Independent developer Yangyang Mobile has announced the release of High Times, a dating and cooking simulator which is now available on PC, Xbox Series S/X, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch & Nintendo Switch 2. Featuring a hand-drawn comic-book art style, High Times puts players in the shoes of a customizable protagonist managing a quirky, high-stakes café. But according to the press release, this isn’t a typical restaurant management game: the food you prepare can directly alter your customers’ emotions, moods, and desires. In High Times, players must “master a fast-paced, multi-layered cooking mechanic to prepare unique comfort foods and avant-garde dishes tailored to a diverse cast of local regulars”. Every ingredient chosen impacts the emotional state of the character eating it, giving players the power to mend broken hearts, calm stressed minds, or spark unexpected creative genius. [Hidden Content] High Times features a branching, dialogue-driven narrative with multiple romanceable characters, each with their own distinct storylines, personal struggles, and secrets. Players will have to make critical choices that lead to drastically different narrative conclusions. The press release confirms the game’s key features below: Donut Therapy: Pay close attention to your customers’ stories to cook the perfect mood-altering treat. The right ingredients at the right time can solve even the most complex emotional problems.Cafe Progression: Grow your business by creating and evolving recipes. Earn tips to purchase more than 100 store decorations, and unlock advanced tools to tackle more elaborate culinary challenges.Relationships with Consequences: Discover the stories of 30+ diverse customers. Six of these characters are romanceable, allowing you to use “donut woo” to win their hearts. With multiple endings per customer, your choices lead to genuinely different outcomes.Premium Visual Novel Presentation: Experience a rich, immersive world featuring a full English voice cast, a catchy theme song, an original soundtrack and fully animated cutscenes. Yangyang Mobile is an indie game studio based in the Philippines. Founded by couple John and Danni Pineda, in 2015, they’ve focused on narrative games. Previously, they’ve released four titles, including The Letter and Love Esquire. Devoted to diversity, nearly half the studio are women and/or members of the LGBTQIA community. The post Yangyang Mobile releases High Times, a dating and cooking sim appeared first on GamesBeat. View the full article
Lead developers of Castlevania: Belmont's Curse have spoken about the process that led to the creation of Rose Belmont, the game's protagonist. Initially, they didn't have a specific gender for the protagonist in mind, but after developing the story, they wanted to base it around the strong bonds between mother and daughter. In an interview with Famitsu, as translated by GamesRadar+, director Yukiko Hokao explains how the process of developing Belmont's Curse began without a specific protagonist in mind. "At the start we hadn't decided that the protagonist would be a woman," she says. "While we were building the world and the story, we thought the role would best suit a woman, and it was decided that it should be Trevor Belmont's daughter." She goes on to explain how the original concept for the game had the protagonist's mother die before the beginning of the game. After discussing the game's world with Motion Twin and Evil Empire, it was agreed upon that the main character should be a woman. Producer Tsutomu Taniguchi expresses how the game's world didn't feel right for a male protagonist. "For example, if this story featured a male protagonist, we'd have to consider the type of world depicted, and I think that could be cool," he says. "However, for this story, it was naturally decided that a female protagonist would be the best fit." Creative director Emmanuel Nouaille further explains how the protagonist's gender fits into the game's themes. "Particularly, considering her mother Sypha's curse would be inherited by her daughter, there's a bond between parent and child," he says. "There is a strong connection between the two, and it gives her a clear motivation to avenge her mother's death and face her cruel fate. From this, the protagonist became Rose Belmont, and the role was best suited for a woman." Castlevania: Belmont's Curse wants you to find the "joy" in the difficulty and it won't be "simple or easy": "That's not Castlevania." [/url]View the full article
I really wanted to like Agefield High: Rock the School. It wasn’t shy about wearing its Bully influences on its letterman jacket, and Rockstar sure doesn’t seem interested in a sequel. But six missions in, I think I’m ready to drop out of Agefield High. Bathed in hollow early-aughts nostalgia, it feels like the adolescent hallucination of someone who’s never set foot inside of a suburban American high school. Its faux-punk, juvenile tone felt more like a sauceless ChatGPT redux of American Pie-era comedies filtered through a No More Heroes sidequest than a cheeky, Rockstar-style lampooning of Anytown, USA. I’ve biked from corner to corner of Agefield, delivering food, fighting bullies, maintaining my GPA, and learning to fit in with my fellow rejects. And after dabbling in as much main and side content as possible, I’m struggling to