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Indie studio NuChallenger has announced that their dark comedy, retro-styled action game Treachery in Beatdown City will see its first episode drop on March 31 for Nintendo Switch and PC.

Treachery in Beatdown City has its tongue firmly in cheek from the start, with its set-up announcing that US President Blake Orama has been kidnapped by Ninja Dragon Terrorists, and the billionaire mayor refuses to help.

The first episode will feature five urban maps set in the city of East Fulton, where players have “the freedom to fight how they want against an increasingly ridiculous cast of enemies,” as the game’s Steam page advertises. The fighting game challenges players to go in-depth with its combat system, creating customized combos with strikes, grapples and “strikeagrapples”.

Players can choose from three different player characters: “Lisa, the Boxing/MMA expert, Brad, a pro-wrestler with a love of fire, and Jeet Kune Do/Capoeira fighter Bruce,” according to the Steam description.

The game features music from chiptunes artist Inverse Phase, and a retro visual style inspired by 80s fighting games and The Ren & Stimpy Show.

Treachery in Beatdown City will release on March 31 on PC via Steam and Nintendo Switch. The EP by Inverse Phase is available now on Bandcamp.

Guilty Gear Strive has a new trailer, and it brings with it two more characters. The latest characters shown off are, in Guilty Gear lore, a couple–Millia Rage and Zato-1. Millia still attacks with her hair, while Zato-1 can summon up shadows to fight for him.

The trailer shows off how these two characters fit into the Guilty Gear Strive art style, and how their moves have been adapted into the new game. Long-time fans of the series will likely see some familiar attacks in here.

You can watch them both in action below.

Millia and Zato-1 are not scheduled to appear in the game’s upcoming closed beta, which will begin on April 16.

Guilty Gear Strive is coming to PlayStation 4 and arcades later in 2020. The other fighters confirmed for the game so far are Sol Badguy, Ky Kiske, May, Faust, Potempkin, Chipp Zanuff, and Axl Low.

Dauntless’s latest update is available now, adding a brand new Escalation quest that features the game’s biggest Behemoth yet.

The free-to-play game is often compared to Monster Hunter, with a focus on building epic loot from materials dropped by the epic beasts you can hunt. The newest update adds fiery versions of some of the game’s existing Behemoths, as well as a brand new monster as the boss of the gauntlet-like Escalation quest.

The update also adds new legendary weapons, armor and amps, as well as a new Hunt Pass called Searing Talons with even more exclusive gear. The Hunt Pass adds extra bonuses for players who pay for the Elite upgrade, as well as offering the ability to pay to skip through the levels for easier loot.

Scorched Earth is the game’s first big update since developers Phoenix Labs were acquired by Singapore gaming giant Garena, the company behind mobile battle royale game Free Fire.

Dauntless is available for free on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch, with its PC version available on the Epic Game Store. A mobile version is also in the works.

Thatgamecompany’s latest game Sky: Children of Light is, like many games in the crowded mobile market, built on a free-to-play model designed to be sustained by microtransactions. In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, studio co-founder Jenova Chen has talked about the delicate balance needed to support an ongoing game financially without its in-game purchases feeling too predatory.

Since its inception, Thatgamecompany’s games have bucked industry trends by focusing on interaction and exploration in a market flooded with action and combat. Their latest mobile game Sky: Children of Light, currently available for iOS, is no different despite its new business model.

Chen says that when they were researching other freemium business models, microtransactions were often built around conflict and competition. “The more I played these games, the more I felt like the developer was like an arms dealer,” he told GamesIndustry.biz. “They’re selling weapons for whoever wants to pay to win. The conflict is what drives spending. That’s definitely something I don’t want to associate with.”

Instead of leaning into these systems, or using the gambling-like gacha model, Chen says they instead leaned into the social aspect of the game–helping not only provide a different type of value to microtransactions, but also to keep players engaged in between new content drops from the developers.

“Everyone understands if we just continue to produce content, like a premium game, the player will always consume it faster than you’re making it. So we shifted our strategy to focus on how we could build a park where people who love this type of game can find a social space,” he said. “What keeps the players around is the other players, not the game.”

In line with this philosophy, the in-game economy was instead built around gifting and giving, encouraging social connections between players–though in testing Thatgamecompany soon discovered it was necessary to give players the ability to be at least a little selfish. “When everything is about giving, people start to do quid pro quo and sometimes when you gift something to someone and that person doesn’t return the favour, you get angry because you’re expecting it to return.”

By re-introducing some “selfish” purchases, however, this transactional impulse was balanced out.

The full interview has plenty of other insights into the development of Sky, and how the same design theories that were used in Thatgamecompany’s other games were implemented into the mobile title.

Sky: Children of the Light is available for iOS, and will be out on Nintendo Switch in Summer 2020. Pre-registration is available on Android while PC and console versions are in the works.

