Category: IGN

Where Winds Meet is taking us back to “one of China’s most glorious eras,” the Tang Dynasty, with its next major update, the Hexi expansion, which kicks off, for free, on March 5.

Between March and May, the team will release Hexi’s three chapters in sequence, taking wanderers “from desert to ice fields to grasslands,” starting with Jade Gate Pass next week.

“In ancient China, friends would write poems for each other. Think of these three chapters as our poem to all of you,” the team explained, stressing that this marks “a much more cinematic approach to storytelling” that feels “quite different from our previous storytelling.”

Set in a vast desert landscape, developer Everstone Games said the Hexi expansion represents the “biggest expansion since the game’s launch, and will offer up brand-new narratives, new bosses, fresh gameplay features, and martial art styles.” We can expect three major maps, which, combined, boast nearly 20 sub-regions, 11 unique bosses, seven Jianghu Legacies, “dozens” of side quests, and “so much more.” There’s also a new path called Bamboocut-Dust, with two new martial arts for Umbrella and Roped Dart. Umbrella’s Spring Dreamscape is “all about agility,” while Rope Dart’s Fleeting Clouds is “all about big, sweeping AOE attacks.”

The stream showed off some of those aforementioned boss fights in detail;, including Jade Gate Pass’ campaign boss, Guo Xin, the aging general and last grand protector who “remains at his post defending the land to the very end.” He’ll come at you with “sweeping combos and summon veterans to fight alongside him,” so you’ll need to use your deflects wisely to protect against his attacks. His second phase, on the other hand, boasts “sands swirl and time reverses” as the call of his army “jostles him back to his prime,” enabling him to unleash his full power.

We also get a sneak peek at Wandering Ark, which, I’m delighted to say, is exactly what it sounds like — a huge ship. Once a messenger, it’s now obsessed with finding its way home through the desert. If you hang on after the main presentation finishes, there’s also a good chunk of the battle against Hexi’s Moongazing Maiden boss fight, too, where all the skills and weapons are related to the moon.

While the stream focused primarily on the desert, we also paid fleeting visits to the upcoming Liangzhou and Qingchuan maps, too. The former is a city known for its fine wine and precious jade in our first snow mountain region, and the latter, your final destination, where you’ll cycle through all four seasons on one map and find warring factions everywhere you turn.

Best of all, though, Everstone stressed that all your progress carries over from season to season, including character levels, talents, and arsenals, so there’s “no need to start from scratch.”

As for goodies? Here’s just some of what you can expect:

• 30+ Lingering Melody
• 90+ Resonating Melody (includes pulls obtained via free Echo Jade earned through exploration)
• 100+ Appearances and items
• Win exclusive Whirl of Radiance outfit (obtained through exploration)
• 100+ Exquisite Rewards, including Appearances like Burlap Sack, Bride’s Bloom, War Drum and more, the White-Headed General Avatar, the Radiant Horizons Nameplate, and the Who Else? And Pluck Stars Emotes

That’s not all! Everstone also revealed a slew of new quality-of-life updates, too, which we’ve summarized below:

Cross-platform optimization and improved stability

• Performance and stability optimizations:
  • Performance and memory usage have been optimized across all platforms. This effectively reduces crashes, ensuring a more stable and reliable overall experience.
• Dynamic scene enhancements:
  • Optimized object motion in dynamic scenes to make screen transitions and movement processes smoother and more natural.
• Unified cross-platform experience:
  • Through comprehensive adjustments across all platforms, we have improved the consistency of the gameplay experience on different devices.
  • Optimized notifications for Compendium, Achievements, Events, Martial Arts, and Guilds. We hope to ensure timely and clear information delivery for all players while minimizing distractions and repetitive alerts.

Console control upgrades and smoother interactions

• PS5 controller optimization:
  • Adjusted controller inputs for the Taiping Mausoleum and select events to enhance intutitiveness and handling.
• Focus and cursor display optimization:
  • Optimized the logic for controller focus display and fixed cursor issues, making UI navigation clearer and more stable.
• Polished console experience:
  • Further improved interaction details on consoles to minimize control interference and improve overall gameplay experience.

Inventory management upgrades

• Recycling and sorting improvements:
  • Optimized the interaction of the recycling interface to support the quick recycling of multiple item types, improving sorting efficiency.
• Fast recycle now available:
  • Added a Fast Recycle function to quickly process expired, discarded, and recyclable items in bulk.
• Item categorization and stacking optimization:
  • Introduced new item categorization methods and increased the stack limit for certain Life Materials, keeping your inventory clean and organized.

Gameplay and social updates

• Guild gameplay updates:
  • Added various Guild-related gameplay modes and challenges to enrich combat styles and play choices.
• Guild War optimization:
  • Adjusted league and command mechanisms to reduce interference, ensuring smoother combat flow.
• Social feature upgrades:
  • Added multiple chat channels and group chat functions to facilitate interaction among players and allow sharing of Jianghu stories.

