Games don’t come much cooler than Sonokuni. This is a Hotline Miami-inspired action game developed by the Japanese hip hop group Don Yasa Crewand, just when you thought that premise couldn’t get any sweeter, it’s coming to Switch.
Inspired by Japanese mythology, Sonokuni will see you playing as a lone assassin, Takeru, tasked with taking down a surreal superpower. To do so, you’ll have to punch, kick and parry your way through opponents, all while bending time to make the action feel that bit more cinematic — another mark in the ‘coolness’ column for additional bullet time.
Hi there, Xbox Wire readers — do you have what it takes to become a hero? Today, we at Whitethorn Games are here to help you do just that in 3D action-adventure Slime Heroes— available now on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One!
In Slime Heroes you’ll take on the role of a slime, the unlikely hero who must save the world from a mysterious corruption. You’ll embark on a journey to explore the expansive 3D world — alone or with a friend — where you’ll encounter ferocious enemies, challenging but approachable puzzles, and uncover lost treasures. As you battle your way through the many obstacles in your path, you’ll gain magical skills that you can dynamically combine to create unique and powerful magic attacks that can take down even the most corrupt minions and bosses. You’ll discover a touching story of overcoming expectations, friendship, and forgiveness as you progress because even slimes can be heroes!
Now, this is quite the challenge for a small slime, so we’re here with a quick start guide to help your slime become the hero they were meant to be.
Explore a Stunning Open World
Dive into an open world that features six distinct regions filled with hidden secrets that will help you through your journey. As you explore off the beaten path, the world will open up, revealing hidden areas and barriers to unlock that will allow you to return to previously explored areas more easily.
You’ll also discover secret puzzle and challenge rooms, and challenging boss dungeons. While the rooms are completely optional to visit, by entering them and completing their challenges, you’ll gain some very helpful items to help you on your quest to save the world.
And be sure to search areas thoroughly, as there are many hidden items to be found throughout the world. From hats that give your slime powerful buffs to potent magical skills to big deposits of shards to help level up your slime, you’ll never know what you’ll find high up on a slightly out-of-view ledge or a crumbled-looking wall! Returning to previously-explored areas can fetch you some great items too, as the new powers you gain will help you reach even more secret areas.
Take Your Slime to The Next Level
Very early on, you’ll meet Orion, who will need a little help from you! They will provide you with a place where you can save your progress and recover your health. They’ll also help you level up your slime — for a price. As you defeat enemies, you’ll collect shards that you can exchange there to boost your slime’s health, strength, magic, and speed. Be sure to return frequently to Orion’s spot to cash in your shards and gain that extra bit of power.
Now, what about increasing your health bar? That’s where those puzzle and battle rooms come in! The archaeologist, Pazmut, waiting outside is also eager to help you save the world. By defeating these rooms and returning tomes to them, you can earn extra hearts to increase your health bar.
Orion can also help you figure out your best build. Visit them to check out the practice arena, where you can test out new weapons and hat combinations, as well as different skill combinations so that you can perfect the build that fits your playstyle perfectly.
Become the Ultimate Magic User
The world of Slime Heroes is full of magic, and even a small slime can become a powerful mage. As you defeat enemies, you’ll collect special skills associated with that enemy’s attack: powerful projectiles, twirling tornados, and more with a total of 18 skills to find. Take full advantage of these skills by combining them in your primary and secondary skill slots to create new, powerful skills. Placing two of the same skill in each slot makes that skill more powerful but consumes more MP. Combining two skills will create a new power, while swapping the skill into different slots will create a new power.
You can also find elemental skills to add to your basic skill combinations that will provide an added punch to your magic attacks. As well, earn powerful ultimate skills by defeating boss dungeons, and equip them in your ultimate skill slot. With ten elemental attacks and seven ultimate attacks to collect and combine with your skills you’ll be able to magically defeat any enemy.
