It's been a while, but development on adorable social sim Mineko's Night Market is still chugging away, with the cat-filled game getting a new trailer this week at Gamescom.

Mineko's Night market follows Mineko, a young girl who has just arrived on the struggling Mount Fugu Island, where villagers have begun to catch sight of the mysterious Sun Cat Abe, who they worship. Mineko must work to restore the village to its former glory through daily activities, quests, crafting, and participation in the weekly Night Market where she can buy, barter, befriend the townsfolk, and play games.

For those following Mineko's Night Market, it's been a long wait. The game was first announced as far back as 2015 and at one point was planned for a 2019 release, but was pushed back repeatedly. It's made by a very small team, but has since picked up a publisher in Humble Bundle and a number of other partners, including A Shell in the Pit for audio. Currently, it has no planned release date still, but is anticipated for Nintendo Switch and PC when the time comes.

Even if its actual release date has been hazy for a long time, every time Mineko's Night Market has resurfaced it's looked better and better. Hopefully this latest trailer means we might finally get to visit the night market sooner rather than later.

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

It's been a while, but development on adorable social sim Mineko's Night Market is still chugging away, with the cat-filled game getting a new trailer this week at Gamescom.

Mineko's Night market follows Mineko, a young girl who has just arrived on the struggling Mount Fugu Island, where villagers have begun to catch sight of the mysterious Sun Cat Abe, who they worship. Mineko must work to restore the village to its former glory through daily activities, quests, crafting, and participation in the weekly Night Market where she can buy, barter, befriend the townsfolk, and play games.

For those following Mineko's Night Market, it's been a long wait. The game was first announced as far back as 2015 and at one point was planned for a 2019 release, but was pushed back repeatedly. It's made by a very small team, but has since picked up a publisher in Humble Bundle and a number of other partners, including A Shell in the Pit for audio. Currently, it has no planned release date still, but is anticipated for Nintendo Switch and PC when the time comes.

Even if its actual release date has been hazy for a long time, every time Mineko's Night Market has resurfaced it's looked better and better. Hopefully this latest trailer means we might finally get to visit the night market sooner rather than later.

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

Understandably, a lot of the talk about upcoming ‘adventure-strategy’ game Gord has focused on debut developer Covenant’s connection to The Witcher. Made up of a variety of Polish AAA developers, some of which moved on from CD Projekt Red to set up the studio, Covenant isn’t running far from its roots - like much of The Witcher, Gord takes place in a grim, pastoral fantasy world inspired by Slavic folklore. But when I saw it at Gamescom, Covenant CEO Stan Just made a different comparison that reveals Gord’s promise - Rimworld.

Like Rimworld, Gord begins by giving you a smattering of generated villagers, each with individual personality traits that can affect their working and personal lives. Like Rimworld, you task those villagers with building a colony from scratch, erecting a temple to their gods, building a palisade wall to keep out the various threats lurking in the dark, and collecting the resources needed to do so. And, like Rimworld, Gord wants to help turn tiny moments into unexpected, personal stories that emerge naturally.

It’s a great set-up, building in elements of real-time strategy (on first glance, this presents itself like a classic top-down unit control game) and survival games to see you grow attached to your townsfolk over time as they build your village. Success is measured by the townsfolk’s sanity (happiness isn’t really measurable in a world as miserable as this) as well as how much progress you make in creating a functioning settlement.

Your villagers can be naturally gifted at certain things (building, using specific weaponry, and more), and they may bring with them unique items that will help them survive. They may also have personalities that mean they simply won’t do certain tasks, forcing you to be creative with how you assign the village’s many roles. In the demo I watch, a baby is unexpectedly born as we play, giving a hint at how this isn’t just about helping a single set of villagers, but perhaps a whole lineage of them. And of course, all of this is being done to make it really devastating when they die.

Because Gord isn’t just a strategy game, or even simply a game about defending the settlement. It’s also a small-scale strategy game, allowing you to arm your strongest villagers and take them out into the wider world, whether to kill off threats, prevent raids, loot treasures, or more. Sometimes, your village itself will offer quests that take you out, but there’s also a full story campaign mode that will see major objectives offered throughout your time in the wilderness.

The pre-beta version I see isn’t exactly pretty, with some fairly basic animations making combat feel a little less than dynamic, but there’s a lot going on under the hood. Villagers can be armed in different ways, and assigned to different groups, even allowing you to add some light automation (you can assign stronger axe-wielding warriors to move and protect weaker bow users, for example). Location is important, too, as both you and your enemies can get buffs or debuffs for the terrain around them.

