Innehållsförteckning för June 2025 från Edge

Developer MercurySteam Publisher 505 Games Format PC, PS5, Xbox Series Origin Spain Release May 22 Sprinting across a medieval landscape, dodge-rolling and parrying sword blows, SBlades Of Fire gives the initial impression of being just one more Soulslike to add to the ever-growing pile. As it turns out, though, this is no straightforward genre clone. In fact, MercurySteam’s game has a pedigree in this field that no others can match. “An emotional influence for us as developers is Blade Of Darkness, the game that started our careers 20-something years ago,” studio co-founder Enric Alvarez tells us. Defined by its dingy dungeons, gritty environments and gruelling combat, the precision-based action game from 2001 is often considered an unfairly overlooked precursor to 2009’s Demon’s Souls. “It’s clear that Demon’s Souls struck some chords that…

Developer/publisher Frictional Games Format PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series, PS4, Switch Origin Sweden Release 2023 A mid the countless horror stories you hear about difficult productions in game development, occasionally you also learn about games where everything went right. Take Amnesia: The Bunker, which ironically happens to be one of the most frightening games ever made. The latest entry in Frictional Games’ acclaimed horror series, Amnesia: The Bunker puts players in the role of French World War One soldier Henri Clemént. Trapped in a warren of concrete tunnels beneath the trenches of the Western front, Clemént is hunted by a monster as he searches for a way out. Developed in little over two years, The Bunker is notorious for its ability to conjure an atmosphere of dread, and it’s arguably…

You might assume that, when the nuclear apocalypse finally arrives, we’ll all eat grass and bugs and the occasional mutated fox, its body perhaps pre-warmed over a radioactive boulder. It will be a way of living, if we’re lucky, but it won’t really be dining. We will have left dining far behind us by this point, along with other niceties such as Broadway musicals, French literature degrees and antibiotics. What marks out Atomfall’s take on our radioactive endgame isn’t that food is scarce and that scavenging is a full-time concern. It’s something else. It’s that this very English apocalypse is actually rather delicious – as long as you have adventurous tastes. Every dispatched thrall or bandit whose belongings you root through in this irradiated take on Cumbria is likely to…

Developer Compulsion Games Publisher Xbox Game Studios Format PC (tested), Xbox Series Release Out now With a raging hurricane ripping a house from its moorings and carrying it away, South Of Midnight recalls The Wizard Of Oz from the start. Instead of Dorothy, though, we take the role of modern teen Hazel, and the house leaves without us, swept off downriver with Hazel’s mother inside. Then, as strange things start to happen, you might say we’re not in Kansas any more. Except we never were. South Of Midnight’s stomping ground is farther south, in a hazy mash of Louisiana swamp, Mississippi farmland and the Alabaman Appalachians, and we’re not due to leave. Rather, this is a Gothic folktale whose fantasy is saturated in the silt and grime of reality. If…

Developer Claymore Game Studios Publisher Kalypso Media Format PC (version tested), PS5, Xbox Series Release Out now The 1913 book Little Wars contains a wonderful photograph of its author HG Wells – resplendent in a boater and white trousers – lying on his front on a well-kept lawn as he carefully aims a tiny cannon. He looms over a miniature castle and row of houses, while a column of toy soldiers marches along his flank. It’s an image that perfectly captures the feeling of playing the Commandos series: of war recreated as a dinky diorama, a playset for the curious-minded. This pleasure has long been denied to us. It’s been 27 years since the release of Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines, and new entries in the realtime tactics series petered out…

Developer Don Yasa Crew Publisher Kakehashi Games Format PC (tested), Switch Release Out now There are two ways of approaching Sonokuni: as a post-Hotline Miami action game, pushing the scuzzy visuals and twitchy combat further still, or as a kind of interactive visual album from Japanese rap-group-turned-game-developer Don Yasa Crew. You probably know instinctively which of those is more appealing – and that preference is, in turn, likely to define how much you enjoy it. If you’re seeking another top-down, gore-soaked shooter-brawler, be warned that this game sidesteps Hotline’s room for improvisational play in favour of a more call-and-response approach. Each incoming attack type has a single counter: blue projectiles can be deflected with your shield, as can red ones, but you’re better off slashing those with your sword to…

