Fall Guys Season 4 is introducing Squads mode, a new way of playing the game with a 4-player team who win (and probably more often lose) together. Initially available for two weeks to judge player reaction, Squads mode will bring together 15 teams (which can be put together manually, or matchmade), and will include almost all of the game's existing events - although they'll be scored differently to their normal versions.

"The crucial difference between Squads Mode and normal Fall Guys," explains lead game designer Joe Walsh, "is that being eliminated does not completely eliminate you from the game. You only get eliminated if your entire Squad perform poorly on any given Round. We've all been in that situation where our teammate gets eliminated in the first Round and they have to sit there and watch you compete. And there's this pressure to be like 'Well, maybe we should all just back out and go to the main menu and have another go.' This allows you to basically all perform as a team."

[ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/fall-guys-season-4-official-trailer"]

Squads mode will institute a scoring system for most of the game's rounds. In Race rounds, players will be scored depending on what position they cross the finish line in, with the lowest-scoring teams overall eliminated after all players have finished. Survival rounds will award players a point for every second they survive, again eliminating the lowest scoring teams.

Fall Guys' developers are very excited about how this might change the strategies for playing some rounds. Walsh gives us an example: "If one of your players on your Squad manages to screw up on Perfect Match and it's the first person to fall off, you essentially know that if you guys don't get some other people eliminated, you are going to get eliminated, because you are now hamstrung for the rest of the Round. So it's really interesting because then your team kind of has to go on the offensive and try and eliminate other people. Because if you can push two players of another Squad off the side, suddenly you guys are going to be earning more points. So it's going to be really interesting to see how that develops over time."

Perhaps most interesting will be Final Rounds – these will still give the victory to the last player standing, or the first to cross a line, but that victory now goes to a whole team. That obviously incentivises teams to work together to get one player to the end of the round: "So," says Walsh with a grin, "if there's three of you left versus two other players, and you've got strong presence in Hex-a-gone, it might be worth two of you just going out there to sabotage, basically throwing yourself off and grabbing other people to their doom."

The team element also means that some normal Fall Guys rounds have been converted into tense Final Rounds. Fall Ball, for example, now pits two teams against one another in an oversized football match final. "Season 4 is actually going to have three times as many Final Rounds as any other mode," says Walsh, "which is going to be really, really fun. And I'm really excited to have four vs. four Fall Ball decide the winner of a show. I think it will be a really, really interesting thing to do. It's something we've always wanted to do." [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/fall-guys-ultimate-knockout-nintendo-switch-trailer"] The mode changes the complexion of Fall Guys, but it shouldn't change its economy too much. When we spoke, Mediatonic didn't have a final decision on how the mode would reward winners but, given that its theoretically easier to win the game, Walsh says the rewards should be "slightly less" than the main game - presumably using the new Crown Shards system. One thing that will definitively be easier however, is Fall Guys' notoriously most difficult achievement and trophy. 'Infallible' asks you to win five entire episodes of Fall Guys in a row. And yes, Squads wins will count towards that – "In theory, we've made it four times as easy for people to achieve that trophy," says Walsh. "I said in an interview six months ago, I was like 'We're going to make it easier over time, for players to get that trophy.' And this is the future I was talking about. So we're finally there." Fall Guys Season 4 has a science fiction theme and begins on Monday, March 22. it will also be bringing Among Us costumes with mysterious, unique features. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Fall Guys Season 4 is introducing Squads mode, a new way of playing the game with a 4-player team who win (and probably more often lose) together. Initially available for two weeks to judge player reaction, Squads mode will bring together 15 teams (which can be put together manually, or matchmade), and will include almost all of the game's existing events - although they'll be scored differently to their normal versions.

"The crucial difference between Squads Mode and normal Fall Guys," explains lead game designer Joe Walsh, "is that being eliminated does not completely eliminate you from the game. You only get eliminated if your entire Squad perform poorly on any given Round. We've all been in that situation where our teammate gets eliminated in the first Round and they have to sit there and watch you compete. And there's this pressure to be like 'Well, maybe we should all just back out and go to the main menu and have another go.' This allows you to basically all perform as a team."

[ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/fall-guys-season-4-official-trailer"]

Squads mode will institute a scoring system for most of the game's rounds. In Race rounds, players will be scored depending on what position they cross the finish line in, with the lowest-scoring teams overall eliminated after all players have finished. Survival rounds will award players a point for every second they survive, again eliminating the lowest scoring teams.

Fall Guys' developers are very excited about how this might change the strategies for playing some rounds. Walsh gives us an example: "If one of your players on your Squad manages to screw up on Perfect Match and it's the first person to fall off, you essentially know that if you guys don't get some other people eliminated, you are going to get eliminated, because you are now hamstrung for the rest of the Round. So it's really interesting because then your team kind of has to go on the offensive and try and eliminate other people. Because if you can push two players of another Squad off the side, suddenly you guys are going to be earning more points. So it's going to be really interesting to see how that develops over time."

Perhaps most interesting will be Final Rounds – these will still give the victory to the last player standing, or the first to cross a line, but that victory now goes to a whole team. That obviously incentivises teams to work together to get one player to the end of the round: "So," says Walsh with a grin, "if there's three of you left versus two other players, and you've got strong presence in Hex-a-gone, it might be worth two of you just going out there to sabotage, basically throwing yourself off and grabbing other people to their doom."

The team element also means that some normal Fall Guys rounds have been converted into tense Final Rounds. Fall Ball, for example, now pits two teams against one another in an oversized football match final. "Season 4 is actually going to have three times as many Final Rounds as any other mode," says Walsh, "which is going to be really, really fun. And I'm really excited to have four vs. four Fall Ball decide the winner of a show. I think it will be a really, really interesting thing to do. It's something we've always wanted to do." [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/fall-guys-ultimate-knockout-nintendo-switch-trailer"] The mode changes the complexion of Fall Guys, but it shouldn't change its economy too much. When we spoke, Mediatonic didn't have a final decision on how the mode would reward winners but, given that its theoretically easier to win the game, Walsh says the rewards should be "slightly less" than the main game - presumably using the new Crown Shards system. One thing that will definitively be easier however, is Fall Guys' notoriously most difficult achievement and trophy. 'Infallible' asks you to win five entire episodes of Fall Guys in a row. And yes, Squads wins will count towards that – "In theory, we've made it four times as easy for people to achieve that trophy," says Walsh. "I said in an interview six months ago, I was like 'We're going to make it easier over time, for players to get that trophy.' And this is the future I was talking about. So we're finally there." Fall Guys Season 4 has a science fiction theme and begins on Monday, March 22. it will also be bringing Among Us costumes with mysterious, unique features. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Devotion developer Red Candle Games is teasing its next project, and it appears to be a non-horror, stylish 2D action title. Red Candle Games shared a short video of its new project on Twitter, and it doesn't seem to be a horror game like the studio's previous games, Devotion and Detention.

Work in progress pic.twitter.com/yPiNIWEOv6

— redcandlegames (@redcandlegames) March 19, 2021

Devotion was in the news recently as it was finally made available after being delisted for more than two years following the controversy that occurred when users found an in-game Winnie the Pooh meme mocking Chinese President Xi Jinping. In 2020, Devotion was set to return via CD Projekt's GOG distribution platform, but GOG posted a message later that day saying, "after receiving many messages from gamers, we have decided not to list the game in our store." [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2019/02/26/devotion-review"] Red Candle Games took matters into its own hands and created its very own Red Candle e-shop to sell its games in hopes to "provide a direct and simple purchasing channel for players who're interested in our games." For more, check out our review of Devotion, in which we said, "From start to finish, Devotion is an excellent psychological horror game full of surreal imagery, creepy dolls, and wonderful environmental storytelling." [poilib element="accentDivider"] Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com. Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

Devotion developer Red Candle Games is teasing its next project, and it appears to be a non-horror, stylish 2D action title. Red Candle Games shared a short video of its new project on Twitter, and it doesn't seem to be a horror game like the studio's previous games, Devotion and Detention.

