Text-based games, management RPGs, and visual novels – of whatever kind – rarely make the most exciting previews. It's just not easy to build a rich interest in the world and characters of a story you can only get the slightest taste of. I'm very pleased to say that a few hours with Sovereign Tower broke that trend entirely.

Whosoever turns the key in the giant magic lock on the tower becomes king. So, as the mystically-appointed lord of the tower, your poor faceless wanderer becomes a very important person overnight in what developer Wild Wits calls a "story-rich, Round Table management RPG." It's an entertaining concept that draws its characters and dialogue equally from fantastical tradition and modern life. Couple that with a deliciously detailed art style and a sense of what's most entertaining to do in both management games and visual novels.

That's enough to sell it, I think, but it also has some nice surprises and a weird little twist on the genre as a whole. I had a pretty darn good time with it, and I'm looking forward to more.

King of the Castle

In each turn of Sovereign Tower, you have to do two things: accept audiences, then assign knights from your round table to various quests. Taking audiences is a simple concept: Sit on the throne and deal with problems people bring you. The decisions you make there can alter the path of the story, bring up new quests for your knights, or avoid problems. They'll also affect the sovereign's standing with the realm's four factions: the Nobility, People, Merchants, and Scholars.

Some problems go away if you just throw money at them, and the taxes you get at the start of every cycle can pay for some of that—but those are the same taxes you use to pay for stuff like cool new swords and horses and magic potions, so do you really want to spend them on boring stuff like bridges or whatever? Probably not.

That sounds pretty normal, but it's the weirdos that show up to need things from you or to join your kingdom that make it memorable. I encountered a stinky jester, proud emissaries unable to admit they couldn't solve their own problems, clever peasants, annoying nobles, and even an assassin. Talking with them solidifies the personality of your blank-slate Sovereign, raising their stats in Audacity, Tyranny, Wisdom, and Kindness to unlock alternate decisions in future events.

The Knights are the flavor that'll really have to carry the game, and from what I saw they might do it. I met a huge guy that acted like a child, a very fancy boy, an extremely overdramatic guy, a nice lady who loved forest critters, the most goth knight ever, and even a straight-up actual wolf. Each of them had their own unique little events and dialogue that popped up from time to time, each of which affected your sovereign's relationship with them. They also had history to learn, as well as more straightforward stats, all of which affect their performance on missions.

Figuring out which knight would be best for each quest was an actually interesting choice. Equipment like a specific horse to ride, a sword to use, or a magic potion can give them temporary stat boosts, but it's often the bonuses or penalties from their personality traits that make the difference between a failure and success or between mere success and an outstanding victory.

For example if you're doing something that's a bit of public relations? Probably should send the more charismatic knight, but not the really arrogant one. Watching each knight's background and figuring out which of the little highlighted keywords apply to the current mission is a fun bit of understanding the characters.

And there's a real penalty for failure. Your knights each have an armor score, which if it goes to zero means that knight's, well, dead and gone. Your blacksmith can only fix one knight's armor each cycle—so you need to be reasonably sure that the task you're sending a knight on is one they can at least survive if they fail.

Shining Armor

None of the characters, nor the entire game as I saw it, would have nearly as much personality without the visual art on display in Sovereign Tower, and I've got to take a moment to run through the influences and elements that make it up. Starting with the simple choices of colors to draw from: The warm pastels, earth tones, and jewel tones are lovely, then they're combined with copious golden shades and tints to express lighting. It's a palette of colors that's something between stained glass or rich watercolor on thick paper.

The characters are drawn with a lot of emotion and movement, too, for what are otherwise relatively flat portraits. You can feel the shrug in how Urusla stands, for example. You can see the carefree attitude in the angle of Angelica's head. And, well, everything about Gideon tells you exactly who he is and how he behaves. It's not just great illustration work in that you can feel the motion, it's that you can immediately start to feel who the characters are just from how they look.

It's clear that these are artists who understand how to work their chosen medium, and if you'll put up with me for a nerd moment, it is deeply reminiscent of the Art Nouveau period in design from France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Particularly the advertisements, posters, and calendars of justly-famous artist Alphonse Mucha. It's a fitting choice, too: Mucha's work often used the kind of medieval romantic and even fairytale themes that Sovereign Tower seems to use in its stories—I imagine he'd approve of being the inspiration here.

I think that's where I'd place this whole game's artistic style, too: It's a blend of medieval fantasy and Arthurian romance setting, the art of Mucha, and the writing of a wryly clever modern comic book. There's basically nothing to dislike in that.

The Clever Twist

It's not a surprise to people who like this kind of game that there are going to be secret events and pathways through the story to uncover, as well as desperate outcomes and painful prices to pay when choosing poorly at certain decision points. I found that Sovereign Tower must have more than a few, since I managed to stumble into at least two hidden story outcomes while playing just by assigning an unexpected or suboptimal knight to a specific quest.