GameSpot’s review called Sky “an ambitious evolution of thatgamecompany’s previous endeavors without straying too far away from what has made them special.” Read our full review here.

If you’ve logged into the Dreamervse in the PlayStation 4 game Dreams, you’ve undoubtedly come across levels that are made with characters and IP owned by various game companies beyond Sony.

One popular gaming franchise that is getting a lot of attention inside Dreams is Mario, and Nintendo is reportedly not very thrilled with its franchise being used in this manner. Creator Piece of Craft wrote on Twitter (via GoNintendo) that Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe recent contacted them with a message from Nintendo stating its objection to the use of Mario in Dreams.

As you can see in the image below, Piece of Craft’s creation has been removed from Dreams on the basis that it “contains copyrighted material.” Plenty of other Mario levels inside Dreams remain online and available, however, including “Super Mario Infinity,” which you can see at the bottom of the page.

Mario is just one of many copyrighted franchises that exists in Dreams right now. These kind of takedown notices are likely to continue as company’s take notice and take action.

Dreams is much more than a game. It’s a suite of robust game-making tools that have spawned countless fascinating and impressive creations.

For what it’s worth, Dreams developed Media Molecule plainly and openly stated before launch that players who made levels based on copyrighted materials should expect their creations to be removed.

GameSpot’s Dreams review scored the PS4-exclusive a 9/10. “It’s a stunning achievement that encourages limitless creative expression, a place where people can come together, collaborate, and explore each other’s imaginations,” reviewer Richard Wakeling said.

Warning: Spoilers for The Walking Dead episode “What We Become” follow…

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With tonight’s Walking Dead episode “What We Become” marking star Danai Gurira’s final appearance on the series as Michonne (as she and the character head off into the Rick Grimes movie trilogy), both Gurira and Walking Dead Chief Content Officer Scott M. Gimple appeared on AMC’s Talking Dead after show to discuss the episode and Michonne’s surreal “Sliding Doors”-style exit.

Despite her character not dying, and living on to exist in a different Walking Dead property, Gurira was still, understandably, emotional about this episode. “It’s overwhelming, in a sense, to have walked on this journey with this amazing character and this amazing family, the Walking Dead family out there in Georgia, for all these years.”

“[The episode] was an insane mind trip in so many ways,” Gurira said, though she was hesitant to give this alternate Michonne a label. “I don’t know if I’d call her evil, but she made a different choice at a pivotal moment. And there’s this crazy aspect of how this one choice can send you on entirely different path.”

Gimple then spoke about what he and the writers wanted to convey with Michonne’s final chapter on the show. “At the end of the day, we wanted to give an idea of what the point of the whole thing was,” he shared. “The whole journey. And she enters the story by helping someone. She chose to stop and turn and help a stranger. Over the course of seven seasons she changed. She became vulnerable. She opened up. Now, in this episode, she has a lead on Rick, which is earth-shaking. It changes everything. She has to go. And even as she does that she crosses people who need help. And we see that’s who she really is now. Even though she’s on the most important journey of her life.”

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Michonne as Negan’s Enforcer

Gurira was asked about recreating several moments from the show’s past, including the infamous Negan lineup. “[Michonne] could have chosen to let Andrea die. She was in this moment where she was very disconnected from her humanity. Just one little knock on her heart got through her armor and she saved Andrea and everything changed. But she could have done what we watched in this episode. I found that very chilling. One choice compounds upon itself. And the very idea that she ends up with Negan felt plausible.”

“Just the aspect of being aligned with Negan, I think that alone was freaky,” she said. “[Jeffrey Dean Morgan] and I had this bizarrely good time but you’re just still freaked out that you’re doing that as an actor. But it was all plausible. The idea that there was a part of her, if she’d gone a different way, that made their connection plausible. It was a chilling thing. We spent a lot of time shooting that lineup scene originally. That scene was deeply traumatic, you know, losing Glenn and losing Abraham, and so to recreate it and to be on the other side of it…we set it up in the exact same place, the RV was behind us, and there was Negan with the bat. Everything was very chillingly the same as that night except I was batting on the other side. It was deeply trippy.”

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What’s Next for Michonne

While Michonne’s move to the Rick movies hasn’t been made official, it’s one of the worst kept Walking Dead secrets at this point. And Gimple, while not being able to say anything outright, certainly teased as much.

“I can say this: Both Rick Grimes and Andy Lincoln would not give up those boots very easily,” he said. “There’s the etching. There’s a Japanese phrase there. There’s Michonne, and there looks to be a more current Judith than perhaps Rick…yeah, there you go. Is he alive? Is he dead? What’s the situation. Those are clues that there’s a whole story unfolding somewhere.”

When Michonne saw those boots, she confronted a part of herself that she had to bury long ago. “[Seeing Rick’s boots] feeds something inside of her that she’s tried to keep down for many years, that she put aside for the good of everyone around her,” Gurira said. “It was an awesome thing for me to see Michonne get back. To get connected to him again to have some of her hunches start to be validated.”

