Category: Gaming

Not only is Fall Guys going free-to-play starting next month, the developers at Mediatonic are also working on adding a level editor to the frantic platforming battle royale.

At the very end of today’s Fall Guys Free for All stream, we got a very early look at the new level creator. Similar to Nintendo’s Super Mario Maker and other level creation tools, the mode lets players create their own obstacle courses from scratch.

The tool gives creators a catalog of common Fall Guys objects, like swinging axes, conveyor belts, and fruit-shooting cannons, and lets players place them anywhere on the map. As long as you don’t exceed the weight limit, it seems you can mix and match objects to create anything that comes to mind.

The customization appears to be fairly in-depth, as an options menu popped up that lets you choose a variety of settings like item size, rotation speed and direction, and more. And — also like Mario Maker — after you finish building the level, you have to prove it can be completed before you can publish it, which suggests we’ll see online content sharing where you’ll hopefully be able to try out levels other people built, and see how many people test out your own levels.

There’s no timetable for when this level creator mode will actually join Fall Guys. In the stream, Mediatonic said, “just to be clear, this mode is still a fair way from release.”

The new free-to-play version of Fall Guys will launch on June 21 for Xbox, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, and on the Epic Games Store. In addition to cross-platform play and progression, the new season will bring an overhauled monetization system, new levels, and more crossover costumes, including Mecha Godzilla.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN. You can find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

Achilles: Legends Untold puts the “early” in Early Access. Across the board, this action RPG is full of ideas that feel like they are still an epic journey away from being ready. Combat, which has Soulslike ambitions, is competent but a bit flat; the first stage of this world looks good and is full of monsters to kill but devoid of things worth exploring; and the story – beyond its interesting reframing of the death of Achilles by a well-placed arrow from Paris of Troy – is trivial and its characters are rote. And, while it should go without saying that early access games are buggy, at launch Achilles has more than its fair share, even by this standard. In its current state, there’s nothing legendary to talk about.

The imaginative addition to the myth is that after being slain, our titular demigod goes to Tartarus and meets Hades, where they agree that it would be in their mutual interest to let Achilles return to the surface so that he can take his revenge; in return, Hades gets a superhuman tool to do his bidding. Familiar characters, like King Agamemnon, meet the freshly undead Achilles and aren’t always happy to see him. It’s a good start, but the other characters and story elements introduced thus far are largely forgettable, and much of the dialogue is utterly underwhelming.

Once reborn, Achilles is thrown into a colorful, verdant Greece, with the first bits of his new lease on life spent finding Hades’ missing nephew, Hephestus, the god of fire. Once they’re reunited the three of them hatch a plan: they’ll restore the connection between Greece and the underworld so that the shambling undead can go back to their homes. Sounds good to me, what could go wrong?

From there, I did a bunch of running from dungeon to dungeon, gathering doodads for so-and-sos, all in pursuit of Hades’ big plan – that takes about five hours to hit the current finish line. Doing so was more inconvenient than it needed to be because without a minimap, in conjunction with the great distance between these locations, it’s incredibly easy to get lost on the way. You can eventually fast-travel between shrines, but because there isn’t a proper world map either it’s impossible to know where they are in relation to each other. As an example of the trouble this causes: when you first begin your adventure, you unlock a forge that’s supposed to be your early go-to location for upgrading and buying equipment… but you can’t teleport to it. So until I memorized exactly where it is among a lot of samey-looking ruins and rocks, I spent more time searching for it than I did engaging with any of the crafting.

This confusion can go double for dungeons. The second one, the Temple of Cronus, changed its layout every time I died in it – but only slightly, with some sections being exactly how I left them, sandwiched between new sections that I’d never seen before. This was a maddening and cruel penalty that made what should have been a simple restart take so much longer, and one that could be easily made palatable by a map or wayfinding system of any sort. Contemporary games with randomized dungeons are almost always a linear path from one room to the next, or at least have tools for finding your way through them – and I didn’t know how much I missed those until now.

All of that aimlessness is a side effect of the fact that the countryside between dungeons is surprisingly large, full of pretty scenery and diverse locations like rugged mountains, dark temples, and rolling hills… but it’s also devoid of anything worth walking off the beaten path to discover. Maybe it’s expecting too much of a modest game like Achilles, but this many years after games like The Witcher 3 and Breath of the Wild stoked our urge to explore by filling their massive open worlds with points of interest with elaborate side quests or puzzle dungeons, I was disappointed by what I found. Rarely did any of my sidetracking bear any fruit, and when it did, it was just to add a new unremarkable weapon to my arsenal of swords, bigger swords, spears, and shields. That might be one thing if you have an exciting loot system, but right now Achilles does not. Other than that, many items you find are various sorts of health potions or status cures, most of which I never even engaged with because (thus far) things like being poisoned are never presented as a viable threat to you.

