Back in 2021, Nintendo announced that it was building a museum-style facility, then called the “Nintendo Gallery”, on the site of its Uji Ogura Plant in Kyoto, with expectations that construction would be finished in March 2024. The building work on the site — since given the official title Nintendo Museum — looked to be on course from the outside, but it seems the museum will miss its target completion date by a month or so.
The construction notice displayed at the site, as captured below by @hanayohaneNEKO on Twitter (thanks, Kyotogamer), now lists the completion date as 30th April. It’s unclear how long this notice update has been up, but it does appear that the museum won’t quite be ready for the end of March.
This year at GDC, the ID@Xbox Showcase featured 10 creative titles by developers from all corners of the world.
Sopa (Colombia), The Sinking City 2 (Ukraine), Sonzai (India), and Go-Go Town (Australia) shared what it’s like to develop indie games in their home countries.
GDC is an exciting time on gamers’ calendars, when the collective knowledge of the game industry comes together to share ideas, reveal upcoming projects, and engage with players and creators. It’s also a great time to see what some of the world’s most talented indie game developers are working on.
The ID@Xbox Showcase returned to GDC this week and hosted 10 game creators and their upcoming projects from seven different countries — all of which are in development for Xbox players to enjoy.
Xbox Wire had a chance to talk with game creators behind the upcoming Sopa (Colombia), The Sinking City 2 (Ukraine), Sonzai (India), and Go-Go Town (Australia) to learn more about these games and the people who make them, far from the more established indie game development scenes like Japan and the United States.
What’s the Indie Game Development Scene Like in Your Country?
Studio Bando Creative Director & CEO Juan Castañeda: Colombia is booming and there’s a lot of great and super talented studios. There’s also a Colombian Video Game Association. The studios have some of the most established, talented, and super experienced people that I think people should hear more about because a lot of them have experience of working on a lot of projects.
SOPA
All that accumulative knowledge [is starting] to really crystallize to the point where they can really deliver these awesome projects.
Now in terms of our experience, I think it’s been a little bit different because most of my experience, even though I’m from Colombia, I’ve been working in the US. I moved back to Colombia, and we started connecting with the folks there. And as things started working out, that’s how the team started growing. We started involving more Colombians, so it was all very organic.
Prideful Sloth Creative Director Cheryl Vance: Coming from Australia, it’s amazing. I think we’ve managed to, as a country, build up quite a reputation internationally for being really good with indie development. So, it’s great, it’s flourishing and there’s so many fantastic games coming out of the country.
SONZAI
Sonzai Executive Producer Andy Andi Han: The best way to describe the indie gaming scene [in India] is “isolated.” This creates a situation where a lot of young and upcoming aspiring developers have second thoughts, never have the opportunity, or are simply driven away from the indie scene in the first place… There are more factors in play here, such as the infamous social pressure to go for more standard jobs or simply the fact that we have multiple spoken languages all over India, so finding a group of passionate indie developers is fairly hard.
All that said, I have seen a handful of indie games pop up from India in the last decade. This should pave the way for future projects, indie or otherwise. I do believe India has extremely talented artists whose creative visions are worth investing in. Hopefully, very soon, we will see some of that potential being realized.
Frogwares PR Manager Paul Milewski: The indie gaming scene in Ukraine is maybe not in its infancy, but it’s still taking those first steps. The country is getting to a point now where they are starting to get recognition from around the world. Unfortunately, the situation with the war happened. But one of the, you could say silver linings, is that there’s a lot [more] attention on the country than previously. And so more people are starting to look at what has been going on there.
GO-GO TOWN
They have had a flourishing tech scene for decades now. But it was very, very isolated. They were looking to the West to get ideas and now they’re starting to come up with their own stuff. Now the West is looking at them, seeing what they’re starting to create. So, I think right now, there’s this moment of hope that this attention will amount into something… The more games that break out in Ukraine, the more it inspires the next generations to follow to get into it.
How is This Game a Unique Journey (From Other Projects)?
Juan Castañeda: Sopa is the most passionate project ever in my entire career, probably in my entire life, and I feel that the whole team behind the project feels the same way. And so, we are approaching it differently. Being able to transmit and convey what we set out to do to represent the things that we set out to do. And making sure that that it’s accessible and that we’re able to find that audience to have a fun experience — but also an emotional one. But also, it is just how much we’ve had to fight to get this far. How committed we must be and the sacrifices that we’ve had to make. And that comes back again to just believing in the project.
