You might have seen an RPG with a swashbuckling theme before, but guaranteed you haven’t seen one that looks like Joker Studio’s Sea of Remnants. Think of a haunted toy box belonging to a deranged puppeteer, and then add a bit of glam rock for good measure. It’s the perfect vibe for the story of a sailor with no memories setting out to find a cursed location, and the adventure will arrive on PC and mobile in 2026.
“Our creative journey began with a spark of pure feeling—an emotional image that guided everything: ‘If a puppet’s mind is soaked in water, memories slip away into the ocean, yet they still choose to return and sail again.’ This early inspiration was both a playful nod to the Chinese saying “ 脑子进水” (‘brain soaked with water’) and a philosophical reflection seen in some of our favorite films,” Joker Studios told us.
“When it came time to build the actual framework, we drew on a wide range of influences—from JRPGs and CRPGs to open-world titles and even niche indie games that share a spirit of boundless exploration. At every step, we focused on how to let players experience these feelings themselves, not just watch them.”
When you dive into Sea of Remnants you’ll be focused on exploring the pirate city Orbtopia, talking to the rich cast of NPCs and – you’re a sailor after all – taking to the briny waves to find islands, treasures, and hidden ruins. You can raid the ships you meet on the sea or take on huge monsters, all while a dynamic weather system rages overhead. When you’re not doing that you’ll be focused on upgrading your vessel, learning new skills, or even kicking back with some fishing, cooking, and mahjong.
“You’ll challenge sea monsters, explore local cultures, and sense the deeper mystery of how memory and forgetting begin to intertwine between the ocean and Orbtopia, the pirate haven. Alongside your companions, you’ll begin a journey that’s equal parts unrestrained and romantic, charting a course as unique as each sailor who steps aboard,” says Joker Studio.
Joker Studio previously released Identity V, a survival horror game created in partnership with Dead by Daylight’s Behavior Interactive. Since its release in 2018, Identity V has collaborated with Edward Scissorhands, Sherlock Holmes, Personae and Deathnote. Just like Sea of Remnants it has a distinctive visual style – think Coraline but creepier. The game made a bigger impact in Asia than the US, but it still has a dedicated fandom.
“At their core, the two games exist in entirely separate worlds and storylines. That said, as a nod to fans and our shared studio DNA, you might find a few subtle Easter eggs or world-building hints here and there. But rest assured, any connections are handled with great care and won’t overshadow the unique stories of each game.”
IGN Live 2025 is packed with exclusive reveals, thousands of giveaways, 170 gaming stations, and tons of fun, the event is shaping up to be a huge celebration of everything fans of games, TV, movies, comics, and collectibles love, and here’s how to watch the event.
Rachel Weber is the Senior Editorial Director of Games at IGN and an elder millennial. She’s been a professional nerd since 2006 when she got her start on Official PlayStation Magazine in the UK, and has since worked for GamesIndustry.Biz, Rolling Stone and GamesRadar. She loves horror, horror movies, horror games, and French Bulldogs. Those extra wrinkles on her face are thanks to going time blind and staying up too late finishing every sidequest in RPGs like Fallout and Witcher 3.
I don’t think you can more easily sell me on a game than by saying it was made by one of the artists behind Celeste, and has music from Disasterpeace, i.e. the composer behind Fez, Hyper Light Drifter, and It Follows. But that’s exactly what Neverway is, a horror RPG in the vein of Stardew Valleyfirst announced back in April, back with a nice little look-in at yesterday’s Day of the Devs presentation.
Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader and Pathfinder: Kingmaker developers Owlcat Games are venturing into the realm of “hard sci-fi” with The Expanse: Osiris Reborn, a new RPG based on the James S. A. Corey novels and Syfy TV adaptations. It’s an original story that casts you as a Pinkwater Security mercenary, who starts out trapped on Eros Station – an asteroid base that undergoes cataclysmic upheaval in the TV show – and later takes charge of an advanced starship, so as to quest around the solar system. The game is inspired by BioWare’s Mass Effect series, with “tactical” third-person combat featuring two ally characters and cover mechanics. Also, crew romances. Here’s a trailer.
Editor’s Note: As this is our first ‘Nintendo Switch 2 Edition’ review (and with many more to come, potentially), we want to outline their focus from the off.