It’s not barren of enemies, at least: the world you’ve returned to is overflowing with greedy bandits, shambling undead, and giant monstrosities who want to send you back across Styx. Alone, most enemies are simple fodder, but in groups they provide more than a little resistance. Some enemies actually use their numbers to explicit advantage, unleashing tag-team moves to attempt to throw you off your game. If they don’t have the numbers advantage, the notable evasiveness of the enemy AI often finds them backing away from you long enough to recruit allies from nearby camps. On occasion, they don’t even have to do that because engaging with some groups of enemies seemingly triggers aggro from off-screen camps. In short, what appears to be a manageable encounter can turn into an overwhelming mess in the blink of an eye.

On the other hand there are some, like archers, who just stand in groups and spam normal shots from a distance that chip away at your health and stamina on block; I’d classify them as more annoying than challenging. Bosses largely fit into that mold as well. There’s a half a dozen or so standing between you and the end of the early access content, and only one, the Skeleton King, really stands out as a challenge beyond simply being a bigger version of a normal monster with more health and more damage.

Meanwhile, Achilles’ tools for combat aren’t much to write home about. Light and heavy attacks can be chained into combos, the length of which is limited by the amount of stamina you have. They lack a bit of impact, though – at times, it feels like Achilles just waves a blade around in the air and then enemies fall over around him. I wish a solid blow landing on a foe felt meatier, more often. There’s a template for this within Legends Untold: adding a run or a dash modifies basic attacks into more stylish and powerful moves, including that fancy jumping sword one Brad Pitt made famous in 2004’s Troy. Getting some of these unique attacks to hit reliably can be a pain, though, as it seems like enemy hitboxes are more of a suggestion than a rule.

Achilles Legends Untold Screens

As you’d expect for a game in the Diablo mold, you can unlock special abilities via a constellation-shaped ability tree as you level up. An item lets you throw your shield early on, but by spending fate (ie: souls) you get things like parries and a weird “stealth” drain attack that allows you to suck life force from unsuspecting enemies from a distance, Legacy of Kain style. Those have the potential to mix combat up, but progression could use a rework because right now unlocking the cool stuff takes a pretty serious investment of this resource to get around the web of points on the various star charts, with lots of upgrading of uninteresting passive skills necessary to get to the next big active skill. So you can expect to spend a lot of time with what you have before you’ll get an opportunity to try something new.

In the interim, there are some one-use items that you can pick up and use to spice up your offensive game plan. One of my favorites was the explosive Greek Flame – effectively a grenade that does big damage to enemies in an area while also lighting them on fire. I also got a lot of mileage out of Groggus Darts, which slow enemies and give you wider windows of offense. If Achilles brought these to the bow fight, Paris would have had a much harder time getting in that lucky shot.

Speaking of luck, you’ll need plenty when it comes to navigating Legends Untold’s bugs, which are more of a problem than in most early access games I’ve played. Almost everything about this game is currently janky in some form. Enemy AI is prone to failure; invisible walls sometimes close you off from returning to areas you were just in; the lock-on system frequently ignores enemies within stabbing distance in favor of ones that are off screen; sound drops out from cutscenes; and (you guessed it) more. Again, it’s early access, but the price to play Achilles isn’t just cash, it’s sometimes a Sisyphean test of your patience. And in its current state, that’s a price I wouldn’t recommend paying.

As someone who loves the melding of classical myth and epic fantasy, plus keeps having Netflix recommend him “shows with a strong female lead,” Asterigos: Curse of the Stars easily caught my eye when it was announced last fall. I was recently sent a demo build of an early segment, and while it may not be as polished as it could be at this stage, I definitely put down my controller curious to see how this fantastical adventure inspired by a combination of Greek and Roman mythology will come together.

Asterigos casts you as Hilda, a warrior of the Northwind Legion as she investigates the ancient city of Aphes in search of her missing father and its long-buried secrets. The city is said to have been cursed by the gods for its careless overuse of the world’s magic–which Hilda herself seems to be able to harness, though whether this is common for her people or she’s just Extra Special™ is unclear– and the once-great ruin is now filled with dangerous beasts and monsters. I didn’t run into anything as captivating as some of what’s been shown in trailers, though the Pixar-esque design aesthetic (reminiscent of Blizzard’s cinematic style or recent mythical adventures like Immortals: Fenyx Rising and Kena: Bridge of Spirits) made even what boiled down to “big alligator” or “giant boar” interesting creatures to square up against.

I initially thought Asterigos was presenting itself as a family-friendly FromSoft homage. You collect “Startdust” from every enemy you defeat, and once the initial movement tutorials faded offscreen the next big teaching point was about how you can rest at a Conduit (basically a “magic fountain”) to create a checkpoint and refill your HP and mana reserve—but that doing so would respawn any enemies you’d defeated since your last rest. You’ll also respawn there (for the cost of some collected Stardust) if your HP drops to zero—an “emergency teleportation” they call it, making sure to be very clear that you have not died.

