Bard’s Tale IV‘s Special Weapons Are Also Puzzles

The puzzles in The Room series are equal parts captivating and haunting, but they have just one problem: you can’t use them to kill anybody after you’ve solved them. The Bard’s Tale IV takes its inspiration from The Room, but with weapons instead of rooms. The Bard’s Tale IV was Kickstarted by inXile back in…

Major Fighting Game Tournament Completes Its Final Round

In a lengthy announcement, Final Round tournament organizer Larry “Shin Blanka” Dixon revealed that the flagship event series will come to an end. After two decades, the fighting game community has lost one of its most prominent competitive arenas. When Dixon took to Facebook after wrapping up the twentieth installment of Final Round this past…

The Gwent Version Of This Witcher Boss Is Out Of Control

As a competitive card game, Gwent has a community of players that’s both completely devoted and perpetually grumpy. The latest target of that energy happens to be a card called Imlerith: Sabbath, a gold monster whose power was best demonstrated when it almost single-handedly won a recent match. Jan “SuperJJ” Janßen, a pro Hearthstone player…

It’s Time For Game Developers To Unionize

SAN FRANCISCO—In a small room yesterday inside the massive Moscone Center meeting complex, roughly 200 people crowded around a large table to conduct a challenging conversation about working in the video game industry. There was a single microphone, chauffeured from person to person by a sprinting staffer working the Game Developers Conference, which is running…

A Way Out Is A Must-Play

The co-op prison break game A Way Out drops tomorrow, and it’s a marvel we’d recommend to any two people who are up for playing a six-hour game together. We highly recommend you go into it blind, just knowing that it’s an adventure made for two players and does some smart, creative things. If you…

Switch’s Success Means A Changing Nintendo

Once the red-headed stepchild of the Nintendo family, indie games have now established themselves as one of the main reasons to pick up a Switch. At the forefront of Nintendo’s efforts to shore up indie support on its platforms is Damon Baker, Nintendo’s senior manager of publisher and developer relations. Next to Nintendo of America…

I Won A Game About Lying By Telling The Truth

A good game of Subterfuge can last weeks as players seek to steal territory and destroy their opponents. It’s a mobile game of deceit, backstabbing, and half-truths. This weekend I won my first game, and I barely needed to get my hands dirty at all. In Subterfuge, up to 10 players seek to control aquatic…

The Tron: Legacy Lego Ideas Set Looks So Good

2010’s Tron: Legacy’s has nothing on the 1982 original in terms of character development and story, but it looked real good. It certainly makes for an attractive new addition to the Lego Ideas line of fan-created sets. You can almost hear the Daft Punk. Submitted to the Lego Ideas program by fan builders/reviewers BrickBros UK…

Nintendo Will Hold Smash Bros. Switch Tournament In June

The debut of Super Smash Bros. on the Nintendo Switch is finally within spitting distance. On June 11-12, Nintendo will host a Smash Switch tournament at E3 where invited players will compete at the recently-announced title. At the same time, Nintendo’s Splatoon 2 World Championships will take place, featuring top teams from Canada, Europe, Australia…

The Switch’s Joy-Con Is Getting A D-Pad From Hori

This July, Japanese peripheral maker Hori is releasing a Joy-Con with a proper D-pad. Thank goodness for that! You will, however, have to trade some standard features for it. The current left Joy-Con features face buttons as does the right one. But if you mostly play in handheld mode, a left-side D-pad might be more…

Why You Shouldn’t Always Trust Job Listing Sites For Video Game News

Recently, Japanese job site CareerIndex posted that game developer Cave was looking for staff for a Yakuza game. The listing was, apparently, a mistake. According to IT Media, Cave’s stock shot up 7.1 percent. Cave is famous for its bullet hell games, but these days, it mostly makes smartphone games. The listing said Cave was…

Tokyo Just Got A New Godzilla Statue 

While this statue isn’t life-sized, this is a fitting tribute to a giant of Japanese cinema. The Shin Godzilla statue went up in Tokyo’s Hibiya, where Toho Studios was born. The plaza was previously called “Godzilla and Toho Plaza” and featured a much smaller statue that was unveiled in 1995. The plaza is now called…

Matsumoto Castle and the North Alps. Matsumoto, Japan. By Joey Elam. Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

Surprise, Zelda Won Game Of The Year At The Game Developers Choice Awards

Nintendo’s latest Zelda adventure followed up its winat the 2017 Game Awards with GOTY honours at tonight’s Game Developers Choice Awards, held as part of the 2018 Game Developers Conference. It also won Best Audio and Best Design. Tim Schafer, meanwhile, was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award, and upon receiving it gave a lengthy,…

Sonic’s Original Backstory Took Place In World War II

The backstory of Sonic the Hedgehog used to involve a fighter pilot with Sonic painted on the nose of his plane, the game’s designers said today. Game designer Hirokazu Yasuhara and character designer Naoto Oshima were on hand Wednesday at Game Developers Conference to present a “post-mortem” of the design of Sega’s classic 1991 mascot…