E L D E N
R I N G
THE
HIDETAKA MIYAZAKI
INTERVIEW
#367
FEBRUARY 2022
mobilism.org
“This is beautiful! Stunning!
A total sensation! I hate it”
As this issue goes to press, Epic has just released The Matrix Awakens: An
Unreal Engine 5 Experience, an interactive showcase for its industryleading graphics technology. It’s the sort of demo Sony and Microsoft
might have paid handsomely to have on PS5 and Xbox Series at launch,
providing visuals that earn the label “next generation” and evoke the kind
of awe you felt when you saw the likes of Ridge Racer running for the first
time. But its impact isn’t dimmed by its arrival in late 2021, and in making
a tangible delivery on the promises made by the team at Epic in E347’s
cover story, it really gets the blood pumping as we look forward to a new
year of games. As one seasoned developer put it to us: “It’s the biggest
wow moment for me since seeing Super Mario 64 for the first time. A lot
of game teams will be thinking: ‘Wow’. And then: ‘Oh, shit…’”
The problem with making a videogame environment look this good, of
course, is that it invites nitpicking on another level, and we barely had the
opportunity to let the code settle on our SSDs before seeing it emerge.
“Well, the car collision physics aren’t very realistic.” “The framerate tanks
when it gets busy.” “It’s not a proper game. Also my wife left me.” If you
follow videogame discourse on the Internet, you knew what to expect. And
we forgive you if your reaction was: look, just shut up a minute and enjoy
this thing you didn’t even know existed a week ago that looks better than
anything else on your console and was just given to you literally for free.
There are legitimate concerns here, though. Epic has raised the bar for
all game studios, creating new challenges even as it puts such powerful
tools in their hands and talks up asset stores and procedural generation.
Making the next GTA, for example, just became an even bigger job.
Fortunately for FromSoftware, cover game Elden Ring isn’t in pursuit of
photorealism in a modern-day metropolis. It is, nevertheless, an intricate
work of magnificent ambition, and the most anticipated game of 2022.
Our interview with game director Hidetaka Miyazaki begins on p48.
Exclusive subscriber edition
mobilism.org
games
Hype
30 Cuphead:
The Delicious
Last Course
PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One
34 We Are OFK
98 Halo Infinite
PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series
102 Solar Ash
PC, PS4, PS5
PC, PS4, PS5
106 Battlefield 2042
Android, iOS, PC, Switch
110 The Gunk
36 The Past Within
30
Play
38 Mini Maker:
Make A Thing
PC
40 Inua: A Story
In Ice And Time
PC
PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series
PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series
112 Fights In Tight Spaces
PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series
114 Heavenly Bodies
PC, PS4, PS5
42 Call Me Cera
115 Space Warlord Organ
Trading Simulator
44 Hype roundup
116 Clockwork Aquario
PC
PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series
PS4, Switch
117 Dungeon Encounters
PC, PS4, Switch
118 The Eternal Cylinder
PC, PS4, Xbox One
119 Sherlock Holmes
Chapter One
PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series
Explore the iPad
edition of Edge for
additional content
120 Unsighted
PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One
121 Cruis’n Blast
Switch
Follow these links
throughout the magazine
for more content online
4
122 Dap
PC
123 Toem
PC, PS5, Switch
98
88
sections
#367
8
FEBRUARY 2022
Knowledge
8 Year of reckoning
20 This Month On Edge
12 Pocket universe
Dispatches
14 A little knight music
The place to come for prizewinning views about videogames.
Well, one set of them, anyway
From surprise hits to lawsuits:
the highs and the lows of a
difficult 12 months in games
The things that caught our eye
during the production of E367
Analogue Pocket goes beyond
Nintendo’s Game Boy on its
mission to host handheld history
How an orchestral Kirby remix
earned a Grammy nomination for
Charlie Rosen and Jake Silverman
16 Dope fiends
Selling banned magical products?
You’re more Stringer Bell than
Gandalf in The Price Of Magic
18 Soundbytes
Game commentary in snack-sized
mouthfuls, featuring Ubi’s Baptiste
Chardon and EA’s Laura Miele
48
88 The Making Of...
Three decades of friendship led
to Oxenfree, a tale that helped
game narratives come of age
92 Studio Profile
22 Dialogue
How Studio Fizbin grew from
a student project into one of
Germany’s premier indie studios
24 Trigger Happy
Why Frame Gride, the oftenforgotten FromSoftware mecha
game, deserves a second chance
26 Unreliable Narrator
Valheim’s Viking fantasy is proving
harder than ever for us to resist
A containment anomaly frees
Steven Poole to discuss the history
of dinosaurs in videogames
As he sifts through the games of
the year, Sam Barlow observes
Unpacking’s Seinfeld routine
124 Time Extend
129 The Long Game
Features
48 Boss Encounter
A meeting with FromSoftware
president Hidetaka Miyazaki to
discuss the creation of Elden Ring
66 The Edge Awards
The best visuals, audio and
games of 2021, plus insight
from our overall GOTY winner
66
mobilism.org 5
EDITORIAL
Tony Mott acting editor Chris Schilling deputy editor
Alex Spencer features editor Miriam McDonald operations editor
Andrew P Hind art editor
CONTRIBUTORS
Jon Bailes, Sam Barlow, Matthew Castle, Grace Curtis, Katharine Davies, Caelyn Ellis,
Malindy Hetfeld, Emma Kent, Jason Killingsworth, Andy McGregor, Niall O’Donoghue,
Lewis Packwood, Emmanuel Pajon, Jeremy Peel, Steven Poole, Alan Wen, Alex Wiltshire
SPECIAL THANKS
Steven Favret, Lee Kirton, Yasuhiro Kitao, Michael Samuels, Bobby Simpson
ADVERTISING
Clare Dove commercial sales director
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MANAGEMENT
Angie O’Farrell chief content officer Matt Pierce MD, games, TV and film
Tony Mott editorial director, games Dan Dawkins content director, games
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+44 (0)1225 442244
6
Year of
reckoning
Reviewing another difficult 12
months across the game industry
H
aving begun the year with a special
edition entitled ‘Look Forward’, it’s
inevitable that we end it by doing the
opposite – and, in the tradition of
predictions revisited after the fact, consider
how the ensuing reality differed. The scope
of Edge 355 wasn’t necessarily limited to
these 12 months, and we even called a
few of the pushbacks (hello, Horizon
Forbidden West), but, even in our COVIDtempered optimism, we might have
reasonably expected more of the
forthcoming games discussed to see
daylight in 2021: of the 56 namechecked,
exactly half have seen final release.
That’s indicative of the industry at large,
of course, as the long-term effects of the
pandemic continue to bite. God Of War
Ragnarök, Dying Light 2, Gotham Knights,
Ghostwire: Tokyo – we could fill this page
with a list of high-profile titles originally due
in 2021 and subsequently pushed into
8
next year or beyond. It’s becoming
almost standard practice even for newly
announced games, with Marvel’s Midnight
Suns and the Saints Row reboot both
amending their release dates within weeks
of introducing themselves to the world.
On the physical front, 2021 has been
quiet, with Steam Deck, Playdate and
Intellivision Amico all pushed into next year,
leaving the Switch OLED Edition and
Analogue Pocket (see p12) as the year’s
most notable hardware releases.
Against this backdrop, the
traditional fixtures of the calendar struggled
to make much of an impression. After E3
was cancelled for 2020, it returned this
year in digital form, and amounted, more
or less, to a loosely associated series of
YouTube broadcasts, something that served
to make the ESA’s offering indistinguishable
from the Summer Games Fest that sprang
up in its absence a year earlier. And if
a digital E3 failed to make much of a
bang, Gamescom and Tokyo Game
Show were barely audible.
In spite of all this, it hasn’t been a
bad year for new games. That much
became obvious as we narrowed down
our favourites for the Edge Awards (p66),
a process that proved as difficult as ever.
This year, assorted factors have made it
easier for smaller developers to take the
spotlight, but that trend was only
accelerated by having fewer of the
traditional big names to elbow aside.
And this is without acknowledging the
growing number of games that don’t fit into
the traditional release pattern, both within
and without triple-A. Valheim has been one
of the year’s most significant hits without
even nearing the big 1.0, and our above
count of 2021 releases omits games that
continue their journey through early access,
KNOWLEDGE
2021
have games to tempt any prospective
such as Baldur’s Gate 3. And of course
buyer, but delivery has been a trickle rather
there are all the live games that, through
than a flood. Importantly, as Microsoft
updates, still dominate concurrent player
counts. Remarkably, Splitgate managed to comes at its second holiday sales period
with the weight of two of its traditional ‘four
combine all these trends – after an early
horsemen’ in Forza and
release in 2017, this
Halo, Sony lacks a big endsummer it became so
of-year release of its own.
unexpectedly popular that PS5 and Xbox
Exclusives are, perhaps,
developer 1047 Games Series both have
an old-fashioned way of
pushed back its full launch
taking the industry’s pulse.
indefinitely in favour of an tempting games,
But casting an eye over this
ongoing open beta. The
but
delivery
has
year’s releases (only
studio was almost
counting, for the sake of
immediately rewarded with been a trickle
sanity, games that warranted
a $100m funding round
and a $1.5bn valuation. rather than a flood a review in these pages)
shows the two consoles in a
If you want an indication of
where games are in 2021, there might be similar position. Xbox Series narrowly has
the edge, with 12 console exclusives to
no better encapsulation than Splitgate.
Or, if you’d prefer, you can look at the PS5’s ten – both lists consisting of a similar
mix of large and small, first- and thirdparty
latest generation of consoles. A year into
titles. But Xbox has no true single-format
their lifecycles, PS5 and Xbox Series both
games, due to every exclusive also
launching on PC, not to mention on mobile
via Microsoft’s xCloud streaming service.
Perhaps most important of all, to
understand where these consoles currently
stand, is the number of games that are also
available on prior-gen hardware: seven for
PlayStation, ten for Xbox. In fact, there
were only two games on our review roster
this year that you absolutely need to buy a
new-gen console to play: Returnal and
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, both on PS5.
That may not change dramatically in the
coming year, given that Sony – while
suffering ongoing hardware shortages –
has backpedalled somewhat on Jim Ryan’s
initial assertion that “we believe in
generations”, with God Of War, Horizon
and Gran Turismo sequels all pencilled in
for release on PS4 as well as PS5.
Looking beyond the games, 2021 has
been a tumultuous year for industry
Splitgate’s concurrent
player count exploded
from 400 to 200,000 in
weeks thanks to its
multiformat relaunch.
Naturally, that number
has dropped since
mobilism.org 9
KNOWLEDGE
2021
STATION TO
STATION
When it comes to
acquisitions, 2021
brought nothing on
the level of last year’s
Bethesda buyout. In
fact, Microsoft made no
gaming acquisitions at
all, leaving Sony to pick
up the slack. In March,
Sony took joint
ownership of Evo, the
fighting-game esports
organisation, and
followed it with the
acquisition of five
studios: Housemarque,
Bluepoint, Nixxes
Software, Firesprite and
Fabrik Games. There’s a
difference in strategy
from Microsoft’s
purchases here, with
Sony bringing allies
closer. Housemarque
and Bluepoint have
made some of the only
true PS5 exclusives in
Returnal and Demon’s
Souls, while Firesprite
and Fabrik, responsible
for PSVR’s The
Persistence, are studios
built from the ashes of
Studio Liverpool. How
many people can say
they’ve been bought
by Sony twice?
10
goings-on. From a California courtroom,
the Epic v Apple case provided us with
weeks of revelations about both
companies’ business practices and the
immortal phrase: “It’s just a banana,
ma’am.” As its outcome continues to be
appealed, the full repercussions are yet
to emerge. (See ‘Forbidding fruit’.)
The latter half of the year, meanwhile,
was dominated by three buzzwords – two
of them often used interchangeably –
which have become boardroom
necessities. No game company’s Q3
earnings call, it seemed, was without a
mention of NFTs, blockchain or the
metaverse, as CEOs rushed to assure
shareholders that they’re all over it (even if
privately they didn’t necessarily understand
why they needed to be aboard).
Meta, the social media company
formerly known as Facebook, showed in
October that Mark Zuckerberg is making
big bets on metaverse technologies, even
if his presentation was heavy on
speculative work. In terms of tangible
developments, none of Meta’s solutions
have really taken a leap forward over the
course of 2021, with its Horizon Worlds
and Workplaces, both currently in beta,
failing to deliver on the grandeur of its
video demonstrations. And if you define
‘metaverse’ as being synonymous with
Fortnite or Roblox, well, those existed long
before the year began, and have spent the apparently, much more – raised $725m,
year continuing along their prior trajectory. while Blankos Block Party developer
Regardless of Meta’s preparedness in Mythical Games attracted $150m.
But this is reflective of investment trends
real terms, though, it was at least a relief
across the game industry as a whole.
to see Zuckerberg and co do what so
many seemed to be avoiding and define According to investment bank Drake Star
Partners, the first nine months of the year
the metaverse as a three-dimensional
social space, following months of the term saw an unprecedented $71bn moving
being thrown around to describe anything into games, across 844 deals. As
where Rick and Morty could rub shoulders Agostino Simonetta, chief strategy and
investment officer at
with an Avenger, a vision
Thunderful Games, recently
of the future filtered through
It was at least
told us: “There is a lot of
the limited imagination
investment going around.
funnel of Ernest Cline’s
a
relief
to
see
From the console platforms
Ready Player One.
Zuckerberg define or Epic, private equity
Meanwhile, we’ve
investment firms, money
seen more games
incorporating blockchain the metaverse as a coming from Asia… there
three-dimensional
is so much money.”
technology, plus many
Thunderful is just one
more NFT scams – and
social space
example of the rise of indie
nothing to change our
mega-publishers and
sceptical perspective on
company collectives with cash to splash
either. When weighing up any new
around. 2021 also saw the launch of
blockchain-related project, we have to
Kepler Interactive, which has grown out
ask: does this benefit someone who
would not otherwise be rewarded for their of Kowloon Nights, and Devolver Digital’s
November IPO, which valued the
work? Could this be achieved without
publisher at just shy of $1bn. And then
blockchain technology? And what is its
there’s Embracer Group, the enigmatic
cost to the environment?
Regardless of an often-grim backdrop, Swedish publishing group that has made
projects involving such technologies have 18 acquisitions this year alone.
One of the year’s biggest and most
continued to attract major investment this
year. In November alone, Forte – the tech fatiguing stories was the lawsuit brought
company behind Will Wright’s Proxi and, against Activision Blizzard by California’s
Department Of Fair Employment
And Housing. The filing painted a
picture of a workplace where
discrimination and harassment were the
norm, opening up a broader conversation
about toxic work environments and
precipitating a cascade of further
allegations and admissions across the
wider industry. In particular, it brought
attention back to the claims directed at
Ubisoft in 2020, and – according to
employee group A Better Ubisoft – how
little had changed in the intervening time.
In this spirit, it’s worth examining what
has happened at Activision Blizzard
since the DFEH lawsuit.
When we reported on the story in
E363, Activision Blizzard had
acknowledged the claims and insisted it
would work to improve conditions. One
immediate change was the removal of
J Allen Brack – named in the lawsuit – as
president of Blizzard, with co-presidents
Mike Ybarra and Jen Oneal taking his
place. As the first woman to hold this role,
even in a shared capacity, Oneal’s
appointment in particular seemed like a
symbol of potential progress. However,
it seems that a symbol is all it was.
Oneal resigned after just three
months as a result of being “tokenised,
marginalised, and discriminated against”,
as she wrote in an internal email seen by
the Wall Street Journal. This reportedly
included Oneal being paid less than
Ybarra for the role to which they had both
been appointed as part of the company’s
apparent efforts to reduce discrimination.
This was just one aspect of the widereaching report, which said there had been
“more than 500 reports from current and
former employees alleging harassment,
sexual assault, bullying, pay disparities
and other issues” since the lawsuit. It also
pointed the finger at Bobby Kotick,
Activision Blizzard CEO of 25 years, who
had claimed to be unaware of the issues
within his company until the DFEH brought
them to light. According to the Wall Street
Journal, Kotick did know about multiple
allegations of sexual misconduct, including
one allegation of rape, which he did not
disclose to the company’s board of
directors. The company issued a statement
which accused the Wall Street Journal of
presenting “a misleading view” of the
company and of Kotick. Nevertheless, it
was followed by multiple calls for Kotick’s
resignation, including a petition publicly
signed by 1,875 Activision Blizzard
employees. At time of writing, Kotick
remains in the role.
It is not the most upbeat note on which
to end the year, but this is where we are.
Nevertheless, much as it might occasionally
stand in for the soul of the entire industry, as
it wrestles with toxic culture in every corner,
Activision Blizzard is just one company.
And, while we might need to qualify our
expectations even more than at the outset
of this year, there is much to look forward
to over the next 12 months.
The hope is that every report and
lawsuit helps to build a healthier workplace
culture across the industry. The Epic v
Apple case has likewise raised awareness
of the uneven profit shares that can reward
digital storefronts at the expense of the
developers who use them. Elsewhere,
while Zuckerberg’s vision for the metaverse
isn’t easy to love, it’s indicative of a move
to broaden the possibilities of virtual spaces
that has yielded everything from Epic’s
collaboration with Radiohead for the
excellent Kid A Mnesia Exhibition to the
subculture that emerged around Animal
Crossing: New Horizons.
And then, of course, there are the
games themselves. The rush of investment
will eventually lead to productions that
might not otherwise have crossed the finish
line, or been granted the time they need to
shine. Even delays have their benefits –
after all, when is the last time a February
release slate looked as exciting as 2022’s?
In a normal year, the arrival of a firstparty
headliner such as Horizon Forbidden West
would be cause for celebration, but
alongside not one but three Edge cover
games, in Dying Light 2, Sifu and Elden
Ring? It’s hard not to look forward.
LEFT As Facebook
unveiled its vision of
the metaverse, Epic
continued moving
towards it in Fortnite.
MAIN Microsoft’s E3
showcase was given a
boost by Bethesda.
ABOVE As well as
Switch OLED, Nintendo
released a Legend Of
Zelda Game & Watch
FORBIDDING FRUIT
The eventual decision
in the Epic Games v
Apple case fell in
favour of Tim Cook’s
company rather than
Tim Sweeney’s, on all
counts but one: the
judge ruled that Apple
cannot prohibit iOS
developers from linking
players outside of their
apps to alternative
payment mechanisms,
a small but significant
victory for Epic’s stated
mission to let
developers avoid the
App Store tithe on
every in-app purchase.
After its initial appeal
was denied, though,
Apple was then granted
an indefinite stay, on
the eve of it needing to
change the App Store’s
rules. Epic has yet to
respond; maybe a
parody of the old
iPod ads this time?
11
KNOWLEDGE
ANALOGUE POCKET
Pocket universe
A
The best way to play Game Boy games? That’s
just the beginning for Analogue’s retro handheld
than a Switch: your hands are positioned
t last, here it is. Analogue Pocket, a
handheld console which natively runs close together, and the front corners can
dig into your palm as you curl your fingers
cartridges for Game Boy and Game Boy
to reach the triggers. But it will feel familiar
Advance, and supports Game Gear
to GBA SP and Game Boy veterans.
cartridges with an adaptor. With future
Besides, when you start a game, you’ll
support promised for Neo Geo Pocket
be entirely invested in Pocket’s 615ppi LPTS
Color and Lynx, Pocket will soon cover
LCD screen. Its 1600×1440 pixels may
much of handheld gaming history up to
seem like overkill for a device designed to
DS and PSP. But once its doors open to
play 240x160-pixel GBA games, but in
developers to add other systems to its
roster, it will be in a position to cover much practice this leads to pristine images
enhanced by filter effects which recreate
more of gaming history, including 16bit
the look of original hardware. GBA games
consoles and potentially beyond.
offer three filters: the first scales the image
And it should have been released
to fit the screen, bright and solid with no
months ago. But such is the reality for any
company trying to manufacture electronics hint of shimmer. The other two pick out the
original GBA’s pixels, one with a dim
during the pandemic. “One day I will tell
colour scheme that evokes the original
the story of the nightmare spectacular of
GBA’s unlit screen, the other
what we have gone
brighter to evoke the SP.
through to get this fucking
They’re so convincing that
product to ship,” Analogue His dream is that
it’s hard to remember they’re
founder and CEO
a graphical effect, yet they
Christopher Taber tells us. it becomes “the
benefit from a modern
“It’s truly unbelievable, the be-all, end-all
fast-response screen that
effort people at Analogue way to celebrate
makes GBA games look
have put in, the amount of
better than they’ve ever
hustling. It’s been ceaseless.” and share all of
appeared in the past.
Analogue’s newest
videogame
history”
Pocket’s Game Boy
voyage into high-fidelity
filters cover the same ground
retrogaming is its most
ambitious by far. This is its first console with and are even more remarkable, especially
the one that emulates its original greenish
a screen and buttons; its first to support
dot-matrix LCD screen, recreating your
multiple systems; its first accompanied by
software, including an onboard operating memory but without Game Boy DMG’s
notoriously smeary ghosting. With colour
system and forthcoming system
schemes that cover Game Boy Color’s
management software for Mac and PC.
With a Pocket in our hands, we can report colourisation of first-generation Game Boy
games, Pocket offers extensive options for
that the ambition has been realised.
playing every generation of Game Boy as
The unit is the same size as a Game
you wish, and of course each system runs
Boy but a little thinner and with GBA-like
with the same lag-free sense of authenticity
shoulder buttons halfway up its back,
as all Analogue’s console recreations.
below its cartridge slot. The D-pad and
Pocket will eventually extend beyond its
four face buttons feel classic Nintendo: a
launch systems, with Analogue poised to
healthy degree of travel and a positive
release a developer SDK with the aim of
moment of actuation. It’s less comfortable
12
SMOOTH
OPERATOR
Taber sees Analogue
OS, Pocket’s operating
system, as a separate
platform that will
open the doors to
playing classic games
with save-state
management, game
databases and much
more. It will feature in
its future products,
such as Analogue Duo
(PC Engine), and may
be back-ported to
older ones, such as
Mega Sg and Super Nt
(Mega Drive and Super
NES). It will also exist
as a PC and Mac app
which Pocket can
connect to via its
USB-C port for
managing thirdparty
cores and sharing save
states and settings.
Analogue founder
Christopher Taber
attracting FPGA developers in hobbyist
communities such as MiSTer (see E358) to
port their cores to it. Pocket sports an Altera
Cyclone V FPGA similar to that used by
MiSTer but with around half the number of
logic elements, plus supporting features such
as banks of low-latency RAM, that should
make it easier to support demanding
systems. Taber says it’s “frictionless to
design for”, and his dream is that Pocket –
and its operating system – becomes “the
be-all, end-all way to celebrate and share
all of videogame history”.
At launch, there’s no guarantee
that the developers will come, or that
Analogue’s operating system will live up
to all of Taber’s promises. Its Memories
feature, which lets you capture screenshots
along with save states of those moments,
won’t arrive until version 1.1. Other future
features include the ability to finetune
systems’ filters and settings and share them,
Library (a complete database of games),
and playlist editing and sharing support.
All these features play directly into
Analogue’s tagline – “We make products
to celebrate and explore the history of
videogames with the respect it deserves” –
but they’re currently untestable.
Simply on the merits of what Pocket
is at launch, though, it’s already the best
way to play handheld gaming’s formative
generations. Its sleep and resume feature
works well, as do its beta save states;
battery life is good; its screen is wonderful.
Its inclusion of synth Nanoloop and Game
Boy development platform GB Studio are
excellent extras. So, even if its potential is
never fully realised, Pocket is a fine device.
And if it lives up to just half of that potential,
we have the entrance of a handheld
device (which can connect to your TV via a
dock) that could be the best way to play a
swathe of other generations besides.
TOP Pocket’s elegant
case is designed by
Kenyon Weston.
ABOVE A packed
PCB shows Pocket’s
dual-FPGA design.
FAR LEFT Battery life
is six hours with the
screen set to bright.
BELOW LEFT A dock
can connect the
hardware to screens
via HDMI and
controllers by wire,
Bluetooth or 2.4g
13
KNOWLEDGE
MUSIC
A little
knight music
T
From Green Greens to Grammys: the story
behind an award-worthy Kirby remix
for The 8-Bit Big Band, Silverman was
ony Award-winning composer,
trying to establish himself as a solo
producer and multi-instrumentalist
electronic act while living in LA. “I had
Charlie Rosen has certainly seen his fair
my organ hooked up to Ableton, I was
share of orchestral arrangements. But
playing the bass with my feet – I was
when Jake Silverman gave the NYCdoing three parts at once, playing with
based band leader the chart for his
sequenced drums, doing videogame
version of Meta Knight’s Revenge, Rosen
covers.” A friend mentioned Rosen’s
was taken aback. First and foremost, he
orchestra and suggested they work
was impressed with Silverman’s work –
together. Meanwhile, Rosen found a video
with one caveat. “I remember looking at
of Silverman (under his Button Masher
the chart and being like, holy shit, this is
so hard to play,” he laughs. Rosen tried to pseudonym) playing Meta Knight’s
Revenge on a MIDI organ. “What really
rebalance the arrangement, and make it
easier for the jazz orchestra he leads, The struck me about it was that you were using
8-Bit Big Band. “Still, everybody was like, the sound font from Kirby Super Star,” he
‘This is the hardest chart I’ve ever played.’” says, addressing his fellow collaborator.
“You’d reharm[onis]ed the crap out of it,
To which Silverman bursts into laughter.
and it blew my mind what you had done
The two are unsurprisingly in good
with the original. I saw
humour as we talk to them
that, and was like, ‘Oh,
over Zoom, with Rosen
man, we should totally
currently working in London The calibre of
do something together.’”
and Silverman calling in
Silverman handed over
from his home in Baltimore. these musicians
his existing orchestral
Before we start, they briefly is astonishing –
arrangement and Rosen
catch up; it’s only the
to
the
extent
that
set to work adapting it.
second time they’ve seen
no rehearsal
The biggest challenge
each other since the
for Rosen was familiar: this
recording session that
was
required
music was made to be
recently earned them
performed by synthesisers,
both a nomination for Best
Arrangement, Instrumental Or A Cappella not humans. “I’d wanted to try to imitate
[composer] Jun Ishikawa’s writing style,
at the 64th Grammy Awards. Silverman
which I’d describe as hyper-maximalist,”
recalls the moment he heard the news.
Silverman says. “Every single space is
“My family was in town for Thanksgiving,
filled, there’s so much activity.” Rosen
and I went for a walk with my dog. I
adds, “These composers didn’t have any
wasn’t thinking about getting nominated,
limitations that instruments have: they can
I’ll just say that. And then I get a text
from Charlie in all-caps that says, ‘DUDE’, jump wild ranges and play super-fast
notes sequentially. Nintendo cartridges
and I knew immediately what had just
don’t have to breathe. People have to
transpired.” The subsequent scream, he
breathe.” But he ultimately didn’t have
says, was so loud he scared his dog.
to change too much, adding strings and
Their collaboration came about as
a harp to “take some of the pressure” off
a result of their shared passion for 8the brass parts, and switching some of the
and 16bit music. While Rosen was
trickier trombone sections to sax. “Just so
rearranging popular favourites of the era
14
THE GREAT
VIDEOGAME
SONGBOOK
As a member of the
Recording Academy,
Rosen self-nominated
the arrangement,
with Silverman’s
permission. He had no
expectations (“worst
case scenario, it’s on
there and maybe a
couple of people
listen to it as they’re
voting”) but was
understandably proud
of his band’s work. He
believes videogame
music is overdue
appreciation from
award bodies. “Film
scores, Broadway cast
albums and songs from
shows, the Great
American Songbook –
we have these bodies
of works that have
been recognised as
canons of musical
material for years and
years,” he says. “It
seems high time we
give this vocabulary
of musical works the
same professional
treatment and
adoration, and love
and respect to these
composers who have
defined the sound of
our generation, like
those composers did
for generations past.”
the trombone doesn’t have to go like this,”
he says, rapidly moving his arm back and
forth as if imagining the trombone’s slide
sawing a piece of wood. More laughter.
Whatever he did, it worked. It’s an
extraordinary piece, a rich, expansive,
complex reworking that still retains the
melodic core of Ishikawa’s original.
Much of that is down to the quality of the
playing. COVID-19 wasn’t an issue in
getting the band together; while the
recording wasn’t uploaded to YouTube
until March this year, the session took
place before the pandemic. At any given
time, Rosen says, The 8-Bit Big Band is
usually between 25 and 65 members
strong, depending on the style he’s going
for; some of his big-band arrangements
might only require 17 people, while a full
jazz orchestra performance might entail
strings, a harp, French horns and even a
choir. “I’m really lucky to live in a city and
have a community of musicians around
me, where if I do need to get an orchestra
together, I can kind of do it in about two
or three days by sending out a barrage of
text messages to my friends.”
Having now played alongside them,
Silverman says the calibre of those
musicians is astonishing – to the extent
that no rehearsal was required. “We
don’t rehearse, even for live gigs,” Rosen
says. “We show up at soundcheck, we
run it, then we do the show that night. At
the studio, they show up, we do three or
four takes and we get out of there.” He
notices our eyebrows raising and laughs.
“Yeah. It’s pretty crazy.” Yet he admits even
these seasoned performers might balk at a
live performance of Meta Knight’s
Revenge: “This is the only chart where
anyone has said, ‘If we’re going to do this
live, you have to give me a heads-up.’”
Silverman laughs. “And we still got
nominated for a Grammy!”
Rosen says he’d like
to collaborate with
Silverman again, and
suggests an even more
challenging track from
the same game: The
Great Cave Offensive
DOPE FIENDS
Drugwars meets fairytales and an
’80s Japanese printing technique
Try putting that on a graphing calculator. The
Price Of Magic is a reimagining of the game that
distracted a generation of kids from their maths
lessons, set in a fantasy kingdom that’s – as per art
lead Paula Lucas – “more The Wire and less Lord
Of The Rings”. It’s quite the pitch, even before you
factor in Lucas’s Risograph-inspired visuals.
“With Riso, you treat each colour as a
separate layer and print one colour at a time as
you burn it into the printing drum,” Lucas explains.
“The ink is slightly translucent, meaning you get
all sorts of interesting overlapping shapes and
shades… I wanted to capture an aspect of that
physical artform and bring it into a game, as I’d
never seen it done before.”
With Lucas counting Gorillaz, Samurai Jack
and Japanese street fashion among her influences,
The Price Of Magic promises a heady mix when
it arrives on PC and Switch next year.
16
KNOWLEDGE
THE PRICE OF MAGIC
The product you move
isn’t actually drugs,
Lucas explains. They’re
“illicit fantasy goods” –
potions, enchanted
artefacts, the occasional
eye of newt – in a world
where magic is banned
17
KNOWLEDGE
TALK/ARCADE
Soundbytes
Game commentary in snack-sized mouthfuls
“While this can seem
trivial at first… it changes
the videogame industry
by introducing concepts
like uniqueness and
control, and thus
value distribution in
our game worlds.”
Yikes. Ubi is serious about blockchain, as product director
Baptiste Chardon attests at the launch of Ubisoft Quartz
“It’s always tough for
me because I have to
be Switzerland now…
It’s always tough when
a game gets nominated
and people get
annoyed at me.”
No man is an island, although
Geoff Keighley is a country
“We are bringing one of the
most influential and talented
individuals in entertainment to
a franchise that is ready to be
unleashed into the modern era
of gaming. It’s an extraordinary
inflection point in game history.”
EA’s Laura Miele is a bit hyped about Vince Zampella picking up Battlefield
18
“Although the results are
terrible, sadly I don’t
think it will be a great
surprise to a lot of
industry professionals.”
The WGGB’s Samantha
Webb captures a mood as a
survey reports that 53 per cent
of game writers have seen or
experienced bullying at work
ARCADE
WATCH
Keeping an eye on the
coin-op gaming scene
Game Men In Black
Manufacturer Sega
What is the cost difference
between licensing a movie
property at the very height of
its powers versus when its
sheen has faded somewhat?
That question may have been
tossed around Sega’s coin-op
division a few times recently,
with its Mission Impossible
cabinet now followed up by a
Men In Black lightgun game.
Using a ‘Tri-Barrel Plasma
Gun’ mounted on the machine
– with support for a co-op
partner by your side – the
action sees you taking down
aliens across locations
recognisable from the movie
series. As a redemption game,
it’s not the most sophisticated
experience to have ever
emerged from Sega’s labs, but
if you’re on the hunt for tickets,
it’s a lot more entertaining than
Big Bass Wheel and its ilk.
KNOWLEDGE
THIS MONTH
WEB
GAME
Dino Breakout
BOOK
RuneScape:
The First 20 Years
bit.ly/runescape20yrs
This illustrated history of
Jagex’s enduring RPG is a
beautifully presented hardcover
book that covers everything
from the game’s origins
through its various highs
and lows to the Old School
RuneScape offshoot and
beyond. Journalist Alex Calvin
does a fine job of making the
story so far accessible to
newcomers without alienating
veteran players – there are
facts here even the most
devoted won’t know. But those
illustrations are the star, with a
frankly astonishing amount of
concept art, from mood pieces
to early character designs and
more besides, adorning just
about every spread. The Deluxe
Edition, with its gilded page
edges and hardbound folio of
art prints, is one for the serious
fan, but anyone with an interest
in gaming history will get
plenty from this splendid tome.
VENUE
Loading Bar Peckham
bit.ly/loadingpeckham
When we spoke to Loading Bar
founder James Dance at the
beginning of the year (E355)
he promised that, in spite of
the obvious hurdles, the
gaming pub would be opening
more venues. At the year’s
close, we’re happy to report
that Dance is as good as
his word. In a tight space,
limpeted to the side of a
drama school, this new venue
offers a cleverly condensed
version of everything Loading
has always done so well:
consoles loaded with drop-infriendly multiplayer games,
a well-stocked boardgame
library, and a pun-heavy
cocktail menu. Anyone for
a Destini 2: Forshaken?
bit.ly/dinobreak
Not the Jurassic Park/Arkanoid
crossover the title might
suggest, but a physics-puzzler
reminiscent of Boom Blox.
Dinosaurs in cages are perched
atop arrangements of blocks;
your job is to throw a ball to
dislodge them, smashing the
cages without toppling any
similarly precarious skull
blocks. You also need to avoid
sending the beasts tumbling
into the abyss beyond the
circular play area, which is a
good deal trickier than you
might think given the intuitive
controls. There are just eight
levels in this free prototype
version – which was made
for an 8bit game jam that
restricted entrants to an eightcolour palette – but developer
Dino0040 has suggested he
might well revisit it. In the
meantime, the “funky chill
loop” soundtrack is the kind
of earworm that could survive
until the next ice age.