However, that’s about as far as the KidSouls gimmick runs, it seems. Yes, dodge-rolling is important and taking enemies on one at a time seemed to be the best strategy to avoid losing any health, but aside from the last boss I ran into, I was hard-pressed to find myself being sent back to the last checkpoint—though that seemed to be demo-specific when a “this guy killed you – thanks for playing!” card showed up and the demo ended. The higher difficulty mode did feel notably different, with basic enemies introducing new tactics, and boss creatures definitely hit a lot harder—though even here, defeat was rare. That’s not a bad thing, of course; as someone who barely made it out of Limgrave in Elden Ring, I’m the last person to say a game needs to be difficult to be enjoyable.

As such, Asterigos’ combat system is relatively simple, but enjoyable: you can equip two magic-infused weapons, each of which has a unique ability in addition to its basic attack combo. The sword and shield, for instance – which counts as one weapon – lets you parry incoming attacks, leaving your opponent momentarily open to a counter, while the twin daggers allow you to make a long dash past (or sometimes through) nearby enemies. My go-to combo for most of my demo was the sword/shield combined with the extended reach of a spear – though I discovered too late how useful Hilda’s bracers were, which not only allow for both close and mid-range magic attacks but also let you drop arcane land mines, which were especially useful for dealing with primarily melee-centric monsters that inhabited these regions.

The biggest hurdle to get over during the roughly half-hour span it took to search every nook and cranny of the demo’s two regions were its controls. While not inherently awful, there were definitely some choices that made guiding Hilda around the world a bit unwieldy. Not being able to jump without holding Run and having those two buttons mapped under the same finger, for example, made fluid exploration tricky, and having to open a radial-menu to before using one of Hilda’s unique skill powers causes the flow of combat to stutter.

That clunkiness did get better as I became more comfortable with the controls, but never went away completely. However, the skills themselves seem to provide a wide variety of options—the demo powers ranged from simply “doing a bigger hit” to creating a temporary shield around yourself to absorb damage or creating an arcane lightning storm that tracked enemies to deal damage over time, and trailers have shown what seem like even more complicated maneuvers—meaning players of all fighting styles should have lots of tactical options.

We didn’t get a full picture of the progression system, but it appears to be a blend of fairly standard action-RPG conventions. You’ve got your RPG-style attribute points (Precision, Constitution, and Arcana, which determine your attack damage, HP and stamina pool, and magical strength/defense, respectively) or passive perks you unlock as you level up alongside those weapon skills, and can collect equippable trinkets with various resistances/vulnerabilities around the world., While I wasn’t able to do anything with the thousands of Stardust points I didn’t spend on emergency teleportations, I’m told it becomes a valuable currency once you get further into the world.

Yes, it’s still a bit rough around the edges—with some lurching animations and unsynced dialogue—but overall I’m curious to see how the full version of Asterigon comes together. Odds are my issues with its button layout will be alleviated once we’re able to configure our own controllers, and hopefully the story and ongoing action will become as compelling as its novel art style. Its Greco-Roman mythic fantasy vibe is one I can easily see myself getting lost in, and I’m always game to tinker with a litany of tactical options to hone the just the right build for my arcane war maiden in what was ultimately a promising, if simplistic, combat system.

Follow along for more on Asterigos: Curse of the Stars as we approach its scheduled launch window of Fall 2022, and for other animated mythic fantasy adventures (and serialized titling) check out our reviews of Immortals: Fenyx Rising or Kena: Bridge of Spirits.

JR is a Senior Producer at IGN, you can follow him on Twitter for more video games and tabletop RPG shenanigans.

Peacock’s Twisted Metal TV series is taking shape, with more stars signing up for the live-action adaptation of the classic PlayStation video game.

It was revealed in 2019 that Sony was developing a Twisted Metal series, but now the wheels are firmly in motion. Cobra Kai writer and producer Michael Jordan Smith is showrunning, writing, and executive producing the half-hour series, which will be based on an original story from the Twisted Metal universe written by Deadpool scribes Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick.

Series star Anthony Mackie is onboard as an exec producer alongside Will Arnett and Marc Forman of Electric Avenue, Jason Spire of Inspire Entertainment, Peter Principato of Artists First, Asad Qizilbash and Carter Swan from PlayStation Productions, together with Hermen Hulst, Head of PlayStation Studios, and Kitao Sakurai, who will direct multiple episodes.

The show will revolve around a motor-mouthed outsider offered a chance at a better life, but only if he can successfully deliver a mysterious package across a post-apocalyptic wasteland. He will be joined by a trigger-happy car thief who will help him navigate the dangers of the open road, including a deranged clown who drives an all too familiar ice cream truck.