find anything redeemable about this game beyond a gag. The stuff I saw was unpolished, uninspired, and flat. I don’t see the big-picture stuff improving, even if Agefield High’s rougher edges – namely its buggy gameplay and wonky physics – get sanded down before its rapidly approaching August release date. Groundhog Day Agefield feels like it’s about to bubble over with appropriate angst. Adults are stuck in dead-end jobs and loveless marriages, teachers don’t know what they’re doing, the elderly are constantly complaining about “kids these days,” and everyone at your school is shaking the bars of their fluorescent-lit enclosure, ready to get on with life. But compared to some of my favorite coming-of-age comedies, it’s all skin-deep. It doesn’t engage with culture, time, or place in a way that measures up to the movies it’s borrowing from. I was two years old in 2002 and even I can tell you this is a hollow knock-off. I’d feel insane too if I lived in a town the size of four city blocks and heard the same few lines of dialogue everywhere I go. I didn’t keep a strict count, but I think most kinds of NPCs (divided by age and sex) each got about five lines. Some characters like your mom, the school bully, or specific teachers get their own. I swear I’d heard them all within an hour. I think I’ll lose my mind if I hear another “[sound up]” “[sound up],” or “[sound up].” Are We on SNL? That should give you a good understanding of the kind of script Refugium Games are working with. Its derivative ideas and un-cartoonish caricatures offer nothing to set this specific shade of grey apart; each cutscene will leave you sighing and rolling your eyes at its parade of cliches. And what is memorable or noteworthy is bad. At the very least, sometimes it’s funny-bad. This is all made worse by Agefield High’s dogged attempts to undermine each cutscene with uncanny valley characters, whose faces and mouths move and change just enough to be unsettling, but not nearly enough to be taken seriously. Naturally, this is all framed with some of the worst cutscene camera choices I’ve ever seen in a video game. Nearly every cutscene or mission will start with a close-up of a character’s face that lasts seconds longer than it needs to – every time. And every time, they just stand there, staring blankly, often directly into the camera. It’s hilarious, just not for the reasons the writers want. Nice Bike I could forgive poor tone or a bad script for some fun gameplay, but Agefield High cast no such lifeline. I spent most of my time with the demo biking around town. Sometimes I was running from a bully or racing against a clock; other times I was meeting up with my friends in the park. You can do tricks on the bike you earn early on in the game, but I was never really encouraged to take advantage of them aside from a few ramps scattered around town. There’s also a skate park close to the center of town, so I have a feeling the final version of Agefield might lean more into that. If there’s anything redeemable in the chunk I played, it’s this. The cycling isn’t necessarily amazing, but it’s really the only part of the demo that felt right. Crashes even end with that goofy, GTA-like ragdoll, just with wonkier physics. But every once in a while, failing a mission or getting knocked out would respawn the bike in a place that softlocked me from completing the mission. Luckily, Agefield is filthy with bikes you can pick up should your bike spawn in a bad spot. Solid (Garter) Snake When you’re not hell on wheels, chances are you’re sneaking around somewhere you shouldn’t be. Most missions ended with some kind of stealth, in fact. This kind of teen comedy almost begs for some stealth-comedy with its panty raids and teachers’ lounge burglary. Unfortunately, these sections aren’t very polished. There’s always an indicator somewhere on-screen telling you when you’re visible, but I swear I’ve been seen while outside of the clearly broadcast vision cones on your HUD, sometimes even through a wall or on another floor. It’s just frustrating how fast-and-loose this stuff felt. Thankfully, these sections are all pretty short, so slipping up – or getting caught by someone with X-Ray Vision – won’t set you back too much. But sometimes you’ll get caught and need to fight back. This is by far the most egregious part of the gameplay, and also the most frustrating. The fights I played all went the same way: throw punches while locked onto your target, block a few blows, push your enemy to break their guard, kick a few times, and hope that everything connects. While there is a lock-on, there’s no tracking, so each attack is disjointed from every other action, including movement. So you stop moving while punching or pushing. This breaks any momentum or link between attacks you throw out, causing a lot of punches to whiff even though they look like they’d connect. It’s kind of a miracle of physics that the punches are weightless and the movement is heavy. Study Hall Your misadventures contend with a rigorous academic schedule that’s lined up with an in-game clock. English, *******, Geography, Math, and Music classes all come with a minigame to complete, each ending with a letter grade based on your performance that determines how much of your allowance you actually make. All of them, except for music, are the exact same multiple choice quiz just with ******* vocab swapped out for identifying countries on a map or filling in missing letters in a word on a spelling quiz. The minigame for music class, which also gets used in one of the last missions of the demo, is a shoddy Guitar Hero-like rhythm game whose inputs don’t hit with any oomph and generally feel offbeat. You don’t need to attend class, but missing classes will make it harder for you to earn an allowance, thus giving you less money to spend on new clothes, a haircut, or a snack from the hot dog cart. The tutorial even suggested that you might get the attention of the police if you miss enough classes. If you cut class, it’s probably to check out the other side content that’s equally repetitive. I saw two different chore-like missions: a lawnmowing minigame that’s ripped straight from No More Heroes, and a food delivery minigame which is a great way to earn some extra in-game cash. There are also some one-off sidequests that take you to new parts of town, but they follow the same structure as the main stuff. Grimacing-Face Emoji Every inch of Agefield feels grey, flavorless, and flat in a way that makes me wonder if AI was used. That’s not an accusation, to be clear, but it’s at the very least an indictment of what’s being presented. There’s no sense of originality or style like in the games and movies it’s so clearly ripping off. It doesn’t help that some characters bear uncomfortably close resemblance to real-life people, like the old man in town named Clint who will look familiar to any fan of Westerns. I could see this attaining cult status… but probably more like The Room or Book of Henry than Superbad or Napoleon Dynamite. A lot of the mechanical wonkiness could potentially be fixed or built upon, but probably not in time for launch, as this game is out next month. I just don’t see its feeble skeleton of Leonardo DiCaprio pointing-level references and unbearably bad writing improving in any meaningful way over the remaining handful of missions. I could see this attaining cult status… but probably more like The Room or Book of Henry than Superbad or Napoleon Dynamite. I have a feeling that fans of the long-sidelined Bully franchise who hoped Agefield High would recapture even a little bit of that classic’s magic will be thoroughly disappointed when Agefield High: Rock The School releases on August 12. Charlie is a freelance contributor for IGN. You can reach them via Twitter or Instagram at the handle @chas_mke. View the full article
Amazon has announced that its cloud gaming platform, Luna, is now available on Prime Video — as long as you’re in the U.S. or *** and are using the streaming service on a Fire TV. The rollout is part of a wider push from the corporation to get the games that Luna offers into as many hands as possible. Luna is included with Prime at no additional cost, and there’s nothing to download or purchase to start playing. Amazon said Prime members can find games the same way they discover everything else on Prime Video, just by looking for the new “Games” tab and starting playing in seconds on your TV, using a controller or your phone. On Luna, Prime members get access to a library of games that includes Hogwarts Legacy, EA Sports FC 26, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, as well as party games like Clue, Ticket to Ride, and Taboo. Amazon said it plans to add new games ever month. "For a lot of people, games have been harder to find than they should be,” said Jeff Gattis, GM of Gaming at Amazon. “Bringing Luna inside Prime Video allows Prime members to discover games more naturally, and if they see one they like, they click it, and they’re in. That’s less time searching and more time playing great games included with their Prime membership.” More details on “additional devices, countries, and games in the months ahead” will be revealed in the future. IGN spoke to Gattis about this new approach for Luna, cloud gaming in general, and in particular, why both have struggled to gain a widespread audience over the years. Amazon with Luna, Google with Stadia, and Microsoft with Xbox Cloud Gaming have all tried and failed to achieve breakout success. “I was at Xbox when we were pushing out X Cloud,” Gattis said. “I think part of the problem is cloud gaming was sort of positioned at core gamers as you don't need a console. There were marketing campaigns around no console required. And in many ways I think that the core gamer who's invested in a console, who's invested in a $3,000 graphics card, not only is committed to that hardware, they love that hardware. They love that fidelity. "So I think part of it was a product market fit problem where we were marketing clouds, and I mean collectively as an industry, at the wrong people, whereas I think there is a much broader audience that will probably never own a console or never own a game PC and never get a chance to play a lot of these games. That's where I believe in the cloud.” Not only does Gattis now think that the right audience is being catered to with cloud gaming, but that the tech has caught up with the ambitions of the platforms. “The technology's only getting better,” he insisted. “Several years ago, you would notice latency in certain people’s connections, and you just weren't getting the fidelity that you needed. A lot of that has been removed. So now it's almost like you have to rebuild trust in