Table of contents for April 2022 in Edge

Retro Games Ltd’s Chris Smith and Darren Melbourne After experiencing a kind of gold rush, instigated by Nintendo’s NES Mini, the hardware revival scene has changed somewhat in recent times, now that most of the popular consoles of yesteryear have been exhausted. Depending on their back catalogues, manufacturers have shifted to different approaches: Sega and Taito followed SNK’s lead in creating miniature arcade cabinets, while Nintendo revived its Game & Watch line to celebrate major game anniversaries. But for Retro Games Ltd, manufacturer of The C64 Mini and its full-size brother, the path ahead has been relatively straightforward: just as Commodore followed up the best-selling home computer of its day with the Amiga, the A500 Mini is the revival specialist’s next step. The A500 Mini is a plug-and-play system featuring…

“I think you could take any genre and make a golf version of it,” Liam Edwards (above) states boldly, citing RPG Golf Story and absurdist puzzle game What The Golf? as examples. Perhaps there could be a fighting game where you smack balls off each other, he muses, or, since golf is turnbased, “an XCOM-style game where flags are your enemies.” As for racing, does Mario Golf: Super Rush suggest that just because you can, doesn’t mean you should? “Golf courses are really big,” Edwards says, “so everybody just runs in different directions.” Still, there is hope. “I don’t know why they didn’t just make it like Mario Kart and you had to drive golf carts there.”…

Hardware Pro Series cabinet Manufacturer Arcade1Up To some collectors of vintage arcade hardware, only an original faux-woodgrain 1970s Atari cabinet with a signed note of authenticity from Nolan Bushnell himself will hit the spot. At the other end of the scale, however, Arcade1Up’s range of affordable recreations have been delivering the goods for a few years – and now it’s looking to raise its game. Utilising upgraded joysticks and buttons, 19” screens and improved speakers, the Pro Series will launch with a Killer Instinct machine featuring the original game and its sequel, plus a trio of Battletoads titles. At $700 a pop, it’s considerably more expensive than 1Up’s standard range, although for that price you also get online play via WiFi, in case that’s something you feel you need from…

January 2022 was a banner month for the cultural micro-industry that consists of philosophical takes on suddenly-popular games. Like nothing since Pokémon Go, the online game Wordle fired the pontificators’ imagination as much as the popular imagination. People described as “psychology experts” were quoted saying that Wordle was popular because it releases dopamine, the brain’s “reward chemical” (which is the neurobollocks way of saying we like to do stuff), and because the arrangement of coloured blocks was “soothing” because it represented order in chaos. (So, like Tetris?) Other people described as “AI experts” alleged that Wordle could help us understand “selfdriving” cars. Which, I suppose, would be good if it helped them self-crash less? Inevitably, by something like the statistical law of large numbers, some of these takes were actually…

Stranger Of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series The more we see of this, the more we’re convinced this could be a real cult favourite: the My Way needle drop on its final trailer alone seems indicative of a game whose developer has made some surprising choices of its own. Goodbye Volcano High PC, PS4, PS5 Well, it does rather feel like the end times are approaching, doesn’t it. And what better way to acknowledge impending doom than with a cathartic blowout courtesy of Ko-Op’s bittersweet dinosaur-high-school adventure? Radio The Universe PC Back in E349, Juno Park told us his commercial debut would be out by the winter. Twenty months on, an update, via Twitter: “better news is coming”. When that will be is anyone’s…

Developer Square Enix, Artdink Publisher Square Enix Format Switch Origin Japan Release March 4 Even without that ridiculous Ronseal title, we can’t help but notice patterns of threes in Triangle Strategy. Its medieval realm of Norzelia is home to three nations (the prosperous Kingdom Of Glenbrook, the industrious Archdukedom Of Aesfrost, and the Holy State Of Hyzante) once at war with one another, but which have held an uneasy truce for the past three decades. In particular, Glenbrook is served by three high houses, including House Wolffort, of which young swordsman Serenoa, the protagonist, is to become the next lord. And for those curious to find out whether this is a spiritual successor to Final Fantasy Tactics, the free prologue demo grants access to the first three chapters. There are…

