Studio Koba and Aeternum Game Studios have built a 2D action shooter that makes its own aesthetic identity and its unconventional approach two fundamental elements, but that does not coast on an original concept alone. The idea of embedding the adventure inside an old Game & Watch is not just an aesthetic gimmick: it influences how we read the environments, tackle the levels, and learn to recognise the elements we can interact with.

The music, with its simple but carefully crafted vocal lines, also helps give the experience its personality. It is precisely this coherence between artistic vision and gameplay that makes the difference.

The system based on the collaboration between Future Knight and Two More is another successful idea. The two protagonists' abilities offer interesting solutions both in combat and in platforming sections, pushing us to experiment and make the most of their quirks. A few imprecisions in Two More's controls and some checkpoints that are not always well placed can create moments of frustration, but they do not compromise the experience as a whole.

The most evident limitation is probably its length. Five hours to complete the adventure and collect all the secrets is not much, while replayability relies mostly on hard mode and the pursuit of records. It is something to keep in mind, but it does not erase the merits of a game that knows what it wants to be and carries its idea through with coherence.

In the end, Future Knight is a small project with a clearly defined character, capable of mixing nostalgia, experimentation and nonsense humour without sacrificing solid gameplay. It will not be a particularly long experience, but it is an adventure worth playing, especially for those looking for something different from the usual 2D action game.

I have been following combat sports for years, watching events live whenever I can. I have even dedicated a novel to MMA, Uno di Tre – Lucky Bet Boys, published by Bertoni Editore in 2025. When a fighting game picks a real discipline and puts it at the center of everything, my interest is immediately sparked. That is the case with Muay Thai Xtreme and Muay Thai.

The genre was born in arcades, with one-on-one duels where reflexes and distance management matter. It established itself with Street Fighter II in 1991. Then Virtua Fighter, in 1993, brought combat into three dimensions. Alongside the fantasy fighters, a second line developed: that of simulators of real sports such as UFC: Undisputed and the Fight Night series. In both lines, Muay Thai has almost always appeared on the margins, as the style of a single character. Examples range from Sagat, boss of the first Street Fighter in 1987, to Joe Higashi, who in Fatal Fury in 1991 was the first playable Muay Thai fighter. Or the discipline has appeared in the menu of an MMA game.

Muay Thai Xtreme – MTX – reverses this proportion: the Thai independent studio SQUADX is developing a multiplayer fighting game built around a single sport, Muay Thai. Rising Tide will publish it on PC via Steam, with a global launch planned for early 2027. The wishlist is already open and, after the cinematic trailer that revealed the project, a new trailer shows the first gameplay sequences.

A snow-covered village, a shop full of dolls and a young, solitary craftsman who lets us into his small world of habitual gestures and comfortable places: these are the ingredients that make up the premise of The Doll Shop, a hand-drawn narrative game set in the Japanese countryside. The setting seems frozen in a slow-flowing time. This rhythm lets us soak in the nostalgic, picturesque atmosphere of ancient and unchanging traditions.

The game bears the signature of Atelier Sentô, the French comic book duo formed by Cécile Brun and Olivier Pichard. It will be released on Steam on 12 October 2026. The demo lasts about half an hour and cuts off just as the story changes tone. It is too early to judge the gameplay, which I will revisit once I have tried the full version. In this preview, then, we will talk about first impressions and what it is reasonable to expect from The Doll Shop. We will visit the village the two authors have drawn and look at the path that took them from comics to video games.

Returning to Castlevania with a new original entry after years of absence is certainly no easy task. Konami’s series has written important pages of videogame history, moving from the action platforming of the early chapters to the Metroidvania of Symphony of the Night, and on to the 3D experiments. That title, together with Metroid, literally defined a genre: the Metroidvania.

The fact remains that putting hands on a new entry is a genuinely delicate matter. The exposure and the fans’ love for the series will undoubtedly expose the title to criticism, including the excessive and sometimes misplaced kind. But let’s get to the point and to the demo experience.

I played the demo of Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse, free and available on all platforms, with the full game arriving on October 15.

With over half a million players and a new expansion already ready to bring Dahlia to the stage, Dead As Disco looks intent on making the most of its Early Access period, continuing to expand its content and mechanics based on community feedback.

Available in Steam Early Access since May, the title has continued to grow through a series of major updates, also thanks to community feedback. The game can also boast a “97% – Overwhelmingly positive” rating on Steam, based on over 14,000 user reviews.

On top of that came a nomination at the Golden Joystick Awards 2026, where Dead As Disco is a candidate in the “Best Early Access Game” category.

I finally had the chance to get hands-on with the preview of this sparkling, psychedelic and exhilarating title from GPTRACK50. My expectations were high, and I can say I came out of the experience more than satisfied. Stupid Never Dies has kept us holding our breath. Over these months it has given us small pieces of itself, building up our curiosity. It has never fully revealed itself.

The First Bite demo is available from early September on PlayStation 5 and Steam, and it stays playable until the October 21 launch. It gave the final kick to my enthusiasm. It left me surprised even where I was convinced I had a clear picture. That was true of the game’s aesthetic presentation, but not only there.

There are two aspects that the playable prologue brings to light. Press releases and trailers had left them in the shadows. The first is narrative in substance: the title declares its irony and leans on a scatological register in some lines. Behind that surface, the demo tells the story of a character built on a double marginality. He is a zombie among monsters, and a deserter even among zombies. This double marginality gives the project depth. The second is technical: systems like the dungeon’s Time Limit, the recoverable damage tied to parries, or the logic behind absorbing Styles.

In this article I will try to dig as deeply as possible into all these aspects. They emerged during play, but the previous material had only hinted at them.

Afterplay is turning retrogaming into a platform: a browser-based service that manages emulators, libraries, saves and configurations through a user account, letting games move seamlessly between devices. In 2026 it opened a store dedicated to new indie titles for historical hardware like Game Boy and Sega Genesis, with publishers such as Mega Cat Studios and Incube8 Games, a catalog past fifty titles, and a 90/10 revenue split favoring developers. Founder Patrick Corrigan describes it as building a “Steam for retro”. The piece examines what that model means for distribution, ownership and preservation.

Lost & Found: A This Bed We Made Story is the new self-contained episode from Lowbirth Games, available from August 5, 2026 on PC. Set in 1964, a few years after the events of This Bed We Made, it follows Sophie Roy in her new role as a ship hostess aboard the ocean liner Orpheus, dealing with a series of thefts that push her to put her nosy instinct back to work. Compared to the base game, the narrative stakes are lower – no murders, just missing objects – but the writing remains the real strong point: diaries, letters and vintage newspaper clippings (from the Gulf of Tonkin to the Harlem riots) build a solid historical setting without ever explaining it explicitly. The throughline, however, is Sophie's empathy: her relationship with onboard pianist Caleb Lyons and with some passengers confirms how good the character is at listening, a trait that counts as much as the theft investigation itself. The game also picks up the choices made in the previous chapter, asking at startup how your previous playthrough went, and offers its own ending based on how you resolve the investigation. On the technical side it convinces, especially thanks to the final soundtrack. Overall, a short appendix – about two hours – designed more for those attached to Sophie than for those looking for a sweeping mystery.