Category: IGN

The gang is back and this time they’re in New York City pulling off the most daring heists. The setting change up from Washington DC from Payday 2 is supposed to be an “enormous living breathing world” that aims to add new layers to the gameplay experience. Dallas, Hoxton, Wolf, and Chains are on the returning cast roster and the story is picking up where it left off. Our favorite heisters are coming back from retirement.

Payday 3 sticks to the classic formula of being a four player co-op shooter. You create your ideal team loadout with your friends and you can bring various weapons and gadgets into the heist with you. You can play solo and with AI teammates if you’re really a solo player but I can’t speak to how that feels since the hour I played was in a full group.

You can approach each heist with various different paths. You can choose to go quietly and stealth around and try not to get caught through the entire mission, or you can go loud and just go guns blazing from the get-go. Starbreeze promises lots of different ways around accessing locked doors and stealthing through the various new tools added to Payday 3.

In fact, there are now new heist phases: Search to go looking for you, Negotiation phase to give yourself more time, and Assault. The gameplay loop has you equipping your preferred loadouts, selecting new skills that you want to use, then entering the heist, assessing the map layout, initiating the heist however you want (stealth or loud), the getaway, then payout.

But of course, before you load into a heist, you have to perfect your gun loadout, along with the specific items and skills you want equipped. There are new skill trees for you to unlock different perks and bonuses. You have to level up to unlock some skills and clicking on a skill before entering a heist lets you “research” that particular skill and unlocks it for you once you’ve leveled. You can also equip your loadout with deployable items that will benefit your team like a Medkit, Ammo Bag, an Armor Bag, and a Zipline Bag (a new device that lets you link cash bags to a zipline to get it quickly to a new location.

I got to play two heists during the preview: Capital Bank and Surphase Art Gallery. Capital Bank was your pretty standard heist where you go in and try to grab all the cash you can while also reaching your goal of infiltrating the larger vault and getting a bigger cashout. Surphase Art Gallery, on the other hand, was an interesting twist on the heist system with the goal being to steal some of the displayed art in the museum, Mission Impossible style.

Capital Bank felt like a familiar return to the Payday 2 days. During the preview play period, I was teamed up with two devs and one other journalist. Dropping us into the game immediately was a bit overwhelming. For context, we were dropped into matches without playing the tutorial mode so I’m sure this won’t be as overwhelming to day one players but there are definitely way more elements to Payday 3 that can get to be a lot to remember – especially if you’re just going off what Payday 2 felt like. We attempted to try the quieter method of stealthing but because of the confusion of what the new first heist phase was, we ended up triggering security and just going guns blazing.

That was kind of the theme of the entire play session. Even though we did get a grasp of the new concepts and mechanics, the actual stealth play is extremely difficult and really punishing if you make the slightest mistake. I’m all for a challenge, but it was unfortunate that we didn’t really get to experience a proper stealth playthrough during my hour of hands-on time. The few times we got the furthest in stealth gameplay, it was really cool to find different keycards through pickpocketing guards or unlocking rooms to access safes that have documents containing info on where security breaches would be the safest.

The concepts of stealthing in this heist game that’s all about high-octane action are really cool, but I worry that most people won’t really experience that very much, since most people are used to just going guns blazing from the jump. Most players won’thave the patience to move really slowly and deliberately to set up a stealth intro when it feels like you’ll just have to eventually go loud once the heist really swings into gear because a single mistake from anyone will guarantee an immediate alert.

Speaking of going loud, the Capital Bank heist has you throwing thermite to breach the vault walls while fighting off waves of law enforcement who get increasingly beefier as time goes on. You start with fighting standard cops, then SWAT-like members who have heavier armor and riot shields, and then you’ll battle a terrifying division of special ops returning from Payday 2 called the Cloakers. These guys got an upgrade in Payday 3 and they can mask themselves and go invisible and reappear wielding blades that can knock you on your ass with one hit.

Once you do make your way into the vault, you actually have to take even more time to make sure you deactivate the security ink pods that will explode if you try to steal the cash under it without successfully deactivating them, rendering the money useless and uncollectible. Once your team has all the cash loaded up in their bags, you can make your way out to the streets and start your escape.

The art gallery heist, meanwhile, was a lot of fun since it was a new environment and gave off an Ocean’s 11 vibe. Stealthing here was pretty difficult, too, since this map requires you to climb around if you want to find a quiet way into the art museum. The gameplay loop was similar to Capital Bank, but instead of cash you steal paintings or small statues and you have to verify which piece of art is the one you’re looking for.

For instance, one of the objectives was to validate the real painting from fake copies by getting a blue light tool to check for blood that was only on the real paintings. Once validated, you cut through the glass on the displays like a true art thief and make away with the treasure. I enjoyed the gameplay and environment way more in the art gallery and the actual museum has a few levels and exhibits you have to navigate through. Hilariously, you’ll actually end up using the “you are here” maps in the levels a lot to figure out where to go, as if you’re actually visiting a real museum.

Payday 3 was developed on Unreal Engine 4 which is a swap from Payday 2’s Diesel Engine. While there is definitely a visual upgrade from Payday 2, Payday 3’s graphics weren’t so incredible that I was blown away by this modern update to the series. Graphically, Payday 3 looked like Payday 2 but with more shading and lighting upgrades. But Payday 3 being built off Unreal 4 lets them do more consistent updates and have more support so I’m not too concerned with how Payday 3 looks visually. I was just surprised to see there wasn’t a real visually upgraded feel to the latest entry.

Payday 3 gives you way more time with mask off gameplay as opposed to Payday 2 where you just walk into the targeted building and strike into action. With Payday 3, you’re able to look around for safety faults, maybe a take a lap around the block to see what’s up and what some potential escape routes can be, and also examine the building from both the inside and outside to assess what your options are to either sneak or bust into the high security rooms.

The mask off gameplay is a bit restricted to what you can do movement-wise, however. For example, it took me a few matches to understand that you need your mask on to be able to climb things around the environment. I understand why that’s a mechanic tied to the mask, since you are most likely trying to climb and break into a locked building, but it was a bit frustrating and not entirely clear. Having to put the mask on for basic movements like climbing also puts you at risk of getting noticed before the heist even gets started so it forces you to really calculate the best moments to utilize the mask and stay alert.

The NPCs are more dynamic as well and you can destroy more things in the environment. There are now new heist phases: Search to go looking for you, Assault (when you’re initiating the heist), and a new negotiation phase that lets you coordinate a plan to give yourself more time in the heist.

When things inevitably go sideways, negotiation is by far the most interesting part of Payday 3. You’re able to actually negotiate with the police using your hostages trapped in that building with you. So you have to manage the hostages while also raiding the bank or museum you’re stealing from. You can use hostages as body shields since the security won’t shoot you if you’re holding an innocent person, or you can choose to release a few hostages to buy you some time for the heist.