Work in progress pic.twitter.com/yPiNIWEOv6

— redcandlegames (@redcandlegames) March 19, 2021

Devotion was in the news recently as it was finally made available after being delisted for more than two years following the controversy that occurred when users found an in-game Winnie the Pooh meme mocking Chinese President Xi Jinping. In 2020, Devotion was set to return via CD Projekt's GOG distribution platform, but GOG posted a message later that day saying, "after receiving many messages from gamers, we have decided not to list the game in our store." [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2019/02/26/devotion-review"] Red Candle Games took matters into its own hands and created its very own Red Candle e-shop to sell its games in hopes to "provide a direct and simple purchasing channel for players who're interested in our games." For more, check out our review of Devotion, in which we said, "From start to finish, Devotion is an excellent psychological horror game full of surreal imagery, creepy dolls, and wonderful environmental storytelling." [poilib element="accentDivider"] Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com. Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

Developing games for next-gen consoles is challenging, especially if you're simultaneously developing them for current-gen, as Control developer Remedy was. But the PS5 and the Xbox Series consoles were not equally challenging to develop for, according to Remedy's Thomas Puha. On Next-Gen Console Watch, Puha said that Sony was "a bit more ready" with its PS5 early tools for developers, and said that it was easier initially to get games like Control working on the PS5 than it was for the Xbox Series X and S. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/03/19/why-ps5-series-x-games-have-yet-to-blow-us-away-next-gen-console-watch"] He did go on to say that both machines were still great to make games for, and while they're both still working out system-level issues, this is normal for new hardware and things will ultimately get better with time. "Sony stuck what worked, their development software and tools were pretty stable and good pretty early on," Puha said. "Microsoft opted to change quite a lot of things, which in the long run are probably good, but of course it was just a bigger hurdle for us devs early on because we had to rewrite a bunch of different things to take advantage of specific features." Puha also had something to say about the Xbox Series S: namely, that developing for it is admittedly holding developers back at least a little. "It's no different from the previous generations where the system with the lowest specs does end up dictating a few of the things you're going to do because you're going to have to run on that system," he said. "The more hardware you have, the more you have to ultimately compromise a little bit when you are a smaller studio like us, when you just can't spend as much time making sure all these platforms are super good." He added that quality assurance especially is a huge problem contributing to this, as it is more and more expensive to test games the more platforms you have to test them on. "I don't envy folks making Halo Infinite," he said. Control: Ultimate Edition is out now for PS5 and Xbox Series S and X, and seems to be running fine on both. The original version was our favorite game of 2019 with our original review at launch celebrating its weird world, its thrilling ranged combat, and its incredible cast, script, and secrets. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

Developing games for next-gen consoles is challenging, especially if you're simultaneously developing them for current-gen, as Control developer Remedy was. But the PS5 and the Xbox Series consoles were not equally challenging to develop for, according to Remedy's Thomas Puha. On Next-Gen Console Watch, Puha said that Sony was "a bit more ready" with its PS5 early tools for developers, and said that it was easier initially to get games like Control working on the PS5 than it was for the Xbox Series X and S. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/03/19/why-ps5-series-x-games-have-yet-to-blow-us-away-next-gen-console-watch"] He did go on to say that both machines were still great to make games for, and while they're both still working out system-level issues, this is normal for new hardware and things will ultimately get better with time. "Sony stuck what worked, their development software and tools were pretty stable and good pretty early on," Puha said. "Microsoft opted to change quite a lot of things, which in the long run are probably good, but of course it was just a bigger hurdle for us devs early on because we had to rewrite a bunch of different things to take advantage of specific features." Puha also had something to say about the Xbox Series S: namely, that developing for it is admittedly holding developers back at least a little. "It's no different from the previous generations where the system with the lowest specs does end up dictating a few of the things you're going to do because you're going to have to run on that system," he said. "The more hardware you have, the more you have to ultimately compromise a little bit when you are a smaller studio like us, when you just can't spend as much time making sure all these platforms are super good." He added that quality assurance especially is a huge problem contributing to this, as it is more and more expensive to test games the more platforms you have to test them on. "I don't envy folks making Halo Infinite," he said. Control: Ultimate Edition is out now for PS5 and Xbox Series S and X, and seems to be running fine on both. The original version was our favorite game of 2019 with our original review at launch celebrating its weird world, its thrilling ranged combat, and its incredible cast, script, and secrets. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

