam Frame.
Steam Controller (2026)
The new Steam Controller looks like a refined version of the previous controller made for the last generation of Steam Machines a decade ago. It still supports gyro controls and has built-in trackpads. The analog sticks are the best modern standard, TMR, which should be the least likely to develop drift over time.
The old Steam Controller had a nice built-in speaker for cute startup and shut-down sounds and took standard replaceable batteries. Unfortunately the new controller has a built-in rechargeable battery. Hopefully the battery is a standard size that is easy enough to replace. No word on a built-in speaker.
A special dongle (“The Puck”) included with the controller acts as a combination wireless adapter and a magnetic charger. Valve says the new controller will work with anything that runs Steam or their Steam Link software. Valve’s page for the new Steam Controller lists “Bluetooth 4.2 minimum, 5.0 or higher recommended.” which is an interesting lack of any specificity about which versions of Bluetooth are supported, exactly. The wireless standard is 2.4Ghz which should be great for low latency. The controller also supports wired mode, for the lowest latency or when the battery stops working entirely.
The new cubed Steam Machine
The new Steam Machine is Valve’s first branded console, the Steam Machines from a decade ago are long dead and were all sold by third parties. Valve says the new Steam Machine is six times as powerful as the Steam Deck thanks to an updated “semi-custom six-core Zen 4 AMD processor that gets up to 4.8 GHz with a 30-watt TDP. There’s 16GB of built-in RAM and 8 gigs of dedicated GDDR6 VRAM.
It’s in the shape of a cube that is about 6 inches and has either 512GB or 2TB of built-in NVMe storage that’s expandable via microSD cards. It’s a little surprising Valve isn’t using the new microSD Express standard that is much faster and used by the Nintendo Switch 2.
There are also a bunch of ports on the new Steam Machine, gigabit ethernet, DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.0 (no 2.1? bummer), one USB-C port and four USB-A ports.
It supports WiFi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3 (they can be specific!), and Valve says there’s a dedicated antenna for the Bluetooth as well as a built-in wireless adapter for the Steam Controller’s 2.4Ghz support.
I’d like a little bit more specificity from Valve about which AMD hardware is inside the new Steam Machine, but we will have to wait for that. I’m excited for a proper console from Valve that’s designed for TV use instead of docking my Steam Deck which has honestly never been that great of an experience.
As with the Steam Deck, the new Steam Machine will have a desktop computing mode. In the past few weeks I’ve been experimenting with using my Steam Deck in place of my desktop computer and it still can’t quite compare in terms of hardware power due to the lower thermal limits and the read-only OS software restrictions. You can work around the software restrictions but if you want a stock experience, there is weirdly no built-in compiler toolchain on the Steam Deck by default. I’d love to try the new Steam Machine as a better desktop computer replacement, but it will definitely be way better for the TV than the Deck.
Steam Frame
Valve’s new VR headset has been rumored for a long time to be a standalone device and the rumors were true. The new headset is powered by a 4nm Snapdragon 8 series processor, which is not very specific, but other Snapdragon processors have been very powerful. As this is an ARM 64 chip, it won’t run desktop PC software natively so this could mean that Valve is expanding their Windows pretendulation layers (Proton) to include hardware instruction translation. This sounds ridiculous, two layers of “emulation” where SteamOS previously just required one, but this method has been surprisingly successful for powerful and reasonably cheap Android-based hardware running Snapdragon processors. Some of which can run many desktop Windows games. Although their power seems to cap out around the Xbox 360 era for big 3D games like Skyrim, they can go further with smaller indie games.
Given the kind of purgatory VR gaming has been in lately, Valve is advertising this Steam Frame headset as supporting both VR and non-VR games streamed from your other computers that run Steam.
The headset also has 16GB of unified RAM which is key for doing bigger games within the constraints of the Snapdragon processor and options for storage, 256GB or 1TB built-in at different price tiers and another microSD card slot.
The displays are 2160 x 2160 per-eye LCDs, with a variable refresh rate between 72 and 144Hz. Valve says the 144Hz mode is “experimental.” There are custom pancake lenses with what Valve calls a “Large FOV” at up-to 110 degrees.
The Steam Frame is the only place Valve’s new hardware supports WiFi 7, and it includes a wireless adapter for streaming directly from your computer so that you don’t have to rely on whatever your current WiFi situation is. Valve says that the headset supports a new technology called foveated streaming that focuses the streaming bitrate on what you’re looking at instead of what you aren’t. If it’s done well, it might mean that you have a higher apparent quality to the quality of streamed games to the headset.
The Frame supports inside-out tracking, no more lighthouses like with Valve’s old Index headset. The new Steam Frame Controllers have TMR sticks and look otherwise like you’d expect from VR controllers in 2026.
For me, the main excitement means not having to buy hardware from Facebook/Meta, one of the worst and most despicable companies out there. There is a huge gulf now between Facebook and everyone else in VR, with Facebook having bought exclusivity or entire development studios for their headsets.
