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Another year at Gen Con is in the books, and 2026 proved to be another exciting showcase for tabletop gaming. Between high-profile announcements from major publishers, surprise indie gems, and long-awaited remasters of all-time classics, the convention floor was brimming with creative games, great artwork, and stunning cosplay. While no single weekend offers enough hours to play through the entirety of the hall’s massive catalog, we spent our time walking the floor and meeting with developers and publishers to seek out unique and engaging experiences for a wide variety of audiences. While there were a huge number of titles that caught our eye, these are our top standouts and previews from Gen Con 2026. Featured Standouts Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation Publisher: Ghost Galaxy Price: $54.99 Release Window: Late 2026 Players: 2 Reiner Knizia’s classic two-player game of hidden movement, bluffing, and tactical combat in Middle-earth makes a return two decades after its initial release. In this asymmetrical game, one player controls the Fellowship trying to guide Frodo to Mount Doom, while the other commands the forces of Sauron attempting to hunt them down. This updated version now includes new special cards and special characters as compared to the original release. The cards all feature some lovely artwork, and the pieces themselves give the game quite a striking table presence. The Gang: Deluxe Edition Publisher: THAMES & KOSMOS Price: $39.95 Release Window: Late 2026 Players: 3-10 A cooperative twist on Texas Hold 'em. Without communicating explicitly, players secretly evaluate their hands and bet on how their cards compare to those of the other players. The Deluxe Edition includes multiple additions to the base game, including the More Players expansion, as well as 3 mini expansions (Jokers & More, Tools of the Trade, and the Deluxe version exclusive The Dealer). This version comes with ceramic poker chips and a playmat, as well. Temple Twist Publisher: THAMES & KOSMOS Price: $29.95 Release Window: Late 2026 Players: 1-4 This cooperative game sits on the lighter side, with an adventure suitable for ages 8 and up. In Temple Twist, players use action cards to manipulate the three-dimensional temple and move through its myriad rooms. One of the cooler things about the game is its malleable difficulty. By introducing challenge cards, players can add new rooms and obstacles to overcome. Given the short playtime of 30 minutes, the ability to tailor the experience to its players makes it an enticing prospect. Oh My Word Publisher: THAMES & KOSMOS Price: $19.95 Release Window: Late 2026 Players: 2-6 In Oh My Word, players draw random letter tiles and race to name words matching active table categories before an unpredictable timer expires and hands out "bad luck" tokens. Like much of THAMES & KOSMOS’s offerings, it looks like it will make for a great party game, as the easy-to-learn mechanics and variable categories make it a fresh experience across multiple playthroughs. Kittens in Space Publisher: Dead Alive Games Price: $16.99 Release Window: Late 2026 Players: 1-6 Kittens in Space is a fast-paced card game for 1–6 players. Players must rescue and rehome space-faring cats by playing cards onto shifting stacks of cards. The player who is able to play all of their hand first gets a point, and the first player to three points wins the game. The game only takes about 15 minutes to play in total, and is accessible to younger audiences with a suggested age range of 7+. The simplistic ruleset and clean card art make it seem like a good option for families and younger groups, but we’ll have a full review out soon enough on our end. Lunar Rush: Innovations Publisher: Dead Alive Games Price: $16.99 Release Window: Late 2026 Players: 1-5 This expansion for the Euro-style Lunar Rush will serve as a hefty addition to the original game’s offerings and options. New asymmetric corporations alter how players interact with the game, and none are exactly alike. Additionally, the new expansion allows for one additional player at the table, complicating the rush for resources even more. Perhaps the biggest changes are the newly introduced random events, awards, and milestones. All of these new mechanics and layers to an already solid game will surely serve to spice things up for new and old players alike. Not Alone (10th Anniversary Remaster) Publisher: Luma Imports Price: $29.99 Release Date: October 16, 2026 Players: 3-10 The classic asymmetric sci-fi survival game returns for its 10th anniversary in a fresh remastered edition. This new edition combines the base game with both the Sanctuary and Exploration expansions in a single box, featuring upgraded components, revised art, and streamlined rules. The gameplay pits one player as the alien Creature, who hunts up to 6 human survivors trying to escape the planet Artemia. Aw Ducks! Publisher: Asmadi Games Price: N/A Release Window: Late 2026 Players: 2-4 While we haven't had the chance to play a full match yet, we scored a print test-run copy for a future review. Here is a preview of what this lighthearted card-shedding game has to offer: The core mechanics of Aw Ducks! have players build tableaus, manage matching number sets, and try to score ducks in the central "Duck Pond" before the deck runs out and ducks start clearing out tableaus. The game ends when a player reaches an agreed-upon score target, with the game offering different suggested targets for specific numbers of players. Mystic Curling Club Publisher: Asmadi Games Price: $41.99 Release Window: Late 2026 Players: 2-5 Taking on the role of a witch, players participate in a tabletop version of curling. Utilizing their familiars and magic spells, each playable character has ways to affect the board and, ultimately, their score. Much like in curling, score is assigned based upon proximity to the center of the ring, and the player with the most points at the end wins. Cyberpunk TCG Publisher: WeirdCo / CD Projekt Red Price: N/A Release Date: October 30, 2026 (Prerelease Weekend) / Full Retail Launch November 6, 2026 Players: 2 After getting hands-on time with a floor demo, this upcoming trading card game delivers some unique tactical considerations for a TCG, working just as much as a resource management game as it does a more traditional TCG. The first thing you’ll notice when holding these cards is just how immaculate the artwork is. Featuring stunning portraits of iconic characters and technology from the broader Cyberpunk universe, players must contend for control over available Gigs, leveraging Night City Legends and eddies to bring them closer to victory. Perhaps this is simply because we’re only working with starter decks, but Cyberpunk TCG seems to fall on the easier end of TCGs. That said, there’s a lot of room for complexity, with multiple avenues of strategy to consider for every player, and numerous ways to interact with your rivals on the other side of the field. The demo got us really excited for the full release, and it lands safely as the most anticipated game we saw at Gen Con. Thank you for sticking around to check out our initial showcase! We’re just getting started with our coverage, so keep an eye out in the coming weeks as we publish full, detailed reviews for many of these titles directly from our Gen Con haul. Which of these games are you most excited to get to the table?

I stand outside of the fog gate, knowing that a powerful enemy awaits me on the other side. But today, I am prepared. I cast a spell to increase my damage. Next, I use my equipment’s abilities to push it further. Then comes another spell, and finally a potion — all before stepping through that gate. As my player character places their hand against the fog, I know I have already won — all that is left is to execute. Stepping through the gate, I see a distant foe drawing near. I wind up my spell, and a flash of blue begins to build at the tip of my scepter, which then releases as a beam of concentrated magic. When the beam dissipates, all that remains of the enemy are tiny particles that drift slowly toward the sky as a notification appears on screen to commend my victory. Who is this fun for? Me. This is fun for me. An endless number of videos and forum posts are dedicated to the use of "cheese" strategies in games. But why is this fun? After all, this type of play is often considered “low skill”. There was no intricate dance between combatants; there were no parries or close calls dodged at the last second. I did not get to feel the rhythm of the music as my foe wound up their ultimate attack, and I did not experience the tension of scrambling at low health to eke out a drink of Estus. Despite missing these moments, I have found something else to latch on to: the process of a plan coming together. There is something so rewarding about the act of preparation as an expression of power, where familiarity with a game’s systems and optimization of abilities allow players to express themselves in their own way. If a character is leveled just right, the equipment used is carefully chosen, and the plan of action has already been decided, the player can come out ahead, and they can know it before the battle ever begins. There is value in that planning and dedication. So when Nate Shearer asked me (as part of his “Encritification” project) whether the act of “cheesing” is a failure of the game or the player, I had to wonder what constitutes cheesing something, and if these moments are failures at all. In most instances, a “cheese strat” is simply a strategy deployed by a player that produces results beyond what one would expect for the level of mechanical skill or effort shown. Beating a boss easily through preparation rather than mechanical execution is one way in which the phrase is often deployed, but it can be used in other contexts as well, such as circumventing intended puzzles or pathways through unexpected means. If a character is leveled just right, the equipment used is carefully chosen, and the plan of action has already been decided, the player can come out ahead, and they can know it before the battle ever begins. There is value in that planning and dedication. This phrase is commonly deployed as an argument by one party to persuade the other party (or parties) that the technique in question ought not be used on some moral grounds. This is a direct result of many people having tied their own personal worth and personality up into the games they have played and how they play them. They wear the act of beating a game the “right” way as a badge of honor, as a means to distinguish themselves as a true gamer, above the rabble. But who gets to decide the “correct” ways of playing a game? Developers set the parameters, and players engage with the material through them. Playing the game in a non-competitive environment in a way that values mechanical skill over in-game function is valid, but not something that can or should be extrapolated to all players. Parry builds in Elden Ring are no more valid than sorcery builds, and the only limitation on their value is a personal determination of what feels most fun to each individual player. Posting aura-farming clip compilations of parries and slow walks toward a foe is engaging content, but it is not a prescription for the correct method of play. So, when is deployment of a cheesy strategy a failure? On the developer side, it may be considered a design failure if the interaction is entirely unintended, but it must also undermine the core gameplay or design ethos. Players using all available tools as intended is not a design failure, even if it trivializes encounters. For players, I generally hold that the only way cheesing a fight or game could be considered a failure is if they have diminished their own joy or experience through the use of such strategies, and such a determination can only be made by the player themselves. Outside parties don’t really have a voice here, even if they object to the strategies utilized (within the bounds of the game). What one player does in their game should not diminish what another feels or accomplishes on their end. An example of a Gamer™ using "cheese" as an excuse for their loss. Multiplayer games have their own concerns regarding balance and player retention when confronted with “cheap” or “cheesy” strategies. There will always be predominant strategies, but allowing for multiple avenues for success is key. “Cheese” strategies that are comparatively too effective or exploit the game in unintended ways must be quickly patched out. Their inclusion is a developer failure, and not the fault of the player. The point of competitive games is to win, and unless pre-established rules are being broken by a “cheese” strategy, a player’s adoption of those strategies is not on the player themselves. Outside of unintended exploitations, the phrase is generally levied by the types of people you’d see featured on Scrub Quotes. Unable to cope with losing in a way they could not foresee, they cast aspersions on the opposing party to diminish the opponent’s victory. In such cases, the only failure is on the part of the loser who was unable to comprehend the strategy or adapt to it. Rather than finding ways to counter these so-called “cheese strats”, the player makes a plea for their elimination. But not all communities react in this way. In fact, many embrace these strategies as a core component of the game itself, given proper context. The speedrunning community is perhaps the most prominent of these adopters. Making use of glitches, broken strategies, or exploiting a game’s systems to the fullest effect are all part and parcel of speedruns, and discovery of those strategies and exploits over time is a big part of the fun for those communities. Take a game like Mario Kart, for instance. Racers are always looking for ways to decrease their time on any given track, and players scour every corner of a map looking for new ways to shave off a second on their time trial, including bypassing track barriers or skipping sections. Finding these is a labor of love — the people engaging in the practice are doing so because they love the game and they love to compete in their mastery of the mechanics. In doing so, these players construct a whole new layer of narrative over the game — one born not from the script, but from the act of play itself. Story is quite often pigeonholed as the written, explicit narrative of a game as dictated by cutscenes or text boxes. But in video games, we shape our own stories through our play. What abilities you use, how you build out your characters, the strategies that you employ — or don’t employ — all tell a story. They shape our experiences as players. More than that, they can shape the perception or thought processes of the character we play. Having your RPG character lean into taking the path of least resistance at all times can become a defining trait, something you can embody through play as much as selecting choices on a screen. Conversely, maybe your character (or yourself) likes to do things the hard way, getting up close and personal with a foe and whittling them down over time. Opening up these avenues for expression ultimately allows players to craft their own story and form attachments to the game, its characters, and its systems. This is true even if one approach is ultimately more powerful or less mechanically intensive than the alternatives. What abilities you use, how you build out your characters, the strategies that you employ — or don’t employ — all tell a story. They shape our experiences as players. More than that, they can shape the perception or thought processes of the character we play. I’ve come to understand that players engaging with the systems at hand and trivializing them does not necessarily constitute a failure on anyone’s part, so long as the interactions utilized are intended. In many cases, I don't see the unintended interactions as a big failure either, unless the game is in such an egregious state that bugs are easily triggered or the game is fundamentally broken in some way. The developers have made a work of art and asked players to abide by specific parameters of play. There is a level of buy-in that must be accepted as a baseline, but ultimately, how those players then engage with the games is up to them. It is a conversation between the creator and the interpreter. As long as the player is having fun — multiplayer caveats aside — nobody has been failed by the execution of a plan.

