Ubisoft is plotting a course to make Skull and Bones Year 2 the pirate multiplayer game’s biggest yet thanks to major content additions like new modes, ships, a Kraken, and something fans have begged for since launch: land combat.
Ubisoft opened its treasure chest of plans for the next year of updates during a special Year 2 showcase that premiered yesterday. Its presentation was packed with content to look forward to, but it’s Season 3: Guts and Glory that promises the land combat feature players have hoped to see included since Skull and Bones originally launched last February.
During Season 3 this fall, Ubisoft will finally allow players to take the action away from the sea, meaning you’ll be able to swordfight and even draw your firearms against others. It’s all part of Season 3’s Rogue Warlord additions, which will see players setting foot on sandy beaches and damp caves to rescue skilled crewmembers known as Officers. A video teasing the feature showed a bit of what players can expect, but it’s clear we’ll have to wait until later this year to see how it all works.
While land combat is by far the biggest addition coming with Skull and Bones Year 2, the presentation had plenty more to keep players digging throughout 2025. Season 1 sets sail today, April 15, with Ascent into Chaos, which adds a loot-enhancing item ascension feature, challenging World Tiers, a new Schooner medium ship, and the team-based Death Tides PvP mode. Season 2: Oaths of War, which launches summer 2025, includes highlights such as Megaforts and the gargantuan Frigate large ships, with Season 4: Eye of the Beast set to introduce the Kraken, Hunter’s Guild, and Corvette large ship this winter.
If everything you’ve heard sounds enticing enough to dive in, you’ll be happy to know Skull and Bones will launch a free weekend in just a few days. From April 17 – 21, players can raise sails to try out pirate PvP for themselves and also purchase the game at a reduced price (which has yet to be announced).
Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor 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).
Dear reader, allow me, if you will, a moment of honesty. I truly, wholly did not know that Skull and Bones was still going. Not only is it still going, but yesterday Ubisoft shared a look at the game’s impending second year of updates, so I really missed the boat on this one – pun intended, of course. The first season of the pirate game’s second year has already kicked off, introducing a few new features.
The Nintendo Switch has certainly been somewhat of a haven for great indie games over the years, but according to publisher Devolver Digital, the console has proven to be exceptionally critical to its own success.
In its latest financial report, Devolver hailed the Nintendo Switch as its “most popular console”, noting that it had sold a total of 9 million games on Nintendo’s platform. As such, it’s highlighted the upcoming Switch 2 as a notable opportunity, and has already revealed three titles for launch in the future: Starseeker: Astroneer Expeditions, Human Fall Flat 2, and Enter the Gungeon 2.
Gwen Frey is no stranger to big ideas—or big games. After working on titles like BioShock Infinite and The Flame in the Flood, she’s back with a new game! Lab Rat, a satirical Sci-Fi puzzle game launching on Xbox that pits players against an overly confident AI named S.A.R.A.
With over 100 handcrafted puzzles, sharp writing, and a surprising amount of heart, Lab Rat is as much about logic as it is about being observed. I sat down with Gwen to talk puzzle design, working solo (and not-so-solo), and what it’s like to voice nearly every character in your own game.
Corey: S.A.R.A. plays a central role in Lab Rat—a hyper-intelligent, metrics-obsessed AI who observes and reacts to everything the player does. Inspired in part by your experience working alone during lockdown, she brings humor, tension, and a sense of being constantly evaluated.
Did the concept for S.A.R.A. shape the gameplay, or did the puzzles come first?
Gwen: The idea for S.A.R.A. developed naturally alongside the game’s core mechanics. Early on, my puzzle designer and I were exploring a new system, but thematically we both felt like rats in a cage—trapped inside, isolated. We built that feeling into everything: puzzles that evoke confinement, jittery character animations, and even blocks that electrocute you when misused, like a science experiment gone wrong.
Visually, I was inspired by my own dual-monitor setup during lockdown, when most of my interaction was through screens. That evolved into the concept of S.A.R.A.—an overbearing algorithm watching your every move, built to reflect the eerie, disconnected mood we were living through. Once I saw the game world through that lens, everything started to click.
Corey: You’ve described Lab Rat as a game that “makes people think and laugh.” Which of those two was harder to design for?
Gwen: Definitely making people laugh! When a person sits down to complete a puzzle game they are prepared to think deeply and solve problems – they are in the correct mindset for that. Thought-provoking commentary is generally a welcome addition to that experience. However, comedy is unexpected, very difficult to do well, and different kinds of humor appeal to different people. Seriously – comedy is hard.
Corey: There’s a really clever rhythm to how puzzles unfold in Lab Rat. What was your approach to pacing the difficulty curve?
Gwen: There are two ways I like to keep puzzle players engaged: discovery and mastery. Discovery is when you encounter something new and figure out how it works; mastery is using that understanding to solve a tougher challenge. I try to introduce something new every few puzzles to keep things fresh, and I aim for solutions that feel earned—clear enough to grasp with some thought, but never obvious.
