Steam

Cards on the table: Samson is glitchy. It’s janky. You’re as likely to fail a mission from getting stuck on some decorative bin bags as you are from being beaten to death. These are all issues that can be fixed, but only with the kind of rigorous update schedule that beleaguered developer Liquid Swords is unlikely to be able to pull off. So, in its current state at least, it’s difficult to recommend. I’m gonna do that annoying thing now that people in my line of work love doing: I’m going to contradict everything I just said with a big but. As in, “however”, not my ****. But (there it is), Samson offers such an interesting and unique take on the open world crime ****** that it does warrant some consideration as a low-cost stopover on this last stretch of highway to the open world crime ****** we all wish we were playing already. In short, Samson’s got a touch of roguelike about it. A roguelite, maybe. Diet Rogue, if you will. It’s “rogue-ish”. For a game that looks, in trailers, like your mum knitted you a copy of GTA 4 instead of getting one from the shops, it scarcely qualifies as a GTA clone at all. For a start, it’s not a power fantasy, eschewing the traditional petty criminal rags-to-underworld-kingpin-riches story for the oppressive conceit of insurmountable debt. Following a botched job in another city, protagonist Samson McCray is saddled with $100,000 to pay off via odd jobs. Strict daily targets must be adhered to or the bailiffs are sent round to give you a kicking. Fail to raise cash quickly enough and you pay in blood: your sister is being held hostage by the St. Louis shellsuit ****** as collateral. And has apparently also been roped into doing their bookkeeping. Every day you wake up with six action points and a list of available jobs that pay a fixed amount of cash. Action points are the currency of time, and with a finite amount of time to make the daily quota, each job must be considered according to its risk. If, for example, you bite off a bit more than you can chew and end up getting your head kicked in on a shakedown job, you’ll wake up in a clinic having been relieved of all your takings for the day: a devastating setback in comparison to the GTA equivalent, where the financial consequences of emergency healthcare are so negligible it calls into question that series’ credentials as a satire of the American condition. Motoring, the quintessential symptom of the American condition and Grand Theft Auto’s most carefree pastime, ceases to be a pure jolly in Samson’s world. If you take one of the various driving jobs, you may end up spending half of your fee on car repairs. Yes, some basic vehicle management is required of you here. Not enough for this to qualify as some sort of dreary petrolhead sim, but enough to make you less cavalier about pranging the motor than you would be in other open world driving games. Your relationship with Samson’s car really sets his story apart from that of GTA 4’s Niko Bellic, to whom vehicles are about as disposable as printer cartridges or chewing gum. For all the trappings of poverty on display in Rockstar’s worlds, very little of it matters. Samson knows, as much of the audience does, how it feels to scrimp and save to keep a single vehicle running. And it is a gorgeous vehicle. The sort of ridiculously macho American muscle car that feels iconic even if you’ve never seen it before. A barely tamed animal of a thing with a throaty growl and a nitrous booster that somehow gets off the line slower than a Kia Picanto and corners like a pub. it's the exact sort of classic car that would be kept and adored by a guy who can't actually afford a classic car. Samson’s ace in the hole is that it has consequences. The constant looming threat of losing an entire day’s progress has a real physiological effect on you. It’s easy for a snowball effect to take hold on the debt if you have a particularly bad run. Lose all your cash on the last job of the day, end up in arrears, get battered by the debt collectors, head out compromised having used your last jar of painkillers. Unable to use your sherman tank of a car in driving challenges because the repair bill is already an entire afternoon’s work. It feels like a deliberate commentary on how crippling debt begats more crippling debt: a barely tweaked satire of the world on the other side of the screen, where the player is statistically of a cohort whose entire adult existence has been spent forced to chainsmoke financial crises. The cosmic joke that it is bloody expensive to be poor. It’s a grim game born of grim circumstances. A vision of crumbling decay from a studio languishing at the pointy end of an industry in existential decline. Samson’s unique, weirdly compelling structure wasn’t the original plan. In fact, it was supposed to be something more traditionally associated with open-world cities teeming with jackable wheels and whackable jackoffs – an action RPG. Or, an action game with RPG elements. An RPG-lite, ish. Ugh, curse these rigid boxes. In a recent interview with PC Gamer, Liquid Swords founder Christopher Sundberg lamented that this abrupt pivot from a straight up GTA clone to a tightly focused rogue-like-lite-ish with no guns and a relatively tiny city came from sheer economic necessity. In the post-covid slump, publishers shut off the money hose, and projects like Samson found themselves parched. In a wretched turn of events, half of the Liquid Swords team got laid off, leaving a much smaller crew to turn what they had into some kind of sellable game. In his words: “We laid off half the team. And those were our friends, and that hurt.” The game that survives in all likelihood isn’t as good or as polished as the game that might have been, especially considering the founder’s track record at Avalanche Studios. But I’m willing to bet that it’s a far more memorable proposition, for better or worse. Anecdotally, it is prompting some marvellous reactions. It has given my colleague Matt Purslow the gift of being the closest thing we've ever gotten to a video game version of the Ryan Gosling getaway driving movie Drive, thanks to the inspired police evasion mechanic of being able to slip into a dark alley and switch off the car (which, the more he's played, does appear to be a marvellous bug and not an intended feature). In a group chat with Rock Paper Shotgun’s esteemed Mark Warren, the Samson experience is compared to what it must feel like to be a minor character in GTA 4, an observation so good that it’s annoying and he’s lucky I’m not stealing it. For me, it evokes a golden age of daft, experimental GTA clones, where there was this 10-15 year ******* of shocking innovation as every publisher scrabbled to stake a claim on the genre like every mid-sized western nation calling bagsies on ever thinner slices of Antarctica. We had everything from Red Faction Guerrilla to Mad Max, from The Simpson’****** & Run to Sleeping Dogs and even Lego City Undercover. Its closest and most recent analog is probably last year’s The Precinct, the GTA-esque police procedural that is also rogue-adjacent and made by a very small team. To be clear, Samson isn’t as good as any of those, even if it does share some of its creative DNA with Mad Max and its stablemate, Just Cause. But Liquid Swords has stumbled into the same kind of interesting genre twist that defines those titles, where in the absence of anything approaching the resources to mount a serious challenge to Grand Theft Auto’s intricate hyper-realism and Hollywood bombast, they focused on making an alternative proposition. These games thrive on doing things that GTA simply wouldn’t ever do: be it destructible environments, a setting like Hong Kong, or Springfield, or a colonised Mars in the far future, or car combat that plays like a brawler on wheels. Samson’s unique modifier is its rogue adjacent structure, the framework upon which rests a debt management meta-game that drives the whole experience. Boiled down to one word, Samson’s ace in the hole is that it has consequences. Real stakes, where the constant looming threat of losing an entire day’s progress has a real physiological effect on you that you rarely get from a criminal power fantasy where within 40 seconds of losing a fight with the LSPD you end up back on the street with a full health bar and a bazooka still inexplicably in your pocket. If you want to keep any weapons handy in Samson, by the way, you’ve got to keep them in the trunk. To be clear, I'm not saying GTA 7 should be a roguelike. I'm definitely not suggesting that a trendsetting behemoth like Rockstar North needs to copy anyone's homework. What Samson does do, though, is provide examples of how deeply felt consequences for failure can connect the player to its world in an authentic way that the naughty boy fantasy playground of Grand Theft Auto, even when it was doing riffs on The Wire back in 2008, rarely achieves. Like a balding set of tires, Rockstar often leaves a lot of friction to be desired. Even when it was doing a 60-hour epic about a guy dying of tuberculosis, the complications were only seen in the narrative, not felt in the bones of the thing. As a card carrying Flawed Game Enjoyer, I find Samson deeply fascinating. Within this broken mess, there are bold ideas that would make for an interesting twist if deployed in a better, more resourced project. And you can certainly marvel at the gumption it must have taken just to get this thing over the finish line in Today’s Economic Environment. But for all the ways it can be admired, Samson remains impossible to recommend: the end result is like going to ******** for wings. It’s cheap, it’s stupid, and you’d be embarrassed to tell your friends about it. And there are plenty of other places to get wings. Like Vin Diesel's Wheelman. Jim Trinca is a Video Producer at IGN, and when he isn't fawning over Assassin's Creed, he can be found watching Star Trek and eating stuff. Follow him on @jimtrinca.bsky.social, and check out The Trinca Perspective playlist over on IGN's YouTube channel! View the full article