Keep reading for a rundown of who’s appearing in the Twisted Metal series — and don’t forget to bookmark the page, as we’ll be updating this article with all-new casting announcements.

Anthony Mackie as John Doe

Marvel’s new Captain America, Anthony Mackie has been cast in the lead role of the Twisted Metal series, on which he also serves as an executive producer. It was announced that he had joined the series in September 2021, coming off the back of his titular role on The Falcon and the Winter Soldier for Disney+ earlier in the year.

According to a press release, Mackie will play the amnesiac John Doe, “a smart ass, motor-mouthed Milkman who talks as fast as he drives, facing savage vehicles of destruction as he delivers much-needed supplies from one post-apocalyptic settlement to another” until he’s offered “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make his wish of finding community come true.”

Stephanie Beatriz as Quiet

Brooklyn Nine-Nine alum Stephanie Beatriz has signed on to star opposite Mackie in the Twisted Metal series, playing Quiet, “a ferocious, badass car thief who acts purely on instinct.” Beatriz steps into the role after recently starring in Disney’s Oscar-winning animated film Encanto and Warner Bros.’ film adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights.

In Twisted Metal, Beatriz’s Quiet originates from “a community that oppressed her into silence” but a press release notes that she will endeavour to find her place in the dark, chaotic world of the high-octane action-comedy. On that journey, she will become “clouded by her need for revenge” and form “an unlikely, antagonistic bond with John Doe.”

Keep checking back here for all the latest casting updates for Twisted Metal. And take note of the release dates for all the upcoming video game movies and TV shows.

Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.

Sony has announced several games coming to its new PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium tiers, including Red Dead Redemption 2, Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, Ghost Of Tsushima Director’s Cut, and more.

Confirmed in a blog post, there are now 56 PS4 and PS5 titles confirmed for the $99.99 a year Extra and $119.99 Premium tiers. The Premium tier also has 29 Classic Catalogue games confirmed and another 29 PS3 games.

Sony has also announced that “time-limited game trials” will be available on the Premium tier that allow users to sample games including Horizon Forbidden West, Cyberpunk 2077, and WWE 2K22 for a few hours at no extra cost.

These lists are just a “a selection of the content” coming to the new tiers as Sony previously confirmed that more than 700 games would be available when it announced the updated service in March.

Further PS4 games are also arriving through the Classic Games Catalogue as Sony has placed remasters and collections in the same category as retro games.

Games including Borderlands: The Handsome Collection and the LEGO Harry Potter Collection will therefore be included in the Classic Games Catalogue that is only available in the Premium tier.

The final list of games that Sony announced is its Original PS3 Games collection that is only available via streaming (through PS4, PS5, and PC), and therefore only available in regions that support cloud streaming.

These include the U.S., Canada, Japan, UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Austria, Switzerland, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Sweden.

Sony confirmed an extension of cloud streaming services would arrive in June, however, giving the following countries access to the Original PS3 Games collection: Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Republic of Cyprus, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

The time-limited game trials available through the Premium tier let players download and sample a game before buying it.

Sony said “most games” will be available for two hours but shows that Horizon Forbidden West will be available for three, perhaps suggesting that PlayStation Studios games will be available for slightly longer than third party titles.

The only first party games at launch will be Horizon Forbidden West and the Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection, however, while the four third party offerings are Cyberpunk 2077, Farming Simulator 22, Tiny Tina’s Wonderland, and WWE 2K22. Cyberpunk and Uncharted are only availably on PS5 but the rest are available on PS4 as well.

The lowest-cost Essential tier is practically the same as the current PlayStation Plus service and Sony has confirmed that the free monthly games will continue to be refreshed on the first Tuesday of each month.

The higher tiers will be refreshed towards the middle of the month, however, with new games being added (and some taken away) over time. This also applies to the game trials, and the number of games refreshed will also vary month to month.

The new PlayStation Plus tiers will be released in North and South America on June 13 but arrive first in Asia (excluding Japan) next week on May 24, followed by Japan on June 2. Europe, Australia, and New Zealand are the last to receive the update with the service arriving on June 23.

A leaked marketing guide appears to confirm that Arma 4 will not be the next entry in the franchise from Bohemia Interactive, but that it instead will be a PC and console game called Arma Reforger.

As reported by PC Gamer, the marketing guide was posted on Reddit’s Gaming Leaks and Rumors and appears to be credible, especially since Bohemia is gearing up to reveal the “Future or Arma” on May 17, 2022.

The guide says that, due to the “complexity of developing Arma 4,” Arma Reforger will be a “bridge” between Arma 3 and what will eventually be the official fourth game in the series. While it may not be the Arma 4 people were hoping for, it does look to be using Bohemia’s new Enfusion engine.

