Hello reader who is also a reader! It’s finally time for another edition of our thrillingly erratic column on game developers and their bestest books. This week, we’re having our ears bent by Marcia Shange, chief operating officer of South Africa, Johannesburg-based developers Nyamakop, creators of puzzle platformer Semblance and the forthcoming postcolonial heist ’em up Relooted. Cheers, Marcia! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?
Expect the following adjustments.
During Nintendo’s Partner Showcase this week, Square Enix announced its new HD-2D RPG title The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales would be coming to Switch 2 this June.
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Here’s what the critics think.
Nintendo is launching its Virtual Boy- Nintendo Classics digital library for the Switch Online + Expansion Pack service later this month, and the previews are now in.
First up are our own impressions from Nintendo Life staff writer Ollie Reynolds:
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For all of their faults (the list may be endless), the interesting thing about live service games, when done well anyway, is the way they can change from day to day. There’s an actual living quality to them that, even if I’ll always prefer them, a singleplayer game can’t capture as well. One such game that can change quite drastically is Arc Raiders, with its varying map conditions and events, swapping in and out at the whims of its developers. This rotation isn’t something universally loved, but CEO Patrick Söderlund has said that they’re here to stay.
Last month, Ubisoft pretty unceremoniously cancelled a bunch of games, the most notable of the bunch being that long gestating Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake. This came as part of a major restructuring at the company, putting up to 200 jobs at their Paris HQ at risk, ultimately leading to a call for an international strike, and the firing of one Assassin’s Creed designer. It’s all a concerning mess, and now the creator of Prince of Persia and lead designer on the original Sands of Time Jordan Mechner has shared his sympathy to devs affected by the remake’s cancellation.
In a few months time we’ll be approaching the anniversary of Square Enix realising that actually, their commitment to releasing certain games only on particular platforms isn’t that good for them after all. These following two years will supposedly have been a time of internal change for the studio, with that translated externally via the Final Fantasy 7 Remake games releasing on more than just PlayStation. Perhaps they’re finally making smart choices! And then last year, instead of finally showing off something like, I don’t know, Kingdom Hearts 4, which was first revealed four years ago now, they announced Killer Inn. Okay! And now, you can try it out for yourself.
Magic: The Gathering is continuing where it left off in 2025, rolling out a whopping four crossover sets under its Universes Beyond branding in 2026: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Marvel Super Heroes, The Hobbit, and Star Trek.
That’s quite the mix, but at a time when fans are crying out for some consistency and continuity, Wizards of the Coast is about to make the same mistake it made with last year’s marketing cycle.
In short, it feels like it can’t wait to get Secrets of Strixhaven out of the way, forgetting why many people play Magic in the first place.
There’s a running joke that Magic crossovers are the worst thing about the game until it’s a franchise you love, and as a longtime fan of Peter Parker’s adventures, I admit I bought into the Spider-Man hype last year.
It was easy to do, too, since Wizards started revealing cards and products super early, trampling over the Edge of Eternities set in the process. The rest, as they say, is history: Spider-Man was inarguably Magic’s most disappointing set of at least the last year (maybe longer), and Edge of Eternities was much more well-received but invariably didn’t get its chance in the limelight.
While I was hoping that Wizards would take some lessons from it, we’re now entering a 2026 roadmap with seven full sets planned. Lorwyn Eclipsed is great, and only just launched, but that’s January’s set. Preorders are now live for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Secrets of Strixhaven, and even Marvel Super Heroes.
That last set, by the way, is around five months from launch. While I appreciate that a company needs a line on a graph to go up to show success by bringing in new players, it’s starting to feel like Wizards of the Coast is trampling on Magic’s own legacy in its desperation to talk about crossover sets.
Lorwyn Eclipsed should be a celebration, a chance to return to a beloved Plane full of classic creature types, and instead, we’re getting close to the Turtles landing on store shelves. Looking past Strixhaven to a Marvel crossover, this early (and with the taste of the Spider-Man set still lingering), is just a bad look.
Please, Wizards – don’t let Secrets of Strixhaven suffer the same way Edge of Eternities is. It’s almost unavoidable with such a packed release calendar, but if you can’t pay enough time to your own universes, the ones that have captivated players for over three decades, does that not tell you a change is required?
Honestly, all of this is moot anyway – I’m part of the problem. I’ve pre-ordered some Marvel Superheroes products, and you can bet your Bilbo Baggins that I’ll be first in line for The Hobbit.
For more on Magic’s current set, Lorwyn Eclipsed, be sure to check out our list of the best chase cards in the set right now, as well as a look at all eight creature types in the new set.
Lloyd Coombes is an experienced freelancer in tech, gaming and fitness seen at Polygon, Eurogamer, Macworld, TechRadar and many more. He’s a big fan of Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games, much to his wife’s dismay.
Switch 2 demo arrives on 9th February.
We’re fans of the final frontier around these parts, so when our combadges chirruped with news of a Star Trek game for Nintendo’s newest console, our anticipation grew like a clutch of tribbles in a grain silo.
As you’ll have gathered from the title, Star Trek: Voyager – Across the Universe is set in the TNG-DS9-VOY era and sees you charged with Captain Janeway’s mission of getting her crew home safely after being thrown across the other side of the galaxy by an alien force.
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You know, you’d think that with decades worth of RPGs in existence, side quests would have been more or less figured out by now. And yet, there are still enough games releasing that seem more interested in going for quantity over quality. But for the devs over at Archetype Entertainment, the goal is to make the side quests in their upcoming sci-fi jaunt Exodus not feel just “tacked on.”
My Menace campaign hasn’t been a rousing success. In my first mission, I failed a string of optional objectives and saw one of my squads gunned down by a group of heavily-armed, jetpack-wearing space pirates. I got revenge by running them over with an APC. So, we’ll call it a draw. But I need to up my game if I’m to kick these freeloading bandits off the planet Backbone.
