CATEGORIES

STRAY GODS: THE ROLEPLAYING MUSICAL

Making choices, awaking voices

SALTSEA CHRONICLES

All aboard for an ensemble adventure

BLASPHEMOUS 2

An expansive sequel embraces its inner Castlevania

COUNTER-STRIKE 2

Anyone seeking clues to the inscrutable Valve’s grand plan for Counter-Strike should look back at CS:GO’s release back in 2012.

COCOON

A beautiful puzzle adventure emerges from its chrysalis

The Case Of The Golden Idol

Color Gray Games’ detective adventure seemed an unlikely candidate for an expansion

X-Com: UFO Defense

What did Firaxis leave behind when adapting alien-invasion strategy for the modern world?

ENDNIGHT GAMES

How The Forest gave a tiny studio an outsized success

THE MAKING OF TUNIC

A game made in the margins

AN AUDIENCE WITH... HENRIQUE OLIFIERS

The Bossa boss on selling off hits, doubling down on co-op, and reinventing the ZX Spectrum

SYNAPTIC LEAP

After a decade in VR, UK studio nDreams is ready for the big time

DEEP TROUBLES

The Chinese Room drills into a rich vein of '70s horror in terrifying firstperson chiller Still Wakes The Deep

Alternate Reality

Adrian Hon on the transformative leap of The Last Clockwinder

Trigger Happy

Steven Poole gets existential about the miracle of Humanity

DISPATCHES AUGUST

Like most people, every waking minute of the past week has involved playing and consuming Tears Of The Kingdom content, but while my timeline has been completely inundated with crazy contraptions and crucified Koroks, it’s Ascend that has surprised me the most out of Link’s arsenal of new powers

Gathering of developers

This year's Develop conference in Brighton features an abundance of game-making talent

Creative crucible

The creator of Shadowrun returns with Adventure Forge, an entirely code-free game-creation kit

All hands on Deck

As the portable PC race hots up, we two rivals to Valve's game-changing weigh up handheld

Changing the narrative

Five years of LudoNarraCon, showcasing videogame storytelling on a digital stage

Dependable independents

After 3,000 games and ten years, ID@Xbox thunders on. But what guides its journey?

Performance anxieties

Why are developers failing to deliver 60fps from hardware that promised to hit the mark?

Ghostwire: Tokyo

One of Shinji Mikami’s goals for Tango Gameworks was to give a younger generation of developers chance to shine.

Pathologic 2

How a tale of sickness and displacement inspired by Russian literature became a chilling prophecy

LEAGUE OF GEEKS

How a cancelled project for Take-Two led the Armello dev to redouble its efforts

ΤΗΕ MAKING OF... CARD SHARK

How Kubrick and magic tricks inspired a whole lot of cheating

FEAR THE OLD BLOOD

The dark magic of Bloodborne lingers, even as FromSoftware moves on to pastures new

DIVIDE AND CONQUER

Weighing up the delicate imbalance of asymmetrical multiplayer

SEEKING SOLIS

How an indie studio fulfilled its plan to deliver a TV-quality sci-fi thriller - with the help of two of videogames' brightest stars

THE ELDER SCROLLS ONLINE: NECROM

Magic, memory and Morrowind: getting to the crux of it with 2023’s expansion

Citizen Sleeper

A progress report on the games we just can't quit