Final Fantasy VII Revelation If you’re looking for a list of games releasing in the calendar year 2027, look no further. Rather than constantly scouring the web for each release date, we at JetsonPlaysGames wanted to give our readers a handy listing of known release dates for games across the spectrum. We’ll track and update this list regularly with every confirmed release date across all major platforms, saving you the hassle of searching the web. While the list has a dedicated option in the site menus, you can bookmark this page for quick access to the calendar. If you'd like to recommend another game be added to the list, you can email us at jetsonplaysgames@gmail.com. Without further ado, here are the dates for upcoming titles. Jump To Section January February March April May June July August September October November December TBD Release Calendar January Final Fantasy XIV: Evercold Game Title Release Date Systems Stranger Than Heaven January 15 PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC Cogito: Requiem January 18 PC Wandering Sword January 21 Switch, Switch 2 Final Fantasy XIV: Evercold PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, PC February Persona 4 Revival Game Title Release Date Systems Sagas of Lumin February 5 PC Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis February 12 PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, PC Persona 4 Revival February 18 PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC Fable February 23 PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC Metro 2039 February PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC Demi and the Fractured Dream PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, Switch 2, PC March Game Title Release Date Systems Join Us PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC April Game Title Release Date Systems May Game Title Release Date Systems June Game Title Release Date Systems July Game Title Release Date Systems College Football 27 July 16th, 2026 PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC August Game Title Release Date Systems September Game Title Release Date Systems October Game Title Release Date Systems November Game Title Release Date Systems December Game Title Release Date Systems TBD Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Songs of the Past Game Title Release Date Systems Agni: Village of Calamity Xbox Series X/S, PC Alien Deathstorm PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC Anima: Song from the Abyss PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC Arma 4 Artificial Detective PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC Atelier Karia: The Night Kingdom & the Guide of Memories PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, PC Bad Magpie Xbox Series X/S, PC Barbie: Horse Ride & Rescue Switch 2, PC Beastieball PC Bub PC Chrono Odyssey PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC City of None PC Clutch PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC Danganronpa 2x2 PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, Switch 2, PC DCKO iOS, Android Death the Guitar PC Dracula: The Disciple PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC Dragon Ball Xenoverse 3 PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC El Paso, Elsewhere 2 Xbox Series X/S, PC Erosion PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC Everbloom Switch 2, PC Everything is Gun! PC Evilbane PC, Xbox Series X/S Exodus PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC Final Fantasy VII Revelation PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, PC Forge of the Fae PC Frostpunk 1886 Gravity Circuit 2 PlayStation 5, Switch, PC Graytail PC Gundam Rogue Orbit PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC Haex (Early Access) PC Hatsune Miku Starry Party Nintendo Switch 2, PC Hello Again PC Hitman Classic Trilogy Remastered PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC Hunter: The Reckoning – Deathwish PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC I Have No Change PC Ill PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC Impermanence PC Into the Unwell PC Into the Void PC Inzoi (Early Access) PlayStation 5 Ithaca PC Kemuri PlayStation 5, PC Lazy River (Early Access) PC Long Gone PC Lords of the Fallen II PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, PC Magicians: The Devil's Deal PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC Mega Man: Dual Override PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, Switch 2, PC Metro 2039 PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC Moosa: Dirty Fate PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC Muramasa: Revenant Blades PlayStation 5, Switch, Switch 2, PC My Arms Are Longer Now PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, Switch 2, PC My Cannibal Family PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC N Plus Infinity Times Two PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, PC Nekome: Nazi Hunter PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC Ninjala 2: The Uncharted Planet Switch 2 Nirvana Noir Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PC Ontos PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC Out of Words PlayStation 5, Switch 2, Xbox Series X/S, PC Outward 2 (Early Access) PC Phasmophobia PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, PlayStation VR2, PC Pikuniku 2 Switch 2, PC Pokémon Winds and Waves Switch 2 Project TAL PlayStation 5, PC Resident Evil Veronica PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, PC Senua PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC Shantae Title Silent Planet - Elegy of a Dying World PC Slap Out of It! PC Spyro: A Realm Beyond PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, PC Star Trek: Shadow Frontier PlayStation 5, Switch 2, Xbox Series X/S, PC State of Decay 3 PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC The Expanse: Osiris Reborn PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC The Free Shepherd PlayStation 5, PC The Lift PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC The Lost Wild PlayStation 5, PC The Pines PC The Talos Principle 3 PlayStation 5, PC The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Songs of the Past PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC The Wolf Among Us 2 PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC Thief: The Dark Project Remastered PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, PC Tiny Metal 2 PC Tomb Raider: Catalyst PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC Tsarevna: Age of Tales PC Until Dawn 2 PlayStation 5 Virtua Fighter Crossroads Vivarium Xbox Series X/S, PC Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Deathmaster PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, PC Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC Waterful PC Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Rageborn PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, PC Westlanders (Early Access) PC Wo Long 2: Wings of Ember PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, PC Xenoblade Genesis Switch 2 Yakoh Shinobi Ops PlayStation 5, PC Zoopunk PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC

Slumber Realm is one of the more unique-looking roguelike deck-builders I’ve recently come across, but the gameplay opts for a more familiar structure to its baseline mechanics. Utilizing a familiar pattern of choosing pathways, fighting battles and getting cards, the game distinguishes itself via a day and night cycle for both its battles and beyond. Players decorate their room and do chores in the real world by day, and enter a dream state where they engage in combat at night. Publisher: Chugga Chugga LLC Developer: Chugga Chugga LLC Platform: Played on PC (Steam) Availability: Releasing Q4 2026 on PC For the daytime, this preview build holds very little to do. You buy decorations for your room, which you can place and organize as you see fit, which in turn earn you more points as you progress through the dream world at night. These items, bought from the room’s corkboard, are not always just decorative, however. Some can be beneficial for the dream world, like new abilities or cards to use, but there is little to do in this waking world outside of a few clicks now and again. On the other hand, the night segments place players on a branching pathway of various encounters against nightmares that take the shape of broccoli, mushroom men, and even the sun. This dream world has some other oddities, like a shopkeeper that eats the equipment you want to buy, and an almost watercolor-esque aesthetic to the environments and figures that appear onscreen. It’s a structure that will feel very familiar to genre enthusiasts, as it does somewhat mimic the heavy-hitters of the genre, but the slumber realm does a few things mechanically to separate itself, at least a little bit. First, that aforementioned day-night cycle is key to the battles. Players have cards in their deck that work at specific times of day. While many cards can take effect at any time, the most powerful tools are often those that need specific times of day to work. Chugga Chugga LLC Each card has a number range that dice rolls must fall within to activate, as well. If a card shows 1-4 but you roll a 5, the card will not activate. Additionally, cards confer resources when activated, signified by the color and symbol in the bottom left of each card. This means players must consider not only which time of day their cards are most effective in, but also calculate the resources needed to make the best use of their abilities, and the die ranges needed for activation. A card with ranges 1-3, 4-6, and 3-5 would be impossible to activate all at once under base conditions, but there are ways to empower your cards to align them more easily. Forging a card increases the top-end value of a card’s activation range, and there are aspects you can unlock that provide the ability to manipulate die rolls by rolling additional dice and taking the lower or higher result (depending upon which specific ability you use). Those are special abilities that take the aforementioned resources to activate, so there is a resource management aspect to all of this as well. But if you’re worried about this all seeming overwhelming, I wouldn’t fret. The actual battles are quite simple, and after a few runs to get your feet settled, it lands safely on the breezier end of the genre. The preview build only let us run through a few battles at a time before forcing players into an “awake” state, something that may not be changed at full release, and the card pool, enemy variety, and decorative aspects are quite limited (the full game will have more of those, at least), so while I am not deeply satisfied by what exists now, it does have some promise as a lighter take on one of the more saturated genres out there.