Developer/publisher Valve Format PCVR Release 2020 Twelve years after the cliffhanger ending of Half-Life 2: Episode 2, the mothballing of the planned Episode 3, and endless rumours of various attempts at a sequel, we got our wish for a new Half-Life. Perhaps it’s fitting that the wish would come with unforeseen consequences: in November 2019, seemingly out of nowhere, Valve announced Half-Life: Alyx, a VR-exclusive prequel told from the perspective of Gordon Freeman’s companion Alyx Vance rather than the crowbar-wielding theoretical physicist. For those of us who have been with the series from the beginning, for whom it shaped our tastes – even as it pioneered what game design should look like for the entire industry – it is difficult to put the reaction to the announcement into words. Shock,…

The detail, the shading, the design of its metal constructions: images of Anoxia Station are instantly pleasing. But look for longer and you snag on something horrid. Yes, those are enormous spiders loitering by that building. There’s a strange, fish-like thing emerging from that cave. And just what is encased within that block of ice? Here is a chilling take on turn-based building and resource management, sending you deep underground on a dying planet to mine for essentials. Conditions are already harsh, thanks to radiation and a shortage of supplies, and as you begin to build, the area is shrouded in darkness, with little indication of what you might drill into. “At the core of the style we wanted to achieve a cold, frightening, yet in its own way beautiful, natural…

Game Cronos: The New Dawn Developer/publisher Bloober Team Format PC, PS5, Xbox Series Origin Poland Release 2025 Nowa Huta was built to be a utopia. Founded in 1949 just outside Kraków, funded by the USSR, and designed by some of Poland’s top architects and urban planners, this ‘ideal city’ was intended to be precisely that – a three-dimensional demonstration of ideology, where all workers’ needs were met by the state and every line of architecture carried the party line. “It was built by Communists, to show that Communism can be great,” says Jacek Zieba. The city was constructed alongside Lenin Steelworks, home to the biggest blast furnace in Europe – and, at its peak, over 40,000 workers, many housed in stark apartment blocks, built in the Moscow-approved Socialist Realist style.…

Game Rematch Developer/publisher Sloclap Format PC, PS5, Xbox Series Origin France Release June 19 Forget ‘football’. Forget ‘soccer’. At Sloclap, the beautiful game is often referred to as “the ten body problem”. It’s his own phrase, but Pierre Tarno, the studio’s co-founder and CEO, still laughs slightly sheepishly when he brings it up. “Without getting into silly theories,” he says, “that’s what our game emulates. It’s always the same, but it’s always different. The ball has a gravitational pull on all players, but the players also have gravitational pulls on each other.” And so? “And so it creates these really unpredictable situations.” A decisive nod. “It’s like chaos theory.” After making Absolver and Sifu, two complex and unforgiving takes on martial arts and brawling, it’s perhaps not surprising that Paris-based…

Developer Dogubomb Publisher Raw Fury Format PC (tested), PS5, Xbox Series Release Out now As far and wide as the Roguelike doctrine has spread in recent years, it mostly only infiltrates games that revolve around conflict. That’s not the case here. Imagine choosing your route in Hades, but rather than merely determining your next victory reward, that selection is everything. Each time you stand before a door in Blue Prince’s impossible mansion and choose which room will appear behind it, the tenor of your run alters. As that door opens, others close, at least for the moment, while yet more spring into existence. Playing Blue Prince, the Roguelike we’re reminded of most isn’t Hades but Spelunky. A slow-burn firstperson puzzle adventure has few obvious features in common with Mossmouth’s platformer,…

