Table of contents for December 2021 in Edge

In the process of writing this issue’s cover story we didn’t ask Techland’s Tymon Smektała how much stock he places in Shigeru Miyamoto’s crusty old declaration that a delayed game will eventually be good, while a rushed game will be bad forever. Nowadays, isn’t it more fashionable to launch a game with the intention of overhauling it entirely over time anyway, whether that’s through refinements, season updates, DLC or beyond? It’s an especially relevant point for Techland, which has spent the past five years adding bits to Dying Light, a process that’s helped to retain an active playerbase that even now outnumbers that of most new releases. With all of the challenges facing studios in 2021, it’s easier to imagine modern game development being driven by a much older contention…

Why Splitgate borrowed the feel of Bungie’s shooters Proulx cuts straight to it: “For me, Halo 2 is the greatest game of all time.” When the time came to tighten Splitgate’s gunplay, then, he was naturally biased about how it should be done. But the approach taken also made more sense for the portal mechanics than the other shooter models considered – in Call Of Duty, death came too fast to encourage portal usage; in Quake, it was too easy to speed away through one and stay alive forever. With a time-to-kill akin to Halo’s, Proulx says, “I’ve got enough time and enough health that I can do cool moves, but not so much that I can just run away the instant I’m about to die.”…

The importance of printed cardboard and moulded plastic All of these games are available as ROMs, but the emphasis is firmly on their physical releases, which are lavish productions across the board. “I think what people really want is the full experience of buying a new GBA game as if they were doing it 20 years ago. They want the box, the instruction manual, the cartridge,” Nicol says. “They want it as close as possible – to relive their childhood, or just get that feeling they haven’t felt for a long time.”…

Developers need to know they can enter their work While film festivals are embracing games within their official selections, many developers remain unaware of this broadening in scope, and how it could benefit them. Even creators with a background in film, who have more knowledge of these events, are surprised to hear it’s possible for their game to be featured. “It wasn’t really part of the strategy to do this, because I never assumed that a game would be in the Venice Film Festival in competition,” Jörg Tittel admits. “We had a meeting with HTC and Vive and they said, ‘You guys should really propose it’. We weren’t accepted into the festival until six weeks [before the start of Venice Film Festival].”…

If the inspirations of predecessor One Strike were in question, this sequel – with its brilliantly logical title – wears them right on its sleeve. There’s more than a touch of Bushido Blade to fights, where a single hit can spell death, while the visuals blend traditional Japanese art in the shifting ink-wash backdrops with frenetic, monochrome characters ripped straight from manga. And then, as designer Danilo Moreira tells us, there are “old samurai movie posters”. Teaming up with artist Gershon Oshiro off the back of the first game’s success, the aim is to create battles you could hang on your wall. That influence is taken literally in the game’s menus and art, as seen here. Oshiro’s process means Two Strikes has taken longer than anticipated, but an Early Access…

OBITUARY Sir Clive Sinclair 1940-2021 Was there ever a more frequent recipient of the descriptor ‘boffin’ than Sir Clive Sinclair? The man who founded Sinclair Research in 1973 was the UK’s preeminent inventor for the microprocessor age, enjoying modest success with consumer products such as calculators before delivering his most celebrated works with the ZX line of home computers. Cherished most for 1982’s iconic Spectrum, the range brought affordable videogames into the home – and inspired countless budding game-makers along the way. In truth, Sinclair was never particularly interested in computers as game devices – see the later QL for ample proof – but he remained one of the UK’s leading technology visionaries, with a passion for electric vehicles, such as his Zike in 1992, far outpacing our readiness for…

At the end of this column there will be a twist. I am still hunkered down in the San Fernando Valley, working long hours with my phone turned off. When I briefly check in on Twitter at the end of the day, only dying embers remain of the discourse du jour. Still, even at this remove, I caught the release of Twelve Minutes. Spoiler etiquette saw everyone talking about its ending, but also not talking about its ending. This much was clear: the game had an ending. And one with a twist in it! I wrote down what I thought the twist might be and sealed it in an envelope. When I do eventually play the game, I will open it and see if I was correct. I love twists;…

