Category: IGN

The fastest player to beat the game Donkey Kong Bananza, as of now, is a runner going by Vytox, who finished the game in just under an hour. In fact, players have so thoroughly optimized Bananza that even runners who chose to play in categories that involve beating all bosses and collecting all Bananza forms can do it in not too much more time than that. That’s crazy fast for a game with so many literal layers, and is possible because runners have invented all sorts of tricks to speed their way through levels and even fly through the sky in ways that were pretty clearly not intended by the developers.

And yet, it turns out that the Donkey Kong Bananza developers have been watching all along.

I learned this when I spoke to producer Kenta Motokura and programmer Tatsuya Kurihara this week at the Game Developers Conference, following their talk at the show: Constructive Destruction: Fusing Voxel Tech and 3D Action Platforming in ‘Donkey Kong Bananza.’ While their talk focused on the ways in which they encouraged the player to do things like destroy terrain and discover hidden treasures, I followed up with them by asking how they prevented players from doing things they weren’t supposed to do — especially in a game that was so open ended.

Motokura initially responded by telling me that unlike previous games the team has designed, Bananza had a lot more things about the player experience that the developers were unable to anticipate when designing.

“In that sense, we have to give them the play space they can enjoy and everything else would be essentially unreachable,” Motokura said. He gave as examples surfaces that Donkey Kong couldn’t climb, as well as other engineering solutions that made some things simply impossible. I was reminded, for instance, of one of the major barriers remaining in Donkey Kong speedruns: an inability to proceed through a certain boss battle if you haven’t yet broken Pauline out of her Odd Rock prison.

I followed up by asking if they found it was getting harder and harder as time went on to block players from getting into things that the designers wanted them to stay out of. Motokura responded in the affirmative: “To answer your question very briefly, it is getting very hard to keep players from going all over the place. But certainly we take those sorts of things into account as well.”

And indeed, this team in some ways almost appears to have conceded in this battle somewhat. I recalled the Super Mario Odyssey team placing coins up in hard-to-reach places anticipating that players would find savvy ways to jump up there. Bananza, similarly, has special dialogue if the player manages to skip their way to the end of the Racing Layer without going for a Rambi ride.

Motokura alluded to this as well in his answer. “Sometimes there are sequence breaks in game that you can, once you learn about them, design around so that there is a gameplay experience on the other side of that sequence break. And certainly when we see players who actually get to those areas and experience those parts, we look around at each other and say, ‘I’m really glad we made that.'”

Later in the interview, I asked both developers if there was anything players had done since the release that surprised them. Kurihara told me he was surprised that so many people try to break every single voxel on a given layer. He knew this was possible, of course, but didn’t think so many people would do it.

Motokura called back to the speedruns: “One thing that really surprised me, and this is maybe going back to the discussion of the sequence break that we had a little bit earlier, was the surprising ways that people are using voxels for movement, not just double jump, but other movement techniques entirely that they discovered on their own to get to some very interesting places.”

So yes, Donkey Kong Bananza’s designers have seen the silly things people are doing to cross massive gaps and speed across stages, and while they stopped short of condoning the behavior, Motokura at least seemed mildly amused by it. As the team eventually moves to future games, it will be interesting to see if they embrace the chaos or continue to try and find cheeky ways to acknowledge player tricks while simultaneously gating off certain paths.

You can read our full interview with Motokura and Kurihara right here.

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

The Simpsons: Hit & Run remains one of the most beloved spinoffs in the franchise’s long history, even if that game still has yet to receive a remaster or sequel. But The Simpsons showrunner Matt Selman is adamant that fans shouldn’t give up hope on a Hit & Run revival, urging them to “Never say never.”

Selman offered this newfound hope as part of a larger interview with People surrounding the animated series’ recent 800th episode. The series’ showrunner also worked as one of the writers on the GTA-inspired game several decades ago, and he seems convinced that it’s simply a matter of showing the studio that the demand for more Hit & Run still exists.

