In the tradition of indie classics such as Limbo and Inside, comes a new action adventure starring a cartoon octopus caught up in an alien invasion.

We don’t actually play that many video games that are truly awful, since there’s usually nothing of note about them to make a review worthwhile. There’re occasional exceptions, like the mind-bogglingly terrible Code Violet and the baffling MindsEye, but most of the worst games are just worthless slop of the sort Sony is currently trying to clear out from the PlayStation Store.

The majority of video games aren’t unusually good or bad, they’re somewhere in the middle. And so it can be difficult to know which are worthy of further investigation, given there are dozens of new indie games released every week, even at quiet times of the year.

We’re not familiar with French developer ZDT Studio, since this seems to be their debut game, but since the graphics for Darwin’s Paradox looked good, the publisher is Konami, and octopuses are cool we decided to give it a go. In the end we wish we hadn’t, not because it’s terrible but because it’s so deeply average.

Maybe average isn’t entirely fair. The graphics are really good for an indie game and on paper your octopus powers are all very neat, including the ability to camouflage yourself; shoot out ink to cover your escape; and walk along any surface, including the ceiling, like a spider (which we’re pretty sure octopuses can’t do, but whatever).

Darwin’s Paradox is, rather randomly, named after Charles Darwin’s discovery that tropical seas don’t seem to contain enough nutrients to sustain coral reefs, despite the fact they’re teeming with life. That has nothing to do with the game, other than the octopus you control is called Darwin, whose friend is captured by secret aliens running a food processing company and planning to invade Earth.

What this translates to in gameplay terms is a 2D platformer influenced by the likes of Limbo and Inside, but swapping melancholic mystery for cartoon silliness. Darwin spends a surprising amount of time on dry land but whether he’s hiding from guards or trying not to get eaten by a moray eel everything works in the same general way.

His camouflage ability is basically a cloak of invisibility and as long as you activate it in time you become completely invisible to enemies. Although it does take a while to complete, so you spend a lot of time slowly inching your way across the screen, spending more time going into camouflage than moving or hiding.

Spraying ink is only good for masking your movement underwater but the gob of liquid you shoot out can be aimed quite precisely and so ends up getting used to activate switches and machinery when you’re on land. Although you don’t have any offensive abilities at all.

The climbing on any surface gimmick is used a surprising amount and while it seems quite clever at first it’s fiddly and inconsistent. Not enough to be a total wash but certainly enough to irritate, with sticky and slow movement that makes you constantly wish you could just get back in the water, where you’re much more mobile. The worst thing, though, is the game is filled with trial and error traps that often cannot be foreseen.

The checkpointing is generous enough that you don’t usually have to repeat too much but it’s still frustrating getting caught out by something you couldn’t have anticipated, especially as it happens so often. Even without this, the puzzles just aren’t interesting enough to engage you, as the solution is usually instantly obvious but pushing items where you want them or getting a pixel perfect jump just right is frequently more difficult than it should be.

As the scope of indie gaming begins to grow wider, from tiny games made by a single person to those whose scale begins to rival low-end games from traditional publishers, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to judge how fair their price tags are.

Darwin’s Paradox is relatively expensive and it’s only around six hours long and yet you can see where all the money went, as the cartoonish visuals are excellent and mixed in with almost photorealistic backdrops. That said, it’s never actually funny, no matter how often Darwin’s googly eyes try to emote as he’s being pecked to death by birds or squished by alien machinery.

Despite its attempts to provoke a reaction we found it impossible to hold any strong feelings about Darwin’s Paradox. It’s competently made, very pretty, and almost completely uninteresting. The dull and long-winded puzzles are the biggest problem and give the impression that the whole game was designed around the visuals, with everything seemingly having been worked back from there.

That’s never been a good way to make a video game and while this is an acceptable enough way to waste away a rainy Sunday afternoon, that’s about as positive as we can be about it.

