Nightmarish

Researchers have discovered a new species of marine lizard, Khinjaria acuta, from the late Cretaceous period, showcasing the diversity of marine ecosystems before the dinosaur extinction. This species, part of the mosasaur family, highlights a time when the oceans teemed with a variety of giant predators, unlike today’s ecosystems dominated by a few apex predators. Credit: Andrey AtuchinSixty-six million years ago, the oceans were full of large apex predators, unlike now.Paleontologists have discovered a strange new…

Ahead of the game's release later this month, Capcom has launched the character-creator tool for Dragon's Dogma 2, and fans are putting it to very good use.Dedicated and creative people are using the editor to create all manner of well-known characters with stunning detail, including Kratos from God of War, Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings, a nightmare version of Pikachu, Walter White from Breaking Bad, and plenty more.Many of the images are pure nightmare fuel, so be warned about that. And many are…

Unhinged Studios has officially announced their roguelite deckbuilder, dev_hell based on the soul-crushing experience of working as a programmer in an office environment. It’s set to release on PC this year. Before getting paid to write bad words, I spent nine years working in I.T. as a technician. That’s not the same as being an office programmer, but it is adjacent. The biggest difference is that people at least understood that I was going to fix their computer. For normal people, programmers just perform whatever…

Riot Games and Netflix have shared the first teaser trailer for Arcane season 2, which is set to debut later this year. The animated fantasy show, which explores unrest and class struggles between the fictional cities of Zaun and Piltover, ended on a cliffhanger finale in season 1. It’s unclear where season 2 will pick up just yet, but it will likely move many of its characters – including Vi, Caitlyn, Ekko, Jayce and Viktor – closer to their depictions as champions in League Of Legends, the multiplayer game Arcane is…

Brush up your resume, as Playtonic friends and Canteen have announced that the absolutely normal job simulator, CorpoNation: The Sorting Project, will be released on February 22, 2024. Alongside this announcement is a new trailer. CorpoNation is a job simulator not too far off from the seminal Papers, Please. However, instead of sorting paperwork at the border in a bleak dystopia, CorpoNation has you sorting genetic samples in a bleak Corporate dystopia. It’s probably the same corporate dystopia that we’ll be living…

Image: Frazer Harrison (Getty Images)At today’s SAG-AFTRA strike announcement, the AI proposal put forth by the the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers was aired out for the first time, and it was said to includetaking scans of background actors for use not only in a single project, but any project, in perpetuity.Finding Uhura’s Confidence in Strange New Worlds | io9 InterviewIf anything will help illustrate the absolute necessity of SAG-AFTRA striking, it’s these proposed “groundbreaking” AI concessions…

Sigur Rós’s new album Átta, their first in a decade, is a tender and consoling piece of work that seems to extend a healing hand to the listener. Given the dramatic events in the band members’ lives during its long gestation, you suspect it serves a similar purpose for the Icelanders themselves. “It’s a comfort blanket for us maybe,” agrees frontman Jón Pór “Jónsi” Birgisson from his home in Silver Lake, Los Angeles. The period the album emerged from was, he says, “depressing and heavy and intense”.In March 2018, the…

Envisioning a dystopian future where humans inch closer to immortality while losing the ability to procreate, Takahide Hori’s stop-motion adventure journeys through a gloomy, dilapidated universe filled with exquisitely strange creatures. Considering that the film is mostly a one-man operation – Hori pores over nearly every technical aspect himself – the worldbuilding details are simply extraordinary, bringing to mind the nightmarish virtuosity of Phil Tippett’s Mad God.Seeking a solution to a diminishing population, a…

Earlier this month saw the UK release of Pearl, a prequel to Ti West’s retro-horror X, starring and co-written by the extraordinary Mia Goth. A uniquely arresting screen presence (check out the final-frame smile of Pearl for proof), Goth is back again in another jaw-dropping role that positively fizzes with playfully dangerous pizzaz. She may take second billing to Swedish star Alexander Skarsgård in this Canadian-Hungarian-Croatian co-production but make no mistake – it’s her anarchic energy that drives the deliciously…

This is truly wild. In our year 2023, we’re finally hitting robotics at theme parks with the knowledge of how to get back up if knocked down, which is totally a good idea. Totally.During The Art & Science of Disney Parks Storytelling at SXSW today, parks chairman Josh D’Amaro along with Disney Imagineers introduced a prototype robot being developed by the company, a small rabbit with rollerblades that looks like Judy Hopps from Zootopia if she were real and also a Terminator. It tracks,as the next evolution of…