“Nothing is set in stone. But my quote about Hit & Run would be, ‘Never say never,'” Selman said. “Because we know people love it. We know they want it, so that’s good. If we know people want it, never say never.”

“Hit & Run is so interesting,” Selman also said. “I’m a thousand years old, and when I was in my mid to late 20s, I helped write Hit & Run. I had no idea it would become a cult game, a cult success. Of all the games, the thousands of Simpsons games… that one…”

On the whole, Selman seems somewhat more optimistic about more Hit & Run than he was when IGN spoke to him in 2021. At the time, Selman noted it would be “a complicated corporate octopus to try to make that happen.”

Selman’s comments are well-timed, as it was just a few weeks ago that we learned the original The Simpsons: Hit & Run and Prototype developer Radical Entertainment has returned under the banner New Radical Games. It would certainly be fitting if the reconstituted Radical were tasked with developing a Hit & Run remake or a full-fledged sequel.

Whatever happens with Hit & Run, it’s clear the franchsie as a whole is in no danger of dying out anytime soon. Last year, the long-awaited The Simpsons Movie 2 got its first official poster and a 2027 release date. Selman also recently noted that while the animated series may eventually end, it won’t have an actual finale episode.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.

After a half-hour of headset-on play in an early section of Little Nightmares VR: Altered Echos, I feel optimistic about the franchise’s jump to VR. While its 3D levels may dilute some of the precise puzzle-platforming I’ve come to enjoy from the ‘pancake’ (i.e. non-VR) entries in the series, its charmingly grotesque critters, tense stealth, and cheeky puzzles have seemingly all made the jump. But the differences from its predecessors that VR brings to the table might be the most interesting part of my demo.

Little Nightmares has always succeeded in making you feel small—often helpless. But that’s really the first thing that hit me the moment I stepped into Dark Six’s shoes in first person. As I pitter-pattered around a dreary train station, that’s really what stood out. Suddenly, things that felt secondary in previous flat games, like picking up and lugging around a big diode to pop into a circuit breaker, felt extremely weighty. Where detailed animations once sold something so laborious, when playing with a more objective camera, bending over and picking something up with both hands in first-person, as it drags next to your feet, hammers home how weak you are.

But the developers don’t use the personal sense of scale and perspective that VR provides as a crutch. The chunk I played felt just as moody and tense as the other games in the series. I constantly felt like I was being watched. Sometimes literally, as security cameras locked on and followed me across cavernous terminals, bag rooms full of luggage, and derelict offices littered with ominous, sparingly scattered human remains.

Starting out pushing luggage carts around as I got my VR legs back while getting used to looking around with a FOV restricted by Six’s hood, the gameplay itself is remarkably similar to the non-VR Little Nightmares, but in first-person. Eventually, I made it out of the leathery trove into a massive station terminal. This was when the sense of scale really started to hit. While still abstract in exactly the way you’d hope from this style of offbeat horror, the terminal felt much more real. As its massive, malfunctioning clock ticked back and forth, I felt like vermin, scurrying from corner to corner as the cameras leered at me.

A series of doors ominously opening in front of and behind me brought me to the station’s office. I spent a bulk of my college years doing IT maintenance in silent, spider-webbed offices and classrooms abandoned for Zoom classes during the pandemic, which revealed just how unsettling the modern office is, especially a silent one. This has made the contemporary office one of my favorite settings for horror, so that room was an unexpected highlight.

It did reveal my biggest gameplay issue, though: While Little Nightmares has dabbled in 3D in specific chunks, it mostly functions as a 2D game, occasionally playing with perspective. But building fully explorable 3D levels makes puzzles much more complex. Whether that complexity works or not tends to make or break the jump. In this case, it’s kind of a mixed result. One puzzle had me swapping in diodes into a circuit breaker to turn the power back on at the station. I tried different ones scattered throughout the room, but none worked.

After running from pillar to post, a small blue light underneath a desk caught my eye. Maybe it was the dark lighting in the room, but I just didn’t notice it. In fact, I walked right past it, not noticing the blue light was coming from a diode on the floor. This is a small issue, but I’m always frustrated when I can’t understand a puzzle just because I literally can’t see the missing piece. Again, this is a small problem, but when a camera is completely under the developer’s control, like in every other game in the series, giving the player a free camera while designing things with the same philosophy might overcomplicate what should be simple puzzles.