people who had a bad cloud experience five years ago.” In terms of Luna, specifically, Gattis believes its current level of popularity is down to how it was positioned when it first arrived on the scene. “I'd say Luna in some ways was trying to compete at the high end of the market with the notion that cloud gaming is just magically going to happen,” he said. “And when it does, everybody's going to come to Luna and start turning in their consoles and their PCs,” he continued. “That hasn't happened yet. I'd argue if that does happen, they're not automatically going to jump ship from Xbox and PlayStation's team. “That market is extremely well served. One might even argue it's overserved today where they're all just competing for the same customers, same players; the pie's not really growing. Let's not compete. They can have that at least for now. But what we saw was a broader opportunity where Amazon, we think, can add real value. 3 billion people in the world play games; only about 500 million own consoles and PCs. So we have a lot of people out there that actually like to play video games, but aren't playing in the highest fidelity setting, aren't playing in a living room on a big TV or on a PC monitor. "We've taken all these games that were previously in a premium subscription with Luna, and we've taken most of them and pushed them all into our standard tier of Luna, which effectively is a Prime benefit. So there's literally close to 100 games in Prime right now that if we're one of the 100 million Prime members worldwide, we have access to all of this. So part of our big challenge is, how do we actually let people know they have this benefit?” Gattis explained how Luna’s integration into Prime Video will, in theory, aid discoverability: “You launch Prime Video to watch your favorite show, there'll be a games tab right on the top, and that's all the Luna content that you're entitled to be there for you. And so that's a first step in terms of just driving more awareness, and hundreds of millions of people use that app and watch video there." “And so you can imagine this future where you're going to go to a page, say in Prime Video, and instead of it just being a bunch of things you can click on and play, it's almost a fandom type page," he continued. "If you're a fan of Tomb Raider, here's the show, here's the TV show, here's the game, here's past games, here's a Twitch feed, here's merchandise you can go buy on Amazon.com. So I think that's the vision for us where you start to bring all these things together and think more of general entertainment as opposed to video games being this entirely separate thing from other views.” This synergy between Amazon’s video game, movie, and TV show output is something Gattis clearly sees as a big part of turning Luna into a success story. “I fundamentally believe you're seeing a continued intersection between TV video and video games, interactive entertainment,” he said. “So I really think of the future, you'll see every TV or movie is going to have a video game story attached to it, whether that's a AAA game or just some sort of extension of the experience. I think it's going to be just part of how films and TV IPs go to market. And so for us, we want to take advantage of that. So you'll see us invest a lot more in making things alongside MGM properties or other Prime Video shows. Obviously Tomb Raider is coming out next year, there will be a Tomb Raider TV show on Prime Video.” Amazon highlighted the Masters of the Universe film, which is now streaming on Prime Video, and how you can now play co-op card battler Masters of the Universe: Legends Unite all from the same subscription. "See the movie, then play in its world, same screen, same night, same membership," Amazon said. Another example, per Amazon, is its AI party game, Courtroom Chaos: Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, where you argue absurd cases in front of Arnold as the judge. Later this year Schwarzenegger will appear in Prime Video holiday movie, The Man with the Bag. "Watch him one night, play against him the next," Amazon said. Only time will tell if Amazon’s new approach to Luna will buck the cloud gaming trend and build a big enough player base to be considered a true success. Getting it in front of many more eyes is a logical first step, of course, so let’s see if Prime Video holds the key to unlocking the platform for millions. 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
With over 2000 blocks of altitude, six weapon types, three enemy factions and interesting world generation, Everwind is the procedural RPG sandbox I always wanted modded Minecraft to be. I’m sure someone could make a Minecraft mod that is very similar to Everwind, but it’d still be Minecraft underneath. Everwind has the benefit of having […]View the full article
Transformers has seen several adaptations over the years, spanning just about every form of media imaginable, but longtime fans will argue that nothing compares to the original G1 animated series from 1984. While Beast Wars is often regarded as one of the franchise's finest and most influential series thanks to its groundbreaking storytelling, and the more modern Transformers: Prime earned widespread praise in its own right, nothing taps into the nostalgia quite like the original cartoon, which introduced Optimus Prime, Megatron, and the Autobots' war against the Decepticons to a generation of fans. View the full article