The frustration with these kinds of events, however, is that they can give you unwanted outcomes or change the story when you weren't expecting them to or were aiming for another outcome. The only choice you've got at that point is often to play the entire visual novel over again just to see a new path or the immediate consequence of a tough choice.

The real good choice that Sovereign Tower makes is to have a built-in do-over mechanic. See, there's a demon that lives in a cage in the tower basement, which I'm sure isn't scary or plot-relevant at all because the demon helps you do something very useful: Step back in time. Don't worry—the demon assures me this is because it has absolutely no bad intentions and is bound to help you—much like all the other magical things that live in the tower.

With the demon's help you can turn back time, especially when some choice you've made would lead to a disastrous end. I expect you'll also be able to use the power to avoid the worst ends in the game, and I'm betting most players will want to use it at least once or twice to avoid making whatever NPC they've chosen to romance not mad at them about something. There's also the hint, given in the trailer and screenshots for Sovereign Tower, that you'll be able to use the demon's power to unlock alternate dialogue in situations you've seen before—tagged with an "Omniscience" stat that surely won't upset or alarm people who don't realize you're time travelling.

Overall, from the art and the writing, I'm pretty intrigued by Sovereign Tower and it's going on my list of games to watch out for. Sure, the game mechanics are pretty simple, but when the story and characters are interesting in this way I'm glad the game rules are getting out of the way to let me entertain myself—failing and succeeding on my own terms.

If you’ve been looking to grab some Amazon devices for a super low price, you’ll want to check out Woot’s sale. From Ring Doorbells to Echo Smart Speakers, everything is an extra 20% off. That’s not the only great deal at Woot, as you can grab a Samsung Frame TV for the lowest price we’ve seen. Moving on to Amazon deals, a LEGO F1 model car kit, Razer’s Black Shark V3 Pro Headset, and Tom & Jerry: The Golden Era Anthology are all seeing healthy discounts. Check out all the top deals below:

TL;DR: The Best Deals Today

20% Off Already Discounted Amazon Devices

Already discounted Amazon devices are an extra 20% on Woot today. When you use the code DEVICES20 at checkout, you’ll see an extra 20% taken off the price at the Amazon-owned company. It’s an awesome sale with items selling out quickly. In fact, a few products I had saved were already gone by the time I went back. Still, whether you’re after a Kindle device, Ring security cameras, Echo smart speakers, Fire TV sticks, and more, there are plenty of deals you’ll want to hop on. Many of these devices are either Amazon refurbished or in like-new condition, but you’ll get a nice 90-day warranty for peace of mind.

Score Over $10 Off A LEGO F1 Model Car Kit

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We’ve finally gotten our first good look at Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord, the latest animated series in this ever-expanding franchise. Shadow Lord follows Sam Witwer’s iconic villain as he sets about rebuilding his criminal empire in the era of the Empire. And while he may be the star of the show, there are a few other familiar faces popping up in this series.

Let’s take a deep dive into the new Shadow Lord trailer to break down both the returning favorites and the new additions to the Star Wars ranks. How does this series fit into Maul’s complex storyline? Here’s what you need to know.

Sam Witwer as Maul

Naturally, the former Darth Maul is the star of the show with this new series. For a character that was seemingly killed off in his first appearance back in 1999’s Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Maul has certainly taken on a second life thanks to The Clone Wars and other animated series. Shadow Lord aims to fill in some major blanks with Maul’s story and connect the dots between the end of The Clone Wars and Maul’s cameo appearance in 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story.

For those who haven’t been following Maul’s journey over the past decade-and-a-half, the character made his unexpected return in The Clone Wars, where we learned that he survived his duel with Obi-Wan Kenobi through the power of sheer hate. Maul was restored to some semblance of sanity and health and set about building a criminal empire called the Shadow Collective with the help of his brother, Savage Opress, and the Mandalorian faction known as Death Watch.

And yet, fate still hasn’t been kind to Maul in the years since. He narrowly survived a reunion with his old master, Darth Sidious (though Savage wasn’t so lucky). In the final Clone Wars story arc, “The Siege of Mandalore,” Maul was defeated by Ahsoka Tano and taken into Republic custody. He narrowly escaped after the events of Order 66 played out, and that’s pretty much where we find him now in Shadow Lord. He’s a free man again, but his criminal organization is in shambles, and the newly formed Empire is hunting him along with the other surviving Jedi.

As the series opens, Maul’s journey to rebuild the Shadow Collective takes him to a new Star Wars planet called Janix. This advanced planetary metropolis has mostly been a free player in the larger galactic order up till now, meaning there’s a lot of opportunity for an ambitious crime lord looking to re-stake his claim on the underworld.

“It's one part Gotham, one part Metropolis and a hundred percent Star Wars with all these different levels and layers,” Executive Producer Matt Michnovetz told StarWars.com. “It's a city essentially built into a crater on this planet that is untouched by the Empire. It's got a functioning democracy and law enforcement doing a good job of policing their own community. It's a rich environment for crime and gangsters, but so far there's been a very peaceful accord between all of them in the interest of business.”