From there, I slunk through yet another impressive setpiece—an endless sea of people walking in unison between the station and the train. I worked my way to a car between their legs as they started, stopped, and started again. My perspective hardly put me up to their ankles, again reinforcing that immense sense of scale that I really liked in this demo.

Once on the train, I encountered a menagerie of grotesque creatures. All human-ish, but reduced to their most base, animal sensibilities, I dodged the watchful eye of a lizard-like conductor who patrolled the various cars of the train. He’s one of my new favorite monsters from the series, walking on all fours, almost like a komodo dragon. At the slightest sound, he’d crane his neck to catch stowaways in unassuming places. He got me a few times.

I really liked what I’ve played of Little Nightmares VR: Altered Echoes. While I have some concerns about the series’ translation into 3D, most of the demo felt right at home in the series. Aided by a more personal perspective and sense of scale, this entry is both different and similar to the originals in cool ways. I have faith that the rest of the game will live up. Thankfully, I won’t have to wait long, since it’s launching on Meta Quest 2 and 3, PS VR2, and Pico on April 24th.

Pokémon Pokopia griefers are blowing up players’ special endgame creations designed to unlock Legendary Pokémon, fans say.

Video evidence of an attack by this gang, which has been likened to the franchise’s nefarious Team Rocket, shows a group of hoodlums using Electrode cannons to bomb a player’s most valuable structures.

Posted on social media by Pokémon Pokopia fan MKRfinal, the video sees the player panic as they discover their Abandoned Power Plant structure (linked to the Legendary bird Pokémon Zapdos) being reduced to rubble. The player quickly attempts to put up walls to stop the attack, but it looks to be too late. After that, they discover their Altar of Fire has met a similar fate, impacting their ability to encounter another Legendary bird, Moltres.

【⚠️指名手配⚠️】
ぽこあ荒らし団（通称 ボマー💥）

巷で噂のぽこあポケモン荒らし集団に襲撃されました💦
彼らは有料メンバー限定のサーバーに入り込んで、2度と建築出来ない『三鳥の祠』を破壊してきます🔥

皆さんは取り返しのつかない『三鳥の祠』の建築場所はよく考えてから行ってください✨ pic.twitter.com/t47SyGf0fG

— M.K.R (@mkrfinal) March 12, 2026

The footage includes live reaction from the player as they respond in Japanese — and it’s clear they’re pretty upset by the damage caused. Reaction to the post is mostly sympathetic, though some fans admitted to finding the whole thing hilarious.

“[WANTED] Pokopia Griefing Group (aka Bombers),” MKRfinal wrote, in the style of a classic Wanted poster. “We were attacked by the notorious Pokopia Pokémon griefing gang that’s making waves in the community. They infiltrate servers exclusive to paid members and destroy the ‘Three Bird Shrine’ so it can never be built again. Everyone, please think carefully before heading to a build spot for the irrecoverable ‘Three Bird Shrine’.”

While you can try and rebuild these structures, players say the time and resources this would take is hardly worth the effort. While some have suggested the whole thing is a skit, others have noted that it is worth keeping a close eye on who visits your Cloud Island — especially if they get their Electrode cannons out.

It’s worth noting that you can manually save a Cloud Island backup — so if you have built anything important, this is highly recommended. If you haven’t done so, however, there’s no other way to revert to an earlier save file, as the game quietly autosaves as you go along. If you’re keen to keep your multiplayer area safe, there’s also an option in Pokopia’s settings to ensure other players’ actions aren’t saved — by setting the version available to them as “Virtual”, which means that any changes they make are kept to the local version they play.

Looking to join in the fun for yourself? IGN’s Pokémon Pokopia review returned a 9/10 score, and dubbed the game as “an enjoyable building and town simulator that capitalizes on the charming personalities of its monsters in a way that appeals to both the creative and collector alike.”

