Anthony Norman is your typical Gen Z worker: 25, a little wayward, and struggling to find a full time job.

You can’t exactly fault him for the position he’s in. Unemployment rates are high. AI is creating a crisis for young people trying to enter the workforce. Hiring has slowed. And several companies—including Amazon, Block, and Meta—have embraced tech’s latest era of layoffmaxxing, with some cutting their staff by 20 percent.

So when Anthony lands a temp position at Rockin’ Grandma’s Hot Sauce, a small business in Southern California, he’s just happy for what he assumes is a regular gig: assisting with odd jobs and helping plan the annual retreat.

What Anthony doesn’t know is that he is actually the mark of Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat, the second season of Prime Video’s experimental docu-comedy where one person unwittingly participates in a staged sitcom (the first season, which blew up on TikTok and snagged three Emmy nominations, was about a fake jury trial). Everyone is an actor except for him.

Anthony joins the team during a moment of transition. The founder, Doug Womack, is preparing to step down. His son, Dougie Jr, is next in line, and because not everyone thinks he’s fit to run the family business, he wants to prove that he’s more than an unqualified nepo baby—“the Bronny of hot sauce,” he says. Having just returned from a four-year stint in Jamaica “jamming” with a hotel lobby ska band called the Jive Prophets, the retreat is meant to be a test for Dougie Jr.

The season trades in the monotony of cubicles and watercooler talk for Oak Canyon Ranch, a cozy resort and recreation center nestled in the grassy suburb of Agoura Hills—about an hour drive northwest of Los Angeles—where the staff convenes for various activities: team building, a client cookout, motivational speakers, and a talent contest. Desperate for “one week without Cocomelon” and her three kids, Jackie Angela Griffin, the distribution and logistics rep, is ready to get away.

Like all offices, Rockin’ Grandma’s is a circus of eccentricity and ego. Accountant and bourbon enthusiast Helen Schaffer has been “cooking the books for 26 years.” Receptionist PJ Green has dreams of being a snack influencer. Sourcing manager Anthony Gwinn, who at one point confuses a flesh light for a water thermos, is jokingly nicknamed “Other Anthony” despite working at the company longer. Kevin Gomez, head of HR, has flashes of Michael Scott: He’s an overeager, comically delusional, hopeless romantic who loves his job and Amy Patterson, the customer relations coordinator. “Hot Sauce is having a moment,” he tells Anthony during the onboarding process. “You don’t see this kind of thing happening with ketchup.”

On day two, eager to demonstrate his instincts as CEO, Dougie Jr. calls an audible and brings in an “emotions and vulnerability expert”—she’s the Walmart version of academic Brené Brown—who confusingly leads the group through a conversation on how to navigate uncomfortable scenarios.

It’s good practice for Kevin’s failed proposal to Amy—they’ve actually never been on a real date minus her birthday, which included eight of her other girlfriends. After a humiliated Kevin makes a quick exit from the retreat center, to the sound of tin cans rattling as he speeds off in his car, Anthony is forced to step up.

“I got a promotion,” he says, improvising on the fly to lift morale and take on the role of “Captain Fun.”

Even as people have struggled to find meaning in their work—or simply find work—TV’s fixation with the American workplace has always been popular with viewers. Mad Men examined the existential toils of advertising executives. Severance has contemplated autonomy, in addition to a lot of other very weird shit. And no series has explored the delightful chaos of workplace hijinks better than NBC’s The Office, which followed the oddball staff of Dunder Mifflin, a Pennsylvania paper company.

Prop Department begins with a 1988 Ford Festiva, a small vehicle with a single wheelbase that screams to be laughed at. He took a bold step in and decided to take that already tiny base and shrink it even more, all while maintaining the idea that this thing had to be road-worthy, and manage to squeeze through tight spaces that a normal car would never even come close to making it through.

