Moroi Preview: Macabre, Weird, and Mysterious in All the Right Ways

I think the first time I really understood what Moroi was, I mean the down-in-your-bones feeling you get when you’re playing something and the lighting bolt of understanding strikes you right on the noggin, was when my character fed himself to a talking meat-grinder because “something inside [him] screams let’s do it!” Admittedly, it would have probably been funnier if Moroi had flashed a game over screen, and most games might’ve as a gag, but Moroi plays it straight. Into the meat-grinder you go, head-first. It chews for a bit and spits you out. You taste terrible, you see, and the grinder’s palate for manflesh is, for whatever reason, a bit more refined. Later on, you can offer it a severed hand (don’t ask) and it’s happy about that, and to grind up the bones and turn the leftover dust over to you so you can use it to help an old woman make “soup” (again, don’t ask), but eating the hand causes it to explode. “You are on fire,” your character remarks glibly as the machine spits binary. But you have your bone dust and it’s not your job to save sentient meat grinders who have developed a taste for longpig, so off you go to break some more stuff. And I said, out loud, “Ah, it’s a game like that.” And I was intrigued.

The word moroi comes from Romanian folklore; it’s used to describe a vampire or ghost, or in some cases, a phantom that rises from the grave to draw energy from the living. I don’t know which part of the definition Moroi the game draws from. What I do know is this: your character, a bearded bear of a man, wakes up in a strange prison, in pain, with no memory of how he got there. Everyone else seems to know him, but he doesn’t recognize any of them. But maybe, as a very tall man in a very strange hat tells him, that’s for the best.

Your first order of business is to get out, and that means solving simple puzzles, many of which boil down to “acquire item, take it somewhere.” Go talk to the cannibal eating himself as performance art who asks that, if eating himself isn’t his magnum opus, lightning strikes him dead. When lightning strikes him dead, take his severed hand and bring it to the sentient meat grinder, who gives you bone dust before catching fire. Then you take that to the tall man in the funny hat, who tells you to take it to the old lady making soup (she needs some salt; you have bone dust. Same thing, right?) before reminding you that “Death will meet you soon enough” and weirdly offering up that his name is Edgar. So it’s off to the old woman, who gratefully accepts your “salt” and is pulled headfirst into the cauldron by the soup to see what’s on the other side. “I’m starting to think that wasn’t soup,” your character says. Noticing a pattern here?

It’s got Doom’s Glory Kills, which quite literally teleport you across the screen for very satisfying slow-motion execution that drops health.

On and on it goes, whether it’s a toenail from an overfed corpse still being pumped full of… something, or taking the old woman’s spoon and using it to wake up the rat with the important job of running in his wheel and powering The Horrors (and the doors). But then something strange happens. Moroi gives you a sword, and throws a bunch of enemies at you, and that’s where the magic happens. Combat is simple — the top-down, twin-stick perspective seems a little weird when you’re solving puzzles, but then you get to a combat section and it’s like “Oh” — but it’s fast and hits feel weighty and satisfying and it’s got Doom’s Glory Kills, which quite literally teleport you across the screen for very satisfying slow-motion executions that drops health. And then you get a minigun that shoots harpoons. And that’s rad.

When Moroi is flipping between the two — quick, simple puzzles like using the number of corpses in a freezer to work out a door code, and combat sections against multiple enemies howling for blood like it’s Black Friday and you’ve just snatched the last George Foreman grill — it’s pretty grand. But there’s also plenty of weird stuff beyond that, too. At one point, you save a duck with human teeth from being turned into a wide variety of duck-based cuisine and he rewards you with his teeth so you can reinforce your weapon, and then explains the way out through bloody gums.

Sometimes messages pop up on-screen offering cryptic hints at something more. Other times, story details are left to collectibles scattered around the environment. I particularly liked the one that listed Duck of Eternal Torment as a type of potential meal prepared from our toothy friend, and the one where the cleaning lady resigns because the furniture is upside down every day and she’s convinced the place is cursed and/or haunted.

And it’s never afraid to be weird. One of my Moroi demo’s last segments thrust me into the role of a strange, winged doll tasked by his mother (another doll) with helping his brothers – an increasingly rude group of trees – survive some incoming horror that’s killing all of them by literally giving away pieces of himself to do it. It’s an odd segment, but a compelling one, and when the credits rolled shortly thereafter, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, but I am interested in seeing where it goes from here.

