Bask in the sun… and risk getting the meanest sunburn of your life. Hello Sunshine is an impressive step up from the usual post-apocalypse survival RPG formula, playing with some clever ideas around scorching sunlight, blissful shade, and the cycle of day and night.

I previewed a hands-off, pre-alpha slice of Hello Sunshine’s story-driven, single-player campaign with the developers at Red Thread Games, many of whom are veteran developers in the narrative gaming world (think Dreamfall, The Longest Journey, and The Secret World).

Hello Sunshine is looking extremely polished for something built by just seven people, and puts a cool twist on what “suspense” means in the genre. From the extreme, sizzling heat of day to uncovering lore during frigid nights – here is why I believe Hello Sunshine’s future is looking bright.

Coming in hot

The team didn’t mention any sort of inspiration from the Fallout series, but right from the start screen there’s no denying the visual parallels – a skeleton in a folding camping chair, still clutching a drink as if the world ended mid-sip. Pressing the start button, the player character stumbles past, immediately launching you into this weird wasteland world. It wasn’t clear to me whether she was a preset character or customizable, but (in this preview, at least) she appeared to be the silent type.

In this cruel and scorching desert, it’s clear that she is already suffering from the early symptoms of heatstroke, and she’s also very sad about finding a water bottle that turns out to be empty. This scene is the introduction to Hello Sunshine’s heat and thirst mechanics – a delicate balancing act of avoiding collapse from dehydration or slow-cooking in the harsh sunlight. Robots aside, the sun is essentially your biggest enemy (but with ray tracing).

Ruined buildings yield water and other supplies that help you maintain a survivable body temperature, but shadows also play a huge role. If you’re roasting, resting in shade can keep your temperature down. And almost immediately, you’ll meet the most interesting shadow dynamic of all – Hello Sunshine’s other “main character,” who is a skyscraper-sized robot that seems to have a clearer idea of where it’s going than you do.

Chasing shadows

This metallic gentle giant is, like you, wandering through these badlands. It kind of ignores you in the beginning, but you’ll be grateful for the enormous shadow it casts as it moves, shielding you from UV-based harm as you follow it along sand dunes and amongst rusted shipping containers. And no, it won’t wait patiently for you if you saunter off; you’ll need to keep up with its pace if you don’t want to end up dying humiliatingly of sunburn.

This is survival through solar instinct and (coining an ahem hot new term here) shade management, not health bars alone – creating an urgency that adds an unconventional form of suspense to your strange journey.

The landscape, of course, hides precious resources – but you’ll need to strategize and carefully time your brief detours from the robot’s shadow. Spend too much time dilly-dallying and the robot may move too far ahead, meaning you won’t make it back before your heat meter runs out. The sun’s path, from afternoon to sunset, was particularly brilliant – with shadows lengthening or shrinking as the day progresses, you’ll need to adapt your decisions about how far you wander.

You can expect that you’ll find more awesome loot the farther you stray, of course. No word yet on whether loot will be randomized each playthrough, but I’m hoping that will be the case. Whatever ingredients you’re able to grab could limit what you’re able to craft – and add further challenge, based on what gear you’re able to make and how that may limit your desired playstyle.

Bringin’ on the heat

It’s not all sunbeams, however; Hello Sunshine does include combat, which you can shape according to your desired playstyle. Being noisy and aggressively guns-out (or, more accurately, bows-out), for instance, will probably attract even more enemies – and more scavengeable loot from their remains.

Or you can go for more defensive options, potentially even avoiding head-on conflict. I didn’t really get a sense of what a stealthier playthrough might look like, but I’m hoping the confrontational-to-avoidant spectrum is wide.

Your enemies, by the way, are more robots – definitely angrier than your giant friend – and they curiously seem to have taken on forms of the fleshy species that I assume were otherwise wiped out during the apocalypse. A little metal jackal will snap at your heels, for example, or a hulking robot crab may try to skewer you with its giant claw.

Your character’s bow is one of the primary weapons. At first, it doesn’t look like much – kind of pitiful against giant armored bots, really – but you’ll be able to upgrade it throughout the game and craft better ammo for it, such as explosive arrows.

