I’m going to go out on a limb and say that when you think of penguins and video games, Club Penguin is probably the one that comes to mind for you (or the Surf’s Up adaptation if you’re nasty). There aren’t really a lot of games about these flightless birds, and they’re normally on the sillier side when there are because penguins are funny little critters. Penguin Colony, the next game from the devs behind Umurangi Generation, doesn’t completely abandon that silliness, but it does throw in some cosmic horror and the hubris of man in for good measure. And its first demo certainly sets the stage for an old experience.

In Penguin Colony, you are a penguin. One of many, any penguins actually. You can slide on your belly, jump, and swim, a Shadow of the Colossus style stamina meter limiting your ability to walk up steep, icy cliffs and the like. But you do not have to stay as this penguin. The tuxedo wearing animals are found all over the game, of varying sizes and species and benefits and negatives. If you walk up to a baby penguin and switch to it, you can climb under a gap in a fence, but if you try to swim you die, whereas embodying a fully grown adult nets you more stamina.

Controlling the penguin(s) is admittedly a tad awkward, in a way that feels incidental over purposeful, and yet it still lends itself well to the experience. Waddling along feels stiff and unsatisfying, but when have you ever seen a penguin be graceful while moving on its two feet? This is why you must slide as much as you can, for that’s where things smoothen out.

And then there is the Lovecraftian madness. As you make your way forward, ever forward, at first towards the flare of a human stationed out there in the Antarctic, later towards an obelisk structure that the Nazis (the original ones) claim is linked to an ancient, Aryan race, the voice of Disco Elysium’s Lenval Brown warningly narrates at you his experience in this frozen tundra. It is disquieting and somehow isolating, and I look forward to more in the full game.

You can pick up glowing orbs along the way to restore some stamina, random words appearing as you collect them like indigenous and encyclopedia. They don’t just litter the land either. At one point I came across a man who fell to his knees, violently shaking his head before it exploded, producing an orb for me to add to my portfolio. The word it produced was “sex.”

Penguin Colony’s demo is short, but does at least set the groundwork for a unique critique of fascist ideology. Who could have thought you’d get something like that while playing as a penguin! Right now it doesn’t have a release date, but it is due out in 2026, and you can try out its demo on Steam for yourself right now.

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Nintendo is introducing a new account-history requirement for Switch 2 purchases in Japan to keep consoles away from resellers. The move targets the multi-language Nintendo Switch 2 sold through the official Japanese Nintendo Store, which scalpers have been buying in bulk because it can be bought for less in Japan and resold abroad.

The price difference explains why scalpers are interested. In Japan, the multi-language Switch 2 is considerably cheaper compared to some other markets. That gap gives resellers room to import units and mark them up overseas, especially while official stock remains limited. The Japan-exclusive model, which only supports Japanese text and characters, is not affected by the new rule.

Nintendo is using account history as a filter

Nintendo said on X that it had found multiple orders linked to suspected resale activity and temporarily paused sales of the multi-language model. When sales resume, buyers will need to meet stricter conditions. Their Nintendo Account must show at least 50 hours of playtime on the original Nintendo Switch by 11:59 PM on May 31, 2026. Playtime from demo titles and free software will not qualify.

Nintendo StoreにおけるNintendo Switch 2（多言語対応）の販売につきまして、買い占め等の疑いがある注文を複数確認しましたので、一時的に販売を停止しておりました。…

— 任天堂株式会社 (@Nintendo) June 11, 2026

The company is also limiting purchases to one console per Nintendo Account. That gives Nintendo a way to reduce repeat buying while making fresh accounts less useful for resellers.

Nintendo takes a page out of Valve’s playbook

The Switch 2 has become one of the most practical handheld gaming console options, especially after Valve’s Steam Deck price hike made PC handhelds a bigger expense for many buyers. Still, Nintendo’s console will not stay immune to higher pricing for long, with its own price increase expected soon.

Scalpers have been a thorn in the side of gamers for years. Valve faced a similar issue with the recent Steam Controller launch, where units quickly sold out and appeared on resale sites at inflated prices. Valve responded with a reservation queue, purchase-history checks, and a one-controller-per-account limit.

Nintendo is now applying a similar idea to the Switch 2. Fresh accounts will have a much harder time passing the check, which could reduce bulk buying through the Japanese store.

