Fretless - The Wrath of Riffson is the kind of genre-blending mismatch that’s just crazy enough to work. A turn-based deck-building rhythm game clearly made by musicians with a care for the craft scratches an itch for me that a lot of more straightfo

Frontline Protocol – Tactical PvE Strategy Wishlist on Steam and join Playtest for free Hi everyone! I'm an indie developer working on Frontline Protocol, a real-time strategy game with a unique blend of rts, deckbuilding and auto battler mechanics, and a strong focus on cooperative PvE gameplay. This isn't your typical RTS: Instead of controlling units directly, players influence the battlefield by playing cards. Every card you deploy brings instant effects – from spawning units, constructing buildings, placing towers, to launching tactical actions. Positioning, timing, and smart synergy between your three active decks is key. Key Features Card-based RTS Control your army through over 300 cards: infantry, vehicles, towers, buildings, and powerful action cards.1–4 online Multiplayer PvE Co-op Jump into online Multiplayer battles with up to 3 friends. Share spawners, coordinate strategies, and specialize your decks for roles like defense, eco, support, or frontline pressure.Auto Battler Dynamics Once deployed, your units act autonomously – but their effectiveness depends on your deck structure, map control, and team coordination.Meta Progression Earn Booster Credits and unlock card packs containing new units, action cards, and some items. Permanently improve select cards, invest skill points for meta-progression, and shape your long-term strategy. Create new specialized decks like infantry only, anti vehicle, eco buildings or what you want.Mission System Take on dynamic PvE missions with modifiers like time limits or card restrictions. Complete them to earn Mission Coins and unlock exclusive tactical rewards from mission booster packs.Special OrderAdd extra difficulty and earn rare rewards. Special Orders can be activated by the host to increase mission difficulty for all players – by limiting income, increasing enemy spawns or something else. The entire team receives a special loot if they succeed under these conditions. Deployment PlansStrategically boost rewards during missions. Deployment Plans are one-time tactical items drawn from mission booster packs. Use them during missions to gain extra Player EXP, Card EXP, or bonus loot – either per map or at mission completion. Choosing the right plan at the right time can multiply your rewards. Stats: Genre: Real-Time Strategy meets Deckbuilder and Auto Battler Online Multiplayer: Cooperative PvE for 1–4 players Card-Based Tactics: Spawn units, fire missiles, deploy towers, build economy Multi-Deck System: Play with up to three customizable decks simultaneously Booster Packs: Unlock new units, new action cards, and items 300+ Cards: Infantry, vehicles, support units, towers, buildings, and special actions Shared Resources: Teamwide synergy through buildings and spawner sharing Deck Progression: Permanently upgrade cards and build long-term strategies Skill Tree: Earn XP and unlock passive bonuses like faster income or extra hand size Missions & Objectives: Take on randomly generated missions with bonus rewards Built for Co-op: Game design encourages collaboration and tactical communication No Paywalls: All content unlockable through gameplay only Dynamic Enemy Scaling: AI becomes stronger the longer you wait – pressure guaranteed Replay Value: Constant deck experimentation, randomized missions, and tactical depth Get more: Steam Page: Frontline Protocol on Steam Official Website: www.frontlineprotocol.com

What we've been playing - New York, Poker, and frustration A few of the things that have us hooked this week. Image credit: FromSoftware Feature by Robert Purchese Associate Editor Additional contributions by Ed Nightingale, and Jim Trinca Published on May 24, 2025 24th May Hello and welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've been playing. This week, Bertie caves and installs the time-hogging phenomenon known as Balatro; Jim returns to the noir-like artistry of Grand Theft Auto 4; and Ed bangs his head repeatedly against Sekiro. What have you been playing? Catch up with the older editions of this column in our What We've Been Playing archive. Balatro, PS5 Snap! Wait, that's not the right game, is it?Watch on YouTube I did it: I finally caved and played Balatro. It's free with PlayStation Plus at the moment so I thought why not? Let me explain that hesitation quickly. I've never really liked Poker. I tend to defiantly not like what everyone else likes, I don't know why, and I also struggle to be serious for extended periods of time. The thought of sitting around a table with a 'Poker' face on, for hours on end, seems like torture to me. But I bit, and guess what? No surprise: I really liked it. I had to search for what a couple of the poker hands meant, because I didn't know my flushes from my straights - and I guess there's some assumed knowledge on the game's part there - but otherwise, I