Foxhole is one of my favourite games to read about, even if I don’t play it. It’s a massively multiplayer World War 2 game, viewed from above, where battlefield logistics matters as much as aiming and flanking. Its developers have just announced a major new update coming next summer, Foxhole: Airborne, which adds planes to the game for the first time.
Planes, in a topdown MMO? It makes a little more sense if you watch the trailer.
I didn’t get much further in the extremely popular beta for the haute-couture-asaurus action of Monster Hunter Wilds than perfecting the exact orange-to-white ratio of my cat. Not because I wasn’t having fun, but because I immediately started looking up GPU prices after playing for ten minutes. As such, I didn’t spend enough time with the combat to get a proper feel for it. Cultural osmosis has once again allowed me to form an uneducated take, however, and I’m getting the sense there’s been some mixed reactions re: bonk quality. According to a clip shared on X by user Blue Stigma, there’s a good reason for those misgivings. It’s all about frames, you see.
Neva is the Sophomore effort from Nomada Studio, who you may remember from their beautiful, dreamy platformer Gris. Neva is not a literal sequel to Gris, but it certainly seems to be one in a spiritual sense, as it, too, is a floaty hand-illustrated platformer fond of metaphor. Neva introduces some drama, with combat and a health system (if not actual stakes because of near-instant restarts), and although neither the platforming nor combat are precise enough to be neat bedfellows, I think we should be willing to forgive most of the mess.
My default movement mode in horror games that actually scare me is: meandering. I seek to approach without approaching, scooting back and forth across the path like a stray hamster, worrying at the corners and avoiding clear perspectives of the route ahead, while keeping the route behind me in my peripheral vision. I have been trained to do this especially by Amnesia, where tilting your gaze too decisively at anything nasty drives your character nuts.
Lurks Within Walls has no time for my hamstery antics. Developed by Here Be Monsters, it’s a grid- and turn-based first-person dungeon crawler – a long-lost cousin of Etrian Odyssey that has wound up in an asylum jammed with internet cryptids, reminiscent in cinematic texture of F.E.A.R. In keeping with other grid-based dungeon crawlers, it only lets you turn the view by 90 degree angles and travel in straight lines. Going by the demo, it’s a promising restraint for a horror game, though they really do need to expand on the combat, which is currently a slight waste of some terrific creature art.
Rogue Flight is an arcade space combat game with some StarFox somewhere in its DNA, “inspired by the landmark style of ’80s and ’90s prestige anime”, also known as “the only good anime.” It’s due for release later this year and there’s an announcement trailer below.