Category: IGN

Rockstar Games has accused the employees it recently fired of leaking confidential information.

Last week, the Grand Theft Auto 6 studio reportedly fired between 30 and 40 employees in a move that the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB) claimed was “blatant” and “ruthless” union busting.

At the time, Rockstar parent company Take-Two issued a statement insisting the firings were for “gross misconduct, and for no other reason.”

Mega Evolution, the start of the next era of Pokémon TCG, has kicked off in style, and we’re seeing product slowly come down to market value at big box retailers.

Could this be the Pokémania pricing bubble getting ready to burst?

I have a new, all-consuming obsession, and that obsession is Ball x Pit. I didn’t set out to replace all my free time with grinding its roguelite take on Breakout, but its reliance on strategy (with a butterfly kiss of luck) and enticing upgrade paths both on and off the playfield grabbed a hold of the primal lizard parts of my brain to the detriment of all other civilized activity. I am hooked. In fact, Ball x Pit is the only video game I’ve played since I first started it a couple weeks ago. I cannot break free from its satisfying loop of running a level and upgrading my balls, upgrading my city to unlock more balls, and then jumping right back in. It’s a sickness, a sickness with no cure – and, honestly… I’m not even sure I’d want to be healed from the madness that has taken hold of me. I’ve been recommending it to everyone and, so far, those who have taken my advice inevitably reach out to tell me the same thing: “You ruined my life, you sicko.” It’s fantastic. Join us. We all bounce down here.

At a distance, Ball x Pit looks like one of those crappy games you see advertised on TikTok or Reels. You know the ones: “We’re playing a game the comments said was fake part 17,” or something like that. At first blush, it does look like some endless runner game trying to hook you with playtime gems or whatever predatory garbage is in vogue these days. But, crucially, it’s not one of those games at all, as it’s entirely free of microtransactions and actually respects your time as it vacuums it all up. It doles out satisfying upgrades in each level and then gives you the opportunity to build up more permanent powers in your home base. There’s nothing cheap or underhanded about it. It makes you feel powerful, not cheated, and even with an element of RNG in each level, it requires you to make the most out of every opportunity rather than rely on dumb luck or random chance. When you beat a level, it feels like you earned it.

The actual gameplay seems straightforward on the surface, too: Your character, or characters, march up the playfield firing bouncing balls at wave after wave of enemies. The balls are weaponized, the enemies are crushed under the onslaught, and eventually you get to a given level’s unique boss. That’s the basic loop, but the operative word there is “basic.” Because, friends, Ball x Pit is much more complex. For starters, there are different kinds of balls to fire. For example, your initial character, the Warrior, starts with a special ball that imparts a “bleed” status effect that stacks up to cause extra damage on successive hits. As you defeat enemies, you’ll also pick up gems in order to level up, which then gives you a choice of balls and other power-ups to use during that specific run.

There are special balls with status effects or area-of-effect damage, balls that spawn more “baby balls” (weird), and loads of other options. Then there are buffs, passive effects, defensive boosts, and even allies who’ll join you in the march forward, dealing out damage or even health. Some of the power ups are much better than others. The Earthquake ball, for example, deals damage around the enemy it hits and, like most of the AOE balls, becomes incredibly powerful when fully upgraded. Others, like the Wretched Onion, kind of suck. Part of the fun is finding out which upgrades work best in any given level, as well as discovering what happens when you combine certain balls with Fusions and Evolutions that mix or modify their powers even further.

Fusions can simply save you a slot by mashing two effects onto a single ball, but specific combos instead get the chance to evolve into a new power. For example, fusing the Horizontal Laser with the Vertical Laser creates my personal favorite, the Holy Laser. It shoots beams of pure fiery death vertically and horizontally on hit while also dealing AOE damage, which is as useful much as it just rules.

It’s cool that fusing balls both scales the damage you are dealing and gives you room to add even more. It’s hard to keep track of all the possibilities, but there’s an in-game encyclopedia that shows you the combos you’ve unlocked. I’m more than 30 hours in and I still have fusions I haven’t found yet, which I find pretty damn exciting.

