A post on Discord from one of the three listed developers and co-owner of Banana, aestheticspartan, said the team had parted ways with one of its members after it emerged they were accused of being involved in a Steam scam previously. This team member has denied any involvement in a scam, saying instead an influx of money obtained through the Steam marketplace was the result of a bug.
Despite their involvement, “there is no scamming or scam going on,” aestheticspartan insisted. Banana’s gameplay literally involves clicking a banana repeatedly, but its main draw is in its dropping of Steam items which can be sold on the official marketplace. Banana gives out different bananas as its item, and clicking on the game once in a while nets players a couple per day.
Most of these items are listed for just a few cents each, meaning the players of Banana are often spending and gaining very little at a time, but this likely doesn’t matter to Steam owner Valve or the development team.
That’s because both get a cut of every marketplace sale. Valve takes 5%, to a minimum of $0.01, and the developer takes another small percentage, the exact total of which is unclear in this case, but likely follows the same conventions as Valve’s to a minimum of $0.01.
Buyers and sellers don’t see the same numbers on Steam’s community marketplace, as the seller chooses the amount and the buyer sees the total of that number plus fees. This would explain why no banana item is available for less than $0.03 — they’re likely listed at $0.01, but another $0.01 for Valve and $0.01 for the developer adds up to the $0.03 total.
These tiny numbers add up though. Using the most basic example, the plain Banana item (compared to the banana that looks like a Panda or any other obscure design), we can see how much the developer and Valve potentially make from Banana.
Steam itself features an hour-by-hour breakdown of how many of these items are sold. Using the latest full day example, June 18, 2024, an eye-watering total of 1,993,669 of this single item were sold.
Valve therefore potentially earned a total of $19,936.69 from this single Banana’s sales over a 24-hour period, a number more than likely earned by the developer, too. This standard drop is one of 81 items being sold on Banana’s community marketplace.
This is the most common item, however, so it’s being sold in larger quantities than other items. The Rainbow Banana, for example, is currently listed for around $0.75 but generally sells for less than 50 per hour instead of the thousands of the most common Banana. The most expensive item, the Crypticnana, of which only 25 exist, has been sold four times for values of more than $1,000 since June 17.
While this is a colossal price compared to the most basic Banana for the buyer and seller, Valve’s 5% means it only nets $50 per $1,000 sold on these. It’s therefore the $0.01 minimum policy affecting large quantities of low-selling items that make Valve and the developer the most money. A total of 14 items are listed at the minimum $0.03 amount, and each one sells thousands per hour.
Developer aestheticspartan’s insistence Banana isn’t a scam is therefore likely legitimate, but it’s also almost certainly earning the development team tens of thousands of dollars a day, if not more. As for why it’s so popular, developer team member Hery told Polygon Banana is a real-life “infinite money glitch.” “I do believe that the reason why it mostly caught on is because it’s a legal infinite money glitch,” Hery said. “Users make money out of a free game while selling free virtual items.”
They also admitted Banana had a bot problem early on, with only around one third of all concurrents being actual players. Whether or not that figure has changed since Banana blew up remains to be seen, though Hery said the developement team has contacted Valve for help with the issue.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
Mortal Kombat 1 has a new patch that finally removes the 30fps cap for cutscenes on PC.
NetherRealm’s fighting game launched with a 30fps cap for in-game cutscenes such as Fatalities despite gameplay running at 60fps. Developer NetherRealm has insisted this cap lets it create flashier cutscenes, but some players have said the switch from 60 to 30 and back again is jarring.
Now, in a fresh update for Mortal Kombat 1, that 30fps cap is removed with the addition of a new graphics setting that increases the lock to 60fps on PC only, but it’s worth noting that NetherRealm warned this setting is intended for PC gamers with high-end rigs.
The patch, also available on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, makes a number of character fixes, including to the recently released DLC character Homelander. The patch notes are below.
