Austin Wood
Austin has been a game journalist for 12 years, having freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree. He's been with GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've ౠyet to realize his position is a co🌌ver for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a lot of news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.
Latest articles by Austin Wood
"We fell short": Wuthering Waves devs apologize and hand out 30 free Tides as players riot over update 2.3 anniversary awards
News Wuthering Waves' first anniv🍸ersary did nᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚot sit well with players
After days of Oblivion remaster leaks, Bethesda suggests it will finally be announced and possibly released tomorrow: "All will be revealed"
News Everyone act surprised
People said it wasn't hard enough, so one Phantom Blade Zero dev cooked up a hardcore difficulty mode that changes enemy AI so much it feels more like PvP
news This Extreme Mode will only unlock after beating the game for the firs⛦t tim😼e
Monster Hunter Wilds cheaters have gotten so bad, Capcom's warning players hacked quests could make the game "unplayable": "We plan to implement additional countermeasures"
News Capcom is h🍰unting hackers, and invites players to report anyone🗹 suspicious
It took 18 months and over 50 updates, but Lords of the Fallen finally added the one feature I wanted from this Soulslike RPG at launch: "full shared progression co-op"
News Just w♏hen I think I'm out, they pull me (and a friend) back in
No Animal Crossing announced for Nintendo Switch 2 yet, but the life sim RPG I've waited 11 years for is coming to Switch next month
News Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time looks better every trailer, and is also coming to PC, Xbox, and Pla✨yStation
Palworld dev explains what's going on with its slick Dead Cells-style "Metroidvania x Roguelite," which has its own team who "used to be at Pocketpair"
News The team still works in 🎃Pocketpair's offices, unconventionally, but they're somewhat separate
Nintendo Switch 2 price remains $450 in US despite tariffs but "accessories will experience price adjustments," and US pre-orders open April 24
News "Other adjustments to the price of any Nintendo product are a🌌lso ꧂possible"
Even if it isn't a Soulslike, Phantom Blade Zero still wants to channel that "pre-Elden Ring" FromSoftware level design with secrets and layers
News "Level design is something that's very important for🍃 us"
Palworld developer says reaching 32 million players is "unexplainable" and "a lot of people don't realize how much of an anomaly that is"
News One of a kind
In a custom "nightmare mode" where any damage permanently deletes his character, MMO daredevil ends 15-month Old School RuneScape challenge with a 68-minute finale
News Resident OSRS sicko Settled does it again
In a brutal 60-hour YouTube video, one devoted fan preserves notorious Genshin Impact streamer's legendarily bad luck for all eternity: "What am I doing with my life"
News Years of bad RNG for Genshin Impact🎃 content creator Zy𝐆0x, condensed to just 30 feature films
Marathon feels like a good extraction shooter, but it's not free-to-play, and I hope Sony and Bungie don't price it into an early grave
Feature Marathon needs to be both: good and affordable
After playing Marathon for 8 hours, I don't think Bungie's extraction shooter will be the next Helldivers 2 hit, but I don’t think it will be the next Concord bust either
Hands-on Hands-on | Marathon might be the most polished ext☂raction shooter yet
How does Pocketpair spend all that Palworld money? Dev says they can take "risks" even if "we don't know what we're doing," trusting the CEO has "squirreled away enough to keep us alive"
News It's good to be Pocketpair
"We're not just making Dark Souls over and over again": For this indie team, making a Smash Bros-infused Metroidvania alongside an open-world roguelike just makes sense
News Possessor(s) 🥀is another distinct example of what makes a Heart Machine game
"Most of the games that are Metroidvanias are just Metroid games": The director of this Smash Bros-infused Metroidvania hates the word because "it's a silly term and Japan did it better"
News Possessoꦦr(s) from Heart Machine is full-on search actiജon
Hollow Knight: Silksong will finally launch in 2025, and the long-awaited Metroidvania is also coming to Nintendo Switch 2
News SILKSONG MENTIONED!
Ex-Bethesda dev turned indie says "good things often happen by accident," like that time Skyrim players convinced themselves the RPG's foxes were leading them to treasure
News "Players don't realize how ma🌞ny h✨appy and sometimes unhappy accidents" happen in games
Palworld dev says the studio went dark for months because "the team was getting burnt out from all the social media stuff, I was getting burnt out, our CEO was under attack in Japan"
News "We really tried to push back🌺 on the AI stuff specifically"
At a ridiculously detailed showcase of the open-world engine behind the RPG Crimson Desert, I asked a ridiculously detailed question about water and all hell broke loose
News How wet is water, exactly?
"Should JRPGs be considered a distinct genre?": Lunar icon Kei Shigema reflects on the genre with new remasters on the way and how RPGs have changed 33 years later
Interview Interview | "The time I spent working on this game was the 🌄happiest and most fulfilling period of my lifeꦕ"
24 years later, RuneScape gets its own survival game – RuneScape: Dragonwilds turns the MMO into a co-op game with RPG juice and Valheim energy, and it's out this year
News RuneScape꧂: Dragonwilds will launch in Steam early access this spring
"Minutes after Palworld released," Pocketpair was already getting game pitches from "some really big names" before it even set up its own publisher: "No one has money at the moment"
News "we're kind of open to helping people w🧸ith their weird little ideas becau🐻se they have them"
Valve leads considered making a "mediocre" game before Half-Life to build the team up, but original marketing exec said "if you do that, the company will fail"
News "I ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚtold Gabe that I thought the only way that Half-Life wa🦹s really going to work was if it was named Game of the Year"
