The video game industry’s awards season was dominated this year by adulation for French turn-based roleplaying gameClair Obscur: Expedition 33. It’s easy to see why so many people loved it, AI usage andcontroversial status as an “indie” game aside, but my personal game of the year was a much smaller project that garnered a lot less attention: Baby Steps. Fortunately, at least one awards show is finally giving it the respect a bunch of us weirdos believe it deserves.
The 2026 Independent Games Festival Awards released its list of nominees on January 8, showcasing the incredible work of developers outside the AAA space. Baby Steps managed to pick up nominations in five categories, including Excellence in Audio, Excellence in Design, Excellence in Narrative, the Nuovo Award (for “experiences that make the awards jurors think differently about games as a medium”), and the Seumas McNally Grand Prize.
Baby Steps tells the story of Nate, a man transported from living in squalor in his parents’ basement to a magical world inhabited by long-dicked donkey men and Australians. Navigating this strange setting, at least on PlayStation 5, revolves around using the controller’s triggers to independently control Nate’s feet by lifting them off the ground, and the control stick to have Nate lean in whatever direction you intend on traveling. Even simple walking requires maintaining a rhythm, and things get even more difficult as you climb slippery slopes and awkward rockfaces.
I’m so happy to see Baby Steps get this kind of recognition. Not only does it advance the nascent genre of physics-based “rage games” practically invented by co-developer Bennett Foddy (who previously made QWOP and Getting Over It), but it also manages to interrogate the very concept of challenging video game mechanics through both gameplay and narrative. Please play this game, and remember, Baby Steps doesn’t want you to rage, it wants you to love yourself.
Offbeat local TV broadcast simulatorBlippo+, surreal strategy gameTitanium Court, and the bafflingly controversialHorses also received multiple nominations. After seeing the Game Awards, the Game Developers Choice Awards, and the DICE Awards focus almost exclusively on Clair Obscur and other mainstream, AAA fare, it’s refreshing to know there are still shows dedicated to plumbing the depths of the medium rather than remaining at surface level.
Furthermore, this year’s show features a new category honoring games made by women and other gender-marginalized developers in collaboration with investment fundWings Interactive. Each award comes bundled with a $2,000 bonus, apart from the grand prize which awards $20,000.
Maxi Boch isn’t done with Baby Steps. Boch has enjoyed a productive career in game development and she knows how it feels to be creatively finished with a project. She experienced it at various points with Rock Band, Dance Central, Fantasia: Music Evolved and Ape Out, but on Baby Steps’ launch day, done was not the vibe.
“I’ve been in the industry for a long time; I shipped broken strumbars for Rock Band,” Boch told Engadget. “I know that things change over time in this world, and it’s not to say that Baby Steps is not done. It’s done. But whether I’m done with Baby Steps, this is a different story.”
To make a long one short: Boch’s collaborators, Bennett Foddy and Gabe Cuzzillo, were ready and excited to ship the game before she was, and so they did. Baby Steps hit PC and PlayStation 5 on September 23, 2025 (following one strategic delay to avoid the Hollow Knight: Silksong release window).
From the player’s side, Baby Steps feels like a finely honed experience. It’s a walking simulator that follows Nate, a manchild in a gray onesie, as he attempts to scale a mountain and symbolically escape his parents’ basement. The player controls Nate’s legs individually, lifting each knee and carefully placing one foot in front of the other, learning how to walk in the very literal sense. Baby Steps succeeds because of its mechanical precision, but it excels because of its irreverent tone, magically surreal setting and AAA levels of polish. The mountain is a mix of childhood memories and adult anxieties represented by giant chess pieces, rude graffiti, and a crew of drinking, smoking, anthropomorphic donkeys who wander the cliffs with their dicks swinging free. Improvised dialogue between Nate and the NPCs turns each cutscene into a comedy sketch, but his journey also includes shocking revelations of existential numbness.
In Baby Steps, falling is just as much of a mechanic as walking. You will fall — dramatically, drastically, down crevasses that took hours to climb — and Nate will bounce and slide and eventually just lay there, mumbling to himself while his onesie fills with mud. And then you’ll pick him back up and start walking again. You’ll settle his steps into a soothing cadence. You’ll marvel at the way his sweat slowly saturates the material at the base of his spine, just above his bulbous butt. You’ll try to skip a cutscene and realize that in order to do so, you need to play a minigame with the X prompt. You’ll learn how to run. And somewhere along the way, you’ll remember what it feels like to just enjoy play.
Baby Steps
(Devolver Digital)
As a former marching band member, I appreciate the sense of rhythm that’s built into Baby Steps, spurred by the animal sounds and natural-world musical cues that are tied to Nate’s footfall in specific areas. This is Boch’s area of expertise, and also the main reason she doesn’t feel finished with the game. Boch and her collaborators ended up using a slapdash mosaic of audio middleware and low-level software for Baby Steps, and a series of late-stage issues infused all of the songs in the game with incorrect samples. On launch day, the music and audio cues weren’t reacting as intended when Nate stepped, stumbled and fell.
On September 23, the day that Baby Steps came out, Boch and I talked for an hour about its development process. Our conversation gently circled the topic of perseverance, the game’s core theme, but we only directly acknowledged it at minute 59. It’s not something you need to scream or repeat — tenacity is the obvious message in a game about climbing a mountain on wobbly feet — but it was fascinating to learn why Boch in particular was inspired to build a game about endurance.
Making Baby Steps
Boch, Foddy and Cuzzillo started working on Baby Steps right after they released Ape Out and cemented their names in the annals of frenetic, bloody and slightly silly indie history. Foddy was already known as the creator of QWOP, GIRP and Getting Over It, and Boch as the rhythmic and hardware mastermind behind the largest AAA music games of the mid-2000s. The trio worked out of Boch and Foddy’s shared office at the NYU Game Center, where they were instructors and Cuzzillo was finishing up a graduate degree with Ape Out as his final project. They began prototyping Baby Steps around March 2019.
“At that point, I also started manifesting more symptoms of my chronic illness, and so I was in the midst of a period of an attempt at really intense reconditioning, which ultimately failed,” Boch said. “But when that period was over, I joined up with the crew again.”
Boch lives with a trifecta of chronic illnesses: Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome and Mast Cell Activation Syndrome. EDS is a connective tissue disorder that affects the entire body, and it can cause hypermobility, fatigue, vision issues, fragile skin and an increased risk of vascular ruptures. People with POTS experience an abnormally large increase in heart rate when changing posture, and MCAS is a disorder that releases excessive amounts of histamine and similar chemicals in the body, causing random and potentially life-threatening allergic reactions. It’s common for people with one of these diagnoses to also receive the others.