Arma Reforger will allegedly take place on the fictional island of Everon in the Atlantic ocean and will be set in “an alternate 1989” during a conflict between the US and Soviet Union. The game is being billed as a “military simulation game (as opposed to a ‘simulator’),” which hints it may be more accessible than the mainline games.

Bohemia hopes this game, which will be on its new Enfusion engine, will get modders comfortable with the new tools in time for Arma 4, whenever it arrives. In doing so, Arma 4 should have a thriving modding community at launch.

The marketing guide also notes that Bohemia will continue to work with the International Committee of the Red Cross and the company will keep working on features that have an “anti-war humanitarian focus” by continuing to “expose, disseminate, and promote International Humanitarian Law in-game.”

Arma 3 was released in 2013 and doctored footage of the game was recently used as hoax news footage of combat in Ukraine.

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.

After nearly 40 years away from the games industry, Van Mai, the pioneering woman who wrote on Atari 2600’s Wabbit and helped create the first console game to star a human girl, has been found.

As reported by the Video Game History Foundation, Polygon began searching for this developer that went by the name “Ban Tran” – a Vietnamese woman who worked at Apollo to develop Wabbit before the company declared bankruptcy in 1982.

Van Mai – Image Credit: Van Mai/Video Game History Foundation

Tran would leave the company and work on an unreleased Solar Fox conversion for the Atari 5200 at MicroGraphic Image, but then she seemingly disappeared from the industry. There were many who attempted to find her, but she was not found until recently thanks to the help of collaborators at the Video Game History Foundation.

A Discord member named SoH, who is part of a channel dedicated to finding Ban Tran in the Video Game History Foundation’s Discord, suggested that someone should contact the National Archives in Texas to try to find the bankruptcy records for Apollo.

This proved to be the golden ticket as Tran was one of several Apollo employees who went through the court to get their final royalty checks for the games they worked on. Once this information was obtained, the Video Game History Foundation was able to reach out to her and she agreed to talk to the company about her story.

Tran, who now goes by her married name, Van Mai, was born in Vietnam and entered the US as a refugee following the Vietnam war. She lived in Dallas with her family and would drop out of high school due to the language barrier. While she would eventually get a GED, before that she started taking programming classes.

Wabbit Cover Art – Image Credit: Apollo/Video Game History Foundation

After working for the Dallas Independent School District, Mai applied to a help wanted ad at Apollo and got the job, in part, by pitching a game in her interview. Despite Mai not being the type of “nerd” Apollo was used to hiring, she quickly made an impression.

“It was an extremely-intense concept and made Night Trap look like a bedtime story for kids, but it was 20 years ahead of its time and way too intense for the VCS,” Mai’s one-time co-worker Dan Oliver remembered. “She was explaining it like it was a picnic at the beach, so pretty quickly the stereotype started to fall.”

Mai herself doesn’t fully remember what the game was, but she does remember pitching a game for little girls that would eventually become Wabbit – a game starring a girl named Billie Sue who has to keep rabbits away from her vegetables.

“I don’t think my teammates or my boss said anything about [the theme],” Mai said. “Everything was up to me, I designed it – all the animation and all that. They seemed to like it a lot.”

Billie Sue Sprite From Wabbit – Image Credit: Apollo/Video Game History Foundation

Wabbit was developed in about 4-6 months, but Mai doesn’t recall if the game was successful or not. She does know, however, that her mom was proud of her and that one of her nieces tried to buy a copy at a local mall but it was sold out.

As previously mentioned, Mai would leave Apollo after it filed for bankruptcy and would work at Micrographic for a while before leaving to earn a degree in computer science. She would work as an Oracle developer for a French telecommunications company before settling in in the banking industry, a field she still works in today.

Over the years, Mai had thought of returning to games, but understands it would be tough to jump back in. Despite that, she has fond memories of her time in the industry.

“It was wonderful,” Mai said. “Writing games is the most — I don’t know, I can never find a job like that. You just go in there and play games for a while to get ideas, and then sit around and talk to your teammates, just giving each other opinions. It was fun.”

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.

Continuing the Fortnite Icon Series fresh off of last week’s Chica skin, comes the new Ali-A skin. Epic Games continues to add skins that either depict or are inspired by real-life people into the game, with offerings like Olympic snowboarder Chloe Kim getting her own skin or the Wu-Tang Clan getting their Wu Wear bundles in the Item Shop. UK-based YouTuber Ali-A is the latest addition to this lineup, with his years of work in the Fortnite content creation scene culminating in him being added to the game.

Epic is using their Fortnite Icon Series, as well as an in-game competition and creative experience, to showcase his five-year career and cement his status as a key member in the Fortnite content creation space. Starting May 19 at 5 PM PT / 8 PM ET, Ali’s fans will be able to pick up his Icon Series set from the item shop. The set will include the Ali-A outfit with eight different styles as well as multiple color and lighting options, along with customizable back bling and a glider that’s built into the outfit.

