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Lost & Found: A This Bed We Made Story is the new self-contained episode from Lowbirth Games, available from August 5, 2026 on PC. Set in 1964, a few years after the events of This Bed We Made, it follows Sophie Roy in her new role as a ship hostess aboard the ocean liner Orpheus, dealing with a series of thefts that push her to put her nosy instinct back to work. Compared to the base game, the narrative stakes are lower – no murders, just missing objects – but the writing remains the real strong point: diaries, letters and vintage newspaper clippings (from the Gulf of Tonkin to the Harlem riots) build a solid historical setting without ever explaining it explicitly. The throughline, however, is Sophie's empathy: her relationship with onboard pianist Caleb Lyons and with some passengers confirms how good the character is at listening, a trait that counts as much as the theft investigation itself. The game also picks up the choices made in the previous chapter, asking at startup how your previous playthrough went, and offers its own ending based on how you resolve the investigation. On the technical side it convinces, especially thanks to the final soundtrack. Overall, a short appendix – about two hours – designed more for those attached to Sophie than for those looking for a sweeping mystery.
By the time we reach the end of REANIMAL, its greatest strength is impossible to miss: this is a horror game built on conviction. Tarsier Studios takes the sensibilities that have defined its work for years and carries them into an entirely new universe, once again finding fear in distorted imagery, oppressive spaces, grotesque creatures, and the uneasy feeling that the world around us has somehow gone wrong. REANIMAL is not interested in mechanical complexity for its own sake. Its priorities lie elsewhere, in the places where Tarsier has always been most confident: atmosphere, visual storytelling, exploration, and the emotional connection between its characters. For the most part, that focus pays off. The island is where that vision comes together most convincingly. It is far more than a backdrop for the story, functioning instead as a constantly shifting expression of the nightmare itself. Flooded facilities, ruined structures, forests, open water, and decaying interiors each possess their own visual language while remaining part of the same unsettling whole. Tarsier's creature design is every bit as effective. The monsters are grotesque without becoming excessive, and their impact often comes from the way they are revealed rather than simply from what they look like. A distant silhouette, an unfamiliar sound, a movement glimpsed at the edge of the frame: REANIMAL understands that what we imagine can be more frightening than anything placed directly in front of us. That confidence extends to its two protagonists. The relationship between the Boy and the Sister is never reduced to exposition; it is communicated through the way they move, react, help one another, and refuse to face the island alone. In co-op, that relationship becomes even more tangible. The shared camera can be awkward, particularly when the pace accelerates, but the underlying design philosophy is remarkably coherent. REANIMAL does not simply allow two players to inhabit the same world. It asks them to inhabit the nightmare together. Solving a puzzle, navigating a dangerous space, or escaping a creature becomes a shared act of survival, giving the cooperative mode an emotional dimension that many horror games never manage to achieve. If there is a clear gap between REANIMAL's ambitions and its execution, it is found in the depth of its mechanics. Exploration, puzzles, stealth, combat, and chase sequences are all handled with a strong sense of pacing, and the campaign benefits from knowing when to introduce an idea and when to move on. Nothing is given enough time to become particularly exhausting. The downside is that very little is given enough time to become genuinely sophisticated, either. The puzzles rarely demand more than careful observation, stealth remains relatively straightforward, and combat never develops into a substantial system in its own right. That is a limitation, but not necessarily a contradiction of the game's design. REANIMAL clearly does not want us to spend hours mastering a combat system or solving elaborate environmental puzzles. Its mechanics are there to keep the journey moving, to make us interact with the world, and to shape the rhythm between moments of discovery and moments of danger. The problem is simply that the extraordinary richness of the world sometimes makes us wish there were more beneath our feet mechanically. Tarsier has created a world we want to examine; the game does not always give us equally compelling reasons to engage with it on a systemic level. The story occupies similarly uncertain ground. Its reliance on imagery, symbolism, and environmental storytelling is one of its most appealing qualities, and there is genuine pleasure in being trusted to interpret rather than being handed an explanation for everything we encounter. Some of REANIMAL's most memorable moments work precisely because they leave questions hanging in the air. They encourage us to look back, reconsider what we have seen, and search for meaning in recurring images and seemingly insignificant details. Yet not every unanswered question feels equally purposeful. Some mysteries deepen the world; others leave us wishing the narrative had gone one step further. The issue is not ambiguity itself, but the balance between suggestion and development. REANIMAL is at its best when it gives us enough material to form our own interpretation. It is less successful when an idea feels introduced only to disappear before it has had the opportunity to fully resonate. The result is a story that can be haunting and thought-provoking, but occasionally frustrating in its refusal to provide the context certain moments seem to deserve. Still, those shortcomings are ultimately secondary to what Tarsier accomplishes so consistently well. REANIMAL is a game with an unmistakable voice. It does not need elaborate systems to establish its identity, nor does it rely on constant shocks to maintain its horror. Its environments, creature design, lighting, sound, pacing, and character relationships are all working toward the same objective. Very few elements exist simply for spectacle. Almost everything serves the mood. And that is why the experience works as well as it does. REANIMAL understands that horror is not necessarily about making the player feel powerful, nor