Yars Rising is a 2024 action-adventure video game developed by WayForward and published by Atari, Inc. for home consoles and computers.[1] It is part of the Yars series.[2]
Yars Rising has been described as a metroidvania genre with 2D exploration and labyrinthian level design.[1][3] The player is expected to hack 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 a "mixed or average" critical reception according to the review aggregation website Metacritic, and a "positive" reception for the Nintendo Switch version specifically.[8] 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][9]