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC
Price: £19.99
Publisher: Konami
Developer: ZDT Studio
Release Date: 2nd April 2026
Age Rating: 7

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After Square Enix prevented the game from being reviewed before launch, a passionate fan of Life Is Strange gives her opinion of what may be the last entry in the series.

It’s a strange cosmic space to occupy, being both a Pricefielder, who sacrificed Arcadia Bay in the first game to stay with Chloe and a gamer largely unsatisfied with the frictionless writing of Reunion, the game expected to be the death knell of the franchise for Square Enix and developer Deck Nine.

After the critical flop of Double Exposure, insider gossip suggests that Deck Nine shifted their plans for Reunion. So perhaps we will never truly know how much of Chloe’s return was planned and why Square Enix previously took such a hard line approach to shutting down fan criticism of her absence in Double Exposure.

What the rumours also suggest is that many of Deck Nine’s developers were laid off as the project wrapped up. The combination of a short development schedule (Double Exposure was only 2024), reduced staff, and a possible story pivot has led to a game that would have perhaps been better suited as an apology DLC, à la Mass Effect 3’s Citadel DLC.

The studio (and/or Square Enix) has made the decision that this curtain call should be a love letter to Max and Chloe – the heroines and potential lovers from the original game – while hoping that nostalgia will make up for the disappointments of Double Exposure. Chloe’s return is certainly a welcome change from the Avengers style team-up that the ending of Double Exposure seemed to be hinting at. Although retconning the ending of Double Exposure as Max’s ‘Storm Amnesia’ is a bad way of doing it.

If you’ve ever been in a lesbian situationship, you will be familiar with elongated conversations about each other’s feelings and extended, longing handholding. Rest assured, the title delivers firmly on this premise. There’re also some fun Easter eggs available via Max’s time-rewinding superpower, which makes for a fun touch of extra detail.

The game shines when you get to play as Chloe, who is as outspoken as ever, but now with a decade of extra lived experiences, leading to some funny interactions with pre-established characters in the town of Lakeview.

However, Deck Nine’s attempt to fix the damage caused by Double Exposure unfortunately doesn’t change the fact that the game is still its sequel, so it continues to struggle with many of the same problems.

An average playthrough takes around nine hours and is missing the chapter structure Life is Strange fans will be accustomed to. The reduction in scope plays out across the limited mechanics, with very few proper quick time events, let alone any action sequences that aren’t pre-rendered cinematics. I established very early on that you could walk away from the controller without fear of messing up a quick time event or interrupting the flow of a scene.

Chloe’s much advertised backtalk feature, where she’s able to bamboozle antagonists and talk her way out of trouble, appears a mere three times and is a shadow of what could have been. It’s lovely to return to Max’s rewind powers, even if their use is a little limited in places, but it does lead to some narrative inconsistencies.

Locations in-game are incredibly limited and are mostly sections of locations already seen in Double Exposure. There’s a lot of those moments throughout the game, where we are given an off-screen hint at things that would have been really cool to see play out on a grander scale.

The game does shine when it is allowed to do things without reference to Double Exposure. The Abraxus house section is certainly the most well-designed section of the game, feeling like a return to form for the franchise. The game is at its darkest here, and the split perspective between Max and Chloe works well, despite the continued issue of a lack of player agency.

Reuniting Chloe and Max is the game’s saving grace. However, I can only wonder whether any of this was even necessary. In my playthrough of the original game I left Chloe and Max racing off into the sunset together – having to piece back together their lives in the fallout of Max’s decision, rightly or wrongly, to sacrifice the Bay.

Unfortunately, having also played the version where Chloe died in the school bathroom, I can say that the story here is weak – Max’s reactions are noticeably reduced to the bare minimum that can be reused across both timelines.

The game’s retconning of the core ideas and lessons of the original is its biggest crime. In Life is Strange, regardless of your final choice, we learn, alongside Max, that even superpowers cannot fix everything. Grappling with the topic of evil and moral choices is what made it so compelling, leading to the continued debate between Arcadia Bay-ers and Ba-ers over the last 10 years of fandom.