THIS MONTH ON EDGE
When we weren’t doing everything else, we were thinking about stuff like this
GAME
Lair Of The Clockwork God –
Limited Run Collector’s Edition
bit.ly/clockworkgodce
Dan Marshall and Ben Ward’s point-and-click/platformer hybrid gets
a lavish physical release care of Limited Run. Within the old-school
DOS-style box (illustrated to look like a vintage LucasArts adventure)
is a 78-page journal detailing the thoughts of Ward’s in-game alter
ego, including the resolution to that cliffhanger ending. The game’s
soundtrack is also here, alongside art cards, a poster, and a canvas
print. Best of all is a physical manual: since no one at Limited Run
specified it had to be for Clockwork God, Marshall and Ward wrote
one for a completely different fictional game instead. Orders for
both Switch and PS4 incarnations go live on December 31.
20
continue quit
Massive
FFXIV Endwalker’s early
access release sets a new
concurrent player record…
Endstander, more like
…but lengthy queues
lead to tedious waits for
many excited players
Plus interest
Reports suggest that PS5
owners will soon get a
three-tier subscription service
to rival Xbox Game Pass
Halo, goodbye
Mods lock down Infinite’s
subreddit due to rampant
toxicity – even before the
game’s official launch
Titan shifter
Vince Zampella is unexpectedly
placed in charge of EA’s
beleaguered Battlefield…
Despawn
…as Titanfall is pulled
from sale following a
barrage of DDOS attacks
Yorda best
From Miyazaki to Del Toro,
Ico’s 20th anniversary
attracts admiring tributes
from big-name creatives
Unfestive casualties
Activision lays off a dozen
QA testers at Raven
just before Christmas,
prompting walkouts
DISPATCHES
FEBRUARY
Across the universe
Issue 366
Dialogue
Send your views, using
‘Dialogue’ as the subject
line, to edge@futurenet.com.
Our letter of the month wins
a 12-month Xbox Game
Pass Ultimate membership
Reading your article on NFTs [E365], I
found myself agreeing with the sceptical
tone. NFTs in games seem daft at best: a
solution looking for a problem, or
potentially the worst innovation to come at
the worst time; pointless, environmentally
damaging tech bobbins for grifters to hype
while we’re looking down the barrel of
potential climate catastrophe. That said, I
couldn’t help but try to think of what an
interesting use case might be, and I think
I’ve found one: NFTs should be a curse.
What about a scenario where, if you’re
killed or invaded in a Dark Souls-type game,
ownership of a curse gets transferred to
you? The curse then wreaks
havoc in your game – or
maybe it’s a creature that
hunts you like Mr X in Resi 2;
its target indelibly logged in
the blockchain and the only
way to get rid of it is to
transfer it to someone else.
Maybe it could be like It
Follows or The Ring, and
after you’ve been got it goes
after the previous owner.
All the proposed scenarios for NFTs
seem to just be about making what could be
functionally infinite digital products have
artificial scarcity. It’s all about making
players care about ‘ownership’ of digital tat.
I’m not sure that many people even care
about ownership of games themselves,
considering the success of PS Plus and
Xbox Game Pass, let alone the products
in those games. However, the idea of a
specific digital entity travelling through a
network, manipulated by players, its journey
recorded in digital history, is actually
intriguing – infinitely more so than the
prospect of owning a specific copy of a
+5 axe or one of those awful apes.
Dave Merrett
Dig it
I have been having a brilliant time with the
recently released Battlefield 2042, putting in
about 52 hours in the weeks since release,
which is about the same amount of gaming
I had managed in the previous three months.
It is fair to say that this game has its hooks
in. Yet the current meta in subreddits and
gaming forums is to slate the game and EA/
DICE for releasing ‘a broken, buggy mess
that is an insult to gamers’.
Now don’t get me wrong – this game has
its fair share of bugs, poor design choices
and balancing issues, and
arguably should have been
delayed until next year after
the beta. However, despite
these issues, I am enjoying the
game immensely. If I decide
to pop my head above the
parapet and declare this fact,
I get quickly flooded with
comments telling me why my
opinions are wrong and that I
am ‘part of the problem’.
I have no issue with people expressing
their negative opinions of the game, so why
am I not allowed to discuss what I like about
the game without getting shot down? I don’t
think I have seen such polarisation in
discussions around other forms of
entertainment, so what is it about
videogame discourse that so quickly
descends into name-calling and shitposting?
It certainly doesn’t help me persuade
non-gaming friends that gaming is now a
grown-up hobby when they see articles
about Halo subreddits being shut down for
due to toxicity or developers getting death
threats. I dearly love my hobby, like Henry
Cavill likes his Warhammer, but as in his
case, it seems we just aren’t allowed to
enjoy what we enjoy these days without
someone crapping all over it.
Matt Spink
“The curse
wreaks havoc –
or maybe it’s a
creature that
hunts you like
Mr X in Resi 2”
A use for NFTs in videogames that feels
not only legitimate but fascinating? This is
22
precisely how to go about winning a year’s
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate membership.
DISPATCHES
DIALOGUE
Unfortunately, it’s been like this going back
to Ugg deriding Ogg’s wonky stone wheel
in front of the entire tribe. Our advice:
discuss games with friends, not strangers.
Get back
As someone who rarely revisits older
games, I often find it surprising how much
conversation there is around spending what
limited time we have on this planet reliving
our past. Be it remakes, re-releases, game
preservation or backwards compatibility,
there is a vocal group of players keen to
resuscitate past experiences and developers
keen to make some easy money.
I rarely go back to retro (or even fairly
recent) titles – partly due to having such a
huge backlog that I feel guilty doing so, and
partly because the experience is often
disappointing. Even when I’m convinced the
game in question will hold up well, such as
Super Mario 64 or OutRun, I’ve been left
disappointed. In more recent months, we’ve
seen some shocking ports that barely work.
Reliving many of these experiences isn’t
that great. Control inputs have improved.
Our patience for replaying sections multiple
times and only getting a save opportunity
every 30 minutes has diminished. And the
tech has left the past, more often than not,
slightly redundant. Every new generation
promises better AI or more processing
power, but often that power is just spent on
better visuals. What if we used all of the
new processing power of modern platforms
to reinvent these retro experiences, building
on what’s already there and working well?
What if F-Zero GX was online and with
40+ racers on track? What if Halo 3 upped
the ante and the larger set-pieces featured
even better AI and scale? What if Deux Ex:
Human Revolution made the enemies 50 per
cent more clever and unpredictable?
Tetris 99 is one of very few games I can
think of that took an old game, and gave
me a reason to experience it again in a
new way. It brought back the feeling I had,
but made it entirely original. I’d be much
more tempted to return to games of old if
more did the same.
Sean Thomas
To be honest, we had a much longer, more
thoughtful response in mind, but such
egregious OutRun slander will not stand
around these parts. Online F-Zero GX,
though? Mmm, now you’re talking.
chance to carve out your own path. This
leads to an extremely subjective tension. It
only makes sense to give the player better
control over this.
Robert August de Meijer
Two of us
There’s a lot of talking in videogames, but
not a lot of it is dialogue – at least if we focus
on the communication the player has any
agency over. Dialogue: a conversation, an
The long and winding road
Today marks the tenth anniversary of Skyrim’s exchange of ideas, a discussion.
In part it is the limitations of digital
Clairvoyance spell. Or, as I call it, the biggest
missed opportunity I’ve seen in game design. storytelling. The nonsequiturs, tangents
Here’s the deal: for a little mana you can
and callbacks that happen in natural
conversations are a social dance. Not only
shoot a beam that points the way to the
do they require a lot of script, but also that
closest objective. I never used it because
Skyrim’s arrows on your map are clear enough. NPCs take a role in driving conversation.
When Paul rebukes JC for using too much
But imagine if there weren’t any markers. I
bet we would look around a bit more and use violence, it still stands out because it’s a
Clairvoyance the moment we start to get
rarity. He brought up the subject and a strong
frustrated. Especially if the price of using the opinion on it. The power fantasy places NPCs
in the passive role, being pumped by the
spell was one worth considering. That could
player for quests or clues: hardly a dialogue.
have been an interesting choice!
Only in Grand Theft Auto IV were NPCs
Location markers overshadow the details
of our virtual worlds. But we also hate having allowed to annoy the player on their own
to look up directions on the web. Some games, initiative, and that’s not going to be repeated.
The best dialogue should happen with the
such as The Witcher III, let you turn them on
antagonist, but – Wolfenstein cutscenes aside
and off. Some, such as Breath Of The Wild,
– we often spend little time in their company.
give you instructions. Some, such as Hollow
Knight, have us venture around before we
The Illusive Man’s arc gave us a sense of how
find a map. Oh, and you can pay hard cash
that might happen, but what conversation can
for a map pack in Forza Horizon. It’s a
you have with a man indoctrinated by space
magic? (One gated by a reputation bar,
sensitive balance. But why not gamify this
apparently.) When we do get to speak to the
like we do with everything else? Think of
villain, how often do we hear “We’re not so
how we make save points a choice, such as
different, you and I?”
in Resident Evil and Ori.
How about giving Assassin’s Creed extraThe day may never come when I can have
challenging towers for special map markers?
a dialogue with an NPC in the sense of two
Deus Ex fills your screen with location
equals in a social dance: too much of a
distances – why isn’t that a modification that technical and content burden for too little
payoff. If I want a dialogue in a game, I could
requires upgrades or energy? Cruelty Squad
always unmute the multiplayer lobby.
blissfully lets you search for its secrets, but
Tom Piercy
I occasionally wouldn’t have minded trading
an organ to get a hint.
Videogames have this crazy paradox:
Hmm. Not too sure about the latter option,
when they point out where you can go, you
although to be fair it is always useful to find
lose the goal of the game – namely, the
out where our mothers were last night.
23
DISPATCHES
PERSPECTIVE
STEVEN POOLE
Trigger Happy
O
em.emusnok noitartsullI
ne of the finest examples of corporate
euphemism in cinema comes in
Jurassic World (2015): “Ladies and
gentlemen, due to a containment anomaly, all
guests must take shelter immediately”.
“Containment anomaly”, of course, is PR
speak for “the dinosaurs have escaped”, just as
Elon Musk’s talk of a “rapid unscheduled
disassembly” was an ironic acknowledgment
that one of his rockets had blown up. The
word ‘anomaly’ itself comes from the ancient
Greek for “against natural law”, so – and I’m
sure the screenwriters intended this nuance
too – the whole of Jurassic Park was an
anomaly from the beginning.
There have, I regret to say, also been many
containment anomalies during my time with
Jurassic World Evolution 2, while I was
forgetting that raptors can climb fences or
distracted by the disgruntled state of my staff.
It may even be the case that some customers
were sadly eaten. If so, they should stop at the
customer-service facility next to the exit and
we will be happy to offer a full refund.
I’m of the generation whose first
experience of a videogame dinosaur was the
T-Rex in JK Greye and Malcolm Evans’ 3D
Monster Maze (ZX81, 1982): a truly terrifying
apparition, even though constructed from
greyscale blocks of 8x8 pixels, that in many
ways set the tone for all survival horror since:
its DNA is perceptible still in Alien: Isolation,
for example. It would probably be excessive to
claim that the game, which has you running
around in a series of mazes while being
chased by an enormous, implacable monster,
was itself a bleak existentialist allegory of
human existence, so I’m going to go right
ahead and do it.
In 3D Monster Maze you can’t fight back,
only run away, so it was a relief to traumatised
players who years later were able to enact the
catharsis afforded by Turok: Dinosaur Hunter
(N64, 1997), in which one can murder
countless dinosaurs, including a firebreathing T-Rex, with arrows and a shotgun.
This kind of liberal carnage against outsized
24
Shoot first, ask questions later
When humans are gone,
perhaps the species that takes
over will design a game series
called Anthropocene Park
beasts went on to inform the Monster Hunter
series, while a philosophical-ecological
objection to it was supplied by the seminal
Shadow Of The Colossus, whose mournful
giants did not, after all, deserve to die.
These days I share a house with a small
person who is obsessed by dinosaurs, and so
the most satisfying part of Jurassic World
Evolution 2 is its attention to educational
detail, with animations inspired by research
into analogous modern animals: so, for
example, the ankylosaurus moves somewhat
like the similarly armoured armadillo. The
range of species lovingly modelled is
aesthetically and technically splendid, with
only the inclusion of the made-up dinosaur
Indominus Rex from the movie franchise
slightly spoiling the illusion.
The problem, at least for the most
passionate theropod-fanciers, is that the
game’s perceptual structure works against the
majesty of its non-human inhabitants.
Because it’s a management sim, you are given
a free-roaming God’s-eye view that can go
anywhere, but will spend most of your time
with the camera rather high up and far away
from the dinosaurs, which are thereby reduced
to toylike size. This is because, of course, you
spend most of your time placing buildings
and fences, or giving orders to Ranger teams,
and so forth, so it’s necessary for the game to
work as intended. But I couldn’t help wishing
for something like a pure exploration mode,
where you could go on a firstperson safari,
weaponless and if need be invisible, among
the dinosaurs, and so pay full attention to all
the extraordinary work that the designers
have accomplished.
Technology has come far enough, after all,
that a game such as JWE2 could function as
something like a virtual zoo, to encourage us
to contemplate the fragility of ecosystems and
the splendour of nature – something the
game’s designers work hard to make a
distracted-sounding Jeff Goldblum say in the
voiceover, but that one doesn’t really
experience while playing the game as
structured. To properly instil awe at the scale
of these masterpieces of videogame character
design, we’d need to be less omniscient, and
more epistemically humble. Walking with
dinosaurs, not lording it over them.
When humans are gone, perhaps the
species that takes over planetary dominance
will design a game series called Anthropocene
Park, where they can marvel at the strange
physiology and behaviour of people. Wouldn’t
we at least want them to pay us the respect of
observing our simulations up close?
Steven Poole’s Trigger Happy 2.o is now available from
Amazon. Visit him online at www.stevenpoole.net
DISPATCHES
PERSPECTIVE
SAM BARLOW
Unreliable Narrator
V
Exploring stories in games and the art of telling tales
em.emusnok noitartsullI
ideogame awards season is here – the
time of year when I hunker down and
play through the year’s big games in a
marathon crush for various jury duties. For a
few weeks I live like a game reviewer,
overwhelmed by how damn long games are.
Flashback to the year when a fellow juror told
me: “You really need to play at least 70 hours
of this game to understand why its narrative
is so special!” Normally this makes me
grumpy towards bloated triple-A blockbusters
and my heart soars when I hit a short and
unique game. However, this year the triple-A
blockbusters are pandemically thin on the
ground and so I am left to get grumpy at the
short and unique games. This is not the kind
of behaviour I really want to boast about in
public. But for now let me (half-heartedly)
grumble about indie storytelling as I digest
my thoughts on the recent Unpacking.
Unpacking is a pronounced example of the
trend born of both indie necessity and
ingenuity: it tells a story entirely devoid of
humans, those creatures who are annoyingly
expensive to model, animate and program.
This is an indie thing, but it started with the
big games. Once upon a time, when games
were primarily about shooting or whacking,
we lauded them for telling stories with their
environmental dressing. As we pushed to
elevate games even more, we talked less about
the shooting and whacking (still the core
experience) and more about the
environmental storytelling. At some point we
convinced ourselves that this was a special
and magical way of telling stories – unique to
games! (Mise-en-scène is French, so clearly
something entirely different.) As much as I
love ellipses in storytelling, I posit that telling
a story with only the objects or atmosphere
that surround it often feels less effective
than, well, telling a story directly. So I was
primed to raise my eyebrow when I saw
Unpacking praised for telling a story “in a way
only a videogame can”. And, yes, there is a lot
here that is environmental storytelling – at
least once you’ve unpacked it all.
26
Unpacking is a Seinfeld
routine that opens with,
“Moving house, huh.
What’s the deal with that?”
Our protagonist’s career is mapped out
through the tools of their trade on their desk,
the certificates and framed prints on the wall.
There are now two toothbrushes on the sink,
announcing the arrival of a live-in partner. So
far, so mise-en-scène. And, yes, I do find this
somewhat unsatisfying. It’s like if Citizen
Kane was just about a sled called Rosebud and
we never saw Orson Welles and his Mercury
Theatre chums. I love to infer a Major Life
Event, but would also love to see a
protagonist react to it in a way that is
uniquely their own. In the absence of a main
character, I find these games often become a
projection of their player. Which is not
entirely surprising when we consider the type
of story which Unpacking taps into.
Unpacking is all about Observational
Storytelling, where the storyteller points at
something and asks, “Have you ever
noticed…?” It works best when the thing you
point at is so everyday and common that we
all recognise it, but are not used to looking at
so closely – opening up unexpected comedy
or insight. Unpacking is a Seinfeld routine
that opens with, “Moving house, huh. What’s
the deal with that?” The gameplay asks us to
go through the motions of unpacking –
something universal – and through the
scrutiny of a game mechanic have us notice
things in a way we wouldn’t necessarily. So:
unpacking into a partner’s existing apartment
is a very different spatial puzzle to unpacking
into an empty apartment as a single person.
Don’t we all have that one weird thing we
carry around with us from place to place?
What’s the deal with the special mug? A lot
of this is the stuff of a Seinfeld routine, but
there’s a novelty to the game because we
exercise muscle memory and recall buried
memories associated with the processes that
we’re calling upon: I’m doing the thing and
thinking about the thing at the same time.
Synthesising experience and reflection is
one of the higher goals of art, in my opinion
– it’s something that eludes us in everyday
life. So let’s applaud Unpacking for this – and
wonder at what other pieces of observation
would benefit from an interactive take. That
said, I come back to the people themselves
and remember the pitch for Seinfeld, which
famously posited that it was “a show about
nothing”. But it wasn’t really a show about
nothing. It took the universal standup
routines and dramatised them through the
vessels of its minutiae – an oddball cast of
specific and memorable characters. Imagine
an Unpacking whose mascot is an Elaine or a
George, rather than a stuffed pig toy.
Sam Barlow is the founder of NYC-based Drowning A Mermaid
Productions. He can be found on Twitter at @mrsambarlow
The essential guide to
a year in videogames
On sale now
magazinesdirect.com
#367
THE GAMES IN OUR SIGHTS THIS MONTH
30 Cuphead: The
40 Inua – A Story
Delicious Last Course
In Ice And Time
44 Slitterhead
34 We Are OFK
42 Call Me Cera
44 Nightingale
36 The Past Within
44 Sonic Frontiers
44 Alan Wake 2
38 Mini Maker:
Make A Thing
44 Thirsty Suitors
PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One
PC, PS4, PS5
Android, iOS, PC, Switch
PC
PC
PC
PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series
TBA
PC
PC, PS5, Xbox Series
TBA
Explore the iPad
edition of Edge for
extra Hype content
28
Dreams and schemes
As the late, great Terry Pratchett once wrote, “Only presumptuous fools plan.
The wise man steers.” Videogames rarely match a creator’s original vision
entirely: radical shifts of approach during development are not uncommon,
often causing unforeseen delays. Someone may come up with a brilliant
idea that changes everything, or a combination of circumstances may force
a developer to adapt.
In the case of Ruben Farrus, creative lead on Mini Maker: Make A Thing,
the first seed of an idea suddenly sprouted as he was leaving for GDC
to pitch an entirely different game – one that has since been canned. By
the time he returned from the event, his team had assembled a prototype:
“It was really, really bare bones,” he tells us. “But already, I saw a spark.”
The Past Within, the 16th entry in the Rusty Lake series, sparked to life as
a singleplayer game. But something about its room-within-a-room conceit
made it an awkward fit for solo play, so the studio started again from
scratch, transforming it into a co-operative twoplayer game. The result is one
of the series’ most distinctive adventures to date. Inua – A Story In Ice And
Time, meanwhile, took inspiration from Sir John Franklin’s
MOST
lost expedition to find the Northwest Passage, before its
WANTED
Moss: Book II PSVR
developer chose to explore this remote part of the world
The biggest problem with the original
Moss was that it finished just as it seemed
across three different time periods.
to be hitting its stride. The promise of
more of the same is welcome, then, as
Sometimes, of course, it’s simply a matter of a game’s
Quill – one of the most adorable
videogame heroes of recent years –
scope
growing beyond the original plan. That’s certainly
finds herself hunted by a winged tyrant.
the case for Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course, an
Gran Turismo 7 PS4, PS5
With Forza Horizon 5 winning plaudits
expansion that’s more than you’d expect from a piece of
and awards aplenty, Sony’s flagship
racer has its work cut out as it finally
nears the starting grid. Not long to go
DLC. This new Inkwell Isle is roughly the size of the first
now: here’s hoping Kazunori Yamauchi
and Polyphony Digital make it as exciting
two islands in the original, offering nearly a dozen new
a finish as Hamilton versus Verstappen.
bosses, with secrets, weapons and charms besides –
Triangle Strategy Switch
Fresh from the outstanding Dungeon
and, of course, a new playable protagonist. As Studio
Encounters, we turn our attentions to
another Ronseal-titled Square Enix
MDHR steers this long-gestating add-on towards its June
RPG. With its deeply tactical positionbased battles and HD-2D style, it looks
2022 release, the decision to wait until now to talk about
like another winner. Let’s hope this one
benefits from a marketing budget of
it feels like a wise move indeed.
more than 73p and a half-eaten Freddo.
It’s not all running and
gunning. The flying levels
return, too. In this case,
you’re tackling a cowgirl
who is quite literally a cow
H Y
P E
CUPHEAD:
THE DELICIOUS
LAST COURSE
This mouthwatering dessert
looks worth the long wait
Developer/publisher
Format
Origin
Release
30
Studio MDHR Entertainment
PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One
Canada
June 30
31
B
y the time Cuphead: The Delicious Last
Course is released, it will be nigh-on four
years since it was announced. That is, by
any measure, a long development time for a
piece of DLC. But this is no ordinary add-on.
And Studio MDHR is no ordinary developer.
As COO Maja Moldenhauer puts it, “We’re
constantly challenging ourselves to sweat the
small details that not everyone might notice,
but which will surprise and delight the people
who do. Something we’re really proud of with
The Delicious Last Course is the richness and
detail we’ve put into every aspect – from
design to animation to painting to music, and
everything in between.”
The success of the run-and-gun original,
Maja says, was humbling, inviting the
development team to “ask ourselves at every
turn what the best thing for the [DLC]’s
quality was, and to follow that as our true
north, so to speak.” What that means is an
expansion that’s more, well, expansive. As
extra dishes go, The Delicious Last Course
is a belly-filling share-size pudding: another
Inkwell Isle to add to the existing archipelago,
with 11 new bosses, hidden secrets, extra
weapons and charms, a new soundtrack
performed by a 140-strong orchestra, and
over 25,000 frames of hand-crafted
animation. Hence: four years.
When you see the new bosses, it’s easy
to understand what took so long. A screenfilling giant casually picks up a grizzly bear
and drags it toward you. Tiny gnomes poke up
from the ground, their hats acting as spike
traps, while others try to hit you with stone
hammers, and flocks of geese – some with
diminutive riders – flap across the stage. And
that’s just one level. A fight against a spider
boss takes place across three layers; while
you’re contending with a bouncing caterpillar
it lobs at you, there are ants pumping smoke
rings towards you. These can be parried into
the boss, however, and the potential threat
inadvertently becomes an ally.
Parrying is simpler with The Delicious Last
Course’s most significant addition: a new
playable character. Ms Chalice appeared in the
original, albeit as something of an archetypal
damsel. Here, she’s the star, equipped with a
32
double-jump for increased mobility and the
ability to dash-parry, batting back pink
projectiles by rushing into them. The
Moldenhauers won’t be drawn on what
effect that might have on the difficulty of
these new encounters, but we’re reminded
of our question to Hidetaka Miyazaki
As extra dishes go, The
Delicious Last Course is a
belly-filling share-size pudding
regarding whether Sekiro’s revival mechanic
was about making the game easier or giving
him licence to make it even harder. It’s
possible the Moldenhauers want to open
Cuphead up to an even wider audience than
the already successful original. But the smart
money is on the latter.
The motivation behind making more
Cuphead, Chad Moldenhauer tells us, is
simple: they fell in love with the world they’d
TOP You can bring Ms Chalice
back into the main game,
too. Perhaps her new
abilities will improve
your best clear times?
ABOVE That double-jump
comes in particularly handy
to dodge some of the more
wide-reaching attacks
LEFT It may look busy, but
Studio MDHR has a knack
of filling the screen with
detail without losing clarity.
BELOW The ability to dashparry should, in theory, make
The Phantom Express a
good deal easier to beat
Second time’s
the charm
This wizard transforms, first
into a snow beast and then a
giant fridge – cheered on by
a rapt crowd that, despite
appearances, provides the
opposite of a frosty reception
created and wanted to spend more time with
it, and had a few ideas left on the cuttingroom floor when the original shipped. “As an
independent team working on our first title,
we absolutely got to the finish line with
things we couldn’t include for time and
budgetary reasons – homages to parts of
classic cartoons we wish we could have made,
themes we wanted to explore, and designs we
couldn’t find a home for in the original title.
This affection for what we had built and
nagging desire to see these ideas through was
“We’re very lucky to
be able to choose
small ‘wow’ moments
to highlight while
holding back things
we know are even
more bombastic,”
Maja Moldenhauer
says about the studio’s
approach to teasing
new additions – which
explains why Studio
MDHR is largely
keeping the new
weapons and charms
under wraps. Jared,
though, says sharpeyed viewers will spot
a few in the latest
trailer and suggests
they’ll open up new
strategies. “They were
a really fun design
challenge, as we
wanted to ensure we
were thinking outside
the box and surprising
sort of the perfect storm that led us to The
players who knew the
Delicious Last Course.”
original game’s
The Moldenhauers say they consider this weapons and charms
the end of the story, and it’s clear they’re keen inside out, while not
pushing them in the
to go out with a bang. As such, it’s natural
direction of being
they don’t want to give too much away, so
gimmicky,” he teases.
players can enjoy the thrill of discovery. “It’s
something we grapple with all the time,” Maja
says. “Our guiding principle has been that we
want to show people just enough to get them
excited about all the things they haven’t seen
yet, if that makes sense.” Job done, we’d say.
33
Developer/publisher
Team OFK
Format PC
Origin US
Release 2022
A
WE ARE OFK
Is this interactive series required viewing?
fter chatting with writer/director
Teddy Dief a year ago, we weren’t
sure just how interactive this episodic
‘interactive EP’ would be. We Are OFK doesn’t
leave us in doubt for long, its menu making its
intentions crystal clear. “Who’s watching?”
you’re asked, as you select from a range of
emojis on a Netflix-like profile screen, while
moving your mouse over an episode title
shows how long it is, along with a progress bar.
Depending on your perspective, you might see
that as a statement of intent or fair warning;
either way, as the plot stylishly unfolds, we
start wondering if that O should be an A.
Still, the vibes, as the kids say, are
immaculate. Bathed in pastel hues, all
Watching people doing
nothing of great significance
proves strangely appealing
shimmering surfaces and sharp edges, LA has
rarely looked (or sounded) quite so appealing.
Not that wannabe musician Itsumi Saito
seems especially enamoured with it; having
just moved there after a messy break-up with
her girlfriend, she’s struggling to find time to
pursue her passion. It doesn’t help that,
seemingly every time she tries to pull herself
out of her slump, counting down before
dragging herself out of bed and over to her
keyboard, her phone screen lights up. Given
practice appears to be a long way from making
perfect, the distraction is hard to resist.
We Are OFK passes the phone test, then,
largely by dint of having one buzz onscreen
every so often, prompting you to involve
yourself more directly in the story. The text
conversations, covering everything from
pedantic work colleagues to the dangers of
mixing matcha with energy drinks, via Point
Break and Gaga’s Edge Of Glory, avoid the
usual pitfalls of older developers trying to
approximate how much younger people speak
34
to one another. It’s hard to determine if the
replies you choose at certain points have any
real impact on the story, but you can steer the
flow of conversation in a different direction.
As a getting-the-band-together story, this
is an ensemble piece, of course – so it’s not
long before you’re on the other side of the
conversation. Luca (voiced by Dief) is a
frustrated copywriter and shy songwriter,
seemingly reluctant to share his work with the
world. When visual artist (and soon-to-be
bandmate) Carter enters the fray, it can feel as
though too many characters are speaking in
the same voice – at least when they’re texting
one another. Though you could argue that’s
entirely in keeping with the shared language
we develop with those close to us.
Besides, it’s not long before statuesque
producer – and formerly Luca’s teaching
assistant – Jey arrives to shake things up. Not
least for Itsu, who seems awestruck (if not
smitten) by this confident older woman,
particularly when she dismisses a creep in
brutal fashion at a party. That encounter is
one of a handful of occasions you get to make
a choice away from your phone; again, you
shouldn’t expect these to significantly affect
the plot, but they’re welcome opportunities to
imagine yourself in these characters’ shoes.
Not that their specific situation is
especially identifiable. Even so, most of us
can surely relate to feelings of urban ennui,
heartbreak and existential angst; chats about
favourite films, songs and snacks; sad texts
and tipsy compliments (talking of which, hats
off to Itsu’s voice actor Ally Maki, who makes
for one of the most convincing drunks we’ve
heard in a videogame). While not a great deal
actually happens in this opening episode, the
script and performances are strong enough
that watching people doing nothing of any
great significance proves strangely appealing.
We hope the second chapter of this LA story
picks up the pace a little now the band has
been introduced. But we’re already looking
forward to binge-watching the rest.
Press play
Alas, the build we
receive for the
opening episode
doesn’t feature the
music video for the
already-released single
Follow/Unfollow, in
which Itsu finds herself
looking around LA for
her phone. These
animated sequences
are more reactive to
your input, as we see
during a short glimpse
of a couple of later
videos. In one, moving
your mouse pointer
creates a trail of
destruction across a
vast dining table, then
shatters sculptures as
Jey strides through a
museum exhibit. An
upbeat synth-pop
track, meanwhile,
sees Carter imagine
themselves on an
idyllic beach, as you
scatter palm trees
around them and
sweep away clouds.
A subsequent scene,
in which they surf
through a violethued dreamscape,
could easily be an
offcut from Sayonara
Wild Hearts.
ABOVE These characters
might be struggling in their
own ways, but money
doesn’t appear to be a
problem if their apartment
is anything to go by.
TOP RIGHT As Luca, Dief
proves themselves to be a
capable voice actor, too.
RIGHT All the bandmates
appear in the opening
episode, but its main focus is
on Itsumi and the emotional
fallout of her relationship
heartbreak as she attempts
to adapt to her new life
in the City of Angels
ABOVE Some replies in
text conversations are
automated, but you get to
choose replies often enough
to feel involved. The
interface and sound effects
are clean and appealing.
MAIN Lazing around in the
LA sunshine? It’s a hard life
for the OFK gang. Although
you may find it difficult to
empathise with their
situation, so far they’re
engaging company
35
Developer/
publisher Rusty Lake
Format Android, iOS,
PC, Switch
Origin Netherlands
Release Q2 2022
THE PAST WITHIN
Bring a friend for Rusty Lake’s collaborative escape room puzzler
T
he Rusty Lake series has always had
something of the uncanny about it. These
may be singleplayer games, but their eerie
ambience provokes a sensation of being
watched: when you play them, you feel you’re
never entirely alone. This time, that extra
presence is very much corporeal: The Past
Within is a puzzler made for two, the first of
the series designed solely for cooperative play.
In one sense, it’s not actually all that new:
transmedia project Cube Escape: Paradox was
part game, part live-action short film, two
worlds colliding in one game. This feels like a
natural extension of that idea, as one player
investigates a large cube with various buttons,
switches, symbols and dials to prod at on each
face. Meanwhile, the other player explores a
more traditional Rusty Lake hand-drawn 2D
world, one held within the cube itself. With the
cube positioned within a world of its own, too,
you wonder how deep the rabbithole goes.
It’s a game about communication,
essentially, with each player given an incomplete
picture: not altogether dissimilar to Keep Talking
And Nobody Explodes, except both players have a
begins, as he explains the macabre plot. “You
will think, ‘OK, what is this?’ but you will
understand it quickly.” Not that anything is
ever quite that simple in Rusty Lake.
As co-founder Maarten Looise tells us, it
made sense that a series that began life as Cube
Escape should at some stage embrace a third
dimension. But The Past Within was not
conceived as a twoplayer game. “It started out
as a smaller project,” Ras adds. “We showcased a
demo at PAX Boston 2020 before COVID, and
that was the singleplayer demo.” After a number
of test sessions, they sensed something wasn’t
right – a common feeling among players, but
not in this way. Something wasn’t gelling with
these two worlds on one screen. The decision
was made to separate them, and Looise and Ras
started again from scratch. Hence the two-year
development cycle – an unusually long time
for a Rusty Lake game to come to fruition.
Lore and
order
As the Rusty Lake
universe grows, game
by game, it must
surely become harder
to keep track of
where everything fits.
Doesn’t resurrecting a
character introduce
extra headaches, not
least when you’re
with two time
The game is pretty much content complete dealing
“We have
at this stage, with polish and bug fixes next on periods?
timelines on paper
the agenda. But perhaps the biggest task at
and in our heads,
hand is convincing a passionate playerbase that where [everyone] is
at certain moments,”
this new way to play a Rusty Lake game is
Looise says. “And
worth their while. “We have a singleplayer– the past and
minded community so we have to make them time
the future – is always
comfortable playing with another person,” Ras a bit of a theme of
says. “A lot of people are saying, ‘I’m only
Rusty Lake, and very
interesting for game
playing this by myself. I don’t have friends
But he
who like Rusty Lake,’ so that is something we mechanics.”
that he and
screen and no instruction manuals are required. have to do in the coming months, to prove how admits
Ras are also reliant on
You might have a printed maze to direct the
fun it is to actually play this together.”
their community on
other player through, or a chessboard around
Part of that plan involves bringing the series occasion. “There’s this
which you can guide your partner. In a further to consoles for the first time: The Past Within online fan-made wiki,
which is really useful
intriguing twist, one room is in the past, and
will be playable on Switch as well as mobile
for us,” he adds,
the other in the future: the former casts you
platforms and PC, though the studio is
“it’s better
as Rose Vanderboom (who series fans will
“hopeful” that it will launch at the same time admitting
and more extensive”
remember from Rusty Lake: Roots). The studio as the other versions rather than outright
than the studio’s own.
is keeping tight-lipped as to the identity of the guaranteeing it. Either way, crossplay won’t be “More than 200
other character for the time being. Regardless, a problem, since the two screens don’t link up. pages!” Ras enthuses.
“It’s almost like a Christopher
Nolan kind of story. You will
think, ‘OK, what is this?’”
the two must work together to fulfil a plan
concocted by Rose’s father, Albert. There’s just
one small problem with that: Albert is dead.