There are some things about Moroi that concern me: my demo was buggy (It crashed once;I got stuck between a door and a bookcase a couple times; once I fell through the floor) and some of the writing is uneven. But those are things that can be ironed out. Moroi marries the macabre and the mysterious, and it often went to places I didn’t see coming in my half-hour demo. I’m still not sure what a moroi is in this context, but I would like to find out. After all, who can resist a game with a meat grinder that lusts for the flesh of men and a duck with human teeth?

Genshin Impact Is Getting an Official Cookbook — Here’s an Exclusive First Look

Genshin Impact is getting an official cookbook later in 2025, and IGN has an exclusive first look.

Genshin Impact Official Cookbook: Culinary Journeys Across Teyvat, by Thibaud Villanova, comes out September 2, 2025 and “invites readers to explore, taste, and experience the fantasy world of Teyvat in an entirely new way.” There are even prefaces from Michelin star chefs Paul Pairet and Mory Sacko.

As you’d expect, the cookbook lets Genshin Impact recreate dishes from the game, accompanied by cooking quest givers the Gourmet Supremos. There are 60 recipes designed to take budding chefs on a culinary journey through the first four major regions of Teyvat: Mondstadt, Liyue, Inazuma, and Sumeru.

The images, below, show recipes for ‘Dinner of Judgment,’ a speciality of Rosaria, the ‘Lighter-Than-Air Pancake,’ and the tantalisingly named Nutritious Meal (V.593). If you’re curious, Nutritious Meal (V.593) revives a character and restores 20% of Max HP, then restores an additional 1,500 HP to the target fallen character with a 120-second cooldown in Genshin Impact itself.

Chef Villanova, who goes by @gastronogeek on Instagram, is no stranger to creating recipes based on video games, and has published more than 16 cookbooks that have sold over 500,000 copies.

As for Genshin Impact, if you’re low on ingredients, take a look at our Genshin Impact codes for some freebies (in-game only, though, not actually edible). For your next trip to Teyvat, here are the current Genshin Impact banners for Version 5.4, and our guide to the best Sigewinne build if you get lucky on her banner.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Gaming Peripherals Maker Corsair Clarifies GTA 6 PC ‘Early 2026’ Release Date Comment

Corsair has clarified recent comments from one of its executives who claimed Grand Theft Auto 6 would release on PC early 2026.

During a financial call, Corsair Gaming’s VP of finance, Ronald van Veen, said: “Yeah, GTA 6 is probably the one everyone is talking about. And we’ll get a glimpse of that, I think, later on in the year for console. My understanding now it’s going to come out in the fall for console, and then early 2026 for PC.”

That was enough to spark a number of headlines about Corsair’s apparent insider information on GTA 6’s release window, but a representative of the company told IGN that Ronald van Veen’s comments were speculation, and confirmed Corsair does not have release dates supplied from Rockstar or Take-Two.

Take-Two recently committed to launching GTA 6 fall 2025 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S only, despite concern around a potential delay. But what does this mean for the PC version, which remains unannounced?

It’s an omission in keeping with developer Rockstar’s playbook for its previous games, but in 2025 feels outdated. And, given the increasing importance of the PC for a multiplatform game’s success, is GTA 6’s no-show on PC a missed opportunity or even a mistake?

IGN put that question to Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick ahead of the company’s recent financial results, and in his response he teased GTA 6’s eventual release on PC.

“So with Civ 7 it’s available on console and PC and Switch right away,” Zelnick said of Firaxis’ recently launched Civilization 7. “With regard to others in our lineup, we don’t always go across all platforms simultaneously. Historically, Rockstar has started with some platforms and then historically moved to other platforms.”

Rockstar fans have noted the studio’s historical reluctance to release other past games on PC day-and-date with console, as well as its fraught relationship with the modding community over the years. Still, some had hoped that a game as big as GTA 6 could be a turning point for the studio’s PC gaming attitude.