Little events occur here and there to keep your journey interesting – like a distant airdrop of unspecified items, or a sandstorm that gives you brief respite from the sun but also reduces visibility, making it easier for you to lose your robot friend. Many of these events are procedural, hopefully unlocking varied experiences with subsequent playthroughs.

Befriending the sleeping giant

Conveniently, your enormous robot companion has a circadian rhythm: once the sun sets, it will take a break to recharge. In the preview, this happened at the remains of a Sunshine service station – owned by the ominous corporation whose shareholders, presumably, voted to min-max the humanity-destruction budget.

The service station is basically your inexplicably cheerful crafting workshop, complete with happy tinkling music. You can take a breather here, check out your loot from the day, “recycle” unwanted items, and use the parts to 3D-print new gear – from health packs to flashlights or even new shoes. You can also mend the wear-and-tear wrought on your gear throughout the day. Did you rip up your pants sliding down dunes butt-first? Repair ‘em here.

The Sunshine building also acts as a robot maintenance site, allowing you to make repairs or upgrade the big guy. As I mentioned previously, it pretty much ignores you in the early stages – but if you impress it enough with your ongoing care, it may begin to care about you too.

You won’t want to stray far at night, though, as it gets chilly. The preview didn’t demonstrate any “night runs,” but that’s apparently something you’ll be able to do, which could be a nice (or fraught) accompaniment to the day journeys – no word on how optional these runs may be, or whether they’ll offer different rewards (or even plot developments).

Most of the story unfolds during these night sequences; start a campfire and strangers just may show up. The preview didn’t show interactions with any of these strangers, but they may or may not be very nice people. Regardless of whether they turn out to be friends or meanies, they will unveil parts of the Sunshine corporation’s mysterious origins.

In short: shade wins

The Sunshine rest stop was where our preview ended – though we were told that the player would progress through different biomes over the following in-game days. Since I only saw the desert area, the wildly different weather conditions of various other environments may really transform what to expect in the lead-up to release.

Though I only saw part of the single-player campaign, there will also be co-op (split-screen and online); buddy up, and you will both experience a reframed version of the story. It’s recommended you do this after the main campaign so you can get the full story behind whatever the heck is going on in this world.

Hello Sunshine is the studio’s first foray into both the RPG and survival genres, so will their narrative pedigree see it through? I like their chances based on what I’ve seen so far. Everyone loves a good “evil corporation” story, and I honestly still can’t get over how cool those dawn-to-dusk shadow mechanics are (I can imagine other game designers thinking, “Damn, why didn’t I think of that?!”).

If your overall question about Hello Sunshine is “Does it look good?” then yes, it is very promising. And if it’s “Will I melt to death holding a handmade bow?” the answer is still yes – but enthusiastically.

Fullbright has announced its next game will be a lo-fi narrative experience with branching dialogue named Springs, Eternal, as the company's founder Steve Gaynor continues on as a solo developer.

An official blurb for Springs, Eternal describes the project as a "short, focused, supernatural-inflected first-person narrative exploration game" that will offer around two to three hours of gameplay. It's due to launch on PC at some point in 2026.

Set in a creepy-looking retreat, Springs Eternal will see players exploring its forest paths and interacting with other guests to learn more about "deeply heartfelt memory of the romantic relationship that brought them here, and perhaps discover where it will lead them next." It all sounds a bit Firewatch meets The Twilight Zone. Here's a first-look trailer:

Springs, Eternal looks to be another small solo project from Gaynor following last year's bitesize Fullbright Presents: Toilet Spiders.

In its previous era as The Fullbright Company, Gaynor and his former colleagues released indie hit Gone Home and sci-fi follow-up Tacoma, before Gaynor's teammates quit the company during the development of its next title, Open Roads, amid reports of his toxic behavior. (Open Roads was then finished and released separately, without Gaynor's continued involvement.)

A press release for Springs, Eternal notes that Fullbright is "now primarily the solo developer label of founder Steve Gaynor," who "continues to focus on atmospheric, emotionally-driven first-person story games (and occasional weird microgame experiments) in an evocative, lo-fi visual style."

Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social

For the first time ever, a Primarch is playable in a Warhammer 40,000 video game. Lion El'Jonson — aka The Lion — is playable in upcoming real-time strategy game Dawn of War 4. It’s a hugely exciting prospect for fans of the setting, who have so far had to imagine what it would be like to play as a Primarch in a video game. Now, we’ll get to control The Lion himself, the reborn leader of the Dark Angels chapter of Space Marines, as he presumably swats away all before him with the Emperor’s Shield and Fealty.

