Techland launched Dying Light: The Beast last September for current consoles and PC, but had planned to bring the game to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One at a later date. Unfortunately for players on those platforms, those plans have been axed.
The developer/publisher posted on X stating that it will no longer bring Dying Light: The Beast to last-gen consoles due to technical issues getting the game to run well on older hardware.
“Dying Light: The Beast was built from the ground up to take full advantage of current-generation hardware,” Techland writes. “Its open world, advanced visuals, and fluid combat and traversal all depend on processing power and memory that previous-generation consoles simply cannot provide. As development progressed, it became clear that bringing the game to those platforms would require compromises that would prevent us from delivering the experience we set out to create.
This was not a matter of choosing to leave those platforms behind. Rather, it reflected the technical realities of development and our commitment to delivering the best possible experience.”
After careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision that Dying Light: The Beast will no longer be released on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Dying Light: The Beast was built from the ground up to take full advantage of current-generation hardware. Its open world,…
Techland states that any players who had planned to play Dying Light: The Beast on PS4 or Xbox One are eligible for a refund.
Dying Light: The Beast was released on September 19, 2025, and sees the protagonist of the first game, Kyle Crane, return as the playable character after suffering genetic mutations granting him special powers. We scored the game an 8.5 out of 10 in our review. Techland recently released a new edition of the game called Restored Land that adds a new persistent survival mode alongside every piece of available content.
A good puzzle is one of the best things in life. Some are relaxing time-killers, while others test our skills in critical problem solving or quick mental gymnastics; both can be incredibly satisfying. Video games can elevate these head-scratching problems to new heights and complexities by immersing you in a setting, messing with concepts like the tenants of time and space, or by simply giving you endless access to your favorite brainteasers. Here are some of our favorite modern puzzle games listed in no particular order, that you can play right now that will pleasantly twist your brain into knots.
Animal Well
PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, PC
Animal Well is a platformer, but its design philosophy is rooted in puzzle mechanics that require more lateral thinking than dexterity. Exploring the game’s surreal yet beautiful world, which teems with animals, of course, as a diminutive blob yields strange but deceptively useful items. The trick is knowing how to use them. Animal Well obscures the full breadth of capabilities for tools such as a slinky, bubble wand, or yo-yo, letting you discover what’s truly possible on your own. Fully uncovering the labyrinthine map requires examining your inventory and trying out-of-the-box ideas to see if an item lets you reach a higher ledge or bypass a deadly creature. Some items perform logical alternative functions, while others are a bit wackier (but still make sense). Overcoming obstacles is often more an exercise in problem-solving than jumping prowess, and the rich world is brimming with fascinating secrets for those clever enough to find them. | Our Review
Blue Prince
PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, PC, Mac
Plenty of genres have spilled over into the roguelite realm, but Dogubomb’s ever-shifting rogue-puzzler Blue Prince feels one-of-a-kind. Your player-character, Simon, is tasked with solving the constantly shifting Mt. Holly estate and exhuming its secrets to claim their inheritance. Every day, Mt. Holly resets, and each morning you must approach the front door and draft rooms with different effects, puzzling your way through dwindling resources as you try to venture further into this impossibly massive house. Uncovering the truth about Mt. Holly and its denizens is a spectacularly rewarding treasure box that’s certain to inspire more than a few hastily scribbled notes and feverish theories. It’s a big, big house worth getting lost in. | Our Review
Chants of Sennaar
PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, PC, iOS, Android
The people in Chants of Sennaar speak a language you do not, and to figure out what’s going on in the world, you need to become fluent. Armed with an in-game notebook and a sense of curiosity, you make your way through several cultures and learn their respective tongues using context clues. Each language has its own writing styles, grammatical rules, and key words, and it’s always satisfying to piece them together. We especially appreciate that it combines word puzzles, pattern recognition, and traditional adventure mechanics to create a truly unique gameplay loop. Even when you’re fluent in one language, you have to start fresh once you get to the next area.