On top of that, you can use Faith - a currency of sorts generated by having your villagers worship at a temple - to call on the gods to offer protective or offensive spells. The damaging spells are a highlight - these gods don’t seem to be all that merciful, with one spell sending worms to infest a target, and another getting them to hover in the air as their bones are twisted into unnatural positions.

Enemies themselves come in many forms, from natural beasts, twisted humanoids and, most excitingly, the Horrors. Horrors are underworld demons of various shapes and sizes that have been placed across Gord’s world, and represent the most threatening figures you can find. Brilliantly, these aren’t just totally hostile bosses - a Horror could visit your village and ask for a gift. That could be your gold, your crops… or your children. In the early stages, you might just have to take that deal - reject them, and they may curse your village, infesting it with insects, summoning a tornado, or worse.

But crucially, these more traditional adventure sections tie back into that Rimworld-like set up. A death while out on patrol could devastate your villagers - especially if you can’t recover and bury the corpse. Sustain an injury or lose sanity, and a warrior might suddenly have a physical ailment or mental affliction that affects them back home. Avoid those things, and your villagers will gain experience in their assigned professions over time - perhaps, after enough training, you’ll be able to send out a force and exact revenge on the Horror that took your kids.

Gord feels built to tell endless stories, and Covenant is accounting for that by including a full custom scenarios mode alongside the campaign. Here, you can micromanage what kind of a world you’re placed into, including the kinds of objectives you want to complete (or simply have no objective, and see how long you can survive) - and those seeds can be shared among players to allow for people to take up the exact same challenge.

Covenant isn’t aiming low. The games the team is aiming to invoke are beloved by their fanbases, but with Gord it’s looking to create something that may earn its own following, on its own terms. I’m more than intrigued to see if it can manage that feat.

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.

Understandably, a lot of the talk about upcoming ‘adventure-strategy’ game Gord has focused on debut developer Covenant’s connection to The Witcher. Made up of a variety of Polish AAA developers, some of which moved on from CD Projekt Red to set up the studio, Covenant isn’t running far from its roots - like much of The Witcher, Gord takes place in a grim, pastoral fantasy world inspired by Slavic folklore. But when I saw it at Gamescom, Covenant CEO Stan Just made a different comparison that reveals Gord’s promise - Rimworld.

Like Rimworld, Gord begins by giving you a smattering of generated villagers, each with individual personality traits that can affect their working and personal lives. Like Rimworld, you task those villagers with building a colony from scratch, erecting a temple to their gods, building a palisade wall to keep out the various threats lurking in the dark, and collecting the resources needed to do so. And, like Rimworld, Gord wants to help turn tiny moments into unexpected, personal stories that emerge naturally.

It’s a great set-up, building in elements of real-time strategy (on first glance, this presents itself like a classic top-down unit control game) and survival games to see you grow attached to your townsfolk over time as they build your village. Success is measured by the townsfolk’s sanity (happiness isn’t really measurable in a world as miserable as this) as well as how much progress you make in creating a functioning settlement.

Your villagers can be naturally gifted at certain things (building, using specific weaponry, and more), and they may bring with them unique items that will help them survive. They may also have personalities that mean they simply won’t do certain tasks, forcing you to be creative with how you assign the village’s many roles. In the demo I watch, a baby is unexpectedly born as we play, giving a hint at how this isn’t just about helping a single set of villagers, but perhaps a whole lineage of them. And of course, all of this is being done to make it really devastating when they die.

Because Gord isn’t just a strategy game, or even simply a game about defending the settlement. It’s also a small-scale strategy game, allowing you to arm your strongest villagers and take them out into the wider world, whether to kill off threats, prevent raids, loot treasures, or more. Sometimes, your village itself will offer quests that take you out, but there’s also a full story campaign mode that will see major objectives offered throughout your time in the wilderness.

The pre-beta version I see isn’t exactly pretty, with some fairly basic animations making combat feel a little less than dynamic, but there’s a lot going on under the hood. Villagers can be armed in different ways, and assigned to different groups, even allowing you to add some light automation (you can assign stronger axe-wielding warriors to move and protect weaker bow users, for example). Location is important, too, as both you and your enemies can get buffs or debuffs for the terrain around them.

On top of that, you can use Faith - a currency of sorts generated by having your villagers worship at a temple - to call on the gods to offer protective or offensive spells. The damaging spells are a highlight - these gods don’t seem to be all that merciful, with one spell sending worms to infest a target, and another getting them to hover in the air as their bones are twisted into unnatural positions.