The gunplay in Payday 3 feels really good. The transition between hipfire and aiming down your sights is pretty quick and the guns feel heavy and realistic. The different sights you can use for your weapons are varied so you can definitely find one that works for your preference. The movement in Payday 3 also feels pretty fluid. There is a new slide mechanic but I really didn’t find myself using it too much since it doesn’t work to increase your movement speed or hold too much momentum. Your armor segments regenerate over time if it’s not completely gone which lets you get back into the fight pretty quickly.

The initial fighting feels pretty easy, the waves of basic security feels almost like playing a normal horde mode since they never seem to really pose a real threat of gunning you down. It’s only after about ten to fifteen minutes into the heist that enemies seem to really crowd you and your team and the more armored and tankier enemies come out making it a real challenge. It may have also helped that I did have teammates who were good at communicating and supporting each other during matches, but the combat felt very easy until the escape portion of the heist.

One of the most fun parts of Payday 2 was customization. You’re still able to customize your characters in Payday 3 by unlocking different masks, outfits, and various other cosmetic items. You get access to more as you level up and get more money and you use the cash earned in game from heists to unlock them. There was a currency system set up in the shop when I looked during the preview, but we haven’t been given a real idea of what the real money bundles will consist of other than they will only be for cosmetic items.

Overall, I’m pretty excited to play Payday 3 again, especially with the same friends I played Payday 2 with and relive those old memories in a modern setting. Payday 3 is also going to be cross platform and cross progression so you can play anywhere and with anyone you want. It’s set to have quite a bit of post-launch content updates as well – like new characters, heists, weapons, and updated skills and challenges – so hopefully there’s a good flow of new stuff to keep players invested. Payday 2 had 20 DLC packs after launch so it’s not a huge worry of mine.

The Atomic Heart: Annihilation Instinct DLC comes out August 2, publisher Focus Entertainment and developer Mundfish announced.

This DLC, the first for the action-RPG, adds a new area, new weapons, new enemies and a new glove ability. The trailer is below.

Here’s the official line on the new DLC: “Continue the story in the Annihilation Instinct DLC and learn what happened to this dystopian world after the climax of Atomic Heart. Prepare to embark on a journey through the new mind-bending Mendeleev Complex and its surrounding swamps, and discover the truth about NORA as Major P-3 is pulled back into Facility 3826.

“Survive vicious, shapeshifting new enemies, and take them down using two cunning new weapons – the ranged Secateur and the melee Klusha – as well as your glove’s new Techno-Stasis ability, allowing you to manipulate time itself.

“Meet a new enigmatic character, as well as returning ones in surprising circumstances, and dive deep into the AI’s insanity to curb its Annihilation Instinct.”

Meanwhile, out now is a New Game+ mode for free alongside a new update. This is designed to offer Atomic Heart’s most difficult mode yet. “Players will need all of their previously unlocked skills and arsenal to deal with the strongest enemies Atomic Heart has ever unleashed, thanks to their new specific resistances and attack effects, which will be reflected in the different colors of enemy auras,” Focus said.

The Atomic Heart: Annihilation Instinct DLC is included in the Atomic Pass and in the Gold and Premium Editions. IGN’s Atomic Heart review returned an 8/10. We called it “a highly imaginative, atompunk-inspired attempt at picking up where the likes of BioShock left off that makes missteps but definitely has the ticker to punch well above its weight”.

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.

At The Game Awards 2020, Xbox unveiled a new game from its fledgling studio The Initiative: a reboot of Perfect Dark.

The two-minute trailer was purely cinematic, showing off an “eco-futuristic” Earth as a camera soared over a massive city bedecked in greenery. After zipping through a skyscraper, we saw a woman gazing at distant pyramids amid a raging storm. “Did you find what you’re looking for, Agent Dark?” a voice asks. “Not yet,” replied Joanna Dark. “This is only the beginning.”

Three years later, developer The Initiative is still, in many ways, only at the beginning.

At the time the trailer – created by an external CG house – was shown, it was “very obviously way far ahead of anywhere the game was at,” according to one developer who was working at The Initiative at the time. “We hadn’t even figured out any of our core game mechanics. We didn’t even really know what type of game we were making.”

Teasing new games with cinematic trailers years before the game itself is ready is a common practice in the industry. But The Initiative’s radio silence since combined with reports of major attrition at the studio have sparked questions about the project, exacerbated by its recent absence from Xbox’s summer games showcase. The concern is not unfounded: according to conversations with 13 sources familiar with the game’s development, little meaningful progress has been made on Perfect Dark since that 2020 trailer.

Why? The answer isn’t glamorous, but rather wrapped up in the realities of game development. The project has seen roadblock after roadblock, with problems such as a fraught co-development partnership, a pandemic, technological challenges, an ongoing exodus of significant talent, and unclear direction from management keeping the game in development limbo. And while a new partnership with Crystal Dynamics appears to finally be bearing fruit, multiple sources who have worked on the game recently say that Perfect Dark is still “in the earliest stages” of development, estimating that it is still roughly two to three years away from being ready for release.

Spy Experiments

The Initiative was founded and first unveiled at E3 2018, a strange outlier among a rash of significant acquisitions. The goal in all these acquisitions, as stated by leaders like Xbox head Phil Spencer and corporate VP Matt Booty, was to build out a massive catalog of games to sustain Xbox not just as a console, but as a broader service encompassing console gaming, cloud gaming, mobile, and more.

Amid Xbox Game Studios’ sudden ballooning to 23 internal studios, The Initiative stood out. It was one of only two studios added during that time that wasn’t an acquisition, and was instead spun up internally from scratch. The other, World’s Edge, was formed by existing Microsoft leads to shepard the already-internal Age of Empires franchise. But The Initiative was somewhat experimental: wholly new at the time it was announced, headed up by former Crystal Dynamics chief Darrell Gallagher, and with his former Crystal colleague Dan Neuburger as game director. Based in Santa Monica, the newly-formed creative team was, per Xbox, given freedom to select its first project, and opted to bring back Rare’s lapsed spy IP, Perfect Dark. Their selection dovetailed neatly with Xbox’s goals: Xbox wanted a “flagship” title within every major genre, and Perfect Dark could be the flag it planted in the underserved realm of spy/espionage.

Gallagher’s plan, which he and other studio leads partially laid out in a development video alongside The Game Awards trailer, was for The Initiative to craft a reimagined Perfect Dark that would be a true blockbuster, with the best graphics, innovative gameplay and tech, driven by a powerful narrative and a strong protagonist in Joanna Dark. Internally at The Initiative, early employees recall hearing comparisons to massive TV and film franchises, such as Game of Thrones or Westworld. Gallagher imagined a spy thriller with big, memorable set pieces, lots of physicality, and plenty of gadgets, all amid a hopeful eco-futurist setting masking a corrupt underworld. Several employees from the early days of the studio recalled the designation “AAAA” being thrown around as a way to emphasize the sheer size and scale of what they should be building (it was also used in at least one public job listing). Everyone I spoke to who recalled hearing the term said there was never a clear explanation of what it practically meant.