was (ahem) straight in. Time to being hooked: about five minutes. I love the immediacy of games like this. I know I'm predisposed to liking quick-play deckbuilding games - they just work wonderfully with my mental wiring - but there's clearly a skill to onboarding people in a way that's fun and frictionless, and Balatro has got it. There's no waiting for the game to begin, you just press go and learn as you play. Anyway, brb, see you in a few hundred hours. -Bertie Grand Theft Auto 4 Which GTA protagonists are the best?Watch on YouTube I've been replaying GTA 4 for a Thing I'm working on and rediscovering just how bold a game it is. Big budget video games tend to default to a sort of pseudo-photorealism as their visual style, and there's nothing wrong with that. As we know from a century of pointing lights and cameras at real actors, there is plenty of scope for creativity within that. But it is often a safe choice. With a triple-A budget comes the expectation to have the triple-A 'look', essentially mimicking what the real lights, cameras, and actors are doing at the time. GTA 4 doesn't have that look. It looks like GTA 4, with its unmistakable forever autumn draping a decaying urban sprawl in soft baths of burnt orange. With its desaturated neo-noir nights pocked with bursts of colour where city lights cut the dour air. It's a look that fully serves the themes of the game: a dismantling of the American Dream as experienced through the eyes of an immigrant - a war-damaged man fleeing a war-damaged society, only to find, like millions of people before him, that the problems from an old world tend to follow you to the new. Niko’s is a bleak life with fleeting moments of triumph and fleeting moments of levity, and his Liberty City reflects this in every flaking piece of paint and every particle of billowing trash. GTA 4 sticks resolutely and defiantly to its aesthetic of grime and decay in much the same way the underrated shooter Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days did, in sending the player into an unwaveringly grim handicam snuff film and revelling in their discomfort. Both games are miraculous works of art. Plus in GTA 4, the stockmarket is called BAWSAQ, which is funny. -Jim Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, PS4 Here's Aoife sharing in some of Ed's Sekiro frustration.Watch on YouTube I don't think I've ever been as angry as when I play Sekiro. I'm not just talking about being a bit frustrated. I'm talking 'existential why the hell am I doing this to myself' despondency. I am not enjoying it, but I can't stop playing it. I know I shouldn't let it get to me. Get a grip Ed, it's just a silly little video game. I should really just learn to git gud, right? But: sigh. For context, this is the last big FromSoftware game I'm yet to finish, and I've started it three times now. I'm determined to finish it - I've come too far with these games to stop now. But Sekiro just hasn't clicked for me like the studio's other games have. In part that's down to aesthetics, I think, as I just vibe more with the dark fantasy of Souls and twisted Gothism of Bloodborne than I do the Japanese horror of Sekiro. But also it's to do with combat. It's so focused on a single method of fighting - parry parry parry - that there's no room for the expression or build variety that I really like. I do enjoy how rhythmical parrying can be, but each boss encounter feels like I'm banging my head against a wall, much more so than any other game of this type. At least the end is in sight as I only have the final boss to go (I'm ignoring the Demon of Hatred for the moment). At this point I'm just playing Sekiro out of stubbornness and spite, and I'm not sure what to be disappointed in, the game or myself. -Ed

Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)It's possibly becoming a bit of a hard sell these days, the old roguelike dungeon-crawling adventure, replete with retro/pixel visuals. We know it. However, as busy and as overstuffed with pale imitators to the greats as this genre is, it's still well worth keeping an eye out for the odd gem. And here we have an example of said gem. Into the Restless Ruins is a fantastic thing - put simply, a game that takes a whole bunch of mechanics you might think you're tired of, and weaves them together into something entirely fresh and unique. Edinburgh-based Ant Workshop Studios has melded deckbuilding, dungeon-crawling, dungeon-building, a fiendishly moreish memory game, and delightful, Vampire Survivors-esque, auto-combat to beguiling effect in its Switch debut. The delicately judged balance here, in how each of these mechanics is given an equal share of your time, ensures that, from the first dungeon drop to the very last battle of the campaign, you may find yourself immobilised, such is the addictiveness of the core gameplay loops running in tandem. Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked) Kicking off in a dank catacomb, in a region known as Eorisdale, Into the Restless Ruins sees you take charge of a cloaked protagonist, a Celtic champion, who's on the hunt for the Harvest Maiden. This figure from Scottish folklore, according to the game, can satisfy any heart's greatest desires - in return for a little toil. And so off we pop down some dungeons as we've got a hot tip-off that's where she goes to chill out. This first dungeon gently introduces the flow of the gameplay. Starting a run, you're procedurally-generated a single piece of dungeon, perhaps a crossroads, with a spawn point in the centre. You also have a deck with five cards. Each card has a little part of a dungeon displayed on it, alongside the number of BP (Build Points) you'll need to play it, and a note of any other effects the card may have. An armoury will raise your attack stat, a camp lets you regenerate a little of your torch, whilst faded groves give you a little health regen, and so on through more complex fare. Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked) You start off from your spawn point and use your cards, choosing a piece of dungeon to fit — in a lovely clicky way — to the piece you're currently on. The aim now is to build and expand, using your given turns and BP, to reach several clouded areas spread around you, some of which contain seals. These seals must be found and broken to advance further to a final boss confrontation. All good. Now, once you've done your planning and played your cards, you hold in 'Y' to drop right down into the dungeon (and it's nice how the game just seamlessly zooms right in for this bit) where the auto-combat battling begins. The combat here will come as no surprise to anyone who's survived vampires: it's all about positioning and timing, avoiding explodey rats and mice, weaving through wizard's spells, and knowing when to press or pull back. Once this part starts, you'll likely quickly realise that you've made some mistakes in the planning (especially if you are us). You see, as your dungeons expand, as you reach a seal and break it and are then faced down by a horde of angry beasties, the importance of dungeon design is fully revealed. Accessibility Features GameplayAssistsControlsVisualAudioFull Accessibility Report Data by Family Gaming Database Campsites, first up, need to be placed along routes with some thought to ensure you can keep your torch lit, because they've only gone and put your light supply on a tightly-timed gauge. Tension has entered the chat! You also have a bar dictating your health, which doesn't take much to empty either, so the positioning of those regenerating faded groves is now of critical import. Once you complete a run you'll be taken back to your deck and another gauge is deployed. This purple addition to the fun shows you how cursed you are, you see. It gets added to with each complete run, and so doing well, not dying, and playing clever will help you keep this bar filling up as slowly as possible. Dying and making a mess, on the other hand, will add some hefty chunks, putting you at risk of being overwhelmed before you manage to break all the seals and beat the boss. Phew! The first dungeon's leisurely pace and straightforward layout gives you a chance to get used to spinning and placing parts of your dungeon onto the map, as well as getting to grips with how you'll need to time everything just so to push on to victory. The combat keeps itself varied by providing new weapons and collectibles, too, as well as giving you new options through a vast selection of upgradeable and changeable cards (116 base varieties, we believe). Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked) There are further layers provided through build synergies — certain placement patterns provide surprise boons — and there's also a whole bunch of Cantrips to unlock and use, allowing you to add both positive and negative effects to raise or lower the amount of XP you gain in a run, or "harvest" to use the correct lingo. So, lots of moving parts to consider. You've also got a few characters to meet out in these ruins that you've built around yourself, strange NPCs who'll upgrade your cards, duplicate particular faves, and more besides, whilst imparting some folklore upon you. Upgrading here, it has to be said, is also just really cool and satisfying because, besides the usual numbers-going-up, you get new entrances onto your card pieces. So, for example, a long corridor with three doors that you couldn't use because it wouldn't fit, now gets an extra door for you to work with. It's addictive, puzzley-time stuff that just gets better as it gets harder. Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked) Of course, when a clouded area within any of your dungeons doesn't contain a seal, you've wasted a lot of resources making your way towards it, and this aspect also brings enough tension to your planning time that the building is every bit as enjoyable as the combat. Wandering through dungeons brings the added danger of getting lost, too, as there's no map, so the memory game starts to rear its head as you move onto the later catacombs, which mix things up by spreading the clouds you need to uncover in various directions. This means way more pre-planning is required to avoid coming a cropper to the tight time and health constraints placed on you. Beyond this, you've also got cursed cards that'll be played into your deck once you've been cursed, these add some rough negatives to proceedings if you let them sit in your hand, and so you need to consider when to play them (they cost a BP) in order to do the least amount of damage to your chances and get them out of your deck. These are offset by favour cards you'll get from breaking seals and levelling up, so you could, as an example, play a cursed card that means you can't heal up at groves, but then play a card that gives you +500% damage, so it nullifies the negative somewhat and removes it from your deck. Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked) There are so many wrinkles here that it could have become very tedious and/or messy, so the best thing is how it's all so effortless and easy to learn, even if you don't really do cards as a regular thing. Every aspect is explained well (there's a tutorial in the menus when you need it), and you can take your time in the planning phase. As the catacombs get harder, things progress along perfectly from relaxing and addictive, to tension-filled and even more bloody addictive. The lovely pixel art style, quick shots of Scottish folklore, and solid soundtrack all work to give you exactly the kind of ambience you need to settle in for the long haul. In terms of negatives, well, the story aspects are light, really, so this one isn't gonna be challenging any of the more narratively bombastic examples of the genre to a straight-up auto-fight in the school playground. We guess, too, that the graphical style is one that's been done quite a bit, but honestly, we're picking for the sake of it now. This is some premium-grade roguelike, in the end - a uniquely fresh take that borrows inspirations from all over its chosen genre, and cobbles them together into a wonderful indie game that's very much its own thing. Just be warned that the 'one more run' factor here is high. Conclusion Into The Restless Ruins has taken us totally by surprise. This is a belting addition to the Switch's lineup of roguelikes that manages to make itself fresh and unique in a category full of bland copycats. The melding of deckbuilding, combat, memory challenges, and construction of dungeons makes for a game that draws you right in every time, robbing you of hours as you work your way through its delightful catacombs. A little more narrative oomph may have taken it even further, but you're still looking at a bit of a must-play here. A wonderfully clever melding of mechanicsCombat is fun with good variety in enemies and weaponsPacing is spot on, with dungeons getting more complex as you goEasy to get to grips with but deep as the darkest dungeon, too Story is very lightPixel art style has been done quite a bit before Excellent 9/10

Drop it like it's not (the piece you need right now) Drop Duchy is a deck-building, Tetris-like, Carcassonne-esque puzzler The game layers tile dropping onto worker placement, and stacks up nicely. Kevin Purdy – May 16, 2025 7:30 am | 2 Credit: The Arcade Crew Credit: The Arcade Crew Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more When my colleague Kyle Orland submitted Tetrisweeper for a list of Ars' favorite 2024 games not from 2024, I told him, essentially: "Good for you, not for me." I'm a pedestrian Tetris player, at best, so the idea of managing a whole different game mechanic, while trying to clear lines and prevent stack-ups, sounded like taking a standardized test while baking a three-layer cake. And yet, here I am, sneaking rounds of Drop Duchy (Steam, Epic, for Windows/Linux via Proton) into lunch breaks, weekend mornings, and other bits of downtime. Drop Duchy is similarly not just a Tetris-esque block-dropper. It also has you: Aligning terrain types for resources Placing both your troops and the enemy's Choosing which cards to upgrade, sell, and bring into battle Picking between terrain types to leave behind Upgrading a tech tree with achievements Picking the sequence of battles for maximum effectiveness Drop Duchy is a quirky game, one that hasn't entirely fused together its various influences without some seams showing. But I keep returning to it, even as it beats me to a pulp on Normal mode, based on decisions I made five rounds ago. It feels like a medium-deep board game, played at triple speed, with someone across the table timing you on how fast you arrange your tiles. Your standard roguelite deck-builder, Tetris tactics, worker placement game Drop Duchy launch trailer. Allow me to try to describe what is happening in Drop Duchy, ignoring entirely the idea that there is some kind of plot. You start off with three buildings and your enemy's buildings that you must place, mixed into a pile of terrain (plains and forest to start) in Tetris-like shapes. Filling a horizontal line gives you resources (wheat, wood, and stone) from that line but does not clear it. If you build