Our existing reviews — in this case for Breath of the Wild, both the Wii U and Switch versions, and the DLC — are still live and relevant. If you’re coming to this game fresh, we recommend you look back at those first.Our NS2 Edition reviews will focus on new features and upgrades, evaluating what they add to the original experience, and whether they’re worth your time – and they will be scored accordingly.
Fortnite has just wrapped up its latest explosive live event, detonating the Death Star looming over the Island and welcoming DC Comics hero Superman in the process.
Tonight’s event, Death Star Sabotage, saw players infiltrate the Empire’s fully operational battle station that has hovered menacingly over the Fortnite battle royale Island throughout its Star Wars mini-season. Happily, and perhaps unsurprisingly, players were able to stop the station’s deadly space laser from obliterating the game’s map — although not without causing a bit of damage in the process.
As destruction rained down, the event’s closing moments saw Superman arrive — presumably to try and help with clean up duties during the game’s incoming superhero-themed season, which begins in just a few hours’ time.
Fortnite’s big Star Wars event began in orbit around the game’s battle royale Island, giving players a rare glimpse at the game’s setting from outside its usual boundaries. Fortnite’s setting exists as a bubble of reality floating through the multiverse (which handily allows any character from any franchise to turn up at any time!) and here, players were able to pilot X-Wings and TIE-Fighters to blow up orbiting Star Destroyers and engage in fun dogfights. In the continued absence of a Star Wars: Battlefront 3, this was a fun riff on its space battles to get things started.
The action then swiftly moved to within the Death Star itself, as Fortnite heroes Jonesy (Troy Baker) and Hope (Suzie Yeung) led players through the bowels of the station, initially disguised as Stormtroopers and their captives. Ultimately, players found themselves in an encounter with Star Wars’ Emperor (was that the voice of Sheev Palpatine himself, Ian McDiarmid?), and able to escape the Death Star as it exploded.
In a nod to Fortnite’s 2021 live event Operation Sky Fire (which also ended in a space station exploding above the game’s Island), players were initially left to celebrate their victory — until the realisation that huge flaming chunks of said space station were now raining down on their battle royale home. And here, one of these chunks smashed straight into the glowing Rift Gate used to access the spirit realm by Fortnite’s current antihero Daigo, unleashing its untold power.
The event’s final moments see players back on the Island, mysterious energy now crackling around them. (Will this be the explanation for why superpowers now exist in the next battle royale season? Quite possibly.) Meanwhile, Superman is seen watching the Island from afar, as it is flooded by spirit realm energy. The suggestion here, of course, is that Superman will be swooping in to help.
If you weren’t in-game at the time, you can watch a recording of the full Death Star Sabotage mission below:
Remember Toem? That was a bloody lovely game. I’m always partial to a game where photography is the core mechanic, there’s such a specific joy in navigating a space attempting to capture a fracture of its essence. Photo modes just aren’t the same, I want someone to textually give me a camera and send me on my way. A sequel was announced last year, quite simply called Toem 2, and during yesterday’s Day of the Devs, some gameplay was shown off for the first time.
You’ve got your MTG Final Fantasy cards, they’re all sleeved up, and you’ve even got yourself some fancy new dice and counters for the occasion, but something is missing.
That’s right, you need one of Ultra Pro’s latest Final Fantasy playmats. Ultra Pro, perhaps best known for its sleeves, tends to release a series of playmats for Magic: The Gathering sets, and they rarely disappoint. This time around, though, you can get a great new place to play while protecting your cards for just $26.99.
These mats will set you back $26.99, and I’m definitely tempted to snag the Cloud one as a big Final Fantasy 7 fan. If you want to spend a little more, you can also get one of three two-sided playmats, which is a nice touch as there are a fair number of double-sided cards in the Final Fantasy set.
Looking for more Final Fantasy? MTG cards from the upcoming set featured in this week’s crashers and climbers update, and it’s good news!
Lloyd Coombes is Gaming Editor @ Daily Star. He’s a big fan of Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games, much to his wife’s dismay. He’s also a tech, gaming, and fitness freelancer seen at Polygon, Eurogamer, Macworld, TechRadar, Tom’s Guide, IGN, and more.
While the upcoming Slay the Spire 2 hovers threateningly over the deckbuilding landscape, one game in the genre is replacing the usual boney arithmetic with harsh words, legal loopholes, and subtle threats. All Will Rise is a “narrative deckbuilder” set in a tense courtroom where you play a lawyer cross-examining those who may or may not be involved in the brutal murder of a holy river.
