And while, initially, we were in awe of how Mira looked on the newest Nintendo console, as time has gone on, and fans have been digging into the update, some are disappointed, reportedly asking Nintendo to refund the $5 NS2E, Eurogamer reports.
Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2 – A Holy Warrior of the God-Emperor Joins the Battle Against Chaos
Matt Bone, Lead Designer, Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2
Summary
Sister of Battle Nyra Veyrath joins the fight as a second playable character alongside returning Ultramarine Malum Caedo.
See the never-before-seen key art for Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2.
Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2 will launch on Xbox Series X|S in 2026.
One of the most requested features from fans of Boltgun was to add a second playable character to the game, in addition to Malum Caedo. Right from the start, we knew we wanted to do this for Boltgun 2, especially as it aligned so well with two of our goals for the game: adding more variety and replayability.
Today I’m excited to share more about our new player character: Nyra Veyrath, a battle-hardened Sister of Battle Celestian who loves nothing more than bathing heretics in righteous flames.
A Wild Torrent of Flame
To make for a truly different experience, it was important to us that Nyra had her own unique set of weapons. When it comes to Sisters of Battle, their “holy trinity” of guns are bolters, flamers, and melta weapons, so we knew we had to do these justice.
We’ve spent a lot of time during development making sure her flame-based weapons are as gratifying as possible to use. For these weapons more than most, visual and audio feedback can make or break their feel. They’ve got to be convincingly destructive – as befits a wild torrent of flame – whilst still clearly communicating to the player where and how damage is being applied. My personal favourite is the Heavy Flamer — our internal goal was to make a weapon that feels like the end of the world, and I’m very happy with (and slightly terrified by) the results.
Enhancing Mobility with Fervent Slide
For a breakneck-paced shooter like Boltgun 2, mobility is key when creating a new character – especially for Nyra, who we wanted to feel even more agile than Malum.
One of Nyra’s core abilities is Fervent Slide, a rapid means of getting around levels, with the bonus that it’ll tear right through any cultists in your path. By pressing jump during the slide, Nyra uses her momentum to perform a special Leap – an effective way of reaching higher areas.
Immediacy is a central pillar for Boltgun 2, and part of that means creating abilities that are instantly understandable and satisfying to use. Onto that straightforward base we add optional layers of functionality, expanding the ability’s utility in the game.
As such, Fervent Slide is a great way to both enter and escape combat, whilst the Leap is not only a handy means of reaching high ground, but also – as you can slow time by holding jump – can be used to take stock of the battle around you, or to take some precision shots with your current weapon.
Melting the Enemies of the Emperor
We really wanted to ramp up grenades for Boltgun 2 and make them a unique part of each character’s arsenal. To suit Nyra’s affinity for righteous flame, she has a devastating Melta Bomb at her disposal.
Again, the ability is straightforward to use: simply lob the bomb at an unfortunate heretic and watch the explosion. But there’s added depth to play around with: Holding throw will
slow time whilst priming the grenade, allowing a more precise throw, whilst pressing it again after it’s thrown will detonate it early. The latter allows high skill play such as exploding the bomb over a group of enemies. Or, if you really want to impress the Emperor, you can shoot the bomb in midair…
Adding a Cutting Edge
Anyone who has played Boltgun will know Malum Caedo’s Chainsword is an integral part of his gameplay. When it came to Nyra, we needed her Power Sword to feel equally important to her character.
We wanted her first ranged weapon in the game to be a one-handed Bolt Pistol partly because it allowed us to show the Power Sword on screen at the same time. That way we’re immediately encouraging the player to get in the faces of your enemies, performing vicious combo slashes with the Power Sword.
And for enemies just out of reach, holding the melee attack button performs a forward thrust with the sword, causing increased damage and often showering the screen in gore.
Reinforcing the themes of mobility and extra utility, the thrust attack can also be used as a means of moving around. For this and Nyra’s other abilities, we’re really looking forward to players’ creativity in how they use and combine them.
Boltgun 2 Key Art Reveal
As you may have noticed at the top of the post, we wanted to share the brand-new key art for Boltgun 2! This was created by the supremely talented Johan Grenier, who also created the key art for the original Boltgun! In the new key art for Boltgun 2, Nyra naturally takes centre stage alongside Malum on a battlefield of chaos factions.
This is only the start for Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2 and we’ll have even more exciting reveals to share over the next few months! Be sure to add Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2 to your wishlist to be notified when it releases later this year, and follow Auroch Digital on X, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube for all the latest updates.
Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2 is the brutal and fast-paced sequel to retro FPS Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun.
Following directly on from the end of Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun, your duty takes you to new locations in a branching, single-player campaign that effortlessly blends the grimdark Warhammer 40,000 universe with a fast-paced first-person shooter.
A New Champion
Lock in as one of two playable characters, each offering their own unique abilities, weapons, and play style.