Where Winds Meet’s Hexi expansion can be pre-downloaded from today (February 27). “To wrap up, Hexi is a cinematic open world experience. Three chapters, tons of creative storytelling. We really hope this passion project brings something fresh to all of you,” the team said.

The Wuxia open-world action-adventure RPG set in ancient China debuted on PC and PlayStation 5 on November 14, topping 9 million players in just two weeks. The mobile version released on December 12.

It didn’t take long for players to find creative — and highly amusing — ways to make use of the game’s chatbot NPCs, including taking a novel approach to solving riddles by… simply telling the game’s AI-powered chatbot NPCs that they have solved the game’s riddles.

Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.

Pokémon Day 2026 is a particularly special celebration for fans, as it’s officially the 30th anniversary of the famous Red and Blue release in Japan in 1996. There’s plenty of excitement going into the day, which also makes it one of the best times to check out the best deals on everything Pokémon.

TL;DR: The Best Pokémon Day Deals

Whether that’s restocks or price reductions on the latest and greatest Pokémon TCG releases, or some sizable discounts for almost every Pokémon game on Nintendo Switch – I’ve done the hard work for you, and found the best offerings available today.

Pokémon TCG: Restocks and Best Prices

Quite surprisingly, there’s actually a whole lot of great Pokémon TCG restocks and deals available right now online, with Amazon having some of the best around. The online retailer has gone through something of a massive restocking mission this week, and at just the right time.

Pokémon Day Finds at Amazon

The biggest highlights from Amazon’s selection include the Ascended Heroes – Elite Trainer Box, now available and in stock for trainers to freely buy. It’s matching market price, at $119,99 as well.

There’s also the Pokémon Day 2026 Collection, which, considering the ongoing 30th anniversary celebration, should absolutely be at the top of your buy list right now.

Besides those standouts, I also wanted to highlight the Prismatic Evolution themed Pokémon Day 2025 collection that released last year. Listed for $40.64, Amazon has recently restocked the special edition set.

It includes two Prismatic boosters, a special metallic Eevee coin, and a foil Eevee card that features a unique Pokémon Day 2025 logo. That’s absolutely worth picking up alongside the new 2026 collection, if I say so myself.

I also want to call out availability on the Phantasmal Flames – Three Pack Blister, for $32, alongside the Mega Lucario ex Figure Collection, and several of the Scarlet & Violet Unova series, like the Poster Box, Tins, and Illustration Collection.

Pokémon Day Finds at TCGplayer

TCGplayer has also pulled out all the stops for Pokémon Day, and has several of the most popular Pokémon TCG sets in stock and at market price.

In terms of sealed sets, I want to highlight the Perfect Order booster boxes, which are currently available for $201.18 market price at TCGplayer. That’s a remarkably good price for the upcoming set releasing on March 27, and probably one of the best deals I’ve seen all year.

Featuring 36 booster packs, you’re looking at about $5.50 per pack, which is as close to MSRP as I think we’re ever going to get. Compare this to Phantasmal Flames booster boxes, which are currently going for $320 or more, this is a huge saving. I’d snap this up ASAP before prices spike again as we get closer to release day.

My next best suggestion is to consider The Pokémon Center Exclusive Ascended Heroes ETB, which is currently available for just $246.84 market price at TCGplayer. Considering this was selling for $400 just a few weeks back, I’d consider this one of the best deals available right now for the biggest Pokémon TCG fans out there.

Nintendo Switch Games on Sale Today

Amazon’s Woot store has been known to offer a bunch of deals in the past, but it might just have outdone itself this time around with its brand new “Video Games For All!” sale that includes a whole slew of Pokémon games on Nintendo Switch. Just use promo code LEVEL20 to access the new bargains.

The biggest standout is on Legends Z-A, which is down just $35.92 on Nintendo Switch. IGN’s Rebekah Valentine gave the game an 8 out of 10 in her review last year, saying “Pokémon Legends: Z-A finally feels like Game Freak hitting its stride in Pokémon’s 3D era, with a fun setting to explore, a well-written story, and a total battle system overhaul that works surprisingly well.”

You can upgrade to the Switch 2 version digitally as well for just $10 after making your purchase, making this a certified bargain. But, and this is a big but, these are certified Pokémon Day deals that will expire by the end of today (February 27, 11:59 PM CT, to be exact). So, act fast to avoid disapointment.

Pokémon Funkos, Toys and Plushies

I couldn’t wrap things up without at least mentioning several amazing Pokémon plushies that are on sale at Amazon right now. That includes an adorable and massive 20-Inch Torchic Squishmallow that’s down to just $30.99, which is lowest price in the past 30 days.