If you’re already playing, be sure to check out our list of all the Pokémon in Pokopia, and take a look at our Things to Do First in Pokopia guide to make the most of your first few days. To help you get started, we’ve also got a list of 17 things that Pokopia doesn’t tell you, plus How to Raise the Environment Level and How to Raise Pokémon Comfort Level.

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

Bethesda boss Todd Howard will continue to work on Starfield and ensure the company’s ambitious space game can “eventually become something that will be legendary,” according to the game’s composer.

Speaking to RPGsite, veteran video game composer and frequent Bethesda collaborator Inon Zur said he believed Starfield had simply been ahead of its time when it arrived in 2023 to a more muted reception than the company’s usual Elder Scrolls and Fallout blockbusters.

The years since have seen Bethesda launch an initial expansion to the game, 2024’s Shattered Space, but not a whole lot else. Still, Bethesda invited a gaggle of hardcore Starfield fans to its studio before Christmas to show them some of what it is still working on, so we know that more content is on its way — even if the fans themselves have suggested it is not some kind of Cyberpunk 2077-esque version 2.0 relaunch.

“He is very persuasive and has a very strong character,” Zur said of Bethesda boss Todd Howard, who helped drive development on Starfield during its lengthy time in production. “He will also find ways to describe what he wants without really calling it a name. He knows how to allow freedom of creativity on one hand, but also how to steer it to his own vision. He is a visionary. He sees things that people will start to find out years later.

“This also applies to Starfield,” Zur continued. “When Starfield released, I believe people were just not ready for it. It’s a different way of looking at it, but Todd is really strong, and he said very, very lightly, ‘Look, if you don’t like it, then you don’t like it, but this is the new thing that we’re doing, and we’re sticking to it.’

“He believes in his way,” Zur added, “and it just has proven time and time again that eventually people will understand his vision. It just takes time and this is a common thing for all the big visionaries. Sometimes people really don’t understand them correctly, but they were strong enough to stay on course, and Todd will stay on course on Starfield. Starfield will eventually become something that will be legendary. I have no doubt. It’s just a matter of time.”

Does Zur know more about what Bethesda has planned for Starfield? It seems likely, considering the fact that he scored the main game and Shattered Space, and seems a safe bet to be involved in whatever new DLC or expansion Bethesda has been cooking. He’s also clearly close to the company in general, having also served as composer for Fallout 76, The Elder Scrolls: Blades, and parts of The Elder Scrolls Online. Outside of video games, he also wrote the Fallout TV series theme, alongside further work on several episodes.

So what do we expect is coming to Starfield? Well, Bethesda has previously confirmed plans to improve Starfield space gameplay “to make the travels there more rewarding”, after datamined fragments of code suggested the developer had a more streamlined space travel experience in the works. Based on this datamine, while you may be able to travel between planets within the same system, you won’t be able to fly all the way between systems, nor fly directly from a planet’s surface into orbit, like in No Man’s Sky.

A major retail leak last month suggested that this new content was being lined up to arrive alongside a PlayStation 5 version of the game, which is reportedly set to launch on April 7 with physical copies and both a Standard and Premium editions.

Last month, Howard himself confirmed that “a lot of Starfield content” is on the way, and that Bethesda would be announcing it more publicly “really soon.” Speaking to Kinda Funny, Howard teased that the company was “moving into a phase where we’re ready to talk about Starfield. And really show that in the right way, and what’s coming to the game. We’ve been doing a lot of work that we like a lot.”

Elsewhere, of course, Bethesda is mostly working on The Elder Scrolls 6. On the upside, Howard has said this project will mark a return to Bethesda’s “classic style” of games following experiments with online and sandbox-style gameplay in Fallout 76 and Starfield. On the downside, it also sounds like the project won’t be ready for launch anytime soon.

Then there’s the Fallout 3 remaster that fans are desperate to see announced, which is also reportedly in active development, years after it appeared in FTC documents as part of Microsoft’s bid to buy Activision Blizzard. The Verge said Bethesda is keen to ensure the game is polished enough to enjoy a successful launch similar to last year’s The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, which Bethesda chief Todd Howard recently told IGN he was “really, really pleased” with.