There will also be a Zero Build Duos Cup for players to compete to earn the skin in, and a creative experience showcasing bits of both Ali-A’s career and Fortnite’s history. A new quest to eliminate 15 opponents at the Ali-A experience will also be available for the experience’s duration, unlocking the Ali-A Was Here spray for all who complete it. For other skins, check out our list of all the Marvel skins currently in Fortnite or find out how to unlock the free Splash Squadron skin here.

Techniques such as Trickshotting, Absolute Thunderclap Rushes, Slow Daruk Marking, Guardian Disabling, and Jelly Bouncing are just a few of the tricks used behind the scenes in this mind blowing clip. Even 5 years later, players in Breath of the Wild continue to create amazing ideas.

At this point you’re probably wondering, How did they pull this off? And what the heck actually happened?. You’d be surprised at just how much preparation, creativity, trial and error, and thought went into this simple 20 second Breath of the Wild clip that you would’ve never known without actually understanding what’s happening behind the scenes, so today I’m going to break down exactly what happened step by step, because this brilliance requires a lot more explaining than you might think, and maybe you’ll appreciate it all a lot more when you see all the pieces. If you enjoy this type of content, let us know with a like.

User Breneko shared this clip on twitter on May 5th, 2022, and dropped many jaws. There’s a total of 7 major glitches used here, all with different properties that combine to make this work perfectly. So let’s jump right in and first explain what is happening on Link’s side. How is he getting airborne like this? This is a fairly recent find called Jelly Bouncing, a technique that uses a normal chuchu jellies splash to push link airborne if he breaks the jelly perfectly beneath his feet, enough to get you bullet time. You can trigger this by dash attacking a chuchu jelly, or more consistently by performing a charging spin attack and moving into the jelly at the same time to launch you upwards for bullet time attacks. The interesting thing is in this case, since you’re holding down to move backwards during the spin attack and being knocked airborne for bullet time, Link automatically backflips, without even touching the jump button.

Everyone loves a comeback story. When Diablo 3 launched 10 years ago today, it was a mess. A pernicious mixture of server issues and deeper design flaws angered a fan community that had already been anxious about this new chapter in the beloved series, which had been more than a decade in the making. What Blizzard pulled off in the intervening years is nothing short of incredible, making one of the worst launches in company history into one of its most beloved games–an impeccably fine-tuned loot-RPG that’s accessible enough for beginners, but deep and rewarding enough to tempt long-term fans back again and again.

In the years since, Blizzard has gone through significant changes. The company has since become embroiled in a series of investigations and lawsuits, spearheaded by the state of California, regarding harassment, worker intimidation, and unfair hiring practices. It has been accused of fostering a sexist, “frat boy” culture, implicating many senior staff in either wrongdoing or complacent knowledge of it. Many long-time staff members have left, and investigations are ongoing. Now Microsoft has stated its intention to buy Activision Blizzard outright, based partly on the depressed stock price resulting from investigations. It has been a tumultuous decade for the studio that made Diablo 3, even as the game itself has improved greatly from its release.

My game about the devil has too many colors in it

Even before the launch, the Diablo community had mixed feelings about the impending sequel. Screenshots and videos of the game showed a much brighter, more colorful aesthetic than that of the first two games, which were dark and gothic. Fans expecting a grimmer vision from a game about actual Satan felt disappointed in this new direction.

As we would later learn, Blizzard actually did design Diablo 3 with a darker visual style before adding more light elements and a wider color palette. Blizzard poked fun at itself with the Easter egg Whimsyshire, a unicorn-laden land that’s much brighter than anything else in the game. It’s even designing Diablo 4 with the promise of art direction closer to Diablo 2.

As Diablo 3 was preparing for launch, though, there was a quiet rumble of dissatisfaction before it ever left the gate. With the art style so divisive, the proof would have to be in the playing. Once you got your hands on Diablo 3, Blizzard suggested, you’d be a believer.

Error 37 lights up the Internet

So, with an eager bunch of demon hunters itching to put the game through its paces and see how it handled, it was doubly problematic when it turned out that they couldn’t actually do that. Instead of being met with the game they had been waiting for for the better part of a decade, players received a vague message:

The servers are busy at this time. Please try again later. (Error 37)

Without any clear indication of exactly how busy the servers were, or how long it would take to fix, players were left in limbo. They had no idea if they should wait, check back in later, or give up entirely. Game director Josh Mosqueira later said that the launch was just much bigger than anyone on staff had anticipated–even after doubling and then tripling the projections–in the book Blood, Sweat, and Pixels by Jason Schreier.