“It’s been an incredible challenge,” Boch said. “I think, easily, the hardest thing I’ve had to deal with in my life. I think there’s something very singular about each one of us, the three core members of this crew, and part of that is our ability to work fluidly across disciplines and the like. But another part of it is just a level of stick-to-it-iveness that my body has handily rejected, and so I’m in a fight with it all the time.”
Baby Steps
(Devolver Digital)
Boch has an arsenal of specialized tools to help her create games, including ergonomic (and very expensive) keyboards and a pair of glasses that act as a mouse.
“I have found that most of what game development is about and is oriented around is kind of hostile to those of us with poor fine-motor skills, and it’s an odd thing to be experiencing alongside the making of a thing that is stridently difficult,” Boch said. “There’s odd moments in it, where I have been going through physical therapy processes to retrain my actual walking, alongside working on this thing that is deconstructing walking. A very odd subset of feelings.”
Boch said the hardest thing for her to contend with is the moment-to-moment unpredictability of her health. But by the fall of 2019, she was back in the office with Cuzzillo and Foddy, iterating on the ideas that would eventually become Baby Steps. Cuzzillo and Foddy were feeling slightly discouraged at this point: They were four or five ideas deep, messing around with a competitive, real-time strategy game or a SimCity type of experience, but nothing was quite right. Boch encouraged them to return to their ridiculous, mechanically-driven roots.
“I think it started to become a lot clearer in everyone’s mind when it started to take on aspects of Bennett’s work,” Boch said. “The first handful of years of Baby Steps’ development, we were all playing various sorts of roles. The work of VO direction, recording and narrative development was something we were all working on together. Some of the foundational narrative premise things are concepts that I brought to the table as ways to try and prop up some world around this character. Lots of tools building and infrastructural work and all of the foundational stuff that makes it possible for a team that’s so tiny to make a thing that’s so strong.”
The Baby Steps crew shared a house in upstate New York during the first winter of the pandemic in 2020. They hiked together and worked on the game at one big folding table, enjoying the mountain air with their partners and each other. There were no strict roles on the game development side, with Boch, Cuzzillo and Foddy contributing to all aspects at once, including voice work.
“Over time, there are aspects of the narrative development that became increasingly more personal to my collaborators,” Boch said. “And they started to feel more comfortable in a director-less environment in terms of coaxing naturalistic performances out of themselves, and so that work became more disjointed.”
By the time they were recording voices and finding characters through improvisation in the sound booth, Boch happened to be in the early stages of transitioning. Vocal training and voice acting are a tricky mix, it turns out.
“I kind of recognized what it was going to take to be doing voiceover performance myself in the midst of my early transition, and I made the call that it was not the right activity for me,” Boch said. “So my characters were cut — it was like one or two — and I endeavored to strike up some novel collaborations on the audio side.”
For the past year and half in particular, Boch has been focused on all things audio in Baby Steps, as well as overseeing big-picture production tasks. She brought on a collaborator from the world of hardcore techno music, Jack Schlesinger, and he primarily handled system architecture details while Boch dealt with creative aspects. DJ Ashe Kilbourne and harpist Emily Hopkins rounded out the list of audio contributors. When she was able, Boch took an improvised sound kit into the wild and collected nature noises, and the team stitched together a reactive audio system using middleware and leftover bits of software from the Harmonix days.
When Baby Steps’ dynamic audio kicks in, and the boops, chirps and thunks start layering on top of one another as Nate waddles along, it adds a delicious sense of hypnosis to the game. Unfortunately, the audio systems fell apart in the final weeks before launch. The VO was fine, but many of the sounds and beats weren’t populating in the right places at the proper times, and Boch’s vision wasn’t being clearly communicated day-one.
“The foundations of game audio tooling are terrible,” Boch said. She continued, “The world of game audio, from my perspective, is a bunch of people who are sitting on top of a bunch of work they’ve done to write drivers to talk to consoles, and a bunch of work they’ve done to forge relationships with console manufacturers so that their audio technology will be licensed by the two major engines. But they’re both trash. I will not endorse either one, and I will not say that either one is capable of doing the kind of work that I need done.”
Since launch, the Baby Steps audio team has released patches addressing the sampling issues and adjusting dynamic audio cues across the game. An imminent update will introduce animals singing along with the songs, outdoor and indoor reverb simulations across all sounds, and other fixes. Boch has additional updates and surprises planned, including a Baby Steps Fi Beats livestream to showcase the game’s music on YouTube. By November, the audio team will be focused on composing.
Baby Steps is only going to get more immersive as the audio improvements roll out. And if you listen closely, you’ll be able to hear Boch voicing a few small roles throughout the game.
“I play, like, a baby and a hypothetical gay partner for Nate and a bunch of other random characters,” Boch said. “There’s some cosmic sadness on my part, that the timing worked out in exactly the ways that it did. But I don’t know, it’s the cards you’re dealt. It’s important to do the thing that’s true to you.”
One glaring truth that shook out during the Baby Steps development process was the supremely close and infectious bond between Cuzzillo and Foddy. The game’s dialogue and cutscenes are composed of off-the-cuff conversations and rambling inside jokes between Cuzzillo and Foddy, and each of these moments is delightful in a chaotic kind of way. Like a classic comedy duo, these developers share an undeniable resonance. They’re even born on the same day and they have older brothers with the same birthday, two facts that Boch finds adorable.
“I’m not a horoscope person at all, but they have a kind of cosmic level of synchronicity that they both acknowledge, but also are a little bit like, ‘What, this?’” Boch said. “They have plenty that they disagree about and plenty that they bicker about, but there’s something about their orientations toward the world that’s perplexing and generative. They are immensely talented folks.”
Taking Baby Steps
In the end, Cuzzillo and Foddy felt finished with Baby Steps before Boch. She didn’t want to hold their joy hostage, so the audio team made it work and they shipped the game on September 23, 2025, published by Devolver Digital.
“That kind of dream-deferred shit is emotional torture, and so I had no interest in putting them through that, they had no interest in going through that,” Boch said. “It makes sense to me to be landing in the place that we are.”
Baby Steps
(Devolver Digital)
I caught up with Boch three weeks after Baby Steps’ release date to see if she was feeling more done, now that the launch-day dust had settled. She said it was a hard question.
“There is so much more that I am interested in exploring, and so much more that I have set up in terms of pins to knock down,” she said. “I think this is a struggle that highlights the inherent tension of trying to make art at this boundary between a fine art practice and a commercial art practice. I think that for the sake of the work, and for the sake of me and my team as artists, the tech I have built deserves to continue to be refined in a different context, one wherein sound is more paramount. That’s where we’re headed.”