Yes, friends. We’ve spent the past few days pushing and pulling at our new Switch 2s as we get to figuring out just what this baby is really capable of. And, well, it seems as though it’s capable of some quite twisted stuff.
Or at least a bit mixed up, as it turns out you can actually mix and match your Switch 1 and Switch 2 Joy-Con as working pairs and get stuck into playing games and browsing the Switch 2 console menus in the manner of someone wearing two completely differently-sized gloves.
So much of Dying Light is informed by the series’ melee-first design. Its impact can be seen in the damage system that causes its grotesque zombies to fall apart with every slash of your blade, as well as the weapon crafting, which turns household tools into hilariously impractical killing machines. And, of course, it influences the parkour movement, which allows you to keep well away from chewing teeth and clawing hands.
So what happens when you add guns to this close-quarters formula? And I don’t mean one or two rusty pistols, but a whole armoury stocked with shotguns, assault rifles, and plentiful ammo. That’s a question the next game in the series, Dying Light: The Beast, poses. The answer is not the obvious one. Far from transforming into a regular first-person shooter, guns have turned Techland’s latest into something that feels closer to Crysis or even (if you squint a bit) Dishonored. They’re another layer of an increasingly varied toolset that ensures every encounter is a sandbox solved by your own rules.
For this month’s IGN First, I was able to play an hour-long mission from an early section of Dying Light: The Beast. This meant stepping into the combat boots of Kyle Crane, the returning protagonist of the original Dying Light. Held hostage and experimented on for 13 years by a shadowy figure known only as The Baron, I join Kyle a few hours into his quest for revenge. Deep within the new, much more rural zone of Castor Woods, I infiltrate one of The Baron’s factories. And, standing on the facility’s roof, I realise my options are more varied than the last time I played Dying Light.
Using Kyle’s heightened “survivor” senses (a benefit of all those experiments he endured), I’m able to highlight the patrolling members of The Baron’s militia. Some are marked in orange, while others are red; an indication of who is armed with melee weapons or guns, respectively. It’s a colour-coded threat level that helps me set up a plan of action. Yes, it’s all very Batman: Arkham.
I start right in front of me with a blissfully unaware bowman. Approaching silently, I perform a melee takedown using a shiv I’ve crafted – much faster than choking him out – and then swipe the bow from his corpse. Bows were, of course, in Dying Light 2, but kept out of reach until the back half of the game. Their earlier introduction in The Beast promises a greater level of engagement options across the campaign, especially considering their ranged stealth potential.
Notching an arrow, I headshot the bowman’s buddies, including a rifle-wielding sniper on the opposite roof. No one hears him slump to the floor, so I’m free to parkour across and add his gun to my collection. Once again, my engagement opportunities expand: no longer limited to firing single arrows and enduring long draw speeds, I can take out groups of charging melee enemies before they make it into striking range… although everyone around me will know exactly what’s going on. Might as well make a spectacle of it, then.
I dive down to the roof below, where a further two riflemen, a squad of brawlers, and – delightfully – a pile of explosive gas canisters await. The dive triggers a slow-motion effect. It’s hardly the slick bullet time of Max Payne and the old FEAR games, feeling more as if you’re suddenly travelling through sticky air rather than becoming John Wick, but it nonetheless successfully emphasises Kyle’s military background.
Taking more than a few pages from The Walking Dead’s book, you can now smear yourself in undead guts in order to mask your human scent.
With this expanded toolkit, Dying Light’s encounters have graduated into a space similar to Crysis and Far Cry’s sandboxes. Using Kyle’s survivor sense allows you to methodically remove enemies with guns from the playing field before going toe-to-toe with less dangerous foes. Flowing fluidly from stealth takedowns to silent headshots to shell-sputtering shoot-outs allowed me greater control over the space than I’ve come to expect from the typically messy melees of Dying Light 2. Combined with the parkour, which makes a respectable stand-in for teleportation, there’s even a little of Dishonored’s strategy to be found here, too – albeit less elegant in execution. My hope is that, beyond the boundaries of this demo, there are encounters that encourage a strong variety of approaches.
