How Strange Scaffold Tackled the TMNT World in Tactical Takedown

How Strange Scaffold Tackled the TMNT World in Tactical Takedown

TMNT TT key art

The place:

New York City.

The time:

Three years after the deaths of Shredder and Hamato Yoshi…

…the father, mentor, and friend also known as Master Splinter.

Strange Scaffold, as a group of developers, are known for making their own small contained worlds like I Am Your Beast or El Paso, Elsewhere, but when the opportunity arose for us to play in another playground we couldn’t turn it down! We got to make a game, with our own story, set inside the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” world. And if you read the above, you know we really got to make our story.

TMNT: Tactical Takedown began its life as a totally different game, well, kind of. I’ll let Xalavier Nelson Jr, our Studio Head tell you. “Teenage Demon Slayer Society, another Strange Scaffold project, was the origin of our journey adapting action game mechanics to a turn-based format.” This game served as a jumping off point, letting the team hit the ground running even faster when Tactical Takedown began development. “While that project is still in development, we’re incredibly glad that its technology got to result in TMNT: Tactical Takedown existing, and coming out sooner than later!”

TMNT TT screenshot

“The game has a more focused scope and scale than most TMNT projects, we had really exciting conversations with Paramount about that giving us the freedom to pursue large, bold creative leaps.” Xalavier noted, “So, we took the biggest leap we could–with the Turtles on the cusp of adulthood, in a world where Splinter and Shredder are both dead. Paramount signed off without a single note and the rest is history.”

Bringing in a new leader for The Foot Clan had a natural choice, to us, in Karai but they are teaming them with Baxter Stockman? “Karai is a complex character. She’s ambitious, but forever in Shredder’s shadow. She’s honorable, but ruthless.”, Michael Futter, Licensing Producer on the game, “Teaming her up with Baxter Stockman may seem like a curious choice, and players will need to experience the game to understand why she’s thrown in with him. Not all is as it seems…”

TMNT TT screenshot

An interesting challenge was translating the feeling of each Turtle to a tactical combat system. “Tom Vinita, our game’s lead designer, did an excellent job in identifying early on what the brothers would need in order to feel different from one another without overloading the player with too much information (or making the moves too difficult to understand).”, Amanda Farough, Executive Producer on the game noted, “He struck those chords relatively early on, allowing our level designer, Aubrey Rugroden, to build out the individual ‘biomes’ with each of the Turtles’ moves allowed to shine through.”

Another question for the team was how can you marry the more fast-paced feeling that the TMNT are known for with what is traditionally a slower genre? “The real tricky bit”, Amanda went on to explain, “was finding the right rhythm in balancing the game’s methodical tactical rhythms with its fast-paced beat-em-up elements. It took time to tune the kits and the biomes to find that balance, but it’s been worth it, especially in refining for Remix Mode and this console release.”

TMNT TT screenshot

Remix Mode, which is available right away with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown, allows you to ratchet up the difficulty and variety as soon as you finish a chapter. New enemies and new problems will require you to rethink your strategies while also customizing your Turtles loadout to create the perfect moveset for the challenge ahead of you.

We were incredibly fortunate to get to make a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game that was still very much a Strange Scaffold game, as Xalavier noted the game featured “Eccentric, player-first decisions.” which is always a hallmark in a Scaffold game. “We didn’t put any polish or feature in the game unless it fit the scope of what our team could make–and would be directly visible to players. That involves putting a lot of ego aside, which is a hard thing to do!”

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown is out right now on Xbox Series X|S!

Xbox Play Anywhere

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown

Strange Scaffold


2

$19.99

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown is the first-ever turn-based TMNT video game. Inspired by the classic cartoon, you’ll experience a bold new approach to the world of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! Splinter and Shredder are dead, and as the Turtles approach adulthood, they’re not just growing up… they’re growing apart.

Battle the Foot Clan as a powerful new leader takes control in action-packed campaigns that showcase each Turtle individually. Carve through enemies in 20 constantly-mutating levels that grow, shrink, and add new threats with each turn, inspired by classic TMNT games! Rack up points for high scores while experiencing a powerful original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles story from acclaimed indie studio Strange Scaffold. This is the next step for Michelangelo, Donatello, Leonardo, and Raphael–and you can experience it with flying, slashing figurines in graphic novel-inspired splendor.

The post How Strange Scaffold Tackled the TMNT World in Tactical Takedown appeared first on Xbox Wire.

Where To Buy Final Fantasy Collector Boosters and Precons Now That They’ve Sold Out

Magic: The Gathering’s current set may have taken us to space, but that’s not to say the Final Fantasy set that debuted in June 2025 is gone.