This was especially galling because of the game’s always-online requirement. While Diablo 3 does have a multiplayer component, you can complete the entire game solo if you want to. There was no reason players shouldn’t be able to simply fight their way through the campaign alone, whether the servers were working or not. But playing offline, as you could in the first two games, wasn’t an option, so eager fans were stuck making no progress at all while Blizzard sorted out the server issues. This issue did not come entirely by surprise: Prior to release, and based on the playable beta, players were already expressing concern with the always-online requirement.

“Right now, in the state it’s currently in, it’s an inherently broken product,” wrote John Walker for RPS. “A single-player game that won’t pause, and if you leave it running will boot you out and cancel your progress.”

But Blizzard stayed the course, and the launch-day disaster was the eventual comeuppance. Adding to the frustration, the always-online requirement seemed to be tied to another online feature, and one that proved most central to the game’s woes in its first years.

The Auction House

Blizzard had a problem. In previous Diablo games, the ability to trade items had created a black market for loot. Players hungry for the best gear were willing to pay, which also left the door open for unscrupulous third-parties and price-gouging. Blizzard saw the perils of an unofficial, unregulated marketplace for Diablo items, and thought it could do it better with a legitimate, regulated one.

“The auction house came out of the desire to legitimize third party trading so that players would stay in the game to do their trading rather than go to third party sites, and as a result reduce fraud, scams, spamming, and the profit in hacking the game, making dupes, etc.,” former game director Jay Wilson said in an interview with DiabloII.net after leaving the company. “The problem is, of course, it over-legitimized trading. It made it too easy. I think we all know this by now and the consequences. We worried about these consequences ahead of time, but we thought the benefits would outweigh the downsides, and [World of Warcraft’s auction house] seemed like a good proof of concept. Obviously we were mistaken.”

The mistake came down to two key areas. First, the auction house had a real-money component, allowing players to buy loot directly. This element opened Blizzard to criticism of engineering poor-quality loot drops to maximize market exchanges, since it took a small cut from every transaction. Whether or not this was the case, the overall quality of loot was extremely poor at launch, and fans were justifiably suspicious–especially given that Blizzard’s acquisition from Activision was only a few years old at this point, and longtime Blizzard fans were watchful for any resulting changes in corporate culture.

Second, the existence of real-money marketplace made anti-cheat measures that much more vital to the health of the game. If someone could generate a valuable item infinitely, for instance, it would lead to scams and ultimately drive down the value of items. That was part of the always-online component that had driven players’ frustrations in the opening days. If you’re always online, the system can constantly check for cheats like duplication glitches, though that didn’t make players who wanted to exclusively play offline feel any better.

What Blizzard had on its hands was a feature that fans didn’t like, that existed mostly to support the technical underpinnings of another feature that fans didn’t like.

As the company reassessed and decided how to move forward with Diablo 3 in the months following launch, it quickly decided that the auction house was “doing harm to the game,” according to Wilson. That harm manifested across both the real-money and gold versions of the Auction House, as it broke the core gameplay loop of Diablo. Why bother hunting monsters and demons if you can just buy equally good or even better gear? But the team wasn’t sure if shutting it down was even an option. The considerations were both practical–their player data showed a significant number of players were actually using the feature, and didn’t want to upset them–and legal, since it was advertised on the box.

Blizzard ultimately decided that both the real-money and gold Auction Houses needed to go, but it wouldn’t be enough to just leave an Auction House-shaped hole in the game design. The team started planning a larger-scale update. This would integrate suggestions from Josh Mosqueira, who initially joined to oversee the console versions and then became game director in 2013. The Auction House’s retirement would be paired with a complete overhaul to many of the game’s core systems, along with the launch of console versions and its first (and only) major expansion, Reaper of Souls. The biggest marquee feature was to the loot system, which Blizzard dubbed “Loot 2.0”–a massive change meant to make the loot drops more rewarding. It was to signal a whole new era of Diablo 3.

“We firmly believe that by shutting down the real-money and the gold auction houses, it really paves the way to make sure that killing monsters in-game is the most rewarding, the most satisfying, the most compelling way of getting your hands on those items,” said Josh Mosqueira in a video announcing the change.

The Auction House was shut down on March 18, 2014. Despite being the source of so much consternation at launch, Blizzard didn’t add an offline mode–and still never has. One week after the Auction House closure, Reaper of Souls would change everything.

Paving the way for the Reaper

Though Reaper of Souls was the biggest injection of new content, Blizzard also made a number of changes to Diablo 3 that would provide a good foundation in the months and years after the game’s initial release. The first major update came a few months after launch and long before the expansion. Patch 1.04, which was released on August 21, 2012, added a number of new features still in use in the game today.

