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Shovel Game combines Minecraft, Mozart and hell
Game Updates

Shovel Game combines Minecraft, Mozart and hell

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I did not expect to meet Mozart in Shovel Game, nor did I expect him to ask me to mine a pyramid of shit, with the helpful advice that I start at the top to avoid any floating shitbricks. Mozart is probably the least interesting thing about Shovel Game, actually.

It’s a shortform first-person oddity with Minecraft-style destructible voxels (yes I know Minecraft doesn’t really use voxels) and a touch of AHL_5am. The idea is to tunnel through “a sequence of strange and unfamiliar spaces”. Here’s a trailer.

Watch on YouTube

Only certain blocks can be mined, and you’ll want to dig with caution, because the catacombs are full of groaning, wailing sprites that look like Zordon from Power Rangers. It’s as if somebody had cracked the glass on his energy tube, freeing the galactic wizard’s blobby visage to wander the Earth in pain. Enemies kill you on contact and I’ve yet to discover any weapons, just my trusty shovel and an 8-ball – purpose unknown.

It’s coming to Steam, but you can find a demo on Itch.io. Expect plenty of aggravation: there’s a labyrinth full of oozy blue phantoms that requires fast footwork. Also a kind of cosmic chapel full of what appear to be flattened babies. The developer is Luke Vincent, who created it for a “shovelware horror” gamejam, ho ho.

Bonus game mention: leafing through the submissions page for that jam, I discover a new work from Mike Klubnika, architect of Buckshot Roulette and the recent S.p.l.i.t., which Nic had eloquent emotions about. Co-developed with James Dornan, Klubnika’s jam game is called Crank It and is about being stuck behind a set of gadgets in a cavernous hallway, trying to spot horrible creatures. Got to say, this sounds far worse than shit pyramid Mozart.



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No, Silksong hasn't been in development hell, hype skyrocketed sales of the original game to give Team Cherry financial freedom
Game Reviews

No, Silksong hasn’t been in development hell, hype skyrocketed sales of the original game to give Team Cherry financial freedom

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Earlier today, Team Cherry finally announced a release date for its long-awaited Hollow Knight sequel Silksong. After seven years, it will finally be out next month.

Yet contrary to what you may believe, Silksong hasn’t been in development hell for that time. Instead, Team Cherry’s developers were just having too much fun making it.

In fact, sales of the original game have skyrocketed from 2.8m copies to 15m copies since Silksong’s announcement in 2019, giving the studio the financial freedom to take their time.

Hollow Knight: Silksong – Special AnnouncementWatch on YouTube

What was originally intended as an expansion to Hollow Knight soon ballooned into its own game, with the studio announcing in February 2019 it would be a full sequel.

“Even at that point we were recognising that it was going to become another giant thing to rival the scale of Hollow Knight or probably exceed it,” Team Cherry co-founder Ari Gibson told Bloomberg. “And then because of how we work, obviously the world ended up being just as big or bigger. And the quest system existed. And the multiple towns existed. Suddenly you end up six, seven years later.”

“It was never stuck or anything,” Gibson added. “It was always progressing. It’s just the case that we’re a small team, and games take a lot of time. There wasn’t any big controversial moment behind it.”

That 12m rise in sales of the original Hollow Knight is extraordinary. Somehow, Team Cherry inadvertently created the ultimate hype machine: hype for the sequel led to sales for the original, which meant it could take longer to develop, which fed the hype even more due to silence, which became a meme, which meant it could take even longer.

“We’re very lucky in that regard,” said Gibson. “I don’t ever really think about it that much. Maybe that’s the privilege of it.”

No strict deadline and a flood of financial income meant Team Cherry could take its time. It’s in stark contrast to so many other studios at the moment hell-bent on chasing trends and generating cash in the face of rising development costs, which has inevitably resulted in the mass layoffs across the industry in the last couple of years.

By contrast, Team Cherry has remained lean. What’s more, it’s spent the past seven years enjoying development.

“We’ve been having fun,” said Gibson said. “This whole thing is just a vehicle for our creativity anyway. It’s nice to make fun things.