is it about constantly asking them to overcome increasingly complex challenges. Sometimes it is about making a place feel wrong. It is about hearing something before we see it, entering a room we immediately want to leave, or catching a glimpse of something that our mind continues to reconstruct long after it has disappeared from view. Tarsier remains exceptionally good at creating those moments. There are imperfections, of course. The occasional technical hiccup and camera issue can disrupt the otherwise meticulous presentation, while the relative simplicity of the gameplay and the openness of the narrative will not satisfy everyone. But none of these issues obscures what REANIMAL is trying to achieve. This is not a horror game built around depth for depth's sake. It is a tightly authored journey through a world designed to unsettle us, and its greatest achievements come from the precision with which that world has been designed. We went into REANIMAL with high expectations. Tarsier Studios had already shown us how distinctive its approach to horror could be, and the prospect of watching that sensibility evolve within a completely new universe was more than enough to make us curious. Now, having reached the end of the journey, we can say with confidence that those expectations were not misplaced. REANIMAL may not have the depth to match the extraordinary richness of its presentation, and its story occasionally leaves us wanting answers that never arrive. But those are not the things we are most likely to remember. We will remember the island. We will remember the creatures moving through the darkness. We will remember the sound of something approaching before we could see it. And we will remember two children trying to hold on to one another while everything around them falls apart. That, ultimately, is where REANIMAL finds its greatest success. Tarsier Studios has not created the deepest horror adventure on the market, nor has it delivered a flawless one. It has created something more specific: a carefully authored, visually extraordinary nightmare with a voice all its own. And after spending hours inside it, that nightmare is difficult to shake.
Windrose sets sail with a deceptively simple premise: what happens when the freedom of survival is brought to the open sea? Kraken Express turns that idea into a pirate adventure where exploration, building, combat and sailing are woven into a single, seamless experience, with land and sea constantly opening new possibilities. The result is a surprisingly cohesive and enjoyable survival game that captures the thrill of discovery and the fantasy of life as a pirate with remarkable ease. Yet beneath its accessible design, Windrose is still searching for the depth needed to match its ambition, as simplified systems and uneven balance occasionally hold back what could otherwise be a far more accomplished adventure.
Mortal Shell 2 shows real growth over the original, both in writing and in the overall presentation of its world. The circular map, small but packed with dungeons and points of interest, still carries the experience, and it delivers enough variety even where the surface setting sticks close to genre conventions. The build system now offers more freedom thanks to full respec options for weapons and Shells, letting players experiment without wasting resources, even though certain elemental stones still lock into a handful of specific weapons. The game's biggest weakness sits in the second half's balancing. Difficulty spikes sharply, bosses lose their identity next to regular enemies, and the stretches between checkpoints turn punishing rather than engaging. Several serious bugs compound the issue, from a Shell that stopped working entirely to a broken teleport that caused accidental deaths. Despite these flaws, the combat system holds up well, and the level design in the opening hours alone justifies picking this up if you already love the genre. It suits returning fans far more than newcomers taking their first steps into soulslikes.
The Sinking City 2 understands something its predecessor occasionally struggled to recognise: more is not necessarily better. Frogwares could have answered the original's shortcomings with a larger map, more activities, and a greater commitment to its open-world structure. Instead, it has made the more difficult choice of cutting back. The sequel is smaller in scope, but considerably more deliberate in how it uses that scope. That restraint is the foundation of a much stronger game. Exploration, investigation, and combat no longer feel like separate ideas competing for the player's attention; they now support a common rhythm. Combat remains conventional, but its precision, readable enemy design, and weak-point system give encounters a welcome degree of tactical depth. Boss fights build on those foundations effectively, demanding greater awareness of patterns, timing, positioning, and resources when the difficulty is raised. The biggest improvement, however, may be found in the spaces themselves. The open-map structure gives Frogwares greater control over density and pacing, allowing locations to be built around meaningful routes, secrets, resources, and environmental storytelling rather than simply providing another stretch of world to cross. The sequel understands that an environment does not need to be enormous to feel expansive; it needs to give the player a reason to explore it. Investigation has undergone a similarly measured transformation. Frogwares has reduced the complexity of its puzzles without stripping away the investigative core of the series. Evidence still needs to be examined, connections still need to be made, and the player is still encouraged to participate in the process of uncovering the truth. The result is less demanding than before, but arguably more consistent with the game's broader survival-horror structure. It is the writing, though, that ultimately gives these systems their context. The Sinking City 2 understands that Lovecraftian horror is not simply about monsters, forbidden rituals, or ancient entities. It is about what happens when the pursuit of knowledge begins to undermine our ability to make sense of what we discover. Calvin's search for Faith gradually opens onto the Slither and a much larger cosmic conflict, with each revelation providing answers while simultaneously making the world less comprehensible. Frogwares is particularly effective when it resists the temptation to explain everything. The final act leaves several questions unresolved, allowing uncertainty to remain part of the horror rather than treating every mystery as a