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This year’s main Dungeons & Dragons adventure path, The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, is (according to its designers) a wicked and whimsical adventure through the fantastical plane known as the Feywild. It seems fitting, then, that the adventure would open with a carnival, which – depending on how you feel about clowns and fried dough – is about as whimsical an event as we can conjure in the mortal plane.

What’s a faire without carnival games, though? Witchlight introduces a series of midway activities that Dungeon Masters can present to their players before their adventure begins in earnest. “The carnival games help familiarize new players with the rules of D&D and how dice rolls can affect outcomes,” said Chris Perkins, D&D’s Game Design Architect, in a recent interview with IGN. “The games also spur fun roleplaying opportunities, allowing players to settle into their new roles before having to face the adventure’s more serious challenges.”

Players who choose to play can win prizes such as Witchlight wine, a stuffed pixie plush or a wizard hand puppet, a replica unicorn horn filled with candy, and even a packet of pixie dust that temporarily grants them the ability to fly. We recently got a look at the rules for two of these carnival games, which are classic fair(e) fare, along with some additional info from Perkins about how the players actions can affect the carnival at large.

“The actions and antics of the characters can affect the overall mood of the carnival,” he says, “which the DM tracks with the help of the Mood Tracker on the Witchlight Carnival poster map. As the carnival’s mood improves, the characters have an easier time of getting what they need. If the mood sours too much, the staff becomes a little harder to deal with, and the characters will miss out on the chance to be crowned as the evening’s Witchlight Monarch.”

Almiraj Ring Toss is a magical take on the grandfather of all carnival games. Instead of having to get rings around stationary posts, the players’ target is now this statue of what might be D&D’s cutest beast, the Almiraj, as it teleports around a table. It’s one of six carnival games that are included in the adventure, each one aimed at challenging a specific character ability. Ring Toss is geared towards Dexterity, while others are focused on things like Strength, Intelligence, etc. Perkins assures us they’re not designed to be particularly dangerous to players (at least not as-written), saying that the Pie-Eating Contest – which I assume requires a series of Constitution saves – deals “Custard Damage”.

While real-life carnivals may feature pig races (if you’re lucky), the Witchlight offers a slimier alternative – Giant Snails. They appear to be a new monster stat block included with the adventure and are described as “unusually fast.” Unlike pig races, however, the Witchlight’s snail races aren’t simply a specatator sport – players can opt to spend ride tickets (because even in a whimsical fantasy realm all carnival rides still need tickets) to become snail jockeys.

Of course, parties aren’t limited to just the games and challenges included in the book. “We tried to keep most of the carnival games simple so that DMs could emulate them and create their own,” Perkins says. “Most of the games can be resolved with a single die roll.”

The Wild Beyond the Witchlight will be available starting on September 21, 2021. The standard version can be purchased in-store or at online retailers like Amazon, or you can order the limited edition alternate cover from your friendly neighborhood game store! For more on this year’s D&D releases, check out the new sourcebook adapting another MTG setting, or the new bestiary deep-dive Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons.

JR is a Senior Producer at IGN who is desperately looking forward to getting back to in-person D&D. In the meantime, he’ll have to settle for playing online and talking about it on Twitter.

Following the launch of Frontiers, the recent No Man’s Sky expansion that added settlements, expanded base-building options and more to the game, the title has finally surmounted a huge milestone in its redemption arc with a change in its Steam review status – having progressed from ‘Overwhelmingly Negative’ at launch to ‘Mostly Positive’ today.

The turning point serves as a momentous occasion in No Man’s Sky’s five-year history and sparked a deservedly emotional response from Hello Games founder Sean Murray on Twitter:

you guys 😭 pic.twitter.com/eviUu0s4Og

— Sean Murray (@NoMansSky) September 6, 2021

Tim Woodley, Head of Publishing at Hello Games spoke about the feat and what it has meant to the team working on No Man’s Sky. “Over the last five years we’ve moved from ‘Overwhelmingly Negative’ to ‘Mostly Positive’, it’s an incredible achievement for the team. Moving to ‘Mixed’, which may seem funny to celebrate, took two years of hard work. Moving from Mixed to Mostly Positive has taken the last three years (knowing that any small mistake along the way may result in backlash and negative reviews).” said Woodley.

“In some ways, it’s easy to dismiss Steam reviews, it’s a bit of meme to share the silly ones, but as a developer, they are undeniably meaningful. For five years now if someone bought No Man’s Sky they had to do it in spite of a red or yellow warning symbol beside our name (and affecting the likelihood algorithm in charge of displaying the name in the first place). The team is really chuffed today at hitting this milestone but we also owe a huge thank you to the community, the players, but also folks like yourself who continue to support us to do this work we enjoy.”