Developer/publisher Pearl Abyss Format PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series Origin Korea Release TBA Honest-to-goodness surprises are a rare breed in videogames these days, with few announcements not preceded by strong rumours or outright leaks. A clumsy entry on an artist’s public portfolio. A hacked server. A misread embargo. An online storefront jumping the gun. Among the known quantities at Gamescom (including plenty of big hitters), the thrill of the unexpected meant Pearl Abyss’s creature-collecting open-world adventure always had a chance of standing out – all the more so when it looks like this. Given the, well, familiar nature of your quest, the response from some quarters was predictable, with some suggesting that this is what they’d hoped Pokémon games might look like by now. (If we’re being harsh,…

Tchia will be firmly story-driven, Crifo says, with “high production value” cutscenes and voices for all characters: “I don’t like the term ‘cinematic’, but I guess it kind of defines what we want.” The main quest line, however, will take structural inspiration from earlier Rockstar games, “where the missions were pretty freeform – you have an objective, but you can go about solving it any way you want to”. Making an openworld game was partly about communicating the joy of exploring a place such as New Caledonia, he says. “It’s a thing about growing up there, but I think that’s true for the whole world – where you’re [playing a game] and you’re like, ‘Can you imagine if GTA took place in our town? That would be crazy’. And that’s…

Publisher/developer Stray Fawn Format PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series Origin Switzerland Release 2022 More city-builder games are starting to factor in the ecological impacts of industry, asking us to treat their worlds as living, breathing organisms. None, however, takes that concept as literally as The Wandering Village, which installs its settler community atop the flat back of an enormous creature called Onbu, where they carve out a symbiotic existence like oxpeckers on a hippo. In a postapocalyptic landscape ravaged by toxic spores, the last of humanity is forced to acknowledge that their host’s wellbeing is as important as the fertile real estate it provides. The game’s themes are second nature to the co-founder of Zurich-based developer Stray Fawn, Philomena Schwab, given her background in biology. “It seems that whenever I…

Storyteller relies on well-known stories and archetypal characters, presumably because it means players can intuit the rules that define their behaviour. You don’t need to know the ins and outs of Dracula’s plot to understand the roles that Mina, Jonathan and the Professor play, nor the kind of events that might play out on a moonlit moor as opposed to in a dusty crypt. There’s no mixing and matching to be seen so far – whether it’s fairytales or The Old Testament, each puzzle sticks within a particular oeuvre, though their building blocks can be used to recreate other stories. In fact, this is something the game encourages: twist a tale of love-inspired poisoning into the shape of Romeo and Juliet or Goethe’s The Sorrows Of Young Werther, and it’ll…

The freedom to drastically alter Villedor’s look and layout through choices may give completionists cold sweats, but it inadvertently lends the game’s co-op a sense of purpose that was somewhat absent from the original. Dying Light’s multiplayer was good for gambolling around town with pals, competing in pop-up challenges as you monstered the ailing masses, but was largely throwaway fun. Here it offers a window into roads not taken – the appeal, to Smektała, lying in visiting other versions of the city. “If I completed that mission with the opera singer and you didn’t, or you made a different choice, I can invite you to my game, or you join me in public matchmaking, and you will see something different. Maybe something a little bit aesthetic, but hopefully interesting as…

STARGLIDER 2 Developer Argonaut Publisher Rainbird Software Format Mac Release 1989 STAR FOX Developer Nintendo EAD, Argonaut Software Publisher Nintendo Format SNES Release 1993 STUNT RACE FX Developer Nintendo EAD Publisher Nintendo Format SNES Release 1994 SUPER MARIO 64 Developer Nintendo EAD Publisher Nintendo Format N64 Release 1996 1080° SNOWBOARDING Developer Nintendo EAD Publisher Nintendo Format N64 Release 1998 DOSHIN THE GIANT Developer Param Publisher Nintendo Format GameCube Release 1999 STEEL DIVER Developer Vitei, Nintendo EAD Publisher Nintendo Format 3DS Release 2011 TANK TROOPERS Developer Vitei, Nintendo EAD Publisher Nintendo Format 3DS Release 2016 CARVE SNOWBOARDING Developer/publisher Chuhai Labs Format Quest Release 2021 WHITEWATER WIPEOUT Developer/publisher Vitei Format Playdate Release Q4 2021 Giles Goddard has always embraced the unknown. Perhaps best known for creating the interactive face that greets players…

