It feels quite fitting that a game like Big Hops released today, the day after Awesome Games Done Quick wrapped up, because this thing feels like it has a guaranteed spot in Summer Games Done Quick already. You’re a frog! Who hops around! What’s not to love? It helps that the platformer feels so good in motion, too.
Arc Raiders and its cutthroat PvP encounters have generated dozens of viral clips since launch, but some peaceful players prefer PvE to such a degree that they’ve started using the aggression-based matchmaking (ABMM) to find friendly lobbies.
The jig is up: developer Embark Studios is matching aggressive PvP players together. It’s a matchmaking tactic that has set the Arc Raiders community ablaze since the company announced its implementation earlier this month. While some of the more aggressive fans aren’t sure how they feel about being linked up with other bloodthirsty Raiders, gentler players are using ABMM to find lobbies where player-vs.-player violence is practically off-limits.
The type of lobby you get after not shooting someone for 20 games pic.twitter.com/TAYzsiEd6e
— Arc Raiders Intel (@ArcRaidersIntel) January 11, 2026
Multiple players have shared stories online about finding friendly lobbies that see Raiders cooperate with one another by evenly sharing loot after taking down a Matriarch. Some runs have even been said to result in a group dance party.
“Took down a matriarch and everyone shared the loot equally and then danced together at extract,” one player explained. “After a week of pure PvP this is like a whole new world.”
“Lately I’ve been running into nothing but friendly players,” another added. “Last night, a gentlemen just randomly gave me two blue prints. Didn’t have too, just did.
“I’ve been trying to repay that kindness forward. I’ll be the first to admit im not even good at this game, but the exploring, looting and meeting friendlies has been totally worth it for me.”
There are plenty of fans, especially in the solo queue pool, who favor a more serene Arc Raiders experience. While players do their best to use ABMM to land them in friendly lobbies, some have begun offering advice to those who would prefer to avoid PvP but can’t quite crack the code. There are even some fans discussing their hope for official support for strictly peaceful lobbies, but for those who prefer to rummage for loot in Stella Montis with a hint of paranoia, ABMM can be manipulated in the other direction, too.
Those who keep the safety on when looking for rusted gears and light bulbs with friends may have some luck balancing their lobbies with both friendly and aggressive players if they don’t exclusively stick to PvE combat. With enough trial and error, a few fans say they’ve had luck tweaking matchmaking to add just a dash of mischief.
“I enjoy both lobbies,” one Reddit user commented. “PvE for making new friends and looting properly. PvP with my mate terrorising the whole lobby and losing all the good weapons we brought [because] someone outplays us with a big smile on our faces and having a great time.”
Embark has been clear: ABMM isn’t a science. The aggression-based matchmaking tool is also likely still being tweaked as Arc Raiders rides success through its third month since launching for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X | S October 30. Still, it’s proven to be at least somewhat useful for those looking to avoid PvP, and the tension that comes with it, as much as possible.
While players argue over whether ABMM is right for Arc Raiders, Embark seems to have made up its mind. For the Stockholm-based game developer, Arc Raiders is better off without doubling down on competitive gameplay mechanics like leaderboards, with CEO Patrick Söderlund explaining in a recent GamesBeat interview that “the game isn’t about shooting other players.”
“You can do that if you want to,” he added, “but the ethos of the game has never been to go in and shoot players. It’s a part that we use to craft tension.”
The Arc Raiders community is still deciphering its favorite way to experience the evolving extraction shooter. While we wait for more updates, you can see what Embark is doing to extinguish cheaters. You can also check out what to expect from upcoming patches as players look out for a potential in-game marketplace.
Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).
Where can you play 1993 classic fps Doom? Loads of places. Cooking pots, smart photo frames, receipt printers (what), Wikipedia (what???), Alarmo, the wacky list goes on. And as of yesterday, that list includes unreleased indie sandbox Hytale, courtesy of a clever modder.