“[Rick leaving] was last year for us, as viewers of The Walking Dead, but for Michonne it’s been years,” Gimple added. “To see this, it just pulls her through time. It’s a whole other world.”

“Her story isn’t done,” Gimple concluded. “And the thing we were so happy to find, thematically, was we were able to conclude the character. Michonne is the person who would help those people at the end, even though she has no idea who they are. And they have this weird fashion sense. And she has a lead on Rick. And we see this group, this organized, nomadic, strong-looking group. And she’s going to them on behalf of these other people. Something’s going on here. It was great to see the character fulfill her arc in the story while also opening up a whole other story while on the road to a story we want to know more about, which is Rick.”

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Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN and a member of the Television Critics Association. Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at Facebook.com/MattBFowler.

Warning: this review contains full spoilers for Batwoman: Season 1, Episode 16. If you need a refresher on where we left off, here’s our review for Season 1, Episode 15.

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They say a hero is only as compelling as their archenemy. That’s certainly been true for Batwoman in the Arrowverse. This series only really seems to thrive when Alice is handled with an appropriate amount of depth, which hasn’t always been the case. But potholes aside, the series has by and large seen dramatic improvement on the Alice front ever since Crisis on Infinite Earths. “Through the Looking-Glass” continues that trend, proving once again that Alice works best when she’s less an outright villain and more a distorted reflection of her twin sister.

The lines between the two are more blurred than ever, with this episode exploring the fallout of Kate’s little act of manslaughter. Initially, it doesn’t seem as though Episode 16 is really going to take advantage of that twist, with Alice playing the usual “betray her family and scamper off into the night” card once again. Thankfully, it’s not long before the plot kicks back into gear as Alice discovers her entire gang slaughtered and realizes Kate is her only hope. We can probably assume that’s the handiwork of Mabel Cartwright, but whatever the case, that killer is a problem for another day.

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Once the Kane sisters are reunited, this episode does take advantage of their evolving dynamic and Kate’s difficult emotional journey. Crisis: Part 2 continues to cast a long shadow over the series. Without ever having to overtly reference that episode’s Kate/Bruce reunion, we know exactly what’s going through Kate’s mind as she grapples with a line crossed and the fear she’s doomed to become the unrepentant killer Alice and Evil Bruce are. Maybe it’s just in the family genes?

Once again, the series proves that Alice works better as an agent of chaos whose goals occasionally align with those of her sister, rather than a straightforward villain. There’s plenty of good sibling drama to be found her, but also a welcome dose of humor and even a little low-key bonding time. This has been a common refrain in recent reviews, but Rachel Skarsten’s performance really benefits from the opportunities to play Alice as a multifaceted character who isn’t constantly putting on a scenery-chewing persona.

All of this culminates nicely in the raid on Arkham Asylum. The fight scenes are entertaining, if a bit hindered by the same lighting and visibility problem that’s plagued so many Arrow episodes. Through it all, there’s the nagging question of why Kate is willing to go so far to help her sister when it means turning two hardened, mentally unstable criminals out in the world. The answer is very satisfying. Alice winds up being hoisted on her own petard for a change, and the result is another deeply heartfelt, traumatic moment between the two sisters. They seem forever doomed to be driven apart whenever there’s a hope of reconciliation.

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Thankfully, the Luke-centric B-plot is able to hold up its end surprisingly well. The series has been slow to flesh out Luke and transform him into something more than just another snarky Arrowverse tech dude. But with this week delving much deeper into the mystery of Lucius Fox’s death and Luke’s conflicted emotions, the character is finally getting the attention he deserves. That this comes at the same time Julia Pennyworth returns to town is just icing on the cake. This episode successfully builds an intriguing conspiracy out of Lucius’ murder and makes Luke a more critical piece of the Season 1 puzzle. Even Sophie seems to benefit from being drawn into this tangled web. In general, Batwoman is just a more interesting series thanks to these most recent two episodes.

The developers of Halo Infinite have shared another behind-the-scenes look at how they are capturing sounds for the game, and, like the ones before it, this latest video is a delight.

The team at 343 Industries visited the Powerland Heritage Park in Oregon to record steam engines that will serve as the inspiration for some of the sounds you’ll hear in Halo Infinite. Specifically, the steam engines will bring to life some “mechanical sounds” for Halo Infinite.

Check out the video below and try to guess what these sounds may be used for in Halo Infinite. It’s always a special treat to see these types of videos.

These are just the latest behind-the-scenes videos from 343. Earlier this year, 343 showed off how it capture Halo Infinite’s weapon and car sounds. And in 2019, the developer shared a video of a cute little pug whose snuffs and scruff sounds will be put into Halo Infinite.

Halo Infinite is a launch title for the Xbox Series X. Despite the development team now working from home, the game is expected to release this holiday alongside the next-gen console. Halo Infinite will also be released on Xbox One and PC.