This is a tease of what’s next for Boch, even though she’s still finishing up Baby Steps. She’s planning on leaving NYU, spurred by the unpredictability of her health, but she’s not done making games. Her next one will be more personal.
“It’s important to me to share what I’m doing with people,” Boch said in September. “I think that there is not enough in the world of games that puts audio at its very center. I think that my personal ambitions and future ambitions are definitely leaning more in that direction by the day. I had a long time of needing to get some space from interactive audio as The Thing. Where my winds are blowing is in that direction.”
Baby Steps exists in its current form because Boch and her teammates were able to adapt and endure. They were honest about what was working, what wasn’t and what could, and they leaned into the aspects that felt the most natural to them. Boch in particular set aside her ego, listened to her body, and took things day by day. You know, baby steps.
“The process of transition is one that involves an enormous amount of self-reflection and a growing sense of self knowledge,” Boch said. “Ultimately, that process for me was kind of orthogonal to the storytelling of Baby Steps. There’s a lot that comes from lived experience, and from commiserating and sharing that lived experience between Bennett and Gabe, and you can see that very clearly in the work. There’s also just ways in which that process was illuminating to me in terms of inherent differences. There’s an aspect of it that came alongside the necessity of slowing down, and then the subsequent necessity of staying inside that hit with my chronic illness and then Covid. There was a way in which I was more with myself at that moment than I’ve ever been.”
Welcome to our latest roundup of what’s going on in the indie game space. It’s been a packed week, with tons of new releases worth highlighting and Tokyo Game Show taking place.
Before we get started, make sure to check out our recap of Kojima Productions’ 10th anniversary showcase if you need to catch up. I can’t quite get my head around how a literal walking sim from Hideo Kojima might work. Sony had a bunch of things to show off during its PlayStation State of Play this week, including a few tasty-looking indies like Chronoscript: The Endless End. So too did Xbox in its Tokyo Game Show stream — Double Dragon Revive looks neat, as does Rhythm Doctor.
Also, the developers and publishers of several of this week’s arrivals delayed them to get some breathing space from Hollow Knight: Silksong… only to run right into Hades 2. That’s extremely unfortunate. But the teams behind some newcomers — Baby Steps,CloverPit, Aethermancer, Star Birds and Deadly Days: Roadtrip — are doing something about that. They’ve teamed up for a special Steam sale and bundle of their games. Love to see indie developers supporting each other.
Reviews have been pretty stellar for Supergiant’s sequel. I played a little of it in early access last year, but decided to hold off getting in too deep until the full version arrived. And, of course, I now have a ton of other games to play. I’ll absolutely spend some time with Hades 2 eventually. But there’s another roguelite that’s soaking up a lot of my time right now…
I feel grimy when I’m playing CloverPit. I’m imprisoned in a tiny, rusty, metallic room that wouldn’t look out of place in Silent Hill‘s Otherworld. I have a debt to pay and deadlines to meet, with some coins, lucky charms and a slot machine to help me reach my goals and hopefully escape. Failure means plunging into a dark abyss.
Whenever I haven’t been playing EA Sports FC 26 in my free time, I willingly keep returning to this disgusting cell. I try desperately to find synergies between the lucky charms to break the slot machine and make sure I earn enough coins to resolve the arrears. Offers made by telephone, almost Deal or No Deal-style, can help while perhaps adding a greater risk of losing all my coins.
Panik Arcade has stressed that this is a horror game, not a gambling simulator. The whole idea is to bend the rules in your favor.
I haven’t yet had a successful run. I did pretty well a few times with builds focused on cherries and diamonds, though deadline 11 has remained out of reach for me thus far. No spoilers here, but there’s a big jump from the 10th deadline’s debt level.
The game is incredibly sticky, and I can see myself sinking many, many more hours into CloverPit. (I won’t be alone there. I just watched a video of someone who put 155 hours into the demo.)
CloverPit, which is published by Future Friends Games, is out now on Steam.
I had fun with the Baby Steps demo this summer, but after looking forward to this literal walking simulator for a couple of years, I realize that I’m more likely to watch a YouTube video of someone playing it than try to beat it myself. I’d probably do that on a treadmill so I can get my own steps in at the same time.
This is the latest game from Bennett Foddy (QWOP, Getting Over It), Gabe Cuzzillo and Maxi Boch, who previously made Ape Out together. It sees “an unemployed failson” being forced to get up off his rear end and make it to the peak of a mountain. To take Nate there, you’ll need to pick up one foot and move it onto (hopefully) stable ground before moving his other leg, taking one clumsy step at a time to reach his destination.
Baby Steps is supposed to be as funny as it is frustrating. You will fall. A lot. Sometimes in a way that erases much of your progress. But as with working out, progress is the point. If only Nate would actually use his damn arms for stability as well. Then you might really start to see some results.
I’ve had my eye on Bloodthief for a while. It’s a vampiric, medieval take on fast-paced dungeon running in the vein of Ghostrunner with Ultrakill-style murdering. A solo developer who goes by Blargis is behind this game, which hit Steam this week.
Giving so much of my attention to CloverPit and don’t-call-it-FIFA (and a few others we’ll get to momentarily) means I haven’t much time to check out Bloodthief yet. Still, I look forward to being as terrible at it as I am at Ghostrunner 2.
One of the highlights of Playdate Season 2 is Blippo+, a parody of cable TV. The FMV experience from Yacht, Telefantasy Studios, Noble Robot and publisher Panic has moved into the color TV age, as it’s now available on Nintendo Switch and Steam.
As you channel surf the otherworldly broadcasts and observe the offbeat alien TV personalities doing their thing, you might start to piece together a deeper story that’s playing out across the shows and news programs. Blippo+ is such a strange, wonderful thing. I’m glad it exists and that more people have the chance to enjoy it.
Consume Me is a coming-of-age life sim about a student who is entering her last year of high school and dealing with the stress and complexity of that painful time. For Jenny, that means managing chores (such as laundry and walking the dog), her studies, dates with her boyfriend and an eating disorder. Time management is a key factor, and you’ll try to stay on top of everything by playing minigames.
Consume Me, which is based in part on co-developer Jenny Jiao Hsia’s own experiences as a teenager, won the Seamus McNally Grand Prize at this year’s Independent Games Festival. AP Thomson, Jie En Lee, Violet W-P and Ken “coda” Snyder are the other developers of the game, which Hexecutable published. Consume Me is out now on Steam for PC and Mac.
Hotel Barcelona brought together two famed game directors, Swery (Hidetaka Suehiro), of Deadly Premonition fame and No More Heroes creator Suda51 (Goichi Suda). The latter came up with the concept for this game, which Swery announced all the way back in 2019. So the roguelite had been in the works for quite some time before it checked in to PC and consoles this week.