If you’ve checked social media today, you may have stumbled across a see-through ballpoint pen with real parasites swimming around inside it (and maybe dismissed it as AI slop). Prompting grossed-out reactions and comparisons to Resident Evil, the pen is actually a real souvenir from Japan’s Kochi Prefecture. Earlier this year, Japan’s Asahi News fished out the origins of this strange writing implement. Even though the pen looks like something you’d find on Wesker’s desk, it’s a real product purchasable from a fishmongers’ shop in Susaki city, Kochi Prefecture. The transparent section of the pen contains living Anisakis, a type of fish-dwelling parasite, suspended in a clear liquid. The parasite can cause food poisoning if you eat raw or uncooked fish containing it. Lovely. The kind of ***** a Resident Evil villain carries around and stabs themselves with before transforming into a giant meatblob with lots of eyes to shoot at. [Hidden Content] — Johnny (@JohnnyMonke) April 8, 2026 The company behind the pen is not Umbrella Corporation but local company Tada Suisan. According to company president Takuhiro Tada, the inspiration came from an acquaintance on social media back in 2021 who “was putting Anisakis extracted from his own stomach into ballpoint pens.” In his original video post, pen creator FUNA84 quipped that, “If you use it when signing the consent form for Anisakis extraction surgery at the hospital, you can show them you’re an Anisakis master!” アニサキス入りボールペンできた。 良くある「ひょっとして、この虫アニサキスかな？」って時に比較できるし、病院でアニサキス摘出手術の同意書記入時に使えばアニサキスマスターをアピールできるぞ。 [Hidden Content] — FUNA︎ (@FUNA84) March 6, 2021 Inspired by FUNA84’s post, Tada tried making an Anisakis pen for fun but “it got such a big reaction, that I decided to sell them at the store.” The Anisakis are extracted from caught fish (specifically skipjack/bonito), and so the number of pens made by the company each week depends on the catch. “Sometimes we make about 20 pens a day, while at other times we might not make any for a week,” Tada explained. The pens have previously created waves on Japanese news and social media back in 2024 but this time, they have caught the attention of users outside Japan — especially players of a certain Capcom survival horror series. Resident Evil fans have been quipping that it's an “Umbrella Corporation 5-year work anniversary present.” Even Resident Evil’s Community and Social Media Manager for Europe noted that the pen sounds like something that would pop up in an ominous in-game diary entry… Resident Evil diaries be like April 9 I found this cool pen with wriggly stuff in it at the office, but as my manager walked in I started chewing nervously on it. I also let my dog have a nibble because it tasted funny. Hope the thing inside doesn't escape. April 10 It escaped. [Hidden Content] — Katastrophe (@ImKatastrophe) April 8, 2026 Posting on April 8, Tada himself reacted to the pens going viral, saying that he understood why the product was causing a stir but noted that the content had been shared by unauthorized reposter accounts. He also mentioned that there have been some threatening comments. The Anisakis pens have also stirred up ethical debates online, with some suggesting that they are pointless cruelty to living things. It certainly looks like the kind of pen Umbrella scientists would have used when taking notes on the latest mutant experiment. Verity Townsend is a Japan-based freelance writer who previously served as editor, contributor and translator for the game news site Automaton West. She has also written about Japanese culture and movies for various publications. View the full article