Shadow Lord is set early on in the reign of Palpatine’s Empire, at least in Season 1. The question is how much time the show will ultimately cover. Will we see Maul grow to become the master of the powerful Crimson Dawn organization, as he is in Solo: A Star Wars Story (which is set about 10 years before A New Hope)? Will the series advance even further to reveal what happens after and why Maul becomes stranded on Malchor in Star Wars Rebels? There are a lot of blanks the series can fill in with this character, even if we already know how his story ultimately ends.

Gideon Adlon as Devon Izara

Maul: Shadow Lord will introduce a number of new characters to the Star Wars canon, but probably the most important of these is Devon Izara. From what we can glean from the trailer, Devon is one of the Jedi who survives the Jedi Purge, only to find herself on the run and battling against Stormtroopers and the Sith Inquisitorius.

It appears that Devon becomes an unlikely ally of Maul’s in this series, despite the two characters coming from opposite sides of the Jedi/Sith tracks. As Devon is sure to learn, the old rivalries don’t necessarily matter in this new era where survival is everything.

“Devon is a young person who's living through challenging times and realizes that the future she once thought she was going to have is no longer possible, and so she has to adapt,” said Michnovetz.

Maul is certainly fond of recruiting minions to become his latest Sith apprentice. He did it with his brother, and he tried to do it with Ahsoka on Mandalore. We suspect he sees a similar opportunity in Devon, a chance to shepherd an impressionable young Force user and, in turn, forge himself into a true Sith master capable of exacting vengeance on Sidious.

Whether he ultimately proves successful in turning Devon to the Dark Side will probably be one of the key questions in the series. But some fans are already speculating that we’re about to see Lucasfilm add another popular Expanded Universe character to the modern Disney canon. The theory is that Devon will eventually become Darth Talon, another Force-sensitive Twi’lek and a major villain from the comic book series Star Wars Legacy.

In those comics, Talon is active more than a hundred years after the fall of the Empire, but that hasn’t stopped the fires of speculation from burning. And it’s worth remembering that George Lucas himself was a big fan of Talon and reportedly wanted her included in the canceled Darth Maul video game. Maybe he’ll finally see a version of that desire realized.

Wagner Moura as Brander Lawson

While Maul will face plenty of opposition of the lightsaber-wielding variety (and we’ll get to those characters shortly), it looks as though one of his main new antagonists in the series is a humble cop named Captain Brander Lawson. Brander is a police detective on Janix, one who has so far managed to keep the peace in the chaotic early years of the Empire’s reign. Maul’s arrival surely threatens that fragile peace.

Brander wears a uniform similar to that of Kyle Soller’s Syril Karn in Season 1 of Star Wars: Andor. That gives us a clearer picture of what his place is in the law enforcement hierarchy. He’s not an Imperial officer, but part of the local Janix police force. We suspect that, as much as Brander and the Empire are aligned in their desire to see Maul brought to justice, he’ll be butting heads with them as they start to assert more dominance over the Janix sector.

Richard Ayoade as Two-Boots

Richard Ayoade is adding another Star Wars role to his repertoire with Shadow Lord. Just as he voiced the droid Q9-0 in The Mandalorian, Ayoade will play a different droid character called Two-Boots in Shadow Lord. Two-Boots is Brander Lawson’s faithful partner and companion. He gets his name from - you guess it - the unusual pair of boots he wears on the job.

Star Wars fans will get a chance to become acquainted with both Brander and Two-Boots before the animated series premieres in April. They’re also central figures in the Marvel Comics prequel series Star Wars: Shadow of Maul.

“This is a sci-fi story, but it's also a crime story,” writer Benjamin Percy told Marvel.com. “It's a story about cops, criminal syndicates, a neon-lit, shadow-alleyed city that hides many sins and secrets. I'm teamed up with an artist who's already a Star Wars veteran and legend: Madibek Musabeckov. His art is gritty and grounded and perfectly matches the noir tone. We've been in close contact with Lucasfilm—reading scripts and watching episodes of this fantastic new animated series—and our story will serve as a prelude to what viewers will see play out on the screen.”

Vanessa Marshall as Rook Kast

Maul will have at least one other ally in his early quest to rebuild his shattered empire. It turns out some Mandalorians are still loyal to him, even after the fall of their world. Vanessa Marshall will reprise her role as Rook Kast, the leader of Maul’s Mandalorian super commandos. She’s likely a fugitive from the law, like Maul himself, and sees an opportunity in Maul’s criminal scheme.

A.J. LoCascio as Marrok

We first encountered the mysterious Marrok in Ahsoka Season 1, where he was one of several lightsaber-wielding villains going up against Rosario Dawson’s Ahsoka Tano and Natasha Liu Bordizzo’s Sabine Wren. Marrok proved to be a silent but deadly mercenary, and we eventually learned that the reason is that he was resurrected as a zombie by Nightsister magic.