The Festiva donor car had a solid base from the start. Everyone knows that this was one of the most compact cars back then, with hardly enough room to turn around inside. Its super-tight footprint makes it an ideal candidate for this experiment. Instead than putting on more parts or attaching a bunch of extra garbage, the crew decided to reduce things down to the bone. They marked up the body, took out the straightedge, and prepared to cut it down the middle, using a laser level to ensure that everything stayed true and the two halves would line up without a single gap or twist later on.

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There was a lot of work to be done before they could make the first cut. The team had to clear room, strap the car down, and double-check all of their measurements to avoid making a single error that would ruin the entire operation. They started cutting once they were ready. All documents reveal that they had to do the project twice, meticulously reducing pieces to get the sides just the proper thickness without compromising the entire structure. That precision was critical since the final design needed to be able to sustain the engine, suspension, and wheels in their new, unusual places.

An xTool laser welder and CNC cutter handled the heavy cutting and shaping work, delivering clean edges and strong joints with a precision that would have been nearly impossible to achieve by hand. Every extra inch of width was removed without compromising the structural integrity of the body, and once the narrower shell was welded back together it was as solid as the day it left the factory. The seats, controls, and wiring were either kept in place or adjusted just enough to suit the new proportions, and the original drivetrain was left completely untouched, meaning the car drove away from the build under its own power.

Then came the road test, and to everyone’s amazement, the car handles perfectly. It drives well enough for regular streets, navigating twists and stops without tipping over or feeling unstable. Drivers can maneuver it into small spaces that would bring a typical vehicle to a complete stop. Alleyways just big enough for a bike lane suddenly become accessible. Furthermore, the entire package remains registered and roadworthy, complete with lights and signals that meet all regulations.

Of course, there are some practical limitations to all of this. As you might guess, with all of the removed sections, storage room has vanished, and passengers other than the driver are out of the question. Fuel economy and comfort? They’re exactly the same as the original tiny automobile, nothing extra. If cargo room or quick access for friends is important, this invention has you covered. For solo travels through busy neighborhoods or quick errands in the most congested urban areas, this gadget opens doors you never thought were possible.

Two Calvin-40 robots have recently appeared on the Renault assembly line in Douai, France. They keep placing tires into the conveyor belt that feeds the Renault 5 electric assembly line because it’s a repetitive motion they can perform hundreds of times per shift without tiring.

Over the next 18 months, the business plans to add more of these machines, totaling 350, to the ElectriCity complex. As it stands, they are already producing Renault 5 vehicles in less than 10 hours each car. With the new robots, they should be able to reduce that time even more while also lowering production costs across the board. Each of these devices stands on two legs and can reach the manufacturing bins and racks on the shelves, which a human would have to leap up and down to access. There’s a camera attached just below waist level to help it keep track of what it’s doing, and it flashes green, yellow, or red to let you know how it’s doing, and then there’s those circular arms that can lift up to 40kg with ease, allowing it to do things like hoist tires and body panels without the need for a hand.

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Wandercraft, the company that created the design, completed the current iteration of the robot in just 40 days. However, making it fast enough to be useful took a little longer, as it required six months of artificial intelligence training to operate at full speed. Renault purchased a minority investment in the company for $75 million in June, allowing them to modify these robots to be ideal for vehicle manufacturing.

Workers used to have to do the same tedious tasks day after day. Now, sophisticated robots do it for them, lifting panels and tyres into place without making a sound. The final assembly sites remain off-limits because the machines are not fast enough to match the required speed. Their guy in charge of manufacturing and quality, Thierry Charvet, just wants to get the job done as quickly and efficiently as possible.

During the deployment, Renault’s CEO, François Provost, also spoke up. While other automakers display their fancy prototype robots in tech showrooms, Renault takes a very different approach. They simply want to have the thing up and running on the line right now, and they will be doing the same thing in factories around the country. The overall goal is to reduce the time it takes to construct a car by a third and lower expenses by 20% over the next five years. The new robots are just one aspect of it, making some of the most difficult and commonplace tasks much easier for those working on the line.
[Source]

An MRI scan is never a pleasant occasion – even if you aren’t worried about the outcome, lying still in a confined, noisy space for long periods of time is at best an irksome experience. For hearing protection and to ameliorate boredom or claustrophobia, the patient wears headphones. Since magnets and wires can’t be used inside an MRI machine, the headphones have to literally pipe the sound in through tubes, which gives them poor sound quality and reduces the amount of noise they can block. [SomethingAboutScience], however, thinks that photoacoustic speakers could improve on these, and built some to demonstrate.