But now there is no debate, because Max can have her cake and eat it.

Reunion’s writing establishes a universe where anything is theoretically possible. Could Max simply jump into a childhood photo and save Rachel? The consequences of her time travel and the butterfly effect seems to have been solved and sidelined in Reunion. The way to prevent the collapse of the space/time continuum is to merely think it away.

The merging of timelines creates a paradox, so that Chloe and Safi both simultaneously exist and don’t exist. It’s established that merely thinking about this causes the two to be transported into the Overlight – a dream place where they blink out of existence for a few seconds. The fact that this is solved by the power of ‘not thinking about it’ may feel a little unsatisfying.

Meanwhile, Safi is reduced to a strange pantomime villain role, no longer on her mission to find other people with superpowers, but popping up periodically to confuse Max. Her pressing concern is that she believes herself to be half-dead, revelling in the nihilism of her semi-existence and attempting to bring down Chloe with her. Unfortunately, I found myself agreeing with her at many points in the game.

I’m not sure if it was a deliberate message by an upset developer, or divine intervention, but Safi is the character that sums it all up, late on in the game, lamenting that ‘All of us have the seeds of our deaths planted inside of us. But I’m trying not to focus on mine while I still have a life left to live.’

Unfortunately for the Life Is Strange franchise, the seeds of its death were sown long, before this final entry, and this attempted quick fix, to get things back on track, isn’t nearly good enough to achieve that goal.

Whilst ultimately an underdeveloped entry, it does make for a loving send off for Max Caulfield. Unfortunately, being another weak entry, it may also play that role for the franchise itself.

Score: 5/10

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £44.99
Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: Deck Nine
Release Date: 26th March 2026
Age Rating: 16

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A new indie puzzle game from the creator of ElecHead is one of the best releases of the year – and also one of the cheapest.

We are glad that Nintendo tries to highlight new indie titles, in their semi-regular Indie World showcases, but their irregular schedule and short running time means they can only cover a tiny fraction of all the games that are released. Add in the strange obsession with shadow drops – which means there’s often no way to review many of the titles until long after they’re out – and we’re not sure how much many of the games really gain from the exposure.

Öoo wasn’t in the most recent Indie World for the UK and we had no idea it even existed until a reader pointed out it has been in the Japanese version of the showcase. Given it has only two reviews on Metacritic, we’re clearly not the only ones. Why it wasn’t featured in the Western version we don’t know, but it’s unclear whether the companies have to pay to be included in the shows.

The game is primarily the work of just a single person, with Japanese indie creator Nama Takahashi having previously made 2021’s ElecHead. That’s also a game that escaped our attention the first time round, but now that we’ve become aware of Öoo we can confidently say it’s one of the best games of 2026.

We’re not sure how you’re meant to pronounce the game’s name, which is actually a pictograph of the caterpillar creature you play as, with the umlaut taking the role of his little antenna. That’s all very clever but as we’ve said many times before, indie games where there’s any confusion over how you say or spell their name are not a good idea and it’s infuriating how many times developers keep doing it.

To add insult to injury there is already a game called oOo: Ascension, which came out in 2018 and is also on the eShop. We’ve no idea what it is, but it doesn’t seem to involve exploding caterpillars.

There is no real story to explain what’s going on but the idea is that each segment of the caterpillar is made out of a bomb, which can ejected and exploded at will – assuming you’re on the ground at the time. If you’re within the blast radius you won’t be killed but will instead be launched forward, essentially allowing you to jump; what direction you move in depends on what side of the bomb you were sitting on when it went off.

At first you can only use one bomb at a time, but when you gain the ability to use two at once the puzzles get exponentially more complicated and interesting. Bombs can, in classic Zelda style, also be used to destroy walls and set off switches, and so you learn to not only launch yourself but also the other bomb, in order to get it where it needs to be.