problem that requires a definitive answer. The journey to Antarctica, drawing directly on the imagery and ideas of At the Mountains of Madness, takes that philosophy even further. Away from Arkham's familiar streets and institutions, the game places Calvin in a landscape where isolation and scale themselves become sources of unease. The sequel still has weaknesses. Its technical performance is the clearest blemish, particularly on PC, where frame-rate drops can occasionally interfere with combat and shader compilation can produce unwelcome interruptions. Some loading times are also longer than they should be, while ammunition management is not always ideally balanced. A handful of puzzles, meanwhile, feel less developed than the stronger investigative sequences. None of these problems is catastrophic, but they are enough to keep the game from achieving the level of consistency its best moments suggest is within reach. What matters is that these shortcomings exist within a fundamentally stronger vision. Frogwares has not tried to solve the problems of The Sinking City by making the sequel larger or more elaborate. It has solved them by becoming more selective. The result is a game that knows what its different systems are for, how they should interact, and – just as importantly – what they should leave out. That makes The Sinking City 2 more than simply a better version of its predecessor. It is the point at which the series' two defining identities finally become compatible. Investigation gives the horror context; horror gives investigation consequence. Exploration creates the opportunity to discover something; discovery creates the reason to fear what comes next. There is still room for Frogwares to refine the formula, and the sequel's technical shortcomings prevent it from reaching the highest tier of the genre. But as a statement of direction, The Sinking City 2 is remarkably clear. This is a series that has finally found a shape capable of supporting its ambitions. And perhaps that is the most fitting conclusion for a game so concerned with forbidden knowledge. The greatest horror is not necessarily what waits in the darkness. It is what we discover when we decide to look into it, and the growing suspicion that some truths are frightening precisely because they can never be fully understood. The Sinking City 2 knows that the search for answers is not always a path towards certainty. Sometimes, it is the path towards madness.
By the time Hell is Us reaches its conclusion, its greatest strength and its most significant weakness have become one and the same: Rogue Factor has made a game unwilling to compromise on its vision. This is not an action-adventure designed to remove every obstacle between the player and the next objective. It deliberately steps away from the conventions that have made modern exploration increasingly frictionless, placing observation, memory, and discovery at the heart of the experience. The result is distinctive, occasionally frustrating, and, at its best, remarkably rewarding. The decision to dispense with a conventional map is perhaps the clearest expression of that philosophy. Hadea has to be understood rather than simply traversed. Conversations become directions; landmarks become reference points; seemingly incidental details can acquire significance much later. The player is not asked merely to follow information, but to retain and interpret it. When that design clicks, even something as mundane as finding the right road becomes meaningful. You are not reaching a destination because the interface told you where it was. You are reaching it because you understood the world well enough to find it. That sense of ownership is one of Hell is Us’s most compelling achievements. It also exposes one of its more persistent weaknesses. The game occasionally mistakes withholding information for creating mystery, and there are moments when directions are too imprecise to provide a meaningful path forward. Retracing an area because you genuinely missed a clue can be satisfying; retracing it because you cannot determine what the game expects you to have noticed is considerably less so. The line between encouraging curiosity and creating unnecessary friction is a narrow one, and Hell is Us occasionally crosses it. Combat is more conventional, but it provides a reliable counterweight to the slower pace of exploration. The different weapons, dodges, parries, and enemy patterns create a system that is straightforward without being entirely superficial, while the drone adds another layer to both combat and traversal. The Chimeras are most effective when encounters require the player to understand their behaviour rather than simply overwhelm them with attacks. The combat rarely feels as distinctive as the exploration, but it rarely needs to. Its role is to support the wider adventure, and for the most part it does so competently. The boss encounters are where that system comes closest to matching the ambition of the rest of the game. They give individual mechanics greater purpose, demand a better understanding of enemy behaviour, and create some of the adventure’s most satisfying confrontations. But if combat is the foundation, atmosphere is the soul of the experience. Hadea is an unusually evocative setting, balancing melancholy, unease, and beauty across landscapes shaped by war, abandonment, encroaching vegetation, and the presence of the Chimeras. Rogue Factor’s art direction gives these spaces a character that extends well beyond their technical construction. Even during quieter stretches, there is a persistent sense that the landscape has a history: that something happened here, and that the environment has retained traces of it. That atmosphere is reinforced by the narrative, which is similarly interested in what can be left unsaid. Rémi’s personal journey is intertwined with Hadea’s history, and the story gradually reveals itself through conversations, discoveries, and fragments of information rather than constant exposition. Some threads are more successful than others, and the volume of material can occasionally make the narrative difficult to follow, but there is a clear confidence in allowing the player to assemble meaning rather than simply receive it. This is also where the relationship between story and exploration becomes particularly effective. Hadea is not simply a backdrop for Rémi’s journey; understanding the country is part of understanding the story. The places you visit, the people you meet, and the details you uncover gradually change your perception of the world around you. Exploration consequently has a narrative function