Big Rockstar titles tend to get to PC eventually, but the question of how long PC gamers will have to wait for what could end up being one of the biggest games ever remains. Given GTA 6’s fall 2025 release window, it seems likely PC players won’t get to play the game until 2026 at the earliest.

In December 2023, a former developer at Rockstar attempted to explain why GTA 6 is coming to PC after it hits PS5 and Xbox Series X and S, and called on PC gamers to give the studio the “benefit of the doubt” over its controversial launch plans.

We’ve got plenty more on GTA 6, including Zelnick’s response to concern about the fate of GTA Online once GTA 6 comes out.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

After Becoming the Worst User-Reviewed Game Ever on Steam, Overwatch 2’s Recent Reviews Jump to ‘Mixed’

Overwatch 2 Season 15 appears to be going down well, improving sentiment around what was once the worst ever user-reviewed game on Steam.

We’re now nearly nine years out from the debut of Overwatch in 2016, and two-and-a-half from the launch of Overwatch 2. In August 2023, Overwatch 2 became the worst user-reviewed game on Steam ever, with most of the negative reviews focused on monetization after developer Blizzard was heavily-criticised for forcing its premium predecessor to update into a free-to-play sequel, rendering the original Overwatch unplayable back in 2022.

Overwatch 2 subsequently endured a number of controversies including the cancellation of its long-awaited PvE Hero mode — the one feature, players said, that justified the sequel’s existence.

But while Overwatch 2 still has a ‘mostly negative’ user review rating on Steam for all reviews, recent reviews have shown an improvement to ‘mixed.’ That means 43% of the 5,325 user reviews left in the last 30 days were positive.

That might not sound like much to crow about, but for Overwatch 2, which has endured overwhelming negativity since its release on Valve’s platform, it’s a significant milestone.

This improvement has to do with the recent launch of Season 15, which made a number of dramatic changes to Overwatch 2. While the roadmap ahead includes much of what you’d expect to see in terms of new content, the core gameplay itself has seen a seismic shift, including the additions of hero perks and the return of loot boxes.

“They just released Overwatch 2,” reads one recent positive review. “The recent update is what the game should always have been before corporate greed got in the way.”

“For once, I must come to Overwatch’s defense and say they really have stepped up their game,” reads another. “Going back to what worked in Overwatch 1 while introducing new and fun mechanics to the game. A certain game made them LOCK IN and I couldn’t be happier. Now we just gotta wait for next season with an actual cooler battlepass.”

That’s a reference to the hugely popular Marvel Rivals, a similar competitive multiplayer hero shooter from NetEase that’s seen 40 million downloads since launching in December.

In a recent interview with GamesRadar, Overwatch 2 director Aaron Keller discussed the new reality Blizzard finds itself in, with Marvel Rivals now out in the wild and attracting tens of millions of players.

“We’re obviously in a new competitive landscape that I think, for Overwatch, we’ve never really been in before, to this extent where there’s another game that’s so similar to the one that we’ve created,” Keller said.

You’d think this would be a bad thing for Overwatch, then, but Keller called the situation “exciting,” and even said it was “really great” to see Marvel Rivals take ideas established by Overwatch in a “different direction.”

Still, Keller admitted Marvel Rivals’ success had forced a change in attitude within Blizzard when it comes to Overwatch 2, saying: “this is no longer about playing it safe.”

Of course, it’s way too early to declare Overwatch “back,” and there is a push and pull with Overwatch 2’s Steam user reviews that suggests it’ll be extremely difficult for the game to improve upon ‘mixed,’ no matter what Blizzard does. Meanwhile, Season 15 has caused an uptick in players on Valve’s platform, with peak concurrent player numbers almost doubling to 60,000. It’s worth noting that Overwatch 2 is available on Battle.net, PlayStation, and Xbox, and neither Blizzard, Sony, nor Microsoft make player numbers publicly available.

For context, Marvel Rivals, which launched a new mid-season update itself recently, had 305,816 peak concurrent players on Steam over the last 24 hours.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

IGN UK Podcast 788: Singing in the Nightreign

Cardy, Matt, and Mat are back for some February Friday fun and frolicking as a range of delights are explored, including first impressions of the multiplayer spin-off Elden Ring Nightreign. There’s also time for a look at awards contender The Brutalist, new Adult Swin animation Common Side Effects, and visual novel dice-roller Citizen Sleeper 2.

