After many years of waiting, fans of the Inazuma Eleven series were beginning to question if Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road would ever see the light of day. Fortunately, Level-5 dug deep and was able to finally release the title on the Switch and Switch 2 in November last year.
It’s already getting some updates (with more to come), but that’s not all – with the Level-5 president and CEO Akihiro Hino mentioning how he’s already started writing the scenario for a “sequel” to Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road. Yep, you read that correctly! We’ve even got a little detail about it.
A week after we heard about Ubisoft’s closure of its mobile game-focused studio Ubisoft Halifax, news has now surfaced about the third-party publisher laying off people at two other teams as part of ongoing cost-cutting measures.
According to a report from IGN, Ubisoft “expects 55 jobs” to be impacted at the Swedish Studios Massive Entertainment and Ubisoft Stockholm following a voluntary leave program in fall 2025 that apparently fell short of its target.
Following the surprise release of Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition for the Switch and Switch 2 last November, Aspyr said it would continue to update the Nintendo versions with patches over time to provide the “best possible experience for all players”.
From the Po Valley to the Deep: Building Italian Horror with Loan Shark
Scott Millard, Dark Product CEO/ Publisher
Summary
Horror driven by obligation, time pressure, and the quiet weight of an impossible debt.
Drawing on Northern Italian storytelling traditions.
Step inside a single night where every choice feels costly and every delay carries meaning.
Horror doesn’talways come from monsters.
Sometimes it comes from obligation. From silence. From a debt that cannot be repaid.
When the team at Studio Ortica, based in Turin, Italy, began working on Loan Shark, they weren’t interested in building a traditional horror experience filled with combat encounters or overt shocks. Instead, they wanted to explore something more familiar, more uncomfortable, and deeply rooted in lived experience: the quiet dread of owing something you can never truly give back.
That idea, debt as horror, is not abstract in Northern Italy. It is cultural.
A Different Kind of Italian Horror
Turin is a city shaped by restraint. Long winters. Industrial history. Catholic architecture that towers over daily life without spectacle. Unlike the sun-washed imagery often associated with Italy, this is a place where stories tend to unfold inward, where consequences matter more than spectacle, and where morality is often framed as an unavoidable reckoning rather than a heroic choice.
These influences run quietly through Loan Shark.
Italian storytelling tradition, from post-war literature to regional folklore, often avoid clear heroes and villains. Instead, they focus on inevitability. On characters trapped by circumstance. On moral decisions that are technically “choices,” but never feel free.
Loan Shark adopts that sensibility fully.
You are not a warrior. You are not a saviour. You are a person who made a bad deal and now has to live inside it.
The Weight of Obligation
At the heart of Loan Shark is a simple premise: a single night, a single boat, and a debt that cannot be delayed.
Rather than treating debt as just number on a screen, the game treats it as a presence. It shapes how you move. When you act. What you fear. The true weight comes from the atmosphere itself: from strained conversations and the constant awareness that time is slipping away whether you act or hesitate.
This approach mirrors how obligation is often depicted in Italian narrative traditions. Debt is rarely loud. It doesn’t announce itself. It waits.
In Loan Shark, fear doesn’t come from what is chasing you. It comes from what you already owe.
Catholic Guilt Without Preaching
Northern Italy’s Catholic heritage is not presented in Loan Shark through overt religious imagery or doctrine. Instead, it appears in something more subtle: moral consequence without absolution.
Many games offer binary morality systems. Good choices and bad ones, rewards and punishments. Loan Shark deliberately avoids this framing. The choices you make are rarely framed as ethical victories. They are compromises. Delays. Attempts to survive one more moment.
This reflects a worldview where guilt is not erased by good intentions, and where consequences arrive regardless of how well-meaning you believe yourself to be.
You are not asked to redeem yourself. You are asked to endure.
The Sea as Indifference, Not Romance
Although Loan Shark takes place on the water, the sea is not romanticised. It is not freedom. It is not escape.