Valve hasn't commented on the nature or validity of "SteamGPT"View the full article

But industry experts say it may be too early to conclude that modern AI systems are directly responsible for most of these job losses. Cognizant Chief AI Officer Babak Hodjat told Nikkei Asia that companies often cite artificial intelligence as a convenient explanation during restructuring. Read Entire Article View the full article

Riot Games has unveiled its bold new vision for the Valorant Champions Tour in 2027, and it looks like the developer-publisher has looked to the past for inspiration. The new format will throw the doors open to teams across the globe once more, removing the current league system in favor of a good ol' fashioned regional free-for-all to decide who gets to go to Masters, and subsequently Champions. "Everything is a tournament" now, and the stakes have never been higher. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: New Valorant agent Miks is channeling pure sonic power, and he could be my next instalock Valorant ranks order, distribution, and ranking system explained Valorant codes April 2026 View the full article

Taeseok Jang finds the silver lining in these situationsView the full article

Project EL is no longer in developmentView the full article

Interview | We hear from Krafton's Taeseok Jang and Taehyun Kim about the future of PUBG: BattlegroundsView the full article

The Waking the Grid quest is about exploring Spaceport for various security devicesView the full article

The Epic Games Store has officially announced The Stone of Madness as its free game for April 16, while launching a separate freebie for PC gamers in the meantime. Blending tactical stealth with a Bourbon-era Spain setting, The Stone of Madness will mark the single most expensive title given away to Epic Games Store users in April 2026. View the full article

