Poker face.
Remember how much time you have sunk into Vampire Survivors? How about all the hours you’ve put into Balatro? What if they were… in the same game?
Yep, you guessed it, Vampire Survivors is crossing over with Balatro in the new ‘Ante Chamber’ free expansion. This one arrives on most platforms today, but we’ll have to wait a little longer until it lands on Switch on 31st October.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
It’s hard to imagine what first-person shooters would be like today, if they were to exist at all, without the original DOOM, released back on December 10, 1993, for MS-DOS. A lone super soldier, the legendary Doom Guy, fending off the hordes of demons from hell is one of the defining images of PC gaming, and the series continues to shock and amaze fans to this day with every new gory entry. Now, Modiphius Entertainment is bringing DOOM to the tabletop with the upcoming Doom Arena Board Game, now on Kickstarter, and I had a chance to get some time with a prototype to see just how well I could rip and tear in my dining room.
While Doom Arena isn’t the first cardboard adaptation of the series, this latest rendition is a bloodbath contest between one player controlling Doom Guy and the other controlling the demons. Taking place in – you guessed it, an arena – the two players maneuver their plastic forces around the hexagon grid-based warzone, competing to see who can dish out the most pain.
Each point of damage done to an opponent earns you blood, which serves as a victory point. The winner is whoever comes out ahead in two out of the three rounds by earning the most blood, with each round consisting of six turns each for both sides. Between rounds, both Doom Guy and the Demons can upgrade their arsenals. Doom Guy gets new weapons and armor, while the Demons swap out weaker enemies for hartier ones like Pinky, Cacodemons, or the mighty Cyberdemon.
Doom Arena is one of those games that fits great as a filler between some heavier ones during a game day, or when you just want to have some fun while sipping a cold one and munching on some snacks. The gameplay is a slick dice-chucker where the strategy takes a back seat to running in guns blazing and seeing how much pain you unleash, which is very reminiscent of its source material. The only real “strategy” I found myself thinking about is what upgrades I was going to spend my resources on between rounds.
I appreciate the simpler ruleset behind Doom Arena, because you can explain the rules to friends pretty quickly and be rolling dice shortly after. That being said, I wouldn’t complain if there were a smidgen more depth to be found. To be fair, the prototype I had access to and a work-in-progress ruleset included only two-player game modes, whereas the final game will be playable with 2-4 players, so it’s possible the additional depth I am hoping for will be found in the final rules and other game modes. On the topic of game modes, I will say that having official rules for starting with more upgrades is smart, and makes for a ton of chaotic fun, and I could see some great matches happen by adopting a pick/counter-pick approach.
The version of Doom Arena that I played featured miniatures showcasing the classic looks of Doom Guy and demons that players of the original game from the ’90s will recognize. But those who jumped on the chainsaw wagon in more recent decades will have a version for them, too. Modiphius is producing a mechanically identical version that instead has arenas, models, and weapons pulled from the most recent Doom: The Dark Ages, with Doom Guy replaced by the menacing Doom Slayer and demons including the Mancubus, Imps, Imp Stalkers, Hell and Battle Knights, Pinky Rider, Arachnotron, and Soldiers. And for folks who may be lacking in storage space, Modiphius will also offer a version that replaces the plastic miniatures with acrylic standees, shrinking the box size and lowering the cost.
When I first heard the announcement that Modiphius was designing a new Doom board game, my mind immediately went to images of playing as Doom Guy, exploring corridors, finding keys to unlock doors, that eventually would lead to a fight with a big scary demon. Something more akin to say a Betrayal at House on the Hill, Cthulu: Death May Die, or Zombicide. I still would love a Doom game like that, but I can’t deny that Doom Arena captures the spirit of these games splendidly.
This is a series about killing as many things as fast as possible, and Arena delivers on that premise in an exciting and digestible package. Even playing dice with this WIP build led to tense moments where I had to hold my breath as I rolled my dice, or giant sighs of relief as my demons avoided being brutally dismembered by a chainsaw. I eagerly look forward to seeing what sort of additional elements or add-ons will be available to play around with and what sort of other game modes will ship in the final release that use three and four players. With the Doom Arena Board Game, Modphius looks to deliver a box that fans of both the video games and board games in general can enjoy, and I am counting down the days until I can rev up my chainsaw again and take it to some demons again.
Doom the Arena Board Game’s campaign runs until November 21, 2025 with an expected delivery date of October 2026.
Scott White is a freelance contributor to IGN, assisting with tabletop games and guide coverage. Follow him on X/Twitter or Bluesky.
