ENTERTAINMENT

Microsoft’s latest ID@Xbox Showcase has been and gone, stuffed with updates and announcements from some of the best indie games around, including Balatro, which shadow-dropped onto Xbox Game Pass yesterday, February 24.

Another fan-favorite indie, Buckshot Roulette, is also making the jump to Xbox. Within a year of its release back in December 2023, the tabletop horror game was a hit, taking over four million of us through a fiendish – and terrifying – game of Russian roulette with a pump-action shotgun.

But those aren’t the only games jumping onto Microsoft’s subscription service. We’ve rounded up all the new indie games confirmed at last night’s show as coming to Xbox Game Pass later in 2025.

Xbox Game Pass 2025 lineup:

• Balatro (Cloud, Console, and PC) – out now
• 33 Immortals (Cloud, Console, and PC) – March 18
• Descenders Next (Console and PC) – April 9
• Blue Prince (Cloud, Console, and PC) – April 10
• Tempopo (Cloud, Console, and PC) – April 17
• Revenge of the Savage Planet (Consoles) – May 8
• Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault (Consoles and PC) – 2025
• Tanuki: Pon’s Summer (Consoles and PC) – late 2025
• Buckshot Roulette (Consoles and PC) – TBC
• Echo Weaver (Cloud, Console, and PC) – TBC
• Ultimate Sheep Raccoon (Consoles and PC) – TBC

This is of course on top of Watch Dogs: Legion (Cloud, Console, and PC), which launches into Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass, and Game Pass Standard today, February 25.

Check out IGN’s Fan Fest 2025 hub for more.

Vikki Blake is a reporter, critic, columnist, and consultant. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.

Bloober Team has announced it has signed a deal with Konami to make a new game based on the Japanese company’s IP, following the successful release of the Silent Hill 2 remake.

While neither Bloober nor Konami said what the game is, or which franchise it’s in, given Bloober’s expertise with horror games and the success of the 2 million-selling Silent Hill 2 remake, another Silent Hill game of some type seems likely. Bloober said Konami will continue as both the publisher and rights holder of the mystery game.

Here’s the official blurb from Bloober CEO Piotr Babieno:

Konami, a legendary name in the gaming industry, sought a partner who could breathe new life into one of its most iconic franchises — Silent Hill. Bloober Team was selected for their expertise in horror and atmospheric storytelling, and in 2021, both companies signed a partnership agreement. In October 2022, during the official Silent Hill Transmission livestream, it was announced that Bloober Team was working on a remake of Silent Hill 2, widely regarded as one of the best psychological horror games in history.

The success of the remake proved that Bloober Team had perfectly captured the atmosphere and depth of the original while introducing crucial innovations. The game was well-received by players, earning an 86/100 rating on Metacritic and an 88/100 on OpenCritic, along with numerous awards, including Game of the Year 2024 from IGN Japan and Best Horror Game of the Year from the IGN Community Awards.

The trust built upon the success of Silent Hill 2 laid the foundation for signing another agreement for a new project. The deal aligns with Bloober Team’s strategic plan to expand its internal development division within a first-party framework.

Our collaboration with Konami has been incredibly fruitful, and the success of Silent Hill 2 speaks for itself. By sharing knowledge and experience, we have been able to create high-quality production together. Of course, we can’t reveal too many details at this time, but we are confident that fans will be just as excited about our collaboration as we are. We can’t wait to share something truly special with players when the time is right.

Silent Hill 2 remake went on sale on PlayStation 5 and PC via Steam on October 8, 2024 (there’s no word on an Xbox Series X and S version yet), and just a few days later had sold one million copies. This was thought to have made Silent Hill 2 remake the fastest-selling Silent Hill game ever, but Konami has yet to rubber stamp that potential record.

IGN’s Silent Hill 2 remake review returned an 8/10. We said: “Silent Hill 2 is a great way to visit – or revisit – one of the most dread-inducing destinations in the history of survival horror.”

The sales success of the Silent Hill 2 remake has clearly strengthened Konami’s plans for the franchise, which have ramped up significantly in recent years. Silent Hill f and Silent Hill: Townfall are both still in the works, but perhaps Konami will also continue to remake past Silent Hill games. There’s a film adaptation of Silent Hill 2 coming, too. And modders are doing eye-catching things with the Silent Hill 2 remake on PC, including removing hair sheen, the game’s famous fog, and even turning it into Sunny Hills.

The question now is, what is this new Bloober game for Konami? If it’s a new Silent Hill game, is it a remake of a previous game, or a brand new game in the franchise?

The Silent Hill 2 remake features several new puzzles and redesigned maps, so if you need help navigating through it all, head to our Silent Hill 2 Walkthrough Hub. We’ve also got a comprehensive guide to the Silent Hill 2 Remake endings, all Key Locations in the game, and what changes in New Game+.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Douglas Is Cancelled premieres Thursday, March 6 on BritBox.

