Crisol: Theater of Idols aims to blend Bioshock with Resident Evil-style gameplay in a horror FPS influenced by classical Spanish folklore. I crawled through abandoned streets, popping zombie-like enemies with guns that used my blood for bullets, ducking in and out of derelict storefronts looking for the ever-reliable genre staple bolt cutters, and dodging powerful enemies along the way. While Crisol showed more to set itself apart from stalwarts in the genre during my hands-on demo, its weapon designs and distinct aesthetic in particular left me interested to see more.

Exploring a horrific, reimagined version of Spain called Hispania, Crisol’s world and character designs blew me away – especially the guns. Here, your blood is your health and your ammo, so reloading each gun triggers a spine-tingling reaction like when your handgun’s handle bristles with little needles, drawing blood from your hand, or when needles stick out of the base of your double-barrelled shotgun’s barrel, waiting to trade health for survival.

This push-and-pull forces you to keep tabs on both to keep yourself from wasting either and landing yourself in a sticky situation. You can pick up healing syringes to help restore ammo, but Crisol also encourages you to drain the blood from dead bystanders, killed by your mysterious foes, to heal and reload.

The gun designs themselves are cool too; gilded with red accents, they add a gothic pop of color that stands out, but doesn’t clash with the environments I saw in my short demo. The environments, on the other hand, didn’t have nearly as much character to them. While the trailer promises some pretty cool-looking set pieces, the dark streets of Hispania I wandered didn’t offer much deviation from the norm. That’s surprising considering just how well-designed the enemies and guns are.

Crisol doesn’t waste any time throwing you into the action. Within seconds of picking up the controller, lurching, puppet-like enemies stumbled towards me. Low light revealed unsettling details in their mask-like faces as they approached, eventually collapsing under my gunfire. Each enemy I encountered (or at least each one I was able to kill) reacted based on which part of their body I shot; crawling headless after I kneecapped them, and popped their heads. Both of the blood-soaked firearms I tried have an older feel to them, more like the oomph of the original BioShock than the punchy crack of the guns found in most contemporary shooters, though Crisol’s trailer (and weapon wheel) promise a seemingly diverse arsenal of sanguine shooters.

After making my way through a few city blocks, absorbing blood from dead bodies and popping zombie-like critters blocking my path, I came across a locked gate with a winch. Locked by a padlock with a chain – classic! Like clockwork, I set out looking for the bolt cutters I’d found in half a dozen survival horror games before. But before I could start looking, some kind of gigantic, arcane cyborg – a towering mass of blood-soaked bones and clanking machinery with a mask of a woman’s face crying blood – picked me up and tossed me around.

The beast chased me down the street to the window (conveniently) of the hardware store, but couldn’t touch me once I dove in. Safe for now, I grabbed the bolt cutters from the back storeroom and every coin in the cash register and set out to snip the chains that kept me from safety. But the beast was back at my heels practically the moment my feet hit the dirt road, hurling threats my way as it hunted me down.

Crouching to minimize the noise I made, I found a shortcut through a fish store, making a bunch of noise at one end before cutting through the store, snipping the chains, and cranking away at the winch to open the gate in front of me. I heard the creature thudding towards me, and just pushed away in the quick-time event faster, hoping I could squeeze through instead of running back to cover. The gate opened with just enough time to spare; I rushed out of the courtyard to safety, the gate snapping shut before my assailant could catch me.

This puzzle-like stealth section, though very simple, added a lot to my demo. I can see the ways this could evolve into a tense blend of stealth and shooting if I eventually need to dodge bigger enemies at the same time as popping the smaller, stoppable ones with my sanguine arsenal. I hope Crisol doubles down on these two different kinds of survival horror to produce layers of tension between the blood-for-bullets combat and high-stakes stealth in the full release.

While I enjoyed my demo well enough, I felt like I hadn’t seen anything new beyond the Bloodborne-like, health-for-ammo trade-off and some really cool weapon and enemy designs. I’m sure puzzles and progression will begin to differentiate themselves from Resident Evil as the game gets more complex. But I didn’t get to see much of that in this demo, which was clearly very early in the campaign. Still, I have a feeling Crisol: Theater of Idols will be worth checking out for its distinct take on survival horror with a Spanish flair.

Dying Light: The Beast lead producer Szymon Strauss shares five tips for helping you survive the zombie apocalypse in Dying Light: The Beast, the upcoming new standalone entry in the first-person, melee-plus-parkour action-adventure series.

This is the final exclusive piece of our month-long IGN First coverage on Dying Light: The Beast. If you missed any of our other content, get caught up on our hands-on preview, our 30-minute extended gameplay video, the deep dive on the Chimera boss battles you'll fight, the weapons overview, and a closer look at the Castor Woods setting.

Dying Light: The Beast will be released on August 22 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. Wishlist it on Steam if you're interested.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN's executive editor of previews and host of both IGN's weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He's a North Jersey guy, so it's "Taylor ham," not "pork roll." Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.

Introducing Gloomy Eyes, a new "self co-op" cozy horror adventure with a Tim Burton-esque, The Nightmare Before Christmas artistic vibe that has you playing as two different characters, each with their own powers and abilities – and sometimes you'll control both of them at the same time to solve the game's puzzles.

Belgian developer Fishing Cactus sets up Gloomy Eyes as such: "In a world plunged into eternal night and torn by conflict between the living and the undead, one faint glimmer of hope still flickers in the hearts of two special souls. Gloomy Eyes tells the tale of Gloomy, a sweet zombie boy, and Nena, a mischievous human girl, who defy the rules by teaming up and embarking on a quest to bring back the daylight."

The levels are handcrafted dioramas, and puzzles will have you alternating between playing as Gloomy and Nena, set to what Fishing Cactus hopes will be a memorable and unique soundtrack.