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For anyone spending the majority of their day online, whether working in a hybrid setting, shopping, gaming, or banking, digital security has quickly become impossible to ignore. As someone who constantly juggles multiple devices and frequently connects to public Wi-Fi networks, internet security is not just a technical concern but a daily necessity. These experiences have shown me how easy it is to fall into risky habits or overlook threats. Many of us don’t consider cybersecurity until something goes wrong, but with a constant stream of scams, identity theft, and phishing attempts, maintaining strong and layered network protection is essential.

Trend Micro meets this need with its Premium Security Suite, where one subscription easily protects up to 10 devices at once.

Why Standard Antivirus Isn’t Enough for Digital Security Anymore

One of the biggest reasons most people delay upgrading their cybersecurity is the assumption that it will be a technical headache to manage. Because of this, many rely on the basic, pre-installed antivirus software that comes with their computers. For years, I thought the same way. If my computer did not show a big warning sign while downloading something, I assumed everything was perfectly safe.

That illusion was completely shattered when a family member clicked on what looked like a normal delivery tracking link while waiting for a package. Within minutes, they were locked out of everywhere, scrambling to deal with compromised credit cards on their shopping apps. However, the most alarming part was that the site looked completely authentic at first glance.

Modern online threats are far more deceptive now, often disguising themselves as a routine part of daily digital life. Today’s scams not only involve rogue downloads but also center on ID theft or data leaks that bypass traditional shields.

That is precisely why modern cybersecurity requires looking beyond basic file scanning, where Trend Micro’s Premium Security Suite comes into play. Rather than just waiting to scan file downloads, it shifts the focus to active background defense by combining scam detection, privacy tools, ID monitoring, etc., into a single package. Together, safeguarding your entire tech ecosystem effortlessly removes the security burden from busy households.

How Trend Micro Handles Total Identity Protection

Identity protection is a really important factor. With so many accounts linked to personal details, payment info, and recurring subscriptions, a single leaked password can quickly spark a domino effect. I lived this firsthand when I got an alert that an old streaming password of mine had been exposed in a data breach. It turned out I had actually reused that same login for several of my important accounts, too.

To counter this vulnerability, Trend Micro offers dark web monitoring that continuously checks if your private information has been compromised. For U.S. subscribers, the plan provides up to $1 million in identity fraud insurance along with round-the-clock support to assist with account recovery in an emergency. The service further bundles new dedicated services such as lost wallet assistance, credit freeze assistance, and credit notifications. By keeping an eye out for threats to your sensitive information and sending real-time alerts, the platform gives you total peace of mind even when you can’t keep track of everything yourself.

Locking Down Your Data on Public Wi-Fi

Traveling or hybrid working from cafés and hotels means that navigating public Wi-Fi is just a regular part of your day. While free connections are utterly convenient, they also open up an easy way for hackers to intercept unsecured data or set up fake login portals.

To keep your data safe while moving between these public networks, Trend Micro includes a Secure VPN, anti-tracking tools, and an ad-blocker directly in the plan. It features specialized safe-browsing protections that automatically shield your connection when you’re banking, shopping, or logging into social media. This layer of active coverage provides an effortless safety net, letting you open up your laptop anywhere without a second thought.

Redefining Cybersecurity for Everyday Users

What further stands out about the platform is its focus on convenience. A lot of security software tends to overwhelm users with endless alerts, heavy system slowdowns, and confusing settings panels. Imagine trying to relax with a movie at home, only for an outdated security app to keep interrupting the screen with random update notifications.

Trend Micro solves that nagging issue by running quietly in the background while blocking modern threats like suspicious links, AI-powered scams, and even deepfake-related attacks before you notice them. Additionally, its Gamer-Friendly Mute Mode temporarily silences non-critical notifications, so your work sessions, games, or streams stay uninterrupted.

Moreover, the cross-platform compatibility makes the overall value proposition incredibly easy to justify. Without the hassle of managing separate security plans for different family members, this package covers the entire household setup. For a modern lifestyle built around multiple devices and operating systems, this unified approach simply feels practical.

Why Consider the Premium Security Suite

At its core, the software feels engineered around convenience as much as it is around digital threat defense. This makes it a compelling option for people who prefer a set-it-and-forget-it approach to cybersecurity. Rather than operating like a basic security tool, it positions itself as a comprehensive, multi-layered digital shield.

Currently available for $149.95 for a two-year subscription, down from the $299.90, the Premium Suite offers savings of up to 50%, while covering 10 devices across PC, Mac, and mobile.