On September 13, 1996, musician, poet, actor, and activist Tupac Shakur was murdered in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada. As one of the most prominent figures in American pop culture at the time of his death, the impact of Shakur’s passing was widespread, and the fact that his murderer was never confirmed or found added mystery surrounding the events before and after the shooting — a mystery that was immediately capitalized upon by thousands in an effort to make money for themselves. In the wake of this tragedy, hundreds (if not thousands) of songs, albums, poems, books, and films have been released that prominently feature details about Shakur or contain references to him and his death. Posthumous albums featuring his work and voice, as well as collections of his private poems, were quickly disseminated, and untold numbers of memorabilia remain in circulation to this day. Tupac Shakur was never given the courtesy of peace, even after death — a fact that remains just as true now as it was in the 1990’s. Tupac Shakur's likeness as it appears in Stranger Than Heaven On June 5, 2026, Summer Games Fest held its keynote presentation showcasing a large number of upcoming video game titles to be released in the coming months and years. Among those titles was Stranger Than Heaven, an action-adventure title about gangs in Japan developed by RGG Studio — the famed makers of the Like a Dragon (Yakuza) series. In their presentation, RGG revealed that Tupac Shakur’s likeness would be prominently featured in the game, despite being deceased for 30 years. Of course, this is not the first time an actor or famous person has been posthumously puppeteered in this way. Actors like Carrie Fisher and Peter Cushing saw their visage portrayed in Star Wars films after their demise, and even Bruce Lee was imagined as an advocate for Johnny Walker, despite abstaining from alcohol himself. Shakur’s likeness is not even the only one to be featured in a major video game this year, with legendary actor Toshiro Mifune’s likeness being used as the main character in Onimusha: Way of the Sword. So why does Shakur’s inclusion in Stranger Than Heaven feel so much worse? I argue that it lies in several key areas: the nature of Shakur’s death and its relation to the subject matter of the game, legal battles over rights to Shakur’s estate, the fact that Shakur had no say in the matter, and the long history of the commodification of the black body post-death. In Resurrecting the Black Body: Race and the Digital Afterlife, author Tonia Sutherland states, “The use of digital technologies to reanimate the dead, understood here as a 'resurrection practice,' raises a complex set of sociocultural and ethical concerns, particularly around issues of spectacle, commodification, carcerality, and the Black body as souvenir and memory object. Closely related to notions of symbolic immortality and digital immortality practices (addressed in depth in chapter 5), digital resurrection is a modern phenomenon that uses a combination of innovative technologies, digital manipulations, and marketing appeal to construct a domain in which the deceased appear wholesale in new contexts as though alive today—and, in some cases, as though consciously aware of their own demise.” As noted earlier, Stranger Than Heaven is about gang violence in Japan, but more than that, it is about how the protagonist goes on to found the Tojo Clan, the largest and most powerful gang within the Like a Dragon games. The fact that Shakur was himself a victim of the type of violence the Tojo clan goes on to perpetuate makes his inclusion in the Tojo’s founding chapter astonishingly distasteful. RGG Studio’s explanation of his inclusion and depiction is lacking as well, with them telling Game Informer, “Well, if Snoop Dogg and Tupac have this relationship in the game together, you'd probably cry about that because it's so cool!'” Positioning Shakur’s specter as a mere tool to elicit emotion is one thing, but RGG Studio is aiming to go beyond a simple depiction of who Shakur was in life, stating within that same interview, “We wanted to try to envision who Tupac might be now, and we did this with the full approval step by step. Going through the family to make sure that everything met it. We wanted to say, 'Okay, if he was still alive now, thirty years later, how would he act? How would he express himself in that way? That's what we're trying to not going into his past, but rather his potential future.’” One problem with this approach comes in assuming to know how Shakur’s ideals or politics would present themselves today. He died 30 full years ago; it is impossible to know how his positions, demeanor, or appearance would have evolved. It is arrogant to assume such things, and RGG’s insistence on doing so is baffling. By utilizing Shakur’s likeness to voice their own ideas, they commodify him and reduce his inclusion to mere spectacle—a critique that echoes Sutherland’s observations. But this isn't the first time Shakur’s countenance has been paraded in public, either. At Coachella in 2012, a digital recreation was placed onstage alongside Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre to perform some of his songs. Sutherland describes it thusly: “So too was Tupac Shakur, resurrected in hologram form from the dead, expected to perform: he was set to dancing, set to singing, set to play the role of a shucking-and-jiving, oil-slicked, shiny, brawny, Black body—forever enslaved by the fetishism of the white gaze (just as Michael Jackson was) to the rhythm of his own music.” In the absence of Shakur himself, his estate controls the rights to his likeness. This is also true for every other person who has been brought back in this way, but there are key differences in how this has been handled among the various parties named earlier. For Fisher and Cushing, their inclusion was in a long-running series that they themselves had already been a part of in life. While they did not themselves agree to the appearances, there remains some level of continuity of point and purpose for the inclusion. For Shakur, the Like a Dragon series is entirely foreign. He did not know of it, and the extent of what Shakur could have envisioned as the use of his likeness in perpetuity is beyond our knowledge. Further still, the executors of Tupac Shakur’s estate are not actually members of his family; it is controlled by former Warner Brothers record executive Tom Whalley. Whalley was left the estate by Afeni Shakur, Tupac’s Mother, but ongoing legal battles with Tupac’s remaining family color Whalley’s handling as less than stellar. So while RGG Studio claims they received approval from the family, RGG Studios finds themselves between parties looking to control what remains of Tupac Shakur’s legacy. When all of this is considered, it becomes impossible to separate Shakur’s appearance in Stranger Than Heaven from the longstanding exploitation and commodification of black bodies throughout history. As noted in Resurrecting the Black Body: Race and the Digital Afterlife, Harvard restricted access to and profited from images of slaves in compromised positions (though they have since relinquished ownership), entire industries and subcultures were built upon photographs of lynchings, and more recent tragedies like the murder of George Floyd have been subject to continual public viewing, all while being used by corporations for marketing ends. Violence against black people is continually dredged up for some other purpose, removing the humanity of those involved from the equation. While I suspect few in the general populace understand or know about the history of this commodification, sentiment against Tupac Shakur’s inclusion has been comparatively large when stacked up against Toshiro Mifune’s likeness in Onimusha. There are likely a multitude of factors for this. First, RGG Studios' recent troubles should not be discounted when examining why backlash to Shakur’s incorporation has been met so loudly. Once considered a studio that could do no wrong, RGG has had several missteps in recent memory that have turned many against it, such as the removal of trans-related quests and including an actor in its game who has admitted to sexual misconduct because he seems like a “creep”. Second, the circumstances surrounding Mifune’s appearance are much less immediately recognizable as unsavory. His likeness is managed by the company he himself set up, Mifune Productions, and there are no ongoing concerns about its management. Additionally, the way he is used, as an actor portraying a role in a piece of media, does not aim to reveal some truth about Mifune as a person, past or present. Finally, while Tupac Shakur died from gang violence and is now set to appear in a game about it, Mifune’s passing was unrelated to the material at hand. No violence had been brought upon Mifune, and the exploitative aspects ring differently when put against the history of photographic and commercial exploitation of violence against black people. Mifune was not cut down with a katana in the streets of Tokyo, only to then have his digital clone puppeteered in a game about human murders via katana. Despite Mifune’s appearance being comparatively more agreeable, I argue against both. It is worth considering letting the dead rest; directing these dead bodies to express things to our liking feels ghoulish, especially when they deal with subjects so close to their own personal experiences. These methodologies are inherently exploitative, particularly when the deceased were never consulted in the first place. Toshiro Mifune's likeness as it appears in Onimusha: Way of the Sword. Such efforts to recreate the deceased in this way are distasteful in the same ways AI Companions wearing the skin of a dead loved ones are repugnant. There’s just something unnerving about taking the faces and histories of those who can no longer advocate for themselves and using them to our own perverse ends. It goes beyond simple memorialization. When companies like 2wai and the now-defunct Eternime compile replicas of our deceased loved ones, they are looking to monetize our pain, regurgitating their likeness to appeal to our longing for connection. In Laura Parker’s New Yorker article How to Become Virtually Immortal, she writes “For the time being, it seems that Eterni.me’s appeal is more philosophical than practical. 'A hundred years down the track you might not only be able to talk to your mom who died a year ago, but to your grandmother who died when you were sixteen, and your great-grandmother who died before you was born,' Susan Bluck, a psychology professor at the University of Florida, said. 'So it means that we could, in some way, forge relations with ancestors who lived and died well before our own lifetime.'” But these facsimiles are not the ones we cherish; they hold none of the hopes, dreams, skills, beliefs, or love in their hearts. The corporations that make these doppelgangers prey on and commodify those who cannot advocate for themselves, just as much as they prey on those who retain memory of the lost. They are simply replicas meant to extract capital from the living by donning the visage of the dead. And while Tupac Shakurs’s inclusion in Stranger Than Heaven is by no means the first or most prominent digital recreation of a deceased person, its connections to historical black exploitation and closeness to the circumstances surrounding his death carry their own weight in its reception.