Combining classic 1930s “rubber-hose” animation, retro gunplay, modern mechanics and exploration, and a deeply bizarre setting, Mouse: P.I. For Hire is shaping up to be a truly unusual treat – but there’s more to this game than you might have realized from earlier trailers.
After announcing a March 19, 2026 release date during today’s ID@Xbox Showcase, we were treated to a deep-dive on the game, directly from the developers at Fumi Studios in Warsaw, Poland.
You can watch the full deep-dive above, or read on to find out the big new details we learned along the way:
If there’s one thing to take away from today’s introduction, it’s that Mouse is far more than a retro shooter in even more retro clothing. While your core interaction is with the game’s gunplay (more on that later), this is a far more modern game than you might think.
For a start, your character – war veteran-turned-private investigator, Jack Pepper – doesn’t have just a single case to solve. From the very beginning, Jack’s presented with three separate cases to solve, each of which will take him across the city of Mouseburg to unravel their secrets.
Each case can be taken on in any order, asking you not just to take down the enemies in your way, but to find clues – whether those are physical objects, information learned by talking to NPCs, or photographs you might take. Clues can then be taken to your office’s classic string-adorned corkboard, and put in place to unlock new revelations and destinations.
With 10 biomes to explore, each containing multiple levels, this is very different to a Point A-to-Point B shooter.
At the core of all that exploration is the game’s hub world – set at the centre of Mouseburg, the hub contains Jack’s office, his local pub, and a workshop where he can upgrade his weaponry before heading to the next case. But there’s far more here than a series of menus. NPCs might offer conversations, and a range of minigames are on offer to provide different gameplay experiences, and even rewards of new clues, or upgrades.
The biggest of these minigames will take you across the entire game – a classic collectible card game, themed around baseball, will see cards dropped across many of the levels you’ll be fighting through, letting you build a deck and take on increasingly difficult matches.
And once you’re ready to leave, you can jump in your car and take a trip across the beautiful overworld map to your next firefight.
Mouse’s combat draws on classic shooters like DOOM, but with added touches that bring it right up to date. With a philosophy of “challenging but fair”, you’ll be pitted against hordes of enemies, collecting weaponry that ranges from the expected (Tommy guns, shotguns) to the gleefully insane (a brain in a jar that fires psychic waves).
Every gun comes with an alt-fire mode, and can be upgraded over the course of the game, helping things stay fresh. But beware – enemies themselves will see upgrades, too. As you progress, familiar enemy types will start to get their own modifications – a tank-like enemy you may have mastered can start coming equipped with a forcefield, for example, forcing you to change you tried-and-true approach.
Bosses might even throw in whole new mechanics, too – we saw a ghost-like boss named the Third Wife, which seems to require you to weaken her with a flashlight before you can start pumping lead.
And, of course, we need to talk about how this game looks. While enivronments are rendered in 3D, every single character, enemy, and weapon has been painstakingly hand-drawn and animated to resemble classic 1930s “rubber hose” animation. The way everything in the world bounces, stretches, and bends is a tribute to that distinctive style (even shotgun shells seem to dance in their chambers during a reload), and took an enormous amount of work from Fumi.
To add to the challenge, the game is entirely black-and-white, which changed how Fumi approached traditional level design. Where most games use colour to subtly guide the player, Fumi needed to take that approach with light, giving the entire game a unique look from a player’s perspective. Even here, we’re seeing a tribute to classic cartoons – interactable objects dance in place, waiting for you to find them.
And to complete that tribute to the past, we even learned that Fumi has added customizable audio filters to the game – you can choose to play with crisp, modern sound effects and music, or add degradation to help it everything sound as if it’s being played off of old-school vinyl. The attention to detail – and to how players might want to experience it – is clear across everything Fumi has touched.
Mouse: P.I for Hire comes to Xbox Series X|S on March 19, 2026.
PlaySide
DEADLY INVESTIGATIONS
Meet Private Investigator Jack Pepper, a former war hero-turned-detective in a world where danger lurks even in the smallest mouse hole. Uncover the truth when a simple missing persons case quickly escalates into a complex web of intrigue, with corruption, kidnapping and murder all on the docket. Investigate the seedy underbelly of Mouseburg, battle heavily armed gangs and crooked cops, and discover clues to reveal the conspiracy buried underneath the surface.
LOCK, LOAD & LAUGH
From crackling machine guns to explosive firepower, each weapon in Pepper’s arsenal is designed to deploy non-stop cartoon chaos. Arm yourself with an array of classic, creatively twisted and experimental firearms, and consume powerful upgrades when you need that extra spinach-loaded punch! Lethal encounters and manic boss battles await in this boomer shooter-inspired, retro-vibed adventure – and the denizens of Mouseburg never go down without a fight.
