Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown Score Details “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown makes turn-based tactics feel as fast-paced as a John Wick brawl.” Pros Very original approach to TMNT Thoughtful characterization Fast-paced tactics Compact size is a plus Cons Repetitive missions A bit anticlimactic Buggy at launch “Why you can trust Digital Trends – We have a 20-year history of testing, reviewing, and rating products, services and apps to help you make a sound buying decision. Found out more about how we test and score products.“ Please link here Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown is a shining example of how the way a game plays can completely change what it says about its characters. Growing up, my perception of New York’s finest reptiles was shaped by beat-em-ups. GameCube drawlers like Battle Nexus taught me that the boys were a bunch of rowdy goofballs. They were deadly, but sloppy. They aren’t the same turtles I find in the turn-based action of Tactical Takedown. There, I meet hyper efficient assassins who don’t waste a single movement. They aren’t just members of a squad who need one another to take out waves of enemies; each is a one turtle wrecking machine. I’m left to wonder just how devastating they must be as one unified band of brothers. Recommended Videos Fast-paced strategy makes Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown’s turn-based action feel as active as an arcade brawler. Each level offers a jolt of arcade excitement that gives each turtle their chance to shine rather than treating them as interchangeable heroes. Its small scope leaves it vulnerable to bugs and repetition, but Tactical Takedown’s best quality is how much it’s willing to break the mold and offer a new spin on a familiar TMNT power fantasy. Together alone Rather than revisiting a scenario that’s been done to death, Tactical Takedown tries its best to steer away from TMNT clichés. It pits the boys against a new Foot Clan leader who is filling a void left behind by Shredder. Rather than tackling that threat together with a carefree attitude, we’re left with four brothers who have grown distant as each comes to terms with impending adulthood. The big shock is that the four of them never appear together during their mission, as an attack on the Turtle Lair takes out their communication system. Each one sets off on their own solo objective, only interacting with their bros through interstitial dialogue between missions. A broken Turtlecom turns out to be a perfect metaphor for a more human kind of distance. That may sound a little sacrilegious at first, but it’s a purposeful swing. The physical separation drives home how much the team is growing apart through the story. It’s a little sad, like waking up one morning and realizing that you haven’t seen the cousins you used to play all night with on Christmas Eve in years. We’ve so rarely, if ever, gotten to see a version of the Turtles that feels this lonely and introspective. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and I walked away from Tactical Takedown with a new appreciation of their dynamic. Tactical Takedown isn’t a big licensed project and shouldn’t be approached as such. That separation isn’t played as a bummer, though. Instead, developer Strange Scaffold uses it to shine a spotlight on each hero. Every level has me playing as a specific Turtle, as they all work towards the same goal using their own skills and expertise. Michelangelo attacks the problem at a street level, taking out goons with his nunchaku. Donatello sticks to the sewers, Raphael dashes over rooftops, and Leonardo sticks to the subway like a real New Yorker. In any other Turtles game, these would be locations that every turtle would explore by the end of the story. Here, each feels like one of the hero’s turf, giving them a specific home field advantage that their other brothers don’t have. That builds to a climax you can probably see coming, but not in the way you’re expecting. We’re never quite given a moment where all four heroes are playable together, sharing a pool of actions and synergizing their skills with one another. There’s a much different interpretation of their union here that undercuts their individuality. It’s functional enough, but the finale feels less like a natural conclusion and more like a concession to not mess around with the core tactics formula too much. That philosophy makes for some repetition as each of its 20 levels plays out the same with little variation aside from swapping the hero. Strange Scaffold Tactical Takedown isn’t a big licensed project and shouldn’t be approached as such. It’s a micro indie from a studio known for playing things fast and loose. Like every Strange Scaffold game I’ve ever played before launch, I encountered some form of game breaking bug that will no doubt be fixed by the time you actually play it. A broken special attack that I could spam multiple times by hammering a button, reset levels due to a glitched “end turn” button, and a loadout menu that I could not for the life of me figure out how to edit. It’s not that I hold those issues against it much, just as I didn’t mind I Am Your Beast’s few game-breaking issues that halted my progress for a few days. They’ll get fixed promptly by a nimble team, but sometimes I wonder what just a little more time in the oven could do for some of the studio’s best ideas, whether it’s polishing them to perfection or having time to build in one more creative twist that snaps everything into place. All action Though there are limits to its compact nature, Tactical Takedown’s focused scope is its greatest asset too. Each bite-sized level drops a turtle onto a small grid-based map. Every few turns, a new piece of the map forms while another goes away. It’s built to feel exactly like an old beat-em-up in that way, with the screen scroll of an arcade game stopping to frame a brawl before prompting players to move on. It’s an ingenious way to bring the feel of those games to an entirely different genre. That same philosophy extends to its brilliant spin on turn-based combat, which takes a genre known for careful decision making and makes it feel like John Wick. Each Turtle has five moves that they can use on each turn and a whopping six action points that can be spent in any way. When playing as Michaelangelo, my initial skill set is largely about leaping around enemies. I can skateboard over a foe and hit them on the way over or dash past a few enemies with my whirling nunchucks. Even my most basic attack, a simple bonk, moves me to the enemy’s square once defeated. With six whole points to spend per turn, and more if I equip moves that replenish AP, I’m able to do a whole lot of damage in one go. There’s a maturity to the boys here reflected in precise strategy rather than drunken brawling. There’s a strategy to each turtle and the brisk four hour runtime gives me just enough time to perfect each over time. With Michaelangelo, I learn to chain my way through enemies by knocking my way through one so that I can directly move to another without spending a movement point. Donatello is more about shocking enemies to keep them in place and create distance between them, allowing him to pick them off from afar or trap them in poison sewer pits. Leonardo is more about standing his ground, creating stacks of evasion that allow him to survive in tight subway car melees. And Raphael is all about yanking faraway enemies to reposition them and boot them away. Each strategy is distinct and rewards mastery. Once I got the hang of each, I couldn’t believe just how much I could do in a turn. Sometimes I’d be greeted with a