AAAA or otherwise, Perfect Dark was a big vision for what Gallagher expected would ultimately be a fairly small studio, even one that was packed with experienced, senior talent. His plan, sources say, was to have The Initiative work closely with other partners to become effectively a franchise steward of the Perfect Dark IP that would eventually become a long-running Xbox tentpole. And while The Initiative did eventually make a public announcement that it would be bringing on Crystal Dynamics to fill the partner role, it actually had a different co-development partner for the first several years of Perfect Dark’s life: Halo co-development studio Certain Affinity.

Uncertain Affinities

In the early days of the project, the overall mood was optimistic. Perfect Dark was an exciting IP that most were thrilled to be working on, first at The Initiative and then at Certain Affinity when the studio signed onto the project in 2019.

As with any early development process, much of this initial work consisted of nailing down a clear creative vision for what the game would consist of, and then developing a core gameplay loop that is both supportive of that vision and fun for the player. Studio leadership was fairly clear from early on that The Initiative’s Perfect Dark would see a balance of combat and espionage elements that would ideally feel like playing through a James Bond or Mission: Impossible film – the developers just had to figure out how to translate those memorable movie moments into video game format.

But while these core ideas remained roughly consistent throughout Perfect Dark’s development, exactly what the player would be doing to express them kept changing as ideas were pitched, prototyped, and then scrapped for something completely different over and over again. This process was expected at first, as a fairly normal component of game development. But as Perfect Dark moved into its second and third year, sources tell us that this process began to drag on much longer than expected, as leadership’s refusal to commit to any specific ideas or shape for the game began to frustrate both teams.

One former employee, a woman, also expressed frustration both with the low numbers of female creative staff on the project generally during this time, as well as multiple meetings where male creative heads made insensitive suggestions that were difficult to push back on without more women in the room to support potential concerns. An Xbox spokesperson offered the following response to this specific topic:

“We are committed to addressing any and all concerns employees have, in accordance with our company policies. We have been and will continue to encourage employees to report workplace concerns when they have seen or experienced behavior that falls short of our culture, values, or policies. Employees can report workplace concerns in a number of ways, including anonymously.”

Among even more former employees we spoke to was a sense that the people in charge were unable to communicate a clear vision for the game they had so enthusiastically signed up to make. Or, some said, when they did manage to communicate that vision, leadership ignored or dismissed feedback from the experienced team they had put together. These repeated struggles over creative vision resulted, sources said, in build after build being thrown out, and internal frustration growing with each new reset.

“It was not that we didn’t know what we wanted, it was that we kept making things that weren’t what we wanted,” said one The Initiative developer. “We’d do it over and over again. The…levels we had when I left weren’t the same ones we’d had three months prior, or three months prior [to that]. I don’t know why people just kept hitting the reset button. That was definitely contributing to that feeling that we weren’t making any progress. People kept starting over.”

Some of this may have come down to a challenging relationship between The Initiative and Certain Affinity. Both Certain Affinity and The Initiative employees told me there was a seeming mismatch between Certain Affinity’s experience building focused, specific elements of clearly defined games as instructed, and The Initiative’s desire to have a creative partner to bounce ideas off of. What’s more, The Initiative was a very small studio still hiring up, and Certain Affinity was a large, established studio whose team vastly outnumbered The Initiative’s. As The Initiative began to staff up, the two studios found themselves with numerous senior staff roles duplicated across both offices whose visions often clashed, causing further tension on both sides and a general feeling of mistreatment across Certain Affinity in particular.

“We were set up in a way where no one at the remote studio reported to anyone at our studio,” one person recalled. “Only the top level of management had any established accountability relationship.”

And all these problems were worsened for everyone as the COVID-19 pandemic sent the world into a work-from-home situation that abruptly disrupted internal communications, lowered morale, and diluted any early attempts to build a studio culture at The Initiative. Multiple people I spoke to recalled the onset of the pandemic as a major morale killer, even for employees who were already used to working from home. But they also noted that the pandemic was but one major stumbling block for a studio already struggling.

“I blame The Initiative,” said one former The Initiative employee. “I don’t blame our development partners. We chose not to hold anyone accountable to the vision, and we just let people keep trying things. Yeah, people were all over the place. It was a giant game of telephone. You heard that expression thrown around in the process all the time. ‘Oh, it’s telephone! I said this, but then this person said this, then they went and talked to their manager, then their manager talked to our manager, then our manager talked to this lead, and by the time the message got to the other side, it’s been completely mangled beyond recognition.’”

Despite all these setbacks, in the spring of 2021, a few months after The Game Awards trailer announcement was shown, the two studios had put together a fairly polished proof of concept of Perfect Dark. It included a handful of unfinished, prototype levels, a loose narrative, and showcased some basic traversal, gadgets, and combat. It was a major milestone for the team, but hardly anyone was happy in its wake. Not long after, the news came that Certain Affinity and The Initiative would not renew their contract for another year. While the decision came as a relief to both parties, it left Perfect Dark short over half its development team at a time when it was supposed to be entering the next major phase of development. And more departures were on the horizon.

A Lack of Initiative

In early 2021, before Certain Affinity’s departure and the major development milestone, Perfect Dark design director Drew Murray left the studio to return to his former employer, Insomniac Games, as a principal designer. All our sources who were there at the time cited him as the first significant exit in what would become a veritable avalanche throughout 2021 that would nearly deplete the studio.

A tally of those who list their work at The Initiative on LinkedIn reveals 35 total departures in 2021 alone. The Initiative lost another 12 in the first three months of 2022, and LinkedIn numbers indicate the studio did not hire nearly as many new employees in the same period or even since. While these numbers are rough estimates, those who were there at the time suggest that roughly half the studio was gutted, with the total number of employees dipping down into the 30s at its lowest.

Why were so many people leaving? Largely, frustration at a perceived lack of forward momentum, exacerbated by more and more people departing. Because The Initiative had hired so many industry veterans in a competitive geographic location, many found new roles quickly and easily. Entire departments were hollowed out, and progress on Perfect Dark halted as people waited for key decision-making roles to be filled. One developer there at the time recalled “literally” doing “almost nothing for nine months,” waiting for positions to be filled and decisions on key game elements to be made.

“It’s frustrating to not make progress…it was just a dark time,” they said. “You’d basically get two or three people that would show something off at a ‘show and tell,’ like new texture mapping or a lighting thing they did or a blockout of a new level they’re messing with or whatever, and then you’d get the announcement that two or three people were leaving. It was very hard to stay positive when that kind of energy and lack of progress happens.”

Sources at The Initiative during this time recall Gallagher and other studio leads trying to maintain a positive outlook, reassuring employees that Microsoft believed in them and that a new co-development partner was on the way. Multiple people recall Microsoft Studios head Matt Booty giving a “pep talk” of sorts, reassuring remaining employees that the parent company thought things were going great.

In the middle of 2021, with Certain Affinity gone and the studio bleeding talent, leadership at The Initiative had to figure out who, exactly, would be doing the bulk of the development work on the project going forward. And in September, a savior arrived in Gallagher’s old studio: Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics. According to one former Crystal Dynamics employee, the plan was for their studio to supplement and support The Initiative’s vision – not to fully take over. But rather quickly it became apparent to Crystal Dynamics that Perfect Dark and The Initiative were going to need a lot more help than they had realized.