There’s also a great deal on Lugia and Snorlax 12-Inch plushies, which are just perfect, and also at 30 day price lows right now at $22.99 each (down from $34.99).

It’s also worth mentioning the brand new lineup of Pokémon Funkos. A select few are now available, while several others are still up for preorder.

There are some bangers in here as well: an angry, electricity-summoning Pikachu, an angry, vine-summoning Venusaur, and more. Take a look and see if you want to order any from Amazon for Pokémon Day.

Pokémon LEGO Back in Stock and Now Available

There’s also a trio of new Pokémon LEGO sets that are now available from today! There’s an adorable Eevee, a dynamic Pikachu, and a pricy (yet incredible) set depicting Venusaur, Charizard, and Blastoise. All sets are now back in stock and available to purchase, exclusively at the LEGO Store.

My favorite from this is definitely on the Eevee LEGO set. This LEGO version is definitely going to be popular, so I’d snap it up ASAP before it sells out again fast.

We recently built this set as well, so you can check out our full impressions over there. Long story short, it’s a gorgeously designed set that manages to turn a pile of blocks into a smooth and fluffy-looking critter. In addition to the loveliness of this set, the price is right as well.

For more on Pokémon’s 30th Anniversary celebrations, be sure to check out our roundup on best Pokémon games of all time.

Robert Anderson is IGN’s Senior Commerce Editor and resident deals expert on games, collectibles, trading card games, and more. You can follow him @robertliam21 on Bluesky.

The We Were Here series is the stuff of co-op magic, and at IGN Fan Fest 2026 we got to see its latest evolution. One look at the We Were Here Tomorrow trailer and it’s clear the cult co-op series is taking a giant leap into new territory. Previously set in the labyrinthine rooms of an abandoned castle, We Were Here Tomorrow sets its perplexing puzzles in the raygun retrofuturistic looking Norcek facility. The core of the game – shouting at your friend through a walkie talkie as they prove to be dumber than you ever thought possible – remains the same, but there are other changes to go with the new look.

“It’s a story that has some familiar characters and some totally new ones, and we’ve also done a lot with giving you new tools for puzzle solving and moving through the environment,” said Martín Mittner, creative director at Total Mayhem games. “And we’ve done a ton of work on the walkie-talkies to keep you in the game instead of on Discord.”

In case you’ve yet to experience the sometimes chaotic communication of the We Were Here series, there are two key roles: the Explorer and the Librarian. Usually the Explorer is the one faced with physically interacting with the puzzles, while the Librarian translates information only they can see through the walkie talkie that’s key to the solution.

“What I’m really excited about is accentuating the differences between the two players even more, introducing a bit more asymmetry and giving each player a really unique perspective [and] role in the whole playthrough,” added Thijs Schippers, the game’s design director. “Yeah, that’s in the DNA of this new title, through and through.”

Both talked about how, as well as giving the designers a chance to work on something other than snowy castles, the change in setting allows for new environments and new setups for puzzles.

“If you’ve played We Were Here Forever, we did this what we called ‘mind-bendy puzzle,’ where you’re inside a D12 die and you’re doing these weird warps between dimensions and getting different information and stuff,” said Mittner. “We’re doing some more of that, right? There are sort of capstone puzzles that we’re presenting that are very mind-bendy. It’ll be really interesting to see players play through that. And also there’s like a unique aspect to the storytelling we’re doing that I can’t really talk too in depth about. But it’s going to be very different in some ways from previous titles. And it will be interesting to see how the players interact with each other surrounding the story.”

We Were Here Tomorrow is coming to PC (Steam), PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. Head over to Steam and add the game to your Wishlist.

This is just the latest news from IGN’s Fan Fest 2026 – check the schedule to see what else is coming and to keep up to date on all the latest from the worlds of games and entertainment.

Rachel Weber is the Head of Editorial Development 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, Red Dead Redemption 2, and her Love and Deepspace boyfriends.

I first took notice of Samson: A Tyndalston Story when its team of former Just Cause and Mad Max developers posted a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it teaser of Tyndalston itself. The fictional city reminded me of GTA 3’s Liberty City or Max Payne’s New York. My first look at proper gameplay in a demo with the creative director only upped my interest, and now that I’ve had the chance to actually play Samson – albeit only for an all-too-brief hour – I’m officially amped for this gritty, grimy, run-down brawler with pseudo-open world freedom where your heavy punch can drop bad guys in one bloody shot and you pop painkillers to stay in the fight.

The setup for this 1990’s-set crime story sees you as Samson McCray, fresh out of prison after eating a charge as a result of a robbery in St. Louis gone bad. Your sister, Oonagh, pulled some strings to help keep you safe while you were inside, and she cut a deal upon your release: you’ve got to repay the money lost from the failed heist to people that will absolutely kill you both if you come even one cent short.

