Warhammer: Vermintide 2 celebrates 7 years of rat bashing with a new versus map and double XP for all players, but its hotly anticipated weapon pack 'won't be coming out this year' - Related to all, coming, out, 'okay,, fans

Axe Ghost is mix of Tetris, Sokoban, and Gloomhaven - a sort of 'Tekken', if you will

This week, we're highlighting the best demos you can play during Steam Next Fest, which runs from February 24th until March 3rd. We call this Wishlisted.

Brevity soul'd or no, wit can also be the enemy of honesty; a fundamentally performative pin brooch with an artificial sheen. When I go back over my notes after playing a game, at least two-thirds of them will routinely be useless and powerfully crap jokes I've written in lieu of practical points because - even in a document no-one but me will ever read - I cannot bear to cease reminding myself that I'm an implausibly clever sausage.

Occasionally I do remember to just jot down an unadorned factoid. "Cards wot do two things (Gloomhaven)" says my notes on this puzzle game. I've had my eye on it for a while, mainly because making your game star a ghost with an axe and calling it Axe Ghost is some premium Nic Reuben bait, especially if the ghost also has normal human arms for some reason.

How's the demo? It's good! Falls into the "It's either quite hard or I'm quite bad at it, yet I still want to keep playing" category. A tricky one to get right because, as we've already established, I do like to be reminded that I'm very good at everything by all things, at all times.

It does indeed feature cards that do two things, or rather offer two options, or rather actually offer four options because the arrows on the cards can be reverse-toggled. Those arrows are used for shunting around monsters or grouping them together so you can wipe out the entire shoal with your axe, which is where that Tetris comparison comes in.

They're also useful for pushing monsters away. If a single one reaches you it's farewell to normal human arms: you're now entirely dead.

My Sokoban comparison is more spurious, but what I mean here is that you spend time working out which shunts to chain together to create paths without blocking off others, lest your future shunting plans be interrupted. The most basic arrow will target and move an entire group of monster types as long as they're all touching, but it won't work if any of those monsters would end up getting blocked by the move. For those situations, you need a different type of arrow that tracks collision on each monster individually, letting others complete their move even if some of the group get blocked. You get cards that move entire rows one space, cards that move whole columns one space, cards that freeze monsters in place, and so on.

An additional wrinkle here is that the actual axe you need to actually get rid of the monsters is itself a card, although one that presents up regularly. An Axe Ghost without permanent access to his own axe? Communism did this.

It took me a while to wrap my head around all the rules and counter rules but it ends up flowing nicely after a little investment. What I like most about Axe Ghost is how it takes some game things that feel quite ancient and primitive and turns them into a random conundrum generator, offering meaty, puzzly turns that sometimes had me stumped for good stretches.

Also, as far as I could tell, it's made by a single guy. I realise that's not quite as impressive as it used to be, since with 2025 inflation that's more like one and a quarter guys. Still impressive though. No release date on this one just yet.

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Battlefield playtest gameplay is leaking all over the internet, and fans seem cautiously but genuinely excited: 'Okay, we might be back'

Early playtesting of the next Battlefield game is now underway—there hasn't been an official announcement to that effect as far as I know, but we can tell because gameplay footage is flooding the internet.

The testing is taking place under the auspices of Battlefield Labs, the initiative introduced in February that aims to ensure future Battlefield releases go enhanced than Battlefield 2042, the most recent addition to the series, which did not make an especially good impression among fans. The Battlefield Labs announcement video concluded with a 10-second clip of pre-alpha gameplay showcasing environmental destructibility, and that's central to quite a bit of the leaked gameplay footage as well.

Destruction in the new Battlefield game [website] 7, 2025.

Interestingly, Charlie Intel showcased on X that the playtest is under NDA and that leaked videos "are being taken down immediately by EA," but it's not clear whether that's actually the case. BobNetworkUK_, who posted a compilation of four clips totalling about eight minutes of gameplay, wrote that "it seems EA retracted the takedowns."

around 9 minutes of footage with sound since it seems EA retracted the takedowns [website] 7, 2025.