Block-pushing games come with a unique problem: it’s easy to end up in an unwinnable state without realizing it. That kind of thing kills motivation. So in Lab Rat, we let you undo moves, pull blocks off walls—basically give you room to experiment without fear of getting stuck. It makes the game more accessible, especially for players new to the genre, without making it any less satisfying.
Corey: Working on a game in a small team means wearing a lot of hats—designer, writer, programmer. Which part of that process felt most natural to you, and which one surprised you the most?
Gwen: Programming, art, and animation all came very naturally to me. These are things I’ve done for years, and I’m working in the Unreal engine, which I’ve used my entire career, so there was nothing new to learn. By far the most surprising thing I had to learn for this project was voice acting. I am not a performer and I have never done voice work before Lab Rat. It was quite challenging.
Corey: We’ve been fortunate enough to have played through the game, so we’ve seen the end credits. Exactly how many characters did you personally voice in the game? Have you counted?
Gwen: This question made me laugh. My programmer put my name in the credits about 100 times as a sort of joke. I might change that before launch… but it is true that I voiced every character in Lab Rat. There was one line where we absolutely needed a male voice and my husband stepped up to the mic for it, but other than that all the characters were voiced by me personally. I spent a lot of time recording arguments with myself, and then made extensive use of sound effects in the engine to make each character sound unique.
Corey: If you could sit next to someone playing Lab Rat on Xbox for the first time— without spoiling it, is there a particular moment you would be waiting for them to reach?
Gwen: There are many, many moments I hope they reach! I wanted every 30 minutes of Lab Rat to feel more interesting and unexpected than the previous 30 minutes. I’m excited to see if we achieved this.
Corey: Huge thanks to you, Gwen, for taking the time to chat about Lab Rat, indie game development, and what it’s like to argue with yourself in a recording booth!
Lab Rat is available now on Xbox One optimized for Xbox Series X|S.
You have been chosen to participate in a special test that will help refine a brand new kind of game!
Lab Rat was generated by the world’s most advanced machine learning algorithm – me. I have been meticulously trained on the best interactive entertainment available today and my data indicates you will be completely satisfied with the result. However, your valuable human feedback is required to help me further adjust and develop this experience.
Key Features:
Maneuver objects, divert lasers, and manipulate electricity to overcome over a hundred surprising genre-bending puzzles.
Outwit a metrics-obsessed machine intent on heckling you for your humanity.
Participate in satirical in-game analytics that are updated in real time with real player data.
The Game:
Lab Rat is a hand-crafted narrative puzzler masquerading as a machine-generated video game. This satirical adventure stars a metrics-obsessed AI who will monitor, profile, and guide you as you solve over a hundred unique spatial problems. Over time this AI will develop a hilariously-misguided understanding of humanity based on your performance and survey response data.
The Team:
While Lab Rat pokes fun at the absurdity of algorithmically-generated interactions, this game is lovingly hand-crafted by a team of expert human developers. Lab Rat is directed by Gwen Frey (creator of Kine & co-creator of The Flame in the Flood). It features environment art by Mike Snight (Lead World Builder, Bioshock Infinite), writing and programming by Ian Bond (Programmer/Developer, Bioshock 1), and puzzles by Lucas Le Slo (beloved experimental puzzle designer).
Xbox has locked in its second wave of Game Pass games coming to the subscription service in the back-half of April 2025. It’s an interesting mix of virtual worlds, from big names to indie darlings, and even a notable new role-playing game.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a big highlight here, as a brand-new role-playing game and the debut effort from studio Sandfall Interactive. The RPG sees a team of Expeditioners on their last legs, sailing to the ends of the world to stop the Paintress, who erases anyone as old as the number she writes on the horizon. It’s available day-one on Game Pass Ultimate and PC on April 24.
Towerborne‘s Game Preview also heads to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC on April 29, bringing some action gameplay to the lineup for Game Pass in April. A few heavy hitters of years past are also on the way, including Grand Theft Auto V‘s return to Game Pass today, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 arriving on May 1, and horror-fishing gem Dredge surfacing on May 6.
For some deeper cuts, keep an eye on Tempopo, a cute puzzle game about rescuing musical flowers across different sky islands. It’s from the team behind the narrative moving sim Unpacking, which drew quite a bit of attention for its clever use of literally unpacking boxes to tell an effective, emotional story. Tempopo goes to Game Pass for Cloud, Console, and PC on the day of its launch, April 17.
Also, if you missed the speedrunning shooter hit Neon White, its heading to Game Pass Standard for consoles on April 16. Picture the movement and technique of a speedy shooter infused with a heavy dash of Toonami style, and you’ve got Neon White. Fans of time trials should make time for it.
Check out a full list of everything coming to Game Pass in the back half of April, stretching into May 2025, below.
