Category: Video Games

Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail studio HoYoverse’s newest upcoming title, Zenless Zone Zero, is a fusion of what you’d expect from HoYoverse games with totally new ideas. The game studio’s development processes are largely a mystery, but in an interview with Zenless Zone Zero producer Zhenyu Li at a media event, IGN learned a little more about what goes into kicking off an entirely new game at HoYoverse, Zenless Zone Zero’s future, and at least this particular team’s position on generative AI.

Zenless Zone Zero (also known as ZZZ) is an action game with a heavy emphasis on its flashy urban landscape set in an apocalyptic world. Players take their team of three into monster-infested roguelike zones, then bounce back to the city landscape to complete side quests, get to know characters better, and maybe grab a cup of coffee or bowl of ramen.

Like the other HoYoverse games, its variety of stylish characters with combat specializations is arguably its biggest focal point. As the entertainment landscape has been in a tumult with the rush in the development of generative AI, we couldn’t help but ask: is the Zenless Zone Zero team using generative AI in development, or is it planning to?

“Today, no,” Li said. “For the art part, we have not tried it, but we have tried a part of it to touch on the programming. As for the art aspect, I think that the human touch is more meaningful right now and this is what our team is pursuing.”

This approach seems to be in line with what the Honkai: Star Rail team explored in using AI for development as of last year.

Li also explained that when developing ZZZ’s characters, the aesthetics came first early on. However, that changed as development progressed. The planning team responsible for character mechanics and the art team now work closely together to create new characters.

With the blurb “Gear up, get in, and get out”, Exoborne elegantly sets out its stall as an extraction shooter. But they left out the most important part: “Get blown around by a massive tornado”. While Exoborne bears all the features you’d expect from the likes of Escape from Tarkov and Call of Duty: Warzone’s DMZ, the most exciting part of a presentation I saw at Play Days was when developer Sharkmob talked about the weather.

Exoborne’s setting is not postapocalyptic, but rather midapocalyptic, with the world falling apart all around you – the result of mankind’s meddling with the climate. Project Rebirth’s attempts to provide limitless clean energy have backfired somewhat, and now Mother Nature is taking her revenge.

Extraction shooters live or die on emergent gameplay, and there’s nothing as emergent as a twister, flood or tsunami. The weather during a session of Exoborne can change from clement to hellscape in minutes – all of which has profound effects on gameplay, according to Sharkmob.

A 10-minute walkthrough video based on a pre-Alpha build of the game began with a short cutscene where a group of teammates known as The Reborn assemble in a dropship and prepare to jump. The character models are based on whatever skins and loadouts each player has selected, so this is a nice chance to show off your flair before the action starts.

The players then skydived from the dropship, parachuting in to the map below. Action kicked off immediately, as this area of Colton County in the Southeast USA was infested with killer robotic machines and human enemies.

Kill, loot, equip – so far, so extraction shooter. Entering a base located nearby required some teamwork, and the destruction of some AT-ST-like enemy walkers, while at another point the squad clambered aboard a Warthog-style armored vehicle with open top/sides/back for ease of blasting. Maps are as vertical as they are wide, with towers connected by huge Rebirth Cables that snake through the environment, placed by the architects at Rebirth without regard for the scenery or the human residents; these industrial eyesores allow players to ascend with grappling hooks and fight on higher ground. Burned-out school buses and a busted motel sign litter the deserted streets of what might long ago have been an idyllic rural town. Sinkholes offer the chance to explore underground.

And then came the tornado warning. Once the weather hit, the squad cut their mission short, calling in the dropship and climbing aboard with the loot before things got hairy. But a Sharkmob developer explained that over a longer play session, you can expect a dynamic range of climates to impede your progress. The rain apparently gets so heavy you can no longer hear your teammates, their comms drowned out by the deluge, forcing players to rethink their strategies.

While the risk may be high in any given session, Sharkmob has designed Exoborne to be more forgiving in the longer term. That is, extraction is not always guaranteed, and you may lose items in a given session if you don’t make it out alive – but the game makes it possible to rebuild your arsenal over future games, improving your character from game to game as you loot and progress. The idea is to make the game as approachable as possible for newcomers, who may find the high risk of other extraction shooters off-putting.

Throw in a bunch of cool near-future weapons, tech gear and Exo-Rigs, and of course a mix of PVP and PVE scavenging action, and Exoborne is shaping up to be a cool addition to the genre.

Skate Story’s vibe gripped me right away. Its liminal, Vaporwave-inspired levels mix hyper-realistic concrete textures, lighting effects, and objects like a chain-link fence or The Moon with engrossingly impressionistic flourishes like The Skater’s body, which is made of kaleidoscopic glass, or the on-looking, ever-judgemental eyes whose disembodied voices screech in unison in disdain for your quest. It’s a lot to take in, but never too overwhelming. These levels felt just wild enough to imbue each moment with its own distinct sense of cool without distracting me from the mission at hand: skating.