Doom running in Hytale comes courtesy of modder tr7zw (h/t Rock Paper Shotgun), who uploaded a video of Doom running “100% inside a Hytale mod, before Hytale is even released.” It is apparently fully controlled within the game of Hytale and isn’t actually very good to play in terms of controls working well. It’s a bit goofy, too, as it involves standing somewhere out in the world and then playing on what amounts to a blocky in-game monitor floating in the air in front of you. It runs at 20fps. But it is functional! That sure is Doom all right! I don’t know why you’d want to play it here when you have so many better options, many of which are on actual gaming platforms, but the purpose of the long-standing tradition of running Doom on weird systems has never been actually playing Doom in an ideal environment.
What’s really nuts about this is that Hytale isn’t even out yet: it launches in early access tomorrow. But modding platform CurseForge is already fully ready to support all the mods the community might desire, which imaginably will be quite a few given the game’s sandbox nature and similarities to Minecraft.
Hytale is showing some early signs of being a pretty big deal. According to its developers, it’s already made enough money to cover the next two years of development costs. Hypixel Studios founder Simon Collins-Laflamme is expecting over one million players on release day, and urged fans today to download the launcher now to help reduce stress tomorrow.
It’s a pretty incredible turnaround for a game that almost didn’t even get finished. Initially announced in 2018 from the developers of popular Minecraft server Hypixel, Riot Games ended up buying the studio mid-development to support the project. The game was delayed several times as its scope increased, until in June of 2025 the project was canceled and the studio closed. However, in November, Collins-Laflamme announced he had acquired the IP rights, announced that the game was back in development, and in a seemingly Herculean effort, the team has an early access version ready for tomorrow.
“It’s a damn miracle we were able to salvage Hytale,” Collins-Laflamme said in a statement last year. “It was barely playable. All basics were broken. Camera, movement, combat, crafting, building, gameloop, sounds, rendering. Everything, everything was wrong.
“It should have taken years to fix, but within weeks, we got the game into a playable, fun state. And now, instead of slowing down or celebrating a release, we have to keep pushing for years to make up for the time that was lost.
“So yes, I feel anger. And I’m turning that into focus and execution. I’m committing more money, more time, and personal sacrifice to deliver the game this vision deserves.”
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
Peak, a popular cooperative climbing game, costs $5. Except it actually costs $8, which is basically $5. And it’s on sale right now for just under $5, which is also $5, but if it dropped down to $3 it would actually be $2, which is basically free…
“What.”, you are probably thinking right now, but hear me out. It kinda makes sense. This goofy pricing scheme comes directly from Peak co-creator Nick Kaman in an interview with Game File, where he explains how his team came to the game’s actual sale price of $7.99. In the interview, he shares a theory about indie game pricing vibes that the team floated around as a bit of a joke that still has some truth behind it.
“We had this joke of, like, how much is a game really? In a player’s mind, what does it mean to spend five bucks? Well, that’s five bucks. But six bucks? Well, that’s still five bucks. Four bucks is also kind of five bucks. Three bucks is two bucks. And two bucks is basically free.
“So we’ve got these tiers: You know, twelve bucks… that’s ten bucks. But thirteen bucks is fifteen bucks. “And we found that eight bucks is still five bucks. It doesn’t become ten bucks. Seven ninety nine, that’s five bucks, right?
“So, eight bucks going to five bucks is the biggest differential we could find in pricing, so we found it very optimal.”
If you’re still reeling from this a bit, what Kaman is trying to say here is that a person getting ready to spend money on a game might see a price tag for $7 or $8, and psychologically not feel it’s that different from $5. But if a game is $9, it feels more expensive, closer to $10. And if a game is $2, it feels basically free to them.
There’s no exact science behind that, to be clear, but Kaman is working off his seven years of experience at Aggro Crab, and it seems to have worked out for the team. Peak launched in June 2025, and by August it had sold 10 million copies. Though its playerbase has (naturally and understandably) shrunk since launch, it’s still pulling in tens of thousands of people per day, which is a huge feat for such a small game.