These speakers use the photoacoustic effect, which is mostly caused by surface heating when exposed to an intense light, then transferring the heat to the surrounding air, which expands. If the surface can transfer heat to the air quickly enough, and if the light source is modulated quickly, the rapid expansions and contractions in the surrounding air create sound waves. As a test, [SomethingAboutScience] shone a modulated 5-Watt laser on a piece of gold leaf, which produced recognizable music.

Gold leaf works because it absorbs blue light well and is thin enough to transfer heat to the air quickly. To cut out the absorbing surface, [SomethingAboutScience] also shone the laser directly into orange nitrogen dioxide gas, which produced a somewhat cleaner sound (in a purely auditory sense; nitrogen dioxide is quite dangerous, and calling it “a little toxic” is an understatement). Soot-coated glass also worked rather well, though a soot-coated glass smoking pipe didn’t provide the desired acoustics. He also 3D-printed an earphone shape with a gold leaf-lined cavity inside it, then used a fibre-optic cable to direct the laser light into it. We would be personally reluctant to couple a 5-Watt laser into a reflective cavity centimeters from our eardrums, but it didn’t appear to damage its surroundings.

We’ve seen the photoacoustic effect used before to perform long-range, almost silent command injection to voice assistants. It’s also possible to use lower-power lasers and beam sound directly into people’s ears.

Thanks to [Marble] for the tip!

United States law enforcement this week took down the Aisuru, Kimwolf, JackSkid, and Mossad botnets, a slate of cybercriminal tools that have infected more than 3 million devices around the world, including many inside home networks, and have been used to carry out record-breaking cyberattacks. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of iPhones are currently vulnerable to takeover by a new tool called DarkSword that Russian hackers used to steal victims’ data.

Customer service calls and chats with the Sears Home Services AI bot Samantha were exposed and publicly accessible until a researcher reported the situation—revealing personal details from calls and chats, including, in some cases, hours of extra audio seemingly recorded after customers thought a call had ended. And WIRED reviewed dozens of Telegram channels containing job listings for “AI face models.” The people who land the jobs are mostly women and are likely being used as the face of AI scams to steal victims’ money.

Meta recently announced that it will eliminate end-to-end encryption protections for Instagram Direct Messages on May 8, citing low adoption of the feature. The company had long promised the protection as a default for Instagram chat, and experts fear that the bait and switch could set a dangerous precedent in the tech industry. In other Meta encryption news, though, Signal creator Moxie Marlinspike announced this week that he will collaborate with the tech giant to integrate his encrypted AI platform Confer into Meta AI in some form.

And there’s more. Each week, we round up the security and privacy news we didn’t cover in depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.

Imagine trying to explain this one to your boss: You can’t get to work because your court-mandated breathalyzer won’t let you start the vehicle—not because you’ve been drinking, you swear, but because that alcohol-vapor-detecting device has been disabled by a cyberattack on the company that makes it.

Intoxalock, an automotive breathalyzer maker that says it’s used daily by 150,000 drivers across the US, this week reported that it had been the target of a cyberattack, resulting in its “systems currently experiencing downtime,” according to an announcement posted to its website. Meanwhile, drivers that use the breathalyzers have reported being stranded due to the devices’ inability to connect to the company’s services. “Our vehicles are giant paperweights right now through no fault of ours,” one wrote on Reddit. “I’m being held accountable at work and feel completely helpless.”

The lockouts appear to be the result of Intoxalock’s breathalyzers needing periodic calibrations that require a connection to the company’s servers. Drivers who are due for a calibration and can’t perform one due to the company’s downtime have been stuck, though the company now states on its website that it’s offering 10-day extensions on those calibrations due to its cybersecurity disruption, as well as towing services in some cases. In the meantime, Intoxalock hasn’t explained what sort of cyberattack it’s facing or whether hackers have obtained any of the company’s user data.