“It’s almost like a Christopher Nolan kind
of story,” Rusty Lake co-founder Robin Ras
36
Rather, it’s the words and actions of you and
your playing partner that will bridge that gap,
as you connect past and future – and maybe,
after a fashion, help to bring a Rusty Lake
favourite back to life in the process.
LEFT “With every game we
make, it gets harder to
puzzle all the characters
and storyline elements
together so they still fit
the story so far, and also
make for an interesting
new story,” Looise admits.
BELOW Ras teases that the
effects of your meddling
may well bleed into the
environment surrounding the
cube. Then again, knowing
Rusty Lake, that could easily
be another red herring
ABOVE The matching chess
and draughts boards
demonstrate one of the
simpler examples of how
the two worlds connect.
RIGHT There’s something
about the spartan
presentation of the 2D
spaces that makes them all
the more creepy to inhabit
37
Developer/
publisher Casa Rara
Format PC
Origin Canada
Release Q1/2 2022
MINI MAKER:
MAKE A THING
D
“I think the clients play into
the different ways that
people have embodied those
perfectionist issues – they’re
all battling with their own
reasons as to why they build
or don’t build,” Lazarus says.
“It was important to show
people that may be scared
of creating that they won’t
be alone – they’ll have
somebody there, cheering
them on,” Farrus adds
Letting creativity flourish between expectations and reality
uring the early stages of the pandemic,
many of us found ourselves with time
on our hands, and set about finding
ways to fill it, often in the form of new
hobbies. Syd Lazarus, comms manager of
Montreal-based indie studio Casa Rara, says
a lot of their friends started playing games
or finding something tactile with which to
occupy themselves. “I wonder what it is about
those times when you’re left to your own
devices, how you start just creating,” they say.
“Or maybe it’s about no longer fearing that
judgement of what the outside world thinks.”
For Mini Maker: Make A Thing creative
lead Ruben Farrus, this “wonky workshop
simulator” was as much about highlighting
the joy of creativity as exorcising his own
impostor syndrome. He had become drawn
to YouTube videos of people building things.
“I was into people that were modding Hot
Wheels and the like,” he explains, “and I
wanted to capture that feeling because it
seemed like a lot of fun.”
He tried a variety of creative tools
himself, inspired by immaculate Minecraft
recreations of Notre-Dame de Paris and
dazzled by the level-building talents of Super
Mario Maker 2 users. “The problem is, I
thought I was going to make something great
on my first attempt; that it was going to
Comms manager Syd
Lazarus and creative
lead Ruben Farrus
38
As with any creative project,
you’ll have to deal with
distractions, which are
represented by a variety of
cartoonish obstructions.
“People have mentioned
that they feel like it’s as if
Spore Creature Creator and
WarioWare had a baby,”
Farrus says. If that doesn’t
sell you on Mini Maker,
we’re not sure what will
from creating. Our goal is to make you feel
like a kid again. Kids build without
judgement – they’re just excited to show it
to their parents. How do we recapture that
feeling in a videogame format?”
That aim is partly reflected in the game’s
accessible but playful interface, which feels
less like a professional creative tool, and
more like rummaging around in drawers and
cupboards for bits and bobs. All the parts
have physical properties, and each belongs to
a ‘piece family’. “There’s like eight or nine of
these, such as Heads, Limbs, Food and Wild,
and some are phrased in an ambiguous way to
include the sort of objects that you would
find in your junk drawer,” Farrus explains. For
Which isn’t to say that your efforts won’t each challenge you need to use parts from
three categories: building a dinosaur with
be judged in some fashion – after all, the
kitchenware, human limbs and scienceonly thing worse than bad feedback is no
fiction-themed accessories, for example. And
feedback at all. The clients who hire you to
create the various ‘things’ will certainly have yes, you can paint them – and you won’t be
punished for straying outside the lines.
something to say, even if their harsher
Setting a specific objective but giving
assessments are unlikely to be as pitiless as
your own. “We want the motivation to come you free rein in how you complete it feels
like a smart way to avoid blank-canvas
from within – we need intrinsic, not
syndrome, while a generous time limit adds
extrinsic motivation – but we know that
just a hint of pressure – Farrus says it helps
certain things like a scoring system works,
encourage a sense of flow, but it’s clearly
right?” Farrus says. “So these characters
there to discourage perfectionist tendencies.
will definitely have an opinion that’ll be
We’re amused, then, when we ask how
important in the process of getting closure
development is going and Farrus says “there’s
a lot of polish to do” in the coming months.
“We like to refer to our team as antiperfectionist,” Lazarus grins.
“Maybe making this is about fighting the
perfectionist in ourselves and processing
those voices,” Farrus says. “Also welcoming
people that are struggling with that. We want
to show that everyone can have fun making
things, and this will help you get there.”
look as good as what these guys were doing
on YouTube. And every time, no matter what,
I would fail miserably.”
Mini Maker: Make A Thing, then, has
been made with a view to freeing you from
the judgement we tend to impose upon
ourselves. Here, just about everything you
make will be imperfect – but that, as the
game makes clear, is OK.
“Our goal is to make you
feel like a kid again. Kids
build without judgement”
The interface was designed
with immediacy in mind.
Farrus: “I just thought of all
the times that I tried to learn
Photoshop or Premiere or
Blender, where you have all
those buttons and they
[each] have an icon that you
don’t know what it means”
Deck builder
The sheer range of
parts that you can
attach to your creation,
which grows as you
progress, naturally
makes this a highly
replayable game. But
to further mix up
challenges, you can
deploy different types
of cards. There are
perks that give you
more time or remove
the ticking clock
entirely. Some let you
include an extra piece
family for an individual
task, while ‘mood cards’
might, for example, let
you “build on a beach
at sunset”, Farrus says –
“or with a different
soundtrack”, Lazarus
interjects. There are
gold cards that twist
the rules: piece
roulette demands you
include five specific
parts, while there’s a
speedrun option, too.
It’s about providing
a bit more structure
for those who thrive
when limitations are
imposed, Farrus says.
39
Developer
The Pixel Hunt, IKO
Publisher Arte France
Format PC
Origin France
Release 2022
S
INUA: A STORY
IN ICE AND TIME
Reckless interlopers disturb the frozen North
ir John Franklin’s lost expedition has fired
the imaginations of writers and the public
for more than 170 years. The explorer left
England in 1845 on a quest to find the fabled
Northwest Passage, but neither he nor the 130
or so crew members on his two ships returned.
The Victorians were gripped by newspaper
reports of search parties sent to look for the
men. Tantalising clues slowly emerged. Three
makeshift graves were found on Beechey Island
in the Nunavut territory of Canada. In 1859, a
cairn was discovered with a note saying that the
ships had been locked in ice for two years, and
the remaining crew members were attempting
to walk inland. Human remains found in the
1980s showed possible signs of cannibalism.
Imagining what happened on the frozen
wastes 170 years ago is a key part of Inua: A
Story In Ice And Time, a co-production between
Parisian studios The Pixel Hunt and IKO. But
this isn’t a game about helping some stricken
sailor to survive the elements. “We didn’t want
to have the player play yet another classical
point-and-click adventure, when you have an
avatar on screen that you have to guide,” The
Pixel Hunt founder Florent Maurin tells us.
“We wanted the player to not fully understand
who they were until pretty late in the game.”
Instead, the player takes on the role of
something akin to the spirit of the land, an
invisible overseer who can peer into people’s
thoughts. “You’re the glimmer of inspiration
that will push people into acting a certain way,”
Maurin says. Clicking on what the game calls
‘tokens’ – an artefact or a letter, perhaps –
prompts ideas to form in different characters’
minds, nudging them along a narrative path.
The story’s authors, Natalie Frassoni and
Frédéric Bouvier, took the Franklin expedition
as their original inspiration, but the scope of
Inua stretches far beyond the fates of those
Victorian sailors, Maurin says. “They thought,
‘What if this was only one occurrence of several
bizarre things that could happen in this very
remote part of the world when you venture into
it without the respect the place wants from
40
you?’” Consequently, the game features three
separate time periods. In addition to Franklin’s
1800s expedition, Inua follows a journalist
investigating the remains of the ships in the
present day, as well as a filmmaker exploring
the region in the 1950s while attached to a
Canadian army unit investigating reports of
what could be a meteorite or a Russian missile.
It reminds us of Eternal Darkness: individual
tales played out against the backdrop of
something much larger. “The idea is to say that
time doesn’t really matter when you’re dealing
with stories that are 100,000 years old,” Maurin
says. But rather than cosmic horror, Inua
presents a kind of cosmic benevolence,
integrating elements of Inuit spirituality. “We
Perspective
correction
Maurin says the
Franklin expedition
was an important
focus at the start of
production, but this
changed. “After
spending a lot of time
chatting with Inuits
and exchanging about
what the game was
going to be, we
realised they didn’t
find the Franklin
needed those elements to be truthful and
expedition as
respectful to the Inuit cosmogony, because
interesting as we did,
the story happens on Inuit land,” Igal Kohen, because that’s a very
way to
founder of IKO, says. Accordingly, the studios colonialist
this part of
brought in Inuit co-authors and advisors right consider
the world – only being
from the start of the production process.
interested in northern
Maurin emphasises that the focus is on
Canada because of the
outsiders disturbing an unfamiliar land. “The Franklin expedition.
You overlook the
story really is about three people that come
that was
from countries that are not the Great North,” he civilisation
for centuries
says. “And those people are coming to this land here
before European
without knowing anything about the Inuits or people ventured into
Inuit cosmogony – and they’ll make mistakes, those territories. So
and they’ll misunderstand things that happen the Franklin expedition
some of its weight
there, and they’ll be misled by their own ethos.” lost
in our story, in favour
The discovery of the wrecks of Franklin’s
of other elements
ships over the past decade has put the lost
that were more
expedition back in the spotlight, while AMC’s Inuit sourced.”
“Time doesn’t matter when
you’re dealing with stories
that are 100,000 years old”
The Terror has raised the Victorian explorers
even higher in the public consciousness. But
the land and the people in it were there long
before Franklin’s interlopers arrived. It’s
fitting that they should be the stars.
TOP The art style is intentionally
dreamy and ephemeral in order to
fit with the themes of the game.
Art director Delphine Fourneau
met with Inuit sculptor Billy
Gauthier to gain inspiration.
ABOVE Rather than controlling a
character, you play an invisible
overseer who can peer into people’s
thoughts and nudge their choices
TOP Inua partly focuses
on the real-life Franklin
expedition of the 1800s.
“We present the game as
a fiction, but one inspired
by reality,” Maurin says.
ABOVE Kohen says that
authors Natalie Frassoni
and Frédéric Bouvier came
up with the story for Inua
back in the late 1990s.
LEFT The opening portion
sees you following journalist
Taïna as she covers the
discovery of Franklin’s lost
ships. Later you switch back
and forth between three
separate time periods
41
Developer
Toadhouse Games
Publisher
Team Toadhouse
Format PC
Origin US
Release 2022
CALL ME CERA
A visual novel about making friends and navigating boundaries
N
ot every visual novel is a dating sim.
While some, such as Hatoful Boyfriend
and Doki Doki Literature Club, subvert
this expectation, it’s hard for the uninitiated
not to assume the genre is predominantly
romance-based – or something more explicit.
It’s a stigma that Toadhouse Games founder,
lead programmer and writer Alanna Linayre
often finds herself having to explain: “I have
a visual novel. It’s not sexual, it’s about
friendship. Not that type of friendship!” But
games have a tendency to reduce the bonds
of friendship or romance to quid-pro-quo
interactions, where giving sufficient
attention or saying the right thing is enough to
become best friends, or more. Linayre is also
disappointed in the genre’s tendency to focus
on teens, and that there aren’t games about
adult friendship – or, more specifically, the
common struggle to make friends as an adult.
That’s the basis of Call Me Cera, in which
the titular protagonist moves to the fictional
US north-east coastal town of Fernweh (a
German word meaning the opposite of
homesickness: the ache to explore new farflung places) to start a new life and meet
new people. But this is far from a friendship
simulator. Linayre stresses you can’t befriend
everyone – people can be friendly, they can be
co-workers, but they will not necessarily be
interested in being friends. “If you try to push
[that] too much with some characters, they’ll
get colder and push you away,” she says.
Take Cera’s boss Imani, who runs the café
where she works. “You can only be so friendly
with your boss,” Linayre explains. “If you try to
be best friends, the game will give you social
cues, so she’s going to politely remind you, ‘I
have two kids, a husband and a life outside of
my work. And no, I’m not interested in going
to the movies with you. We work together and
I like it that way.’” At this, we suggest it’s less
about making friends and more about setting
boundaries, to which Linayre instantly beams:
“Yes, it’s a game about boundaries!”
As someone who is suffering from an
anxiety disorder and attends therapy sessions,
42
Cera has her own issues in this regard.
Addressing this, her therapist teaches a
technique which forms the game’s main social
mechanism: Spheres Of Influence, something
Linayre herself learned from years of realworld therapy. Reminiscent of Persona’s Social
Links, it essentially assigns a number to every
NPC – “Your fours are strangers, your threes
are like your co-workers, your twos are your
friends, and your ones your best friends and
your found family,” Linayre elaborates – which
informs how Cera should treat and react to
each person. Put it this way: she shouldn’t
spill the most intimate details of her life to a
three or a four. “You have to be mindful of
how you feel towards that person and how
that person feels towards you,” Linayre
continues. “So if they see you as a three and
you’re desperately trying to make them a one,
that disconnect is going to make for some
awkward situations.”
It’s a game that bears the ring of
autobiographical truth – indeed, Call Me Cera
is partly based on Linayre’s own experiences
with bipolar disorder and a time when she
“If you try to be best friends
with your boss, the game
will give you social cues”
moved to Austin, Texas. Ultimately,
she decided that giving Cera a heavily
misunderstood mental-health diagnosis made
the game too dry, while opting to populate the
town with a more diverse cast, with a growing
Southeast Asian demographic that reflects her
time growing up in New York. The details
may be specific but the theme is universal;
Linayre feels that anxiety is something anyone
can relate to, whether or not they’ve been
clinically diagnosed. Even removing mental
health from the equation, it’s fair to say that in
the social media age, where lines have become
increasingly blurred, we can all get better at
establishing and respecting boundaries.
Mini meets
Toadhouse has already
released two vignettes
set a year before the
main game, with two
more planned. Each
focuses on NPCs you’ll
meet in Fernweh,
such as Sophia, a
transfeminine arcade
owner learning about
what it means to be a
confident woman.
They originated from
character exercises
Linayre felt were too
good to waste, but
there were other
reasons for releasing
them. “I wanted to
show people that
they could trust me to
address heavy subjects
like self-harm and
anxiety in a very
respectful but
authentic manner,”
she explains. These
hour-long games
were also quicker to
release, helping to
fund the full game –
since Linayre knew a
visual novel focused
on LGBT and mentalhealth issues would
be, in her words,
“a risky project”.
TOP Childhood friends Amira
and Jessica run a food court
together, the focus of one
of the game’s vignettes.
ABOVE You’re introduced
to the concept of the
Spheres Of Influence fairly
early on in the game.
FAR LEFT Fernweh may be
as diverse as its characters
are accepting, but it
doesn’t mean everyone
wants to be your friend.
LEFT It’s not uncommon
for Cera to spend time by
herself, processing her
thoughts and anxieties
43
ROUNDUP
NIGHTINGALE
SONIC FRONTIERS
Developer Inflexion Games Publisher Improbable
Format PC Origin Canada Release 2022 (Early Access)
Developer/publisher Sega (Sonic Team) Format PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series Origin Japan Release Q4 2022
‘Survival crafting game’ – not our favourite combination of
words. Still, the shared-world game from former Bioware boss
Aaryn Flynn’s new studio Inflexion also has towering monsters
to bring down, stylish Victorian-era garb for its characters, and
a certain lady with a lamp wielding a pistol in her free hand.
ALAN WAKE 2
Developer Remedy Publisher Epic Games
Format PC, PS5, Xbox Series Origin Finland Release 2023
The reveal trailer may have given little away, but those rolling green hills sure look pretty, as Sega’s long-standing mascot
goes open world. Ordinarily, this would be cause for concern: it’s fair to say Sonic hasn’t adapted to the third dimension to the
extent Mario has, his particular set of skills seemingly best suited to linear 2D obstacle courses. But elsewhere this issue we
examine how indie open-world games have started to focus on traversal, and with Square’s Forspoken and now this, it seems
bigger studios are following suit. The acid test will be how it feels when the Blue Blur is invariably forced to slow down.
THIRSTY SUITORS
Developer Outerloop Games Publisher Annapurna Interactive Format TBA Origin US Release TBA
Remedy says it’s “going dark” on this long-awaited sequel
until the summer. Indeed, it seems that’s true of the game
itself: if the studio is claiming it as its “first foray into the
survival horror genre”, it’s a fair bet to expect something
grislier and nastier than the now-12-year-old original.
SLITTERHEAD
Developer Bokeh Publisher TBA
Format TBA Origin Japan Release TBA
Outerloop’s narrative action-adventure is quite the departure from Falcon Age, and it looks
fantastic: a vibrant hybrid of Scott Pilgrim and Jet Set Radio Future with acrobatic cooking
interludes, in which protagonist Jala battles a succession of exes in turn-based combat while
dealing with the expectations of her disappointed parents. Add in a dumbbell-twirling auntie
and one of the funniest eye-rolls we’ve seen in a game, and we’re itching to find out more.
44
It’s more action-packed than we expected from Keiichiro
Toyama, but Bokeh’s debut delivers on the horror front, with
human mouths yawning open to reveal grotesque assemblies
of flesh and bone, which you’re encouraged to carve apart.
There’s comedy, too (well, the title reveal amused us, anyway).
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46
#367
VIDEOGAME CULTURE, DEVELOPMENT, PEOPLE AND TECHNOLOGY
124
92
88
48 Boss Encounter
66 The Edge Awards
88 The Making Of…
Oxenfree
92 Studio Profile:
Studio Fizbin
124 Time Extend:
Frame Gride
66
48
With the launch getting close, what’s your state
of mind right now?
It’s not a pretty state of mind, I will tell you that
[laughs]. This is a tough point in the development
of any game, not just Elden Ring. At this point, just
a couple of months from release, this is when I
really start to have regrets and doubts about
releasing the game into the wild, and seeing what
everybody thinks. I start thinking, ‘I could have
maybe done this better… I could have maybe
approached this in a different way…’
There’s a lot of these thoughts that build up
just on the cusp of a game’s release that are
involuntary and they plague your mind a little bit
as you’re finishing off work on the project. So it is
quite tough. It’s a tough time, and it doesn’t get
easier with experience. But particularly, looking at
Elden Ring as its own piece of work, I’m really
looking forward to people playing it and seeing
how they react. It’s a big moment in our
development history.
CREATION
What memories stand out from your first
conversations with George RR Martin?
Yes, I have some good memories of those initial
discussions. Not so much for the content but just
the general feelings I had speaking with George
Martin. He actually knew about the Dark Souls
games. He was aware of them and what they were
about, so that made me happy. That sort of gave
me a little bit of a boost. I knew immediately from
talking to him, it just became apparent his skill
and his passion for the fantasy genre, and for
games as well. There was a little bit of a generation
gap between us, so I felt a bit apprehensive about
going to these talks, but after a lot of these
conversations, it was just like speaking with an old
friend. And it just felt so fresh to have those
conversations with someone who was so
passionate about the same things, and to show
that pure joy and sense of curiosity for these
fantasy worlds. This was something that really
captured my interest throughout all of our talks,
and I was really thrilled to be working with him.
What were the environments for the initial
meetings that took place?
It was usually us going to America and to his
hometown or base of operations. I think it was
a hotel where we first sat down and spoke.
Game Elden Ring
Developer FromSoftware
Publisher Bandai Namco
Format PC, PS4, PS5,
Xbox One, Xbox Series
Origin Japan
Release February 25
51
“We started off giving George RR Martin
these very broad ideas for the mythos
that I had swimming around in my head”
It was us going out to him to his home turf and
having these kickoff conversations with him
there in person.
What can you tell us about the creative brief
you gave him before he set to work on the
foundational parts of Elden Ring’s backstory?
Early on, we established a very good level of
respect between each other, both in our
personalities and the sort of work that we do.
And this was really important in establishing
that foundation for the game because Mr Martin
respected the fact that we didn’t want him to
write the game’s story or the in-game text.
Because we felt like that would actually limit his
creative output, and if it was limited to
something that was already a game or already a
concept in this way, then it would limit the
inspirations we could possibly get from him. So
we established very early that he would be
writing that foundation, that historical element
to the game, something that took place long
before the events of the game itself. And this way
he was able to much more freely flex those
creative muscles and provide something that
wasn’t restricted.
We started off by giving him these very vague
and broad themes and ideas for the mythos that I
had swimming around in my head, along with
what kind of games we typically make, and the
sort of themes we’d like to explore in our games.
So it was all very loose and quite vague. Then he
would come back to us with a lot of ideas: how
about this, this and this? That back-and-forth
started the exchange of ideas.
What form did his Elden Ring mythos take
when it arrived with you? Short stories?
Character sketches?
There was nothing visual – it was all text. Rather
than being a short story, it was something that
depicted the setting or set the scene for the game
and for the world, detailing the flow of history
and the figures who appeared throughout it.
There was, of course, a story that came with this
as a sort of backbone, but it played as more of an
introduction to that world and a natural course of
events for these characters to follow. And this is
what was given to me and the team, and then we
were able to interpret this in our own way and
52
provide the visuals to go along with that, and to
build that into an actual game. A lot of the
motifs that came from this and drove my creative
thinking behind these elements in the game were
connections between people, including parentand-child relationships. A lot of the issues that
Mr Martin dealt with in his writing provided
these motifs for the game itself, so that is
something I am very grateful for.
In the past, you’ve mentioned British fantasy
literature being a touchstone for Dark Souls –
were there any books, or even films, that were
inspirational in creating Elden Ring’s world?
It’s difficult to give any one single inspiration
that had a major impact on Elden Ring. There
have been a lot of different works that influenced
the creative process in various ways – The Lord
Of The Rings, The Eternal Champion series of
novels by Michael Moorcock, aspects of tabletop
RPGs such as RuneQuest, etc. There are a lot of
motifs and themes that I was able to pick from
these various works that had an effect on the
development of Elden Ring.
The biggest departure from the Dark Souls
series is that I had this constant source of
inspiration and impetus from George RR Martin
and the mythos he had created. This probably
had the largest impact on the game just because
it was an approach I hadn’t used before. It
allowed me to draw lines connecting the history
in this new mythos and build up something very
fresh. It provided a lot of motivation and a great,
constant source of inspiration.
Your office appears to be full of creative
inspiration – and other things besides.
I have a fridge. I have books. I have games. I
basically live here [laughs]. With this peak period
of any project, what I like to do is retreat into my
office, knuckle down and surround myself with
these inspirations and these stimuli – just bury
myself deep into that creative aspect of it. This
place has everything I need, besides a bath, so I’ll
go home to take a shower or a bath [laughs]. But
other than that, especially with COVID and the
current remote-working situation, it’s been very
easy for me to just lock myself away and dig
down into that creative aspect, especially at this
peak time of development.
Trick
and treat
FromSoftware has been
making stepwise progress
toward Elden Ring’s calibre
of open-world immersion
for over a decade. Miyazaki
and his team have done this
by gradually peeling away
the contrivances that
games have been forced to
rely upon to work around
their technical limitations.
The method by which
players access the unique
locales tucked behind
Demon’s Souls’ Archstones
wasn’t fundamentally
different from selecting
discrete levels from the
overworld map of an 8bit
classic such as Super Mario
Bros 3; in contrast, observe
the way that Elden Ring
removes the fog-gate
contrivance from its boss
encounter with Flying
Dragon Agheel.As you
gallop across a waterlogged
marshland in central
Limgrave, an orchestral
prologue breaks the silence.
Then a guttural screech
from overhead as you
notice the scaly menace
soaring to earth, shaking
the earth as it touches
down. Only then does the
creature’s HP bar appear
onscreen. Elden Ring
doesn’t just contain magic;
in places such as this, its
execution feels like a
feat of magic in itself.
RIGHT Stormveil Castle,
one of Elden Ring’s
so-called Legacy Dungeons,
conjures memories of
Demon’s Souls’ opening
stage and the climb to
Boletaria’s ramparts
What can you tell us about the character on
the cover of this issue?
When we were talking with George Martin, we
had these themes and ideas for creating pieces of
artwork for the bosses, for these core characters
of the story. And when he wrote the mythos, we
asked him to create these dramatic heroes of this
ancient mythos that takes place before the events
of the game. These dramatic and heroic
characters weren’t really present in our previous
titles, so this is something that was really
appealing to me – how he would depict the
mystique and heroic qualities of those characters.
And Godfrey, the character in your cover
artwork, is sort of an embodiment of that. He’s
one of the major players in the game.
One of the motivations of the player character
in Elden Ring is to become Elden Lord – they’re
to journey to The Lands Between and become the
next Elden Lord. In the sort of heyday of the
Golden Order of The Lands Between there were
two Elden Lords, and Godfrey was the first of
these. He was the very first Elden Lord and was
married to Eternal Queen Marika, who’s been
detailed in some of the lore we’ve released
publicly so far. And he was representative of this
period of grandeur and affluence. He represents
everything great about the Elden Ring and about
The Lands Between at that time. Eventually, he
was exiled from The Lands Between. He himself
became tarnished and he shares this deep
connection with the Tarnished – the player
character. Godfrey is an embodiment of their
long history and struggle. He represents a lot of
what the player character stands for and he
symbolises a deep connection with the player –
something that used to shine brilliantly and has
now become tarnished and fallen from grace.
There are tentacle motifs across the blade of
Godfrey’s poleaxe, which suggests a
connection to the ocean – is that a part of the
world we can expect to navigate in the
finished game?
What I will say is that he’s a character with a
major presence in this story. And he represents
not only a great part of the player character’s role
but also a large part of the world and its history.
And so, without spoiling too much, I just want to
say, as a character that represents so much of the
game, he’s definitely one who I find very
appealing and very attractive in that sense. And I
think there’s a lot to explore there for the players
The Lands Between
contain reminders of a
glorious past that has
faded to ruin. Will you
be able to salvage
their corrupted glory?
54
“The level of freedom that we wanted to
ultimately achieve in Elden Ring exceeded
what we were initially planning for”
once they play the game, and they see the sort of
presence he has, and they figure out how deep
his tale goes.
When a ring of power is mentioned in a fantasy
context, it’s impossible not to think of
Tolkien’s famous One Ring. It’s striking that
when you cast the Holy Ground skill in Elden
Ring, a cursive script appears on the ground
that resembles the Elvish writing he devised. Is
the script used in Elden Ring an actual tongue
that was developed for the game, or is it a
design motif without any literal translation?
As a thematic or inspiration, this is something
that could have potentially been tied to Elden Ring
by observers, but there is no direct link to The
Lord Of The Rings or any of Tolkien’s work. In
terms of conceptual differences, whereas the One
Ring is something that actually physically exists
and fits on your hand, the Elden Ring is more of
an abstraction. It’s a representation of something
metaphysical. So there’s not a direct link between
Elden Ring and inspiration from the One Ring and
Tolkien’s works.
In terms of actual scripture and language used
within the game, there’s actually several of these
kinds of runic characters or scriptures used by
various factions and powers. [The Holy Ground
script] actually represents one of those factions –
the Two Fingers – rather than being a direct
representation of the Elden Ring itself.
Elden Ring’s cover artwork features several
overlapping golden circles – do those shapes
have anything to do with the different factions
you’re describing?
The rings that you’re looking at in the logo are
not so much a representation of those factions, as
you put it, but more a representation of the law of
the world, the rules and the order. This Golden
Order is something that the Elden Ring may have
once represented, but not directly. It’s more about
how you apply those rules and how you enforce
them on the physical world and what effects they
have on it. So it’s more the influence of these
demigods that existed a long time before and how
they applied these concepts of order and
discipline. That’s what’s being represented by the
Elden Ring and these overlapping and intersecting
rings. It gets a little bit more complicated than
that, but I’ll leave it there for now [smiles].
CONSTRUCTION
Let’s talk about Elden Ring’s development.
When you’re building a play space as vast as
The Lands Between, how do you begin
breaking down that task into manageable
chunks of work?
It was a challenging process because it was, of
course, our first experience creating a world of
this size, on this scale. So we don’t know if our
approach was the right one, but we generally
approached it with the same strategy we’ve used
with all of our games up until now, in the
physical sense of how we lay it out, and how we
break it down as a game world. And then,
throughout development, it just depends on
what the game needs and our requirements and
conditions for the game and how it takes shape.
We always have to put the game first. We have to
draw out the essence of the map; we have to
draw out the elements that shape it and that are
going to benefit it for the sake of the game.
So our general approach there did not change
except for the sense of scale, which was of
course magnified. One of the benefits of the
increased sense of scale and this new format was
that it actually allowed us to convey a lot of
these details and elements that we maybe
couldn’t before on that smaller scale. So that
was itself both a challenge and a blessing
because it just allowed us to do so much more.
What prompted the decision to push back the
game’s original release date?
The level of freedom that we wanted to
ultimately achieve in Elden Ring exceeded what
we were initially planning for. This [complexity]
gradually built up, and the time needed to debug
and QA in particular took a lot more effort.
Given the scope and complexity of the project
as a whole, were there any particular
mechanics or gameplay systems that were
particularly difficult to get right?
There were a number of challenges that, of
course, came with the scope of this game and of
the world. There are a lot of areas in which we’ve
had to use trial and error since creating the Dark
Souls series, iterating on those mechanics and
formulas, expanding on them in this new sense
of scale. A lot of it was related to the game
55
tempo – the rhythm and the flow of the game,
to keep the player from getting bored, to keep
them interested, exploring and having fun. And,
of course, in this brand-new huge world that
we’ve created, we wanted to prioritise that fun
and level of player freedom more than anything.
So with that comes a lot of characters, a lot of
events that you’re trying to incorporate, and you
don’t want anything to tread on the toes of
anything else – you want it all to mingle and to
mesh nicely with the player and their own
motivations as well. But you want it to be there,
and you want it to provide that stimulation for
progressing forward and exploring. So that was
probably one of the biggest challenges.
Given that an open-world game requires more
visual assets than your previous projects, did
you have to expand the team considerably? Or
was it more about leaning on outsourcing
partners for assistance?
Yes, of course, both the team’s scope and our
outsourcing needs increased with the scope
and scale of the world and the content
required to fill it. But we managed to explore
some new systemic procedures as well that
allowed us to fill out the world in ways that
didn’t require people to always be hands-on
and do it manually. So there were a lot of ways
in which we were able to use not only our
existing team, but expand our skill set in that
sense, and to apply it to this new challenge
with this new world.
A simple example would be the creation of
something that exists in vast quantities in the
world, such as trees and vegetation. A lot of
this we could employ using a more procedural
system for vegetation to generate trees and
handle their placement – that accounted for
about 80 per cent of that task, and then our
artists would go in and sort of add the
finishing touches by hand. So this was a really
nice new workflow to work with.
Given the challenges presented by the
pandemic, how did you navigate the transition
to remote work without the game suffering?
Yes, especially in the beginning, everything
changed. And it would be false to say it didn’t
affect Elden Ring’s development in any way – we
had to change how we approached a lot of the
aspects of game development, including
Your steed Torrent doesn’t
simply offer a swifter
means of getting around –
it can also access a superjump launch point
to scale towering cliffs
56
58
“Elden Ring is based on a culmination
of everything we’ve done with the Dark
Souls series and with our games thus far”
Scaling
difficulty
The commercial imperative
of making a game that
appeals to the widest
possible audience would
seem to be incongruent with
the Soulsborne formula of
demanding players achieve
technical mastery or die –
and die and die – trying.
The closest thing to a
conventional easy mode in
the Dark Souls series has
always been the magic build.
Like bringing a gun to a
knife fight, there is a guilty
pleasure in spamming Soul
Arrows from range while a
hollowed undead stumbles
in vain toward you, unable
to close the gap before
dying. Elden Ring offers an
even wider tray of options
for the cheese connoisseur
who finds close-quarters
combat overly stressful.
While perched atop Torrent,
gallop within range of an
earthbound footsoldier and
let the magical blades of
Glintsword Arch auto-track
your enemy like a pack of
swarming missiles from an
attack helicopter. Or use
Lone Wolf Ashes to summon
three phantom wolves to
tank for you while you hack
at the boss’s flank. Or don’t.
Elden Ring builds upon
Dark Souls’ casting crutch,
allowing you to scale your
difficulty dynamically based
upon how many aids you
enlist at any given time.
LEFT A blight infected
the minds of many in the
wake of the Shattering.
Are pot-like head casings
such as this a desperate
attempt to halt its spread?
communication, which was obviously a big part
of it. It was a big challenge to adapt at first, but
we succeeded thanks to the team. We were able
to push through those hardships, especially
initially, and figure out how we could handle
development in this new situation thanks to our
staff and teams who handled the setup of the
new infrastructure. They made it possible to
work smoothly and comfortably within those
limitations – it’s definitely all thanks to them.
A lot of the staff and I are OK with working
and communicating remotely. You know, we have
a sort of culture where we’ve had a lot of
experience with just speaking remotely or across
emails or phone calls or video chats and things
like that, so it was just a case of expanding on
this and making it more of a company-wide
practice. A lot of that experience played quite
well into how we had to adapt during that
difficult time.
You’ve mentioned previously that in Elden
Ring you wanted to create a new dark fantasy
action RPG full of things that you weren’t
able to realise in the Dark Souls series – what
kinds of things, exactly?
I think it would be good to rephrase my previous
comment. Elden Ring is based on a culmination
of everything we’ve done with the Dark Souls
series and with our games thus far. That’s the
best way to look at it. So it’s not necessarily
about what we couldn’t do then that we could do
now, it’s more about what Elden Ring has allowed
us to do thanks to the experience of developing
those games. So in that sense, it couldn’t have
come first. But there’s a lot of different things
with each of these games, and Elden Ring
represents the culmination of all of that
knowledge and experience coming together. And
that creates a brand-new whole that wouldn’t
have been possible before.
Demon’s Souls was the start of that journey
for you, of course, and we’ve since seen it
rebuilt by another developer, without your
direct involvement. What is it like to
experience the re-release of a game you
originally worked on over a decade ago?
As you say, I was not directly involved in it, and
I haven’t actually played the Demon’s remake.
But this is because I just don’t enjoy playing the
games that I’ve made in the past. It brings up a
lot of old emotions, a lot of old memories, and
this gets a little bit overwhelming, and it doesn’t
feel like playing any more. So I have not played
the Demon’s remake, but I am very glad to see it
get this fresh look, these brand-new current-gen
graphics. It was an old game, so to see it get
remade in this way and have new players playing
it was obviously something that made me very
happy. It was a rough game back in the day, with
a relatively rough development, so I was anxious
that new players would not enjoy it in that same
way. That was a cause of concern for me when it
was re-released but, you know, in the end, I’m
just happy to see the reaction and happy to see
people enjoying it.