Dominate combat as the unrelenting force that is Malum Caedo, a formidable Sternguard Veteran with a reputation for purging heretics. Or quickly take control of the battlefield as the swift and nimble Sister of Battle, Nyra Veyrath, torching enemies and leaving only ashes in her wake.
Discover New Worlds
Take the fight to never-before-seen worlds and vanquish the foes that lurk there. From the colossal heights of a hive city to the impenetrable mangrove swamps of a jungle, you’ll need to overcome the challenges of each biome to complete your mission.
Bloody Action-Packed Combat
Built on the explosive combat of Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun, charge headfirst into glorious battle armed with an arsenal of deadly Space Marine weapons. Shred enemies with your lethal chainsword or blast them into an explosion of pixels and blood with your Shotgun!
Never-Before-Seen Foes
As your arsenal improves, so do the enemies! The ferocious Bloodletters and their daemonic Juggernauts are a near unstoppable force as they charge into battle hungry for blood!
Features
Two Playable Characters – Play as the formidable Malum Caedo or battle-hardened Nyra Veyrath, each with their own playstyle.
Explosive FPS Gameplay – Obliterate foes in high-octane combat.
Branching Campaign – Choose your own path through the campaign with each branch featuring unique levels.
NEW Enemies – Face never-before-seen foes from different factions.
NEW Weapons – Eviscerate hordes of relentless heretical scum with devastating weapons.
NEW Locations – Discover a range of worlds and biomes.
Navigation Guide – Effortlessly navigate the battlefield so you’re always at the center of the combat.
AND MORE!
“Zero Parades is ultimately about identity,” explains Kaspar Tamsalu, art director at developer ZA/UM. “The conflict between what you subscribe to as an individual, as a private person outside of the professional sphere, and then how that mixes with what your vocation is.”
Your vocation in ZA/UM’s latest RPG is espionage. Hershel Wilk, your protagonist, is a spy for The Superbloc, a union of left-wing republics. She was born bourgeois before ending up spying for the communists, a background story intentionally filled with blanks to allow you to shape Hershel as you see fit.
“Just because she’s from a communist country does not mean that she subscribes to the ideology,” says Siim “Kosmos” Sinamäe, Zero Parades’ principal writer. “This is up to the player to decide. Spies can be spies for ideology, for money, for a sense of accomplishment, or because they are batshit insane and want to do things like that.”
Sinamäe quickly offers an example of the latter: “I’m going to subscribe to this thought called Unguided Missile Strikes, because I want to say violent things to people. I want to threaten people with nuclear strikes, because that’s the type of spy I am.”
When Sinamäe says “subscribe to this thought”, he’s referring to Zero Parades’ Conditioning system, which reformats Disco Elysium’s Thought Cabinet for an espionage setting. When exploring the world and talking with characters, you’ll encounter new ideas and concepts you can “subscribe” to, rewriting your personality to unlock new dialogue options and roleplaying opportunities. But where ZA/UM’s previous game explored what it would be like for an alcoholic amnesiac detective to soak up ideas like a sponge, Zero Parades approaches the mind of a spy like a collection of masks. Which one is required for today’s task? This required a new method for thought subscription.
“You get the choice about whether or not you want to reinforce or punish the thought,” explains Nicolas Pirot, Zero Parades’ lead technical artist. “You have a branching option of, ‘I don’t like this. I don’t want that to be a part of myself. I was always a violent spy. I no longer want to be a violent spy.’ You can resist that, and then that’ll have a different impact on the way you do things.”
“It’s really framed as this violent reordering of your mind,” he concludes.
It’s All in Your Head
That violent reordering is viewed through the flickering glass screen of an old CRT television. Much of Zero Parades’ in-world technology is modelled after the gizmos and appliances of the 1990s – down at the Bootleg Bazaar, you’ll find vinyl records housed in plastic cartridges in an analogue echo of Sony’s old MiniDisc format. This approach extends past the boundaries of reality and into Hershel’s psyche. The art team needed something functional but flawed to represent this spy’s troubled mind – a mind that could tune itself into dangerous thoughts and settle into uncomfortable programming. And so the Conditioning system’s menu sits inside that box of cathode rays.
“It’s in an imperfect state,” explains Maeve Bonefacic, a technical artist at ZA/UM who helped create the system’s look and feel. “In the sense that [the television] works, it does, but there’s a slight imperfection to that tool. We worked a lot on the particular glitches and effects that a CRT might have.”
I want to threaten people with nuclear strikes, because that’s the type of spy I am.
The CRT is just one example of Zero Parades’ fascinating, two-pronged approach to art design. There’s the physical – the environments you explore, the people you meet, the items you acquire – and then there’s the creations of Hershel’s mind, represented by the wild art cards assigned to each quest, the disturbing televised thoughts assessed through Conditioning, and the badges assigned to your sentient skills. ZA/UM describes this approach as representing the two realms that Hershel exists in: the objective and subjective.