But at this earlier stage in the Star Wars timeline, Marrok is still (as far as we know) an ordinary flesh-and-blood member of the Sith Inquisitorius. He even carries the esteemed rank of First Brother. He’ll even have actual dialogue this time around, with A.J. LoCascio cast in the role for the first time.

“The Empire is consolidating the galaxy from the core worlds out, and the Inquisitorius is stronger than ever,” Michnovetz said. “They're hunting Jedi and other Force users, doing all kinds of nasty work. The galaxy at large is sort of dealing with this slow rise of the Empire and different groups have different understandings of what the Empire is. The same thing goes for the Inquisitors. They’re secret mercenaries that show up out of the darkness.”

We may even learn how Marrok dies his original death in this series. The safe bet is that either Maul himself or Devon gets the upper hand on this character.

Clancy Brown (?) as Eleventh Brother

Marrok won’t be the only Sith Inquisitor to appear in Season 1 of Shadow Lord. We also catch a glimpse of Eleventh Brother, a character who previously appeared in the anthology series Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi and Tales of the Empire. We assume Clancy Brown will once again voice Eleventh Brother.

Like Marrok, it appears that Eleventh Brother has been tasked with hunting down Maul and bringing him to Imperial justice. Unlike Marrok, though, we know he won’t be getting killed off in this show. That honor was already claimed by Ahsoka in Tales of the Jedi.

The Other Shadow Lord Characters

Disney’s press release for Maul: Shadow Lord drops several other key names. We know that the cast also includes Dennis Haysbert as Master Eeko-Dio-Daki, Chris Diamantopoulos as Looti Vario, Charlie Bushnell as Rylee Lawson, David C. Collins as Spybot, and Steve Blum as Icarus. For now, it’s hard to put those names to faces we see in the trailer, but let us know in the comments if you have any ideas.

For more on the future of the Star Wars franchise, find out what to expect from Star Wars in 2026 and see why we only need one thing from Lucasfilm’s new Presidents.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.

Why pay $250 for the new AirPods 3 when you can get the 2nd generation model for way, way cheaper? Vipoutlet through its eBay store is offering open box 2nd gen Apple AirPods Pro earbuds for just $108.72 with free shipping when you apply coupon code "VIPOUTLET2026". This is the second generation model with USB Type-C and MagSafe charging case. Vipoutlet has over 600,000 eBay feedback with an average 96.2% rating.

Apple AirPods Pro (2nd Gen) for $108.72

Open box with 90-day warranty

Forza Horizon 6 is set to release for Xbox Series X|S and PC on May 19 — unless you buy the most expensive edition, which comes out May 15. This latest installment of the reliably excellent Microsoft racing series whisks drivers to Japan to get their speed on. It’s available now to preorder in a number of editions (see it at Amazon). Below, you can find out what comes in each one, how much they cost, and more. Let’s put the pedal to the metal and take a look.

Standard Edition

Deluxe Edition

Xbox

• Get it at Xbox Store (digital) - $99.99

PC

• Get it at Steam - $99.99

The deluxe edition includes the game, the preorder bonus detailed below, plus the following:

• Car Pass - 30 new cars, with one new vehicle made available each week starting May 19.
• Welcome Pack - 5 special pre-tuned cars and a Car Voucher, which can be used to claim any car available from the Autoshow. You’ll also receive 3 tickets to redeem any Common or Rare clothing items.

Premium Edition

Xbox

• Get it at Xbox Store - $119.99

PC

• Get it at Steam - $119.99

If you want everything possible included with the game, plus early access, you’ll want to preorder the premium edition. It comes with the game, as well as the following:

• 4 day early access (May 15)
• Car Pass
• Expansion 1
• Expansion 2
• VIP Membership
• Time Attack Car Pack
• Italian Passion Car Pack
• Welcome Pack

On Game Pass Ultimate

Premium Upgrade Bundle

• Get it at Xbox Store - $59.99

If you have Game Pass, but you want to get all the extras included in the Premium edition, you can purchase the premium upgrade bundle.

Preorder Bonus

Preoder any version of Forza Horizon 6, and you'll receive a "pretuned and exclusive" Ferrari J50 in the game.

What Is Forza Horizon 6?

Forza Horizon 6 is the newest installment of Microsoft’s open-world racing game. You play as a tourist who joins the races as a novice and works the way up the racing ladder. It’s set in Japan, with a variety of biomes scattered around, from the skyscraper-dense, neon landscape of Tokyo to winding mountain roads and snowy vistas. It features over 550 real-world cars, which is the most in any Forza Horizon to date. That includes special Forza Edition cars fitted with extreme modifications, as well as rare Aftermarket Cars you can collect.

What About the PS5 Version?

Games that used to be Xbox exclusives are no longer Xbox exclusives in this brave new world we find ourselves in, which means Forza Horizon 6 is coming to PS5. Unfortunately, Microsoft hasn't announced a release date for it. But with Forza Horizon 5's excellent sales numbers on PS5, you can bet it will arrive on Sony's console eventually.

More Preorder Guides

Chris Reed is a commerce editor and deals expert for IGN. He also runs IGN's board game and LEGO coverage. You can follow him on Bluesky.