Peak is currently on sale for $4.95, which is almost actually $5, and the lowest price it’s ever been offered for. It’s also significantly cheaper than basically everything AAA, as major publisher game prices in recent years have slowly crept up from $60 to $70, and now even $80, a price that definitely doesn’t feel like $5 or $10. Meanwhile, discussions in the indie game community about what to charge for a game remain ongoing, following a $20 price tag on Hollow Knight: Silksong causing some to panic about how it would impact their own prices.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
There is a strange deliciousness in experiencing a game from a perspective that it does not otherwise allow. Sure, things don’t always look right, there’s just this opportunity to rethink how you view a particular world. Recently, it appears that someone playing Arc Raiders got to do just that, by switching it into a first-person shooting mode as opposed to its usual third-person camera, all thanks to an accident.
What’s the genre called for games that recreate a desktop PC interface? There’s gotta be a name right, there’s enough games to justify it, but PC game is kind of already taken as a term. In any case, while we ponder over that question, let’s look at an upcoming addition to that genre, Imprinted, a horror game where you are tasked with restoring mysterious, damaged cassette tapes.
A new era begins.
Yes that’s right, although we said a fond farewell to Felix and Zion over the last few months, Alex has now been joined by a brand new face over on YouTube: please say hello to Mai Ladyman!
Mai is no stranger to making YouTube videos, but she now joins Alex full-time as we storm into 2026. We’ve no doubt she will flourish as Nintendo ramps up its Switch 2 plans over the coming months and years.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
The epic saga of My Hero Academia has drawn to a close, but the adventure continues! Relive the excitement and immerse yourself in the world of the anime with the highly anticipated release of My Hero Academia: All’s Justice.
The game features a story mode that lets you relive the anime’s final season as well as play original missions crafted specifically for the game.
Join us for a unique look here as we delve into the creation of these unique, game-original scenarios.
My Hero Academia: All’s Justice offers two original game modes to enjoy: Team Up Mission and Hero’s Diary, which is unlocked by completing Team Up Mission.
In TeamUp Mission, you’ll become a student in Class 1-A at U.A. High School and experience hero activities in a virtual space that mirrors the U.A. High Class 1-A student activity. Use the Quirks of the students in Class 1-A to take on parkour movements and various missions, fully enjoying your hero activities.
Hero’s Diary is a mode where you can catch a glimpse of the unknown daily lives of the Class 1-A students. Enjoy three episodes each for all 20 students to your heart’s content.
Are you curious to know the kind of challenges and innovations involved in incorporating the original elements into My Hero Academia: All’s Justice?
Here’s an inside scoop from our production team:
In this game’s TeamUp Missions, you can experience the growth of each Class 1-A character leading up to the final battle through lesson missions that take place behind the scenes of the manga and anime. However, student life includes not only lessons but also daily life filled with communication with friends and colleagues. To allow you to experience the world of My Hero Academia more deeply and enjoy student life, we’ve focused on depicting each character’s daily life in Hero’s Diary.
We’ve carefully selected game-original stories that show the relationships between all the Class 1-A students. Fun fact: the scenario production was supervised weekly by the manga and anime production team – working together to create these unique in-game scenes was a special experience.
For example, you’ll be able to see Bakugo hanging out with classmates like Iida after school at a family restaurant or catch a sweet moment with Kirishima & Koda as they look for animals. We hope you’ll enjoy the Hero’s Diary, which is unique to the game.
The customizable items you can obtain as rewards are designed not only to show off your achievements to opponents in online battles, but also to be enjoyable when playing offline. We’ve implemented multiple designs with your favorite characters as motifs.
The HUD is a particularly popular customizable item among the development staff. In Japan, there’s a culture of customizing vehicles and bags with visuals that prominently display your favorite characters, like itasha (decorated cars) and itabags (decorated bags). During development, we were happily working on what we affectionately called Ita-HUDs. We hope you’ll enjoy creating your own unique customizations.
Also, the cards that you can obtain by exploring missions and stages feature many famous scenes from the past of My Hero Academia, so be sure to collect them.
Of course, we’ve focused on recreating the abilities from the battles and making you feel the power of the Quirks, but this game goes beyond that. We’ve designed the movement actions of each character so that you can experience on the town maps how you might use a Quirk if you had it – how you could move around the town, or how you could solve problems. This is something that many of you probably felt while watching My Hero Academia.