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

Destiny fans are lamenting the future of Bungie’s sci-fi shooter franchise, following a threadbare update this week, released while the developer focuses on supporting Marathon.

Destiny 2 Update 9.5.5.5 arrived on Wednesday, and its full patch notes read as follows:

And that’s it. Now, to be fair, there was no expectation that this week would bring a vast well of new Destiny 2 content to keep players occupied. Destiny players are also well aware of the fact Bungie is currently busy trying to make Marathon a success. But, as one fan put it in response: “I expected nothing and still got disappointed.”

Last month, Bungie announced via social media that it was delaying its next major Destiny 2 game update, Shadow and Order, by a full three months — from March until June — something it blamed on the need to make “large revisions” to its content.

At the time it announced that delay, Bungie avoided mentioning its simultaneous launch of Marathon, which would have arrived within the same release window — presumably to avoid the suggestion that one project was sapping resources from the other. But Destiny fans have found it hard to imagine a world where, had Bungie not been also focused on shipping Marathon, its revisions to Shadow and Order would not need to take as long.

Indeed, in its statement on the delay, Bungie seemed to go as far as it could to signal that things would be quieter for Destiny over the coming months, with basic maintenance and balance updates likely the only changes that players would see. The studio then thanked fans for their “continued patience and support,” before affirming that it would release more information on the update “closer to launch.”

For many players, the news felt like Bungie effectively moving its public focus on Destiny to the back burner until the summer months — something this week’s latest update has only cemented in fans’ minds, resulting in a mix of frustration and dark humor.

“Almost 3 hours of downtime for… this,” noted one fan, in a lengthy thread of complaints on reddit. “A single fix.”

“I’m curious – how many patches have only ever been one patch note?” questioned one fan. “Even dating back to Destiny 1, I feel like that has to be a rare sight. Not even dogging on the game/studio – genuine curiosity.”

“There’s literally no one working on this game anymore,” wrote another fan. “Dev team is genuinely one part timer huh,” added a second. “So effectively they’ve dropped Destiny entirely to work on Marathon? Sigh, could of at least released the DLC you announced first,” said a third.

“Next [blog] will literally just say ‘please play Marathon’,” reads another comment. “You can only laugh about it and then cry about what has become of the best live service game ever,” reads yet another.

IGN has contacted Bungie owner Sony for more detail on its content plans and resources available to work on Destiny, but did not receive a response. In the meantime, it remains a tough time for the developer and the nine-year-old Destiny 2, while there have also been mixed reports on Marathon’s initial launch performance so far.

Last year, Sony said Bungie had failed to meet its sales and user engagement expectations, following a notable drop in Destiny 2 player numbers. The damage was bad enough that Sony said it had been forced to record a 31.5 billion yen (around $204.2 million) impairment charge as a result of Destiny 2’s underperformance. That was significant enough to drag down profits at Sony’s Game & Network Services Segment, which includes Sony Interactive Entertainment.

“For years now, Destiny has been on this steady hardening of the core [audience],” Destiny 2 game director Tyson Green told IGN back in November. “More and more core players are staying and playing the game, but relatively few [new] people come into the game. There’s a tightening and contraction, and this presents problems for a game that you’re trying to maintain as a live service, especially when you want to keep serving those core players with great, compelling expansions.” Exactly when these might arrive, however, remains to be seen.

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

Pokémon Pokopia will soon get an update that addresses an array of issues and improvements, Nintendo has confirmed.

Launched last week to huge success, Pokopia players are already creating blocky Pokémon paradises full of incredible creations — though a few users have gotten snagged by bugs along the way. Now, Nintendo has said it is aware of several issues — and listed a string of bugs and upcoming additions it has planned for Pokopia in the near future.

Happily, Nintendo expects that its planned update will several progression blockers that are currently occurring in players’ worlds, even if players have encountered them already (so no, hopefully you don’t now need to start over).

