It’s Nintendo’s Indie World, we’re all just living in it.
Nintendo is going absolutely crazy as tomorrow, 7th August 2025, we’re getting our second video game showcase for the Switch 2 and Switch. And it’s an Indie World.
Indie World showcases are always a nice surprise, and given that this is the first for the Switch 2 gen, we might well be seeing a little more Mouse Mode in action — or, quite literally, mice.
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NBA 2K26 tip-off on PlayStation 5 is less than a month away; bringing a host of exciting gameplay innovations and presentation enhancements in the latest iteration of the NBA 2K franchise. This year, the Visual Concepts development team made another Eurostep forward in lifelike animations and authenticity, with heightened player fidelity, palpable arena atmosphere, energetic commentary and captivating pageantry—let’s get into it.
The weight of the moment combined with the wear and tear of each dribble, foul, and collision takes a physical toll over the course of a game.
In NBA 2K26, the evolution of player fidelity is more noticeable thanks to a new shader that brings out the subtleties of each player’s skin. Get up close and see the sweat stream down the pores on players’ faces, the cracks in their lips from dehydration, and the improved muscle definition after a thunderous dunk.
This new shading technology makes uniforms and shoes look even more detailed and stunning. The curvature of embroidered names on the back of jerseys boasts increased accuracy—you can even see the ultra-fine stitching. These minute details bring you closer to the action than ever before.
Take in the grandeur of these larger-than-life NBA arenas with improved lighting, floor shading, and team-specific features in NBA 2K26.
Improved arena lighting
The lighting in NBA 2K26 has been redesigned to improve light intensity and color correction. Coupled with the new skin shader, the players shine and reflect like the stars they are as they dazzle under the bright lights of the arena.
Improved court floors
In addition to the new skin shaders, new floor shaders have been introduced to add more life and sheen to every court. The meticulously polished courts in 2K26 invite you to step on the hardwood and observe the uniqueness of each team’s home court. Depending on the camera angle you prefer, there’s a distinct contrast in wood grain color based on a higher or lower view.
Team-specific features
From the shape of each arena’s overhead spotlights to the Clippers’ towering “Wall,” all 30 arenas in NBA 2K26 have been designed to closely match their real-world counterparts. Teams around the league have different pregame rituals, like how they create specific patterns with their light shows or how they illuminate the court with team colors. For the teams that rely on pyrotechnics to fire up the crowd, a thin haze will fill the arena and progressively dissipate as the game gets underway. Dedicated fans of these teams will appreciate the level of authenticity and effort that went into capturing the true essence of every arena, like the Detroit Pistons’ courtside lounge behind the baseline.
Feel the palpable energy of an NBA arena in NBA 2K26. Interact with diverse fanbases as a player and quiet the hecklers with sensational plays. Even the entertainers are putting on a show—mascots, hype crews, and national anthem singers are raising the bar during pregame and in between timeouts.
Crowd variety & interaction
Crowd variety and interactions were a big focus this year, and received major improvements and upgrades. Variety was greatly expanded with twice the number of unique character models, including more body types and heads. This represents a wider range of sizes, shapes, and ages. Clothing options are also expanded and now include current and historic player jerseys that feature a player’s name on the back of the jersey. We’re talking about over 60 historic players such as Jordan, Bird, and more; many of the top current players in the game have been included, as well.
Fans in the crowd have been given rally towels, foam fingers and even rubber chickens to show their team spirit. Expect to see these deployed in key moments of special games, think NBA Cup and Playoffs games. Each fan will also wear an arena provided LED wristband that’s used to create light shows for player introductions, after big plays, and more.
In MyCAREER, particularly passionate fans may heckle your MyPLAYER during the game. Listen to their chirps and use it as motivation to silence them with your skills on the court.
In-arena entertainment
During breaks in the action, new performers and entertainment will take the floor. From mascots on pocket bikes to choreographed dances, and more. There will never be a dull moment. All-new renditions of the U.S. and Canadian national anthems will be played pregame, prior to tip-off.