Good news everyone, I now have a Steam Machine in the GamingOnLinux house and I have some initial thoughts. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article
The latest Xbox Game Pass library update brought Hell is Us, which is now available on three tiers of the service. Its arrival marks the 12th addition to Xbox Game Pass in July 2026, with three more titles scheduled to join before the end of the month. View the full article
The Gameplay Group and PM Studios release a new message to the Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game community, providing an update to the Nintendo Switch 2 version as well as an unfortunate last-minute delay for the Xbox Series X platform. Alongside the launch of a full-length movie, the Avatar franchise continues to grow with a brand-new video game called Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game. View the full article
A D&DBeyond blog post reveals the final form of Arcana Unleashed's eight new subclasses. Wizards of the Coast hasn't given us the full rules rundown, but the summaries highlight more than a few changes since playtesting. Generally, it seems like these D&D character options were granted a last-minute buff. Read the full story on Wargamer: D&D reveals last-minute buffs to new Arcana Unleashed subclasses View the full article
Japanese brand Taito is releasing one of the strangest mice I've ever laid my eyes on that's officially licensed for anime fans: the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood PC Mouse. As discovered by Siliconera, this new mouse doesn't have all the bells and whistles of the best gaming mice and is a simple plug-and-play wired rodent, but instead, Taito has put all of its focus on recreating the iconic cursed item, down to its haunting illuminating eyes and stone-textured face. Unfortunately, it's not the kind of thing you can just walk into any old tech store and pick up, but an exclusive Japanese arcade prize item. Yet, I can only hope that anime fans alike can still find a way to get their hands on this official piece of JoJo tech - I just hope there's no vampirism side effects that come with it. (Image credit: Hobby Genki/Future) While it's always disappointing to see neat pieces of tech like this remain prize figures that require a costly trip to Japan to find, it might not all be doom and gloom. Jenni Lada at Siliconera pointed out that there are listings for it across some retailers, including at Hobby Genki, which states it will be available on July 31, 2026. Though there is a massive "out of stock" banner across the photo too. It's also not entirely impossible to get your hands on Taito prizes and other merch that's typically reserved for prize machines in Japan. Personally, I regularly use online stores like Surugaya to import items like it that would otherwise be out of my reach. However, with stores like it, you do have to be okay with accepting that you'll be getting a second-hand item, rather than a brand-spanking new gaming mouse for your PC. If you're a hardcore JoJo fan though, I imagine that won't stop you. I've only watched the first few series' of the anime, and even I'm contemplating adding this mouse to my setup as I'm infatuated with the fact that it's not just got official JoJo art printed across like MSI's Frieren Beyond Journey's End accessories. Instead, the entirety of the surface of this mouse recreates the various nooks and crannies of the mask's surface. (Image credit: eBay/Future) The Hobby Genki description describes the mouse as "highly ergonomic" but I'm not entirely sure it'd be all that comfortable to actually use. Though who knows, maybe having a nose poking into the palm of your hand would actually be pretty comfortable? As a heads up to fellow anime enjoyers, this isn't the first time an iconic piece of anime history has been transformed into a mouse. Shuichi Shigeno's well-known Initial D series (which you may know more from its memes if you aren't an anime fan of a certain age like me) has resulted in a series of bizarre mice of its own. Rather than being based on a mask, naturally, these are based on the iconic cars used in the series, and can regularly be found on the likes of eBay. They're not cheap by any means, and you can expect to pay $124.80 (eBay) for the privilege of having your mouse shaped like a Toyota AE86 car. But it's got Bluetooth connectivity over Taito's wired Stone Mask mouse, and the *********** even pop up and actually light up. It doesn't get any more anime than that. View all anime PC gaming accessories at Amazon Our team has rounded up the best gaming keyboards, the best gaming headsets, and the best gaming chairs if you want to give your setup a boost. [/url]View the full article
The fourth season of WWE 2K26’s Ringside Pass is now available, adding four more superstars and a number of other new features. The Premium route of Ringside Pass Season 4 adds Matt Hardy, Jeff Hardy, musician Jelly Roll and AAA wrestler Lady Shani to the game, also adding a combined 47 new moves and taunts to the creation suite. As has now become the standard following player feedback, all four superstars will be unlocked immediately as the Tier 1 reward for players who have access to the Premium route. Read More... View the full article