Portfolios don’t come much more adventurous than that of Kitfox Games. The Montreal studio’s latest is Boyfriend Dungeon – a saucy rendezvous between visual novel and action-RPG in which weapons transform into hotties who are levelled up through dating. The game follows cyber-theocratic whodunnit Lucifer Within Us, cult-horror village manager The Shrouded Isle, and fantasy adventure Moon Hunters, in which your deeds form a constellation in the sky for the guidance of future generations. If Kitfox has formed quite the constellation itself, what really makes the studio worth watching right now is its thoughtful reconsideration of its own working practices as it expands into publishing other studios’ games. Consider the recent decision to trial a four-day week. “We don’t know if it’s going to be a permanent change or just…

Publisher Bethesda Softworks Developer Arkane Studios Format PC, PS5 (tested) Release Out now Colt wakes up on the beach again, his latest death fresh in the memory. But while he’s nursing an infinitely looping hangover and mourning his demise at the business end of a shotgun, you have a fresh batch of ideas to think on. Yesterday might have brought a glimpse of some unexplored path in a level you thought you knew backwards, an epiphany about one of Blackreef Island’s many mysteries, or just some new way of wreaking havoc you’re keen to try. So you apply those ideas, test theory against practice, and – one way or another – end up back on that beach. Even if you do manage to survive through a full day, there’s nothing…

Having played a pre-release build on PC and the finished game on PS5, we’d recommend the latter if you have the choice. Unless your monitor’s larger than your TV, Jett’s sense of scale means it feels more at home on the big screen, particularly in the moments when the camera zooms out all the way and you’re little more than a speck. As with Deathloop, though, it’s the game’s use of the DualSense controller that makes the biggest difference: the grainy sand when you venture into Tor feels distinct from the crunchy snow on the unfortunately named Khovd. There’s a gentle arpeggiated rumble when you glide over a fissure and collect vapour; squeeze the trigger to surge, meanwhile, and it’ll shudder violently when your scramjets are about to overload.…

Holding the left bumper lets Alex tune into auras, which can be found all around Haven Springs. Sometimes they’re used for throwaway gags, but often you’ll find subplots to influence, such as cajoling a pair of friends into confessing their feelings, or helping a jellybean counter win a contest, to the chagrin of an unscrupulous stall owner. There’s a slightly creepy edge to listening to people’s thoughts, but it’s satisfying to resolve problems, whether you’re encouraging a jogger to overcome self-consciousness or locating a missing jukebox CD to remind a student of a forgotten tune. Objects have auras, too, with memories (and Achievements/Trophies) attached: these vignettes offer enlightening details about key characters.…

John’s frying pan is not only used as a weapon of blunt destruction, but also, in towns and villages, for culinary creation. Ingredients are usually bought, not scavenged, and can be combined in various appetising ways to cook health-restoring meals. Everything from hamburgers to fruit salads can be stored in John’s backpack – and often prove essential for making it through boss fights. Kitchen appliances play a vital role in the game: food can only be cooked using one of the rusted ovens found in many houses, while your ‘memories’ are stored in refrigerators – the game’s metaphor for saving. Food feels important, accentuating the sense that this is a team used to working hard for each crust. That salt is the world currency is telling.…