I fire up Jenny the Witch, and for a brief moment, it is 2002 all over again. It arrives with the luster and bluster of a classic PS2-era action RPG — loud and unconcerned with hyper-realism. Positioned squarely as a hack-and-slash spectacle that attempts to marry character action combat with floaty platforming, my mind alights with possibility and nostalgia. However, despite design elements that show clear promise, uneven mechanical tuning and technical rough edges keep this witch from fully taking flight. Publisher: Catbird Soft Developer: Catbird Soft Platform: Played on PC (Steam) Availability: Released on July 22, 2026 on PC Visually, Jenny the Witch reaches for the nostalgic blocky aesthetic that has grown more popular over the last few years. For this game, that aesthetic manifests as bright colors and limited flashy effects during combat, while maintaining a bare-bones approach to environmental design. Between combat encounters, players will participate in some light platforming, a structure that, despite its “spectacle fighter” Steam tag, feels a bit more like Kingdom Hearts than a straight musou game like Dynasty Warriors. Yet, for all of its reverence for those aged classics, Jenny the Witch neglects to build up its story and characters in any meaningful way. You play as Jenny, a bounty hunter of sorts hired to investigate the mysterious disappearance of several miners at a remote dig site. Piloting a witch-themed mech, Jenny will need to fight through hordes of mechanical super soldiers in order to discover what happened to the missing people and uncover the group behind the events. There’s not much more to the setup than that, and the story remains minimal throughout, with brief dialogue exchanges appearing occasionally to establish basic context. With the plot pushed to the background, narrative tension rarely takes hold. Additionally, with a relatively small roster of enemy types and environment designs that can feel uniform over time, the progression across the campaign tends to blend together with few distinct thematic milestones. I never really got a sense of who Jenny is as a character. Her brief interactions with her hacker brother don't yield much characterization, and the gameplay gives few clues on its own. This isn’t a plea for more “story.” I don't think an explanation of the ins and outs of Jenny’s philosophy or reasoning is necessary for Jenny the Witch to be a compelling game, but she lands nearly devoid of personality — an empty husk, much like the mech suit she pilots. Character action games often live and die by their rich characters just as much as they do by their combat. They work in tandem to create memorable and exciting experiences. The characters inform the action, and the action informs us about the character — they become inseparable. For Jenny the Witch, so little of the action or characterization engrosses me, or drives the game forward. In some sense, you can get a taste of this by taunting when your hyper meter is empty, with Jenny launching insults toward her mechanical foes, but very little about Jenny can be gleaned from her actions or animations, and I think that’s a shame. Take a character like Bayonetta, the lead from the series of the same name; her attacks and movements are fluid, almost dancer-like; her walk exudes confidence. We can learn so much about her just by watching her. In comparison, Jenny attacks with rigid movements, rather than with the flair of a heroine or confident hunter. By contrast, the game’s final boss gets more characterization than all other characters combined, with interstitial vignettes showcasing their thought process and feelings throughout the game. Unfortunately, the game, along with the characterization, ends just as abruptly as it begins, with the ending sequence feeling intensely rushed as a means of shuffling us out the door. When evaluating an action title, game feel — the tactile feedback and responsiveness of player controls — is paramount. Jenny the Witch delivers a mixed bag here, offering satisfying weight in some areas while feeling restrictive in others. That feel in combat has its positives, like the attacks carrying a noticeable weight, aided by subtle micro-pauses upon landing hits that make strikes feel impactful. Against smaller enemies, this system shines as hits stagger foes outright. However, because larger enemies do not react or stagger when hit, engaging them up close carries high risk, especially on elevated difficulty settings. Jenny possesses both close-range melee attacks and long-range shooting mechanics. While melee combat is inherently more dynamic, yielding higher damage, hitting multiple targets, and filling the hyper attack meter much faster, it operates under noticeable constraints. A key design challenge lies in how the game ties both basic weapon attacks and dodge maneuvers to the same extremely limited resource pool. Because melee attacks feature relatively long recovery animations on their final hits, players are forced to spend this limited resource just to dash out of harm's way. Switching to ranged attacks, which refills energy reserves for melee, presents its own rhythm, as there is a brief input delay between pressing the button and firing. This friction is further compounded by the game's monetary economy, where upgrades and new moves are purchased using funds earned through high combo chains. While melee attacks build the combo meter faster, ranged attacks allow players to build and maintain chains safely from a distance without breaking the combo or risking heavy damage. As a result, the safest and most efficient way to play often disincentivizes close-quarters melee, even though that melee system is arguably where the core combat shines brightest. Once completed, Jenny the Witch opens up the ability to replay the story using your unlocked abilities, or participate in an "Arena" mode to face off against waves of enemies. The cliché is that “familiarity breeds contempt,” but thankfully, I’ve not found this to be the case. Playing the story on the highest difficulty comes with new enemy encounters, which forces engagement in melee due to the high volume of foes — something that is not true on normal difficulty. The increased difficulty necessitates a more robust playstyle, which does make it much more interesting to engage with than simply firing away at robots, but all of the aforementioned quirks and issues of melee remain the same, which can lead to frustration. The Arena provides flat, dull stages to face waves of foes so that you can practice more thoroughly, but confers no additional benefit, as far as I can gather. Still, there is something soothing about learning the combat of a character action game like this, even if there is little to take hold of. Being able to manipulate the character just so, gracefully dashing from foe to foe, all of it does bring fulfillment. But here it also makes me yearn for more — more freedom in dashing and melee, and the ability to make each fight my own. A key design challenge lies in how the game ties both offensive special attacks and basic dodge maneuvers to the same extremely limited resource pool. Beyond the combat loop, Jenny the Witch encounters its most significant hurdles in its camera system and platforming responsiveness. Platforming segments are not exacting in their timing, but the camera often struggles to keep up with the action, occasionally clipping into geometry or swinging abruptly during tight maneuvers, making it difficult to gauge landing spots and positioning. As such, camera collision issues near walls end up being the direct cause of most falls and deaths. Players may also occasionally encounter minor animation hitches, such as getting momentarily stuck in a jump state during frantic sequences, leaving the player unable to perform their normal combat actions and stranding them in a vulnerable state. On the positive side, early technical hiccups have seen active developer attention already. An early bug that prevented enemies from exiting spawn points was promptly addressed in a pre-launch patch. For early adopters, such day-one friction is not uncommon, and active patching bodes well for the game's ongoing stability. Verdict Ultimately, Jenny the Witch is a throwback that channels the vibrant spirit of classic action titles, but never fully captures it. Its core combat carries a satisfying weight, and its blend of colorful visuals with arcade-style scoring provides a fun foundation, but camera inconsistencies, strict resource limitations, and a minimal story keep it from reaching true classic status. That said, players who appreciate retro game feel and simpler hack-and-slash action will find a title and developer worth keeping an eye on. Image Credits: Catbird Soft and Taylor Rioux Disclaimer: We received a copy of this title for free from the publisher.

Making Art in a Broken World Authoritarian systems work hard to break us down, and every screw put to the people takes constant effort by the state. Yet people persist, making art and finding joy in even the darkest of moments. And so, these authoritarians take on the work of erasure, eliminating or subjugating dissidents, while squashing undesirable art and ideas in an effort to sustain the bloated husk of a fascist regime. Celestial Return, a three-part, story-driven RPG heavily inspired by text-heavy classics like Planescape: Torment, Citizen Sleeper, and Disco Elysium, examines this erasure. Publisher: Shoreline Games Developer: Metaphor Games Platform: Played on PC (Steam) Availability: Released on July 14, 2026 on PC In Celestial Return, every persuasion attempt or desperate acrobatic maneuver relies entirely on a limited pool of physical dice. As more of a visual novel than a standard RPG, you never take full control of the protagonist, Detective Howard, or his companions during a fight or within a scene; you simply select an action, roll, and watch it all play out. These rolls are supposed to matter. As part of the game’s prologue, the writer addresses the player directly to set expectations, promising that your choices will shape Howard’s character and alter the narrative. To an extent, they do. But Celestial Return also has a habit of railroading you into specific outcomes, forcing the plot down a predetermined path even if you pass your skill checks. The writer openly admits this in the introduction, as well, warning the player that the world will grind forward regardless of their choices. This funneling stings because dice in this world function as a diegetic currency that characters use in furtherance of their goals, while also serving as the means by which players interact with the world. When an outcome is static, spending those limited resources may feel completely pointless, as if the choices do not matter beyond the roleplaying aspect. Of course, role-playing is the point of such a game, isn’t it? It’s not really about finding the optimal outcome in every given scenario. When you inhabit a character in an RPG like this, I’ve always found more joy in crafting a character and sticking to that persona consistently to shape a story. How does this person interact with this world, and how does the world mold around them? When you inhabit a character in an RPG like this, I’ve always found more joy in crafting a character and sticking to that persona consistently to shape a story. That said, it is a bit of a let-down when your choices lead you to dead ends, or when success is meaningless despite the high opportunity cost of using dice on a roll. Too often failure is not used as a jumping-off point to tell further interesting stories; instead, it simply bars the player from receiving anything of interest. The highest cost is not in dice, but in narrative advancement. By missing a roll, the player is locked out of any kind of story from forming — the interactions are cut short, rather than replaced. We can derive meaning from failures. Whether we learn something new, or our characters are altered in some way, failure in one action does not have to be an end-state for the events of our lives. For Celestial Return, it too often is. There is nothing to be gained by this loss. The game is also plagued by myriad technical problems in at least two key areas — text progression and saving. For the text, I have encountered several moments where the advancement of the story was meant to present me with a choice, but the options did not appear on the screen. In other moments, the choice options did appear, but clicking on them did not have an effect, forcing a reload in both types of scenarios. Unfortunately, the save system is just as broken as the people of Netherveil. Loading a save will sometimes cause dialogue options to disappear upon reload, and it has a habit of not placing players in the scene or environment that they are trying to load into, instead having the text scrawl over the environs and imagery that was being loaded from. In both scenarios, the only consistent way forward is to load another file and hope it works, so maintaining as many save slots as possible is paramount. These mechanical frustrations might be easier to endure if the world they broke into felt seamless. Unfortunately, the game's technical instability mirrors the inconsistency in its writing and artwork. There is something a bit “off” about Celestial Return. The language is mostly stiff and sometimes stilted, but it ventures into moments of lucidity. There are times when the wording feels poetic and fluid, where the text on the screen feels evocative and purposeful in describing a scene, only for it to collapse into terse, repetitive, or mechanical wording. There are whole conversations filled with short, fragmented sentences, littered with cliché, contrasted framing such as “it's not just X, it's Y”. In one conversation with a character, the text made note of her “almond-shaped eyes” three times within the span of a few minutes, as if the writers could not stand the possibility that players might miss the fact that this character looks Asian. So, to solidify their intent, they have leaned upon racialized shorthand to “other” her. This is all coupled with infrequent but noticeable spelling and grammar mistakes. The artwork is similarly inconsistent. Characters may look different from piece to piece, with someone like the protagonist, Howard, looking different across the menus, the main screen, and his UI portrait. While the American comic book-style artwork can explain or mask some of these inconsistencies, I feel a bit uncomfortable when I look too closely. When I see things like a misshapen flowerpot, an oddly warped book, or features and shadows on a character that don’t quite make sense, I am given pause. Why are certain elements of this scene in a different perspective than others? How much can be attributed to artist errors, and what is intended? The inconsistency