Here, you’ll fight your way through a hotel that serial killers have overrun. You can rope in a couple of friends to help you thanks to multiplayer support. In the style of many FromSoftware titles, you’ll also have the option to invade other players’ games and play spoiler by taking them out and undoing their progress. That seems really mean, though. I don’t know why anyone would do that.
Hotel Barcelona, from Swery’s White Owls Inc. and publisher Cult Games, is out now on Steam, Xbox Series X/S and PS5.
Upcoming
Annapurna Interactive is always a publisher worth paying attention to given its strong track record. This week, it revealed three upcoming adventure games during a showcase at Tokyo Game Show. I checked out demos for a couple of them, and I’ve already added all three to my wishlist.
D-topia is set in an apparent utopia run by artificial intelligence. You play as a maintenance worker who tries to keep things humming along by solving logic puzzles in the factory and helping out others with their problems. Your choices decide how the story plays out and, shock horror, things might not be going entirely smoothly behind the scenes.
I dig the very clean look here. It reminds me a bit of Mirror’s Edge. The dialogue in the demo is fun too. Expect to see this narrative-driven puzzler from Marumittu Games land on Steam, Epic Games Store, Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Windows PC via the Xbox App in 2026.
Also coming to Steam, Epic Games Store, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Windows PC via the Xbox App next year is People of Note by Iridium Studios. This is billed as a “musical narrative adventure” that sees pop singer Cadence seeking stardom with the help of other musicians who specialize in other genres. You’ll need to time your attacks to the beat to make them more effective, while genres play a role in making battles more dynamic.
Turn-based combat generally isn’t my bag and I didn’t enjoy it in this demo either. However, Iridium wants people to be able to play the game their way. People of Note will include the option to disable things like turn-based combat and environmental puzzles. That immediately makes the game more appealing to me, especially because I like what I’ve seen of the world, story and characters. The promise of “full-length cinematic musical sequences” sure sounds good to me too.
The third game Annapurna showed off is Demi and the Fractured Dream. I haven’t had a chance to try the demo for this one as yet, but it looks like a Zelda-esque action adventure with environmental puzzles, platforming and plenty of hacking and slashing. As Demi, a cursed hero who is trying to save the world by slaying a trio of Accursed Beasts, you’ll have a variety of tools and spells at your disposal. Time your dodges just right, and you’ll power up your next set of attacks.
This week’s State of Play included a gameplay trailer for Halloween, from IllFonic and co-publisher Gun Interactive. We also got a release date for it. The horror game is coming to PlayStation, Xbox, Steam and Epic Games Store on September 8, 2026. Why it’s not dropping in late October is beyond me.
This is an asymmetric multiplayer game in the vein of Friday the 13th: The Game (also from IllFonic and Gun) and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, which Gun published. Three teammates will play as civilians who are trying to save the intended NPC victims of Jason Voorhees. If you’d rather go it alone, though, you can terrorize Haddonfield, Illinois as the legendary killer in a single-player mode.
Welcome to Video Games Weekly on Engadget. Expect a new story every Monday or Tuesday, broken into two parts. The first is a space for short essays and ramblings about video game trends and related topics from me, Jess Conditt, a reporter who’s covered the industry for more than 13 years. The second contains the video game stories from the past week that you need to know about, including some headlines from outside of Engadget.
Please enjoy — and I’ll see you next week.
The climbing genre is not a monolith — that is to say, there’s plenty of variation in the realm of mountaineering games, from mechanically driven cliff-scaling sims to silly multiplayer survival experiences, but they tend to share the same premise: Reach the peak. You’re miles from civilization, with no vehicles and a limited backpack of equipment, and directly in front of you, there’s a mountain. Ascend.
All you have is your body and mental fortitude against an overwhelming physical challenge, and your step-by-step journey is the story. There’s an obvious symbolism to these games, offering a cliff face as the physical manifestation of impossibility, hopelessness, oppression or fear, alongside a surface-level message about never giving up, trying again and generally hanging in there. Cat poster vibes, but an ever-relevant and poignant lesson nonetheless.
Today, though — particularly after spending time playing the Cairn and Baby Steps demos, and watching PEAK streams — I want to focus on the other half of the climbing-game equation. The part where you fall, over and over and over again. Your grip slips, your leg doesn’t bend that way, your energy depletes, and your body tumbles down the mountain, bouncing off boulders and crashing into trees, leaving you bloody and broken and right back where you started. Or, at the very least, staining your onesie with mud.
I’m learning to appreciate these moments. In mountaineering games, falling tends to generate the most powerful reaction in players, whether that’s immediate laughter (PEAK) or grim frustration (Cairn), and this is an admirable quality. It’s easy to argue that the fall is more important than the climb, because without the lush bed of emotion generated by the constant threat of slipping and tumbling and restarting, reaching the peak wouldn’t feel that special at all. There’s context in the fall, and with that, there comes a sliver of peace.
When you spend all your time climbing, it’s easy to forget that falling is actually the most natural thing you can do. Next time you’re on your way down, try to make peace with the fall.
OK — we’ve gone from motivational cat posters to new-age cult speak, so I’ll get to the point. There are a notable number of mountain-based games in the zeitgeist at the moment and I just wanted to shout them out because they’re all pretty incredible in their own ways.
Cairn is a climbing simulator, endurance test and survival game in one gorgeous package, complete with music by Furi composer The Toxic Avenger, French artist Gildaa, and Martin Stig Andersen, who did the soundtracks for Control, LIMBO and INSIDE. Climb absolutely anywhere, manage your inventory by shaking your backpack, bandage your wounds, forage for food and sleep under the stars. Cairn comes from Furi studio The Game Bakers and it’s due out on November 5 for PlayStation 5 and Steam; the demo is available on both platforms now.
Baby Steps is a different kind of mountain-scaling game, and one could argue that it doesn’t even belong in the same category as something like Cairn, but I believe you’ll find that it does. Baby Steps adheres to the established premise of the climbing genre — reach the peak — and it features a distant mountaintop as the main waypoint for Nate, a lost and lonely man in a gray onesie. Nate is essentially a dude-sized baby learning how to walk, and creators Maxi Boch, Gabe Cuzzillo and Bennett Foddy are infusing his journey with the appropriate amount of hilarity and mechanical intrigue. Baby Steps is published by Devolver Digital and it’s heading to PC and PS5 on September 23, a date that was recently pushed back to avoid the curse of Hollow Knight: Silksong. (More on that below).