This year marked the 20th anniversary of the Game Boy Advance’s launch. Not the point in a system’s lifecycle, perhaps, where you’d expect to see a new game announced. But, some 13 years on from the Nintendo handheld’s last commercial release, Goodboy Galaxy is preparing to pick up the slack – and it’s far from alone. “We really want to support the Game Boy Advance,” designer Rik Nicol says. “To bring the scene back up, as it were.” This effort began in earnest with GBA Jam 2021, co-organised by Nicol’s collaborator, programmer Jeremy Clarke. Arranged to tie in with the anniversary, it ran for three months, beginning in April. “It’s not, you know, the typical weekend jam,” Nicol says, “so there were some fairly substantial games that all kind of…

The gap between the videogame and film industries is getting smaller all the time. On a technological level, advancements in Unreal and Unity have led to filmmakers using the engines in the movie-making process, both for previsualisation and realtime visual effects. There’s a similar convergence happening culturally, as film festivals – long the platform for critically acclaimed films to be unveiled to the public – are increasingly becoming a place for developers to showcase forthcoming games. In September, the 78th Venice Film Festival hosted its latest VR Expanded showcase. The festival was the first to introduce a dedicated competition for VR works, something that has since been matched by the Annecy International Animation Film Festival. Venice’s showcase includes VR experiences both in competition and not, as well as a curated…

An event that’s physical, in-person – there’s a novel concept in 2021. We’ve always looked forward to trips to Brighton for Develop ever since the conference was established in 2006, but this year we’re practically ravenous. A selection of the industry’s best and brightest, all in one location, talking about games for three days, with plenty of opportunities for socialising? Careful we don’t bite your arm off. Among the best and brightest in question is Ted Price, president and founder of Insomniac Games – and host of developer interview podcast The Game Maker’s Notebook. After hearing Price prove himself as an interviewer there, we’re looking forward to seeing him on the other end of the questions in his fireside chat session, though given the recent announcement that Insomniac is pulling…

“Twisted Metal is one of the most beloved franchises from PlayStation. We are thrilled to have such a great team working on bringing this iconic game to life for the fans.” PlayStation Productions’ Asad Qizilbash knows there hasn’t been a Twisted Metal game since 2012, right? “Might as well give people the peace of mind that they can relax doing their own thing on their own time.” Phil Tibitoski is chilled to reveal that Bugsnax’s devs are moving to four days a week “The supply of chips will remain very tight until at least September next year… Some customers may not be fully served until 2023.” Toshiba’s Takeshi Kamebuchi has some bad news for game hardware manufacturers “In my opinion it will most likely be determined by the promised actions…

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 Here comes the content Why does so much DLC have to be accessed through the main campaign? Many games are too long, so DLC often provides a kind of greatest-hits version of the main campaign, sometimes with a more interesting setting and a tighter story to boot. Think Shivering Isles compared to Oblivion, Minerva’s Den to BioShock 2, or perhaps Sam’s Story to Metro: Exodus. In other words, DLC often presents a way to enjoy the main experiences a game offers in a complete, self-contained, and, most importantly, condensed package. So having to slog through a significant chunk of the main campaign to access some…

Speaking to the New York Times four years ago, Shigeru Miyamoto offered a telling insight into his hiring process. “I always look for designers who aren’t super-passionate game fans,” he said, explaining that the best candidates were those who “have a lot of different interests and skill sets”. Some of Nintendo’s brightest lights had little to no prior experience of the medium when they joined, which helps explain how it has sustained its standing as an innovator: it doesn’t just look to other games for inspiration. It is often the influences that come from outside videogames that add the distinctive touches to make new games stand out in crowded genres. Breakout Gamescom hit DokeV blends elements of traditional and contemporary Korean culture – while the convincing behaviours of its young…

The climate seems largely sunny and temperate, but the humble umbrella proves to be one of your most valuable tools in DokeV. As Nam explains, it’s used to conceal you, effectively rendering you invisible: “The inspiration for this was children hiding themselves under umbrellas during play and naïvely thinking that no one else could see them as they hid.” Kim adds that the decision to use it as a glider was influenced by his own childhood flights of fancy. “I always wanted to fly like Superman and would often imagine myself flying through the sky with an umbrella,” he says. “I guess introducing personal memories such as these had a way of striking a chord with people in general and in turn provided a genuine touch to the game.”…