After multiple necessary months of onboarding and discussion, the new co-development partner of Perfect Dark was handed the vertical slice that The Initiative had assembled with Certain Affinity. But according to individuals who worked at Crystal Dynamics at the time, what they received was a bit of a mess. While some sources attributed that to the chaotic relationship between Certain Affinity and The Initiative, as an added stress, The Initiative had opted to jump to Unreal Engine 5 in the interim before Crystal Dynamics came on board, adding to the amount of work needing to be done. One former Crystal Dynamics employee described what they were handed as a construction with no foundation. “A lot of the project, if not almost all of it, ended up needing to be wholly reworked,” the source said. “They had done three years of work on it already, but we didn’t benefit from three years of work.”

Which is how in 2022, nearly four years after the studio was formed, Perfect Dark was essentially started over from scratch in Unreal 5. And while the two studios did broadly seem to get along better than in the previous partnership, after a year of high attrition at The Initiative, it was hardly in a state to lead development on a massive project. Crystal Dynamics, well-staffed, began to step into missing leadership roles and take more and more ownership of the project. This once again resulted in disagreements and infighting in departments that had established leaders on The Initiative side.

Management, meanwhile, seemed impatient. The Initiative had been working on Perfect Dark in some form since 2018, announced it in 2020, but in 2022 still didn’t have much to show for itself. Sources at The Initiative and Crystal Dynamics say that leaders at both studios began pushing for speed and tighter deadlines as a result. But the development team was still building the game’s foundations. Even with Crystal Dynamics’ resources, the studio didn’t seem to have the numbers to meet the tight deadlines being demanded of it. Crystal Dynamics did hire more people onto the project over time, but those I spoke to described feeling constantly understaffed for what was asked of them. Multiple leads told me of struggling to fill necessary roles on their teams, and described notable numbers of developers departing in frustration (though not as severe as in 2021). While no one we spoke to reported significant crunch, many described a sense of stress associated with fears of what would happen if deadlines weren’t met.

Despite these troubles, throughout 2022 progress was slowly but surely made on Perfect Dark. Crystal Dynamics employees tell me that Embracer Group’s acquisition of the studio in August of that year didn’t impact much internally, and by the end of the year, it had fully settled into the driver’s seat on the project. A recent announcement of Embracer-wide layoffs has employees nervous but (at least at the time of this writing) unimpacted so far. Multiple sources who have worked on Perfect Dark in the last year told me that in its most recent iteration, they would consider Perfect Dark to be more of a Crystal Dynamics game than one by The Initiative.

A Hands-Off Approach?

I reached out to all three studios involved with Perfect Dark – The Initiative, Certain Affinity, and Crystal Dynamics – for comment ahead of this piece’s publication. Certain Affinity responded directly in the following way:

Certain Affinity is proud of its 17-year history of co-developing hugely popular games like Halo and Call of Duty, among many others. We’ve partnered with and continue to co-develop alongside talented teams of all sizes and at all stages of development, including early ideation, concept, pre-production, production, and beyond. We’re incredibly grateful for our deep, longstanding partnerships across the industry, including with Microsoft.

We collaborated closely with The Initiative during the initial stages of ideation for Perfect Dark. Following the successful completion of our engagement, we have not been involved with the project. We’re excited to see what the team has come up with for the newest installment of the Perfect Dark franchise. We’re rooting for The Initiative and can’t wait to jump in and see what Joanna Dark is up to when the game is released.

Xbox took a different approach. In direct response to my specific inquiries, Xbox provided contextual information from past interviews with Darrell Gallagher about the purpose and direction of The Initiative and its Perfect Dark reboot, all of which complimented what my sources told me and has been included in the narrative above where relevant. But Xbox also connected me with Booty following its Xbox Games Showcase in June for an interview about its larger strategy for its studios, as well as regarding The Initiative more specifically.

Developers from all three studios involved with Perfect Dark told me that throughout development, Xbox has been remarkably hands-off with the project – not unlike its reported attitude toward Arkane’s Redfall. One described the parent company’s involvement as simply “giving us money and letting us decide how to move forward and requesting milestone updates.”

I questioned Booty on this point – his response was surprisingly jovial.

“I will just chuckle a little bit at the ‘hands-off,’” he said. “The amount of time I’ve spent on the phone with Darrell and everybody at that studio is sort of the opposite of hands-off, and the amount we’ve been down there.”

Booty later explained Xbox’s approach as a middle ground, of sorts, between very hands-on parents that retain full control and total autonomy. And his explanation makes sense – Booty could be on the phone every day with The Initiative leadership, but rank and file employees might never know about it. He went on to say that some of The Initiative’s struggles were less a result of Xbox’s attitude toward its studios, and more an inevitable reflection of the struggles born from starting a studio from scratch just ahead of a global pandemic, which we spoke about in detail elsewhere in the interview. And he confirmed some of what many sources suggested to me about why things didn’t work out: early-stage creative ideation during a pandemic was difficult, and the mismatch between The Initiative and Certain Affinity’s respective needs and skillsets made things even more challenging.

“So many things have changed in terms of how we want to staff games. I think that going forward, almost every major AAA game out there is using some level of co-development, which I separate from outsourcing. Outsourcing is very: Here’s a spec, please go build this, give it back to us. Co-development is: This is a studio, a group of people who are a creative entity, how can you work with them? One of the things we learned on Perfect Dark is there is a difference between studios that have that creative DNA versus studios that have done more traditionally outsourcing, no matter how complex, and we just had to find the right rhythm there.”

Booty goes on to pin the wave of departures, at least in part, on the specific flavor of co-development that The Initiative is trying to pioneer. “Is it perhaps a little different than what has been done over the last five to ten years? Sure. But I think it’s more of the way that we’re going to see things getting built going forward than not. And that’s why, despite all the bumps in the road and the hiccups, we’ve had some people come on board from other very traditional teams that show up and go, ‘Wait a minute, this is not how I’m used to working.’”

Amid all this, though, he affirms that The Initiative and Crystal Dynamics have “hit their rhythm” on Perfect Dark, saying he had a “full review” of the game in May. He adds that they’re continuing to try and build a leadership team at The Initiative and grow the studio. When I ask him if Crystal Dynamics outnumbers The Initiative on Perfect Dark, he says “not really,” but declines to get into specifics. He maintains that the two studios are not thought of as separate entities, but rather “Team Perfect Dark,” though he does note that “half of Crystal” is working on Perfect Dark right now (the other half is on other projects, most notably Tomb Raider). At the time this piece was written, there was a single job posting for The Initiative on the Microsoft website – for an IT Manager. At this same time, LinkedIn indicates 48 employees work at The Initiative.

My takeaway from talking to 13 individuals from across these three companies, as well as formally with Booty, is neither tidy nor especially earth shattering. Game development is hard and getting harder, especially in recent years amid the ripples of a pandemic, economic struggles, and increasingly complex technology being used to both create and run AAA games. Co-development relationships, while quite common industry-wide, can make all this even more challenging if not managed carefully. But it’s also true that many studios industry-wide are grappling with these problems and succeeding in spite of them, while The Initiative’s struggles with management, communication, and creative vision were only increasingly exposed by the challenging environment it found itself in.

