Developers at Hyper Light Drifter, Solar Ash and Possessor(s) studio Heart Machine are unionising. They’ve signed up with a local branch of the Communications Workers of America, in a “wall-to-wall unit [that] represents all frontline employees”. This comes in the wake of layoffs, and takes inspiration from larger unionisation drives at megacorps like Microsoft.
Has it crafted a space in your heart?
A Pokémon-meets-Minecraft life sim has been at the top of our ‘Pokémon spin-offs we’d love to see’ list for, well, forever, and last week, TPC finally made it happen.
If you have taken one look at any of the Pokémon Pokopia marketing, then you’ll know how adorable it is. This is a game that sees you hop into the shoes of a humanoid Ditto, setting out to rebuild a fallen region by creating creature habitats and making friends along the way.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Time to take up your blade once more, warrior. Like its predecessor, Ghost of Yōtei’s rich single player campaign is just one side of a Zeni Hajiki coin, as Sucker Punch Productions brings its acclaimed PS5 adventure’s combat thrills to a supernatural plain in Ghost of Yōtei Legends. Launching tomorrow, March 10*, this online co-op multiplayer mode builds on the wonderful foundations of Ghost of Tsushima’s own Legends mode while reimagining Yōtei’s new mechanics and threats in a mythical, mystical spin fit for any storyteller’s fantastical yarn.
The mode was announced last year, and fully revealed in this past February’s State of Play. Today, the studio – in the form of Legends Lead Designer Darren Bridges, kindly taking time out from putting the final polishes to the mode – joined us to break down what awaits players when they download the update on March 10. The mode is available at no additional cost for all owners of Ghost of Yōtei.**
“We had a core team working on multiplayer throughout [Ghost of Yōtei’s] development. We were reacting and responding and pulling the systems in, figuring out how they would work in a multiplayer context. As [the main game] finished, people moved over to work on Legends, flesh it out. It’s an interesting development process. There’s a lot of stuff that looks like a prototype for a long time, and then when the team moves in, it’s a really rapid escalation and improvement. It’s like an advent calendar: we wake up every morning and see something new. There’s so much new content, and that the game is getting amazing and beautiful so quickly once the rest of the team jumps in to contribute. So it’s a really fun experience.”
Examples of the Samurai class
“The Yōtei Six are bosses, warlords, that haunted Atsu’s story. Legends is a retelling of that way later; years, even centuries after the fact. A lot of the details have washed away. These big characters have been exaggerated. Instead of fighting powerful warlords, you’re fighting 15-foot demonic bosses. It makes enemies a suitable challenge for multiple players.”
“Each boss has a faction of enemies that come with them. That includes sub-bosses that are different for each [of the Six’s domains] and are themed around the abilities of the boss, so they all connect. So for example, the Kitsune has an elite soldier called the Snow Woman, who has frost and cold abilities. The Snake has a summoner.”
Examples of the Archer class
“We want to give players different roles they can play into, to be able to complement each other, and you can split and focus on different enemies based on the weapons you have. But if you all want to play, say, Samurai, then you can and will be able to solve all the challenges put in front of you. But each Class has a focus weapon. So for instance, the Samurai has the Odachi, the Archer, the Yari. The Mercenary has dual katanas. The Shinobi has the Kusarigama, Some of their tech tree builds toward that. Some of their gear is based around that. But they’re not limited to those exclusively. They can use other weapons too. We also have things like quick fire weapons, so some abilities that are on cool down.
“Each class has their own tech tree, so there is build crafting based on the gear you unlock and the abilities you unlock and choose.”
“Every mission is replayable and there are four difficulties: Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum. As you play those, you’ll face different enemies, different challenges. The higher difficulty you play, the faster you’ll earn XP, the faster your character class will advance, and the better loot you’ll get based on.
“There’s recommended gear levels for each difficulty. So if you are kind of signing up for a mission that is at a higher difficulty that your gear level is set too. We’ll give you a warning, but we’ll also say, “hey, go for it”. Some folk want to slowly move their way up the difficulties. Some want to jump into the highest difficulty unlocked and struggle. That’s great. We support both of those approaches.”
Examples of the Mercenary class
“One of the most amazing parts of working on game development is collaborating with professionals in a completely different discipline, and just seeing the things that [the art team] turn out. Obviously, with the mode being supernatural and fantasy, we can really dive into completely different ideas and really wild stuff [for cosmetics]. There’s one helmet that has a bunch of eyeballs on it, that look around while you’re wearing it. And all this content is available for Ghost of Yōtei owners at no additional cost. So all of this is unlocked just through gameplay.”