Honestly, the laser balls in any configuration do a crap-ton of damage, searing rows and columns, sometimes adding stackable status effects like radiation while also doing normal, hot laser damage. When you’re fully powered up and the RNG gods have held you in their favor, it’s a beautiful bloodbath. Lasers and explosions and effects are going off constantly, and the damage counters fill the screen as entire rows of enemies evaporate into experience gems, as well as gold you’ll spend back in your town between runs.

The town is the other half of Ball x Pit, one that’s enormously important to growing your characters. In addition to earning permanent stat boosts just by playing as them, constructing certain buildings and character houses will provide buffs and bonuses as well, which you’ll absolutely need in order to make it through the later levels. But while it’s very important, the city-building part of Ball x Pit is extremely clunky – in fact, it’s probably the worst part of what I think is otherwise a flawless game.

After you complete a level, whether or not you did so successfully, you’re thrown back into the town interface where you’ll build structures from blueprints you gathered out in the field. You also build resource tiles: forests for wood, fields for wheat, and rocks for… well, rocks. Those resources, in addition to gold, are required to build and upgrade new structures. Thankfully there are plenty of ways to gather resources outside of just harvesting, including during runs and with passive buildings like the stone quarry, but collecting it manually is the most fun.

In the harvest phase, you use your unlocked characters as balls, taking aim from the bottom of the board and letting them rip, Beyblade style, in the direction of the stuff you want to hit. They then bounce off the walls and buildings, collecting resources from the resource tiles and upgrading any buildings you marked for improvement. This process is amusing but also fairly tedious, as you can move buildings around before you harvest in order to optimize their placement, but there isn’t really a convenient way to do so.

What I usually end up doing is moving everything off to one side of the map, then shuffling all the parts and pieces back again to where I want them at that specific moment. It almost seems like Ball x Pit is aware of how cumbersome the city building is, because there’s no penalty or resource cost for moving tiles around. What I’d love to see is some kind of option to wipe the slate clean without needing to go through and manually remove every building, or maybe a holding pen where I could drop structures temporarily while I reconfigure my layout.

And you will be reconfiguring your layout a lot. Building upgrades require your characters to bounce off the buildings multiple times, and if that building is in a weird location, good luck getting the trajectory right to consistently hit it enough times during the harvest phase without reorganizing half the town. I often ended up moving relevant buildings down near the launch area, which meant moving all the other stuff away… and then reorganizing it again after all is said and done. I don’t like it at all.

It’s such a bummer because you can’t really ignore this, as city layout is extremely important to how powerful you are in the levels themselves. Some buildings provide buffs that make the effects of other nearby buildings stronger, so their placement is crucial to your continued success. That need for careful planning is at odds with the reality of constantly shuffling tiles around when it comes time to harvest, build, and upgrade.

However, building-specific issues aside, I do really like how your town structures contribute directly to the action itself. The better your city, the better your characters, and the more blueprints you find, the more options you have when it comes to a new run. It may be cumbersome to move everything around, but the results are meaningful and can sometimes be surprising in a way that is ultimately a positive.

Double Down on Strategy

Somewhat early on, you unlock a building that lets you bring two characters into battle instead of just one, adding another layer of complexity and experimentation to each run. At first, it almost feels like cheating, but it would be functionally impossible to get much further without it. I’m still figuring out which combinations work well and which ones are total crap. Since you still gain gold and experience even on a failed run, I don’t even mind when I pick a total dud combo because I’ve still made some progress. There have also been several times where I thought I’d figured out some god-tier combo, only to get three-quarters of the way through a level and realize I have made a terrible mistake.

The worst was when I paired The Warrior with The Flagellant for a New Game+ run of the first level. Balls shot by the Flagellant bounce off the bottom of the screen instead of the top, and The Warrior has no special attributes other than being your starting character. The first level boss, the Skeleton King, requires hits to the back of its skull to inflict damage. The RNG gods had graced me with some decent fusions, but all of them ended up bouncing harmlessly between his two arms out front, leaving me almost completely ineffective. An errant baby ball would sometimes bank off the wall to register a tiny amount of damage, but I ended up losing on purpose just to back out of the level.