The good news, though, is that The Initiative and Crystal Dynamics – or rather “Team Perfect Dark” – seem to at last be making progress. Perfect Dark is now further on than Certain Affinity’s vertical slice from 2021 and with stronger foundations, though it still has a long way to go. All my sources with recent knowledge of its status say it’s still in pre-production, roughly two to three years away from release. It’s still an FPS balancing combat and espionage, with an emphasis on spy gadgets, some experimental movement tech, and a focus on narrative. Recent plans seem to be leaning toward some kind of episodic format – though the exact form and shape of it has yet to be determined, and could still change entirely before release.

It’s still far too early to say whether or not Xbox’s The Initiative experiment from 2018 will be a success or not. The company has not spun up any new internal studios since then (not that it’s announced, anyway), but it has continued its acquisition spree, most recently with efforts to bring the behemoth that is Activision Blizzard into the fold. “We can’t lose the ability to start a new studio,” Booty emphasizes during our interview. “It’s really important.” And Booty is right. In these recent years of transformation and growth for Xbox gaming, the jury remains out on a critical question: does Xbox’s middle-ground studio involvement strategy work for a brand new initiative? Or is Xbox doomed to keep gobbling up the studios of others if it won’t change its tactics? In that context, there’s a lot more riding on Perfect Dark than just one game. The answer, potentially still years away, could be a harbinger both for the future of the Perfect Dark franchise, and for the future of Xbox.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

SEGA recently released the Yakuza series on GOG but not without removing several developers and support studios from the games’ credits.

As reported by PC Gamer, Timo653 on Reddit pointed out each game in the series is affected, with chief creator Toshihiro Nagoshi perhaps the highest profile removal.

He’s not the only one though, as in in Yakuza 0, for example, even director Kazuki Hosokawa, art supervisor Saizo Nagai, and game design supervisor Koji Yoshida were removed.

Support studios, who don’t lead design on the game but assist with more technical aspects, were also cut. Lab42 was previously credited as porting Yakuza 0 and Kiwami to PC but was removed from those credits. QLOC was similarly credited with porting Kiwami 2 and Yakuza 3, 4, 5, and 6 to PC, but was also pulled.

“Despite using a larger font and more spacing, the GOG credits manage to be shorter than the Steam version ones, because of all the removed names,” said Timo653. “A bunch of names are missing from almost every section of the credits. Some of the removed people seem to be former Sega employees who left for Nagoshi Studio, but I’m not sure about the other removals.”

The NetEase-owned Nagoshi Studio was founded by Nagoshi after he left Sega in 2021, and given his connection to Yakuza’s roots and the core of the Ryu Ga Gotaku Studio, some Sega staff joined him on the new adventure. It’s unclear if there is a connection to the employees removed from the credits and the ones who left Sega for Nagoshi Studio, but IGN has asked Sega for comment.

Timo653 continued: “This feels unnecessary and disrespectful to the people who worked on these games. As of the time of writing this post, only the GOG version has these ‘updated’ credits. The people who worked on these games are still credited properly on the Steam version.”

The collection encompasses the seven numbered Yakuza games, meaning Zero through to 6, and not Yakuza: Like a Dragon which essentially rebranded the franchise in the west. Ryu Ga Gotaku Studio tried to explain why the change was made, though perhaps only made things much more confusing.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Playing Pikmin has always felt like a warm hug, and I’m delighted to report that nothing in that regard has changed in Pikmin 4. During the hour I spent roaming around in story mode, delegating tasks to my little leaf-headed guys — as well as my new sidekick, a very cute two-legged, bug-eyed canine fluffball named Oatchi — I constantly had to remind myself to stay on task; the lure of scrounging around every little nook and cranny of the map was extremely tempting. But focus, I must. Because as the newest recruit of the Rescue Corps, my crash-landed crewmates and civilian castaways were splayed out, waiting for me to save them.

Once again, I landed in a forest area called Sun-Speckled Terrace with my Red Pikmin waiting to be extracted from the Onion, ready to be tossed around and respond to my every command and whistle. This time, though, I was also greeted by my new buddy, Oatchi. This alien pup has tons of handy uses. It can bash through sturdy objects the Pikmin can’t, drag back heavy things all on its lonesome, and follow the scent trails of stranded crew members, treasures, and ore that can eventually be used as the material for item crafting and equipment upgrades once you locate your missing lab-rat comrade.

In Pikmin 4, players aren’t relegated to searching the surface level and exploring in the daytime. Nighttime Expeditions to find new Glow Pikmin are now available, as seen in the gameplay trailer unveiled during the recent Nintendo Direct, although I didn’t get to try that out during my hands-on demo. Additionally, you can dive into manhole-covered pipes that lead to subterranean levels where time moves more slowly than it does up above. Not that I needed to be clock watching. Like Pikmin 2 and 3, Pikmin 4 ditches the strict 30-day time limit to assemble pieces and do recon for your team in favor of an open-ended timeframe that encourages exploration of the map and mastering Dandori, the technique of planning ahead.

Pikmin 4’s caverns are where I unearthed more types of Pikmin, including the electric, eared Yellow Pikmin and the brand-new chunky Ice Pikmin that can freeze enemies, giving Oatchi a clean target to bash into for massive damage. Down in those depths, I also found a couple of my crewmates and had my Pikmin drag them back to safety, which would unlock their highly useful and specialized skill sets the next day. Like Tears of the Kingdom, these extra layers of playable levels — oh yes, some pipes have more pipes within — provide a whole different aesthetic experience on a large layout while remaining true to the game’s ultimate mission. With all of the glimmering treasures poking out of corners, I desperately wished I had more time to scratch my completist itch and de-mist every piece of the map and strip-mine the area for all it’s worth. Once you’re finished grinding underground, you’ll find an air vent to blast you up to the surface with all your Pikmin in tow.

Nightfall still looms, however, and you’d better make sure all your little guys are at attention by the time the 10-second clock counts down, lest they be lost to the dangers of the night. In the morning of Day 2, I landed back in Sun-Speckled Terrace to find that Oatchi had practically doubled in size overnight and was now big enough to ride on like a horse. One of my crewmates explained that I can train Oatchi to improve his utility, like making his bashes stronger and increasing his health gauge. Another of my rescued cohorts gave me the ability to craft items, including treats for Oatchi and things like a shock-resistant collar. My solo time ended shortly after these discoveries, but it certainly highlighted some of the potential that’s awaiting in Pikmin 4, especially with a new galumphing pal at your side.

I also spent some time with the competitive Dandori Battle mode. Here, players on opposite sides of a tiny map go head-to-head with Oatchi and an equal number of Pikmin in collecting treasures and sneaking bombs underneath your opponent’s ship to blow up their cache in a timed match. I personally found it too chaotic, but that can probably be chalked up to a rustiness in my Dandori skills. I much prefer the cozy adventure of pulling up Pikmin and cruising around on Oatchi until my brain feels smooth in the best possible way.