In Damian Martin’s view, there’s a tendency for sciencefiction works to focus on broad themes such as saving the universe. Stories that seek to be relevant to contemporary life, however, most often adopt a realist approach. Yet for Damian Martin, playing Sundae Month’s Diaries Of A Spaceport Janitor – a game about cleaning litter in an alien bazaar – implanted the idea that it’s possible to do both. “There’s something about the atmosphere that I found incredibly personal,” they say. “But then I love the fact that it was set in a science-fiction universe. I wanted to make something that’s relatable but still has those big science-fiction themes going on as well.”…

Developer/ publisher Failbetter Games Format PC, Switch Origin UK Release Q4 We’re attempting to flirt with a potential love interest when a cloud of bats screeches by in the background. If you had any doubts that this romantic visual novel – a spin-off from Failbetter’s Fallen London – was going to retain the weirdness of its parent game, the first hour of Mask Of The Rose quickly sets about putting them to bed. Not many dating sims open with England’s capital falling through the surface of the Earth; fewer still feature a murder mystery where the victim isn’t actually dead. And if the idea of getting your freak on in a world where tentacles slither out of mouseholes and rats build homemade guillotines leaves you a little uneasy, you can…

Rhythm minigames in Afterlove EP involve either practising your guitar in your room or jamming with your band, the latter an integral part of the story. The emphasis is on feel over skill, as evidenced by the minigames having just a single button input, while an autoplay difficulty option is available. The songs are written and performed by Indonesian band L’alphalpha, who Fahmi knew from his previous job as a tech journalist. “They’re like indie-indie – they have full time jobs, so they don’t really have time to make music,” he says. “I told the vocalist and guitar player that I want to make a game and work with local indie bands. They offered themselves to work on the full soundtrack, and I was like, ‘Sure!’”…

One of Ikumi Nakamura’s early concepts for Ghostwire saw people around the world wearing masks to combat an outbreak of disappearances. It’s probably for the best that this version of the story has been abandoned, though the experience of lockdown is, of course, palpable in the emptiness of the game’s streets. Developers across the globe have struggled to function in the face of the COVID pandemic – Ghostwire itself was supposed to be released last year – but Mikami says that Tango has done a good job of weathering the crisis. “In regard to the COVID-related pressures and stress,” he says, “Tango’s outstanding project managers along with the detailed care from our HR staff has helped to make things go relatively smoothly.”…

How much playtime can you expect on Deck out of a single charge? It depends on the game, with Valve’s testing figures varying between seven-plus hours and just shy of three. Our own experiences are very much at the bottom end of that scale, even for less demanding titles – a result, perhaps, of cranking up the brightness as high as it’ll go. Battery life, however, is yet another area where Valve is hoping Deck can improve over its lifetime. If the device is a success, Newell hopes developers will be motivated to optimise their games towards it, just as they would for an AMD or Nvidia GPU. “Because a lot of times, there are really simple things you can do to address it. Nobody spends time tuning for power…

Among the strangest factory games is Luden. io’s educational sim Learning Factory, in which players massproduce toys for cats. The game also collects data on feline purchasing habits, which you use to train a machine learning model and automate pricing. “There is actual machine learning under the hood,” communication director Georgii Kurgan says. “There are models that are being applied even now by Amazon.” The sheer quantity of outputs together with the difficulty of tracking down faults in a factory simulation makes an ideal basis for teaching players about machine learning, CEO Oleg Chumakov adds. “If just one piece of the production chain is broken, you’ll find problems [everywhere], so you need a really good understanding of the whole system. And that’s why you need data analysis.”…