Remember to send us your thoughts about all the new games, TV shows, and films you’re enjoying or looking forward to: ign_ukfeedback@ign.com.

IGN UK Podcast 788: Singing in the Nightreign

Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & The Envisioned Land Might Be the Series’ Coziest JRPG Yet – Hands-On Preview

After over two dozen mainline games, I can only imagine how difficult it must be to innovate and stay relevant in an era where a great game is coming out every few weeks, but that’s exactly what KOEI TECMO aims to do with the next entry in its long-running Atelier JRPG series, Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories and the Envisioned Land. After spending over six hours gathering resources, doing Sailor Moon-esque magical dancing rituals, and riding around on a motorbike, I’m inclined to believe they’ll pull off just that, yet again. With more engaging combat, improved visuals, more convenient crafting, and an entirely new building system that lets you put your own personal touch on the world, there’s quite a bit to be optimistic about, even if what I saw of the story and characters was, at least so far in the opening hours, pretty boilerplate stuff for the genre.

If you’ve played any of the recent Atelier games, then you probably won’t be shocked by Atelier Yumia at first glance. All three of the pillars that have been around since its conception are still alive and well: exploration, where you run around collecting resources and solving puzzles; combat, where you fight baddens with a party chock-full of pretty anime friends, and synthesis, where you combine your hard-won resources into alchemical creations that make you stronger. But each has been given a substantial overhaul (not to mention a serious facelift) that breathes new life into a familiar formula.

Combat seems to be getting the biggest rework, with action-based systems that let you perfect parry, dodge out of the way, and switch to different range bands depending on whether you’d like to thwack enemies in melee or take them down from a distance. At lower levels, combat seemed fairly undemanding, as I was able to just unload every ability I had, swap to other characters to do the same, then repeat it all again, ending most encounters in a matter of seconds, but later on (and especially when I wasn’t properly leveled) I seriously got rinsed if I wasn’t paying attention to enemy attack patterns and working on my timing. It never got especially challenging so long as I was properly leveled, but it was nice to see a less passive combat system that I couldn’t just steamroll through while on autopilot.

Combat seems to be getting the biggest rework.

Exploration also had some improvements, like having a gun to stun enemies and collect resources at a distance, ziplines that help you navigate the map more easily once you find and activate both sides of the line, and, crucially, a badass motorcycle for you to speed around on that makes getting around much easier. Finally, there’s Synthesis, which in typically Atelier fashion is so dang complicated, you could spend quite a bit of time customizing and min-maxing every aspect of your gear and crafting new items and attacks to use in battle. Or, if you don’t have the patience like me, you can just hit “auto mode” and it’ll automatically optimize all of it for you. Not that I don’t enjoy this aspect of the series, but it’s certainly nice to have the option of leaping back into the action quickly for times where I wasn’t in the mood to tinker.

Atelier Yumia also shakes things up by adding a fourth fairly significant activity to the list of things to do as you explore and level up: the ability to build and customize settlements throughout the world map. That’s right – Atelier Yumia seems to be leaning into the cozy craze, so now you can have a little bit of Animal Crossing or Sims with your JRPG by constructing your fantasy cottage on a patch of land and spending some quality downtime with your party members. I was only able to dabble in this a bit, given the constraint of the resources available to me in the early part of the story, but I could definitely see myself sinking quite a bit of time into taming the wilds with an elaborately decorated home.

With all Atelier has going for it, I will say that it did very little to make itself stand out in terms of story. The characters and foreshadowing of the undoubtedly epic and convoluted story that starts to develop in the opening hours aren’t bad by any means, but at least so far everything has been quite predictable and retreads a lot of ground we’ve seen from JRPGs of the past. This is especially true of the characters I met during my explorations, like the ditzy by wholesome Isla and the stoic and no-nonsense Viktor, both of whom I feel like I’ve seen half a hundred times already. But this is the beginning of a JRPG, so in all likelihood it’s just going to take a while for the story to start rolling or for characters to show their true colors to any level of satisfaction, leaving plenty of opportunity for my concerns to disappear given more time.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Atelier Yumia marks the first time the series will appear on the Xbox platform, and as a Westerner who would quite like more JRPGs to be readily available, that’s pretty awesome to see. Achievement unlocked!