Final Fantasy 16 players are absolutely loving Ralph Ineson’s performance as Cid, who’s essentially become the unofficial summer voice of video games after also appearing in Diablo 4.

Ineson has emerged as the standout star in Final Fantasy 16 with fans loving his cheeky attitude and deep Yorkshire drawl. “Cid’s voice actor is insanely good,” said chai_zaeng on Reddit.

“This man’s voice is deeper than the Marianas trench and his delivery of Cid’s lines is awesome: so nuanced and yet so full of emotion.”

This is now a Cid from Final Fantasy XVI fan account pic.twitter.com/R9Ajf8q9LZ

— PlayStation UK (@PlayStationUK) June 25, 2023

Others agreed. “Such a brilliant job as Cid,” said TheKarnov on Twitter. “I actually slow down to make sure I hear every Cid line when I’m playing,” added RabToons. The official PlayStation UK account chimed in too. “This is now a Cid from Final Fantasy 16 account,” it said.

Ineson also played Lorath in Diablo 4, and fans equally flocked to his role there. “The same voice actor for Cid is also Lorath in Diablo 4,” said a Reddit user. “Awesome voice. That is all.”

Taking heed of the compliments, Ineson took to Twitter himself to share his appreciation of all the players enjoying both games.

“Thank you for all the kind words about Final Fantasy 16 and Diablo 4,” he said. “I started working on both games three years ago not realising they’d be released within a month of each other. Cid and Lorath were both great fun and I had some great writing to work with.”

Thank you for all the kind words about #FinalFantasy16 and #DiabloIV . I started work on both games 3 years ago not realising they’d be released within a month of each other. Cid and Lorath were both great fun and I had some great writing to work with https://t.co/b7mT07PSWy

— Ralph Ineson (@ralphineson) June 23, 2023

While perhaps most known to UK fans as Finchy from The Office, Ineson has otherwise appeared in some of the biggest entertainment franchises in recent memory.

His credits include Star Wars Episode 8: The Last Jedi, The Green Knight, Chernobyl, Guardians of the Galaxy, Kingsman: The Secret Service, Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Games of Thrones, and more.

Sticking to its deeply British theme, publisher Square Enix also put Final Fantasy 16’s signature sword on display in the Tower of London as a marketing stunt.

Players who tried the demo ahead of time also grew obsessed with a new feature called Active Time Lore and are calling for it to be an industry standard going forward. The game’s intro was also directly influenced by the original Final Fantasy and references another beloved character from the franchise.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Warning: full spoilers follow for both Final Fantasy 16 and Game of Thrones.

Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida has made no secret about drawing inspiration from Game of Thrones for the latest epic in the long-running RPG series, but the influence of A Song of Ice and Fire goes way beyond its gritty mediaeval setting and regional British accents. At some points the similarities are as heavy-handed as Ramsey Bolton’s approach to Theon’s special area.

So, let’s take a look at the many characters, plot points, and locations in Final Fantasy 16 that feel less like they took inspiration from Game of Thrones and more like George R.R. Martin warged directly into the minds of the team at Square Enix. Full warning, we are going to be covering the entirety of Final Fantasy 16, right up to the finale, so there will be extremely big spoilers. There will naturally be a fair few for Game of Thrones, too, so now is your chance to back out if you need to.

Clive Rosfield Is Basically Jon Snow

With his unkempt dark hair, determined demeanour, and loyal hound by his side, it’s immediately clear that Final Fantasy 16’s protagonist, Clive, has a passing resemblance to Game of Thrones’ Jon Snow. But as Clive’s character develops it becomes increasingly clear that there’s a lot of overlap between the two. Both are the black sheep of a highborn family, are forced into servitude, and have a link to fire-breathing monsters. Flick through the gallery below to see just how many of Clive’s character traits are shared with Jon Snow.

Joshua Rosfield Is Basically Brandon Stark

Much like Jon, Clive has a younger brother who grows into one of the most vital keys to saving humanity from the looming apocalypse. Similar to Brandon Stark, Joshua is pushed to the sidelines for many of the story’s early chapters, but when his importance is made apparent he becomes one of the plot’s most important figures. The two characters are also united by the fact that they share a significant link with mythical birds; Joshua is the Dominant of the Phoenix, while Bran becomes the Three-Eyed Raven. Take a look at the gallery for more details on how Joshua and Bran are alike.

Elwin and Anabella Rosfield Are Basically Ned and Catelyn Stark

With Clive and Joshua sharing much in common with two of the Stark children, it’ll likely come of little surprise to learn that there’s parallels between the Rosfield and Stark parents, too. Elwin Rosfield, head of the house and leader of the Grand Duchy of Rosaria, is a lot like Eddard Stark, including being the person who has to die to kick the story off. His wife Anabella, meanwhile, is a little like Catelyn Stark, although she also has traits seemingly drawn from Cat’s sister, Lysa Arryn, and Cersei Lannister.

Jill Warrick Is Basically Theon Greyjoy

Clive’s companion and love interest, Jill Warrick, also appears to be heavily inspired by a Game of Thrones character. While her personality and general approach feels largely original for Final Fantasy 16, her backstory is very reminiscent of Theon Greyjoy. A political prisoner that grew up in a family and land far away from her own, Jill is also forced to endure horrible hardships as an adult. It’s an echo of Theon’s own dark, complicated tale.

Clive’s Companions Are a Lot Like Hodor, Daenerys, Ghost, and More

The Rosfield family are where the most significant parallels between Final Fantasy 16 and Game of Thrones can be found, but they are far from the only places where the series’ influence is felt. Many of the supporting cast share traits with Game of Thrones characters, ranging from small details to clear homages.

The World of Valisthea Is Basically Westeros

It’s not just the characters that bear a resemblance to the world of Ice and Fire, though. The actual landscape of Valisthea feels a little more than familiar; much like George R.R. Martin’s The Known World, Final Fantasy 16’s story primarily takes place across two continents, one of which is locked in a long and difficult conflict between many houses. Many of the towns and landmarks in this world also echo places from Game of Thrones, either through their physical appearance or their purpose.

The Villain Is Almost Just The Night King

Many of Final Fantasy 16’s characters and concepts are not as directly inspired by Game of Thrones as those detailed above. However, there are plenty of ideas from the books and show that make their way into Final Fantasy 16 and act as one small part of an otherwise more original character or plotline. For example, an apocalyptic evil that overshadows the power struggles of mortal men is a major element in the story of Valisthea. It’s an idea that stops short of just being The Night King, but still certainly has similarities. Then there’s wider concepts, such as the quest to bring an end to slavery. Look through the gallery to learn about these in more detail.

That’s everything we spotted, but there’s likely dozens more. Tell us any Game of Thrones details you noticed in Final Fantasy 16 in the comments below.

