With the revival of 3D platformers, fans have been clamoring for sequels to their favorite franchises. Banjo-Kazooie returned as Yooka-Laylee, Mario returns to 3D sandboxes later this month in Super Mario Odyssey, and Psychonauts 2 is making headway in development after its successful Fig campaign.
In a newly posted update, Double Fine Productions recently completed a major milestone by creating the game’s “first playable” build. Previously shown gameplay segments were focused on being art tests. Testing areas such as the Whispering Rock remake were designed to look pretty, but they wouldn’t be incorporated into the final game. Instead, they allowed developers to test various lighting and graphical settings as they continued to work on the art style.
As a “first playable” build, this area represents a segment of the full game that showcases the tricky platforming and exploration that is central to Psychonauts 2. In this new area, Double Fine can tests new pipelines and workflows from any department, be it art, animation, tech, design, cinematics, or others. This is the studio’s first attempt to create a chunk of gameplay with all the systems working together. Other developers might refer to this as a “vertical slice,” but Double Fine doesn’t want to imply a level of polish that isn’t required at this stage of production.
Far from being shippable, the first Playable build has everything the final game would have including combat, quests, experience, user interface, and even a cutscene. At this stage, everything is working with scratch dialogue and audio, along with rough visual effects, textures, and lighting.
Another focus in this update includes a look at how all the characters and critters make it from a 2D sketch to a 3D in-game model. Each character starts out as a rough sketch in various poses. After some feedback, the sketch is refined and shows the character from every angle. From there, another artist takes the sketches, builds a 3D model, and goes back and forth with the original artist to refine the model.
Every asset, no matter the size, goes much the same way. A rock or tree might go by more quickly, but something like a main character takes multiple weeks to perfect.
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.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.