Back in March 2023, FBI director Christopher Wray confirmed, for the first time, that the agency had purchased US phone location data. While the FBI had previously paid for phone data from commercial data brokers—instead of seeking a warrant—it had stopped doing so, Wray said. “That’s not been active for some time,” Wray claimed. Fast-forward three years, and the FBI is once again purchasing location data that can be used to track Americans.

At a Senate hearing on Wednesday, FBI director Kash Patel confirmed that the agency is buying “commercially available information” that he claimed was “consistent with the Constitution” and other laws. “It has led to some valuable intelligence for us,” Patel said. The practice involves the FBI buying information from commercial data brokers, which sell huge volumes of data, including phone location information, that is collected by advertising technology baked into apps.

Dongle DACs are everywhere. Scroll through Amazon or any audio retailer and you will find dozens of tiny USB DAC/amps promising better sound from your phone. Most solve one problem while creating another: a cable dangling from your handset and one more gadget rattling around in your pocket.

The Fosi Audio MD3 tries to clean up that mess in a manner that will work for some.

Priced at $149.99, this compact DAC/amp attaches directly to the back of your phone using 16 high strength N52 magnets, making it MagSafe compatible with modern iPhones. Instead of a dongle hanging off the bottom of your device, the MD3 sticks flush to the rear panel, turning the DAC into something closer to an integrated mobile audio upgrade than yet another accessory.

While affordable, it is entering one of the most crowded categories in portable audio. The difference is that very few of those competitors try to physically integrate with your phone the way the MD3 does. The question is whether the concept works in practice and more importantly, whether the sound quality justifies sticking it to the back of your phone.

Fosi Audio MD3 Specifications and Technology Explained

At the heart of the Fosi Audio MD3 is the ESS ES9039Q2M DAC, the chip responsible for converting digital data into analog sound. It’s a highly regarded converter with impressive specifications, including a 116dB signal to noise ratio and total harmonic distortion plus noise of roughly 0.00075%. The chip also supports PCM up to 384kHz/32-bit and native DSD256, so those with a library of hi-res FLAC or DSD files will have plenty of headroom.

Another advantage of the ES9039Q2M is its low power consumption, which is important in a portable device. In theory, that should allow the MD3 to deliver better sound without draining your phone’s battery as quickly as some other portable DAC/amp designs.

Amplification duties are handled by four ESS ES9063Q op amps, which together deliver up to 180mW of output at 32 ohms. That is a respectable amount of power for a compact mobile device and should be more than adequate for most in-ear monitors and an acceptable range of high-sensitivity headphones.

One of the MD3’s more unusual design choices is its MagSafe compatible magnetic backplate, which uses 16 high-strength N52 neodymium magnets. The idea is simple: instead of dangling from your phone like a traditional dongle DAC, the MD3 can snap directly onto the back of compatible iPhones, keeping the setup compact and eliminating cable clutter.

I wasn’t able to test that feature personally because I use an Android phone, but Editor in-Chief Ian White tried the MD3 with his iPhone 14 at CanJam NYC 2026 last weekend and confirmed that the magnetic attachment works as intended. It’s a clever approach that separates the MD3 from the dozens of conventional dongle DACs currently competing for attention in the portable audio space.

Design & Build Quality

Despite the budget friendly nature of the Fosi Audio MD3, the chassis is made from aluminium alloy, something you do not always see on dongle DACs priced under $200.

Even with its all metal construction, the MD3 remains extremely portable. It weighs just 50 grams (1.76 ounces) and measures 70 x 45 x 12 mm (2.76 x 1.77 x 0.47 inches), making it about as unobtrusive as a portable DAC/amp can be.

That 12 mm (0.47 inch) thickness is not accidental. According to Fosi Audio, the dimension was carefully chosen so that most headphone plugs will not lift the unit away from the back of the phone when connected. That detail is important because the MagSafe magnetic attachment relies on the MD3 sitting flush against the device.

