Scroll through the eShop any week, and under the new releases section, you are bound to find a Metroidvania, if not several. The genre is packed with so many games that few manage to break out. However, Red Candle Games’ Nine Sols did manage to make a name for itself earlier this year on PC, and now that it has come to Switch, it is clear to see why.
It fuses the intense, precise parrying system seen in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice with satisfying skills, abilities, and upgrades that are all accentuated by strong sound design and visuals. While the worldbuilding and design didn’t particularly grab us, its combat is enough to make it stand out when compared to its 2024 Metroidvania competition.
Yes, it’s good, but it’s not great. And by gum, if you’ve been a fan of Nintendo for a while now, then you’ll know that My Nintendo’s predecessor, Club Nintendo, was often great. In operation from 2002 (region-depending) until 2015, Club Nintendo offered up some of the most incredible, one-of-a-kind products imaginable. A golden Twilight Princess statue, a SNES controller for the Wii, a Year of Luigi coin, multiple CD soundtracks… It really felt like the sky was the limit for Club Nintendo, and we’re saddened that My Nintendo will likely never match its brilliance.
Just when you thought you’d played all the RPGs – maxed every last stat, drained the XP of every last creature, tap-danced your way along every branching questline – CD Projekt have announced that The Witcher 4 is in “full-scale production”.
Crescent County Is the Witch-Tech Racing-Delivery-Life-Sim You Didn’t Know You Needed
Before I played an early version of Crescent County, I didn’t know that an in-game version of a motorized, magical broomstick could feel right. But here I am, drawing wide arcs through the gently swaying grass of the Isle of Morah, identifying the perfect hillock to glide off from, and intuitively following paths of flowers to shortcuts across its open world. You’d think there’d no right way to depict something as bizarre as this, but as I feel a leyline-powered boost ignite the rumble of my controller, I start to think, “well, maybe.”
The debut game from Electric Saint – a two-person development team made up of Anna Hollinrake (Fall Guys) and Pavle Mihajlović (Erica) – Crescent County is part-open world exploration, part-dating game, part-gig economy delivery challenge, part-racer, part-life sim, and all-centered around that motorbroom experience. It’s ambitious, and with so many moving parts, you might expect it to have come together in pieces – but the real origin point was straightforward.
One of the earliest pieces of art that inspired Crescent County. Credit: Anna Hollinrake
Hollinrake has been painting images of what she dubs “witch-tech” for years, building a following as people fall in love with the bright, curious worlds she creates in static form. Choosing to leave the world of AAA development behind, and contacting Mihajlović to create the tech, there was only one setting they wanted to bring to life together.
“The number one piece of feedback I get when I’m at conventions selling art based on this world, or on social media when I post images of it, is that people wish that they could live in the paintings I create,” she tells me. “I’m an art generalist for games and have worked along the whole art pipeline, but my specialty is infusing moreish worldbuilding into my work, from concepts to full 3D environments, that give a sense of place, with little story hints throughout. I really want to give people the opportunity to step into a lovingly crafted, painterly space that feels both joyful and a little melancholy and that, critically, they feel at home within.”
It means that Crescent County wasn’t built out of disparate mechanical ideas that the developers wanted to jam into one playspace – every choice has been made because it fits the theme. Even in the early form of the game I play, that comes across. As main character Lu, your motorbroom is key to everything you do – you arrive on the island and take part in a race, then become the island’s delivery courier. That job allows you to meet characters you can get to know (and romance), afford furniture for your apartment, and to customize your broom and go further, faster. In Crescent County’s world, motorbrooms aren’t a vehicle, they’re a culture.
“Motorbroom racing is an underground sport, practised by a small group of the coolest people you know,” says Hollinrake. “It’s very inspired by roller derby and the roller skating community (I’m an avid quad skater myself!), and we wanted to capture that punk, do-it-yourself attitude within motorbroom subculture.”
“In terms of racing though, it’s more about friends challenging each other in playful ways (like seeing who can get up the mountain first), than it is about big formal races with sponsors and crowds,” adds Mihajlović. “If you win, you can expect to learn some secrets about the island, or maybe get a hot tip on how to get a particular broom part, but you can also choose to lay back and spend some more quality time with a racer you have a crush on.”
That idea, that every activity can affect another, seems key to Crescent County. You’re building a life for Lu on the island – a race can lead to romance, a delivery job could net you new decorations, and even the house creation element (so often a side activity) can have effects on the wider game.
“We’re really interested in how we can take classic, cozy house decoration and make it push our story forward rather than being purely for aesthetics,” explains Hollinrake. “In that classic scouring-Facebook-Marketplace way, you can do jobs around the island for people who’ll pay you back with a couch they have in the shed and aren’t using. Inspired by our own experiences living in crappy house shares in our early twenties, we know how big of a difference each single piece of furniture can have on your social life or sense of place – you can’t have a dinner party without a dinner table, and getting your new friends around it lets you chat late into the night and deepen those relationships. Even if the spaghetti bolognese you made was terrible.”