muddies my appreciation. The artist behind the game's imagery once defended these anomalies on Reddit, stating “I’ve been in the industry for years, but I still make mistakes” as part of an explanation for why a character had six fingers in a demo build. Perhaps these other pieces can similarly be waved away, but more time to iron out these details would have served the game much better than shipping as-is, both in terms of quality and perception. Yet, despite the distracting irregularities, Celestial Return finds its footing when it shifts its focus to the political architecture of Netherveil. The narrative leans heavily into the weight of fascism, citizens' complicity in building it, and how the gears of those systems crush individual lives and the aspirations of its people. While all of this is relevant to the world of today, the game has little to say about these systems that remains intriguing aside from one throughline — the place and purpose of art within these societies. Art plays a large role in the events of the game, with major questlines focused on art showings, and minor explorable events giving the characters moments to inspect or appreciate the artworks of those living within the city. All of these moments have something to say on the point and purpose of that art, and perhaps most surprisingly, players are given opportunities to bounce off those works themselves. Much like many CRPGs of late, this game showcases the protagonist’s personality as different distinct aspects, with Howard’s Virtue manifesting as a righteous do-gooder, intelligence playing the part of the pragmatist, and so on. In these moments where Howard is reflecting on the artworks he encounters, each of these personality traits has something different to say on the subject. In the art showing during the main quest, Howard’s thoughts on the work itself range from viewing it as pretentious or useless to holding it as important work. Ultimately, the player can at least partly decide how the character feels about the pieces and the people who made them. At another point, Howard sits down and admires a piece of graffiti on a nearby wall while speaking to Rose, the Abstract abomination of a talking rose donning a human-esque face. Rose wonders what the artwork showing two robots getting married is meant to symbolize, and from there a conversation unfolds where Rose wonders, “I don't get it. Why would someone paint that?” As the player, you decide whether Howard focuses on the artist's intent (they were bored, took the blank wall personally), the purpose of the work (doesn't need our permission to exist, artist is trying to figure something out), or its legality (it’s just vandalism), and choosing one will help inform Rose’s perception of the piece. More importantly, it shapes our shared understanding of the world. By taking the position of a supporter of the arts, Howard is able to contextualize how the piece fits into the broader picture. As it currently stands, the ruling government of Netherveil is fascistic and overbearing, tightly controlling what people can say and do, making no space for true self-expression without the support of the state. Immediately after the explanation, a cleaning drone washes away the artwork, as if it never existed. Ultimately, the player can at least partly decide how the character feels about the pieces and the people who made them. This is heavily contrasted by the propaganda pieces littering the city as you play, which are akin to wartime propaganda posters advocating for the support of government programs. There is a clear line from the first posters, which showcase communal efforts to do something ostensibly positive, to the outright demands by the government for compliance on the later posters. These prepared messages are allowed to linger thanks to their service toward the ongoing fascist project enacted by the government. Comply, and you will live. Resist, and you will be erased, just like that mural on the wall. But I wonder if any answer we give to Rose’s question would ever be sufficient. Why would someone paint that? The direction the game takes us through its writing speaks to art as a broad concept, but what about here, in this moment? Why would someone paint this picture under these conditions? What is the point, and why does it matter? These are all questions artists are asked today — questions artists ask of themselves. So many who see the works will remain unaffected, unmoved, and uninspired. What good does a single piece of art do in a sea of sorrow? Can this singular work change the world? Probably not, but it can change you, if you let it. And you — the reader, the viewer, the physical being engaged in the world today — can change what you think, what you feel, and how you act. You can guide those around you, and make the world a better place. You can change your world, and that is enough. These conversations about the work of artists make interpreting Celestial Return difficult in its own right, but the fault doesn't lie entirely with the game, either. Living in the United States of America for my entire life, I have seen the noose of fascism slowly tighten around the necks of its people. Surveillance programs like the PATRIOT Act have been used to spy on Americans, government-sponsored pogroms in the form of ICE raids terrorize communities across the nation, and even the suffocation and removal of art that depicts anything the state deems untoward have all been enacted in the name of safety. All of it has, to some degree, been further facilitated by the burgeoning use of AI in everyday life. Kinda wish the game's most meaningful conversations didn't happen with...this thing. It is here that the explicit erasure of art by a machine cuts entirely too close to home. Propaganda produced by the state carries the stink of an inhuman nature, with computer-generated nonsense spewed out in furtherance of their goals. AI tools are used to identify and accuse people of crimes, regardless of the accuracy of the tool or veracity of the claims. So, when I see the wobbly lines and six-fingered portraits, or read the tired, repetitive language of the text within Celestial Return, my stomach drops. And maybe that is not fair. Despite my unease, the development team behind the game, Metaphor Games, has stated on multiple occasions that they have not used AI in the production of this title. They’ve gone on record to say that all of the writing and artwork is handmade by humans, and the PR team behind the game has assured me of the same. By all accounts, I should believe them. I should take their word for it. More disturbingly, I should not even have to question it. So why is there a nagging at the back of my mind? It is a terrifying time to look too closely at a video game. When a warped perspective or artistic variance no longer registers as a human mistake, the simple act of my interpretation becomes infected by paranoia. Just as the protagonist struggles with making sense of the world around him, I wrestled with an uneasy distrust of the material I was meant to open myself up to. The heightened presence of AI has done something insidious to the space. It has cast doubt on the humanity and purpose of the art form. AI has not only changed the works that use it, but it has also changed me. It has changed the way I examine art, changed the way I interpret and interact with it. It has ruined my sense of reality — or rather my belief in a shared reality with other humans — in more ways than I care to admit. I just wish it hadn’t.

Twin-stick shooters are rarely my cup of tea. That isn’t to say I haven’t enjoyed my fair share of them — games like Enter the Gungeon, Hotline Miami, and Resogun are all titles I’ve happily run through. But a deep familiarity with the genre is not something I possess. Roguelites, however, have made up the bulk of my gaming diet over the last five years. Hyperwired aims to marry these two genres, taking the semi-randomized, choice-driven progression of a roguelite to spice up an otherwise sparse twin-stick shooting experience. Not content to leave things there, developer SIDRALGAMES also introduces its primary gameplay and level progression mechanic: plugging in. Publisher: SelectaPlay, Beep Japan Inc. Developer: SIDRALGAMES Platform: Played on Nintendo Switch Availability: Released July 2, 2026, for PC (Steam), Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, Playstation 4/5, and Xbox Series X/S While most twin-stick shooters are denoted by fluid, free-flowing movement and frantic bullet-dodging, Hyperwired grounds you. Plugging into an outlet tethers your ship to a small radius, restricting your mobility in exchange for energy, health, or stage progression. The Nintendo Switch version also notes this action with a nice little rumble in your hand, as if the power were now running through you, the player. On paper, this adds a compelling tactical dimension to the combat; in practice, the execution leaves much to be desired. Mechanically speaking, the tether system functions perfectly well. Snapping onto an outlet is proximity-based and intuitive, theoretically forcing you to make risk-reward decisions about when and where to anchor yourself. Unfortunately, the surrounding systems quickly homogenize the experience. Because normal levels feature sparse enemy numbers, your sole objective is to rush toward four specific stations, plug in to revive them, and unlock the exit. This loop severely trivializes the combat. The most optimal strategy is always to ignore the small drones and mechanical turrets that inhabit a level, sprint to an outlet, and only fire your weapons to temporarily clear encroaching foes while you charge up. While a scoring system exists, there is no mechanical incentive to chase a high score beyond self-satisfaction. Even if you get the urge to hunt down the mostly-harmless fliers drifting around the map, a stifling energy economy prevents you from venturing away from your power sources for long. This energy restriction is where Hyperwired ultimately short-circuits. Because your reserves deplete so rapidly, the most viable strategy during the much more punishing boss fights is to hover near a charging station. Take the giant helmet-like boss, for instance. It sits back and fires spreading shots at the player before slowly lumbering around to initiate contact damage. Getting in close poses a much greater risk of damage with little to no upside. By contrast, staying out of range tethered to a station means your energy, laser charge, or ammo reserves remain high, allowing you to deal much more damage over time with some room for safety, and this is even before upgrades for being plugged in are considered. The game does feature a roguelite upgrade tree to expand your energy capacity, but because upgrade drafts are randomized, prioritizing damage and movement speed is always the safer bet. On top of the randomization aspect, few of the upgrades feel noteworthy or exciting to receive. Sure, having a more powerful laser or more bullet damage is nice and valuable, but it doesn't alter how you play in any meaningful way. They’re not the types of upgrades you see offered and say “wow, I really want to try this out!” Roguelite genre titans like Hades make each run feel meaningful with not only the number of choices provided, but the ways in which those boons alter the play experience, crafting a run that feels like it is uniquely yours. By contrast, Hyperwired's incremental numbers-based approach feels totally unremarkable. While there is a certain element of “you control the buttons you press” to all of this, the severe lack of reserve resources sans multiple upgrades necessitates that players plug in frequently. There is an “overcharge” mechanic that is meant to mitigate staying plugged in eternally, forcibly unplugging the player from the socket, but it is slow to take hold. Plugging into a station with full energy will begin to build up overcharge (denoted by a red bar above your ship) only after several seconds of being plugged in, and will take an additional seven or so seconds to fully “overcharge” your ship. Unplugging from the station quickly lowers the overcharge bar, meaning only a few seconds off the power source are needed at any given time. While the tether should create tense, tactical trade-offs, its sheer necessity makes every run feel identical. This monotony is doubly felt when you realize the bosses appear in the exact same order every time. If you’ve made it to the end once, you have seen it all. Thankfully, power-ups aren’t the only means of differentiating runs, as players can unlock new ships to fly after rescuing them during the course of a level. When saved, these ships assist you in combat as automated minions, taking out the chaff while you focus on unlocking objectives. After a run is completed, these ships become selectable by the player and have their own unique abilities, such as more bombs. Despite the mechanical diversity of ships, the core structure remains the same — plug and move until you reach a boss. This mechanical monotony is unfortunately mirrored in the game's presentation. On a purely technical level, Hyperwired sounds great. A pulsing, techno-inspired soundtrack permeates the soundscape, and clear auditory feedback when firing your weapons or locking into a socket lends weight to the actions (especially when accompanied by the rumble). However, the soundscape ultimately suffers from the lack of action on screen; because the level is so routinely starved of enemies and urgent threats, the music feels like a rave playing to an empty club. Instead of escalating the tension during an intense firefight, the booming beats merely highlight how quiet and empty the levels actually are. Space that could be filled out by ships firing on you or explosions in the distance is simply left hollow. The same could be said of the visuals. While the ship designs are clean and the pixelated artstyle is clear and beautiful in motion, the dearth of onscreen action leaves mostly empty space to fill the view. When enemies do show up, there is little variety in their design. You face the same handful of enemies across the entire run, making it easy to lose track of how just how long you've been playing or how far you've progressed. Verdict I must admit I am a bit perplexed by the lack of excitement in Hyperwired. Twin-stick shooters can so rarely be considered boring, but this one manages to land with a dull thud. Without meaningful threats or interesting upgrade paths, the game just thoughtlessly advances, each room feeling just like the last. The plug mechanic, which should have been its saving grace, ultimately acts as the anchor weighing it down. Despite this, the game can be fun in short doses, making it a good fit for the portable modes on Switch or for a Steam Deck. Image Credits: SIDRALGAMES, SelectaPlay, Beep Japan Inc.