In Italian storytelling, nature is often indifferent rather than hostile, unmoved by human struggle. The sea in Loan Shark behaves the same way. It does not attack you. It does not help you. It simply exists, absorbing sound, swallowing light, and reminding you how small your situation really is.
This indifference amplifies the horror. There is no villain monologue echoing across the waves. No dramatic storm to signal danger. Just the steady understanding that no one is coming.
Designing Fear Through Restraint
Studio Ortica’s small team of Nicola Dau, Luca Folino and Tremotino leaned heavily into restraint as a design philosophy. The game’s scale is intentionally narrow: one setting, one night, one unfolding spiral of consequence.
This wasn’t a limitation as much as it was a creative decision.
By reducing scope, the team was able to focus on tone, pacing, and psychological pressure. Every interaction matters. Every silence lingers. Every sound carries weight.
This design approach aligns naturally with console play, particularly on Xbox, where immersive audio, controlled pacing, and focused play sessions allow atmosphere to do the heavy lifting. Loan Shark is designed to be experienced deliberately with lights low, and attention fully engaged.
A Horror That Trusts the Player
Perhaps the most Italian aspect of Loan Shark is its refusal to explain itself too much.
The game trusts players to read between the lines. It trusts implication. It allows discomfort to exist without immediately resolving it. In a medium often driven by explicit feedback and constant reinforcement, this restraint feels almost radical.
But it is also deeply human.
Fear, after all, is rarely about what we see. It is about what we already understand and cannot avoid.
Bringing a Local Voice to a Global Audience
While Loan Shark is shaped by Northern Italian sensibilities, its themes are universal. Debt, obligation, desperation, and moral compromise are not bound by borders. They resonate precisely because they are familiar.
Studio Ortica’s achievement lies in refusing to sand down those cultural edges in pursuit of mass appeal. Instead, they leaned into specificity trusting that authenticity would travel.
On Xbox, Loan Sharkstands as an example of how small, focused games can deliver powerful emotional experiences without spectacle. It is horror built from atmosphere, storytelling, and uncomfortable truths rather than mechanical escalation.
And in doing so, it offers something increasingly rare: a quiet, unsettling experience that stays with you long after the screen goes dark.
Not because of what it shows you — but because of what it asks you to live with.
You’re an indebted angler, trapped in a vicious cycle of borrowing and desperation. One dark, endless night at sea you haul up something unnatural: a talking fish named Cagliuso. It promises you riches — but its bargains come with terrifying strings.
In LOAN SHARK, the nets you cast bring more than fish. They pull you toward sacrifice, secrets, and a deadline you may never meet. The “loan shark” isn’t just metaphoric — something is stalking the waters, your time is running out, and every deal you strike pushes you deeper into the unknown.
It’s been a banner launch day for Hytale, the new sandbox game from the creators of popular Minecraft server Hypixel. In addition to a surge of players and a lot of positive buzz, it’s shot up to become, briefly, the most popular game on Twitch, with over 420k viewers.
This was observed first by PC Gamer, who earlier today clocked that it was the most-watched game on Twitch and the second-most-watched category, only behind Just Chatting by about 43k views. At the time this piece was written, Hytale had dropped down to around 260k viewers, but is still the most-watched video game and the third-most-watched category. It’s now behind both Just Chatting and football (soccer, for the Americans) league Kings League. And it seems possible that it will surge further in the coming days.
It’s a heck of a comeback story for a game that, half a year ago, was thought to be canceled entirely. Hytale, made by the developers of wildly popular Minecraft server Hypixel, was first announced in 2018 with an incredibly popular trailer, and garnered plenty of buzz at the time. Riot Games took notice, invested, and in 2020 acquired it entirely. However, Hytale was delayed several times as its scope grew, and just this past year was canceled entirely by Riot. Then, in November, co-founder Simon Collins-Laflamme announced he had acquired the IP rights back from Riot, and in an incredibly fast turnaround, he and the team got the game ready for an early access release today.
At last! Those of you wondering just how much time you’ve lost to your Nintendo Switch 2 (and your Switch), you needn’t wait any longer. Nintendo’s Year In Review is out right now.
