Bungie’s Marathon has a new release window. The survival extraction shooter was originally set to hit PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC in September, but by June, Sony had delayed it indefinitely. Now, with a plagiarism issue largely in the rearview mirror, Bungie has confirmed that Marathon will arrive in March and and plans to sell it for $40.
Alongside the release date and price announcement, Bungie released a 23-minute video that takes a deep dive into the game and shows off the current state of Marathon. New features include proximity chat and a solo mode, while Bungie says it has upgraded the environmental storytelling and visual fidelity. Gritty environments provide a nice contrast to the glossy sci-fi sheen that defined Marathon’s visual language in our earliest looks at the game.
There’s a lot more on deck for Marathon’s first year including new maps and events. Bungie also plans to release more shells, which are akin to character classes that can be customized by changing your loadout. The Rook shell, for instance, is a new one that the studio has added since the alpha playtests. This shell allows you to join a run that's already in progress. You’ll have a limited loadout, but you’re not really risking anything valuable as you run around to loot items.
There’s a lot riding on Marathon. Parent company Sony Interactive Entertainment said last month that Destiny 2 had not lived up to its expectations and it wrote down the value of Bungie’s assets by $204 million. Back in August, Sony asserted more control over Bungie and said the developer was “shifting into a role that is becoming more part of PlayStation Studios.”
That’s hardly the only issue Bungie has faced this year. The studio admitted in May that one of its former employees plagiarized the work of artist Fern Hook by enabling it to be used in Marathon’s in-game textures. Earlier this month, Hook said that Bungie and Sony had resolved the matter “to my satisfaction.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playstation/bungies-marathon-will-arrive-in-march-200838426.html?src=rss
Ubisoft is moving deeper into MOBAs after buying March of Giants from Amazon and acquiring the team that made the game. As part of the agreement, Amazon will help promote March of Giants on Twitch. The deal is expected to close on December 16
There’s no release date as yet for March of Giants. Amazon announced the free-to-play game back in August and there was a closed alpha playtest the following month. The next playtest will take place in 2026. The next major update for March of Giants will include “new giants, expanded competitive modes and foundational systems designed to support long-term growth.”
March of Giants is a 4v4 game in which players control giant war commanders. You’ll lead armies with thousands of soldiers and send them to attack enemy giants. Likewise, you’ll have to fend off the other team’s minions. You can also deploy reinforcements (called Battleworks) like trenches, tanks and bunkers to help you win a match.
MOBAs aren’t entirely new territory for Ubisoft. While it’s ostensibly a third-person action game, For Honorchecks all the MOBA criteria too. Although it clearly sees an opportunity in the MOBA market, Ubisoft will have a job on its hands to make March of Giants succeed in a space that’s dominated by League of Legends and Dota 2.
March of Giants was in development at Amazon Games Montreal, a studio that was established five years ago. Several former Ubisoft employees are returning to that company as part of this deal. Many of them were part of the original creative team behind Rainbow Six Siege, including Amazon Games Montreal founder and March of Giants creative director Xavier Marquis.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/amazon-sells-moba-march-of-giants-to-ubisoft-183948291.html?src=rss
Welcome to our latest roundup of what's going on in the indie game space. Between The Game Awards and showcases like Day of the Devs, Wholesome Snack, Latin American Games and Women-Led Games, there’s been a ton of video game news over the last week (I need Control ResonantASAP, please and thank you, Remedy). And hey, guess what? I've got even more for you to dig into, including info on some new releases that you can play right now.
One of those is a game I’d been looking forward to since about 2022, and it’s always nice when something you’ve remained patient for turns out to be worth the wait. In Sam Eng's Skate Story, you play as a demon who accepts a deal offered by the Devil. If the demon can ride a skateboard to the Moon and swallow it after being transformed into a creature made of “glass and pain,” the Devil will grant them their freedom.