Added a new Graphics Setting to increase the 30 FPS lock on certain sections to 60 FPS, which is intended for users with High-End Hardware
The new setting to enable this is accessed via Main Menu > Settings > Graphics > Experimental > 60 FPS Mode: OFF (Default)/ON
Note that this setting will not affect pre-rendered movies and will be automatically disabled during Online Matches to avoid stability issues
General Fixes & Adjustments
Fixed several desyncs that could occur during online play if the game had been hot-fixed
Adjusted camera behavior when Homelander, Omni-Man, or Peacemaker are interrupted or hit high off screen
Character Specific Adjustments
Main Fighters
Reptile
Fixed damage scaling on Force Ball when not enhanced
Peacemaker
Human Torpedo & Enhanced Human Torpedo now hits High
Reduced base health value to 650 (from 700)
Homelander
Fixed canceling into Flight when grounded more than once in a kombo not consuming Super Meter
Fixed Jump Attacks during Flight be able to be canceled into Flight on block
Fixed not being able to breaker God Complex & Enhanced God Complex
Improved Punching Down linking into God Complex & Enhanced God Complex from Flight when it hits opponent near the top
Fixed issue that could result in Homelander sliding on the ground sometimes when God Complex from Flight was canceled from certain heights
Fixed rare issue that could result in Homelander sliding on the ground sometimes when God Complex from Flight was performed just as flight was about to time out
Fixed rare instances of some juggle kombos sometimes behaving slightly differently against Homelander with specific timing
The following attacks can no longer be parried by Dirty Trick
Kitana – Fancy Strike (Away + Front Punch)
Rain – Tide (Away + Back Punch) & It Pours (Back Punch, Front Punch, Front Punch, Back Punch)
Reptile – Kneet Trick (Towards + Back Punch, Front Kick)
Sindel – Shear Genius (Towards + Front Punch) & Off The Top (Away + Back Punch, Front Kick, Back Punch)
Ermac – Dragged Under (Front Kick, Back Kick)
Peacemaker – Gutshot (Away + Back Kick) & Pinky Toermenter (Down + Back Kick)
Quan Chi – Skeleton Jacker (Towards + Back Punch, Front Punch)
The following attacks can now be parried by Dirty Trick
Kenshi – Quick Slice (Jump Front Punch in Sento Stance), Upper Gash (Jump Back Punch in Sento Stance), Ancestral Guard, Soaring Sento, & Teamwork
Kung Lao – Kung-Kussion & Shaolin Shimmy
General Shao – Power Strike
Smoke – Vicious Vapors & Smoke Bomb
Peacemaker – Coming Through! (Towards + Back Kick, Front Punch)
Homelander – Grounding Fist from (Air) Diabolical Dash & Soaring Strike from Diabolical Dash
Kameo Fighters
Cyrax
Fixed canceling into Horizontal Kopter Chopper from Kopter Chopper not using Kameo Meter
Khameleon
Reduced pushback on block of first 2 hits of Roll & slightly reduced the pushback on block of the last hit
Reduced base health value to 250 (from 300)
Janet Cage
Slightly increased combo damage scaling on Hop Punch & Hop Skip Punch
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.
Ubisoft has delisted Beyond Good and Evil on Steam ahead of an expected reveal of a remaster.
A note on the Steam page for the cult classic adventure signals Ubisoft’s decision: “Notice: At the request of the publisher, Beyond Good and Evil is unlisted on the Steam store and will not appear in search.” At the time of this article’s publication, Beyond Good and Evil remains available to buy on GoG.
Ubisoft has said it will announce more news about Beyond Good & Evil – 20th Anniversary Edition during the Limited Run Games Showcase on June 20 at 11am Pacific / 2pm Eastern 7pm UK. It seems likely a re-release is inbound.
Looks like Uncle Pey’j has a message to share with you all… See you at the Limited Run Games Showcase on June 20th at 2pm EST for more news about Beyond Good & Evil – 20th Anniversary Edition! 👉 : https://t.co/zaLKVRlN2A Big thanks to Hubert Chevillard for this little teaser😀 pic.twitter.com/dY2PqL2JWn
In August 2023, the Electronic Software Ratings Board (ESRB) rated Beyond Good & Evil: 20th Anniversary Edition for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, Nintendo Switch, and PC. Then, in November, Ubisoft accidentally released Beyond Good & Evil 20th Anniversary Edition early, blaming it on a “technical error” while confirming an early 2024 release window.
Beyond Good & Evil first launched on November 11, 2003, so we’ve skipped past the actual 20th anniversary. In IGN’s 9/10 Beyond Good & Evil review, we said: “While it’s over a bit before you’d want it to be, Beyond Good & Evil tells its story with amazing pizzazz and polish. Even better, it’s a story well worth telling.”
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.
Activision has detailed Call of Duty’s Fallout crossover and confirmed a release date of June 20, 2024.
The fusion of both Microsoft-owned franchises sees Price, Ghost, Soap, and Gaz of Task Force 141 dressed in Vault Dweller skins. There are Vault-Tec-themed weapon blueprints and other Fallout-themed items for use in Modern Warfare 3, Warzone, and Warzone Mobile.
The in-game Fallout: Vault Dwellers event goes live at 10am PT on June 20 through to 8am PT June 26. The Tracer Pack: Fallout Vault Dweller Bundle includes two Fallout-themed weapon blueprints featuring Vault-Tec Tracers and a V.A.T.S. Death Effect.