What’s important to make clear up front is that Samson is not a AAA game. You’d be forgiven for thinking it was at first glance, because its Unreal Engine 5-powered visuals are quite impressive, both in terms of Samson’s character model and the city of Tyndalston. Lighting has a very fluorescent-tinged yellow tint to it that you really had to live through the ‘90s to understand, vehicles look great, and the city itself looks very, very lived-in. But Samson doesn’t have the scope of a AAA game, and that’s not a complaint – it’s just important to properly calibrate your expectations. The opening cutscene is not a full-blown cinematic but a voiced-over motion-comic, voice acting is so-so at best, and this isn’t a 40+ hour open-world sandbox. You do plenty of driving around a neighborhood – perhaps more of Tyndalston unlocks the further into the story you progress – but this is not a massive playground full of chatty NPCs and side activities.

Again, this isn’t a complaint, but it’s important to emphasize because when you first fire up Samson, it seems like it’s following a very GTA-esque playbook. But I really like the choices that Samson makes within its more limited scope. For instance, there are numerous little things around the world to take note of and interact with, from notes and photos in your apartment to sandwich-board signs you can knock over with your car in order to gain small bursts of nitro boost.

It gets better: there is a progression system. The more bad guys you beat up and the more missions you complete, the more XP you earn that gets redeemed for a point in one of four skills: Instinct (boosts your adrenaline), Tactics (health), Aggression (power), and Cunning (finesse). This allows you to tailor your Samson to your preferred playstyle, whether you’d rather absorb and dish out maximum punishment in each fight or strike quickly and frequently in order to speed up the maxing out of your adrenaline meter, at which point you can click in both thumbsticks and enjoy a brief period of dealing extra damage.

Gameplay segments are split into days, and within each day are afternoon, evening, and night. Every time the sun rises, you have to pay back a certain amount of your debt. In order to do that, you’ll need to take various small jobs around Tyndalston. Fortunately, you’ve got choices each day; it’s not a linear mission structure. My first job involved finding the manager of a club called Chubb’s and, well, beating the crap out of him. Naturally, it wasn’t quite so simple. I had to worm my way through the bowels of the club first, fighting my way through his goons in the process. This mission functioned as a bit of a tutorial, allowing me to practice parries, dodges, light punches, heavy punches, and triggering my adrenaline meter after I’d built up enough adrenaline during fights.

It didn’t hurt Samson’s chances of me loving this game when the very first dude I threw a heavy punch at dropped immediately, his face covered in his own blood. Most of the time in a game like this, guys can take an unrealistic number of hits. But not in Samson. Not everyone will hit the floor after a single punch, but the fact that it can happen not only made me feel like a badass, but it added to the underworld grittiness that is clearly oozing out of every square inch of Tyndalston.

Anyway, back to the missions: as I was saying, you’ve got choices at each segment of the day, but each choice takes a certain amount of time. Meaning, you can’t just do a dozen jobs in a single day in order to quickly pay down your debt and break the game. Every job, realistically, takes time, so when I was, for example, shadowing Dave the Bookie, that took all afternoon of in-game time. First I had to drive to where Dave had last been seen. Then, once I’d clocked him, I had to follow him from a safe distance (lest he recognize the tail and get spooked, triggering a mission failure) so that he’d lead me to evidence of what he was suspected of by the people that I took the job from: that Dave was playing both sides. Sure enough, I caught Dave red-handed, and then I had to square up against Dave and his associates. By the time it was done and I got paid, the day moved to evening.

Some jobs can only be taken at certain times of day. And some jobs will cost you money. Like when I had to take out the cars of two guys who were avoiding my temporary employer. First I drove to where they’d last been seen, and then both cars came flying around the corner in front of me and the chase was on. The problem was, my car was already pretty beat up from the erratic driving I’d been doing in previous jobs. So the first time I tried the mission, my pursuit led us to a freeway onramp, where I was able to get behind the closest of the two target cars, and then nitro-boost directly into his rear bumper, slamming his car into the curving wall of the onramp and taking it out. Problem was, the bumper boost also took my pre-battered car out, and by the time I’d grabbed another car, the second of the two cars I was pursuing – who was already in front of me – had gotten away.

On the retry, I stopped at a gas station repair shop first, spent some of my hard-earned cash (which, I remind you, I needed every cent of to try and make my daily debt payment), and was then able to keep my car intact while taking out both of my four-wheeled targets. I got paid, and headed home for the evening. But who was waiting for me? Two debt collectors, and so before I could crash on my own couch for the night, I had to bloody my knuckles one more time.

Both combat and driving were a lot of fun in my one-hour hands-on. I have no idea if Samson will ever introduce guns into the mix, but I kinda hope it doesn’t. The melee combat system feels heavy in a really good way, meaning that Samson takes shots just as hard as he dishes them out. I like the mix of punches, parries, and dodging. Sure, the Batman: Arkham combat arguably remains the brawler standard, but Samson’s fisticuffs are slower and more deliberate in a way I quite enjoy.