It’s just as strange as that setup sounds. While you’ll need to execute combos to defeat bosses, this is a skateboarding game that leans more heavily on story than pure gameplay. It’s visually and sonically arresting too, with Blood Cultures and John Fio crafting a killer soundtrack I know I’ll be listening to for a long time to come.
Unbeatable is another game I’ve had on my radar for some time, though I haven’t had a chance to jump in yet. This is another stylish game in which you play as Beat, who sings in a band. However, music is outlawed in this world (oh no!). Through rhythm-based minigames and battles with cops, Beat tries to bring back the music. There's a separate arcade mode with a dedicated progression system too.
I'm a sucker for stories about rebellious underdogs, and this rhythm adventure could well hook me in. Unbeatable — from D-Cell Games and publisher Playstack — is available on Steam and PS5 for $28 (there’s a 10 percent discount on Steam until December 23). It's set to hit Xbox Series X/S very soon too.
Speaking of games I've been keeping an eye on, Adrift (from solo developer S.K.9.8 and co-publisher Secret Sauce) was one of the first games I covered when I started doing this weekly roundup earlier this year. It's a driving game in which your aim is to deliver a volatile energy core. Since you're traversing a hot desert, you'll need to be careful to prevent the core from overheating and blowing up. Thankfully, there are safe spots and cooling stations where you can bring down the temperature.
The vaporwave aesthetic of Adrift caught my eye and although I dig the presentation, the game isn't quite clicking for me in the early going. It didn't take long before my vehicle got stuck and I had to reset, and I'm finding the top-down world a little confusing to navigate. I'll stick with it for at least a little longer, though. Adrift is out now on Steam. It usually costs $13 though there's a 25 percent discount until December 23.
I've very happy that a game like Drywall Eating Simulator can exist. Peripheral Playbox's satirical walking sim sees your character trying to deal with the maddening realities of daily life and the frustration that one may find in dealing with other people. Get mad enough and you'll be able to punch through a wall (something you'll have to do to move through the levels anyway). Then, you can munch on some drywall to calm yourself down.
I had a good time with it and there’s some pointedly funny writing here. “I thought AI sucks but it told me that was wrong and I believed it,” says one person. That's all well and good, but I mainly just want the NPCs to leave me alone so I can eat drywall in peace. Drywall Eating Simulator is out now on Steam. It'll usually run you $10, but there's a 10 percent discount until December 17.
Planet of Lana was one of my favorite games of 2023 and now it's available on iOS and Android for $9. It sees teenage Lana and her cute companion Mui making their way through a world that's been taken over by alien robots as they try to rescue Lana's sister.
This is a puzzle platformer in the vein of Inside and Limbo, and despite the pretty and often bright presentation, it's just as dystopian as those games. It sounds gorgeous too, thanks in large part to a beautiful score from The Last Guardian composer Takeshi Furukawa. I'm very much looking forward to the sequel from Wishfully and publisher Thunderful. That's set to arrive next year.
A Game About Digging A Hole is one of this year's real indie success stories. It’s a game that a developer started making in their spare time that has sold more than 1.2 million copies since February. After landing on PC and mobile, the $5 game from Doublebee and publisher Rokaplay is now on Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S and PS5. It's on Game Pass Ultimate, Game Pass Premium and PC Game Pass.
It's a straightforward loop. Start digging a hole in your backyard, sell the stuff you find, upgrade your equipment and keep going. Just, uh, be careful down there. You never quite know what you'll run into.
Upcoming
Vampire Therapist developer Little Bat Games has revealed its latest project, Better Than Us, which is coming to Steam in 2026. It's a narrative-driven sci-fi narrative game in which you'll infiltrate swanky parties thrown by wealth hoarders in the future to steal spoils back from them.
Violence isn't the solution here, as you'll need to charm the ultra-rich, who buy elections and have "monopolized AI development to ensure machines serve their interests" (I dunno, this all seems extremely far-fetched). You can spin up a web of lies about things like how your husband died and how much Worldcoin you have. To maintain your ruse, you'll need to keep your story straight by remembering what you said and to which characters.