of its own, allowing the player to uncover context rather than merely collect it. The experience is not without its weaker material. Some secondary activities lack the focus of the main journey, and certain puzzles can become frustrating when their intended logic is not communicated clearly enough. Combat would benefit from greater enemy variety, while the technical presentation is occasionally uneven, particularly in character animation and some secondary visual details. These are tangible shortcomings, not merely concessions made in pursuit of ambition. They prevent Hell is Us from reaching the consistency of the genre’s very best examples. What saves the experience from feeling uneven as a whole is that its strongest elements are united by a remarkably coherent creative identity. Hell is Us does not feel as though it is borrowing a familiar formula and adding a few unusual ideas on top. Its design choices speak to one another. The lack of a map reinforces exploration; exploration reinforces environmental storytelling; environmental storytelling reinforces the narrative; and the atmosphere gives all of it a distinct emotional character. Hell is Us is willing to let the player become lost, to leave a question unanswered, and to allow a discovery to remain a discovery rather than immediately turning it into another objective. Sometimes that makes the experience less comfortable than it needs to be. But it also makes its best moments feel more personal. And that, more than any individual mechanic, is what stays with me.
Lunarium is one of those debut titles that deserves attention and, above all, to be played. Not because it is a revolutionary ARPG or because it manages to reinvent the genre, but because it demonstrates a surprising level of maturity for a team working on its first major project. Its influences are evident, particularly when it draws from the world of souls-like games, Sekiro, and more traditional ARPGs, without falling into the trap of approximation or artificially inflating the difficulty. One of its greatest strengths is undoubtedly the relationship between Ave and Lune, which is not confined to the narrative but becomes an integral part of the gameplay. The stagger-based combat system, simultaneous control of the two protagonists, and a progression system rich in options give the game a well-defined personality. On the other hand, Lunarium still shows some of the limitations of a debut project. Encounter balance is inconsistent, as is the pacing during the second half, which tends to lose some of its momentum. The progression system also reaches its limits a little too early. These shortcomings become more noticeable precisely because the rest of the game works so well. Ultimately, Lunarium is not a masterpiece, but it is a genuinely strong game. It is an excellent calling card for Lunarium Game Studios and a solid foundation on which to build something even more ambitious. If this is the starting point, it will be interesting to see where the team can go with its next project. I am confident it will not go unnoticed among fans of the genre.
STALKER 2: Cost of Hope is an uneven expansion, but an undeniably fascinating one: perhaps the most revealing direction GSC Game World could have taken the series at this stage. Its greatest strength is, without question, the writing. The Duty storyline is the clear highlight and arguably the finest piece of narrative content in the expansion. Zulù is compelling, Voronin is a welcome surprise, and Tkachenko leaves a genuine mark. More importantly, the campaign succeeds in giving the Duty something the series has rarely afforded them: a deeply human identity. Brotherhood, loyalty, sacrifice, and conviction are no longer simply ideological concepts; they become relationships the player can actually feel invested in. Mavka's campaign is more uneven, but it remains thematically ambitious. Its exploration of freedom, ownership of the Zone's miracles, and the increasingly blurred relationship between those who inhabit the Zone and the organisations operating beyond it adds meaningful weight to the expansion's broader questions about who should ultimately control this extraordinary and dangerous territory. The new locations are impressive. The boss encounters provide some welcome escalation. And the train sequence with the Duty is one of the DLC's most memorable set pieces, precisely because the spectacle is grounded in relationships and stakes that have been carefully established beforehand. The problem is that the gameplay does not consistently match the ambition of the writing. The platforming is frequently frustrating rather than rewarding. The puzzles can struggle with clarity and balance, with the centrifuge sequence standing out as one of the expansion's least convincing stretches. The AI remains inconsistent, while A-Life still does not deliver the fully autonomous, reactive ecosystem that has always been one of the defining promises of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.. Technical issues have also not disappeared entirely: crashes, performance drops, and lengthy loading times can still surface, making it increasingly difficult to dismiss these problems as remnants of an early build. Yet none of this represents the expansion's most significant weakness. Its real problem is that it keeps expanding the story without allowing enough of it to move forward. Zulù's new position. The signal. The Untold Stories. The new Consciousness. The mercenaries. The world beyond the Zone. Every one of these threads has the potential to become crucial to the future of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.. But the more the Zone expands, the more apparent it becomes that some of its mysteries need to start paying off. Mystery has always been fundamental to the series. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. understands the power of withholding information, of allowing players to piece together fragments of a world that rarely offers straightforward answers. But mystery is only compelling when it creates the expectation of resolution. When every revelation simply opens another question without meaningfully advancing the ones that came before it, intrigue can gradually give way to narrative inertia. That is ultimately where Cost of Hope leaves us. The Zone is richer. Its lore is deeper. Its characters are more compelling. Its future feels more consequential than ever. But it still does not feel complete. GSC Game World has proven that the Zone is nowhere near running out of stories to tell. The next challenge is considerably harder: to give some of those stories an ending.