A shift in the title’s Steam review status hasn’t been the only milestone hit by the team following the launch of Frontiers. According to Woodley, the expansion has been one of the team’s more popular to date, with the game featuring its highest player numbers in recent years and the No Man’s Sky subreddit now comprising over 600,000 members.

Shifting a product’s review status in the vein that No Man’s Sky has done is no easy task, Woodley says. “Each percentage point becomes exponentially harder to earn as you move up the ratings. Moving from 20% positive to 21% positive may only require a few hundred positive reviews whereas moving from 69% to 70% needed 10,000 positive reviews. This is why it’s so rare for games to change their All-Time rating and why we’d assumed that we might never be able to.”

News of the game’s new Steam status comes alongside the launch of the game’s third expedition, Cartographers. As the name suggests, this latest quest for budding spacefarers within the No Man’s Sky community focuses on planetary mapping and exploration. Unlike previous expansions for the game, Cartographers focuses on exploring a single planet, Gisto Major, where travellers are tasked with prepping a unique Starship for flight in order to escape a toxic atmosphere. As with No Man’s Sky’s previous seasons, players will be able to earn a range of new rewards during their expedition.

With so many players flocking back towards No Man’s Sky, now might be the perfect time for beginners to don their astronaut gear and head out for the first time into the vast expanse of No Man’s Sky’s procedural universe. To find out more about what has been added to the game during its latest update, make sure to check out our full rundown of the expansion. Alternatively, you can check out the official trailer for Frontiers below:

Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN who can’t help but smile for all those involved with No Man’s Sky. You can follow him on Twitter.

If there’s one thing that could improve the experience of watching hundreds of bloodthirsty zombies run towards me in a frenzy, it just might be doing so from a first-person perspective rather than third. Seeing hordes of the undead throw themselves off ledges right at me or piling themselves up into murderous mountains of meat to climb towards me is already one of the best experiences World War Z has to offer, but when I saw it through the eyes of my playable survivor it dialed the horror up to 11 in the best possible way. Whether I was trying not to die of hypothermia in the frozen nightmare of Kamchatka, Russia, or blasting my way through a sea of flesh-eaters in the streets of Rome, every encounter hit closer to home with each zombie right up in my face.

It certainly helps that World War Z significantly overhauls its melee sandbox in Aftermath, which afforded me lots of new opportunities to get up close and personal with the undead. Each of the melee options added, including two-handed weapons and single-handed weapons that can be dual wielded, has their own advantages, disadvantages, and unique animations that made each of my first-person skirmishes all the more satisfying. There’s also a new class ability that’s awesome, but difficult to master, which gave me a shield to block zombies from getting through entryways, stop rampaging “Bulls” in their tracks, and let me charge my way through a sea of enemies like good ol’ Frank West.

The new areas pair perfectly with the fresh perspective, as I absorbed the iconic, ruined locales of Rome and thanked my lucky stars I’ve never experienced a Russian winter…especially during the zombie apocalypse. Excellent, diverse locations have always been a highlight in World War Z, but experiencing them through the eyes of my character brought it to a whole new level, especially Kamchatka, which made me take damage just from being outside. Running from heater to heater to avoid dying simply for the deadly sin of being in Russia almost made me forget all about the armies of undead that surrounded me and eagerly anticipated chewing my face off…almost.

You don’t often see a first-person mode added to a game that came out over two years ago, but in World War Z’s case it really does breathe new life into a shooter that’s quite literally drowning in the dead. Not only am I excited about the two new campaigns that will ship with Aftermath, but I’m also curious to see how World War Z’s existing campaigns will feel through this new perspective. The fact that a 4K/60 FPS upgrade will be deployed around the same time is all the more reason for me to revisit those stories.

Spencer debuted at the Venice Film Festival. It will hit theaters on Nov. 5.

It may come as a surprise that the story that Spencer, the new Princess Diana biopic by Jackie director Pablo Larraín, most closely resembles is not The Crown, but Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. After all, the psychodrama that stars Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana in a career-best performance, is all about letting go of the past and moving forward to the future. But that’s a seemingly impossible task in the House of Windsor, where tradition is valued over everything, and Spencer shines in portraying that in Diana, going beyond her icon status and getting deep on the woman who struggled in this suffocating environment.

It is in this strict climate that we first met Diana, Princess of Wales, who is late for a Christmas weekend event at one of the Royal Family’s many estates — which just so happens to be located next to her childhood home. From the opening scene, Larraín frames Diana in a completely different context than the rest of the characters. Where the arrival of the guests at the ancestral estate of Sandringham is methodical, symmetrical, and meticulously timed, Diana is not escorted by a security detail or a driver, but driving alone on the countryside, stopping at a diner to ask some patrons for directions. An oppressive Jonny Greenwood score that mixes baroque with dissonant jazz sounds, meanwhile, creates a cacophony of rhythms and noise.

