Author: Game Infliction

One of the big announcements from this year’s Pokémon Presents was a new, mobile Pokémon Trading Card Game, which comes as a big surprise, given Pokémon already has a game where you can collect cards and play online called Pokémon Trading Card Game Live.

Unlike the newly announced Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket, TCG Live was released in 2023 on desktop and mobile, but its lackluster quality has earned it both a 2.8/5 star rating on Apple’s App Store (as of this writing) and the ire of Pokémon card players everywhere. But while Pokémon TCG Pocket does look attractive — with its gorgeous, immersive card art, and slick animations — it’s actually not the game the Pokémon TCG community needs right now. What we need is a functional digital client that fully captures the real-life tabletop game and not a watered down App Store game version emulating Marvel Snap.

Exhaustingly, up until 2023, the main way to play Pokémon TCG digitally was through an official client, Pokémon Trading Card Game Online, which was serviceable but showing many signs of its advanced age. (In hindsight, we didn’t know how good we had it.) Fans were initially excited when a replacement was finally announced in the form of Pokémon TCG Live, but it was so riddled with issues that it had us begging for the 12-year-old client back. It’s been a real Mankey’s Paw situation!

The digital card game space has evolved dramatically over the years, with Marvel Snap in particular setting a new standard that other developers appear eager to chase. Between Snap’s many awards and millions of dollars in revenue, it’s easy to see why. From the announcement trailer, Pokémon TCG Pocket seems to have been built in the same mold, a “free-to-start” game where you collect cards and challenge other players to quick and breezy battles. Given the Pokémon TCG is one of the most popular tabletop card games in the world, it seemed inevitable The Pokémon Company would get in on this trend, but it seems to have come at the expense of it’s pre-existing Pokémon TCG app that allows you to play the full game, or at least that’s how this competitive Pokémon TCG player sees it.

While we don’t know for sure whether Pocket was developed at the expense of Live, it would certainly explain the lack of polish to the latter. That kind of bad optics comes at a time when the competitive Pokémon TCG landscape is already dealing with a host of other issues. Top among them, the increasing popularity of the game has far outgrown its current capacity, leading to major tournaments selling out in minutes and leaving many players rightfully frustrated. If only there were a quality digital version capable of hosting tournaments online to help alleviate the issue…

Having a fully developed, high quality Pokémon TCG client is important for reasons beyond just being able to play the game online. It’s how many new players first discover the game, pro players rely on it to practice, and content creators stake their wellbeing on it because it’s how they showcase the game on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. But when the only option available is as underwhelming as Live, it only serves to drive people away to other, better online card games such as Magic: The Gathering Arena or Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel.

Speaking of Yu-Gi-Oh!, that’s a card game that has the best of both worlds. A flashy version of the full game in Master Duel and a simpler version in Duel Links. What Yu-Gi-Oh! has that Pokémon doesn’t is one of their games doesn’t completely eclipse the other in quality. They’re two different yet equally valid ways to enjoy the game.

Not all reactions to Pokémon TCG Pocket from the competitive Pokémon TCG scene have been negative. Pokémon TCG tournament caster and YouTuber Frosted Caribou posted on social media, “This app could be our TCG savior,” and later responded to a comment with, “Competitive players are sometimes way too quick to dismiss anything that isn’t ‘true TCG.’ If they supported bridging the gap between collectors and players more there are huge opportunities to grow the game and create fun and healthy playgroups for so many more people.”

That’s a fair point. At first glance, Pokémon TCG Pocket does seem like it’ll have a strong appeal to fans who aren’t necessarily looking to go pro, and it’s easy to see it has great potential to grow the casual, collector side of the hobby. Even if Pocket doesn’t let you play using all of the rules like with Live, its quality can still entice new players and act as a starting point before they dive into the full card game.

To be clear, I’m not knocking Pokémon TCG Pocket. Aside from issues with the “free-to-start” model, it looks like a fun, accessible way to enjoy the Pokémon TCG. It has an impressive amount of cool features, all executed with sky-high production value. It’s clear to see that it was made by people who love Pokémon cards, and that they put a generous amount of time, passion, and effort into it – and probably a Wailord-sized pile of money.

All Pokémon TCG players want is to be able to say the same thing about Pokémon TCG Live.

We probably don’t need to tell you this, but developing a game is hard, even more so when a ton of quality assurance work needs to be done. The remake of Resident Evil 4 was far from immune to those struggles, as a new documentary recently revealed.

The details came in a recent episode of the documentary series 100 Cameras (spotted by GamesRadar), which, true to the name, installs a hundred cameras to capture individuals in the specific episode’s theme. This particular episode focused on Capcom.

At the time of filming the episode, Resident Evil 4 Remake had one month left in development before its release date, with a slew of QA issues that needed to be addressed. One development team member disclosed that they found “around 70” bugs after finishing just one day of playtesting.