If you're a Windows user who's looking for a PC version of the Apple Mac Mini, then this deal might be right up your alley. Amazon is currently offering Amazon Prime members the Kamrui Hyper H1 AMD Ryzen 7 6800H Mini PC for just $359.10 shipped with coupon code "KAMRUI119". This is a great opportunity to pick up a complete tiny PC package that includes everything - the CPU/GPU, RAM, storage, and OS - for less than the cost of a Mac Mini.

Kamrui Hyper H1 AMD Ryzen 7 6800H Mini PC for $359

Includes 32GB of DDR5-4800MHz RAM, 512GB SSD, and Windows 11 Pro

The highly anticipated next expansion for Pokémon TCG's Mega Evolution series, Ascended Heroes, is (as per usual) increasingly hard to get hold of right now. Preorders are unavailable at most major retailers, and if you missed The Pokémon Center's latest drop, then you're hard out of luck. Well, not entirely.

Trusted resale marketplace TCGplayer has just launched its selection of Ascended Heroes sealed products (see here), giving plenty of fans another opportunity to secure the new cards, albeit at a significantly higher price than MSRP.

I'll leave a link to everything that's now available in TCGplayer's presale, ready for the January 30, 2026, release. But, if that's not of interest to you, then we can swiftly move on to discussing the latest market price data on display for Ascended Heroes' sealed products.

Just to note, while Ascended Heroes will certainly be available from January 30, several products will be part of a staggered release instead. To get you up to speed, here's when to expect everything:

January 30, 2026

• Booster Collection (2 Pack)—Erika/Larry
• Tech Sticker Collection

February 20, 2026

• Elite Trainer Box
• Pokémon Center Elite Trainer Box
• Mini Tins
• First Partners Deluxe Pin Collection
• Premium Poster Collection—Mega Lucario or Mega Gardevoir

April 24, 2026

• Booster Bundle
• Mega Meganium ex Box, Mega Emboar ex Box, or Mega Feraligatr ex Box

With that out of the way, let's dig into the latest market price data on everything available right now at TCGplayer, whether it's actually worth the increased cost versus MSRP, and how it compares to the other sets from Mega Evolution so far.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder is a delightfully inventive and downright trippy video game. One of the earliest hallucinogenic bits you encounter are talking flowers. If you’re a fan of the chatty flora, you’re in luck: you can preorder a plastic Talking Flower of your own right now. They’re available at the Nintendo Store for $34.99, with a release date of March 12.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons got a big 3.0 update earlier this month, which alongside a lot of new content for everyone included a Nintendo Switch 2 upgrade with some fancy technological buffs. One of those was the ability to play with up to 12 total people on the same island, up from eight in the original version.

Sounds fun, right? Wrong. It's a nightmare. A nightmare once again spawned by Nintendo handling online functionality in the most ridiculous way possible.

I was so foolish and naive a week ago, when I first had the idea to get 12 of us together for an Animal Crossing session. It would be easy, I thought! So easy, I originally didn't even plan on writing anything about it! Let me just call up...11 other people I know who are still playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

Who also have Nintendo Switch 2s.

And somehow we'll manage to find an hour we can all do this, despite everyone being busy adults.

Okay, harder than I thought, but we did it! Last night, a group of 12 of us all logged on at once with a plan to meet up on my island. We considered using the Game Chat functionality, but decided against it due to lack of compatibility with Bluetooth headsets, the function's friending requirements, and the fact that you can't take screenshots while Game Chat is active. Discord it was, then, apparently still the second-best place for Nintendo Voice Chat (after the podcast, of course).

The plan was for an hour-long session from 9pm to 10pm last night, but I recalled that the cutscene for people landing on the island was a bit lengthy, and we'd have to watch it 11 times, so I logged on half an hour early to open my island so we could start filtering in. I was hopeful that with improved Nintendo Switch 2 loading times, it might not be so bad. And it's true, the actual loading times were notably faster, though most of the wait for people to land is a combination of said cutscene ("We'll be making a water landing, but that's OK because this is a seaplane.") and everyone saving the game each time, so we didn't really shorten the wait by that much.

But all that was to be expected. Here was where the nightmare began.

At 8:35pm, my friends began trickling in. We managed to get three people in before the entire session crashed, booting out everyone who had showed up so far and shutting my islands gates for me. I reopened at 8:46pm and we started again, this time creating a "queue" in our Discord text chat so everyone didn't try to flood in at once. At 8:58pm, one of my friends got an error that kicked her out alongside one other person, but everyone else stayed, so we brought them back and continued down the line.

At 9:19pm, I typed in Discord, "WE DID IT" as person #12 seemingly landed successfully.

At 9:21pm, as person #12 strolled in, another error occurred and two other people got kicked out. At this point, my husband (who was playing Ace Attorney next to me) started rolling his eyes.

At 9:24pm, one of the people who had been kicked out tried to rejoin, errored out, and the whole session crashed again. Every single person got booted back to their islands and my gates were closed again, just as we were finally about to taste success.