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater Announcement Teased as Fans Spot Easter Egg in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6

Activision may finally be ready to start talking about its next Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater game, and it seems to be using a sneaky Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Easter Egg to get the conversation started.

Call of Duty outlet CharlieIntel spotted and shared references to the publisher’s legendary skateboarding video game franchise in a peculiar place after the Black Ops 6 Season 2 Reloaded update went live today. Included with an ammo chest of new features, weapons, and more content was the return of the fan-favorite skate-themed map, Grind. The skatepark arena has been brought back mostly as fans remember it, with one exception being a giant, in-game TV screen featuring a very Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater-looking logo and a date of March 4, 2025.

It stops short of being in-your-face but is still undeniably an eyebrow-raising reference for fans who have been on the lookout for another entry in the Pro Skater series. Rumors that another installment could soon be announced began earlier this week when fellow skater Tyshawn Jones let it slip that he would soon be featured in an upcoming Tony Hawk video game (via VGC).

“I’m in a Tony Hawk coming out, so that’s cool,” Jones said during a conversation on The Breakfast Club podcast. “They got a new one they remastering so that’s about to come out. I was in the last one.”

It was a curious comment that had fans excited, with today’s newly revealed Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater Black Ops 6 Easter Egg letting them know when they can expect to learn more. Unfortunately, there’s no telling what exactly that March date has in store.

Activision tried to breathe life into the franchise with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 back in 2015 but has yet to release another new numbered entry since. However, in 2020, fans received the Pro Skater 1 + 2 remakes from Vicarious Visions. That means it’s been five years since a Tony Hawk game hit store shelves. With so much evidence lining up for a big reveal next month, it seems the wait may soon be over.

While we wait to see what that March 4 reveal has lined up, you can read up on a few of the other skateboarding-themed inclusions in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Season 2 Reloaded, including a pack of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cosmetics that have some fans upset. You can also see Tony Hawk himself confirm that he was working with Actvision again as of last year.

Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

Solasta 2 Preview: It’ll Get Recognized in a Post-Baldur’s Gate 3 World, But it Must Do More

Years ago, a video game like Solasta II might’ve been a niche product. Old-school computer RPGs, bound by dice rolls and Dungeons & Dragons rulesets, tend to be popular within exactly one demographic of the gaming populace; the same one that possesses fond memories of a long suspended campaign in Neverwinter Nights. Conventional thinking stated that the quirks of the genre—the punishing difficulty, the baroque questlines, the constant threat of permadeath—sealed off mainstream avenues. Or, so we thought. Because in 2025, we live in a post-Baldur’s Gate III world, which proved without a shadow of a doubt that society at large could absolutely fall in love with a quirky traipse through all of these quirky systems. Solasta II is hoping that lightning can strike twice.

The first Solasta arrived in 2021, and by and large both games are bringing the same formula to the table. Like its predecessor, Solasta II is a turn-based tactical RPG undergirded by D&D structures, and in the two-hour demo I had access to, many of the rudiments were immediately legible. My party of adventurers had arrived at a rocky cliffside village, and I point-and-clicked my way through town to learn, exactly, what was ailing the citizens. A tribe of marauding kobolds were causing some problems on the border and unexplained tremors were destroying buildings, all while a crew of lost fishermen had been pinned down by flesh-eating giant crabs. The core plot points forked off in subtle ways, providing a variety of methods to approach the crises. Do you want to slaughter the kobolds in their camp? Or, perhaps, sneak off and nab one of the dragon scales they cherish, convincing them that you belong to the same cult? So, off you go to solve these problems, hoping for a bounty of loot—or at least a few gold pieces—in return.

All of these decisions are meted out in garden-variety skill checks, auditing your capacity for persuasion, perception, historical fluency, and so on. One crucial change Solasta II has made is that, from what I can tell, it doesn’t matter which party member you are currently controlling when you navigate those dice rolls. The party is treated like an all-encompassing unit, which cuts down on the annoyance that comes when you accidentally wind-up in a high-stakes parlay with your low-charisma barbarian. I also appreciated how, with the stroke of a button, players can control their group using their WASD keys—ditching the traditional top-down view entirely. It makes navigating some of the tighter corridors around the map much easier.