The Razer BlackShark V3 Pro has some of the best audio that can be found in a PC gaming headset, and it's just dropped to its lowest ever price.View the full article

The use of generative AI in games is one of the hottest topics in the industry right now, and a couple of weeks ago, the biggest game of the year so far, Crimson Desert, found itself at the centre of it after some in-game paintings were discovered to have been created using the technology. It led to a swift apology from developer Pearl Abyss, who claimed that AI-generated assets “were unintentionally included in the final release,” and admitted it should have disclosed the use of AI to players. “We sincerely apologize for these oversights,” the Korean company added. It’s Steam's policy for games to clearly declare on their store pages if generative AI has been used to make them, but it is by no means against the rules to use these tools in the development process. So, should studios feel the need to apologise for using such technology? It’s a question IGN recently asked fellow Korean developer and head of PUBG Studios, Taeseok Jang. “It's a bit of a tricky question,” says Jang. “But what I can tell you now is I'm currently studying and monitoring the situation and industry's AI usage cases. Is this kind of situation happening only in the gaming industry, or is it relevant in the art industry or other industries as well? So, actually, as a fan, it doesn't matter to me. Because if they make good gameplay, then it doesn't matter to me if they use AI for artwork. Maybe it could be different from the perspective of developers or investors, but yeah, I cannot tell you the exact answer about it because I'm currently learning and studying the case.” So, it would seem that PUBG Studios values the craft of designing compelling gameplay more than the human touch of in-game artwork, then. To some extent, it makes sense — Battlegrounds is an experience-based, almost purely on the timeless tension of its gunplay and loot and survive loop — but I can’t help but feel like other aspects of game design should be held in as high regard. I play games to get immersed in worlds that feel like they have been sculpted by a human hand, which Crimson Desert does magnificently for the most part, incidentally. The thought of art design becoming the whole of generative AI, as long as the gameplay is good, just doesn’t sit well with me. So, what is PUBG’s position on using generative AI in its own games? Jang answers, “Our stance is that basically our goal for using AI is to bring new and fun gameplay experiences to our users. We are thinking that it is a tool, just like Maya, which we used in the past. There is no difference in terms of the purpose of that AI. So I think AI will give us freedom to focus on more fun gameplay experiences because it can give us freedom and more time by automating repetitive work. So when we make a new gameplay, it is not largely using AI yet for now, but currently we are at the stage of how to make it more helpful for making new experiences for our users.” “Automating repetitive work” sure does sound appealing, but when it comes at the cost of workforce numbers being reduced, is that net gain really worth it? I’m sure CEOs and company leaders would perhaps say so, but to the thousands of game developers who have already lost their jobs over the past year, I’m not sure they’d agree. AI technology is certainly something that seems more ingrained in the culture of PUBG Studio’s parent company, Krafton, though. The publisher currently finds itself in the middle of a long and expensive dispute with Subnautica 2 developers Unknown Worlds, in which the subsidiary studio has claimed that Krafton’s CEO used ChatGPT to “help him brainstorm ways to avoid paying the earnout”. That bill is said to have been the not insignificant sum of $250m. Recently, Krafton stated in a press release that while it will remain “focused on its core identity as a game developer”, it will continue to “explore opportunities rooted in its game technology.” It further added that, “since 2021, the company has applied AI technologies primarily to enhance gameplay experiences and improve development efficiency, including concepts such as CPCs (Co-Playable Characters). In October, KRAFTON declared its transition to an AI-first company to implement workflow automation, with the goal of reinvesting time and resources back into creative game development.” “Looking ahead, Krafton is evaluating how its game technology may eventually be applied to areas such as physical AI and robotics,” the statement continued. “These areas are viewed as long-term exploratory opportunities, not near-term business initiatives, and are informed by Krafton’s experience operating large-scale virtual worlds and physics-based simulations.” Krafton appears to be all-in on the AI revolution, then. I’d love to hear what you think about the use of generative AI in game development, though. Do you agree with the head of PUBG studios that, as long as the gameplay has been handcrafted and made to feel great, then it doesn’t matter how the in-game art is made? Or, would you prefer to see a fully human touch across all aspects of game development? Let us know in the comments below! Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social. View the full article