It leads to what promises a very satisfying loop – the more you play, and the more you engage, the more opportunities await you. Again, building Crescent County as a living world rather than a sandbox, is the key. The game’s organized into days and nights that pass based on what you choose to do (you can deliver by day, and race by night), rather than through a linear cycle, which gives you an incentive to choose the interesting thing rather than the efficient thing.
“Each day brings a host of new opportunities to earn some cash, make your flat less sad, and learn more island drama,” says Mihajlović. “You’ll get to pick who you want to help that day – whether it’s because you want to know a particular bit of gossip, you want to get a specific broom upgrade, or because your friend Rava has promised you she’ll give you her unwanted and admittedly ugly couch if you help round up her wayward sheep. You can either plan out your route carefully, or take it a bit more casually and ride around and see what you get up to. At the end of the day you can take your weird couch home, pick where to place it, and invite your friends over for a movie night – who point out you don’t actually own a TV.”
All of this would be moot if the brooms themselves didn’t feel quite so good, and the Isle of Morah wasn’t quite so fascinating a location. That connection to Hollinrake’s art means that this world is a deeply interesting place – unfamiliar silhouettes clutter the horizon, and the sheer fun meant that I spent as much time simply going places than doing, well, Lu’s job. The final piece in the puzzle, then, is in creating a motorbroom that suits you.
“Broom customization is both about building a motorbroom that looks amazing and feels just like you, but it’s also in how you decide how you’re going to navigate the island,” says Mihajlović. “Whether you want to speed down the straights, cut across a field, or glide over a canyon, different broom setups will open different paths and playstyles. You can also put Sigil Stickers on your broom that give you weird and wonderful powers, like an offensive sideways phase shift that you can use to bump your rivals off the track, or a more forgiving 10 second rewind that lets you retake a corner if you didn’t get it quite right.”
The way the team is winding together mechanical and narrative benefits to the player isn’t just fascinating – it’s unusual. It’s the kind of thing that might have been hard to pitch at their previous studios, meaning self-publishing with ID@Xbox has been a boon:
“We’re huge fans of the ID@Xbox program – and before that Xbox Live Arcade,” says Mihajlović. “It birthed or enabled so many of the games that we love, and in a lot of ways the whole indie wave that got us into the games industry in the first place. I actually remember the first Summer of Arcade, and how exciting and validating it was as a teenager to see indie games on a console, so it’s incredible to now be a part of the program.”
With a two-person team, the game still has a way to go until release – and they’re not set on a release date just yet – but the early version I play makes abundantly clear how wild, weird, and ambitious Electric Saint is getting. Just like its motorbrooms, Crescent County might be unfamiliar, but it’s feeling just right already.
Discover this beautiful open world racing on the back of your very own motorbroom. In Crescent County you play as Lu, as you move to the island under tense pretences, eager to start afresh. It’s a game about finding home in a brand-new witch-tech universe.
During the day you’re a motorbroom courier; delivering packages, herding sheep, and setting off fireworks. You find yourself building a life through helping the locals; getting to know their struggles, and their island home. Plan your day every morning by picking your jobs, and then zoom around the island getting things done! The better your broom is the more you can do, and the more of the gossip you uncover.
After you’ve made some change, head down to Bo’s workshop to upgrade your motobroom and make it your own! Replace parts to improve your broom’s handling, top speed, or gliding ability, and pop some Sigil Stickers on it to enable special powers such as Phase Shifting and Time Rewind.
At night, use your customised motorbroom to defeat your new friends in improvised races around the island. Discover shortcuts on ancient ley lines, and sprint through abandoned power stations in rebellious, secret races to win new broom parts.
Start in your cousin’s empty bedsit and collect furniture from the locals to scrap together a cosy new life for yourself on the island. The better your home is, the more activities you can do with your new friends. Can’t have a dinner party with a table, or a date without a couch!
Zynga has announced plans to bring Star Wars: Hunters to PC via Steam Early Access in 2025.
Star Wars: Hunters is a free-to-download team-based battle arena game that launched on Nintendo Switch and iOS and Android in June. IGN’s Star Wars: Hunters review returned a 7/10. We said: “Star Wars: Hunters’ lighthearted PvP fun is like a party at the Death Star: Impressive for a bit, but probably not a place you’ll want to hang around for too long.”
Take-Two-owned Zynga is best known for mobile games FarmVille, Words with Friends, and CSR Racing, but with Star Wars: Hunters it branched out to console for the first time. Similarly, Star Wars: Hunters, developed by its development studio NaturalMotion, is the first Zynga-published game to launch on PC.
The PC build features higher resolution textures and shadows, higher rendering quality, and a high detail PC layer in select battlefields, zynga said. Keyboard, mouse, and wireless controller support will be added and players can also utilize keybinding.
“The success of Star Wars: Hunters on mobile and Nintendo Switch devices has led to our decision to expand the game to PC,” commented Yaron Leyvan, executive vice president, games, at Zynga. “This is something our community of fans have been asking for and we are very excited to welcome even more players to Vespaara. This moment also marks a milestone for Zynga as we bring one of our games to PC for the first time.”