The subjective side of Hershel’s reality is spearheaded by lead illustrator Anton Vill, who created the surrealist artwork for Disco Elysium, including its grotesque Thought Cabinet. Once again, he took inspiration from the work of David Lynch, particularly the ominous tone of Twin Peaks’ dark forests, reflecting the messed-up thoughts of a broken character in his bizarre, twisted, emotionally heavy artwork. In one example, a collection of five, cigarette-smoking Hershel doppelgangers face each other in an unnerving pentagon as words of insecurity, such as “abandoner”, “liar”, and “f***ing spy”, hover above them on flowing reams of paper.
“I’m a huge fan of this kind of mysterious, dark, inner world of a person,” says Vill. “I think that shines through [in Zero Parades’ subjective artwork] and I think it’s perfect for the game.”
The Portofiran Identity
While the art team understandably wanted to create a sense of warped darkness for Hershel’s interior thoughts, it needed to create a complementary vibe for the physical world. It would need to be via different techniques, though, so that subjective thoughts didn’t merge with objective reality.
“We try to subtly inject this unease for the players,” says Tamsalu. “There is a lot of detail that we put into the game, but the way we have textured these [details], and how we approach lighting for the scenes and set up these situations, there is this underlying current of something brewing.”
This thing that is brewing is, of course, why Hershel is in the city of Portofiro. But her job is very unlike that of Disco Elysium’s disaster cop protagonist, and the espionage story Zero Parades tells had a significant influence on the way the city was designed.
“When you’re a police officer looking into a crime, anybody who’s in the vicinity is a potential suspect and expected to speak with you,” Tamsalu explains. “And in a spy game, it’s kind of like the inverse of that. You don’t want to stand out. And because of that, we needed to create a slightly busier backdrop. That’s why you have these characters that go about their own business, and you have your own covert business as you navigate through that.”
While capturing the heart of spy fiction has been an important part of the project, ZA/UM has been very intentional with how it has approached a genre filled with tropes, staples, and conventions. As you’d expect from the studio, this isn’t a James Bond or Jason Bourne adventure, but nor does it aspire to be a John le Carré novel repackaged as a video game. This had to be a fresh take on this shadowy world, and so a number of rules have been set in place. For instance, Herschel is an “operant”, rather than an agent. Her mission takes her “in-theatre” rather than in the field. And her employer, the communist Superbloc, flips the typical capitalist nation perspective of classic Cold War thrillers.
“We wanted to avoid the obvious spy themes,” says character artist Liis Väljaots, who explained how this philosophy extended into the art. “One of the things we wanted to avoid was making the world look too noir-y and too oppressive, to kind of contrast the subject matter, which is quite serious.”
“There are a lot of trench coats in the game, though,” she laughs. “That’s undeniable.”
Roll Play
Your choice to wear a trench coat or not is just one of many decisions that shape the kind of spy you are – clothing, as in Disco Elysium, provides stat modifiers that boost or inflict penalties on your skills. That pool of skills has been reduced (now 15, down from Disco’s 24) with the idea of making each attribute more prominent and viable. They’ll also be tested with much more frequency.
“We have a skill check every 3,000 words, compared to Disco Elysium’s every 6,000 words,” reveals Sinamäe. “We feel this makes the player more engaged with what they’re doing and what type of spy they want to be.”
As I explored in IGN’s hands-on preview of Zero Parades, skill checks have deeper mechanical complexity this time around thanks to the Pressures system. Each of your skills fits into one of three categories – athletic, psychological, and intellectual – and those categories have corresponding “health” bars that measure your fatigue, anxiety, and delirium levels. Fail a psychological skill check and your anxiety bar will fill. Max the bar out, and you’ll take a permanent stat penalty.
Things are made even more interesting by the ability to “exert” a skill check – you can roll an extra die to increase your chances of passing the check, but at the cost of purposefully damaging the skill’s corresponding pressure bar.
“It’s like, how much more can the player take?,” says Bonefacic. “Can I afford to, for example, exert a dice roll? Am I allowed to do that? Do I have the resources to do that? I think it has added an interesting element of strategy.”
That strategy wouldn’t work if there were no method for reducing your pressure gauges. By default, a bar will reset after taking so much damage that you endure a stat penalty, but that’s hardly an approach to build a self-care system around. Instead, you can have Hershel perform a ritual.
“Rituals are a system that we have where you can reduce your pressures by doing all kinds of small things in the world,” explains Pirot. “It can be sitting on a bench and watching the sunrise that might lower your anxiety. It can be smoking a cigarette, having a cup of coffee, or yelling at someone in the street. These very small, very immersive moments, that are available in different parts of the world at different times, that can help an incredibly stressed out, anxious, fatigued, or delirious spy to keep their sanity more or less in check.”