This now-annual tradition — which usually drops in December but was pushed back a month to January — is available for those in Europe and North America. Then, within a few seconds, you’ll have all of your gaming data from 2025 at your fingertips.
Humble’s new Decked Out Collection bundle features seven games that are great for Steam Deck users looking to add a little something new to their handheld’s library. If you have some trips planned for the months ahead, these are sure to keep you entertained on any long journeys.
The seven games in this bundle (which you can see in full below) have a total value of $129, but through the bundle you can get them all for as low as $12. That’s a sweet offer to jump on, though keep in mind it’s only live for 15 more days. If the selection has caught your eye, now is the time to grab it.
As mentioned before, paying as low as $12 will set you up with all of the games above. However, you can also pay just $5 for Vampire Survivors and Nidhogg 2, if you’re not looking to splash out on multiple games.
If you decide to pay a little more than the $12, your money is actually divided up between publishers, Humble, and a charity, which is American Cancer Society through this bundle. That’s a nice little bonus on top of the games, if you’re able to give a bit extra.
Outside of this bundle, there’s plenty more to check out right now on Humble Bundle. If you’re on the lookout for even more PC games to add to your library, January’s Humble Choice lineup is live. With a Humble Choice membership, which costs $14.99 per month, you can take advantage of this month’s selection which features a great variety of games, including Sonic Frontiers, Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered, and six other titles. What better way to keep busy over the winter months, right?
Hannah Hoolihan is a freelancer who writes with the guides and commerce teams here at IGN.
AI is absolutely bloomin’ everywhere these days; doubly so if you kept an eye on CES 2026 earlier this month. There’s no getting away from it, and folks are particularly keen to see what game developers think of the whole thing.
Josef Fares, founder of Hazelight Studios and director of both Split Fiction and It Takes Two, recently caught up with Chrisopher Dring at The Game Business. The subject of AI naturally cropped up, and while Fares is keen to highlight the technology’s advantages in game development, he doesn’t see it taking over completely anytime soon, and firmly believes that having someone with a “vision or idea” for a game is vital.
Star Wars Outlaws arrives on Game Pass Ultimate today, an open-world journey through the galaxy’s darker side.
Learn about the major quality-of-life updates, including changes to stealth, new combat additions, and more.
Expand Kay’s journey in two new paid DLC packs, available as part of the Star Wars Outlaws Gold Edition, Ultimate Edition, Season Pass or for purchase individually.
Explore the underbelly of the galaxy in Star Wars Outlaws, arriving with Game Pass Ultimate today.
Since launching in 2024, the game has seen a huge number of quality-of-life tweaks, including a major update to the game’s stealth mechanics, not to mention two story expansions that introduce new locations, activities, and even well-known characters from across the Star Wars universe. That all means that the version of Outlaws joining Game Pass is bigger and better than ever.
So, if you haven’t had the chance to see the story of Kay Vess, here’s a few reasons to head off on this interstellar bounty hunting adventure today.
Explore the Galaxy’s Dark Corners
Star Wars Outlaws explores the galaxy’s underworld, and takes us to several stunning locations both iconic and never-before-seen. Whether you’re soaring through the arid sands of Toshara on the back of your speeder or skulking through the moody, frozen streets of Kijimi hunting for leads, Outlaws deftly showcases a darker side of the Star Wars universe and its inhabitants, many of whom belong to the multiple major crime syndicates operating throughout the galaxy.
Kay Vess, a survivor and a scoundrel to boot, is attuned to these surroundings and instinctively primed to seek opportunity – walking slowly through settlements and loitering in bars will alert you to new opportunities and hidden treasures, immersing you entirely in its surroundings.
Your Outlaw, Your Way
As the first truly open-world Star Wars game, Outlaws offers the opportunity to roam these areas as you’d like. Exploration leads to rewards – Treasures dotted around each planet contain extremely useful items and collectibles, from valuable intel on shady characters, upgrades for Nix and useful Sabacc tricks, as well as other salvageable trinkets you’ll be able to sell for credits.