Cheryl Vance: As a studio, we worked on titles like Batman: Arkham and Devil May Cry, and here we are now making cozy games. So, I’d say that’s pretty much a complete opposite change of what we used to do. We just wanted to focus on something different. All of us were kind of like, “We’ve done combat for a while now; let’s not do combat.” And now here we are, and this is our third game.
THE SINKING CITY 2
It was more just wanting to take games from the farming genre, and I wanted an experience where it was open world and could do more things, and that kind of morphed — with some feedback — into this Zelda-meets-farming thing and it’s constantly about what experiences do we want to make.
Sonzai Project Coder Ritam Ray: I have been into game development since I was 12. It started with modding my favorite games to then tinkering with game engines and making smaller games/demos. So, I have been on the indie game development journey for as long as I can remember. The biggest difference between this, and other tech jobs I had, is creative freedom. Not a very interesting answer but it’s an important distinction regardless.
Sonzai Project Artist Swapnil Karmakar: As for me, I’ve drawn for most of my conscious existence. But both my game development and animation journey started in college with a game we were developing right before Sonzai. It never saw anything near completion but taught me the challenges game development brings. I learned animation entirely through developing Sonzai. So, the biggest difference from other jobs I’ve taken on is that in a long-form project both the quality and style of my work changed, which makes it difficult to keep the entire thing cohesive. In short-form projects, this has never been an issue. But I think we’re working on something that we can be proud of here.
SOPA
Paul Milewski: It was only up until recently that Frogwares decided they were able to go independent, and one of the first games that they released was Sherlock Holmes: The Awakening. The thing is though, that project came out of necessity. That project wasn’t really meant to happen, but then the war broke out and they needed to essentially stop what they were doing and do something that was a lot smaller; they needed to figure out if they could even produce a game under these (war) conditions, right?
Team members would drop in and out in terms of availability. Power cuts happen all the time. Air raids happen. This is essentially the team’s big test to see if everything that they have learned in the previous game can still be applied to this when you’re working on something on a bigger scale. But they’re also going a step further to make [Sinking City 2] more survival horror and keep the investigation feature as optional. So, this is also a very big step to see if they can pull this off and be able to broaden their horizons a bit.
How Does Your Game Represent Your Region?
Juan Castañeda: We tried to represent even the mundane of it as a backdrop. There are so many colorful and new and fresh things that exist in in Latin American culture that I think most people have never seen, even in projects that are set in these places. You see it in a more traditional game and then they’ll take some of the aesthetic. And that’s beautiful and wonderful. And I’m happy to see it when it happened.
GO-GO TOWN
In our case, we wanted to take that a step further and really try and communicate the sensation of being there, including the mundane right? So just hanging out in your grandmother’s house and walking around and looking at the objects that she has in her house and that back and forth. Another thing that that we wanted to bring that we think is pretty refreshing is the concept of magical realism. And that’s something that’s like part of our identity in Colombia specifically.
Andy Andi Han: Sonzai is simply a game that we wanted to make. It takes a few of Ritam’s favorite things in gaming like JRPGs like the Persona series, Final Fantasy 6, and combines them with my Swapnil’s love for stylish character action games like Bayonetta and Metal Gear Rising and fuses them together.
It is truthfully hard to say how much it represents our local game development scene. However, it represents something far more fundamental, in my opinion. As long as you want to create a game and know your limits you can actually jump into indie game development.
SONZAI
More and more players are giving the indie gaming scene the attention it deserves. Hopefully, with Sonzai, we can generate more interest in game development in our local scene. So that in the future, people will be less intimidated to do what we did. Everything starts in the grassroots, and Top Hat Studios took the time to go down to the weeds and believe great things were being done there. With support like that, it’s possible for creative projects like ours to exist, and hopefully many more in the future.
Cheryl Vance: It’s the culmination of both our experiences in the industry as well as the vibrant dev community with our peers providing feedback on our games. It’s also the government funding that’s helped us stay here and continue… Because now we have real tax incentives in our country as well too, which is fantastic. And that’s also allows us to change and do different things than we otherwise would with our money knowing that we have a bit of safety net, to try things differently than we would and that’s been fantastic for us.