PEAK is the thing all the cool kids are playing this summer, and as a fadingly hip not-kid who prefers solo games and familiar FPSes, I can attest it’s entertaining to watch and looks like a lot of fun to play. PEAK is a co-op climbing game with simple 3D models and deceptively challenging mountains to summit, each with four biomes. The map updates each day so there’s a steady stream of fresh climbing content, and the proximity voice chat works exceptionally well. I particularly like that players get to live on as little ghosts after they die. PEAK comes from indie studio Team PEAK and it’s on Steam for $8.
And why not, I’ll shout out some other modern, but not as recent, mountain-based favorites of mine: Jusant, Celeste, GIRP and Journey are all pretty spectacular.
Enjoy the climb — and the fall.
The news
A selection of indie and AA games I’m looking forward to that aren’t Silksong
Baby Steps is the latest game to change its release date in order to get out of the way of Hollow Knight: Silksong, which is coming out on September 4. Team Cherry dropped the release date in a trailer on August 21 and since then, at least eight indie studios have delayed their own games to avoid the Silksong window. It’s lovely to see Silksong have its day in the sun, but personally, I’m more interested in playing Baby Steps in full.
With that said, here’s a sampling of indie and AA games I’m anticipating that aren’t Silksong, in no particular order and right off the top of my head:
And obviously, Baby Steps (September 23, 2025) and Cairn (November 5, 2025).
Electronic Arts has revived the Skate series after 15 years, and the (very youthfully styled) skate. is primed to hit early access on September 16 across PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC. The new skate. is a shift for the series: It’s a free, online, open-world experience with microtransactions (but nothing in the pay-to-win realm, according to EA). The early access version will be free, too, of course.
You’ll find this one alongside Resident Evil Requiem and Pragmata in my AAA-inclusive list of games I’m most looking forward to, and Engadget UK Bureau Chief Mat Smith’s preview from Gamescom is only making me more stoked on it. Silent Hill f is set in a remote village in 1960s Japan and stars a schoolgirl named Hinako. Here’s a bit of Mat’s take after a two-hour demo, which involved a scarecrow confrontation and marionette attacks:
The latest Silent Hill still has jumpscares, like you’d expect from the horror series, but the setting and game systems are more focused on tension, putting both Hinako and the player under constant duress. A typical health meter is joined by a sanity gauge and even your weapons have limited durability, so you’re forced to pick your fights.
… The entire experience is drenched in atmosphere, supported by this new sanity system — is there anything more 2025 than a mental health gauge? The constant feeling of isolation (“Where is everyone?”) and unanswered questions made the demo a persuasive introduction to the game.
Silent Hill f is due out on PS5, PC and Xbox Series X/S on September 25, 2025.
Remember when I said I liked playing familiar FPSes? Overwatch 2 is my kind of decompression. With season 18, Blizzard is changing how hero progression is displayed, adding color-coded borders and top-hero cards to the character-selection process. The aim is to make it clearer how skilled you are with any given character, and also share this information with teammates and enemies in a way that won’t enable trolling during the ban phase. The progression 2.0 developer notes are here, if you’re interested. Season 18 also brings keyboard and mouse support to consoles, but those players will be thrown into the PC matchmaking pool, and introduces the water-bending support hero Wuyang.
Overwatch 2 Season 18 went live today, August 26. My colleague and fellow Overwatch 2 player Kris Holt spotted two egregious copy errors in the new season’s welcome screen, captured for posterity below:
Overwatch 2 Season 18’s welcome screen could’ve used a copy editor.
Bungie’s longtime leader has left the studio and the Destiny community couldn’t be happier. Pete Parsons has taken a lot of heat for the stale state of the company’s shooter (and the size of his car collection), but it’s more likely the whole art theft, bungled launch and indefinite delay of Marathon led to his departure. New CEO Justin Truman, who at one point ran Destiny 2 and most recently was the company’s “chief development officer,” has his work cut out to win back fans.
There comes a time in most parents’ lives when you find yourself in a place so outside your comfort zone – one not taught in any pre-natal classes. You find yourself in a baby music class.
For some the baby music class (whatever preference or brand you choose to go with, likelihood if it’s your first baby, you’ll attend several) is a place of joy – it’s been your lifelong dream to be in a room where it’s not just cool, but positively encouraged to sing out as loud as your heart desires. But for many people, it can be an uncomfortable place, mumbling words it’s just assumed you know to a million nursery rhymes while getting the hand actions repeatedly wrong. Oh, and if you’re there with a young baby, chances are you’ll miss the majority of the class when the baby does a poo-nami or falls asleep (despite the fact you’d spent the last two hours trying to get them to sleep before the class.
Experts Featured in This Article
Jessica Rolph is CEO and co-founder of Lovevery, a company focused on healthy brain development for children under five.
It can find yourself, by the time you get home, wondering if it’s all really worth it? Well, rest assured, baby and toddler development experts say music can be important for young children, for lots of reasons.
With that in mind – and if you’d rather take the many verses of Wheels on the Bus while safely at home – renowned toy company Lovevery have launched The Music Set (available from 17 October), a musical version of their award-winning play kits, containing everything from jingle bracelets to concertinas. Ahead of the launch we asked Lovevry CEO Jessica Rolph to explain why music can be so beneficial to small children.
How Can Music Help Children’s Learning and Wellbeing?
School readiness: “Early exposure to music has been shown to improve many school readiness skills like language, math, and executive function,” says Rolph. “Studies show that playing music can also boost reasoning skills, as your child learns to translate abstract ideas-like notes on a sheet of music-into sounds, rhythms, and songs.”
Behaviour: “Engaging with music may also help preschoolers think before they act,” adds Rolph. “Following directions is a big part of music-your child learns to start and stop, play loudly or quietly, and make the right sound by hitting this note and not that one. This musical play can help strengthen your child’s inhibition-an executive function that includes skills like impulse control and emotional regulation.”
Movement: “And music gets children moving!” says Rolph. “Music gives them a chance to practice both gross motor control and proprioception – the understanding of where their body is in space.”
Language: “Your child engages with early language skills every time you read them a bedtime story or point out words when you go about your day. Look for similar ways to incorporate music.”
Rhiannon Evans is the interim content director at PS UK. Rhiannon has been a journalist for 17 years, starting at local newspapers before moving to work for Heat magazine and Grazia. As a senior editor at Grazia, she helped launch parenting brand The Juggle, worked across brand partnerships, and launched the “Grazia Life Advice” podcast. An NCE-qualified journalist (yes, with a 120-words-per-minute shorthand), she has written for The Guardian, Vice and Refinery29.
Taylor Swift-mania is hitting the UK as the Eras Tour makes its long (long) awaited debut on these shores on Friday in Edinburgh. But while fans will be soaking up every bit of coverage as they stack bracelets on their arms, there’s one class of people who will be dreading the onslaught – the parents of ticketless Swifties.