But how did developer King Art Games convince Games Workshop to let them do what no other developer has done before? And how did it approach making the seriously overpowered Lion El'Jonson work in Dawn of War 4? What does his inclusion mean for Dawn of War 4’s potential canon status within the setting? And will we get to see his face?

I sat down with director Jan Theysen to ask these questions and many more. We get into some serious detail about The Lion, the Dark Angels, and where we’re at in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, so sit down, relax, and trust in the Emperor.

IGN: I think the first obvious question is why did you choose the Dark Angels as the second playable faction for the Space Marines?

Jan Theysen: When we talked about, okay, what are the factions we want in the game, it's obvious that you need the Blood Ravens, right? It's a Dawn of War. And we talked about the other factions and then at some point it came up, okay, why just have the Blood Ravens? Maybe there is an option to also have another faction or another chapter. And basically Games Workshop said, ‘Hey, why not Dark Angels, could be a cool pick?’ And we said, ‘Oh, okay, of course, why not? Cool pick.’ And then they said, ‘Okay, what about… do you want Lion El'Jonson?’ And we were like, ‘Oh, okay, cool idea.’ That's basically it.

IGN: So Games Workshop suggested Dark Angels to you guys?

Jan Theysen: Yeah, basically they said, ‘Hey, just because it's a Dawn of War doesn't mean that it can be only Blood Ravens, right? There could be other Space Marines in there as well. And this was basically, okay then let's talk about it. What are the options and what could be a cool addition? And we took it from there.

IGN: There'll be a system where you'll be able to choose between playing as the Blood Ravens and the Dark Angels and you pick the missions you want to play. How will that work?

Jan Theysen: As you might know, we have four different campaigns in the game and for all of the campaigns we try to figure out something that gives the players some choices or some things they can do and influence in the campaign. And so for example, in the Ork campaign, you can literally pick, okay, do you want to play these Orks or these Orks and they're fighting each other. And so that's a very clear distinction.

For the Space Marines, of course that doesn’t make sense, right? They're not really different goals or anything, they're not fighting each other, but they're working on the same thing. And so we basically said, okay, what we can do is we can offer different gameplay experiences based on the factions, because story-wise, the Dark Angels, they have all the toys and all the power and they can basically do the big battles and the epic conflicts, while the Blood Ravens are… they have bigger problems and they need to rely on smaller operations, behind enemy lines, a little bit more covert operations maybe.

And so basically how this works is we have this Space Marine campaign story and there are different things happening at the same time. The Blood Ravens and the Dark Angels, sometimes they are at the same place at the same time and then you can play both of them. But other times it's like, okay, Dark Angels do this now, Blood Ravens do this now, who do we want to play? And then you can basically pick, hey, I want the big all out war battle or I want to play this more tactical thing maybe with the Blood Ravens. And then you can pick and then at some point they meet again, or the things converge again.

IGN: So you don’t change the story outcome?

Jan Theysen: The story remains the same, but the question is which parts of the story you encounter or you play with because the other stuff still happens, but then you only hear from it if you're not a part of it.

IGN: Do the Dark Angels have different units at their disposal? Are the gameplay mechanics different?

Jan Theysen: In general it's all Space Marines, right? The faction is Space Marines, but storywise in the campaign, the Blood Ravens don't have access to all the toys and to the big armies and so on. So their missions will be more infantry heavy and also a little bit smaller. And there is even here and there something that is more in the stealth or something that leads you to play a little bit more careful maybe, while the Dark Angles is more like okay, the big battles.

But they have the same units in multiplayer. In multiplayer for example, if you play the Blood Ravens, you have all the same toys because that's a separate thing. Where they differ is with the heroes. So both of the factions have two playable heroes, except for Lion El'Jonson, who is in the campaign but not really like a playable hero. So they both have two. And that of course leads to different things you can do, but also a little bit different playstyles maybe. So depending on the hero you pick, if you really are into slow progress and powerful defensive units, then you might pick the Terminator captain. And if you are more about quick stealthy stuff, you might pick Cyrus. There they can differ a little bit in terms of gameplay.