Gloomy Eyes is coming to PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch later this year. Wishlist it on Steam if you're interested.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN's executive editor of previews and host of both IGN's weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He's a North Jersey guy, so it's "Taylor ham," not "pork roll." Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.

On the surface, Grave Seasons might look like any other nice, cozy farming sim like Stardew Valley or Harvest Moon: you’re a stranger who’s come into a farm in the small town of Ashenridge, full of seemingly friendly people. You plant and harvest crops, craft items, and make friends. But there’s a mysterious, unnerving sense that tugged at the back of my neck during my half-hour playing Blumhouse Games and Perfect Garbage’s not-so-cozy farming sim. One that kept me much more engaged than your garden-variety farming game, with its impressively intriguing threads that added a little drop of poison to the well.

After a brief intro to the player character, who’s escaped a prison sentence in search of a new beginning, things start getting weird. Hari, a neighborly caretaker who’s maintained the property since falling into ruin, greeted me with an incredulous (but charming) hello, which doubles as a quick tutorial. At first glance, the stuff he introduced me to wasn’t that strange. I had the standard tool wheel, complete with a shovel, pickaxe, watering can, and so on. But I also had a crowbar?

That’s because Grave Seasons isn’t just a grim or slightly spooky take on farming: it’s also a mystery game. And while I didn’t have a chance to use a crowbar during the early section I played, it sounds like you’ll need to use it to break open locked doors later on in the story. But given the mysterious circumstances under which my character came into their new home, I’m curious to learn about their motives and means.

After working my new land, picking some chilis, cabbage, and tomatoes that Hari so neatly planted – and doing a little planting of my own, burying some carrot seeds my new friend offered as a welcoming gift – I did some exploring. To my shock, I found a severed hand and a bloodied ring amidst the weeds and garbage littering the far reaches of the property. I tugged at this new thread immediately, taking it to Hari to see what he had to say about it, rendering shock and horror from my musclebound, tutorial-dispensing neighbor.

Nothing really came from this interaction, beyond that reaction, and the revelation that I could talk to Hari about other stuff, and even offer them a gift. Obviously, I’m sure there are opportunities to spend more time with them (or any character, as I met later) and figure out what he might actually want. But a half-hour demo isn’t exactly designed for that kind of long-game mindset. So I gave them the chocolate ice cream cone in my inventory as a sign of friendship (and maybe more). Unfortunately, he reacted to the frozen treat about as well as he did to the hand… I didn’t get another chance to try my hand (no pun intended) at offering them something else, but given Grave Seasons’ dark, slightly comedic tone, I’m curious to see what winds up tickling their fancy in the full game.

Then I retreated to my shed, where I found a pickling and fermenting station a while earlier to put my chilis and cabbage to good use by making some kimchi. This highlighted one of my favorite parts of Grave Seasons. Although it’s decidedly horror-focused, Grave Seasons doesn’t skimp on the stuff that makes farming games great in the first place. With a diverse menu, well-realized in a sharp, pixelated art style, this demo made me hungry as I marveled at the pixel art of garlic, hummus, pickles, and salads. Kimchi in hand, I set back out to my house to find a new character sitting on the edge of the well in my yard.

Pilar, a fashion designer with a passion for vintage clothing, greeted me with another warm welcome before telling me about their plans to forage for some rare herbs that night. After agreeing to explore my new home a bit, I tried talking to them more, again about the hand, getting another shocked response. I gave them my fresh kimchi to see what they thought about it, but just like Hari, no dice.

Here was another favorite part of the demo: just talking to Pilar and Hari. Their dialogue was consistently engaging, funny, and distinct in a way that conveyed loads of personality and life. I would’ve sat there for the entire demo just gifting them every last radish, head of lettuce, and cigarette in my inventory if I could. Based on the trailer and other materials Perfect Garbage has shared, I’m excited to see what other characters I get to meet. And I’m eager to watch them play out their roles in this mystery, which deepened at night.

After cleaning up some trash, mining for some minerals and iron, watering my carrots, and putting some crops into storage to be sold, it was time to take a walk in the woods with Pilar. Upon walking into the gulley, something was immediately off. Then, a pair of bright red eyes opened behind them, claws emerging at Pilar’s ankles, illuminated by their lantern. In the blink of an eye, some kind of eldritch beast mangled Pilar. It took me about a minute to refix my dropped jaw after seeing that… I can’t believe how expressively gory Grave Seasons would get, or that they just killed off Pilar like that.

That was the end of the demo, but it absolutely left me wanting more. Setting up a story that blends in all sorts of seemingly disparate threads like this – from small-town murders to bloodthirsty creatures beyond comprehension lurking in dark woods – created just the right kind of intrigue. I’m sure I’ll wind up investigating my now-dead friend’s witchy ways, make more friends (and enemies), and grow crops to make tasty food while doing it.

I’ve had a lot of trouble sticking with most farming sims because they lacked a certain sense of intrigue; that hook to keep me looking forward to the next day for something other than fresh crops. This is exactly what the developers at Perfect Garbage are looking to remedy with Grave Seasons; I’m sure this first day was a condensed version of the kind of pacing we’ll see in the full release, but I love the balance of visual novel-like mystery with the more relaxing pace of farming gameplay, ensuring that fresh crops grow in time with the narrative and dramatic tension.

Grave Seasons promises to inject something sinister into the farming sim genre with a compelling horror-mystery that seems on track to deliver personality, fright, and charm in spades. I’m interested to see and learn more about Grave Seasons’ community of charming townsfolk and the secrets lurking underneath Ashenridge’s small-town veneer when it ships on PC and consoles sometime next year.