Resident Evil 4, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, and More Video Games for April 2023

April's biggest video game release is Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, and it's one of the best games of the year so far. The lightsaber combat feels smooth and dynamic, the story is as cinematic as ever, and the scenery is beautiful—when it renders in full resolution, that is. At this writing, the game has a number of visual-performance issues, with frequent frame rate and resolution drops, choppy cutscenes, and screen tearing. None of these problems have made our game less playable, but we recommend waiting for another performance patch from the developers before buying it at full price. We’re also loving the fantastic Resident Evil 4 remake, and a slew of great games from independent developers have also arrived just in time to keep us busy.

Here are the games we’re playing on our consoles, PCs, and handhelds in April, as well as all the releases we’re looking forward to.

Dredge Rated E; PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S

Dredge is a laid-back, cozy fishing adventure—until you get to the part about the Lovecraftian nightmares. Developer Black Salt Games takes a pretty competent fishing-boat game complete with markets, an economy, and upgrades, and mixes in the deep-sea horrors of Cthulhu. Dredge grabbed me harder than I’d expected. While the controls are a little finicky and the goals can be opaque on occasion, the desire to pursue more upgrades and new fish types mixes well with the threat of supernatural terrors waiting for unwitting sailors who venture where they shouldn't, looking for secrets that should stay buried. And despite how the game might look, it's not an endless exercise in fishing with bits of story—most players will take 10 to 12 hours to see the horrors Dredge has to offer.

—Arthur Gies

Have a Nice Death Rated T; PC, Switch

Have a Nice Death stars the Grim Reaper himself as he seeks to retake control of the most diabolical hell you can think of: a giant office bureaucracy of the damned. It's a cute conceit, and it's paired with an absolutely beautiful hand-drawn and hand-animated black-and-white aesthetic and a distinctive sense of humor—think The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy combined with the work of Edward Gorey. But Have a Nice Death is actually a challenging "roguelike" action platformer where you must dash past enemy attacks and attack them with a variety of setting-appropriate weapons including a whole host of scythes, along with some cloak-oriented magical abilities. Thankfully, developer Magic Design Studios has included a difficulty setting to make things a little more approachable for people who don't like a painful challenge.

—Arthur Gies

Resident Evil 4 (Remake)Rated M; PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S

Resident Evil 4 revolutionized action games and horror games back in 2005, and now it's back with the same remake treatment that developer Capcom has given to the other mainline Resident Evil titles. The results are fantastic, with gorgeous redone visuals, a fleshed-out story and characters, and some big surprises in store for fans who have played and replayed the original release on numerous other systems. The game plays with modern-feeling controls and side quests and goals that tie more directly into Resident Evil 4's systems and progression. But be ready for a challenge—and some pretty graphic violence to go along with that M rating.

—Arthur Gies

Dead Cells: Return to Castlevania Rated T; PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S

The latest Dead Cells expansion, Return to Castlevania, has dragged me in once again. The game's rewarding gameplay loop—try, learn, die, repeat—its fast-paced combat, and its satisfying exploration bring me back every few months to turn my brain off and smash things. Dead Cells has received a stream of major updates since it launched nearly five years ago, adding a ton of unique biomes to explore, enemies and bosses to fight, sometimes very silly weapons and abilities to customize your gameplay, and outfits to look cool while you’re doing all that.

Several of these updates have included collaborations with some of my other favorite games—Hollow Knight, Hyper Light Drifter, Risk of Rain—and the latest crossover involves the legendary Castlevania series, which inspired many of these indie hits. The Return to Castlevania expansion adds a bangin’ new soundtrack, atmospheric new areas to explore, iconic bosses to fight, and more unique items that add a fun gameplay twist, including Death's scythe and a spell that summons a swarm of bats. I finally fought through hordes of skeletons and werewolves to reach the big bad himself (that's Dracula), who immediately melted me with that very same swarm of bats. Guess I’ll just have to keep trying.

—Kimber Streams

Terra Nil Rated E; PC, Mac, Linux

At first Terra Nil looks like plenty of other strategy games, but in reality it inverts the inherently colonial nature of society/city builders completely. Set on a ruined planet, Terra Nil charges you with building the tools to undo an ecological collapse wrought by humans, to reintroduce a sustainable amount of biodiversity and climate to the region, and then, ultimately, to remove all traces indicating that you were ever there at all.

Just as Terra Nil's conceit is a surprising twist on strategy games, its gameplay adds some unique wrinkles. You have a finite pool of resources to build with, and you can gain more only by efficiently utilizing the space around you. This restriction leads to what is essentially a puzzle-like set of challenges, and if you don't rehab the space around you well enough, you may just have to restart the map you’re on. Despite that added bit of stress, Terra Nil is a remarkably chill way to play in the world-building genre without having to invest in an economics degree to keep track of everything.

—Arthur Gies

Meet Your Maker Rated M; PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S

Meet Your Maker's setting is a bleak post-genetic apocalypse where everyone is trying to gather enough genetic material to keep cloning themselves, but that's not really the point of the game. Instead, you have two jobs: first, to build a base to house and protect your "genmat" from other players trying to find it, and second, to raid other players’ bases to steal theirs, which in turn gives you experience and materials to upgrade your gear and your defenses. Meet Your Maker is the latest game from the studio behind Dead by Daylight, a hugely popular, largely community-driven multiplayer game, so the odds are good that Meet Your Maker will see support and updates for quite a while, which is great—there's something diabolically entertaining about making your way into gruesome vaults and disarming traps. The game constantly kept me on my toes, making me wait for the other shoe—or wall of spikes—to drop. And good news: It's free for PlayStation Plus subscribers in April.

—Arthur Gies

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Rated T; PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is the follow-up to the huge critical and commercial hit Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. In this game, set five years after the original (and around the same time as the Disney+ show Obi-Wan Kenobi, and years before the events of the original Star Wars), Jedi Cal Kestis is on the run from Darth Vader and his Inquisitors, lightsaber-wielding cultists hoping to stomp out the rest of the order. Fallen Order combined Star Wars with elements of games like Metroid, emphasizing exploration, puzzle solving, and a steady supply of new items and abilities that allowed access to more and more areas on planets around the galaxy. Our early impressions of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor are extremely positive, and it brings back more of everything we loved about the original game and then some. But we’ve also experienced some disappointing performance issues related to low frame rates and resolution, and we’re hoping to see a patch for these issues soon before recommending the game at full price.

—Arthur Gies

Omega Strikers Rated E10+; PC, Switch, iOS, Android

We got our hands on Omega Strikers at a demo at the Game Developers Conference, and we’ve been looking forward to its release ever since. Omega Strikers features three-versus-three hockey-style matches where players can sabotage, attack, and knock each other off the map, all while trying to shoot the puck through various goals. Each player must choose a hero from a roster of more than 15 characters, all with their own unique abilities, strengths, and speeds. I was partial to Drek’ar, a sexy lizard dude equipped with a gun, an invisibility cloak, and a bolt that slowed enemies, but I’m also interested in trying out Juno, a slime girl who shoots nocuous blobs at the opposing team. Omega Strikers comes out on April 27, and it will be free to play. It will also offer full cross-play support and progression.

—Haley Perry

This article was edited by Arthur Gies and Caitlin McGarry.

There are too many great video games to keep track of, but we’re here to help you find one or two you might love.

There are too many great video games to keep track of, but we’re here to help you find one or two you might love.

Wirecutter Staff