I was also surprised to find hand stitched leather covering the rear panel. It is a small touch, but one that adds a bit of tactile refinement to an otherwise utilitarian product and likely costs Fosi Audio more than you would expect at this price point.

Moving to the front of the Fosi Audio MD3, you’re greeted by a 1.28 inch circular LCD display. It doesn’t get especially bright, but visibility is perfectly adequate in most lighting conditions and the colors are surprisingly vibrant for such a small screen.

The default volume display is particularly clever. It mimics the look of a classic VU meter, giving the interface a bit of retro flair while still presenting useful information such as gain level, sample rate, and the selected digital filter.

The screen can also do more than simply display playback data. Fosi has included a selection of images and preloaded animations, including a spinning vinyl record, a cartoon dog, and even an anime character. None of it is essential to the MD3’s function as a DAC/amp, but it adds a bit of personality to a category that is usually very utilitarian.

There are even a few built-in mini games, including dice rolling, spin the bottle, and rock paper scissors, which make use of the display. I didn’t spend much time with them, but someone out there will inevitably appreciate the novelty.

Just below the screen sits what Fosi calls the Vista button, which cycles through the available images and animations.

On the right side of the MD3 are three physical buttons. From top to bottom they handle volume up, volume down, and menu or confirm, with the volume buttons also doubling as navigation controls when scrolling through the menu.

Connectivity is straightforward. The top panel features a USB Type-C port for connection to your phone or source device. The bottom panel includes a second USB-C port, along with both 4.4 mm Pentaconn balanced and 3.5 mm single ended headphone outputs.

That’s really all there is to it. The MD3 is a refreshingly simple device to operate.

But features and design only get you so far. The real question is how it performs where it matters most: sound quality.

Listening & Headphone Synergy

To evaluate the sonic performance of the Fosi Audio MD3, I connected it to both my mobile phone and laptop, feeding it a mix of Spotify streams and hi res FLAC files.

On the output side, I rotated through a range of over-ear headphones to see how well the MD3 would pair with different designs and whether it could handle more demanding loads. Headphones including the HiFiMAN HE1000 Unveiled, Thieaudio Cypher, Sendy Audio Egret, and Beyerdynamic DT880 Edition 600 Ohm were plugged in to see how far the little DAC/amp could be pushed.

After a few months of listening, my overall impression of the MD3’s sound quality is fairly straightforward. It presents music with a neutral, largely coloration free tonal balance that walks a careful line between analytical clarity and musical engagement. Fosi Audio has managed to maintain good balance across the audible spectrum without tipping into the sterile or overly clinical presentation that sometimes plagues affordable DAC/amps.

Starting with the bass, the MD3 reaches deep into the sub bass without obvious roll off and delivers satisfying texture and dynamic impact. Electronic music and drum heavy tracks carry the right sense of weight and physicality, so you never feel like the low end is being shortchanged. A good example is the infamous sub bass swell around the three and a half minute mark in Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard’s “Why So Serious?”. Through the HiFiMAN HE1000 Unveiled, the MD3 reproduced that moment with convincing rumble and control.

The midrange maintains the same level of clarity and composure as the lower frequencies. Vocals and instruments come across with a natural timbre and a sense of intimacy when the recording calls for it. Listening to Sade’s “Smooth Operator,” the presentation placed her voice front and center with the kind of effortless smoothness that suits the track perfectly.

Up top, the treble extends cleanly with a healthy amount of sparkle, but without drifting into sharpness or glare that could lead to listening fatigue. “La Lune” by L’Impératrice sounded particularly engaging through the Thieaudio Cypher, with the delicate triangle strikes rendered clearly and with impressive nuance despite their relatively low level in the mix.

Overall, the MD3 paired well with most of the headphones in my collection, largely thanks to its neutral and balanced sound signature. In practice, that means any reasonably well tuned pair of headphones will likely perform well with the little Fosi.