Just like an actual ocean, Dave The Diver is beautiful at first glance, but then you dive into it to find a vast, wonderful world to explore just beneath the surface. This waterlogged adventure manages to exceed the expectations of an already hilarious premise with some of the most irresistible exploration, sim management, and minigames I’ve seen in a long time, and which kept me completely glued to my seat for far more hours than I’d ever intended. With characters and a story that are deceptively substantial and more content packed into it than I could have anticipated, Dave The Diver never stopped surprising me. If you would have told me that one of the best games I’d play this year, standing alongside juggernauts with mega-million-dollar budgets, would end up being a retro indie RPG where you play as an obese SCUBA diver who runs a sushi shop…I would have believed you, actually. That sounds awesome. And it is.

Dave The Diver’s story focuses on a loveable group of coworkers turned friends who open a sushi bar near the mysterious Blue Hole: a seemingly magical stretch of water known to change its terrain and aquatic ecosystem every day. You play as the titular Dave himself, a rotund, soda-chugging diver who begrudgingly caters to the whims of everyone in his life, including the occasional bossy sea creature. What follows is an endearingly silly tale involving a secret society of merfolk, some really aggressive wildlife-protection enthusiasts, and dozens of people making very rude comments about your character’s weight.

But while it comes off a bit shallow at first, the story shockingly develops into something more substantial, with characters that are far more complex than their pixelated faces initially suggest. Even after more than 30 hours I still find myself eager to spend time with the likes of Bancho, the stoic, fearless sushi chef, and Duff, the anime-obsessed, neck-bearded gunsmith. It certainly helps that many characters are given extremely amusing and memorable cutscenes every time you interact with them, like one where Bancho traumatizes a fish with his knife-sharpening skills or where Duff elegantly dives into a swimming pool to test out a newly crafted weapon. I’ve seen them all dozens of times at this point, and yet I refuse to skip them – they’re just that good.

But this is not just an amusing adventure RPG; it comes with a surprisingly deep restaurant-management sim baked into it. You’ll split your time between diving into the dangerous depths of the Blue Hole to hunt for fish and supplies, battle wet foes, and complete quests while also managing a sushi shop by crafting recipes, cooking, hiring and training employees, and dealing with an extremely fussy clientele.

Diving into the Blue Hole is where the literal and figurative meat of the adventure happens: you’ll use a harpoon, guns, and nets to capture and kill fish to be turned into sushi, and explore ever deeper, inevitably leading to action-packed confrontations with aggressive sharks, navigating ancient ruins filled with simple puzzles, and fighting off over-the-top bosses like a massive hermit crab using a monster truck as a shell. Tracking down and collecting all manner of sea life is a compelling and Zen-like game of hide and seek where you’re rewarded for bringing your quarry down with as little brute force as possible by mastering Dave The Diver’s simple but satisfying combat.

Swimming around with guns blazing like a savage brute will get the job done quickly, but your shoddy work yields minimal usable resources for your restaurant. Using your harpoon – or better yet, nets or tranquilizer darts – to bring fish in alive is much more beneficial, but trickier. That tradeoff gives you plenty of ways to succeed, depending on your preference and what you think you can pull off with the tools you’re given.

Sometimes you’ll get swarmed by a whole school of small, hungry biters, while other times a lone narwhal will come barreling at you to impale you on its spiral tusk; you never know what vicious wildlife lurks in the Blue Hole’s depths. Dodging out of the way and fighting back is usually easy enough, so long as you aren’t an overburdened sitting duck, but mastering the angles, navigating the environment, and choosing which weapon to bring with you (you only get one per dive) will significantly impact your options.

You might prefer an awesome long-range sniper rifle that does high damage but has extremely limited ammo, or you might prefer to get up close and personal with your prey using a shotgun that requires less of that overrated aiming. Or, if you’re feeling particularly brave, you might try to bring down your enemies with a tranquilizer dart gun and extract a giant shark to your boat while it snoozes for a few moments – a tall order that requires some serious finesse and can get you killed fast. There’s lots of different ways to play, and although it always amounts to the same pattern of dodging, shooting, and swimming away from your pursuer, it allows for quite a bit of creativity and usually leads to some pretty amusing hijinks.

Fighting silly, enormous bosses and solving simple press-that-switch-to-open-the-path puzzles offers a nice change of pace from spearfishing, even if both are too easy to provide any kind of meaningful challenge (and no difficulty options are available to bump it up). There’s definitely some very cool novelty in taking down a giant squid at the bottom of the ocean, but since nearly every boss can be killed (very quickly) by learning their pattern and hitting them three times, the break from the norm is usually short-lived. Similarly, while the plot developments that are usually involved in story-heavy puzzle sections are usually worth the trouble, the actual puzzles are mostly effortless busywork, like a few sections where you redirect beams of light off of mirrors but the solutions become obvious literally the moment you see them.

In between dives you’ll make worthwhile upgrades to your gear that make your excursions more profitable and improve your combat effectiveness. There are tons of useful stuff like making your oxygen tank bigger, refining your swimsuit so you can dive deeper, increasing your inventory space, and crafting and upgrading your weapons to deal more damage and apply status effects like poison and, nonsensically, fire to your underwater foes. All of these require increasing quantities of resources generated by capturing fish and driving up profits from your sushi business, and it creates a loop that is truly hard to walk away from. I can’t tell you how many times I promised myself “One more dive,” before then rationalizing to myself, “Well, I gotta wrap up the day at the sushi stop, then I’ll stop,” then repeating those empty promises for hours on end.

Throughout all of your exploration you’ll need to keep a close eye on your oxygen tank, which smartly doubles as your life bar and your carry load limiter, drastically slowing you down when you bag too many fish and other treasures to easily carry back to the surface. Early on, that meant I often found quite a bit of challenge when faced with fish of prey, as one or two false moves could leave my oxygen nearly depleted as I desperately tried to get to the surface in time. Meanwhile, my greed for rare fish and supplies often forced my encumbrance beyond my maximum, leaving me sluggishly floundering around and jeopardizing my entire run – being spotted by a giant shark while over-encumbered is always a bit dicey.

When you run out of oxygen you don’t actually drown, but you return to the surface with only a single measly item from your haul that you are allowed to choose to take with you. This makes failure quite high-stakes – especially since you (annoyingly) can’t save in the middle of runs, which could mean you lose a half hour of progress with a single death due to some rookie mistake you should have known better than to make. The limitations of your oxygen tank and carry load also ensure that you’ll regularly need to emerge from your watery paradise, but that’s not annoying at all because it leads to interactions with the other fantastic half of Dave The Diver’s world: restaurant management.

Like a true spreadsheet lover’s dream, running an exotic sushi bar requires you to master numerous disciplines like gathering materials, hiring and training your staff, nurturing both an agricultural and a fish farm, learning recipes and upgrading your menu, and more. Watching sales charts climb and building a better business is a dopamine hit that kept me up late into the night and repeatedly drove me back into the ocean to collect ingredients, especially once the complexity of my business swelled to insane proportions when my success required me to open a branch location. The bonkers amount of depth and planning that goes into preparing for a single night of slinging sushi awoke my inner entrepreneur like few games have. Wait, should I open a sushi bar in real life? Oh, my God! Are we really doing this?!