Other than bug fixes, there’s no mention here of actual new content also coming to Pokémon Pokopia in future — but it is still early days. And it’s worth remembering that the first in-game event “More Spores for Hoppip” is already now live, and set to run until March 25.

Beyond that, it remains to be seen how and when Nintendo will add new Pokémon species and items to Pokopia, though the game’s big launch (with more than 2.2 million copies already sold) means it’s likely the game will be kept updated for the forseeable future.

Nintendo’s current list of upcoming fixes, as confirmed in a new blog post on the official Pokémon Pokopia website, lies below:

Known issues

• When requesting “Let’s build a home!” in “Pasapasa Koya Town,” Squirtle moves up a tree and cannot be spoken to, preventing the request from progressing.
• In the “Gloomy Seaside Town” request “Find a Pokémon Center!”, if you destroy the cracked blocks on the bridge before Mojambo crosses it, it will be difficult to progress with the request.
• When performing the “Find a Pokémon Center!” request in “Dusky Seaside Town,” if you follow certain steps, the event to repair the bridge in “Mojumbo” will not occur, and you will not be able to progress with the request.
• In “Rugged Mountain Town,” if you follow certain steps, the event where you encounter “Rotom” will no longer occur.
• When the request “Let’s clean up the roads!” in “Rugged Mountain Town” occurs under certain circumstances, it becomes difficult to progress with the request.
• The type of “Spinarak” in the Pokédex is incorrect.

Planned improvements

• In the “Pasapasa Koya Town” request “Break the rocks with a Rock Smasher!”, if you place another block in the position of the cracked block near the “Crab Growl”, it will be difficult to understand how to proceed.
• In the “Dusty Seaside Town” request “Take the Professor with you!”, if you place another block in the position of the cracked block near “Snorlax”, it will be difficult to understand how to progress.

Future plans

An update to correct the above will be released soon. Even if the problem has already occurred, applying this update will resolve it. We will continue to investigate any other issues not mentioned above.

If you’re currently playing the game and not stuck at a progression blocking bug, be sure to check out our list of all the Pokémon in Pokopia, and take a look at our Things to Do First in Pokopia guide to make the most of your first few days. To help you get started, we’ve also got a list of 17 things that Pokopia doesn’t tell you, plus How to Raise the Environment Level and How to Raise Pokémon Comfort Level.

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

Blight: Survival has reemerged with a new gameplay trailer — and its developers are promising big news in 2026 after a whopping 1.5 million Steam wishlists.

In a new development update, publisher Behaviour Interactive, of Dead by Daylight fame, and developer Haenir Studio, announced small scape playtests to help shape the game’s future.

Blight: Survival is a medieval co-op action horror game whose 2022 announcement trailer — an early look at gameplay — has seen 3.9 million views on IGN’s YouTube channel alone. The new trailer, below, shows new in-engine footage showcasing combat finishers.

After the trailer went viral and those Steam Wishlists piled up, Ulrik Langvandsbråten, creative director and cofounder at Haenir Studio, partnered with Behaviour and set about rebuilding Blight’s core systems from the ground up.

In an interview with IGN, Ashley Pannell, senior creative director on Blight: Survival at Behaviour Interactive, acknowledged the pressure the team is now under following its viral success and the weight of so many Steam Wishlists, but said the pressure will result in a better game.

“We understand the heightened expectations of what we are being asked to deliver upon here,” he said. “What I personally really love about this is somehow the zombie trope is so powerful that it’s such an all- encompassing thing that we just have to deliver on those expectations to the best of our ability. And that’s really our goal every day, is to try and reach that benchmark to work towards those goals. And yeah, it absolutely is a big responsibility for us to do that. But one of the things that we have as a result of this, is that we have a community with us, and we have a group of people who are on this journey with us. We’re not alone here. It wasn’t just comments from three years ago. And even now, we are doing small scale play tests with members of the community, with the team, to really try and fulfill those expectations and make sure that we deliver on the game that A, they thought it was going to be, and B, that we believe that it can be at the same time.

