Alas, it’s happening, but judging from the newly-released ‘first look’ teaser for the upcoming season, our confidence in Hemsworth has been given a slight boost. Granted, we don’t see his version of Geralt of Rivia do anything other than turn to the camera in a suitably brooding and manacing manner, but it’s a start.
The great appeal of pocket-sized board games is the ability to take them anywhere. A family get-together, office lunch room, or group camping trip–just toss a game in your pocket or bag and everyone is sure to be entertained. The portability of these smaller games allows you to carry them around just in case the opportunity for play arises.
One of the really wonderful things about this hobby is the sheer variety of styles on offer. This quality extends to these tiny boxes. This list is comprised of 10 titles that offer a wide range of mechanisms and playstyles, all while containing those experiences into a modest package. Some may require cargo pants, but all of these offerings are modest in profile and easy to transport.
This stylish wonder arrives courtesy of prolific designer Reiner Knizia. The pitch is enticing: in the aftermath of an art heist, players bicker and fight over splitting the loot. This conflict is resolved through card play. You alternate taking turns by playing a single card, with these cards mapping to loot tokens in the center of the table. By playing a card you snatch the corresponding token and place it in front of you. The twist is that you can steal a token from another player instead of taking it from the middle. The second twist is that some of the lower scoring tokens offer alibis. At the end of the game, the player with the fewest amount of alibis is eliminated from play, regardless of their final score. The result is an entertaining back and forth where you gank loot from others yet must balance high scoring options with those that offer protection.
Trio
Everyone is familiar with the classic board games Go Fish and Memory. Trio splices the two, asking players to flip over three cards of the same number. These cards are facedown on the table, but some are also spread among the hands of the players. When flipping a card from a player’s hand, however, you can only ask them to reveal their highest or lowest card. The goal is to claim three of these trios or just the set of sevens. It’s a simple thing, but it’s one that elicits little moments of drama where a player has flipped two of the same number and is trying to remember where the third card is. It features hand management and surprisingly clever play.
Love Letter
When Love Letter hit the market in 2012 it created quite the stir. This little 16-card game has players holding and playing only a single card on their turn. It’s maddeningly simple, but it works, capturing a degree of bluffing and risk management. Love Letter is fun and flexible, but it’s particularly noteworthy as it kicked off the microgame movement that spawned dozens and dozens of offspring. Most of those titles have long since faded, while Love Letter remains a clever and engaging experience. There are now a bevy of different versions of this game, including a Star Wars, Batman, and wedding-themed set. They all play similarly, so you can’t go wrong whichever you choose.
Radlands
Radlands is one of the best head-to-head card games in recent years. Each player draws from a shared deck of mutants, raiders, and weirdos, playing these fighters down into one of three lanes on their side of the table. Each lane corresponds to a base that must be protected. The goal is to vanquish your opponent’s defenders and destroy their bases. The magic is in the multi-use aspect of each card. Beyond using them for the characters depicted, they can also be discarded for a card-specific resource. Performing well requires strong tactical intuition and judicious play you’d use in all the best strategy board games. All of the interlocking abilities and effects collide to produce a swift-playing and tense battler.
Friday
This small box is unique in that it’s for solo board game play only. This card game is based on the story of Robinson Crusoe. You take on the role of his companion Friday, attempting to help Robinson survive and prepare him for the impending pirate attack. This is a deckbuilding game where you add cards to your deck during play. Each turn you confront a jungle hazard and then play fight cards from your hand in order to overcome the challenge. If you do, the hazard is then added to your deck and may be used in a later fight. You must pick your battles wisely, as you can’t win them all and must be careful in how you shape your deck for the big finale. This is a difficult game that offers a tremendous amount of play and strategic depth.
For Sale
For Sale crams the buying and selling of real estate into a brief yet satisfying 30 minutes. In the first phase of the game, players bid on a set of buildings by using a limited pool of personal currency. You must bid higher than all previous bids on each of your turns, or bow out of the round and claim the lowest value property available. Determining how long to hang in the auction depends on the value of the property on offer, as well as how stubborn your opponents are. The second portion of the game reverses the process with money cards worth various amounts flipped faceup in the middle of the table. Players secretly select a property they’ve purchased from their hand in an attempt to secure these monetary bids. You all reveal simultaneously and the money is split. It’s an exceedingly easy game to learn, but it’s one full of subtle play that relies on intuition. It’s paramount to squeeze every ounce of value out of your resources, and the player who manages their assets most judiciously will secure victory.