Making entertaining and illuminating television from spicy ingredients like cancel culture, the modern-day news media, and the court of public opinion requires a deft hand. Unfortunately, that’s not a hand Douglas Is Cancelled possesses. The provocative comedy-drama from Sherlock creator and former Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat can’t help but sink beneath the weight of its smugness and judgemental attitude. While there are certainly flashes of brilliance in its four episodes – including captivating performances from Hugh Bonneville and Karen Gillan – there are also too many eye-roll-inducing lines intended to push the audience’s buttons. I found my buttons pushed, so, job well done, I guess.

The setup is rife with possibility, though its particulars are recognizably commonplace. Moffat sets his media-world parable in the offices and studio of a popular current affairs show hosted by TV veteran Douglas (Bonneville) and rising star Madeline (Gillan). It’s an onscreen combination that viewers on both sides of the pond should be accustomed to: The middle-aged guy and the conventionally attractive younger woman effortlessly bantering back and forth on a studio sofa. When we first meet him, all Douglas has to worry about is flubbing facts on-camera. That all changes when someone on Twitter (the show acknowledges that the social media site is now called X, but refers to its original name throughout) posts about overhearing Douglas “making an extremely sexist joke” at a wedding. The account only has 300 followers, so Douglas is confident it will blow over. Of course, the tweet goes viral, and everything snowballs from there.

Part of the overall intrigue is that Douglas claims he can’t remember the joke. Yet despite his lapse in memory, he repeatedly argues that the joke was sexist and not misogynistic; any amusement over the distinction quickly runs its course. The circular debate over Douglas’ supposed indiscretion may grow tired, but there’s a farcical edge to the fact that only the tweeter knows what was said. (Or what was said to be said.)

Even more interesting is that Douglas is married to the editor of a British tabloid newspaper: His wife Sheila (Alex Kingston) is an expert at spinning dirty laundry into front-page news. Now that it’s her husband holding the soiled linens, Sheila attempts to use her insider knowledge to protect her family. She’s also concerned with how much influence Madeline has over her husband, but the conflict between the two women never advances beyond overdone cliché. Kingston does what she can with the material, but Sheila’s interactions with anyone younger than her are perplexing. Her Gen-Z stereotype of an assistant, Helen (Stephanie Hyam), can’t even look her in the eye.

With her therapyspeak, coping mechanisms, and constant threats to contact human resources, Helen feels like the result of Moffat plotting out a “too woke” bingo card. The generational digs don’t stop there: Douglas and Sheila’s 19-year-old daughter, Claudia (Madeleine Power), is at constant odds with her mother over their differing worldviews – though Claudia’s is usually presented as the more inherently ludicrous one. It gets less cartoonish as the series progresses, but in the first episode, she borders on parody, and this punching down is unnecessary. She even uses the phrase “Okay, boomer” because, of course, she does. Claudia is at university, but initially reads much younger in her combative behavior, making this choice even more aggravating. (At least she’s given a more layered relationship with Douglas.)

Thankfully, Madeline isn’t painted with such a broad brush; Douglas Is Cancelled would be exhausting if she were. Sure, there are some slight jabs at her millennial habits (including how much time she spends scrolling socials on her phone), but she gets off easy in comparison to Helen and Claudia. She has more dimensions than that; her motivations are purposefully masked early on, and Gillan rolls with every shift in demeanor and twist in her character’s engrossing arc. One of several Doctor Who alumni reuniting with Moffat for Douglas Is Cancelled, she’s excellent throughout, showcasing a range of emotions that help land the deeper points. There are moments in the third episode where I genuinely held my breath in reaction to Gillan’s fearless approach to tough scenes. Similarly, Bonneville enthralls with the different levels of Douglas’ frustration – and his own inherent idiocy.

“Outrage is exciting. Nuance is work. Douglas is canceled,” says Sheila in the first episode, summarizing her audience’s taste for scandal. In her expert assessment, everyone looks at headlines, but no one reads the articles below them. Lines like this feel like they’re talking directly to the audience, just one facet of how over-the-top and aggravating the premiere gets. Moffat is imploring us to see a nuance that is, ironically, glaringly obvious, and then asking us to wade through other unsubtle insights to get to the meaty material. It grows tedious; observations about the state of the media landscape and how easy it is to get “canceled” swing between insightful and frustrating.

While Douglas Is Cancelled is more of a satire, it is hard for me not to draw comparisons to Apple TV+’s slick The Morning Show, which used Steve Carell’s disgraced host as a stand-in for ousted Today anchor Matt Lauer, and was equally muddled in reflecting some of the thornier elements of that dismissal. Douglas Is Cancelled also contains traces of British TV personalities like Phillip Schofield and Huw Edwards, who lost their jobs after their conduct was called into question – as a Brit, I couldn’t help but see the similarities in Douglas’ situation. There are surprises that I shan’t spoil, and by the end, the series sheds some of its defensiveness and indignation. But Moffat can’t save his cancel-culture sermon from its own moralizing.