Specifically with this title, what we’ve done is run play tests that we started about a year into development. We’re on our fourth one now and that’s pushed out our development timeline. But again, we have that safety net of funding to help with that. That’s a part of what’s been good about having government backing to help with those sorts of things to do that.
THE SINKING CITY 2
Paul Milewski: I don’t know if it’s an Eastern European thing or just if it’s more question of like upbringing, but you can also look at it, sort of how it was in Poland and how it is in Ukraine. There’s something about the way that these companies write their stories. It’s not very black and white, right? Maybe you could argue that Western audience always wants the good guy, always the bad guy. You know, it’s very clean cut.
With stories that are coming out of Ukraine, there’s always this moral gray, middle road. They want to kind of do this thing where not everything is clean. You are not playing this hero that’s basically untouched in terms of infallibility and all that stuff. That’s always something that they have that they’ve done well, and this is something they’re going to apply here.
These games are just a small look into the world of indie game development from across the world, and all are being developed for Xbox. In fact, we can confirm that Sopa will be available with Game Pass once it launches, and that it and Sonzai are both part of our Developer Acceleration Program which works to empower game creators from underrepresented groups– you can learn more about DAP here.
Following the release of Echoes of the Fallen last December, Final Fantasy XVI’s final DLC chapter, The Rising Tide, is set to release on April 18! Available individually or in the discounted Expansion Pass on the PlayStation Store, the upcoming paid DLC, which takes place before the ending of the main game, includes plenty for fans to look forward to! Learn more about the DLC, as well as a new update and purchase bonuses, below:
Introduction to The Rising Tide
An unmarked letter arrives at the hideaway containing a most curious request: the Dominant of Leviathan, the long-lost Eikon of Water, needs rescue. To heed this call, Clive and his companions must journey to Mysidia—a hidden land under a blue sky—where they will uncover the tragic history of a forgotten people.
New Leviathan Eikonic ability set
In addition to the level cap being raised to level 60 in Story Focused Mode and Action Focused Mode or level 110 in Final Fantasy Mode (New Game+), during Clive’s journey in Mysidia, he will obtain new Eikonic Abilities of Leviathan the Lost.
This new ability set allows you to tame the tides and drown your enemies both near and far with the terrible might of the Eikon of Water, as well as includes an all-new Eikonic Feat – Serpent’s Cry, allowing Clive to summon a sea-spitting serpent capable of dealing precision strikes to enemies at great distances!
And when Clive has seized the eighth and final of the elements, what awaits him then? Yet Leviathan is not the only power Clive will discover on his journey…
New locations and threats
Enjoy additional side stories to learn more about the area and people of Mysidia, which will have you encountering new threats, including Final Fantasy XVI’s tonberries found in the ominous Aire of Hours, a new stage, which was once a bastion of civilization—these proud ruins now lay silent, save for the incessant sharpening of knives.
The Rising Tide also brings the highly anticipated confrontation between Clive and the legendary Eikon, Leviathan!
New endgame battle content – Kairos Gate
The Rising Tide introduces a challenging new mode unlocked after completing both The Rising Tide and main game scenarios.
Players can plumb the depths of a virtual underworld, vanquishing wave after wave of internal foes. Only with both strength and strategy will Clive survive the Kairos Gate and emerge with its richest spoils.
Fight through 20 stages–each growing more difficult than the last. Maximize battle performance to earn points and find new materials and weapons to upgrade for Clive. Top players can aim for a spot on the global leaderboard!
Special bonuses
Fans who purchase The Rising Tide or the Expansion Pass will receive special bonus items, including:
A reimagined version of the “Curtana,” the signature weapon used by the Warrior of Light in Final Fantasy XIV, and
“Torn from the Heavens” and “Through the Maelstrom” Orchestrion Rolls, to be played as background music in the hideaway!