Overall
The three things we are missing here are prices, more specific release dates, and reviews of the new hardware from independent journalists. The prices could fluctuate wildly depending on whatever nightmare tariff situations are going on but I would expect high quality from Valve especially as all of the hardware will be directly sold by them instead of third-parties like they did with the original Steam Machines.
Valve’s Proton has been an absolute nightmare for anyone who cares about native Linux gaming with “pretendulation” (Wine is not an emulator, right?) decimating actual ports to Linux that can run bug free more consistently instead of just happening to work with Proton. Some games still just stop functioning with new patches under Proton. For example, a friend was saying that HITMAN: World of Assassination started experiencing new game breaking graphical glitches. When the Steam Deck was first released I had issues even launching Elden Ring, a game that was heavily advertised by Valve as being compatible with the Deck using their Proton compatibility layer. Proton working today is no guarantee that it will work with the same game tomorrow.
Still, I am very excited for this new hardware. I hope that this plethora of new devices that run SteamOS will some day result in a turnaround where developers target native Linux versions of their games for these platforms and they solve problems I have now.
My Meta Quest 2 has broken down over time and the last time I tried to use it, the gaskets had disintegrated into dust. The new Steam Machine looks very exciting for TV use and possibly replacing my desktop computer if I can be satisfied with the hardware performance. The original Steam Controller is one of my favorite controllers with unique features that make it great.
The other thing Valve didn’t announce is an updated Steam Deck and there are a lot of directions they could go in. I could see them announcing a Steam Deck mini running a Snapdragon chip if they do go forward with a hardware translation layer in addition to Proton and that would be very exciting to have a more pocketable experience in the future.
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Blue Prince After 230 Hours
Blue Prince came out way back in April and after a lot of time with it, I’ve got a few things to say about it.
The story is unique. You’re Simon P. Jones, and your uncle Herbert has died and left you all of his generational wealth if you can just get to a hidden room 46 in his mansion.
The gameplay is innovative. A first-person puzzle game set in a mansion that changes every day, and every time you enter another door you pick a new room to follow the previous one. Each time you pass through a door you use up a limited number of steps and often spend some gems or other limited resources.
To make a longer post shorter, I ultimately recommend Blue Prince but there are some technical, and accessibility issues that I’m not sure can be overcome. There are also issues with the story that persist throughout the game and grow more bizarre as the in-game days go by.
I can only talk about the technical and accessibility issues without major spoilers. Blue Prince is a game that is similar to Fez, Tunic, and other games in the genre of “you should absolutely play these, but don’t look up anything about them beforehand.” Unfortunately, Blue Prince is also a little bit like The WItness in that you might wonder about the politics of the developers after playing it.
Technically, Blue Prince is full of minor issues that are presumably a result of a game where almost any rooms contents can connect with any other room in an almost untestable way if the game was made by a small team. These are generally fine to overlook and over the months the game has been out, Dogubomb, the developer, has patched out many of the worst issues where you could fall through the world and be forced to stop playing for that in-game day.
However, there have been persistent save game issues where players lose their entire progress, especially on the PlayStation version of Blue Prince. A friend lost his save game with nearly 200 hours in it with no recourse for getting that progress back. That friend is also going to return to the game with the newly available Mac version.
The accessibility issue was huge for me and would be for anyone else with non-typical color vision. I can’t differentiate between many colors along the red and green parts of the color spectrum. There are ways in which the game includes these colors both in text and visual parts of the game that seem like they would be impossible to work around.
Still, there is a promise of future accessibility options in Blue Prince from the developer. Hopefully they can do something to alleviate or compensate for some of those color vision issues and make Blue Prince more accessible. As it is today, I could not have completed the game without help from people watching me play on Twitch.
Other accessibility challenges can surely be remedied, but it is surprising that they haven’t been in the past six months. None of the controls are currently rebindable. The audio can’t be adjusted beyond a global volume control.
The greatest issue I have with Blue Prince, even more than the big issues with accessibility, is about the story. The game goes to some very interesting places with the puzzle gameplay, especially if you have typical color vision and no other accessibility issues, but the story is just messed up. I had originally written a few paragraphs about the ways in which it is, but ultimately, because Blue Prince is otherwise recommendable when we don’t have a lot of choices for similar games, I don’t want to even have the chance of spoiling the game to anyone who might play it.
You should play Blue Prince if you enjoyed games like Tunic and Fez, games that hide something more below the surface level gameplay. I’d be a little bit more hesitant to recommend Blue Prince to Myst-enjoyers. Myst has more thought put into its world and story.
Ultimately, at $30 on Steam for Windows and macOS, PS5, or Xbox, Blue Prince is an incredible value in puzzle games that deserves much of the praise it has received but I have serious doubts about the thought that went into the story.