Please enjoy this timelapse video, courtesy of our intrepid Wiki writer KBABZ, of 40 minutes of us trying desperately to get everyone onto the island, only for the unthinkable to happen right at the very end:

I was undaunted. By golly, we got all these people together, we were going to hit each other with nets and drop recipe cards for each other! We started again from the top. This time I forbade everyone from doing anything once they landed aside from standing still in a line next to the airport. No menuing. No talking to villagers. Nothing. Folks started coming back in at 9:27pm. At 9:37pm, the fourth person to join crashed the island again. At 9:39pm, almost 40 minutes after our planned start time, we began yet again. Everyone posted cat pics in the Discord channel for emotional support.

This time worked. Finally, at 10:05pm, after multiple crashes and false starts, we had 12 people on my Animal Crossing island.

I'm happy to report that after the 90 minute ordeal that was getting 12 people onto one island, online play actually worked great. We all exchanged gifts, took a pic in the Town Square, explored the island, and got coffee at Brewster's. People wrote on my bulletin board and sent me letters. Some borrowed my Wario costume from the hotel. A couple people decided to play pranks, burying junk and trapping my villagers with holes. It was genuinely a pretty great time. It just, you know, took way too dang long to set up.

It's baffling to me that Nintendo's infrastructure for Animal Crossing is still set up this way. Yes, the island landing cutscene is very cute, and I do think the sea plane line is pretty funny. But why on earth do we need to sit through it 11 times, with everyone who's not traveling collectively watching a mostly-blank airport-themed loading screen? Why does everything on my island need to completely freeze and exit menus so someone can come in? Why does Group Stretching require me to be Best Friends with everyone on my island? How much worse would all this have been if we had used Game Chat? Mario Kart World doesn't have this problem!

The best explanation I can think of is that Nintendo genuinely didn't intend for anyone to use this feature in the first place. Animal Crossing: New Horizons' 3.0 update is fun, sure, but it's not creating the same massive surge in interest that existed in 2020 when we were all locked at home and had nothing better to do than ponder whatever it is that Dodos do. You're unlikely to ever need to collect 11 friends and drag them to your island all at once. Heck, given how hard this was to schedule, I'll be lucky to get four one of these weekends.

Anyway, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is still very fun to play with friends, but it's still a massive pain in the butt to actually set up the circumstances for that play to be possible. Next time I'll just get everyone together for Jackbox.

We're still checking out the big 3.0 update and all the fun new stuff that's been added. We've catalogued some of the surprising little changes, including the ability to strafe and jump, and we've got tips if you, like us, are returning to your island after a long hiatus. Oh, and check out this Zelda stuff added in the 3.0 update!

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Blogroll image screenshot courtesy of KBABZ.

Today, Game Freak's upcoming action game Beast of Reincarnation reemerged at the Xbox Developer Direct, with a lengthy segment showing off traversal, combat, its cast of characters, some dang good music, and more. Also, great news, it's apparently out this summer.

Beast of Reincarnation is a fascinating new game, and an anomaly in Game Freak's portfolio. Game Freak is, of course, best-known for developing Pokemon, a series that's grown in scope as it's transitioned to home console releases but has also seen notable declines in performance and visual quality. But Game Freak has also been increasing its other independent endeavors in recent years, with games such as HarmoKnight, Tembo the Badass Elephant, and Pocket Card Jockey.

But aside from Pokemon all of those have been fairly small-scale endeavors. Though we haven't gotten our hands on Beast of Reincarnation yet, this looks far more ambitious. It's a full-on action game, for one, with what seems to be pretty complex and multi-layered combat and movement. It's also, if the trailers are any indication, really pretty, and a departure from Game Freak's historically more cartoony style. That's led to plenty of questions as to what led Game Freak to make something like this in the first place, and whether or not the studio can pull it off. At least from what we saw today, there's reason for optimism.

I sat down with Kota Furushima, game director of Beast of Reincarnation, to chat about some of these topics, as well as get some further details on what exactly the game will be. Here's our full interview transcript, very lightly edited for clarity:

IGN: Beast of Reincarnation seems very, very different from anything Game Freak has done before. How did this game come to be?

Kota Furushima: So, it all started, I wanted to get something going. It was an original project. I wanted to try something completely different and new, unlike other stuff we've made. And it just so happened that internally, here at Game Freak, we have a program we call the Gear Project, which is sort of an internal contest run by our president, Satoshi Tajiri, to make original IP within the company. So, I entered my design doc into that contest, and I was able to get permission to start working on a project.

I should mention too, to clarify, it wasn't so much that I was trying to do something different than what we've done before. I started with the concept of the feeling that I wanted to get across to the users, the feeling of loneliness, isolation, and warmth, and the game design that we have now kind of coalesced naturally around that concept.

How long ago was it that you entered this in the contest?

Furushima: It was about six years ago.