“Story missions have you dealing with these legends as told by the storyteller, who is narrating the events as you play through them. There are two player story missions, while Incursion missions are the culmination of that. There’s one Incursion for each of the four bosses available in the launch version – The Spider, The Oni, the Kitsune, the Snake. Story missions are themed around them, then you enter their domain in four-player Incursions, fight your way to them and ultimately face off against them.
“Survival is a four-player, area and wave defense type of mode. Four missions, each themed around one of the bosses. Each mission has you defending three locations. Each has a unique blessing and curse. So if you hold an area, you could activate a blessing to, say, summon a spirit bear, or activate fire spirits to attack enemies. But if you lose your hold, a curse activates… So now you have a shadow bear that will hunt you down and attack. So it leads to the matches being really dynamic.”
“The Raid launches next month in which you’ll face the last two of the Yotei Six, the Dragon and Lord Saito.*** It’s four-player, hardcore content: you actually need four players to complete it. You can’t do it with fewer and you want to have players that you can communicate and coordinate well with. We view this as the most co-opy co-op. The rest of the Legends missions are co-optional. We provide opportunities for you to work together, but we don’t ever want to make it a blocker. This though? This is for four players. Mark my words. You cannot win without four players.”
Examples of the Shinobi class
“Ghost of Tsushima’s lobby was a flat 2D menu. Our goal in designing [this mode’s] lobby was to give you something you can do while you wait for friends to join. You can go look at the feats you’ve completed and unlock cosmetics. You can tweak your build, adjust your tech tree. But the lobby also has some light PvP elements, such as Zeni Hajiki, the coin-flicking game that was in the single player campaign. We heard players wishing they could play that against friends (so did our QA team), so we did!
“There’s also a Bamboo Strike score challenge, with mini leaderboards that you can brag against your friends. There’s a training area if you want to get good at perfect parries in a low pressure environment, or to just test your build. So it’s just meant to be a place that while you’re waiting or you’re in between rounds, we give you interesting things to do.”
Ghost of Yōtei Legends is available as an update to Ghost of Yōtei owners at no additional cost on March 10.
*Ghost of Yōtei Legends will launch on March 11 in some territories including Asia, Australia, and New Zealand.
** Internet connection and account for PlayStation required. PlayStation Plus subscription (sold separately) required for online play or multiplayer. PS Plus is subject to recurring subscription fee taken automatically until cancellation. Age restrictions apply. Terms apply: play.st/psplus-usageterms
***Available in future update (patch version TBA)
EA has laid off an unknown number of individuals from across its Battlefield teams, including workers at Criterion, Dice, Ripple Effect, and Motive Studios, IGN understands.
Individuals are being informed that the layoffs are taking place as part of a “realignment” across the Battlefield studios, as the team continues its ongoing, live service support for Battlefield 6 following launch. All four studios will remain operational, though the layoffs seem to be impacting a variety of teams across multiple studios and offices. IGN has reached out to EA for comment on total number and types of roles impacted, as well as for the specific reasons for the layoffs.
Battlefield 6 was the best-selling game of 2025 in the United States. It sold a “record shattering” 7 million copies in three days and was the best launch ever for a game in the franchise. While its campaign received a bit of a mixed response from critics including us, we gave its multiplayer an 8/10 at launch.
However, the months since Battlefield 6’s launch have seen the game begin to struggle from patch to patch. Fans have criticized a number of updates due to reasons ranging from cosmetics to movement, and three months in, Steam reviews have fallen to “Mixed” from a “Mostly Positive” start. Major issues reported include criticism of heavy monetization, use of generative AI for in-game cosmetics, and fewer content updates than expected. The criticism was heavy enough that the teams delayed the start of Season 2 to allow more time to implement community feedback. EA recently published a three-month roadmap for its expected updates.
Steam concurrents have also dropped significantly following Battlefield 6’s big launch, when it hit a huge 747,440 peak. Steam concurrents are now, typically, in the tens of thousands. For example, Battlefield 6 hit 67,000 peak concurrent players on Valve’s platform yesterday. Of course, Steam numbers do not paint the whole picture of a game’s popularity or success, given Battlefield 6 is also available on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S. But they do give us a sense of where a game is at, and in Battlefield 6’s case the drop-off may have been more dramatic than EA had expected. Meanwhile, the free-to-play Battlefield battle royale, Redsec, has had problems of its own, with a ‘Mostly Negative’ Steam user review rating for recent posts.