Skills can be changed up on the fly at any time, allowing you to adapt to any challenge with ease. There are thousands of skill combinations you can make, so keep mixing and matching until you find the ones that best suit your play style.
Gear up with Weapons and Equipment
Slime Heroes has a variety of weapons and equipment earned by defeating bosses as you progress in the game. Each weapon comes with its own set of stats, so experiment a bit in the practice arena to figure out which ones best suit your play style and combat situation.
As for equipment, what works better for a slime than a jaunty hat? Like weapons, each hat comes with its own set of stats, from stat bonuses to bonus skills. And like skills and weapons, you can change them up at any time — even during battle — so you never have to sacrifice fashion over function.
Call in a Friend
While you can play Slime Heroes alone, saving the world is a big job for a little slime. It’s always more fun to play with a friend! Invite a friend to play at any time. With both couch co-op and online multiplayer, you can team up and tackle it together to take down the vicious enemy in no time flat!
A Game for Anyone
Making sure games can be played by anyone, regardless of ability, skill, or experience with the genre is a value shared by Whitethorn Games and Pancake Games. Because of this, the team has put a lot of effort into making Slime Heroes as accessible as possible. You can explore them in the settings menu once you start your game. Some of these include multiple difficulty settings including sliders to increase or decrease enemy, world, or player damage, and puzzle timing, visual accessibility features to adjust cursor size and colour, character outline and a guiding arrow, button remapping, disabling flash effects, and more.
We hope these tips will help you on your journey to save the world in Slime Heroes. Don’t forget to pick up your copy on Xbox Series X|S or Xbox One today to discover even more as you save the Guardians and save the world!
Journey with your fellow slimes to save the ancient guardians from a mysterious corruption taking over the land. Explore a whimsical world filled with secret passageways, challenging puzzle dungeons, and forgotten treasures. Consume special gems and dynamically combine them to create unique magical skills. Level up and fight back against the corrupted minions to restore the land.
Dynamic Abilities
-Collect an arsenal of skill gems consumed from defeated corrupted creatures.
-Dynamically mix skill gems to craft unique skill sets at any time.
-Discover all the different types of enemies to complete your gem collection.
Co-Op
-Jump into your friends’ game at any time and drop right into the action.
-The entire game can be played with a friend.
-All loot is shared; no fighting over that one pretty gem.
-Create different magical abilities that complement each other when playing with a friend.
Expansive World
-Discover secret passageways and challenging puzzle dungeons in a whimsical open world.
-Find the six gods of the realm and defeat the corrupted version of each. Once freed they will aid you on your quest!
Commemorate The Last of Us franchise with a brand-new controller; here’s a first look at the DualSense wireless controller – The Last of Us Limited Edition. Created in close collaboration with the creative team at Naughty Dog, this striking design features glossy trophy icons printed across the surface that call back to key moments, characters, and events from The Last of Us Part I and The Last of Us Part II.
To share more about the controller’s design and inspiration, here’s Head of Studio and Head of Creative Neil Druckmann and Graphic Designer Megan Mehran from Naughty Dog:
“We were excited by the chance to memorialize The Last of Us franchise in a controller that fans and our own team would love. We wanted to ensure that both installments of The Last of Us are represented, via trophy icons printed in black gloss across the controller body. Among the trophies, three particular images will immediately stand out for TLOU fans: The firefly, moth, and wolf. Players will recognize the Fireflies’ iconic spray-painted logo that originated in Part I, while the moth and wolf represent the intertwining lives and duality between Ellie and Abby in Part II.“
Download the image
Download the image
Download the image
Download the image
Download the image
The DualSense wireless controller – The Last of Us Limited Edition will be available in limited quantities for $84.99 / €84.99 / £74.99. Pre-orders start on March 14, 2025 at 10am local time at direct.playstation.com (where available) as well as participating retailers, with launch on April 10, 2025. The exact launch date and availability for the controller may vary by country/region.