Publisher Modern Wolf Developer Afterschool Studio Format PC Origin US Release Q1 2022 You can tell a great deal about a strategy game from the first couple of units it gives you to play with. Facilities aside, the first in Cantata is a transport tower, which houses four basic conscripts and helps ferry them to the frontline – but which, you’re told, is not good at attacking. The next is a recon rickshaw – which is also not good at attacking. Afterschool Studio’s game isn’t in a hurry to bring out the big guns, then. Indeed, it’s not really in a hurry all round: you might expect these to be nippier vehicles, since they’re not laden with weapons, yet they trundle across the battlefield. That’s the first sign that you…

Like Stray Fawn’s previous games, The Wandering Village will initially release in Early Access with a Roguelike structure. “That’s usually how our studio approaches making simulation games,” Schwab says. “The random mode for the game is first, and if the game does well, we tend to add a campaign or something more story-based.” You can expect maps and starting points to shift around, then, as well as resource locations and events. There will also be permadeath, should either the humans or Onbu expire, although that should be mitigated for those who prefer less stress. “Personally I enjoy playing stuff with permadeath,” Schwab says, “so if I die, it makes it more emotional. But some people really don’t want that, so a save and load option will be implemented.”…

Developer Chuhai Labs Publisher Thunderful Games Format PC, Switch Origin Japan Release 2022 As hexes go, we can certainly imagine worse. Cursed To Complete Tax Returns, perhaps, or Cursed To Step On Upturned Plugs. Still, the protagonist of Chuhai Labs’ golfing Roguelike has good reason to want to escape his sporting fate: having been struck by lightning on the 18th hole, he’s been sent to purgatory, and the only way he can escape to the real world is by completing a series of intricate courses that are more challenging than Carnoustie at its windswept worst. If the name sounds familiar, then we’re grateful that you take the time to read This Month On Edge: in E349, the original Itch.io version of the game earned our recommendation. Shortly afterwards, designer Liam Edwards…

“WE WANTED TO USE THINGS YOU THINK OF AS MODERN – LIKE CHARGERS FOR ELECTRIC CARS – AND SHOW THEM DEVASTATED BY NATURE” Game Dying Light 2: Stay Human Publisher/developer Techland Format PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series Release February 4 Familiarity breeds contempt – or, in the case of Edge, a 6. That was the score awarded to Techland’s Dying Light in 2015, a reaction to what we saw as a spread of ideas magpied from other games and stitched together into Harran, an open-world city flooded with zombie-like infected. There were Far Cry towers to scale, levelling through doing (as in Elder Scrolls), and a cast of ripped tanks and bloated exploders evoking the ubiquitous line-up from Left 4 Dead. All of this on top of tropes…

In an age of increasingly commonplace launch delays, there is sometimes a faint frown of doubt from those outside the process about what can really be achieved in so little time. How does Smektała expect to spend the two extra months that have pushed Dying Light 2 to February 2022? “[The game] is full of complex, intersecting systems created by hundreds of people – at some point in the production they all really click and start working together, but you also start discovering various edge cases where maybe they don’t, and you want to fix that. Those are usually simple fixes, but you want to make sure you test and catch as many of those as possible. Those extra two months will be spent exactly on this. And maybe we’ll…

STILL PLAYING Hades PS5 With loops on the agenda, it was inevitable that we would return to one of the most absorbing of recent years. Starting afresh, we gain new appreciation for how beautifully designed Supergiant’s multiaward-winner is: every time we emerge from the Pool of Styx, there is something new to discover, a fresh face to greet us, a zinger to grin at, and sometimes all three. But with the busy season upon us, can we really afford to get hooked all over again? 51 Worldwide Games Switch Nintendo’s all-in-one variety pack proves the perfect fare for a family get-together. It’s not quite a Wii Sports-level hit with the older generation (not least because of some wobbly motion controls in darts and bowling, the nearest equivalent), but that’s made…