“We’re very fortunate that we have a development method that is so enjoyable,” Gibson continued. “Not exactly sure how we stumbled into that. Everything comes together quickly. You can see results fast. Ideas turn into something that exist in the game almost immediately before your eyes, and that’s very satisfying. And that allows you to go off on those tangents and meet weird characters because someone’s off-handedly mentioned a weird character as an idea and the other person’s laughed, and that’s enough.”

Will Silksong push the Metroidvania genre to new heights? | Image credit: Team Cherry

“You’re always working on a new idea, new item, new area, new boss,” added co-founder William Pellen. “That stuff’s so nice. It’s for the sake of just completing the game that we’re stopping. We could have kept going.”

Add to that a desire for exceptional polish, and it’s easy to see how development could have continued even longer.

“I think we’re always underestimating the amount of time and effort it’ll take us to achieve things,” said Gibson. “It’s also that problem where, because we’re having fun doing it, it’s not like, ‘It’s taking longer, this is awful, we really need to get past this phase.’ It’s, ‘This is a very enjoyable space to be in. Let’s perpetuate this with some new ideas.'”

“There’s a level of finish that has to be met throughout the entire game,” added Pellen. “All the way the systems interact, all the hidden work that pops up later on. It’s multiplicative. As you add stuff, the process of tying it all back together just increases.”

Of course, it remains to be seen whether Silksong will fully live up to the hype, but with its release date of 4th September it won’t be long until we find out. At the least, it follows games like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 as a project with a relatively small team and a huge amount of passion finding big success, where so many AAA studios and publishers have stumbled.



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Samwell Tarly looks asconce at Jon Snow.
Game Reviews

Game Of Thrones Fan Tells George R.R. Martin He’ll Be Dead Soon

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Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin recently appeared on a panel at Seattle WorldCon 2025 entitled The Shifting Landscape of Epic Fantasy, alongside Brandon Sanderson, Robin Hobb, Rebecca Roanhorse and Ryan Cahill. However, during the question-and-answer portion at the end of the session, one member of the audience got up in front of the all-star panel to complain that George R.R. Martin was taking far too long to write the penultimate book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, The Winds of Winter, and given that he likely doesn’t have that long left to live, shouldn’t he let someone else write it?

The outstandingly rude question was met with an astonished murmur in the hall, while the guests on stage looked incredibly uncomfortable and attempted to move the topic on. However, the audience member seemed not to be able to pick up on the mood they’d created, and just continued digging their hole with a series of staccato additional words. You can see the squirm-inducing moment here (thanks ScreenRant):

Which somehow means someone choosing to film a two-hour panel in portrait wasn’t close to the most offensive thing that happened.

The bizarre, rambling question, which begins with the audience member talking somewhat incoherently about Martin Scorsese directing her in a movie, then takes a dramatic left-turn as she declares, “George, you’re not going to be around for much longer.”

Martin, who is 76 and clearly still reasonably healthy, didn’t appear to react to the premonition of his death (although the person filming infuriatingly avoided filming him at any point). “This is a tough question,” the person at the mic continues while the audience begins audibly booing and vocally disagreeing, attempting to rescue herself by adding, “this is more directed at Brandon…” The reason being that Brandon Sanderson, a spritely 49, took over writing Robert Jordan’s unfinished The Wheel of Time epic fantasy series after the author died, aged only 58. The questioner wondered if the same could be arranged for A Song of Ice and Fire. “How would you feel about someone else taking over and finishing the books?” she said, seemingly now addressing Martin again, despite various members of the panel loudly saying, “No, no,” and getting up from their seats.

“Not me,” you can hear Sanderson say, while Martin gets up from his seat. Even then, the person at the mic keeps going, responding to inaudible comments from the panel, in a room that surely could no longer contain any air at all.

Obviously a lot of GoT fans are frustrated by The Winds of Winter‘s prolonged absence, given the book was due out 14 years ago. Given the series is two books away from being finished, and given Martin’s current output, it’s reasonable to wonder if any human would live long enough to get it finished at the current rate. Assuming another 14 years, Martin would be 90. However, there are obviously more human and decent ways to approach the subject.