That makes Öoo sound like a Metroidvania, especially as you’re stuck in a maze-like 2D world where some areas seem completely inaccessible at first. But while there are some small similarities with things like Animal Well the second bomb is the only extra one you get and all the new abilities you learn are really just tricks and exploits of the game’s in-built mechanics, that it’s entirely up to you to work out.

It may look like an old ZX Spectrum game, but Öoo is an incredibly clever sandbox puzzle game. It’s not a direct comparison but it reminded us very much of the superb Baba Is You, in the that the game sets up the rules for you at the start and you have to work out how to interpret and stretch them into solving the puzzles. Nothing is scripted and everything feels organic, as you slowly realise the logical extent of you powers and how they can be used to your advantage.

The game doesn’t just drop you off in the deep end though, as there’s a lot of what is the puzzle game equivalent of signposting, as new techniques are hinted at and then you ended up being teleported back to an earlier location, where you realise you can actually progress through it after all.

Unlike the cold and unforgiving The Witness, Öoo seems to actively want you to succeed and to not get frustrated. There are plenty of checkpoints, no penalties for dying, and while the game’s certainly not linear it won’t have you exploring aimlessly for too long; especially as areas are blocked off by frogs that require you to feed them flies before they’ll let you pass.

As with all good puzzle games, the obstacles seem absolutely impossible right up until the moment you work out what you’ve got to do, and you kick yourself for not realising how easy it was after all. Some obstacles require careful timing, which can be a little frustrating, but it’s a rare problem and for the majority of the time it’s brainpower and not fast reflexes that are most important.

Sandbox gaming might be more commonly associated with giant open world games but the much more modest confines of Öoo are infinitely more engaging and versatile than most titles a thousand times its budget. Your progress is impeded only by your own imagination, and the game is a master at stimulating it and making you feel like a genius for every problem you solve.

Formats: Nintendo Switch (reviewed), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £8.50
Publisher: AMATA Games
Developer: Nama Takahashi
Release Date: 3rd March 2026
Age Rating: 7

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From one of Capcom’s most experienced producers, and a new team that’s worked on everything from Monster Hunter to Far Cry 4, comes an exciting new action RPG with a roguelike tinge.

With the continuing drip-feed of news about games developers around the world shuttering or suffering layoffs, it’s always pleasing to welcome a new one to the industry. Japanese outfit GPTRACK50 first emerged in December 2025 at The Game Awards, with an intriguing teaser trailer for its first game, Stupid Never Dies.

It features a zombie protagonist, a cartoonish, hyper-coloured art style, and a brief hint of some epic-looking action. Now, the developer has given us the first in-depth (hands-off) presentation of the game, and our intrigue has transformed into anticipation.

With its wacky storyline and distinctive visuals, Stupid Never Dies has a slight whiff of a Suda51 game, such as the recent Romeo Is A Dead Man. But before drilling down into its gameplay, it’s worth putting it into context by examining the background of this new developer.

GPTRACK50 was founded, and is helmed by, a bona fide big beast of Japanese development, Hiroyuki Kobayashi, who previously spent 28 years at Capcom, with production credits spanning various Resident Evil and Devil May Cry games; Kobayashi was also the driving force behind Dragon’s Dogma and was producer on Suda51’s killer7.

He also headed up Capcom’s drive to turn its intellectual property into films and is keen to point out that amongst the team of around 30 people are developers who worked on the likes of Resident Evil 4, Monster Hunter: World, Far Cry 4, Final Fantasy 15 and Metal Gear Solid 5.

Kobayashi spoke about how keeping his team to 30 people allows the studio to remain agile and even though the company has only existed for three years, he was adamant that Stupid Never Dies will be released in 2026.