As frustrating as that was, it’s emblematic of something I love about Ball x Pit: it requires strategy in almost every facet. The balls and upgrades offered to you are at the mercy of RNG, sure, but you also have the choice of which ones to use and which ones to fuse and evolve. I was able to identify good combinations and bad combinations of characters based on their attributes and would make mental notes about which pairings would work out for my specific needs as I pushed through each level. The Juggler, for example, throws balls over enemies – pairing him with The Shade, whose balls shoot from the back of the field, and then following a heavy AOE upgrade path allowed me to clear out basically any row of enemies on the board while still getting a ton of damage from balls bouncing in the back.

That combination of strategy and knowing how to best upgrade any given character combination for a specific level is what keeps bringing me back, over and over again, until I’m bleary eyed and tired. When everything aligns and you’re wiping out entire fields of enemies, when the screen is absolutely filled with lasers and explosions and baby balls scattering in every direction, you feel an enormous sense of power. From an outside view, honing in your upgrades combined with careful building placement and frequent stat leveling from buff buildings makes it seem like Ball x Pit would feel easier over time. But it does a rare thing: instead of feeling easy, it makes you feel powerful.

When I finally did beat the main story and watched the credits around the 20-hour mark, I immediately started up New Game+. I never do that. But the entirely inconsequential story is just a small part of Ball x Pit for me. The real joy here comes from building up your powers and combos and seeing what delights will unlock themselves during the course of a run. I play for moments when the music is nearly drowned out by the sounds of explosions and laser blasts, or when I get a gold bonus for clearing the field of enemies and then doing it two, three, even five more times in a given level. It scratches an itch deep within my lizard brain. Hard work pays off, but the right combinations of upgrades mixed in with a touch of luck pays off even more.

Holy pizza, they’re making an Overcooked reality TV show at last.

This news dropped today from Deadline, which reports that the series is in the works for Netflix from A24. This would be A24’s first reality series.

The reality show is supposedly an unscripted format along the same lines as Nailed It! and Floor Is Lava, and will feature kitchen challenges with a bent toward the kind of chaos you might see in the Overcooked video game. You know, trying to cook meals in the beds of two moving trucks, for instance. Probably. I’m sure.

The show is in the early stages and is being produced by Gemma Langford, Oli De-Vine, and Phil Duncan, all members of developer Ghost Town Games.

Overcooked first released in 2016, as an up-to-four-player cooperative game where players try to complete cooking tasks to build orders to meet customer requests, all while dealing with various kitchen obstacles. It’s a fun, chaotic time that we gave an 8.4/10 back in 2017 when its Nintendo Switch port first arrived. As our reviewer said then, “Overcooked is one of the freshest couch co-op games I’ve ever played. It’s a perfect blend of strategy and chaos, asking you and your teammates to think on your feet as its smart and strange levels do everything they possibly can to make sure you are shouting at each other.”

The “All You Can Eat” version of Overcooked, which includes both Overcooked and its sequel, Overcooked 2, online play, and all DLC, launched back in 2021.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

White Flare is the other half of the last and dual set of the Scarlet and Violet era, twinned with the Black Bolt set. Every Unovan-native Pokémon has either an Illustration, Secret Illustration, or Black and White Rare. It’s a big set, and you’ll need as many boosters as possible to master this bad boy.

EA and Battlefield Studios have plans to tweak aim assist settings for Battlefield 6 controller users – but that hasn’t stopped PC players from digging into the files to turn off crossplay.

Senior console combat designer Matthew Nickerson confirmed BF Studios would be “reverting back” to open beta controller aim assist settings in an X/Twitter post earlier this week. It’s a major change, especially for those on console, that fans have pleaded for since Battlefield 6 launched for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X | S October 10.

Far less stickiness so it does not create that rotational persistence that is currently live. Consistent slow down, no ramp. Recoil reduction is a separate system from AA but will be getting adjusted also once the new tech is online.

— Matthew Nickerson (@The_n0ttus) November 4, 2025

Nickerson says the change back to open beta settings will arrive “shortly,” adding that recoil reduction adjustments are also coming soon. Although PC and console players have disagreed on how aim assist has changed since the August open beta tests, many feel the settings have been tweaked for the worse.