Beast of Reincarnation does seem to be a significantly larger game than some of the other, I guess, non-Pokemon projects you've worked on before. Did the studio have to scale up significantly for Beast of Reincarnation?

Furushima: The team is quite large, as you can imagine, but I will note that it's not all folks internally here at Game Freak. We managed to seek out a lot of partner companies to work with us, companies, studios that are able to realize the vision of this game in the way that we wanted to make it, so we're lucky to have a lot of people working on it externally as well.

[PR reached out post-interview to clarify that the internal Game Freak team working on Beast of Reincarnation is "relatively small" while still playing a core role in leading the project through direction and management.]

Can you tell me about the original pitch that you entered into the contest, like what that original sort of design looked like?

Furushima: So, it was pretty simple at first. The general concept was the idea of taking a journey along with a companion. That was the main pillar of the game, and you started thinking about the feelings you wanted the player to have, and gradually, the design sort of began to coalesce around that idea of the journey with the companion.

Was there anything in particular that inspired you throughout the development of the game, other games, film, art, music, just any other art in particular that you were thinking of, as you worked on Beast of Reincarnation?

Furushima: Yeah, absolutely. I mentioned I'm a big fan of science fiction movies to start with, and because I wanted to create this new world that no one had seen before, I started really putting a lot of thought into the way world building is done and science fiction. Blade Runner was a specific one that I can mention, that does such a good job of world building. I wanted to try and create my own world in a similar sort of fashion.

So, Beast of Reincarnation, I know, was originally announced under the Private Division label when it was part of Take-Two, and then Private Division got acquired, renamed, and is now being run by different people. I'm curious if all those changes impacted the development of Beast of Reincarnation in any way.

Furushima: There's probably not much I can say about that, to be honest.

Okay, tell me a bit about the structure of Beast of Reincarnation. Is it a linear, story focused game? Is it open world, Metroidvania, something else?

Furushima: The way we created this game, it is about a journey with a beginning, middle, and end, right? It kind of conjures up images of a road movie sort of thing, so it's not open world in the purest sense. The game is comprised of different stages, but these stages I would not describe as linear either. There's quite a lot of room for exploration, a lot of radiation between the different environments and things of that nature.

What are you primarily doing in these different stages? Are you primarily fighting creatures? Are you doing more exploration? Are there puzzles? What are the main activities that you're doing as the character?

Furushima: You're doing a lot of different things in the game. I think there are no traditional puzzles to put block progress, for instance, as you saw them, but there are definitely puzzle adjacent segments of the game. For example, this game takes place in a world that's been largely destroyed, so you could come to a part where you want to get across a chasm, and the bridge has been destroyed, so you have to start thinking, "How can I get across there?" Now, luckily, Emma, the main character, has a lot of abilities at her disposal. She can extend at the vine or plant, I don't know what you call it, her hair actually. I mean, she can use that, for example, to cross a chasm instead of a bridge, right? So she has certain abilities at her disposal that can help her get through this world. Of course, battle is a huge part of the game, as well as exploration. There's definitely parts where you want to see what's off the beaten path as well.

How challenging is the combat? I'm curious if there's difficulty settings or if a casual player could pick it up and feel comfortable with counters and things like that?

Furushima: First of all, I should say that, yes, there are three difficulty settings in the game. As many people to play it as possible, there's going to be story mode. There's a little bit easier, there's normal mode, and then of course there's hard move where enemies are significantly stronger.

Even in the normal mode, it's important to note that the game is not just played through the single character of Emma. She, of course, has her companion Koo. Koo also has actions that he can use in conjunction with Emma. There's a lot of freedom and variety of what you can do in the game. Beast of Reincarnation is, of course, an action RPG. Players have the freedom to think of their own strategy and the way they're going to tap all certain situations, how to best utilize Emma's abilities and Koo's abilities to suit their own play-style with which they're most comfortable.

Can you give me an example of a type of play style you're referring to? Are we thinking the difference between close range and long range? Is it more magical or physical?

Furushima: There's a lot of variety in the game. As far as the main actions of the player that Emma is going to undertake for attacks, she largely relies on her Katana for close range attacks. She also has the ability to attack a long range with bows, crossbows, and those sorts of weapons. Koo, of course, relies primarily on what we call bloom arts, which are kind of plant-based attacks in the game. You'll find yourself up against some pretty big enemies, and the rhythm of a lot of the combat does center around pairing, countering, and things of that nature, but you also, again, have an added layer of using Koo and his abilities to your advantage as well, so there's quite a lot of variety there that different people can use in different ways to suit their own style.

What can you tell me about Emma and Koo as characters? Who are they? How would you describe them?

Furushima: One thing to note is, at the beginning of the game, Emma is kind of a blank slate. She has neither memories nor emotions or feelings when you first meet her. Koo, you'll soon discover, is what are known in this world as malefacts. He has this blight, or this corruption about him. You will notice in the game, too, that Emma herself is also a blighted one, and although this does give her special abilities, the downside of that is, of course, she's not treated well by other humans. She's living a very isolated lifestyle, essentially banished. What we have here, typically in this world, Emma would consider a creature like Koo to be an enemy because he is blighted. She typically fights against these sorts of enemies, so there's a bit of irony in this game, that she ends up teaming up with Koo and they go on this journey together.

