CATEGORIES
TWELVE MINUTES
And you’re back in the room
Nurturing nature
How Afrofuturist strategy game We Are The Caretakers is helping to tackle real-world rhino poaching
SOLAR FLAIR
Heart Machine’s elegant action-platformer redefines open-world traversal
Celeste
How facing inner turmoil helped us climb a mountain
ROAD 96
Taking a trip that delights in the path not taken
PLAYING POLITICS
From triple-A to two-person teams, the developers refusing to shy away from politics in their games
GORD
Exploring the darkness on the edge of town
Broadcast media
Behind the scenes of Ghosts, an FMV-based game that can only be played once per day
THE MAKING OF... STREETS OF RAGE 4
How a team of French Japanophiles cashed in their credits to revive a classic Sega series
TEAM NINJA
The Ninja Gaiden and Nioh developer enters an exciting new era
LAST STOP
All change for the Virginia dev’s surprising science-fiction anthology
SEVERED STEEL
This indie FPS is a cut above
Slay The Spire
What we talk about when we talk about running
THE MAGNIFICENT TRUFFLE PIGS
Detectorists meets Firewatch? We dig it
CROWD COVER
How social stealth found its people in the world of indie multiplayer
HELL LET LOOSE
Learn by dying like a dog for no good reason
CLOSING THE LOOP
Lemnis Gate looks to the past, present and future of the first-person shooter
Collected Works ED Logg
He was the golden boy of the golden age of arcades – and even has the T-shirt to prove it
The Harder They Fall
Cyberpunk 2077’s disastrous launch asks questions of the blockbuster business model
There Will Be Blood
Turtle Rock Studios breathes new life into the horror of Left 4 Dead
Resident Evil Village
Capcom mixes the old and new in a tall tale of Eastern European vampirism
OPEN ROADS
Fullbright’s star-studded road trip looks to new horizons
STATE OF PLAY
How the BAFTA-winning indie gravitated from paper towns to the Antarctic coast
BALAN WONDERWORLD
Is Yuji Naka’s return missing a trick?
Hitman 3
Developer/publisher IO Interactive Format PC, PS4 (tested), PS5, Stadia, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series (tested) Release Out now
ACOLYTE
This AI-powered detective game is a real conversation piece
A Plague Tale: Innocence
How killer rodents helped us see the light
Goodbye Volcano High
Ko-op scales up for a bittersweet ode to youthful impulse
NODDING HEADS GAMES
How an Indian studio defied the odds to develop a culturally rich adventure
SHADOWS OF DOUBT
A detective procedural