Enemies themselves come in many forms, from natural beasts, twisted humanoids and, most excitingly, the Horrors. Horrors are underworld demons of various shapes and sizes that have been placed across Gord’s world, and represent the most threatening figures you can find. Brilliantly, these aren’t just totally hostile bosses - a Horror could visit your village and ask for a gift. That could be your gold, your crops… or your children. In the early stages, you might just have to take that deal - reject them, and they may curse your village, infesting it with insects, summoning a tornado, or worse.

But crucially, these more traditional adventure sections tie back into that Rimworld-like set up. A death while out on patrol could devastate your villagers - especially if you can’t recover and bury the corpse. Sustain an injury or lose sanity, and a warrior might suddenly have a physical ailment or mental affliction that affects them back home. Avoid those things, and your villagers will gain experience in their assigned professions over time - perhaps, after enough training, you’ll be able to send out a force and exact revenge on the Horror that took your kids.

Gord feels built to tell endless stories, and Covenant is accounting for that by including a full custom scenarios mode alongside the campaign. Here, you can micromanage what kind of a world you’re placed into, including the kinds of objectives you want to complete (or simply have no objective, and see how long you can survive) - and those seeds can be shared among players to allow for people to take up the exact same challenge.

Covenant isn’t aiming low. The games the team is aiming to invoke are beloved by their fanbases, but with Gord it’s looking to create something that may earn its own following, on its own terms. I’m more than intrigued to see if it can manage that feat.

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.

Shapeshifting action-adventure game, Nobody Saves the World is getting a DLC expansion. Frozen Hearth will add new areas, challenges and forms, and will arrive on September 13.

Annnounced during IGN's Awesome Indies showcase at Gamescom, Frozen Hearth sees players find an underground region in which "the strongest warriors compete for glory in The Tempering, a series of puzzles and challenges that will push players’ transformation skills and creativity."

The expansion adds two new transformation forms – Killer Bee and Mechanic – new characters to meet, and rewards for conquering the Tempering. The expansion will retail at $4.99 USD on all platforms.

“When we shipped the original game, there were so many ideas we had to leave on the cutting room floor, and this DLC gave us a chance to bring some of them to life,” says lead designer Ian Campbell, Lead Designer. “We had a blast creating even more forms, as well as puzzles and challenges that make the most of the game’s mix-and-match customization!”

We awarded Nobody Saves the World a 7/10 review, saying "at its best, which it is for a majority of the 15-hour campaign, it's a joy to play."

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.

Shapeshifting action-adventure game, Nobody Saves the World is getting a DLC expansion. Frozen Hearth will add new areas, challenges and forms, and will arrive on September 13.

Annnounced during IGN's Awesome Indies showcase at Gamescom, Frozen Hearth sees players find an underground region in which "the strongest warriors compete for glory in The Tempering, a series of puzzles and challenges that will push players’ transformation skills and creativity."

The expansion adds two new transformation forms – Killer Bee and Mechanic – new characters to meet, and rewards for conquering the Tempering. The expansion will retail at $4.99 USD on all platforms.

“When we shipped the original game, there were so many ideas we had to leave on the cutting room floor, and this DLC gave us a chance to bring some of them to life,” says lead designer Ian Campbell, Lead Designer. “We had a blast creating even more forms, as well as puzzles and challenges that make the most of the game’s mix-and-match customization!”

We awarded Nobody Saves the World a 7/10 review, saying "at its best, which it is for a majority of the 15-hour campaign, it's a joy to play."

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.

The upcoming remake of The Last of Us Part 1 has some interesting accessibility features, including the use of haptic feedback to help deaf gamers feel how dialogue is delivered.

A PlayStation Blog post outlined the several accessibility features arriving in the game, carrying on from The Last of Us Part 2's extensive array of modifiers.

“[One feature] which started as a prototype but ended up being really successful during playtesting is a feature that plays dialogue through the PS5 DualSense controller as haptic feedback,” said game director Matthew Gallant. “That way a deaf player can feel the way a line is delivered, can feel the emphasis, along with the subtitles to give some sense of how that line is delivered.”

This interesting new feature is made possible due to the PS5’s DualSense controller and its haptic feedback, a far more nuanced response than a simple rumble or vibration from other controllers.

Of course, it’s not the only accessible feature being added. “We’re expecting this to be an accessible experience for blind players, for deaf players, for players with motor accessibility needs,” said Gallant.

“The biggest new feature we have are audio descriptions for cinematics. We partnered with Descriptive Video Works, a professional service whose background is TV, movies and video game trailers, and integrated it into the cutscenes and across all our localized languages.”