Via a trailer and various sequences of gameplay, Kobayashi explained what Stupid Never Dies will be all about. The game’s general tone is apparently defined by the phrase ‘funky zombie action’ and he pointed out that it’s an attack-focused game, with no guard or dodge. Although it will feature a parry move, which causes great damage if properly timed.

Stupid Never Dies has a simple but wacky storyline. You play Davy, a low-level zombie who is described as: ‘The weakest of the monsters.’ In Stupid Never Dies’ post-apocalyptic game-world, Davy wanders, in classic zombie fashion, into a shopping centre where, in a cold storage room, he encounters Julia, a beautiful woman who has been frozen; Davy instantly falls in love with her and his desire to bring her back to life becomes his driving motivation.

Davy encounters a mad scientist called Dr Frank, who explains that the zombie outbreak has been caused by the King of Monsters, who resides in a vast subterranean dungeon. Dr Frank produces a phoenix egg which Davy eats, giving him powers that will enable him to take on the monsters in said dungeon, with the King of Monsters’ demise returning the world to normal and enabling the resurrection of Julia.

The developers weren’t entirely forthcoming about all of Stupid Never Dies’ gameplay mechanisms, but they confirmed that the game’s action, and its role-playing style elements, reside in the monster-filled dungeon. Every time Davy visits the dungeon, the speed at which he levels up will increase, and he will essentially start from scratch with each new visit. Later in the press conference, the company admitted that that mechanism has a roguelike feel to it.

After ingesting the phoenix egg, Davy acquires the ability, while in the dungeon, to bite monsters, eat their cores and learn how to assume their physical forms. Thus, Davy’s ability to shapeshift (and, the developer adds, body hack, allowing him to, for example, attach a sword or gun to one arm) allows him to take on and beat hordes of monsters at once.

The developer has used that mechanism to enable Davy to assume no fewer than 11 wildly different forms. Namely werewolf (agile, with claws); harpy (flying, with a range attack); golem (tank-like, and good against packs of enemies); vampire (puts Davy in charge of a pack of bats that attack from mid-range); will-o-the-wisp (ghostly and ethereal, good for avoiding environmental traps); cyclops (huge and deadly at close range); snow fairy (freezes enemies, making them more vulnerable); merfolk (dives into the ground as if it were water); lich (commands an army of skeletons, whose ranks can be added to with dead enemies); and demon (uses whips and gravity to control enemies’ positions).

Stupid Never Dies’ gameplay hinges on dynamically morphing between those forms, according to what enemies you’re faced with – presumably, each pass you make through the dungeon will introduce Davy to new fighting forms, until in the latter stages, he acquires all 11 of them. The body-hacking system will remain consistent whatever form Davy morphs into. We were shown him with a gun, a sword, a rocket launcher, and a gravity gun sending out mini-black holes, with equipment attaching to his right arm, legs or head.

On top of this is the Davy Burst: a mode that powers up as he takes out enemies and enhances all his abilities, effectively giving him a special attack. In the time-honoured fashion of action role-players, there will also be boss battles, although we didn’t get to see any in the fairly brief demo.

While the preview left plenty of question-marks about the game – such as how well its unusual levelling up structure will work, what gameplay exists outside of the dungeon, and how different an experience the dungeon might present each time you visit it – it certainly whetted our appetite to sample the game for ourselves.

Stupid Never Dies certainly looks pretty impressive, and its combat is indisputably fast, over-the-top and empowering. As ever with a first look, hands-off demo, it’s impossible to ascertain how well it will hang together as a structured game or, for example, how long it will take to complete and how much replayability it might provide. At launch, it will be available for PlayStation 5 and PC only; GPTRACK50 hinted that it might port it to Xbox consoles, but not until it has been on sale for a while.

But if you like action role-players, it’s definitely one to look out for as it promises satisfying action, loads of character, and hopefully a certain amount of originality to its gameplay. We’ll report back when we manage to get some hands-on play with it.

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The Monday letters page thinks there’s less crossover between console and PC gamers than publishers pretends, as one reader tries to imagine a Capcom console.