screen full of ninjas and assume that I couldn’t possibly take them all out. With careful enough positioning, I’d realize that I could punt a foe off an edge here to instantly kill it, slash another weak one to finish it off and get its AP, jump over to a pizza box to heal, and still have enough actions left to take out a few more enemies. All of this happens quickly in my brain. I don’t need to think about what to do next; I reflexively fire off actions one after another, often taking out a whole screen full of enemies in seconds flat. It’s like playing a beat-em-up, but somehow faster and more precise. It’s through that ironclad combat hook that my perception of the Turtles changes. While most TMNT games hone in on the teenage part, Tactical Takedown is concerned with the anagram’s N. Each one truly feels like a ninja here, dispatching enemies in the blink of an eye. If you cut out the bits of decision making between move selection, you’d be treated to a thrilling little sequence on every single turn that plays out like Oldboy’s hallway sequence. Strange Scaffold I do wish that there were a few more ways to really drive that point home outside from the fairly static gauntlet of fights that never really changes. Some levels can feel long, throwing out waves of enemies with little pace until they just suddenly end. Perhaps some bosses or stage hazards could have given me a few more ways to think about the most efficient ways to use my moves, especially since the difficulty winds up feeling flat even in its enemy-filled finale. There’s more room to grow the great seed Strange Scaffold has planted here if the studio decides to take the team for another spin one day. Even if it’s destined to be a one-shot, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown is a welcome little addition to TMNT’s storied video game canon. In just a few short hours, it gave me a new appreciation of each individual bro by deconstructing the team dynamic and showing how each part of the unit functions on its own. There’s a maturity to the boys here reflected in precise strategy rather than drunken brawling. You can break up a team, but the mark of a strong family is its ability to fight through hell and back to come together again. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown was reviewed on PC and Steam Deck OLED.

Not providing enough practical experience in science classes will have a direct impact on whether children work in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) roles in the future, research suggests. EngineeringUK and The Royal Society’s Science education tracker asked hundreds of science teachers about delivering hands-on lessons and found there has been a decline in practical classes, with teachers highlighting many of the barriers standing in the way of being able to deliver this style of teaching. “We know the frequency of hands-on practical science has dropped,” said Becca Gooch, head of research at EngineeringUK. “Our Science Education Tracker research in partnership with the Royal Society highlighted this, as well as how critically vital practical science is as a motivating factor for learning science for years seven to nine. “Hands-on practicals help bring science to life for young people and boost interest in science, as well as developing important skills,” she added. “We need more young people, especially girls, choosing to continue with science and progress into engineering and technology careers. So, we need school students to have many more opportunities to get hands-on in their science lessons.” More than half of children in years seven to nine highlighted how important practical science lessons are for motivating them to learn more about the subject, especially for students who are less interested in the topic – if there are fewer practical science lessons, it actually serves to put people off of studying the subject later on in their education. With EngineeringUK and The Royal Society reporting that a diverse engineering and tech workforce in the future is directly linked to young people engaging in science and other STEM subjects, more needs to be done to maintain an interest in these subjects into further education and beyond. One of the reasons young people, and especially girls, don’t choose tech or other STEM careers is because they don’t fully understand what they involve or what the kinds of people working in those careers look like, so hands-on lessons can help in informing young people about what skills they may use in a future career. Female students are slightly more likely to engage with a subject when there is practical work involved than their male counterparts – practical elements of learning were a motivator for 54% of female students versus half of males – and having a good teacher is also more important to girls than boys. But hands-on science lessons have been on the decline over the past 10 years, with 44% of students across the UK taking part in practical work at least once every two weeks in 2016, dropping to 37% in 2019, and falling further to just over a quarter in 2023 – and now in many cases, practical demonstrations have been replaced with videos. Teachers pointed to a number of barriers in the way of delivering hands-on lessons, the biggest of which are what is required in the curriculum, and the time they have – with the amount of time it takes for teachers to develop practical sessions that relate directly to the learning goals laid out in the curriculum, teachers said in many cases they can’t feasibly work them into their teaching. Unfortunately, a child’s socio-economic background can stand between them and certain educational pathways, and the area a school is in can prevent access to certain funding and resources. What schools are able to provide can be varied depending on funding and area, and 26% of teachers said a lack of equipment stood in the way of offering more practical lessons. Some 27% said they don’t have the money to buy the equipment. Read more about STEM in schools Computer science has a persistent gender divide, but research by BCS has found more women are now being accepted on computing university courses. Speaking at the Bett Show this year, the UK’s education secretary outlined the ways in which teachers will be using technologies such as AI in the future, including planning lessons and marking work. Almost a quarter said they don’t have enough technicians with the skills available to facilitate hands-on science lessons, and almost 40% of teachers said vacancies in science departments have stopped students from receiving practical teaching. A small number of science teachers also expressed concerns about their ability to deliver practical sessions, with 3% saying they lack the training and 2% saying they lack the confidence to do so, a trend that has existed for some time. EngineeringUK and The Royal Society pointed out that practical science lessons are important for increasing student interest in STEM, fuelling the talent pipeline in the future, and gave a number of recommendations to help enable teachers to offer more hands-on lessons. The first was a call to government to take advantage of the current curriculum review to streamline it and allow science lessons to offer more practical lessons, as well as to make practical learning part of the curriculum to ensure all students are able to experience these kinds of lessons as part of their learning. Resources for schools was the third suggestion from EngineeringUK and The Royal Society. Going forward, schools need more investment to make sure they have the equipment, training and technical assistance needed to give students the opportunity for practical lessons.