Kay can also learn new skills for various disciplines by seeking out experts around the galaxy, which allow you to further refine your playstyle. One expert provides valuable slicer skills for a stealthier approach, while other can grant Kay new shooting abilities, weapons, and speeder upgrades for those who prefer an explosive entrance and a dramatic getaway.
You’ll also be able to shape Kay’s journey too – by choosing which Syndicates and characters to favor, and who to betray in each moment throughout the story. Gaining favor with each party leads to different benefits, but there will be consequences to every choice. This freedom in who you trust, who you betray, and how you approach every situation makes for a truly customizable adventure in Outlaws.
Stealth And Combat Updates
Star Wars Outlaws has also seen a significant change to its stealth systems since launch, giving players much more freedom in their scoundrel pursuits. Previously, some sections of the game required stealth to complete successfully, but now, you have the choice to tackle those missions any way you’d like.
If you’d prefer to talk with your blaster rather than wiggle through the air vents issuing silent takedowns, that’s a viable option now. The enemy AI has also seen detection improvements, making it easier to see when you’re about to have your cover blown by an enemy, and offering more options to smoothly retain your stealth before needing to resort to full blown combat during a mission. You can now also use your Blaster while driving your Speeder, making it easier to defend yourself from pirates and other rogues out to ruin your day.
If you’re not a stealth fan but still want to get stuck into Outlaws’ deliciously destitute world, this is the update you needed.
Two New Story Packs
Star Wars Outlaws now has two additional paid Story Packs that expand Kay’s story and ties it to threads of the wider Star Wars universe. In Wild Card, Kay is hired to infiltrate a high-stakes Sabacc tournament, where she swiftly discovers that a whole other kind of game is being played in the background. This particular Sabacc game is strictly invite-only, so Kay must find a way to earn her entry and find out what’s going on. Aboard the casino cruiser Morenia, Kay encounters notorious pilot Lando Calrissian, who offers to help her gain an upper hand in Sabacc with his expert double draw technique.
The most recent Story Pack, A Pirate’s Fortune, takes Kay and Nix on a journey to seek out lost treasure in the Khepi system. The hunt for the legendary loot will take our intrepid explorers through numerous dangerous spots, where they’ll encounter the Rokana Raiders, a pirate gang also out to steal the treasure for themselves.
In A Pirate’s Fortune, Kay and Nix pair up with Hondo Ohnaka, a pirate and fellow scoundrel who you may recognize from ‘Star Wars: The Clone Wars’ and ‘Star Wars Rebels’. Ohnaka is down on his luck and without a crew or a ship, but his quick-wit and knowledge makes him a solid companion for Kay as they seek out lost treasure and take on rival pirate gangs together.
This DLC is designed to be enjoyed after completing Outlaws’ main campaign, so it’s a great place to hop back in, or an extra adventure to look forward to if you’re yet to jump in. Purchasing the Gold Edition, Ultimate Edition or Season Pass of Star Wars Outlaws will grant access to both packs, or Game Pass members can purchase each expansion individually.
If you’ve always wanted to see the darker, mysterious side of Star Wars through the lens of a scrappy survivor rather than a Jedi hero, Star Wars Outlaws has the goods. Hop in on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox on PC with Game Pass today.
Experience the first-ever open world Star Wars action-adventure game and explore distinct locations across the galaxy, both iconic and new. Risk it all as scoundrel Kay Vess, seeking freedom and the means to start a new life. Fight, steal, and outwit your way through the galaxy’s crime syndicates as you join the galaxy’s most wanted.
If you’re willing to take the risk, the galaxy is full of opportunity.
DISCOVER A GALAXY OF OPPORTUNITY
Explore distinct locations with bustling cities and cantinas. Race across sprawling outdoor landscapes on your speeder. Each location brings new adventures, unique challenges, and enticing rewards if you’re willing to take the risk.