Zynga’s note to press fails to mention Star Wars: Hunters coming to other consoles, such as the Xbox Series X and S and the PlayStation 5. Players can get an early look and help test the PC version by signing up for the upcoming closed beta. Expect more details soon.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Whereas some bits of games kit are in and out of the sales like they keep forgetting their keys there, The PlayStation 5 DualSense controller is one of those peripherals that just seems to hover around its £60 / $75 list price indefinitely. Which is a shame, as it’s a very, very good gamepad, including for PC playage. Consider these Black Friday week deals, then, as a rare opportunity to secure yourself said good gamepad without acquiescing to Sony’s stubbornness: it’s down to £40 in the UK and $54 in the US.
Steam’s Early Access recently got a new addition: Guidus Zero, a top-down dungeon crawling roguelike developed by indie South Korean studio Izzle.
The story takes place in a world where a war raged for ages without a clear victor. After it ended, the central continent was declared a neutral zone. A massive sinkhole called The Scar opened on that continent, and from its depths comes a mysterious substance known as Black Blood that spawns corrupted beings. It’s unknown how this sinkhole came to be, where the Black Blood is coming from, or what waits in the deepest regions of The Scar. That’s where you come in.
You’ll join a cast of characters in The Scar, traveling deeper and deeper beneath the surface while facing all manner of enemies that have been corrupted by the Black Blood. You’ll have several different controllable characters to choose from, each with their own strengths and abilities. There’s real-time action combat with a bit of a twist: You and your enemies move between tiles on a grid in which you can only navigate in the four cardinal directions.
When an enemy is about to attack, an exclamation mark will appear above their head and the ground will be highlighted showing where their attack will land. Different enemies have different attack patterns — some strike directly in front of them, some hit a long line, and others target a larger area of the grid. You’ll face several enemies at a time, forcing you to stay on your toes and react quickly to dodge attacks.
While moving, you can roll to make yourself invincible, but each roll consumes stamina. And since you can’t move diagonally, you’ll need to be strategic about which direction you move and how often you roll. You don’t want to end up trapped between attacks you can’t avoid.
Combat isn’t all about avoiding damage, though. You need to be able to dish it out too, but how you do that changes depending on what character you pick. Before each run, you’ll choose a character and their starting trait. In classic RPG fashion, killing enemies gains experience, which makes you level up.
As you level up, you’ll unlock choices for skill upgrades that are unique to the trait you picked at the start of the run. These will define the playstyle of that run, so even if you play the same character, runs can play differently depending on the starting trait and upgrades you pick. Your levels and progression selections are exclusive to that run, so when you die, they’ll all reset.
Not everything will reset, though. During the course of a run, you’ll come across ore veins you can break to obtain stones, which have their own stats. All the stones in your bag will add together, and reaching certain stat thresholds will give your character buffs. You can equip stones in available slots, which will preserve them even after your run ends. Any unequipped stones in your bag when your run ends will be converted into stone fragments, which can serve as currency or be reforged into new stones by an NPC blacksmith.
During each run, you can also discover special rooms with treasure chests where you can find artifacts. They grant unique buffs and improve your abilities, and over time can build up stacks of elemental effects. If an artifact reaches five stacks, it becomes bonded with a spirit that corresponds to that element and allows you to use unique elemental attacks and effects.
Becoming bonded to Ignis, the fire spirit, gives you access to a burn debuff that deals continuous damage. Atlen, the water spirit, slows enemies and freezes those with a wet debuff. Rathorus, the lightning spirit, inflicts a shock debuff that deals additional damage. Enryl, the wind spirit, increases your movement speed and enhances multi-hits with a sprint buff. Terrania, the earth spirit, inflicts a petrify debuff that causes fragments to shoot out when you attack petrified enemies.
This all adds up to a roguelike with a classic “one more run” feeling. Stones provide permanent growth, while your choices for character, starting trait, and ability upgrades make every run different. If you’re interested in checking out Guidus Zero, it’s available now in Early Access on Steam.
They’re celebrating launch by offering a 10% discount that will last until Dec. 9. Guidus Zero is also considering future releases for Xbox and Nintendo Switch, but a console release has not been officially announced.
Recently, PC games have been gorging themselves silly on our storage space. 160GB for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2? 190GB for God of War Ragnarok? If these games were people they’d stand waiting at the Pizza Hut buffet and nab ten of the twelve slices of Pepperoni Feast as soon as they’re slid under the heatlamps. What to do? For our part, there’s little we can do except upgrade capacity, and there are few better ways to do that on a budget than with the WD Blue SN580. It’s a cheap yet fast PCIe 4.0 SSD, which the Black Friday sales have knocked down to £47 / $55 for 1TB.
Here are some orc names I quite like. Haters will tell you these “aren’t real orcs”, but those fools are forever trapped in a stifling prison forged from the failures of their own imaginations. Suck it, haters:
Everyone’s favourite pink puffball, Kirby, is teaming up with Heinz (you know, the tomato ketchup guys) for a new range of sauces in Japan. Well, that’s not a sentence we thought we’d be writing today, but we can’t say we’re surprised.
Shared by the official Heinz Twitter account, the Kirby range will be launching in late November with nine designs adorning the front of the packets. There’s even Balsamic and Sriracha flavour options for those who like their chips with a bit of a kick.