Ever since PUBG pioneered the genre and the subsequent rise of Fortnite, battle royale has been the dominant shooter mode of choice online. But now, the emergence of the extraction shooter as a mainstream concern, namely the popularity of Arc Raiders, threatens to take that crown. For nearly a decade, players have been going head-to-head to be the last standing, and while other genre contenders, such as the hero shooter, have had their successes, battle royale remains the most popular, whether that be Battlegrounds, Fortnite, Call of Duty: Warzone, or Apex Legends. But that won’t last forever, and is something Taeseok Jang, head of PUBG Studios, is very aware of. Hence, the developer is already branching out the PlayerUnknown experience into other formats. The most notable of these is the currently in-development ****** Budget, the Korean studio’s venture into the extraction shooter market. “I believe in its potential, so that's why we are making ****** Budget,” Jang explains in an interview with IGN, when asked if extraction shooters could ever overtake battle royales. “The genre itself is very complicated compared to shooter genres in terms of gameplay, and also, as a developer, it is not easy to make a good extraction shooter. But I think Arc Raiders has proven that it has huge potential. So yeah, I believe that it has huge potential.” Arc Raiders really has proven itself as the breakout extraction shooter hit, having sold over 14 million copies and reaching nearly 1 million concurrent players in the first few months after its launch. It’s become somewhat rare for a live-service shooter to find so much success of late, though, with games like Concord and Highguard shutting down in a matter of weeks of release. The jury is still very much out on Marathon, Bungie’s extraction shooter, too, which has garnered much critical acclaim but nowhere near the player numbers of an Arc Raiders. So, what is the key to a successful live-service shooter launch in 2026? “That’s what I want to know,” Jang jokingly told me in Seoul. Krafton’s experiment in the mobile market with PUBG Blindspot has already come to an end before it made it out of early access, with the announcement of its closure coming around the ninth anniversary of Battlegrounds. “As you can see, it is true that launching a live service is very difficult these days,” Jang continues. “And I think in the past, the number of live service games themselves was smaller than now, and at that time these live services were emerging in the market one by one, but now it is more difficult for live services to enter that niche market. But what I can tell you now is that the core of the game is fun. So if you find the core fun factors that you can appeal to players, then you can naturally find the niche market and position in the live-service industry. And if you pursue that effort to make a fun game and the USP that you can appeal to, then it will naturally make you successful.” Sounds simple. But the truth is, many “fun” games have failed to attract and grow an audience over the past few years, whether those be WB’s Multiversus, EA’s Knockout City, or Square Enix’s Marvel’s Avengers. Sadly, for every Arc Raiders, there are a hundred fun games that fail to find a fraction of its success. No release window has been given yet, but we’ll see how well PUBG: ****** Budget’s attempt to break into the extraction shooter space does when it arrives, and if Krafton has managed to find that key to live-service success that Battlegrounds benefited so much from in the first place. For more about PUBG, check out the original battle royale has Fortnite in its sights as it aims to become a “global cultural icon." Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social. View the full article