up a big area of plains on your board, you can drop your "Farm" piece in the middle, and it converts those plains into richer plains. Put a "Woodcutter" into a bunch of forest, and it harvests that wood and turns it into plains. Set down a "Watchtower," and it recruits some archer units for every plains tile in its vicinity, and even more for richer fields. You could drop a Woodcutter next to a Farm and Watchtower, and it would turn the forests into plains, the Farm would turn the plains into fields, and the Watchtower would pick up more units for all those rich fields. That kind of multi-effect combo, resulting from one piece you perfectly placed in the nick of time, is what keeps you coming back to Drop Duchy. The bitter losses come from the other side, like realizing you've leaned too heavily into heavy, halberd-wielding units when the enemy has lots of ranged units that are strong against them. Or that feeling, familiar to Tetris vets, that one hasty decision you made 10 rows back has doomed you to the awkward, slanted pile-up you find yourself in now. Except that lines don't clear in Drop Duchy, and the game's boss battles specifically punish you for running out of good places to put things. There's an upper strategic layer to all the which-square-where action. You choose branching paths on your way to each boss, picking different resources, battles, and trading posts. Every victory has you picking a card for your deck, whether military, production, or, later on, general "technology" gains. You upgrade cards using your gathered resources, try to balance or min-max cards toward certain armies or terrains, and try not to lose any one round by too many soldiers. You have a sort of "overall defense" life meter, and each loss chips away at it. Run out of money to refill it, and that's the game. Again: It is not a Tetris clone Every run is a new set of cards that you upgrade, sell, reserve for certain terrain conditions, or wonder why you picked it. The Arcade Crew Every run is a new set of cards that you upgrade, sell, reserve for certain terrain conditions, or wonder why you picked it. The Arcade Crew Upgrading cards is almost always worth it—unless you need to replenish your overall defense. The Arcade Crew Upgrading cards is almost always worth it—unless you need to replenish your overall defense. The Arcade Crew Every run is a new set of cards that you upgrade, sell, reserve for certain terrain conditions, or wonder why you picked it. The Arcade Crew Upgrading cards is almost always worth it—unless you need to replenish your overall defense. The Arcade Crew The path you choose to encounters and trading posts makes a difference in Drop Duchy. The Arcade Crew The path you choose to encounters and trading posts makes a difference in Drop Duchy. The Arcade Crew See that river on the right, the one that would look great if only it could be connected? Welcome to this game. The Arcade Crew See that river on the right, the one that would look great if only it could be connected? Welcome to this game. The Arcade Crew The path you choose to encounters and trading posts makes a difference in Drop Duchy. The Arcade Crew See that river on the right, the one that would look great if only it could be connected? Welcome to this game. The Arcade Crew Drop Duchy feels, moment to moment, triumphalist and unfair, but that is its intended rogue-ish nature. Where I see issues with the game beyond that is in the little stuff. The game plays well on a Steam Deck or other handhelds, but if you have any issues with reading small text on a small screen, Drop Duchy is unforgiving. Many of the buildings look very similar, and the icons and text can be quite small. I feel the most for folks with extensive Tetris experience and muscle memory. Drop Duchy uses some non-standard pieces, like single, double, and three-square corners. And while line clearing is almost always rewarded, it can also work against you, like if an enemy's fort fits a slot, but also grants it lots of troops from the surrounding terrain. Drop Duchy can sometimes feel unbalanced, sometimes a bit unfair. Its bosses will typically require multiple runs before you figure out the right multi-round strategies. The game's many, many mechanics make this a title where I wouldn't blame someone for running the Tutorial round more than once. But, like golf, home repair, or setting up a server, the few times you get a round, or just a line, perfectly right can erase all the hard lessons you had to endure before. I keep finding things in Drop Duchy that seem impossible to overcome, and then I come right back and try it a different way. I think this title will get a few balance fixes, but even before those, it's a good run. Listing image: The Arcade Crew Kevin Purdy Senior Technology Reporter Kevin Purdy Senior Technology Reporter Kevin is a senior technology reporter at Ars Technica, covering open-source software, PC gaming, home automation, repairability, e-bikes, and tech history. He has previously worked at Lifehacker, Wirecutter, iFixit, and Carbon Switch. 2 Comments