Rather than, say, the classic health potion of other RPGs, which are clearly labelled and a genre staple, you’ll need to discover these rituals through exploration and experimentation. They also unlock further roleplay opportunities – yelling at someone in the street doesn’t exactly sound like a traditional remedy, but for an operant boiling over with rage, it may be very cathartic.
“By the player making a build choice of, ‘I want to be a very violent spy’, they would naturally seek out the rituals that complement that,” says Pirot.
Rituals, mental masks, blending into busy cities, and threats of nuclear armageddon. These are all important aspects of Zero Parades’ spy fantasy, and each is manifested within the game by a different team at ZA/UM. Writing works alongside artwork and system design to produce a world through which you can observe, bargain, and bully. A world in which you can roleplay the type of spy you think can change the world. Or, at the very least, change their place in it.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s Executive Editor of Features.
Earlier this month, Epic Games Store shyly announced that their free game giveaways are having “a measurable halo effect across the broader PC ecosystem”, increasing the sales of those games on Steam during the offer period. New Blood Interactive’s Dave Oshry has made the same argument a bit less sympathetically: boosting the profile of games already on Steam is the only reason to release anything on the Epic Games Store, even given Epic’s more generous developer revenue share, because EGS sucks.
Vantage Studios, the Ubisoft subsidiary that now manages the publisher’s biggest brands, has announced a fresh leadership team for Assassin’s Creed.
The blockbuster historical stabathon series will now be led by Martin Schelling, a veteran Ubisoft producer who previously served senior roles on Assassin’s Creed titles such as Black Flag, Origins and Valhalla, and has recently served as Ubisoft’s Chief Production Officer.
Schelling will be assisted by Assassin’s Creed veteran Jean Guesdon, who will assume the role of Head of Content for the franchise. Looking after the series’ creative direction, Guesdon will be applying the experience he’s gained as a long-term designer on the series, working on more than a dozen titles in the franchise, back to Assassin’s Creed 1 in 2007.
Finally, François de Billy will serve as Head of Production Excellence, following previously acting as Production Director on Valhalla and Origins.
Ubisoft told staff of Côté’s departure via an internal email that discussed the need for Vantage Studios’ leadership team to be “aligned” with its core goals. At the time, IGN reported that Côté had been offered a role as part of Vantage Studios’ leadership, but declined.
Côté has since launched a lawsuit against Ubisoft that claims he was essentially replaced in his role early in 2025 by Vantage Studios’ newly-installed leadership, Christophe Derennes and Charlie Guillemot — the cousin and son of Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot. With this layer of management now above him, Côté alleges he then learned over the summer of 2025 that Vantage was now seeking to hire a new Assassin’s Creed franchise boss, too.
Last week, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot reaffirmed that the company had “several” Assassin’s Creed titles in development, comprised of both single-player and multiplayer experiences. Back in 2022, Ubisoft announced a raft of upcoming games including the now-launched Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the witchcraft-inspired Assassin’s Creed: Hexe (another single-player blockbuster) and Invictus (a multiplayer game). The company is also widely-expected to announce its long-awaited Black Flag remake soon.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
KPop Demon Hunters voice actor Kevin Woo has exclusively revealed a new Dead By Daylight Survivor to IGN — for which he’ll be providing the voice, if not his singing talents.
If you’ve watched or sung along to the animated Netflix phenomenon, you’ll have heard Woo as the singing voice of Mystery (the boyband member with purple hair over his eyes).
“I personally think as a Killer, Mystery Saja would thrive on psychological manipulation rather than brute aggression,” Woo said Woo, who’s set to star in a brand new chapter for the horror game, All-Kill:Comeback.
Here, he plays Kwon Tae-young, a tech designer Survivor hired to work on a virtual idol. Players will be able to check him out in a Public Test Build that will go live on Steam tomorrow, on February 24.
“I focused on making every breath, every strained scream, and every moment of fear feel grounded”
Woo previously worked on Dead By Daylight as a consultant on its previous K-pop storyline, which introduced the sociopathic idol the Trickster.
“Transitioning from consultant to fully embodying a character through voice was both surreal and deeply fulfilling,” Woo said. “As a consultant on the original chapter, I was involved in shaping the Trickster’s emotional identity — his ego, his obsession with artistry, and the narcissistic rage simmering beneath his polished idol exterior.
“Stepping into Kwon Tae-young’s perspective in this new release allowed me to approach the world of Dead by Daylight from the other side of that mythology. Because I understood the Trickster’s lore so intimately, his betrayal, his fixation on control, and his warped perception of performance. I was able to layer that history into Kwon Tae-young’s fear and internal conflict.”