Player interactions in 2K26 set the scene before the game with an updated lower-bowl experience.
Pregame shootaround includes fresh animations; players and trainers can be seen conducting drills and getting warmed up ahead of the game.
When there’s a stoppage or break in the action—timeout, coach’s challenge, end of a quarter—players will see refreshed bench and huddle animations, as you make substitutions and draw up plays. Some players may even make their case to the officiating crew about potential foul calls.
Add to the memory of your clutch moments with eloquent commentary captured by the talented play-by-play and color commentary of the NBA 2K broadcast team. In the waning moments of a game, especially when it’s tightly contested, there will be a noticeable shift in tone from the commentators. As the clock ticks down and the intensity ratchets up, the heightened energy will feel much different from a blowout.
Returning to the broadcast booth in NBA 2K26 are the talented, iconic, and insightful crew of Kevin Harlan, Greg Anthony, Stan Van Gundy, Shams Charania, and more. In addition to this distinguished cast, new PA announcers, international correspondents, and the incredibly savvy Tim Legler have joined the mix.
NBA history is defined by iconic individual seasons and clutch performances in big moments. NBA 2K26 is designed to capture the magnitude of these awards and moments by drawing you in with the pageantry and spectacle of it all.
Dynamic banners
Celebrate your championships properly with dynamic banners in NBA 2K26. As you win titles, you’ll see banners from those championship victories raised into the rafters, where they’ll hang to commemorate your milestone achievements. Year after year, as you add to your storied legacy, these banners will be a constant reminder of your place in NBA history and a crowning achievement of your success.
NBA Cup
Presentation now has full integration for the NBA Cup, including more detailed overlays in Cup games that educate you on the groups and how many points teams need to advance in this unique format.
In addition, custom highlight reels will be played before NBA Cup games, featuring signature NBA Cup thematic music and special NBA Cup branding to make every moment feel more significant.
Replays will utilize the unique ‘matrix cam,’ which shows a 360-degree replay that orbits around highlight moments.
NBA Awards
Celebrate your achievements with all 7 NBA regular season awards: MVP, Rookie of the Year, Defensive Player of the Year, Sixth Man of the Year, Most Improved Player, Clutch Players of the Year, and Coach of the Year.
Your trophy will be presented to you in your first home game after winning the award. If you won more than one award, you’ll even see them presented together.
Capture your favorite show-stopping highlights with Instant Replay, Photo Moments, and Highlight Builder features. In NBA 2K26, you can now save filter presets for easy access when creating highlight reels. Put an artistic touch on your gravity-defying plays to give them a cinematic look and feel.
From the rafters to the hardwood, and everything in between, NBA 2K26’s presentation enhancements raise the intensity inside the arena and make every game feel like it’s primetime. Pre-order NBA 2K26 Superstar or Leave No Doubt Edition and experience all of these authentic features for yourself during Early Access*, starting August 29!
*Early access only available for NBA 2K26 Superstar and Leave No Doubt Editions (Digital) only available on PlayStation 5. Availability restrictions apply.
In 2023, a video game called Dredge hit a collective nerve with its story of trawling the seas for an increasingly horrible and disturbing catch of fish. One of the people it inspired was horror fan and board game designer Judson Cowan, and he set about riffing on its inspiration to deliver a cardboard equivalent, a marriage of theme and delivery as yet untapped on tabletop.
The result is Deep Regrets, and we’ve climbed aboard and sailed it out so we can check whether all’s shipshape and Bristol fashion. We also wanted to see how it compares to the top horror board games on the market.