Turns out, making games is hard. Who knew? And it gets way, way harder when you have to make a game function on two completely different generations of consoles at once, according to Control developer Remedy's communications director Thomas Puha. On Next-Gen Console Watch, Puha outlined the struggles developers go through to bring games like Control from one generation to the next, especially when the studio doing the work is a smaller one with fewer resources (like Remedy). [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/03/19/why-ps5-series-x-games-have-yet-to-blow-us-away-next-gen-console-watch"] "Whenever you're in this cross-generational point, to be blunt, it sucks," Puha said. "You have to support the previous gen, make sure that sings, and then whatever you bring to next-gen is still limited by the choices you made years ago for the previous generation. It's not a very realistic thing, that this old game, we're just going to remake everything and then bring it to next-gen. It's just not like that. It's not a reality for us, because you're literally taking away resources that are building the future games and improving the engine for the future." Puha continued, saying that this is why PS5 and Xbox Series games right now don't look as good as we might want them too -- better than the previous generation, certainly, but maybe not quite the dramatic upgrade people might have wanted. "The games that will come out, the stuff we're working on, the visual bar, you're going to be blown away. And you only need to look at previous generations. You look at something like Modern Warfare. I can't understand how that game looks so good on Xbox One and PS4. And you're going to have the same on this current generation. We're going to see so much improvement." Puha pointed out that many of the problems with developing games for new generations are related to developer resources and tools. He noted that Control originally was shipped on a version of its game engine from August 2019, but then the engine completely updated to incorporate next-gen support -- effectively breaking everything Remedy already had in place. "When you get to the point where you have to get [a game] running on next-gen systems, on a new engine it takes several months just to get everything working," he said. "Nothing works at first. The content looks wrong, the textures look wrong, the lighting is busted, because we've made all these improvements but then they're incompatible with what we had in 2019. It took months -- the game is running, we had it running back in summer of last year, but it didn't have any of the nice things...it just took quite a while to get to the level where we had everything working that we had in the previous-gen version. Now we can actually start doing all that cool next-gen stuff." Developers effectively have to pick and choose what they want to work on, he said. But if they want to fully make use of every piece of next-gen tech for a game being brought over from the previous-gen, that can take up time they might otherwise be spending making new games. "We could keep developing features for this game for months, if not a year, but then you're already screwing the next project that is expecting to get these developers to work on that game. That's just the reality of a multi-project organization." Control: Ultimate Edition is out now for PS5 and Xbox Series S and X, following an initial kerfuffle over next-gen save transfers. The original version was our 2019 game of the year and our original review praised its "captivating, oddball world." [poilib element="accentDivider"] Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