One thing that was really fun was seeing
[Bluepoint Games] come up with things we
didn’t consider and to approach certain
elements of the game – its visuals and its
mechanics – in a way that we either couldn’t or
didn’t back in the day. So to see them
researching and applying these new thought
processes and new techniques, this was
something that was really exciting and
interesting for me.
Did the graphical fidelity of the Demon’s Souls
remake create extra pressure within the Elden
Ring team, given that the games will sit side
by side on PS5?
Yes, I’m pretty sure our graphics-creation staff
felt that pressure more than anyone else. And
not just with Elden Ring, but with all of the
games we make. Graphical fidelity is not
something we put as the top priority. What we
ask for on the graphics side depends on the
systems and requirements of the game itself, and
it takes less priority compared to the other
elements of development. So this is always an
area where I feel a little bit apologetic towards
my graphics team because I know they work
extremely hard. And they’ve worked extremely
hard on Elden Ring – our graphics-systems team
and our programmers have been pushing a lot of
new features to create the best-looking game
we’ve ever made. But, you know, for me
personally and for our games as a whole, it’s not
the number-one priority.
59
“We wanted to prepare lots of these
mysterious situations that players would
hear about and want to go looking for”
With Elden Ring benefitting from the lessons
taken from all the games you’ve made over the
past decade, do you feel it’s FromSoftware’s
best game to date?
That’s a difficult question. We are always trying
to top ourselves and make the best game we can,
and make our best game to date. It’s not just
limited to Elden Ring, of course – it applies to all
of our titles. And I said it before but Elden Ring
would not have been possible without that
culmination of experience, the know-how from
development of previous titles, and of course our
talented team that has grown throughout the
development of those projects. It’s safe to say
that we could have only made Elden Ring now,
after all of that. So in that sense, yes, I believe it
will be our best to date.
CONQUEST
An Elden Ring social-media post from earlier
this year stated, “Like the Erdtree itself, a
Tarnished’s path reaches up to the branches of
the heavens and twists down into the roots of
the earth.” Dark Souls’ game world had a
surprising vertical span, from lava pits deep
underground to the clifftop city of Anor Londo
– will Elden Ring be similar in that regard?
We’ve noticed item descriptions tease us with
the prospect of an ‘Eternal City’ underground
as well as a ‘Temple in the Sky’.
Yes, those places referred to in terms of the
depths and the heights of the world will be places
you can actually explore. We wanted to create
this world that was full of the joy of exploration
of the unknown. So we wanted to create lots of
enticing things for the budding adventurer. And
we wanted to prepare lots of these mysterious
situations that players would read about or hear
about and want to go looking for and want to go
exploring. Variety is something we strived for
when creating this game, and something I believe
we’ve managed to achieve.
On the topic of the Erdtree, literal and
symbolic trees figure prominently in many of
your games. Why does the concept of the tree
have such a strong grip on your imagination?
In Dark Souls, the tree motif was present, but fire
was the most distinctive visual element of that
60
game. And for Elden Ring, the tree is obviously
more apparent in that respect – the Erdtree. I
don’t want to go into too many details for fear of
spoilers, but it does get nice and complicated.
There’s a lot to explore here, I feel, and people
who are that way inclined are really going to get
something out of the game.
First of all, just as something that’s visually
striking and enticing on the screen, in the world
itself, something that draws your attention,
something that stands out, this tree with golden
glowing leaves is something that fits my ideal for
something that represents the world physically.
It’s something that burns that image into your
mind, but it also stands as something that
represents those rules and an order of the world
that we talked about earlier.
What can represent these rules and order but
also not be absolute? That was the question that
ran through my mind when I created this image.
And the tree really fits the bill nicely for that
because the tree is something that’s alive, it’s
something that grew, it’s something that will
eventually wither and die. And this really fits the
role of something that can then bestow this
order, control these rules and enforce these rules
on the world. Because these too are things that
will grow and will change and will wither and die
as well. So I feel that the tree this time is
something that fits those elements both visually
and thematically. But saying any more than that
would definitely go into spoiler territory.
Considering the title of the game, it’s a
surprise that rings aren’t wearable items,
especially given that historically they’ve been
quite important in the Dark Souls games.
There are a couple of reasons for this choice. The
first is that, yes, we explored rings as equippable
items a lot in our previous games – Dark Souls,
particularly – and so talismans this time allowed
us to approach those ideas in a different way,
with a greater variety of designs. And the second
reason is that, of course, rings do exist as physical
‘finger rings’ in this game, but more as unique
items that are involved in the story and unique
character events. So we wanted them to have a
special positioning within the world of Elden Ring
and also to be something different from a design
standpoint in relation to the talismans.
Treasure
everywhere
Though Breath Of The Wild
inspired awe with its
bristling grassy plains and
beckoning faraway peaks,
the existence (and necessity)
of its paraglider testified to
how much of the game’s
sprawl was content to
remain flyover country. And
the emptiness of Fallout 3’s
Wasteland was at least
thematically appropriate
given its post-nuclear
predicament.The density
of Elden Ring’s world
furnishing, by contrast,
boggles the mind. The Lands
Between pulse with life, the
drama of a world teeming
with motion prior to your
arrival. You join in medias
res. The fine-tuned pacing of
Elden Ring’s exploration,
discovery and conflict cause
the hours we spend with it
to evaporate as if minutes.
It’s not just that engaging
moments are packed tightly
together; it’s the wider
spectrum of variety and
duration. Groveside Cave
consists of a glorified
antechamber, a small pack
of wolves and a boss arena.
If action RPGs can have
minibosses, then why
shouldn’t they have
mini-dungeons as well?
TOP Torrent isn’t essential
for outdoor combat, but it
helps even the odds during
a tough fight. CENTRE LEFT
Exploration is aided by a
gorgeous stylised map,
which also shows fast-travel
locations. CENTRE RIGHT The
inventory UI retains the
general feel of previous
From games, but importantly
it encapsulates crafting
items. BOTTOM Special Ashes
summon spirit creatures
to tank for you in battle
Evolve or die
Two of the biggest names in the Soulsborne fan community
share their observations on how Elden Ring builds upon
the design template of FromSoftware’s previous games
After a few weeks digging
into the average game, we’re
accustomed to the tip of our
shovel clattering against
bedrock. Yet there is so much
complexity to metabolise in the
Soulsborne games that it’s
possible for enthusiasts to
devote years of their lives to
mining them for raw material
and not exhaust them – or the
curiosity of their audiences.
Elden Ring appears set to offer
a motherlode even more
abundant than its predecessors.
If FromSoftware, historically
gun-shy about spoilers and keen
on preserving the mystique of
its games, felt perfectly
comfortable stuffing more
than ten boss fights into Elden
Ring’s closed beta, how many
climactic fights await in the
final release? As a few players
noted, Elden Ring’s network test
felt as though it had more to
offer than some full games.
But it’s not just about the
game’s breadth, in the volume
of activities or raw surface area
to explore. The sensation of
depth hinges on the variety of
moment-to-moment gameplay
experience. Michael Samuels,
better known by his YouTube
channel name VaatiVidya, has
released countless videos about
the lore of FromSoftware
games, but the highlight of his
experience with the network
test was the way that Elden
Ring builds upon Dark Souls’
combat formula, incentivising
players to break out of mindless
button-mashing habits.
The introduction of an
invisible posture meter means
that guard-breaking enemies in
Elden Ring to open them up for
critical hits – a central feature
of Sekiro’s combat – offers a
more reliable path to victory. In
Dark Souls it was generally a
better strategy to just spam
faster R1 attacks to maximise
damage dealt, but a jumping
slam to break an enemy’s guard
and open it up for a critical
blow might be the shrewder
option with the new game.
“You will find yourself
deviating away from just R1
and realising, ‘Oh my god, R2s
LEFT Early on, Merchant
Kalé can be found in the
ruins of a church. He may
dress like Saint Nick but
don’t expect to get his
Crafting Kit without paying
are insane’,” Samuels observes.
“I fought a boss with R1 and I
didn’t stagger it at all, but then
I fought it weaving in some R2s
and staggered it multiple times
and I could do multiple crits.
Traditionally, it was never wise
in Dark Souls to use R2 in
combat – it was more of a niche
button. After many hours with
Elden Ring, I was happy to see
that combat has deepened.”
Some players with early
access to Elden Ring have
criticised FromSoftware for
leaning on gameplay assets
and animations introduced in
previous works, but modder
Zullie The Witch, who has vast
experience of combing through
the innards of From’s games,
views this decision through the
lens of opportunity cost.
“I don’t see a problem with
reusing skeleton models and
animations, if they’re still
conveying the character and
actions they’re meant to
convey,” Zullie says. “A common
complaint is that reusing assets
is ‘lazy’, but I think that’s
extremely reductive. It carries
the implication that the
developers could have just
redone all these animations
without compromising the
scope of the game if they’d just
tried harder, which is a flawed
argument. Any time they would
have spent going back over all
those animations would have
been time spent away from
adding something new to the
game instead.”
Instead of looking at what’s
been recycled, Zullie believes
it’s more consequential to
appreciate the ways that
FromSoftware has capitalised
on the chance Elden Ring offers
to explore new design territory.
“From can be very mired in
tradition,” she says. “They have
a tendency to refer back to their
previous games to decide how
to do certain things. So some of
the biggest surprises playing
Elden Ring have been in seeing
how they weren’t defaulting to
their usual playbooks and how
they had innovated on existing
designs instead of following
them to the letter.”
Mounted combat on horseback is obviously a
big new feature. Are there any enemy
encounters beyond what we saw in the
network test that have been designed
specifically around the addition of Torrent?
At no point do we want to enforce horse riding
or mounted combat on the player. Rather, we
want to build situations that may ask for
mounted traversal or may suggest that mounted
combat is a viable strategy, and it’s up to the
player whether they want to pursue those
strategies. They should never feel as though
something is being forced upon them. In terms
of map design and encounter design itself, due
to the scale and the structure of the world, it’s
something that should encourage traversal
using Torrent. And also the mounted combat
will hopefully play into the players’ variety of
choices and how they approach these various
situations, with that level of freedom, as well.
So in that sense, yes, we’ve designed the world
with that in mind.
The open-world action RPG genre features
some of the most notable games of recent
years, including Breath Of The Wild, The
Witcher III and Skyrim. Stepping into that
design space with Elden Ring, where did you
feel there was the most opportunity to leave
your own mark on the genre?
I don’t want to put it in such grand terms as
“This is the mark I wanted to leave on the
industry”. Rather, if I was in the mood to play a
game, or if I had an ideal game world, Elden Ring
gets pretty close to that. I create the games that
are my type: tight combat, fantasy medieval
settings, with dungeons to explore and things
like that. It’s just what I’m into. And so Elden
Ring is really hitting all the right notes there.
You know, I probably won’t end up playing
Elden Ring because it’s a game I’ve made myself.
This is sort of my personal policy. You wouldn’t
get any of the unknowns that the fresh player is
going to experience. Like I said before, it
wouldn’t feel like playing. But if I did, then this
would be close to the ideal game I’d want.
I don’t approach it in terms of “This is the
kind of open world game I want to make”, it’s
just that the open world enriches this ideal
experience I’m trying to achieve. To give some
very simple examples, if I was to explore this
world, I’d want a map – a proper map. Or, you
know, if I saw something over there, I’d want to
actually be able to go over and explore it. And
I’d want to fight with a dragon in an epic arena.
Things like this. It’s very simple stuff, but Elden
Ring allows a lot of these things to become a
reality for me, creating something that’s very
close to my ideal game.
63
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65
T H E E D G E
AWAR D S
66
If you ever need proof that critics are optimists, look no further
than E354. Thirteen issues ago, we described 2020 as “a year
unlike any we’ve experienced – and hopefully will ever
experience again”, only for 2021 to effectively say “hold my
beer”. The pandemic’s ongoing impact on the game industry has
been evident throughout the past 12 months.
Once again, it wasn’t a vintage year for triple-A, with indies
and smaller studios continuing to pick up the slack. Still, a few
blockbusters did break cover, and into our top ten – including no
fewer than four sequels. That’s just one sign of what an odd year
it’s been. There was no indie breakthrough on the level of Hades.
And where was 2021’s equivalent to Animal Crossing: New
Horizons? For some, that game continued to provide an escape,
but we wonder if that would have been the case had Nintendo
not been quite so quiet. This is the first year since 2016 that no
Nintendo-published game has made it into our top ten.
Still, if our list reflects the reality of a largely transitional 12
months, it also highlights the wide range of experiences that
videogames offer. And while there were disagreements as we
picked the individual categories, there was ultimately little debate
about the big prize. We have an exclusive interview with the
director of our number-one game, as well as celebrating the
great, good, and downright strange of 2021. It may not have
been a vintage year for the industry itself, but turn the page and
you’ll see plenty of cause for optimism.
67
THE EDGE AWARDS
P L AY S TAT I O N G A M E O F T H E Y E A R
RUNNER-UP
RUNNER-UP
WINNER
J E T T: T H E FA R S H O R E
RETURNAL
DEATHLOOP
Developer/publisher Superbrothers/Pine Scented Software
Format PC, PS4, PS5
Developer Housemarque Publisher SIE
Format PS5
Developer Arkane Lyon Publisher Bethesda Softworks
Format PC, PS5
Flawed? Sure. Not for everyone? What game
is? Superbrothers’ reflective star trek was one
of 2021’s most distinctive visions, and the
rare videogame that encourages players to
consider the impact of colonisation. Holding
fast to that idea through to its daringly
downbeat ending, it feels like a game that
may one day earn wider acknowledgement.
Not the year’s best PlayStation game, but
possibly its most PlayStation. Tough, weird,
flexing the hardware – Returnal is not only
the logical next purchase after escaping the
remastered Boletaria, but a game that speaks
to what the console stands for in 2021. With
the blockbusters yet to arrive, PS5 remains a
machine for the dedicated, in the best way.
There’s a perverse pleasure in awarding this
to a game technically published by Microsoft,
but Deathloop is the best advert yet for
getting a PS5. It blends broad appeal with
the kind of strangeness that characterises the
finest entries in Sony’s back catalogue, and
leverages the DualSense so perfectly that it’s
hard to imagine the inevitable Xbox version.
XBOX GAME OF THE YEAR
68
RUNNER-UP
RUNNER-UP
WINNER
HALO INFINITE
PSYCHONAUTS 2
FORZA HORIZON 5
Developer 343 Industries Publisher Xbox Game Studios
Format PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series
Developer Double Fine Publisher Xbox Game Studios
Format PC, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series
Developer Playground Games Publisher Xbox Game Studios
Format PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series
Third time is indeed the charm for 343. The
campaign’s gestures towards an open world
might pale beside the winner of this category,
but the grappling hook is a brilliant addition,
topping off a movement system that balances
dexterity with weight. Inhabiting the Spartan
armour hasn’t felt this good in years. Scratch
that: it hasn’t felt this good ever.
Yes, it’s also available on PlayStation – but
Double Fine’s sequel wouldn’t exist (in its
present form) without Microsoft’s investment.
As well as being a terrific sequel, this feels
like a statement of intent from its publisher:
Xbox is keen to diversify its roster and, in
doing so, to bolster its reputation. Games this
imaginative can only accelerate that process.
The quintessential Game Pass game? Horizon
5 attracted a record ten million players in its
first week – many of whom, we’d wager,
might never have played it had it not simply
appeared in their libraries. But having
dipped in, it’s hard to tear yourself away
from its generous, gorgeously realised world.
Reason enough to keep that sub topped up.
NINTENDO GAME OF THE YEAR
RUNNER-UP
RUNNER-UP
WINNER
NEW POKÉMON SNAP
METROID DREAD
MONSTER HUNTER RISE
Developer Bandai Namco Studios
Publisher Nintendo, The Pokémon Company Format Switch
Developer MercurySteam, Nintendo EPD
Publisher Nintendo Format Switch
Developer/publisher Capcom
Format Switch
This on-rails point-and-shooter’s belated
comeback, some 22 years after the N64
original, was an unexpected treat. Perhaps
the best-looking Pokémon to date, it offers a
larger range of critters to photograph, and
makes them more reactive: months on,
players are still discovering odd combinations
to fill their album with wondrous shots.
Samus’s return alone might have been
enough to secure this game’s spot in the list –
especially with her sleek new moveset – but
the introduction of the EMMI guaranteed it. In
a game which otherwise hurtles along with
all the speed of a Shinespark boost, these
stalking robotic predators slow things down
and crank the tension right up.
You know it’s not been a vintage year for
Nintendo when it doesn’t top this category,
but it had its work cut out against this powerful
competitor. Rise could easily have been a diet
World, but Capcom’s improvements ramp up
the pace of battles while demonstrating what
Switch can do when pushed to its limits. A
thrilling game and a technical powerhouse.
PC GAME OF THE YEAR
RUNNER-UP
RUNNER-UP
WINNER
INSCRYPTION
ELECHEAD
WILDERMYTH
Developer Daniel Mullins Games Publisher Devolver Digital
Format PC
Developer NamaTakahashi, Tsuyomi
Publisher NamaTakahashi Format PC
Developer/publisher Worldwalker Games
Format PC
Daniel Mullins’ horror-tinged odyssey (part
escape room, part deckbuilder, part
nightmare) is full of dizzyingly creative ideas.
Though its later acts aren’t as exciting as its
first, this is a world that lingers after you’ve
left it, with some gleefully macabre touches
that aren’t soon forgotten – you’ll never look
at a pair of pliers the same way again.
This brief but clever puzzle-platformer stars
an electrically charged robot that can detach
and throw its own head. Deceptively simple,
it’s packed with little epiphanies as developer
NamaTakahashi builds a remarkable variety
of challenges around this single mechanic,
combining familiar ideas to ingenious ends.
A short, sharp shock of a game.
The way Wildermyth rethinks D&D’s influence
on videogames traces a line through Baldur’s
Gate and Planescape, while the combat is a
reminder of how much XCOM borrows from
the tabletop. The developer is investigating
the possibility of a console port, but this is a
PC game through and through, with all the
wordy, granular pleasures that might suggest.
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VR GAME OF THE YEAR
RUNNER-UP
RUNNER-UP
WINNER
MASKMAKER
HITMAN 3
RESIDENT EVIL 4 VR
Developer Innerspace VR Publisher MWM Interactive
Format Index, PSVR, Rift, Vive
Developer/publisher IO Interactive
Format PSVR
Developer Armature Studio Publisher Oculus Studios
Format Quest 2
MaskMaker interrogates the notion of VR
itself – exploring the idea of what it means to
put something on your face to inhabit the
body of a digital avatar. However, it’s most
successful when you take off a mask and
return to your workshop to make another, with
the crafting process proving more absorbing
than the worlds to which you’re transported.
IO didn’t reinvent Hitman for VR: the motion
controls are perfunctory, its biggest design
change the removal of the Instinct detectivevision mode. As it turns out, it didn’t need to.
Putting the game in firstperson and letting
you poke around its intricate sandboxes is
more than enough reason to revisit some of
games’ most beautifully crafted destinations.
We’d hesitate to say this is the best way to
play Capcom’s action-horror masterpiece, but
it’s the most revelatory version since the Wii
edition added IR pointer aiming. It’s a little too
easy to fully recapture the original’s relentless
intensity, but Armature has otherwise smartly
tailored it for VR, while the rev of Dr
Salvador’s chainsaw still provokes a shiver.
BEST VISUAL DESIGN
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RUNNER-UP
RUNNER-UP
WINNER
THE ARTFUL ESCAPE
GENESIS NOIR
PSYCHONAUTS 2
Developer Beethoven & Dinosaur Publisher Annapurna
Interactive Format PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series
Developer Feral Cat Den Publisher Fellow Traveller
Format PC, Switch, Xbox One
Developer Double Fine Publisher Xbox Game Studios
Format PC, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series
It’s ironic that a game about a musician is
more notable for its visuals, but then Francis
Vendetti can already play; his voyage of selfdiscovery is about redefining his image and
stage persona. Here, it’s less about what you
do so much as how good you look while
doing it, and The Artful Escape pulls off its
colourful interstellar stage show with panache.
Any other year, this would have won easily.
Framing the beginning of the universe as a
classic noir, Feral Cat Den’s beautiful debut
marries the cosmic with the mundane to
startling effect. Looking like no other game,
its stylish monochromatic aesthetic carries the
game through its occasional lulls, before
climaxing in an unforgettable burst of colour.
For sheer imagination and range, Double
Fine’s sequel is impossible to beat. Hats off to
art director Lisette Titre-Montgomery and
team for a visual tour de force, realising
madcap concepts from psychedelic festivals
and casino hospitals to worlds themed around
hair and teeth. No other game in 2021
offered such rewards for simply looking.
THE EDGE AWARDS
BEST AUDIO DESIGN
RUNNER-UP
RUNNER-UP
C H I C O R Y:
A C O L O R F U L TA L E
Developer Greg Lobanov, Alexis Dean-Jones, Lena Raine,
Madeline Berger, A Shell In The Pit Publisher Finji
Format PC, PS4, PS5
The Artful Escape’s equal and opposite
reaction, perhaps: a game about visual art
that blesses the ears as much as the eyes.
Lena Raine’s soundtrack is the star here, but
there’s a loving attention to sound throughout
including playable in-world instruments.
WINNER
SABLE
J E T T: T H E FA R S H O R E
Developer Shedworks Publisher Raw Fury
Format PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series
Developer/publisher Superbrothers, Pine Scented Software
Format PC, PS4, PS5
Sable’s art may be its most striking feature,
but Martin Kvale’s exquisite sound design
and the score from Michelle Zauner (aka
Japanese Breakfast) kept us captivated by its
world whenever bugs threatened to break its
spell. Heartstring-tugger Better The Mask
proved a pitch-perfect way to bring the title
character’s journey to a moving, hopeful end.
If Jim Guthrie’s sole, spine-tingling contribution
sends Superbrothers’ divisive adventure
soaring into space, Andrew ‘Scntfc’
Rohrmann’s remarkable score keeps it there.
Rohrmann and Priscilla ‘Ghoulnoise’ Snow
create a soundscape that leaves you in no
doubt as to why these explorers found the
planet’s ‘hymnwave’ signal so irresistible.
BEST STORYTELLING
RUNNER-UP
RUNNER-UP
WINNER
M A R V E L’ S G U A R D I A N S
OF THE GALAXY
WILDERMYTH
UNPACKING
Developer/publisher Worldwalker Games
Format PC
Developer Witch Beam Publisher Humble Games
Format PC, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series
The best videogame stories, they say, are the
ones you tell yourself. And while Wildermyth
has some lovely prose – just the right shade
of purple – its real strength is that you can
never be sure whether a given moment is an
impossibly well-structured callback to an
adventure hours before, or your brain making
a random connection. A true magic trick.
No, it’s not just about tidying up. The title’s
double meaning becomes clear as you grow
to understand the significance of the presence
(and absence) of specific items, and their
position within its protagonist’s world.
Through the acts of unboxing and putting
away, this seemingly modest game delivers a
masterclass in interactive storytelling.
Developer Eidos Montreal Publisher Square Enix
Format PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series
The triple-A action-adventure template leaves
little room for narrative invention or humour.
Credit, then, to Eidos Montreal’s writing team,
for making not only the funniest blockbuster
in an age, but investing us so thoroughly in
this bickering bunch that we became more
attached to them than their MCU counterparts.
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THE EDGE AWARDS
BEST DEBUT
RUNNER-UP
RUNNER-UP
WINNER
THE FORGOTTEN CITY
EXO ONE
WILDERMYTH
Developer Modern Storyteller Publisher Dear Villagers
Format PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series
Developer Exbleative Publisher Future Friends Games
Format PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series
Developer/publisher Worldwalker Games
Format PC
Its roots as a Skyrim mod occasionally show
through in this otherwise gripping time-loop
mystery, but The Forgotten City is an
impressive calling card for Modern Storyteller.
Strong writing and characterisation invest
you in this ill-fated city and its inhabitants, in
a detective story that reserves its richest
rewards for the most thorough of investigators.
Jay Weston’s science-fiction voyage – an
arthouse Tiny Wings in 3D, if you will – only
narrowly missed out in the Best Visual and
Audio Design categories. But then this is a
game of fine margins, as you time your craft’s
swoops and climbs to sustain its momentum.
By turns relaxing and exhilarating, it’s an
enveloping sensory experience.
The story of Wildermyth’s development would
fit perfectly among the kind of tales the game
spins. A family that grew into a small team, a
six-year labour of love, and a happy ending:
one of the year’s finest games and enough
financial success that Worldwalker has said
“we’re now confident our studio has a future”.
We can’t wait to hear what happens next.
BEST PERFORMANCE
RUNNER-UP
RUNNER-UP
WINNER
JASON E KELLEY AND
OZIOMA AKAGHA AS
COLT AND JULIANNA
I N D E AT H L O O P
M AYA S A R O YA
AS MEENA HUGHES
IN LAST STOP
ERIKA MORI AS
ALEX CHEN IN LIFE IS
STRANGE: TRUE COLORS
Abrasive, seemingly uncaring, work-driven
to the point of psychopathy. It’s not an easy
role – nor, importantly, the kind often given
to a woman of colour. We’d describe
Meena as refreshingly unlikeable, but that
might be the wrong descriptor, since the
sheer force of Saroya’s performance makes
us care despite – or perhaps because of? –
her many obvious flaws.
There are many potential pitfalls for a
character such as the emotion-hoovering Alex
Chen, yet Mori never lets Chen’s reactions to
others’ most potent feelings tip into actorly
histrionics. Her blossoming romance with
either Katy Bentz’s Steph or Eric Emery’s Ryan,
meanwhile, is defined by understatement –
Mori deftly (and movingly) captures the
tentativeness of a foster-system survivor.
How could we ever separate these two? The
mutterings and retorts of Colt and Julianna’s
verbal sparring matches are so perfectly
interwoven that it almost feels like a single
performance. With a fresh squabble delivered
at the outset of each loop, the prospect of
failure – and eternity – seems more appealing
in the company of Kelley and Akagha.
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PUBLISHER OF THE YEAR
RUNNER-UP
RUNNER-UP
WINNER
CAPCOM
XBOX GAME STUDIOS
D E V O LV E R D I G I TA L
Between Monster Hunter Rise and The Great
Ace Attorney Chronicles, Capcom delivered
two of the year’s most purely enjoyable
games, both offering lavish presentation
and equally luxuriant runtimes. And while
Village may have nosedived after its first
half, Capcom belatedly gave us a Resident
Evil game of sustained brilliance,
collaborating with Oculus and Armature on
an outstanding VR remake of Resi 4.
Psychonauts 2, Forza Horizon 5, Halo
Infinite and Age Of Empires IV: that’s a
lineup of which any publisher would be
proud, even before the slightly wonky
miracle that was the Xbox version of Flight
Simulator. Not a bad way to celebrate a
20-year anniversary – and with several of
those studio acquisitions set to bear fruit in
the coming months, Microsoft could well go
one better next year.
What else could it be? No other has had a
year like Devolver’s. We’re not just referring
to the company’s billion-dollar valuation,
though we’re sure that helps, but: Olija,
Phantom Abyss, Boomerang X, Death’s
Door, Inscryption. We might not have cared
much for Loop Hero, but it’s hard to deny
that Devolver put more eyes on it than might
reasonably have been expected. That,
surely, is the sign of a great publisher.
STUDIO OF THE YEAR
RUNNER-UP
RUNNER-UP
WINNER
W O R L D WA L K E R
GAMES
DOUBLE
FINE
ARKANE
LYON
Building its game on an old version of Java –
thus making console versions less likely –
might be the only misstep made by this
Austin-based studio, where a core team of
just six people, working remotely, made
perhaps the year’s most revolutionary
roleplayer. Setting a new standard in reactive
storytelling, Wildermyth is sure to influence
narrative games for years to come.
Being acquired by Microsoft, Tim Schafer
said, allowed Psychonauts 2 to retain boss
battles that might otherwise have been
scrapped. Though these were arguably the
game’s weakest link, Double Fine’s sequel
otherwise excelled in every department: a
testament to Schafer’s dedication to the world
he’d built, and his team’s commitment to
realising such an imaginative vision.
Rationally, we know Microsoft didn’t spend
$7.5 billion just to get its hands on Arkane –
but frankly, we’d understand if it had. A
studio of two halves, the decisions of both
driven by a shared design philosophy,
Arkane’s French division has this year proved
itself capable of grabbing mainstream
attention. Now, all eyes turn to Texas, and
Redfall. Your move, Arkane Austin.
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PSYCHONAUTS 2
Developer Double Fine Publisher Xbox Game Studios Format PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series
The brilliance of that titular portmanteau is too rarely
discussed. The group to which it refers are, indeed,
navigators of the psyche: a group of trained individuals,
tasked with boldly charting new frontiers – that, in this
case, happen to be found within the human brain. It’s
fertile territory for a drama, moreso for a comedy, as the
16-year-old original proved. As a society, our
understanding of mental health has deepened since the
first game, and what might have amused us then hasn’t
always aged well. This is a more sensitive treatment of its
subject matter, then. And yet, with hindsight, it’s untrue to
say it’s not as funny: one early section involves a power
that allows you to connect a variety of nouns and verbs,
to quite hilarious ends. Still, when it’s over, you’re
thoroughly reprimanded for your tinkering – and
reminded that meddling with someone’s mind for your
own ends is no laughing matter.
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The difference, in other words, is that Psychonauts 2
knows exactly when to deliver a gag, and when it’s time
to ease off. That’s about as cautious as it gets, however:
in every other sense this is a game that doesn’t hold
back. There’s a more extensive cast than before, which
arguably gives writer Tim Schafer too many balls to
juggle comfortably, yet provides more imaginative
brainspaces to explore. If it feels slightly invasive, that’s
an idea that Schafer’s script is more than happy to
address. And there’s a distinctly empathetic narrative
throughline that extends all the way to the collectables: if
your job is to tidy up a busy mind, why wouldn’t you
take the time to fully declutter? Particularly when every
one is so extraordinary in conception and realisation:
from psychedelic rock shows to cavernous libraries and
cookery game shows, it demonstrates that a person’s
inner space can be as wondrous as outer space.
THE EDGE AWARDS
RETURNAL
Developer Housemarque Publisher SIE Format PS5
When it comes to modern game design, running around
shooting weapons at enemies might be decried as being
“a bit route one”, but when those weapons feel good,
such flimsy notes just float away. And some of Returnal’s
feel utterly phenomenal. Not at first, necessarily, when
you’re just finding your way. Eventually, though, deep
into the game, having picked up alien hardware packing
a clutch of stacking modifiers, you pull the trigger and
the quantity and intensity of the dangerous stuff that
emerges from the bit you point at the baddies makes it
feel as though the universe might actually be ending.
This level of offensive potency is just as well, since
Returnal is one of 2021’s crunchiest challenges – and
consequently among its most satisfying. But only if you
persevere. At every turn it tries to stop you by drenching
the screen with hails of lethal neon, casting projectiles in
fizzling arcs that seem impossible to negotiate without
harm. During your early attempts, success feels like a
faraway place, and it seems that getting there will only
be possible via good fortune, the Roguelike structure
randomly throwing up just the right combination of
power-ups and weapons to help you scrape through the
next pinch point, and then the next. Eventually, though,
you come to appreciate that the tools you need aren’t
lucky drops, but simply hands and a brain with enough
practice on the clock. Some of the game’s most taxing
sections might well be impossible were its control scheme
not up to the task, but this is a Housemarque production,
so it has been calibrated to a level close to perfection.
Creating a game as singular as Returnal wasn’t just a
risk, it took tremendous skill and attention to detail.
Echoes of classic bullet-hell shooters may reverberate
around its stages, but this is a thrilling, entirely modern
game deserving of its showcase positioning on PS5.
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THE EDGE AWARDS
BONFIRE PEAKS
Developer Corey Martin Publisher Draknek & Friends Format PC, PS4, PS5, Switch
Corey Martin’s Sokoban-style puzzler would be one of
the most elegant of its kind in years even without the
autumnal, introverted mood – supplied in no small part
by Martin’s own score – that makes it so distinctive. In
some respects, Martin is operating in a familiar register:
his previous game, Hiding Spot, was about boxing
yourself in as a coping mechanism for stress or trauma.
This, however, is more about exorcising the past. As you
deposit a crate of your possessions on a pyre, it
produces wisps of smoke that resemble ghosts, the
camera quietly pulling back as if to give this man room
to process what he’s just done.
You need plenty of time to contemplate the matter at
hand yourself, not so much to think about why you’re
burning your things as how to reach the pyre at all. Still,
Bonfire Peaks isn’t as difficult as it might seem at first –
and with the option to rewind as many steps as you like
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without penalty, you’re encouraged to keep trying. All
the while, the soothing music lulls you into a sombre
reverie, suppressing any frustrations that might otherwise
surface. And it’s smartly structured to ensure you needn’t
complete every puzzle in a set: the boxes you recover
from each form steps to fresh challenges, and only the
toughest optional tests demand you pile them high.
Despite its languid pace, then, there is a palpable
sense of momentum as you climb through dark woodland
to a snowy mountaintop. That pinnacle isn’t the only
point at which you’re encouraged to rest and reflect: tap
a button and your avatar sits, as if to give his weary
limbs a break before continuing his steady, determined
ascent. Responsible for more late bedtimes this year than
any other game, Bonfire Peaks is a slow burner in every
sense, carrying itself with a serene grace that belies the
clumsiness of our own faltering steps toward the fire.
HITMAN 3
Developer/publisher IO Interactive Format PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series
How many truly great videogame trilogies can you
name? Most series take a few instalments to iterate
towards greatness or, worse, pull a Godfather Part III at
the final hurdle. Hitman’s World Of Assassination Trilogy,
though, finishes strong – if you ignore the whimper of its
final level, that is. The five other locations in this game
(a number that, if you own the prior titles or are willing
to splash out, grows to 20) are impeccable, at least.
Hitman 3 with all the stops pulled out is a package
unlike any other in videogames: a selection of the prior
generation’s finest level designs, preserved in a form
that makes them just as attractive for this one. The five
years between explosive golf balls in the Sapienza
sunshine and toilet drownings in a grimy Berlin nightclub
compressed into a few moments of load time? Giddying.
The only note of caution we sounded at the time of
our review was that the launch game’s offering of bonus
missions felt a little slight. That’s been ameliorated
somewhat since then with the traditional monthly
delivery of Elusive Targets and the occasional Escalation
mission (with the caveats that, if you missed the former
you’re out of luck until they cycle around again, and
many of the latter remain locked behind content passes).
