Ghost Tetris Sokoban: Latest Updates and Analysis

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.

Moving to another aspect, 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 exhibits 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.

enhancement (28/02/25, 3:50 PM GMT): Arrowhead has now resumed the Galactic War.

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“It's modding on steroids” Skyblivion project lead talks progress towards a 2025 release, those official Oblivion remake rumours, and if Fallout: London offers any lessons

We should finally get to play Skyblivion this year. The massive modding project that’s remaking The Elder Scrolls IV in Skyrim’s engine has been in the works since 2012, and now it's seemingly on the home stretch.

It's not had a full release date penned in yet, but. We'll be getting to see a bit more of it via a showcase from the Skyblivion team at a fan-run Bethesda community event called Community Creations Con - or C3 - this weekend. So, ahead of that, VG247 caught up with the massive mod's project lead, Kyle 'Rebelzize' Rebel, to ask a few questions about how things are going for the project as it builds to that 2025 release.

"I am feeling good about our progress, everyone is pulling their weight and focussing on the last pillars we need to overcome [to make a release possible]," the modder tells me, "Of course, with this being a volunteer project we can't guarantee this level of commitment throughout the year, but for now we are on the right track."

Naturally, as rumours about an official Elder Scrolls 4 remake or remaster - something that was mentioned in an internal Microsoft document leaked during the firm's legal battle with the FTC in 2023 - have continued to crop up and. Circulate, Rebel and the Skyblivion team have receieved plenty of messages from fans wondering what such a thing potentially being real could mean for the modding project.

"I think whether the rumours are true or not doesn't affect us much," the project lead says, "If they are true I hope it will give people even more of a reason to try out our iteration of it. If it's not true then this will be the best way to re-experience the game [with] a new coat of paint.

"At the end of the day, we are not trying to sell a game and. Make a profit. I dedicated 10+ years to bring this game to the fans and I feel this is a typical case of 'ït's about the journey. Not the destination'. The fact Skyblivion is nearly in a releasable state is a miracle, as we all went into this blindly and. In some cases failed our way to the finish line. There are at least four major events that could have easily wrecked the project and caused it to be abandoned, but. We're still here.

"I am just excited to be able to see everyone’s hard work pay off and as a bonus see others finally playing this. I often think about how I would have been able to release this mod years ago [if I'd had] all the knowledge we have now, but. Unfortunately that's not the way life works. You achieve your goals through hard work, failure and the rare breakthrough, which we ended up doing."

In terms of whether Skyblivion can learn anything that might help with its own release from massive Fallout 4 mod Fallout: London, which came out last year following delays - some of which its developers could do nothing to prevent - and was plagued by some pretty serious bugs prior to patches arriving, Rebel says the answer is "yes and no".

"FOLON is a very impressive mod, but it's apples and oranges in lots of ways," he explains. "Distribution of the mod has always been a big discussion internally and FOLON's release definitely made us think of alternative ways to let people access the game when the time comes."

Finally, since I'd in the recent past seen Bethesda Game Studios acknowledge Skyblivion's upcoming C3 stream in a tweet from its official account, I asked the modder if Skyblivion's team has had any communication from the studio, since Fallout: London's leads were pretty open last year about not getting as much as they'd have ideally liked.

"We have had plenty of contact with Bethesda over the years," Rebel says, "I'd like to think we are on very good terms with them. Generally speaking, Bethesda has been one of the most supporting communities when it comes to modding, so it only makes sense to support behemoths such as our project that in a lot of ways encapsulate everything Bethesda's games stand for.

"We are a multicultural group of fans from all over the world that came together to make something unreasonably complicated and. Far fetched. It's modding on steroids."

As mentioned earlier, that unreasonably complicated and far fetched thing is currently set to open its Oblivion gates to players before this year's out, so here's hoping Rebel and the Skyblivion folks are able to navigate the tricky roads ahead on their modding adventure through Cyrodiil.

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Don't worry, Helldivers 2's CEO doesn't anticipate this Galactic War timeout having a major effect on the story going forwards, even if it'll definitely be canon

As you might have heard, Helldivers 2's Galactic War is currently on hiatus, as Arrowhead works to fix a bug with planet libration rates that's been "harming the game experience".

Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani has responded to some player questions regarding this outage, and. It sounds like the goal is for it to end up as just another of the many weird war moments that've wormed their way into the game's lore. You know, a bit like the kid saving that inspired the "moderately feeble young adults" versus mines major order which has just been interrupted.

Jorjani didn't have much to add to the official statement Arrowhead put out on social media in terms of the practicalities of the war being pause, simply reiterating that it was due to a "backend bug" and. That the studio wouldn't be blaming any individual devs for it, as you'd hope. "No, of course not," were his words regarding that last bit, "S**t happens. It’s fine. We’ll fix."

He was a bit more verbose in terms of how the outage might end up fitting into the established arc of the Galactic War once it's back up and running. Telling one player who asked if the pause will "majorly affect the story heading forward" that "I don't think it will - but it will be canon somehow". The exec seemingly suggested that it could well be used as a springboard for some more antics from , Arrowhead's game master, musing: "Oh, he'll come up with something for this".

That was about it on current events, but. As usual Jorjani did share some thoughts on what the game's future might look like - and it sounds like this episode hasn't neccesarily changed his mind regarding whether the war might need a reset at some point. "Let's see how far we can take this baby" was his answer on the topic of whether the current iteration of it will "last throughout the games lifespan".

That mentioned, he doesn't seem to be giving the general green light to just stacking things in Helldivers 2 on top of each other forever. Responding to a question about fear of freature creep by saying: "We need to plan things out. we can't just have 23020 warbonds and no plan." As for what he might like to see added in at some point down the line, he did mention "a total rework of armor passives and. [tying] it to a fun progression system".

How do you think Helldivers 2's Galactic War should proceed once it gets back underway? Should this ceasefire be a big thing story-wise? Let us know below!

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