There are limits, however. Extremely power hungry headphones such as the Modhouse Tungsten or HiFiMAN HE6se V2 are simply asking too much of a compact device like this. While the MD3 could push the HE6se V2 to my preferred listening level of around 65 dB, the bass became noticeably thin and some of the finer details were lost. Headphones with very high impedance or low sensitivity typically need several watts of power to perform at their best, which is well beyond the intended use case of a portable DAC/amp like the MD3.

The Bottom Line

The Fosi Audio MD3 takes a different approach in a category crowded with tiny USB dongle DACs. Instead of dangling from your phone with a short cable, the $149.99 MD3 magnetically attaches to the back of compatible iPhones, turning it into a compact all in one mobile audio upgrade. Combined with a capable ESS ES9039Q2M DAC, clean amplification, and a neutral, well balanced sound signature, the MD3 delivers a natural listening experience that pairs well with the vast majority of headphones.

It also stands out with thoughtful design touches such as an aluminium chassis, hand stitched leather backing, and a customizable circular display that adds some personality to what is usually a very utilitarian product category.

Where the MD3 faces pressure is on value and raw power. Competitors like the HiBy W4 offer more output power and Bluetooth connectivity for roughly $50 less, which may matter more to some listeners than magnetic convenience. And while the MD3 has more than enough power for most headphones and IEMs, it will struggle with extremely demanding models that require several watts to perform at their best.

For iPhone users who want a cleaner, cable free portable setup, the MD3 solves a problem that few dongle DACs even attempt to address. If MagSafe integration and tidy pocket ergonomics matter to you, the MD3 is a clever and enjoyable mobile audio companion. If raw power and features are the priority, there are stronger values elsewhere.

Pros:

• MagSafe compatible design attaches directly to the back of newer iPhones
• Aluminium chassis with hand stitched leather gives it a premium feel
• Interactive circular LCD display with customizable visuals and animations
• Neutral yet musical sound signature that works well with most headphones
• Enough power for the vast majority of IEMs and portable headphones

Cons:

• $149.99 price feels slightly high compared to competing dongle DACs
• Less output power and fewer features than some cheaper rivals like the HiBy W4
• Not suitable for extremely power hungry headphones like HE6 class designs

For more information: fosiaudio.com

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When Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang took the stage for his annual GTC keynote on Monday, the $4-trillion-dollar company’s stock started to drop.

Wall Street investors, it seems, were unmoved by the leather jacket-clad founder’s bullish 2.5-hour speech. Instead, they placed more weight on AI’s uncertain future and fears of a bubble. The nervousness felt by Wall Street couldn’t be more different than the buzzy atmosphere in Silicon Valley, where confidence, not uncertainty abounds.

Huang talked for more than two hours about the company’s latest innovations, from new video game graphics tech and updated networking infrastructure to autonomous vehicle deals and a new chip designed with Groq to accelerate AI inference in the Vera Rubin system. He also threw out some eye-watering numbers about Nvidia’s business and beyond. Huang called the AI agent ecosystem a $35 trillion market and the physical AI and robotics industry a $50 trillion market.

Huang also said he expects to see $1 trillion worth of purchase orders for the company’s Blackwell and Vera Rubin chips — just two of Nvidia’s many products — by the end of 2027.

Shouldn’t that make investors excited? It’s not surprising that they aren’t, Futurum CEO Daniel Neuman told TechCrunch.

A great new uncertainty

“[AI] is so good, so transformational, and moving so fast that we don’t actually understand what it’s going to mean for all the things that are the societal constructs that we’ve come to understand,” Neuman said. “The markets hate uncertainty. The speed of innovation has actually created a great new uncertainty that I think most people never expected.”

Some of that uncertainty comes from misleading information coming out of the market, Neuman said, who added that headlines about low enterprise adoption of AI aren’t painting the full picture — at least, based on conversations he’s having.

“Enterprise AI adoption is going to hit inflection and scale very quickly,” Neuman said. “I actually think it’s happening. When you say it’s not, I think what you’re probably saying is the [return on investment] and the receipts are still a little bit undefined and companies are citing the surveys and the reports that are largely six-month-old data. It just takes months to aggregate data.”