In fact, the set will be standard legal for quite a while yet, but given its incredible popularity, some products are unlikely to see reprints. Chief among them are Collector Boosters and Collector Editions of Commander Decks.

Here’s how you can find them.

What Happened To Magic: The Gathering x Final Fantasy Collector Boosters?

Collector Boosters offer 15 cards, including 5–6 cards of rarity Rare or higher and 3 – 6 Uncommon, 3 – 5 Common, and 1 Full-Art Land card, with a total of 8 – 12 Traditional Foil cards and 0 – 3 cards with a special foil treatment.

The fact that chase cards are most commonly found in Collector Boosters has meant they sell out quickly, and now command a high price on the secondary market.

While Play Boosters are likely to be reprinted regularly, Collector Booster packs are going for as much as $149.99 – for fifteen cards.

What About Collector Commander Decks?

Commander Decks will likely see reprints, and they’re already slipping below MSRP, but the Collector’s Editions are a “one and done” kind of deal.

It’s worth stressing that these don’t offer any additional cards you won’t find in the standard versions, but give every single card a foil treatment. The price for that privelege is $159.99 and up, with the Final Fantasy 7 deck closer to $500 – yikes.

But Wait!

Believe it or not, you don’t have to sell your house to buy Magic cards. There are a whole host of more affordable, but still awesome, cards you can find on the secondary market for a few dollars each.

Even some of the full-art, borderless cards are available if you know what to look for, and we’ve got a handy list.

Lloyd Coombes is an experienced freelancer in tech, gaming and fitness seen at Polygon, Eurogamer, Macworld, TechRadar and many more. He’s a big fan of Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games, much to his wife’s dismay.

Grand Theft Auto 5 Players Think They’ve Finally Solved the Mount Chiliad Mystery, But Others Aren’t Convinced

A Grand Theft Auto 5 content creator believes he has finally solved the infamous Mount Chiliad mystery after 12 years of sleuthing, but some members of the community aren’t convinced.

If you’ve played GTA 5 – and there’s a good chance you have – you’ve also likely heard about Mount Chiliad and the notorious UFO Easter Egg associated with it. In September 2013, almost exactly 12 years ago, eager GTA fans booted up Rockstar Games’ latest sandbox to find a trio of main characters, new locations, and a smorgasbord of mysteries to uncover. Evidence of aliens could and still can be found strewn about the Los Santos map, with players able to discover everything from extraterrestrial remains to crashed UFO ships if they know where to look.

Aliens have been a hot topic for both GTA 5’s in-game citizens and its real-life players, but it’s the mystery atop Mount Chiliad that has sent heads spinning for more than a decade. Those who make the trek up Los Santos’ unmissable rocky mountain will notice a small cavern with a strange diagram that features a maze-like pattern and four distinct markings: a UFO, a cracked egg, a person wearing a jetpack, and an all-seeing eye looking down on Mount Chiliad.

After 12 years, most GTA 5 fans still aren’t sure what it all means, but content creator Gator Keys thinks the answer has been in front of us all along.

Signs

Gator Keys, a popular YouTuber who has put on their GTA detective hat to solve some of GTA 5’s greatest mysteries for the last year, dug into what is perhaps the series’ most infamous Easter Egg with their most recent upload, titled “This is The End of the Mount Chiliad Mystery.” It’s an eight-minute video with an unfortunately anticlimactic conclusion: GTA 5 players solved the mystery years ago.

As discovered more than a decade ago, players who return to the top of Mount Chiliad after achieving 100% completion will be met with a full-on flying saucer – laser beam noises, flashing lights, and all. As an added gag, this UFO, along with some of the others found in the game, features an FIB logo, representing the Grand Theft Auto universe’s parody version of the FBI.

The assumption since GTA 5 launched all the way back in 2013 has been that there must be more to the story than just another UFO appearing in the sky. There are, after all, other flying saucers to be discovered around the map, but Gator Key believes it all truly comes back to that FIB logo.

“The whole point of this mystery is to tell us a little more,” Gator Key says. “The reason they put a UFO at the top of Mount Chiliad is to show us the FIB logo spinning on the side of it. This means the FIB created these UFOs. They are the aliens. They are the all-seeing eye.”

It makes sense – Rockstar is known for using GTA to provide commentary on the real world, and conspiracy theories about aliens play a part in that, too. Just like the players who have obsessed over Mount Chiliad and its connections to life in space, there are those in Los Santos who worship the aliens and tell tales about UFO sightings.

There are also recent comments from former Rockstar designer Ben Hinchliffe to consider. When speaking with GTAVIoclock last year, he touched on the great Mount Chiliad mystery, and although he wasn’t directly involved with its creation, he admitted that some Easter Eggs are included “just to mess with people.”