Driving, meanwhile, also has a welcome weight to it. All of the (fictional) cars in Samson are ‘90s era at the newest, given the ‘90s setting. Samson’s own car is a ‘70s Chevelle-like two-door muscle car, and as such it’s no light Lotus. Are these simulation-style driving physics? Absolutely not. You have the aforementioned nitro boosts and there’s a side-slam button – and of course, the B button lets you pull off sick handbrake turns once you’ve got some practice under your belt. By the end of my hour I had really started to get the hang of the driving and was eager to zip my way around Tyndalston some more.

As you can probably tell by now, I had a fantastic time in Tyndalston. If Samson can keep its mission variety fresh – which is no small thing, I recognize – it’ll go a long way towards making its campaign enjoyable over the long haul, versus the extremely fun hour I had with it. I’m curious to see if the city opens up more as the story unfolds, and I hope the story itself is engaging enough to keep me motivated to continue playing and isn’t just “keep doing jobs to pay down your debt until a big climactic mission happens at the end.” Samson is due out on April 8 for PC, so it won’t be too long before we find out if it can keep up the good stuff it’s got going for it.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our semi-retired interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.

Highguard studio Wildlight Entertainment reportedly has less than 20 people remaining to work on the game following a round of devastating layoffs just weeks after the game’s launch.

This comes from a new Bloomberg report, which tells the story of Wildlight’s rise and fall since its founders first assembled the team back in 2021. Made up of Respawn veterans, the group hoped to recreate the successes of Apex Legends and Titanfall, initially with a survival-focused shooter.

When that design didn’t quite work as well as they’d hoped, they scrapped it and pivoted to Highguard, leaving remnants of the original survival game in the final draft of what was now a hero shooter. As the game progressed, testers had positive feedback that had the developers hopeful, though notably they also said it was more fun on microphone with voice chat, and the experience was too complicated and less fun without them.

Sources speaking to Bloomberg say the studio largely had a positive culture and the team felt good about what they were making up until the game’s announcement at The Game Awards last December, which apparently came about at Geoff Keighley’s urging after he enjoyed what he played of it. The team originally intended to announce and launch Highguard simultaneously, but with The Game Awards announcement that left a month-and-a-half-long silence between announcement and launch during which the internet had a field day.

The game launched to a celebration-worthy number of Steam concurrents, but unfortunately was unable to retain players for very long at all, meaning it made very little money from microtransactions. Reviews were also poor. Though the developers at Wildlight believed they had financial runway to improve, financial backer Tencent suddenly pulled its funding, and most of the 100-person team was laid off as a result. Fewer than 20 individuals remain to try and save Highguard. Those developers have recently reassured that a new patch is on the way, after a website issue led players to believe the whole game was being taken down.

The full story is at Bloomberg.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

As our exclusive, all-February-long IGN First “cover story” on the upcoming black-and-white, hand-animated first-person shooter MOUSE: P.I. for Hire continues, we wanted to learn more about the origins of its unique 1930’s rubberhose-animated style. And so we sat down with Fumi Studios CEO and Founder Mateusz Michalak as well as Art Director and Lead Animator Michal Rostek to go behind the scenes of this unique game. Read on for a lightly edited transcript of our conversation, or watch the video version below. And you can wishlist MOUSE on Steam if you’re interested.

IGN: What came first here, the idea for the game itself or the desire and idea to use this 1930s Rubber Hose animation style?

Mateusz: Yeah, I think this is the question more for Michal right now because he was one of the original creators and the guy who created the first art for the MOUSE.

Michal: I came from the animation industry and I’m really passionate of the animation and especially of history of animation. The MOUSE is like my little passion project that I started inside of my regular animation work. When we started to make video games, I came into the matter with the idea of the boomer shooter with the style of the 1930s Rubber Hose animations, and he loved that idea and give this idea opportunity to make it happen. We started with five people on the small team of this project. Our programmer put a video of making the game on TikTok then it goes viral and resonates all around the world. I remember that day when I was going to work and met my friend in the subway and he told me, “Hey, I read the article, the gaming website, that some guys make a game that looks like the game that you want to make.” And I said, “Really?” “Yeah.” Then he showed me the article and that was MOUSE.

Mateusz: Yeah, I can add that from the beginning. It was passion project. We’ve done most of the work after hours. We started prototyping the game. The first prototype that Michal showed to me was really, really basic. Then we hired a coder/programmer, David, who joined the team and we started the first full small production and the game came out of this small teaser that he showed on TikTok.

IGN: That’s cool. So my next question, was it always going to be black and white or was color in this animation? Was that a debate at all amongst the team?