You’ll have seen more and more desperate social media requests clogging up your feed from celebrities (come on, give over please) to local parents prepared to beg, borrow and steal to get an Eras ticket for their children. And it’s understandable that as a parent you might be having one last go at keeping the tears and disappointment away (well, from the normal parents, not the celebrities and influencers – we all know you’re just on the blag). Ok, there’s enough going on in the world that it’s easy to roll your eyes and ask if this is really a big deal and mutter something about “back in my day”. But being on the receiving end of your child feeling left out at school, upset and angry can be tough to manage. The disappointment for the kids is the FOMO of course. But for the parents you can add to that the fact that the potential worry and guilt some are feeling is two fold – first not managing to secure the tickets, then secondly not being able to afford the (quite extortionate) tickets, whether that be at face-value or the hugely inflated resale prices.
But if you’ve not got tickets, should we be grasping onto this as a “learning opportunity” for our kids? How should we talk to them about disappointment? Is it about the value of money? Is shouting, “Oh STOP! Olivia Rodrigo is better ANYWAY” the way forward? (No, no it’s not). Don’t worry, we spoke to a parenting expert to find out how to deal if you’ve got a Swift-loving fan who doesn’t have a ticket for her Eras tour.
“My daughter is absolutely gutted she can’t go,” a friend told me. “But she doesn’t quite grasp how much they cost on a resale basis.” And with some tickets being thrown around for thousands, how can a child really contemplate that?
And there’s a long road ahead for some parents. Many children will not believe they’re not seeing Swift until she finally leaves these shores after her last scheduled date on June 23. “My daughter decided she was a Swiftie after the tickets were announced and has proceeded to ask me every single day if I have managed to find a way she can see her idol,” another mum told me. “I’ve tried to explain the tickets are almost impossible to come by, but she is adamant, and optimistic, that one way of another I will find a way. Part of me feels really smug she thinks so highly of me, but the other realises come the summer I’m going to have a very disappointed eight-year-old on my hands.
“Let them know that it is okay to feel this way and try not to be dismissive.”
“My parenting style is pretty honest and I tend to believe the truth is the best route even if it hurts. If it comes down to it and I’m not delivered a Taylor-sized miracle, I will be open and let her be disappointed, as I think resilience is one of the most important skills you can teach. I’m also quite prepared to watch the Eras tour on repeat to ease some of the heartache.”
Parenting specialist Kirsty Ketley first addressed the parenting guilt lots of parents seem to be feeling around not being able to make their children’s Swift dreams come true. She says: “It is absolutely normal to feel guilty as a parent for not being able to make this happen, it is a very normal response to our children feeling upset and sad, when they have relied on you for something that you haven’t been able to fulfil. But you should never let it consume you and you should see it as a great learning opportunity, to show your child that you can’t always have what you want, and how to handle disappointment.
“The reasons for missing out will differ from affording tickets and just missing out, to simply just not being able to afford the tickets, and so the feelings of failure will potentially be harder for those parents who don’t have the money, but whatever the reason, it is no bad thing for kids to learn that they can’t have it all.”
So what is the best way to deal with the child who is navigating those feelings of disappointment? “It is important though to show some empathy to your child – show them that you understand how they are feeling,” says Ketley. “Perhaps you feel the same as you are a fellow Swiftie, or you can remember feeling the same when you missed out on seeing your favourite artist or band. It sucks and FOMO is real, so go gentle and allow them to feel ALL the feelings. Let them know that it is okay to feel this way and try not to be dismissive – telling them they are being ‘silly’ for instance.
“As parents we want to try and fix things for our kids, to make it all better, but kids need to know that tricky emotions do pass, so let them wallow and they will come through it when they are ready – as long as they feel supported and heard. And the bigger picture is that you can’t fix this, in that you will be able to make it happen, but perhaps you can find ways of celebrating your child’s love for Taylor Swift in some other way? Having a Taylor Swift Day, watching YouTube clips, her documentaries and listening to her music?”
And if none of that seems to help, perhaps you could suggest them channelling some of their feelings into poetry or music… it’s worked out well for their idol, after all.
Rhiannon Evans is the interim content director at PS UK. Rhiannon has been a journalist for 17 years, starting at local newspapers before moving to work for Heat magazine and Grazia. As a senior editor at Grazia, she helped launch parenting brand The Juggle, worked across brand partnerships, and launched the “Grazia Life Advice” podcast. An NCE-qualified journalist (yes, with a 120-words-per-minute shorthand), she has written for The Guardian, Vice and Refinery29.
Last month on “The Bachelor,” a contestant, Lexi Young, surprised viewers by choosing to prematurely leave the show because she and bachelor Joey Graziadei weren’t on the same timeline when it came to children. Young had been open about her endometriosis diagnosis and said at the time, “Because I have endometriosis, having children is going to be a lot more difficult.” It was refreshing to see endometriosis be discussed on such a large platform, because the truth of the matter is, for many dating with chronic illness, these conversations are happening all the time.
Endometriosis is a painful condition that affects one in nine people with a uterus. It can be described by tissue similar to the lining of the uterus that is found growing in other areas of the body. This condition can cause debilitating pain and infertility. Living with endometriosis can make the day-to-day difficult, not to mention dating.
From my own experience, I can say that the brutal reality of living with endo is hard to work into first-date conversations. It’s hard to navigate when the right time is to bring up the ins and outs of living with endometriosis. Letting someone see you at your most vulnerable can be really nervewracking. The questions and “what ifs” can quickly become overwhelming: How will they react when I cancel plans because I’m in pain? Will they leave when I tell them sex can be painful? When should I bring up children?
I learned it was best to be transparent – early on – about my reality and how endo affects my life. Of course, that may lead to potential heartbreak, but someone who isn’t willing to support and accept me fully (endo and all) isn’t worth the time and tears.
Instead of pitying me, he told me I was brave.
When I went on my first date with my now-fiancé, I was terrified and almost canceled. I was having a bad pain day, and none of my cute clothes would fit from bloating in my stomach. I wasn’t feeling confident. Luckily, I didn’t cancel and instead put on my comfiest dress. He called me beautiful, and the conversation was easy. I felt comfortable with him. Comfortable enough to tell him my story – and instead of pitying me, he told me I was brave.
In navigating my illness while being in a relationship, the biggest thing I can emphasize is communication. Before I started staying over at my fiancé’s house, I made him aware of what my “bad nights” can look like and how they can affect me the next day. Those days I’m so run down I can barely leave bed. My pain makes me vomit and, at times, pass out.