“So we’re on a journey together. We may have not been loud to the world, but we’ve been very active with our community, talking to our community, making sure that we get their feedback whenever we can. And like I said, even through actual small scale playtesting already, which we’re doing regularly.”

2022 feels like a long time ago now, and gamers have been burnt before by Steam games that have either failed to meet expectations, failed to even come out, or scammed customers outright. People are more sceptical now of flashy, ‘too good to be true’ gameplay reveal trailers from unknown developers than they perhaps were just a few years ago. And this is something Pannell said the team is well aware of.

“From a dev team perspective, we obviously know that we’re building a real game every day, every moment,” Pannell said. “So on a day-to-day basis, as a creator, I tend not to think too much about it. But it’s true. It’s absolutely true and correct that obviously people have been burned by things that have been released. Our goal is to ultimately, as we move forward, prove that we are making a real game, that it is awesome. We’re focusing on the fun, we’re focusing on the things that really matter to making a good quality, fun game that fulfills these expectations.

“We do talk about it. We do think about it. It does, like anything, that worries us. But then 10 years before that it was, did you have a loopbox in your game? 10 years before that it was something else. There’s always something to worry about. And I guess our goal is to manage the expectations and make sure that as we move forward and develop, that we release what we think is right. What is good, what is right and what is fun? And how can we deliver this message in a way that is meaningful to people and especially our community that if anyone is primed for a fall, it’s the people who started coming along for the ride in the first place. So yeah, it’s a thing we think about, but I wouldn’t say it dominates our thoughts. I mean, certainly, before we had this meeting, we had like, this could come up. It’s a thing that is real in the world right now and it’s important to be able to tackle.”

So, what is Blight: Survival? It’s an action horror co-op game set in a brutal medieval world. “It is a game where tension beats at the heart of the whole experience,” Pannell explained. “So I’m not going to land directly on any obvious genres here other than that overall thing. So as a player, every combat you enter will have a risk and reward. And risk reward is a key element of the overall driving part of many features in the game. So whatever you do, you always have to weigh up your decisions really carefully because every fight might be your last, every investigation might be your last, or it might bring you great reward. It’s not just a traditional action horror, it’s not a hack and slash, but it definitely is beating at the heart of this tension that is driven by risk and reward wherever we can find it in the situation we have.

“So it borrows from a number of different genres, but I think our closest landing point is action horror. It is a combat driven game with elements of exploration, with extraction light elements that are in there, and other elements also from games of that genre that help us drive the internal tension and the risk the players take whenever they’re in a given space.”

As for those extraction elements, don’t expect a clone of Arc Raiders or Marathon. “We have loss in our game, and the decision whether to bank that or keep it at some point in the game will become a key choice the player makes,” Pannell teased. “The decision to take more risk at the consequence of, for want of a description, call it extracting early to bank your reward will or is currently in the game as we would expect and a core component of how the game plays. So we have extraction elements, but it’s not driven exclusively as the extraction genre. And we’re also taking extraction influence from other types of games, like for example, Helldivers or Deep Rock Galactic, that have extraction components as a core part of the phase of the game.

“Again, not a direct analog, but we have both elements of what we normally consider a round-based game with extraction, plus a pure extraction game too. We have both those elements in our game, and they work in harmony with each other over the course of your playtime.

“The core game loop is you go in, you try and amass what you can, and you can always push for more, but you could always back out when you feel like you’ve got something that is meaningful.”

Don’t expect a release in 2026, but things are certainly ramping up. There are 45,000 people in the Blight discord, where playtesters will be plucked from. And the developers will then respond to feedback.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

There’s something endlessly endearing about a good-natured dummy. Just a happy, optimistic doofus that can barely scrape two brain cells together to form a thought. You can take your dark and brooding Kratos, or your wisecracking Spider-Man. Give me Dunk from A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, or Guybrush Threepwood from The Secret of Monkey Island, heck, even the dog from Up, any day of the week. And soon, give me Davy, the undead nobody, from Stupid Never Dies, the upcoming action-RPG and debut release from the Devil May Cry and Resident Evil veterans at GPTRACK50.

