Hope for the future, it’s coming soon enough

One of the best things about games is

Deathloop

Arkane Studios has spent the past few years

Twelve Minutes

If you’ve played The Witness, you’re already acquainted

Returnal

Few developers make things explode as spectacularly as

Season

Amid the marketing maelstrom of December’s Game Awards,

UFO 50

We’re long overdue a catch-up with Mossmouth’s compendium

It Takes Two

Having followed the delightfully dark fable that was

The Artful Escape

Two things stand out about The Artful Escape:

We Are OFK

Teddy Dief, director and co-writer of this forthcoming

Open Roads

No road is long with good company, as

The Good Life

After the lovable disaster of Deadly Premonition 2,

Baldur's gate III

If life were a D&D campaign then 2020

Horizon Forbidden West

The new console generation has only just begun,

GHOSTWIRE: TOKYO

When the godfather of survival horror says he’s

RESIDENT EVIL VILLAGE

Elsewhere in this issue, Siren creator Keiichiro Toyama

Zelda: BREATH OF THE WILD 2

Last year Nintendo coasted to recordbreaking Switch sales,

Monster Hunter Rise

While World delivered Monster Hunter’s (and Capcom’s) biggest

Halo Infinite

Microsoft made one of the boldest decisions of

Lego Star Wars : The Skywalker Saga

If there’s a common criticism levelled at Lego’s

Happy Game

There’s something subversive about Amanita Design announcing a

Sable

It captured us from its first appearance in

Fights In Tight Spaces

As any good action hero will tell you,

Yakuza Spreads Its Wings

Microsoft may have repeatedly scotched rumours that its

The return of social gaming

By now, we’re all well used to

A new wave of Roguelikes

In case there’s any doubt that 2020 was

Detective games

Most games tap into our inner detective in

The rise of the indie immersive sim

Reports of the immersive sim’s death have been

VR comes of age?

Virtual reality’s growing pains are still uncomfortably apparent.

Metroidvanias galore

We’re not huge fans of the term (‘Metroid-like’

Halo Infinite

As a component of fractal geometry and a

The evolution of Spirelikes

There aren’t many developers who can say they

Road Trips

Games have long understood the appeal of the

The shifting landscape of live-service games

Making it big in live-service games is one

Enhance games

People. Crowds of them, walking up escalators, flowing

Double Fine

The star item in Microsoft’s recent studio-buying spree

Inkle

Game concepts can come from the unlikeliest of

Inner Sloth

You can cobble together a narrative of responses

Simogo

From left: Simon Flesser and Magnus ‘Gordon’ Gardebäck

KAIZEN GAME WORKS

“We thought Paradise Killer was going to be

DREAMFEEL

A distinctive, intensely personal coming-of-age story about a

Bokeh

Leave it to the director of Siren and

Echodog Games

The LA-based studio behind last year’s Edge Artisan

Game Pass

Approaching its fourth year, Xbox Game Pass continues

Amazon Luna

Among today’s swathe of cloud gaming platforms, Amazon’s

Super Nintendo World

Bringing the Mushroom Kingdom into the real world

Itch.io

In June 2020, Itch launched the Bundle For

SSDs: the real game-changer

With the constant distraction of social media and

Getting To Grips With Dual Sense

Yes, some will dismiss it as nothing more

PLaydate

The little console with the crank remains one

Intellivision Amico

Growing up in the ’80s, Tommy Tallarico’s favourite