Paragon Levels added a more rewarding endgame progression, providing a tangible benefit to continuing to level up beyond the standard level cap of 60, including passive stat boosts along with gold and loot find boosts and extra character portraits. This was accompanied by an adjustment to difficulty, to smooth the gap between normal mobs and rare monsters, and just generally encourage efficient play. Legendary items also got a huge boost in 1.04, both in terms of raw stats and a greater occurrence, and variety of special game-changing attributes. With this more powerful gear, players could reliably build their character around their favorite piece of gear and its special abilities.

Blizzard continued to make tweaks for more than a year afterward, leading up to Reaper of Souls. One month before Reaper hit, on February 25, 2014, Blizzard deployed Patch 2.0.1. This was the biggest single update to the game yet, and made many of the changes that made the game recognizable to today’s players.

Patch 2.0.1 made major quality-of-life improvements for all players, regardless of whether they planned to get Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls. Paragon leveling was combined between characters. Difficulty got a huge overhaul, as monsters would now scale with your level. The difficulty levels were placed with new Normal, Hard, Expert, and Master, as well as various Torment levels. Torment would yield greater rewards and was intended for endgame players to keep honing their skills and finding even better loot. The patch also revised and simplified the crafting system, and introduced a temporary experience boost called Pools of Reflection.

The centerpiece of the changes, as promised, was Loot 2.0. Whereas the loot grind in the original release had overloaded players with tons of junk loot, post-patch players found themselves getting significantly less loot, and what they did find was of much better quality. Loot would have more bonuses and special properties, and those properties would smartly be tailored to a player’s specific build. Legendary items would provide skill modifiers or other game-changing properties more often.

With a firmer foundation, Reaper of Souls was ready to reintroduce lapsed players, tempt new ones who had skipped the initial experience, and expand the player base by inviting in console players for the first time. Not only was the expansion built on a vastly improved player experience, but it added even more content to an already robust game. It included a new defensive class, the Crusader, a fifth story Act. A new Adventure mode gave the game unheard-of longevity, establishing a way for players to continue running through missions and bounties indefinitely without simply repeating campaign content. That was critical because Diablo 3, unlike its predecessors, allowed you to freely respec your character, leaving little reason to create alts of the same class. The level cap was also raised from 60 to 70, giving players even more opportunity to enhance their character for endgame challenges.

“Whatever it is, Reaper of Souls has it,” Carolyn Petit wrote in GameSpot’s Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls review. “This expansion adds a decent new character class, a great new campaign act, and most significantly, Adventure mode, a devious Blizzard concoction calculated to make Diablo 3’s existing content more rewarding–and more addictive–than it has been in the past.”

To every Season, turn, turn, turn

Reaper of Souls made one more long-term change to the formula, and though its impact was not immediately apparent at launch, it would end up being the biggest contributor to Diablo 3’s incredible longevity. Seasons were the solution to keep players engaged and coming back, offering special rewards and exclusive Legendary gear designed to reward players devoted enough to plumb their depths. Seasons would reset every three months and grant special rewards for the most devoted players. Now, not only could you get great gear from a robust endgame and Torment levels, but your gear itself could tell other players a story about a particular time and place that you earned your items.

Since then, Diablo 3 has seen a constant, steady stream of updates that have kept the game fresh for long-time fans. It received a significant class rebalancing in Patch 2.2. The next major patch added a Season Journey feature to let you easily keep track of your seasons, as well as Kunai’s Cube, a special item that allowed players to transfer Legendary traits, among other special quality-of-life abilities. It also added Nephalem Rifts, a new type of dynamic content that further helped make the game more replayable. Patch 2.4 introduced Set Dungeons, a way to test your skill in Adventure Mode at the peak of your equipment and abilities. It also introduced Greater Rifts, an riff on the Nephalem Rifts that had already become popular. Next, Blizzard created the Armory to allow players to quickly switch between loadouts. It even introduced an entirely new class as DLC, the Necromancer, in Patch 2.6. That was followed once again by class rebalancing and special endgame armor sets for players who gravitated toward the new class.

Even just last month–nearly 10 years after launch–Diablo 3 received a major update with an entirely new mode. The Echoing Nightmare mode lets you challenge your seasonal character against waves of fallen Nephalem warriors. To access the mode, you needed to get a Petrified Scream from a Greater Rift Guardian, showing how the new content has built on itself over time. And of course, challenging the new mode would grant you powerful, exclusive rewards, so even the most veteran of Diablo players could find something worthwhile.

The very fact that there are even veteran players to cater to with a challenging new mode, 10 years after release, is a testament to the staying power of Diablo 3. A game with a disastrous launch and some fundamental problems with its core design has grown into one of Blizzard’s most long-lasting and beloved games. The future looks bright for the series, with Diablo 4 on the horizon and even the once-maligned Diablo Immortal starting to raise curiosity among series fans. But if Diablo 3 is any indication, whatever those games are at launch may not resemble what they’ll be 10 years later. Blizzard has shown it will take the time to get it right and create an enduring classic, come hell or high water.