These layoffs come just months after the unexpected death of Battlefield franchise head Vince Zampella in a car accident. They also come as EA is preparing to be acquired by an investor group composed of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners for approximately $55 billion. However, the acquisition has not yet closed (it’s expected to close in the first quarter of the 2027 financial year, or April, May, and June of this year). IGN understands internally, EA is stating that the layoffs are unrelated to the acquisition.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
Last year, Microsoft finally put some effort into making Windows 11 less dreadful for handheld PCs, launching Xbox Full Screen Experience – a stripped-back, more gamepad-friendly interface specifically for launching and installing games – on the Asus ROG Xbox Ally family. The same update has been strangely unforthcoming to other Steam Deck rivals, but it sounds like the Lenovo Legion Go series is finally getting access soon. There’s a preview build that Legion Go, Legion Go S, and Legion Go 2 owners can try right now, too.
Fortnite has confirmed that The Foundation, its heroic character voiced by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, will return next season – and begun an Avengers: Doomsday-style countdown for his reappearance.
A cinematic teaser trailer released today shows The Foundation currently frozen in ice, captured by The Ice King (another important character in Fortnite lore). Still, players expect they’ll be able to break out The Rock’s character in the battle royale mode’s next season, which begins in shortly over a week’s time.
Indeed, today’s teaser reveals the official name for Epic Games’ next slice of Fortnite, and riffs on the wording seen in recent Avengers: Doomsday teasers (not that they’re actually teasers, apparently) to confirm the return of several key characters.
“The Foundation and The Ice King will return in Fortnite: Showdown,” the teaser states, before the words shift into a date (March 19, 2026) and then a countdown clock revealing the weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds left to go until the update drops.
The teaser itself reveals a new in-game location, which looks to be a fresh and more detailed version of The Ice King’s classic Polar Peak fortress. Previous in-game imagery had teased this wintry palace, and suggested it was home to one of the game’s current Zero Point shard macguffins.
The suggestion here is that this new Ice King is working with Fortnite’s current baddie, The Dark Voyager, to reunite the Zero Point’s broken shards for nefarious means. But previous Fortnite lore, doled out through graphic novels, painted the original Ice King as something of a more noble figure, who freezes beings he has deemed a threat to reality. Fans have suggested the Dark Voyager is capable of corrupting previous Fortnite characters (such as Lynx) to do his bidding. Or maybe the Ice King really has just broken bad?
The original Ice King was a mysterious character who kept a prisoner in his dungeon back in Fortnite’s first chapter (something recently glimpsed again via the Fortnite OG mode, which retells the game’s original storyline). In today’s teaser, however, the new Ice King is shown to have several other captives, too, including golden skeleton lady Orelia and Marvel’s own Steve Rogers (though his may just be yet another nod to Doomsday).
The teaser concludes with The Ice King sidling up to The Foundation, frozen mid-punch. How he’ll escape remains to be seen, though one things for certain: with newly-tweaked designs for The Foundation and The Ice King on show here, fans will have several must-have new skins to obtain next season.
Recent weeks have seen several surviving members of Fortnite’s heroic Seven faction return in game, including a new version of The Visitor voiced by a very familiar-sounding actor. Fortnite is yet to officially confirm the return of Dwayne Johnson to his own role, though fans seemingly won’t have long to wait until The Foundation speaks once more.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
Well, good!
If you’ve been frequenting the eShop on the Switch 2, then you’ve no doubt noticed that it’s altogether a much more pleasant experience when compared to the original Switch.
Nintendo has made several moves to improve the eShop, including promoting more well-known games to the top of the discounts page and separating the best-selling charts into Switch and Switch 2 categories. Granted, visibility for genuinely great indie titles is still an issue (as it is on all digital storefronts), but Nintendo is certainly taking things in the right direction.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Hi, I’m Ines from Tiny Roar and we’re thrilled to announce that Lou’s Lagoon, our high-flying adventure, will be landing on PS5 later this year!
Today, I’m excited to share more details about the game and take you behind the scenes to show some of the work that has gone into creating the places you’ll visit, the people you’ll meet, and the journey you’ll go on.
Lou’s Lagoon begins with you arriving on Limbo, a tropical archipelago that has been hit by a nasty storm; worse still, your beloved Uncle Lou was caught up in the storm and is missing. You’ll take to the skies in your trusty seaplane to trace Lou’s journey across Limbo’s islands and use a clever arsenal of gadgets to rebuild the communities and help residents back on their feet.
We hope that you’ll fall in love with the colorful world we’ve created and that you’ll get swept up in Limbo’s peaceful way of life as you hop from island to island, each with a charming cast of islanders, in search of clues to Lou’s disappearance.