The real solution to the lack of bonus missions,
though, has come from the game’s community, which in
the months since launch has produced a near-endless
flow of Contracts: challenges that pull you back into
these locations with a new target and player-defined
rules and restrictions. The very best of these rival the
deviousness of IO’s own work, meaning that – should
you desire – you could probably spend the rest of your
gaming life without ever leaving these 20 destinations.
It’s testament to the depth and flexibility of their
construction that this option actually sounds tempting.
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MONSTER HUNTER RISE
Developer/publisher Capcom Format Switch
When you’re running out of runway, there’s only one
place to go: up. With 2018’s World broadening Monster
Hunter’s appeal and its environments – taking it from
segmented biomes to a single expansive sandbox,
earning Capcom its biggest-ever hit in the process – many
wondered where the series could go next. Would it
succumb to the scope creep of every big-budget sequel?
The announcement of a new Switch game suggested the
opposite: a backwards step on a less powerful machine,
albeit with the tacit promise of a return to first principles
(the series’ breakthrough was as a local multiplayer game
played on handheld devices). In the event, we got a game
that reintroduced some of the more esoteric, characterful
flourishes its maker had appeared to drop in its move to
home consoles, but one that retained World’s openness.
The biggest difference comes in the way you get
around. You now have canine and feline allies, the former
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carrying you into battle before fighting alongside you. Yet
it’s Rise’s insectoid grapple that proves the most inspired
addition, transforming the way you navigate as well as
how you fight. It would be wrong to say it’s a seamless
transition: this is Monster Hunter, so of course it takes
a while to acclimatise. But it’s been integrated so brilliantly
into the natural rhythms of combat that once you have
become familiar with it, returning to World is a real eyeopener: you really do miss that little Wirebug. That
increased mobility only makes fights more exciting,
whether you’re nimbly vaulting over a swiping tail or tying
a sinuous monster in knots, before mounting it and riding it
into battle against an even bigger beast. These shorter,
pacier battles ensure you reach the endgame quicker, in a
game that feels perfectly tailored to its format without
losing the magnificent spectacle of its predecessor – lifting
this much-loved series to thrilling new heights.
THE EDGE AWARDS
FORZA HORIZON 5
Developer Playground Games Publisher Xbox Game Studios Format PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series
Forza Horizon always puts its best foot forward – and
then slams it hard to the floor. The series’ introductory
drives are the ultimate vertical slice: a sampling of the
landscape and garage devised at the project’s outset that
makes clear the technical ambitions of everything that
follows. In the case of Forza Horizon 5, that’s a draw
distance capable of supporting a hurtling shriek down the
slope of an active Mexican volcano, before switching to
the meticulous fidelity of jungle canopies and flocks of rosy
flamingos, perfectly placed to fill the sky with pink confetti
at an optimal moment. That opening is as good a ten
minutes as you will play in 2021.
But Forza Horizon 5 has a long tail to match. The
seasons first seen in Playground’s British outing return with
added dynamism, as tropical storms and dust clouds roll
in, turning a co-op Sunday drive into something more
apocalyptic, or providing a suitably ominous backdrop to
a round of battle royale Eliminator. And if the weekly
seasonal shifts entice you back, it’s the accompanying
timed challenges that keep you buckled in. Model and
class restrictions prevent any single car from dominating
your garage – there are now over 500 to choose from,
and many more reasons to peruse them. Crucially, it hits
the games-as-a-service sweet spot of offering enough new
to keep you visiting (and, we suspect, that Game Pass
subscription rolling), without holding every evening
hostage à la Destiny.
And in Event Labs we discover Horizon’s answer to
Halo’s Forge. Already new courses are sprouting in
corners of the map untouched by Playground’s designers,
while existing tracks turn into bowling-pin-festooned carnival
games courtesy of powerful rule-editing tools. Forza
Horizon 5’s prologue may dazzle, but it’s the promise of
even more to come that pushes it so far ahead of the pack.
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THE EDGE AWARDS
DUNGEON ENCOUNTERS
Developer/publisher Square Enix Format PC, PS4, Switch
Between this and Unpacking it’s been a good year for
boxes. Colouring in the squares of these winding paths
delivers a pleasure similar to the one you get from
tidying everything away in Witch Beam’s game – a
gradual feeling of ownership of a space. Not that it’s
ever fully under your control, but in charting it, the
freedom you have in how you explore it grows. That
ferocious group of enemies lying between you and the
descending steps at the end of the corridor? It can simply
be hopped over, or shuffled to another part of that floor.
Why bother with the stairs? After all, you can teleport to
the next stratum that has solid ground below the spot on
which you’re standing. Then again, now you can throw
your zweihänder, bringing those elusive flying gargoyles
within range, you might opt to stand and fight.
Designer Hiroyuki Ito, with the help of some fellow
Square veterans, maintains that delicate equilibrium
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between empowerment and peril throughout your
descent. Slow and steady might work at first, but then
gaining a powerful ally via a quick (if risky) return trip to
a lower floor will make lighter weather of opponents,
particularly when you’re looking to ease in a low-level
newcomer. Accidents will happen, of course. A black
hole sucking in your party and scattering them far and
wide is the kind of hard-learned lesson that will have you
forming a second and maybe even a third band of
raiders-cum-rescuers, as a dire warning to those who run
out of adventurers lends extra tension. Trials and errors: it
all feels wonderfully considered. Even that initially
incongruous guitar-heavy score that remixes classics from
the likes of Mussorgsky and Wagner is a thematically
apposite blend of vintage and contemporary – further
evidence that this team of old dogs is more than capable
of learning some new tricks.
WILDERMYTH
Developer Worldwalker Games Publisher WhisperGames,Worldwalker Games Format PC
Stories about stories are always tricky to tell, but
Wildermyth makes it look easy. The characters in this
D&D-inspired RPG are living legends or folk heroes in
the making, but they still do normal human things such
as bickering, joking, failing and dying, living out entire
lives during the game’s multi-chapter story campaigns.
History bleeds into the present, and the present lives on
in the future – probably as a song.
Relationships feel real and playful, and the stakes,
while generic (the Big Bad must be defeated, or else)
don’t let up. Dwindling days and resources pile on the
tension as your party conquers the map tile by tile. It’s a
game of meaningful decisions: where should the archer
go? Do we have time to build this bridge? Is it worth
eating that magic fruit? Whatever choice you make, it
always feels like the right one, somehow slotting into the
procedurally generated story via arcane design magic.
If the character art is hardly dazzling, the prose
more than fills in the gaps. Wildermyth’s writing and
worldbuilding are some of the very best in the business:
this is proper, hearty high-fantasy fare, the literary
equivalent of a hunk of crusty bread and cheese
consumed by a roaring fire. Combat, too, is its own
form of storytelling. On easier difficulties, fighting has
an almost cinematic flow, as if you’re choreographing
a slick action scene with paper cutouts. Crank up the
difficulty, however, and it becomes a high-stakes game
of chess, beloved characters investing you more deeply
in the fate of the pieces.
Balancing smarts and soul, Wildermyth brings its
world and characters to life with a wonderful lightness
of touch that allows room for the player’s imagination to
flourish. In all likelihood, we’ll be setting out on these
fantastic adventures for years to come.
81
CHICORY: A COLORFUL TALE
Developer Greg Lobanov, Alexis Dean-Jones, Lena Raine, Madeline Berger, A Shell In The Pit Publisher Finji Format PC, PS4, PS5
Games that emphasise creativity are not only plentiful
nowadays, but also account for some of the biggest hits.
Looking at the blank canvas and impressive range of tools
many offer, though, we confess that we often find
ourselves unsure of where to start. Chicory can’t compete
with the tools of Minecraft or Dreams: it has just one, a
brush which leaves MS Paint-style scribbles on the world.
Over the course of your adventure, this lone tool does
reveal hidden depths, but Chicory’s real genius lies in how
it sidesteps the inspiration problem entirely, by making
creativity a byproduct of simply playing the game.
The world of Picnic is filled with plants which respond
to your paint: trees which shrink or grow into walkways,
spring-loaded branches that fire you over gaps, bulbous
bombs which clear obstacles. Each leaves a stroke of
colour on the monochrome landscape, prompting you to
wonder: wouldn’t a little complementary purple make this
82
look less of a mess? An accidental double-tap reveals a fill
function, creating an effect different to the one you’d
intended. Now, what about those custom brush shapes
you just unlocked? It’s often only after stopping and
leaving for the next screen, the next blank canvas, that you
realise you’ve made something to treasure.
As the mechanical complexity of your brush (and its
creative potential) grows, and the story deepens, taking in
questions of mental health and what it means to create
something, you’re building something of your own. This
culminates in the year’s greatest credits sequence, and
perhaps its finest moment full stop: a montage of places
you’ve been, your paint applied in time lapse, before it
pulls out to show the world map coloured in. The sense of
ownership is immense, how Minecraft master builders must
feel as they survey their works, without requiring any of
the talent, dedication or planning on our part. Ideal.
THE EDGE AWARDS
DEATHLOOP
Developer Arkane Lyon Publisher Bethesda Softworks Format PC, PS5
At first it might be disappointing to discover that Deathloop
doesn’t have an equivalent to Dishonored 2’s Clockwork
Mansion or Crack In The Slab: no high-concept showstopper
of a level that can stand alone from the rest of the game.
But then you realise this is because the entirety of Blackreef
island – in fact, the game itself – is one big Clockwork
Mansion, constantly shuffling itself into new shapes.
Those shapes will be particular to each player. We kill a
dozen Harriets, preaching in her cockpit-turned-pulpit,
before ever clapping eyes on Aleksis, a would-be playboy
in a wolf mask who only comes out at night. You, however,
might go for him first, gaining his power of body-launching
telekinesis that much sooner. Which would, in turn, change
your approach to Harriet – presumably involving an
increased number of ragdolls flung skyward.
But crucially, thanks to the loop, both players will get the
opportunity to try it all. Building on a long lineage of games
about the power of the path not taken, Deathloop
rearranges things so that the alternative approach is only
ever a day away. You needn’t permanently eschew stealth
in order to enjoy the muscular action game Arkane has
made here, its tour of duty on the Wolfenstein games
shining through. And you needn’t feel guilty for sprinting
past all those lovingly crafted assets and nuggets of
environmental storytelling while under fire. After all, you’ll
be back soon enough.
Now factor in multiplayer – which proves a wonderful
excuse to return to Blackreef every time a friend picks up
the game, to introduce them to its sharp end – and
Deathloop is nothing less than a fundamental reconstruction
of what ‘an Arkane game’ means. The new shape it has
taken on is a thing of wonder. And the fact we keep
expecting the whole thing to reshuffle again? Well, that’s
the hallmark of a true showstopper.
83
Q&A
S
Dinga Bakaba, game
director and recently
promoted studio
head of Arkane Lyon
DINGA BAKABA
ince it was founded in 1999,
Arkane Studios has built a
reputation for crafting deep
worlds and systems, but Deathloop has
proved something of a breakout hit.
Game director Dinga Bakaba discusses
how our game of the year differs from
its precursors, and how that affected its
reception both publicly and internally.
Congratulations on Deathloop landing
the top spot in Edge’s 2021 Awards –
we’re sure this won’t be the only such
recognition it receives. How has the
game’s reception felt on your side?
We are super happy that the game
is recognised like that. If we were to
go back and tell Dinga of three and
a half years ago… he wasn’t cynical
enough to laugh, but he would
have been surprised. Not because we
didn’t want to make an interesting
game, but because we thought that we
were going to make something
interesting enough that it will repel
as much as attract. That was what we
said since very early on: this is a game
that some people will love and
probably many will hate.
We didn’t really update our thinking
on that until maybe one or two weeks
before release, when I finally got to
play the entire package, including
multiplayer, on my TV, plug in the PS5
and start invading journalists and
ruining their day as Julianna. That’s
when I started to think, actually, maybe
the group of people who will hate it –
well, I don’t know about that group. But
the people who will love it, maybe that
will be a bigger group than expected.
Why did you anticipate that players
would react negatively to the game?
Because it doesn’t have the
characteristics of a lot of the games
that we see – and even the ones that
we made, that got these awards. For
Dishonored 2, we were happy and
surprised when we started getting nice
reviews and awards and stuff but, you
know, we were working for that. We
84
were working to make the best possible
Arkane game. And this one was: ‘Let’s
make something different. Be true to
ourselves but innovate and maybe go
into the weird a little bit’. Because
weird is always fun in brainstorms but
then you’re like, ‘Well, you know, at
some point real people have to see
this, so tone it down’. I always loved
projects like Bayonetta or Psychonauts
where you can tell that someone in the
room said “not crazy enough” or “not
weird enough”, rather than the
contrary. I always dreamed of that.
And I hoped that Deathloop was the
right occasion to do that.
“THIS ONE WAS:
‘LET’S BE TRUE
TO OURSELVES
BUT INNOVATE
AND MAYBE GO
INTO THE WEIRD
A LITTLE BIT’”
What impact did that decision have on
the development of Deathloop, and the
way Arkane Lyon now makes games
as a studio?
For me as a director, because it was
my first time directing a game…
[pauses] I will say this: in the beginning
of the project, there were so many fires
to put out, so many questions to
answer, that I dedicated almost all of
my time to that. Which is what you
expect, in a way. And actually, that
was a mistake. Because this is a
complex game. And it is complex for
the people that are conceptualising it –
but then, at some point, it gets to the
team. And clearly not everyone
understood what we were going for.
And not everyone necessarily liked
what we were going for. That’s always
the case in a game studio, right?
Because we’re professionals. The thing
is, professional or not, sometimes it’s
really nice when you take the time to
explain things.
Personally, that’s what I learned.
I [approached the project] like we did
it before, working on some things that
were maybe less challenging. Now, for
something as challenging as this,
I should have spent more energy and
resources formulating, reformulating,
reformulating, reformulating the pillars.
Even if you think it’s clear, it’s about
finding different ways to explain what
we are making, why it’s cool and –
very importantly – why some people
will absolutely love it.
And how different is the game you
initially conceptualised from the one
we’re playing today?
The weird part is, even though the
game is not the same thing at all as the
first versions, in terms of the overall
vision there is a lot that is still there. It’s
not like we did a 180 at some point.
We never rebooted the project, for
instance, which is weird for something
like this. When we changed our minds,
we always built on something that was
there – which is good, because it gives
you a frame of possible iteration that
you cannot go too far away from.
One of the biggest additions Deathloop
makes to the traditional Arkane game
is multiplayer, taking all the systems
and opportunities for player expression
your games are known for and
introducing a competitive element.
Have you been surprised at all by how
players have approached it?
The things that we hoped would
happen, like people helping each other
without synchronising – like, you just
invade someone for the first time and
are like, “Yeah, I feel kind of bad, I’m
going to help them through the
mission” – we’ve seen that happening.
I was hoping for that because
Julianna, in the fiction, doesn’t want
Colt to give up. She wants to keep him
THE EDGE AWARDS
motivated enough that he is an
interesting, worthy opponent – she
wants him to ‘git gud’, in a way
[laughs]. That’s why she’s horrible with
him. She wants him to be a worthy
opponent. And it’s not even out of
hate – well, there is some resentment.
But it’s not about that. It’s mainly
about: this is fun, isn’t it? And it’s more
fun when you’re motivated. And [for
the Julianna player], you don’t want
them to rage quit, you want them
to keep playing.
multiplayer, as integral as it is, exists to
reinforce the experience of being Colt
and breaking this loop. Colt,
fictionally, has the most scary person in
front of him, harassing him. Ah, the
Internet! That’s a good recruiting
ground for Juliannas [laughs].
Adding multiplayer to a singleplayer
game is not an easy task. But the thing
is, when someone deactivates it, it’s
not a failure for us. On the contrary, it
proves that we made the right choices
in the big picture.
After launch, there was a lot of talk
about people just turning off
multiplayer invasions so they could
play solo. How are you feeling about
that, a few months down the line?
Multiplayer did turn out how we hoped
it would, which is both integral to the
experience and entirely optional. That’s
what we wanted. And those are two
big points of tension when you’re
trying to develop a feature.
We want it to be inherent because
that’s the Arkane thing, right?
Everything has to be there for a
reason. An explainable, articulable
reason. Like Sébastien [Mitton], when
he does character design, he hates
when there is a pocket that is just
impractical – like: “How do you put
something in this pocket?” And the
same for multiplayer – if it’s there, it
cannot just be a mode, it needs to be
something diegetic, very integrated,
that reinforces the themes and high
concept of the game. And we are
pretty happy that it’s all those things.
But! It’s your game. If you don’t
want that vision that we have for the
experience, and you will be satisfied
without that, we need to allow that and
we need to make it as good as
possible. Which was actually one of
the pivots [during development]. At
some point – for reasons I will not go
into today – we decided to say,
let’s stop the tension: if we have to
prioritise one thing, it will be the
singleplayer experience. Because the
Speaking of the big picture, Deathloop
introduces a lot of mysteries around
Blackreef and this time loop, but by
time the story ends, they haven’t all
been resolved. Was that an intentional
decision to leave room in case you ever
want to go back to the setting?
I’ll say this: the focus was not about
building a mythology with this game.
That’s something we did with
Dishonored that was not a goal for this
game. We wanted it to be something –
even though it is a loop – with a
beginning and an end. Explaining
everything was not necessary to that.
We do have an explanation
somewhere. You need to, otherwise
things can be contradictory or
incoherent. But we felt this time it was
interesting to leave the mystery.
Some people have been pretty
good at deducing some of it. Some
parts, maybe we went too far to the
subtle side, so people are now
confused, and there are some wrong
assumptions that are circulating in the
community. But it’s fascinating. When
people are entirely convinced about
the wrong thing, it tells you that your
work has outreached you, in a way.
But no, it wasn’t to leave room this
time, it was to focus on what was
important, and what was important
here was Colt’s, and the player’s,
journey and struggle. And if that was a
way of probing for whether we are
adding more story, I will not answer
that today [laughs].
85
THE EDGE AWARDS
T H E A L T E R N AT I V E E D G E AWA R D S
REDDEST FLAG
U N PA C K I N G
FUNNIEST
OVERREACTION
B I O M U TA N T
I T TA K E S T W O
The sequence in which Unpacking’s
player-character moves in with her
boyfriend is one of 2021’s most
quietly horrifying narratives. It’s
immediately clear they’re not a good
match: there’s a distinctly Patrick
Bateman vibe to his mostly grey
bachelor-pad decor and fastidious
neatness. We’re practically screaming
“get out” even as we try to cram all
this poor woman’s belongings into
what little space he’s left her.
Developer Experiment 101 Publisher THQ Nordic
Format PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series
Developer Hazelight Publisher Electronic Arts
Format PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series
Whatever animal Biomutant’s hero is
supposed to have mutated from, its
character creator lets you take that
bipedal rat-fox-weasel thing and
squish it beyond all recognition, with
the physical features reshaping based
on the stats you pick. Unsure exactly
where to specialise, we end up
pouring our points into Intellect purely
because it makes the weird little
creature’s head balloon adorably.
Missing out on a top ten place by a
hair, Hazelight’s charming co-op
adventure taps into a rich seam of
dark humour, most notably when
parents Cody and May decide they
need to make their daughter cry in
order to return to human form. Their
solution? To tear apart her favourite
toy elephant. Inevitably, the Internet
was utterly appalled. We, meanwhile,
were thoroughly amused.
THE ‘YOU DIED’
AWARD
MOST PITIFUL
OBSTRUCTION
CHEEKIEST LIFT
Developer Witch Beam Publisher Humble Games
Format PC, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series
86
MOST PLIABLE
PROTAGONIST
FORTNITE
OVERBOARD!
METROID DREAD
Developer/publisher Inkle
Format Android, iOS, PC, Switch
Developer MercurySteam, Nintendo EPD
Publisher Nintendo Format Switch
Developer/publisher Epic Games
Format Android, iOS, PC, PS4, PS5, Switch,
Xbox One, Xbox Series
While Death’s Door charmed us with
its full-screen, all-caps declaration of
‘DEATH’, that’s only the year’s secondbest game over. Inkle’s short-form
adventure makes sharp use of its
limited voice acting, with a variety of
fruity mutterings from Amelia Tyler
ensuring it takes the prize. What
could better capture the feeling of
another loop ending in Sing Sing than
an exasperated “Oh, bollocks”?
The final boss might have taken a few
dozen attempts to best, but they pale
in comparison to Dread’s most
fearsome foe: yes, we’re talking about
the single block that gates off your
entrance to Dairon. Hidden underfoot
in a poorly lit area, and encountered
hours before you gain the ability to
scan your surroundings, it stumped
more than one fellow reviewer in
those pre-walkthrough days.
Kid A Mnesia Exhibition may have
had a stick figure in an elevator
repeatedly calling you a clown, but
Epic went one further by brazenly
co-opting the conceit of Innersloth’s
Among Us for Fortnite’s Impostors
Mode. The two parties patched things
up (via a social media exchange that
made us queasy) but it was the
audacity, particularly after that PUBG
business, that really stuck in the craw.
DARKEST CHUCKLE
MOST PLEASANT
TUBE TRIP
GNARLIEST SLOPES
It’s hard to tell how many of the laughs
in Luís António’s pitch-black
Groundhog Day are intentional;
particularly this one, in which we’re
alerted to an accidental electrocution
by slapstick sound effects coming from
the next room: Bzzt! Oh! Thud. And
then, hovering over the victim, the
words ‘Wife (Dead)’. If only we could
press F to pay our respects. We’ll just
have to laugh at it instead.
Developer Variable State
Publisher Annapurna Interactive
Format PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series
Developer Beethoven & Dinosaur
Publisher Annapurna Interactive
Format PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series
In a year when we tried to avoid the
London Underground at all costs, Last
Stop’s menu screen was a chance to
relive this mundane yet strangely
missed experience. The spot-on seat
patterning locates its fictional borough
somewhere along the District line,
though the game perhaps departs too
far into fantasy with the empty seats
between its three characters.
Ubisoft Annecy might have expected
to have this one sewn up, but Francis
Vendetti’s galactic quest for a new
stage persona had the year’s most
gleeful undulations. For all its licensed
kit, Riders Republic didn’t let you slide
downhill on your knees, let alone do
so while delivering a facemelter of a
guitar solo. The thrill of shredding
while shredding cannot be denied.
MOST UNEARNED
TEARS
HACKIEST HACK
MOST EFFECTIVE
CONTRACEPTIVE
T W E LV E M I N U T E S
Developer Luís António
Publisher Annapurna Interactive
Format PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series
BEFORE
YOUR EYES
Developer GoodbyeWorld Games
Publisher Skybound Games Format PC
Anthony Hopkins’ speech about life
“going by in a blink” in Meet Joe Black
seems to have inspired this narrative
adventure, in which the protagonist’s
existence does just that, each vignette
ending when you close your eyes. Its
sentimental streak is tolerable until a
manipulative twist designed to make
you weep. The Pay It Forward of
games, and that isn’t a compliment.
LAST STOP
O P E R AT I O N :
TANGO
Developer/publisher Clever Plays
Format PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series
Amid all the laser-beam deactivating
and drone steering, this spy-themed
co-op puzzler at one point presents you
with a black terminal screen –
obviously it’s in need of a good
hacking. The solution, brilliantly, is
simply to mash at the keyboard as
quickly as possible, perfect lines of
green code appearing on the terminal
as you do. The only Hollywood cliché
missing is a final “I’m in”.
THE ARTFUL
ESCAPE
RESIDENT EVIL
VILLAGE
Developer/publisher Capcom
Format PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, Xbox Series
And, without wishing to be too
graphic, probably the best laxative,
too. Nothing else in Capcom’s
anthology of horror comes close to
matching the terrifying climax of
House Beneviento: a truly sleepruining sequence in which you’re
pursued by a giant deformed foetus
that giggles and wails like a baby. It’s
enough to put you off kids for life.
87
T H E
M A K I N G
O F. . .
OXENFREE
How over 30 years of friendship, and a persistent love
of ’80s cinema, culminated in a spooky adventure
By Malindy Hetfeld
Format Android, iOS, PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One
Developer/publisher Night School Studio
Origin US
Release 2016
88
M
ost cousins, it’s probably fair to
say, aren’t quite as close as Night
School co-founders Adam Hines
and Sean Krankel. Bound by a
shared love of films and games, the two have
spent nearly their entire lives together, sharing a
dream of making games that is almost as old as
their friendship. While Oxenfree wasn’t the first
game either worked on, it was the first they’d
worked on together.
The road there – as is often the case in the
videogame industry – involved many detours.
For Hines, in fact, it led through a shoe shop.
His graphic novel Duncan The Wonder Dog
introduced him to many writers in different
industries, but success was by no means an
instant thing. His friend Pierre Shorette, then
creative director at Telltale, would eventually
recruit him (and several of his colleagues) from
said shoe shop to work on The Wolf Among Us
and Tales From The Borderlands. Krankel,
meanwhile, worked at Disney in several roles,
eventually becoming game designer at Disney
Interactive. When mobile game Where’s My
Water? didn’t turn into the IP-encompassing hit
Disney had hoped for, the team was laid off. It
proved to be a turning point for the two cousins.
“We thought that now we couldn’t just complain
about our jobs any more, it was time for us to do
it,” Krankel laughs.
They took the opportunity to return to an
old idea. “Two or three years leading up to
2014, we had this very specific idea for a
game where you could move and talk at the
same time,” Krankel says. “We just thought,
‘Wouldn’t it be cool if, in Limbo, you could
talk?’” And initially, the game didn’t have much
more shape than that. “When we met with some
investors I had met in a prior job, we didn’t have
a prototype, all we had was a pitch deck – the
control scheme and a vague story we had
grafted on top of that,” Krankel says. When the
pair got the green light, he invited several of his
former Disney colleagues to work with them,
among them lead programmer Bryant Cannon
and artist Heather Gross.
Oxenfree’s story developed from Hines’
and Krankel’s unshaking love of coming-of-age
adventure films. According to Hines, main
character Alex was directly influenced by Lindsay
Weir, a protagonist in the short-lived cult TV
show Freaks And Geeks, while maybe-bad boy
Jonas was inspired by River Phoenix’s character
Edwards Island is peppered with old relay stations and
empty houses, giving the sleepy tourist trap a spooky touch
in Stand By Me. Occasionally, though, these
influences contributed in unexpected ways.
One pivotal idea came from a trip to the
Goonies 25th anniversary reunion tour. While in
Oregon for the event, Krankel came across an
overgrown bunker in a state park. Curious about
its history, he learned that Japanese submarines
had been stationed along this part of the West
ONE PIVOTAL IDEA
CAME FROM A TRIP
TO THE GOONIES
25TH ANNIVERSARY
REUNION TOUR
IN OREGON
Coast. This would eventually inspire the tragic
end of the submarine USS Kanaloa in the game.
As the vision for the game started to come
into focus, it was also shaped by restrictions.
“From the very beginning we knew that the size
of our team and the things we could do well
would pose some limitations,” Krankel admits.
“We couldn’t set the game in Tokyo, for
example, because we didn’t have the budget for
it – but a game that plays like an interactive
play, with no cuts, set in a desolate environment,
lends itself to certain types of stories.”
Oxenfree’s striking watercolour-style
environments and cartoony character design,
which received an IGF award for visual
excellence, are a large part of the game’s
appeal. The setting of Edwards Island, a small
tourist trap in the Pacific Northwest, was also
inspired by the ’80s via stories told by Stephen
King and Steven Spielberg. But above all,
Krankel credits it to the personal experiences of
Gross, who also designed each character and
ghost in the game.
“Heather actually grew up in the Pacific
Northwest – she is obsessed with being in the
woods,” he says. “She has a very detailed
understanding of the flora and fauna of that
environment. The work feels so authentic
because Heather loves and grew up with that
stuff – it’s sort of like a love letter to those
environments. We filtered a story through her
vision.” The painterly style of the environments
isn’t just easy on the eye, it also has practical
benefits – since wayfinding can be difficult in
2D environments, Gross had to make sure that
certain parts of the environment would stand out
enough to be recognisable as paths.
Oxenfree’s communication system is often
referenced as its standout element. The player,
as protagonist Alex, is offered three dialogue
options to use at any point during a
conversation, even if that means cutting another
character off. “We felt really early that as part of
a normal conversation, you sometimes stop to
talk about something else, or interrupt someone,
so we needed to come up with a way to express
that in the game,” Hines says. “We came up
with a system of bookmarks, little checkpoints
that remember the topics you were on and
where you were in the conversation. The system
both knows when to direct you back to a topic
and when something so big and dramatic gets
in the way that you wouldn’t continue talking
about anything else after that.”
The trick to making this feel natural? “Lots and
lots of segueing dialogue,” Hines laughs. “Stuff
like ‘anyway’ and ‘where were we?’, just tons of
that.” It’s also thanks to the cast’s performances,
he says. “I’m very particular about how I want
things to sound. But sometimes I’d get almost
angry when they did it even better!”
Thanks to the growing popularity of visual
novels in the west, as well as Oxenfree’s own
success, today it feels perfectly natural to have a
game about “little else” but walking and talking.
However, when Night School started working on
the game in 2014, the discussion about whether
games with few game mechanics were ‘real’
games, fuelled by titles such as Dear Esther,
was in full swing. So, was there ever a fear
that Oxenfree wouldn’t have enough to keep
players engaged? “Our confidence grew over
89
THE MAKING OF...
development, as we played more of the game
and realised that it actually was fun to play this
way,” Hines says. “But in the beginning, when it
was just a few ugly sketches crammed into Unity,
it was definitely scary. As the story developed,
we thought that, as a teenager dealing with
awkwardness as well as the supernatural, you
should definitely feel underpowered.”
Before that decision, however, the team had
experimented with many different mechanics,
including superpowers, ghostbusting guns and a
big yellow Walkman for Alex. “We wanted to
use recorded clips in different places throughout
the world – it was supposed to be a mixtape that
Michael had, and so it was really sad because it
had your dead brother’s songs on it and you were
taping over it,” Krankel tells us. “We were so in
love with that idea that we worked on that
mechanic for a while, but it was just too crazy.
All the radio tuning features we ended up with
were adapted from that Walkman.”
In the end, Night School committed fully to its
communication system because, Krankel says, it
was “better to develop one mechanic and make it
the best there is instead of having five or six
mechanics that are just OK”. The radio with which
Alex opens portals – and, inevitably, ends up
using to communicate with ghosts – might have
been a compromise, but it turned out to be the
perfect catalyst for Oxenfree’s overarching theme
of communication. “We looked at games like
Double Fine’s The Cave and the interplay between
different characters, and the more we dove into
that we thought, ‘How is this serving the player’s
ability to have agency in the story?’” Krankel
says. “The radio at heart is still a communications
tool, because among other things it’s the method
by which you communicate with the supernatural.
So the nucleus for us was communication as a
toy, and everything else was built on that.”
Inspired by the first Silent Hill, Night School
took note of how spooky radios could be, in the
voices and weird static they can summon out of
nowhere. “The radio got us to think more about
very mundane objects and how to use them in
different ways,” Hines says. “We knew from the
beginning that we didn’t want to make a
straightforward adventure game with an inventory
where you have to find keys – somehow you
always have to find keys! – but that meant giving
the limited number of items you could have a
range of functions.”
90
Q&A
Andrew ‘Scntfc’
Rohrmann
Composer
How would you
describe the Oxenfree
soundtrack?
Nostalgic, but for an
ephemeral thing or occurrence, or somewhat
undefined point in time.
What kind of pitch did Night School give you?
There wasn’t so much of a solid pitch as much as
there was a mutual discussion about what style
would fit and what influences might be
appropriate. The more I came to know about the
game, the more that glitchy, static-y textures
seemed like a perfect fit. We looked at both
historical scoring from the likes of Tangerine
Dream and John Carpenter and also to
contemporary artists who mine some of those
same influences. Folks like Boards Of Canada,
Bibio and Pye Corner Audio.
When you’re essentially making a soundtrack
full of noise, how do make sure a track doesn’t
become overloaded?
My musical process involves a continuous
process of adding and subtracting components.
Building things up, and then carefully removing
non-essential parts, instruments and frequencies.
I’m a big fan of minimalism – not as a genre but
simply meaning ’use less stuff’. I see people
whose productions involve 50 to 100 tracks,
but for something like Oxenfree I’m generally
working with a fraction of that. I suppose some of
the wobbly tuning and lo-fi elements might be too
much for some peoples’ ears, but I just push them
to where I think they sound best personally.
The chime at the start of Lost (Prologue) has
become so recognisable that it features in the
trailer for Oxenfree 2. Where did it come from?
It’s actually a reference to the musical notifications
on numbers stations. Some of them use a simple
melody as a sort of intro for when a number
sequence would begin or end. Lincolnshire
Poacher is probably the most famous example.
The game’s tape players are one example of
these seemingly everyday items with supernatural
purpose. Appearing whenever Alex is caught in a
time loop, they’re a tactile way for players to break
her out – by winding back a tape. This
appearance, Krankel is very happy to hint, isn’t as
random as you might think. “The tape players may
feel arbitrary but there is a narrative reason – we
just never say it,” he explains. “There is a similar
mechanic that will appear in the next game, so
you will get a little more of a reasoning.” Krankel
admits that the narrative justification for the tape
players came after their introduction – the initial
idea came from the game’s soundtrack, which
itself incorporates a lot of analogue tape sounds.
Both the radio and the conversation systems
are intuitive to use, but Oxenfree isn’t always so
straightforward. The meaning of the game’s
thought bubble system has been debated by
players since launch, so we can’t pass up the
opportunity to ask about it. “There are specific
technical reasons for that system being as opaque
as it is, but it basically tells you that a character’s
opinion of Alex or even another NPC has
changed,” Krankel says. “We didn’t want to say
more than that, because we didn’t want to give
players the feeling they were doing anything right
or wrong.” Behind the curtain, the game does use
this system to measure how much one character
likes another – but the player themself can’t tell
which of the two just happened just by looking at
a speech bubble. For Hines, this is part of a
delicate balance between telling players they’ve
affected the game without telling them how,
similar to Telltale games telling players an NPC
“will remember that”.
“Personally, I still really love how that works,”
he says. “Some people are like, ‘I get enough of
what it’s communicating,’ and some players don’t
get what is happening at all. It was a very
deliberate choice – we knew that some players
would be confused and off-put. We liked that the
UI had that same mood of uncertainty and
confusion our teenage characters experience –
sometimes you just don’t know exactly what’s
going on.” Krankel adds that the system also
helps convey emotions that the game can’t
otherwise portray in its 2.5D environment.
Whether it was the interplay of these systems,
the similarity to widely popular coming-of-age
cinema, or simply how well Night School
navigated its limitations, Oxenfree ended up a
success. Neither Krankel nor Hines want to put
their finger on what exactly made it work, but
work it did – enough so that, five years on, their
company has been acquired by Netflix.