Lorelei and the Laser Eyes
Switch 2, Switch, PC
Calling developer Simogo’s 2024 puzzle game “weird” doesn’t do the bizarre adventure justice, but the word “brilliant” certainly does. Lorelei and the Laser Eyes centers on a woman who visits a mysterious hotel to collaborate with its eccentric owner on a surreal art project. From there, you fall down a captivating rabbit hole of solving mind-bending riddles to unlock rooms and reach new areas of the hotel while learning more about your eager, enigmatic host. A notepad and calculator are your best friends in this complex adventure, and the epiphanies they help uncover routinely bowled us over. Lorelei’s reality-bending puzzles are superbly crafted, and the dopamine high of cracking a seemingly inscrutable problem is incredible. Lorelei’s immaculate vibes are another highlight, boasting a presentation and atmosphere as stylish as they are profoundly unsettling. | Our Review
Lumines Arise
PlayStation 5, PC
Tetsuya Mizuguchi wowed us all with 2018’s Tetris Effect (a game no longer on this list as it’s eight years old, but still absolutely worth your time today). Seven years later, he returned to his original puzzle creation, Lumines, and infused it with the humanity and impactful score of Tetris Effect, using the formula to create a dazzling new must-play block game. The puzzles of Lumines Arise are theoretically simple – rotate and use falling blocks to create larger matching blocks – but, like the best games of this genre, what begins as uncomplicated soon becomes an intricate, complex dance of rhythm, combos, and reflexes. Backed by trance-inducing visuals and a vibrant (sometimes corny), heartfelt soundtrack that work in harmony to create various stages full of falling blocks, Lumines Arise is yet another showcase of Mizuguchi and developer Enhance Games’ inspired understanding of the puzzle space. | Our Review
The Rise of the Golden Idol
PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, PC, iOS, Android
The Rise of the Golden Idol is the sequel to 2022’s excellent The Case of the Golden Idol, and it picks up hundreds of years later, with the whereabouts of the titular Golden Idol unknown and various parties searching for it. Unlike its predecessor, which takes place in the 18th Century and is still absolutely worth your time, Rise puts players in the 1970s to solve the mystery behind several connected crimes and deaths. To do so, you must observe various disco-fueled scenes, corporate offices, and more to piece together a sequence of events, objects, and people involved in a scene that has already happened. The more you learn, the stranger things get, and the closer you come to solving the mystery of the dastardly Golden Idol once more.
The Roottrees Are Dead
PC
While other puzzle games might have you find solutions to ancient mechanisms or match colored blocks, The Roottrees Are Dead uses a problem-solving skill set many of us use every day: searching in a web browser. Someone has hired you to piece together the Roottree family tree to nail down everyone’s identities, how they’re related, and reveal a hidden truth about the family, including a secret it’s spent decades hiding. The Roottrees Are Dead gamifies the act of going down a weird internet rabbit hole: by searching for key terms in a web browser, a periodical database, or even a library website, you’ll draw conclusions from the subtlest hints. It’s amazing how effective the game is at sucking you in to just search for one more term or follow one more lead, and having a wild guess confirmed as correct is supremely satisfying. | Our Review
The Séance of Blake Manor
PC
It’s 1897 in Ireland, and private investigator Declan Ward has been summoned to solve the disappearance of one Ms. Evelyn Deane from Blake Manor. That alone might make for an interesting premise, but the mystery unfolds during the gathering of an international group of occultists, scientists, and skeptics alike, as a massive séance is due to take place; one which, you fear, no one will survive. Steeped in regional folklore and layers of religious and occult influence, The Séance of Blake Manor sets a ticking clock for the player’s investigation, as they must uncover Deane’s disappearance, the motives and mysteries surrounding the other attendees, and ultimately try to stop the approaching horrors. Perfect if you want a little horror story mixed in with your Hercule Poirot.