STILL PLAYING Halo Infinite Xbox Series X The promise of hot pink armour was reason enough to sample Infinite’s Cyber Showdown, but it was Attrition that really kept us coming back day after day. This Slayer variant gives each team a shared pool of lives – fall again once they’re depleted and you need to be revived by a teammate. A few minor rule changes, really, but enough to reenergise those rock-solid fundamentals, turning the final moments of each match into a tense battle-royale-ish scramble for survival. The event is now over, but 343 apparently has plans for Attrition’s return. You can guarantee we’ll be there, looking pretty in pink. Death’s Door PC Long-time Edge readers may recall our Create section, with its People, Places and Things features. If those…

The skill tree has been expanded to a series of categories that let you lean into a particular playstyle, whether you prefer ranged or close-quarters combat, or would rather use potions and shields to stay in the fight for longer. Certain combinations of skills unlock nodes that offer temporary but potentially gamechanging buffs called Valor Surges: these are triggered by pressing both shoulder buttons during combat, ostensibly through ‘playing tactically’, but in reality landing a few successive hits tends to suffice. Activating this prompts the camera to zoom in for an exaggerated animation: Aloy might slam a power module into her spear for a massive melee boost, or apply war paint to increase ranged damage. It lends a welcome injection of anime-style drama to combat.…

Developer/publisher Sloclap Format PC, PS4, PS5 (tested) Release Out now Stop. Breathe. Try again. For all the gorgeously choreographed punches and kicks and offered by Sifu, its most defining action might be this: putting the controller down for the duration of one long exhale and repeating a mantra. It’s a ritual of acceptance and preparation that takes a while to settle into. The initial urge is to mash the attack buttons, which rewards you with fight animations as carefully crafted as lines of poetry. Until, inevitably, a sweeping leg or a length of pipe to the skull puts a hard caesura in your flow. Your warrior drops, and what seemed moments before like an appreciative audience takes the opportunity to put the boot in. And just like that – you’re…

Roll7 has provided a suite of customisation tools that push back against skateboarding’s ‘young male in jeans’ cliché – a stereotype the previous games leaned on. It does so within the constraints of its hand-drawn artwork, and though it can’t meet anything like absolute representation of the global population, it makes a better fist of it than most. The character models often leave gender to the player’s own interpretation, while clothing and accessories go far beyond a traditional skater wardrobe. Want to drop in wearing a summer dress? There’s a wealth of choices across that one item alone, and there are less orthodox combinations besides. Real-world skateboarding has become much more diverse, but OlliOlli World presents a community that more actively celebrates difference.…

Not For Broadcast has a charming line in absurdist British humour, and erratic guests regularly see everything going a bit Alan Partridge as events spiral out of control. The satire is nowhere near as sharp as Partridge’s debut vehicle, radio show On The Hour, but some segments – such as the Mornington Crescent-like Sportsboard tournament with its rules that cannot be pinned down – elicit genuine belly laughs. Alongside the gags that hit, there are some misses, too – a streak of deeply unfunny scatological humour is the game’s biggest weakness.…

As thoughtfully crafted as Florence is, its few flaws become clearer on a second playthrough. Its selfimposed reliance on visual storytelling means at times it leans into Hallmark-movie cliché: you feel for Florence after the break-up, but when we see her huddled up on the sofa, her head between her legs with the rain pouring outside, it feels like Mountains is laying it on a bit thick. There’s a brief misstep as we’re inexplicably placed in the role of Krish, tidying up his messy room ahead of Florence’s arrival. And the chapter breaks feel unnecessary: the pieces of a torn photograph slowly floating apart is an effective visual metaphor without the header ‘Drifting’ spelling it out. Likewise when Florence learns to let go: it’s only when you take your finger…

While rumours persist that Microsoft is looking to buy a Japanese game company, doing so is tricky. Historically it has been difficult for overseas firms to buy Japanese concerns unless they are on the brink of going bust (as was the case with Foxconn’s acquisition of Sharp, and Renault’s of Nissan). None of the major Japanese players are in that sort of trouble, and if they were, they would most likely prefer to deal with a compatriot. Language and cultural barriers are also significant hurdles. While only a fool would rule anything out in a post-Activision Blizzard world, in the short term it appears Sony is by far the more likely to grow its studio network with Japanese buyouts.…