That’s Not a Hat
This is the type of game that is both maddening and hilarious. Each player is dealt a card that sits out in front of them faceup. Cards depict simple objects with black and white line art. These are common things such as a basketball, lava lamp, or a hat. Once play begins, players take turns flipping their card facedown and passing it to an adjacent player. Soon, all cards are hidden and players are trying to track which is which. When you pass a card to a neighbor, you claim what the object is. The receiver of the card may challenge your claim, creating a confrontation of memory. It’s simple but sparks moments of laughter as it’s surprisingly easy to lose track of what card sits in front of you. Eventually someone messes up and the game begins again. This is a wonderful design that consistently delivers joy.
Regicide
Regicide is a fully cooperative board game where players work together to overthrow the royal line and claim victory. Each of the 12 enemies must be dealt with one at a time. These bosses map to the face cards in a standard set of playing cards. They are shuffled together and one is revealed. Players then take turns placing a single card on the table to attack the enemy and deal damage. The value on the played card is the strength of the attack with the suit triggering a special power. There’s a fairly thoughtful decision point here in weighing the needed attack versus the desired effect that would most help the other players. It’s a fairly intuitive card game where hand management and timing is everything. The strongest trait is that it’s full of tension as the group is constantly on the brink of defeat. Often, it will appear hopeless until another player tosses out the exact card the group needs, allowing everyone to refill their hands and persist. Regicide is an intriguing experience with a distinct feel. It’s a wonderful little pocket game.
The Mind
The Mind is a special game. Players are dealt a hand from a deck of cards numbered 1 to 100, with a portion of the cards left out and unknown. Play then flows in real-time. The player with the lowest card in hand must play it on the table. Then the next lowest card must be played atop the previous, and so on. The enormous twist is that players cannot communicate. You can’t talk or nod or gesture. You can just look into each other’s eyes and try to divine the proper time to play your card. It sounds ridiculous, but I assure you, there is a game here. It’s about pausing and feeling out the situation, eventually playing the proper card when it feels like enough time has passed. If approached with the right attitude it can brush up against a metaphysical element, achieving a playstate with similar vibes to a Ouija board. This may not have universal appeal, but it’s a game that presents a singular vision that is capable of achieving transcendent entertainment.
Werewords
This small box is basically the classic 20 Questions with the inclusion of a traitor. One player receives a word they must get the group to guess, and everyone else is allowed to only throw out “yes or no” questions. At least one person in the group is a werewolf trying to trip up the villagers. They know the word before play begins and can attempt to mislead or stall the group. If everyone fails to figure out the correct word, however, they get to vote as a group to hang a player they suspect to be the werewolf. If they select the villain, the villagers win regardless of failing to land on the proper word. This strongly mimics the structure of social deduction games such as One Night Ultimate Werewolf and The Resistance: Avalon, but it allows for a more simple and streamlined process with a broadly enjoyable classic game at its core. It’s frankly surprising how effective this concoction is, but it manages to offer inspired play with all kinds of players and tastes. This is one of the most reliably fun pocket-sized games ever designed.
Video games with deep levels of strategy are becoming increasingly unappealing, according to a new study.
The report from Quantic Foundry collected nine years of data from the researcher’s own Gamer Motivation Profile tool, which tracks how appealing different aspects of games are to different people. Categories include Destruction, Excitement, Competition, Community, Challenge, Strategy, Completion, Power, Fantasy, Story, Discovery, and Design.
Quantic Foundry looked back on what’s motivated gamers across the years and found all of these have remained relatively consistent except one: Strategy. “Gamers who score high on this component enjoy games that require careful decision-making and planning,” its summary states. “They like to think through their options and likely outcomes.
“These may be decisions related to balancing resources and competing goals, managing foreign diplomacy, or finding optimal long term strategies. They tend to enjoy both the tactical combat in games like XCOM or Fire Emblem, as well as seeing their carefully devised plans come to fruition in games like Civilization, Cities: Skylines, or Europa Universalis.”
But across its 1.7 million surveys, Quantic Foundry found that two thirds of strategy fans worldwide (except China, where gamers “have a very different gaming motivation profile”) have lost interest in this element of video games. “67% of gamers today care less about strategic thinking and planning when playing games than the average gamer back in June 2015,” the report reads.
“When we looked for long-term trends across the 12 motivations, we found that many motivations were stable or experienced minor deviations over the past nine years,” Quantic Foundry said. “Strategy was the clear exception; it had substantially declined over the past nine years and the magnitude of this change was more than twice the size of the next largest change.”
The trend was analysed but Quantic Foundry couldn’t find any distinct separations between, for example, men and women or gamers based in or out of the U.S. It was likened to other trends related to a decrease in attention span, like shorter YouTube videos now generating more views and shorter lengths of time between cuts in films, but Quantic Foundry admitted “it’s difficult to pin down cause and effect” and said there’s a lack of evidence to solely blame social media, as many do.