Equip the “Vault-Tec Approved” M16 Weapon Blueprint with two Aftermarket Parts: the JAK Cutthroat Stock offering an unrivaled combination of speed and stability while aiming down sights, plus the JAK Patriot Conversion Kit which transforms the M16 into a fully automatic rifle with superior recoil control and firing aim stability.
Accompanied by a 45 Round Mag plus two attachments improving handling and recoil control, this is the ideal weapon for lasering down foes from a distance.
For closer fights, opt for the “Atomic Disintegrator” HRM-9 Weapon Blueprint geared for sustained combat in close quarters. With a 50 Round Drum Magazine plus thermal target identification, improved accuracy and recoil control, and extended range, this SMG configuration is ideal for aiming down sights with the ability to compete out to the mid-range.
The Fallout Bundle also features a “Vault 141” Operator Skin for Price, Ghost, Soap, and Gaz plus six loading screens and more. The full list of included content is as follows:
Four “Vault 141” Operator Skins
“Atomic Disintegrator” HRM-9 Weapon Blueprin
“Vault-Tec Approved” M16 Weapon Blueprint
“Let’s Do This!” and “Fatman” Charms
“Wasteland Workshop” Calling Card
“You’re Special” Large Decal
“Vault-Tec Engineer” Emblem
“Nuka-Cola Spacer” Sticker
Six Loading Screens including “Nuka-Cola,” “Please Stand By,” “Survivors’ Journey,” “Sanctuary Hills,” “Vault 141,” and “Restoring Democracy”
The Fallout: Vault Dwellers Event, meanwhile, features challenges across Multiplayer, Zombies, and Warzone. Here are the details:
Use any of the Vault Dweller Skins during the Vault Dwellers Event for an additional XP boost. Earn additional Fallout-themed cosmetic items like the “New California Republic” Large Decal, “Nuka-Cola Caps” Emblem, “Slocum’s Joe” Sticker, “Nuka-Cola” Charm, and the “Nuka-Cola Quantum” Weapon Camo.
Activision has gone big on crossover events in Call of Duty in recent years, with everything from Warhammer 40,000 to Gundam seeing in-game skins and weapons. The Fallout bundle comes hot on the heels of the breakout success of Amazon Prime’s Fallout TV show, which has boosted interest in everything related to the post-apocalyptic setting.
Modern Warfare 3 continues to receive updates as Activision prepares to launch Black Ops 6 in October. Activision is expected to move on from last year’s shooter to focus on new seasons for Black Ops 6 and Warzone later this year.
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.
Gematsu spotted a rating for TimeSplitters on PS5 and PS4 in Taiwan, indicating Free Radical Design’s much-loved shooter is coming to the Classics Catalog soon.
TimeSplitters has been rated for PS5 and PS4 in Taiwan. 99 percent likely it’s the PS2 version for the PlayStation Plus Classics Catalog, considering the platforms. Search “TimeSplitters” here to see the rating yourself: https://t.co/kSQ7a9X1P4pic.twitter.com/InFED7ihTx
TimeSplitters first released in 2000 as a launch game for the PlayStation 2 and a spiritual successor to Rare’s GoldenEye and Perfect Dark. Indeed TimeSplitters was made by some of the people who worked on those iconic N64 shooters. It took place across multiple different time periods with 18 separate characters battling against the titular foe, creatures who can travel through time and wreck history using special crystals.
It got a sequel in TimeSplitters 2 in 2002, and a further entry in 2005 called TimeSplitters: Future Perfect. After Free Radical struggled to find a publisher for a fourth game, the rights languished at Crysis developer Crytek for years before Deep Silver parent Koch Media bought them up in 2018. Eventually, as with so much video game intellectual property, TimeSplitters ended up in Embracer’s vault.
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.
The official Elden Ring manga has been put on hiatus as its creator has taken time off work to play expansion Shadow of the Erdtree.
As reported by Automaton, Nikiichi Tobita, the author of comedy manga Elden Ring: The Road to the Erdtree, announced on X/Twitter he’s skipping the July 19, 2024 release of the series so he can spend time playing Shadow of the Erdtree upon its June 21 release.
Tobita shared a drawing of himself sleeping alongside the announcement, showing him dreaming of the “glowy worm boy” — a new beastie in the expansion that became an instant hit upon its reveal by developer FromSoftware.
He’s likely not the only Elden Ring fan taking time off work to play the expansion, which has been more than two years in the making.
“Like the base game did before it, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree raises the bar for single player expansions,” we said. “It takes everything that made the base game such a landmark RPG, condenses it into a relatively compact 20-25 hour campaign, and provides fantastic new challenges for heavily invested fans to chew on.”