The new generation of consoles has been a little short on compelling reasons to upgrade. Deathloop makes the argument more eloquently than perhaps any other. It’s beautiful, of course, and the design has a rare newness to it, but most of all it’s how the game leverages the PS5 DualSense’s features. Julianna’s radio calls come through the built-in speaker crystal clear, while haptic feedback and trigger resistance are used to lend extra character to each weapon. Charging up a shot with the nailgun and feeling the cranking of its inner mechanisms against our palm might be enough to make PS5 the definitive way to play Deathloop. Precisely what Bethesda’s new parent company wants to hear, we’re sure.…

Encounters aren’t exactly trivial, but Ember Lab doesn’t fully succeed in its stated goal of making each one meaningful. By the third act, crowd control has become straightforward – even with enemies arriving in greater numbers and different combinations, and the addition of spectral foes you need to render corporeal by spirit-dashing through them. Bosses represent a far sterner test: they all hit hard, and can cover a lot of ground quickly. These well-staged set-pieces are comfortably the game’s most intense moments, though such a sharp uptick in difficulty might be too much for the younger players who will likely get the most from the story. Those keen to see Kena’s tale through to its bittersweet end can, happily, reduce the difficulty at any time.…

Among the (presumably expensively assembled) cast, the likes of Mark Strong and Lena Headey have smaller roles than you might expect. Caroline Kinley’s Violetta feels underused, too, after initially playing a key part in setting Vendetti (Michael Johnston) on his journey – though at least she’s not simply painted as our hero’s muse, nor does the story attempt to force a romance between the two. Despite competition from Jason Schwartzmann, it’s Carl Weathers, as surrogate mentor Lightman, who is the standout – as Galvatron has admitted, the actor strayed from the script, and it sounds like he’s enjoying himself. Perhaps the funniest turn, however, is delivered by Galvatron himself as Calvagio, an alien with a particularly, well, distinctive voice.…

Successor Of The Skies can be played in local co-op, although player two takes charge of a targeting reticule only. Given how chaotic the screen can get with just one character, that’s probably for the best, and it’s an entertaining inclusion, especially for unevenly skilled partners. For solo players, there’s also Isa And Kachi Mode, which only unlocks after you’ve completed the game with both characters individually. Now you can instantly switch characters at any point, allowing you to take advantage of their different fire modes to suit each situation, or bench one temporarily if their health is getting low. In other words, it adds a touch more tactical depth and makes the game easier – begging the question: why it wasn’t the default singleplayer experience?…

Understanding the twisty release schedule of Splitgate requires almost as much mental gymnastics as navigating the game’s portals. In its two and half years on Steam, the title has never been listed as an Early Access release – the version of the game that first became available on PC in May 2019 was a “soft launch”, Proulx says. “What we viewed it as internally was our MVP – you know, minimum viable product.” Back then, the game had the unwieldy subtitle ‘Arena Warfare’, which it jettisoned in time for the open beta launch this July (in retrospect, potentially the game’s “drop the ‘the’” moment). With the full release pushed back indefinitely, that’s the state in which the game currently exists: a perpetual open beta.…

The appeal of Game Boy development isn’t just about nostalgia, Puch insists: “One of the things that I like about developing for the Game Boy is the limitations.” With tight caps on everything from storage and music to resolution and colour, he compares it to the 1960s Oulipo movement, with its concept of ‘creativity by restriction’. For Nicol, though, it’s a double-edged sword: “Some of the restrictions are quite difficult for me as an artist. I want to do cool stuff with big sprites and sometimes I have to make concessions.” The 32bit GBA CPU makes things easier, he admits, but “to really get the most out of it, you still have to use the classic 16bit tricks. It’s the best of both worlds, I think.”…

In ‘The trouble with game development’ (Knowledge, E363), we referenced allegations levelled at Alexis Kennedy, and in doing so characterised one of the people alleging misconduct as a ‘colleague’. We have been asked to clarify that she was in fact a freelance ‘guest writer’ on Sunless Sea, for which Kennedy led design and writing. We have also been asked to clarify that none of the allegations referenced (nor those levelled by Failbetter staff) accused Kennedy of sexual harassment, as may have been implied by the article’s phrasing.…