Deep Regrets comes in a small box but it’s heavy with contents. Lifting the lid reveals a number of small player boards. There’s a main one to track the fish swimming in the three different depth levels available to dredge, a port board for when you sail back to dry land to sell your catch and equip your boat, the ocean madness board that tracks each player’s state of mind, and a number of double-sided player boards for tracking the status of your game. The sides are functionally identical, it’s just that one side has a sinister-looking old sea dog and the other side has… an even more sinister-looking old sea dog. That tells you a lot about what kind of game this is going to be.
Much of the weight comes from various decks of cards. There are three decks of fish, one for each depth, plus a deck of “dinks,” tiny fish you can gain if your main catch gets away. There are also decks of rods, reels and “supply” that you can buy at port. The biggest deck of all is the deck of regrets which you pick up for undertaking regrettable actions at sea. There’s also a cloth bag of custom dice shaped like fishing floats, various chunky wooden tokens and a metal “fish coin” used to flip and resolve some card effects. Finally there’s a paper pad for tracking your catches in the solo variant.
It’s hard to overstate just how evocative the visual design of the game is. Everything is decorated with art by the game’s designer, even the inside of the box lid. He’s a talented artist, creating detailed, imaginative visuals that strike a pitch-perfect stylistic balance between fun and creepy. Once you start flipping the fish cards, the chance to see new ones, or re-examining familiar ones for details that you missed becomes a major draw to replay the game alongside the fun of dice-rolling and decision-making.
The game is normally played over six days from Monday to Saturday. Each day starts out with you rolling your clutch of dice and placing them in your fresh pool: you start with three but can gain more, which have higher numbers than your starting dice. You then make one of the game’s key decisions, whether you’ll spend the day at sea or head to port. Everyone starts at sea, so we’ll go through the possible actions as you plough the waves.
Most of your turns at sea involve trying to catch fish. Each depth has three card piles, called shoals, and the card backs indicate whether the card represents a small, medium, or large fish, with bigger fish generally taking larger dice values to catch. You pick which shoal you want to fish in and flip the top card. Some fish have effects when revealed, such as the whiptail stingray, which allows you to reroll one die. All fish have a value in “fishbucks” in one corner and a difficulty value in the other. To catch a fish, you’ve got to spend dice equal to the difficulty.
This makes flipping fish a calculated gamble, as it’s possible you won’t have enough dice to reel in whatever horror you’ve hooked. If you can’t, you get to take a dink card as a consolation prize, which generally gives you a small bonus like the shrimp, which reduces the difficulty of a fish by one. In addition, not all fish are created equal. Some have values that are significantly different from their difficulty, while others can have both good or bad effects on you or other players when caught. They also come in two flavors: fair, which are normal, real-world fish, and foul, which are body parts, repulsive mutants, occult creations and worse.
However you fare in the fish lottery, the process is almost always enormously fun. For starters, there’s the big reveal, not only with the anticipation of matching the difficulty against your dice but of seeing what kind of freakish thing you’re up against and enjoying the art. There may be a reveal effect to resolve, many of which affect all players or otherwise mix up the expected catching process. Then, you may have an awkward decision about whether you want to spend multiple dice on it, whether you even want it at all, or whether it’s better to sacrifice a die and take the relative safety of a dink draw instead.
Spending days at port allows you to sell fish for their value and buy equipment. Rods, reels and supply cards all help your fishing efforts in various ways, and you can also buy additional one-use dice to roll, meaning you can land more and more difficult fish. But be careful with what you sell, because the value of your unsold fish is your score at the end of the game. You can also mount fish into one of three slots while in port, which multiplies their value by two or, in the top “prize catch” slot, three. Choosing which days to spend in port rather than at sea is a key strategic decision in which you’re torn between wanting better fish to sell or mount, and wanting to spend as much time on the waves for a bigger catch.
Landing foul fish generally leads to you drawing regret cards. Each of these has a numeric value between zero and three as well as a narrative tagline which varies from bleakly funny – “got a bad tattoo” – to seriously sinister – “partook of human flesh.” Depending on the number of regret cards you’ve accumulated, you may go increasingly mad, slowly reducing the value of fair fish, boosting that of foul fish and raising the maximum number of dice you’re allowed to use in a day’s fishing.