Though Suzuki’s work is primarily on the main series, he’s familiar enough with Koei Tecmo’s approach to collaborations – whether it’s working with Nintendo on Fire Emblem Warriors or adapting anime and manga series such as One Piece and Berserk. “There are a lot of discussions, until both sides agree to what elements will be kept in the game and what will be taken out. There are a lot of fine discussions around that and, once both sides have agreed, then we go into developing the game. We always work very closely with the other parties to make sure that everyone is on board with how things are portrayed.” Koei Tecmo president Hisashi Koinuma has expressed a desire to work with Mario and Star Wars, so it’s fair to say…

With shortages still blighting production of high-end hardware, what is the impact on lower-powered devices? “It’s not availability, it’s price – that’s where we’ve seen the hits,” Smith explains. “We’ve been lucky-ish in that we are not using the current best-of-breed – we’re using moderate RAM chips, and the company that makes them is on the same complex as the company that manufactures our hardware.” That helps, given transportation prices. “Shipping costs are astronomical – that’s had a massive impact,” Smith says. “In about 14 months, they’ve gone up by about 600-700 per cent,” Melbourne adds.…

Making games takes a long time. When Immortality is done, it will have been three years of continuous effort. I have notes about it going back ten years, and its true genesis occurred last century. Only a fool would consider how long a game takes to fund, develop and release and do the mental arithmetic to ask how many games one can realistically make in an averagely productive lifespan. People (exclusively the nonchildbearing ones) sometimes compare the making of a game to the effort, cost and pain of childbirth, but you only have to glance at the ‘project babies’ sections of videogame credits to see how much easier it is to make a baby than a videogame. Shipping a videogame is like having a baby – but backwards. First you…

Developer/publisher Larian Studios Format PC, Stadia Origin Belgium Release 2023 The road to Baldur’s Gate is long and hard. The first act alone – currently playable in Early Access – takes us from crashed slave barge to subterranean cult, via a goblin camp, besieged druids and fungal forests. And all this to the ticking of a time bomb: a tadpole burrowed deep in the brain that grants psychic boons as it saps the host’s humanity. Surviving all the way to the Sword Coast metropolis will be one thing; making it there as the same hero you set out as, quite another. And so it is for Larian, which finds the route to release studded with obstacles of a different kind: the restructuring of processes to fit a pandemic-gripped world; the…

Before a battle or during exploration, you have the option to visit your encampment, a small hub where you can spend your coins on supplies or upgrading party members’ attributes – provided you’ve also got the necessary materials. An elder will trade your kudos points for quietuses, skills that can be deployed once per battle to grant a much-needed advantage, such as instantly recovering half of any unit’s health or guaranteeing that the next attack will be a critical hit. As it happens, most of our time is spent at the tavern, but rather than knocking back a few cold ones, it’s where we can engage in mock battles, and since these optional skirmishes can be repeated, it’s essential for grinding unit levels and resources.…

Developer/ publisher Poncle Format PC Origin UK Release Q4 (Early Access out now) Videogames have always placed us in fights for survival against impossible odds. Vampire Survivors belongs to the same lineage as Robotron: 2084, with one player-character facing off against ever tougher and more voluminous swarms. It escalates to a level of gleeful chaos that recalls the likes of Treasure’s Bangai-O and the EDF series, albeit (largely) without the slowdown that often accompanies such a barrage of enemies and ordnance. And in its way, it’s as compulsive and straightforwardly entertaining as any of those. Its biggest point of difference is that firing is automatic; all you need focus on is movement. The primary verb, at least at first, is ‘avoid’. Then, slowly, surely, you gain the firepower to stride…

Those who’ve spent some time in Fallen London already will delight in getting a firstperson view of it. The lamplit backdrops add to the disquieting mood, with subtle animations lending extra atmosphere: we’re particularly taken with a curious paperweight in the Ministry’s offices that resembles a tiny meteorite covered in arcane symbols that glow a fiery orange. Character art, in keeping with genre norms, is largely static but flicks between different expressions and poses. There’s no anime-style exaggeration here: flatter Griz or Archie and you’ll see their eyes softening, the corners of their mouths turning up just a touch. The most enigmatic grin, however, belongs to Horatia: hers is a smirk that suggests she knows more than she’s letting on.…

