I tend to take my videogame dwarves spacefaring, but there’s something inviting about the more classical, beards-and-barrel-chested adventuring being offered by Regions of Ruin: Runegate.
An expanded and prettified sequel to 2020’s Regions of Ruin, which I also knew nothing about until this morning, Runegate casts you as a lone dwarf charged with travelling the treacherous (but attractively pixel-arty) wilds to bring about the rejuvenation of your peoples’ ruined subterranean home. Here’s the new release date trailer; not to spoil the ending, but it’s out on April 14th 2026.
Though survival horror games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill have always taken up most of the spotlight for the genre, lesser known franchises such as Fatal Frame have quietly provided some excellent horror experiences for those willing to go a bit off the beaten path. Fatal Frame traces its roots back to the PlayStation 2 and while it’s been over a decade since the last new release (on Wii U, of all things…), Koei Tecmo has been getting its feet wet in recent times by experimenting with some ways to bring back the old titles for modern platforms.
The most recent of these is Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly Remake, a reimagining of the most popular entry in the series that brings it more in line with modern survival horror standards. It’s not perfect, but there’s a lot to love about this one and it feels like a definite improvement over the original.
Featuring a character dressed like Link and a creature that looks like Pikachu, upcoming Steam game Pickmon isn’t afraid to hide the games it’s clearly, er, inspired by.
A initial trailer for Pickmon, below, begins with Link, or whoever the main character is supposed to be, leaping from a clifftop that’s clearly a riff on Breath of the Wild’s Great Plateau, while familiar-sounding piano notes tinkle away in the background.
Not-Link deploys his glider, and is shown to have a not-Pikachu clinging onto his shoulder. A dragon-like creature definitely not based on Rayquaza then also drifts past — and this is all in the trailer’s first two seconds.
PickMon | Summer Game Fest 2026 Trailer | Pockegame This is the official account of PickMon. #PickMon is a brand new multiplayer monster-collecting game with open-world survival elements! 🧭Open world survival crafting game for up to 32 players! 🔫Gather your weapons and go on… pic.twitter.com/IdR6byINRk
The next few minutes of Pickmon footage offer much more of the same, with creatures familiar to both Pokémon and the gun-toting Pals of Palworld (the previous Pokémon-like game to land on Steam, which is also still the subject of a Pokémon Company lawsuit), as well as some rudimentary base-building and farming mechanics.
The trailer concludes with a prompt to go wishlist Pickmon on Steam now, and to look out for a future release that’s rather ambitiously “planned for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation.”
Let’s be honest here, everything about this trailer looks set to spark obvious comparisons to Nintendo properties. Even the name of the game’s developer, Pokegame, seems part of the bit. For an indie developer looking to launch its first game, it’s a safe way to grab attention — and if Nintendo was to start legal action, well, that’s even more publicity guaranteed. And already, a Pokémon player has claimed Pickman copied one of their designs for a Pokémon fan design, too.
Of course, it remains to be seen whether Nintendo will bother getting involved. While the comparisons between Pickmon and Pokémon are far from subtle, Nintendo currently seems to have gotten bogged down in its previous Palworld lawsuit, which has dragged on for over a year while Palworld itself remains on sale, albeit with a few minor gameplay tweaks.
Perhaps notably, Pickmon does not seem to include the same catch mechanic as Pokémon, which Palworld initially contained at launch, before tweaking. Instead of creatures being caught and unleashed from a ball, Pickmon seems to have them being summoned forth from magic cards.
“What if we take Palworld, and take its designs EVEN CLOSER to the original Pokémon designs were inspired and even dare promising a release on Switch?” wrote one fan after seeing Pickmon in action. “This is the smash bros ‘everyone is here’ trailer of plagerism [sic],” said another. “We have Pikachu at home ass trailer,” said a third.
But despite the criticism, it’s hard to imagine Pickmon’s developer is upset about all the attention. Whether it will now also gain the attention of Nintendo, however, remains to be seen.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
Resident Evil Requiem is getting a story expansion and a new minigame, together with the already-promised photo mode, Capcom have announced. What the expansion and minigame involve remains unclear, but there is just the dimmest possibility that we’ll finally be able to play the official Leon Kennedy Meet ‘n’ F*ck game of our wildest dreams.
Boring filler quests, often of the “fetch” variety, used to be derided – but in extraction shooters nobody seems to mind that they’re rampant. Go here, scan this terminal, collect ten wotsits, find five doodads, spin around three times and return to base.
Of course, extraction shooters don’t stand on the strength of their quests, and these objectives are welcome excuses to explore the map. I don’t mind trekking to reach a quest marker if I find something surprising on the way, or an enemy team to fight when I arrive. But these quests cannot get in the way of the looting and shooting.
Not only are Bungie’s quests, called “contracts”, boring and fiddly, but they’re at the heart of the game. Completing contracts is your progress. You cannot mostly ignore them and do your own thing, as I have for my 250 hours in Arc Raiders – you need to finish them to unlock new skills and better gear.
Let me be a bit more specific about their failures.
First, some of these contracts have multiple fiddly steps. An early quest on Perimeter, the starting map, commands you to visit North Relay, South Relay, and Overflow, scanning objects in the first two and downloading an “agricultural report” – try not to explode with excitement – at the third. You could not pick three locations more spread out if you tried.
Remember, every player in a squad will have their own contracts, likely in entirely different areas. Before you know it you’ve got six target locations: even if you meet friendly players who want to help, that’s an impossible task.