Mateusz: It was never a debate among the team. It was debate in the community because when people first saw the art or the trailer, they thought, “Okay, it’s quite original, but you need color.” Because no one ever made an FPS cartoonish game in fully black and white. It was something unusual back then, but we sticked with our roots in our original design and we never wanted to add any color. It’s challenging. It’s really challenging, especially in player guidance, in patch finding because you can always add a yellow color if you have a color in game or any other color, and I think that we’ve done a pretty good job. It was really, really challenging. We learned a lot of new skills, managing only basically two basic colors, black and white.

IGN: Help me understand how much of this, of the animation of the art, was done by hand?

Mateusz: I think all the animations that you can see in the game are done by hand. It’s not easy process, but having computers right now, we can speed up some elements in the whole pipeline. Of course, we used techniques from the 1930s, 1940s Rubber Hose techniques. But having computers, we could speed up the whole process. It was much, much nicer and we could basically see our effects not instantly, but quite fast in the game. So if you would use the old techniques, so using paper, pens, scanners, and so on, the whole process would take not months, but years. And in the game development, they don’t tend to wait for games, they want games right now. That’s why the whole development process of games is shortening every year and we couldn’t tell people that, “Okay, you saw teaser, then you need to wait at least 7, 8 years to see the final product.” That’s why we used computers. And I think Michal can say something more about the whole pipeline of the animation.

Michal: Yeah, so the animation pipeline is really similar to the pipeline that we use in the animation industry because game is based on animation. So it’s really similar but not 100% the same. So for example, we started with the concept that we took from the design department. They’re giving us a idea and we made our first concept arts for the character, for the NPC, for the weapons of the game. And then we came to the process that, in the film industry is like a storyboard process when we made a limited animation to put in the game and look how this work.

And if it’s good, it comes to the animation process when we put the life on the animations, on the characters, on the weapons and all of the interactive elements in the game. Then to clean up process, when we clean all the outline to not look rough, but to look good, put the colors on it, and the last final step on making animation for the game that is different than making animation for the film is to render all of these things, put it in the engine and pack it and make the magic go on.

IGN: Michal, were the weapons the most fun thing to animate in the game because for me, what I’ve seen and experienced of the game so far, I mean it’s all gorgeous, I just love the entire look, but the weapons, I just love how alive the weapons are.

Michal: Definitely, it was a very fun thing to do, but for me, one of the most challenging things. And we couldn’t make such a great design, such a great animations without our two animators and with our two artists, Abraham, who made the great concepts for the weapons on the game and Igor who animated all of the things. So it was also credits for our game design who put all the mechanics, all the specific timing for the weapons to look good because this is one of the things that we need to focus when we making animation for the video game is that it should fit the mechanic, it should fit the interactive aspect of the game and do it in the… right tempo because when you have a game hardly based on the animation, they should look good, but also be useful for the player and not be player shouldn’t feel frustration when he uses an animated gun.

IGN: How did the animation influence the tone of the game? It seems to lean a little more playful and I’m just sort of curious how you guys balance that of matching the animation to the tone of the game?

Mateusz: Animation, it’s crucial for the whole game, so it’s connecting also with the whole narrative element. It’s like when they think about MOUSE, they think about animation, they think about art and it’s a really great thing because we have a hook, we can hook them, interest them in the game. But beneath that, this art animation elements, there is a deep vibrating story and I believe that we’ll surprise a lot of people when they will play the game.

IGN: So you talked about the engine earlier. You guys are using the Unity engine here underneath the animation system. How much custom work had to go into Unity to get it to cooperate with the uniqueness of what you guys are doing with the animation?

Mateusz: The first prototype, however, the first prototype was done in Godot, but the proper development is we are doing in Unity. The unity is really good in managing the 2D animation sprites, it’s really good. But our game has thousands of thousands of animations and this was the most challenging part because still, you can put as much assets in the game, 2D assets, as you can, but your game can grow having 200 gigabytes, 300 gigabytes. So the most challenging part was the optimization process of the whole animations and we needed to develop a special tools that will compress 2D animations to have a better performance for the whole level because there is tons of animations, different kinds of animations through the whole level.

IGN: Can you talk about, on a similar note about if there were challenges of using 2D animations in a 3D game? We don’t see that very often. I imagine that had to present some sort of challenge either in the animation itself and maybe the level design as well.

Mateusz: I think it would be much easier to make everything in 3D. The most challenging part, managing 2D assets, especially enemies in 3D space is to animate all directions. So we need to animate front, front left, left side, back left, back. All the bosses, all the enemies, every skills, every objects, so not objects, every enemies, bosses and some interactive objects, they are animated in 9 or 8 directions. So it was challenging and really time-consuming. Also, having 3D animations, it’s much easier to add every bit of animation to the game. Having 2D animations, we needed to think really carefully what we want to add because we don’t want to spend weeks animating things and then we will just delete our work. We wanted to have the whole 2D animations into the foreground, not in the background. So we use flat colors as in the old Rubber Hose animation. So there are all flat colors and you can spot really easily every 2D animation, walking around the level. Either this is enemy or 2D animation objects, interactive objects, you can’t really easily spot it.