Tango has another game in the works, a mysterious new IP helmed by The Evil Within 2’s game director, John Johanas. Studio founder Shinji Mikami declines to give a timeframe for revealing the game, but hints that it’ll be even more ambitious than Ghostwire: Tokyo. “The new IP title that John is making is completely the opposite of horror,” Mikami explains. “He’s in the groove working on it, and we hope you look forward to hearing more about it.” Ghostwire’s subtitle suggests that it could be the first in a series, though Tango is more interested right now in breaking ground. As Masato puts it: “We will most likely continue down this path of making unique pieces for the world to enjoy.”…

Set alongside a Switch, Deck is noticeably bigger and heavier. It’s a good half-centimetre wider, over three times as deep and, at 669g, nearly twice the weight. You may be more likely to rest Valve’s console on your lap or a knee while playing, but it’s yet to put any strain on our wrists. (Portability is helped by the compact carrying case that ships with every model.) There is one downside to Deck’s breadth, though: just how far inland the thumbsticks sit, requiring a bit more reach than we’d like while playing firstperson shooters. With their traditional spot taken up instead by the twin trackpads, perhaps we should simply get used to lining up headshots on those instead?…

VALVE CO-FOUNDER, CEO & PRESIDENT The top-end models of Steam Deck cost significantly more, but the 64GB base model is selling for £349. Was the device’s development aimed at a particular price point? There are huge advantages to operating in the PC space in terms of price performance – you have so many competitors for so many components. We had pretty rigid notions of what price points we wanted to hit, and then sort of back-solved from that. And, you know, these are pretty painful price points to actually hit. It’ll be interesting, a couple years down the road, to decide whether or not that was as important as we thought it was. Nobody gets hurt by having a great price for the device – other than, certainly, our margins.…

Factory sims are often likened to programming. Is there much value in this comparison? “If you’re thinking about real bottom-up logic-gate hardcore computer programming, then there are some similarities, which is, ironically, why factory layouts tend to look like chips,” Cliff Harris says. “Because we are doing vaguely similar things that are really low level. But they’re not really programming games as such.” Playing factory games may be “an indicator that you would enjoy learning to code”, he adds. “I think they appeal to people who enjoy keeping a really complicated system in your head. The kind of mental processing that you have to do to manage a massive factory layout is what you need to be a software engineer.”…

Jon Ingold Co-founder and creative director, Inkle Did you ever consider making this game a spin-off from one of Inkle’s previous titles? One of the things that the team was suggesting, that Tom and Joe were quite keen on, was setting it in the 80 Days universe. I was really against it, though, because I felt like they’re very tonally different games. And people who would be expecting more 80 Days would be a bit like, ‘What’s this murder-on-a-boat game?’, while people who don’t remember 80 Days might say, ‘Oh, well, I didn’t play 80 Days, so I’m not interested in it’. So I kind of fought back against that. But I think really, fundamentally, if it had been an 80 Days game, then the steward would have to be…

It may not come as a shock that we’ve been thinking a lot about structure recently. Structure (with a capital S) is at the heart of Sloclap’s Sifu: think of it as an equivalent to Sekiro’s posture gauge, where a full bar leaves your opponent stunned, and open to takedown finishers. Of course, you also have a meter of your own to keep an eye on. But then there’s a lot to think about full stop, not least the game’s structure – and this time you’ll note we’ve moved to lower case. Sifu’s ageing mechanic is designed to encourage mastery. Muddle through the first stage and you’ll probably be too old to make it much farther – instead you’re encouraged to dust yourself off and try again until you’ve made…