The first thing I did in Halloween was pick up a pickaxe. I thought it might give me a fighting chance against him. I was right. A couple minutes later, I ran into Michael Myers, the Shape himself. The fight that followed that quick: his knife against my pickaxe. I knocked him down, but that didn’t mean I won. He’s the boogeyman. Give him a minute, and he sits right back up. But it was enough time for me to get a headstart. If I wanted to survive a night in Haddonfield, that would have to be enough. If there was ever a film that was primed to be an asymmetrical horror game, John Carpenter’s Halloween is it. But after spending some time with it at PAX East, what makes Illfonic’s latest stand out isn’t the asymmetrical horror structure: it’s everything around it. Unlike most asymmetrical horror joints, Halloween isn’t just a 1v4 game where Michael takes on a group of Haddonfield residents. It’s the story of the town of Haddonfield, and what happens to that town when Michael Myers walks the streets. I wasn’t just trying to save myself or the other folks I was playing with; I was trying to save the other people in town, too. Michael’s here for everyone, including you, but he’s especially interested in Special Targets, who are named NPCs scattered throughout Haddonfield. Keeping them alive means getting to them before he does and letting them know there’s a masked killer on the loose. Each conversation is claustrophobic; I can barely see what’s around me. Every time, I’m vulnerable. Every time, he might be behind me. But once I convince the person I’m speaking to that the threat is real, we can help each other. They can call the cops; I can hand them a weapon, tell them to hide, follow me, point them to any escape we’ve unlocked. Even then, there are no guarantees. I can’t stay with them forever. But they’re better off than they were. Each conversation is claustrophobic; I can barely see what’s around me. Every time, I’m vulnerable. Every time, he might be behind me. Every journey into a house is a risk. Each time, I wonder if I’ll open a door to see Michael on the other side, staring at me from behind the mask. I started locking doors, turning TVs off and on depending on how much noise I’m making. I open drawers and scour the trunks of cars for anything to give me an edge: a brick, a lawn dart, maybe even a joint. That one’s to take the edge off. Inevitably, he’s there: around a corner, in the house, walking towards me on the street. Sometimes, the things I’ve done to keep me safe end up backfiring. I lock a door leading outside only to find Michael between myself and the other exit. Turn around, unlock the door I’ve just locked, and hope I can make it outside before he catches me. He doesn’t run, but he doesn’t always need to to catch you. He has a knack for disappearing into the darkness, appearing around corners. I don’t always understand how, at least not initially. The tension ebbs and flows. I know he’s not always there, and I have to navigate the town to find what I need and save who I can. But it can change in an instant. Lead Designer Jordan Matthewson told me that the design of Haddonfield itself, and making the people in it, was a crucial part of the story of each match. “We felt it was really important to embody what it feels like to be in this situation and let the horror movie unfold for you in a way that might not have happened if there weren't a bunch of people kind of scattered throughout giving those different occurrences and encounters… We built it for population, giving that real feeling of interacting with people that you'll care about a little bit when you interact with them, but at the end of the day, you might push them into Michael to give yourself a chance to run away.” I feel it every time I pick up the phone to call the cops, and the camera closes in a little tighter, every time I walk through the open front door of a house I know I’ve never been inside, every time I hear a window break. Maybe he’s trying to get through it. Maybe someone’s jumped out of it to get away. Sound becomes a crucial part of navigating Haddonfield. What I hear tells me where to go, and the places I should avoid. Perhaps Halloween’s greatest success based on what I’ve played so far is that Haddonfield feels like a place that exists outside of me. Things happen in these houses when I’m not there. Matthewson told me that was intentional, too. “The environment being so in-depth was crucial to building the horror sandbox that we wanted to do. It's about you creating your own horror movie, using the framework of this source material we have.” Eventually, I do manage to escape, though not because I finally found the bolt cutters to unlock one of the map’s built-in exits. Enough of us call the cops and they roll in with a police wagon, and everyone who’s left makes their way over. My pickaxe was good enough to put Michael on the ground for a while, but these guys have guns. I wait until most everyone makes it inside the wagon, and then jump in myself. I’ve never been so happy to see the cops in my life. Turnabout Is Fair Play Then it’s my turn as Michael. I get lucky early; I’m spawned right next to another player, who is too focused on something else to notice me sneaking up behind them. I pick them up by the neck, and slice their throat open. One down, though I know residents can sometimes come back as a Sheriff's deputy or even Dr. Loomis himself. Michael is a different beast, one I was forced to adapt to. He walks slowly, and when he speeds up, you can hear the heavy breathing behind the mask. He starts with a knife, but he can acquire other things – like a pickaxe, which makes for some truly gruesome executions. The way he swings his knife is ponderous: if you want to make sure someone doesn’t get away, your best bet is to grab them. Stalking his victims long enough allows him to track them even if they get away. Locked doors only slow him down. Pickaxes and pistols may look like they hurt, but he’ll just rise again. He feels like he does in the films. He’s the boogeyman. But how do you put that into a video game and make it compelling to play (and play against)? According to Chief Creative Officer Jared Gerritzen, it meant building the entire game around Michael. “It's [from the] ground-up. It's something that is IllFonic because we make it for the killer. We don't make a formula and then just go, ‘Okay, this is the formula, new killer.’ We start from the killer and then the killer sets those definitions, it sets those things.” In Michael’s case, that meant watching a lot of Halloween, and realizing one of the core parts of Michael’s identity was being able to move around in the dark. As IllFonic pitched the game to Trancas International Films, who owns the Halloween license, the pacing decisions John Carpenter made could become game mechanics. “It was purely because in a scene, it just sits there and the lights turn off,” Gerritzen tells me. “That was to eat up time. It was just one of those things that we said like, ‘Michael wants it to be dark. Why does he want it to be dark?’ We seized on the idea that darkness allows him to move in and out of this world and then we came back and we said, ‘Okay guys, this is what we want to do.’ We worked on it, we pitched it to him and they said, ‘Yeah, let's do it.’“ That became Shape Jump, Michael’s most defining and impressive ability. As long as he’s in darkness or outside of a resident’s line of sight, Michael can slip into the darkness, which makes him much faster, allows him to move through physical barriers like fences, and plan ambushes. If you’re a citizen of Haddonfield, you might think he’s behind you only to realize he’s beaten you around the corner you were headed for. Shape Jump is extremely powerful, but it is limited. Michael cannot Shape Jump in the light, and he needs to be in darkness to reenter the physical world. Smart Civilians will run from light to light, using that to their advantage. But even the smartest Civilians make mistakes. And one slip up is all Michael needs. If being a Civilian is an exercise in tension, inhabiting Michael is about power. The more he stalks and kills, the stronger he becomes, and the more executions and abilities he gains access to. As a Civilian, you’re not defenseless, but you are prey. Here, you’re the hunter, and there’s a sick thrill to stalking Civilians, turning off the lights at the right moment, executing the perfect Shape Jump ambush, and simply walking after a resident who is desperate to get away. The attention to detail here is impressive, from the sound of Michael breathing behind the mask to executions that mirror those seen in the films. You haven’t lived until you’ve pinned a screaming teenager to a wall with a butcher knife. What I loved about my time with Halloween was how different it feels from everything else in the genre while simultaneously staying true to the films that inspired it. I focused on the special targets (and managed to get all of them), but the real cat-and-mouse games were against the other players. Even if they did manage to knock me down, it was only a matter of time before I was back up and on the hunt. By the end, I was even taking on the cops. All I needed to do was get them alone. I ended up securing a minor victory, even if I was too late to the police wagon to take out another resident. Asymmetrical horror is hard, but what I loved about my time with Halloween was how different it feels from everything else in the genre while simultaneously staying true to the films that inspired it. As a Civilian, I’m not just fighting for myself; I’m fighting for my town. As Michael, I wasn’t trying to just get other players. I wanted to wipe out a town that was actively fighting back. I haven’t played anything quite like it, which makes sense because despite its imitators, there’s still nothing quite like Halloween. If IllFonic can continue to hit on what makes Halloween tick, we might have something special on our hands. Horror films have given us lots of scary guys in masks, but there’s only one boogeyman. Will Borger is an IGN freelancer. You can find him on Bluesky @edgarallanbro. View the full article