EXPERIENCE AN ORIGINAL SCOUNDREL STORY
Live the high-stakes lifestyle of an outlaw. Turn any situation to your advantage with Nix by your side: fight with your blaster, overcome enemies with stealth and gadgets, or find the right moments to distract enemies and gain the upper hand.
EMBARK ON HIGH-STAKES MISSIONS
Take on high-risk, high-reward missions from the galaxy’s crime syndicates. Steal valuable goods, infiltrate secret locations, and outwit enemies as one of the galaxy’s most wanted. Every choice you make influences your ever-changing reputation.
JUMP INTO THE PILOT SEAT
Pilot your ship, the Trailblazer, as you engage in thrilling dogfights with the Empire and other foes. Find the right opportunities to chase, evade, and attack to get the upper hand.
Offer, content, and dates subject to change.
Internet connection, Ubisoft account, Microsoft Account and Game Pass Ultimate or Core (subscriptions sold separately) required to access online multiplayer/features.
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War has been in hibernation since 2017, and its most recent installment was far from universally well-received. So when King Art Games was handed the task of bringing it back, there were a lot of tricky decisions to navigate and an eager but picky fanbase to face. We recently got to chat with Creative Director Jan Theysen and Senior Game Designer Elliott Verbiest about how the team is calling the shots. (Read on or watch the video interview below.)
It was King Art’s previous game, Iron Harvest, that seemed to catch the attention of someone at Games Workshop. And it’s not too difficult to see why, if you look at its big, stompy robots.
“So we were working on Iron Harvest, our previous game, an RTS game as well,” Theysen recalled. “And that was a Kickstarter game. So we were very open about the development and we showed a lot of stuff we can do with the engine and what we do in terms of art and so on. And as someone at Games Workshop must have seen that and they basically contacted us and asked, ‘If we were doing Dawn of War 4, what would you do, basically?’ And so we made a little pitch and we sent them over our ideas and the presentation and we didn’t really hear back from them a lot. And so we basically thought, okay, that’s it, right? It’s like, cool that they asked us, basically. And then when Iron Harvest came out and was successful, they basically came back and said, ‘Okay, let’s talk about it for real.’ But you can’t really believe it, right? Yeah, well, okay, now they’re asking us, but in reality, we’re not going to make Dawn of War 4. And then slowly but surely it becomes more realistic and you don’t really dare to believe it, right? And then at some point you sign the contract and it’s like, holy… it’s there. We’re doing it.”
For many, myself included, Dawn of War was the gateway to the whole Warhammer 40K universe. And King Art hopes this next installment might be as well. It’s a sprawling and… sometimes convoluted setting, so that’s not exactly a straightforward task.
“It’s funny because we hear that a lot, right?” Theysen agreed. “And that was also one of the big things for Dawn of War 4, that a lot of people say, ‘Okay, Dawn of War, yes, that was like the first time I really interacted with Warhammer.’ And so for us, it was very important to basically make a Dawn of War 4 that is of course for fans, but also a potential entry point for someone who’s new.
“Yeah. I think I remember basically how I felt when I played Dawn of War for the first time and it was like, okay, super cool, but also I don’t understand a lot, right? But I understood enough so the game was fun. It was not like I had to know what all the different weapons do or something like that. It was more like, okay, I can figure it out. And I think that is also the approach we take for Dawn of War 4, which is basically without any prior knowledge of Warhammer, you still need to understand what the factions are about, what the units are about. You won’t understand all the different weapons and equipment and all of that, but it’s fine, you can figure it out.”
Taking the brutal, aggressive Orks as an example, the goal with the design of the whole faction is that you should naturally be able to figure out how to play without knowing a ton about their lore or having to have it spelled out for you. But those of us who have been living part of our lives in this universe for years should still have stuff to get excited about.
“We don’t really tell the players, if you play Orks, you should have a lot of units and a lot of buildings and just have this explosive expansion,” Theysen explained. “It just kind of feels natural to play that way, right? Because buildings are cheap, units are cheap, you lose a lot, so you build a lot … We make sure that even if the people don’t know what Orks are about, they can still play them correctly, basically.”
