After several years of independent developers creating innovative and unique games using classic 8-bit and 16-bit pixel art, the hand-drawn aesthetic has begun to gain some traction, as well. Tsioque, a Kickstarter-backed game for OhNoo Studio, previously resurrected the 2D animation of classic Disney films, and the adventure game Candle looks to take the medium into a space we haven’t really seen before: watercolor.
“Instead of making a game based on a previous concept-art step, we decided to create a game that was the concept art itself,” says director Jose A. Gutiérrez in a Candle developer diary. “And that’s how we started working on Candle.”
The team opted for a watercolor visual style, but this game wasn’t just “inspired” by this style of painting; the backgrounds and characters were actually painted by hand, and the “texture of the canvas” is actually visible in-game. As the painting process was much more permanent than Illustrator or another digital tool, the team at Teku (also the name of the game’s main character) had to plan each scene completely before they began doing any actual illustrating.
“There was also a random effect to the process that created some imperfections here and there, but that’s what gives the game its own personality and makes it feel more authentic,” adds artist Jorge Rueda.
A similar, albeit intentional effect is visible in the upcoming action-platformer Cuphead. Burns, hairs, and other minor scuffs are visible on the screen to emulate the imperfections of traditional film and animation.
Though the official release lists Candle‘s release window as “Q3 of 2016,” the game’s Kickstarter page is more specific, stating that the game is scheduled to be released this month as both a physical and digital release. It will be available for PC, Mac, and Linux. While audio options will only be available for Spanish and English, there will also be subtitles for “French, Italian, German, Brazilian Portuguese, Korean, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, and Russian.”
Imagine tapping a Zelda icon on your iPhone and jumping straight into Hyrule. A new open-source project called nxnative makes that possible by repackaging Switch games you’ve bought into apps for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, with no emulator in the middle.
Why does this run so well on Apple devices?
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”