Okomotive (Herdling, Far: Changing Tides) just revealed its next game. PinKeep is a roguelike deckbuilder in which you'll place structures on a playing field to fend off enemies. To collect resources, you'll need to play some pinball. By using the flippers (and flicking the ball for more precise movement), you can pick up what you need to fight back against your opponents. You can damage bad guys directly with the balls too.
As a Ball x Pit enthusiast with a tepid but growing interest in deckbuilders, this speaks to me. A PinKeep demo is coming to Steam in January, with the full game set to arrive late in 2026.
AudioMech is a neat-looking game that popped up for the first time during the pre-show of The Game Awards. This is a rhythm-based action title from Dylan Fitterer, the creator of Audiosurf. It taps into whatever music you have playing on your computer (even something that you're streaming or playing through a microphone) to customize both your weapons and opponents.
A track that's heavy on bass might give you a longer sword, while vocals and lead instruments can power a cannon. There are several ways to play, including a mode in which you don't take damage and a boss rush option. AudioMech is coming to Steam and there's a demo available now.
Let's wrap things up with something a little more relaxing. Lost and Found Co. is a hidden object game from Bit Egg Inc. and co-publisher Gamirror Games. During the latest Wholesome Snack showcase, it was revealed that the game is coming to Steam on February 11.
It's little wonder that more than 170,000 Steam users have wishlisted this game. It looks absolutely lovely. The developers sought to recapture the "magic" of childhood puzzle books in their hand-drawn world. Here, you'll help Ducky, a duck-turned-human intern at a startup that hunts for items that townspeople have lost. There's a demo available that features the option to decorate a part of the world using items you find.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/swallowing-the-moon-and-other-new-indie-games-worth-checking-out-154937071.html?src=rss
Warning: the following contains spoilers for part one of Stranger Things season five
With just over a week to go until Netflix releases the next batch of Stranger Things episodes, the company has dropped a trailer for the second part of season five. The clip begins in the aftermath of the action-packed ending to the first bunch of episodes, with bodies and blazes surrounding Will as he says in a voiceover, "We failed. We never stood a chance." However, his mother Joyce tells him that, "This is not over. Not by a long shot."
We learn in this trailer that some of the gang who were still in the Upside Down at the end of part one make it back to their own reality. However, it appears that we’re about to learn a whole bunch of new information about the deadly alternate dimension. Dustin says, "This whole time, everything we have ever assumed about the Upside Down has been dead wrong."
In addition, the clip shows some of the heroes going on the offensive against a militarized area; Max and Holly making their way through the "mental prison" they're trapped in; Demodogs attacking the Hawkins hospital; and Eleven asking Eight to help her find and kill Vecna. There's also a death pact between Dustin and Steve, a look at an ominous new pulsating mass from the Upside Down and Vecna stating, "It is time for a new world."
There's a lot going on in this trailer and we won't have to wait too much longer for the next three episodes. They will hit Netflix at 8PM ET on December 24. The finale will debut on December 31, also at 8PM. The last episode will also be shown in movie theaters.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/new-stranger-things-trailer-hints-at-whats-next-for-our-heroes-152327474.html?src=rss
Why have one Star Wars game announcement at an edition of The Game Awards when you can have two? Star Wars: Galactic Racer is a podracing (and speeder racing) game from Fuse Games, a studio established in 2023 by former Burnout and Need for Speed developers. It's scheduled to hit PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC in 2026.
The action here is set after the fall of the Empire. With the galaxy in rebuild mode after dealing with that whole mess, an unsanctioned, underground racing circuit called the Galactic League comes into being in the Outer Rim. Here, according to the game's Steam page, "syndicates bankroll chaos and champions are forged."
Star Wars: Galactic Racer is run-based, so if your podracer blows up, it might be game over. The action takes place across well-known Star Wars planets in addition to some new ones. The races have branching routes and you'll unlock new abilities on each run.