The Talos Principle II
PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC
The Talos Principle II builds upon and expands its predecessor’s signature puzzle mechanic of guiding beams of light across obstacle courses in exciting ways. You can manipulate gravity, invert light colors, and create portals to divert beams through objects, to name a few, and the game cleverly layers these mechanics across hundreds of fantastically designed challenges. Roaming multiple large islands yields many environmental riddles, secrets, and philosophical questions for the sentient robotic protagonists to ponder as they embark on a captivating quest to learn the origins of a mysterious megastructure. Boasting a narrative that stimulates the mind as effectively as its gameplay, The Talos Principle II is the complete package for an experienced or aspiring smarty pants. | Our Review
Void Stranger
PC
Most are probably familiar with the “sokoban” style of box-pushing puzzle games. In its earliest floors, Void Stranger might seem like just another one of those. After a gorgeous opening, you descend deeper and deeper into a massive pit-dungeon, pushing blocks and solving puzzles along the way. But its mechanics run deeper. The little details – everything from a number or block position to the screen itself – start to take on deeper meanings. Solving Void Stranger’s deeper puzzles isn’t just about learning to play sokoban well, though it certainly helps. It’s about seeing the puzzles within the puzzle and finding ways to break the rules of a world that never really established too many of them to begin with. This is one for the meta-theory, red-string thinkers who love to stare at a screen and think, “Where have I seen this before?” And then, suddenly, blissfully, figuring it out.
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Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced launched last week, on July 9, and one of the various Ubisoft studios behind its development is facing impending layoffs, despite the remake’s early success. Ubisoft Barcelona, which is responsible for the game’s underwater exploration and tech, is set to lose 51 employees in the coming weeks as part of the layoffs. In response, the studio, represented by the Coordinadora Sindical del Videojuego union (CSVI), has begun a strike today that will last through Thursday, July 16, as reported by Video Games Chronicle.
During this strike, the CSVI union will be attempting to negotiate with Ubisoft over the proposed 51 layoffs. The strikers’ demands include the cancellation of the proposed layoffs, a return to the studio’s previous 60 percent remote working policy, the granting of previously promised promotions and raises, and stronger job security.
Ubisoft Barcelona workers, supported by the CSVI union, previously went on strike in February of last year in response to more than 500 layoffs at Ubisoft studios worldwide, as well as the closure of three development studios.
“Despite the game’s commercial success, 51 Ubisoft Barcelona workers will lose their jobs in the coming weeks,” a CSVI union statement on the strike reads. “After an intense production, the company claims a ‘strategic shift’ to justify these layoffs. After years of dedication to our team, the company has turned its back on us. We will never see the fruits of our labour, and the reward for our hard work will be the loss of our jobs.”
Notably, Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, a remake of the original Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, sold 2 million copies in just one day after its launch, according to Ubisoft. It also ranked Top 1 on Twitch on July 9 – its launch day – and reached a peak of 99,451 concurrent players on Steam within 24 hours of launch, “making it the highest concurrent player count ever recorded for an Assassin’s Creed title on the platform,” Ubisoft writes in a celebratory statement released yesterday on July 13.
Many Ubisoft developers and other members of the game development industry have spoken out about these layoffs, particularly as they come after the successful launch of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced; it gives further credence to the idea that layoffs in game development are inevitable – if your game struggles, layoffs, and if it succeeds, like in this remake’s case, you’re still not safe from layoffs.
The murder mystery genre clings tightly to a tried-and-true formula – a set toolbox and sequence of necessary events – that confines any story that adheres to its style. What’s so delightful about The Mermaid Mask is that it follows every rule and acknowledges every well-worn trope, but still stands with exciting and exceptional storytelling. With memorable puzzles, eye-catching animations, and a spirited voice cast, I admire the way the story was told just as much as the story itself.
Magnus Mortuga, captain of the Mortuga Submarine, has been killed, and it’s up to Detective Grimoire and his assistant Sally to solve the case. The ensuing investigation is compelling and exciting, and I’m pleased to say the conclusion is surprising and satisfying. I loved the previous title, Tangle Tower, but found its final moments to be its weakest; the culprit in The Mermaid Mask is superior, and the art and animation surrounding the investigation’s climax are perhaps my favorite in the whole game. SFB Games is also particularly skilled at writing funny, conversational exchanges between characters (which often work thanks to Grimoire and Sally’s respective line deliveries).
The Mermaid Mask takes place entirely within the aforementioned submersible, combining point-and-click gameplay with puzzle-solving and lots of conversations with the vehicle’s inhabitants. Each room is eccentric, reflecting its inhabitants, and has a backdrop scattered with evidence (the game has about 50 pieces total) for you to investigate. The sheer volume of evidence can become overwhelming later in the game, when you’re hunting for that last clue or two to trigger a confrontation to move the story forward, but an optional hint system (free of cost and punishment) can nudge you in the right direction if you feel stuck.