Skating might be the most normal thing about Skate Story. That’s not to say it’s bad or uninteresting, but it does feel exactly how you’d want a skating game to feel. It has a great sense of speed as you accelerate by holding down or mashing the A button to go as quickly as humanly possible. This game’s tight camera really emphasized that sense of speed too, focusing on your crystalline avatar as they lean into any momentum they can get a hold of.

I saw a pretty early section of the game, so tricks and jumps—while fun—were pretty simple. Holding down a specific button controls one of The Skater’s feet, and hitting another button initiates the trick itself. Each trick and jump works on a timer, with a little notch sliding around the outline of an organic shape. Releasing the button for a trick or jump while the notch is floating around in the thicker part of said outline will execute it perfectly, and reward you with better air time. Doing a trick with imperfect timing didn’t seem to cause that much of an issue, but I’m certain it will become increasingly important later on in Skate Story.

The levels I played had me zooming down tight corridors, exploring a courtyard, jumping over deadly neon red nettles, and visiting museum gift shops at the behest of verbose statues. Although that speed demonic camera worked wonders for Skate Story’s feel, it sometimes betrayed its flexibility of movement and occasionally even fought against its own sense of speed and pace as it obscured certain objectives or obstacles in some levels. Obstacles are usually easy enough to vault over, even with a split-second’s notice. But The Skater is made out of glass, so even the slightest error can set you back a spell, making the camera problem a tad more frustrating than it would be otherwise.

Unreliable camera aside, each level presented a satisfyingly diverse approach to design and pacing with repetition cleverly punctuating important moments while twisting what I’d already seen into something new and fresh thanks to its unexpectedly charming writing. Developer Sam Eng told me that this semi-autobiographical story is inspired by true events, but didn’t go much deeper than that. The chunk I saw was so strange and impressionistic that I can’t wait to see where Sam takes the story next. In my half hour with the demo, I watched as The Skater set out on their quest to shatter the moon. Culminating in a trial to prove their worth—and their skating chops—Skate Story’s writing and sense of humor stand in a league of their own. This isn’t just because its metaphorical approach is weird, but because it had me chuckling all the way through.

With a promising story, absorbing vibe, and responsive skating controls, Skate Story has so much potential as both a distinct story and a damn cool skating game. It shot up to the top of my Steam wishlist after my hands-on demo at Summer Game Fest this year, and I can’t wait to see the weird places this wildly expressive skating game goes.

The first of Blumhouse Games’ newly announced slate, Fear The Spotlight promises throwback horror with a more approachable take on PS1-era horror gameplay designed for non-horror fans to enjoy. Set on the night of a break-in gone wrong, this story follows two high schoolers on a night they won’t soon forget as they unravel their school’s dark past.

Fear The Spotlight follows a trend that has yet to get old in that it looks a lot like an updated PS1 game. Chunky character models wearing low-resolution textures and a CRT filter might have you believe that this is a lost game from the late ‘90s. But don’t let its homage for bygone games like Silent Hill or Resident Evil mislead you – Fear The Spotlight is no hollow nostalgia trip. Wandering around the school’s dim halls reveals a free camera, modern lighting systems, and most importantly, modernized controls.

Sunnyside High can get pretty spooky after hours. The high-pitched whir of security cameras and exaggerated creak of every door make everything just a bit more tense; you never know who or what could be around the next corner, with almost certain detention threatening any misstep. Ducking below desks to avoid the watchful eye of a rotating security camera or running from room to room exploring empty halls feels smooth and responsive. Overall, Fear The Spotlight seems intent on avoiding a lot of the pitfalls that hold its predecessors today, instead letting its story and mechanics shine in their own right.

That story shows immense promise. The half-hour demo I played followed two girls: Vivian and Amy. The picture of a perfect student, Vivian’s hesitant approach to their quest to break into the school’s library and perform a seance using a Ouija Board-like Spirit Board paints her as the goody-two-shoes foil to the rebellious and morose Amy. This punky goth kid is constantly pushing Vivian outside of her comfort zone. Meanwhile, something’s not quite right with Amy, but it’s hard to care… Her dynamic with Vivian was so compelling during the first half-hour of the game that all I wanted to do was see what happened next, no matter what the consequences were.

We learn that decades prior, Sunnyside High had a fire that claimed dozens of students’ lives. The ghost of these victims loomed over the school’s library as I found my way into the librarian’s office, fished the key for a display case out of their desk, and eventually freed the ‘Spirit Board’ from its glass prison. Small interactions like moving the Spirit Board’s planchette myself revealed just how much love and care has gone into building this experience with multiple dialog trees and responses to my trickery before ending the seance with an abrupt shock as Amy was seemingly possessed. Suddenly, the school started shifting, turning the familiar library into something else entirely as the hallway emitted a bright light, creating a concerning silhouette.