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
The Roll and Write genre has exploded in recent years. This accessible style of games is derived from the classic board game Yahtzee. Players roll dice or flip cards, and then use the revealed numbers or symbols to mark up a private sheet. It’s a simple concept, but it’s a genre that’s ripe for exploration, and more surprisingly, sophisticated gameplay.
This type of game is highly appealing as it’s straightforward and immediately rewarding. You are afforded creativity in personalizing your own sheet or board, but the accompanying rules structure is typically straightforward. With this winning combination, Roll and Writes find a great deal of success across a wide range of players as the barriers to entry are relatively miniscule. The following group represents the best this genre has to offer.
The most unique title on this list, Twilight Inscription combines the huge excess of board game giant Twilight Imperium with the Roll & Write format. This sprawling experience seeks to emulate the 4X genre of video games, where players establish their space empires through exploration, exploitation, expansion, and extermination. It accomplishes this in roughly 90 minutes, which is brief in comparison to its forefather’s epic playtime of several hours.
Each aspect is represented with a separate sheet. Each of these sheets forms an entire sub-section of the game, one that can be explored and mastered over many plays. The challenge here is in focus, as each turn you must choose one sheet to perform actions upon. This creates a significant series of tradeoffs and opens up the game to many different approaches. The resulting experience is relatively large in scope, and in this way Twilight Inscription feels more akin to a full-fledged strategic board game than the typical breezy Roll and Write.
Lost Cities: Roll & Write
Another adaptation of an existing game, this one translates the enticing card play of Lost Cities to the Roll and Write genre. Here, players are attempting to explore the jungle by heading down separate colored paths. There is a core strategic aspect where you must optimize your expedition and carefully decide which dice to select from a larger pool.
One of the more delightful qualities is the bridge bonus. The first player to make it to the seventh space on a particular color receives a boost of 20 points. This establishes a race element to the game which works hand in hand with the pulp adventure setting to provide some character and personality to play. This is a lighter experience, one that’s easily internalized, but it’s a satisfying endeavor that is absolutely worth the brief time commitment.
Super Skill Pinball: Ramp It Up
Most roll and write games don’t do much in the way of conjuring up a theme, but Super Skill Pinball replicates a pinball table with nothing more than a pen and some dice. You choose one of four supplied tables to play, enter at the top, and then drop down by choosing to hit various bumpers and targets depending on your roll. It’s the same deal when it drops to the flippers but the kicker is that you can’t re-use a box twice, so your ball will eventually run out of targets and drop. It’s up to you to use the specific combo and special play rules of your table to maximize your score, making for a puzzle that’s fascinating and thrilling in equal measure. There are a number of sets available including a Star Trek–themed one, but Ramp It Up is the pick of the bunch and even includes a cooperative table.
Welcome To
Welcome To isn’t strictly a roll and write game: it belongs to a closely related genre called flip and write, which replaces the dice with cards. This gives you a lot more options to work with. Here, they’re pressed into the service of town planning as you choose pairs of house numbers and building effect cards to create three suburban streets. It’s a tricky ask as you have to get houses in number order while balancing your score across various bonuses such as pools, parks and racing to be the first to meet city plans that require specific layouts. It’s super satisfying when you pull it off and there’s a surprising amount of strategy, but gamers who want even more could choose its more complex sci-fi cousin Welcome To The Moon.
My City: Roll & Build
Based on the popular board game My City from famed designer Reiner Knizia (see on Amazon), this dice game employs a similar structure of campaign play that is wholly rewarding. Play takes place across multiple episodes, with each 30 minute session adding a small amount of new rules and wrinkles to play. This layered approach allows for a gradual increase of complexity without being overwhelming, and it succeeds admirably in this method.
Thankfully, the game is also quite flexible and allows you to play each of these episodes as a one-off session if you desire. It works well in this format, particularly once you’ve completed the campaign and are somewhat familiar with what each chapter has to offer. Either way, this is an entertaining little gem that will stand up to many plays.
Rather than filling in a score sheet, Railroad Ink asks you to draw a transport network on a grid, based on tracks and junctions thrown up by its custom dice. You’re rewarded by linking as many exits as possible to the same network which rapidly becomes a tricky task as you balance the need to minimise dead ends with the desire to leave things open in the hope of linking them later. Combining risk versus reward gameplay with spatial thinking makes this roll and write quite unusual, but there are various editions to add to the variety. Deep Blue, which allows you to add rivers and lakes to your map along with potential ferry routes, is the pick of the bunch but you can go for volcanos with Blazing Red, forests in Lush Green or deserts in Shining Yellow.