The game is particularly dialogue-heavy, but there’s not a boring performance in the entire voice cast. Symmetry speaks with an almost Shakespearean meter; Zephyr’s low-pitched voice is mysterious and alluring; and Sinthia’s earnest enthusiasm is endearing. Combined with charming character designs and lovingly detailed animation, the whole crew of Mortuga’s submarine comes to life from the game’s earliest moments. After completing the game, there’s an extensive art gallery showcasing early concept art for each character, complete with artist commentary. I highly recommend checking it out.
The soundtrack enhances the whole experience. Music in a game like this has to set the tone while staying out of the way of the dialogue and story. Raphael Benjamin Meyer’s orchestral soundtrack is just exciting enough to catch my ear and specific enough to fit each occasion, but subtle enough that it never gets between me and the characters I’m speaking to. I was also impressed by how many unique tracks the game has – there’s a theme for every character, and various minigames get their own songs – especially since it could have scraped by with much less.
I particularly appreciate how The Mermaid Mask makes players earn their clues and conclusions. It’s not enough to present the right evidence at the right time – there’s also a fill-in-the-blank minigame (a series staple) that asks you to draw conclusions based on relevant information. The Mermaid Mask also includes many 3D puzzles to solve, typically used to open locked boxes or reveal hidden compartments. The puzzles are also all ideas I’ve never seen before, like twisting a pig’s expression to create certain numbers, arranging a grid of peculiar skulls, or cataloging mushroom species. The puzzles often appear inscrutable, but you can solve most of them just by analyzing them hard enough, which really helped me get into the detective mindset. If you can’t figure them out, Grimoire and Sally will give a few more details on each failed attempt.
The Mermaid Mask is the best Detective Grimoire adventure yet. Its art, music, voice cast, and puzzle design are all worthy of praise, but they’re held together by a great story and a fun script, complete with all the quips and twists I’ve come to expect from SFB’s mystery series. I spent my entire playthrough engrossed and engaged, and I hope the development team gets to make plenty more sequels.
Kingdom Hearts will celebrate 25 years next year, as the first game in the RPG series, which began life as a crossover between Disney and Final Fantasy, launched in 2002. Disney will mark the occasion a bit early with a “Deep Dive into Kingdom Hearts” panel during D23 this year.
D23 is the official Disney fan club, and it celebrates with a convention called D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event every other year. This year is likely to feature our first official look at Avengers: Doomsday and other upcoming Disney movies, as well as confirmed retrospective panels on classics like Beauty and the Beast and more. While we’re a bit bummed there’s no word on appearances from in-development games like Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra, the action game starring Captain America and Black Panther, or Motive Studio’s Iron Man, the schedule Disney released today confirms we’ll be seeing Kingdom Hearts during the event.
“Join us for a journey through light and darkness as we commemorate 25 years of Kingdom Hearts,” the schedule listing reads. “Discover how this saga united Disney, Pixar, and Square Enix, with insights from the creative minds, character voices, and more behind the magic.”
Admittedly, this reads as though the panel will focus on the entire series and its history, but there’s always a chance something from Kingdom Hearts IV will be shown. After all, the game recently surprised fans by appearing in a Nintendo Direct (of all places), confirming a simultaneous console and PC release, including Switch 2. Only time will tell, but we don’t have to wait long, as D23 takes place next month, from August 14 to August 16.
Agent 64: Spies Never Die is a retro-inspired homage to Nintendo 64 shooters, namely Rare’s classics GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark. First revealed as a prototype back in 2021, the shooter is finally launching on August 11.
Developed by Replicant D6, Agent 64’s story campaign stars secret agent John Walter, who must defeat his nemesis, Dominic Pulp, to save the world. Although the first-person shooting action and level design highly evoke GoldenEye and Perfect Dark, the action features modernized enemy AI. The 14-mission story campaign can also be played solo or alongside friends in 2-player local split-screen or 4-player online co-op. Each mission offers three difficulty levels that add more objectives and areas to uncover. You can also unlock and apply modifiers and cheats, such as “big head” mode, slow bullet speeds, disabling reload, and more.