Beyond the core toolkit, this package adds robust safeguards like ransomware and malware detection with 24/7 identity resolution support. To ensure it fits your needs, Trend Micro backs its subscription with a 30-day money-back guarantee so you can try it completely risk-free.

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It is, as I write this, one year to the day since I and two fellow, newly-orphaned siblings finished the process of auditing, packing, and clearing out our childhood home. The final task: enduring the fearsome rattling and suspect braking of our dad’s neglected Renault Megane, just long enough for it to sputter to someone mad enough to buy it off us. The irony, that this clanking full-stop on the end our bereavement’s lengthy administrative aspect could so feasibly kill me, was not lost.

That process, from the last beep of hospital machinery to the unhaggled exchange of French scrap metal, took 11 months, so it’s good that A Storied Life: Tabitha condenses its own house clearance to just a couple of hours. Posthumously asked by an elderly friend to give her cottage a tidy, you spend half your time in A Storied Life rummaging through her things in a kind of reverse Unpacking, selecting which bric-a-brac to throw away, which to keep, and which – with her blessings – to auction off for cash. The other half is spent taking inspiration from the objects you’ve kept to rewrite her water-damaged memoirs, a bittersweet series of word puzzles that still achieves a certain warmth – provided you can come to terms with the peculiar writing style.

At the very least, I enjoyed this a lot more than the early demo I played last year. That laid the logical issues of A Storied Life’s junk-into-words concept very bare indeed: there was no way of predicting the memoir material you’d get from any given object, even the ones with seemingly the most sentimental value, so progressing to the next room often meant being forced to write contradictory, sometimes grammatically criminal nonsense. She always LOVED her husband, did old Ms. Kettlewell. He was NEVER around for the childrens’ LABRATORY.

The finished game can still slip into this, to its detriment – in most contexts the Fridge Poetry gibberish might raise a laugh, but this is putting words in the mouth of the recently deceased. At the same time, ending up with a legible page-turner does feel a lot more doable than in that demo, with running out of ‘good’ words a rarer event. And, while this is achieved through further gameifying the process of item-packing, an approach I previously found uncomfortable in the narrow confines of a vertical slice, the addition of capital-M Mechanics is unexpectedly fitting in the full game.

It helps that you can simply replay each room you’ve cleared, so improving a duff chapter is just a case of rewinding and choosing to save different items. But the game also drops hints, without getting outright prescriptive, about which item combinations would make for a coherent story. Matching dot patterns on your cardboard box to the patterns on each item secures at least a broadly usable selection of nouns and adverbs, and finding multiple items with a matching theme – gardening gear, say, or keepsakes from a lost husband – will produce more sensible-sounding word combos.

I accept that this is the exact kind of right choice/wrong choice gameyness I needled the preview for. Again, though, it makes more sense here, particularly as the game’s replay-happy structure encourages a mental recalibration. I’d previously assumed that A Storied Life’s dearly departed pensioner was a fixed character, one whose memory I’d betray with every goofy word jumble; it’s more accurate to say that her personality and history are player-defined on the fly, such is the breadth of tales that can be told through her eclectic trinkets. She can be a loving wife and a doting grandmother. She can be a careerist horticultural genius. She can be an aspiring witch. She can be a fraudster who may have bashed a blackmailer’s head in with a hammer. All are canon, and none are, and as much as it stings to knowingly, reluctantly scribble in a grammatical error, it’s not betraying a memory. It’s just that this memory might be different to the one you invent on the next playthrough.

This open-endedness wouldn’t be possible if A Storied Life didn’t fill its house with interesting bits. Much of the interactables are just junk – filler items that will end up in the recycling box even on a fourth or fifth playthrough – but there’s plenty that will tickle the imagination, from occultish wall hangings to old medals to a photo with a scratched-out face. Since this is ultimately about spinning your own stories, you’re never fed clarity on the more curious possessions, though this does avoid being overly insistent on your subject’s life in ways that could undermine the characterisation you’re following. Maybe the dry red matter on the hammer really is just rust.

It’s also easygoing as a puzzler. The only waft of challenge comes when your desire to save as many mementos as possible bumps into the paltry capacity of your sole box, cramming wooden ducks and chess boards into the tiny grid layout like you’re stuffing JC Denton’s pockets. Once victorious at Cardboard Tetris, you still need to make sure any breakables are bubble wrapped – lest they smash and fill your memoir screen with undesirable words – and that an especially heavy box is reinforced, both of which deplete your pile of packing supplies. Running out, however, never feels like a serious concern. Tape and bubble wrap are replenished from Ms. Kettlewell’s own cupboards, and you’ll soon gain a ‘budget’ that can easily and instantly cover most unmet supply needs. Auctioning, meanwhile, almost runs itself. Drop a vaguely valuable-looking item into the selling box for each room and the dosh rolls in passively.