“In the beta, aiming and shooting felt really satisfying, but now the aim feels completely different,” one popular comment posted shortly after launch says. “Making micro-adjustments is harder; I find myself fighting with the aim.”

“I’m not the greatest on controller but I’m pretty good and I can also say confidently that this problem did not exist in the beta,” another comment at the time said. “Aiming and aim assist felt perfectly fine on controller.”

BF Studios has made more than a few adjustments to Battlefield 6 that have had players up in arms, but the post-beta changes related to aim assist have been especially controversial. They’ve been so divisive, in fact, that some PC players recently started tearing through the game’s files just to avoid players using the controller assistance feature.

The workaround comes from content creator and X user @otterTweets, who revealed the method for those who are “tired of OP aim assist.” They say diving into the files at “documents/battlefield 6/settings/steam/PROFSAVE” and adding “GstGameplay.CrossPlayEnable 0” turns off crossplay completely.

There is, unsurprisingly, a catch for those who do this, though. Ottr says turning Battlefield 6 PC crossplay off drops affected players into lobbies populated with bots instead of real-world players. If enough PC users switch crossplay off, they could theoretically begin playing with more actual players, but it could take some time to really catch on.

With EA and BF Studios actively preparing to release aim assist tweaks for controller users in Battlefield 6, PC players may want to hold off on finding their own ways to sneakily turn off crossplay. While we wait to learn more about when and how these changes will be delivered, you can read up on other recent changes, including a reduction in challenge requirements and tweaks to Conquest ticket sizes. You can also read our September interview with Nickerson and technical director Christian Buhl.

Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

Terminator 2D: No Fate — the new retro game that blends scenes from Terminator 2: Judgment Day with original scenarios and multiple endings — has been delayed for a third time, this time to December 12, 2025.

Terminator 2D: No Fate sees you play as Sarah Connor and the T-800 as you try to put a stop to Skynet’s plans before the human race is annihilated. It’s coming to PC via Steam, Nintendo Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X and S, and last-gen console systems. It was initially slated to release on September 5 before being delayed to the end of October, then November 26. And now it’s been delayed again.

Last time, publisher Reef Entertainment said the release date had been pushed back from the original October 31 date due to “ongoing global trade and tariff changes that delayed shipment of the components for our Day One and Collector’s Editions.” And while the “physical components” necessary for all editions have now “finally arrived,” the company needs “some time.” And even though this only impacts the physical editions of the game, Reef has confirmed this delay also applies to digital editions, too.

“First of all, we want to start by saying thank you. We know you’ve waited longer than expected for the release of Terminator 2D: No Fate, and we truly appreciate your patience and support throughout this journey,” the team said. “The physical components for all editions have now finally arrived, following the ongoing delays that pushed us off our previous schedules. However, we now have to assemble the physical editions, which we need some time to do.

“Because of this, we are moving the launch date of Terminator 2D: No Fate to December 12, 2025, for all physical and digital versions of the game.

“We are sincerely sorry for the repeated delays. We don’t take your patience for granted, and we never want to disappoint our community. Our goal has always been to deliver the game that you deserve, and we’re almost there. Thank you again for standing by us.”

In June, IGN reported on how the developers tracked down the actor who played future war John Connor back in 1991 to include his likeness, and found out why Arnold Schwarzenegger isn’t in the game.

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

Battlefield 6 developer BF Studios has announced a “major” overhaul of Challenges and Assignments, with “substantial” adjustments across the board.

BF Studios said that these changes, outlined in patch notes below, build on the recent updates that increased the XP earned in official matches and reduced the XP needed for the first 20 attachment ranks.

“This update makes significant reductions to challenge requirements, cutting down on time investment while maintaining a focus on skill-driven progression that rewards consistent play,” BF Studios explained. “Challenges and Assignments are tuned around defined playtime targets, and these changes bring their requirements in line with those goals to make them more achievable within a reasonable session length.”

BF Studios continued: “Assignments will continue to range from goals you can complete through regular play to a few that reward true mastery, particularly those tied to cosmetic items. Some of the original criteria did not fully reflect that intent, and we have updated them to make their difficulty and purpose clearer.”