Founded in 2009 by industry veterans Mike Wilson, Harry Miller, Rick Stults, and Graeme Struthers, Devolver Digital has grown significantly from its humble beginnings. The company built its reputation by championing unconventional, high-quality independent projects that larger publishers often overlooked. Over the years, Devolver has published beloved hits such as Hotline Miami, Cult of the Lamb, Enter the Gungeon, Inscryption, The Talos Principle, Katana ZERO, Loop Hero, and GRIS, helping many independent studios reach mainstream audiences. View the full article
Yesterday, Microsoft began rolling out its Backwards Compatibility on PC program for original Xbox and Xbox 360 titles, starting with four classic games. But we don’t have to wait long for the rest of the library to catch up. It turns out that Microsoft has inadvertently handed the emulating community the keys to the kingdom with this launch. View the full article
A recent post from Bandai Namco US seems to be teasing that the release of Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero’s big expansion isn’t far off at all and could release in the very near future. View the full article
Warhammer Blood Bowl hits the end zone this fall, and we've got first-look screenshots and confirmed platforms for launch. The video game adaptation of Games Workshop’s Warhammer fantasy football tabletop game is now in the hands of Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector publisher Slitherine, which obtained the licence, publishing rights, and back catalog from the collapsing Nacon. Now, Slitherine has re-announced Warhammer Blood Bowl with a batch of screenshots, below. It’s due out this fall across PC, Xbox, and PlayStation. Slitherine said Warhammer Blood Bowl is “built upon the solid foundations of Blood Bowl 3,” with series developer Cyanide still in place. The game will also adopt the latest official tabletop ruleset, updated through September 2025 (also known as Third Season Edition). The roster expands with the Bretonnians and Khemri Tomb Kings. "At Slitherine, we're strategy gamers first and foremost, and Blood Bowl has always been one of our favorite tabletop games," said Marco Alessandro Minoli, Director of Publishing at Slitherine. "We're incredibly proud to welcome this iconic franchise into our portfolio and to be working alongside the talented team at Cyanide. Our goal with Warhammer Blood Bowl is simple: we want this to become the definitive Blood Bowl video game — not just at launch, but for years to come. Our vision is to support and expand it over time, turning it into a living, constantly evolving experience, just as we've successfully done with other Warhammer titles such as Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector and Warhammer 40,000: Gladius." Helpfully, everyone who owns Blood Bowl 3 on PC and consoles will receive Warhammer Blood Bowl as a free upgrade, keeping all previously purchased teams and cosmetics. A playable demo is set for the end of the summer on PC. It includes Rumble Mode, a fast-paced, dynamic 7-player format designed for quicker matches. Blood Bowl 3 has a 'mixed' user review rating on Steam, and it's fair to say the game failed to meet fan expectations when it launched in 2023. IGN's Blood Bowl 3 review returned a 5/10. We said: "Blood Bowl 3 is a sloppy, muddy, buggy rehash of a better game." Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at *****@*****.tld. View the full article
While gamers are still in for a bit of a wait before they get our hands on Pokémon Winds & Wavesto start exploring the new tropical region, there's been a ton of leaked information lately that will keep us busy until its official launch next year. With several exciting rumored new evolutions on the way, including a possible new Onix form and potential Arcanine evo, as well as Gym types and more, there's plenty to chew on to keep us busy for now. View the full article
Valve has just introduced wishlist categories, cross-region gifting, and options for email gifts and guest checkouts in a new Steam update. Read the full story on PCGamesN: Steam wishlists and gifting games just got a whole lot more useful View the full article
Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game has suffered a shock delay on Xbox just hours before it was due to come out, sparking a backlash from fans. The Paramount Games Studio-published fighting game, developed by Gameplay Group International, was due out today, July 23, across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, PC via Steam, and Nintendo Switch. But in a note to fans published just a few hours ago, Paramount said the Switch version will be available as the Standard Edition only, and crossplay with other platforms and language localization beyond English will not be available. “We are committed to bringing these features, along with upgrading to Deluxe Edition, to players as soon as possible and will keep you updated on our timeline and progress,” Paramount said. But it’s an even worse situation for Xbox fans, who have seen the game in its entirety delayed to September 3 — a 6-week wait that sets Xbox players back significantly on the competitive front. Paramount failed to say exactly what the issue was, speaking in vague terms to say it was due to “unforeseen circumstances on a backend feature.” “For the Xbox community, we are forced to delay the