Next Station: London
Another train-based game but this time a flip and write, Next Station: London offers the novel twist of making pencil colors a key part of the game. Each color ties into a starting station on the player’s map, which is where you begin to draw your network based on the station symbol of the drawn card. You can extend in either direction and even branch your line as you try to cross as many districts as possible, taking in tourist sites, joining other lines and crossing the river on the way. But beware as you can’t cross lines except as stations, meaning that a sprawling, high-scoring first turn may box in your expansion for later lines. Then all the players swap pencils and start anew. It’s a simple concept that reveals surprising nuance over repeat plays, giving it an edge of additive puzzling while resulting in fun multicoloured maps.
Dinosaur Island: Rawr N Write
Part of the appeal of roll and write games is their speed and simplicity, but Rawr N Write was the first of a new breed in the genre that uses the concept as a springboard to more complexity and depth. The dice roll gives players a choice of resources such as money and DNA that they need to build their own Jurassic World style dinosaur theme park. You’ll need to sketch out your park with both attractions and concessions stands on a mini-grid, while also bringing in staff, special buildings and taking care of security. Then, at the end of each of the three turns, you run an actual tour route through your facility to score points while hoping no-one gets eaten. With so many different aspects to juggle, planning your park is a rich, brain-burning challenge while running the tour brings the numbers to life with a thematic kick. Read our Dinosaur Island: Rawr ‘n Write review for more details.
Games in this genre often play well with large groups because there’s a central roll or flip and everyone tries to make the best use of the results. That means a lack of player interaction, which Cartographers came along to challenge. This is a flip and write where the idea is to use the cards to map out the terrain of a fantasy kingdom, trying to fulfil some variable scoring challenges. The fun twist is that every so often there’s a monster card, at which point you pass your map to your neighbour and they have to figure out the most annoying place to draw the negative monster icons in your kingdom. Not only does this make Cartographers feel much more personal, but the maps you’re left with at the end have an engaging sense of world-building about them, conjuring up some theme. The sequel, Cartographers: Heroes, added more dynamic monsters and new hero cards to ride in and save your kingdom from their depredations.
Long Shot: The Dice Game
Horse racing game Long Shot was fine, but this derivation into a roll and write has proved a smash hit with players. Unusually for the genre, there’s an actual board for the track around which the horses race, based on a dice roll, but some horses are more likely to move than others. Your job is to watch the unfolding race and bet sensibly on the odds as proceedings come to a head. However, you can also use your cash to buy horses to access a special power and a hefty bonus if it wins, as well as take various options to fiddle the odds in favour of your chosen steeds. Since everyone is free to bet on any horse, this creates a fascinating web of dependencies between players as the race progresses, since horses you’ve backed may pay out better for your opponents. With interaction, excitement and a hefty dose of theme, Long Shot: The Dice Game satisfies in areas other roll and writes cannot.
Vengeance: Roll and Fight
Most games in this genre fit a certain, relatively staid, pattern of having a random seed to offer all the players a choice, which they mark on their sheet. In trying to recreate the hectic pace of a martial arts movie, Vengeance: Roll and Fight turns these expectations upside down. This is a frantic real-time game where players generate actions for their turn by trying to grab dice and roll combos faster than the other players. Once the pool of dice is empty you can use your actions to draw a route through a warehouse full of goons, moving, fighting and looting your way to a showdown with the boss. With variable characters, each with a unique roster of abilities and items, plus lots of maps to work through, the fast play time and variety mean you can keep rolling and fighting over and over into the small hours.
Three Sisters
It’s common for roll and write games to reward players who achieve particular combination of rolls or scores, but Three Sisters takes this concept to the extreme. Your score sheet here is a garden in which you grow a variety of crops and flowers and purchase various tools based on the results of dice rolls making a rondel of actions available. However, when you complete certain actions the reward is often a bonus action which you can then, in turn, use to gain another bonus action and so on. Indeed, the action chaining gets so intense that the score sheet has a special space to record and rub out your bonuses as you accrue and use them during a turn. Making full use of these chains requires more strategic planning than most games in this genre offer, making this a tactical treat. See our Three Sisters board game review for more info.
Fleet: The Dice Game
This is another combo-tastic game which tries to snare players more with a plethora of interconnected options. As the owner of a fishing fleet, you’ll need to decide whether to use the dice to buy licences for the depicted type of seafood or to launch a boat to catch it. The further you go down each tree, the bigger the rewards. Boats will later return to the harbor where you can sell your catch and construct buildings that offer additional benefits over the 10 rounds of play. It’s all about using the dice as random seeds and working out the best set of interconnected benefits you can glean from each tree of potential options. Fast, fun and with a thematic set of mock mother of peal dice, Fleet: The Dice Game is a lot less dangerous and a lot less smelly than real high-seas fishing.