When we started working on what would become the Limbo archipelago, we took a lot of inspiration from classic adventure titles from the 90s and 00s, with island settings. We felt a tropical archipelago really fit the vibe we wanted for the game – easy-going and a world you can immerse yourself in without stressing out (there’s enough of that in real life!).
As Limbo is an archipelago, we enjoyed the opportunity to come up with ideas for fun thematics across the islands. When it came to designing the individual islands, we went through a lot of ideas including flying pyramids, an icy octopus island, and a creepy ghost ship but, in the end, we landed on a set of diverse island themes with our own unique stamp on them that should still feel familiar to anyone who had played adventure games before.
Take Gleam Reef, for instance. We quickly landed on the idea of an aquatic vibe, featuring huge pink corals and we wanted its residents to fit in with this theme, which led to the creation of the Vooi. The Vooi are lanky and agile jellyfish-based islanders who we like to think lived underwater for a long time and have recently learned to live on land. They’re very chilled and love to ‘go with the flow’ but this means they sometimes accept their fate too easily, maybe you can help them with that?
We took a similar approach when creating the wildlife that can be found across Limbo, building them as combinations of real animals. The Beever is part bee, part beaver. The Deergoat is… well, that one’s not hard to figure out. Each of these creatures carry different resources that you’ll need to collect and craft with as you help islanders and rebuild their communities, and we’ve worked hard to give players loads to discover whenever they land on an island for the first time.
As I mentioned earlier, you’ll travel from island to island in your seaplane and we’ve put a lot of effort into making flying feel satisfying and fun, whether you’re an experienced pilot or just discovering the fun of flying for the first time.
You’ll see ring challenges throughout the skies above Limbo. We hope that these challenges offer a fun way to get to grips with piloting your seaplane. Why not try and beat your personal best as you get more confident behind the controls?
Once you touch down, you’ll need to get to work on clearing up debris, gathering resources and crafting items to help restore the islands to their vibrant, pre-storm state (or even better?). Your key tool – and one of my favourite tools in the game – to help you do this is the Swirler 2000, which can grab storm debris and loose resources across the islands. For anyone who has played Slime Rancher, it’ll feel immediately familiar as you’re able to easily collect materials on the move.
The whole Tiny Roar team are incredibly excited to be bringing Lou’s Lagoon to PS5. Stay tuned for more updates as we get closer to release later this year and be sure to follow Lou’s Lagoon on social media. We can’t wait for PS5 players to explore Limbo and track down Uncle Lou!
If the absurd silliness of 2019’s Untitled Goose Game is the type of thing that floats your boat, then the upcoming multiplayer puzzle game Big Walk by the same developer should rank pretty high on your list for 2026. This wacky adventure occupies the growing number of games lovingly dubbed “friendslop,” in the same vein as Lethal Company, R.E.P.O., and most applicable here, Peak, making use of proximity chat and goofy gameplay to create memorable times with friends. And if the opening hour is any indication, then Big Walk stands a strong chance of capturing the attention of those, like myself, who will happily jump online to joke around with their buds during some low-stress shenanigans.
Big Walk is a cooperative puzzle game meant to be played with friends that emphasizes creativity, silly scenarios, and limited communication options as a core game mechanic. Unlike many games in this genre, you’re not stuck in a survival horror scenario, but instead solving a series of increasingly challenging puzzles that require your team to work as a group. Playing as weird, birdlike creatures, you’ll run around searching for oblong key items hidden throughout the island, tackling puzzles that have you doing things like describing hieroglyphs to your friends while they enter them into a codepad, or stacking up on top of one another like a circus troupe in order to get to areas unreachable on one’s own. The goofy and low-stakes nature of these obstacles means that, if you’re anything like my group, you’ll spend most of your time messing around and making very little progress while you crack jokes and come up with lore for the completely unexplained and odd world you find yourself in.
Like other multiplayer-focused indies of its kind, you’ll be limited strictly to proximity chat and won’t be able to hear your co-op partners if they’re standing more than a few feet away, so will have to make use of signs, hand signals, and other non-verbal forms of communication. This creates some unique hurdles, especially when players are required to split up to solve a puzzle. For example, in one scenario where one player had to hold down a button while I ran a long distance away to grab an item that was only accessible while said button was being held, my teammates had to keep an eye on me with binoculars so they could verify that I’d recovered the item.