IGN recently met with the team behind Stupid Never Dies for a first look at Davy’s wild adventure. With blazing-fast action, a slick approach to changing combat styles, and a naive goofball of a hero that might just be in over his head, this has the makings of a damned good time. And, like many of the best, most foolish adventures, it starts with a bit of romance.

Romance is (un)dead

Davy is dead. Not figuratively, or metaphorically, he’s literally dead, and risen again as a zombie. The world has gone to hell (again, not a metaphor), and monsters now roam the world, in total control. As a lowly zombie, Davy sits firmly at the bottom rung of monster society. Weak and powerless, he wanders an abandoned shopping mall, his un-life devoid of meaning or purpose, until he “meets” Julia.

Julia, like Davy, is dead. Though in her case being dead stuck. Instead of a zombie roaming around the end of the world, she met her end in a freezer inside of the mall, and has stayed a human popsicle for who knows how long. When Davy shambles upon her one day, it’s love at first sight, and he makes it his mission to bring Julia back to life, and ask her out.

It’s not exactly the sort of meet-cute you’d see in a Hallmark movie, but it’s enough to send Davy delving deep into creature-filled dungeons in hopes of taking on the King of Monsters (or KOM), stealing his powers, and saving Julia. Davy isn’t usually a fighter, but with Julia’s life on the line, he’s willing to make an exception.

This not-even-remotely-thought-out mission might seem doomed before it starts, but, thanks to some dumb luck, Davy finds a strange egg, and, feeling a bit hungry, decides to make a meal of it. While eating random mystery eggs is not typically a good idea, in Davy’s case it works out beautifully. That snack turns out to be a phoenix egg, and eating it has awakened Davy’s dormant zombie power, and granted him an incredible new ability called Style Eat.

Funky Zombie Action

The KOM rules over monsters from deep within his dungeon, and Davy will need to fight through his armies to reach him. The miasma that permeates the dungeon directly affects Davy. Unlike the surface, where he moves with the classic slow undead shuffly, the miasma turbo charges Davy, allowing him to run, jump, and attack freely. His bite allows him to rip through other monsters, and by sinking his teeth into their core, he activates Style Eat, and that’s when the fun really begins.

Style Eat allows Davy to take on the characteristics and abilities of his enemies. Think Mega Man, or even Kameo, but with more gnawing. Snack on a werewolf, for example, and you’ll gain claws, fur, and beastlike agility, allowing you to rapidly tear through monsters and opening up new traversal options. Or chomp on a Lich to gain the ability to raise an army of skeletons from the enemies you kill. There are 11 styles total, and you can switch between them at the touch of a button – though limited slots mean you won’t be able to equip all of them at once. You can, however, combo the ones you do have. One example given was flying above enemies using the Harpy Style, then transforming into a heavy monster made of rock using the Golem Style, and crashing down on top of enemies.

The other trick up Davy’s infected sleeves is Body Hack, which allows you to customize his arms, head, and legs with special gear to add special effects. We only saw a small selection of the arm modifications, but seeing a missile pod strapped to Davy’s arm, and him unleashing ghoulish hell on a group of monsters was a pretty clear tone-setter. These also persist with the Style Eat transformations, so if you want to go into a fight as a Werewolf with a giant sword for an arm, you’re in luck.

While Stupid Never Dies isn’t necessarily a roguelike, it does have some of that DNA in its approach to progression. Each venture into the dungeon has a time limit, and Davy won’t be able to make it all the way to the KOM right away. You keep any loot you collect, but each fresh run resets Davy’s level back down to zero. However, as you progress further you will build an XP multiplier, allowing you to level up faster, and make it deeper on the next attempt.

With enough persistence, Davy may yet be able to slay KOM and Julia, though it remains to be seen if our lovable, undead-doofus of a protagonist will get the girls in the end. Fortunately, we won’t need to wait too long to sink our teeth into some monsters and find out. Stupid Never Dies on PC and PlayStation 5 later this year.

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