“The Mount Chiliad mystery is a play on real life,” Gator Keys adds. “The fact that the government, the people in power, control the population, and we can hit 100% all we like. We can get to the top of the mountain, but the UFO is still out of reach because we alone are not the all-seeing eye.”

They Live

It would be disappointing to see 12 years of community effort come down to little more than a misunderstanding, but if Gator Keys is correct, then that’s exactly what happened. It’s an explanation that arrives as little as one year away from the launch of Grand Theft Auto 6, and it doesn’t even come close to convincing some of the die-hard GTA 5 fans who have combed over Mount Chiliad for years.

“Nonsense. The creator should stop making these types of videos,” one individual commented in a recent Reddit thread.

“He didn’t dig far enough. Itl happen someday. But hes wrong,” another user commented in an X/Twitter post.

Users on the chiliadmystery Sub Reddit, which contains more than 44,000 “hunters,” have posted as recently as just days ago as they continue to work out what may or may not be at the bottom of GTA 5’s Mount Chiliad mystery. Some believe the Easter Egg connections may continue to branch over into GTA 6, while others think there may be a connection to DLC that was canceled long ago. It is not clear how the Rockstar team may or may not continue to build on the Mount Chiliad mystery, but one thing is for sure – no one is saying anything.

For more on Rockstar and the Grand Theft Auto universe, you can check out what we know about GTA 6’s price. You can also learn about a recent National Gaming Expo event that left many attendees without an opportunity to meet stars from GTA, Red Dead Redemption, and more.

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).

Disco Elysium-Inspired Narrative RPG ‘Rue Valley’ Gains A Switch Release

Plus a neat charity collaboration.

Rue Valley, a narrative RPG heavily inspired by Disco Elysium, has been confirmed for the Switch in addition to PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

No release date has been set at the time of writing, but we’re keeping a close eye on this one. It looks pretty awesome; definitely a little more upbeat and comedic than what Disco Elysium offered, but still retaining some of the same DNA.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Troublemakers Unite! Smugglers Tide comes to Sea of Thieves with Season 17

SoT S17 hero image

Troublemakers Unite! Smugglers Tide comes to Sea of Thieves with Season 17

The post Troublemakers Unite! Smugglers Tide comes to Sea of Thieves with Season 17 appeared first on Xbox Wire.

Inside Avatar: The Last Airbender’s Beginner Box for Magic: The Gathering

Let’s be real, Magic: The Gathering is complicated. I’ve been playing it for decades, but knowing how or where to start is intimidating if you haven’t – until last year, when a product called the Foundations Beginner Box finally provided the excellent starting point paper Magic has needed. Now, with a brand new Beginner Box themed around the game’s upcoming crossover with Avatar: The Last Airbender just a few months away, that inviting front door is being opened up to an even wider audience.

Ahead of the Avatar set’s first look earlier this week, Wizards of the Coast sent me the Avatar Beginner Box to open up and try out for myself. It’s been every bit the flavorful introduction I hoped it would be, full of fun references to the cartoon show and simple but still mechanically interesting cards to ease newcomers in. And with over 100 brand new cards, some of which are unique to this product while others are from the main set, we have a massive amount of spoilers to show off here.

You can flip through the slideshow below or watch the video above to see every card in the Avatar: The Last Airbender Beginner Box:

If you’ve already tried the Foundations Beginner Box, this is pretty much the exact same thing with new cards and an Avatar-themed coat of paint – and if you haven’t, or are simply an Avatar fan who is dipping a toe into Magic for the first time, this is genuinely a great place to get started. It comes with 10 differently themed Jumpstart decks, each of which is essentially half of a 40-card deck so that you and a friend can each grab two, shuffle them together, and play against each other on even footing. It also comes with a simplified rule book (trust me, you don’t need to start off with the comprehensive rules), two fold-out playmats to give you a sense of how the game is laid out, and some dice and tokens to keep track of other things.

There are 120 total nonland cards in the Beginner Box, 50 of which have the TLE set code, which is represented by the set symbol that looks like Aang’s Glider (47 are brand new, while three are existing cards reprinted with new Avatar art). These cards are not part of the main set, instead only legal in places like Commander or other formats where they were already playable. The rest of the cards are from the main Avatar set, which has the set code TLA and a set symbol that looks like Aang’s head. Those are legal in Standard, with only four reprints and a handful of duplicates across the 10 theme options.

It’s hard to think of a better place for Avatar fans to start than this.

