The Bitzee virtual pet line is expanding to bring some familiar characters into the family, plus some all new ones. Spin Master, which introduced Bitzee to the US last summer, is now gearing up to release two new versions of the device later this year: Bitzee Disney and Bitzee Magicals. The former will feature 30 characters from the Disney/Pixar universe, including Stitch, Olaf, Nemo and Dory, Remy, Mike Wazowski and Sully, and Heihei. 

Unlike most digital pet toys, Bitzee doesn’t have a screen. Instead, it functions almost like a pettable hologram in a box, with movement-based controls and a flapping flexible display that allows the player to physically interact with the character. You can run your finger along the top of the display to pet the creature that’s being projected, for example, or rock the little box from side to side to put it to bed. There's also a small swipe bar that serves as a way to navigate the menu of activities. 

On top of mini-games and caretaking tasks, there will be a replayable animation representing a memorable movie moment for each of the characters featured in Bitzee Disney. (Dory from Finding Nemo greets you by speaking whale.) Bitzee Magicals, on the other hand, will introduce entirely new characters, including some adorable cryptid-inspired creatures like a Yeti, Nessie and two versions of a Jackalope. Bitzee Magicals also mixes things up a bit with the addition of a magic wand feature that might, say, temporarily turn your pet into a duck on a skateboard. It’s pretty cute. You’ll also be able to change your pets’ colors by collecting potions.

Spin Master

Bitzee is a pretty low-stakes virtual pet game; if you forget about your pets for a while or just don’t do a great job of taking care of them, they’re not going to die on you. This makes them particularly good for kids who might not be ready yet for a virtual pet as demanding as a Tamagotchi, but also for adults who just like to have something on their desk that they can fidget with here and there. Just close the box, and the pet will go into sleep mode. 

Bitzee Disney is available to pre-order for $35 on Amazon today, while pre-orders for Bitzee Magicals ($30) will open on July 1. Both are slated to ship in the fall.

Sometimes it’s the simplest games that end up leaving you all teary-eyed and emotional.

When I first downloaded Cool Lemon Club’s The Keyper for Playdate, I didn’t have much in the way of expectations beyond a general sense that it should be pretty good, since lots of people online seemed to be recommending it. The adventure game, which is available on itch.io and the official Playdate Catalog, sees the player searching for the many different keys needed to unlock areas of the mysterious Winchester 21 building after taking over the role of caretaker. The person who formerly held the job is gone, leaving only some cryptic notes behind, and the residents are varying degrees of weird.

On its face, it seems like a pretty standard game of puzzle solving and exploration. It’s effectively frustrating throughout, as you repeatedly retrace your steps trying to navigate the Winchester 21’s several floors and labyrinthine tunnel system to find the keys and the doors they unlock. But as the plot unfolds and you uncover more of the building’s secrets, The Keyper reveals itself to be a game with a lot of heart.

Its charm lies in the strange interactions between you and the people who live in the apartments (and tunnels… and walls) of the Winchester 21. They each have their own little storylines, some of which present new mysteries and side-quests for you to take on. One of these in particular really tugged at my heartstrings, but I wouldn’t dare spoil it for you here.

The Keyper is a little dark, a little funny and just the right amount of challenging. While it does offer the option to save your progress so you can walk away from it and come back later, I’d recommend setting aside a few hours and just playing this through in one shot for the most impact. By the time you reach the end and finally figure out what’s been going on all along, the entire tone of the game has shifted into something a lot more heartwarming than it all first appears. I may even have cried a little during the final scene. 

After yesterday’s launch of the first crewed Starliner mission was scrubbed, NASA, Boeing and ULA made the decision to wait a few days before making another attempt. Starliner was scheduled to finally lift off on Saturday afternoon after a series of delays, but this attempt was aborted due to a last-minute issue with a ground computer system that plays a key role in launching the rocket. While NASA and partners discussed possibly flying today following their assessment of the issue, they’ve decided to hold off until the next opportunities, either on June 5 or 6.

Saturday’s launch wasn’t scrubbed due to a problem with the Starliner craft itself, but because an automatic hold was issued by the ground launch sequencer for a then-unknown reason. In a press conference later on Saturday, Tory Bruno, president and CEO of ULA explained that it came down to a problem in verifying the launch sequencer’s redundancy. There are three large computers in this system, all of which are the same so it’s “triple redundant,” Bruno said. During the system health check in the minutes before launch, one of the computers came up slow, triggering an automatic hold.

NASA said the decision to forgo today’s launch attempt was made in order to “give the team additional time to assess a ground support equipment issue.” The launch window opens again on June 5, but no target liftoff time has been announced just yet. If Starliner doesn’t fly by June 6, it’ll be set back by at least another 10 days, ArsTechnica reports, as the ULA team will need to swap out the Atlas V rocket’s batteries.