On Reviews as Price Evaluations Gaming is expensive, and it’s getting ever more so by the day. Thanks to massive data centers across the United States monopolizing computing hardware, components that would otherwise head to consumers — like RAM sticks and solid-state drives — are instead being diverted to AI projects spearheaded by Tech giants like Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI. Of course, the effects of these price increases are not contained solely within the realm of PC gaming. As gaming consoles need much of the same technology, the companies that make them have increased the costs associated with play, with consoles like the Xbox Series X|S getting multiple price increases over the last year alone. The Xbox Series X, initially priced at $499.99, climbed to $599.99 and now sits at $749.99, following several incremental increases. Meanwhile, Valve, the corporation behind PC gaming juggernaut Steam, had hoped to capitalize on its position as the de facto PC gaming platform and release a dedicated PC for gaming. Before the actual product’s release, speculation surrounding the newest iteration of the “Steam Machine” positioned it as likely an entry-level piece of hardware, rather than an enthusiast powerhouse. At the time of its initial announcement, such a machine would cost somewhere in the realm of $600-800 if a person built it themselves. While Valve was able to put together a machine comparable in power to the PS5, the prices for each model are all over the $1000 mark, with the top-end version being a hefty $1,430. The Steam Machine is a capable piece of hardware, but PC component prices have driven its price up. Alongside these price announcements came reviews for the Steam Machine, with evaluations on its capabilities, shape, and even its operating system landing on the pages and pages of words sent out upon the media embargo. While the listed price points are certainly worthy of talking about within these reviews and beyond them, assessments on whether or not the Steam Machine was “worth” the price were peppered throughout much of the prose. Discussion on the Steam Machine’s “worth” is impossible to avoid. In Jacqueline Thomas’s review at IGN, they state, “At $1049 (and $1349 for the 2TB model), the Steam Machine seems like it’d be hard to recommend to most people.” Similar sentiments are echoed by Andy Edser of PC Gamer, who writes, “I just can't square the Steam Machine's performance with any idea of consumer value. I really can't. The first question you need to ask yourself as a hardware reviewer is this: Would I buy one?” The evaluations of what a game or piece of hardware is “worth” come from those least equipped to make it. Price discourse is always a bit peculiar when it so often comes from people who do not actually have to make a buying decision on the thing they're speaking about, seeing as they do not have to pay for them. These products are given to the reviewer or company behind the review as part of the agreement to participate in the marketing blitz surrounding the product. In Jacqueline Thomas’s review at IGN, they state, “At $1049 (and $1349 for the 2TB model), the Steam Machine seems like it’d be hard to recommend to most people.” Sure, each reviewer knows the value of a dollar or euro to some extent, couching their perspective in their own lived experience. But there is a fundamental disconnect between a party that gets these products for free and those that do not, and that disconnect is hard to reconcile with the fact that reviews are so often positioned as generalized declarations of a product’s value. This disconnect births a sort of simulated financial anxiety within this criticism. Because many reviewers feel obligated to act as consumer advocates, they often perform an elaborate pantomime of budgeting. They scowl at the high price tag on behalf of the reader, projecting a hypothetical financial strain that they themselves never actually had to endure. It is a risk-free empathy. In these circumstances, the critic suffers no buyer's remorse if the product fails to deliver, nor do they feel the sting of a bank account drained by a hobby. By trying to calculate a transaction they never participated in, the reviewer ends up speaking over the actual material reality of the consumer class they claim to represent. These sorts of evaluations are often littered with numerous “ifs” and “buts”; if you are looking for X, this may be for you. It is expensive, but it could maybe, possibly, be worth the cost if you can afford to pay for it and want something that can do X, Y, or Z. It is not based on anything tangible and comes with so many caveats and suppositions that it is rendered meaningless within the text. Despite some disagreement with the particulars of the wording in these types of product reviews — such as Giant Bomb’s Dan Ryckert titling his review “The Best Beginner's Gaming PC... At an Enthusiast Price” when enthusiast PCs would realistically run you between $2000-5000 today, a price point far beyond that of the Steam Machine — this evaluation is somewhat forgivable when dealing with hardware, as we can do direct price-to-performance comparisons between other sets of machines and parts. The error occurs when we try to apply this same logic to the art of video games itself. Hardware possesses measurable utility; we can calculate frames per second, thermal efficiency, and gigabytes of storage per dollar. But a video game is an aesthetic and emotional experience, and you cannot run a benchmark on how deeply a narrative resonates or how elegant a game mechanic feels. When a critic treats software like hardware, they equate the canvas to the paintbrush, attempting to quantify an artistic relationship in a way that seems arbitrary. There is no set dollar-per-hour ratio you can devise for time played that can adequately capture the experience of playing a game, and how each person interacts with a title will vary wildly. Yet, this sort of “price discourse” still seeps its way into reviews for games all the same. That isn't to say people aren't calculating it, such as this one from https://mgtools.cloud/tools/game-cost-calculator. Look no further than the recent release of Star Fox on the Nintendo Switch 2. Releasing on June 25, 2026, with a price tag of $49.99, much was made of its status as a shorter game — and a remake to boot. When Dashiell Wood of TechRadar writes of Star Fox “the experience is still pretty fleeting and doesn’t feel befitting of the $49.99 / £41.99 / AU$84.95 digital (or $59.99 / £44.99 / AU$99.95 physical) asking price”, he is making an estimation based on his play experience and relationship with money, of course, but it is not based on Dash’s material reality. He did not have to pay for the game at any point, so why spend time trying to assert such playtime-to-dollar valuations to a more general audience? Who does this portion of the review serve, specifically? What makes a game “worth” the price, anyway? There are no definable metrics that I would use to evaluate such a thing, and any valuations of a game’s worth could only come after having played a game. Putting a price on games is hard enough, with titles running the gamut from free to $99.99 for just a single copy of GTA VI: Ultimate Edition. How can one quantify the difference in value between any two games? Everything from financial standing, expertise, and even play experience would come into making such a determination. It is inherently a deeply personal thing. Reviews are personal expressions of the reviewer's thoughts on the games they played, too, so a writer concluding that a game is or isn't worth the cash is not inherently misleading. I do not expect reviewers to account for every possible experience outside of their own to justify the cost, but it does not sit well with me to make these broad assertions if the reviewer never had to make the purchase in the first place. It is not useful to include price evaluations in a critical analysis of a work, but perhaps that’s not the intent. Many video game reviews exist in this space between critical evaluation and tech product review, where writers list gameplay mechanics like features on a washing machine and compare the prices of two entirely separate titles as if they could be directly equated. From this perspective, the price talk makes a bit more sense — if a potential consumer is choosing between two similar products, the length of use and price point are much more pressing concerns. But this is not the purview of the critic; it is the perspective of a salesman — games as product rather than art and experiences. Yet, cost has a place in criticism all the same. In Art as Experience by John Dewey, Dewey writes: “Costliness is, also, as Santayana has pointed out, an element in expression, a costliness that has nothing in common with vulgar display of purchasing power. Rarity counts to intensify expression whether the rarity is that of infrequent occurrence of patient labor, or because it has the glamor of a distant clime and initiates us into hardly known modes of living.” So how can game critics write about pricing in a way that is more aligned with the task they are performing? After all, if you are so inclined to put your thumb on the scale, pricing is an important determinant in readers making a purchasing decision. First, kill the salesman in your head. While product reviews are more suited for price discussion, and game reviews can certainly be used as buyer’s guides in their own right, pinning down what a game should be valued at for a broad audience is a fool’s errand, and you’re not actually here to make the sale, are you? If a reader has gone through an entire review, seen how a writer feels about the game top to bottom, and is given the information of a game’s price point, whether or not a reader then buys the game is out of the writer’s hands. Or at least it should be. Why would you need an entire section of your review dedicated to sussing out some sort of content-to-dollar ratio? What were all those other words for? Frankly, it would be best to leave determinations of a game’s monetary value up to the reader. The critic’s argument is in the substance of the art (or product). Without some sort of comparative analysis or an overview of market conditions (something a few reviews for the Steam Machine actually do), cementing a game’s worth in dollars is a nothing statement, and an ephemeral one at that. By insisting on pre-calculating this worth, critics trap themselves within a paradox. What is this game doing, how does it make the critic feel, what does the work say, and so on — these are all topics explored in a review, and a game's “worth” can only come as an evaluation of the experience. A product review is meant to guide a purchase decision before it happens; if a writer has produced the review, discussed the game, and provided the pricing information, the reader has all the tools they need to make a buying decision. After all, a writer doesn’t really need to tell the readers the value of a dollar.