Games Inbox is a collection of our readers’ letters, comments, and opinions. To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Evil weekend
Been playing Resident Evil Requiem over the weekend and I’m loving it so far. I was surprised how relatively serious it was at first and then the bit with Leon and the chainsaws is… I think that may be one of my top five Resi moments ever.

Grace’s longer section after that was amazing too and I’ve just finished that and very much looking forward to the rest of the game. I think it’s obvious the game has lived up to the hype and I’m only sorry it’s not going to last me that long, but there’s no way to make a game of this intensity last forever.

Resident Evil games have neve been long and they’re definitely not going to get any longer given how expensive games are to make now. Plus, the appeal would probably wear off if they were 60 hour epics. I mean, how many times can you go searching for weird-looking keys?!

But it gets top marks from me so far: great graphics, great atmosphere, and Leon’s gameplay (and one-liners) are great. Roll on Resident Evil 10!
Bouncer

Each to their own
So just finished Resi, 12 hours to complete. And while it was good I was left a little disappointed as I’d been looking forward to it for a while. I really enjoyed the Grace parts, especially with my headphones on. I did also really like 7 and Village and the 2, 3, and 4 remakes.

However, I did find this to be a step backwards, personally. I also found it to be a little bit grey in places, taking me back to Xbox 360 days. I’m glad I got it on disc, as I can now trade it in. I will say I’m still happy I played it and I did enjoy it, but it’s got me in the mood to play through The Last Of Us again now, which In my opinion is a better game.
P B

On a roll
Capcom are on great form recently. Resident Evil Requiem looks really good, but it’ll have to wait for me, I’m mid-game replaying the great Resident Evil 4 remake again, which brings me to… Dragon’s Dogma 2, another great game.

I played the first game all those years ago and while the base game was good, the Dark Arisen DLC made it better. It was brutal! I was hoping for similar DLC to be released for Dragon’s Dogma 2, but it appears Capcom have forgotten about it.

Damn shame really. It would be great to go back to Bitterback Isle on the PlayStation 5 but it appears the ferrywoman on the pier is busy elsewhere…
Chevy Malibu (PSN ID)

GC: They do run hot and cold on that franchise in a very peculiar manner.

Email your comments to: gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Pre-console pre-order
There is a Kickstarter to bring Bit.Trip ReRunner to the Switch 2 currently live on said crowdfunding website.

I first played the games on the Wii, where you play Commander Video jumping, dodging, and kicking to a funky soundtrack. It’s currently a third funded with 16 days left to go. If you back it at $25 dollars and above you get a Switch 2 code for the ReRunner game and your name in the credits of the Switch 2 version. There are optional add-ons for the previous games on Steam and PlayStation 5 at half price their usual store prices.

On PlayStation 5 there is only one game available but on Steam four different Bit.Trip games are available at 50% off to help fund bringing ReRunner to Switch 2. I’ve backed at the $25 level and also added an add-on for one of the other games. I haven’t got a Switch 2 yet, but when I do the code will be sitting there waiting for me.
Andrew J.

Second sequel
A couple of people wrote in about it and whether Kitana is in the original Mortal Kombat film. I picked up the Mortal Kombat Legacy Collection really cheap (massive nostalgia) and it got me in the mood for the films. Kitana is in the first film a lot and plays a major part in the plot and Talisa Soto is gorgeous too.

I’m also really looking forward to the Karl Urban Mortal Kombat 2 film in the summer, as everything he is in is usually great.
Simon

Very important people
Is there many electronic industries where we seem to take an obsessive interest in who the new boss is, etc.? Do we buy a mobile phone and wonder who is in charge of Motorola or Nokia? Do we buy a TV from LG or Hisense and wonder whom is on their board? Or do we buy a PC and really care about Asus, Nvidia changing their boss?