The newest Apple Watch is down to one of the best prices we’ve seen it go for yet, so if you’ve been thinking about upgrading, now would be the perfect time to do so. The 41mm Apple Watch Series 9 (GPS only) is $100 off on Amazon, bringing the price down to $299. There’s also a deal on the larger version (45mm), which is down to $360 from its usual price of $430. The full discounts apply to Series 9 in Midnight and Starlight, but there are varying deals on the other colors as well.

The Series 9 Apple Watch is the best Apple Watch you can get today, and our favorite smartwatch in general. It comes with some new features made possible by the S9 system-in-package (SiP) processor. With this model, Apple introduced the Double Tap gesture that allows you to carry out certain actions on the watch without touching the screen, like pausing your music. It also has on-device Siri and an improved version of “Raise to Speak” to more easily activate the assistant.

As with the other Apple Watch models, the Series 9 is water resistant and great for fitness and health tracking, though it currently doesn’t offer the blood oxygen monitoring feature that was initially touted, thanks to a patent dispute. It has an always on display with a peak brightness rating double that of the previous model, and twice the internal storage capacity.

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You can get Apple’s third-generation AirPods for under $150 right now. In a deal on Amazon, the AirPods are back down to their record-low price of $140, a 17 percent discount. This model normally costs $170. The third-generation AirPods were released in 2021 and brought some big improvements over the previous version, with a more compact and comfortable design, and much better sound quality.

The third-generation AirPods earned a score of 88 in our review and marked a notable upgrade over their predecessors in the line of regular AirPods. They feature a shorter stem and more angled earbud placement that’s meant to give the sound a more direct path into your ear, on top of fitting more comfortably. They also brought an IPX4 rating to the regular AirPods, making the earbuds and the charging case sweat and water resistant.

This model is powered by Apple’s H1 chip, which allows for features like always-on Siri and one-touch fast pairing. The chip also enables some more advanced features in the sound department like Adaptive EQ, spatial audio and dynamic head tracking. Audio quality got a big boost in the third-generation AirPods. Engadget’s Billy Steele found that “the sound is bigger and more immersive” than with the earlier AirPods, which by comparison offer sound that seems “compressed and downright boring.”

The third-generation AirPods have pretty good battery life too, lasting about six hours on their own and up to 30 with the charging case. They also support quick charging with the case, which allows for about an hour of additional use after just five minutes in the case.

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Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft is coming to Netflix on October 10. Netflix announced the release date today along with a new trailer, which finally gives us a slightly more in-depth look at what the series will be like. It picks up after the events of the Survivor Trilogy, which focused on a younger Lara Croft. Per Netflix’s Tudum, it will see Lara “forced to confront her true self and decide just what kind of hero she wants to become,” as she chases down a “dangerous and powerful” stolen artifact.

Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft was first announced back in 2021 and is being produced by Legendary Television and Powerhouse Animation, the studio behind the Castlevania anime. It’s executive produced and written by Tasha Huo, known for The Witcher: Blood Origin. Lara Croft is voiced by Hayley Atwell (Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning). The Legend of Lara Croft is not to be confused with the other Tomb Raider series currently in development for Prime Video, which has Fleabag creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge on board as writer and executive producer.

Godzilla Minus One is now available to stream on Netflix, and the black-and-white version will soon follow. The streaming giant announced the surprise release today, coinciding with the film’s arrival for digital purchase and rental on VOD platforms including Prime Video and Apple TV, where both the color and “Minus Color” versions are available. On Netflix, Godzilla Minus One can be watched with subtitles or dubbed.

For anyone who didn’t get a chance to catch the black-and-white Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color when it briefly ran in theaters earlier this year, distributor Toho International said it’s coming to Netflix later this summer. Anyone else’s plans for a summer Godzilla marathon just get even better?

Godzilla Minus One, which is set in post-World War II Japan, quickly gained a lot of passionate fans when it was released in December 2023, becoming one of those movies that had people running back to theaters to see it again — and again, once the Minus Color version dropped. It received critical acclaim, and went on to win the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects at the 2024 Oscars. 

The first crewed launch of Boeing’s Starliner capsule has once again been called off, this time after an automatic hold was issued by the rocket’s ground launch sequencer less than four minutes before liftoff. As a launch commentator explained during NASA’s livestream, the ground launch sequencer is the computer that takes over the terminal count and ultimately launches the rocket. “The reason for that hold is not known at this time,” the launch commentator said. Starliner’s next chance to fly is tomorrow at 12:03PM ET, but whether it does will depend on the outcome of the team’s investigation into today’s issue.

In a brief update, NASA said the launch was scrubbed “due to the computer ground launch sequencer not loading into the correct operational configuration after proceeding into terminal count.” Why this happened, though, remains unclear. “The ULA team is working to understand the cause,” NASA said.

Japan’s hit virtual pet, Punirunes, will be released in the US this summer and I can almost guarantee most of you have never seen a toy quite like this before. A play on the Japanese mimetic word for “squishy” (punipuni), Punirunes has a design quirk that sets it apart from other gadgets of its ilk: a doughy button at the center of the device that serves to simulate physical contact with your pet. How do you get to that button? By sticking your finger into the quarter-sized hole in the side of the plastic shell.

