Game announcements have settled into a tired, cynically hype-generating routine. First you have your logo on a black background, then after months of nothing you have a 20-second teaser trailer, followed by a preview that contains roughly three nuggets of new information. Could we not replace all that with an alpaca puppet banging his head on a keyboard? Yes, says the man in his dressing gown writing PC Gamer's news posts, although it took Microsoft Studios' streaming team to make this brave new world a reality.

Partway through a stream of Age of Empires II: HD Edition yesterday, a puppet named Alfred (and his handler) appeared on the screen. After whacking his head on a keyboard a few times, the above image then appeared, revealing an Age of Mythology: Extended Edition, yes, with a Steam logo plastered over the top. One of the devs of AoE2 HD later confirmed the news on Reddit .

Do we know anything more than the game's existence at this point? Nope, but the presence of the word 'extended' suggests that Ensemble Studios' mythological strategy game will be receiving some additional content, unlike the merely spruced up Age of Empires II HD that hit Steam at around this time last year. In the short term, the team at Hidden Path are busy finishing up a new free campaign for AoEII expansion The Forgotten, which is set to arrive sometime in the next week.

Ta, Snowskeeper Ferenczy and PCGamesN .