PREVIEW ROUND-UP

RIVER CITY GIRLS

FORMAT PS4 / ETA 5 SEP PUB ARC SYSTEM WORKS DEV WAYFORWARD

Grey-haired readers will remember Technos Japan’s Double Dragon and Renegade series. Well, those games were acquired by Arc System Works, and River City Girls is a loose spiritual successor. This colourful side-scrolling retro beat-’em-up features all the combo fun you’d want from a genre game of this kind, but with a modern twist. These girls are out to rescue their baes, flipping the damsel in distress narrative. In-game the big twists are the ability to recruit defeated enemies to your cause, and unlocking stat boosts to make that arse-kicking a little easier.

MANIFOLD GARDEN

FORMAT PS4 / ETA TBC / PUB WILLIAM CHYR STUDIO DEV WILLIAM CHYR STUDIO

This first-person, free-roaming, physics-based puzzler taps into the same ideas as The Witness. Replacing the idyllic isle