“I think that’s actually one of the main appeals for the Warhammer 40K universe is that enormous breadth and depth of things that you can potentially learn,” Verbiest added. “It’s definitely one of the things that attracted me to it was that, okay, sure, of course there is a surface level understanding of it that you can introduce to the games, for example, through a story or a campaign that kind of gets you into that world essentially. But there’s so much more to it. And I think that that promise of, hey, there’s much more going on beneath the surface, I think is what attracts so many fans to it. And I think that’s also how you can serve both fans old and new is that you introduce a story, something to help onboard players into this world, but you have enough detail and other things within that, that signal to more established, more veteran fans of the universe, hey, we are aware of this and we speak the same language. We have the same understanding here.”
Deciding what Dawn of War 4 was going to be in context of the previous entries was a judgment call all its own.
But even within the Dawn of War envelope, there are different players bringing different expectations to the table. Dawn of War 1 was more of a traditional basecraft RTS. Dawn of War 2 put the focus more on upgrading a few elite squads, almost like an RPG. And Dawn of War 3 was… well, I try not to think about it too much. But even it had its fans, apparently. So deciding what Dawn of War 4 was going to be in context of the previous entries was a judgment call all its own.
“I mean, that was definitely one of the big questions at the beginning, right?” Theysen said. “What is a Dawn of War game, right? Because Dawn of War 1 and 2, at least everybody here at the company really loves, but they’re very different games. And you can say, okay, maybe we can make a kind of best off of both of those. But we’re not sure that that actually works. And so in the end we said, okay, we have to go with one of them. And we said ultimately, okay, let’s go a little bit back to the roots, right? Let’s do Dawn of War 1, or our version or our interpretation of Dawn of War 1. Let’s see if something from Dawn of War 2 or even 3 works with that. And if it does, sure, then let’s put it in. But Dawn of War 1 was clearly our guiding star.”
“And it’s really interesting because that also informed a lot of the gameplay and design decisions that we made as well,” Verbiest elaborated. “The real time strategy genre is also something that has very different market segments or different audiences that have very different, sometimes conflicting needs. And I think that having that clarity of vision of, we want to go for Dawn of War 1 and how people felt about that definitely also informed a lot of the choices that we made as to what kind of parts of the game are we focusing on. So that’s why we have this emphasis on the campaigns as kind of like our flagship feature, as well as having all these fantastic cinematics and CGIs that we then have then to inform that story. Because that’s something that I think a lot of people were missing from the genre for quite a while.”
And storytelling is poised to be front-and-center for Dawn of War 4. While many RTSes have led with a competitive multiplayer mindset, King Art is putting a lot of emphasis on their dynamic campaigns and the single-player experience.
“Because that is like the first big decision we made was basically, okay, if we do a Dawn of War 4, we want four factions back and not only three,” Theysen continued. “And if we have four factions, we really would like to tell a story for each of the factions, right? And then all of the four campaigns have this overarching story, basically. And for us, that just felt like a natural thing we wanted to do because we like campaigns, we know that a lot of RTS players like campaigns, and so let’s really focus on that. And then we made our lives even harder because we decided, okay, let’s maybe also have the campaigns be a little bit non-linear. So there are things like, you can pick which of the Ork bosses you want to play, for example. Or there are missions that are mutually exclusive or things that you can optionally do and so on. And so for us, it’s like this: the campaign is like the heart of the whole thing and that has to work. But of course, then also we have multiplayer and we have Last Stand and so on.”
If you’re interested to hear more about the nonlinear aspects of the Ork campaign, keep an eye out for our hands-on preview later this month. Then be sure to check out all of our other Dawn of War 4 coverage as part of IGN First, including the Ork cinematic trailer. And for everything else, keep it right here on IGN.
action-adventure game and explore distinct locations across the galaxy, both iconic and new. Risk it all as scoundrel Kay Vess, seeking freedom and the means to start a new life. Fight, steal, and outwit your way through the galaxy’s crime syndicates as you join the galaxy’s most wanted.
