Blasphemous 2 Collector’s Edition Unveiled, Slated for Release on PS5 and Nintendo Switch in Early 2024

Open-world survival crafting game Palworld will launch in Early Access for Xbox Series, Xbox One, and PC via Steam and Microsoft Store on January 19 at 12:00 a.m. PT / 3:00 a.m. ET / 17:00 JST, developer Pocket Pair announced. It will also be available via Xbox Game Pass. It will support English, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, and Korean language options.

Pax Dei will enter Early Access this spring, Mainframe Industries announced today. Their cloud-based sandbox also got an Early Access trailer at this morning’s Nvidia presentation, as the game will launch with DLSS 3 support.

After being revealed at the Las Vegas Final Fantasy Fest in July, and then detailed at the London Fan Fest in October, the Final Fantasy XVI crossover event is scheduled to hit the popular MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV in Early April. We’ve known the event was in the works for a while now, but this is the first time we’re seeing an actual release timeframe. The event will launch with the current expansion, Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker, ahead of the release of the new one Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail.

Publisher Game Source Entertainment updated plans on a handful of titles, including deck-building roguelite Lost in Fantaland (via Gematsu). The isometric strategy game is currently in Early Access on PC, and it’s coming to PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch this June. 

Supernature Games-developed roguelite deckbuilder Lost in Fantaland will launch for PlayStation 5 and Switch in June, global publisher Game Source Entertainment announced.

Throughout 2023 the overseas shipping crisis more or less resolved itself, allowing the busy board game release schedule to resume full-throttle. Consuming all of these titles, however, is like drinking from a fire hose, and 2024 looks to be just as splashy and bombastic as the year that came before. Here are eight promising new board games that have caught our eye.

Infestation 88 was announced by developers Nightmare Forge Games yesterday (January 1) in the New Year celebrations as the iconic black and white cartoon character Steamboat Willie (an older version of Mickey Mouse) is now in the public domain. 

Turn-based strategy game Rising Lords will release on January 18, 2024 after nearly three years in Early Access. The hybrid of PC turn-based strategy with more traditional board game and card game design focuses around strategically expanding a medieval fiefdom's economy while raising armies to defend yourself against—or conquer—your neighbors.

BlazBlue: Entropy Effect will leave Early Access and launch for PC via Steam on January 31, 2024, developer 91Act announced.

In a new blog published to the game’s official site, Andy Tsen, co-founder of Ramen VR, fully officially discussed the prospects of Zenith: The Last City’s 2.0 version. The blog also acknowledges that alpha playtests will be enacted soon. 

Creative Assembly, and specifically the Total War leadership team, posted a lengthy message to the series’ community today recognizing their own missteps while promising adjustments and course corrections, especially in regards to Total War: Pharaoh and Total War: Warhammer 3.

These days, fighting games live and die based on their online playerbase, and yet, Mortal Kombat 1 did not launch with crossplay support. Thankfully, that will change relatively soon though, as NetherRealm Studios announced in a recent livestream that crossplay between PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PS5 will be coming in early 2024 (perhaps unsurprisingly, the ill-fated Switch version is left out).