About

Checkpoint Guides is built around one simple idea. If you are stuck in a game, you should get the answer straight away, and the detail should be there for when you want it.

The name comes from the save point. That moment in a game where you can finally breathe, because you won't have to repeat the hard part. That is what we want a good guide to be.

The games we cover

We write about what we play, and we play a wide mix: shooters and extraction games, horror, brutal action games, cozy sims, roguelikes, JRPGs, military sims and strategy. If a game is on the site, someone on the team has played it, and not just for an evening.

Who covers what

Everyone has a home turf, and the rest overlap. These are just the games each of us keeps coming back to.

Josh lives in shooters and extraction games like Arc Raiders, plays horror whenever it is good, and has put more hours into Supermarket Simulator than he will admit. Strategy and sims are never far away.

Sunny splits her time between Stardew Valley, The Binding of Isaac and the Persona games, and has played every one of them. Cozy sims, roguelikes and JRPGs are her territory.

George is a glutton for punishment. Dark Souls, Arma and Call of Duty are his idea of a relaxing evening, so the games built to beat you usually end up with him.

Each of us also plays well outside those games. When a big release lands, whoever is deepest into it writes the guide, and every guide carries its author's name.

How we write guides

We play the game. Every guide comes from playing it ourselves, then checking the details against patch notes and official information so it matches the current version.

No nonsense. No long intros, no padding to hit a word count, no teasing the answer and then making you scroll for it. If the answer is a single sentence, it goes at the top.

Complete, not thin. One proper guide beats five short ones that each cover a quarter of the problem. We would rather write the full thing once and keep it right.

Kept up to date. Games change every patch, and an old guide can do more harm than none. Every guide shows when it was last updated and which patch it was checked on. Codes that stop working stay on the page, struck through, so you know they are dead.

Honest. If we haven't tested something, we say so. If a guide or review has a mistake in it, we fix it and note what changed.

What you won't find here

• Pages stretched out to look bigger than they are
• Guides that dodge the question you searched for
• Clickbait titles that promise a secret and deliver the obvious
• Walls of pop-ups between you and the answer

How the site pays for itself

Right now it doesn't, it is just a project we care about. Down the line we may add some ads or affiliate links to cover the costs. If we do, they will be clearly labelled and they will never change what we write. The full picture is on our How we make money page.

Tell us when we get it wrong

Spotted a mistake, a dead code, or a game you want covered? Use the contact page or email kernelandshell@gmail.com. We read everything, and it is the fastest way to make a guide better.