Personally, as someone who has owned an Xbox Series X for four years, I could not care less who the Xbox CEO is. Or whether she likes or plays games; why is that important to me? Saying that though, I think Peter Moore was great for Xbox, but was he a gamer? I doubt it.

And I totally agree with your comments in one article expressing reservation about the new CEO trying to appeal to gamers online. One suspects that some of it feels forced and she would be best not bothering and focusing on strengthening the Xbox brand.

Why does she need to bother but instead make decisions that will put the fun back into Xbox and make it a strong contender again. Perhaps price cuts for Xbox Series X/S before next gen Xbox arrives and free multiplayer for Series consoles.

Regarding exclusives, I’m content with what’s been on offer from Xbox, because I only have so much time and money to play them. For example, this year I will get Resident Evil Requiem and GTA 6, which leaves little room for anything else.

So, in summary I would rather most business heads were kept in the background and allow the product to do the talking. Maybe that was an issue with Phil Spencer as Xbox seemed at times to be more about him and not the consoles itself.
Stephen

Capcom Entertainment System
Great to see Resident Evil Requiem being launched multiplatform, scoring high and selling tremendously well. Even on their worst days Capcom makes decent games, a standard they’ve maintained since the ‘80s in the heyday of arcades.

When the Street Fighter franchise was at its most popular in the ‘90s/‘00s Sony (and Sega before) must have been thanking their lucky stars that Capcom never entertained the idea of entering the console market. If they had, they would have truly ruffled a few feathers and who knows how the market would look today.
Sam

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Separate formats
Seeing Ishi’s comment that Sony exclusives should remain exclusive I had some thoughts.

Personally, as a PC exclusive gamer, I think Sony (and Microsoft) porting games to PC is a good thing. But then I would say that I guess!

They do have very different strategies – Microsoft release games on PC at the same time as Xbox. Whereas Sony only release games on PC a few years after the original release, where, let’s face it, if you haven’t bought a PlayStation to get a specific game by that point, you are very unlikely to!

I personally am extremely unlikely to buy a console. I have already spent enough on my PC and its various peripherals that I’m not going to invest in another ecosystem. I also have a huge amount of games to choose from. I have literally hundreds of games I have never even downloaded thanks to Epic giveaways and Humble Bundles and the like.

There are games in the Sony ecosystem I would like to play, sure! But there isn’t a single one I would buy a whole new console for. I am currently playing Spider-Man on PC. I’m a huge Spidey fan and it looks fantastic in super-ultrawide 5120x1440p.

But if it hadn’t been released on PC I simply wouldn’t have ever played it. I also have The Last Of Us and Uncharted on my Steam wishlist that I will buy eventually, and if Wolverine ever comes to PC (and if GC reviews it well) I will probably buy that.

I honestly don’t think there is a huge crossover between PC gaming and console owning. Most PC gamers I know, if they do have a console, will usually have a Switch to play Mario Kart with their kids.

Obviously my view is entirely biased though! So perhaps take it with a pinch of salt.

Whatever you game on, enjoy!
The Dude Abides

Inbox also-rans
Just beaten got to Racoon City in Resident Evil Requiem and that whole bit was great. Fantastic game so far and I think the two character thing works really well. It’s like a best of hits for the whole series.
Toni

A Pokémon game with good graphics? What an incredible innovation that no one could possibly have anticipated. Let’s just hope that trailer is accurate to what it will actually look like.
Ant

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The small print
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A new indie game from the makers of The Binding Of Isaac may seem a frivolous tale of magical furballs but it’s actually one of the most deeply complex strategy titles of recent years.

For a brief time, at the end of the 2010s, turn-based strategy games were fashionable. Despite loving the genre, we never would have thought that possible but, alas, those 15 minutes of fame were fleeting, and the obsession was only brief as far as mainstream gamers were concerned. As such it’s unlikely there’ll ever be another XCOM and a game like Into The Breach was only ever going to be a one-off.