Resident Evil 4 Remake director Yasuhiro Anpo detailed several bugs, from the screen freezing at random points to Leon falling from the map. “At this rate, we won’t make the release,” Anpo said in the episode.

The episode goes into detail of the activities of QA testers during game development, delving into the extensive gameplay testing to ensure proper functionality.

Among other things, it highlighted the rigorous testing of elements like the “Game Over” screen, and revealed that one QA tester died 300 times in a day while testing the Resident Evil 4 Remake. At one point, the QA lead, frustrated with the number of bugs and questioning why the “fixes are so sloppy,” held a meeting with Anpo, worried that the team would be unable to finish the game before its release date.

One of the major issues was the fact that new additions, including those dealing with menu screens and lighting, were being tacked on during the final stretch of development, causing new bugs to surface and leading the QA team to pile more work onto their plates.

Nevertheless, we know how this story ends: Resident Evil 4 Remake hit its March 24, 2023 release date and did not encounter any game-breaking bugs upon release. The development team’s efforts did not go unnoticed, as Resident Evil 4 Remake was a critical and commercial success.

“The Resident Evil 4 remake is the series’ most relentlessly exciting adventure rebuilt, refined, and realized to the full extent of its enormous potential,” my colleague Tristan Ogilvie wrote in his glowing review of Resident Evil 4 Remake.

Taylor is a Reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.

Pokémon Legends: Z-A was announced during Tuesday morning’s Pokémon Presents stream with a 2025 release date. One of the first questions on the minds of fans was, “Is Pokémon Legends: Z-A coming to Switch 2?”

The answer, for now, is “we don’t know.” Fans who pointed out that it’s coming to “Nintendo Switch systems,” with an emphasis on the plural, were reminded that the Switch has Lite and OLED versions. The timing does align rather conspicuously, though, with the rumored release date of the Switch 2, which is said to be be around March 2025.

The Ori games have always felt like something of a big deal. That’s in part thanks to the backing of Microsoft Studios, which published both The Blind Forest and The Will of the Wisps initially as Xbox console exclusives. The shine of that exclusivity drew people to Ori’s quality, and by the time the games were released on other platforms it was common knowledge just how talented developer Moon Studios was. It’s a reputation that somewhat betrays the reality that the first Ori game was built by just a couple of handfuls of staff. The studio is small. Or it was small, at least to begin with.

Today, Moon Studios is pretty sizable for an indie developer, and currently at work on its most ambitious project yet: No Rest for the Wicked, an action RPG with striking visuals, precise combat, and online multiplayer. It’s a huge leap for the company, and so as part of this month’s IGN First we caught up with Moon Studio’s co-founders to discuss moving forward from Ori’s success and into the challenging waters of sprawling worlds, fantastical lore, and early access development.

“I always saw Ori as our Mario,” says Moon Studio’s co-founder, CEO, and creative director, Thomas Mahler. “Because, even though it was a Metroidvania, the platforming focus was so big in that game. […] Then I was really excited about the idea of ‘What happens if Moon Studios, with our art style and all of that, would take on something like Zelda?”

That tantalising prospect is the genesis point for No Rest for the Wicked. Mahler and his team began working on it right after completing development on Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition, but quickly realised that it wasn’t the right time to make their RPG Moon’s next release.

“We didn’t quite feel that we were ready to take on online multiplayer, PvP, a full-blown RPG in 3D,” recalls Gennadiy Korol, Moon Studios’ co-founder and its director of technology. “That is a very, very difficult thing to do as a studio, so we felt that we needed to grow a bit more. We needed to learn a little bit more.”

And so Moon went off to work on a sequel to Ori, the Will of the Wisps. Well, most of Moon. In the background, a very small group of creatives continued to tinker away on their epic fantasy project. And while they tinkered, Moon Studios grew. Ori and the Blind Forest was built by around 20 people. Will of the Wisps saw the studio grow to almost 60 staff. Today, it’s a group over 80 strong. “It’s a whole new era for our studio, for sure,” says Mahler.

Entering that new era meant that Moon Studios was finally ready to make its dream RPG. With the completion of Will of the Wisps’ Switch and Xbox Series editions, the entire company – with all its newly accumulated knowledge, wisdom, and experience – shifted across to No Rest for the Wicked. But while bigger, stronger, and wiser, this evolved version of Moon Studios still had plenty of challenges ahead of it. That began with the fundamentals.

“We built our own engine for [No Rest for the Wicked], for the networking of it,” explains Korol. “We had to re-envision all the art pipelines, all of the asset pipelines. Everything was basically redone from scratch in full 3D.”

Despite so much having to start again from scratch, Korol notes that there are many “interesting parallels” between Metroidvanias and action RPGs, meaning that much of what was learned making Ori was transferable to work on No Rest for the Wicked. Mahler points to Ori’s fully connected world, the philosophy for which also underpins Wicked’s level design. “We went through the paces on that twice,” he says. “We spent a decade working on the Ori games, and doing the really hard things to actually get us into the groove of how we now build a game like this.”