Developer/publisher Techland Format PC, PS4, PS5 (tested), Xbox One, Xbox Series Release Out now There’s a deflated feeling, usually associated with the penultimate episode of a pot-luck Netflix miniseries, that comes once you realise you’re no longer in narratively safe hands. Payoff is not coming. Your investment, emotional and mental, has been for naught. The journey to plot conclusion will be a slow exhalation of disappointment and relief. With the burden of caring lifted, the brain is freed for more pertinent questions: what else is on? (Do we need toilet roll?) It’s a mercy that this realisation comes early in Dying Light 2. During a drawn-out intro that demonstrates the limits of parkour in a countryside setting, Techland lays out its pitch for the inner-world intrigue that’s supposed to propel…

The space-time rifts that result in you being whisked back to this proto-Sinnoh have caused other disruptions – not least to the region’s Noble Pokémon, the game’s deadliest opponents. These frenzied beasts need to be pacified with their favourite food: rather than balls, you hurl balms at them while they launch powerful attacks that must be dodged in realtime. At certain points these boss battles fold in more traditional turnbased elements as you use your squad to stun them, giving you a brief window to calm them without fear of reprisal. There are plenty of legendary monsters besides, not least an encounter with the titular Pokémon. Though this final quest takes the series’ famous mantra literally: to welcome Arceus to Hisui, you gotta catch ‘em all.…

In truth, we’re probably not experiencing Wanderer at its best. With a successor not far away, the PSVR hardware is showing its age, the PS Move controllers in particular feeling as ancient as any artefact encountered on our time travels. Any manoeuvre that brings hands in close contact requires a squishing of rubber orbs. This is not entirely the hardware’s fault, however: why insist on single-finger pokes when you know a segment of your playerbase will effectively be wearing boxing gloves?…

The benefits to Bungie from being bought by Sony are clear. It has expanded its operations significantly in recent years. It has multiple non-Destiny projects in the works, including a new game from CCO (and Halo legend) Jason Jones. It also has ambitions for Destiny beyond videogames. Former series director Luke Smith and executive producer Mark Noseworthy are steering Destiny’s transmedia expansion, something Sony, with its TV and movie divisions, is perfectly placed to oversee. To that end, the studio announced the hiring of Derick Tsai, previously animation director on Riot Games’ animated shorts, as head of development for Destiny Universe Transmedia.…

Though Empires returns to the series’ segmented, stage-based approach, its focus on castle sieges was inspired by their presence within Dynasty Warriors 9’s open world. “We saw the potential of being able to really show more realistic ways of battling within and also around castle grounds,” Suzuki says. The game’s Secret Plans mechanic lets you determine a number of different ways to infiltrate these fortresses, whether you want to tackle them head-on or come up with your own more cunning plan. “You can follow that [preset] mission to get through the castle gates or you can follow your own instincts – there is no one correct way.”…

The golf game has felt increasingly niche in recent years, despite once being a videogame staple. With EA taking an extended break from its licensed franchise, HB Studios’ precise simulations for 2K have been the sole serious contenders, while Clap Hanz has emigrated to Apple Arcade and Mario Golf has spent a decade or so in the rough. Yet, while the sport’s representation has flagged, its mechanics have been co-opted by indie developers for alternative ends. Clubbing little balls is a versatile activity, it turns out, with a heap of cultural baggage to explore. Take Chuhai Labs’ forthcoming Cursed To Golf, a golfing Roguelite dungeon crawl. Its central premise riffs on the ambivalence golfers – including game director Liam Edwards, who played regularly during his childhood – themselves often have…

“I’ve decided to not continue the partnership with VoiceVerseNFT. I’ve heard you and apologise for accusing anyone of ‘hating’ just by simply disagreeing with me.” That beeping noise is actor Troy Baker reversing out of his commitment to tech for (hnngh) ‘voice NFTs powered by AI’ “[VR] headsets would isolate you from the real world, and I can’t agree with that. Headsets are simply annoying.” Memo: don’t ask PlayStation father Ken Kutaragi if he’s looking forward to PSVR2 “Activision Blizzard sold for $70b today and the community is going to see $0 from this. Play-to-earn couldn’t come sooner.” Thank you, entrepreneur Greg Isenberg, for keeping us laughing for a solid month “Had good calls this week with leaders at Sony. I confirmed our intent to honour all existing agreements upon…