Martin said of the delay last year, “How could I be 13 years late? I don’t know, it happens a day at a time.” He then added, “A lot of people are already writing obituaries for me. ‘Oh, he’ll never be finished.’ Maybe they’re right. I don’t know. I’m alive right now! I seem pretty vital!”

And who knows! Maybe he’ll surprise everyone and release his version of the story’s conclusion all of a sudden (the Game of Thrones TV series had to write its own ending, given it unexpectedly ran out of source material). In the meantime, maybe don’t yell at the old dude on stage that you reckon he’ll die soon.



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Death Stranding 2
Gaming Gear

11 little Death Stranding 2 improvements that made me say ‘hell yeah’

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When the original Death Stranding comes up in conversation, you can count on someone citing its tedious writing, pace-destroying exposition dumps, and reckless use of unexplained proper nouns as the biggest hurdle to enjoying it. Fair enough, but I submit that nothing sucked more in Death Stranding 1 than the menus.

Kojima’s first apocalyptic hiking sim had dozens of tiny annoyances that chipped away at my patience over two playthroughs totaling over 100 hours: Holding X to confirm every time Sam made the slightest cargo adjustment, navigating three layers of menus to recycle used-up grenades, plotting routes on an unhelpful map, the laborious process of emptying Sam’s backpack. I can feel my blood pressure rising just thinking about it.

Thankfully, I’m finding Death Stranding 2 to be a sequel in the best way possible—targeting my list of “this better be better” demands and satisfying almost every one of them. My first two hours have been full of little quality-of-life discoveries that have me saying “hell yeah” to myself in a hushed tone. If you played the first game a ton, maybe they’ll also excite you.


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Cargo shortcuts!

(Image credit: Kojima Productions)

Yes, I’m telling you the best new feature in Death Stranding 2 is six buttons in a radial menu. Holding up on the d-pad brings a bunch of handy cargo shortcuts that cut out a lot of menu time, the most important being “Auto-Arrange Cargo.” Balancing Sam’s cargo load now takes three seconds, but you can still enter the full Cargo Management screen at any time to move items around manually (no X confirmation needed).

Also handy are buttons that will only offload cargo/materials (not tools), one that offloads everything, and another button that’s so good it’s getting its own section below.

Handgun holster

(Image credit: Kojima Productions)

Death Stranding has always had pistols, but now Sam has a dedicated place to carry them. Similar to the boot clip and grenade pouch, the handgun holster means Sam can always carry a weapon without adding to his backpack Tetris stack. You also have the holster from the start, an early signal that Death Stranding 2 has a bigger focus on stealth action.

Route Simulator

(Image credit: Kojima Productions)

Drawing lines on maps just got slightly more pleasant. Sam’s route planner got an upgrade that automatically highlights hazards along drawn routes—stuff like deep rivers, bandit patrols, and BTs. The route tool has also been folded into the prep screen before accepting an order, and routes now include summaries that show its distance, elevation changes, total hazards, and overall risk level. It’s kinda like a real-life pilot flight plan.

Stats!

(Image credit: Kojima Productions)

Stats got an expansion, too. Sam used to automatically improve his cargo capacity and stamina over time, but DS2 seems to go a lot deeper with stealth and combat upgrades. I haven’t messed with this much yet, but you still improve Sam automatically by doing things, not by dumping points into a tree.

Backward hats

(Image credit: Kojima Productions)

Death Stranding 2 casts Norman Reedus in the role he was born to play: A backwards hat-wearing single dad. The hat menu was my first stop after getting control of Sam. That’s where I found the “wear backwards” option, gasped, and never looked back.

Offload backpack

(Image credit: Kojima Productions)

No backpack, no problem. You can (finally!) take Sam’s backpack off when you’re about to walk him into dangerous places. The button’s in that same cargo shortcut radial, and it’s already come in clutch at a bandit camp. It’s pretty cool that Sam can still carry a handgun, rifle, and grenades without his backpack, so you basically shed 100 kg of “Cargo mode” and enter “Solid Snake” mode.

Quicker order turn-in

(Image credit: Kojima Productions)

Turning in a bunch of orders at once used to require spamming X to skip through each completion screen. Since that was stupid, now all of Sam’s turned-in orders are summarized on one screen.

