Eric Barone (aka ConcernedApe) says that combat in his new game, Haunted Chocolatier, is being made from scratch – as opposed to being directly copied from Stardew Valley.

"Haunted Chocolatier has a greater focus on combat, so it needs to be very fun, satisfying, and engaging, while also appropriately fitting into the big picture," says Barone in a recent blog post. "You can rest assured that I’m not 'copying and pasting' Stardew’s combat. On the contrary, almost everything in Haunted Chocolatier, including the combat, is completely coded (and drawn) from scratch."

The blog post also features some accompanying footage showing the game's combat in action, which can be seen in the tweet below. Barone notes that some of the animations are different from those shown off in the game's reveal trailer. "That’s because I’m still working on everything, and it’s all a work in progress," he explains. "Everything seen so far could still change before the game is finished. If you followed the development of Stardew Valley, this will be familiar."

Haunted Chocolatier: stunning an enemy allows for a quick attack pic.twitter.com/FQznMeBVb2

— ConcernedApe (@ConcernedApe) October 30, 2021

Although elements of combat could still be set to change before the game is released, Barone has said that players will be able to approach combat situations in different ways depending upon their preferred playstyle. "Many attacks can be blocked with a shield, and in most cases, blocking an attack causes the enemy to become 'stunned'. While an enemy is stunned, you can attack them much faster, as seen above," says Barone.

"The shield/stun mechanic rewards more cautious, patient players who wait for a window of opportunity. But you don’t have to play like this, you could just as well charge in aggressively, and if you can pull it off, you’ll defeat enemies more quickly that way. There will be other off-hand items besides shields that will compliment different play styles."

While it looks like the game's combat is moving forward nicely, it could still be a long while before fans are able to get to grips with it themselves. Similar to Stardew Valley, Barone says that he won't be releasing Haunted Chocolatier until he's "personally satisfied that it’s very fun and compelling, in every aspect." With that in mind, Haunted Chocolatier still has no current release window officially confirmed. Although that might put a few worried expressions on the faces of fans, Barone did offer some reassurance, stating that the game is "on the right track so far".

Haunted Chocolatier was revealed recently, and will be the next game from the developer of Stardew Valley. If more Stardew was what you were hoping for instead of a new game, then you may be well catered for in the Stardew Valley board game that was announced earlier this year.

Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Fairfax: Season 1 debuts Friday, Oct. 29 on Amazon Prime Video.

It takes a few minutes to get into the full groove of Amazon's new animated satire Fairfax, but once it clicks, and hits you with a near-perfect blend of heart and venom — or as its vibe is default-described in a later episode, "tasteful, yet obnoxious" — Fairfax turns out to be a lovely and hilarious surgical strike skewering of L.A. Gen-Zers clamoring for clout and social media influencer status.

Fairfax is filled with niche jokes and a sort of contemptuous cleverness, but it also has a warm heart fueled by friendship, camaraderie, and acceptance. You might think you'd never root for self-centered middle-schoolers who dream of nothing in life but follower counts, swag drops, and being the dopest crew on the streets, but the series is smart enough to make the cares and concerns of these kids feel important, because it's not just them who care about getting verified on Instagram or snapping the sickest selfie — it's their entire community. It's their school, their peers, and their neighbors too. It's a Los Angeles bubble entirely obsessed with all things streetwear-centric and internet-integral.

At its core, Fairfax is simply a human story. Set anywhere else, in any other era, it would just be about different parameters of cool, and that show's tweenagers would just be chasing that specific version of style and swagger. And, also to its credit, Fairfax laces the material superficiality its heroes crave with a healthy dose of lessons learned, true sentiment, and great inside-baseball gags to make it feel special and well rounded. It's legitimately laugh-out-loud funny and it wouldn't be able to achieve that if it was just an exercise in meanness.

Ultimately, Fairfax's secret weapon is the character of Dale (The Righteous Gemstones' Skyler Gisondo), a new-in-town kid from Oregon who comes without a shred of purposeful irony. Dale enjoys the outdoors, loves his parents, and carries with him an actual set of practical skills from his years as an Eagle Scout. Dale's existence completely baffles Fairfax Middle School's sneaker dealer Benny (Peter S. Kim), activist-in-training Denica (Zack Snyder's Justice League's Kiersey Clemons), and aspiring filmmaker Truman (Only Murders in the Building's Jaboukie Young-White), who at first glance think this fresh-faced Pacific Northwest tween is doing some sort of normcore bit.