There's a story-driven, single-player campaign, as well as PvP modes. The vehicles are customizable too. Dig it. Where do I sign up, Watto?
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/star-wars-galactic-racer-is-a-podracing-game-set-for-2026-035508891.html?src=rss
It didn't take too long for a game that a whole bunch of people are excited about to swoop into Grand Theft Auto VI's old release week. Or maybe Rockstar had an idea of was what was coming and delayed its blockbuster by six months to get out of the way of Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight.
Either way, TT Games and Warner Bros. Games brought a new trailer to The Game Awards and revealed that the Caped Crusader's next adventure will hit PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Steam and the Epic Games Store on May 29. The base game will cost $70 and pre-orders are open as of 11PM ET on December 11.
Lego games often have a massive cast of characters and, as the trailer revealed, this one will be no different. It will feature the likes of Robin, Nightwing, Batgirl and Catwoman, as well as a murderer's row of super-villains, such as The Joker, Two-Face, Poison Ivy, Mr. Freeze, The Penguin and Bane.
Warner Bros. Games is announcing the release date at a bit of an awkward time. Netflix recently had an $82.7 billion bid accepted for a chunk of Warner Bros. Discovery that includes the gaming division. However, Netflix co-CEO Gregory Peters said the company didn't factor Warner Bros. Games into its valuation.
"While they definitely have been doing some great work in the game space, we actually didn’t attribute any value to that from the get-go because they’re relatively minor compared to the grand scheme of things," Peters said, according to PC Gamer. "Now we are super excited because some of those properties that they’ve built, Hogwarts [Legacy] is a great example of that, have been done quite well, and we think that we can incorporate that into what we’re offering. They’ve got great studios and great folks working there. So we think that there’s definitely an opportunity there. But just to be clear, we haven’t built that into our deal model."
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/lego-batman-legacy-of-the-dark-knight-swoops-onto-pc-and-consoles-on-may-29-024729940.html?src=rss
Larian Studios didn’t rest on its laurels for long. Two years after taking home the Game of the Year prize for Baldur’s Gate III at The Game Awards, the developer popped up again at the 2025 edition of the ceremony to announce its upcoming project, which is the next entry in the Divinity series. Simply called Divinity, this will be the studio’s biggest game to date with “more breadth and depth than ever before,” according to TGA host Geoff Keighley.
After 2017’s Divinity: Original Sin II, Larian took a break from the series with which it established itself to make BG3. The rumor mill had been churning about a new Divinity game after Keighley shared a photo of a statue that was erected in the Mojave Desert. The shape of the statue matched a Divinity logo that was trademarked recently.
Before the reveal trailer was shown at The Game Awards, a short (and rather neat) live performance took place in which some actors were hoisted into the air. The trailer itself is pretty gruesome. It references The Wicker Man, as large wooden effigies with people chained inside are set ablaze. I won’t spoil what else happens other than to say it’s pretty gruesome, so maybe don’t watch it quite yet if you’ve just had dinner.
Larian hasn’t announced a release window for Divinity yet.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/larian-studios-is-returning-to-the-divinity-series-with-divinity-015833088.html?src=rss
Many of the big announcements at The Game Awards are for completely new projects, some of which are total surprises (if you had an Okami sequel on your bingo card last year, you're either in the know or probably used up all your luck for the next few years). We'll often get updates on games that were previously announced too. The trailer for Order of the Sinking Star is something a little different, as it's a game that Braiddesigner Jonathan Blow has been working on fairly openly since releasing The Witnessin 2016.
The trailer revealed some new details, including confirmation of the expected title and a release window (2026 on Steam, with more platforms to be announced). Ahead of The Game Awards, Blow gave Engadget a preview of the game and explained some of its many complexities.
Fundamentally, Order of the Sinking Star is a grid-based puzzle game in which you'll move blocks around to complete an objective. You might know of this as a Sokoban game, named after the series Hiroyuki Imabayashi created about pushing boxes around a warehouse.
