Latest articles by Austin Wood
"We're not just making Dark Souls over and over again": For this indie team, making a Smash Bros-infused Metroidvania alongside an open-world roguelike just makes sense
News Possessor(s) is another distinct example of what makes a Heart Machine game
"Most of the games that are Metroidvanias are just Metroid games": The director of this Smash Bros-infused Metroidvania hates the word because "it's a silly term and Japan did it better"
News Possessor(s) from Heart Machine is full-on search action
Hollow Knight: Silksong will finally launch in 2025, and the long-awaited Metroidvania is also coming to Nintendo Switch 2
News SILKSONG MENTIONED!
Ex-Bethesda dev turned indie says "good things often happen by accident," like that time Skyrim players convinced themselves the RPG's foxes were leading them to treasure
News "Players don't realize how many happy and sometimes unhappy accidents" happen in games
Palworld dev says the studio went dark for months because "the team was getting burnt out from all the social media stuff, I was getting burnt out, our CEO was under attack in Japan"
News "We really tried to push back on the AI stuff specifically"
At a ridiculously detailed showcase of the open-world engine behind the RPG Crimson Desert, I asked a ridiculously detailed question about water and all hell broke loose
News How wet is water, exactly?
"Should JRPGs be considered a distinct genre?": Lunar icon Kei Shigema reflects on the genre with new remasters on the way and how RPGs have changed 33 years later
Interview Interview | "The time I spent working on this game was the happiest and most fulfilling period of my life"
24 years later, RuneScape gets its own survival game – RuneScape: Dragonwilds turns the MMO into a co-op game with RPG juice and Valheim energy, and it's out this year
News RuneScape: Dragonwilds will launch in Steam early access this spring
"Minutes after Palworld released," Pocketpair was already getting game pitches from "some really big names" before it even set up its own publisher: "No one has money at the moment"
News "we're kind of open to helping people with their weird little ideas because they have them"
Valve leads considered making a "mediocre" game before Half-Life to build the team up, but original marketing exec said "if you do that, the company will fail"
News "I told Gabe that I thought the only way that Half-Life was really going to work was if it was named Game of the Year"
The lead UI designer on Metaphor: ReFantazio had never designed for a game before – he just rolled up and made some of the best UI I've ever seen in a JRPG
News "Hyper stylish" became the guiding light for Metaphor: ReFantazio
Behold, the most intimidating demo I’ve had in 12 years of covering video games: playing "literal walking simulator" Baby Steps in front of Getting Over It mastermind Bennett Foddy
Feature Baby Steps, from Bennett Foddy and the Ape Out crew, is a singular experience
Ex-Bethesda dev says his new studio isn't making a "little Skyrim," but does channel a key part of the iconic RPG: "Stuff got built because somebody cared about building it"
News Soft Rains has a first-person sci-fi game in the works
"There is an expectation we're gonna make a little Skyrim": Ubisoft and Bethesda veterans form new studio headed by Skyrim and Fallout designer, debuting with first-person sci-fi and "crunchy mechanics"
Feature Soft Rains studio head Joel Burgess says "it would be unfun and foolish not to use our strengths to challenge our weaknesses"
When Destiny 2 "weekly active users dropped lower and faster than we'd seen since 2018," Bungie assembled an A-Team to put out some fires: "We needed to do something"
News Before Lightfall's problems, Bungie "leadership got worried" about the state of the MMO
Lies of P director loves FromSoftware and respects the Soulslike tag, but says "I'm really serious, I'm not lying, I'm very truthful, our focus is to create our own style of game"
News "I am a big fan of Bloodborne, and we believe that it's actually a very attractive game"
Lies of P director says Overture DLC is at least 15 to 20 hours long for "experienced" players, packing tons of bosses and ideas the devs couldn't fit at launch
News Lies of P Overture almost sounds like the final third of the game
"Will today’s players still enjoy a game from 30 years ago?": JRPG icon Kei Shigema says he was thrilled to see Lunar getting a remaster even after all this time
News "When I saw Grandia being remastered first, I thought, 'That’s so nice. I’m jealous!'"
CD Projekt boss says "cutting-edge single-player games" – you know, like The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2 – will "continue to enjoy great popularity" despite industry shifts
News Single-player games update: not going anywhere, it seems
Monster Hunter Wilds Title Update 1 is out April 4 and looks stacked: Zoh Shia returns, the Grand Hub adds a social space, plus Arch-Tempered Rey Dau, arena speedrun contests, and Mizutsune
News The Zoh Shia armor might be the best-looking set in the game
Half-Life devs worried Gabe Newell "promised things that they couldn't possibly deliver" for the iconic FPS, but "they just didn't know" that they'd be able to do it yet
News The game was awarded 'Best Action Game' at E3 1998
Helldivers 2 boss says "death and rebirth" is a natural part of the games industry, but it's "unnecessarily brutal" right now "because we don't diversify enough"
News "A lot of publishers try to play it safe by taking safe bets, but one thing that's guaranteed is those safe bets are a death sentence for the studios that try to make it."
Helldivers 2 players "became obsessed" with Malevolon Creek, but it was Gabe Newell who really kicked off one of Super Earth's bloodiest battles
news The rally we didn't know we needed