Woo is the perfect person to act as a consultant on the world of K-pop. He performed as part of the line up for K-pop bands XING and U-KISS, and recently announced he was part of a new subunit of U-KISS with bandmates Hoon and Kiseop. But how did his bandmates feel after his consultant work on the role of a killer K-pop idol?
“The irony is that while Ji-Woon Hak’s lore in Dead by Daylight explores betrayal and ego within a band dynamic, my real-life band experience was built on camaraderie and growth. That contrast actually helped me understand the tragedy of the Trickster even more,” he revealed.
“They mostly praised me about becoming a ‘global Hollywood superstar’ after KPop Demon Hunters. It was flattering — but I reminded them that none of this exists without our shared experience as global idols that paved the way for K-pop.”
Since Woo first worked on the game in 2021 the world of K-pop has grown to be a much bigger force in the world of global entertainment, in no small part thanks to the incredible success of the Netflix movie KPop Demon Hunters, which first aired last year. Woo explained how his work on that project helped him embody the character of Kwon Tae-young in All-Kill: Comeback.
“Voice acting for KPop Demon Hunters deepened my appreciation for how much storytelling can be communicated purely through tone, breath control, and texture. Without physical performance to rely on, your voice becomes the entire emotional instrument. In a game like Dead by Daylight, that responsibility is amplified,” he explained.
“As a consultant, I wanted to ensure that the cultural references remained authentic. As a voice actor, I focused on making every breath, every strained scream, and every moment of fear feel grounded within the brutal, high-stakes environment of the Entity’s realm.”
He also revealed that voicing a Dead By Daylight Survivor demanded a lot more of him than just reading a script.
“To authentically capture that experience, I had to embody exhaustion, adrenaline spikes, and sudden bursts of panic. I would run in place during takes to elevate my breathing. I rehearsed strained vocalizations that mimic being hooked, injured, or chased,” he continued.
“Unlike polished K-pop tracks, which prioritize control and tonal perfection, horror voice work embraces imperfection, cracked screams, unstable breathing, and vocal strain. The chaos is the performance.”
And Woo isn’t just a consultant or a voice actor when it comes to Dead By Daylight, he’s a player too.
“I gravitate toward a tactical Survivor play-style, focusing on stealth loops, careful map awareness, and team synergy,” he said. “I’m usually the one prioritizing safe unhooks, body-blocking when necessary, and healing teammates in concealed areas.”
Dead By Daylight was first released in 2016 and since then has introduced a steady and increasingly terrifying number of Killers and Survivors to the game, including characters from Stranger Things, Attack On Titan, Resident Evil and of course, Nicolas Cage.
Rachel Weber is the Head of Editorial Development at IGN and an elder millennial. She’s been a professional nerd since 2006 when she got her start on Official PlayStation Magazine in the UK, and has since worked for GamesIndustry.Biz, Rolling Stone and GamesRadar. She loves horror, horror movies, horror games, Red Dead Redemption 2, and her Love and Deepspace boyfriends.
Sometimes you get a note through the door, nestled among the bills and flyers for local takeaways. Oi, it says, some priest’s been murdered, and we need you to track down the folks on a list of Nazis he smuggled out of Germany after the war. Ok, you reply, it’s the 1970s and I’ve got nothing better to do.
That’s the setup for Owlskip Games’ The Ratline, the Steam Next Fest demo of which has just put my beleaguered Monday brain to the test.
With Resident Evil Village, Capcom wisely leaned into the success of Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, presenting a direct sequel that continues the story of protagonist Ethan Winters. This time, he winds up in a rural village overlooked by a vast, elegant castle as he strives to locate his kidnapped daughter, Rose. It’s no secret that Village borrows heavily from what is widely regarded as the series’ critical darling, Resident Evil 4, but the results are somewhat mixed.
For starters, Village ramps up the action with more open spaces, a wide array of enemy types, upgradable weapons, and counterattack mechanics. The enemies are significantly more interesting than The Mold featured in RE7, with Lycans, reanimated dolls, mechanically enhanced ‘Soldat’ humans, and more all vying to bring your journey to a gory conclusion.
ID@Xbox Developer Acceleration Program Celebrates Games from Across the African Diaspora
Black artists have had a tremendous impact in art forms such as film and music, with Black culture and stories reaching audiences around the world in record numbers. This interest in diverse content and perspectives is not exclusive to those industries, but the barriers faced in game development are very real. The good news is that Black developers, despite the challenges, are now finding more ways to create and share games that celebrate their culture, uplift their stories and are simply fun.
The impact of Black developers in gaming dates back to Gerald Lawson and his role in designing the Fairchild Channel F and pioneering the first video game cartridges. In many ways, Black developers today are part of Mr. Lawson’s legacy and represent an inclusive future for our industry, where more stories make more players feel seen and included.