Over that time, the studio has never said
goodbye to its debut, and not only because it’s
now working on the sequel. Instead, Oxenfree’s
DNA is everywhere, part of all of Night School’s
subsequent releases. Krankel, Hines and the
Night School team dared to make something no
one else had before, and ended up with a kind
of storytelling that is uniquely their own.
1
2
4
3
5
1 From maybe-delinquent Jonas
to the ditzy Nona, the character
designs are distinct, but relatable.
2 The full view of Towhee Woods
shows off the intricate environment
with its many pathways.
3 The influence of the Pacific
Northwest on Oxenfree’s setting
is evident in every piece of art.
4 Whether it’s the fir or the
red alder, artist Heather Gross’
knowledge of trees allowed her
to design natural-looking forests.
5 Some designs, like that of the
communications tower, are less
unsettling in the finished game.
6 The early sketches show
protagonist Alex as an active,
naturally curious young woman
6
91
STUDIO PROFILE
STUDIO
FIZBIN
From card tricks to juice shops:
telling stories with one of
Germany’s premier indies
By Jon Bailes
92
F
izbin loves telling stories. The studio’s name
itself is inspired by one, about a card trick
called the ‘Fizbin drop’ – so difficult, legend
has it, that magicians might break their
hands performing it. Since it set up in 2011, the
German studio has spun plenty of its own yarns,
with five commercial releases, including three this
year (Minute Of Islands, Say No! More and Lost At
Sea), that offer a diverse mix of character studies
and satire. It’s a range that reflects the company’s
commitments beyond game development – and
the backgrounds of its three founders.
The first story they told together, though, was
quite traditional: The Inner World, a point-andclick adventure born when the trio met as students
at an inter-university workshop. Game director
Sebastian Hollstein and Mareike Ottrand (a
fellow co-founder who remains a company
shareholder, but now works as a professor of
Illustration and Games in Hamburg) were both
studying at Ludwigsburg Film Academy. The
workshop introduced them to coder Alexander
Pieper from the University Of Applied Sciences
Ravensburg-Weingarten, who is now the studio’s
technical director. “The idea was to bring together
people studying interactive media with people
studying computer science,” he says. It worked.
Combining their skills in art, game design and
programming, the trio built a prototype for The
Inner World during their studies and began to
collaborate professionally on freelance projects.
“Actually,” Hollstein tells us, “we founded the
company the same day we had our final exam.”
They established Fizbin right there in Ludwigsburg,
and immediately focused on creating a
sustainable business.
“We wanted to make a living out of it,”
Hollstein says, “so it wasn’t just like ‘OK, let’s
make an indie game.’” Without initial capital to
finance The Inner World, they continued doing
contract work until they secured 100,000 of
state funding – then quickly realised that wouldn’t
stretch far. “When we planned the game during
our studies, we said it would have 50 screens,”
Hollstein says. “Then we calculated what we can
do with that funding if we pay ourselves and other
people and realised we had to reduce it by half.”
Despite their businesslike approach, the initial
plan to finish the game within a year was
unrealistic. The Inner World eventually saw the
light of day over two years later, in late 2013,
after they signed a publishing deal with Headup
Games. “They showed us nice physical boxes
and we were convinced,” Hollstein says. “They
were like, ‘Look, we have boxes, we have special
Founded 2011
Employees 14
Key staff Sebastian Hollstein (managing
director, game director), Alexander Pieper
(managing director, technical director)
URL www.studio-fizbin.de
Selected softography The Inner World,
Minute Of Islands, Say No! More, Lost At Sea
Current projects Imprisoned Kingdoms:
Liberation, Ice Dance Nomads
In recent years, Hollstein (left) has focused on overseeing
projects while Pieper has taken on more management duties
editions, and nice booklets.’ And yeah, admittedly,
The Inner World boxes are really cool.”
For both Hollstein and Pieper, The Inner
World fulfilled a long-held ambition. “It was like
a dream that we could do a point-and-click
adventure game in the beginning,” Pieper says.
He cites as his formative gaming experiences
Monkey Island and Sierra adventures such as
Police Quest and King’s Quest, which he used to
steered by different directors, with Hollstein
overseeing the projects, leading to very different
tones and styles, yet still linked by the core idea of
interweaving interaction into narrative themes.
“I think they all share the Fizbin DNA,” Pieper
says. “We wanted to try out something new
gameplay-wise, but still let players experience
story worlds.” Regardless of tone, he says, the
studio’s games tend to touch on important themes.
The Last Wind Monk’s story, for example, was in
part a response to the growth of the far-right AfD
party in Germany, while Minute Of Islands is
about a character who feels unable to ask for help
and comes to realise she’s hurting herself and
those who love her. “I guess it’s also in our DNA
“MY BROTHER BOUGHT AN AMIGA 500.
I T WA S I N T H E L I V I N G R O O M , S TA N D I N G
THERE LIKE AN ALTAR IN A CHURCH”
play with his father. “For me, making an adventure
game was amazing, because it was something I
could play with my dad,” he says.
Hollstein likewise points to Monkey Island as a
favourite, along with other Amiga classics, from
Lemmings to Test Drive. “My brother bought an
Amiga 500 with his first earnings,” he says. “It
was in the living room, standing there like an altar
in a church.” Later, he was drawn to narrative
adventure games due to his interest in other visual
media. During that world-building workshop, he
explains, they created an ‘IP bible’, with the idea
that The Inner World’s setting and characters could
transfer to other projects. At one point, there were
even plans for an animated series.
What came to fruition instead was a direct
sequel, The Inner World: The Last Wind Monk, in
2017, after which they began to consider more
experimental projects. “They’re [rethinking] the
adventure genre a bit,” Hollstein says of Fizbin’s
latest batch. “They’re not classic point-and-click
adventures any more, but they’re still interactive
storytelling.” The three recent games were also
that we want to make games that have relevance
to our social behaviour.”
One reason, perhaps, is that Fizbin is not only
defined by its games, but its wider work. For one,
there’s the “contract work” its founders reference in
our conversation. “We started Fizbin as a studio
that makes games and animation,” Hollstein says.
“We made short film clips, animated clips, and so
on.” While Fizbin no longer dabbles in animation
projects, interactive contract work (including a
game installation for Münster’s state museum, and
multimedia apps for German public broadcasters
to accompany kids’ TV shows) remains important
both for the company’s finances and its portfolio.
How does the studio juggle this work
alongside its games? “We don’t have a fixed
structure,” Pieper says. “We check who fits the
project and who has time for it, and adjust to the
needs of the project.” This fluidity enriches game
development, he says. “With contract work we
can try out new things, whereas for our own
projects it’s better to rely on stuff we know. So we
can expand our knowledge to different areas.”
93
STUDIO PROFILE
It wasn’t easy for the collective to find an affordable property in Berlin to expand
Saftladen, the space Studio Fizbin shares with other game developers, but they now have
a larger office that accommodates 50 desks, not far from the central Alexanderplatz
Fizbin also selects contracts that involve
conceptual or creative work. “We don’t do
generic minigames for some no-name company,”
Hollstein says. “I think that’s one reason our people
don’t say, ‘I don’t want to work on the contract
stuff – I only want to work on our own games’.
Because it’s also interesting.” Early on, however,
Fizbin did get into some misjudged collaborations,
such as one with an advertising company. “We
experienced the advertising world as totally
crazy,” Hollstein says, citing ridiculous working
hours and last-minute concept changes. “Mareike
was sitting in the office over Christmas. That was
our last time working in that area.”
Another subplot of note is Fizbin’s
geographical organisation. In 2015 the studio
established a second office in Berlin, and moved
into a bigger space, while retaining the
Ludwigsburg office. “Some staff wanted to stay in
Ludwigsburg,” Pieper says. “Also, there’s the state
funding, and Ludwigsburg is in a different state to
Berlin, so we could use two funding pots.” Like
the work itself, there’s fluidity between the locations.
“The offices aren’t separated by projects or
departments,” Pieper says. “If someone wants to go
to the south, they go to Ludwigsburg. If someone
wants to go to the northeast, they go to Berlin.”
Further flexibility comes from sharing their
office space with other developers, as part of an
indie collective they call ‘Saftladen’ (literally ‘juice
shop’ – its first Berlin office was an old juice
press – but also referring, ironically, to a colloquial
term for a company that dispenses shoddy wares).
“We don’t drive it like a business,” Pieper says.
“The main benefit for Fizbin and the other
companies is the synergies you have in a shared
space.” Members rent desks for fixed periods,
taking advantage of common infrastructure and
organised events, and Saftladen has become a
hotspot for visiting developers and publishers.
94
“This has had some pretty intense effects,” Pieper
says. “For example, we met the publisher of Say
No! More, Thunderful Games, at one event – and
when they came to Saftladen, they saw other
games, which they later signed.” Not surprisingly,
there’s now a waiting list for space.
Of course, COVID-19 put all this activity on
pause, and normality is only slowly being
restored. Fizbin moved to working from home in
March 2020, a transition made easier because
teams were already used to communicating
remotely between offices, yet there were still
negative consequences and delays. “It was little
things, but they accumulated,” Pieper says.
“When you’re working on something, you
team member demonstrated an alternative. “We
were going through the night working and he was
like: ‘Uh, it’s 5am. You needed this done? I can
give it to you tomorrow. Bye.’ At that point, when
we had all this passion and energy, I couldn’t
understand. But I always respected it, and now
everyone wants to live like that.”
These days, overtime is monitored. “In our
biggest games, we couldn’t avoid it completely,”
Pieper says, adding that Minute Of Islands
involved about four weeks of crunch. “The red line
for us was always that there’s never unpaid
overtime.” The studio limits hours and operates a
scheme of ‘Gleitzeit’ – time off in lieu – where all
hours are tracked. It’s not only about avoiding
SAFTLADEN HAS BECOME A HOTSPOT FOR
VISITING DEVELOPERS AND PUBLISHERS.
T H E R E ’ S N O W A WA I T I N G L I S T F O R S PA C E
yourself don’t see [the problem], but someone
else could just walk by and easily spot it.”
It was difficult to meet potential clients for
contract work, too. “You need noise and events
and meeting and showing what you’re doing,”
Hollstein says. And regardless of their own
logistical efficiency, they had to slow to the pace of
big institutions they were working for that couldn’t
adapt so easily. Still, while they’re relieved things
are opening up again, there are no plans to
abandon remote working. “I really like the home
office right now,” Hollstein says. “I still want to go
into the office about half the time, but two or three
days working at home is very nice.”
The studio’s considerate culture extends to the
subject of crunch. “When we started the company,
we all worked too much, and it was hurting our
private lives,” Hollstein says. Yet even then, one
burnout. “Crunch empowers toxic behaviour
because people start to become heroes,” Pieper
says. “Basically, crunch is shameful for us as a
company because we couldn’t make it in time.
It’s not something to be proud of.”
As for the next chapter in the Fizbin tale,
there’s another twist. Currently in the prototyping
stage of new projects, Hollstein is returning to a
hands-on role, with an eye on new genres. “We’re
going into the direction of the action-adventure,”
he says. “We want to take our knowledge from
the multi-layered worlds we build and make more
of a game out of it.” The plan is to focus on one
main production, with any secondary project
designed with shared resources in mind. “We’d
like to shift a little bit and try something new,”
Hollstein says. “Going back to the Amiga” –
he laughs – “and not only Monkey Island.”
1
2
3
1 The Inner World games
enabled the studio to
establish and refine its art
and animation pipelines.
2 Minute Of Islands has a
synergy between storytelling
and interactive elements.
3 Say No! More’s satire
about refusing to follow
orders is supposed to deliver
a positive rather than critical
message. “Just be nicer to
yourself and nicer to
others,” Hollstein says
95
REVIEWS. PERSPECTIVES. INTERVIEWS. AND SOME NUMBERS
NEAR
MISSES
Big Brain Academy: Brain Vs Brain Switch
Clearing that pile of shame sometimes means
neglecting newer, shinier games, and there
were several for which we didn’t quite have
the room (or time) this issue. While few would
have bet on Nintendo’s other brain-training
series matching Dr Kawashima for longevity,
Brain Vs Brain makes a reasonably
convincing case for its existence via its online
Ghost Clash mode. Here you compete against
the ghost data of other players in a series of
mental races: sure, it was probably a kid of
primary-school age we just trounced, but we
take these wins where we can get them.
Nix Umbra PC
This brisk, intense firstperson occult horror
sees you stumbling through a pitch-dark
forest, seeking refuge from barely glimpsed
terrors. Trees suddenly burst into flame as
you brush past them, while strange shapes
dart in and out of sight as you advance.
Raising your sword unleashes a dazzling
flash to keep these creatures at bay, but
leaves you desperately short of the light
you need to avoid being swallowed up by
the void. Death comes quickly, then, but
progress is tangible – and despite its trialand-error mechanics, Nix Umbra keeps
finding new, awful ways to freak you out.
One Hand Clapping Switch
We’ve had a game you control by blinking
this year; now here’s one you play with your
voice. The intent, it seems, is to encourage
vocal confidence: a noble intention, but it’s
simply too easy, that central gimmick barely
evolving from start to finish. Walk, jump,
croon, walk some more… the biggest
challenge, as with Before Your Eyes, turns
out to be keeping your peepers open.
Explore the iPad
edition of Edge for
extra Play content
96
White Shadows PC
Did you play Limbo, Inside and Little
Nightmares? If so, then you’ve already seen
better versions of this derivative puzzleplatformer, although it deserves acclaim for
its beautiful black-and-white presentation.
REVIEWED
THIS ISSUE
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102
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112
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121
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123
Halo
Infinite
PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series
Solar Ash
PC, PS4, PS5
Battlefield 2042
PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series
The Gunk
PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series
Fights In Tight Spaces
PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series
Heavenly Bodies
PC, PS4, PS5
Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator
PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series
Clockwork Aquario
PS4, Switch
Dungeon Encounters
PC, PS4, Switch
The Eternal Cylinder
PC, PS4, Xbox One
Sherlock Holmes Chapter One
PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series
Unsighted
PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One
Cruis’n Blast
Switch
Dap
PC
Toem
PC, PS5, Switch
Snapshot
It’s early December as we write this, which means alongside our regular helping
of reviews, it’s also time for an annual catch-up. We’ve spent a few delightful
hours lately with charming photography game Toem, framing our subjects with
great care to get the perfect picture. It’s had us thinking about where videogames
place their focus – this month we’ve got examples that pull back to offer a broader
scope, and others that zoom right in, paying closer attention to the fine details.
This issue’s blockbusters are inevitably thinking about the bigger picture, though
Battlefield 2042 can be too much of a sprawl. Doubling the player numbers has
meant expanding the warzone – and when there are no vehicles in the vicinity,
it can be a long old walk to where the action is. Halo Infinite, in contrast, sees
343 Industries finally nail down the core loop that has eluded it since Bungie
handed over the keys: there are ‘30 seconds of fun’ scattered all over its beautiful
sandbox. Even if it doesn’t get the balance right every time,
there’s always that glorious grappling hook.
Talking of hooks, Space Warlord Organ Trading
Simulator has a doozy. Rather than making you schlep
between dodgy starports to buy and sell dubious goods,
as a space-age spiv you spend your time competing with
other traders to profit from body parts scooped up from
the frontlines of an ongoing war. Fights In Tight Spaces, as
the title suggests, also keeps things compact, resulting in a
flawed but absorbing turn-based brawler that’s more John
Wick than, well, John Wick Hex. The grid-based labyrinth
of Dungeon Encounters is even more claustrophobic still:
here is an RPG that makes a virtue of its limitations to
deliver an adventure that feels lean and epic all at once.
Looking for a game to occupy you until the February
deluge? This one’s well worth snapping up.
97
PLAY
W
Halo Infinite
elcome to Zeta Halo. Well-worn dirt tracks
giving way to tall grass, slate cliffs topped
with rows of pine and, off in the distance,
towering alien structures silhouetted against the gentle
sunlight of a mild winter’s day – it looks, well, a little
familiar. This setting, in all its Pacific Northwest beauty,
is just one of the many ways 343 Industries is directly
quoting Combat Evolved, as it attempts once more to
recapture the glory of Xbox’s most-lauded shooter. Gone
is any suggestion of Spartan Locke or the Prometheans;
in its place, a classic adventure that puts an AI in your
head and a well-rounded pistol in your hand. It all feels
like an attempt to poke your inner monologue – as the
rest of you thunders across the landscape in a half-dead
Warthog – towards phrases such as ‘return to form’.
Infinite isn’t that. But it’s certainly 343’s best shot yet.
Zeta takes these archetypal surroundings and
expands them into something more closely resembling
an open world, without ever quite being one. The
developer has pushed back on describing the game that
way, and for good reason. Zeta’s boundaries are tighter
than those in any game from Ubisoft’s stable, and set
clearly: the world is a floating archipelago, giving way at
the edges to sharp-angled Giant’s Causeway pillars and
then nothingness. Aside from a few ramps that allow
you to close the gap between islands, most attempts to
push past these limits will result in an endless fall into
the abyss (itself something of a series tradition).
Nevertheless, flip open the map screen – yes, there’s
a map screen now – and you’ll find the standard openworld littering of icons: Far Cry-style outposts to
recapture; squads of marines to rescue from aliens;
powerful Banished lieutenants and warlords to be taken
down. And that, campaign missions aside, is more or
less your lot. There’s not a lot of variety to be found on
Zeta. Not that it matters when you’re in the thick of
things, darting between vehicles and grappling hooks,
electric grenades and deployable forcefields, with
primary-coloured artillery pouring in from all directions.
For all the new toys, in combat Infinite sticks close
to the building blocks of earlier Halo games. With the
Prometheans ditched, most encounters consist of a
flock of Grunts to keep you busy, a smattering of Jackals
with energy shields up to focus attention, and the
occasional Brute or Elite breaking the line at the worst
possible moment. There might be a sniper hidden in the
nearest rock formation or, later, a Sentinel or two buzzing
overhead. The only real addition to the enemy’s ranks is
the Skimmer, a little like the winged monkeys of Oz
armed with long-range Shock Rifles and the demeanour
of a mid-tier biker gang. They are the rare flying enemy
we are not immediately annoyed to encounter.
A rather less conservative approach has been taken
to expanding the game’s arsenal. There are plenty of
98
Developer/publisher Xbox Game
Studios (343 Industries)
Format PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series
(tested)
Release Out now
The Skewer
is a highlight,
a sniper rifle
that fires
rocket-sized
harpoons able
to perforate a
vehicle’s chassis
new additions, almost all of which fit right in – the
Skewer is a particular highlight, a sniper rifle that fires
rocket-sized harpoons able to perforate a vehicle’s
chassis – but more important is the new taxonomy into
which they have all been arranged. You’ll probably be
familiar with the strengths of plasma and kinetic guns,
good for stripping shields and taking off heads
respectively. Now there are also hardlight and shock
weapons, able to pass through multiple targets and
electrify their targets respectively. In singleplayer, shock
hits pass a current to anyone in the vicinity, freezing
them on the spot for a moment. In multiplayer, where
this would be irksome, it causes low-level persistent
damage as it arcs between nearby bodies and even
weapons left on the ground. Shock has even nabbed the
Plasma Pistol’s vehicle-halting EMP effect: a rewriting
of the rules first discovered, to our peril, mid-battle.
The balance feels just right, ensuring we never stick
to one weapon for too long. Impressively, this holds true
for both the campaign’s frenetic one-versus-dozens
assaults and the more intimate faceoffs of multiplayer,
which retain the odd sense of ballet being performed by
two battleships. This is a particularly admirable feat
when you consider the biggest addition: equipment
items. There are returning favourites from Halos of old
on the roster – Overshield and Active Camo alongside
Halo 5’s Thruster boost – but they’ve never been so
closely integrated into the action. In multiplayer
matches, they’re dropped onto the map to be picked up
like guns and grenades. In singleplayer, you earn them
over the course of the campaign, switching between
them with a tap of the D-pad. If you’re mathematically
inclined, you may have noticed that this limits the
number to four, the most notable absence being
multiplayer’s Repulsor: a localised Fus-Ro-Dah which
pushes away foes and grenades alike. A real shame, as it
would make a great, chaotic addition to the sandbox.
There’s a sense, though, of it getting out of the way
to accommodate the headliner: the Grappleshot. The
first ability you acquire in the campaign, it’s also the
most versatile. You can use it to grab objects – weapons,
objectives, the newly heftable explosive canisters – or
to send yourself careening towards an enemy for a
melee hit. Attach it to a manned vehicle and you’ll even
boot out the driver on arrival. And, most importantly to
Halo Infinite’s greater ambitions, it’s a traversal method
outside of combat, allowing you to cross the open world
with ease even when you don’t have a vehicle to hand.
Once you’ve mastered the grapple’s steering, it
can be used for some agreeably janky mountain climbing,
à la Skyrim. The problem is that the game almost never
rewards you for these efforts. There are a few collectibles
to seek out – a mix of audio logs, multiplayer cosmetic
unlocks, skill points for upgrading your equipment (see
ABOVE The mix of deathmatch and objective-based modes in matchmaking
is pitched just right, although without a dedicated objectives playlist, you’ll
sometimes encounter players who are only interested in their kill count
MAIN Weapons and vehicles can
be called in at recaptured outposts,
with the available selection
growing as you complete missions.
ABOVE Halo has always featured
one of the best pistols in gaming,
and Infinite’s MK50 Sidekick is no
exception. As the name suggests,
this is a trusty companion.
RIGHT These forcefields can be
destroyed to free marines, who
will immediately grab any nearby
weapons and join the fight
99
‘Armor unlock’) and the traditional Skulls – but finding
these rarely presents any navigational challenge; often
they’re stored a few metres from an objective marker
you’d be visiting anyway. There is talk of secrets
stashed away in Zeta’s corners, but most of the time we
find ourselves clambering the awkward angles of some
alien architecture only to be greeted by dead space.
It’s symptomatic of a more general emptiness to the
world. It works best as an extension of the usual Halo
combat arenas, which have always featured multiple
entry points and angles of attack. Here, if the odds aren’t
in your favour, you can retreat from a fight, perhaps
seek out some marines held captive down the road, then
return with a transport full of allies. In these moments,
as Infinite delivers on a fantasy that’s been with us since
the first hour of Combat Evolved, we’re very nearly sold
on the shift to an open-world-adjacent design.
But it comes at too great a cost: a map that’s often
cut-and-paste, not only in the activities on offer but the
territory itself (don’t expect any forays into the desert
or snow here, just vista after vista of the same greys,
blues and greens); campaign missions that too often
take you out of the world, a crime of which the final
stretch is especially guilty, funnelling you through
windowless Forerunner dungeons; and a corresponding
lack of the kind of memorable set-pieces Bungie had
mastered by the end of its tenure – in their place, boss
battles that don’t leave much room for experimentation.
And yet. Across the 20-odd hours spent on Zeta,
and the many more we’ve just begun pouring into
multiplayer, there are many times when it all melts away
for another of those famous 30-second doses of fun:
deploying a shield just in time for a rocket to strike its
100
Filling a Warthog with marines is a pleasure, but always having to be
the one in the driving seat does serve to highlight the absence of co-op
at launch. When is it our turn to take control of the big gun, 343?
ARMOR UNLOCK
For the first time, Master
Chief has to earn his toys, by
collecting Spartan Cores from
around the map and spending
them in a skill-tree menu.
Although ‘tree’ implies
branches; rather, this is five
independent rows of upgrades,
one for each of the abilities
accessed during the campaign.
Expanding the Grappleshot’s
functions feels right, the new
capabilities opening up in step
with our growing dexterity, but
we’re less enamoured of the
15 per cent boosts in shield
capacity. These aren’t tangible
in play, and worse still, having
stubbornly refused to push a
single point in their direction,
we’re left wondering whether
failures are our fault or a result
of the game being unable to
balance its encounters for
varying amounts of health.
surface, blowing up in the face of its sender; knocking
the helmet off a Brute with our last round, then
switching to the Skewer for a no-scope kebabbing;
chasing down a Warthog-borne flag carrier in a Ghost,
peppering its escaping rear with plasma – or that same
scene from another angle, a tight-fought shootout
ended by an unseen vehicle rushing in from stage left to
splat both duellists; those runs when it all comes
together into a Double Kill, a Triple, a Spree. It’s an
endless supply of stories that last half a minute.
Often we’re reminded of one of the oldest, simplest
examples of Halo’s sandbox: what happens when one
grenade is applied to an unexploded stack of its peers.
A cascade of possibilities, all these tiny moments of
pleasure bouncing off of one another in a way that could
never be fully scripted in advance. And to that mix
Infinite adds barrels of dynamite, both metaphorically
and literally: a narrowly missed shot setting off an
explosive canister, launching another – this one
somehow full of electricity – towards your original
target, stunning them so you can swoop in for a
grapple-powered punch.
It’s just a case of finding places where these chain
reactions can take place – in the honed arenas of
multiplayer, certainly, and on the miniature battlefields
that circle individual outposts, where Halo’s former
glories can be taken off the shelf and polished to a fresh
shine. But across the plains and cliffs of Zeta, so
deceptively familiar at first glance, concealing a
topography that is alien to the series? Out there, 8
343 doesn’t feel quite as much at home.
PLAY
Post Script
H
What does the battle pass controversy really mean for Halo Infinite’s multiplayer?
alo has always been a game of two halves, and the
relative quality of both has aligned perfectly just
twice in its 20-year history. But never has that
been more true than in the case of Halo Infinite, with
the campaign and multiplayer games existing within the
same executable but being sold separately, the former
your usual paid-for (or, more likely, accessed-throughGame-Pass) experience, the latter making the leap into
free-to-play, with a few hooks – notably the cosmetics
that are only accessible by exploring Zeta’s nooks and
crannies – to draw players from one to the other.
Perhaps even more strikingly, they released on
different dates. Not a year apart – a plan that 343’s
Joseph Staten recently told us was considered when the
game was delayed last year – but separated by a few
weeks, multiplayer arriving in time for Combat Evolved’s
birthday. It’s fairly clear that singleplayer is coming in
hot, with a faint whiff of minimal viable product about
its campaign and room clearly being left for expansions.
But the multiplayer – “a smaller nut to crack,” in
Staten’s words – has had many months to cool, and it
arrives in almost perfect shape. Almost.
One strange side effect of multiplayer’s early arrival
is that, in the days leading up to release, the main
discussion around Halo Infinite has been focused not
on anticipation for the full thing, or even relief that
multiplayer has the fundamentals so tightly nailed
down, but rather on the failings of its battle pass. And
while we might suggest that this is the least interesting
thing about the game, the stark contrast between
Infinite’s progression system and prey much every
other part of its beautifully honed multiplayer suite
is remarkable. But is it really a problem?
The first thing to consider is exactly what is on
offer here. Infinite’s seasonal battle pass has 100 tiers.
For players who buy in, each level-up is rewarded with
a cosmetic to be equipped to their Spartan: armour
paints, visor tints and, most notoriously, individual
shoulder pads. For those not willing to shell out, tiers
are either empty or offer ways of levelling up more
quickly – something that’s arguably pointless if all
you’re earning is more XP boosts. It’s not exactly
generous, especially for an opening gambit that is
meant to convince players to stick around until the
next season, but nothing disastrous.
More contentious is how you move between these
tiers. XP is awarded at the end of each match, with a flat
reward for simply completing a game, win or lose. That
amount (with exceptions we’ll get to shortly) is 100XP,
a tenth of what it needed to reach the next level. It’s a
tiny amount that makes perfect sense, from a certain
perspective. After all, if the reward is unconditional, it
When the
numbers don’t
go up, it’s hard
not to feel like
you’re doing
something
wrong, even
if you won
can’t be big enough that even perpetual losers will fly
through the tiers. It’s not quite as simple as this, with
343 responding to the backlash with the introduction of
an XP bonus for your first few matches of the day: a
perfectly reasonable compromise.
More baffling – and harder to imagine how 343 will
fix – is the handling of weekly challenges, which enable
you to earn bonus XP by achieving certain feats: get so
many kills with this weapon, complete so many matches
of this variety, and so on. Again, you can understand the
logic: encourage players to try new things with an
incentive for leaving their comfort zones. This is
essentially what Destiny, Halo’s cousin once removed,
has been doing for years, and it’s worked rather well
over there. But the vital difference is that here you
(thankfully) don’t have control over your loadout, or
what activities you participate in. Complete a match of
Oddball? Sounds good, except matchmaking hasn’t
served one up for 20 rounds.
We want desperately not to care about all this. The
rewards are largely rubbish, especially if you’re not
paying, and how many times have we railed against
meaningless numbers-go-up design in videogames? But
the battle pass XP bar is the first thing you see after a
match ends, and when those numbers don’t go up, it’s
hard not to feel like you’re doing something wrong,
even if you won the match.
This mindset even seeps into matches. Passing a
weapon on the racks, we remember spotting it in the
challenge list and pick it up, despite knowing it’s not
the best option tactically. This is, arguably, the
challenges doing their job, and we’ll admit to an extra
burst of satisfaction to every Commando headshot
knowing it’s on today’s list. But it also adds an extra
layer of mental noise to a game, with the addition of
grapples and shields, that already demands full
attention to every tool at your disposal – too many
times, we die refusing to drop our assault rifle for that
final crack to an opponent’s skull, because it would have
helped fill a bar that would earn us nothing of value.
It’s clear, then, that multiplayer’s extra year of
development was not spent prioritising the design of its
battle pass. Good, frankly. It’s hard to imagine how more
extrinsically rewarding progression could have been
implemented without comprising the game’s intrinsic
pleasures. And if this – along with the move to free-toplay – is Halo’s one concession to modern shooter
design, we’re relieved. In play, it’s gloriously oldfashioned, a unique flavour that’s been sorely missed
in recent years. And so, coming back yet again for just
one more match, we thank our lucky stars that Infinite
offers nothing but slightly naff cosmetics, and try our
hardest not to think about that XP bar too much.
101
PLAY
T
he first thought that crosses our mind as the
credits roll on Heart Machine’s ambitious actionplatformer: we can’t wait for the speedruns. That’s
no surprise for a game that has, as the developer put it
to us, “two buttons for go”. At its best, it feels like Jet
Set Radio meets Shadow Of The Colossus for the AGDQ
generation. It’s a game about moving fast and looking
good while doing so – without letting the small matter
of the end of the world get in the way. And in practised
hands, for the most part, it manages to achieve both.
From its edges and surfaces to its colour palette, it’s a
softer, looser game than Hyper Light Drifter, less precise
and only occasionally as demanding. Rei is a drifter in
a very different sense, moving with an easy grace that
belies the urgency of her mission. Her world may be on
the verge of disappearing into the Ultravoid – a black
hole gobbling up planets, with Rei’s next on the menu –
but she’s clearly enjoying navigating the fragments left
behind. Sometimes, in full flow, she lets out a yelp of
delight as if marvelling at her own agility. The thrill this
evokes is somewhere between a sustained period of
web-slinging in Insomniac’s Spider-Man games – albeit
with fewer of those windmilling plunges – and a clean
run of tricks and grinds in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.
Yet this is a place unbound by real-world gravity or
geography. You will, in all likelihood, have a destination
in mind most of the time, but it’s probably not right in
front of you, and the route is rarely straightforward. At
times you might even have trouble picking out the
horizon; sometimes it’s above, and sometimes way
below. Rather, you must pick your way through inverted
ruins, leaping between broken clifftops, riding long,
arcing rails that have a tendency to curve upward at the
end, sending you soaring towards another. In between lie
seas of marshmallowy cloud, yielding underfoot as you
skate over them. And while Hyper Light Drifter’s enemies
could be daunting skill checks, the creatures here are
made to be raced past and swatted aside, as if kicking
over a traffic cone while rollerblading down the street.
Structurally, it’s remarkably similar to The Pathless.
In each biome, you’re tasked with completing a handful
of smaller quests to draw out a large monster before
taking it down and moving on to the next. Yet Solar Ash
finds a better balance between quick and slow, even if
it’s more enjoyable when you’re skating rather than
walking. The biggest difference is that Rei is selfpropelled, unreliant on floating targets to reach full
speed. She just needs a bit of space in front of her. A
squeeze of the right trigger sees her push off; the left,
held down, maintains that momentum.
But within minutes of starting, it becomes clear that
Solar Ash is a very different game to play than to watch.
Creative director Alx Preston’s fluid demonstration of
Rei’s skillset is unrecognisable from our early fumblings.
It’s partly a matter of expectations – we had anticipated
102
Solar Ash
Publisher Annapurna Interactive
Developer Heart Machine
Format PC, PS4, PS5 (tested)
Release Out now
Long, arcing
rails have a
tendency to
curve upward at
the end, sending
you soaring
towards another
THREAD THE NEEDLE
Alx Preston’s health issues are
well documented, not least by
his previous game. If Hyper Light
Drifter’s story was about disease,
Solar Ash seems to touch upon
treatment – those syringe-like
protrusions on Dregs and
Remnants suggest a painful
reminder of what recovery can
entail. Its storytelling, however,
veers between saying too much
and too little. Sure, Drifter’s tale
could feel opaque at times, but
its wordless narrative, heavy on
visual metaphor, left room for
player interpretation. Solar Ash’s
story seems purposely vague until
it suddenly isn’t; interjections
and observations from Rei and
various NPCs puncture the
atmosphere of mystery, while
the identity of Echo (a huge,
almost deific figure who meets
with Rei between Remnant
encounters, and ‘rewards’ her
by destroying part of her shield)
is rather heavily telegraphed.
Rei being a little lighter on her feet, and a little easier to
stop than she is – and a minor misunderstanding about
her moves. There is no mid-air dash, so no recovery
when you skid off the edge of a platform, nor a quick
course-correct should you find yourself falling short of a
safe landing. A time-slip move (think Gravity Rush, but
more controlled; flying, rather than falling with style)
briefly suspends you in mid-air, allowing you to reorient
yourself, but it’s only useful if there’s a grapple point
nearby. At least the clouds offer a comfortable landing
when you fall, your only penalty being a long climb back
to where you were – which can be hastened by opening
shortcuts, letting you return via vertical rails.
That laser focus on traversal remains for almost
the entire duration. Awakening the world’s sleepy titans
– Remnants – requires you to first purge Dregs, patches
of unctuous black ooze into which you must slam a
series of needles, reaching the next before the infection
heats up and the goop becomes too hot to touch. The
Remnants, meanwhile, might be colossal, but this is
no Colossus – rather than a desperate struggle, these
encounters are more races against time. They’re
extended versions of the Dregs, in essence; the staging
might be more spectacular, but the process is more
prescriptive, with punishingly strict timing windows to
reach the next needle before you’re thrown off.
With no broadening of Rei’s moveset (beyond
unlockable suits that offer perks such as time-slip
cooldowns) and those acupuncture points never
changing, each attempt plays out almost identically until
you get it right. Nail one of these tense high-wire acts,
and the rush is undeniable. But the process can be
frustratingly exacting, demanding a precision that feels
slightly beyond the controls, especially on the higher
difficulties. The reason you fail is sometimes hard to
understand. A single inexplicable dip in momentum can
be fatal, particularly during the lengthy third stages
where the Remnant’s bones have cracked and the gaps
are wider, the margin for error narrower still.