But this is a Jonathan Blow game, so nothing stays too simple for very long. Blow and his team took the core concept of pushing objects around and built on it in myriad ways, with a wide array of environments, mechanics and characters for you to get to grips with.
Order of the Sinking Star starts with you playing as a deposed queen from another world who is transported to a strange place. This turns out to be the tutorial. Among other things, you'll find out about the undo button, a handy option you can use to revert your actions if you get stuck. It's probably worth being careful with this button, as Blow says it's possible to undo thousands of moves with it. There's a level reset option too.
The first phase of the game has four distinct territories with their own characters, stories and gameplay mechanics. One of these realms has a fantasy theme with a warrior character who can push multiple objects that are in a row. His friend, the thief, can only pull objects. The wizard, meanwhile, can teleport and swap positions with objects or other characters. Sometimes, you'll use multiple characters in a level and swap between them to solve puzzles. There’s a talking boat somewhere, too.
You'll take what you learn within individual levels into the overworld so you can make progress there. For one thing, the queen can wear a warrior, wizard or thief outfit to adopt their abilities and solve puzzles in the north section of this phase.
Over in the east, there’s a world with mirror-based puzzles. By positioning the mirrors and where you stand, you'll use the mirror's reflection to teleport at a right angle. If your character (or an object) has a reflection in two mirrors, they can be duplicated, which is something you might have to do a few times if a level requires you activate multiple switches at the same time.
Once you near the end of two of the phase one worlds, you can enter one of six gold rooms. In these rooms, which are the gateways to the second phase of Order of the Sinking Star, some of your characters meet each other for the first time. For instance, the guy from The Mirror Isles and the wizard might encounter each other in a gold room and then you can use their combined abilities to solve puzzles. Given that later-game levels combine mechanics from the early stages, they are naturally more complex. Shifting to 3D perspectives will ramp things up too.
Order of the Sinking Star
Thekla/Arc Games
You can tackle the four worlds that make up the first phase in any order. Collectively, they contain "days worth of gameplay," Blow said. And yet he claimed this first phase accounts for about five percent of the entire game.
All told, there are about 1,400 puzzles, many of which are optional. If you're a completionist, you'll need to be pretty dedicated to see this through. Blow estimates that it'll take around 500 hours for a player to do absolutely everything in the game.
The overworld has more than 100 screens from which you can jump into individual levels. "All the levels are about ideas. They're not just random puzzles," Blow said. "We don't add puzzles to the game unless they show something cool about how the objects interact. Then, once you see the cool thing, you come back to the overworld, and you navigate from that screen using the cool mechanic that you learned."
"We" is a key word there, because it's not as if Blow has been making Order of the Sinking Star by himself for the last decade. His studio, Thekla, has around 10 people working on the game full-time along with another 10 or so part-time contractors. Those who contributed include puzzle game designers Alan Hazelden and Marc ten Bosch. Some members of Blow's Twitch community who "contributed some idea to one of the levels somewhere" will receive design credits too.
Blow and his team use custom game engines for their projects. Starting in around 2013, he started livestreaming his work on the programming language that Order of the Sinking Star is written in (Thekla will eventually make the engine available for free as an open-source project). "Once I was working on the game, it was a good way to show people what the programming language was about and also how game programming works, and so I would frequently do just streams where we would sit down and implement something," Blow said. Some of the design work he did on stream ended up in the final game.
Order of the Sinking Star
Thekla/Arc Games
After such a long time of working on Order of the Sinking Star, the end is in sight for Blow and his team. The main focus for the last year or so has been on making sure all of the puzzles align with the overworld. Making art for many hundreds of levels is a major undertaking too, while Blow is still refining the story.
"Because there's a lot of these levels and a lot of characters in the levels, it's just natural for them to talk to each other," Blow said. "And so what is that dialog and what does it do? Is it just little jokes that don't add up to anything? Or do you get little peeks into a larger narrative? I think the latter is obviously better. And so that's my main task between now and release, is making sure that the story is really good."