release,” Paramount said. “Due to unforeseen circumstances on a backend feature, we will now launch by September 3. Existing preorders will remain active and will not be canceled. “Our priority is delivering the best possible experience on every platform and we are working tirelessly to make that happen. Thank you for your patience, understanding and continued support. We’re excited to get everyone into the fight as soon as possible. Tune in here for updates as we have them.” As you’d expect, Xbox gamers have reacted negatively to the news, with many of the replies highly critical of Paramount. “F**k your game!” replied one person. “Delaying your game HOURS before release on XBOX is horrible management. Zero excuses. You should’ve known this WELL IN ADVANCE. Keep your game, not buying it. Was looking forward to it so much as an Avatar TLA fan.” “Delaying an anticipated game by a month and a half less than 24 hours before release is actually insane,” said another. “Do better, @ParamountGames.” “All my Xbox homies should get a free deluxe upgrade because this here is some bs of the highest degree. Xbox friends, please get your refunds,” another said. “Wtf do you mean ‘existing preorders will remain active and will not be canceled?’ Watch this ticket support go through,” one person said. “There's no reason to make such an announcement with less than 24 hours till release. That's ridiculous.” “Damn.. not sure to get the game now,” another added. “I'd rather just wait another month then. It just hurts the experience for everyone if not all of the potential player base is there.” “Unforeseen circumstances on a backend feature isn't good enough,” another person said. “Explain the situation, this is terrible comms guys and you know that.” "This is ridiculous man. This literally killed all the hype I had for this game. I rather get folded week of release and not after a month once everyone else knows their strings, especially for the characters that weren't in the beta," another said. It’s highly unusual for a video game to be delayed so close to release, doubly so for only certain versions. And it’s a real shame for what was looking like a promising fighting game. While PC and PS5 players will carry on regardless, the overall pool of players available for crossplay matchmaking is now hamstrung at release. Will Xbox gamers wait until early September, or simply decide against buying the game at all? And then there’s the note about existing preorders remaining and not being canceled. Based on the comments I’ve seen from Xbox gamers, that statement is sure to be tested. Avatar Legends had suffered from delays before today's announcement. It was once due out July 2, but was delayed to July 23 to add "brand new content previously unplanned." It has also endured a troubled journey to launch. Gameplay Group was founded by Victor Lugo, who was for a time lead designer at Iron Galaxy working on Killer Instinct, and Philip Mayes, who was managing director of *********** games company Mighty Kingdom, which has a number of licensed games under its belt. Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game was in the works at Swedish firm Maximum Entertainment for some time before it was quietly canceled in 2024, according to a financial report. The company never responded to IGN's request for comment. Gameplay Group then picked up the Avatar fighting game Maximum Entertainment was working on to try to revive it. You might remember Maximum Entertainment for its publishing label, Modus Games, abruptly ceasing development on 2D fighting game Them's Fightin' Herds, sparking a backlash from players. Maximum Entertainment has suffered financial problems, executive resignations, and legal action against former board members. Some relatively well-known fighting game developers worked at Maximum Entertainment while it was developing this Avatar fighting game. The most high profile is Mike Zaimont, who was design director on fighting game Skullgirls. Zaimont, now design director at Maximum Entertainment, was previously accused of ******* harassment while boss of Lab Zero Games. He went on to work on Diesel Legacy: The Brazen Age, a 2v2 indie fighter from Modus Games (the same publisher of Them's Fightin' Herds). Gameplay Group is listed as the publisher of Diesel Legacy and Them's Fightin' Herds, as was the publisher of Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game before Paramount's newly-formed video game company stepped in to help get it across the line. IGN’s Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game review returned an 8/10. We said: “Despite some puzzling omissions and a lackluster story mode, Avatar Legends is a fighting game fan's dream, with a diverse roster, an incredibly flexible combat system that rewards precision and creativity, and some of the coolest looking combos around.” Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at *****@*****.tld. View the full article
