Yars Rising

Yars Rising has been described as a metroidvania game with 2D exploration and labyrinthian level design.^[1][3] The player is tasked with hacking into terminals while progressing through the game, giving the player-character different abilities by altering her DNA.^[2]

Set in the year 2049, Yars Rising is about Emi Kimura, a young hacker who is hired to expose the dark workings of the shady QoTech corporation.^[2][1]

Yars Rising was announced at an Indie World Nintendo Direct on April 17, 2024.^[4] Its creator James Montagna said that the game was made to be "a little bit unconventional" for the Yars IP.^[2] He added that they were going for what he called "freeform stealth" in the gameplay, while the environment was based on retrofuturism.^[5] Howard Scott Warshaw was not involved in the development of Yars Rising.^[2]

The soundtrack of the game consists of music composed by a collaboration of twenty international artists, and includes vocal tracks in both English and Japanese.^[2] The music too was designed to be parallel with the retrofuturistic game theme.^[5] The team also worked on making the most out of the rumble feature of the Joy-Con, on the Nintendo Switch version of the game.^[2]

Development was done by American studio WayForward, who are known for Shantae (2002) and River City Girls (2019).^[2]

It was released on September 10, 2024, with physical editions for PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch.^[3][6][7]

Yars Rising received "mixed or average" reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic, and generally favorable reviews for the Nintendo Switch version specifically.^[8] Fellow review aggregator OpenCritic assessed that the game received fair approval, being recommended by 58% of critics.^[9] Reviews by PC Gamer, Rolling Stone and Slant Magazine found the game's 2D platforming sequences weak with simple platforming, while commenting that the hacking sequences were the high points.^[1][3][10]

• List of Atari video games (2001–present)