IGN: I have to imagine that this project has been more difficult than maybe you initially thought. And I only say that because I mean making any video game is clearly not an easy thing, but nobody else does this. You guys are the only studio making a game in this way. So how much more difficult, how have you found the process over time? Have you really, I imagine you’ve learned a lot in the course of development.

Mateusz: We made a lot of mistakes, a lot of mistakes. And going back and forth, back and forth with numbers of things. I think that there are few FPS games that using sprites or using to the animations, but I think our project is unique that we are using a lot of frames, a lot of images in our animations to show that the Rubber Hose animation style is really unique and the whole animation is really unique. And I know that right now there is a debate if hand skills not be useful in the future or they will be replaced with some tools. I believe, and I think that we showed it, that having a great hand skills, having a great artist, it’s only beneficial for your game and the project itself.

IGN: I’m curious as to maybe this might be a good one for Michal, your inspirations for this because Cuphead, I think of very quickly, for obvious reasons, the other really amazingly hand-drawn game, totally different kind of game of course than your boomer shooter, but I also, I get a little bit of Who Framed Roger Rabbit from this too. I’d be curious to hear your inspirations.

Michal: I think the biggest over overall our inspiration, our biggest inspiration is the Rubber Hose art style as a whole. Our biggest inspiration is the animations from the Fleischer Studios, the people who create such a characters as Betty Boop, Popeye, Coco the Clown, or Bimbo the Dog. Fun fact, we probably watched every available Popeye episode during the pre-production, took the best inspirations for the environments for the characters. But also how they inspired by works of Ub Iwerks. He was a lead animator in Disney. He was animating for example, Steamboat Willie but then he became a solo animator and became a solo career and make characters such as Flip The Frog or Willie Whopper, but also other animation studios for that era. Like for example, Paul Terry, Charles Mintz, but also the old cartoons that were quite violent for that era. But it was a good inspiration for the combat and fight for our game. So we took a lot from them.

IGN: Awesome. The last question I have for you guys, maybe for either or both of you, so now you’re almost there. The game is nearly complete, it’s almost out. Moving forward, do you guys want to stick with this animation style for your next project or was this a one-time fun experiment, fun project or is the Rubber Hose animation going to be the Fumi Studio signature moving forward?

Mateusz: I think that the overall hand-drawn style will be our studio signature. I believe in the craftsmen of artists and I think that we will surprise people in the future with our next project.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our semi-retired interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.

Surgent Studios, the developer behind Tales of Kenzara: ZAU, has unveiled its next game today, and it’s…absolutely nothing like Tales of Kenzara: ZAU. It’s called FixForce, and it’s a chaotic cooperative “extraction platformer” about a team of robots fixing machines using random parts they find lying around.

FixForce puts up to six players together as a robot repair crew sent into an area to fix various broken structures littered around the area within an allotted amount of time. Each broken machine indicates what parts are needed to fix it, and those parts can be found scattered around the level.

However, many of those pieces will be stuck behind obstacles: bodies of water robots can’t swim through, up tall towers, guarded by evil enemy robots. To collect them, you’ll need to use your robot building abilities to pick up and place objects strategically so you and your friends can climb across them to reach whatever it is you need. And if you’re injured by an obstacle, your head will fall off, and your teammates will need to find your head and body and stack them back together to resurrect you back into the game. Teams earn points based on how many things they fix within the time limit.

I got a chance to play a round of FixForce ahead of the announcement alongside the developers, and yeah, the level of silly chaos implied in the announcement trailer pretty much encapsulates it. It’s easy to get distracted goofing around with all the objects in the level and building weird, random things, but FixForce also lends itself to silly emergent moments, like when one of the devs tried to toss platforms at me to save me from being stuck on an island, and instead slammed one into me and knocked me right into the water.

It was a surprisingly cheery and silly time for a studio that just made a game about grieving the death of a loved one. That fact is not lost on founder Abubakar Salim, though.

“As FixForce came together, we saw the pure chaos and hilarity it was unleashing and made the decision to move quickly and publish it ourselves,” he said in a statement. “Yes, FixForce is completely unlike anything we’ve ever done before, but look: we made one game about grief and another about abuse and thought, ‘can we have a little bit of silly, stupid fun for a second?’ I promise we’ll go back to dark and depressing after this.”

Notably, this isn’t the same game Salim announced in 2024, Project Uso, nor is it the horror game announced last year to be published by Pocketpair. Surgent clearly has a lot of irons in the fire here, but its eagerness to get something released quickly makes sense given the scale of its long-term ambitions and its financial struggles in 2024.