But there’s a major catch. While the number of cards you have is public knowledge, the values on them are not, and the player with the highest total value at the end of the game must discard one of those precious mounted specimens and the multiplier that goes with it.
Dice aren’t just spent on catching fish but can also be discarded to allow you to fish in deeper waters, which have more difficult targets and a higher proportion of foul fish. This allows you to manipulate an overall strategic curve. You can save dice, stay in safe waters, maximizing the value of your fair fish and resting safe in the knowledge you won’t be the one discarding when the game ends. Or you can dredge the depths, catching more and more appalling abominations, revelling in the horror and crossing your fingers that you’ll have fewer bleak regrets than your fellow fishermen when the game ends. Or try to chart a course between the two extremes, adjusting carefully depending on other player’s decisions.
On a tactical level, the game gathers momentum towards the finale. Initial fishing trips are fairly bland but as you begin to gain dinks, equipment, and a collection of fish, some of which can be eaten for an immediate ability, you can start to look for combo effects between the different cards. This snowballs as you get more and more of each, meaning you can pull off some pretty spectacular fishing turns late in the game, once you’ve learned to spot them. But each of these is laden with various risk vs reward decisions, most obviously that eating a fish means you no longer benefit from its value. In particular, once the regret deck runs out, additional regrets must be taken from other players, making for some very swingy turns.
While there are definite strategic and tactical choices of this kind in the game, it’d be overselling things to make too much of them. Fundamentally, this is a push-your-luck game where you’re eternally hoping for the highest dice rolls, the best fish card reveals, and for the fish-coin flips to always go your way. Experience and planning help, but anyone around the table can win, with that hidden regret value being particularly punishing. This cuts both ways, as it can make the game feel over-long at high player counts, and hardcore strategy hounds may find the game too lightweight to satisfy, but newer players will enjoy rolling with the punches in the knowledge that they’re in with a chance to win right up until the bitter end.
It’s a good month to be subscribed to Humble Choice, and not just because you get eight Steam keys for the price of one lukewarm Deliveroo. August’s headliner is Persona 5 Royal, and honestly, that’s enough on its own.
League of Legends: Wild Rift executive producer David Xu has said Riot “can and will do better,” after sharing an anniversary video to the game’s account on Chinese social media site Weibo that very much looks to be AI slop.
However, Xu hasn’t confirmed that the video did use AI in this sort-of-apology, instead claiming this was a “creator-made” video that’d found its way onto the League of Legends‘ spin-off’s official channels.
Pull on your gloves and ready your hose: PowerWash Simulator 2 approaches, and so far it’s looking ultra-polished (in a gloriously unhygienic kind of way.) I had an absolute ball of a time revisiting Muckingham to correct the townsfolk’s filthy ways.
In the niche of “oddly satisfying” games, its predecessor PowerWash Simulator (and its oodles of DLC) already blasts away competitors. So what does the sequel offer, besides just “more dirty stuff”? To find out, I went hands-on with a single-player PC build of PowerWash Simulator 2, checking out five levels showcasing hot new technology like abseiling and floor washers.
PowerWash Simulator 2 starts off with the expansion of your business to a fully fledged office building. Your first job is to clean up the mud-caked removals van that transported your furniture and gear over. Couldn’t you have found a neater moving company to work with? It seems that the residents of Caldera County are still unable to clean up after themselves, which is great – more work for you!
And it’s entertaining work, too. None of your jobs are quite ordinary. For instance, you’re not going to clean any old generic car – yours will have a dog tail and headlights that weirdly seem to flit around like eyes. Don’t forget to wash inside the ears!
You’ll be travelling farther afield this time, to hilariously named neighboring towns like Lubri City and Pumpton. And this time, the true hero of PowerWash 1, Ulysses the cat, tags along to supervise you. You’ll be glad to know that yes, you can pet the cat.
