At The Game Awards 2025, film director J.J. Abrams (Star Wars: The Force Awakens) took the stage with Left 4 Dead's lead designer, Mike Booth, to show off 4:Loop. The game is being released by Abrams' company Bad Robot games.

The four-player co-op shooter has a sci-fi twist where player's characters get reprinted when they die to try out new strategies as they fight an invading force.

The game is planned for PlayStation 5 and PC and will be having early playtesting soon. You can learn more at PLAY4LOOP.com.

 

The sci-fi action RPG Exodus made its grand return during The Game Awards two years after its initial reveal at the 2023 edition. The easy pitch for the debut game by Archetype Entertainment is Mass Effect meets Interstellar, and the game even features actor Matthew McConaughey in a prominent role. Tonight’s extended trailer gave us a better look at the overarching plot, the alien characters players will befriend or battle, and the protagonist's otherworldly combat abilities. 

Set 40,000 years in the future, humanity has fled a dying Earth to find a new home in another galaxy. After settling on a world called Lidon, life support and terraforming systems begin to fail due to a corrupting force called the Rot.  Players control Jun, a customizable hero who can be male or female, and a salvager with a secret lineage to the revered Traveler dynasty. This heritage means Jun must embark on interstellar missions to recover powerful alien technology known as Celestial Remnants, which may be the key to humanity’s survival. Jun’s mentor in this journey is C.C. Orlev, a mysterious and legendary figure voiced by Matthew McConaughey in his first video game role.

Players travel to different planets alongside a crew of companions – of which only some are human – to battle enemies in third-person, cover-based shooting, along with a suite of superhuman abilities. Before you ask, yes, you can romance companions. Your main weapon is a shapeshifting gun called the Recycler, but Jun has also been genetically engineered to interface with celestial technology. This is leveraged by a special gauntlet they wear that allows them to manipulate a powerful resource to manipulate the environment in offensive ways. In the trailer, Jun punches the ground, which causes the earth to erupt upwards to damage enemies in front of them, for example.

Outside of combat, Exodus is a choice-driven narrative adventure. You can talk yourself in or out of situations such as combat encounters, though Archetype aims for more nuanced choices as opposed to going down more black and white “good” and “evil” paths. Jun’s choices will also affect how their companions view them.

 

While all of this may sound similar to Mass Effect, Exodus sets itself apart with its time dilation feature. Since you're traveling at lightspeed, time passes differently for you than for those left behind. While you may be gone for days exploring a new world, 10 years will pass back home. The people you meet will age rapidly, which will affect their personalities and their feelings towards you, for better or worse. This also applies to any companions you leave behind, as you can’t take everyone in your party on a mission.

Exodus was originally scheduled to launch next year, but it now has an early 2027 release window. When it does arrive, it will be available for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. 

Kritika Lamba / Reuters:
Fortnite returns to the Google Play Store in the US following a US district court injunction; Google and Epic announced a settlement last week  —  Epic Games' popular battle royale title Fortnite is back on the Google Play Store in the United States after Google (GOOGL.O) …

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani swept into City Hall promising a clean break from the Eric Adams era. For nearly 200 political appointees, that initially meant a pink slip.  But the administration’s early attempt at a broad housecleaning is now facing a common city obstacle: union protections. More than 30 of the 179 mayoral staffers who were […]

The post Mamdani Must Keep Some Adams Appointees He Had Told to Quit appeared first on THE CITY - NYC News.

Wildflower Interactive, the new studio formed by The Last of Us co-creator and game director Bruce Straley in 2022, has revealed its inaugural game: a witchy adventure called Coven of the Chicken Foot. Revealed during The Game Awards 2025, Coven of the Chicken Foot is described by the studio as "a single-player adventure about the bonding of an old witch and a peculiar creature as they attempt to fulfill a coven's oath." 

In the reveal trailer, we get a look at the game's unique companion-based gameplay where Gertie, the elderly witch, must work with an oddball creature to solve puzzles, overcome challenges, and platform through this vibrant world. 

Wildflower says your "creature-companion can observe, learn, and develop new behaviors based on contextual situations," but adds that the creature is a fully realized character with their own motivations, surprises, and interests. 

"The dungeons have been plundered and the monsters long slain," a press release reads. "As heroes move on, an elderly witch quietly gets to work. Gertie has long awaited her moment to prove herself to the coven. Having pledged to counter the so-called 'heroes' and their unbridled pride, she'll require the assistance of an odd creature."

Coven of the Chicken Foot will see players, as Gertie, venture into dark dungeons, lush forests, catacombs of fallen heroes, mucky bogs, and more, a press release says, but she's not your typical hero. "She won't be swinging swords or double-jumping her way past dangers," it continues. "Instead, she must learn to work with and adapt to her peculiar companion to survive." 

 While Gertie talks and the creature makes noises, Wildflower Interactive says these two adventurers intentionally do not share a common tongue, adding, "Players are driven to discover the creature's true intentions themselves" and that "through environmental storytelling, [we] let the world itself reveal the narrative, inviting players to discover the story firsthand." 

Get another look at Coven of the Chicken Foot with the screenshots below: 

 

Coven of the Chicken Foot is in development for PC, but there's no word on when the game will launch. 

What do you think about this game's reveal? Let us know in the comments below!