Bargain Basement Bathysphere
While roll and write games can often accommodate large numbers of players, they’re also fast and fun to play solo. So the logical next design step for the genre is a solo-only game: enter the delightfully named Bargain Basement Bathysphere, originally conceived as a fan project to print and play, but which proved popular enough to get picked up by a major publisher. Over the course of a multi-challenge campaign, you’ll pilot your makeshift craft into the deep and back, trying to use your dice pool to hit the spaces you need to achieve your goals before you run out of oxygen or structural integrity. Things start simple but build rapidly into a real challenge with lots of long-term mini-games to balance and jokes to enjoy.
Sagrada Artisans
The original Sagrada was quite a chill game of arranging gem dice to mimic stained-glass windows. This version takes it a step further in multiple ways. From a roll-and-write perspective, you now get to actually colour in your window as you build, and to maintain that sense of calm there’s even additional decorative colouring in to complete for fun while you wait for slower players to finish their turns. The other fresh aspect is that it’s now a campaign game in which you complete your beautiful windows over a series of ten sessions, each adding fresh tools and challenges to the mix without compromising the game’s simplicity or Zen-like feel, making for a smooth ride up to an exciting finish.
Motor City
Coming from the same designers responsible for two previous entries on this list, Three Sisters and Fleet, this is the culmination of their roll-and-write experience. It turns the genre into a mirror for car production lines, where you’re controlling four different aspects of vehicle design, engineering, testing, production and sales. So you’ll need to use its dice-drafting mechanic, supported by the novel blueprint board that offers potential bonuses alongside the dice itself, to try and coordinate the actions you need to take your muscle car all the way to market. Eschewing the explosive combos that typified their previous games and aiming instead for a more joined-up strategic challenge, this is the most innovative offering of the three.
Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail studio HoYoverse’s newest upcoming title, Zenless Zone Zero, is a fusion of what you’d expect from HoYoverse games with totally new ideas. The game studio’s development processes are largely a mystery, but in an interview with Zenless Zone Zero producer Zhenyu Li at a media event, IGN learned a little more about what goes into kicking off an entirely new game at HoYoverse, Zenless Zone Zero’s future, and at least this particular team’s position on generative AI.
Zenless Zone Zero (also known as ZZZ) is an action game with a heavy emphasis on its flashy urban landscape set in an apocalyptic world. Players take their team of three into monster-infested roguelike zones, then bounce back to the city landscape to complete side quests, get to know characters better, and maybe grab a cup of coffee or bowl of ramen.
Like the other HoYoverse games, its variety of stylish characters with combat specializations is arguably its biggest focal point. As the entertainment landscape has been in a tumultwith the rush in the development of generative AI, we couldn’t help but ask: is the Zenless Zone Zero team using generative AI in development, or is it planning to?
“I think that the human touch is more meaningful right now and this is what our team is pursuing.
“Today, no,” Li said. “For the art part, we have not tried it, but we have tried a part of it to touch on the programming. As for the art aspect, I think that the human touch is more meaningful right now and this is what our team is pursuing.”
Li also explained that when developing ZZZ’s characters, the aesthetics came first early on. However, that changed as development progressed. The planning team responsible for character mechanics and the art team now work closely together to create new characters.
The Zenless Zone Zero Team and Collaboration
The development team behind HoYoverse’s massive games has largely been a mystery, though Li offered some context on how the ZZZ team behind that handmade art came to be. Li said it began with only 12 people in its initial demo stages in 2020 before growing to around 60 people during its first closed beta. Now, it’s ballooned to more than 400 team members.
“Zenless Zone Zero’s development team is very young and a lot of us come from different backgrounds,” Li said. “We have veterans from the gaming industry but also young talents who share the same values and are all passionate about getting involved in the creation of an interesting product. Indeed, some team members including myself had experiences working on HoYoverse’s other projects before. Take me for instance: I used to take care of the CG, animation, and video for Honkai Impact 3rd.”
Li clarified that the ZZZ team only works on their project rather than swapping between other HoYoverse properties and that collaboration between the different game teams is “quite rare.”
“Not that it doesn’t exist,” Li said. “I’ll check with the teams for an advisor such as [for] the technical aspects.”
Zenless Zone Zero Inspirations
Li acknowledged that the ZZZ team received many comparisons to Persona 5 with both sharing a stylish city setting, though he said they’re hoping to create something unique. And though there may be some visual and musical similarities, the heart of the game doesn’t have its roots in Persona.