As the Director of the ID@Xbox Developer Acceleration Program, I have been fortunate to visit, speak to and partner with developers from around the world in places like Nigeria, South Africa, Brazil and here in the United States, including cities such as Detroit, Oakland, Atlanta and Houston. The passion, stories, culture and gameplay experiences that are being created are the fresh perspectives and new voices that our industry needs to bring the joy and community of gaming to everyone on the planet.
The Developer Acceleration Program is dedicated to empowering developers across the globe, enabling them to share their unique stories and perspectives with a broader audience. Since its inception, the Developer Acceleration Program has provided support to more than 300 developers spanning six continents. This commitment has already resulted in the launch of over 100 games, each benefiting from the program’s guidance and resources.
As part of the celebration of Black History Month, the Developer Acceleration Program is proud to shine a spotlight on DAP Partners and their games from across the African diaspora.
Reclaim real African artifacts from Western museums in this Africanfuturist heist game. Recruit crew members, plan escape routes, acquire the precious cargo, and bounce out of the joint as fast as you can.
What sets your game apart?
Relooted features very unique non-violent puzzle/action gameplay – the puzzle comes in figuring out the plan for your heist, and the action comes in executing it. Nyamakop is a South African team primarily but, working on Relooted, we’ve been lucky to have people from over a dozen African countries contribute to the project! That was important because the game’s core theme – African artifact repatriation – is one that affects all African countries. A final favorite fact about the game is that all the artifacts in the game are real! These artifacts have such great stories and history to them that it’s easy to think they were made up, but they are real objects that you can see in museums (maybe not the right museum though).
How has the Developer Acceleration Program impacted your game creation journey?
The Xbox team has been so amazing to work with! The program has given us the space to enhance the game and make it better. I think without the support from the Developer Acceleration Program team it’s quite possible we wouldn’t have been able to even finish Relooted – so in some ways the impact of DAP was fundamental to us.
What’s ahead for your game?
The game is out now! Stop reading and start reclaiming – it’s out on Xbox Game Pass & it’s Xbox Play Anywhere.
Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator
Please give us a brief description of your game.
Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator is a sci-fi day trading sim where the stock market, deprived of other speculative goods, decides to go all-in on alien babies. Buy low and sell high as your trade interface simulates their adorable, dystopian lives in this arcade satire of real-life economics!
What sets your game apart?
We are the only game in history to let you short a baby, and for that, I am sorry. You can also hire consultants from across the galaxy to help you deal with fluctuating market conditions like time randomly changing, the market flipping up-side down, and a spate of powerful births producing babies that live 150% longer.
How has the Developer Acceleration Program impacted your game creation journey?
We make games that run the gamut from fast-paced revenge thrillers (I Am Your Beast) to absurdist lo-fi sandbox comedy (An Airport for Aliens Currently Run by Dogs). ID@Xbox – and the Developer Acceleration Program – has supported us in each part of that journey, and trusted us to bring worthwhile experiences to players, even when those projects were unusual, or didn’t follow a trend. That belief is why our studio is still here today, 6 years after our founding, and why we can feel confident making a game where you short a baby – because we trust that to be something unique and cool our players deserve to see.
What’s ahead for your game?
We’re currently available on Steam, but you can expect a fully-featured Xbox Play Anywhere port in the very near future, including all the features and content we’ve been adding in the game’s post-launch cycle, including a daily challenge!
Aerial_Knight’s DropShot is a high-speed, stylized FPS / Race where you play as Smoke Wallace. As a kid, he was bitten by a radioactive dragon, turning his skin purple and giving him the power to fire bullets from his fingertips. Thrown into deadly sky battles for revenge, you race rivals, fight dragons, move fast, shoot smart, and look cool when you land.
What sets your game apart?
Unmatched style, wild story, and unique gameplay that mixes racing, gunplay, and ducks.
How has the Developer Acceleration Program impacted your game creation journey?
Without the Developer Acceleration Program, this game most likely doesn’t get made. I’m really grateful that funding like this exists for gamers to get a lot of different options in new games to play made by devs from many different backgrounds.
What’s ahead for your game?
My game just launched with Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Play Anywhere. It’s something I’m really proud of, and all I want is to keep making games that people enjoy that highlight different types of characters and cultures that many games don’t offer.
Beatdown City Survivors
Please give us a brief description of your game.
Beatdown City Survivors is ‘Escape from New York’ meets Dead Rising with “survivors-like” gameplay, filled with environmental destruction and over-the-top weapon crafting.
What sets your game apart?
In Beatdown City Survivors,players explore a procedurally generated post-apocalyptic city where everything in your environment can be destroyed – which will help or hurt you. Hydrants, cars, streetlights, air conditioners, and more can be used to drench things in water, light things on fire, send electricity through everything, and freeze everything in its path. There’s also a lot of toxic waste. Stay away from that. Because it’s a city, players get weapons like knives, folding chairs, fireworks, chanclas, legally distinct construction boots, pigeons and more. But wait!
