Entertainium

After the incredibly successful bow to fans’ demands of a setting with Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Ubisoft is back with another release that had been long rumored (and finally confirmed only a few months ago) with Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced.

Say what you will about using the word “addictive” to describe videogames. I honestly can’t think of another adjective to better call the picross genre in particular. Something about them makes me want to keep playing every new release, and boy, there have been plenty of those lately. So when outside of already fantastic gameplay comes a combination with retro game nostalgia, I’m hook, line, and sinker. Such is the case of developer Jupiter’s collection of old school arcade/console collections.

The James Bond franchise has been on hiatus in many ways since the release of No Time to Die in 2021, but it has been on hiatus in the video game space for much longer. The last major Bond game was 007 Legends way back in 2012; a poorly received middling shooter which had you playing through one level from each of the main Bond actor’s eras (developer Eurocom was shuttered after release).

Being dumb and behaving stupidly is a trademark of the horror genre. Especially in movies and having prime examples in the lush decades of 1980 and 1990s with their wave of slasher flicks starring teenage kids who are so hapless and without a clue in the world, sometimes so bafflingly so it made us wonder how they’d survive if breathing wasn’t an involuntary bodily function.

Long in development and delayed since last October, Mina the Hallower will be finally available at the end of the month. The first big game from Yacht Club Games after their longstanding hit franchise Shovel Knight is a true love letter to 8-bit action adventure games, expanding upon the gameplay standards set by Zelda and its ilk delivering a huge, challenging retro-inspired adventure.

The evolution of the adventure game genre over the course of the last 30 years has been quite remarkable. Despite most games having broadly the same control scheme and functionality as Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge did in 1991, many modern adventure games have introduced many elements which have shaken up the formula, from simple things like hint systems to entirely new forms of gameplay. You could easily argue that Disco Elysium is an adventure game, or indeed L.A. Noire.

Developed in Poland by Fumi Games, Mouse P.I For Hire is sure to be one of the most visually striking games of 2026. Like ultra-tough platformer Cuphead before it, the Polish studio’s first project is steeped in the style of 1930s “rubber hose” animation. Here, the commitment to the bit is so total that the game is rendered entirely in black and white.

In the 1950s, the science fiction writer James Blish had Earth’s metropolises take off into the stars, using anti-gravity devices called “spindizzies”. Developers Seismic Squirrel may have been thinking of Blish’s Cities in Flight series when they came up with Aether & Iron, which is set in an alternate 1930s, “decopunk” New York which floats in the sky and is full of flying cars. This distinctive setting is the main draw for this mixture of turn-based RPG and visual novel elements.

Motorslice is a platformer where you navigate a sprawling megastructure fighting autonomous and hostile machines along the way. You play as P, a slicer who’s been assigned to investigate this structure and destroy all the machines roaming within. These machines, often construction oriented vehicles, are considered “corrupted” – identifiable by the orange glow they exhibit when viewed via a visor – and therefore dangerous.

Sometimes – and this has been increasingly the case with games over the years – less is more. With the arrival of Pinball FX Williams Volume 10, that is certainly what’s going on. Out of its three tables, Diner, Fire!, and Comet, the first is easily, handily, and by very far, the one that makes this DLC more than worth getting, while the other two are there to serve as filling, mostly.