The first set of changes went live today, November 5, through a server-side update and are available immediately. Any progress you’ve already made will automatically be applied when you enter a match, unlocking any challenges or assignments you now meet based on the updated criteria.

BF Studios said the scale of its plans for Challenges and Assignments is “large and will take place over multiple server-side and client-side updates,” so players can expect additional updates in the future.

While Battlefield 6 has enjoyed a record-breaking launch, some have critisized the pace of in-game progression, which this update looks to address. Other hot topics include the size of Battlefield 6’s multiplayer maps compared to those in previous games, and out-of-place soldier skins.

We’ve got plenty more on Battlefield 6, including word on the hidden firing range room that players are investigating for secret Easter Eggs and hints at future content. Those looking to brush up on their online skills can also read our multiplayer tips and tricks guide.

Community Update – Challenge & Assignment Changes patch notes:

In this first set of changes we made a total of 90+ adjustments to Challenges and Assignments. Below we’ve highlighted a few examples.

Class Challenges

Assault, Engineer, Support, and Recon challenges now complete much faster.

• Assault 2: Have Squadmates deploy on your Spawn Beacon.
• Reduced from 50 deploys to 5.
• Support 2: Revive teammates as Support.
• Reduced from 200 revives to 60.

Weapon Assignments

All weapon-type assignments (ARs, SMGs, LMGs, Shotguns, DMRs, Snipers, Carbines) have been significantly simplified.

• Rapid Fire 1/Assault Rifle: Inflict damage with Assault Rifles.
• Reduced from requiring 10000 inflicted damage to 3000.

Mode & Unit Assignments

The majority of our mode-specific assignments (Conquest, Rush, Breakthrough, Domination, and others) have been standardized to require two wins per tier. This change makes it easier to pursue these challenges with clear intent.

• Conquest 2: Wins in Conquest.
• Reduced from 5 wins to 2.
• Conquest 3: Objective kills in a round of Conquest.
• Reduced from 30 objective kills in a round to 10.

Gameplay & Mastery

General “Expert” and “Master” assignments that require multi-kills, headshots, kill streaks, or revives have been adjusted to better match the natural rhythm of gameplay. For example, multi-kill and streak goals now align with average round performance rather than rare, outlier achievements.

• Explosives Expert 2: Get Multi Kills (2+ Kills Onwards) with explosives.
• Reduced from 20 Multi Kills to 5.
• Adaptable 2: Repair damaged Vehicles in a life.
• Reduced from requiring 3000 damage to 500.

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

Today, November 5, marks 10 years to the day Battlestate Games unveiled its extraction shooter, Escape from Tarkov. And now, 10 days from its 1.0 release, the developer has revealed preorder and beta rewards.

Escape from Tarkov is a hardcore MMO mixture of first-person shooter / third-person shooter and role-playing gameplay. Players need to find a way out of the isolated Russian city of Tarkov, survive deadly hazards, and unearth the mysteries of the city. It’s been playable in early access form since making its debut in 2016, and it’s finally coming to Steam as part of the 1.0 launch on November 15.

For anyone thinking of preordering the shooter ahead of its November 15 release — or those who’ve already preordered it — players can get following awards:

• Clothing set: USEC Legionnaire Olive
• Clothing set: Bear Sumrak Reverse
• PMC Dogtag: Immortal
• Prayer Armband: Head, Eyes
• Hideout Style: Echo of Battle
• Shooting Target: Hatchling
• Mannequin: poses

Valor Mortis, the first-person action game set in an alt-history version of the Napoleonic wars, was announced earlier this year at Gamescom Opening Night Live. In its announcement and subsequent marketing, the developers have been clear about one big element of Valor Mortis: it’s a soulslike.

Sure, it’s a first-person game, which automatically makes it look radically different from any FromSoftware game or even the 2D soulslikes such as Hollow Knight, Nine Sols, and Blasphemous. But speaking to me at the Game Industry Conference in Poznań, Wielkopolska, game director Radosław Ratusznik was hyperaware of the expectations that such a bold declaration would immediately attach to Valor Mortis. And he’s determined to do right by players while remaining committed to the perspective shift.