Turns out, making games is hard. Who knew? And it gets way, way harder when you have to make a game function on two completely different generations of consoles at once, according to Control developer Remedy's communications director Thomas Puha. On Next-Gen Console Watch, Puha outlined the struggles developers go through to bring games like Control from one generation to the next, especially when the studio doing the work is a smaller one with fewer resources (like Remedy). [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/03/19/why-ps5-series-x-games-have-yet-to-blow-us-away-next-gen-console-watch"] "Whenever you're in this cross-generational point, to be blunt, it sucks," Puha said. "You have to support the previous gen, make sure that sings, and then whatever you bring to next-gen is still limited by the choices you made years ago for the previous generation. It's not a very realistic thing, that this old game, we're just going to remake everything and then bring it to next-gen. It's just not like that. It's not a reality for us, because you're literally taking away resources that are building the future games and improving the engine for the future." Puha continued, saying that this is why PS5 and Xbox Series games right now don't look as good as we might want them too -- better than the previous generation, certainly, but maybe not quite the dramatic upgrade people might have wanted. "The games that will come out, the stuff we're working on, the visual bar, you're going to be blown away. And you only need to look at previous generations. You look at something like Modern Warfare. I can't understand how that game looks so good on Xbox One and PS4. And you're going to have the same on this current generation. We're going to see so much improvement." Puha pointed out that many of the problems with developing games for new generations are related to developer resources and tools. He noted that Control originally was shipped on a version of its game engine from August 2019, but then the engine completely updated to incorporate next-gen support -- effectively breaking everything Remedy already had in place. "When you get to the point where you have to get [a game] running on next-gen systems, on a new engine it takes several months just to get everything working," he said. "Nothing works at first. The content looks wrong, the textures look wrong, the lighting is busted, because we've made all these improvements but then they're incompatible with what we had in 2019. It took months -- the game is running, we had it running back in summer of last year, but it didn't have any of the nice things...it just took quite a while to get to the level where we had everything working that we had in the previous-gen version. Now we can actually start doing all that cool next-gen stuff." Developers effectively have to pick and choose what they want to work on, he said. But if they want to fully make use of every piece of next-gen tech for a game being brought over from the previous-gen, that can take up time they might otherwise be spending making new games. "We could keep developing features for this game for months, if not a year, but then you're already screwing the next project that is expecting to get these developers to work on that game. That's just the reality of a multi-project organization." Control: Ultimate Edition is out now for PS5 and Xbox Series S and X, following an initial kerfuffle over next-gen save transfers. The original version was our 2019 game of the year and our original review praised its "captivating, oddball world." [poilib element="accentDivider"] Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne HD Remaster will be released for PS4, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam on May 25, 2021. While May 25 is the official release date, those who pre-order the Digital Deluxe Edition will get access to the game on May 21, four days earlier than the standard edition. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/07/20/shin-megami-tensei-3-nocturne-hd-remaster-official-trailer"] The Digital Deluxe Edition will cost $69.99 USD and will give players to such bonus content as the option to play as Devil May Cry's Dante. The full list of extras is as follows;

• Full Game Download
• Exclusive Access to the game four days early, on May 21
• Maniax Pack - Adds Dante from the Devil May Cry series
• Chronicle Pack - Adds Raidou from the Devil Summoner series
• MERCIFUL Difficulty - Adds and easier difficutly mode
• Mercy and Expectation Map Pack - Adds "Little Master's Mercy" and "Master's Expectation"
• Shin Megami Tensei BGM Pack - Two songs each from Shin Megami Tensei, Shin Megami Tensei II, Shin Megami Tensei IV, and Shin Megami Tensei: Apocalypse

[widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=shin-megami-tensei-3-nocturne-hd-remaster-screenshots&captions=true"] Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne HD Remaster is a modernized version of the PS2 classic from 2003 with remastered 3D models and backgrounds, additional difficulty settings, the ability to save wherever you'd like, both Japanese and English VO, an alternate branch featuring Raidou Kuzunoha, and other fixes that will improve the original game. For more on Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne HD Remaster, check out more about Dante's addition to the game and an explainer on the new Merciful Mode. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com. Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne HD Remaster will be released for PS4, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam on May 25, 2021. While May 25 is the official release date, those who pre-order the Digital Deluxe Edition will get access to the game on May 21, four days earlier than the standard edition. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/07/20/shin-megami-tensei-3-nocturne-hd-remaster-official-trailer"] The Digital Deluxe Edition will cost $69.99 USD and will give players to such bonus content as the option to play as Devil May Cry's Dante. The full list of extras is as follows;

• Full Game Download
• Exclusive Access to the game four days early, on May 21
• Maniax Pack - Adds Dante from the Devil May Cry series
• Chronicle Pack - Adds Raidou from the Devil Summoner series
• MERCIFUL Difficulty - Adds and easier difficutly mode
• Mercy and Expectation Map Pack - Adds "Little Master's Mercy" and "Master's Expectation"
• Shin Megami Tensei BGM Pack - Two songs each from Shin Megami Tensei, Shin Megami Tensei II, Shin Megami Tensei IV, and Shin Megami Tensei: Apocalypse

[widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=shin-megami-tensei-3-nocturne-hd-remaster-screenshots&captions=true"] Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne HD Remaster is a modernized version of the PS2 classic from 2003 with remastered 3D models and backgrounds, additional difficulty settings, the ability to save wherever you'd like, both Japanese and English VO, an alternate branch featuring Raidou Kuzunoha, and other fixes that will improve the original game. For more on Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne HD Remaster, check out more about Dante's addition to the game and an explainer on the new Merciful Mode. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com. Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.