Video games' soaring prices have a cost beyond your wallet - the concept of ownership itself As the industry's big squeeze reaches consumers, a grim bargain emerges. Image credit: Adobe Stock, Microsoft Opinion by Chris Tapsell Deputy Editor Published on May 22, 2025 Earlier this month, Microsoft bumped up the prices of its entire range of Xbox consoles, first-party video games, and most (or in the US, all) of its accessories. It comes a few weeks after Nintendo revealed a £396 Switch 2, with £75 copies of its own first-party fare in Mario Kart World, and a few months after Sony launched the exorbitant £700 PS5 Pro (stand and disc drive not included), a £40 price rise for its all-digital console in the UK, the second of this generation, and news that it's considering even more price rises in the months to come. The suspicion - or depending on where you live, perhaps hope - had been that when Donald Trump's ludicrously flip-flopping, self-defeating tariffs came into play, that the US would bear the brunt of it. The reality is that we're still waiting on the full effects. But it's also clear, already, that this is far from just an American problem. The platform-holders are already spreading the costs, presumably to avoid an outright doubling of prices in one of their largest markets. PS5s in Japan now cost £170 more than they did at launch. That price rise, mind, took place long before the tariffs, as did the £700 PS5 Pro (stand and disc drive not included!), and the creeping costs of subscriptions such as Game Pass and PS Plus. Nor is it immediately clear how that justifies charging $80 for, say, a copy of Borderlands 4, a price which hasn't been confirmed but which has still been justified by the ever graceful Randy Pitchford, a man who seems to stride across the world with one foot perpetually bared and ready to be put, squelching, square in it, and who says true fans will still "find a way" to buy his game. The truth is inflation has been at it here for a while, and that inflation is a funny beast, one which often comes with an awkward mix of genuine unavoidability - tariffs, wars, pandemics - and concealed opportunism. Games are their own case amongst the many, their prices instead impacted more by the cost of labour, which soars not because developers are paid particularly well (I can hear their scoffs from here) but because of the continued, lagging impact of their executives' total miscalculation, in assuming triple-A budgets and timescales could continue growing exponentially. And by said opportunism - peep how long it took for Microsoft and the like to announce those bumped prices after Nintendo came in with Mario Kart at £75. Anyway, the causes are, in a sense, kind of moot. The result of all this squeezing from near enough all angles of gaming's corporate world is less a pincer manoeuvre on the consumer than a suffocating, immaculately executed full-court press, a full team hurtling with ruthless speed towards the poor unwitting sucker at home on the sofa. Identifying whether gaming costs a fortune now for reasons we can or can't sympathise with does little to change the fact that gaming costs a fortune. And, to be clear, it really does cost a fortune. Things are getting very expensive in the world of video games. £700 for a PS5 Pro! | Image credit: Eurogamer Whenever complaints about video game prices come up there is naturally a bit of pushback - games have always been expensive! What about the 90s! - usually via attempts to draw conclusions from economic data. Normally I'd be all on board with this - numbers can't lie! - but in this case it's a little different. Numbers can't lie, but they can, sometimes, be manipulated to prove almost anything you want - or just as often, simply misunderstood to the same ends. (Take most back-of-a-cigarette-packet attempts at doing the maths here, and the infinite considerations to bear in mind: Have you adjusted for inflation? How about for cost of living, as if the rising price of everything else may somehow make expensive games more palatable? Or share of disposable average household salary? For exchange rates? Purchasing power parity? Did you use the mean or the median for average income? What about cost-per-frame of performance? How much value do you place on moving from 1080p to 1440p? Does anyone sit close enough to their TV to tell enough of a difference with 4K?! Ahhhhh!) Instead, it's worth remembering that economics isn't just a numerical science. It is also a behavioural one - a psychological one. The impact of pricing is as much in the mind as it is on the spreadsheet, hence these very real notions of "consumer confidence" and pricing that continues to end in ".99". And so sometimes with pricing I find it helps to borrow another phrase from sport, alongside that full-court press, in the "eye test". Sports scouts use all kinds of numerical data to analyse prospective players these days, but the best ones still marry that with a bit of old-school viewing in the flesh. If a player looks good on paper and passes the eye test, they're probably the real deal. Likewise, if the impact of buying an $80 video game at full price looks unclear in the data, but to your human eye feels about as whince-inducing as biting into a raw onion like it's an apple, and then rubbing said raw onion all over said eye, it's probably extremely bloody expensive and you should stop trying to be clever. Video games, to me, do feel bloody expensive. If I weren't in the incredibly fortunate position of being able to source or expense most of them for work I am genuinely unsure if I'd be continuing with them as a hobby - at least beyond shifting my patterns, as so many players have over the years, away from premium console and PC games to the forever-tempting, free-to-play time-vampires like Fortnite or League of Legends. Which leads, finally, to the real point here: that there is another cost to rising game and console prices, beyond the one hitting you square in the wallet. How much is GTA 6 going to cost? $80 or more? | Image credit: Rockstar The other cost - perhaps the real cost, when things settle - is the notion of ownership itself. Plenty of physical media collectors, aficionados and diehards will tell you this has been locked in the sights of this industry for a long time, of course. They will point to gaming's sister entertainment industries of music, film and television, and the paradigm shift to streaming in each, as a sign of the inevitability of it all. And they will undoubtedly have a point. But this step change in the cost of gaming will only be an accelerant. Understanding that only takes a quick glance at the strategy of, say, Xbox in recent years. While Nintendo is still largely