PowerWash 2 stays very true to its predecessor, with gameplay actually remaining mostly untouched. That’s not a bad thing – you can’t fix what isn’t broken, y’know? It means that, if you’re a PowerWash veteran, you’ll jump right in and feel like you’re simply picking up where you left off. And don’t fret if you’re new: PowerWash 2 is first-timer friendly as well, with simple controls and “no talk, skip to the action” gameplay that barely warrants a tutorial.
Progression mechanics have stayed pretty much identical to PowerWash 1 – you’ve got a checklist of specific details to clean, a key to highlight stubborn remaining dirt, and equipment upgrades to buy in the shop with your earnings. And, of course, the “ding!” that lets you know you’re doing a bang-up job.
One major addition is a brand-new, delightful, and very satisfying washing tool: the “SwirlForce,” a washer which has a wide, circular head. I think it’s supposed to be used for cleaning floors, but I used it on basically every flat surface I came across, from ornamental windows to trucks. It was too fun not to!
The other notable addition to your loadout? Suds. The soap mechanic has been retooled a bit – it’s now specific to certain types of washer tools. It coats a surface with a thick layer of foam that can then be hosed off in one gratifying burst. I’m curious to learn just how much this precious commodity will cost, because I hope to use it as much as possible.
Some levels now have multiple stages, which adds a bit of fun. For instance, I was tasked with cleaning a vaguely described “public facility,” which at first appeared to be a sort of knee-high pedestal in the middle of Detergento’s eerily quiet town square. Once I had it sparkling, it began to rise out of the ground – it was actually a pop-up bathroom! Yes, it was absolutely filthy. And yes, I was pleasantly surprised to have even more scum to clean.
My favorite job was the billboard level – a great opportunity for my SwirlForce washer, but also a great example of the new abseiling equipment. Just slap that equipment on a tall, wide surface, and you’re ready to get in the swing and bounce all over the billboard to make sure every corner is gleaming. Looking down at the highway from my billboard actually felt dizzying, in an unexpectedly thrilling sort of way. If PowerWash Simulator 2 also makes it to VR, I think that’s where abseiling will really shine.
The other new piece of heavy equipment is the scissor lift. Its purpose is similar to the scaffolding you’ve already got in your lineup – the difference is that it’s adjustable. Press the button to go up. And down. Up. And down. It doesn’t meaningfully add much to the whole cleaning experience, but it’s a fun toy.
With all sequels come visual upgrades, and PowerWash Simulator 2 is no different in that department. Mud looks slimier, and grime looks even more convincingly like it’s harboring bacteria.
Additionally, your jobs simply feel bigger now thanks to more detailed level backgrounds. The art deco house I scrubbed felt like a real part of the suburban neighborhood around it, complete with lush trees and even distant, snow-capped mountains.
One of my most anticipated graphical upgrades was water behavior, so I’m sad to say that PowerWash 2 does not introduce any new water physics. I was hoping to see rivers of mucky brown water streaming down walls and puddling at my feet, resulting in another mess I’d have to deal with. Dirt still pretty much disappears once you hit it with your washer, though, making it look more like you’ve taken a giant eraser to the town rather than hosed it down with an ocean’s worth of water.
There is one minor upgrade, at least: a new, momentary rippling water texture on windows and other glassy surfaces. It’s a small step towards the dream of water physics. Maybe for PowerWash Simulator 3?
The minimal change to water is understandable (adding new, from-the-ground-up physics is hard for developers!). But remember, there’s still a lot of satisfaction to be had in a classic, eraser-style deep-clean. Plus: we’ll always have gnome physics.
One of the best things about PowerWash 1, in my opinion, was the absolutely bonkers single-player campaign. It’s one thing to spray stuff with water, but another entirely to slowly uncover deep lore beneath the dirt. Given that the first game featured everything from the mayor’s cat to egg-flinging monks and even time travellers, I needed to know if the madness would continue.