Optional exposition

(Image credit: Kojima Productions)

The citizens of Death Stranding sure like to prattle on about stuff I didn’t ask about, but in Death Stranding 2, a lot of that extra exposition is optional. In the screenshot above, I had the option to skip this guy’s life story and detailed Timefall Shelter explanation and move on with my life.

Offload all unusable items

(Image credit: Kojima Productions)

Another big time saver for Repair Spray power users. Now you can hold a button to drop all of your empty grenades, sprays, and guns at once (though you should still recycle them for the materials).

Recycle shortcut

(Image credit: Kojima Productions)

Speaking of, recycling doesn’t suck anymore either. When you’re at a place where recycling is possible, it’s now listed as one of the options when moving an item in Cargo Management. I know that sounds dull, but if you know how much that rules, you know.

Goodbye emails, hello posts

(Image credit: Kojima Productions)

Death Stranding 1’s emails were charming and occasionally helpful, but I ain’t reading all that. In DS2, characters have upgraded from email to live-tweeting unsolicited advice on social media. The Social Strand Service is both a feed of tips from friends and a photo log of players’ photo mode pictures. It’s still mostly fluff, but it’s not as busy or wordy as Sam’s old inbox.



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Image for Hardcore World War 2 shooter Hell Let Loose is free to play all weekend, and on a 50% discount for the next two weeks
Product Reviews

Hardcore World War 2 shooter Hell Let Loose is free to play all weekend, and on a 50% discount for the next two weeks

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Call of Duty and Battlefield may only occasionally dip into the Second World War these days, with CoD’s most recent Nazi battering entry being 2023’s Call of Duty: Vanguard, while Battlefield hasn’t so much as sniffed an M1 Garand since 2018’s Battlefield 5. But there are plenty of other shooters dedicated to replicating history’s most destructive conflict in virtual form. One such example is Team17’s well-regarded 2021 shooter Hell Let Loose, which is letting players enlist for free over this weekend.

Hell Let Loose is a large-scale multiplayer affair, where two teams of 50 players battle across large World War 2-era maps. Structurally it resembles Battlefield, with large-scale, combined arms combat and game modes similar to Conquest and Rush. But it’s a more hardcore, tactical affair than DICE’s shooter. Careless movement will get you killed quickly, so there’s a much greater emphasis on teamwork and communication.

HELL LET LOOSE | The Eastern Front Official Trailer – YouTube

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Multiplayer shooter specialist Morgan Park reviewed Hell Let Loose back in 2021, and enjoyed how it balanced challenging combat with more accessible logistics than some other military simulators, awarding it a score of 70. “Black Matter has simplified most of the logistical mechanics that can bog down 90-minute Squad matches. Constructing a Garrison building that the entire team can respawn at is way faster and takes half the effort as in Squad.”


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Morgan’s main criticism of Hell Let Loose was its audio design: “No matter how much I mess with audio sliders, the game never gets loud enough for my liking.” The game has received numerous audio updates since Morgan’s review, though whether or not they address his specific concerns, I cannot say.

In any case, if you’re looking for a shooter that takes itself more seriously than CoD, but still lets you get into the action without drawing up an entire battle-plan beforehand, Hell Let Loose is free to play until Monday. And if you find yourself wanting to play more after the free weekend expires, then it’s on a 50% discount until June 26.



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Starlight Re:Volver is an upcoming anime as hell Hades-esque, MMO inspired roguelite that already has the vibe
Game Updates

Starlight Re:Volver is an upcoming anime as hell Hades-esque, MMO inspired roguelite that already has the vibe

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I’m not much of an MMO person, I’ve dabbled over the years like with RuneScape in my youth, and a bit of Final Fantasy 14. These days it’s the level of commitment that puts me off, even though I really do love being able to partake in what feels like living, breathing worlds, the hustle and bustle of actual people going to and fro. Luckily, I think I have a lower-key way to get this kind of feeling in the upcoming action roguelite Starlight Re:Volver.