adhering to the buy-it-outright tradition and Sony is busy shooting off its toes with live service-shaped bullets, Microsoft has, like it or not, positioned itself rather deftly. After jacking up the cost of its flatlining hardware and platform-agnostic games, Xbox, its execs would surely argue, is also now rather counterintuitively the home of value gaming - if only because Microsoft itself is the one hoiking up the cost of your main alternative. Because supplanting the waning old faithfuls in this kind of scenario - trade-ins, short-term rentals - is, you guessed it, Game Pass. You could even argue the consoles are factored in here too. Microsoft, with its "this is an Xbox" campaign and long-stated ambition to reach players in the billions, has made it plain that it doesn't care where you play its games, as long as you're playing them. When all physical consoles are jumping up in price, thanks to that rising tide effect of inflation, the platform that lets you spend £15 a month to stream Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Oblivion Remastered and the latest Doom straight to your TV without even buying one is, at least in theory (and not forgetting the BDS call for a boycott of them) looking like quite an attractive proposition. Xbox, for its part, has been chipping away at this idea for a while - we at Eurogamer had opinions about team green's disregard for game ownership as far back as the reveal of the Xbox One, in the ancient times of 2013. Then it was a different method, the once-horrifying face of digital rights management, or DRM, along with regulated digital game sharing and online-only requirements. Here in 2025, with that disdain now platform-agnostic, and where games are being disappeared from people's libraries, platforms like Steam are, by law, forced to remind you that you're not actually buying your games at all, where older games are increasingly only playable via subscriptions to Nintendo, Sony, and now Xbox, and bosses are making wild claims about AI's ability to "preserve" old games by making terrible facsimiles of them, that seems slightly quaint. More directly, Xbox has been talking about this very openly since at least 2021. As Ben Decker, then head of gaming services marketing at Xbox, said to me at the time: "Our goal for Xbox Game Pass really ladders up to our goal at Xbox, to reach the more than 3 billion gamers worldwide… we are building a future with this in mind." Four years on, that future might be now. Jacking up the cost of games and consoles alone won't do anything to grow gaming's userbase, that being the touted panacea still by the industry's top brass. Quite the opposite, obviously (although the Switch 2 looks set to still be massive, and the PS5, with all its price rises, still tracks in line with the price-cut PS4). But funneling more and more core players away from owning games, and towards a newly incentivised world where they merely pay a comparatively low monthly fee to access them, might just. How much a difference that will truly make, and the consequences of it, remain up for debate of course. We've seen the impact of streaming on the other entertainment industries in turn, none for the better, but games are a medium of their own. Perhaps there's still a little room for optimism. Against the tide there are still organisations like Does It Play? and the Game History Foundation, or platforms such as itch.io and GOG (nothing without its flaws, of course), that exist precisely because of the growing resistance to that current. Just this week, Lost in Cult launched a new wave of luxurious, always-playable physical editions of acclaimed games, another small act of defiance - though perhaps another sign things are going the way of film and music, where purists splurge on vinyl and Criterion Collection BluRays but the vast majority remain on Netflix and Spotify. And as uncomfortable as it may be to hear for those - including this author! - who wish for this medium to be preserved and cared for like any other great artform, there will be some who argue that a model where more games can be enjoyed by more people, for a lower cost, is worth it. Game Pass often offers great value, but the library is always in a state of flux. Collectors may need to start looking at high-end physical editions. | Image credit: Microsoft There's also another point to bear in mind here. Nightmarish as it may be for preservation and consumer rights, against the backdrop of endless layoffs and instability many developers tout the stability of a predefined Game Pass or PS Plus deal over taking a punt in the increasingly crowded, choppy seas of the open market. Bethesda this week has just boasted Doom: The Dark Ages' achievement of becoming the most widely-played (note: not fastest selling) Doom game ever. That despite it reaching only a fraction of peak Steam concurrents in the same period as its predecessor, Doom: Eternal - a sign, barring some surprise shift away from PC gaming to consoles, that people really are beginning to choose playing games on Game Pass over buying them outright. The likes of Remedy and Rebellion tout PS Plus and Game Pass as stabilisers, or even accelerants, for their games launching straight onto the services. And independent studios and publishers of varying sizes pre-empted that when we spoke to them for a piece about this exact this point, more than four years ago - in a sense, we're still waiting for a conclusive answer to a question we first began investigating back in 2021: Is Xbox Game Pass just too good to be true? We've talked, at this point, at great length about how this year would be make-or-break for the triple-A model in particular. About how the likes of Xbox, or Warner Bros., or the many others have lost sight of their purpose - and in the process, their path to sustainability - in the quest for exponential growth. How £700 Pro edition consoles are an argument against Pro editions altogether. And about how, it's becoming clear, the old industry we once knew is no more, with its new form still yet to take shape. There's an argument now, however, that a grim new normal for preservation and ownership may, just as grimly, be exactly what the industry needs to save itself. It would be in line with what we've seen from the wider world of technology and media - and really, the wider world itself. A shift from owning to renting. That old chestnut of all the capital slowly rising, curdling at the top. The public as mere tenants in a house of culture owned by someone, somewhere else. It needn't have to be this way, of course. If this all sounds like a particularly unfavourable trade-in, remember this too: it's one that could almost certainly have been avoided.