We’re thrilled to share this new design with the community during an especially exciting time for new and old TLOU fans alike. In the coming months, PC players will be able to continue the acclaimed story of this iconic franchise with The Last of Us Part II Remastered, launching on PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store on April 3, 2025. Fans can also follow Joel, Ellie, and Abby’s emotional journeys in the highly anticipated second season of The Last of Us, premiering April 13, 2025, on HBO and available to stream on Max.
direct.playstation.com Purchase Information
Starting March 14, 2025 at 7am PT in the U.S., and 10am local time in the U.K., France, Germany, Austria, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, players will be able to pre-order the DualSense wireless controller – The Last of Us Limited Edition through direct.playstation.com in limited quantities. When ordering directly from PlayStation, enjoy free launch day delivery for eligible pre-orders – visit direct.playstation.com for more details.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is getting a major patch on 13th March, developers Warhorse have announced. It will enhance the bracingly mucky RPG with modding tools and a “trove of updates”, including what the devs ambiguously refer to as Barber Mode. Going by the promotional image they’ve knocked together, this is just a selection of beards and haircuts for protagonist Henry. But it is not yet 13th March, so let us dare to dream. Let us imagine that the update will let Henry become a barber, cutting a swathe through the innumerable beards and fringes of 15th century Bohemia.
After a quiet year beneath the waves, The Sinking City 2 has resurfaced with a brand new trailer and an official Kickstarter campaign launch.
Exactly one year after its announcement, the new trailer for The Sinking City 2 gives us our first look at pre-alpha gameplay and the expected focus on Lovecraftian horror first, with survival, and investigation gameplay mixed in that developer Frogwares is embracing as its signature style. The team has also published a developer deep dive with a more detailed look at what the team is planning for combat, exploration, and optional investigation.
Alongside these trailers, Frogwares has launched a Kickstarter today to help get the game over the finish line. In a statement, CEO Wael Amr explained that the Kickstarter funding was necessary due to the ongoing war in Ukraine:
After 3 years of this horrid war hanging over our daily lives, we’ve learned to adapt, though it has never been easy. In 2023 when we released Sherlock Holmes The Awakened with the help of Kickstarter and our loving fans, we built ourselves a safety net that saved us more than once. From power outages and the need for team members to relocate on short notice, to having to pause development for days, this safety net was crucial. Given that The Sinking City 2 is a far more complex and demanding game, we’ve decided to take the same route as before.
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.
You know, we had a sneaky suspicion that Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom would have some legs on it. From people’s ridiculous Ultrahand creations to glitches to challenge runs, it feels like players are always discovering something weird or new.
Well, fans have now found a huge hole (ahem…) tucked underneath the Hebra Depths, and Gaming Reinvented has provided a breakdown of how to reach it.
Monster Hunter Wilds is the fastest-selling game in Capcom’s history. It continues to lord over the Steam charts, with peaks that might cause Counter-Strike 2 to glance momentarily down from its Olympus of user-created hats, and while people are still booting the dung out of the PC version’s performance, verdicts upon the beast-punching as a whole are glowing.
To suggest that now is the time to go back to formula is probably pure contrarianism, but Wilds makes my brain itch. Building on (and hopefully not just recapping) Brendy’s excellently ambivalent Monster Hunter Wilds review, I think the series is balancing on the edges of contradictions that extend throughout its design, from the combat through the user interface to the world and narrative themes. I think it’s been doing that for years, in fact, but Wilds, for me, is where Monster Hunter’s confusion about itself has come to a head.
Marvel 1943: Rise Of Hydra might release at Christmas according to Khary Payton, who voices the Black Panther in the upcoming World War 2-set action game. It’s the first morsel of release info we’ve garnered for Rise Of Hydra since its announcement last March, which tantalised with the prospect of playing USO Show-era Steve Rogers and Azzuri, great-grandfather to the current Black Panther.