The Witcher 3 is a deep, textured game with incredible worldbuilding—worldbuilding that the Witcher Online mod on NexusMods delves deeply into. Finally, you can explore the Continent with your friends, doing setting-appropriate activities like (checks notes) er, riding about on each other's shoulders, and (frantically sweating, flipping through notes in a panic) turning into a little kitty cat... Read more.View the full article

You still have a week to get eWorlds for freeView the full article

Samson, the new action-adventure game from Just Cause co-creator Christofer Sundberg, has quickly become one of the worst-reviewed video games of 2026, but its creative director says it plans to address the game-breaking bugs and performance issues with continued updates and post-launch support. Samsonis currently only available on PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store, but player reviews appear to be mixed, while critic reviews have been much more scathing. View the full article

NetEase continues to evolve the Marvel Rivals experience, releasing a brand-new update for the game on April 9, 2026, which adds new cosmetic content, applies additional fixes, and gives Deadpool fans a new opportunity to score some loot. The free-to-play hero shooter continues to receive updates from developer NetEase, keeping things feeling fresh while also adding new content for fans to dive into. The latest Marvel Rivals update adds some interesting cosmetics to a couple of characters as well. View the full article

Kingdom's Return: Time-Eating Fruit and the Ancient Monster pre-orders are now live for Switch with Steam to follow. View the full article

The Minecraft Chaos Cubed update has just landed on the Java side of the sandbox game, and I'm already eager to see what the wealth of inventive Minecraft creators and modders can do with its incredible new Sulfur Cube mob. It's been a week since the new Minecraft update came to Bedrock, but the more open-ended and mod-friendly nature of Java means it's likely to be where we see the most unique creations. With the latest addition opening up a whole world of possible minigames, it's the most excited I've been for a Java snapshot in years. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Minecraft's switch to smaller game drops doesn't rule out "more transformative updates" Minecraft's new crop of babies will "deepen your bond" with your animals, but make sure to keep them safe Minecraft is adding a gorgeous new biome, and it's home to the most useful mob ever View the full article