To help ease the communication limitations, a whole bunch of the controls are dedicated to your character moving their arms about, including raising them in the air, holding them out at your sides, or pointing directly forward, and individual buttons are assigned to your left and right arm as well, allowing you to get quite specific with the different combinations. All of the puzzles placed before us in this demo were simple enough that we weren’t really required to get fancy with hand signals, but I could see the building blocks there that could lead to more complicated scenarios.
It’s also notable that in my time with Big Walk I encountered no puzzles that could be solved without the assistance of my companions, which I learned early on after becoming separated from the rest of the group and stumbled upon a puzzle and tried to solve it myself, only to quickly discover that I needed at least two players to complete it. Not only is solving puzzles with friends just fun to begin with, but I think it’s a good decision to make it so your friends can’t take off in different directions and make progress on their own, since it meant I never had to worry about missing out on any of the puzzle solving if I got lost or stopped to smell the roses while the others forged ahead.
In fact, puzzles actually change dynamically to fit the number of players in your party, from 2-4. For example, one puzzle requires everyone to stack on one another to reach a button located high up, and the height of that button is adjusted relative to the number of teammates you have. In another area, our prize could only be acquired when all four of us hit four buttons at the same time, and the number of buttons that had to be pushed simultaneously was determined by our player count. These examples are obviously quite simple since I effectively only played through the tutorial area, but I really like the idea that the participation of everyone on the team is required to make progress, and could see them coming up with some really devious challenges that require everyone taking on a vital role, overcoming communication obstacles along the way.
Aside from solving puzzles, you’ll also find things in the world that seem intended purely to waste your time, like one area where we found a paintbrush that allowed us to change the color of various parts of our weird bird characters’ bodies, and another where we found an odd rest stop of sorts, which had no puzzle to speak of, but played some chill jams and provided a nice view to admire. In a game that relies so heavily on creating silly memories with your friends, it’s great to see how apt Big Walk is when it comes to knowing when to slow things down and give players an opportunity to be childish dorks. We definitely took the developer up on every chance they gave us to do just that, and much of the joy from our demo came not from any novel game mechanic, but from us finding our own fun within their bizarre sandbox. At least in this short demo, they did a really great job at making room for this kind of fun, and it was surprising just how quick all four of us fell into a comfortable state of juvenile behavior. It’s the kind of pure, good-time nonsense vibes that we just don’t see enough of these days.
The premise of Big Walk might seem like it won’t have staying power, and that’s because it probably won’t. The whole thing is roughly 10 hours long according to developer House House Games, and none of the puzzles change aside from adjusting to your player count. But a lack of longevity or replayability isn’t such a bad thing with games like these, where a few amusing nights with your friends is well worth the time invested. I think of it a bit like doing an escape room – you likely won’t have a reason to return to the same collection of puzzles more than once, but it’s the kind of unique experience you’re unlikely to find elsewhere. In an era where more and more games are asking for absolutely every minute of our time for years and decades to come, I really relish the opportunity to play these bite-sized adventures that leave a lasting impression and then let me move on with my life (Don’t worry, GTA V. I still love you, baby).
I should also mention that the build of Big Walk I played was running on a (wait for it) Mac Mini. That’s right – A. Mac. Mini. Look, it’s not like this goofy co-op game could be even remotely demanding on hardware, since you’re mostly just hopping around and stacking on top of one another, but it’s still pretty impressive just how approachable this game seems to be, not just in terms of gameplay, but by the low barrier of entry in terms of the hardware you play on. For that reason, this might even be a good option if you’re looking to play with friends and family who aren’t normally into video games. After all, goofing around as a weird bird creature seems like a pretty universal kind of experience.
After a very memorable first hour, I’m absolutely sold on this as the next friendslop for my crew and I to jump in on. If it managed to be this enjoyable when all the puzzles were super simple, I can only imagine how ridiculous and memorable it’ll be when they introduce more complicated scenarios.
When Emil Pagliarulo was growing up in South Boston, he lived in fear of Whitey Bulger: a local crime boss who had been shaped not only by street gangs but Alcatraz, and a stint in the CIA’s mind control program, MKUltra.
“He was basically the boogeyman,” Pagliarulo says. “He was the evil bad guy. You didn’t know where he was or even what he looked like, but you knew he was out there. I’m 10 years old, and I know this name.”
Decades later, as Bethesda Game Studios shifted into full production on Fallout 4, Pagliarulo drew on those memories to bring a post-apocalyptic Boston to life. “The game was missing something, as far as one of the overall themes,” he says. “I remember having a conversation with Todd Howard that there should be this overriding sense of paranoia that people have, and they don’t know who to trust.”