It is undeniably a little weird. The device will even display an animation of your finger on the screen when you do this (you can choose from a variety of skin colors during setup). But once you get past the strangeness of the aforementioned act and really get into the things it allows you to do, Punirunes’ oddest feature actually makes for a pretty rich virtual pet experience. The squishy button feels like a joystick wrapped in mochi, which makes sense because the characters themselves are adorable, gummy-like creatures that start their lives as small blobs. You can pat them on the head to show them affection and bounce them to catch items; you can even drag them around to clean the virtual floor using their sticky bodies as a mop.

Spin Master/Takara Tomy

The device has a full-color, LCD display and the potential to raise 55 different characters. There are 6 built-in games, each of which make use of the squish mechanism, plus a food cooking activity in which you have to mix the ingredients yourself. To play the mini-games or visit the other locations — including the marketplace and the forest — you have to bounce your character through a window portal Super Mario 64-style. You can also accessorize your pet and change up the decor in its room. I've been playing around with Punirunes for a few days now, and I've got to say, I'm having a lot of fun with it. The characters are so cute it hurts. 

Spin Master/Takara Tomy

Anyone who follows the digital pet space closely has probably come across Punirunes at some point. The toys were first released in Asian markets from Takara Tomy in 2021 and have since grown to include multiple generations of the devices. They even inspired an anime series, which was released in the fall of 2022. I myself have had my eye on Punirunes for some time, but was hesitant to purchase the Japanese-language version because the gameplay seemed a bit more complex than something like a Tamagotchi.

Their expansion to the US comes through a partnership with Spin Master, the company behind Paw Patrol, Hatchimals and a slew of other popular kids’ brands. Punirunes will make its US debut in August and be available in the teal shell from all major retailers for $40.

Over the past few years, I’ve developed a peaceful little routine to make up for time spent cooped up inside working on sunny days: after I’ve closed my laptop for the day, I throw my sneakers on, open Pikmin Bloom on my phone, and go for a long walk to clear my head and plant virtual flowers with the 'min.

Pikmin Bloom was released for Android and iOS in 2021 by Pokémon Go developer Niantic and Nintendo as another “go outside and touch grass” app, and I’ve been playing it pretty regularly since then. Only recently, when the app announced some special events for its 2.5-year anniversary, did it occur to me how long I’ve actually stuck with it. There isn’t all that much to Pikmin Bloom, but that’s part of the charm — it’s more of a walking buddy than a full-on game. You accumulate Pikmin, feed them nectar so they’ll grow flowers from their heads, then pick the petals and use those to “plant flowers” when you go on walks (don’t think too hard about the science of that, it’s Pikmin).

Unlike Pokémon Go, Pikmin Bloom doesn’t require a lot of your attention while you’re walking around, which really appealed to me as someone who likes to stay fully aware of their surroundings while out and about. That, and the promise of being accompanied wherever I go by a horde of quietly singing Pikmin; I just love those weird little guys.

I typically get everything set up before I leave for a walk, making sure I have plenty of petals ready to plant. Then I hit the ‘Start’ button and mostly leave the app alone until I take a break or am done with my walk, checking in only here and there to see if I’ve passed anything of interest. You can send your Pikmin on expeditions to pick up fruit or destroy mushrooms that’ll pop up on your map, but you don’t need to be actively walking to do this, as they’ll be recorded on a list you can revisit later. Once I’m back home, I love seeing how many flowers I planted versus how many steps I took (I still haven’t figured out the ratio), and delegating different missions for my Pikmin to tackle.

There are frequent events that serve as motivation for reaching certain step count goals or planting a particular number of flowers, including some with community involvement. And, there's the prospect of collecting themed Pikmin who wear special decor outfits. Pikmin Bloom is currently teasing some upcoming Cheese Decor Pikmin for next month, and I’m going to work extra hard to try and get them. While the app does have the potential to lure players into in-app purchases, they’re by no means necessary to get the full experience. I’ve managed to make it this far without spending any money at all.

Pikmin Bloom has an AR component similar to Pokémon Go’s, so you can photograph your Pikmin in the real world, but this feature can be pretty glitchy. What’s better than that, in my opinion, are the postcards your Pikmin will sometimes bring back from their travels — they’ve been known to photobomb landmarks in these pictures on occasion. If you have friends in the app, you can send postcards to them too. Pikmin Bloom also has a built-in lifelog, where you can choose a picture from your walk and jot down any notes and feelings from your day. It’s a nice thing to look back on once you’ve racked up a lot of adventures.

I’ve tried out plenty of apps over the years that attempt to gamify physical activity, but I almost always lose interest in them pretty quickly. For all its simplicity, Pikmin Bloom adds just the right amount of reward to a walk without distracting from the actual activity. Plus, there are Pikmin.