Beast of Reincarnation is most compelling not because it reinvents the action RPG, but because of what it represents for Game Freak. For a studio so closely identified with Pokémon, stepping into a darker, more mature and mechanically demanding world is a meaningful creative departure in itself. The game does not always match the ambition of its ideas, but it consistently reveals a studio willing to experiment, to question the boundaries of its established identity and discover what might exist beyond them. At the heart of that experiment are Emma and Koo, whose relationship remains the game’s defining achievement. Game Freak could easily have treated Koo as a conventional companion, but instead makes him inseparable from both the emotional and mechanical structure of the adventure. The player does not simply watch their bond develop; they learn to depend on it. Emma’s attacks, Koo’s abilities, defensive options and opportunities for coordination gradually become part of a shared combat language, giving their relationship a tangible presence that few narrative partnerships manage to achieve. That philosophy carries directly into the combat system, which is at its strongest when it asks the player to understand rather than simply overpower. Timing, positioning, parries, evasive manoeuvres and Koo’s abilities all contribute to a rhythm that becomes increasingly satisfying as its rules reveal themselves. The Nushi encounters are the clearest expression of this design. These bosses are not simply larger enemies with more health; their behaviour, attack patterns and visual cues demand observation and adaptation. The most satisfying victories therefore come not from numerical superiority, but from understanding how an encounter works. Progression complements that approach without overwhelming it. New abilities, equipment and powers acquired through major encounters provide a clear sense of growth, while the ability to shape Emma’s build gives the player room to experiment with different approaches. The system is not particularly revolutionary, but it serves the combat well, ensuring that progression feels connected to the challenges the player is overcoming rather than existing merely as an external reward structure. The same confidence can be found in the game’s visual identity. Japan in 4026 is one of Beast of Reincarnation’s most convincing ideas because Game Freak understands that a post-apocalyptic world does not have to be defined by destruction alone. Here, civilisation has been gradually absorbed by the world that followed it. Trees split apart abandoned structures. Vegetation overwhelms infrastructure. Waterways reclaim spaces once controlled by humanity. Technology remains scattered throughout the landscape, but increasingly resembles the archaeological remains of a vanished age. This relationship between decay and renewal gives the setting a personality of its own. Some of the game’s most memorable images emerge not from its largest set pieces, but from quieter moments in which Emma and Koo move through landscapes where human architecture and natural growth have become almost impossible to separate. The world often feels as though it has continued living after humanity stopped being its dominant force. The irony is that the strength of this world also highlights one of the game’s greatest limitations. Beast of Reincarnation frequently creates the impression of an environment that should invite deeper exploration than its level design ultimately allows. The landscapes suggest hidden histories and possibilities, yet the structure remains relatively controlled, with exploration generally serving the forward momentum of the campaign rather than challenging it. There are optional discoveries and resources, but rarely the kind of systemic freedom that makes a world feel genuinely unpredictable. The narrative follows much the same pattern. Its strongest material is found in the personal journey of Emma, particularly in the relationship between memory, identity and loneliness. Her inability to fully understand her own past gives the story a natural reason to investigate the world alongside the player, while Koo provides an emotional constant as she gradually learns how to connect with others. These ideas give the narrative genuine weight, even when some of its broader developments fall back on more familiar science-fiction and JRPG conventions. For all its narrative ambitions, Beast of Reincarnation is therefore most effective when it remains intimate. Emma and Koo are more compelling than the mythology surrounding them, and their relationship often communicates more than the larger exposition ever could. The game has plenty of interesting ideas about humanity, technology, memory and the natural world, but it is the emotional simplicity of two characters learning to rely on one another that gives those ideas their strongest foundation. The soundscape reinforces that intimacy. Environmental audio gives the reclaimed wilderness an almost constant presence, while subtle details – from insects and vegetation to distant wildlife – make the world feel active even when nothing is happening on screen. Combat sounds provide equally important feedback, helping the player read impacts, parries and successful actions, while the vocal-driven soundtrack gives key moments a distinctly emotional character. Audio rarely feels like decoration; at its best, it becomes another way of communicating what Emma cannot always express herself. There are, however, moments when the experience loses that sense of cohesion. The pacing occasionally becomes uneven, with narrative interruptions breaking the momentum established by exploration and combat. Some secondary activities feel noticeably less developed than the game’s central encounters, while the RPG systems provide meaningful progression without offering the depth that more systems-focused players may expect. Technically, the move to Unreal Engine 5 demonstrates the scale of Game Freak’s ambitions, but it also reveals an uneven level of refinement across environments, animations and secondary details. These shortcomings ultimately prevent Beast of Reincarnation from reaching the level of greatness its strongest moments occasionally suggest. Yet they do not diminish the importance of what Game Freak has attempted. In fact, the contrast is revealing: whenever the studio embraces its new ideas, the game becomes considerably more distinctive; whenever it falls back on familiar structures, that individuality becomes less pronounced. That is ultimately why Beast of Reincarnation works best as a statement of intent. It is neither a flawless action RPG nor a genre-defining reinvention, and judging it by either standard would miss what makes it interesting. What Game Freak has created instead is something more valuable at this particular stage: a clear indication of where the studio might want to go next, and of what becomes possible when it steps beyond the enormous shadow of Pokémon. Beast of Reincarnation may leave some of its potential unrealised, but what it does accomplish is difficult to dismiss: it proves that Game Freak’s creative identity extends far beyond the world that made its name.