It’s not dull, though. Also like Unpacking, A Storied Life trades in intimate, well-realised spaces where poking around brings gratification in itself, and not just because of the stories that its population of thingamajigs can tell. The nicely hand-drawn, SFX-heavy presentation does particularly well to balance the comforting familiarity of this largely unremarkable British abode – the pokiness of the kitchen, the soft creaks of cupboard doors, the low rustle of unfolding jumpers – with the melancholy of it outlasting the person who lived there. I’ll admit to hanging on the view of a few emptied rooms, quietly regarding the bookless shelves and the patches of discoloured wallpaper where a frame once hung, just as I once did for my own family home.

For this, it has my respect, and I don’t regret giving it my time. It just bears remembering, amid the dust, the quietness, and the boxes of unreliable memories, that the bookwriting values flexibility above the pursuit of a single, perfectly scribed chronicle.

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Most apps are designed to keep you on them as long as possible, especially content consumption apps where you scroll a never-ending feed of content. 

Dreambeans, a new experimental app from Google Labs, does the opposite. It gives you a small collection of AI-illustrated stories each morning and sends you off to live your actual life.

What kind of stories does Dreambeans actually generate?

While you sleep, the app collects the required data from your Google apps and services, including Gmail, Calendar, Google Photos, YouTube, along with your search history, and curates them into a set of 10 to 14 personalized stories.

The stories are lifestyle suggestions based on your interests and activities. They could contain a coffee shop suggestion near where you live (based on the places you’ve searched), insights about an upcoming vacation marked in your calendar, or ideas related to a hobby YouTube keeps surfacing.

Some stories include an action, such as a link to buy a ticket or book a show.

Every story is illustrated with AI-generated artwork personalized using Google Photos and Nano Banana 2. If a Dreambeans story involves you or people you know, the app uses your Photos face grouping and includes them in the scene. 

Who can use it and what is the catch?

For now, Dreambeans is only available to Google AI Ultra subscribers aged 18 and older in the United States, on both Android and iOS devices. To me, it looks like Google is keeping the audience deliberately small, as the AI Ultra is its most expensive subscription tier. It costs $100 per month. 

And yes, privacy-conscious users can choose which services connect to the app and delete their data at any point through the in-app settings. Dreambeans choices do not affect preferences in Gemini or AI Mode either. 

The app also includes a feedback system. Since it is in the experimental phase, the app might show some irrelevant stories or inaccurate visuals. Whether users trained on years of infinite scroll will actually want a daily content limit is the real experiment here, I’d say. 

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The Apple Watch already has one of the best displays on any smartwatch, but the company is reportedly working on something that could make it meaningfully better. 

According to industry sources cited by The Elec, LG Display is currently developing and validating a new display backplane technology. It is called high-mobility oxide, or HMO, and the company is making it on its sixth-generation OLED production lines. 

How does HMO matter for Apple Watch battery life?

Every OLED display needs a backplane, which is the layer of transistors that controls each pixel. 

The current gold standard for Apple Watch panels is LTPO, which improves battery life by allowing the screen to dynamically drop its refresh rate to 1Hz when not being used actively.  

HMO, on the other hand, takes a different approach. It maximizes the inherent low-power advantages of oxide transistor technology without the complex manufacturing steps involved in making LTPO.

The new technology doesn’t require laser crystallization or ion implantation, which, in theory, should result in a display that draws even less power while costing less to produce. In simple words, the Apple Watch models using the technology could last substantially longer than the ones that rely on LTPO technology. 

Apple is evaluating HMO as a potential successor to its LTPO technology for Apple Watch displays. If everything pans out well, we might see the same technology on future iPhone displays. 

When could HMO reach an actual Apple Watch?

The challenge comes down to how quickly the transistors inside the display can switch on and off. 

Today’s mass-produced oxide panels aren’t fast enough for the kind of high-resolution, high-refresh-rate displays Apple demands, and LG Display needs to close that gap significantly before HMO is ready for production at scale. Getting there consistently across a full-sized panel, without sacrificing reliability, is the challenging part.