Right from the first second of Starlight Re:Volver you’ll absolutely be thinking to yourself “oh, this is anime as hell.” That’ll be offputting to some, maybe, but it does so with such a ridiculous degree of finesse and style, I was won over right out the gate. The core gameplay loop is that you set out on runs with up to three of your friends, going through different rooms with waves of enemies across them, picking up abilities and buffs along the way.

Watch on YouTube


It definitely seems like there’s a Hades-like approach to the game, though the demo that’s currently available for Steam Next Fest is more like an online playtest above all else. Right now I’d say there’s a bit of an onboarding issue, as the game doesn’t really do much to tell you much about anything, but with multiple characters to choose from all with unique playstyles, I had a fun enough time in the few runs I went through.


All of that can be smoothed over of course, I’m not that worried about that, so the real thing that’s pulling me in so far is the vibes. The game’s Steam page refers to itself as an “anime-inspired MMO universe”, and the game’s hub area certainly offers a slice of such a pie up.


There’s an in-world Suika Game rip-off to play, a fishing mini-game, clothes to unlock, different areas to just hang out in. You can see different players running around too, and even if there’s not much to do right now, it really does capture that specific feeling of being in a virtual place with a whole bunch of strangers.


How that may progress whenever the game comes out, I can’t tell you, it’s certainly something I hope to see expanded upon. In the meantime, you can wishlist the game on Steam here, and you have until June 16th to try out the demo for yourself.



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Gachiakuta
Product Reviews

‘Gachiakuta’ is Mad as Hell and Ready to Trash Everything

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Summer is here, and that means there’s new anime for the season. For the shonen heads, there’s returning fan favorites like Dan Da Dan and Kaiju No. 8, plus a new show by the name of Gachiakuta dropping next month.

Based on Kei Urana’s ongoing manga, the series stars Rudo Surebec, a teenager living in the slums of the Sphere who comes home to find his foster dad dead. Charged and found guilty of murder, he’s condemned to The Pit, a massive dump site below town that’s home to criminals and anything else considered trash by the Sphere’s wealthy class. A man named Enjin rescues Rudo and invites him to join the Cleaners, a group of people who create weapons out of objects they imbue with their power and use them to hunt monsters made of literal trash.

Rudo joins up with the Cleaners, mainly because he has dreams of making it back topside to get revenge on the Sphereites who dumped him to the surface. Gachiakuta is developed by Studio Bones, which helmed My Hero Academia and its current Vigilantes spinoff, and the contrast between the two shonen is so sharp. Rudo is so much more angrier than Deku, the pivot (and equally furious social commentary) may be enough to entice viewers to see what Bones does with darker material.

Gachiakuta premieres Sunday, July 6 on Crunchyroll, with respective opening and ending themes by Paledusk (“HUGs”) and Dustcell (“Tomoshibi”). Global premiere events with advance screenings will be held before then on July 4 and 5 in several locations, including the US, Japan, and Brazil. You can find the locations here.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.



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A cloaked Elden Ring Nightreign character stands before an armored character with a golden light behind them
Gaming Gear

Singleplayer Elden Ring Nightreign is no longer hell to play, but it’s still a compromised game of 30-minute boss runbacks

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I am Mr. Antisocial Souls⁠—I don’t play many multiplayer games in general, and FromSoft’s offerings have always been, for me, private affairs. So I’m just as surprised as anyone that Elden Ring Nightreign’s multiplayer focus has really hooked me.

I still thought I’d be playing solo at least half the time until I realized that Nightreign’s singleplayer experience elevates all the game’s flaws to their maximum annoyance level. Two patches have made the solo experience about as good as it can get, I reckon, at least within the specific, run-based format FromSoftware has created. If the queue’s taking forever and none of your friends are online, it’s an option.

Alternatively, if you’re a challenge run YouTuber or you’ve got an unhealthy relationship with these games and a certain prideful streak, I can’t deny there’s a “lemme get one more shot at this guy” appeal here. I’m afraid I’m now in too deep and I will solo the Darkdrift Knight, RNG be damned.


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What’s still busted?

I’ve got three main gripes with Nightreign overall: Its opacity and borked UI, the frustration of a wasted run and long runback to a boss, and the game’s cruel, often borderline trolling RNG. They’re all made much worse with the isolation and added pressure of solo play.