“67% of gamers today care less about strategic thinking and planning when playing games.
The likes of Facebook, X/Twitter, TikTok, and other social media apps could have “accelerated the underlying trend”, however. “Another potential hypothesis is that the increasing negativity, polarization, intrusiveness, and emotional manipulation in social media has created a persistent cognitive overload on the finite cognitive resources we have,” Quantic Foundry said. “Put simply, we may be too worn out by social media to think deeply about things.”
Regardless of the cause, Quantic Foundry said “it’s clear that gamers have become less interested in strategic thinking over the past nine years,” which “implies that gamers are now more easily cognitively overloaded when they play games and are more likely to avoid strategic complexity.”
This trend may even affect how developers create and market games, though there are still plenty of strategy titles on the way. Capes, a gritty turn-based strategy role-playing game about villains ruling the streets and a new batch of superheroes having to rise up, launches just one week after this report was released on May 29, 2024.
Everything And Then The Licensed Kitchen Sink fighting gameMultiVersus returns next week after an almost year-long self-imposed post-beta exile. With the decision to pull the game from sale and turn off its servers for months on end after allowing people to sink their real-life money into unlocking costumes and such (with no refunds), its developers are now looking to seemingly give something back in return.
We first caught wind of Capes in the hazy days of early 2023. The turn-based superhero tactics set-up sounded like a novel idea, albeit one that we were worried might tread on the toes of one Marvel’s Midnight Suns which, remember, we were still expecting to see on Switch.
That Switch port was eventually cancelled, and we Nintendo fans were left with an ‘XCOM-meets-X-Men’ gap in our game libraries. Almost one year on, Capes is set to fly into that gap.
This new update brings some cool new ways to play together with friends:
Party-up with up to eight players, all visible in your world as you travel.
Battle your friends in 1v1, and even assign custom rules to your battle such as enabling/disabling sticker attributes.
Trade tapes with each other.
Team up for raid battles against Rogue Fusions.
Exciting right? Let’s get into it!
Feeling lonely? Now you can bring your friends!
Eight players can connect via a shared code (even across different platforms) to play together in Online Mode as you all progress through the story of Cassette Beasts– even if you’re in wildly different places! You can follow along with everyone’s progress by watching them on the world map, you’ll even receive progress notifications on how other players are doing and what milestones they’ve completed. What a perfect time to text them a bunch of cryptic emojis or knowing winks. If you get stuck in any section, your buddies can track you down and give you a helping hand on how to progress. Don’t worry, though, even when connected, your game is safe from outside interference and does not impact the story or cutscenes in the current game.
By easily locating your friends on the map, you can even send them direct invitations for the next neat features coming with this whopper of an update, so without further ado, let’s talk about Raids!
Now you can take on Roaming Fusions with your friends! These are powerful Beasts waiting to take on your team in the open world of New Wirral. Only by teaming up with your fellow adventurers will you have a chance to defeat them. Surely, you’re asking, why risk life and limb on these titans of Beast-kind? Great rewards, is why! From challenging, and defeating, these Rogue Fusions you will receive the new “Cyber Material” item, which, after showing it to Captain Codey, can be used to “hack” a Rogue Fusion to turn it into a bootleg. If you’re looking for a specific Bootleg, what better way to collect them than with the help of a buddy!
Speak of your buddies, it’s time to move on to… 1v1 Battling!
Have an on-going bet with your friends about who has the best Beast squad? Now you can settle it with in-game, 1v1 battles! Take on another and prove your Beast-besties have nothing on your team!
Not only can you go head-to-head with your rivals, you can also set custom rules to make things interesting. Just off the top of our domes, here are some ways to make things a little more challenging when battling your buds:
Levels: You can keep your current levels or temporarily set both players to either level 50 or level 100 to make the battle fair.
Fusion: You can enable or disable fusion for battle, as well as set whether players can use “Fusion Power” (if they’ve unlocked it with their current partner)
Sticker Attributes: You can enable or disable Sticker Attributes for a battle.
Duplicate Stickers: You can enable or disable the effects of having multiple versions of the same sticker applied to a tape.
And on Stickering, the next to tackle on our list is… Trading!
Have you been drooling over your friend’s custom starter Beast with the +1 slot but have yet to find that sticker in your game? That’s where Trading comes in. You’ll now be able to swap Beasts with your friends, or even random players in Randomizer Mode. If you’ve connected via Online Play, you can select the player you’d like to trade with on the world map and ask them to swap Beasts (which includes any stickers placed on the tapes). Finally, no more Beast-envy when you can share your prized Cassettes!