Now that we’ve reached the end of The First Berserker: Khazan, what stays with us most is the feeling of facing a game that knows its own strength extremely well. Neople hasn’t built a soulslike that’s flawless on every front, but it has built an experience where combat takes on absolute centrality and, in most cases, manages to keep engagement running high. This very specialization is what makes Khazan an interesting title even beyond its ties to the Dungeon & Fighter universe. Personally, I consider the combat system the most convincing element of the entire production. The need to learn enemy movements, manage stamina, alternate attack and defense, and exploit the right openings makes every fight particularly satisfying. The game almost never hands out its victories: when players finally manage to get past a boss that took numerous attempts, the satisfaction mostly comes from knowing they’ve sharpened their own skills, not simply from picking up stronger gear. The boss fights, as a result, mark the moments where Khazan shows its potential at its best. Some fights run extremely demanding but also deeply rewarding, since they force players to genuinely understand the game’s mechanics. Facing a boss turns almost into a kind of dialogue built on movement: the opponent throws out an attack, the player learns to recognize it, responds with a parry or a dodge, and waits for the right moment to counter. It’s a system that asks for patience but pays off handsomely once mastered. I also appreciated the art direction. Cel shading isn’t just a distinctive aesthetic choice; it gives the game an immediately recognizable identity. The characters, and especially the bosses, come with real craft behind them, while attack animations help make fights spectacular. Some settings feel less memorable and lean on fairly similar tones, but the overall result still lands convincingly. The mission-based structure, on the other hand, ranks among the aspects that won me over least. On one hand, it keeps the experience focused on action and makes it easy to jump into different activities; on the other, it cuts down the sense of discovery that often ranks among the most fascinating elements of soulslikes. Players explore the game world through separate, relatively linear levels, with few moments where they truly feel lost inside one huge interconnected environment. The narrative, too, could have hit harder. Khazan’s story has an interesting premise and touches on potentially powerful subjects, but some characters and some situations don’t get the room they need to fully develop. The protagonist mostly works as a warrior and as the central figure of the action, while his more emotional side could have used more depth. Even so, the story still manages to hold enough interest to carry players through to the end. Difficulty, finally, is bound to split the audience. Personally, I see it as a positive that the game demands effort and precision, since that’s exactly what gives real value to victories. That said, some difficulty spikes come across as particularly sharp and can make the experience frustrating for players unfamiliar with the genre, especially when they reach a boss fight without having had enough chances to properly prepare for its mechanics. Either way, The First Berserker: Khazan left me with an excellent impression. It’s not a game trying to compete on every single front with the best soulslikes, but it carries a strong enough identity to stand out. Its strength lies in the precision of its combat, the quality of its boss fights, the variety of its weapons, and a recognizable art direction. I can only credit a production that shows just how well Neople has adapted to a genre completely different from what it’s known for, and I can only call this title a soulslike that looks great, plays solid, challenges players, and above all entertains — one worth recommending to anyone who puts the combat system at the center of their experience. Players looking for a massive world to explore or an extremely complex narrative might come away less satisfied. For everyone else, Khazan’s journey stands as convincing proof that even a series born mainly in the territory of online action RPGs can find a new dimension through a single-player experience built with ambition and personality.