What can you tell me about the music in Beast of Reincarnation? I really enjoyed the music that I heard in the trailer, and I was curious who was composing it and what the vision and style was.

Furushima: So, starting with the concepts of the score, again, the music is very much focused on the game's core concepts themselves, out of loneliness and isolation and learning to rely on people, that sort of motif and sort of feeling. So there's all sorts of different types of songs in the game. There's some focus on amplifying the trusting relationship that Emma develops with Koo. Some focus on the loneliness and despair of the world itself that's been destroyed. Then, we have the bosses in the game, which are called Nushi. Their music tracks tend to focus on more kind of traditional, Japanese sort of instrumentation. They give it a difference as well, so there's a lot of variety in the game.

I know Game Freak has a lot of history of delving into mythology and nature, especially with all the Pokemon designs they've done over the years to create really interesting creatures, and I'm curious if we'll see any particular myths, legends, or types of creatures in the world of Beast of Reincarnation.

Furushima: I think what you'll see in the game is a lot of the natural environments, whether it be the plant life, the flora, and the fauna in this game, the animals and the plants are very much based on the plant life and animal life that we see here in Japan and we've seen here in Japan throughout our history. Sakura, cherry blossoms would be a good example of that. It definitely has a sort of a local feel, in terms of the creatures that you'll meet.

Game Freak has received some criticism in the past few years for the performance and look of some of its 3D open world games. Beast of Reincarnation looks to be fairly ambitious. What would you say to those who are concerned that it might struggle in the same ways?

Furushima: I think when it comes to Beast of Reincarnation, and I guess we would regard it as the scale and the ambition of the title, when we approach game design, we're not looking to make, say, a title of a certain level of quality. We're looking to deliver a very specific game experience, and visual fidelity and graphics, this is something that supports that game experience, everything that goes into that. That includes things like bug fixing, optimization. Everything is there to serve the gameplay and the experience. Our focus is on that gameplay experience. Part of that, of course, is making sure that it performs really well, but our attention is more on getting the experience over to you and making sure that our vision can get to your hands and your hearts.

We just got our first lengthy, proper look at Beast of Reincarnation, the upcoming game from Pokemon developer Game Freak that, at least based on what we saw today, seems to be their most ambitious non-Pokemon game yet. But as a Pokemon fan, that does leave me with a big question: is Game Freak up for this?

Having sat wearily through Pokemon's Nintendo Switch era, I've now seen multiple releases in a row that suggest to me Game Freak has some serious struggles with home console optimization. I've written about it before, but several Pokemon games in a row have struggled with bugs, crashes, extremely distracting framerate issues, or just being generally kind of ugly. Pokemon Legends: ZA, the most recent entry, is significantly improved, but still a far cry from what Beast of Reincarnation seems to be promising.

Because that's just it: Beast of Reincarnation, at least in today's trailer, looks really nice. The environments seem lush and detailed, the action appears fluid and precise, objects and environments seem like they have texture and depth and detail. Even if you don't normally care about graphics (I sure didn't until Pokemon Scarlet and Violet), there's no denying that you need a game to run well for action combat with counters and fast reaction times to function. If Game Freak hadn't had a couple concerningly stuttery Pokemon games in a row, I wouldn't even be asking this question! But here we are.

So ask I did. I spoke with Kota Furushima ahead of today's presentation, and noted the criticisms of the performance and look of Game Freak's recent 3D open world games. I pointed out that Beast of Reincarnation seems fairly ambitious. So what would he say to those worried it might struggle?

Here's what Furushima said:

I think when it comes to Beast of Reincarnation, and I guess we would regard it as the scale and the ambition of the title, when we approach game design, we're not looking to make, say, a title of a certain level of quality. We're looking to deliver a very specific game experience, and visual fidelity and graphics, this is something that supports that game experience, everything that goes into that. That includes things like bug fixing, optimization. Everything is there to serve the gameplay and the experience. Our focus is on that gameplay experience. Part of that, of course, is making sure that it performs really well, but our attention is more on getting the experience over to you and making sure that our vision can get to your hands and your hearts.

I'm not sure that's a fully satisfying answer, but I also was warned up front that Furushima wasn't interested in speaking about Pokemon even vaguely during this conversation. Which, fair enough. And I don't think Furushima is necessarily wrong here. Pokemon is still dang fun to play, as demonstrated by my recent reviews of it as well as the sheer number of people still buying it year after year. They did prioritize the experience, in that sense. I'm just still a little concerned that they aren't concerned about the ways in which that experience can be marred by technical jank.

Regardless, I want to believe. Beast of Reincarnation looks lovely, and we'll know for sure where it stands on both experience and ambition this summer. You can read the rest of my interview with Furushima right here. And you can catch up on everything announced at today's Xbox Developer Direct right here.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.