The game’s refusal to explain basic systems is certainly exacerbated if your first few runs are solo, as was my experience, but that naturally becomes less of an issue as you get more time in. The boss runback⁠—the amount of time between a checkpoint and a boss room for repeat attempts⁠—is something FromSoft has concertedly minimized with each new game, to the extent that it’s barely even a concern in Elden Ring.

Still preferable to playing solo. (Image credit: FromSoftware)

Nightreign, with its half-hour roguelike runs, is Boss Runback: The Game. While rewards for dying to the Nightlord have been improved with the latest patch, losing a run in Nightreign still feels worse than in any roguelike I’ve played⁠—I’d chalk this up to how much of the difficulty is weighted toward the final boss. After a certain point, you’re only really losing runs that have progressed all the way to day 3.

Not having allies to support and revive you adds to the ludicrously high stakes, and no matter how much damage tuning FromSoft does, the Nightlords in particular were designed with three players in mind. Losing to a boss that feels like it was designed for a trio, knowing it’ll take another half-hour for another shot, and not having anyone to commiserate with is just an awful feeling.

Then there’s the RNG question: One of the most fundamental, “You got Nightreigned” experiences is loading into a run only to find that there are few⁠—or even zero⁠—camps on the map with a guaranteed drop of the elemental weapon type the Nightlord is weak to.

I tested out the new patch today, and across two solo runs as archer Ironeye against the lightning-weak Darkdrift Knight, I only had three lightning camps spawn on the map⁠—one in the first run, two in the next.

None of them produced a lightning bow for my archer character. Nightreigned yet again.

What’s gotten better?

FromSoft’s patches have done an admirable job mitigating the frustrations of solo play, and absent work on a structurally more solo-friendly experience⁠—which just doesn’t make sense, given Nightreign’s focus⁠—I think it’s as good as it’s going to get.

(Image credit: Tyler C. / FromSoftware)

Self-revivals have been very well-balanced: You get one freebie each climax fight (night one boss, night two boss, Nightlord), and every merchant carries a Wending Grace item for sale providing one more revive. You can only buy one during the first two days, with the final, day three merchant having one more. This means you get two revive opportunities per night boss, and three in the final fight.

The balance of enemy health in solo play also now feels much closer to base Elden Ring⁠—I don’t feel like I’m plinking away at raid boss health pool meant to stand up to three players anymore. Faster level-ups in solo play help make up for your inherently slower camp-clearing without friends to back you up.

Nightreign’s hit its natural ceiling for solo play, with a severely compromised experience, but a viable one. The whole reason I’ve been on a solo Darkdrift Knight kick is to complete Ironeye’s final remembrance quest, and solo play is, overall, a reasonable way to blow through remembrances without inconveniencing other players⁠—or having a Discord call talking over a dramatic story beat.

There are just a lot of caveats even for me, Mr. Antisocial Souls, so I can hardly recommend Nightreign as a solo experience to someone without the Souls Sicko emotional handicap.

It works best as a supplemental gametype. If I were to prescribe a tolerable dose… maybe 15% of your total playtime? It’s another matter, though, if you aspire to the lifestyle of a challenge run YouTuber. Sekiro god Ongbal soloed Nightreign’s final boss just two days after launch, and now has a video of them soloing every Nightlord in the game. The rest of us mortals are probably going to have a lot more fun with a team.



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James Cameron Underwater
Product Reviews

James Cameron Will Take a Break From ‘Avatar’… in Hell

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Everyone knows that James Cameron gets super excited about ocean exploration. But for his next project, he’s going even lower than that. Cameron just announced that his company, Lightstorm, has acquired the rights to The Devils, a new book by Joe Abercrombie that follows a high-ranking demon who takes a group of evil beings on a mission in Hell.

“How do I describe The Devils?” Cameron wrote in a press release via his social media. “A sharply witty horror adventure? An epic battle between good and evil except most of the time you can’t tell which is which? A twisted, stylish, alt-universe middle-ages romp, where your best hope of survival is the monsters themselves? This is Joe Abercrombie in absolute peak form, opening up a whole new world and an ensemble of delicious new characters. The twists and turns come at a rollercoaster pace, and with Joe’s signature acerbic wit and style. The Devils showcases Joe’s jaundiced view of human nature, in all its dark, selfish glory, as told through some decidedly un-human characters. But of course, Joe always teases with the flickers of redemption that make it all worthwhile—and ultimately quite heartwrenching.”