A CITY OF SECRETS
Explore a diverse city playground, from dark streets to classic film studios, opulent opera buildings, poisonous swamps and underground sewers. With a myriad of cases to solve and collectibles to find, Mouseburg is truly a detective’s delight! Use every tool at your disposal to wall-run, grapple-hook and double-jump through this unrelenting cartoon world.
FEATURES
– Black and white, hand-drawn rubber hose animation, inspired by cartoons of the 1930s
– Fast-paced FPS combat, where constant movement is key
– A thrilling single-player campaign that unravels a complex web of crime and corruption
– Over 20 noir-infused levels, teeming with mice, rats and shrews
– Fully-loaded arsenal of over a dozen unique weapons and equipment – with a cartoon twist
– Devastating consumable power-ups, capable of turning the tide of any battle
– Unlockable movement abilities and Metroidvania-inspired level traversal
– Original jazz soundtrack, featuring a big band orchestral ensemble
The post Mouse: P.I. for Hire Is Much More Than It Appears appeared first on Xbox Wire.
The classic 1995 first-person shooter Star Wars: Dark Forces is finally getting its due, in action figure form. Kyle Katarn, the hero of the video game, is getting a Star Wars The Black Series action figure. It costs $27.99 and will be available on April 1. You can preorder it now at Amazon.
The Kyle Katarn figure is six inches tall, with a good amount of articulation. It comes with a blaster and a blue-bladed Lightsaber, with a standard blade and one that mimics the blurred swinging effect. It’s a figure that looks good enough for adults to enjoy as a collectible, but it works equally well for play, with a suggest age range of 4+.
The video game Star Wars: Dark Forces hit PC in 1995, with a port to PS1 the following year. It’s one of the early “Doom clones,” but it had strong enough story and gameplay elements to stand up on its own. Gameplay-wise, it included novel ideas like the ability to jump and duck, as well as to look up and down, all of which Doom and Doom 2 lacked.
Dark Forces is set in the (no-longer-canon) extended universe, around the time of the first Star Wars movie. It follows Kyle Katarn, a mercenary working for the Rebel Alliance, as he uncovers the Dark Troopers Project and goes about trying to stop it. This mission brings him all over the galaxy to locations like Jabba’s yacht, the Imperial mines on Gromas, inside a Star Destroyer, and more.
Star Wars: Dark Forces got the remaster treatment last year, making it accessible on modern platforms and tweaking its graphics and adding various quality-of-life improvements.
Chris Reed is a commerce editor and deals expert for IGN. He also runs IGN’s board game and LEGO coverage. You can follow him on Bluesky.
My review of The Outer Worlds 2 begins with a retelling of the first unexpected curveball the RPG threw my way. Barely out of the intro and having made exactly two vending machine purchases, I was offered the consumerism flaw. This puzzled me. As it turns out, this event had good reason to puzzle me.
Fallout Day has just recently concluded, and plenty of news was released for Bethesda’s online RPG. Fallout 76 continues to deliver new content each year, with the Burning Springs DLC set to release later this year. Next year, Bethesda is finally set to release native PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S versions of the game. Similar to the rest of the franchise, nothing is more iconic in Fallout 76 than Vault Boy. Today, you can pre-order the Vault Boy 76 Nendoroid at IGN Store. If you’re a fan of the legendary RPG series, this is the perfect item to level up your collection.
The Vault Boy 76 Nendoroid is set to include three face plates: smiling face, grinning face, and jealous face. Depending on where you put Vault Boy 76, you can customize these for a completely different style of figure! Additionally, the following optional parts are included:
If you’re unfamiliar, Nendoroid is a line of figures manufactured by Good Smile Company. Each figure sits at approximately four inches tall, offering owners many different poses and parts to customize their Nendoroid to their liking. This Vault Boy 76 Nendoroid is set to release in Q2 2026. Be sure to head over to IGN Store today and secure yours before pre-orders close!
IGN Store sells high-quality merch, collectibles, and shirts for everything you’re into. It’s a shop built with fans in mind: for all the geek culture and fandom you love most. Whether you’re into comics, movies, anime, games, retro gaming or just want some cute plushies (who doesn’t?), this store is for you!