Slide to the Left, Slide to the Right Shuffle Dungeons can feel a bit claustrophobic at first. Slinking through the halls of the trap-filled and shrine-heavy dungeon that I have assembled, I am reminded of the labyrinthine layouts and intense horrors of the video games I have played in the dungeon-crawling genre. I can't help but relive the corridors of King’s Field, or even reflect upon my time with Lunacid, fretting about how best to proceed, knowing each new room may bring my demise. While many tabletop entries in the genre have leaned on the display in excess by including elaborate pieces and layouts, Shuffle Dungeons opts for a simpler design and presentation. The game “board”, if you will, is entirely comprised of small cardboard tiles, each with varied pieces of equipment, rooms, and enemies wonderfully rendered upon them, but they are still sparse in terms of three-dimensional detail. Still, I find the absence of concrete minutiae gives way to a player's imagination. I can look at the detailed character and monster art and envision a tense combat scenario taking place in the damp halls unfolding before me. Product: Shuffle Dungeons Designer: Isaac Serafini, Jeremy Stark, Kyle Talbert Publisher: Luma Imports Price: $39.99 Age: 12+ At its core, Shuffle Dungeons is a collaborative effort in survival for one to four players. The thematic bones are traditional in every sense of the word — a party of distinct adventurers plunges into the dark depths of the dungeon, facing monsters and collecting gear all the while, eventually attempting to eliminate the Boss Monster guarding the exit. The physical manifestation of this journey is lean, relying on a modular architecture of 86 square, two-sided cards that serve a dual purpose. On one side, they are the rooms of the dungeon — shrines, traps, and empty corridors. The other side holds weapons, armor, spells, and snacks. This svelt gameplay is translated into the rules and experience, as well. There are only a handful of things to keep track of at any given time, with a limited hand size, a small selection of eight characters to play (each with only one ability), restricted equipment slots, and a compact ruleset for actions available on a player’s turn. While monsters can pose some small threat within those base rules, you can easily coordinate with your team through trading and drawing to ensure some level of safety. It is unfortunate, then, that the base rules leave so little in the way of threats for the player. While there is still some essence of delight in the collaboration and brick-laying done by players, the rules don’t punish simply wandering until you’ve collected your preferred gear and items, making the player unstoppable from early on. The modified rules (included in the rulebook) offer much more of a challenge, but the limited number of tiles and variation in equipment means the gameplay experience quickly feels homogenous between games. The characters themselves have very little identity as well, so they all feel quite similar when played, though there is certainly room for optimization. Still, the simplicity was charming, in a way. The cardboard tiles feel like pieces of a jigsaw, and finding the right spot for each one on your journey with friends for each moment is equivalent to finding the right puzzle piece in a sea of similar-looking fragments. Playing alone can’t really replicate this feeling. There are no “single-player” boss monsters, but the instructions dictate that you must choose a boss monster with the same number of spatial "gates" equal to the player count, so you’ll need to use the monster for a two-player game, and you’ll be forced to control two separate characters alone. Furthermore, while the visual identity of the game is striking, the packaging houses its own minor traps. The components feel substantial enough for its slight design, but certain hanging parts of the cardboard can snag during unboxing, threatening to tear the very tiles you are meant to explore with if removed with anything less than deliberate patience. And despite the lean nature of the game, the amount of table space required for a full game can also feel daunting. The lack of heft can never fully eliminate the space required to lay down this tapestry for display. The bulk of interactive gameplay comes from the combat. When a monster card is drawn, it is immediately placed by the player who drew it, along with “loot”, indicated by a number on the monster tile. These serve as rewards for defeating an enemy, and are a great way to collect new tiles to power up your character or optimize your layout. Combat is done through a dice roll-off between the players in combat and the enemy monster, with bonuses being awarded via equipment, snacks, spells, and even room effects. It’s simple, but there’s a nice tension to these do-or-die moments in the early game that can guide your decision-making. Do you try to avoid the enemy and collect better gear, or take it on now for immediate rewards? As the 13 boss monsters are the ultimate threat in the dungeon, you would expect a little more mechanical variety to their combat, but that’s not really true. Although they do have unique effects when initially revealed by playing a tile that connects to their gate, the actual combat progresses the same, just tougher. Thus, the player is still free to wander through shrines and traps hunting for buffs and gear to their hearts' content (or until time is nearly out under the alternate rules). What elevates Shuffle Dungeons beyond a simple exercise in card-counting is the aforementioned mutability. Everything from the equipment you carry, the rules you use, and the layout of the dungeon itself is left to players’ designs. On the flip side, the light rules and lack of variety in the ways turns play out left me longing for something a bit more substantial. Verdict Ultimately, Shuffle Dungeons succeeds because it understands that the true joy of a dungeon crawler isn't in detailed miniatures and elaborate sets, but in the weight of its choices. Make no mistake, the game is designed for a lighter play experience than most dungeon crawlers, even with the modified rules, but there is still room for player choice and expression. It is a design that respects both your time and your intelligence, wrapping a cooperative, highly modular experience into a quick hour of tense decision-making. With a little imagination, you can craft a nice scenario in your mind to run through as you play, with the onus for meaningful experience left up to the player by design. Disclosure: We received a free review copy of this product from the publisher.

SPOILER WARNING: Some plot spoilers for The Drifter are contained within this review. Sometimes, I think about where I’d be now if I didn't have the support of my younger sister, Kelsey. I was down on my luck, kicked out of my house just a few days before being shipped off to basic training to join the Army National Guard. The owners had sold the house without ever mentioning to us that it was up for sale — a real kick to the nuts while I already felt down enough about signing away my soul to the closest thing this Earth has to the Devil. Mick Carter is down on his luck, too, starting The Drifter off by riding in a boxcar on his way back to his old hometown so that he can attend his mother’s funeral. I never got that far down. For myself, I had two days in my car before making my way to Alabama and enjoying the luxuries of swamp air and abuse at the hands of drill sergeants. Once all that was over with, I got to come back home to a family who was willing to put me up on their couch. I had support when I needed it most. Mick doesn't seem to have that — or at least he doesn't think so. Publisher: Powerhoof Developer: Powerhoof Platform: Played on Nintendo Switch Availability: Released Jul 17, 2025, for PC (Steam); June 22, 2026, for Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 So when Mick makes his way back home, there are a lot of emotions wrapped up in his decision. It has been five full years since he’s been back, afraid to see his ex-wife, Sarah, child, and the family he left behind. Worse still, he’s a drifter, homeless and without purpose. Things change quickly when another homeless man sharing the car with him gets gunned down, and he subsequently becomes embroiled in a massive conspiracy surrounding the disappearance and murder of multiple unhoused people. A person completely untethered from society would make the perfect target for such a crime. Without family or friends to check in on them, a transient’s disappearance is likely to go unnoticed, or in the event it is stumbled upon, determined unworthy of our full attention. Mick being fully estranged from his family and ex-wife would mean certain death. But that’s the rub, isn’t it? Even when we’re down on our luck, even when we’ve messed up badly or hurt the ones we care about, sometimes it’s less about them and more about us. Mick can’t forgive himself for his past failures. Missing his son’s funeral, skipping town and leaving his family behind, never really being able to pull himself together and make something of his life after the divorce — all of this weighs on his mind heavily throughout the game, even as secret forces hunt him and his loved ones down. Yet despite his past failures, his friends and family are willing to set that past aside to help him through, as long as he lets them. Image Credits: Powerhoof The first time you meet Sarah in-game, Mick is going through an episode, and she’s angry. Her voice carries the weight of that anger, and the pain of her ex-husband now lying on their son’s grave, covered in filth and blood. Mick’s voice is similarly expressive, emoting his shock and sadness with intense fervor. The game's voice acting elevates these emotional beats, and Mick’s in particular is intensely powerful. Adrian Vaughan delivers one of the best performances in gaming, period. Between his sardonic quips, bouts of fear, fits of anger, and everything in between, each line serves to pull you into the action more deeply. Later, when we visit Sarah again, there is still pain behind Sarah’s words, but empathy too — a closeness that comes through in the tone and word choice rather than being delivered point-blank. So when you use the right stick to examine the various objects in the room, and get chastised for spending a little too much time on eating food off the counter, there’s a marrying effect that takes place between the gameplay and narrative. You don’t really think about the two separately in the same way that you otherwise might. The adventure game bones of The Drifter don’t weigh so heavily on the experience. That isn't always the case, however. While the conversion of point-and-click mechanics to the Switch is admirable — using a linear selection of nearby points of interest rather than a traditional cursor — The Drifter can never really escape the trial-and-error nature of its puzzles. I did not love how much of the advancement and arriving at solutions comes through this poking and prodding of everything I can find on screen. There are some great moments where allowing the player to think through solutions and actions elevated the gameplay into something more than haphazard stabbing at objects, such as when combining items to make tools that are immediately useful in a situation. Those moments feel earned, allowing players to think through utilizing their limited inventory; a feeling of revelation is gifted to the player by the curated interactions and narrow use cases. There are some great moments where allowing the player to think through solutions and actions elevated the gameplay into something more than haphazard stabbing at objects, such as when combining items to make tools that are immediately useful in a situation. In other cases, the answer is not so cleverly devised. You’d never really know some of the solutions unless you stumbled upon them. Other moments have the player bouncing back and forth between zones for single interactions at a time, dragging out what most frequently feels like a tight experience into bouts of tedium. Despite this, the more time-sensitive scenes of action still strike me as wondrous. Running from a monster, you only have moments to make a decision on where to go and what to do. Economy of action is necessary — one wrong move and you may find yourself splayed out on the pavement below a several-story-tall building. I found myself enamored with the ways in which the electronic thrums of the music were deployed in scenes full of tension, heightening the urgency with which players are pushed to act, and how that urgency bred mistakes. When Mick finally crawls his way out of each hole, you feel just as much relief as he does. But guys with guns aren't the only things Mick is running from; his own demons are the real threat to contend with. There’s never enough time to get everything done that we want to, and unexpected events can change the very course of our lives, pulling us away from the people who matter most. Yet, when the conspiracy completely spins out of control, Mick finally stops running. He learns to trust the family he abandoned, and they step up to pull him out of the dark—baggage and all. Sometimes, a little help is all you need to make it through the night. Verdict The Drifter stands out by masterfully intertwining its narrative depth with compelling gameplay and atmosphere. The game is driven by a powerful story about grief, estrangement, and redemption, which is elevated by Adrian Vaughan’s phenomenal and expressive voice acting. The Drifter marries traditional point-and-click mechanics with its narrative, utilizing item-combination puzzles and a Switch-focused control scheme that minimizes traditional genre friction. The Drifter excels at building high-stakes tension through its time-sensitive action sequences, where a pulsing electronic soundtrack perfectly heightens the urgency of Mick's narrow escapes. Ultimately, it delivers a deeply immersive experience that balances the thrill of a massive conspiracy thriller with a grounded, empathetic look at overcoming personal demons.