Cameron goes on to talk about his love of Abercrombie’s work before revealing that he’ll co-write the script with Abercrombie just as soon as he gets some other movie he’s working on into theaters. “I’m looking forward to the writing process with him, though I’m certain this adaptation will practically write itself because Joe writes very visually, almost in scenes, and with a very cinematic structure,” Cameron said.

“I can’t wait to dig into this as I wind down on Avatar: Fire and Ash. It will be a joyful new challenge for me to bring these indelible characters to life.”

That third Avatar film, Fire and Ash, is scheduled for release December 19, and while most of us probably assume that means Cameron would jump right into the fourth film, he’s got some time. Avatar 4 is not scheduled for release until December 2029. Whether or not he’ll direct or pass those duties—for either Avatar or The Devils—to someone else remains to be seen. Either way, though, he certainly seems very excited about making his way to Hell. And you would be too if you now owned the rights to this…

“Brother Diaz has been summoned to the Sacred City, where he is certain a commendation and grand holy assignment awaits him,” the official description of The Devils reads. “But his new flock is made up of unrepentant murderers, practitioners of ghastly magic, and outright monsters. The mission he is tasked with will require bloody measures from them all in order to achieve its righteous ends. Elves lurk at our borders and hunger for our flesh, while greedy princes care for nothing but their own ambitions and comfort. With a hellish journey before him, it’s a good thing Brother Diaz has the devils on his side.” Here’s Cameron’s original post.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.





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Sci-fi action-RPG Hell is Us gets PC demo out today on Steam
Game Reviews

Sci-fi action-RPG Hell is Us gets PC demo out today on Steam

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Sci-fi action-RPG Hell is Us will receive a demo later today on PC via Steam, ahead of its release in September.

The demo will be available from 2nd – 16th June but won’t be available on console due to “technical constraints”. Said developer Rogue Factor: “Please rest assured: Hell is Us will launch simultaneously on PC and consoles, with the same content and the same level of polish. Development is progressing equally across all platforms – this limitation only concerns the demo.”

The demo will take place at the start of the game and offer players a taste of its gameplay, though Rogue Factor promises some “key elements, like exploration and the player plattering experience, truly come into their own as the world opens up and the layers unfold”.

Hell is Us – Investigation Trailer | PS5 GamesWatch on YouTube

So what is Hell is Us? The game has been shown at a couple of PlayStation State of Play events – it’s a new action-RPG from Mordheim studio Rogue Factor, combining soulslike combat with dungeons filled with puzzles and survival gameplay.

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It’s all set in a hostile land without a map or quest markers, meaning players will need to focus carefully on exploration, while battling supernatural creatures due to a mysterious calamity.

And while the soulslike combat is meant to be challenging, the demo will have three difficulty levels and further customisation options.

Image credit: Rogue Factor

PC specs have been revealed as per the image above. Recommended specs are as follows:

Graphic Settings: 1080P 60 FPS AVG High Settings

GPU: “NVIDIA RTX 2080Ti 11GB or AMD RX 6750 XT 12GB

CPU: Intel i7-11700K or AMD Ryzen 5 7600

RAM: 16GB

OS: Windows 10 – 64bit

STORAGE: 30GB SSD

The Ultra settings on PC suggest an NVIDA RTX 4090, but note this will still be at 30fps.

Eurogamer’s Lottie Lynn went hands-on with Hell is Us at Gamescom last year and was impressed with its immersive exploration.

“The narrative already has me hooked – the human story of a country drowned in war, its people barely surviving, running alongside a supernatural mystery of unknown horrors emerging from the dark – while combat mechanics show excellent promise for when Hell is Us is released next year. But it’s that twist on navigation that brings the real magic of a chilling atmosphere.”

Hell is Us will release on 4th September across PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. The game’s protagonist Rémi is voiced by Elias Toufexis, best known as Adam Jensen from the Deus Ex series.



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