Outside of the campaign, Agent 64 features 4-player competitive local splitscreen multiplayer and 8-player online multiplayer. You can also play against bots in these modes if you don’t have enough human players. Modes include Deathmatch, Briefcase (where players must capture and hold a briefcase as long as possible to score a point), Zone (capturing map zones to score points), and Challenges, special matches against bots tasking players with achieving a score under timed conditions.
Agent 64: Spies Never Die launches August 11 for PC via Steam. It also has a Steam demo to try ahead of its release.
“Growth” is what makes a good RPG, according to Kota Furushima, the Game Freak veteran directing the studio’s newest project: Beast of Reincarnation. That word is fitting considering the lush environments, plant-riddled animals, and a main character named Emma who can grow vines at will. Of course, Furushima isn’t necessarily talking about plants here, but it’s all meant to be intertwined. “Growth from a game system perspective” but also “story… and how players connect with that,” Furushima says.
After playing 90 minutes of Beast of Reincarnation and speaking with Furushima, I am obsessed with dropping down on enemies from my own vines, eager to craft my build, hesitant about the story, and begrudgingly ready to face my most avoided skill: parrying.
I am immediately struck by the fidelity and beauty of this post-apocalyptic take on Japan. But before I can take it all in, I am running headfirst into an increasingly crowded battlefield for the initial tutorials.
A bear with dramatically long claws and tree branches fused to his back rushes towards me. It is infected with the blight, the disease rampaging through this fantasy world. The enemies are mostly forest animals, but sometimes they’re so overgrown with flowers and treebark that I can barely identify their original forms. Emma moves quickly enough that spamming attacks can be a winning strategy against the weaker enemies, but the stronger ones require more tact.
I block at worst, and parry at best, delighted to see a yellow flash indicating success. Emma also has a long-range weapon, perfect for shooting down the smaller winged creatures swooping towards her. This is all standard fare, but the combat’s secret sauce is Emma’s dog companion, Koo, who gives this real-time action a turn-based twist.
Koo can unleash a series of attacks known as Bloom Arts. Doing so consumes Florescence Points (FP), which are replenished when Emma parries. When you open the menu for Koo’s Bloom Arts, everything moves in slow motion to allow time to choose an attack. You can hold this for as long as you want, a welcome break from the quick fighting, similar to the command selection slowdown of Final Fantasy VII Remake. Once a Bloom Art is selected, landing a QTE determines its effectiveness, reminiscent of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
After getting through the opening tutorials, the world opens up a bit. Beast of Reincarnation’s areas are widely explorable, with side quests and optional items, but this is not an open world game. “There [are] approximately 10 ‘stages’ [spanning] about 30 hours of gameplay,” Furushima clarifies.
For the sake of time, I focus on the main objectives, but I take a little time to loot nearby wooden sheds and abandoned huts. I could’ve walked easily from point A to B but I take advantage of my vine abilities to grapple, make bridges, and create vines to lift Emma high into the air. These tools make exploring a novel thrill. I’ve double-jumped and climbed in hundreds of games, but I’ve never essentially vine-levitated.
A vine bridge is useful for crossing a gap, but it can be used to position yourself above an enemy for a stealth takedown. After crossing a few divides and killing a few enemies, I am tasked with slaying several robots called Corrupted Golems in an underground, industrial space. Taking them head-on probably would have been faster, but lurking from above and picking them off one by one is so much more satisfying.
Koo also helps in exploration by barking to alert you of nearby enemies and items. The enemy alerts are specific, usually having some additional UI indicator, but the item notifications are more subtle: ranging from Koo grabbing the item for you to just telling you there’s something nearby. This level of variability makes exploration and combat feel natural. “We didn’t want Koo to become this autonomous tool that basically became just another weapon for the player,” Furushima says, “nor did we want to create a situation where the player had to be very attentive to [Koo].” Koo can be downed, but thankfully that never happens in my time playing. I die long before Koo did, and I prefer it that way.