Valor Mortis is being developed by One More Level, the studio behind 2020’s Ghostrunner. Ratusznik tells me that the studio is largely made up of Souls game fans who badly wanted to tackle the genre, but knew they needed more development experience as a group first. This, he says, is what led to Ghostrunner, which is a first-person action game that, at least by our own estimation, was pretty great.

With one success under their belt, One More Level turned to Valor Mortis. Ratusznik says that the idea for gameplay came before the game’s setting – the team wanted something that would let them mix melee combat and firearms with the more magical mutant abilities. It just so happened that the game’s lead concept artist was also an historian with a lot of knowledge on Napoleonic Europe.

Which is how Valor Mortis ended up set during the Napoleonic Wars, featuring a monstrous Napoleon raising an army of undead mutants to rampage across Europe.

“I think, for many players, the Napoleonic era sounds really to be like… I don’t want to say unattractive, but with this silly uniform, something like that, they’re not treating it like something that is maybe attractive for them, and we wanted to change that a little bit,” Ratusznik says. “We think that this is a significant part of our history here in Europe, Napoleon as the emperor, and we want to tell the story, our own version about it. It’s not historically accurate. So we don’t want to educate players, of course, about the history, but we think that it’s something unique, something new for the players to play, to explore.”

You play as William, a British soldier who initially joined Napoleon’s army wooed by promises of a free Europe, but who is gradually coming to the realization that war is far from rosy. Unlike his fellow soldiers, William can control the nephtoglobin, the substance that prompts the undead mutation, and is able to retain his sanity while making use of its powers and fighting his way through the gruesome, warped battlefields left in Napoleon’s wake.

“The theme of horror is very important for us,” Ratusznik explains. “So it’s not even just these monsters that you are fighting. We are also telling the story about the war and how there are no winners, no true winners at war. That we are in the middle of this conflict, we will learn about each side of the conflict. So this is a story about the foreign soldier in the foreign army, in the foreign land, because we are exploring the eastern parts of Europe. We are not telling if it’s Poland or is it some other country. So it’s more like a universal story about soldiers in the war.”

Having played quite a bit of Valor Mortis at GIC, I can confirm that despite how silly the premise seemed to me initially, One More Level has indeed made something pretty unsettling. An image permanently burned into my memory is of a soldier in uniform, on all fours, leaping out at me like a dog from behind a pile of bodies. But instead of looking at me with his face, his head was contorted downward to put his large, ridiculous, fuzzy wig-hat out front, which had opened down the middle into a mouth full of teeth and was snarling at me as it attacked. Weird, startling, and very effective.

But whatever you think of the setting, the gameplay is fundamentally very souls. There’s a stamina meter to manage, poise meters on enemies to break with attacks and well-timed parries. When you die, you of course drop all the currency you’ve collected from enemies as you go and have to fetch it back, or lose it forever. And there are bonfires (in this case, lanterns) that serve as safe spots and checkpoints to restart from with each death. Valor Mortis is also quite difficult. I won’t pretend to be the best Souls player around (I’m decidedly middling) but I spent a good long while running up against the game’s first (I think) boss, which had two phases, summoned smaller enemies, and had an enormous attack radius. I died. A lot.

And yet, Ratusznik is on the defensive about whether his game qualifies as a Soulslike or not, in part because of the first-person perspective, but also because of the high expectations put on any game that purports to hail from that tradition by its many fans.

“I think that the genre is such a demanding thing that if you want to create a good thing for this demanding community, you need to be very well prepared,” Ratusznik says. “And we wanted to communicate it this way. We are telling people, ‘We are a Soulslike. And If you are not sure about it, you can challenge us. You can ask us why we think it’s Soulslike.’ And we are perfectly fine with that. And we know that players after the playtest, after showing the game at Gamescom, at TGS, we were also on PAX in Seattle, and all the players who are playing, they are telling us, ‘I was doubtful about it that you can manage to make a Soulslike in first-person, but after playing it, I believe you. It’s true. It’s a Soulslike in first-person.’ So that’s what’s very cool for me. I mean, personally, as a fan of the genre, that we managed to deliver the game in the genre, it’s something amazing.”