Free update (Ver. 1.30) arrives same day as The Rising Tide Release
Free Update (Ver. 1.30) will also be available for all Final Fantasy XVI players on April 18! This downloadable update will add quality-of-life improvements for the full game, including:
Return to a quest giver immediately with the new “Quick Complete” function
Icon updates for important character quests
A new Skill Set feature, which allows players to save up to five unique Feat and Ability sets
Abilities and Accessories adjusted for easier use
New “Custom” controller type allows for freely customizable button layouts
Tone correction, screen effects, and more added to Photo Mode
Last time I checked, my pawn Bronco sat at 80 in the monthly leaderboard of the pawn global rankings. Not forgetting that this is pre-release, so his place within the top 100 isn’t quite as good as it seems. This pains me. I am saddened that my sweet, sweet boy Bronco isn’t being picked up by adventurers as much as I’d like. He may not be a 1:1 recreation of a popular anime character or like, Tony Blair, but he is fantastic at shredding monsters.
Thing is, his ranking means that I’m not doing enough. Right now, I need to make his CV more appealing to prospective clientele and I need to become the agent he deserves. Dragon’s Dogma 2 may be an action RPG, but it is also about being the best agent you can possibly be.
Asymmetrical multiplayer action game Killer Klowns from Outer Space: The Game is set to hit PC, PlayStation, and Xbox on June 4. As it’s playable at PAX East this weekend, IllFonic was kind enough to send over a look at and brief description of some of the weapons and tricks for the Klowns. Note that the tricks unlock over time during a match.
Klown Weapons
Cotton Candy Raygun – The main weapon of the Klowns, which fires a steady ray of cotton candy energy. Used for turning humans into tasty cotton candy cocoons by keeping your aim trained on a nearby human. Can also coat escape objectives and the resurrection machine to block human progression.
Mallet – a classic melee weapon with a hard hitting melee combo. Klowns can change the mallet for a lunging secondary attack that stuns anyone in the area of effect.
Boxing Gloves – Shorties favorite gloves, these dish out quick attacks and feature a block knocking secondary charge up attack.
Popcorn Bazooka – A ranged weapon that fires a burst of popcorn. Humans hit are damaged and tracked for a short period of time. Use this to effectively “spot” humans for your fellow klowns to zero in on.
Klown Tricks
LOL – Laughter is really the best medicine for Klowns, and with the Laugh Out Loud Trick, the Klown is able to heal, and get a substantial buff for a short period of time. All klowns have this ability standard, much like the Jump trick.
Finger Lure – Jumbo perfected the ultimate use of the Finger lure trick to catch humans in a hypnotic trance that pulls them towards a beckoning klown. Humans can break the pull, but it requires completion of a minigame.
Pizza Box – Great for camouflaging and sneaking up on humans for surprise attacks. Transform into the pizza box and show the humans that heartburn and indigestion are the least of their worries seeing this little box with legs.
Balloon Dog – A trusty balloon dog that Spikey can whip up in no time at all! This cute little companion sniffs out humans and helps the klowns track them down. Listen for barks and follow the dogs pointing directions.
If you’re at PAX East this weekend, be sure to stop by and give Killer Klowns a try.
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.
While nearly all of the best Amazon Spring sale deals are available to all, some Prime-exclusive offers are popping up every now and then. Take this Ugreen Docking Station, a longtime member of our best Steam Deck accessories guide: Prime members can have one for 30% in the UK and 40% in the US. Gated as they are, these savings make Ugreen’s dock less than half the price of Valve’s official Steam Deck Docking Station, despite it providing a similarly healthy supply of ports and jacks.
Cardy, Dale, and Matt are back again to talk about video games. Who would’ve thought? This week the line-up includes both Dragon’s Dogma 2 and Alone in the Dark, as well as a venture into the world of movies with a look at the first trailer for Alien: Romulus. There’s also too much chat about what constitutes a sauce.
What’s your favourite sauce? Get in touch at ign_ukfeedback@ign.com.
If you can believe it (and, to be honest, we can’t) it has been a whopping 15 years since Pokémon Platinum first arrived on Western shores. It has been a decade and a half since we first met Giratina and co. A decade and a half since we stepped foot in the Distortion World. And, most importantly perhaps, a decade and a half since we last got an ‘ultimate’ third entry to a Pokémon generation.
We’ll dowse ourselves in Repel Spray before taking a step further — yes, you could count Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon as a ‘definitive’ edition for Gen VII. In fact, we might even do the same. This is a pair of games that carried much of the same DNA as the ones that came before them (Sun and Moon, in this case) while adding new Pokémon, locations, and a fresh storyline. Sounds pretty ‘ultimate’ to us.