Placing such emphasis on movement ironically
results in a loss of forward thrust as the story
approaches its end, too, the repetitive structure
becoming more apparent. New environmental features,
such as poison lakes and flowers whose tendrils act as
organic rails, can’t quite arrest that slight decline, even
as Rei’s movement remains joyful. Instead, it’s in the
mid-game that Solar Ash hits its stride – or rather its
glide, since it’s that sense of frictionless flow that gives
you the most heady dopamine hit of all. Either way,
those stumbles are easily forgiven. It stands to reason,
after all, that when you’re taking larger strides, you’re
more likely to put a foot wrong. And this beautiful,
high-velocity leap into the unknown deserves
7
points for style and daring.
ABOVE Friendly AI Cyd is your main point of contact. She reveals the
location of Dregs in the area, and can replenish your shield with enough
plasma. There’s no real emotional connection with the character, though
TOP The visual effect as you
hammer home that final needle
is a particularly striking payoff.
MAIN After purging each Dreg, you
see a brief cutaway to that area’s
Remnant – otherwise it’s all too
easy to forget they’re there.
LEFT Wondrous sights such as this
are commonplace. Although it has a
few minor technical problems (the
odd framerate drop and a camera
that very occasionally gets a little
wayward), Solar Ash came within
a whisker of a Best Visual Design
nod in this issue’s awards lineup
103
If it misbehaves every now and then, the
camera tends to frame the action well,
often zooming out to emphasise scale
Post Script
L
The challenge of trying to reinvent the vocabulary of the open-world genre
et’s get the obvious out of the way first.
Though there’s plenty of freedom in how
you explore it, it’s easy to see why creative
director Alx Preston was reluctant to describe
Solar Ash as an open-world game. The setting
isn’t sprawled out in front of you so much as
blasted apart. No vast tracts of land lie ahead,
as you gaze out towards a snowy peak in the
distance, making mental plans to head there,
as per the oft-spoken promise of the genre.
Nevertheless, many of its verbs are the
same. You must complete a handful of smaller
missions – which can be tackled in any order
– to unlock a story-critical one, culminating
in a climactic fight. Hidden collectables offer
hints of narrative background, but more
importantly unlock gear that offers bonus
perks, in this case boosting your movement
abilities in a variety of ways. Trails of pickups
guide you towards points of interest, and
gathering them provides a boost to your stats
– or rather can be synthesised to replenish
part of your shield, allowing you to take an
extra hit. And the game’s narrative is largely
delivered through traditional cutscenes and
expository dialogue.
None of that in itself is a problem, of
course, and Solar Ash benefits from being
relatively compact. It does eventually succumb
to repetition, but only right at the end, and
104
not to ruinous effect. Besides, it’s
understandable that smaller studios might
lean on a few genre best practices – do three
of this to get that, and so on – for the sake of
welcoming curious players.
Beyond that, inviting comparison with
triple-A games seems unwise for those with
shallower pockets. So, it makes sense that
independent developers – and teams working
with light-touch assistance from boutique
publishers – should seek other ways to
distinguish themselves from their big-budget
peers. And how they go about it promises to
shake up established sandbox conventions.
Including Solar Ash, three recent attempts
to do just that spring immediately to mind –
all representing a conscious shift away from
the combat-heavy approach of their biggerbudget cousins. Giant Squid’s The Pathless
siloes its fights off from the rest of the game,
limiting violence to its set-piece hunts.
Heart Machine incorporates it into Solar
Ash’s exploration – enemies are hazards
that can be hurried past or else folded into
your acrobatic routine, with the help of
your grapple and time-slip abilities. And
Shedworks’Sable eschews threats entirely.
With such a foundational element of the
genre – bound as it is to the colonialist notion
of conquering a space – either minimised or
cast aside completely, inevitably these games
have to find ways to plug that hole. And it’s
perhaps telling that, to an extent, all three
have chosen traversal as a point of difference.
(If you’re going to build a large world, it’s only
natural to try to make navigating it as
pleasurable as possible.) While we weren’t
wildly impressed by The Pathless, it certainly
attempted something new with its unorthodox
method of getting around. Sable borrowed the
Breath Of The Wild climb-anywhere mechanic
– which still feels relatively novel, given no
one else has attempted it yet – while striving
to create an emotional attachment to your
vehicle. And while we might quibble about
protagonist Rei’s inertia or that inconsistent
lock-on, Heart Machine’s game folds elements
of Jet Set Radio, Gravity Rush and Super Mario
Galaxy into its movement systems while
feeling entirely distinct from those influences.
Conversely, it’s truly exciting that we can
mention a game from a team of around 25
people in the same breath as those much
more expensive productions. It’s a reminder
that the tools, resources and expertise to
build bigger worlds are no longer limited to
larger teams. Flawed as Solar Ash and its ilk
may be, these early steps towards a new
language for open-world games will surely
inspire others to follow.
HORIZON
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Illustration ©2021 David Nakayama
PLAY
T
Battlefield 2042
here’s a rite of passage that occurs every time a new
Battlefield player gets hold of a large transport
vehicle. It begins pleasantly enough – the plane’s
cockpit granting enviable views over unchoreographed
skirmishes playing out below, as the hold quickly fills up
with new spawns. The problem comes when they attempt
to land. Overcome by more degrees of freedom than they
know what to do with, the pilot twists the Condor on its
head, killing everyone on board in a fiery explosion.
This, if the user reviews are to be believed, is the scale
of Battlefield 2042’s launch disaster. Game Pass owners in
particular suffered during their week-long head start,
tortured by rubber-banding and crash-causing data errors
that rendered matches unplayable. By full release, the game
was primed for a public kicking. With the benefit of a
later deadline, however, we can report that our ride with
Battlefield 2042 has been much less bumpy, with DICE
having spent post-launch weeks pulling its service out of
a tailspin. The calm has allowed us to focus on 2042’s
design – and from that perspective, the studio’s landing
is, if anything, a little too smooth and practised.
2042’s reveal trailer promised wingsuit hijinks, with an
extreme-sports vibe that suggested a weaponised Riders
Republic, and extreme weather to match: a direct take on
climate disaster. The reality is less alluring. The wingsuit
is tied to just one of Battlefield’s ten new ‘specialists’, and
not worth specialising in. Its floaty thirdperson dive isn’t
a patch on Far Cry’s equivalent, which keeps you in POV
perspective for the same reason that skydivers use
GoPros – it’s simply more thrilling that way. And the
weather events? More elusive than a British summer.
According to the premise, you’re a ‘No-Pat’,
dispossessed by fires, floods and economic collapse. Yet
through various plot contrivances – a new Cold War,
proxy combatants, and so on – you still wind up fighting
for one superpower or another in Battlefield’s flagship
modes, the way you always have. With no singleplayer
campaign this time, you’re scarcely aware of this backstory.
Instead, 2042 is most reminiscent of 2013 – back
when Battlefield 4 was defined by the skyscraper and the
ping of the lift that heralded slaughter as the doors slid
open to reveal an ambushing squad. Granted, there’s
visual invention in some of today’s maps: Renewal’s
genetically modified green fields back onto a desert
irrigation system, a binary image that sticks in the mind
even during freefall. And the spaces have been expanded
to accommodate a doubled player count – 128, to rival
the battle royale’s. But that extra land only exacerbates an
age-old Battlefield problem: the frequent instances in
which, unable to grab a vehicle, you’re left to sprint
across large tracts with little cover, only to be met by a
sniper’s bullet as you finally near the frontline.
There might be enough real estate for ten dozen
players in Battlefield 2042’s flag-capture mode, but there
certainly isn’t room for them all to have fun. Most are
106
Developer DICE
Publisher Electronic Arts
Format PC, PS4, PS5 (tested), Xbox One,
Xbox Series
Release Out now
merely fuel for the fantasies of a talented handful – the
helicopter aces who pound the ground with missiles, and
the marksmen who’ve unlocked enough attachments to
hit a helmeted head on the horizon. For those few whose
capabilities match their intent, Battlefield is the
extraordinary sandbox of the trailer (and if you’re among
them, by all means add another couple of points to the
score below). For the rest, it’s a very different game, one
of attrition and frustration.
In theory, the place of the average player is in a tight
and communicative squad which, by respawning together,
stays together – retaining their position in the fight and
making meaningful contributions towards capturing
terrority. Except that, inexplicably, Battlefield 2042 has
arrived without voice chat (see Post Script).
Voiceless teamwork is further inhibited by the
breakdown of Battlefield’s class system. DICE may well be
right in assuming that the modern shooter fan wants a
COD-like drip-feed of granular upgrades to their guns
and grenade belt. We’re proud of our own build, which
revolves around information collection and disruption –
strapping plastic explosives to recon drones, then
piloting them into the paths of jeeps, before vanishing in
the puff of a smoke grenade. The variety available is an
invitation to be unexpected, to hit your opponents with a
combo they’ve never quite seen before.
But the cost is clarity. To borrow a metaphor from
one of our squadmates, the original Battlefield’s classes
were jigsaw pieces. A fellow player has hopped into a
tank? Complement them as an engineer. The enemy has
brought in a Tiger? Step into the boots of the anti-tank.
Every death was an opportunity to consider the map’s
problems, then pick the tool to solve them. 2042’s
specialists, by contrast, are mosaics. Each loadout might
DARK CLOUD
Battlefield V had an answer to
be a work of art, comprising hundreds of tiny choices,
PUBG with Firestorm; this year’s but it won’t slot together with its fellows the way those
entry is in conversation with
jigsaw pieces once did. It’s no longer possible to tell the
Hunt: Showdown instead. The
role of the player next to you at a glance. And who would
result is Hazard Zone, a mode
in which several four-person
choose to swap out the build they’ve perfected over
squads compete with each
hours to provide the role the fight needs at that moment?
other and defending AI to
retrieve and extract data drives. Only a player with their head in the wrong century.
Thankfully, Battlefield 2042 allows you to live in the
Their reward for doing so?
Currency to fund better gear
past, should you choose to. Its Portal is stuffed with
for their next run. Permadeath
recreations of select maps from past games – from the
contributes some tension, but
washed-out palette of Battlefield 3, all the way back to the
there’s nothing as characterful
as Hunt’s monster bosses here, Battle Of The Bulge and El Alamein. What a treat to pilot
and maps reused from the other a soldier across the icy forest floor of Ardennes, as we
modes add to the sense that
Battlefield 2042 is a barebones did back in 2002 – and to feel his footsteps thump
release. That said, Hazard Zone’s convincingly through the pad of our PS5, a haptic feat
only made possible in 2020. As nostalgic joys go, though,
squad setup makes your small
victories seem larger, and it’s the it’s a damning one. Battlefield 2042 benefits from Portal
one place where the game’s
climate-change premise can be as a feature, but not from the comparisons it prompts.
If DICE’s formula was most entertaining in its
seen to rumble overhead, the
storms inexorably sweeping in. first iteration, what did we come to the future for? 6
For those
few whose
abilities match
their intent,
Battlefield is the
extraordinary
sandbox of
the trailer
LEFT Battlefield is fought on two
levels, vehicle and infantry. But
fighters in the former forget
about the latter at their peril.
MAIN An international battle
for – what else? – oil has turned
the icy continent of Antarctica
into an unlikely warzone.
BOTTOM DICE’s interiors tend to be
boxy but beautiful – just the way
the developer’s futuristic actionadventure Mirror’s Edge was
ABOVE Renewal’s central wall, with fields and multiple buldings on one side
and the desert and research facility on the other, serves as a bottleneck
for ground-based assaults, though it can be circumvented in a plane
107
Getting a little air and seeing things from
afar is useful in a game that demands
you take a holistic view of the fight
Post Script
N
How will the game industry fix its crossplay communication problem?
ot for the first time, a Battlefield game
has left us wondering whether the
series really is a mainstream shooter in
spirit, or has something more niche at its core.
Yes, the speeding rickshaws and intuitive tanks
lend themselves to rollicking escapades that any
solo player can hop in and enjoy. But beneath
that is a game that values coordination above
all else. Battlefield’s quintessential class is the
medic: a support role built to keep a squad’s
roving spawn point alive, and thus enable glory
for the team, not just the individual. Perhaps
DICE’s peers aren’t Infinity Ward and
Sledgehammer after all, but the teams behind
Natural Selection, Squad and Hell Let Loose –
tactical games in which victory is more a
matter of effective communication and wellmaintained hierarchy than shooting straight.
With that realisation comes frustration:
how can a shooter as team-focused as
Battlefield 2042 launch without voice chat? It’s
an omission DICE has already had to address
in its post-release blogs. “We want to give you
the assurance that we’re carefully evaluating
your desire to see legacy features return,” the
developer wrote shortly after launch. “End-ofmatch scoreboard, server browser, and features
like voice chat are big topics for us to cover all
at once, and we have plenty we want to say
around them. We’ll come back to you when we
108
have things that we can show to you, including
details about our long-term vision for certain
features and functions.”
While it’s amusing to hear voice chat listed
as a ‘legacy feature’, you can see how DICE was
caught off-guard. During the prior generation,
in-game voice support became surplus to
requirements. Xbox One and PS4 included
fully featured party chat functionality, and on
PC – well, PC players have always run
thirdparty VOIP apps in the background. Just
try getting them to do anything else.
So why has this non-issue spun back to
trouble developers again? In a word: crossplay.
With Fortnite, Epic used its newfound heft to
pressure platform holders into allowing rival
machines to connect. Even a reluctant Sony
ultimately committed to supporting and
encouraging crossplatform play, albeit after
initially asking companies for compensation.
Since then, crossplay has fast become an
expectation among players of online shooters.
And one that benefits studios, too, because by
consolidating their audiences, battle royale
developers can quickly source 100 players from
a much larger pool during matchmaking. But
communication tools have lagged behind. Now
players on different platforms are joining
together, they’re finding their voice chat
platforms aren’t connecting in the same way.
It’s a problem we’ve run into on multiple
occasions, notably having spent Warzone’s
lockdown season balancing laptops and phones
near a PS4 so that PC squadmates could shout
out warnings from Discord – a less-than-ideal
arrangement given the noise coming from the
television speakers. Unlike Battlefield, Warzone
does feature its own in-game chat, but it’s
temperamental enough that we never
succeeded in persuading our friends to stick
with it for long.
That particular, painful setup will be fixed
once PlayStation’s new partnership with
Discord bears fruit in the new year. And Game
Pass users are already well accommodated by
the Xbox Game Bar, which easily enables chat
between PCs and Series X/S. But even these
solutions are siloed, leaving cross-console
combinations uncovered. An app that bridges
Xbox and PlayStation looks unlikely (though if
the two companies happen to be looking for a
name, may we humbly suggest Red Telephone,
after the Moscow-Washington hotline).
For now, as DICE is discovering, the onus
will be on developers to provide reliable voice
chat in-game. Either that, or to abandon the
crossplay dream. And that latter ship appears
to have sailed. As Epic’s Joe Kreiner once put it
in an email to Sony: “I can’t think of a scenario
where Epic doesn’t get what we want.”
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PLAY
W
hat, exactly, is the Gunk? That’s the
question for which Rani, your playercharacter, spends this brisk five-hour
adventure seeking an answer after her ship discovers
an uncharted, unnamed, otherwise uninhabited planet
that’s bubbling over with the stuff. But it’s also a
question we find ourselves asking of the Gunk’s unusual
role in the game. It’s a memorable presence, filling
spaces with gobbets of giant red and black frogspawn,
and occasionally advancing on Rani like a cloud with a
grudge. But it’s not really an enemy as such.
And although you’re aiming a reticle and pulling a
trigger, your interactions with it aren’t quite combat. As
you apply your Poltergust-esque vacuum cleaner to the
Gunk, pulling it apart in a treacly stream, it does little
to react. (The question of sentience is also raised, and
eventually answered, by the story.) Nor does the Gunk
fill the usual role of an obstacle in a platformer. There is
a degree of jumping and navigating of spaces here, but
coming into contact with these deposits isn’t lethal; it
just makes it very hard to see what you’re doing.
Eventually, though, it clicks – you’re not fighting or
avoiding the Gunk, but mining it. And it’s at this point
that The Gunk’s shape reveals itself, as a spiritual
successor to the SteamWorld Dig games. It’s a sensible
template for Image & Form’s first foray into the third
dimension. Think of it like this: if SteamWorld Dig was
a beginner-friendly take on Metroid, this is the studio’s
Metroid Prime, a game that borrows the trappings of a
3D shooter to support its transition but resolutely isn’t
one. It even has a scanning mechanic for making sense
of the alien flora and architecture you encounter.
If you’ve played the Dig games, The Gunk’s structure
will quickly feel familiar. There’s a hub – in this case,
the spaceship Rani shares with her fellow space trucker
(and, though it’s never said explicitly, presumably
romantic partner) Becks – from which you move
outwards, rather than downwards, clearing spaces and
collecting resources before coming up for air and a few
upgrades that make your next trip quicker and easier.
Scanning the world around you unlocks blueprints for
new equipment, such as a wider spread for your vacuum
or the ability to heal yourself by sucking up alien
matter. To pay for these, you must gather minerals and
organic matter. This remains a compelling loop, but it
could easily collapse into a grind.
Fortunately, the basic interactions of mining are
inherently delightful. By aiming the crosshairs, you’re
able to carve out chunks of Gunk in a shape of your
choosing, which the remnant then shifts dynamically
around. Meanwhile, resource gathering might involve
pulling back the spring of a root, so that it explodes
into a shower of resource globules to be sucked up.
This is complemented by a sense of physicality in the
game’s visuals: the cast look as though they’ve been
110
The Gunk
Developer Image & Form Games
Publisher Thunderful Publishing
Format PC, Xbox One, Xbox
Series (tested)
Release Out now
If SteamWorld
Dig was a
beginnerfriendly take on
Metroid, this
is the studio’s
Metroid Prime
clumped together out of Plasticine, while the alien ruins
you explore are constructed from carved swirls of rock.
This is a game of textures you want to run a finger over.
Even more importantly, though, The Gunk’s loot is
as much a motivation to explore as it is an end unto
itself. Finding bonus stashes is sometimes just a case
of thinking to look behind a structure or indulging the
urge to go left instead of right; occasionally, though,
reaching them requires completing a short chain of
puzzles or jumping challenges. The prize at the end –
and the (entirely optional) upper reaches of the upgrade
tree to which they grant access – is really just a way of
acknowledging your exploration.
Poking into the corners of these environments –
though pleasingly open, and realised in beautiful detail
– does reveal a few rough edges. Unsure which is the
path forward (in order to ignore it and go the other
way first, naturally) or where we have already been, we
sometimes get the sense that Image & Form is lost right
alongside us. It’s one of the few signs of a developer
working in 3D for the first time. The Gunk is also
arguably a little simplistic in what it asks of the player.
There is, eventually, the odd bout of combat, not with
the Gunk itself but with creatures that emerge from
it. While each enemy type – warty headcrabs, longdistance spitters and bullish chargers – introduces
its own twist on the core mechanics of sucking,
grabbing and pulling, they don’t really add up to much.
Exploration can be broken up into combat, puzzles and
platforming; with a few notable exceptions, you’re
rarely taxed on any front. But they do ensure just a
slight rub of resistance to progress. And the game
shuttles you between them so quickly that you’re
BECKS APPEAL
unlikely to often notice or mind anyway.
Beyond the mysteries of this
The story moves along at a steady clip, giving us
planet – the answers to which
time and reason to warm to these characters (see
won’t come as much of a
surprise to anyone who has ever ‘Becks appeal’) without ever taking away control for
consumed any stories about lost too long. Meanwhile, new environments and concepts –
alien civilisations – the real
explosive fruits, wind turbines that trigger ancient
driving force of The Gunk’s
mechanisms, lures that attract creatures to one spot –
narrative is the relationship
between Rani and Becks. Space are introduced at a pace that ensures you feel like you’re
explorers more in the vein of the always making discoveries, right the way through to the
Nostromo than the Enterprise,
end. We come away with a clear idea of what the Gunk
they’re a pair of labourers
is, both within the fiction and without, and a sense that
wrestling with worries about
we’ve squeezed every possible idea from it. All in a
money, regrets from the past
and cheap second-hand tech.
handful of hours. This might be considered the sign of
In other words, they’re easy
a narrow design space, a world with tight limits on its
to relate to – and thus to like.
lore, but the fact that the game never attempts to push
There’s a classic dynamic to
beyond them is to its credit. In just a fraction of the
the partnership, with one
hothead explorer and one
time it would take another game, The Gunk manages to
fretting pragmatist, which
instil the full sense of exploring an unknown planet
provides exactly enough fuel
to its core. That brevity is both refreshing and makes
for a few hours of conflict,
it easy to recommend discovering the answer to 7
leaving us rooting for them
to kiss and make up.
the game’s various questions for yourself.
ABOVE The score, from Swedish “lycanthrope and sound-explorer”
Ratvader (also known as Oscar Rydelius), ranges from sweeping beauty
to ambient dread, lending an extra layer of gravitas to this alien world
MAIN Before areas are cleared
of Gunk, they can be dark,
oppressive spaces. Afterwards,
they spring back into life, plants
and light flooding in, Okami
style. Nature is healing indeed.
ABOVE Unless you’re willing to do
some major backtracking, heading
to base for upgrades and a chat
requires the use of fast-travel
points, dotted along your journey
at half-hour increments.
RIGHT The snippets of text that
reward your scans aren’t especially
colourful, though we can’t help
but smile at certain plants and
minerals being classified as loot
111
PLAY
E
Fights In Tight Spaces
verything’s a Roguelike deckbuilder these days,
isn’t it? Even action movies. Fights In Tight Spaces
is an attempt to compress the oeuvres of Statham,
Woo and Greengrass into a turn-based card game. Each
run consists of a string of brutal fight scenes playing out
in the bathroom and subway-carriage settings suggested
by the title. As Agent 11, you play cards to unleash
martial acrobatics such as flying kicks, roll throws and
overhead flips, the most dramatic sending the camera in
tight to capture the sharply choreographed animations.
At their best, these fights recall the positional
strategising of Into The Breach. Moves can send their
target tumbling backwards, crashing against a piece of
scenery for extra damage – or, better yet, into the path
of a colleague’s attack, all of which are telegraphed a
turn in advance. But, appropriate to the scale of combat
represented, it all plays out on grids even smaller than
that game’s eight-by-eight chessboard. These spaces
really do feel tight, the placement of every sink or
countertop fundamentally changing the character of
the battlefield. Prison common areas are confined rat’s
nests of tables that block avenues of attack; rooftops are
wide-open spaces with waist-high walls at their edges,
begging you to nudge enemies over them into the lethal
white void bordering every level.
We might feel guilty for doing so, were the game’s
bottomless supply of goons – thrown at you three or
four at a time – not such worthy opponents. Among the
standard pugilists and pistoleros, the game constantly
introduces new enemy varieties. Ones who guard a
single spot, or need to be attacked from the back or –
most terrifying of all – turn to face you as you move.
Sprinkled among the crowd are occasional gang bosses
and lieutenants: strong-armed brawlers whose punches
sweep across multiple squares; Shredder lookalikes in
spiked armour that slices your fists every time you land
a hit; drunken boxers who dodge the first attack thrown
their way then swig on an elixir for random buffs each
turn. Fearsome opponents, a setting that’s more than
mere backdrop, a repertoire of outrageously impractical
moves – it all combines for as convincing an evocation
of the John Wick or Bourne films as you could imagine
in a game that lacks the essential ingredient of realtime
action. At least, it does when everything works.
entirely, one of which seems to be its default. But this
will just turn your first attempt into a war of attrition,
replaying fights until you eventually reach the end and
discover level after level of unlocks all arriving in a
flurry: 20 new cards, three starter decks. (These aren’t
distinct characters, as in Slay The Spire, but overlap, with
the entire card pool available on every run.) This makes
it rather hard to get excited about new cards – and it’s
not the only reason.
In most deckbuilders, card unlocks are a constant
dangling carrot, a chance to see what design twists the
developer has in store next. Here, you’re generally best
sticking with what you already know. Every card in the
game is deeply situational; a single zero-damage push, in
the right circumstances, can let you eliminate a powerful
boss on the first turn. But if all your foes are two squares
away, and you draw a hand of attacks that require their
targets to be adjacent, and no movement cards? There’s
no thinking your way out of that; just hit the ‘end turn’
button. Mitigating randomness is, of course, the primary
challenge of card games. But Fights In Tight Spaces has
two layers to contend with: the luck of the draw and the
current board state. Designing a deck with this in mind
pushes you away from the most interesting cards and
towards strategies that are more foolproof and boring.
We land on a counter-attack deck that practically drives
itself; just load up on block and counter cards, then play
any that arrive in your hand that turn, standing still in a
game that at its best is all about ducking and weaving.
And this isn’t some game-breaking edge case – it’s built
on a starter deck.
It’s indicative of a tension that runs right to the
design’s core. After all, the situational value of each card
is precisely what makes these fights exciting. In a tight
FIGHT WITH PURPOSE
spot, you might swap positions with a foe to line them
Littered among the standard
up with a shotgun blast meant for you, its pushback
fights, as well as the obligatory sending them over the railings to their demise, leaving
text events, you’ll find a few
objective-based missions. These you with a powerful sense of your own genius. However,
might task you with protecting a it often feels as though the game is doing everything in
cowering ambassador who can its power to keep you from playing it this way.
be pushed and kicked out of
It is possible, though, to fight back. We advise
danger’s way without taking
playing in Special Agent mode, which keeps the
damage, or taking down every
member of a gang except the
permadeath but gives you one ‘Rollback’ undo per fight,
undercover informant, who is
and, once you’ve played a couple of runs to get a handle
also attacking you so as not to
on the basics of card design, with drafting enabled. This
blow their cover. These are
The problem with Fights In Tight Spaces isn’t so technically optional, with bonus lets you skip the starting decks – which, bafflingly, do
not include a build focused on repositioning, the game’s
much the fights themselves as the Roguelike deckbuilder rewards for pulling them off
(something every fight has –
strongest suit – and instead pick each card from a
they’re housed within. Battles need to be of a certain
normally just a case of finishing selection of three. Think of it like fast-forwarding
length, both to create challenge and to capture the
in a set number of turns or
through an action movie past all the poorly written
feeling of the game’s inspirations. There also needs to
killing enemies a certain way).
be enough of them in a run to give you time to test your Still, in these cases, it’s hard not dialogue to get to the good bits. Not ideal, of course –
the mission, not
but worth it for those moments when you split-kick
deck, and to balance out randomness. But together, these toleastprioritise
because – a bland ‘pick up two gunmen in a single movement, then vault over a
add up to runs that go on for hours before petering out the briefcase’
mission format
bar countertop so they shoot each other in the
suddenly and anticlimactically. It’s telling that the game aside – they are wonderfully
6
characterful set-pieces.
face. Cue cheering and flinging of popcorn.
offers two difficulty modes that eliminate permadeath
112
Publisher Mode 7
Developer Ground Shatter
Format PC (tested), Xbox One,
Xbox Series
Release Out now
Among the
standard
pugilists and
pistoleros, the
game constantly
introduces new
enemy varieties
ABOVE The game’s minimalist
visuals take the limitations of
a small production and, like a
judo master throwing their
opponent, turn it into a strength.
RIGHT Levels themselves aren’t
procedurally generated, but repeat
encounters in the same space
might feature a completely
different set of threats. Tables
become a real problem when
there’s a gunman on the far side
BELOW One benefit of the
Superhot-style colour scheme is
that when a lethal blow connects,
the resulting blood really pops
against the light background
ABOVE While Fights In Tight Spaces certainly has flaws that prevent it from
standing next to the formidable Slay The Spire, it’s difficult to really dislike
any game that allows you to boot ninjas out the door of a moving train
113
PLAY
B
Heavenly Bodies
eing blown out of the airlock and into the vacuum
of space can, it turns out, be a source of hilarity.
Yes, there’s a touch of the shivers about it, colour
slowly choking from the screen as your astronaut drifts
into the depths of the game’s one fail state. But it’s all
delivered with perfect comic timing. That big red lever,
begging you to pull it. The realisation a moment before
our companion gives it an eager tug. The whoosh of
depressurisation as we’re dumped into the void.
Heavenly Bodies is one of those games that restores
an awareness rubbed away by years of muscle memory:
that of the controller in your hands, an imperfect
communicator between your intentions and onscreen
action. The unusual control scheme puts one of your
astronaut’s arms on each stick, a hand on each trigger,
one leg per shoulder button. Even something as simple
as remembering right from left becomes tricky when
you’re tumbling end over end; operating complex
machinery can require contortions of both the fingers
and the mind. (Each of the game’s seven stages requires
some mild puzzle-solving, as you attempt to translate
its Ikea-style illustrated manuals into clumsy reality.)
The controls – accompanied by a physics system in
love with Newton’s Laws, particularly the third – are at
Exiting your space capsule to fix a broken thruster – knocked loose by
your own poor steering, naturally – creates some quietly cinematic
moments, the vessel drifting along as you cling on for dear life
114
Developer/publisher 2pt Interactive
Format PC, PS4, PS5 (tested)
Release Out now
YOUR MOVE
Heavenly Bodies takes an
inventive approach to difficulty
settings, with three options
that don’t change the tasks but
tweak the control scheme and
physics. Assisted adds the ability
to point your astronaut’s arms in
a direction, Superman style, and
kick their legs to swim through
space – a useful accompaniment
to the breaststroke technique
that saves us many times in
Regular mode. Newtonian
disables all that in favour of
more slavishly loyal physics
and an even stricter challenge.
once a perfectly logical expression of motion in zero-G
and deeply, bodily frustrating. After your hapless
astronaut misses the button you’re aiming for and
instead pulls a vital cable from its housing, for the third
time in a row, it’s only natural to find your muscles
tightened, your jaw clenched.
Playing with friends, this frustration transmutes
easily into laughter. In isolation, it can tip over into
simmering resentment. Either way, eventual success
brings a giddying release. If you’ve ever rescued a DIY
job gone awry, you’ll know the feeling – except in this
case, it’s a space telescope or oxygen garden you’ve
restored with your bare hands. These tasks lead logically
into one another, building a story of sorts and
introducing enough mechanical variety to keep you
on (or rather, off) your toes. Got the hang of moving
without gravity? OK, now do it in the dark. Here’s a
crane arm, a mining capsule, each with its own
counterintuitive control scheme.
The resulting sense of forward momentum helps
keep the frustrations from growing tiresome. For us,
at least – it’s a delicate balance, and Heavenly Bodies
doesn’t really do delicate. If you decide to take the
plunge, we strongly advise bringing a companion along
to lend a helping hand. Just don’t be surprised if that
same hand is the one that sends you spiralling
7
out into space.
PLAY
Y
Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator
ou could never accuse Strange Scaffold of resting
on its laurels. After presenting us with a world of
stock-photo puppies in An Airport For Aliens
Currently Run By Dogs, the developer now takes us into
to the heart (or perhaps the lungs or pancreas) of the
galactic organ trade. Here, you make a living buying and
selling spleens, eyeballs, livers, lungs and even souls –
the grisly detritus of an ongoing space war. Each pulses
away on the left of the screen, but you’ll be too busy
looking at the prices on the right to notice, as more
arrive on the organ barge and you look for a bargain.
You can sell these on at a profit, or look to fulfil a
request – from someone desperate for a new brain,
perhaps, or urgently seeking a bladder to patch up a
hole in their ship. But you’ll need to be quick: other
traders are keen to make a fast buck, and some have
both an impetuous streak and alarmingly deep pockets.
With the clock ticking as soon as you hit the ‘trade’
button, it seems you’re being encouraged to play
quickly, to respond to every request and offer as soon as
you can, but that’s not always the smart option. Rather,
you need to bide your time and look for a bargain: most
requests from buyers give you a few days to fulfil them,
while others have no time limit. It pays to check the
reward you’re being offered first, though a boost to
If you’re after a specific type of organ for a customer, you can pay off
fellow traders to ensure they don’t get their filthy paws on it first
your reputation is often worth a small hit; some side
stories demand you play the long game, helping
someone out early on, and profiting later. And
sometimes you’ll be faced with a threat: you won’t be
sure whether the requester will follow through, but can
you really take the risk that they might?
Market fluctuations mean you might have one day
where you’re competing against a passive trader at a
time when the market is flooded with a particular organ
you don’t need. Alternatively, you might have a series of
requests to fulfil, with the time limit rapidly
approaching, and find yourself up against three wealthy
and impulsive buyers who’ll pick the place clean of
rarities before you’ve had chance to even check the
ORGAN GRINDER
items’ condition. And with the item list continually
Every body part is graded
according to size, condition,
scrolling upward, and organs purchased in a splitblood type and rarity, with some second, you might inadvertently splurge on an
requesters demanding organs
that fulfil a particular criterion. expensive rotcane that damages your hull, the adjacent
eyeball you actually needed having been snapped up by
Their condition (and price)
steadily deteriorates in your
the time you’ve emptied your hold and shelled out for
hold, though certain organs
improve the quality or condition repairs. In that sense, Strange Scaffold’s fiction may be
true to the caprices of the stock market, but it means it
of those around them, while
others transform them entirely. can also be frustrating and sometimes tedious to play.
With enough cash you can buy It seems the point being made here is that the life of an
bigger holds, but after a certain intergalactic organ trader may be grimly fascinating
point you’re better off investing
(and often lucrative), but that such unpleasant
in a portfolio and cashing out
6
business can have unpleasant outcomes, too.
when stocks are up.
Developer/publisher Strange Scaffold
Format PC (tested), Xbox One,
Xbox Series
Release Out now
115
PLAY
A
Clockwork Aquario
lthough technically the third release of a classic
Westone title in the last few years – beginning
with Lizardcube’s handsome remake of Wonder
Boy: The Dragon’s Trap, which was followed by the
underwhelming Asha In Monster World – Clockwork
Aquario’s development has actually been in the works
for even longer. It’s also not a remake but rather a
restoration of an early-’90s arcade game that never saw
the light of day after poor-performing location tests in
Japan led to its cancellation.
Fortunately, unlike the fate suffered by most games
of its kind, the original source code wasn’t completely
lost. After a decade-long journey that has involved
various parties, including designer Ryuichi Nishizawa
and other members of the Westone team, arcade porting
specialist M2, retro publisher Strictly Limited Games,
and renowned emulation programmer Steve Snake, this
lost arcade game finally gets its time to shine.