I don't know whether that's true, but there's no overlooking the fact that these videos are still out there, and not hidden in some secret, dark corner of the internet: Charlie Intel has than five million followers on X, so you can be quite sure EA knows it's sharing these videos.

If EA is letting it all slide, it means two things: One, that NDAs are meaningless when developers solicit testing from the general public; and two, that EA has enough confidence in where the next Battlefield game is currently at that it doesn't mind letting the world lay eyes on it.

That doesn't mean much at the pre-alpha stage of things, but on the whole I think it's more encouraging than a PR guy screaming "Don't look at it!" while desperately firing takedown orders like Animal Mother charging an enemy sniper.

To speculate further, if EA did decide to let the leaked gameplay stand, it may have been encouraged to do so by the reaction to it. There is understandable caution and obligatory negativity here and there, but the overall response to the early build's crumply destruction tech that, from a distance, looks on par with The Finals is very positive.

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The audio in particular draws a lot of praise, but even though there are some glitches and oddities here and there, the whole thing looks pretty tight for a game that's supposedly still very early in development.

Another point of "more excitement than you might expect": The scoreboard is back.

(To be fair, Battlefield fans were really mad that EA dropped the traditional scoreboard from BF2042, to the point that they successfully bullied developers into putting it back in.).

Electronic Arts has a lot of ground to make up here. Battlefield has always played second fiddle to the Call of Duty series, and BF2042 was a pretty significant misstep in the eyes of many long-time fans of the series: EA put in a lot of effort into turning BF2042 around and largely pulled it off, but it needs the next game in the series to come out very strong if it wants Battlefield to be taken seriously as a modern military contender. These gameplay leaks are a long way from that, but they do at least look like a big step in the right direction.

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Warhammer: Vermintide 2 celebrates 7 years of rat bashing with a new versus map and double XP for all players, but its hotly anticipated weapon pack 'won't be coming out this year'

It's preposterous to me that Warhammer: Vermintide 2 is seven years old, when that's so clearly the length of time that has passed since Left4Dead 2 launched. Sadly, Steam, the calendar, and indeed the universe all state that I am wrong, so I suppose I'll just have to go along with Fatshark's celebration of its cooperative Skaven-smasher's seventh birthday.

Headlining the anniversary festivities is the return of the event "A Quiet Drink", a unique, limited time mission in which the Ubersreik five head out into Helmgart in search of a pint (or more specifically, a whole casket of Bugman's brew). Needless to say, this hunt for a laid-back beverage proves anything but relaxing, and chaotic, bloody shenanigans ensue. Although this is a reintroduced level rather than a new one, players who complete it will net themselves a fancy portrait frame themed around something extraordinarily unpleasant being done to a pig.

Arguably more interesting is the addition of a new Versus map, A Grudge Served Cold. This is a reworked version of an existing cooperative map to make it compatible with competitive play. "As always, the Versus version of the map has seen some adjustments to make it fit Versus more effective, including new objectives and changes to sections of the level," Fatshark explains.

Whether you embark on either of these activities, or pursue something else entirely, you'll get double XP for your characters. The grindy element of Vermintide 2 was one of the things I liked less about it, so if you're of a similar mind and drifted away from the game because of it, now might be the ideal time to jump back in.

These major capabilities are bundled with a patch that makes numerous tweaks and adjustments to various weekly events and expeditions, which you can read in full here.

Fatshark also used the announcement blog to address a somewhat unusual situation regarding an upcoming weapon pack for the game. Apparently, the studio has been teasing this pack in other blogs and announcements, even showing a prototype at one point. The pack was supposed to come out at some point in 2025, but Fatshark writes that "we regret to inform you that it won't be coming out this year."

Normally something as mundane as a weapon pack getting delayed wouldn't be that noteworthy. But since it's only March, something dramatic must have happened for Fatshark to state definitively that the new weapon pack won't be doable between now and December. What this could be, I couldn't possibly speculate, but whatever the problem is, it doesn't appear to have killed the weapon pack completely: Fatshark still seems intent on releasing it at some point. "We’re eager to get these weapons into your hands," the studio writes. "And will keep pushing to make that happen!"

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Vermintide 2's seventh anniversary event is playable now, running until Sunday March 16.

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