SPOILER WARNING: Some plot spoilers for Nine Sols are contained within this review. Cast down from on high by Eigong, leader of the then 10 Sols, our protagonist Yi finds himself trapped within the ever-expanding roots of the Fusang, the eternal roots that consume this world. After lying dormant for 500 years, Yi is finally awoken by a small child playing a flute, and after another year of rest and recovery, Yi can now begin his quest for vengeance in earnest. The player is not immediately privy to the particulars of the how and why of this quest, serving as the hook that dangles ahead to drive the action forward — something Nine Sols handles expertly. The opening scenes of Nine Sols are quite effective at conveying so much information through so few words. From the very first conversation in the game, you come to understand — or at least get a sense of — Yi’s relationship to Shuanshuan and the people of Peach Blossom Village. We get a feel for how much those villagers respect Yi, and how much they care for one another. Further still, we can sense Yi’s frustration and hatred for the ones who have wronged him, and his desire to see them brought low. It is compelling, effective. Publisher: RedCandleGames Developer: RedCandleGames Platform: Played on PC Availability: Released May 29, 2024, for PC (Steam); November 26, 2024 for Nintendo Switch, PS4/5, Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox One. Yet when handed the reins, the pull dissipates. The large gaps between the moments of genuine connection and emotion are inundated with collectibles and re-exploring the same rooms over and over, killing the same foes time and time again with no variation or surprise. Getting to the “True” ending of the game requires re-exploration of unchanging, unfeeling tedium, hiding satisfying narrative progression and character growth behind many “things” to do. I’ve been thinking back to and re-reading Jake Steinberg’s essay We Are All Becoming More Thick, where he talks about the lengths people will go to make sense of the games they play by bringing in connections to other material and outside context. He speaks about how the evidence and explanations outside of a game are so often used to “thicken” the persuasiveness of the argument via the accumulation of information. “At a certain point, the entire activity stops resembling dramatic experience altogether. The player becomes an archivist managing emotional evidence after the fact, endlessly thickening the structure surrounding scenes that never fully lived on their own.” This is, unfortunately, how I have experienced much of Nine Sols. There is a certain benefit to being a game reviewer that often goes unexamined — the privilege of fresh experiences. When we get a game prior to release, we get to experience it unblemished by online discussion or talking points. We get to play the games a little more freely from expectation and discourse. Guides don't exist for games under embargo, so you just play the game in front of you. But that’s not how most people experience games. That’s not how I approached Nine Sols. Algorithms on sites like Reddit would push topics about Nine Sols into my feed. I knew what people liked about the game, I saw the way it was spoken about on socials, and viewed short-form videos that explored the untold lore — all of which arrived at my feet without deliberate desire to do so on my end. Step into one of these subreddits, and hundreds of people are waiting with bated breath to inform you of all the connections to mythology, all the little morsels of data you might have glossed over, and how these crumbs then make everything else work well when enough are accumulated. I felt very little of this in playing the game, yet I could not escape it. Connections to the tales of Hou Yi and the Peach Blossom Spring are obvious to those in the know, but serve little purpose in understanding the actual events of this game. They feel about as closely connected as Son Goku and Sun Wukong in the moment — a cute reference that, once drawn upon, can be quickly discarded. Knowing that Nine Sols is a parallel to the tale of Hou Yi and the 10 suns is about as useful as knowing which Dragonball cast members reflect each specific Journey to the West personage — it is largely irrelevant to the thing at hand. The game feels at odds with itself, trying to tell a more traditionally constructed story while also trying to appease the “lore sickos” of the world, hiding notes and piles of world-building in the background through its collectibles. These hidden nuggets of information rarely serve to further the story or stakes of the game in any meaningful way, providing little more than an accumulation of information that can then be collected, organized, and rattled off to explain more deeply how any of it mattered in the first place. This stands in stark contrast to the cutscenes and character interactions throughout the game, which beautifully communicate character relationships, their ever-evolving goals, feelings, and their growth, all through gorgeously drawn and animated sprites and short dialogue sequences. All of it was thrown into the pot with the roux of information congealed through those paratextual readings and viewing. In totality, Nine Sols is a game of few words, at least as the main story is concerned, but Yi’s personal quest for vengeance, and the softening or hardening of his convictions throughout, are borne out through our play. Which quests we do, how we complete them, and decisions on which characters you kill all play a part in the evolving experience of Nine Sols. Yet there is still this lingering tedium that must also be done, to read these bits of text here and there that don’t move anything forward and only rarely work to change our perspective. This feeling is exacerbated by the overwhelming overreliance on parrying as the mechanism for both our offense and defense. Every enemy encounter requires a bit of patience to learn the enemies’ moves, to dial in on the timing required for parries so as to avoid damage from attacks, and then respond in kind. But with the large number of enemies and frequent re-exploration of the zones required for full game completion, the act and elation of parrying not only becomes rote, but descends further into monotony. An almost hypnotically boring repetition of the same button press patterns and timings across a few dozen hours. I find this deeply unfortunate, because the character interactions at the base and within the cutscenes are meticulous and artful, and there’s purpose and power in the environmental design in each area. Beyond simple mystery, these things create an atmosphere that draws players in, wanting to learn a bit more about what happened, while communicating more than enough on their own to satiate over the course of the journey. Additionally, the combat that begins to feel tired over the length of the game is tightly controlled and balanced. Parrying is fundamentally the most important aspect of every encounter in the game; the decisions on which techniques to use or how much aggression to apply in any given moment makes for some intense on-the-fly decision-making. The tension and triumph of success in boss fights are particularly noteworthy, with bosses having a multitude of unique attack patterns and gimmicks that players must contend with to move forward. That tension and purpose are lost in the in-between when navigating the platforms and halls of Nine Sols. The smaller hordes feel much more like an annoyance than a true threat, as if they were simple time-wasters meant to drive you mad over the mundanity rather than actually harm you. Approaching them sleepily does come at a cost, however, with smaller enemies entirely capable of downing Yi in just a few attack strings on their own. It did not take long before I simply tried to avoid as many fights as possible so I could get to the “good stuff”. And there’s plenty of good to go around. Aside from the aforementioned bosses, environments, and character interactions, the platforming is a lot of fun, as well. In fact, I found that by working to avoid enemies, the platforming and navigation were actually elevated. These would-be assailants are much more interesting as roadway hazards than they could ever hope to be as combatants. Moving from space to space while jumping, dashing, and bouncing my way through environmental hazards and foes alike offered a frequently fast-paced and considered experience, serving as a nice change of pace over the more reflexive combat. It felt like a dance as much as the boss fights did, and learning how to move swiftly through each zone became something I looked forward to more and more as the game went on. Despite this, I could never shake the feeling that I was being pushed to do the more boring aspects quite heavily. Upgrades locked behind finding those collectibles, map markers, and icons telling me exactly what I was missing at every turn, and even major story beats hidden behind the tedium of accumulation — all of it in service of gathering oats for my own porridge. If I got enough, surely I would be satiated. But I was satiated. I liked the bosses, the conversations, the environments, the visual style, and the mystery of it all as it pertained to the in-game events. In this sense, the information was not “thickened” in the same way Steinberg speaks about in his essay. Rather than explainers trying to make sense of things that weren't there, the sequence of events leading up to the start of the game is overexplained, ensuring those who encounter the information have enough to work with to draw further connections and parallels beyond the text. Steinberg writes, “One explanation leads to another and then another. The archive keeps expanding. The game keeps improving somewhere else.” Nine Sols is a game that wants to be archived. It wants players to find and draw these connections. It works tirelessly to ensure that each player knows that something more is going on here, and it utilizes the drive of the archivists to catalogue every line of information as justification for its existence. These collectibles are not without their own merits in an aggregate sense. As pieces of the world they exist in, they do stand on their own. As opposed to many other games that hide lore in item descriptions, you will get the full picture of this self-contained story. That said, while they do flesh out the world more fully and provide history and context to it, they never felt hugely important in driving the action. Many contain repeat information, or asides that mean very little in the grand order of things — except to Yi himself. Despite much of the information being things he already innately knows, Yi’s growth (and the ultimate resolution of his character arc) is entirely reliant on completing this menagerie. It was as if his epiphany could only come through the act of repetition itself. Truth discerned by wrenching away the mystique previously held. But I quite liked that mystique, and I wish I could have held onto it a bit longer before being thrust into the annals of the archives. Verdict