Aside from the urban setting, one element that reminds Persona players like myself of Atlus’ series is ZZZ’s time system. Similar to Persona 5, ZZZ has four points in the day with different activities available as time passes with mission completion and other triggers. Li explained his inspiration for ZZZ’s time mechanic was actually instead from a much older game important to his childhood: Digimon World. The 1999 game also features a clock with specific events that happen at particular times throughout the day.
The other major inspiration was, surprisingly, Street Fighter 6. Though ZZZ is an action game more akin to DMC and not a fighting game, you can see the inspirations in its fast combat, emphasis on stunning enemies, and chaining combos.
“Zenless Zone Zero’s development team is very young and a lot of us come from different backgrounds.
Li mentioned he’s spent thousands of hours in the Street Fighter series and learned a lot about the feedback of its action with “how [each] punch really feels that it’s on the flesh of only your own flesh.” Li said the ZZZ team is trying to draw inspiration from their own combat and make each animation frame matter.
Another major lesson Li took from Street Fighter 6 was how to pace tutorials for newcomers to action games. Pacing of all ZZZ’s mechanics has changed quite a lot between each of its closed betas, and Li said the planning team has tried to make sure all important tutorials are more spread out to not be overwhelming.
Potential Future of Zenless Zone Zero
When ZZZ launches on July 4, it’ll be available on PlayStation 5, mobile devices, and PC, but Li said they’re not stopping development there. They’re working to bring ZZZ to Nintendo Switch and Xbox too, though Li framed ZZZ’s arrival on these platforms as a hope and not something quite set in stone.
As a live service game, though, it is set in stone that ZZZ will get content updates. Li confirmed this will include things like expansions to the city with new neighborhoods, shops, and of course, characters.
“We have a basic framework for the story timeline, but we’re also a very flexible team,” Li said when asked about how far they’ve planned ZZZ’s story. “We constantly review what we’ve created in the past to see if we can continue to utilize it or if we have better ideas and solutions.”
“When designing these characters, we would always consider what players haven’t seen before.
One international HoYoverse fan request has been for better representation in characters, especially in the HoYoverse games that feature real-life inspirations of diverse cultures yet neglect to reflect the people who live there. Steps to reflect these international audiences have been taken to varying degrees, and ZZZ’s amalgamation city provides fresh opportunity to do more.
“In Zenless Zone Zero, we have created a wide range of characters. When designing these characters, we would always consider what players haven’t seen before. We want to ensure characters of various types are included, so players can look forward to more imaginative designs that will surprise them in the future.”
“I think our team has added almost everything we wanted for the launch and the game is ready for players,” Li said. “However, of course, we have plenty of interesting ideas and plans for the game in the future which we will share more at the right time. One thing that I particularly want to share is that the multiplayer battle mode is already under development. I hope players can look forward to this mode in future version updates.”
Miranda Sanchez is the Executive Editor of Guides at IGN. Her favorite Genshin Impact characters are Shenhe, Yae Miko, Albedo, and Kokomi. When she’s not playing Genshin, she’s probably journaling about it. Catch her on Twitter/X and Twitch.
With the blurb “Gear up, get in, and get out”, Exoborne elegantly sets out its stall as an extraction shooter. But they left out the most important part: “Get blown around by a massive tornado”. While Exoborne bears all the features you’d expect from the likes of Escape from Tarkov and Call of Duty: Warzone’s DMZ, the most exciting part of a presentation I saw at Play Days was when developer Sharkmob talked about the weather.
Exoborne’s setting is not postapocalyptic, but rather midapocalyptic, with the world falling apart all around you – the result of mankind’s meddling with the climate. Project Rebirth’s attempts to provide limitless clean energy have backfired somewhat, and now Mother Nature is taking her revenge.
Extraction shooters live or die on emergent gameplay, and there’s nothing as emergent as a twister, flood or tsunami. The weather during a session of Exoborne can change from clement to hellscape in minutes – all of which has profound effects on gameplay, according to Sharkmob.
A 10-minute walkthrough video based on a pre-Alpha build of the game began with a short cutscene where a group of teammates known as The Reborn assemble in a dropship and prepare to jump. The character models are based on whatever skins and loadouts each player has selected, so this is a nice chance to show off your flair before the action starts.
The players then skydived from the dropship, parachuting in to the map below. Action kicked off immediately, as this area of Colton County in the Southeast USA was infested with killer robotic machines and human enemies.
Over a longer play session, you can expect a dynamic range of climates to impede your progress. The rain apparently gets so heavy you can no longer hear your teammates, their comms drowned out by the deluge, forcing players to rethink their strategies.
