LOCK AND LOAD

Ashen’s developer leads the Soulslike through an industrial revolution in Flintlock: The Siege Of Dawn

NEON WHITE

Racing meets rocket jumps in Annapurna’s angelic speedrunner

ANIMAL WELL

A Metroidvania aiming to stand alongside modern classics

NINTENDO SWITCH SPORTS

The legacy of the Wii era lives on in this long-awaited successor

De Blob

How an educational demo expanded its canvas, in an attempt to take on Mario

COLLECTED WORKS ED ROTBERG

Meet a man from the forefront of gaming’s momentous leap into 3D

A HIGHLAND SONG

Alive with the sound of music

Rainbow Six Extraction

It can be hard to make those calls correctly, and failure can come in an instant. But isn’t that what makes gambling so exciting?

WHITE PAPER GAMES

Ten years of ambition, mistakes, and learning from them

THE EVIL WITHOUT

Ghostwire: Tokyo rediscovers a haunted city as Tango Gameworks moves beyond survival horror

Sifu

It strives to replicate the feeling of mastering an actual martial art, and that means doing it repeatedly

Pokémon Legends: Arceus

While it skews a little older, we’re hardly in gritty reboot territory. Rather, we return to an old stomping ground

OlliOlli World

It can reach ferocious speeds, demanding dozens of inputs within a few moments of play

ON DECK

Is Valve’s handheld PC ready to change the world?

Horizon Forbidden West

There cannot be many games that aged almost as instantly as Horizon Zero Dawn. Here was a handsomely realised open-world adventure, with a vibrant, expansive and well-realised setting and an absorbing story that married grand stakes with a journey of personal discovery.

Dying Light 2: Stay Human

There’s a deflated feeling, usually associated with the penultimate episode of a pot-luck Netflix miniseries, that comes once you realise you’re no longer in narratively safe hands.

AUTOMATIC FOR THE PEOPLE

Exploring the rise of the factory sim genre – and what it says about automation in our own lives

THE ANACRUSIS

This successor to Left 4 Dead risks getting lost in space

SLITTERHEAD

Silent Hill and Siren’s director promises a completely new strain of action-horror

Lost Odyssey

How Sakaguchi’s clash of past and present created a true final fantasy

PLAYED BY EAR

From interactive podcasts to 3D RPGs: why the growing audiogame scene is demanding that you listen in

GTFO

You’ll realise you have no healing items by default, friendly fire is lethal, and you have precious little ammo

Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker

It pulls out all the stops, capping off its long-running story arc with all the grandeur a Final Fantasy can muster

ONE MORE LEVEL

How Ghostrunner breathed new life into a Polish developer in need of a hit

DARK SECRETS

The exclusive inside story of Jumpship’s mysterious sci-fi adventure Somerville

COLLECTED WORKS JAKE SOLOMON

The journey from underqualified graphics programmer to master strategist

Back to reality

Has waning hype freed VR to shift up a gear in 2022?

Boss Encounter

A meeting with Hidetaka Miyazaki to discover the treasures of Elden Ring

STUDIO FIZBIN

From card tricks to juice shops: telling stories with one of Germany’s premier indies

Frame Gride

Mecha and fantasy mix in a forgotten but vital chapter of FromSoftware’s history