Who is Sierra in Overwatch? Sierra, formerly known as Hero 51, has been officially revealed with the release of the Summit Breach trailer, giving us a first look at the newest character in Season 2. As a member of Helix Security, Sierra utilizes a large plasma rifle and a bird-like drone to protect the world from evil forces. While the Overwatch trailer didn't reveal as much as we would've liked, there has been a leak that confirms some suspicions people have about her kit. With Season 2 set to launch on April 14, we won't have to wait long to see where Sierra fits alongside the best heroes on the Overwatch tier list. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Overwatch's Anran finally gets her glow-up. "Playful" is out, "sincere" is in, but is it enough? Overwatch's Mizuki gets a surprise face update, while Anran's much-requested rework is nowhere in sight The Overwatch devs think you're banning the wrong heroes View the full article

Project Zomboid developer The Indie Stone has confirmed that it has identified and taken action against a series of mods for the zombie game that were "creating malicious files outside of the Project Zomboid directory." The mods in question were add-ons for the popular 'True Moozic' soundtrack expander and were unrelated to its original creator. They have been removed from the Steam Workshop and the perpetrator has been banned, but The Indie Stone encourages anyone who thinks they might have been affected to take action. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Dev behind new 'GTA-like' crime ****** Samson admits it "released a game with flaws" A brutal, single-player twist on Escape From Tarkov, Road to Vostok has finally launched Slay the Spire 2 is cooking a "competitive" mode, but I'm most excited about its new short-time format View the full article

The Working Together quest is Pocahontas' second friendship quest in Disney Dreamlight Valley. You'll automatically unlock this quest once you've hit a level four friendship, and you'll need to initiate it by talking to Pocahontas to accept the mission. Before it shows up though, you'll need Cogsworth and Stitch unlocked in your valley too... Read more.View the full article

The GLaDOS effectView the full article

Five independent game studios – including the developers of the upcoming Replaced and the team behind the upcoming Heroes of Might & Magic: Olden Era – have joined forces in a sort-of co-op in order to support each other with development and marketing, with an aim to eventually create their own co-owned publishing label. Sad Cat Studios (Replaced), Unfrozen (Heroes of Might & Magic: Olden Era), Weappy (This Is the Police), VEA Games (Nikoderiko: The Magical World), and Game Garden (Farmdale) aren't merging; they will each remain independent studios. However, the goal of Nova Assembly is intended to be a backstop against layoffs and increasing development and publishing uncertainty in the gaming space by sharing resources in mutually beneficial ways. Unfrozen founder Denis Federov, who will be the CEO of Nova Assembly, said, “The formation of a single holding structure bringing together five commercially successful and highly promising game studios will not only enable creators of ambitious gaming projects to share invaluable expertise accumulated over years of experience, but will also allow for more efficient and strategic use of shared resources. And all that without compromising creative independence, which ultimately remains the key driver of competitiveness in today’s challenging market.” “In a world where we increasingly give over control to algorithms, we're uniting with like-minded people to reinforce the human element: to exchange human ideas, offer each other human support, and make human decisions together,” added Weappy co-founder Ilya Yanovich, who will be Nova Assembly's Creative Director. The studios posted an open letter on the Nova Assembly website, which said in part, "We will support each other with resources. If one team has just launched a successful game while another needs financial backing, we can resolve the matter internally – and avoid making ruinous compromises. "We will support one another with knowledge and technology. If a team requires a specialist with a specific skillset to tackle a particular challenge, it's far more sensible to temporarily bring in someone from another team, rather than scrambling around for outside assistance. If a team has developed a flexible dialogue editor or devised a clever process or optimization, everyone should be able to benefit. "We intend to build our own publishing arm. We value all the partners we currently work with, but looking forward, we want to be the ones deciding how we market and release our games. We want to establish a direct line of communication with our audience and with the various gaming platforms. "And surely the most important point: making games is hard; making games is daunting; and there's nothing more valuable than the sense you aren't alone in the endeavor. It's always a joy to share success with friends – but it's far more crucial to know that there's someone willing to share the burden of your mistakes and missteps – so we can be bold enough to take creative risks. Replaced (wishlist it or play the demo on Steam if you're interested) is due out on PC and Xbox (including day-one on Game Pass) on April 14. Heroes of Might & Magic: Olden Era (wishlist it or play the demo on Steam if you're interested) is due to launch into Early Access on April 30. The Eternal Life of Goldman (wishlist it or play the demo on Steam if you're interested) has no release window as of yet. Ryan McCaffrey is IGN's executive editor of previews and host of both IGN's weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our semi-retired interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He's a North Jersey guy, so it's "Taylor ham," not "pork roll." Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan. View the full article