The first few times I let him see that side of my life, he made me feel at ease. He would comfort me and offer ways to help me, he would heat up my heat pack for me, and he would bring me water and painkillers. Being with him on those bad days that I’m usually alone made them that little bit easier to tolerate. Not once did I feel embarrassed or guilty about our days spent in bed. That was one of the moments I knew he was the boy I wanted to marry.
A year into our relationship, I underwent a second surgery for endo. These surgeries involve removing endometriosis tissue from organs and, in my case, separating organs that have been stuck together from such intense tissue growth. Sitting in the car after my specialist appointment, I looked at him and immediately burst into tears. He could tell the news I had just received wasn’t good.
My endometriosis was quite advanced, and it had attached itself to most of my pelvic organs and caused some horrific damage. That day in the car that I showed him my surgery pictures, he couldn’t understand what they meant, so through tears, I told him, “Kids, I might not be able to have kids. I am so sorry.”
We had already spoken about kids – how we both grew up in big families and wanted that for ourselves. At that moment, I felt like I’d let him down, that it was the last straw, the final thing that would make me “too much.” Instead, he held my hand and he kissed me. He told me over and over, “We’ve got this, I’m not going anywhere.”
From that moment, we started trying for kids, and somehow, it didn’t feel rushed. Sure, there was pressure from the odds that were given to us, but we still kept trying. We downloaded the ovulation apps and took it in stride. Scheduled sex can get old quickly, but we tried our best to make it fun – an adventure, a time to experiment and try new things. That was what we’ve become really good at: making the best of a bad situation.
I won’t sugarcoat it: it was hard dealing with infertility. We spent hundreds of dollars on specialists and medications. We were in our early 20s, and while most of our friends were still clubbing and living like 20-somethings should, we were trying special diets and staying in on weekends to save money in case we needed to do IVF. For two years, we tried. It was hard on us, but it made us stronger. At times, I felt like a failure when I’d come back with a negative pregnancy test, but just like that day in the car, he would kiss me and tell me it was going to be OK.
Since then, I’ve undergone seven more surgeries for my endometriosis. I completed IVF, and I am now 20 weeks pregnant with a miracle baby boy.
Years ago, I couldn’t have imagined any of this would be happening. I saw myself as “too much.” I thought my endo made me hard to love, because it’s easy to feel that way when your body is seemingly turning against you. How can you love yourself when you despise your body and the pain it causes? But no matter your diagnosis, you are worthy of love – not just from others, but most importantly, yourself.
Haylee Penfold is a 20-something writer from Australia. She is the health and sex editor for Ramona Magazine, where her focus is on chronic illness advocacy and inclusive sex education.
It’s beyond undeniable that 2023 was one of the most memorable years in recent history when it came to new game releases. From completely brand new IPs, to long-awaited sequels, to surprisingly refreshing remakes, there was something for just about literally everyone to try.
It puts just a little bit of pressure on this new year to keep that momentum going, but thankfully there are even more exciting new titles to look forward to, particularly on the PlayStation side of the field. If you’re wondering what all is on the docket this year for PS5 players, we’ve got you covered. Here is our list of all PS5 exclusives releasing in 2024.
The Last of Us Part II Remastered
Release Date: January 19, 2024
Image Source: Naughty Dog
On the heels of giving the universally acclaimed The Last of Us Part I an incredible glow up with their new PS5 engine technology, Naughty Dog has understandably done the same for the sequel, which is set to release in just a couple of weeks now on the PS5. Revered as one of the most controversial and yet most successful sequels in the industry, The Last of Us Part II takes players back into the lives of Joel and Ellie a few years after the events of the first game, and the consequences of Joel’s decisions which have created a familial rift between the two of them.
This time around, players experience the journey ahead mostly through Ellie’s eyes, and even those of new characters she encounters along the way. The journey itself is perhaps one of the most emotionally palpable and devastating ones ever seen in modern gaming, and one that powerfully divided the fanbase of the series in the months and years following its release. If you’ve never played the sequel before, or want to relive it in its completely remastered version, this will be your chance. This version will also debut a brand new, roguelike survival mode called No Return mode for players to try out.
Helldivers II
Release Date: February 8, 2024
Image Source: Arrowhead Game Studios
Helldivers II, which releases on PS5 and PC early next month, looks to be a spectacular reimagining of the original game that debuted back in 2015, with far more explosive action that you can share with friends. While keeping the soul of the first game, the team at Arrowhead Game Studios set aside the top-down aesthetic and instead opted for a more immersive and modern style this time around as a third person shooter.
They’ve also promised plenty of “fast, frantic, and ferocious” action, albeit with a stroke of good humor on the side, as players are tasked with fending off ruthless alien invasions on various planets. You don’t have to face them all alone, however, as the game will feature online co-op, allowing you to team up with your friends against these dangerous threats.
Pacific Drive
Release Date: February 22, 2024
Image Source: Ironwood Studios
Pacific Drive is the very first IP out of Seattle-based Ironwood Studios, and if the trailers are anything to go by, it looks like a very promising and unique experience behind the wheel. An amazing soundtrack plays alongside the backdrop of a mysterious supernatural catastrophe that’s happened in the Pacific Northwest of the country. The region has since been renamed as the Olympic Exclusion Zone where outsiders aren’t permitted, but your character remains trapped within this treacherous, unforgiving landscape, and it’s all about personal survival while uncovering the source of what happened.
The key to actually surviving this supernatural catastrophe is your beloved station wagon, which you need to keep alive and running just as much as yourself. That requires venturing out into the wilderness of the Exclusion Zone to gather as many resources as you can, and each time you travel, new threats and mysteries await in the darkest shadows. Customize and upgrade your car in any way you see fit, with as many bells and whistles as you can, all in the hopes that you can discover the truth and finally escape. Pacific Drive pulls in for players everywhere on PS5 and PC at the end of February.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
Release Date: February 29, 2024
Image Source: Square Enix via Twinfinite
After Final Fantasy VII Remake blew countless fans away with what turned out to be a dramatically immersive reimagining of merely the beginning of the iconic game’s original story, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is set to be the next huge chapter of Cloud Strife’s epic adventure, emphasis on “huge”. After he breaks out of Midgar alongside Tifa, Barrett, Red XIII, and Aerith in order to pursue Sephiroth, the party now has the entire world of Gaia before them to explore. As beautifully vibrant as it is, Red XIII reminds them that the planet is actually on the precipice of death thanks to Shinra, as well as the machinations of Jenova and Sephiroth.