But things go deeper than just creative parallels. In one instance, Moon actually developed systems for Ori as something of a prototype for an idea it wanted in its forthcoming RPG. “We had this little metagame section [in Will of the Wisps] called the Wellspring Glades,” says Mahler. “There were NPCs there, and you could help them out. You could help them make the Wellspring Glades a nicer place. A lot of these things we, even back then, created because we knew we were going to do this in a much bigger way for No Rest for the Wicked.”

With that in mind, it’s clear that much of what fans loved about Ori will form the basis for No Rest for the Wicked, despite the change in genre. That will hopefully make for an action RPG that feels very different to its peers.

“There was always this unwritten rule that ARPGs needed to be procedurally generated, and I always doubted that,” says Mahler. “Because, if I looked at the results that we got, the worlds didn’t really feel that different. To me, level design is really important.

“I worked for a decade on the Ori games, where everything was about level design, and it feeling super fun to be in that world. I wanted to apply the same thing for No Rest for the Wicked. I want to handcraft everything.”

While No Rest for the Wicked’s world isn’t procedurally generated akin to vast stretches of Diablo’s Sanctuary, Korol promises an endgame where the experience feels “varied, and different, and challenging, even though you’re revisiting this handcrafted world.” It’s unclear what he means by that right now, but it’s easy to imagine repeated runs of areas that have been altered by varying parameters and remixed enemies.

But challenging and varied gameplay isn’t the only thing that keeps people coming back to ARPGs. As with any style of role-playing game, artistic design and worldbuilding are vital hooks, and Moon Studios takes this as seriously as any other part of the project. The trailer features a balanced mix of the fresh and familiar, from Soulsian horrors to strange new armour designs that encase its Inquisition soldiers. Running through all this is a believable sense of darkness – a visual tone that many will recognise from one of the best-loved fantasy book series of all time, plus its HBO adaptation.

“Song of Ice and Fire, I think, is the biggest inspiration,” says Korol. That much is clear from its cast of characters, who appear in shades of Cersei Lannister and Jon Snow. But this is also a story of dead kings and the war for succession, the same historically-inspired plot points that are the engine of George R.R. Martin’s tales.

Mahler points to a much older source of inspiration, though. “It was really about building this Shakespearean tale,” he says. “Because, with Ori, we already created these smaller, allegorical tales where we introduced these characters, and somehow still managed to make people really connect with those characters and feel emotionally attached to them.

“This time it was, ‘Okay, let’s go from this almost Disney-esque, Ghibli-esque thing to now let’s do an epic fantasy saga with humans,’ where there’s all these characters that have their own dilemmas.”

“I think worldbuilding is hugely important for us,” says Korol. “It’s also having these characters have interesting conflicts, and story arcs, and ambiguous moral questions that we’re dealing with. Actually challenge the players, and have them think about what’s right and what’s wrong.”

No Rest for the Wicked is a story of significant shifts for Moon Studios. The shift from Metroidvania to action RPG. The shift from 2D to 3D. The shift from Disney-like to Game of Thrones-like. These shifts even extend into the way the game will be released; this time around, Moon Studios is heading down the route of early access.

“I think we knew that this was how we wanted to make games,” says Korol. He explains how creating the Definitive Edition of Ori and the Blind Forest allowed the team to respond to and build upon player feedback gathered from the original launch. The studio had the opportunity to do this again with Ori and the Will of the Wisps, implementing feedback-informed changes into the Switch and Series X/S versions that were released several months after launch.

“For us as creators, that really is fun,” Korol says. “This is why we wake up in the morning, is to see how other people play these games. It’s to make them happy. If there’s anything that we can improve, we are optimisers at heart. It’s the process of optimization and constant improvement.”

With this in mind, it’s easy to see why Moon Studios has been attracted to early access as a development strategy. It’s currently unclear how it plans to implement it, though. Developers that have famously used the approach to great effect, such as Supergiant Games with Hades and Larian Studios with Baldur’s Gate 3, have used different strategies in the build up to a full launch. However, that full launch is typically always greatly benefited by months or even years of player feedback. We’ll learn how Moon Studios intends to go about that as part of Wicked Inside, which airs at 9am PT on March 1.

However it proceeds, it’s clear that Moon Studios has huge ambitions for No Rest for the Wicked. And while it’s a project that demands the team heads into uncharted territory, it appears that – at the very least – they have the right attitude towards this bold new swing.

“I’m a big believer in allowing the art to tell the artist where it wants to go,” says Mahler. “It just became really clear to me and to the rest of the team that, ‘Man, if we do this right, if we actually take all these things and put them together, this could become pretty incredible.’”

Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Features Editor.