Blow had the core concept of having separate worlds with mechanics that work across them in place from the very beginning, though how that worked in practice evolved a lot over time. For instance, the overworld idea wasn't set in stone from the outset. There was an overworld in place by around 2021, "but it wasn't organized in the way the current one was. It was just sort of areas smushed together," Blow said. "At some point, I came up with this concept that it was spatially organized in an almost ritualistic manner or a mathematical manner, whichever way you want to think about it. And we redesigned the overworld from that point, and from then till now, it's been just sort of a continuous improvement."
Order of the Sinking Star was originally supposed to be a much smaller game that took around 10 or 20 hours to play, but "it just blew up," Blow said. "Part of development has just been dealing with that fact. Like, oh, my God, this game took so long to make. It actually feels really good to be here toward the end. We still have a fair bit of work to do before it's done, but we can see the ending from where we are now, and that's great."
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/ten-years-after-the-witness-jonathan-blows-next-massive-puzzle-game-is-almost-ready-for-primetime-015727378.html?src=rss
Capcom’s long, long-delayed sci-fi shooter Pragmatafinally has a release date. It’s headed your way on April 24, 2026 on Steam, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and — as Capcom confirmed in a trailer at The Game Awards — Nintendo Switch 2. You don’t have to wait another four months to try it out, though. A gameplay demo is out now on Steam. It will be available for consoles at a later date.
Pragmata first emerged all the way back in 2020 and Capcom initially planned to release it in 2022. After multiple delays, the game will arrive four years later than the company anticipated.
This is the first entry in a new franchise from Capcom, so taking extra time to get things right is not exactly a bad idea. Pragmata, which is set in a dystopian near-future, features the dual protagonists of Hugh Williams (a heavily armored fella) and Diana (an android with special powers). The two have to work together if they want to escape from a lunar research station that’s filled with malevolent robots. To defeat these clankers, Diana has to hack them to disable their defense systems and make a weak point available for Hugh to attack.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/capcoms-pragmata-is-coming-your-way-on-april-24-010826258.html?src=rss
CloverPitis one of my favorite games of the year so far. Developer Panik Arcade took the formula that helped make Balatro so successful — using various tools to bend the rules of the game to help you rack up obscenely high scores — and based it around a slot machine rather than poker. It’s been a hit so far on PC, where it has sold more than a million copies since September, and on Xbox. CloverPit has been among the top 20 most-played titles on Game Pass since its surprise debut there last month. Now, the horror-tinged roguelite is venturing into new territory, as it’s coming to iOS and Android on December 17.
The mobile versions of the game are said to have a fully-optimized interface, as well as all of the post-launch updates, such as the Hard Mode that Panik Arcade recently added. CloverPit will cost $5 on mobile and it will have no microtransactions or “predatory mechanics.” That might seem surprising for a game centered around a slot machine, but CloverPit isn’t really about gambling (which the developers say they don’t like anyway). It’s about breaking the rules to tilt the odds in your favor.
The setup is pretty straightforward. You’re imprisoned in a rusty cell and you have a rapidly increasing debt to pay off. The only way to do that, and hopefully leave through the door, is to earn enough coins from the slot machine to pay what you owe. There are more than 150 items (which are called charms here) to experiment with that affect things like the number of spins, how much each symbol or pattern is worth and how many tickets you earn. Tickets are what you need to buy more charms.
Figuring out combinations of items that work well together is key to quickly scaling up the number of coins and tickets you can earn from each visit to the slot machine. Fail to pay off your debt by a deadline (i.e. after a certain number of spins) and it’s game over, as you plunge into the titular pit.
CloverPit is strange and beguiling and heaps of fun. I’ve plowed around 39 hours into it on Steam, and I’m sure it’ll take up much of my attention on my phone after it hits mobile next week. Doomspinning seems slightly healthier for my brain than doomscrolling.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/cloverpit-a-balatro-style-game-with-a-grungy-slot-machine-hits-ios-and-android-on-december-17-154500028.html?src=rss