I’ve reason to be hopeful. As I explore Castor Woods, I encounter a zombie wearing a battery pack that detonates on contact, sending arcing forks of electricity through the horde. Another wears an explosive canister on its back – just one good shot will turn him and his buddies into barbeque. Talking of seared flesh, I later acquire a flamethrower. It’s clear that there are plenty of toys to experiment with, and I hope that Techland is playful enough to use these elements to coax players into cleverly absurd solutions for clearing out the undead and deadly alike.
It’s worth noting that Techland has upped its game when it comes to stealth, too. The bow, shivs, and tools like throwing knives are naturally all very good at silently dispatching human opponents, but there’s now a method for quietly avoiding zombies, too. Taking more than a few pages from The Walking Dead’s book, you can now smear yourself in undead guts in order to mask your human scent, and then casually walk through the horde. It’s a simple stealth tool, but one that’s incredibly evocative of the fiction Dying Light revels in.
But Kyle isn’t special because he can use a gun or take a bath in a zombie’s insides. Those aforementioned experiments have turned him into the titular Beast. It’s a similar backstory to that of Aiden Caldwell, the protagonist of Dying Light 2, but where Aiden’s infection gave him some zombie-like superhuman abilities, Kyle has become something much closer to a leaping wrecking ball. Triggered at will after taking and dealing enough damage to fill a meter, Beast Mode allows you to tear regular enemies apart with gory animations akin to Doom’s Glory Kills. A thunderous ground pound violently throws foes to the seven winds – using it indoors is effectively a screen wipe attack, sending zombies splattering into the walls and ceiling. All this came in handy against the demo’s final boss, a towering “Chimera” zombie known as a Behemoth, which is capable of hurling engine blocks and concrete boulders across the arena. The Behemoth has a number of easily recognised attack patterns, but the challenge is in its resilience, as well as the number of minions that shamble after you. With Beast Mode engaged, I was able to easily clear those mobs and inflict big damage spikes against the boss.
But as much as going toe-to-toe with another beast is good fun, I’m actually more interested in the utility aspects of Kyle’s mutations. Techland tells me that playtesters have used the Beast mode’s extended leap ability to bypass entire parkour challenges. And so it’s the unconventional uses of these abilities that promise to join the likes of guns and camouflaging yourself with guts in ensuring that The Beast feels like a meaningful upgrade over its predecessor.
The scope of this demo was pretty limited – in fact, it was largely a playable version of the hands-off presentation I saw at gamescom last year, and so there is almost certainly more to see in time. But being able to wander about this small slice of the world on my own time allowed me to enjoy some of the smaller details. The world feels like a substantial upgrade over Dying Light 2, not so much in level design (although much of what I liked about the old town section of Villedor returns) but in atmosphere. The new weather effects system is exceptional, with storms drenching the landscape with heavy rain and winds whipping trees, bushes, and long grass into a frenzy. And when the sun sets, the light really does die. It’s nearly impossible to see during the witching hour, forcing you to sparingly use your flashlight to navigate between the patrol paths of the much more difficult nighttime terrors. Long-time fans who pine for the scarier nights of the first game should hopefully be well catered for.
When I left my appointment with Techland at gamescom last year, I was somewhat skeptical as to how guns would affect the core ideas Dying Light is built on. Naturally, the studio wanted to show off its new toys, and that hands-off demo was played largely as a shooter. But having had the opportunity to play myself, in which I had the agency to choose when and where guns were deployed, I quickly learned that firearms are just one component of Dying Light: The Beast, not the main attraction. Their addition, alongside what feels like a strengthened inclusion of the bow and the series’ many trademark DIY melee solutions, made the demo’s encounters feel richer and more textured. Each combat scenario felt like a problem with a dozen solutions, rather than the melee mosh pits that I typically found myself in while playing Dying Light 2.
The question now is how all this evolves over the wider game. There are several tools and weapons that I didn’t get extensive or any time at all with, such as the aforementioned flamethrower and oddities like a throwable shock knife, and so my hope is that The Beast constantly adds weapons with unique utilities to the toolkit. And then, of course, there’s your mutations; each Chimera you kill allows you to inject more freaky DNA into your veins and unlock a skill tree of powers. I can only hope that the further down those branches you go, the more wild your ability set becomes. And provided the campaign continues to offer up interesting challenges that encourage the use of both abilities and tools, then I think The Beast could be a much more interesting sequel than it initially appears to be.