Xbox Game Pass April 2025 Wave 2 Lineup
Grand Theft Auto V (Cloud, Console, and PC) – April 15 Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass, Game Pass Standard
Neon White (Console) – April 16 Now on Game Pass Standard
Dredge (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X|S) – May 6 Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass, Game Pass Standard
Some games are also leaving the Xbox Game pass service, too. This batch of games will be departing the Pass on April 30, so make sure to either roll credits or otherwise hit a good stopping point before the end of the month rolls around. Here’s what’s leaving Xbox Game Pass on April 30:
Have a Nice Death (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Kona II Brume (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Sniper Elite 5 (Cloud, Console, and PC)
The Last Case of Benedict Fox (Cloud, Console, and PC)
It turns out you won’t actually be spicing up your life next month, as Funcom have announced that Dune: Awakening is getting a delay. The survival MMO was originally supposed to be launching this coming May 20th, but a Steam post was shared today sharing that its release date has been pushed to June 10th. Those that have the deluxe or ultimate edition on order will still be able to play it a few days earlier, now June 5th.
Dune: Awakening, the upcoming open world survival MMO inspired by Frank Herbert’s beloved sci-fi novels and Denis Villeneuve’s films, has been delayed to June 10, 2025.
Funcom shared the news while also confirming that those who wish to get a head start will be able to jump into the game on June 5 if they purchase either the Deluxe Edition or Ultimate Edition.
As for why the game was delayed, Funcom said, following feedback from its ongoing Persistent Closed Beta, the decision was made so the team has “a bit more time to cook.” This will also let them implement some of the changes they’ve discovered and that have been requested during this beta phase.
Furthermore, Funcom said the delay will allow for a “large-scale beta weekend next month where even more of you will get the opportunity to play the game and share your feedback.”
While this may be disappointing for some who want to jump into Dune: Awakening as soon as possible, Funcom is hosting a combat livestream later today at 12pm ET/9am PT, which will reveal more about PvP and PvE mechanics, archetypes, and skills.
We here at IGN are excited about Dune: Awakening, as we said in our hands-on preview that, “It’s easy to be sceptical about an MMO survival game set in the Duniverse, but after a few bouts of dehydration and sunstroke, the day I spent in Arrakis convinced me that Dune: Awakening is one to watch.”
Welp, it’s finally happened. After many months of mainly murder related updates, Larian’s stonker of an RPG has at last received its final major content update. Patch 8 – which you can read in full here – brings Photo Mode, full cross play, and 12 new subclasses to Baldur’s Gate 3. That’s one for each playable class, and likely at least six more than I’ll ever reasonably experience. Still, a swarmkeeper ranger sounds very tempting. Yes the bees, is what I always say.
With so many Spring Sales popping up, now is a great time to stock up on games at a much lower price than usual. If you’ve been looking to sink your teeth into a massive medieval action RPG, this is one deal you definitely don’t want to miss: Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 (for both PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X) has received its first discount at Amazon and Walmart. It’s down to $59.99, $10 off its list price of $69.99. Head to the links below to pick it up for your collection while the deal is still live.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 for $59.99
If you’re still on the fence about this one, it’s worth having a read through our glowing 9/10 Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 review. Reviewer Leana Hafer said, “Armed with excellent melee combat and an exceptional story, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is one part sequel and one part coronation, bringing a lot of the original’s ideas to fruition.”
This isn’t the only game deal that’s crossed our path recently. At the moment Best Buy has a Spring Sale going on that’s filled with some excellent discounts on games, including offers on Silent Hill 2, Alan Wake 2 Deluxe Edition, Star Wars Outlaws, and more. If you’re building out your library of games, this is a sale worth checking out to save big on some popular options.
For a more in-depth look at the best game deals available right now, it’s worth checking our roundups of PS5, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch deals. In each of these we’ve gathered up the best discounts on games, hardware, and accessories so you can save on a variety of items for your preferred platform. Our overall roundup of the best video game deals includes some great PC gaming deals alongside the console-specific offers, too.
More Games on Sale Right Now
Hannah Hoolihan is a freelancer who writes with the guides and commerce teams here at IGN.
It was always going to end badly for Thillmann The Braggart. 30 gold, he told the brigands. He’d pay them 30 gold each if they could knock up a stew so disgusting that even he – Kobmanhaven’s most famous glutton – couldn’t keep it down. Whether Thillmann actually had the coin on him, they never found out. Seconds after he raised the first reeking spoon of what he suspected was mostly reindeer shit to his lips, he projectile vomited straight in the face of their leader, and they jumped him.
Death comes quickly in the turn-based tactics and open-world merc work of Battle Brothers, and victory comes hard. Really, it’s the stories of the mercs you hire, and their emergent traits and peccadilloes, that make the game what it is. Still, Thillman was possessed of the sort of cocksure spirit that makes a man far less cognisant of sharp objects than he should be, although you couldn’t fault his reasoning: he was still alive, so as far as fate had proven to him up until now, nothing could kill him. I can only apologise for adding to the bastard’s delusions. The boys and I happened to be passing by at just the right time to save him from those brigands, and he’s been with us ever since.