When designing Deku’s light parkour movement actions, we were conscious of both sharpening and toning down the actions, taking into consideration the differences in Quirks between him and other heroes and villains in this world.
While maintaining a light movement speed, we’ve made subtle adjustments based on the Quirk comparisons of the characters, as Iida is, of course, faster in this world. We encourage you to experience the Quirks of each Class 1-A character in the TeamUp Mission.
My Hero Academia: All’s Justice is scheduled to be released on February 6. We hope you’ll enjoy this new My Hero Academia experience that can only be found in this game. Early unlock characters are also available as pre-order bonuses so be sure to get this opportunity.
Once again it appears that Pocketpair appears to be going after a bit of Pokemon’s pie, this time of the card game variety. Where the latter’s started life as a physical medium, the former’s attempt at such a thing, literally just called Palworld Official Card Game, announced today, looks to be of the digital-only variety, though what there is to learn about it is a touch slim overall.
Veteran video game developer Peter Molyneux has announced a release date for what’s described as his final god game: Masters of Albion.
Molyneux and his studio 22cans confirmed Masters of Albion for April 22, 2026 exclusively on PC via Steam, alongside a new video, below. 22cans said the trailer shows off Masters of Albion’s “unique blend of cosy creativity by day and brutal survival by night.”
Molyneux, who famously developed the likes of Fable, Populous, Dungeon Keeper, and Black & White before founding 22cans in 2012 and releasing controversial god game Godus, worked with the likes of Mark Healey, Russell Shaw, Iain Wright, and Kareem Ettouney on Masters of Albion.
“Blending strategy, simulation, town management, and real-time defence, the game gives players extraordinary freedom to play the game the way they want to play it,” 22cans said.
“Taking inspiration from some of Peter’s classic titles, Masters of Albion is a return to form, blending gameplay mechanics from multiple genres, strategy with simulation, town management with defence, to reinvigorate the god game, and give players the power and freedom to create. Or destroy…”
Here’s a comment from Peter Molyneux:
“Masters of Albion is the culmination of my life’s work, a game that owes so much to titles like Dungeon Keeper, Black & White, and Fable. It’s a totally unique game that we hope will delight players, a game that brings God Games into the modern gaming landscape and puts the genre firmly back on the map.”
Build, Create, and Customise
As a god, you have absolute freedom over your towns and villages:
• Design and build every structure
• Hire, house and manage your workforce
• Customise buildings with paint, patterns and embellishments
• Combine building types into unique multi-purpose structures
• No timers or waiting, build instantly and iterate freely
From small workshops to sprawling towns, Albion grows exactly how you decide.
Wield the Power of the God Hand
Command the world with ancient powers:
• Manipulate buildings and objects freely
• Possess and control the living
• Inspire, reward, insult, or punish your people
• Throw giant boulders, spiked balls, exploding barrels or just plain old-fashioned people
• Rain lightning, fire and destruction down upon your enemies
• Shape Albion with absolute authority
Enjoy the freedom that being a god brings, but with great freedom comes great responsibility.
Roam Freely Across Albion
Experience the world from multiple perspectives:
• View Albion from the heavens or possess living beings to explore on foot
• Control heroes, dogs, workers and even chickens
• Complete quests to unlock treasures and secrets
• Delve into dangerous underground cave networks
• Craft weapons and armour for your heroes
• Design the clothes that your workers wear (however bizarre)
• Explore, experiment and uncover the forgotten history of Albion
Defend the Night
When night falls, Albion is no longer safe. Malevolent creatures emerge from the darkness, attacking towns and killing indiscriminately. Survival depends on preparation and decisive action:
• Design, build and arm powerful defensive turrets
• Hire heroes to protect the people
• Escort the vulnerable through the terrors of the night
• Construct walls, choke points, and deadly defences
• Channel enemies into carefully planned kill zones
• Use god powers to strike fear into the undead
• Possess heroes and fight enemies directly in real-time combat
Each night tests your planning, creativity, and resolve.
Key Themes
• Power and responsibility
• Industry versus ancient magic
• Freedom of choice and consequence
• Cosy creativity contrasted with chaos and danger
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