FixForce is dropping in early access on March 12 on PC via Steam and Epic Games Store, and its full, final release will also be on Xbox, the studio says.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Death Stranding 2 isn’t even a year old, but the PC version is already on the way in just a couple of weeks. When it launched on PS5, it was one of the most beautiful games on the platform, and while that would usually mean it’s kind of hard to run on PC, the system requirements are forgiving.

Unlike some recent PC launches, Sony released different quality standards for its minimum and recommended system requirements, which should help pin down what to expect when you try to run the game on your PC. For instance, the minimum spec calls for either an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 or an AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT, which should run the game at 1080p with low settings, at 30 fps.

If you want to max out the game, though, you’re going to need a bit more hardware, but it’s still pretty reasonable. The recommended spec calls for an RTX 3070 or a Radeon RX 6800, and will run the game at 1440p with the High quality preset at 60 fps. Not bad.

I went ahead and listed all of Sony’s recommended PC specs below, but as long as you have a relatively modern PC, the game should be able to run flawlessly onj your machine. Nixxes, the studio handling the PC port has also added a “portable preset” which should make it run smoothly on PC handhelds like the Steam Deck or the Xbox Ally X.

Humble Requirements

Even at the high end, Death Stranding 2’s system requirements are pretty humble by today’s standards. While the GeForce RTX 4080 seems like a lot, keep in mind that this is likely for maxing out the game at 4K, which you very much don’t need to do.

Keep in mind that the minimum spec is calling for a GTX 1660, which was a low-end card when it came out in 2019, and that was almost seven years ago now. I won’t know exactly how this game performs until I’m able to run it on my own hardware, but the wide range of GPUs being represented here likely means that the game is incredibly scalable.

It’s also important to note that even on the PS5 Pro, Death Stranding 2 did not use ray tracing, which means the higher graphics settings are going to be a lot more approachable than other recent AAA games – unless, of course, ray tracing is added to the PC version. Luckily, Nixxes is also adding support for DLSS, XeSS, FSR and Guerilla’s Pico upscaler, so you should be able to find some way to boost your performance.

Death Stranding 2 launches on PC March 19th, so at least we won’t have to wait too long to see how it performs.

Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra

With Housemarque’s new game Saros on the horizon, now is a great time to boot up the developer’s previous release, Returnal. If you haven’t added this one to your library yet but have been waiting for a good time to grab it, this is your chance: Amazon’s dropped its price to $29.83 (see it here).

Considering it usually comes with a price tag of $69.99, this deal saves you 57% on the game overall. It’s also just a few dollars away from its lowest price point at the retailer of $24.70. That’s not too bad at all. Plus, there’s still plenty of time before Saros is released, so the timing of jumping into Returnal couldn’t be better. You’ve plenty of time to get a feel for Housemarque’s style of roguelike shooter before jumping into the studio’s new take on that formula.

Returnal for $29.83

Resident Evil Requiem includes numerous Easter eggs and unlockable extras, but none seemingly as complex as ‘The Final Puzzle.’

Warning! Resident Evil Requiem puzzle spoilers follow:

As with other recent Resident Evil games, Requiem includes a list of challenges which add completion points to your playthrough score. At the bottom of the list is the appropriately-named ‘The Final Puzzle’ — which is proving to be something of a headscratcher.

IGN has a work-in-progress guide to The Final Puzzle where significant progress has been made through the challenge’s convoluted early stages, which feel more complex than anything seen in any other Resident Evil game to date — and, seemingly, with still some way left to go.

Exactly what the final outcome or reward for the challenge might be remains unknown — but as the game continues its launch around the world, the hunt for answers here will undoubtedly become a major point of community focus.

The game’s own description for the challenge offers only the vaguest of hints, to “Let the sweet pair hear the voice.” The mechanics of the puzzle, or at least its first part, appear to rely on players picking up or examining a variety of objects throughout the game to determine fragments of a code.

Requiem’s trail of clues relies on players picking up a specific severed hand which, if obtained, can also be scanned later on to provide a hidden RNA code in a blood sample analysis machine. Other items also hide their own codes, providing (with a bit more puzzling work) a version of that RNA sequence that can be plugged into a safe that features buttons labelled with a Star, Sun and Moon.

After that… well, it’s here the trail has gone cold, though likely not for long. We’ll be keeping an eye on further progress made throughout the next few days, as players uncover further steps. For now, however, it’s just fun to see that the game hides this kind of puzzle.

For a far more granular look at each step to-date, IGN’s work-in-progress guide to The Final Puzzle is right here. We’ve also logged how long Resident Evil Requiem takes to beat, and tracked Resident Evil Requiem’s global release times.

“Like the result of an experiment conducted in an underground Umbrella Corporation lab, Resident Evil Requiem successfully splices two separate strains of survival horror together into the one highly infectious new mutation,” IGN wrote in our full Resident Evil Requiem review, which returned a 9/10 score.

Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social