Have you ever wondered what would happen if you gave a flock of bloodthirsty pigeons a set of knives? Or if you strapped a giant construction boot to a bunch of fireworks and just let it loose? Or, and I know this sounds out there, what if you shoved a giant pipe into a soda bottle, creating a makeshift fire extinguisher? You can get the answers to these questions, and more. And I want to emphasize the morepart. Every weapon can combine with any other weapon to make a long list of more powerful (and funnier) weapons.
Plus, Beatdown City Survivors has a banger of a soundtrack, harkening back to games like NBA Street and Tony Hawk, with a plethora of underground hip-hop tracks from some of the best rappers and producers on the planet.
How has the Developer Acceleration Program impacted your game creation journey?
In the uncertainty of the industry today, I have the great honor of being supported by the Developer Acceleration Program. The funds are why we can make the game at the level of execution we’re able to.
What’s ahead for your game?
Beatdown City Survivors is looking to be out not too long from now, so keep a look out! You can follow shawndoublea on Bluesky and Instagram for more updates!
Black Spades
Please give us a brief description of your game.
Black Spades is a card game rooted in the African American community’s heritage of classic card game, Spades. Yep, that’s right! Spades the way your friends and family play at home, college, reunions, and holiday get-togethers – with Jokers, Wild Deuces, Reneg calling, and more!
From the beginner playing at home, to the expert playing across the nation, Black Spades was created to get you straight to the action with no gimmicks. Designed with authentic rules, realistic gameplay, and heavy social interaction, Black Spades has become a standout offering for Spades enthusiasts.
What sets your game apart?
Black Spades is the first and only game published on any platform that features Spades rules and terminology found in the African American culture. Our mission is to help preserve and extend the history of Spades within African American culture, and to become the only digital entity to house the most comprehensive collection of African American Spades rules.
Black Spades is a cross-platform online multiplayer game. Xbox users can play against other players on various devices, such as mobile phones, computers, and handhelds.
Here is a list of our key features:
Reneg Calling (Play the wrong suit and kiss those 3 books goodbye. If you get caught.)
Live Voice Chat (talk yo’ stuff in realtime!)
Partner Play (Choose or find a partner to play multiplayer matches with you)
Locations (Play in different locations to win exclusive tables, coin jackpots, and become the mayor!)
Leaderboards with bonus prizes! (Daily, Weekly and Monthly)
Goals (Flex your skill, and luck, to win the big jackpot)
Smack Talk!!! (Choose from over 20+ phrases.)
Custom soundtrack (Featuring an original track by “David Banner”)
How has the Developer Acceleration Program impacted your game creation journey?
As an indie developer and publisher, the Developer Acceleration Program has been instrumental in helping us bring Black Spades to Xbox. Their belief in the game –combined with their extensive resources and financial support – made it possible to successfully transition Black Spades from mobile to console.
Konsole Kingz took a nontraditional path to Xbox game publishing, and DAP ensured that path was not only viable but achievable. Through their monthly Green Room sessions, they consistently demystified the Xbox development and publishing process, clearly outlining the tools, requirements, and best practices needed to launch successfully on the platform. It’s a ton of information to take in, but they deliver it in bite-size chunks.
What’s ahead for your game?
Black Spades has joined the Xbox Insider Program to help us test, refine, and polish the game before we launch in the summer. Please reach out to us via Black Spades’ social media handles to request access to the demo and give us your feedback on X, Instagram, or Facebook.
Wishlist Black Spades on all Xbox platforms. Lastly, download Black Spades on your mobile device now, create an account, and play a few games. You’ll be ahead of the game and launch day ready!
Blind Frontiers
Please give us a brief description of your game.
Blind Frontiers is a premium, single-player RPG blending survival mechanics with a road-trip structure. Players follow Niuma, a gifted mechanic, pursuing the elusive Golden City to escape increasingly harsh living conditions in a post-conflict world shaped by scarcity and shifting social norms.
What sets your game apart?
In Blind Frontiers, survival is not about combat, but about how the world chooses to see you. The game features two interdependent gameplay phases: road survival and city interactions. Each city has its own social norms, traditions, and expectations. Navigating them is key to progression, while choices made on the road shape the resources, opportunities, and constraints players carry into those cities.
Meet the griots, who transmit knowledge through oral storytelling, uniquely revealing the mysteries of the Blind Frontiers universe.
How has the Developer Acceleration Program impacted your game creation journey?
Joining the Developer Acceleration Program has been a game-changer for Blind Frontiers. The program provides us with unparalleled support, from funding to hands-on guidance, as well as access to dedicated conferences that help us fully understand and leverage the resources and opportunities offered by DAP.