Kill, loot, equip – so far, so extraction shooter. Entering a base located nearby required some teamwork, and the destruction of some AT-ST-like enemy walkers, while at another point the squad clambered aboard a Warthog-style armored vehicle with open top/sides/back for ease of blasting. Maps are as vertical as they are wide, with towers connected by huge Rebirth Cables that snake through the environment, placed by the architects at Rebirth without regard for the scenery or the human residents; these industrial eyesores allow players to ascend with grappling hooks and fight on higher ground. Burned-out school buses and a busted motel sign litter the deserted streets of what might long ago have been an idyllic rural town. Sinkholes offer the chance to explore underground.
And then came the tornado warning. Once the weather hit, the squad cut their mission short, calling in the dropship and climbing aboard with the loot before things got hairy. But a Sharkmob developer explained that over a longer play session, you can expect a dynamic range of climates to impede your progress. The rain apparently gets so heavy you can no longer hear your teammates, their comms drowned out by the deluge, forcing players to rethink their strategies.
While the risk may be high in any given session, Sharkmob has designed Exoborne to be more forgiving in the longer term. That is, extraction is not always guaranteed, and you may lose items in a given session if you don’t make it out alive – but the game makes it possible to rebuild your arsenal over future games, improving your character from game to game as you loot and progress. The idea is to make the game as approachable as possible for newcomers, who may find the high risk of other extraction shooters off-putting.
Throw in a bunch of cool near-future weapons, tech gear and Exo-Rigs, and of course a mix of PVP and PVE scavenging action, and Exoborne is shaping up to be a cool addition to the genre.
Skate Story’s vibe gripped me right away. Its liminal, Vaporwave-inspired levels mix hyper-realistic concrete textures, lighting effects, and objects like a chain-link fence or The Moon with engrossingly impressionistic flourishes like The Skater’s body, which is made of kaleidoscopic glass, or the on-looking, ever-judgemental eyes whose disembodied voices screech in unison in disdain for your quest. It’s a lot to take in, but never too overwhelming. These levels felt just wild enough to imbue each moment with its own distinct sense of cool without distracting me from the mission at hand: skating.
Skating might be the most normal thing about Skate Story. That’s not to say it’s bad or uninteresting, but it does feel exactly how you’d want a skating game to feel. It has a great sense of speed as you accelerate by holding down or mashing the A button to go as quickly as humanly possible. This game’s tight camera really emphasized that sense of speed too, focusing on your crystalline avatar as they lean into any momentum they can get a hold of.
I saw a pretty early section of the game, so tricks and jumps—while fun—were pretty simple. Holding down a specific button controls one of The Skater’s feet, and hitting another button initiates the trick itself. Each trick and jump works on a timer, with a little notch sliding around the outline of an organic shape. Releasing the button for a trick or jump while the notch is floating around in the thicker part of said outline will execute it perfectly, and reward you with better air time. Doing a trick with imperfect timing didn’t seem to cause that much of an issue, but I’m certain it will become increasingly important later on in Skate Story.
It shot up to the top of my Steam wishlist after my hands-on demo at Summer Game Fest this year.
The levels I played had me zooming down tight corridors, exploring a courtyard, jumping over deadly neon red nettles, and visiting museum gift shops at the behest of verbose statues. Although that speed demonic camera worked wonders for Skate Story’s feel, it sometimes betrayed its flexibility of movement and occasionally even fought against its own sense of speed and pace as it obscured certain objectives or obstacles in some levels. Obstacles are usually easy enough to vault over, even with a split-second’s notice. But The Skater is made out of glass, so even the slightest error can set you back a spell, making the camera problem a tad more frustrating than it would be otherwise.
Unreliable camera aside, each level presented a satisfyingly diverse approach to design and pacing with repetition cleverly punctuating important moments while twisting what I’d already seen into something new and fresh thanks to its unexpectedly charming writing. Developer Sam Eng told me that this semi-autobiographical story is inspired by true events, but didn’t go much deeper than that. The chunk I saw was so strange and impressionistic that I can’t wait to see where Sam takes the story next. In my half hour with the demo, I watched as The Skater set out on their quest to shatter the moon. Culminating in a trial to prove their worth—and their skating chops—Skate Story’s writing and sense of humor stand in a league of their own. This isn’t just because its metaphorical approach is weird, but because it had me chuckling all the way through.
With a promising story, absorbing vibe, and responsive skating controls, Skate Story has so much potential as both a distinct story and a damn cool skating game. It shot up to the top of my Steam wishlist after my hands-on demo at Summer Game Fest this year, and I can’t wait to see the weird places this wildly expressive skating game goes.