As someone who occasionally gets lost in the morass of D&D iconography, the UI in Solasta 2 is highly accommodating.

The combat, too, is retrofitted in some smart, modern ways. Nothing major has changed—you will still roll for initiative, and expense spell slots to cast Magic Missiles. But as someone who occasionally gets lost in the morass of D&D iconography, the UI in Solasta II is highly accommodating. For instance, some of the high-level techniques available to my sorcerer were presented to me right on my action bar, in plain English. Same with my rogue’s economy of bonus actions. The learning curve in Baldur’s Gate is considerably steeper and rife with early-game mistakes as you’re still getting used to the cadence. Solasta II, meanwhile, got me up to speed much quicker.

And frankly, I think that’s my only concern going forward. All of the nice things I can say about Solasta II are cordoned off to smart, assiduous quality-of-life improvements. The demo itself didn’t do much to distinguish itself from other RPGs on the market. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it was noticeable—especially when it looks unfavorable in comparison. One of the calling cards of Baldur’s Gate III is just how pervasively interactive it is. Every NPC can be interfaced, unfurling more intrigue in seemingly limitless dialogue trees. But the portion of Solasta I saw was much more cloistered. Doors wouldn’t open, townsfolk didn’t speak to me, and my party was funneled down the narrow streets. The splendor of a tabletop campaign—how all options are on the table to the player, whether they want to raze the world or save it—didn’t quite present itself. Solasta II has the basics down, but I hope when I play the retail version, it has the capacity to strike that erstwhile sense of wonder within us.

GTA Online on PC Is Finally Catching up With Console Versions

Grand Theft Auto 5 players on PC are in for a treat, as Rockstar has just announced they’ll be getting a free update March 4 that brings their version of the game up to speed with the PS5 and Xbox Series versions of GTA Online.

In a blog post from Rockstar today, the studio revealed that the update would include “all the latest vehicles and performance upgrades available at Hao’s Special Works, animal encounters, and access to purchase a GTA+ Membership — along with improved graphics options, faster loading times, and more.”

The update will also allow players to migrate their Story Mode and Online progress to the new version, and will include kernal-based anti-cheat protection and proactive voice chat moderation, again bringing the PC version to parity with console.

Those who want to remain on the previous version of GTA 5 need not worry, as Rockstar says it will continue to support the old version for those whose hardware does not meet the minimum requirements. First-time purchasers will also have the option to choose between versions. Support for mod platform FiveM will also continue on the old version while Rockstar works to upgrade it to the new PC version as well. However, players on the old version of GTA 5 will not be able to play online with those who upgrade – the two instances will be separated.

This update comes as Rockstar prepares for the imminent planned release of GTA 6 this fall. Though we don’t have details yet on what online component, if any, GTA 6 will include, most are speculating it will have a similar online component either at launch or shortly after.

However, GTA 6 is thus far only announced for consoles and has yet to receive a PC announcement (though it probably will eventually), making this update an appealing one for PC players feeling left out. Recently, publisher Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick affirmed support for “legacy titles” as long as a community wants to remain engaged with them, further suggesting that GTA Online via GTA 5 will be around for a long time to come.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Samurai Pizza Cats: Blast From the Past Game Announced

Developer Blast Zero and publisher Red Dunes Games are celebrating this month’s 35th anniversary of the classic anime Samurai Pizza Cats by announcing a new video game based on the popular 1990s cartoon, called Samurai Pizza Cats: Blast From the Past. It’s in development for “all major platforms.”

The trailer reassembles some of the original voice cast – the English cast includes Rick Jones (Cerviche), Sonja Ball (Polly Esther), Terrence Scammell (Guido Anchovy, Narrator) and Dean Hagopian returning as Seymour “The Big” Cheese – while the game is described as a 2D action-RPG (you can see some gameplay footage in the announcement trailer above) in which you’ll be able to switch back and forth between members of the Samurai Pizza Cats and utilize each one’s unique abilities in combat and to solve puzzles – all within Little Tokyo.

Samurai Pizza Cats: Blast From the Past is described as being “early in development.” Track its progress and wishlist it on Steam if you’re interested.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.