The report suggests that LG Display could supply the technology for smartwatch applications as early as next year, putting an optimistic timeline for an Apple Watch with an HMO display at 2027 or later. However, I won’t be surprised if it is delayed to 2028.

Keep in mind that everything here comes from industry sources cited by The Elec, and nothing has been confirmed by either Apple or LG Display.

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April 16th: We updated our personality guide for the launch of Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream, as well as adding in the North American English variant personality names.

You know how it goes: you wait decades for a life simulation game that can give The Sims and Animal Crossing a run for their money, and then three come along all at once. Actually, three is starting to look like the bare minimum number of interesting new life and social sims we’ll see in 2026, with the latest contender to enter the ring (following hot on the heels of Heartopia and Starsand Island) being Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream.

The long-awaited sequel to 2013’s 3DS-exclusive Tomodachi Life has clearly made the most of its 13 years in the oven, taking steps to address the shortcomings that ensured its predecessor never quite made it past cult classic status in the genre, while also taking copious notes from successful competitors along the way. The ability for your Miis to customise their pronouns, romantic preferences, and fashion preferences are the most obvious signs that Nintendo have a handle on what modern life sim players want.

But Tomodachi Life certainly hasn’t lost sight of its distinctive roots – including the obviously Sims-inspired but still ultimately unique approach to determining your Miis’ personalities. On the surface it can seem impossible to tell what personality your Mii will be assigned based on the attributes you allocate to them, but it’s actually surprisingly easy to figure out once you know a bit about what the game does under-the-hood. So if you want to exert a little more control over your little computer people’s temperaments, read on for our Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream personalities guide.

Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream personality guide

In Tomodachi Life, you assign personalities to the Miis you create by rating their traits on the following series of eight-point scales:

• Movement: Slow to Quick
• Speech: Polite to Direct
• Energy: Flat to Intense
• Attitude: Serious to Relaxed
• Overall: Normal to Quirky

Despite its initial similarity to early games in The Sims series, this system allows you to freely determine where your Mii sits on each scale, rather than giving you a limited number of points to work with. That’s because instead of numbered values, these scales are represented more as a spectrum, with colour grading from green on the left to orange on the right in place of a more (let’s be honest) judgemental numbering system.

Once you’ve confirmed your choices, the game will assign your Mii a two-word personality type based on your selections – and this part isn’t directly within your control. There are 16 personalities in total in Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream, which draw from one of four overarching types followed by a specific sub-type:

• Easy-going: Carer / Dreamer / Optimist / Softie
• Energetic: Adventurer / Bubbly / Charmer / Hot-Blooded
• Reserved: Introvert / Patient / Perfectionist / Thinker
• Confident: Busy Bee / Headstrong / Individualist / Leader

In my experience at least, the personality Tomodachi Life comes up with for the Mii in question is always uncannily similar to what I was going for in character creator. However, there’s still that uncertainty hanging over proceedings, since I didn’t technically get to choose the final personality, along with its attendant traits.

However, it turns out that there is actually a very reliable formula for determining which personality your Mii will be assigned, and it’s based very closely on the one from the original Tomodachi Life game.

This Tomodachi Life personality calculator by GameFAQs user reinseiun has been a staple of the community for over a decade now, and while some of the exact placements and terminology have changed in the sequel, the underlying calculation remains identical as far as I’ve been able to determine.

Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream personality calculator

Following reinseiun’s original formula, you can figure out your Mii’s personality ahead of time by assigning the following values to the points on each personality scale reading left-to-right (or green-to-orange):

Note: The “Overall” scale does not directly impact on the personality selection and thus has no values in this formula.

As you can see, of the four attributes that actually determine a Mii’s personality, Speech and Attitude are weighted slightly more than Movement or Energy, which is why those scales skip the “4” value in the middle.

To work out what personality your Mii is going to be assigned, choose the points on each scale that you think best represent them. Add their Movement + Speech values together, then add their Energy + Attitude values. Find where your two numbers intersect on the chart below and you’ve got your Mii’s personality!

US English terminology in Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream

Since putting together the original version of this guide, I’ve learned that there are some differences between the US English version of the game and the English-language version available in the rest of the world (including Australia, New Zealand, and here in the UK). This includes most personality types having a different name for players in North America.

Rather than complicate the table above by attempting to shove both name variants into each small text box, I’ve elected to include the following supplementary table to allow you to easily figure out the equivalent personality names based on the names you might be seeing:

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