Zirian chases his sister Allira into Tick Town, a dimension where time has stopped and the Clock Tower holds her prisoner behind four chains that need breaking one by one, scattered across the macro-areas of Tearvale. Weird Beluga, already behind Clid the Snail, builds a third-person action-platformer around this mission that looks openly to Jak and Daxter, Ratchet & Clank, and Kingdom Hearts, relying on a clockpunk world painted entirely by hand – no AI involved, by the studio’s own declared choice – five lighting setups for every major area, and a mechanical companion, Cuckoo, who joins Zirian in both exploration and combat. Beneath the action-platform surface, the game works through a story of grief and family legacy rooted in the loss of Gramps, one that time travel – literal, through Minutero, the sword he left behind – turns into a question that follows Zirian through the whole adventure. Platforming stays the strongest part of the experience from the earliest hours; combat, shakier at the start, only gains depth halfway through, once combos finally enter the picture.
Halo: Campaign Evolved is a visually ambitious, technically interesting remake, but it can’t replicate the most important part of the work it aims to celebrate: that extraordinary combination of shooting, sandbox, AI, and freedom that turned Combat Evolved into a masterpiece. It’s a project that proves, once again, that rebuilding a classic is far easier than truly understanding its legacy.
Helix: Descent N Ascent is Badass Mongoose’s first project, a small Belgian studio founded by Cedric De Muelenaere and Gillian Sampont, and it’s a puzzle-adventure that builds its identity around a black-and-white aesthetic inspired by 1980s indie comics, 1990s manga, and the 1970s Franco-Belgian tradition. The game entrusts its narrative almost entirely to imagery: environments, dialogue-free cutscenes, and carved panels that recount, in fragments, a vanished civilization’s myth. The heart of the experience, though, remains the gameplay: five abilities – Block, Drone, Hook, Cage, and Hourglass – that combine first in pairs and then, in the second half of the game, in triplets, generating a puzzle system that keeps offering new solutions for the entire adventure. A consultable map system guides progression clearly, flagging where to return once you’ve learned new combinations, and some passages open through Donkey Kong-style arcade minigames. Jim Guthrie’s soundtrack accompanies every area with the same power to create a suspended territory already evident in the demo, never slipping into repetition. After seventeen hours of play, the overall experience confirms and deepens everything promised since the 2024 announcement: a quiet adventure, intelligently constructed, able to hold up over the long haul without losing its own voice.
Killing Floor 3 is at its best when it embraces the fundamentals that have always defined the series: cooperative Horde combat, satisfying gunplay, and the constant pressure of working together to survive increasingly chaotic encounters. The foundation remains solid, and when played with a coordinated team, the game can still deliver some genuinely enjoyable moments. The problem is everything built around that foundation. Progression can feel unnecessarily cluttered, balance is inconsistent, and the underlying structure becomes repetitive long before the experience has exhausted its ideas. More importantly, Killing Floor 3 repeatedly hints at a much more ambitious game without ever fully committing to it. Its maps, lore, and environments suggest a world with far greater narrative potential, yet the absence of a dedicated campaign leaves much of that promise unexplored. The result is a competent and often entertaining cooperative shooter that feels frustratingly close to being something more. Killing Floor 3 proves that its core formula still works, but instead of using that foundation as a springboard for meaningful evolution, it remains largely within the boundaries of what the series already knows how to do. The ingredients for a more ambitious sequel are there; the game simply never brings them together.
Maseylia: Echoes of the Past carries the metroidvania into three dimensions, an attempt few developers have made this way. Sol Brothers, led almost single-handedly by Victor Abresol with help from two brothers and one collaborator, builds a vertical, interconnected labyrinth openly inspired by Moebius: clean lines, monumental architecture, and a palette that shifts by zone to guide orientation. Vertical platforming (double jump, 360° air dash, grappling hook) stands out as the game’s real strength, surprising even genre veterans. Environmental storytelling, following Hollow Knight’s “mysterious” model, entrusts the narrative to ruins, Beacons, and scattered fragments rather than cutscenes or direct exposition. The flip side shows up on the technical front: glitches, imprecise geodata, shaky camera handling in the more complex vertical sections, and underdeveloped combat, with unstable lock-on and weak enemy AI that drag down even the boss fights. The result is an ambitious, visually memorable title with smart design ideas, held back by widespread roughness that undercuts its potential. Not a title to dismiss, but an unpolished work that asks players for patience and clearly needs further refinement from the team.
Sol Cesto reaches 1.0 with an already mature visual identity and a system that, beneath the “pick a row and hope” formula, hides more calculation than it lets on: dynamic probabilities in plain view, teeth that alter their distribution, powers that break the movement rules. It works when the player manages to read the risk rather than suffer it; it creaks when chance takes back everything the math had built. An easy recommendation for anyone who loves the reasoned gambling of roguelites; a harder sell for anyone after dense execution or narrative.