On the way to the boss, there are plenty of rest sites to restore HP and spend ability points. Their existence and the look of the menus are very Souls-inspired, but that’s where the similarities end. While Game Freak did set out to make a challenging game, avoiding overly punishing the player is apparently a core design tenet. You don’t lose anything when you die, enemies don’t respawn when you rest, and environmental unlocks stay open. So when I lose my fight against the Corrupted Golem waiting behind a locked door, I don’t have to unlock it again by redoing the battles that came prior. My runback from the last rest site is short and peaceful.
My 90-minute session culminates in a boss fight against a Nushi, one of the many powerful creatures inhabiting this land. This one is a giant deer with two phases, providing a brutal taste of what’s to come.
Once the dust settles, I am instructed over comms to return to our ship. This space offers similar features to the rest sites, plus a few extras like talking to our pilot Brad and showering Koo. This respite after a grueling fight showcases the action and tranquility Emma and Koo have ahead of them. Here’s hoping that Game Freak is growing a new hit franchise when Beast of Reincarnation comes out August 3.
The Legend of Zelda franchise has been soaring high for the vast majority of its lifespan, while the Star Fox franchise has struggled to gain traction over the course of multiple entries. These franchises exist in completely different spaces in terms of prestige and consistency. However, they do share a few similarities. Both are beloved franchises, and for many, both produced their greatest (or at the very least, defining) entry on the Nintendo 64. In 2011, both games received 3DS remasters, and this year, Nintendo surprised many by announcing remakes of both The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Star Fox 64 for release in the same calendar year 15 years later. In a vacuum, these 2026 announcements may feel strange in conjunction with one another; after all, why would Nintendo populate its second year of the Switch 2 with two high-profile Nintendo 64 remakes? But even as both franchises exist in extremely different standing within the present-day gaming landscape, returning to their iconic Nintendo 64 entries through modernized remakes makes sense for each respective series.
With Star Fox Zero releasing on Nintendo’s lowest-selling home console of all time (and the reception giving players no reason to find a Wii U to play it and Nintendo no reason to bring it to Switch), it’s been two decades since Star Fox: Assault and Star Fox Command, the last two original games released on popular systems. That means there are entire generations of people who grew up thinking of Fox, Falco, and Wolf as little more than Super Smash Bros. characters. Sure, the 2011 3DS version of Star Fox 64 probably helped somewhat in that regard, but Nintendo needed a way to reestablish the Star Fox team in the fronts of Nintendo fans’ minds. Simply naming it Star Fox, rather than referencing Star Fox 64 in the name, hints that Nintendo sees this as a starting point; if Star Fox is successful, it’s not hard to imagine Nintendo uses that as a jumping-off point to explore all-new adventures starring Fox, Falco, Slippy, and Peppy.
Now that we know the game was developed by Knockout City and Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit developer Velan Studios, 2026’s Star Fox could serve as a jumping-off point for that studio, as well. On multiple occasions, developers have told me that they have used remakes of older games to get a handle on a franchise or new technology. Longtime Pokémon developers Junichi Masuda and Shigeru Ohmori told me in 2019 that they used Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu and Let’s Go, Eevee (remakes of Pokémon Yellow) to further understand the challenges of console development versus handheld development. Meanwhile, the team at Halo Studios is in the midst of moving Xbox’s flagship franchise to Unreal Engine 5, and part of the learning process involved creating Halo: Campaign Evolved, a modern, from-the-ground-up remake of our first adventure with Master Chief and Cortana on the latest version of Unreal Engine. These remakes give development teams the ability to focus on visuals, audio, and gameplay without needing to worry too much about design and story. It’s not hard to imagine that developing Star Fox gave Velan Studios a deep understanding of the franchise’s characters, lore, and, most importantly, gameplay, which it could carry into creating its own all-new entry down the road.
For The Legend of Zelda, the franchise is already in an incredible spot; the last two 3D Zelda games are the best-selling titles in the franchise’s history, several of the games in the 40-year-old series are considered among the greatest games of all time, and Link and Zelda are getting their own silver-screen treatment next year. There’s just one problem: The Wild Era. Now, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is my personal favorite game of all time, but it’s impossible to deny that it fundamentally changed what it means to be a Zelda game. That game, along with its sequel, Tears of the Kingdom, delivered an unprecedented level of freedom for Zelda players, and by all accounts, it was unbelievably successful in doing so.