The real brilliance of the Beginner Box is how two of those Jumpstart decks are actually designed as a guided tutorial of sorts to show you and another player the ropes. They come stacked in a specific order and aren’t meant to be shuffled ahead of your first game, with each player getting their own guide book full of instructions to follow. These walk you through a mostly scripted game, complete with cute little word bubbles from Avatar characters discussing it on some of the pages.

It’s not like playing that on-rails match is particularly exciting, but by taking a note out of a lot of board game rule books that do something similar, the Beginner Box is able to provide a foundation of understanding that is a truly effective learning tool. Magic has a lot of moving parts that are mostly invisible, relying on the players to track things like the phases of a turn or who has an opportunity to act at any given time – it’s a big reason why my go-to recommendation for learning the game has long been to download the MTG Arena digital client and play through that tutorial online since it handles those things for you. (And, to be fair, that is still quite a good way to learn.) But there’s just something satisfying about learning to play this paper game with paper cards, and that tutorial match sets you up for success in a way Magic has largely lacked offline.

It’s also important that the Beginner Box isn’t just a tutorial as those introductory decks then become a part of the 10 half-deck pool, letting you mix and match themes, like pairing a green deck full of big creatures with a black deck all about going on the offensive. The idea of set packets like this isn’t anything new to Magic (Avatar is even getting its own proper Jumpstart release as well), but when the deck building of constructed formats like Standard or Commander can have a higher barrier of entry and the knowledge required for limited formats like Draft can be intimidating, it continues to be one of the most intuitive and approachable ways to enjoy Magic early on.

Of course, most of the praise I’ve slung so far is true of the original Beginner Box, too. What sets this one apart is obviously its Avatar flavor. As a huge fan of the show, it was a delight to recognize so many loving references across these decks – from different takes on characters like Aang or Sokka, to goofy moments like the one on the card How To Start a Riot from the show’s Boiling Rock episodes. There are more of Avatar’s iconic hybrid animals than I can count, clever callbacks to some of my favorite moments, and friendly (or menacing) faces in every hand you draw.

Notably, I don’t think any of these cards are going to light the competitive world on fire or anything, but they aren’t supposed to. They’re relatively simple takes on these people and places, meant to bridge the gap between Avatar fans and its Magic set. A card like Path to Redemption, which basically imprisons an opposing creature until you pay to essentially turn into an Ally, isn’t the strongest version of this sort of effect we’ve ever seen, but it is an incredibly neat way to tell part of Uncle Iroh’s story. It’s the kind of thing that helps make what Magic is trying to do flavor-wise make sense.

Other cards make more direct references with their tie-ins, particular when it comes to bending. Water, earth, fire, and airbending are all represented in both the main set and the Beginner Box, each offering a different take on what they mechanically look like in Magic. Waterbending, earthbending, and firebending even have Jumpstart decks here specifically named after them that are blue, green, and red, respectively. Those colors make sense, with airbending also intuitively making an appearance in one of the white half-decks, but they don’t seem to be restricted to them either, with some Earthbending showing up in black in this product and some other color blending happening in the main set.

All in all, using one of Magic’s Universes Beyond crossovers as the theme for a new version of the Beginner Box seems like a great idea. Wizards of the Coast has talked a lot about how many new folk these tie-ins bring to the game, with the recent Final Fantasy set blowing away even the loftiest of expectations. So, if you’re an Avatar fan who is curious about what this crossover entails but is intimidated by the three-decade old reputation Magic carries around with it, it’s hard to think of a better place to start than this.

Tom Marks is IGN’s Executive Reviews Editor. He loves card games, puzzles, platformers, puzzle-platformers, and lots more.

By Azura, an Oblivion Remastered modder’s dropped collectable Adoring Fan skill bobbleheads all over Cyrodiil

If you like your Bethesda RPG with a bit more of another sort of Bethesda RPG, I’ve got good news. An Oblivion Remastered modder’s decided to put another Fallout feature into the 2006’s hottest ‘supposed to be a jungle, but Lord of the Rings is popular’ game. This time, it’s Adoring Fan skill bobbleheads, and they might help you come to find the annoying lad a bit more loveable.

Hey, if nothing else, you can stick them on the mantelpiece of that house you’re using Obiliv in a thing called love’s Fallout-inspired settlement building mod to erect.

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Look, I just want to talk (about Burnout in wplace)

Right, so, it’s happened. One of my calls for a new Burnout game via the art map void has received a response. Quite frankly, assuming it’s accurate, it’s not the news I was hoping for. That doesn’t mean I’m stopping here, though.

In case you’ve got no idea what I’m on about, the other day I made my mark (no pun intended) on wplace, a site that picks up the mantle from Reddit of letting people doodle all over a map of the world. In two different places, I politely asked for a fresh entry in the Burnout series via slightly wonky writing.

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