Once the trio discovers Dale doesn't do anything outwardly showy and genuinely enjoys things, exploring interests on his own terms, they're utterly fascinated and adopt him into the crew. What follows is a terrific season in which Dale becomes sporadically seduced by the cutthroat image-focused Fairfax Ave. world while the other three absorb various altruistic values (doing unseen charity, helping your parents, etc.). All of it, of course, is spiced up with R-rated acerbic wit and charm.

Outside of the main quartet, voices are provided by Yvette Nicole Brown and Rob Delaney (as Dale's do-good parents), Pamela Adlon (as a crusty old diner waitress), Ben Schwartz (as a prank-fluencer), Zoey Deutch (as a classmate crush for Dale), and the combo of JB Smoove and John Leguizamo as two blinged-out pigeons who offer up occasional meta-commentary.

The cherry on top here is Billy Porter as Hiroki Hassan. As the Willy Wonka of the Fairfax realm, Hassan is the reclusive mastermind behind LATRINE, a fashion house that creates subversive must-have style-of-the-minute bits of ironic junk for everyone to lose their minds over. The season itself, like the classic Roald Dahl Chocolate Factory tale, culminates with a contest that offers up an inside tour of LATRINE as its prize. Fairfax isn't at its best when it leans more into blatant parody, but the Hassan stuff works well.

So brace yourself for first-day-of-school red carpets, a class celebration for Blue Check verification, a "Littercore" rapper named Yung Polluter (who performs at the awesomely and ironically toxic Chernobylfest), a seventh-grader getting catfished by a juice company's marketing team, wallpaper that tastes like In-N-Out, and an Orca rescue from the L.A. river. The story with the most sting here, though, offering up a seasonal highlight, is Episode 8, "Dale Hates His Dad," in which Dale smashes headfirst into the internet's trolling contrarian nature. It's a perfectly executed and wonderfully funny take on social media madness.

id Software currently has a number of job vacancies open at its Dallas offices where the studio is hoping to hire new staff members to work on the development of a "long-running iconic action FPS".

The open positions can currently be found listed on Zenimax's website. As well as stating that the developer is hiring staff to work on an already existing IP, a number of vacancy posts on the site may also provide further clues as to what that might be.

Listed under the job description for Skybox Artist, the studio says that it is looking for someone to join its existing team to provide "AAA-quality sci-fi and fantasy environmental vistas and skyboxes". While id has by no means confirmed what franchise new staff will be working on, its reference to a "sci-fi and fantasy" aesthetic could suggest that the studio is looking to begin development on a new Doom entry. Alternatively, the gothic industrial look of Quake could also be considered within the realms of sci-fi and fantasy.

Doom Eternal, id Software's last entry into the Doom series, was released last year and faired well among critics and fans alike. Feel free to check out our review of the game, which we awarded it a 9/10. While the strong critical reception could be enough to speculate that the studio may be returning to the series again for a sixth Doom, there are also a number of factors that could get Quake fans excited too.

The release of a remastered version of Quake earlier this year following its announcement at QuakeCon may suggest that the studio has been testing the waters before looking to re-enter the franchise further in the future.

Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Staff at Image Comics have today formed Comic Book Workers United – a new union to support its writers and artists.

Announced via an official statement, the union aims to support creators in the comic book industry and was launched today by several key figured at the company.

“We, the workers of Image Comics, have formed a union,” reads the statement.

“For years, comics publishing workers have watched our professional efforts support creators and delight readers. Sadly, we have also watched that same labor be taken for granted at best and exploited at worst. Keeping our heads above water was the new normal before the pandemic and since its onset we have been expected to take on even larger workloads with fewer resources.”

The comic book industry on the whole has been rife with issues – largely focussing on creative rights and IP ownership, as well as the rights of freelancers. But now, it looks as though Comic Book Workers United will bring support to staffers.

“Our workforce, and the comic book and publishing industry as a whole, is overtaxed and undervalued," explains the statement. "This is detrimental not only to general staff but also to the creators we are paid to serve and the audiences they in turn work to entertain."

“We love what we do," it continues, "But loving what you do doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't ask for improvements to your working conditions. It is with this in mind and with great hope for the future of Image Comics and the comic book industry itself that we announce our intent to form a union and request voluntary recognition.”

“In the early stages of organizing, we looked to Image's founders for inspiration," the statement notes. "Their dreams of self-determination and more equitable treatment in the industry they loved and helped make successful are also our dreams.”

Image Comics was founded in 1992 by prominent comic book creators Erik Larsen, Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, Todd McFarlane, Whilce Portacio, Marc Silvestri, and Jim Valentino as an outlet for creator-owned properties.