Audio description is commonplace among TV sets, essentially narrating scenes for those with sight difficulties. The inclusion of audio descriptions in The Last of Us Part 1 really showcases the ways in which developers are looking to increase accessibility.

The Last of Us was originally released in 2013 and is coming to the PS5 next month.

IGN’s original review of The Last of Us said: “The Last of Us seamlessly intertwines satisfying, choice-based gameplay with a stellar narrative. It never slows down, it never lets up, and frankly, it never disappoints."

Want to read more about The Last of Us Part 1? Check out the game’s official launch trailer as well as all the new modes and enhancements coming in The Last of Us Part 1.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

The upcoming remake of The Last of Us Part 1 has some interesting accessibility features, including the use of haptic feedback to help deaf gamers feel how dialogue is delivered.

A PlayStation Blog post outlined the several accessibility features arriving in the game, carrying on from The Last of Us Part 2's extensive array of modifiers.

“[One feature] which started as a prototype but ended up being really successful during playtesting is a feature that plays dialogue through the PS5 DualSense controller as haptic feedback,” said game director Matthew Gallant. “That way a deaf player can feel the way a line is delivered, can feel the emphasis, along with the subtitles to give some sense of how that line is delivered.”

This interesting new feature is made possible due to the PS5’s DualSense controller and its haptic feedback, a far more nuanced response than a simple rumble or vibration from other controllers.

Of course, it’s not the only accessible feature being added. “We’re expecting this to be an accessible experience for blind players, for deaf players, for players with motor accessibility needs,” said Gallant.

“The biggest new feature we have are audio descriptions for cinematics. We partnered with Descriptive Video Works, a professional service whose background is TV, movies and video game trailers, and integrated it into the cutscenes and across all our localized languages.”

Audio description is commonplace among TV sets, essentially narrating scenes for those with sight difficulties. The inclusion of audio descriptions in The Last of Us Part 1 really showcases the ways in which developers are looking to increase accessibility.

The Last of Us was originally released in 2013 and is coming to the PS5 next month.

IGN’s original review of The Last of Us said: “The Last of Us seamlessly intertwines satisfying, choice-based gameplay with a stellar narrative. It never slows down, it never lets up, and frankly, it never disappoints."

Want to read more about The Last of Us Part 1? Check out the game’s official launch trailer as well as all the new modes and enhancements coming in The Last of Us Part 1.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Hello Neighbor publisher TinyBuild has acquired Bossa Studios IPs including Surgeon Simulator, I Am Bread, and I Am Fish for $3 million.

As reported by GamesIndustry.biz, Bossa Studios was looking to sell its catalog of existing IPs as it moves on to developing games "exclusively in the genre of co-op PvE". According to job listings on Bossa's website, the studio is working on a free-to-play, survival or "survival-adjacent" live-service game.

"Together with TinyBuild, we found a path that allows Bossa to dedicate its full attention to its new projects, while ensuring Surgeon Simulator, I Am Bread, and I Am Fish have a new home that understands what makes these games tick as well as we do," said Bossa co-founder Henrique Olifiers.

Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread are arguably the most known titles being bought, both veering on the slightly ridiculous sides of what a video game can be.

Surgeon Simulator is quite a bit different from other sims, as players typically spend as much time juggling organs as they do performing surgery, while I Am Bread lets players play as, well, a bit of bread.

Alongside Bossa's trio of IPs, TinyBuild announced its $5.4 million acquisition of Despot's Game developer Konfa Games.

Jordan is a freelance writer for IGN.

Hello Neighbor publisher TinyBuild has acquired Bossa Studios IPs including Surgeon Simulator, I Am Bread, and I Am Fish for $3 million.

As reported by GamesIndustry.biz, Bossa Studios was looking to sell its catalog of existing IPs as it moves on to developing games "exclusively in the genre of co-op PvE". According to job listings on Bossa's website, the studio is working on a free-to-play, survival or "survival-adjacent" live-service game.

"Together with TinyBuild, we found a path that allows Bossa to dedicate its full attention to its new projects, while ensuring Surgeon Simulator, I Am Bread, and I Am Fish have a new home that understands what makes these games tick as well as we do," said Bossa co-founder Henrique Olifiers.

Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread are arguably the most known titles being bought, both veering on the slightly ridiculous sides of what a video game can be.

Surgeon Simulator is quite a bit different from other sims, as players typically spend as much time juggling organs as they do performing surgery, while I Am Bread lets players play as, well, a bit of bread.

Alongside Bossa's trio of IPs, TinyBuild announced its $5.4 million acquisition of Despot's Game developer Konfa Games.

Jordan is a freelance writer for IGN.