Enchant is launching a new zero-equity accelerator for gaming and AI startups, with applications now open for its three-month program. The accelerator is dedicated to early-stage teams at the crossroads of gaming and artificial intelligence. Founded by veterans of Sony, Supercell, EA, Ubisoft and Playrix, the fully remote program gives founders hands-on product sprints, weekly one-on-one sessions with industry leaders and direct access to a global investor network — while letting every startup keep 100 percent of its cap-table. Enchant backs companies building games, gaming-industry tools, AI products and Web3 experiences. By stripping away office requirements and equity grabs, the accelerator concentrates on rapid product iteration, real-world traction and warm introductions to publishers, VCs and strategic partners, said Eugenii Unegovskiy, cofounder of Enchant, in an interview with GamesBeat. Rolling admission, personal start date Enchant is taking applications for its zero-equity accelerator. The program is an intensive 12-week track that begins the day a team is accepted. Founders apply whenever they’re ready; there is no need to wait for fixed cohorts. From day one, each company follows a milestone roadmap that includes product deep-dives, go-to-market workshops and Demo-Day preparation. “Founders shouldn’t have to wait for a calendar slot,” said Unegovskiy. “Acceptance triggers day-one sprints, live play-tests and build reviews shoulder-to-shoulder with veterans from triple-A studios. It’s real co-building, not classroom mentoring, and it means products hit the market in weeks, not months.” “Zero-equity is a strong benefit, with an even bigger advantage being a clean cap table that helps early gaming and AI teams close future rounds faster,” added Aakash Parameswaran, CEO of Fable Fox, a former Game Designer at Electronic Arts and an expert in Enchant, in a statement. “From refining core loops to designing live-service economies, we work in the trenches so founders stay player-first and ship games investors can trust.” Why zero-equity matters Enchant is taking flat fees for its work. Keeping the cap-table clean at the earliest stage helps founders retain control and stay more attractive for future Seed and Series A rounds, when dilution stakes are far larger. It also lets Enchant operate purely on the startup’s success, aligning incentives around product wins and fundraising milestones. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis, and accepted teams can start immediately. Unegovskiy said that while running demo days for game startups at Subscrible, he realized something crucial: most early-stage founders don’t fail because the product is weak — they fail because the business around it isn’t ready. No go-to-market, no monetization strategy, no clear idea how much money they need — or why. “That’s why I teamed up with folks from Supercell, Ubisoft, Sony, EA, King, Xsolla, and Oracle — many of whom I’m sure you know or have crossed paths with — along with the creators of Tetris, Angry Birds, and Cut the Rope, to launch Enchant, a new kind of accelerator for gaming and AI startups,” Unegovskiy said. Without cohorts or equity, the company will provide focused support that helps founders move forward. “We help with pitch training, fundraising prep, GTM and monetization strategy, grant and UA support, legal and marketing guidance — plus access to tools, credits, and partner services worth over $500,000 (cloud credits, analytics, dev tools, etc.),” Unegovskiy said. “It’s a simple model: small monthly fee + a success fee if we help a team raise or grow — no early dilution.” The team includes Tim Horton, an experienced gaming executive with 16+ years in leadership, business development, and partnerships within the global gaming industry. Horton helps optimize operations, drive growth, and deliver high-quality projects in mobile gaming, triple-A art, console porting, and game development. Sutton Trout specializes in leadership/strategic partnerships/business development/goal attainment and revenue. He is an action-oriented leader with 20 years of experiences in games and entertainment. He has worked at Supercell, Sony and WB Games. And he helped with complex projects and major launches like Hogwarts Legacy. Also on the team is Andrey Feinberg (Kuznetsov), former CIO at GDEV and Nexters. He has more than 10 years of experience in gaming, tech, and internet industries. He helped closed 40+ deals worth over $800 million, and he is now an independent advisor focused on fundraising, M&A, and strategy for gaming and interactive entertainment companies. Unegovskiy is one of the experts, as he is a six-time founder with experience in game development and AI. Other experts include Amir Shaked, Igor Diev, Jun Qian, Oded Lavie, Martin Hoszowski, Kevin Beardslee, Yosef Warburg, Wes Harris, Elvis Fernandes, Han Lee, Faisal Nazir, Tim Gerritsen, Hovav Shoshan, Igor Bazhanov, Cipto Adiguno, Casey Dickinson, Rosario Basilotta, Aakash Parameswaran, Mariam Japaridze and Eugene Volikov. Enchant expert Aakash Parameswaran, CEO of Fable Fox. By not taking a stake in the company, Unegovskiy said the company focuses on working side-by-side with founders to improve everything from pitch to revenue strategy. It takes a flat monthly fee, plus a success fee if it helps a team raise money or grow. The fee is typically 5% to 10% of the raised amount or a share of revenue growth. “We also reserve the right to invest in future rounds on founder-friendly terms — aligned with long-term support, not short-term ownership,” said Unegovskiy. He also said mentors and advisserss are similiarly aligned to the startup’s success.The focus of games and AI at Enchant. The company just opened applications and are starting to see a diverse mix of early-stage founders — from game studios to AI-tool builders, across multiple regions. A significant share of interest is coming from projects working at the intersection of gaming and AI — blending creative ambition with scalable infrastructure. “We’re seeing strong indicators that the next wave of gaming startups will be deeply technical, globally minded, and looking for business-first support without early dilution,” Unegovskiy said. GB Daily Stay in the know! Get the latest news in your inbox daily Read our Privacy Policy Thanks for subscribing. Check out more VB newsletters here. An error occured.