“We are honored to grow their legacy by taking this step to give all comic book industry professionals, regardless of title, the same rights, guarantees, security, and protections which the founders sought when they broke away from the big two to start their own company. In fact, several months into our organizing efforts, Jim Valentino made a comment on social media celebrating union accomplishments. That was the moment we knew this could work. Despite years of union busting and anti-organization sentiments in the American workforce, we know that Image has, at its heart, a desire to be first when it comes to doing the right thing for comics workers.”

“That's why we know we will win, because our success is the company's success. Our success is the creators' success. Our success is the readers' success.”

The statement was signed by Image Comics workers, Ryan Brewer, Leanna Caunter, Marla Eizik, Drew Fitzgerald, Melissa Gifford, Chloe Ramos, Tricia Ramos, Jon Schlaffman and Erika Schnatz.

Image comics is perhaps best known for Spawn, which creator Todd McFarlane is set to turn into a whole comic universe. Over the years the publisher has grown into one of the most prominent comic book companies in the world, publishing the likes of mega-hit Saga (which returns after an extended hiatus very soon), The Wicked + The Divine, and Deadly Class, among dozens more. It's also the home of many of Robert Kirkman's comics, including Invincible (which recently became a hit Amazon animation) and The Walking Dead.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Halo Infinite will be released on December 8, but in the meantime, IGN has exclusive coverage of Master Chief’s spiritual reboot all month long as part of our editorial IGN First “cover story” initiative. That means we’ll be dropping exclusive content throughout the month of November (and yes, we’ve played the campaign – the first four hours of it), starting with today’s reveal of a brand-new Arena multiplayer map called ‘Streets’.

As you can see in the video above with me and lead multiplayer level designer Cayle George, Streets is a small, asymmetrical battleground set in New Mombasa at night. This immediately sets it apart, visually speaking, from the other Halo Infinite multiplayer maps we’ve seen in the test flights thus far. It’s got numerous subtle artistic touches, such as the “Holodog” advertisement, the retro-style Halo Infinite arcade cabinet that plays a MIDI version of the Halo theme, the skyline you can see in the background from certain vantage points on the map, and the glass railings that you can just smash right through. It’s a very fast map with short sightlines, and I really enjoyed it.

We did the above walkthrough video before we actually played the map competitively; we wanted to capture our actual first impressions of it when walking through it with George. Hilariously, after he politely ribbed me for bringing up CTF on this asymmetrical map, the very first gametype that came up in 343’s internal custom-games test hopper when we sat down to play it was…you guessed it, Capture the Flag. And it was really fun! So it certainly can be done, just don’t expect to see it in ranked playlists.

As to other multiplayer tidbits, we sat down with the 343 multiplayer team for over an hour. Among other things, we asked about whether or not we should expect any remakes of classic maps, as has become Halo tradition. “That question is something we actively talk about quite a bit,” said lead multiplayer designer Andrew Witts. “I think that what we've done with [the Big Team Battle map] Fragmentation is something we want; we want things to feel new, but we want things to be a bit reminiscent without giving you the exact same layout or the same layout with slight differences, because we're a different game with different needs.” He cites Valhalla and its remake Ragnarok as influences for Fragmentation. “There are some maps that have been coming out in almost every single iteration of Halo. So I wouldn't say we would never do a remake, but again, we're doing a spiritual reboot, so we look at how we kind of put our own twist on it, but still make it feel like a little bit of a nostalgia trip when you kind of run through them.” George added, “We’ve tried the one-to-one ports. They don’t work well.”

Later in our discussion, we also learned that there are at least two more BTB maps that we haven’t seen yet, called ‘Deadlock’ and ‘High Power’, respectively. Multiplayer creative director Tom French described Deadlock as “very dramatic,” saying it feels very “classic Halo.” It has a “very different mood” than the rest of the maps, he told us. High Power, meanwhile, started out as a “test gym” for BTB. And, 343 says, “Test gyms never ship. At all.” But they told a story about doing a BTB playtest on the-map-that-would-eventually-be-known-as-High-Power, and the hooting and hollering was so loud from developers and testers having so much fun that they all looked at each other and asked, “Oh, is this a [real] map?”

We’ll have much more Halo Infinite as November rolls on, including a look at what awaits in Season 1 of the Battle Pass, an IGN Unfiltered conversation with Halo Infinite head of creative and longtime Bungie veteran Joseph Staten, our hands-on impressions from the first few hours of the campaign, and more – starting with raw, full-match gameplay of 'Streets' this Wednesday!

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.