Developer Neople Publisher Nexon Format PC, PS5 (tested), Xbox Series Release Out now We spot the pressure pad on the floor a few hours into our journey as Khazan. A quick glance around reveals three holes in the wall above a nearby treasure chest. We step on the plate intentionally, then skip to the side – sure enough, a barrage of deadly darts shoots out from the holes. As traps go, this one is so familiar that it poses no danger at all. In a game most likely to appeal to Soulslike veterans looking for the next fix, what is the point? Khazan: The First Berserker wrestles with this question throughout, and can’t pin down an entirely satisfactory answer. In many ways, it’s competently built but no more than that,…

Developer Bad Guitar Studio Publisher NetEase Games Format PC Release Out now At the beginning of each round of FragPunk – before characters are picked, before any bombs can be planted or defused, before the first shot is fired – the screen is filled by three cards, drawn at random from a pool of hundreds. If you’ve ever played a draft-format game of Magic: The Gathering or any of its kin, this process may feel familiar. It’s essentially the game tearing open a booster pack and splitting its contents between the two teams, leaving players to build their decks on the fly. This being a multiplayer FPS rather than a CCG, however, these cards aren’t picked to be played to the table. Instead, they modify the next round’s action, in…

Developer Studio Tolima Publisher Don’t Nod Format PC (version tested), PS5 Release Out now Koira is the story of two creatures – a long-eared moppet and a dog – exploring an enchanted wilderness as they try to get home. You control the moppet, and the moppet controls the dog, directing it to dig paths under fences and dispel scary black clouds of fog at the push of an on-screen button. If that sounds like the kind of thing that would be well suited to the pages of a children’s picture book, that’s because Koira feels like a picture book perhaps more than it feels like a game. The winter-tinged visual design invokes the powdery watercolours of a great kids’ book illustrator such as Jon Klassen, an artist with a similar…

Developer Raven Software, Treyarch Publisher Activision Format PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series Release 2024 As we noted in our review in E405, omnimovement gives Call Of Duty a new texture. Five months on, and many players are still revelling in the ability to jump and slide in any direction, the heavily armed acrobatics resulting in both flamboyant kills and farcical failures. Updates, meanwhile, have provided plenty to keep the community happy, including several new maps – one of which, curiously, works actively against the possibilities introduced by the new movement system. Season Two’s Bullet takes place in (and on) a moving train. The novelty makes it a popular map, its linear nature encouraging a more aggressive style of play to account for the lack of corners. The faster…

The Game Developers Conference can always be relied upon to lay down a marker of the industry’s mood at a specific moment, and so it was at this year’s event, held March 17–21. After 2024’s apocalyptic tone, here the dominant theme was tactics for survival. If the event felt quieter than usual overall, that wasn’t down of a lack of concerns being aired. Worker rights proved a popular topic. Ty Underwood, founder of cooperative-focused Patreon alternative Comradery. co, together with Soft Chaos founders D Squinkifer and Jess Rowan Marcotte, delivered the first day’s highlight session, focusing on the sustainability of their lives as studio owners, and why the industry should organise against the worst excesses of capitalism. Later in the week, New union United Videogame Workers-CWA was announced at the…

DONKEY KONG BANANZA Developer/publisher Nintendo Format Switch 2 Origin Japan Release July 17 With Mario only showing up in his kart during Nintendo’s Switch 2 Direct, it’s going to be left to his oldest rival to fulfil our 3D platforming needs on the new hardware for the foreseeable future. Kong will be spending as much of his time smashing and drilling through scenery as jumping and climbing, however – his ample fists punching holes in the earth and rockfaces alike, where gold nuggets wait to be uncovered. The reveal trailer shows more conventional fare as well, including Donkey Kong Country-style side-scrolling sections and an obligatory mine-cart ride. Well, he’ll need a way to transport all that shiny metal. THE DUSKBLOODS Developer/publisher FromSoftware Format Switch 2 Origin Japan Release 2026 With…