A mysterious letter for Amy sits in Vivian’s inventory. Its vague description, which hints at the hopes of giving it to her at the end of their adventure that night, adds an extra layer of tension of another kind; one that’s the perfect blend of teenage pining and fear of what might come between Vivian and making her confession.

Interestingly, this first project from husband and wife duo Cozy Game Pals already released on Steam in 2023 before the pair pulled it from storefronts following their deal with Blumhouse Games in order to add more into the game. Cozy Game Pals promised me that this updated version of Fear The Spotlight is getting about two more hours’ worth of content, according to their estimates. Given how detailed the first section was, I’m confident that the new additions to this short-but-sweet-seeming experience will be just as detailed as the original release when it comes out on PC and consoles sometime later this year.

Fear The Spotlight sets up a great premise for a horror game. With well-realized characters in a fun, trope-y premise, Cozy Game Pals teased something with lots of potential in this demo. Although I wish I had the opportunity to see more of the puzzle and exploration mechanics, its story has me really excited—and scared—to see what happens next.

With a focus on ecological restoration and a cool approach to exploration and crafting, Aloft shows a lot of promise as a feel-good survival-crafting game. This cozy take on the genre encourages players to glide between floating islands in the sky and fight corruption to restore their ecosystems while discovering the ruins of an ancient civilization. Notably, its first-person town-building and crafting systems seemed exceptionally deep based on my hands-off demo of the game.

In just half an hour, one of Aloft’s developers walked me through the beginning of the game and showed me in-depth tutorials for its myriad systems; so many that I’m glad I went hands-off to watch an expert at work. Nearly everything I saw seemed clever and engaging at the very least and was always framed around Aloft’s core conceit of creating a survival game with a positive, restorative message and vibe.

Off the bat, Aloft’s setup is immediately cool: you start out on a floating island in the sky with nothing. As you work your way through the starting area, you’ll eventually get a glider (think somewhere between Avatar: The Last Airbender and Breath of the Wild), and take flight to another island. Zooming from island to island looked really freeing, and developer Astrolabe Interactive made a point to incorporate systems to keep it engaging and interesting rather than just a hollow jump from one floating rock to another.

Aloft’s momentum systems fuel a lot of its moving parts. It’s crucial for successfully navigating the sky, and certain environmental bits like updrafts can help you gain some extra momentum—and height—as you make your way to the next island. Once you build enough momentum and land on another island, you might find yourself in a corrupted ecosystem.

Overrun with mushrooms and a dense, gray-brown fog, it’s immediately clear that something’s not right here. You can’t even harvest or mine anything from these out-of-whack biomes until you stave off the fungal corruption. Based on what I’ve seen, this is the only place where Aloft has combat. Using timing-based real-time systems (kind of like active reload in Gears of War) to gain small bonuses to boost your attack rate, you’ll fight off small waves of goblin-like mushrooms as you attack the root of the corruption.

Clearing these tree-like fungal structures from the biome will allow you to begin restoring it. Aloft more or less tells you exactly what you need to do to help bring it back to life, which will usually involve diversifying the flora on the island by planting new plants to help improve that microcosm’s sustainability. Once it’s flourishing, you can finally harvest plants from the island and you might even chance upon a helpful critter like a sheep to help produce wool.

With the right materials, you can even pitch a sail on your island. All you need is a rudder, a wheel, and a few sails to catch the wind that’s constantly blowing thanks to the massive hurricane at the heart of Aloft’s map. Crafting in general might be the most interesting system Aloft has going for it, in fact – especially in how you unlock new recipes.

The first is tied to the game’s story. Stumbling upon stone frescoes left by an ancient civilization will reveal new ideas to you, teaching you how to make stuff that’s important to Aloft’s story and progression. This is going to be how you unlock critical pieces like the Glider Stand or the aforementioned rudders and sails.

Next is the more traditional route, which strikes the perfect balance between leaving it up to you as the player to discover a new recipe and showing you how to make it outright. Instead of just showing you everything you can craft with an item from the get-go, small indicators will tell you whether or not you’ve explored every possible combination of materials without explicitly saying what those combinations will make. This seems like the perfect balance of mystery and encouragement and plays well into Aloft’s overall sense of discovery and mystery.

The last crafting method might be the coolest thing I saw in the demo. You can fill out the empty pages of a notebook by drawing things you see in the world around you. Let’s say you stumble on an abandoned house with some cool furniture you haven’t seen. By drawing that piece of furniture, you’ve suddenly unlocked its crafting recipe for your own home.

Like a delicate ecosystem, seemingly every system in Aloft feeds into another. Momentum from gliding can affect combat, succeeding in combat can earn you helpful crafting materials, those crafting materials can then enable you to raise sails on your island and fly it into a storm to help water your crops. With so many systems at play, all coming together with impressive cohesion, it’s hard to believe that Aloft is still in Early Access. I’m really interested to see how this interconnecting web of systems and ideas continues to evolve as the game expands beyond its current state.