Welcome to Next Week on Xbox! In this weekly feature we cover all the games coming soon to Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Windows, and Game Pass! Get more details on these upcoming games below and click their profiles for further info (release dates subject to change). Let’s jump in!
Join Cartman, Stan, Kyle, and Kenny, in three-dimensional glory, to celebrate the most magical day in any young child’s life – a snow day! A massive blizzard has thrown the town into chaos and, more importantly, canceled school. Play alone or with up to three friends, and battle through the snow-piled town of South Park.
Build a world for wildlife with Planet Zoo: Console Edition. Create unique habitats and vast landscapes, and make meaningful choices to nurture animals as you construct and manage the world’s wildest zoos using intuitive console controls.
Dive into the captivating journey of Justin and his allies as they race against the sinister Garlyle Forces. Unravel the mysteries of a forgotten civilization and immerse yourself in an RPG hailed as a timeless classic, with beautiful HD graphics.
Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles is an open world builder with freedom and expression at its core, allowing players to build sprawling towns, spires, and fortresses that become hubs for trade, or rallying grounds for conquests
A spinoff of “Laws of Machine”, you play as a young girl named Sarah, who has to find out what happened in Robotec lab. To figure out what really happened in the lab, you have to reach underground Ascendo lab, where the trail that Sarah found in the memory of a robot DR12 leads
Super Space Club is a colorful endless arcade gunner set to the backdrop of chill, lo-fi music. As a club of skilled misfit pilots, defend the galaxy by taking on galactic forces and completing a series of thrilling missions. In space, everyone can hear you groove.
A shortage of magic crystals and the sudden awakening of ancient robots leads six new friends on an incredible investigation across Terra – a cozy and fantastic world that combines 3D and pixel art.
The Earth is sick and we are the disease. All hope rests on Gaia, a powerful being born from mother nature’s last breath. Use her abilities to alter the environment, escape from dangerous creatures, solve thoughtful puzzles and survive in this dying world.
A fantasy land plagued by nightmares, a common lad trying to rescue his missing mother and an evil forces conspiration to be unveiled. Join Ario in this thrilling adventure where your crossbow and skills will determine the fate of your people.
Experience a thrilling underwater adventure with classic point-and-click gameplay. Explore with 3 characters simultaneously. Ready for a journey to hidden places deep below the waves…?
Explore the eye of master artist Claude Monet and experience a unique biographical adventure! Test your skills and perseverance as you overcome the progressive disease that threatened Monet’s eyesight and solve puzzles to help the painter complete some of his greatest masterpieces!
Forrader Hero is a turn-based tactical roguelike where heroes must battle hordes of monsters, undead creatures, and their sinister overlords. Choose between multiple heroes with different unique skills, chart your path through the danger, and collect items to survive.
HOUSE is a horror adventure game where you play as a young girl exploring a dangerous house that’s doing everything it can to kill you and your family. Race against time to change fate…or fall into darkness yourself.
Re:Touring is a first-person puzzle game in which you’ll explore the abandoned Luoni Energy Competence Center and uncover the facility’s history, navigating through a total of 26 varied levels. Using a retro-style computer, you’ll create color patterns to control elements such as doors, platforms and lasers.
In celebration of the launch of Princess Peach: Showtime, Nintendo has released a set of eye-catching pastel pink Joy-Cons. If you’re someone who’s dying to get your hands on them, we have good news: while they’re sold out at some retailers, they’re still available at Best Buy and Walmart, for $79.99. They are definitely in danger of selling out altogether, so grab them sooner than later if you want them. See below for details.
If you’re looking to get your hands on the game itself, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered there, too. In our Princess Peach: Showtime buying guide, we’ve listed links to where you can buy the game (in both physical and digital formats) at a variety of retailers for $59.99. You can even still get the preorder bonuses at the time of this writing. And if you want to see more of this game before you pick it up, check out our Princess Peach Showtime! review.
Alongside new Nintendo games that are worth keeping on your radar, there are plenty of Nintendo-related deals to check out right now as well. In our roundup of the best Nintendo deals today, we’ve gathered together a variety of discounts, from games to SD cards. If you want to see what deals are available for other consoles, we also have roundups for PS5 deals, Xbox deals, and general video game deals.
Hannah Hoolihan is a freelance writer who works with the Guides and Commerce teams here at IGN.