Bethesda is promising that the development roadmap for The Elder Scrolls 6 hasn't been impacted by mass layoffs across Xbox's various subsidiaries, despite some current and former staff fearing the worst. Earlier this month, Xbox began what it called a "reset" of its business. In plain words, that meant the console maker parted ways with four first-party studios and laid off 1,600 workers across Xbox Game Studios, Bethesda, and Activision Blizzard, with 1,600 more job cuts coming over the course of the next year. Now, asked about whether the sweeping cuts have impacted The Elder Scrolls 6's development timeline at all, Bethesda tells YouTuber MrMattyPlays that production on its most-hyped upcoming game is going just fine, thank you very much: "No, the roadmap is unaffected." [Hidden Content] The question was tossed toward Bethesda because the publisher was hit particularly hard by Xbox's layoffs and because several staffers are seemingly far more worried about the fantasy epic's development than their employer. Citing anonymous sources, IGN reported that several The Elder Scrolls 6 developers are worried about potential delays, crunch culture, and an extra reliance on contractors who would be unfamiliar with the studio's proprietary game dev tech. The Elder Scrolls Online is already struggling with "team bandwidth" after developer Zenimax Online Studios lost well over 100 team members, but we likely won't see how the worker reductions affect The Elder Scrolls 6 until the game finally, maybe, rears its head once again. Bethesda Game Studios' mammoth RPG was first announced to the public in the summer of 2018 with a trailer that didn't reveal much. There was a logo, a non-descript landscape, and a promise that BGS would eventually start properly making the sequel once Starfield was in the wild. Last we heard, the company said it was happy with its progress on The Elder Scrolls 6. "The next chapter is on the way. We're where we planned to be, loving how it looks, and playing it every day," it wrote. "Don't fall for it": Union says Fallout 5 and Elder Scrolls 6 news shouldn't distract you from huge Bethesda layoffs as Xbox CEO praises the series' "remarkable" achievements [/url]View the full article
Open-world survival-crafting games continue to dominate Steam, but every so often one comes along that feels like it is pulling ideas from several fan favorites at once. That's exactly the case with a newly announced sci-fi survival game that blends open-world exploration, automation, and base building in a way that should immediately catch the attention of Steam players who enjoy games like Satisfactory and The Planet Crafter (with a little bit of Subnautica's resource management thrown in for good measure). View the full article
Vermila Studios, the developer of Blumhouse-published Crisol: Theater of Idols, has shut down according to staff. Reports started emerging earlier this week that the studio may be conducting layoffs, and as staff have taken to social media to confirm this, some have stated that the entire studio is closing down. Game designer Raúl Pernía Alejandro wrote a thread on X, stating that the Madrid-based studio was no more. Read More... View the full article
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Independent developer Yangyang Mobile has announced the release of High Times, a dating and cooking simulator which is now available on PC, Xbox Series S/X, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch & Nintendo Switch 2. Featuring a hand-drawn comic-book art style, High Times puts players in the shoes of a customizable protagonist managing a quirky, high-stakes café. But according to the press release, this isn’t a typical restaurant management game: the food you prepare can directly alter your customers’ emotions, moods, and desires. In High Times, players must “master a fast-paced, multi-layered cooking mechanic to prepare unique comfort foods and avant-garde dishes tailored to a diverse cast of local regulars”. Every ingredient chosen impacts the emotional state of the character eating it, giving players the power to mend broken hearts, calm stressed minds, or spark unexpected creative genius. [Hidden Content] High Times features a branching, dialogue-driven narrative with multiple romanceable characters, each with their own distinct storylines, personal struggles, and secrets. Players will have to make critical choices that lead to drastically different narrative conclusions. The press release confirms the game’s key features below: Donut Therapy: Pay close attention to your customers’ stories to cook the perfect mood-altering treat. The right ingredients at the right time can solve even the most complex emotional problems.Cafe Progression: Grow your business by creating and evolving recipes. Earn tips to purchase more than 100 store decorations, and unlock advanced tools to tackle more elaborate culinary challenges.Relationships with Consequences: Discover the stories of 30+ diverse customers. Six of these characters are romanceable, allowing you to use “donut woo” to win their hearts. With multiple endings per customer, your choices lead to genuinely different outcomes.Premium Visual Novel Presentation: Experience a rich, immersive world featuring a full English voice cast, a catchy theme song, an original soundtrack and fully animated cutscenes. Yangyang Mobile is an indie game studio based in the Philippines. Founded by couple John and Danni Pineda, in 2015, they’ve focused on narrative games. Previously, they’ve released four titles, including The Letter and Love Esquire. Devoted to diversity, nearly half the studio are women and/or members of the LGBTQIA community. The post Yangyang Mobile releases High Times, a dating and cooking sim appeared first on GamesBeat. View the full article