While you shouldn’t expect a treasure on par with
the developer’s best works, that isn’t to say Aquario is
the equivalent of an old knick-knack that’s been stuck
down the back of your sofa for years. On the contrary,
the art is gorgeous, while its playable heroes – a boy, a
girl, and a robot, all beautifully animated – are the kind
Since this is a very short game by the standards of modern console
releases, with a mere five stages between you and the credits, you’re
likely to get a lot more out of repeat playthroughs with a friend in tow
116
of large, chunky sprites you don’t often see in modern
pixel art. As expressive as each character is, they play
identically, as you jump and bounce across five colourful
stages, bashing and throwing stunned enemies (or one
another if you’re playing in local co-op) as you go,
before battling arch-nemesis Dr Hangyo: an aquatic Dr
Eggman who pilots various mechanical contraptions.
Within 20 or so minutes, it’s all over. That’s par for
the course for most arcade titles of what should have
been its time, where the desire for mastery or the allure
of attaining a new high score provides the incentive to
replay. Difficulty modes that amount to little more than
being given fewer credits to beat the game are pretty
much your lot. Under those bright, characterful visuals,
ONBOARDING
Aquario is a competent platformer that ultimately lacks
As a restoration of the original
arcade game as opposed to a
an obvious hook – such that you begin to understand
home port, there’s little here in why it failed to turn heads at a time when game centres
terms of extras. Beating the
were dominated by fighting games and the emergence
game once is how you unlock
of 3D polygons. It was essentially Westone’s last hurrah
Arcade Mode – that is, access
to the service mode arcade
in the coin-op sector before it moved on to obscure
operators would use for testing console co-development and eventual liquidation. But
inputs or bookkeeping the
if Aquario is a footnote in gaming history, we should be
cabinet’s performance. More
thankful that it’s a history we can experience – not
fascinating is a gallery that
provides more context to the
through snatches of B-roll on YouTube or files
game’s excavation, from early
concept sketches to examples of circulated via dubious ROM dumps, but as a fully
restored and polished game that, in its Switch
the corrupt files encountered
6
incarnation at least, can fit in your hands.
during the restoration.
Developer Westone, Inin Games
Publisher Strictly Limited Games
Format PS4 (tested), Switch
Release Out now
PLAY
P
Dungeon Encounters
laying Dungeon Encounters, we find ourselves
thinking of Gunpei Yokoi; chiefly, his oft-quoted
maxim of “lateral thinking with seasoned
technology” – familiar, reliable parts used in inventive
new ways. That approach informs this enthralling RPG
from veteran designer Hiroyuki Ito. Stripped to the bone,
it harks back to the tabletop origins of dungeon crawlers
– you’re offered the barest whisper of story before being
invited to navigate a labyrinth that’s nothing more than a
flat arrangement of squares on crumpled paper. Enemies,
vendors, treasures, riddles and more are represented by
hexadecimal numerals. Your job is simply to advance and
descend, mapping out the place by colouring each square.
Your imagination follows suit, filling in gaps as you go.
Ito’s own invention, the Active Time Battle, sits at
the heart of precise, tactical encounters that are the polar
opposite of the pyrotechnic spectacle to which we’ve
grown accustomed from Square Enix. Your party of
adventurers, chosen from a small selection, and enemies
appear as static art in small boxes that shake as blows and
spells land, each attack represented via comically simple
yet evocative animations. You must whittle down their
physical and magical defences before you can deplete
their health; a straightforward but elegant mechanic that
Economical, effective use of sound – offering up rhythmic clanks,
howling squalls and whispering voices – contributes to an atmosphere
that grows steadily more ominous as the floor number increases
encourages you to factor in speed as well as strength.
Further tactical considerations are layered on top; flying
enemies beyond the range of melee weapons are merely
one of the first wrinkles to consider. Soon, gear becomes
more important than your character level, while new
abilities – found within the dungeon, then equipped at
scattered stations – are bound to a pool of points that
grows every 1,000 squares, with a bonus for fully charted
floors. Now you can view the map from a higher vantage
point, or resurrect fallen allies during battle.
Or, perhaps, prevent one of your number from being
swallowed by an anaconda. In our case, the beast slinks
PICTURE PERFECT
away while we finish off its witchy accomplice, before the
These 99 floors host an
remaining trio hare down a passageway in the hope of
extensive menagerie:
rescuing their companion. Dungeon Encounters constantly
ectoplasmic wyverns, spectral
ninjas, slavering werewolves and offers such surprises, each ability and discovery opening
a great many more. Each may
be contained within a tiny box, potential new avenues, shortcuts and anecdotes. Twoperson rescues of petrified friends; knightly leaps
but Ryoma Ito’s portraits are
between corridors to bypass foes; risky plunges to lower
remarkably rich and vivid – as,
indeed, are the brisk bios of the floors to retrieve high-level wanderers; desperate, limping
various dungeoneers. From a
grief-stricken vassal to a faithful retreats to base, that final fast-travel portal greeted with
ecstatic relief. Is this an audacious formal experiment or
hound and a greying warrior
simply a brilliant creator making the most of a miserly
deferring retirement one final
time, backstories and motives
budget? Either way, the lack of support for 2021’s best
are detailed in a few short
RPG is a surprise – by its publisher’s standards, Dungeon
paragraphs – snapshots of
Encounters may seem skeletal, but there is an
characters that feel finely
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abundance of delicious meat on these old bones.
drawn in every sense.
Developer/publisher Square Enix
Format PC, PS4, Switch (tested)
Release Out now
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The Eternal Cylinder
he first lesson we learn in The Eternal Cylinder is
not to get attached. Guiding our group of alien
critters around a landscape that feels like No Man’s
Sky by way of a Freudian nightmare, we draw too close
to a predator – a sort of upturned jacket potato with
stumpy legs and a toothy maw. It awakens and ambles
towards us, and thanks to our slow reactions, one of
our party becomes the potato’s filling. Now we know.
This is survival horror of the kind you see in a nature
documentary. Individuals will perish. We have to take
the loss and revise our approach accordingly.
Thankfully, our charges, the Trebhum, are nothing if
not adaptable. The rotund bipeds can roll like bowling
balls to escape danger, and imbibe small flora and fauna
with their vacuum-cleaner trunks – in some cases for
sustenance, in others with more transformative results.
Swallow an egg dropped by a large grasshopper, for
example, and with a ‘pop’ you’ve got long, springy legs.
Every seed or grub you discover thus carries exciting,
life-changing potential, and there’s a pleasingly large
variety of mutations to distribute between your team,
from inflatable bodies to fur coats and flaming snouts.
There’s an equally grand array of environmental
obstacles to test your absorptions, along with sporadic
Trebhum trunks expel as well as inhale. In their default state, they
shoot a jet of water, but you can also fire items between storage
pouches, while one mutation converts edibles into explosive projectiles
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puzzle-like dungeons. Plus the titular cylinder – a giant
metallic rolling pin stretched ominously across the land
behind you. It remains dormant as long as you stay
within the vicinity of a protective tower, but once you’ve
explored the area and leave for pastures new, it follows.
Methodical resource-gathering turns into breathless
panic as you aim towards the next tower on the horizon
and roll for your life, the cylinder crushing all in its path.
It’s a maliciously inspired concept in a game full of
leftfield creations, all feeding smartly into a cryptic tale
of underdog diversity. As an experience, however, The
Eternal Cylinder is perhaps too diverse, at the expense
of focus and tight systems. The pace of the plot and
NIGHTMARE CREATURES
As a rule, the larger the lifeform scripted events are held back by the baggy tempo of
procedural survival play. Group control, meanwhile,
in The Eternal Cylinder, the
more disturbing its design.
feels like a problem left half-solved; swapping between
Indigenous beasts appear
Trebhum is fiddly, navigation is imprecise, and those
almost familiar yet impossibly
following your lead can get stuck and separated from the
alien; giraffe-like necks peel to
reveal huge tongues, and great pack. It seems ACE Team has recognised the latter issue,
clamping molluscs hunt from
at least, since erratic AI rarely leads to actual casualties.
beneath the sand. These are
Besides, a certain meandering looseness feels
joined by the servants of the
cylinder, Hieronymus Bosch-style reasonable in a game whose allure lies in the unexpected.
hybrids of recognisably human With its commitment to meaningful surrealism, it
parts and machinery. And what would almost be a shame if it slotted together too
of the colossal snakes twisting
neatly. Like the Trebhum, The Eternal Cylinder thrives
down from the heavens?
despite its deficiencies, relying on a unique
They’re all part of a hideously
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ensemble of qualities to find a way.
beautiful work.
Developer ACE Team
Publisher Good Shepherd
Entertainment
Format PC (tested), PS4, Xbox One
Release Out now
PLAY
R
Sherlock Holmes Chapter One
eaders of a certain age may associate young
Holmes with the stop-motion cake assassins of
the Barry Levinson movie; Frogwares’ prequel
proves similarly hard to swallow. And the problem here
is almost pudding-related: a lack of just deserts. The
writers spin cases that keep multiple suspects in play,
with you rewiring the synapses of Holmes’ mind palace
to explain how the same clues might incriminate
numerous rogues. But the final decision rarely feels
definitive: one case ends with a shrug and a “guess we’ll
never know”, while another fingers the culprit and asks
you only to blackmail other villains with the revelation.
The series has long had a moralistic streak – after
pointing the finger, you decide whether to hand the
accused in – but these mushy ambiguities undermine
the sleuth’s signature deductions.
The argument goes that this is a half-formed
Holmes, yet to become the calculating man of logic.
But, nattier dress sense aside, little is gained from
de-ageing. Mechanically, he merely feels more
inefficient, with the already tired detective vision now
forced to work in tandem with a fussy evidence system:
Holmes must ‘pin’ the idea of shoes, say, before seeing
ghostly footprints manifest. It culminates in the same
As if to justify the open world, Holmes is often pulled into wild goose – or
elephant – chases. This mystery drags him from ad-hoc zoo to forest ruins,
an archeological dig and a yacht club. By the end, the thread is very frayed
glowing trail as earlier games, only with extra busywork
beforehand. Likewise map exploration, which tries to
embed you in the handsome open world by giving street
directions instead of automatic map markers – but if
you’re only using addresses to place map markers, what
is gained? When has running your eyes over tiny street
names on a map ever been the fun part of the journey?
These feel like systems designed to free you from
the tyranny of a breadcrumb trail – the kind of
emergent sleuthing that resulted in the magic of Obra
Dinn – only to make placing the breadcrumb trail your
responsibility. The game is more successful when it
sticks to self-contained scenes: the side missions that
hand you a single location and a dossier of facts, and
leave you to deduce who did what and where. There is
BAKER SKEET
Firefights attempt to tap into
simple pleasure in unpicking a sequence of events based
Holmes’ advanced perception as on testimony and environmental storytelling. Though
you use slow-motion aiming to
pick off armoured plates before even this can be hobbled: crime reconstructions ask you
to position models made of blue light that often
attacking props – steam vents
and lamps – to stumble goons, obscures the character detail and makes it hard to parse
opening them up for an arrest. what you’re actually proposing. If this is another riff on
In practice, it devolves into a
laughable Benny Hill pursuit as a Holmes out of his depth, it’s a frustrating one.
Between the bagginess of the central mysteries and
you try to lure brigands towards
the bag of flour you want to
the struggle to fill the open world, it’s difficult to detect
explode in their face. Guy
the
spirit or appeal of the consulting detective in
Ritchie’s films have a lot to
Chapter One. Were he consulted, the verdict is
answer for, but at least these
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easy to predict: Watson, the game is a muddle.
scenes are mercifully rare.
Developer/publisher Frogwares
Format PC, PS4, PS5 (tested), Xbox One,
Xbox Series
Release Out now
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PLAY
O
f all human desires, it’s perhaps the most
universal to crave a little more time. An extra
hour to finish a task at the end of a working day,
perhaps, or another Sunday to make up for frittering
away the previous one. Rarely, however, have we felt so
acutely aware of time’s passage in a game as in Unsighted.
It begins with protagonist Alma awakening in the
aftermath of a brutal war between humans and automata,
where life-giving Anima is locked away from robots,
leaving them running on dwindling internal supplies
until consciousness fades. This is far from narrative set
dressing: a clock ticks down in real time for all automata,
Alma included, as you explore this colourful postapocalyptic world, retrieving meteor fragments to craft
a weapon powerful enough to reclaim your life source.
Yet there are ways to tip the scales in your favour.
Deposits of life-extending meteor dust are squirrelled
away throughout levels, free for you to hoard for yourself
or give away to a diverse – albeit under-written – roster
of NPCs. While the clock can be turned off for less
stressful adventuring, its presence lends a thrilling sense
of urgency to exploring these levels, which spiral out
from central hubs before looping back via well-placed
shortcuts – particularly useful when dallying can have
Beyond the campaign, Dungeon Raid turns Unsighted into a full-blown
Roguelike, where you build your character out while fighting through
randomised levels. There’s a genre-standard Boss Rush mode, too
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Unsighted
Developer Studio Pixel Punk
Publisher Humble Games
Format PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One
(tested)
Release Out now
BREAK THE LOOP
Boss fights are highlights,
pitting you against aggressive
mecha as smaller enemies keep
you on your toes. While there’s
a recommended order to
tackling them, subsequent
playthroughs encourage you
to experiment – whether by
starting afresh with all items
intact, sequence-breaking using
your knowledge of Arcadia’s
shortcuts, or tackling late-game
enemies right away. Combined
with hidden movement and
combat mechanics revealed
via experimentation, secretive
text logs or in one case via an
Achievement hint, it’s flexible
enough to reward return visits.
dire consequences. Light puzzles from the Zelda playbook
are facilitated by a steady drip-feed of new traversal
tools. Whether you’re zipping between explosive
airborne crates using a hookshot, or creating tenuous
frozen footholds with an ice grenade launcher, they add a
sense of novelty to exploration, while expanding the
borders of this cleverly interconnected overworld.
Alma flows effortlessly between abilities and
platforming, setting the stage for a hack-and-slash
combat system inspired by the likes of Hyper Light
Drifter. You duck and weave through dense but readable
patterns of projectiles, while a combo system incentivises
foot-forward combat in the vein of Doom, encouraging
you to go for broke with parries, dodge rolls and ranged
attacks. Further embellishments, such as a timed-reload
mechanic lifted wholesale from Gears of War, add layers
of depth to tempt you into a second playthrough, while
collectible combat chips serve as impactful and malleable
stand-ins for a lack of traditional character progression.
With so many ideas, it’s inevitable that some are
underbaked. Crafting feels redundant, while the lack of
quick weapon-swapping is frustrating. Still, this is an
invigorating shot in the arm for the Metroidvania genre,
and all the more remarkable an accomplishment given its
core development team of just two people. Credit, then,
to Tiani Pixel and Fernanda Dias for a journey that
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feels deserving of your precious time.
PLAY
R
Cruis’n Blast
aw thrills, indeed: Eugene Jarvis’s Midway arcade
series returns to consoles with a game that’s more
high-speed rollercoaster than racer. The pace
simply doesn’t let up – tracks are full of long straights
and extended, wide bends made for drifting. Any
sharper corners can usually be cut, while obstacles can
frequently be ploughed through. After a while, we
wonder why there’s a brake button at all. Each course
is built around a succession of set-pieces so wildly
overblown that it makes the increasingly preposterous
Fast & Furious films seem like the model of restraint.
Vehicles – and frequently environments – are decked
out in retina-scorching colours, dazzling lights and
shimmering surfaces. Playing on an OLED Switch, it
has our eyes watering far more than any indie
tearjerker about grief and loss.
It’s much more Mario Kart than Forza, in other
words – and for a while, at least, its decision to trade
entirely in excess pays off. The total lack of taste and
self-moderation is refreshing; it’s hard not to laugh
when in Rio you find yourself somersaulting past
Christ The Redeemer, set against a purple moonlit sky
filled with a nebula of stars, plummeting past hanggliders and hot-air balloons before somehow hitting
Online multiplayer is absent, but there is support for splitscreen play –
and the action is busy enough and moves at such a clip that you don’t
have time to notice visual shortcomings that seem obvious in static shots
Developer Raw Thrills
Publisher GameMill Entertainment,
Raw Thrills
Format Switch
Release Out now
TOUR DE FARCE
On top of the five tracks from
the arcade version are six tours
with a loose unifying theme:
some take place at night, others
during storms and so on. Cash
rewards incentivise risky driving,
with stunts, pickups, air time,
drift time and takedowns all
factored into your total pot –
this can be spent on single-use
boosts (or ‘blasts’, in the game’s
parlance) and new vehicles. The
fact that a fire truck is one of
the earliest, most sensible
additions says a lot.
the ground with no loss of momentum, pulling up
on to two wheels to leave a blazing trail in your wake
and vaulting off the front-runner to take first place.
Elsewhere, an entire airport of planes is swallowed up
as a fault line suddenly cracks open while your car is in
mid-flight; the London Eye breaks free of its moorings
to roll across the track; crocodiles the size of blue
whales snap at your vehicle as you soar across a magichour savannah. Smash into anything and if it doesn’t
disintegrate as if made of tissue paper or balsa wood,
you’re likely to simply spin off it and boost away –
which is only right and proper with such obvious AI
rubber-banding, designed to keep the pack close so
you can boost off them or else shunt them aside,
Burnout style. Wherever you end up placing, if your
car is horizontal as it crosses the line, you must be
playing it wrong.
As with any rollercoaster, you can never quite
recapture the giddy pleasure of that first ride, even as
the developer does its best to keep you coming back
for more via themed grand prix and gleefully daft
unlockables (see ‘Tour de farce’). If its shallow
glitziness ultimately palls, however, this was never a
game intended to be played for hours on end. Cruis’n
Blast ultimately proves its worth as an arcade game that
fits in your hands – and in short bursts, it lives
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up to both its own name and that of its maker.
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PLAY
W
ith Nintendo seemingly reluctant to make
a proper Pikmin sequel (gentle AR spin-off
Bloom doesn’t count), indie studios are clearly
keen to fill in. The Wild At Heart left us underwhelmed
earlier this year, but Melting Parrot’s debut game is
more like it. Miyamoto’s arboreal RTS always carried an
undercurrent of horror, with its menagerie of strange,
hungry monsters and the frequent, upsetting deaths of
those adorable vegetable people. Dap simply brings that
darkness to the fore, and then cranks up the dial.
The goal of your pale, blank-eyed avatar is to lead
their fellow daps through a corrupted forest that
combines the geometric with the organic: it’s rendered
in pixel art with fuzzy edges that lend it a painterly feel,
yet amid the vegetation you’ll see tangled, maze-like
patterns of straight lines. Within the darkness you’ll
find glowing fungi, harvested with a melee attack or a
brisk dash, that can be synthesised into health potions
by campfires, which in turn require a separate resource
to light. Position one by a rafflesia and its pollen will
transform, spawning more daps. They follow you like
mindless drones, stepping on pressure plates and
affording you extra firepower against the threats that
lurch from the shadows, shrieking and yelping. And you
With no direction, using your little daps effectively and overcoming the
set-piece puzzles and boss fights requires some trial and error. As in so
many games, a good rule of thumb is: if you’re in any doubt, run away
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Dap
need to keep one eye on your allies: tarry in an infected
area and they, too, will become shadowy aggressors.
Dap sustains its menacing atmosphere, punctuating
nervy exploration with short, sharp bursts of action.
The percussive soundtrack increases in pitch and tempo,
with industrial clanks soundtracking these skirmishes –
giving you just enough time for your heart rate to return
to normal before jolting you once more. Combat is
messy and intense, almost like a twin-stick shooter with
limited ammo, your firepower dependent on the number
of daps accompanying you. While the brief cooldowns
can feel like an age, in the mid-game you gain the ability
to charge up more powerful shots with buckshot-like
spread, thus encouraging you to wander down every
ASTRAL GAIN
pathway to seek out more daps.
Dap’s story elements are
deliberately abstruse: between
It’s rather too easy to get turned around, though
levels you see cutscenes where that’s surely deliberate: the sensation of being lost
a large cloaked figure wearing
makes
it more unsettling. And when it threatens to get
a deer skull apparently plots
against you. Meanwhile, you’re too one-note, there are macabre flourishes to keep
spirited away to the safety of a things interesting: a sequence where dozens of red eyes
celestial hub, where you can use loom from the darkness as you edge nervously down a
the resources you’ve gathered
narrow path, for example, or where several threats burst
to plant and grow trees. Once
forth and your daps must race to an strange protrusion
they’re large enough they can
be pollinated by dap spirits,
to purge them with fire. Dap runs out of steam some way
with a strange, horned ally
encouraging you to grow them before it wraps up, but this abrasive, distinctive game
lingers in the mind, haunting you like the ghosts
all – this seems, indeed, to
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factor into the ending you get. of so many fallen Pikmin.
Developer/publisher Melting Parrot
Format PC
Release Out now
PLAY
T
iming is a funny old thing. In any other year, Toem
would be the pre-eminent monochromatic indie
adventure game about the creation of visual art.
However, in 2021, those qualities make the comparison
to Chicory inevitable – and it’s a little like holding up a
single well-composed Polaroid next to one of those oil
paintings that dominates an entire wall of a gallery.
This is not necessarily a weakness, however. Toem
is small by design, a two-hour bus tour that takes you
from your home to the mountaintop natural wonder
that lends the game its name. Along the way, there are
just four stops – woodland, sea port, big city and ski
resort – each constructed from a cluster of singlescreen dioramas that can be taken in from a God’s eye
view or, with a pull of the trigger, studied close-up
enough that you can pick out every little line on the
faces of residents.
Already you’re being primed to think in terms
of zoom and framing, which will be your primary
interaction with Toem’s world as your character is
given their own camera to take on the journey. Each
destination has a handful of tasks to offer, from
monster hunting to identifying lost property, almost
all of which can be completed through judicious
Your wanderings are accompanied by a gentle soundtrack from
Jamal Green and Launchable Socks, tracks from which can be unlocked
by finding cassettes and cued up using your portable ‘Hikelady’
Toem
application of this one tool. Each task grants you a
stamp on your passport; collect enough and you can
catch the bus to your next stop.
Self-expression is an optional extra here – only
the content of your photo matters, not how it’s
presented – but with no limit on time or film, and
each snap gradually filling a photo album, it’s difficult
to resist framing each shot just so. Best of all is when
something catches your eye and you naturally reach
for the camera, only later realising that you already
have the exact picture an NPC is asking for.
(Sometimes in slightly obtuse terms – an early
request to photograph “a tiny army of soldiers” has us
CAMERA SHY
groaning when we finally stumble on the answer.)
Toem’s camera is nowhere
Before you know it, you’ll be at the top of that
near as sophisticated as the
one offered by Umurangi
mountain – and you can call that the end of your
Generation but – like jumping
trip and be done with it. But to really get the most
from a good SLR to a cheap
disposable camera – the results out of Toem, you’ll want to hop back across those
destinations, filling your card with stamps and your
hit a much more consistent
baseline. There are a mighty
album with memories. It doesn’t have much to offer
two camera attachments to
unlock here: a horn for getting for doing so: a smattering of achievements and the odd
subjects’ attention, and a tripod special photo that, once taken, magically transforms
into a hand-illustrated piece of art in the pages of your
that opens up the kinds of
photos you can take. The latter album. Like playing with a good camera, though, this
is one of the most gratifying
unlocks we’ve encountered this is really its own reward – something that’s a joy to
fiddle with for hours at a time, even if no one but
year; a couple more wouldn’t
7
you is interested in the results.
have gone amiss.
Developer/publisher
Something We Made
Format PC, PS5, Switch (tested)
Release Out now
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Mecha and fantasy mix in
a forgotten but vital chapter
of FromSoftware’s history
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genre is what makes Frame Gride such a
fascinating artefact, even 22 years after its
release. If you’re looking for a fantasy mecha
game, especially an action-oriented one,
you’ll be hard pressed to find any other
examples. The venerable Super Robot Wars
features mecha and characters from a
number of fantasy mecha anime series, but
it’s a turn-based strategy affair. If you want
to get in the robot, Frame Gride is all there is.
Fortunately, it’s not a difficult or even
particularly expensive game to get hold of,
thanks to the secondhand market. The
intrepid mecha pilot will also be able to find
a full English fan translation patch and
manual translations, guides and FAQs online.
Not that the script really matters – the plot
is perfunctory, something about an emperor
and knights, relayed via brief screens of text.
Even playing in Japanese without being able
to understand a word, you’re neither missing
out nor hampered in your understanding and
enjoyment of the game.
It’s worth noting that the translation on
occasion deviates from the original. For
example, the first step in your journey
involves answering questions to determine
the starting armour and weapons of your
knight. You proceed down a stone corridor
viewed from a firstperson perspective, the
questions flashing up in turn, accompanied
by stylised images of armoured knights. In
the original text, the questions take the form
of a personality quiz, reminiscent of the Elder
Scrolls or Ultima series. Sadly, the English
translation has replaced that with simply
asking you to select each component from a
list of three. It’s a somewhat puzzling
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of putting giant swords to giant, armoured
faces, but the influences are still clear. The
mecha are chunky, powerful-looking beasts,
but rendered in curves that appear elegant
even on the console hardware of 1999. The
texture work on the knights is nothing short
of exquisite, with a painterly quality to even
the plainest of armour plates that reinforces
the fantasy feel. The combination of latemedieval European plate-armour aesthetics
with Japanese mecha design sensibilities
results in machines that are clearly,
in-universe, works of art created for the
nobility to engage in honourable combat,
rather than functional weapons of war.
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he satisfying clang of
sword on shield. The
deliberate pace of
battle. The unintuitive
yet thoughtfully crafted
control
scheme.
Elements familiar to
fans of Dark Souls, the
game that cemented FromSoftware’s position
as a top-flight developer worldwide – and all
present, too, in one of the studio’s lesserknown titles, a Japanese Dreamcast exclusive
that never had its planned official English
translation and North American release.
Those who fancy themselves scholars of
videogame history will most likely point to
the King’s Field and Armored Core series,
some entries in which received worldwide
releases, as the standout examples of From’s
earlier output. Together, they’re indicative of
the two major strands that run through the
studio’s back catalogue: fantasy with heavy
doses of knights and magic, and mecha.
Frame Gride is notable for blending the two.
Its world is one of armoured, magic-wielding
knights locked in duels across a medieval
fantasy mélange. The twist is that these
knights are fighting machines with guns and
artillery as well as blades and bucklers.
Giant robots with melee weapons is
hardly an original concept – check out just
about any mecha anime and you’ll be
bombarded with beam sabres and vibroblades.
However, these are invariably science-fiction
settings with appropriately hi-tech weapons.
Fantasy mecha, where the robots, rather than
the close-combat weapons, are the
anachronism, are much rarer. Two works
stand out as the pillars of the genre: Magic
Knight Rayearth and The Vision of
Escaflowne, both released in the mid-’90s.
Rayearth was originally a serialised manga
first published in 1993, with an animated
series debuting the following year, while
Escaflowne was an original animated work
released in 1996. Both feature female teenage
protagonists travelling from our Earth to
fantasy worlds, making them examples of the
isekai (different world) genre, long before its
popularity exploded in the 2010s. Notably,
the most prominent fantasy mecha work of
the 21st century, 2010’s Knight’s & Magic, is
also an isekai.
Frame Gride disposes of these dimensionhopping trappings to focus on the business
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decision, as it instantly removes a little of
the game’s mystery while not adding much
in the way of clarity. A new player is hardly
going to be able to tell their Answera and M
Blood from their R Mace and F Leaf.
At the end of this process, you arrive at a
more mundane menu screen, which offers
you the ability to train, jump into battle or
access the various crafting and customisation
mechanisms. The training option is welcome,
since the game’s control scheme is nigh-on
impenetrable. Frame Gride is a child of the
lawless days between 3D games becoming
commonplace and developers agreeing on the
now-ubiquitous dual-analogue stick-based
control schemes. The Dreamcast’s controller’s
lone analogue stick is relegated to camera
control, while the D-pad is used for
movement. Face buttons are used for various
actions, with the triggers providing strafing
sword slash, for example, with the push of a
button. However, performing an extended
combo requires that button press modified
with the pulling of both triggers. Such an
action could be accomplished with repeated
button presses, but that would be too easy.
One of the greatest challenges facing the
designer of any mecha game is conveying the
sensation of controlling a massive war
E V E R Y AVA I L A B L E I N P U T I S U S E D , W I T H
MULTIPLE COMBINATIONS REQUIRED FOR
SOME OF THE KNIGHT’S FUNCTIONS
While functionally just a stage
select screen, the world map
gives a welcome sense of place
to your duelling adventures
126
movement and doubling as modifiers for the
face buttons. It gives you the sense that it
demands more than the humble Dreamcast
pad can possibly deliver. Every available
input is used, with multiple combinations of
two or more required for some of the
knight’s functions. Several actions involve
pulling both triggers while pushing face
buttons. The controls are further modified
by the knight’s proximity to the opponent, as
drawing close zooms the camera from an
over-the-shoulder position to a closeup,
switching several of the inputs to more
melee-oriented functions in the process.
While much of the control scheme can be
attributed to the limitations of the controller
it was designed for, several elements stand
out as unnecessary – from a technical point
of view, at least – suggesting deliberate
design choices. You can execute a single
machine, as opposed to a human on foot – a
task rendered even more difficult when the
robots in question are not lumbering tanks
on legs but relatively nimble duelling
machines. Fantasy mecha take this one step
further, stripping the machines of the
benefits of modern technology. Magic may
be doing the literal and figurative heavy
lifting here, but there’s still a person inside
operating the robot, and many examples of
the genre emphasise that this is hard,
physically demanding labour.
It’s that physical effort which From
conveys so well through the control scheme.
Even with emulators and modern controllers
allowing a great degree of customisation,
handling the knights is still something of a
workout. Remembering exactly which
combination of buttons and triggers will
produce the desired outcome creates distance
Red targeting triangles
automatically lock on to
your foe, prioritising the
opposing knight over its
much less dangerous squires
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Choice of gear is important –
almost as important as the
opportunity to admire the
lovingly textured armour
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with the original text
or differences between
the translations used
for the Englishlanguage patch, the
manual and the various
guides, terminology in
Frame Gride can be
inconsistent. While the
mecha are usually
referred to as knights,
there are several places
in the fan-created
patch where ‘knight’ is
used for the player and
the mecha is called a
squire – a term that is
more typically used
(including in the patch)
for the independent
support drones that can
be summoned during a
duel. While not much of
an issue in the long run,
it does highlight the
importance of good
localisation work, even
in games with little
text. Just one or two
vital phrases being
mistranslated can
create headaches.
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CROSSED
SQUIRES
Whether due to issues
Closing with your
opponent shifts the
camera angle, signalling
that the context-sensitive
controls have switched
over to melee mode
between you as the pilot and the knight
itself, reinforcing the idea that the fighter on
the screen is not your avatar, but a machine
that requires skill and training to control.
While grappling with the controls, and
slowly mastering the art of robotic knight
duelling, the From lineage becomes clear.
Though the knights move surprisingly
quickly, especially when under the power of
their boosters, attacking is ponderous. The
resulting combat is thoughtful and strategic,
relying more on careful timing than twitchy
reflexes. It’s here that the Soulsborne
comparisons are the most apt, as desperate
charges marked by panicky button mashing
are slowly replaced by considered defence
and cunning counterattacks. As the wins
gradually begin to outnumber the losses, the
causes of defeat becoming more apparent
with experience, the realisation dawns that
the game isn’t too hard, or too old, or too
unfair. It’s just demanding more of the player
than is usually expected, and there is great
satisfaction in rising to the challenge.
If From possessed a motto like the
knightly houses of old, it would surely be
‘Knowledge is power.’ It is through knowledge
that you are empowered to progress through
its games – knowledge that is frequently
obtuse and arcane, secreted away within the
bowels of the worlds it creates and whispered
from player to player across time and space.
It’s fitting, then, that knowledge of an
obscure treasure such as Frame Gride should
propagate in similar fashion, with importgame aficionados of decades past spreading
word of its delights and working to translate
its mysteries as a gift to future generations.
It also seems appropriate, with From at
the height of its power, that the fantasy
mecha genre that inspired Frame Gride is
becoming more prominent once again. Both
Magic Knight Rayearth and the Vision Of
Escaflowne have received high-profile
merchandise releases over the past couple of
years, including model kits from GoodSmile’s
Moderoid line, while the ongoing Knight’s &
Magic had an anime adaptation in 2017. All
three have featured in recent entries in the
Super Robot Wars series. Perhaps it’s time
for From to take the task out of
connoisseurs’ hands and reintroduce Frame
Gride to modern audiences.
127
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128
T H E
L O N G
G A M E
A progress report on the games we just can’t quit
O
Valheim
Developer Iron Gate Studio Publisher Coffee Stain Publishing Format PC Release 2021 (Early Access)
n some occasions, a legendary quest begins
with a heroic call to arms: a quest to slay a
beast, or retrieve a long-lost treasure. On
others, it may be the urgent need to craft a new hat.
Such is the case in Valheim, the popular Viking survival
game encouraging exploration with every fibre of
its being. With its dappled glades and misty forests,
ruins that promise reward and refuge, and mysterious
creatures hidden in its depths, Valheim invites you to
discover near-endless horizons.
Yet venturing through this Viking afterlife is not
a totally unstructured experience. Valheim leads you
through its world in a particular order, weaving an
epic tale in the process. Five boss enemies function as
chapters in this story; indeed, they’re literal milestones,
as you must place their severed heads on sacrificial
stones to unlock their powers. The biomes over which
these enemies preside are defined by unique creatures,
colour palettes and musical themes. On crossing into
the Black Forest, the soothing melodies of the Meadows
are replaced by menacing strings, signposting both your
progress and a new level of threat.
Once defeated, a boss drops the keys to the next
biome in the form of crafting ingredients – the
beginning of a process in which you must master an
environment before taking on its boss. Between these
significant events are smaller moments of celebration:
the feeling of a first boat voyage can be a euphoric
experience, particularly when shared with fellow sailors.
Within this overarching narrative, Valheim gives you
plenty of creative freedom through its build pieces, and
actively encourages moments of silliness. Constructing
a hot tub doesn’t help you defeat Yagluth, but it
certainly spices up your Viking spa. The crafting of each
item, no matter how trivial, requires you to return to
the wilderness, opening up further opportunities for
adventure – or rather misadventure. A voyage to find
thistles can easily turn into an hour-long saga to
retrieve armour from the jaws of a sea serpent.
Valheim’s story is not yet complete. With the game
still in Early Access, some of its lands remain barren
and shrouded in mystery. Hearth And Home, its first
major update, has introduced new reasons to return to
the lands we already know in search of materials for
ever-more-elaborate structures. The food system has
been recalibrated to support different combat styles,
while yet another murky creature has been added to the
Swamp. Further improvements to existing biomes are in
development, but the update we’re truly anticipating
is the completion of the Mistlands region. This will
form the next full chapter in Valheim’s narrative, but it’s
an epic fantasy we’re already struggling to put down.
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#368
January 27
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