Along their journey, as revealed in the game’s latest trailers, the party will unite with familiar characters such as Vincent, Cait Sith, and Cid, as well as Yuffie whom players first got to play as in the Intergrade DLC. The gameplay will further evolve, with players able to seamlessly combine abilities between characters during battle. Plenty of open world exploration will mix with more linear storytelling as players are taken through an almost entirely new version of the story, with Cloud’s former friend Zack Fair mysteriously alive in another timeline. Not only that, it’s all but confirmed that arguably the most iconic scene in the game will occur, which has fans all the more anxious for what will truly happen.
Either way, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth will finally release at the end of February as a timed exclusive on the PS5. A PC port will follow suit sometime after, as FFVII: Remake and the Intergrade DLC have since become available on Steam.
Rise of the Ronin
Release Date: March 22, 2024
Image Source: Team Ninja
If you’re someone who enjoys an action-packed, sword-wielding samurai adventure like Ghost of Tsushima, then Rise of the Ronin will probably hit that same sweet spot for you. Players will be able to create their very own customized character, whom will embark on a open-world journey across various iconic cities and countrysides of Japan during the final years of the Edo period, at the peak of the Bonshin War between the Tokugawa Shogunate and factions opposed to the Western influences coming into the country that’s been sealed off for years.
As an action-based RPG, while cutting down those who stand in your way, your character will come across important story-related decisions that will impact the outcome of the conflict one way or another. This is the most ambitious game Team Ninja has developed to date, going from more simplistic, linear titles to an immersive, higher tier RPG with the visual fidelity of previous, similar IPs like Ghost of Tsushima. Its open-world gameplay is bolstered with dynamic battle mechanics and an impressive variety of close-quarter and ranged weaponry. There’s also the transportation, which allows to you go by ground on horseback or by glider in the air, if you wish. That’s right, flying samurais, as if it wasn’t cool enough already.
Rise of the Ronin arrives in late March exclusively on the PS5.
Stellar Blade
Release Window: TBA 2024
Image Source: Shift Up Corporation
Originally marketed as Project EVE by Korean studio Shift Up, Stellar Blade is an action-packed and absolutely stylish hack-and-slash adventure that introduces us to the one and only Eve. After Earth is overwhelmingly invaded by an alien species known as NA:tives, Eve and her squad are tasked by the Colony with going down to Xion, the last standing city on Earth and repelling the invasion at all costs. While there, she meets the city’s residents, particularly a survivor named Adam, and eventually the elder Orcal, who each plead her for help in saving the planet.
With a vibe that definitely feels like Nier-meets-Bayonetta, Stellar Blade looks to make a name for itself in the hack-and-slash genre, and certainly promises plenty of stylish action for players to enjoy. While the game was initially supposed to release in 2023 for PS5, Shift Up announced a delay in December to 2024, with no exact date yet given. Once we know more, we’ll update that here.
Foamstars
Release Window: TBA 2024
Image Source: Toylogic
If you’re in the market for a more light-hearted, free-for-all online bonanza with a bunch of colorful foam cannonballs, then Square Enix’s aptly named ‘Foamstars’ is likely something you’ll want to check out. Since described by public opinion as a homage to the beloved Splatoon franchise, the game is a free-to-play (FTP), 4v4 online multiplayer game that brings much of what makes Splatoon great from the Switch to the heftier PlayStation console.
An open beta hit PS4 and PS5 in Fall of last year, giving players a firsthand look at the foam-based, third-person shooter, and the full game is slated to release sometime this year. Even if you’re on the fence about it, the game will be free to download, so you can decide for yourself with no strings attached.
Concord
Release Window: TBA 2024
Image Source: Firewalk Studios
Concord is the latest IP that comes from the minds of Firewalk Studios, who previously worked on the Horizon: Call of the Mountain VR game that released to critical acclaim. This time around, players will be zooming through the far reaches of space, at least according to the teaser trailer released last summer that didn’t give much away beyond that at the time.
We now know, however, that Concord is slated to be an online multiplayer FPS game that is also being developed in tandem with Bungie, the hub behind the Destiny franchise, and newcomer Haven Studios. Firewalk themselves has so far described the game as having a “unique universe of vibrant worlds” with a “rich” cast of “colorful characters”.
The game is set for a release sometime in 2024 on PS5 and PC, though even that may be tentative as the game isn’t available to wishlist yet on Steam. As soon as more details follow, we’ll update this.
Baby Steps
Release Window: Summer 2024
Image Source: Bennett Foddy
Bennett Foddy is back to both entertain and undoubtedly enrage us once again with his newest, hilarious project called Baby Steps. With the same inherent spirit as Getting Over It, the viral indie title that had many of the biggest streamers screaming and smashing their keyboards a few years ago, Baby Steps is the successor that will have us traversing a vibrant variety of environments, from mountains to jungles, with some very unbalanced footing and a snug onesie outfit to match.
Deadbeat Nate has quite the journey ahead of him, and players will have to get a handle on the unique physics gameplay as best they can, to ultimately put one foot in front of the other and avoid having Nate awkwardly plummet off cliffsides and any other embarrassing stumbles that can mean lost progress.
Baby Steps was first revealed during last year’s Summer Game Awards, and is currently slated to release summer 2024 on PS5 and PC.
Silent Hill 2 Remake
Release Window: TBA 2024
Image Source: Bloober Team
This one is probably a surprise to many, given that so little news has come out about the Silent Hill 2 remake since the teaser trailer first released a year ago in Jan 2023. The cat is now out of the bag, however, thanks to PlayStation’s new 2024 release reel that popped up on YouTube most recently, which briefly showcased the Silent Hill 2 remake among this year’s upcoming games. As soon as Bloober Team officially discloses a closer release window, we’ll update this entry promptly.
In similar fashion to other remakes like Capcom’s Resident Evil 4, this is a top-to-bottom, faithful reconstruction of Konami’s most iconic supernatural horror game, Silent Hill 2. Thanks to the creative minds of Bloober Team, and of course the reunion of Team Silent’s Masahiro Ito and Akira Yamaoka, players will get to relive the harrowing journey of James Sunderland as he returns to the eerie lakeside town of Silent Hill in search of his deceased wife, Mary. Along the way he comes across other mysterious characters, and encounters truly unsettling horrors that pull the curtain back on his own past.
That concludes our list of all upcoming PS5 Exclusives releasing in 2024. We hope you found this informative, and let us know which games on this list you’re looking forward to the most.
Be sure to check out all of our other guides and lists on releases for the new year, such as our list of upcoming JRPGs in 2024.
About the author
Stephanie Watel
Stephanie Watel is a freelance writer for Twinfinite. Stephanie has been with the site for a few months, and in the games media industry for about a year. Stephanie typically covers the latest news and a variety of gaming guides for the site, and loves gardening and being the bird lady of the neighborhood. She has a BA in Writing from Pace University in NY.
