Various Video Game Stories from the Week of May 4

Category: Gaming
Posted: May 8, 2026 07:44AM
Author: Guest_Jim_*

Friday has arrived, and along with the weekend approaching, it is also time to go through the news that has collected in my inbox during the week. First up we have the announcement from Devolver Digital and developer Doinksoft of the release date for Dark Scrolls. This is a frantasy-themeed, action, platformer that merges shoot 'em up chaos with roguelite progression. You will get to select from nine characters, including an ax-throwing warrior, magician, and rat playing a saxophone. Each character has their unique skills, side objectives, and trinkets you can experiment with while working through he procedurally generated levels made by connecting hand-crafted rooms.

Dark Scrolls is releasing May 28 on PC and Nintendo Switch.

Source: Press Release (Devolver Digital – Dark Scrolls)

Jackbox Party Pack 12 has been announced by Jackbox Games, and promises to keep the jokes going with five new games. The games themselves have not been named yet, but we can expect them to "highlight your inner artist, comedian, mind reader, debater and team captain like the life of the party you are."

Unfortunately we do not have a release date, but it is to launch this year on PC, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, Apple TV, iPad, and the Mac App Store.

Source: Press Release (Jackbox Games – Jackbox Party Pack 12)

A new trailer was released for Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV by Plaion and developer King Art Games, revealing the second of the game's four factions. Unfortunately this deep dive video is behind YouTube's age gate, but here is a link if you want to see more about the Adeptus Mechanicus: Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV - Adeptus Mechanicus Faction Trailer. This faction is quick and is especially capable at ranged combat, thanks to its mastery of the calculus of war and technology. Leading its forces at the Technoarcheologist, Potentia-Delta 9, and Skitarii Marshal, Sek-Ix-23, both augmented commanders that embody different aspects of the Machine God, Omnissiah's will.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV is to launch later this year on PC.

Source: Press Release (Plaion – Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV)

A new trailer has been released for The Guild – Europa 1410 by THQ Nordic and developer Ashborne Games. This "city showcase" video allows you to see some of the options you will get to choose from when you start the game, with the goal of shaping and ultimately leading it. Your options for achieving this include becoming a tycoon, where your prosperity is also the city's, and politics, where you will get to define its laws. At launch it will have four cities to choose from; Wroclaw, Nuremberg, Graz, and Kuttenberg.

The Guild – Europa 1410 does not yet have a release target but is coming to PC.

Source: THQ Nordic (The Guild – Europa 1410)

Now for some non-gaming news, starting with information on the PCIe 8.0 specification via Phoronix. There was a briefing this week that included the 0.5 draft for this standard that is to enable up to 256 GT/s of raw bit-rate and 1.0 TB/s bi-directional in the x16 configuration, doubling the capabilities of PCIe 7.0. This doubling has been the goal of each generation for the PCIe standard, as has been backwards compatibility, but Phoronix does note PCI-SIG, the group behind the standard, is looking at new connector technology. Along with increasing bandwidth, the new specification should also enable better efficiency to reduce power consumption.

This is only a draft of the specification and PCI-SIG has set themselves the goal of a new specification about every three years. The PCIe 7.0 specification was finalized and released last June.

Source: Phoronix (PCIe 8.0 Draft 0.5)

Lastly, UL Benchmarks has launched Procyon Essentials, a new benchmark aimed at testing multitasking performance. Its intention is to test browser-focused multitasking scenarios that reflect the work professional are doing every day. It covers video conferencing, managing up to 30 browser tabs, AI-assisted summarization and translation, and file operations. These workloads do not require third-party applications to run, making this simple to set up and broadly compatible with Windows PCs.