From the outside, Maciej Antosiewicz’s domain is indistinguishable from the residences on either side, snow still melting in their gardens. Inside, though, this former mechanic’s garage has been converted into a dual-purpose studio. While Bloober’s audio team work their magic in soundproofed rooms upstairs, the ground floor belongs to Antosiewicz. It’s dominated by a motion-capture studio, in the open space once used for servicing cars – a square of carpet tiles is lifted to reveal an old grease pit underfoot – while around the space’s edges are lumpy DIY equivalents of every weapon and gadget in Cronos. “It’s like big Lego for adults,” he grins, holding up a collection of steel pipes and household products gaffer-taped together into a makeshift chainsaw. What’s the process for building these props? How do…

NEAR MISSES Karma: The Dark World PC, PS5, Xbox Series “Why is everything so surreal?” As you plop down in a landscape comprising a black sea, two enormous arms and a monolith, Karma’s protagonist Daniel asks the obvious question. Not that we blame him: as the latest in a long line of videogame amnesiacs, he has a right to be confused by it all. As a psychological horror game, Karma has its share of striking imagery and plot turns, but is sadly equally clumsy and derivative. We soon discover Daniel is an investigator for the ‘Thought Bureau’ controlled by an all-seeing MOTHER in an alternate 1984 – about as subtle as a visit to room 101. The Darkest Files PC The premise of this true-crime detective game is an instant…

Developer/publisher Rebellion Developments Format PC (tested), PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series Release Out now The jay is a beautiful, rather spooky bird, its body the colour of old bricks, but with a slash of blue at its wingtips. They do not like to be seen, moving off at the slightest sound of visitors, and maintain their distance in brisk bursts of flight. There are jays in Atomfall, not that you’ll ever see them. Instead you’ll be walking through the Casterfell Woods on the trail of druids, or dealing with clumps of tooled-up outlaws, and you’ll suddenly hear the call of a jay on the wind. This call is neither beautiful nor spooky. If anything, it sounds a little like a dot-matrix printer sparking to angry life. This mixture of natural…

What we might call the‘open-plan’ investigation game is perhaps not common enough to qualify as a genre. The likes of Return Of The Obra Dinn and Outer Wilds still feel more like offshoots of the puzzle and the adventure game, albeit with a focus on observation and deduction. 2024’s Lorelei And The Laser Eyes steps farther into puzzle territory, its exploration gated by explicit lock-and-code conundrums. If the movement such games represent isn’t cleanly defined, though, it has been impactful. We struggle to think of any style of singleplayer game that has shown such consistent hunger for innovation in recent years, and delivered as many uniquely rewarding experiences. To the games already mentioned, we might add the Golden Idol series, Immortality and its older siblings, Paradise Killer, Chants Of Sennaar…

Developer/publisher Kaizen Game Works Format PC (tested), PS5, Switch, Xbox Series Release Out now Who would have thought running a mascot agency involved so much driving? Yes, someone has to take the mascots to gigs, but you have an employee for that. It doesn’t explain why, as manager Michizane ‘Michi’ Sugawara, you spend next to no time behind your desk. Instead, it’s because there are people to talk to and hundreds of things to be found, gathered or smashed. Actually managing your business takes a back seat in Promise Mascot Agency. Given Michi’s gangland background, there are obvious comparisons to the Yakuza games here (also, Michi shares a voice actor with Kazuma Kiryu), and – minus the violence – there is a similar vibe. The town of Kaso-Machi, where Michi…

Developer Julián Cordero, Sebastián Valbuena Publisher Panic Format PC (tested), PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series Release May 1 Your instinct might be to look up the meaning of ‘despelote’. It’s a fracas; a hot mess; a confused and chaotic situation. All of which could be used to describe elements of Despelote, if not the experience of playing it: within around two hours, Julián Cordero and Sebastián Valbuena deliver a snapshot of a specific place and time – Ecuador in 2001 – that is deliberately fuzzy but bold in detail and colour. Its firstperson frame contains multitudes: this is by turns an interactive childhood memory, a sports documentary with a side of social realism, a slice-of-life drama, and a disarmingly clear-eyed examination of the creative process. Its opening sequence…