Spanning 17 categories, the Star Awards nominees include some Edge favourites. Mundaun is up for Best Visual Art, for reasons that will be obvious to anyone who read our TMO in E360. Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is in contention in multiple categories, including Best Original IP and Best Game Design. And Housemarque’s Returnal is nominated in practically every category going, from Best Audio to Best Original IP and, naturally, Game Of The Year. Frankly, at this rate, we’re almost surprised not to see it somehow making an appearance in the Recruitment Star shortlist. Finally, if you don’t mind spoilers for the night, this year’s Develop Star Award – its lifetime achievement equivalent – will be handed to Team17’s Debbie Bestwick.…

Game Retro Raccoons Manufacturer Incredible Technologies Retro Raccoons has been discussed in coin-op circles for a good while, but it’s only recently moved into full production, so it feels deserving of some proper attention here – not least because we’re always drawn to any arcade cabinet with built-in holders for bottles of beer (or indeed any other type of refreshment you fancy slotting in there). The throwback reference in the title relates to the visual style, which uses chunky pixels to evoke an earlier era, while the raccoons themselves are controlled by two to four players simultaneously across eight rounds of minigames, selected from a line-up of 40+ at launch, with more available in the future via download. Each player has a joystick and a single button, which suits the…

There’s a moment in the highly entertaining movie Boss Level where the hero, Roy (played by Frank Grillo), and his 11-year-old son are mooching around a pop-up retro-gaming arcade, stuffed with old coin-op classics such as Pac-Man, Street Fighter, and so on. At one point the boy is watching Roy wrestle intently with the controls of an arcade cabinet we don’t see, and he asks why his father likes this particular game so much. “’Cause there’s a lot of people that chase you, and you get to kill them,” Roy replies. It’s a funny line because this is exactly what is happening to Roy, in the style of Groundhog Day: he wakes up with people trying to kill him, and as many as he defeats, he always gets killed by…

Lemnis Gate PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series Another high-concept shooter with ‘gate’ in the title might well have stolen its thunder, though we’ll have to wait and see. As we go to print, the servers are yet to be switched on – but Lemnis Gate should be out in the wild as you read this. Struggling to get your head around the time loop? Try magazine lead times. Shadow Tactics: Blades Of The Shogun – Aiko’s Choice PC After the triumph of Desperados 3, Mimimi Games returns to the game that made its name for a standalone expansion starring its kunoichi master of disguise. We’ll take any excuse to dabble in its stealth sandbox once more. Kid A Mnesia Exhibition PC, PS5 Radiohead’s inclusion in a safe Sony…

The positioning of your various facilities is crucial, since you will need to ensure they’re linked up to keep your supply lines running smoothly. Helpfully, clear markers show where you can and can’t build, while thin dotted lines appear if a potential connection can be made between, say, your refinery, engine factory and garage – though you will still need to link them manually. Eventually, you will need to extend your infrastructure to be able to deploy more powerful units without having to spend several turns moving them across the map. Which is where repeaters come in handy, splitting the input along multiple output lines. You will, however, need to keep all this protected: a single break in the chain could potentially be catastrophic.…

Developer Daniel Benmergui Publisher Annapurna Interactive Format PC, Switch Origin Argentina Release TBA For all the classic tales from which Storyteller borrows plot elements, and all the yarns it lets you spin as the player, the story we keep coming back to is the game’s own. Storyteller first appeared in these pages over a hundred issues ago, in E250, then pencilled in for a ‘late 2013’ release, but the game’s history goes back further still. In 2008, an early version was released as part of Moon Stories, the trilogy of Flash game prototypes better known for including I Wish I Were The Moon. Developer Daniel Benmergui has made other games in the interim, but still: 13 years. It’s enough to make a magazine feel old. “In my defence, when I…