As a Black woman in game development, being taken seriously can be a challenge, and DAP’s backing has made a tangible difference. From our first meetings to pitching the game, we truly felt heard, which has given us the confidence to navigate the industry and advance Blind Frontiers toward release.
What’s ahead for your game?
Blind Frontiers is in active development! We’ll be updating our content across social media soon. In the meantime, you can follow us on Instagram @BlindFrontiers and join our Discord community here to stay up to date on our next big announcement and events.
High Elo Girls
Please give us a brief description of your game.
High Elo Girls is an esports-themed visual novel where you play as the latest recruit for an all-women’s MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) team. Your instincts as a recruit will be tested though through multiple choice matches, and your sensitivity as a teammate and friend through dialogue options with your team. Both will define what type of player you become, and whether or not you’ll reach your esports ambitions.
What sets your game apart?
High Elo Girls is an approachable, story-focused introduction to the world of esports for newcomers, but with an attention to detail for those who are already longtime fans of the scene! We let players take part in a narrative-heavy game inspired by both slice-of-life and sports dramas, meet distinct and charming characters, take part in low-stakes hangouts and high-stakes rivalries, all with a breezy, nostalgic summer vibe.
How has the Developer Acceleration Program impacted your game creation journey?
We’re a very small team who started this project with limited resources. The program gave us the opportunity to make High Elo Girls much closer to our vision and bring on additional talented creatives to help us bring our game over the finish line. We’re so excited to be able to bring our game to a wider audience than we could have imagined!
What’s ahead for your game?
We’re looking to release High Elo Girls on Xbox and PC in the first half of 2026. You can learn more about the game and keep up to date with the release date on our Bluesky here.
One Beat Min
Please give us a brief description of your game.
One Beat Min is an explosive 2D rhythm-fighting game about beatbox battles. Players step into the shoes of an up-and-coming musical master in a hip-hop world moved by the beat, fighting stylish rivals while managing Cred and Hype. Mechanically, the game unites the strategy of versus combat with the energy of rhythm: players create attack sequences where the beat boosts the impact of the sounds. It is a dynamic system where the opponent must read the movement and counterattack with style to dominate the battle.
What sets your game apart?
The innovative fusion between two beloved genres excites us, but the soul of the project lies in the characters and their identities. The universe is vibrant and culturally rich, offering a fresh Afro-diasporic perspective where music and beats drive the combat. Each character brings a unique sound and visual style to the arena, showing that everyone has their own way to shine.
How has the Developer Acceleration Program impacted your game creation journey?
The Developer Acceleration Program has helped us understand the best strategy for our game and allowed us to break down barriers that often prevent our stories from reaching a wider audience. Programs like DAP are essential to support more and more developers in telling narratives that, due to a lack of support, would end up forgotten. We feel proud to be part of this and are immensely grateful!
What’s ahead for your game?
We are currently fine-tuning the beat! As we refine our game, we invite everyone to Wishlist One Beat Min on the Xbox Store to be the first to know when the battle begins. You can also follow Sue The Real Studios on social media for behind-the-scenes updates and character reveals. Get ready to drop the beat!
Hit-Em-Up Highrise
Please give us a brief description of your game.
A brutal neo-retro brawler, set in a futuristic prison with a dystopian ’90s game show theme that incorporates slick combos, drip customization, and roguelike randomized paths, weapons, enemies, and rewards so every run is a new experience.
What sets your game apart?
Hit-Em-Up Highrise is a run-based experience where the player must start at the bottom of a high-rise prison as a newly admitted inmate and fight their way to the top, floor by floor, to earn their freedom. To progress, the player must perform in action-based physical challenges to unlock randomized gear, defeat bosses, and manage their cash winnings to upgrade their drip (sneakers and hats) to define a build that will help them progress, as well as customize their cell and save money to purchase new items each run.
How has the Developer Acceleration Program impacted your game creation journey?
The Developer Acceleration Program helped us push from prototype to development rapidly, and provided morale boosting inspiration to push past barriers in production to get us closer to completing the game.
What’s ahead for your game?
The game is close to complete, we will have a solid, polished build soon, and hope to announce the release date, features and have more gameplay locked in to share with the people.
Nintendo will hold a special livestream tomorrow, Tuesday February 24, detailing more information on its upcoming Mario and Pokémon games for Switch 2.
Tune in at 2pm Pacific / 5pm Eastern / 10pm UK time for an in-depth look at Super Mario Bros. Wonder — Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Meetup in Bellabel Park, plus Pokémon Pokopia.
Both games are set to debut in the coming months exclusively for Switch 2, and interestingly Nintendo has decided to promote them both in a dedicated Nintendo Treehouse: Live presentation that’s set to last around 80 minutes.
More to follow…
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