From the moment Diana steps foot inside Sandringham, Larraín and cinematographer Claire Mathon separate her from the rest of the characters. She’s in constant rebellion to antiquated traditions, with the other two people capable of realizing the absurdity being her own children — who ask why they must open Christmas presents a day before normal kids, or why the heating is never on inside the estate.

Even visually, Diana is kept in a separate world from the rest of the family. Her scenes feel as messy and frenetic as the woman behind the title, using handheld cameras that swirl around and shake as Diana does, and keeping the oppressive Royal Family rigid, unmovable, and distant. Whenever Diana is in the scene, the camera stays fixated on her face using medium angle shots that accentuate the claustrophobia of Diana being alone in such big halls.

Stewart is an absolute revelation as the titular Diana Spencer, giving her one of the best performances of her career and perfectly capturing Diana’s mannerisms, while adapting them for her own spin on the character. She goes from a happy woman who finds joy in small things, like just being with her kids playing silly games after midnight, to being haunted by the ghosts of her past and the mockery of her present. Stewart compassionately portrays a woman suffering with an eating disorder, frustrated by the lack of empathy and understanding around her, while being unafraid to go full camp with the theatricalities of the role, as when she imagines herself eating the pearl necklace she is forced to wear for dinner, or shouting to a member of the house staff that she will masturbate in order to send her off.

Larraín continues to excel at finding the humanity inside the icon, with another biopic that refuses to adhere to known conventions or formulas, instead playing with fact and fiction like you’re watching a David Lynch movie. In the case of Spencer, the title of the movie should tell you everything you need to know about the film’s approach to its subject. This is not the story you know about Diana Princess of Wales, fashion and anti-establishment icon, but about Diana Spencer, the mother of two kids, the woman with simple pleasures that likes to have fun and goes against her terrible mother-in-law and insufferable husband.

Luckily, we don’t have to see too much of those family members. Fans of The Crown, which explores the Royal Family more comprehensively, shouldn’t expect the same treatment in Spencer, as most of the family isn’t seen at all. In fact, only Charles and the Queen get lines of dialogue, and they’re gone as quickly as they are introduced. This is not the likable Queen Elizabeth with moments of humanity and warmth that we’ve seen in the Netflix drama, but Her Royal Highness, a title more than a person, and a specter that looms over the entire film even if she’s not seen.

Other than Stewart, the only three characters played by big-name actors are members of the house staff. There’s Timothy Spall, who plays a butler obsessed with keeping everything according to plan, meaning he’s constantly clashing with Diana; Sean Harris as the chef, who tries to get Diana to comply with all the norms and rules but in a nicer way, reminding her that it will be over in a few days; and then there’s Sally Hawkins as Maggie, the only person in the estate to actually show her some empathy and present a vision of a better future. The comparison to A Christmas Carol is no joke, and by the end of Spencer, Diana all but reaches out to us to proclaim “God bless us, every one!” while the Queen is left sighing and whispering “bah humbug.”

Spencer is not as accessible a film as Jackie, even if they share many similarities. Like its subject, Spencer is messy in its narrative, jumping around, introducing dream-like elements that don’t always add up and threaten to derail the film, but Stewart’s phenomenal performance keeps the film grounded in the story of the woman behind the icon. By the end, The Crown is but a distant memory, and all that remains is the joyful and celebratory image of a mother who should have had many more years free of her extravagant, luxurious, and ancient captivity.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge will no longer be working on Amazon’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith series with Donald Glover, who remains attached as co-creator, executive producer and star.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Waller-Bridge, who originally signed on in the same roles as Glover, “had a different creative vision for the series” than the Atlanta star, but sources say the pair remain friends and her departure from the project was amicable. Her role will now be recast, with the series still on track to premiere on Amazon Prime Video in 2022.

The initial idea for the series is said to have been conceived by Glover who is still on board alongside Francesca Sloane who is serving as co-creator, showrunner and executive producer. New Regency’s Yariv Milchan and Michael Schaefer are also billed as executive producers on Mr. and Mrs. Smith, with production on the series expected to begin next year.

Writing is currently underway on the series, which will act as a reboot to Doug Liman’s 2005 action comedy film of the same name, which famously starred Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. The movie followed the explosive adventures of a married couple after discovering that they’re both assassins working for adversarial espionage agencies.

Waller-Bridge, Glover and Sloane all have overall deals at Amazon. Glover signed his eight-figure deal with Amazon this year and immediately started staffing a writers room for a potential new series called Hive, rumored to revolve around a Beyoncé-like figure. He’s also in post-production on the third season of FX’s Atlanta, while the fourth season is in production.

Meanwhile, Waller-Bridge is currently working on Indiana Jones 5. The movie recently added Antonio Banderas to the cast alongside previously-announced stars Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Kretschmann, Boyd Holbrook, Shaunette Renée Wilson, and Harrison Ford who is returning as the franchise’s titular globe-trotting archaeologist, with James Mangold directing.

Adele Ankers is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.