This sentiment holds weight when you look at Nvidia’s numbers from past quarters. While companies may not be touting their AI ROI, they are increasingly purchasing Nvidia’s tech. The company continues to not only beat its lofty goals and quarterly estimates, but soar past them. Nvidia’s revenue was up 73% year-over-year last quarter.

There is no sign that will change any time soon either. For example, just this week Nvidia confirmed Amazon made a plan to purchase 1 million GPUs, alongside other AI infrastructure, by the end of 2027 for Amazon Web Services (AWS), according to reporting from Reuters.

Kevin Cook, a senior equity strategist at Zacks Investment Research, agreed with Neuman and joked to TechCrunch that investors not being happy doesn’t change the fact that the whole stock market is propped up by Nvidia, because its tech runs the rails for many of these businesses.

“The economy is sort of orbiting around Nvidia,” Cook said. “It’s building this necessary infrastructure. All these different companies in hardware and software and physical AI — even Caterpillar is now physical AI — that are building off of these platforms.”

None of this means there isn’t currently an AI bubble or couldn’t be one in the future. But while GTC may not have been a boon for Nvidia’s stock, the broader uncertainty doesn’t seem to be Nvidia’s problem. The company is clearly barreling full steam ahead, bringing seemingly the entire global economy right alongside it.

“Nvidia, as you know, is a platform company,” Huang said in his GTC keynote. “We have technology. We have our platforms. We have a rich ecosystem, and today there are probably 100% of the $100 trillion dollars of industry here.

Welcome to our latest roundup of what’s going on in the indie game space. There are a whole bunch of neat new games out this week, as well as updates on some interesting upcoming projects.

In case you missed it, the Steam Spring Sale is under way. There are lots of solid deals here, and my credit card is already screaming at me. I’ve picked up a bunch of games from my wishlist. For instance, at just $3, I couldn’t resist snagging Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate.

Meanwhile, over on Bluesky, a prototype from developer Freya Holmér caught my eye. It’s for a falling-block game, but instead of filling a container to create straight lines that disappear, it’s based around a pivot point. As tetrominos join the mass, it rotates left or right by 90 degrees, adding a new dimension to a well-established format. I’m really hoping Holmér turns this into a full game, as it’s a rad concept.

New releases

Given all the bug slaughtering and the jingoistic satire, any Starship Troopers project is going to draw comparisons with Helldivers 2. Fortunately, Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War! is entirely its own thing.

This is a retro first-person shooter from Auroch Digital (the studio behind Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun) and publisher Dotemu. The framing of the game is quite meta: it’s based on the experiences of Major Samantha Dietz, who was on the frontlines against the bugs, and it’s effectively being used as a military recruitment tool.

Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War! is a blast. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it. Not that I needed one, but it gave me an excuse to watch Paul Verhoeven’s original film again since the game (while having an original story) hits some of the same beats.

The tone is spot on. The writing in the cutscenes, in which Casper Van Dien reprises his role as Johnny Rico from the movies, is funny. You can’t tell me that it isn’t a thrill to blow up a giant bug with a tactical nuke. Plus, I was tickled by the consequences of “accidentally” shooting a fellow soldier in the training base and all hell breaking loose.

Alas, the pacing feels off — there’s a bit too much space between objectives in some levels — and it’s a little one-note. Still, it only takes around four or five hours to beat, particularly if you don’t care about hunting for secrets.

Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War! is out now on Steam, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch 2. It’ll usually cost $25, but there’s a 20 percent discount until March 24.

Retro Rewind is a solid name for a video store rental sim. You’ll manage a store in the early ’90s — the heyday of VHS — by doing everything from decorating the place, filling shelves with tapes and buying bootleg films to hiring staff, making recommendations to customers and collecting late fees.

My first job was behind the counter of a convenience store that had a small movie rental section, so I’ve got a tiny bit of experience with calling up customers who have overdue films. That part of the job wasn’t exactly fun, but like the idea of running an entire rental store, an experience that’s sadly almost extinct.

Retro Rewind – Video Store Simulator is available on Steam (normally $20, with a 20 percent discount until March 24). You can try it out by playing a demo.