Although Baldur’s Gate 3’s combat did keep the concept alive for triple-A gaming – and there’s a Star Wars themed XCOM clone coming out this year – turn-based strategies have largely returned to being the preserve of indie developers. And Mewgenics is about as indie as it gets, as one glimpse at the graphics and the credits – which largely consist of just two people – will tell you.

Beyond all the cat nonsense, Mewgenics is a disarmingly complex strategy roguelite combined with a breeding simulator to furnish an army of moggies to take on the powers of evil. It’s very silly and incredibly deep, in what must be one of the most extreme mismatches ever seen, between how a game looks and how it plays.

Although Mewgenics is essentially two games in one the basic explanation of what you’re doing is relatively straightforward. You start by managing your team of felines, kitting them out much as you might in XCOM itself. You can take four of them at a time on a single roguelite run, with combat resolved in an isometric arena reminiscent of Final Fantasy Tactics and all its many derivatives.

Should you be so skilled as to survive to the end of the day any cats that remain are automatically retired and can no longer be used again (except in special cases that we won’t spoil). Instead, you have to select replacements from your ever-growing cattery – ideally ones that have been purposefully bred for the occasion.

There’s a whole research and development element that goes on at your home base, both in terms of breeding the cats and expanding your HQ, with additional rooms and equipment that allow for buffs and other upgrades to be carried across multiple runs.

Although managing the loadouts of your cats involves a lot of very nerdy video game style considerations, the breeding is both complex and funny. Rather than dealing with test tubes and cloning vats, as you might expect when genetically engineering an army of killer kitties, you instead have to encourage loving relationships, making the critters feel comfortable and trying to stop fights between competing males. Even then your plans may be thwarted, if a female cat rejects a potential partner or a cat’s sexual preferences mean it’s not interested.

While breeding is important there’s also the issue of cat collars, which confer class types and associated abilities, and which frequently take the role of the most desirable loot. Combing genetics with collars, especially if your cat had a particularly powerful parent, allows your pussycats to gain abilities from multiple classes but also causes mutations and disorders, which can be either positive or negative – from sharper claws to an unstoppable urge to eat nearby poo.

Normally at this point in a review, we’d try to assure you that the game isn’t necessarily as complex as it sounds, but in this case that’s not really true. Mewgenics is a satisfyingly deep game, but it is a lot to take in at the start, especially given it can’t take itself seriously enough to give proper tutorials and the interface isn’t the most instinctive – especially when it comes to item descriptions, which make Elden Ring seem transparent.

The whole breeding aspect could easily have been a whole game in itself but technically it’s just a prelude to the combat, which in theory is fairly standard for the genre, as you move and attack across grid-based maps. However, the complexity of your cats’ abilities and weapons, and the weirdness of your enemies, means fights are highly unpredictable.

A successful run can take up to three hours but there’s so much randomness involved in that, in terms of the abilities your team is served up (you pick one from a selection of four each time you level up), the enemies, the locations, and random rolls of the virtual die, that the game can seem brutally unfair at times. At a base level it’s not actually that difficult but if luck is not smiling on you then it seems anything but.

As you might guess from the visuals, Mewgenics is by the creators of The Binding of Isaac. We can’t pretend it’s an art style we’ve ever liked but the game is made by basically two guys, so it’s hard to be too negative, especially given the impressive variety in cat and monster appearances. But a lot of the humour didn’t land for us and some of the depictions of the mutated or injured cats are, like their previous games, quite disturbing.

Despite its foibles, Mewgenics is an extremely ambitious and well thought out game. We didn’t gel with some of the elements, especially the random aspects and the artwork, but they’re clearly meant to be like that and are not an accident. Just like a cat, Mewgenics does not apologise for being itself and while it may not be purr-fect it’s impossible not to forgive its missteps, even when it’s purposefully annoying you.

Formats: PC
Price: TBA
Publisher: Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel
Developer: Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel
Release Date: 10th February 2026
Age Rating: N/A

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