At Appfest 2022, Noelia Lopez, Blockchain PM and Senior Monetization Manager at Tilting Point, shared her ad monetization strategies for midcore and hardcore mobile games. Read the summary or watch the full video.She kicked off her presentation with the main challenge facing free-to-play games: less than 3% of gamers actually pay for in-app purchases. But, Noelia explains, just because 97% of users aren’t paying, doesn’t mean you can’t monetize them.The pillars of monetizationAs Noelia explains, many hardcore and midcore game developers are concerned that ad monetization may negatively affect retention and/or revenue. She’s heard them say that:“paying users will churn if they see ads”“in-app ads might cannibalize in-app purchase revenue”“ads attract low-quality players or decrease the quality of the game”But, according to Noelia, none of these concerns are true - in fact, it just means these developers aren’t implementing their ad placements the right way (or, as she puts it, “you aren’t doing your job well enough!”).The roadmap of ad implementationSo, how can you monetize with ads in a way that promotes revenue growth and [tooltip term="user-engagement"]engagement[/tooltip]? Follow a roadmap, implementing placements throughout the development lifecycle, from prototyping, soft launch, global launch, and finally live ops.PrototypingMany developers think the prototyping stage of the game is too early to begin thinking about ad monetization, and would rather focus on other in-game features - but in fact, Noelia says it's critical to begin here.That’s because during the prototyping phase, your entire studio is conducting the necessary market research to understand your competition - making it a critical time to also understand the monetization strategies your competitors use and the strategies you’d like to adopt.From here, conceptualize putting these placements into your game and how much revenue they could bring. Understanding each ad placement’s revenue potential will help you prioritize which placements to focus on first. By getting started this early, you can also encourage the product team to prioritize placements and align on your exact strategy.Noelia emphasizes the importance of conceptualization, or mentally preparing yourself and your team for an ad placement, even if there’s no space for it in that moment. You can start preparing by asking yourself: where exactly a placement should go, what it looks like, and what else it needs, like a tutorial.Soft launchAfter prototyping, it’s time for the soft launch, or the testing phase. Noelia broke this phase down into three parts: integration, goal setting, and testing.First comes your ad placements. This starts with integrating ad networks - whichever ones you find perform best - and a mediation platform. The best ads for hardcore games are rewarded videos and offerwalls.In the next stage, you want to always consider your goals - like fill rate, boosting LTV, and finding the balance between in-app ads and in-app purchases that maximizes revenue. As she explains, there’s no need to push for CPMs, or make a complex waterfall because soft launches often run in countries that tend to have lower impressions. That’s why it’s important to focus on fill rate, so you understand your engagement and impressions per day, and that your fill rate is good.As for tests, Noelia suggests conducting multiple tests for your ads - it’s important to test the most challenging ads, or the ones that might cannibalize in-app purchases, affect retention, etc. As you determine your game economy, this is also the time to test the ideal reward amount you want to give - increasing or decreasing it accordingly. Even after launch, you should continually be testing and optimizing to ensure the highest performance.Global launchNext comes the global launch - time to finally monitor how your in-app ads are performing. Noelia recommends viewing the metrics of all your ad placements, like engagement and ads per [tooltip term="daily-active-users"]DAU[/tooltip], on one page so you can see which perform best. The ad engagement rate for hardcore games, according to Noelia, hovers around 60%, ads per DAU ranges from 0-3, and ad revenue can get up to 15%. The goal is to have a 95% fill rate, to ensure there’s the highest opportunity possible to serve impressions.To drive home her point, Noelia shared successful examples of placement strategies from her games, like Warhammer: Chaos and Conquest. For example, they offer a welcome package of hard currency every time a user logs on, which boosts players to get started in the game and keep playing. To get non-paying hardcore users to experiment with your game’s ads, she also recommends using offerwall ads - which also helped increase Warhammer’s engagement rate.Live operationsFinally comes the live ops, or the post launch period, where you should be adjusting your ad placements to optimize performance. Before making any adjustments it’s important to be mindful that these changes don’t impact users’ ability to engage with ads.The live ops period can even be an opportunity to increase revenue. For example, if you establish a leaderboard to incentivize non-paying players, you can use ad placements as “tickets” for getting in. Due to increased competition with non-paying users, paying users can also be motivated to invest more to stay on top.Ultimately, ads are a major asset to monetizing your midcore or hardcore game, but placement strategies can only succeed with the right amount of monitoring and optimizing - even from the initial stages of your game’s development.