In Their Shoes looks like an intriguing spin on the visual novel. From We Are Muesli, this is billed as a mumblecore narrative vein, indicating that it’s influenced by films from that subgenre (such as the works of the Duplass brothers, Lynn Shelton and, especially in the early part of her career, Greta Gerwig). Through a few dozen interactive scenes, it follows the intertwined lives and intimate moments of seven people in Milan. Each of these dialogue-focused segments lasts around five minutes. There are timed choices and you can arrange the scenes into a timeline.

You can pick up In Their Shoes on Steam now. The full price is $13, but there’s a 25 percent discount until March 31.

For this week’s dog game, here is World’s Goodest Pup. It’s another pooch-based roguelike deckbuilder. This time around, you’ll be trying to succeed in the realm of competitive dog shows. After selecting a dog from among three breeds, you’ll start building a deck of accessories, tricks and poses and combine them in strategic ways to be most effective in competitions and challenges, which are procedurally generated.

This is a cozy game first and foremost, though. You can spoil puppers in a pet resort that you’ll build and treat them with a visit to a dog spa. Cute.

World’s Goodest Pup  — from Pandamander — is out on Steam (normally $7, with 10 percent off until March 26). You can try it out via a demo.

The release trailer for Bonnie Bear Saves Frogtime made me chuckle, so I had to include it. The latest project from Bonte Avond (the team behind Once Upon A Jester) is a comedy adventure game.

As Bonnie Bear, a bear in a frog onesie, you set out to defeat a local bully in a tactical frog-battling game called Frogtime. As with many real-life trading card games, you’ll buy and collect frogs to build a strong army. Most importantly, it seems to be a game about the power of community, friendship and self-worth.

Bonnie Bear Saves Frogtime is out now on Steam and Nintendo Switch for $17.

Upcoming

Gunbrella studio Doinksoft is back with another game that has a fantastic name. It’s a roguelite, side-scrolling action platformer with shoot-em’-up elements. And it’s called Dark Scrolls. It’s such a good title that I’m almost mad I didn’t think of it first.

There’ll be nine heroes to choose from, including a pup named Biscuit and a rat with a saxophone. The game features procedurally generated runs with branching paths, and there’s multiplayer support for two-player online co-op. I’m into the Master System-era art style and the utter chaos shown in the trailer.

The Devolver Digital-published Dark Scrolls (still not over that name) is coming to Steam and Switch later this year.

If you think about it, Scrabble is already a roguelike strategy game. Beyond Words takes that a bit further, with tiles that shift and explode, and boards that change up the rules. Much like in Balatro, you’ll be modifying, destroying and duplicating tiles as you seek powerful synergies and massive score multipliers. There are more than 300 modifiers and abilities, along with boss battles and optional time-based challenge boards.

What makes Beyond Words particularly interesting is that it’s from Steve Ellis and Dr David Doak — who made their names at Rare and Free Radical Design with the likes of GoldenEye 007, Perfect Dark and TimeSplitters — and their small team at MindFuel Games. PQube is the publisher of Beyond Words, which will hit Steam, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch on April 9. A demo is available on Steam now.

We’ve learned about a bunch of upcoming music rhythm games lately, and here’s another one from Guitar Hero, Rock Band and DJ Hero veterans. Echo Foundry Interactive seems to be hoping that the community-driven focus will help Sound System stand out.

When it goes into early access on Steam (October 16, $25), Sound System will have local multiplayer support. Echo Foundry Interactive plans to add online multiplayer with co-op and competitive modes. Players will be able to create charts for any song they like too.

We’ve had a dog game (or two) and a frog game. Now it’s time to wrap things up with a cat game. In Cat Me If You Can — great title, again — the Earth has frozen and lost its color. Only cats remain. By time-travelling and taking photos of them, you’ll gradually restore color to the world.

It’s a hidden cat puzzle game from Cosmic Stag Games that’s coming to PC, Switch and Xbox in the summer. You’ll be able to check out a demo on Steam on April 8.