These contracts are the only thing that could stop me loading in for run after run after run
At least for that particular quest, you can finish it across multiple runs. Some contracts demand completion in one round. A single distraction – a boss fight, running into a squad of runners, a teammate leading your squad to a different location – can spoil the run. I’ve died before because I couldn’t convince my teammates to accompany me to the final step of a contract that would’ve reset if I’d extracted.
Marathon’s UI doesn’t help. On the Perimeter quest I mentioned above, I wasted five minutes searching for two Sparkleaf Bioprinters in North Relay and by the time I found one, it was time to extract. I know now, of course, that you can open your map and hover over a contract objective for more detailed instructions, such as the specific building to search. But why make players menu dive? Why not just put the exact locations front and centre on your map, or simply flag it on your screen as you enter a point of interest?
The tip about hovering over an objective does, apparently, appear in early hints but it’s clearly eluded many players by (I’ve had multiple teammates asking for help finding those damn bioprinters).
My final gripe is linked to the penalty for leaving a match early after you die. In Marathon, your teammates can revive you even after you’ve been downed, finished, and stripped of your loot, and Bungie therefore wants players to hang around in case they’re brought back from the dead. To encourage this, leaving while a teammate is alive incurs strict penalties – including losing any progress towards quests.
Fine on paper but oh-so-frustrating when, as happened to me yesterday, your remaining teammate is AFK. I was forced to watch a static screen for 15 minutes or repeat my contract in a different run. The same goes for teammates who, often rightfully, opt to flee the scene rather than revive you when a full squad is picking over your corpse: you can watch their round play out, or lose your contract progress.
I know this sounds like a big moan. Let me be clear: I’m still loving Marathon and its quirky heroes that set it apart from other extraction shooters. My annoyance with contracts isn’t enough to put me off yet, and the fact Bungie plans to make objective markers clearer on your HUD in a future patch is promising.
But more invasive surgery is required. These contracts, which are the heart of Marathon, are the only thing that could stop me loading in for run after run after run.
Resident Evil Requiem director Koshi Nakanishi has confirmed plans to launch a major story expansion for the game, following other additions planned over the coming months.
In a video posted to social media this morning, Nakanishi thanked fans once again for Requiem’s huge success so far, with 5 million copies already sold as of last week.
Clearly, Capcom now has much more in store for the game, too — including a story expansion, the addition of a “mini game” in May, and the upcoming arrival of a photo mode, too.
After an incredibly lengthy delay, Nightdive Studio’s SiN Reloaded is finally making its way to consoles, including the Switch and Switch 2, later this year.
Built from the original 1998 classic from developer Ritual Entertainment, SiN Reloaded will feature enhanced visuals and performance along with a more modernised control scheme. The release will include the base game and the additional SiN: Wages of Sin mission pack, all optimised with Nightdive’s KEX Engine.
Pokémon Pokopia players are speaking out to save others a whole lot of time and bother — because no, you don’t actually need to water every single square of the game’s world.
When you first start playing Pokopia, your character wakes up in an arid wasteland that was once a lush Pokémon utopia. There are no humans anymore, the world is in ruins, and other Pokémon are few and far between.
On top of that, you’ve likely seen screenshots and trailers showing the possibilities in store when you do revive Pokopia’s world — and so when you gain the ability to water the ground and bring back its green hues, many players’ first instinct (including my own) is to do so everywhere. For hours. Every. Last. Square.
Well, it turns out you don’t need to do that. As many players are now taking to social media to point out (and also, very mildly spoil) there will soon come a time when all of this is handled for you. And if you’d prefer not to read more about what happens next, well, take this as your cue to stop reading — but also stop watering, too.
Nobody ask me if Pokopia has a story, I’ve been watering grass for 4 hours before I let myself progress pic.twitter.com/WP6EKIql85
Thank you because that was starting to feel like such a huge task and I haven’t been focusing on the main quests as much because the dry and withered look BOTHERS me 😭
Yes, eventually your world will experience rain, something that will sort out all those areas of dry ground for you, and immediately make the game look a lot more like those screenshots and trailers. Until then, you really only need to water the plants and trees that you need to create habitats or farm resources such as fruit.
How do you kickstart Pokopia’s rain, you may ask? It’s as simple as crafting the Rain Dance Site item and then activating it using a Water-type Pokémon. This is something that you’ll complete as part of the game’s main storyline when rebuilding the Pokémon Center in Pokopia’s starting area, so you can’t miss it. And for a more detailed walkthrough on increasing your world’s humidity, IGN has you covered.
For now, though, relax and put away your Water Gun. Rain’s comin’.
IGN’s Pokémon Pokopia review returned a 9/10 score, and dubbed the game as “an enjoyable building and town simulator that capitalizes on the charming personalities of its monsters in a way that appeals to both the creative and collector alike.”
“Jurassic parkour!” I bellowed to myself in pure delight, when first I read the trailer blurb for Terrible Lizards, announced yesterday. I can only applaud the immense willpower required to not make that the game’s actual title. In this new first-person horror platformer from WDR Studios LLC, your car has broken down somewhere in the deserts of New Mexico.
It’s 1992, so you can’t just Whatsapp your mate who works at the garage to ask which cacti fluids make good engine oil. Instead, you must venture into a nearby abandoned roadside museum, Dalton’s Dinos, which is full of gorgeous animatronic brontosaurs and suchlike. Oh, yeah – ‘oooh, ahhh’, that’s how it always starts. Then later there’s running and screaming.
The open-world survival game Smalland: Survive the Wilds, which was compared to Grounded when it was originally revealed, will be making its way to the Switch 2 in Spring 2026.
This version promises to include all of the “post-launch updates already released on other platforms” as players step into the role of the “Smallfolk” – a tiny civilization living among the tower grass, insects, and creatures of a vast wilderness.