So I ask Ratusznik, what does it mean to be a Soulslike? What are the defining characteristics, to him, that Valor Mortis just had to embody?

“Well there is always a debate, how many features from the FromSoft games should game have to be a Soulslike?” he says. “So in our example is, of course, a stamina-based combat system. So that’s the first thing. Then we have the checkpoints that are kind of similar to the bonfires in Soulslike. In our game this is a lantern. So you have to reach the lantern to save, make your checkpoints. When you die, you will start from this place. You can then rest, the enemies will come back to life. So this kind of thing is present. But also the exploration is very important, I think, for the Soulslike in this kind of Metroidvania approach in the level structure.

“In our game we even push it further. So we also have these elements of Metroidvania, such as abilities that you are gathering that you can use on previously visited levels to unlock some alternative paths. Also the shortcuts are very important, so you need to explore to find the shortcuts to get faster to the safe point, to these checkpoints or something. So there is a lot of that. And also, the boss fights as the true challenges, very demanding. So I think, yeah, I mean these elements are there for sure, but it’s not like we are taking all of it blindly. We are thinking about each of this and how it’ll fit our vision for this game and also the first-person perspective, which is kind of tricky.”

The perspective switch really is a difference maker for Valor Mortis, as it transforms how combat plays out, how parries and dodges and swings need to be timed and directed, and how boss mechanics can be tuned for challenge. But given the popularity of the Soulslike genre, I’m surprised that there aren’t more first-person Souls games out there – most people just follow in either the Dark Souls tradition or the Hollow Knight one. Why is that?

“I think it’s not easy to make it happen, to be honest,” Ratusznik says. “I mean we did Ghostrunner, so we learned how to make first-person melee combat. And even for us, it was not easy to make the melee combat in first-person satisfying and not confusing. But in Poland we can do it because we have Dying Light, Cyberpunk is also with first-person combat. And we have our games, so Ghostrunner and now Valor Mortis. So it’s a bit tricky.

“You need to make at least a few tricks to somehow help players to get better feedback from each of the actions that they are taking. So for example, when we attack the enemies, we have some kind of a system that is in the action fighting games where you are snapped to the enemy, pulled to the enemy somehow. So we are attacking and the system is assisting you in getting closer to the enemies. Because it’s hard to tell the distance. Both the collider of your weapon is a little bit bigger than you expect just to feel that you hit it. So we need to set it up properly. There are a lot of small things that you have to add to make this combat feel juicy but also satisfying for the players. Of course on top of that there are proper animations, proper animation of the enemies, of the reactions of the enemies. Sound design is very important. Also…there needs to be some additional assets, like some arrows, some indicators that are telling you that if someone is behind you, these kinds of things.”

Valor Mortis is planned for a 2026 release on PC, PS5, and Xbox. I ask Ratusznik how it’s been developing for consoles this generation, and he gives me a rather surprising take: he really likes the Xbox Series S.

“Each generation is easier, the certification process is easier and also the knowledge of the hardware is bigger among the developers,” he says. “So I think also the fact that you have to optimize for all consoles is beneficial for all the players, right? So when we need to optimize our game for Xbox Series S, then the PC players also get a more optimized game, right?

“I know a lot of players who really love, for example, one genre or one type of game. They are only playing, I don’t know, Call Duty or Gears of War, so they don’t have to buy the newest stuff to play their games. So they have the Series S. And if you try to make a PC for the same cost, for example, it won’t be possible, right? So if we manage to optimize the game for the S, I know that a lot of developers are struggling with it, but I think it’s more like a challenge that you should handle to make the game optimized for players.”

But there is one console conspicuously missing from the lineup. Where’s the Nintendo Switch 2?

“I mean I would love that one day,” Ratusznik says. “So we are considering it. It’s not like that we are announcing anything, but personally I would love to bring this game to Switch 2. I think that it would be nice to see this type of game on this console.”

We also spoke to Ratusznik at GIC about Soulslike difficulty, and why the game might have an easy mode, but won’t have a bunch of other difficulty settings. You can read our conversation right here.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.