Well, you get the jist – experiment and see what fun restrictions you can set for yourselves!
We’re so excited to see your screenshots and best team moments! Share your Multiplayer memories with us by tagging us @byttenstudio or, better yet, join our Discord where you can chat with other friends, find groups to join, and share your biggest and best moments.
Welcome to New Wirral, a remote island inhabited by strange creatures you’ve only dreamed of, nightmares you hopefully haven’t, and a cast of brave folks who use cassette tapes to transform for battle. To find a way home you’ll need to explore every inch of the island, and record monsters to your trusty cassette tapes to gain their abilities!
Transform into monsters using… retro cassette tapes? Faced with the constant threat of monster attacks, the residents of Harbourtown, New Wirral choose to fight fire with fire. Record a monster to tape, then play it back to take on its form for battle!
Fuse monster forms. Getting close to your companion has benefits–while transformed you can combine your strengths to gain the upper hand in battle! Any two monster forms can be fused to produce unique, fully-animated new fusion forms.
Explore a rich open world. Certain monster abilities can be used in human form. You’ll need these to help you get around, solve puzzles, and locate dungeons. Glide, fly, swim, climb, dash, go invisible, or turn magnetic!
Travel alongside a diverse cast of human companions. Never fight alone! Form bonds, spend time together, and help your selected partner complete personal goals to become a better team.
Master a deep battle system. Take advantage of elemental chemistry to apply extra buffs or debuffs alongside your attack, or even alter your opponent’s elemental type!
Play with Friends!
Team up in online multiplayer to trade Beasts, Challenge your friend to 1v1 duals, or take on a fearsome raid Beast with up to 8 friends to reap great rewards!
Many of you who have already played Rise of the Ronin may have noticed some elements of our previous works such as Ninja Gaiden and Nioh from Team Ninja. Today we’re excited to share some of the behind-the-scenes development stories for the first time. Plus we share details on an upcoming game update.
Ninja Gaiden connections
The Iga-Ninja Armor is one of Rise of the Ronin’s connections with Ninja Gaiden, an action game from Team Ninja.
From a very early development stage, we have discussed with PlayStation Studio’s XDEV team our desire to include costumes from the Ninja Gaiden series. When considering which costumes and weapons to implement, we’ve agreed on the costume of the main character, Ryu Hayabusa, as an iconic and recognizable costume for an in-game armor design.
Historically, ninjas are said to have existed during the Bakumatsu period (late 19th century), which is the setting for Rise of the Ronin so there is a high degree of affinity with the worldview of these titles.
One of the combat styles, Hayabusa-ryu, was initially implemented at the same speed as in the original, but the attacks were so fast and extremely powerful that we struggled to adjust them to match the game speed of this new version for Rise of the Ronin.
In addition to Hayabusa’s iconic moves, such as the Izuna Drop, we also incorporated as many of Ninja Gaiden’s techniques as possible, such as his Ultimate Technique.
Rise of the Ronin marks the first appearance of Ninja Gaiden-related content on PS5, so re-creating these features in high-resolution 4K format was a challenge. The distinctive costumes of the Hayabusa-ryu ninja, such as the raptor-inspired headgear and sleeveless armor, were newly designed with the image of reconstructing them with weapons and materials from the end of the Edo period. We believe that this fits seamlessly into the worldview of this game and hope that our fans of the series will enjoy these references.
Nioh series connections
As it has been nearly two months since the release of Rise of the Ronin, let me give you a bit of a spoiler, that William, the main character of Nioh, appears as a hidden boss in this game. We decided to have him appear early in the planning stage, as we thought it would be a pleasant surprise for those who have played the Nioh series.
As the game is set in the late Edo period when Japanese and Western cultures started mixing, and many Westerners such as Commodore Matthew Perry appear, so I believe the appearance of William wearing armor was implemented in a way that didn’t feel out of place.
Regarding the combat style Nioh-ryu, we initially had an idea of making the three stances that are characteristic to the series, upper, middle, and lower, into independent styles, but since the controls would have been too complicated, and because we felt that Nioh really is about fighting while switching between the three stances in real time, we implemented it as one style that encompasses the three stances. Nioh has a large number of techniques, so we had a hard time deciding which techniques to include.
The armor he is wearing is based on the Obsidian Armor that appeared in the Nioh series, and incorporates distressed design that evokes the passage of time from the Nioh era to the end of the Edo period.
