Following up on their deck-building, roguelite hit, Monster Train, developer Shiny Shoe set their sights on making another roguelite; this time with a focus on turn-based mechanics and the ability to play with friends. Inkbound became available via Steam Early Access this past May and already showed a lot of promise. This past week it received its first free major update, "The Starship of Terrors," that added a bunch of new features and improved a number of things based on community feedback. We spoke with founder and CEO Mark Cooke about this update, along with inspirations for Inkbound and the challenges of balancing classes for solo and co-op play.

Inkbound, the new co-op roguelite from Monster Train developer Shiny Shoe, received a big update last week, titled "The Starship of Terrors." This was a significant milestone for the title as it not only added new content to the game - including a new character class, a new zone, a new daily challenge, and a new way to craft your ideal build via "trinkets" - but it also tweaked and refined a number of existing features; it's also entirely free.

Over the past 20 years, there have been a number of action-RPG titles that fall in line with the reductive/encompassing idea of "Monster Hunter-like." The latest entry into this field - Wild Hearts - comes from Koei Tecmo and Omega Force and published by Electronic Arts, and it shows a lot of promise... if it can just get out of its own way.

The first open beta for Nexon's The First Descendant wrapped up last week to mixed results. While there is definite potential there, it's largely going to depend upon how the game gets supported and how the time-investment/reward structure for players shakes out. We were fortunate to get some questions answered by Lee Beom-jun, Producer and Head of Magnum Studio (the development team within Nexon that's working on The First Descendant), and while it may not lay all concerns to rest, I appreciate how committed and enthusiastic he sounds about the title.

Illfonic's latest 4v1 multiplayer game, Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed, arrived last week to scratch that certain itch you've been feeling for a while now. You know the one; you strap on a Proton Pack, pull out your PKE Meter, crank the Ray Parker Jr tunes, and destroy just a few chandeliers while trapping a class-five full-roaming vapor.

The latest "shooter looter" to hit the scene - Nexon's The First Descendant - wraps up its open beta later today, and after spending 12 hours with it I've got a few thoughts...

Ah, fall (in the Northern Hemisphere)... the weather starts to cool, the leaves begin to change, and the holiday video game releases loom on the horizon. While the start of summer typically marks developers and publishers hyping up the gaming community with big announcements for what's to come in a year (or two or three) via digital presentations and "Keigh3," the fall is when we usually get teasers of more immediate releases. For example, the September Nintendo Direct dropped yesterday and not only did it finally give a full name and release date for the next Zelda game (The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, May 12, 2023), but there are four new co-op games, two remastered co-op games, and one existing co-op title that are coming to the Switch within the next 6 months.

The much anticipated "massive expansion" to Monster Hunter Rise - Sunbreak - arrived yesterday (June 30) and earlier this week, in anticipation of its release, we figured we'd dip back into Rise for a quick High Rank hunt before checking out a couple of the new monsties in the Sunbreak demo.

Nick's got his Riskrunner, Mike's got his snark, Jason's got his unbridled enthusiasm... yep! It's another Destiny 2 co-op stream! This time we're checking out the most recent expansion, Witch Queen, and discussing what's new with the Light and Darkness.

For our latest "Let's Play Co-Op," Jason talks a lot, Mike rejoices that someone else on staff is now an advocate for Final Fantasy XIV, Locke tries to keep up, and Nick takes a nap.

It's been awhile since our co-op crew has gone on a monster hunt, but last week Locke, Mike, and Jason donned their armor and doot horns to check our the Monster Hunter Rise demo on the PC. Everything went exactly according to plan and they definitely have no rust from not playing for a while...

Square-Enix's flagship MMO, Final Fantasy XIV, has been through its share of ups and downs over the past 11 years, including an entire reboot three years after its release. We've touched upon the title here and there throughout that time between Tally's MMO Co-Opportunities articles and the occasional stream of it, but this week we're giving it a little bit more of its due as Jason and Mike sit down for a nice relaxing chat about this particular behemoth.