quiet

Only last week, Palworld developer Pocketpair announced that the hit survival game, which remains in early access, would be going quiet as it prepared for a full launch in 2026. Well well well… it looks like someone had a surprise up their sleeve, because today brought the announcement of an unexpected crossover, albeit with scant detail.

Palworld is collaborating with Ultrakill, a brilliant indie shooter by Arsi ‘Hakita’ Patala that’s still in early access itself, and continuing to blow minds (the game sits at “overwhelmingly positive” on Steam with roughly 120K user reviews). Ultrakill is fast-paced, bloody, and constructed around five weapons and the intricate way their various fire modes can be comboed together. It also boasts the brilliant tagline: “Mankind is dead. Blood is fuel. Hell is full.”

The announcement says that “collaboration gear and weapons from the cult-hit game Ultrakill are coming to Palworld!” Ultrakill’s hardware is fantastic, and you’d expect there’ll be some clever ways to get all your pals tooled-up and combo-ing merrily together.

Palworld’s most recent high-profile crossover was with Terraria, which caused a big spike in players, so expect something similar for a collaboration that asks the question “will blood rain upon the Palpagos Islands?” You’d imagine it probably will.

(Image credit: New Blood Interactive)

There’s no release date beyond “later this year,” with Palworld also scheduled for a winter update (which Pocketpair has said won’t be as big as the 2024 equivalent: but that was enormous.) Other than that, the developer’s settling down to get it ready for the full release.

“Beyond just adding new content, there’s a lot of cleanup that needs to be done before Palworld can exit early access,” said Pocketpair community director Bucky last week. “It’s no secret that Palworld has a lot of quirks and jank, and we want to take the time to properly address those before releasing the game. With that in mind, we plan to start this cleanup this year.”

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When was the last time you turned the radio on? I imagine for some of you younger readers, the answer is probably never. To be clear I’m not judging you here if that is the case, or even if it’s just been a while, it’s a format that feels hard to reckon with when its main point – listening to a range of pieces of music – is made borderline moot in the era of streaming services. All of which makes Omega Point, a game where you control a mech but the only thing you can do in it is change which radio station you’re listening to, all the more interesting. A severe epilepsy warning is needed for this game as it has a lot of flashing images.

Omega Point is a new game from indie dev Cathroon, whose work you may have previously seen in The Devil. A quick aside, if you haven’t played The Devil, and you’re desperate for a brutalist retro horror game, make sure you take a look at it alongside Omega Point. Speaking of, back to the point!

There is no protagonist in Omega Point, only you, the game starting with your body dissipating into nothingness, leaving you with no choice but to board your mech. This mech is the last surviving Doctrine, a machine that exists at “The Conjunction of Science and Religion.” Once you’re inside, you flick each individual switch to turn the metal giant on, eventually arriving at a timer and a message that says once it runs out, whoever is speaking will be here for you.

And after that? All you can do is explore a ruined world, and listen to the radio. There’s rock tracks, chiptune, lo-fi beats, jungle, spoken word, looking at the credits there’s at least upwards of 50 different songs to listen to.

With nothing else to do but listen to the radio, you do just that, and it makes this experience of watching the aforementioned timer count down feel a little bit less lonely. It’s a curious little game that runs at just over 30 minutes (the timer itself is a full 30 minutes), so it’s not a long experience, but it packs a lot to mull over in a short window.

There’s that classic thing that many a mecha story does of what the pilot’s relationship is to their mech in conjunction with feelings over the body. There’s also the fact that even in such a desolate world, something as simple as the radio can still persist, each station sharing a small expression of itself for whoever happens upon it. A lot of big feelings for such a short run time!

A big recommendation from me for those in search of a short, punchy game that feels fitting for the times we live in. You can pick it up, for free I might add, on itch.io.

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A week after saying it was going quiet for the rest of the year, Palworld announces a crossover with the brilliant and bloodstained shooter Ultrakill

Omega Point is a quiet mecha game where your only company at the end of the world is a radio