The effect of the Blade Flash in Rise of the Ronin is the Ki Pulse in Nioh. Flux can also be used, and by holding down the martial arts input, you can perform the martial arts move directly from any stance without changing stances. It’s a difficult style to master, but we think it’s been incorporated into the action in a Team Ninja style, so we hope you’ll give it a try.
Other than William’s appearance, just like Ninja Gaiden, Nioh is not influenced by the story, so even those who have never played Nioh will be able to enjoy the world of Rise of the Ronin purely.
Looking back on the start of this project, Rise of the Ronin had been in development for more than seven years. The game takes on many new challenges and pursues the kind of action and worldview that is characteristic of Team Ninja, and as we explained in this article, we believe that the game is packed with elements that will please fans from previous titles. I hope this article will help you better enjoy the game’s world even more.
Additionally, we’ll be releasing a new update later this week.
New and expanded content
5 new Ally Missions added.
When replaying a world in Midnight, you can choose to have Public Order deteriorate again.
Level sync selection feature added to missions from Testament of the Soul.
Two new Set Bonuses added to Midnight difficulty.
Addition of dojo training partners.
Add Martial Skill type bonus and raise limit of target score.
Gameplay Improvements
When equipped with the same weapon type on weapons 1 and 2, the number of styles can be expanded to a maximum of 6.
Changed the specifications so that special equipment will be given even if the player does not confess.
Changed the specifications so that greetings with characters after a breakup will return to normal over time.
Adjusted to make it easier for asynchronous characters to be selected.
Thank you for continuously supporting Rise of the Ronin!
Activision’s Call of Duty marketing machine has kicked into gear with the release of the first teaser for Black Ops 6.
The teaser, below, posted by the CharlieIntel X/Twitter account, shows live action footage depicting Mt Rushmore’ being vandalized with the phrase “The Truth Lies”.
BREAKING: The first Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 teaser is here 👀
The clip comes as part of a teaser website that features an interactive television with just six channels, referencing the name of the game.
Microsoft will reportedly announce its intention to release Black Ops 6 straight into Game Pass during its June Xbox showcase. Microsoft has so far declined to comment on the reports, but they tally with recent comments from Xbox president Sarah Bond, who indicated all Microsoft’s games, including those developed by the recently acquired Activision, will launch straight into Game Pass.
Activision is reportedly targeting a late October 2024 release for this year’s Call of Duty, which is expected to be called Black Ops 6 after teasers discovered in battle royale Warzone were acknowledged by developer Treyarch. Microsoft is also rumored to be ready to release the Call of Duty back catalog of video games into Game Pass ahead of Black Ops 6’s release.
Developing…
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.
After a shakeup at the top of the business and the enormous sales success of Helldivers 2 behind it, developer Arrowhead has said it has a grand ambition to become the next Blizzard or FromSoftware.
In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, former Arrowhead CEO and now Chief Creative Officer Johan Pilestedt and new CEO Shams Jorjani insisted they have no plans to sell the company, but do want to realize their ambition of taking it to the next level, with the developers behind the critically acclaimed and commercially successful World of Warcraft and Dark Souls games a particular inspiration.
“We pride ourselves on being an independent studio,” Pilestedt said. “We have to see what the future holds, but there’s nothing in the plans where we want to be acquired by somebody. I want to see how high we can fly. And bringing Shams on board, we have a good potential to realize that future of turning into the next From Software or Blizzard.”
Jorjani added: “The goal of the studio is to make really great co-op games. We really want to turn Arrowhead into a flagship studio, where people who want to make these kind-of games say to themselves: ‘I want to work at Arrowhead.’ When we were growing up, we really wanted to work at Blizzard, it was one of the bucket list places to work at. I think Arrowhead has the potential to be that.”
Arrowhead will inevitably grow in size after Helldivers 2 sold 12 million copies in 12 weeks to become the fastest-selling PlayStation game of all time. However, Pilestedt and Jorjani insisted Arrowhead wants to focus on “measured growth”, and has no plans to go public.
“We have a good potential to realize that future of turning into the next FromSoftware or Blizzard.
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.
In a twist of fate I’ve mentioned in some recent Destiny 2 news posts, I am fully back into Destiny. Former vidbud Liam and I used it, initially, as something we could do while catching up on life. But now? Now we’re all in. Liam has created a spreadsheet of things we’re ticking off to prepare for the upcoming expansion, and I think it’s the perfect summation of what the game is to us: something that makes no sense at all and yet something that makes our brains hum with happiness.
And what we’ve found with Destiny, in all of its bloat, is that we haven’t explored for a single second since our return. Everything is accomplished through menus, making it quite Starfield-esque, which is terrible… but also good. We can’t make sense of it and we don’t think we ever will.