But it’s been nearly a decade since Breath of the Wild redefined the 3D side of the series, and the last traditional 3D Zelda game was 2011’s Skyward Sword, which released all the way back on the Wii. And while many longtime fans have requested Nintendo return to the more structured approach of games like Skyward Sword, Twilight Princess, and Wind Waker, anyone who got into the series through its best-selling entries, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, could view the additional structure and direction as more of a pull-back on freedom rather than a reinforcement of the narrative and game design. This means that an all-new, more linear 3D entry could be seen as a jarring step back in the eyes of newer fans, rather than the next evolution Nintendo as Nintendo would likely want it to be viewed.
Nintendo may have come to the same conclusion that, despite its success in The Wild Era, those games put the franchise in a difficult place when the time comes to reinstate the more traditional structure of the earlier 3D Zelda games. It’s entirely possible Nintendo may have also come to the same solution that I did: A remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time could be a way to delight longtime fans, while allowing newer fans to dip their toes into that more structured, linear 3D Zelda format, without the expectation of evolution. Instead of hearing there’s an all-new Zelda game and wanting a step further down the path of what was delivered by The Wild Era, newer fans would instead approach it as a modernized way to experience a classic that is considered by many as the greatest video game of all time; they would approach it as an approachable way to experience this historical game, which has a different structure from a different era. However, if done right, it would aptly demonstrate to those newer fans the value of the more linear approach to quest and world design, and then, when Nintendo ultimately returns to that format for the next mainline 3D game, the transition is much more palatable for anyone whose entire history with the franchise going into the Ocarina of Time remake was limited to Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.
It also helps that this year is the 40th anniversary of The Legend of Zelda franchise; fans had bemoaned the lack of celebration from Nintendo’s side up until it announced Ocarina of Time in June, so it accomplishes two tasks. If in the coming years, we see a new 3D Zelda adopt the structure or linearity of games like Twilight Princess and Wind Waker, we can safely assume the Ocarina of Time remake did, in fact, serve as that transitional stepping stone for the franchise. Similarly, if Velan Studios receives the chance to make its own original Star Fox title in the next few years, we can likely chalk this year’s N64 remake as a training grounds of sorts for the crafty, New York-based studio. And if neither of those come to pass, and my thoughts on why these games make sense in 2026 don’t actually pan out into the reality of the situation, I’ll still be happy that two of my favorite games from the Nintendo 64 are available on Switch 2, both in their original forms through Nintendo Switch Online, and through these modern remakes.
Developer Aerial Knight makes some interesting (and fun) games, so I’m always looking forward to what’s next from the team. Today, I learned about Aerial Knight’s MrFreezy, and it might take the record for the wildest puzzle-game pitch of all time, and I can’t wait to check it out.
Aerial Knight’s MrFreezy’s Steam page features the following, intriguing text: “Play as a woman who’s an axe murderer, who kidnaps men, locks them in a basement, and decapitates them (in this light-hearted puzzle game.” There are plenty of light-hearted puzzle games out there; there are plenty of games about serial killers, too, I’m sure. But a light-hearted puzzle game about a fictional serial killer? That’s got to be a first, right?
Check it out in the Aerial Knight’s MrFreezy trailer below:
As you can see, AerialKnight’s MrFreezy is right around the corner, launching on PC on September 1. Unfortunately, September is the busiest month of the year (as developers aim to avoid the black hole of Grand Theft Auto VI‘s November launch), so I’ll have to somehow find more time to fit this puzzle game into my gaming schedule.
Octopath Traveler and Octopath Traveler II are coming to Switch 2 on October 1. The move coincides with the series 8th anniversary.
Both games will be available separately, digitally and physically, as well as in a digital-only bundle. Octopath Traveler and Octopath Traveler II, first released in 2018 and 2023, respectively, feature improved frame rates and resolutions on Switch 2.
Unfortunately, reading the fine print of the announcement trailer states that if you own the original Switch versions of these HD-2D RPGs, Square Enix is not offering an upgrade path for the Switch 2 editions. Furthermore, save data is not compatible between the two versions, meaning you cannot transfer a Switch save to the Switch 2 version, and vice versa.