Enchant is launching a new zero-equity accelerator for gaming and AI startups, with applications now open for its three-month program. The accelerator is dedicated to early-stage teams at the crossroads of gaming and artificial intelligence. Founded by veterans of Sony, Supercell, EA, Ubisoft and Playrix, the fully remote program gives founders hands-on product sprints, weekly one-on-one sessions with industry leaders and direct access to a global investor network — while letting every startup keep 100 percent of its cap-table. Enchant backs companies building games, gaming-industry tools, AI products and Web3 experiences. By stripping away office requirements and equity grabs, the accelerator concentrates on rapid product iteration, real-world traction and warm introductions to publishers, VCs and strategic partners, said Eugenii Unegovskiy, cofounder of Enchant, in an interview with GamesBeat. Rolling admission, personal start date Enchant is taking applications for its zero-equity accelerator. The program is an intensive 12-week track that begins the day a team is accepted. Founders apply whenever they’re ready; there is no need to wait for fixed cohorts. From day one, each company follows a milestone roadmap that includes product deep-dives, go-to-market workshops and Demo-Day preparation. “Founders shouldn’t have to wait for a calendar slot,” said Unegovskiy. “Acceptance triggers day-one sprints, live play-tests and build reviews shoulder-to-shoulder with veterans from triple-A studios. It’s real co-building, not classroom mentoring, and it means products hit the market in weeks, not months.” “Zero-equity is a strong benefit, with an even bigger advantage being a clean cap table that helps early gaming and AI teams close future rounds faster,” added Aakash Parameswaran, CEO of Fable Fox, a former Game Designer at Electronic Arts and an expert in Enchant, in a statement. “From refining core loops to designing live-service economies, we work in the trenches so founders stay player-first and ship games investors can trust.” Why zero-equity matters Enchant is taking flat fees for its work. Keeping the cap-table clean at the earliest stage helps founders retain control and stay more attractive for future Seed and Series A rounds, when dilution stakes are far larger. It also lets Enchant operate purely on the startup’s success, aligning incentives around product wins and fundraising milestones. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis, and accepted teams can start immediately. Unegovskiy said that while running demo days for game startups at Subscrible, he realized something crucial: most early-stage founders don’t fail because the product is weak — they fail because the business around it isn’t ready. No go-to-market, no monetization strategy, no clear idea how much money they need — or why. “That’s why I teamed up with folks from Supercell, Ubisoft, Sony, EA, King, Xsolla, and Oracle — many of whom I’m sure you know or have crossed paths with — along with the creators of Tetris, Angry Birds, and Cut the Rope, to launch Enchant, a new kind of accelerator for gaming and AI startups,” Unegovskiy said. Without cohorts or equity, the company will provide focused support that helps founders move forward. “We help with pitch training, fundraising prep, GTM and monetization strategy, grant and UA support, legal and marketing guidance — plus access to tools, credits, and partner services worth over $500,000 (cloud credits, analytics, dev tools, etc.),” Unegovskiy said. “It’s a simple model: small monthly fee + a success fee if we help a team raise or grow — no early dilution.” The team includes Tim Horton, an experienced gaming executive with 16+ years in leadership, business development, and partnerships within the global gaming industry. Horton helps optimize operations, drive growth, and deliver high-quality projects in mobile gaming, triple-A art, console porting, and game development. Sutton Trout specializes in leadership/strategic partnerships/business development/goal attainment and revenue. He is an action-oriented leader with 20 years of experiences in games and entertainment. He has worked at Supercell, Sony and WB Games. And he helped with complex projects and major launches like Hogwarts Legacy. Also on the team is Andrey Feinberg (Kuznetsov), former CIO at GDEV and Nexters. He has more than 10 years of experience in gaming, tech, and internet industries. He helped closed 40+ deals worth over $800 million, and he is now an independent advisor focused on fundraising, M&A, and strategy for gaming and interactive entertainment companies. Unegovskiy is one of the experts, as he is a six-time founder with experience in game development and AI. Other experts include Amir Shaked, Igor Diev, Jun Qian, Oded Lavie, Martin Hoszowski, Kevin Beardslee, Yosef Warburg, Wes Harris, Elvis Fernandes, Han Lee, Faisal Nazir, Tim Gerritsen, Hovav Shoshan, Igor Bazhanov, Cipto Adiguno, Casey Dickinson, Rosario Basilotta, Aakash Parameswaran, Mariam Japaridze and Eugene Volikov. Enchant expert Aakash Parameswaran, CEO of Fable Fox. By not taking a stake in the company, Unegovskiy said the company focuses on working side-by-side with founders to improve everything from pitch to revenue strategy. It takes a flat monthly fee, plus a success fee if it helps a team raise money or grow. The fee is typically 5% to 10% of the raised amount or a share of revenue growth. “We also reserve the right to invest in future rounds on founder-friendly terms — aligned with long-term support, not short-term ownership,” said Unegovskiy. He also said mentors and advisserss are similiarly aligned to the startup’s success.The focus of games and AI at Enchant. The company just opened applications and are starting to see a diverse mix of early-stage founders — from game studios to AI-tool builders, across multiple regions. A significant share of interest is coming from projects working at the intersection of gaming and AI — blending creative ambition with scalable infrastructure. “We’re seeing strong indicators that the next wave of gaming startups will be deeply technical, globally minded, and looking for business-first support without early dilution,” Unegovskiy said. GB Daily Stay in the know! Get the latest news in your inbox daily Read our Privacy Policy Thanks for subscribing. Check out more VB newsletters here. An error occured.