Perhaps Dave The Diver’s best quality, though, is in how it nearly constantly keeps throwing new, ridiculous stuff at you. As if spearfishing and restaurant management weren’t enough on their own, you’ll also get into gambling, aquatic photography, seahorse racing, raising a Tamagatchi-inspired digital pet, concertgoing rhythm games, and at least 20 other absurd things I wouldn’t want to spoil. Whether you’re exploring the Blue Hole as you hunt for an elusive shark or hanging out with merpeople, Dave The Diver lives up to the adventure game genre by absolutely never being predictable throughout its entire duration.

It’s truly impressive that, even in the story’s closing hours, I was still being introduced to new mechanics, some of which had caused the already habit-forming rabbit hole to grow ever deeper. There’s even an entire section where you’re suddenly thrown into a visual novel that fleshes out the backstories of some of the cast. Moments like that are just such a treat!

Not all of the gambles Dave The Diver takes are successful (if they were they wouldn’t be gambles!) and sometimes you’ll end up playing some haphazardly thrown-together minigame that feels like it could have been left on the cutting room floor. For example, in one part of the story you suddenly find yourself playing a half-baked 2D stealth game that has you hiding behind crates and lurking in freezers as you wait for braindead guards to slowly walk by. The good news is that these misses are extremely brief, and even when one didn’t land with me, I was at least amused that the bizarre diversion was included at all.

The last thing to note is that, despite a generally insane level of polish likely brought on by its tenure as an early access game, Dave The Diver does have some bugs it’s yet to work out. Sometimes my UI would disappear, locking me out of doing things like managing my farm, and sometimes enemies or objects in the environment would become intangible, and a few times the framerate would randomly tank itself while I was hanging out in one particular area: the sea village. These issues weren’t common enough to make me not want to keep playing this alarmingly compelling game, but they pretty significantly annoyed me when they happened – it definitely sucked, for example, when one boss randomly became invincible during our fight and I had to start the whole dive over.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been stumbling around looking for a lot of in between games this year. Tears of the Kingdom pretty obviously has dominated a huge chunk of my life for the last month. And recently I was in LA for Summer Games Fest. Earlier this year, I was playing Kirby, and when I get home, I have Humanity waiting for me. But all of these games have been a bit too high stakes to just chug away at the whole year. Lately I’ve needed something slower, something I could get lost in. And recently, I’ve found myself dipping in again and again to a little game called Havendock.

Havendock is a city builder – one of those cozy ones that presents goals but low stakes, so you don’t have to frantically sort out a civilization as its populace crumbles in your arms. It takes place not on dry land, but in the middle of the ocean, starting on a tiny deserted island and proceeding to build out on a series of interconnected wooden docks. You build more docks to make more space for more housing, more people, and more mechanisms that will make your life somewhat easier. Potable water is the first concern, followed closely by something to eat, and shelter. Eventually you’ve worked your way up to dance floors and chicken coops. Materials drift lazily by on the waves, lending an element of pleasant randomness and surprise to your work. More recently, I’ve made a dance floor and a prayer center so my residents have something to hope for – which isn’t me being glib, it’s a literal game mechanic.

While your castaways do get hungry and tired, their needs build so slowly and are so easily fulfilled, their existence is rarely if ever stressful, at least in the several early hours I’ve played. It makes Havendock largely a soothing way to putter around with civilization building, interspersed with moments of humor such as discovering that I can grow hamburgers in the garden, or when I see the very human touch of silly names the NPCs that arrive to assist me have. Havendock is full of this personable goofiness, speaking readily to being a game eager to please a growing community throughout an early access.

Creator Yeo Ying Zhi (who goes by YYZ) got his start working on flash games as a teenager, and eventually took some classes to help him get started learning 3D engines such as Unity. He worked on some personal tower defense game projects for a bit, and also released a 2D idol RPG game called Enchanted Heroes that’s seen some success. Havendock is YYZ’s first attempt at a larger 3D game, and while he’s been fascinated by 3D animation and game design for a while, it took a random, restless night to give him the push he needed.

“I was lying in bed and I couldn’t fall asleep,” he says. “It was like 3 am. So I just had this idea of being in this peaceful place where you’re in the middle of the ocean. And then I made some concept out of it. I wasn’t serious about it turning it into a game. It was just some concept that I had in my head. And then it floated around, and then after some time I decided, ‘Okay, I guess I’m going to try to make this into a game.’”

YYZ has his work cut out for him, not just in the transition from 2D to 3D animation, but also in his goals to make a proper multiplayer experience. I haven’t tried the feature out yet myself, and he bills it in the early access version of Havendock as “highly experimental.” It’s easy to see why, from his description.

“Whenever the character deposits an item into the building, you need to link that across all the players, all the buildings, the items in them, and the characters themselves on top of that. So it’s that interaction that actually makes it very, very difficult to have the game be really smooth in multiplayer. Currently, that’s why there are a lot of issues with multiplayer that I’m trying to fix.”

While some might balk at playing something that clearly isn’t finished, having an open development like this is something that’s important to YYZ. He’s been blogging prolifically about the development process, taking community feedback into account and being as transparent as possible about the problems involved in even simple aspects like letting NPCs drink either fruit juice or alcohol at the bar. He’s been this open from the beginning, too, telling me that he released the earliest version of Havendock to the public about six to eight weeks after he started the project.

“It is very scary,” he says. “If you are scared to release it, that’s probably the right feeling. If you are ready for it, you’re probably a bit too late already…When I tested it, I thought it would be okay, but players do all sorts of things and there’s this sandbox element to it. So you can break things in general in the early stage because I couldn’t expect the way people played the game. So there was a lot of learning from that. But I’m actually glad that it was released early because that gave me a lot of feedback to work with as compared to when I spent a long amount of time getting projects available to the public, it would be a lot of time spent building things that I didn’t know what if it was something that people wanted.”

Even with the struggles, YYZ says that releasing Havendock in such an early access environment has helped him develop it at a much faster and more efficient pace than his previous projects. At the time that we speak, he says he has around 2,400 Discord community members – sizeable. The help is appreciated especially as he’s largely working on the game solo, and still working part-time to pay the bills.

“I think this approach is quite different from how normal developers do it,” he muses. “So I think this is also a big learning point and it’s super stepping out of the comfort zone for me…There was this one day, I remember I just went out for a day and apparently the game had issues because I posted an update the previous day, so the whole day I couldn’t get access to my computer, so I couldn’t wait to just get back home, get to my computer, quickly find out what the issue is and kind of push. It was quite stressful that day. So I think that’s some of the more things that I have to be more wary about.”

YYZ’s clearly deeply invested in this project, but when I ask him what it would take for him to consider Havendock a success, his answer is a humble one.

“Maybe if enough people know about it, I can ask my friend, ‘Hey, have you heard of my game?’ And they go, ‘Yes, I heard of it.’ Something like that. It becomes, I guess, common enough that it’s recognized. I’m not sure if that sounds like success, but I just think it’s cool.”

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.