It’s hard to say for sure; with two hours of hands-on time, there was only so much story that I could experience beyond “power-washing business opens a new branch, cleans a couple of things.” But the clues were there.
I scrutinized what lay beneath the grime I scoured away. What are those weird rainbow lasers in the sky? Why does the art deco house have a giant trilobite on it? In the oddball universe of PowerWash Simulator, such details usually have a deeper, quirkier meaning, and I can’t wait to find out what it is.
I’m not the first journalist to accuse Battlefield 6 of failing to read the room. The new Battlefield’s single player story explores a near-future in which NATO has collapsed, a dastardly private military corporation has filled the power vacuum, and the USA’s somehow-outgunned military must fight to reunite old allies under the Stars and Stripes. The campaign includes an invasion of New York, with street battles waged against the balaclava-huffing scoundrels of “Pax Armata” in the shadow of Brooklyn Bridge. Many valiant helicopters lay down their lives in the process, and the soul of Bob Dylan is flown from every flagpole.
Slow and steady.
Japanese automotive manufacturer Honda has unveiled the Pokémon Koraidon motorbike during the Suzuka 8 Hours motorcycle endurance race on Sunday, and uh… Well, it looks about as elegant as you could reasonably expect.
The vehicle is aided by the Honda Riding Assist system, which means it’s able to operate and move independently. You can check this out in the video below, but don’t expect blistering speeds out of this one. The bike is equipped with stabilisers, presumably to simply keep it upright, but it’s moving at an almost laughably slow speed.
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Fresh light has been shone on an interview that claims Nintendo once suggested Pokémon’s beloved mascot Pikachu should have breasts.
The interview, with The Pokémon Company’s veteran CEO Tsunekazu Ishihara, dates back around 25 years, and is in Japanese — something that has prompted debate over the exact translation of what Ishihara originally said.
Now, however, Japanese site Game*Spark (via Automaton) has examined the original interview in detail to uncover as firm an interpretation as possible — and yes, it really does seem to be what it sounds like.
Firstly, let’s examine what Ishihara says, before further discussing the specific issue over the word “breasts.” For context, Ishihara is discussing an early conversation he had with Nintendo of America employees regarding the localisation of the Pokémon franchise — before it launched in the West and became the global phenomenon it is today.
“When I first showed Pokémon to them, they told me it was too cute,” Ishihara recalled. “The staff at Nintendo of America then suggested their own designs for the characters – I won’t show those illustrations to anyone as long as I live, but they kind of looked like the characters from the Cats musical.
“So, for example, Pikachu was changed into a character shaped like a kind of a tabby cat with huge breasts.”
As Automaton notes, there is some debate here about the exact Japanese word used to describe “breasts,” which could also mean pronounced masculine pecs. However, there’s added context in what is said next.
When Ishihara is asked whether he means breasts “like those girls who do Pikachu cosplays at anime conventions,” the CEO replies in the affirmative.
“Yes, exactly,” Ishihara states, “they presented that kind of design to us for real. I thought it was interesting, in a sense of appreciating such cultural differences. However, I didn’t want to compete in the [overseas] market with that kind of thing.”
One final wrinkle in the matter is a subsequent anecdote from the late Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, who in 2008 recalled early localisation conversations that featured a westernised Pikachu concept with big muscles, in an attempt to make the mascot “stronger and scarier.”
But, as Game*Spark notes, this could simply refer to an additional concept also being discussed in the same meetings, as Nintendo suggested a range of alterations. And, if anything, it’s yet more proof that Nintendo once had some eye-opening ideas to change the design of some Pokémon for the franchise’s rollout outside of Japan.
Judging by the popularity of Pokémon today, and the failure of Cats’ movie adaptation, that’s probably for the best.
Image credit: Universal.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
