As the technology of videogame graphics has grown and evolved over the decades, developers have been able to imbue their characters with more and more life and humanity. Subtle animations and mo-capped facial expressions give heroes and villains a believable inner life that enables more emotionally resonant stories to be told. But that’s all a bit of a waste of time, as it turns out, because Void Sols took about 15 seconds to get me feeling empathy for a triangle. 

In this soulslike’s abstract world, people and creatures are just shapes. At best, larger beings may combine two or three shapes together. The environments are a little more textured, but still simple and boxy with stripped-back details—a flaming torch is just a glowing circle, while a treasure on the ground is a bundle of triangles.

And yet it’s brilliantly atmospheric. The opening sees your little triangle hero in a prison cell next to another identical triangle. When your fellow inmate is dragged out and murdered by the guards in front of you, you immediately understand the trouble you’re in. From that moment on, I stopped seeing shapes, the abstract visuals allowing my mind to fill in the details without me even realising. A big, slow-moving circle becomes a lumbering knight, a quick little diamond becomes a sneaky assassin, and my lonesome triangle becomes a brave adventurer, fighting to escape a nightmarish prison. Simple but well-deployed music and sound effects complete the illusion.

I am not prepared for the final battle of Dragon’s Dogma 2. My borrowed pawns are underleveled, I’m running low on healing supplies and, after playing non-stop for 12 hours, I am very tired. I should have been smashed to bits, but something clicks as I’m scurrying underneath the massive dragon. I become one with my duospear, and I carve the scaly bastard up a treat. He goes down and I allow myself a tired “whoop!” before looking sheepish. I’ve bloody done it. 

As the credits roll, I’m beckoned towards the sovran’s throne. I can usher in a new era of peace as the Arisen who defeated the dragon. But sitting amongst the oblivious nobles is a ghostly figure: my spectral guide, the Pathfinder, whose identity remains a mystery even as the game is poised to end. He’s annoyed when I chat with him, as if he’s just waiting for me to finish the game so he can go to the pub with his mates. But I don’t like being told what to do. I chat with him again. He’s angry this time. 

This is when I realise the game is absolutely not over. 

My refusal to simply accept my fate causes my guide to transport me out of the castle and back in time. The dragon is alive once more, and we’re hurtling through the sky towards our final battle again. I have no idea what’s going on or what I should do. I decide to crawl towards his weak spot. Maybe I can stab him before we land? But I can’t do that. What I can do, however, is equip the Godsbane sword I was gifted by the first Arisen countless hours before. And I stab myself in the heart. 

Get ready for some close-up card-driven brawling, because battler Fights in Tight Spaces has a sequel-spinoff coming: Knights in Tight Spaces, a fantasy themed throwdown that’ll have you take a party of ruffians engaging in a tactical brawl against not just action movie mooks like the first game, but skeletons and wizards and rock monsters.

It’s just as stylized as the first game was, though definitely refined into something even prettier than before, with a hybrid kind of lined and woodcut print looking aesthetic that’s much easier to read than the prior game’s black-and-red-on-white.

While it’s had several hotfixes already this year, Darktide will be getting its first significant 2024 update in late April. As developer Fatshark explains on its blog, this update—called the Path of Redemption—includes a reinvented penance system. Previously, penances were achievements that occasionally rewarded players with a cosmetic. Under the revised system, the points earned for completing them will progress you along a track of cosmetic rewards including, “frames, insignias, trinkets, emotes, end of round poses, character cosmetics, and weapon skins” as well as backpacks, titles, and cosmetics based on the outfits worn by the characters in Darktide’s trailers and art.

To add some much-needed variety to missions, they’re having new “puzzles, challenges, and collectibles” added to them, though the blog post doesn’t go into specifics on those. It does mention one new enemy, a Dreg Tox Bomber who throws blight grenades, and a new condition called “Pox Gas”.