Transcreation WriterTechlandWarszawa Województwo mazowieckie pl2 hours agoApplyJob DescriptionJoin our team as a Transcreation Writer and help us create exceptional games that reach players worldwide! If you have excellent language skills and a passion for text adaptation and storytelling, we’re looking for you.Your daily tasks:Translate and adapt texts from Polish to English, considering cultural and linguistic differences.Create additional narrative materials such as descriptions, notes, and audio logs.Support the VO (Voice Over) recording process by collaborating with the Localization team and delivering materials on time.Analyze source texts to identify key contextual and non-textual elements essential for localization.Adapt texts to regional cultural, legal, and societal standards while preserving their original intent and emotional impact.Daily usage of text and dialogue related tools including Google Docs, Google Sheets, Confluence and our in-house Dialogue and Localization ToolsQualificationsNative English language speakerVery good knowledge of Polish – you can fully understand even the most complex texts and their nuances.The ability to work with different language styles and accurately convey intended messages.Excellent understanding of cultural context – history, customs, and linguistic nuances that are key to creating authentic adaptations.Independence and strong organizational skills – you can research needed information and keep your documentation well-structured.What will make you stand out?The ability to craft engaging stories that capture players' attention.Experience in creating characters and narrative scenes that convey emotions, intentions, and conflicts.Additional InformationWhat we can offer:A wide array of benefits: private medical care, life insurance, pro-health campaigns, gifts for different occasions.An outstanding work atmosphere in a highly-skilled team of professionals, with flexible working hours, no dress code, and full support of the dedicated HR Business Partner.A constant stream of company newsletters, PR & project updates so you will always be in the know.Many opportunities for personal development: a dedicated development budget for each employee, extra two paid days for training and CSR, stable career paths, extensive internal and external training, and financing of English and Polish language classes.State-of-the-art offices filled with chillout zones, a fully equipped kitchen, a gym (Wrocław office), and a free car park (Wrocław/Warsaw office).Company DescriptionTechland is one of the biggest video game companies in Poland, with over 30 years of experience in the gaming industry. From our studios in Wroclaw and Warsaw, we’ve built an international team of more than 500 talented professionals, all dedicated to pushing the boundaries of game development. We’re known for creating iconic franchises like Call of Juarez and the zombie genre-defining Dying Light, which has been played by over 45 million players worldwide. With a focus on open-world action, storytelling, and community engagement, we’re committed to delivering unforgettable experiences to our players.We’re constantly striving to improve, innovate, and take on new challenges. With ambitious plans for the future, we’re looking for passionate people to be part of this exciting journey.Create Your Profile — Game companies can contact you with their relevant job openings. Apply

Seafrog is a colorful skateboarding action game where you are exploring ships and discovering strange monsters as you’re heading home. It is a 2.5D platformer where you can ride a skateboard around giant boats, grinding on pipes and grabbing onto leaky spouts. Everything about this game screams joy and fun. The skateboarding on the wrench, the frog with headphones, the colorful strange monsters that are within these ships; it’s all a delight to see. You even get to watch little cutscenes that give more context to the monsters and moments within the game. This game takes you onto some old, abandoned, leaky boats filled with characters who have taken over. You’ll run into all sorts of oddballs like man-eating chickens, frog fairies, and giant octopuses. There are actually a lot of dangers within these places but you have been left with no choice as you and your trusty USB companion have been lost at sea. After plugging in the USB, you’ll be given a map, some spaces for mods, and a game plan to launch yourself from a cannon to get back to some island. In order to use the cannon, you need to find goal seashells and plug them into the generator. Sometimes, you can even find mods that add more lives or change how your skateboarding works, though you can only hold a limited amount at once. I found that the way you glide about on your skateboard does take some getting use to, but once you have mastered the controls, everything feels like so much fun to do and you’ll want to keep going back to the levels. You can sort of decide where you want to go next, as these ships have a surprising amount of rooms – some even containing various challenges. Many of these boats also need leaks fixed or keys in order to unlock different areas, giving you more to explore. Seafrog is available now on Steam. About The Author