Shot-making is as simple as it gets: you tap A to set the power, and again when the aiming curve is to your liking. “We wanted to make it as easy as playing something like Mario Golf, or even easier,” Edwards says. The hard part, then, is figuring out which power-ups to use to negotiate the various hazards most efficiently. But there’s more skill involved in the game’s spin mechanic, which nods to classic PGA Tour games: “You could mash the button when the ball was in the air, and then you could direct the spin when it landed. That’s basically what we do.” The ability to stop the ball on a dime changed the level design: some platforms have been shortened, tempting players into high-risk, high-reward shots.…

Just as Dying Light’s grappling hook reduced the player’s use of parkour, so ranged weapons sidestepped the meaty, messy melee – the very combat system envisaged as the series’ central pillar. “To be honest, we introduced firearms because we felt that’s what players will expect,” Smektała says. Player stats back him up: after the machete, firearms are the most used. Dying Light 2’s shift to the future gives Techland a second swing, literally, at focusing on melee. In this world, traditional firearms have worn out, no one is producing new ones, and there’s a bigger narrative justification for their absence that Smektała hopes people will tease out from side stories. Bows and crossbows still exist to wean people off their ranged reliance, however, and there’s mention of a boomstick that…

Composer After the score for Celeste, did you want to try anything new with the Chicory one? When we started working on the game, Greg came to me with a bunch of ideas of where we might go stylistically, and expectations [based on] what I had done before that. At the time, I was throwing a lot of ideas at the wall as far as, what is the music that I want to write right now? And I was rebounding a little bit from Celeste being so synth-heavy, so I really wanted to approach Chicory from a primarily instrumental direction. Did Chicory’s visual art themes have any impact on your approach? Initially, I really wanted to do all of the percussion with just painting and brush sounds. One of the…

Videogame designers must constantly grapple with how much guidance a player requires. There is rarely a one-size-fits-all solution, since everyone’s needs are different. By and large, the time-poor player would tend to prefer a bit more assistance; those with more leisure time to spare, by contrast, are probably a little more relaxed about getting stuck or lost. Either way, what can be thrilling for one might well be exasperating for another. This month’s Play selection features a number of games whose creators we can picture, brows furrowed, asking themselves how much freedom players really want. Arkane’s genre-bending Deathloop is so dense with ideas that we detect a hint of desperation in its early attempts to ensure we’re fully on board with what it’s trying to do. In a game that…

In E362, Shedworks suggested that some testers were happy to skip the chatter and simply enjoy the atmosphere. We wouldn’t recommend curtailing those conversations, however. The writing team of Kim Belair, David Bedard and Meghna Jayanth have over-delivered on what must have been a challenging brief: this is, after all, a game composed of side quests, the vast majority of which are entirely optional. It’s testament to them that our final decision is in large part determined by the dialogue we have with our favourite characters as much as the tasks we complete and the role into which we feel Sable best fits. Indeed, its freeform structure will ensure plenty of entertaining exchanges happen beyond the game, as players discuss the very different routes they took on their Gliding.…

The use of realtime character models in virtually every scene gives you a greater incentive to customise the look of each party member. One quest involves finding owls which leave behind accessories, from a variety of spectacles or shades to wolf tails and devil horns, while later on you discover the home of a king and queen owl, whose rewards for restoring their parliament include alternative palettes for your characters. There are also outfits available as paid DLC (or included in the ultimate edition) that tick off school-uniform and swimwear tropes in a more tasteful way than usual. These aren’t merely cosmetic, either, since they also unlock additional Titles in the Skill Panel, giving you more skills and buffs in which to invest your SP almost immediately.…

For all that Lost In Random’s presentation wants to convince you of its dedication to the darkness – and it does have a surprisingly nasty streak for an EA-published family title – the main reason to keep coming back lies at the opposite end of the spectrum. Writer Ryan North (Dinosaur Comics, The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl) brings his trademark playfulness to dialogue, delighting in puns, silly names, and the dictionary’s dustiest corners. The result is a script packed with soft chuckles.…