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach stands as the fullest expression of Hideo Kojima’s creative philosophy. It’s an ambitious work, imperfect and surprising, and deeply personal. Kojima Productions doesn’t simply build a bigger sequel to the first game: the studio delivers an emotional and philosophical journey that questions humanity’s future, the meaning of relationships, and the value of bonds in a world increasingly dominated by technology. Sam Porter Bridges returns as the protagonist of an even more complex adventure, backed by an extraordinary cast and a screenplay that alternates intimate moments with cinematic sequences of real impact. The team refines the gameplay without losing its identity. Exploration grows richer. Combat feels more satisfying. The world turns more unpredictable. But the game’s real strength lies in its ability to make the player feel something. In an era where many titles try to hold their audience through sheer quantity, Death Stranding 2 chooses instead to build an experience grounded in meaning. It’s a game that demands patience. It demands attention. It demands a willingness to let go and get carried away. This work certainly won’t win over every player’s taste. But anyone who chooses to get pulled into its vision will discover an original, memorable experience: one of the boldest and most visionary of this generation.
Reaching Steelrising’s credits, the impression is one of having played a work that perhaps doesn’t reach the heights of the best soulslikes on the market, but that still manages to stand out thanks to a strong identity. In a genre now full of imitators, Spiders chooses to walk its own path, betting on an unusual setting, a charismatic protagonist, and an original reinterpretation of the French Revolution. What we appreciated most is precisely the world building. The steampunk Paris the developers imagined manages to feel credible, fascinating, and different from any other setting released in recent years. Every district, building, and character helps build a narrative universe that keeps sparking curiosity and encourages further exploration, showing how much good art direction can make a difference even in a lower-budget production. The gameplay also works well overall. The combat system is fun, the weapon variety lets players experiment with different builds, and Aegis’s greater agility gives fights a more dynamic pace than many other genre entries. The game still manages to offer a satisfying, well-balanced challenge, even if it’s almost never frustrating. Naturally, a few flaws do show up. On the technical side, the typical limits of an AA production emerge, while the level design and enemy AI don’t always surprise. The narrative, too, despite starting from an extremely interesting idea, could have developed some characters further and handled certain situations with more incisiveness. Even so, I personally consider Steelrising a successful title. Spiders’ ambition in tackling the project is evident, and above all, so is the will to offer something that wasn’t a simple copy of the genre’s great classics. The result is an experience with its own personality, one that manages to entertain from start to finish while showcasing its artistic imagination above all. I recommend it both to soulslike fans who want to try a setting different from the usual and to those looking for a demanding action RPG that’s slightly more accessible than the genre’s most extreme titles. With a few inevitable compromises, Spiders’ work stands as one of the most interesting productions of recent years and shows how creativity and courage can offset, at least in part, far more evident production limits.
DOOM: The Dark Ages – Revelations is an expansion that ultimately leaves a lingering sense of disappointment. This is by no means a bad DLC: its gunplay remains among the strongest in the genre, its technical execution continues to set an exceptionally high standard, and several narrative sequences provide worthwhile additions to the Slayer’s story and the broader mythology of the series. Yet, for every strength, Revelations is accompanied by choices that prevent it from reaching the same heights as the main game. The decision to introduce greater complexity into the combat system once again, the return of mechanics that have historically struggled to complement DOOM’s strengths and a narrative that moves too quickly through events of considerable importance ultimately hold the expansion back. The Dark Ages succeeded in streamlining the modern DOOM formula without sacrificing its depth, creating a combat system that felt immediate, readable and remarkably satisfying. Revelations, by contrast, occasionally feels as though it is retracing ground that the series had already learned to leave behind. That is ultimately what makes the expansion so frustrating. There is a genuinely compelling story buried within Revelations, and its revelations could have formed the foundation for a far more substantial chapter in the Slayer’s journey. Instead, several important developments are compressed, relegated to the background or resolved with a degree of haste that undermines their dramatic weight. Rather than functioning as a fully self-contained expansion capable of building upon the exceptional foundations established by The Dark Ages, Revelations feels more like a bridge to what comes next. From a broader narrative perspective, that purpose is understandable: the expansion introduces important developments, reshapes elements of the Slayer’s past and leaves the door open for the next stage of the saga. As a standalone experience, however, that same approach becomes its greatest limitation.
Hell Clock: Cursed War is a DLC that certainly adds new content, but more importantly, it represents the mature version of Hell Clock. Rather than judging the fourth act, I prefer to reassess the entire project after nearly a year of patches and updates. It arrives after nearly a year of continuous updates that have significantly improved the areas where Hell Clock previously fell short. Performance is now consistently solid, even during the most chaotic encounters. Loot management has become far more flexible, and creating or refining a build is considerably more satisfying than before. These improvements fundamentally enhance the overall experience. For that reason, Cursed War is the perfect opportunity either to discover Hell Clock for the first time or to return after its original release. It isn’t the DLC alone that transforms the game, it’s the months of dedicated work Rogue Snail has invested in refining the experience. Today, Hell Clock: Cursed War finally feels like the game it promised to be a year ago: a fast-paced, distinctive action RPG that confidently carves out its own place within the crowded Diablo-like genre.