Battlefield 6‘s battle royale mode REDSEC is out now, a “genre shifting free-to-play destination” that includes both the promised Fortnite functionality and a new squad-based competitive mode, Gauntlet – no, not that Gauntlet, auto-keyword tool, stop it, you’re making me look daft, UGH I don’t have time to argue with you, please just go away – together with additional gubbins for Battlefield’s Portal editor. You can find it either via your Battlefield 6 install or as a separate release on Steam.
REDSEC’s battle royale map is Fort Lyndon, pictured below, with takes place in the backyards and beaches of California, and is apparently the series’ biggest map ever. The setup is familiar: 100 players divided into squads are dropped into the world and must scrounge for pick-ups and do shooticuffs and fistibangs within a shrinking (and partly destructible) playspace.
Some Wild Hearts.
Acclaimed indie developer Simogo is celebrating its 15th birthday today, but it feels like we’re the one getting presents. Fans of the Swedish studio are going to be thrilled with the projects the team has revealed, so buckle up.
First up (thanks, VGC!) are Nintendo Switch 2 Editions of Lorelei and the Laser Eyes and Sayonara Wild Hearts, two of our favourite games on the Switch. Sharper visuals and frames are likely part of these packages, and we only have to wait until early next year to try them out. No upgrade path has been revealed just yet.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
The post RedSec: An Epic Free-to-Play Destination Built on Battlefield’s Iconic DNA appeared first on Xbox Wire.
Redsec is Battlefield’s first-ever free-to-play Battle Royale game, and it’s launching today. But it’s not just Battle Royale – this experience includes Gauntlet, a round-based elimination mode that samples from the franchise’s rich Multiplayer history, as well as Redsec’s Portal Community Creations, an ever-evolving sandbox from our community developers.
However, your first steps into Redsec will more than likely come in the form of the Battle Royale Initiation playlist:
In BR Duos, eliminate hostels, track intel, and dodge the chemical ring on a condensed map.
Battle Royale Initiation is built for new players as a low-stakes learning environment. In this variant, you and a squadmate can drop into a match with the following key differences:
Your path towards victory will involve the following:
You also get to choose a Sidearm, a small personal defense weapon that is great in a pinch, but is not meant to carry you through an entire match.
Next, get ready to parachute into Fort Lyndon. Either you or your duo will be labelled as the Squad Leader; when the Squad Leader calls for a jump, both of you will leap out of the infiltration plane.
At any point, the non-Leader can break away from the formation and continue dropping on their own. However, we highly recommend that new players stay in formation. Your parachute will automatically deploy when you get close to the ground. Alternatively, you can manually deploy the parachute to delay landing in favor of a more intentional landing spot.
Scavenging for weapons, ammo, and armor become the tools for survival.
These are all available through a variety of crates found in the map; look for giant rectangular boxes that are green (Common), red-and-black (Rare), or red with Class symbols (Class Chests). Look for vehicles that can be opened to contain more items, as well as locked vaults.
Crates can also contain ammo, which is shared between all weapons in a given weapon category. While there are other ways to gain more ammo, like picking it off eliminated enemies or getting an Ammo Resupply Call-In, the easiest way to restock is to use the Support Class’ Supply Box.
Your primary mission in Battle Royale is to eliminate all enemies. Second are Contracts, objectives that can be accepted on your full map screen and reward powerful items. Whenever a Contract becomes available to choose, you will receive a prompt below the compass on your HUD.
The Circle of Death. One step into this area will near instantly down and eliminate you. Mind the red-shaded areas on your mini-map or heed the warnings on your HUD when it shows a red skull icon and a distance.
In Battle Royale, death is not always finite. In the first few minutes of every match, you automatically get a Second Chance, redeploying immediately from the sky. If you don’t use your Second Chance, you get a sizable chunk of XP, which is great for ranking up and unlocking more Loadout items.
Alternatively, Battle Royale includes Respawn Points where squad members can revive their allies. After activating a Respawn Point, stay within its radius for a short period of time to respawn all dead allies. If you are spectating from beyond, you are able to request a respawn.
The last remaining Battle Royale squad wins the match.
At the end of your Initiation journey, you should be ready to drop into Battle Royale.
In Gauntlet, eight squads of four players each go head-to-head in a series of special operations that push every squad to their limit. If you like traditional Multiplayer FPS experiences, then you’ll love Gauntlet.
Gauntlet involves creating a custom loadout and pits squads against each other in a series of high-octane missions. Every mode includes a helpful in-game description and demonstration of how to play, including what actions score points for your squad. Failure to secure enough points results in elimination, while winning four modes in a Gauntlet match means victory.
Here are three quick tips to get started in this pick-up-and-play experience:
See you in Fort Lyndon!