Issue 368 Score to settle I have been a reader of Edge from the very beginning, and one thing I have noticed over the years troubles me. Often, I read reviews, hoping that somewhere in the text I will be proved wrong – alas, this rarely happens. The scores of the games are either not mentioned, or when they are, they get maybe a line or two at most. I am a huge fan of videogame music, and to see this time and time again really makes me ache. A composer can work on or be attached to a score for a game for many months. Often that score will have a huge effect on the game – take, for example, recent games such as Chicory, Returnal, Death’s Door, Guardians…

The games that used to shout loudest about their focus on player choice generally presented us with laughably binary moral decisions – the equivalent of being asked whether you want to rescue a litter of adorable puppies, or else put them in a sack and throw them into a river, with a lit stick of dynamite for good measure. Even so, there was something appealing in seeing the consequences of our responses reflected in tangible ways, though it’s clear that videogames have since grown much more sophisticated in the ways they allow us to make meaningful choices that affect both story and systems. This issue we catch up with Larian’s Baldur’s Gate 3, as it continues to evolve in Early Access. Few games are quite so reactive, the sheer number…

Given the mechanical and visual differences between Baldur’s Gate 3 and its Infinity Engine predecessors, some wonder why Larian resurrected the name, instead of building an all-new standalone D&D game. On this Vincke suggests “some people jump too fast to conclusions” and points to the eponymous city as the place where you’ll see more connective tissue. He says the new story “is one hundred years in the future, and things have happened in the Forgotten Realms, but what happened one hundred years ago had an impact”. He also draws comparisons between the predicament of the tadpole-infested adventurers and the original’s Bhaalspawn protagonist, in that both are tales of “becoming an incredibly powerful form, but having a price to pay for that power. There are lots of touchstones”.…

Developer Jump Over The Age Publisher Fellow Traveller Format PC Origin UK Release 2022 On the wall near their desk, Gareth Damian Martin – the (mostly) solo developer behind Citizen Sleeper and In Other Waters – has a Post-it note with the words ‘precarity, human stories and influence’. “To me, precarity is one of the defining feelings of this generation,” they say. “My experiences in life have been defined by the feeling of being exposed to risk, of being on the edge of things where something could push you one way or the other.” This feeling of insecurity is foundational to Citizen Sleeper, a roleplaying game in which financial and structural pressures keep you teetering on the brink of disaster. You play as an escaped ‘sleeper’: a digitised consciousness in…

Half an hour of action at such a relentless pace ostensibly risks becoming wearyingly repetitive. Yet your choice of power-ups results in appreciably distinct builds, even if the result is essentially the same. Focusing on a single weapon isn’t always the wisest idea, but level it up enough times and it may evolve. This can transform the latter stages of a run: pair attack birds Peachone and Ebony Wings, for example, and you end up with a Vandalier, whose rainbow arcs thrillingly carve through huge crowds. “I didn’t do the weapon evolutions until very late in development,” Galante admits.”But it’s something people are really liking a lot, so I’m definitely planning to keep expanding on these ideas.” There will be plenty more updates, too – “hopefully one per week,” he…

Developer Pikselnesia Publisher Fellow Traveller Format PC, PS4, PS5, Switch Origin Indonesia Release 2022 This narrative game’s unusual title is actually two puns in one. It’s a reference, of course, to the afterlife, which factors into its plot, as the lead character, young musician Rama, finds he’s still able to hear the voice of his recently deceased girlfriend. And there’s a second play on words for those who can speak Indonesian, as explained by creator Mohammad Fahmi Husni – better known mononymously as Fahmi. “This game is about moving on from your past love, Cinta, which is a pretty common name in Indonesia. It also means love, so Afterlove can also mean After Cinta,” he laughs. Afterlove EP sets the scene with a prologue inspired by the first ten minutes…

Talk of PS5’s unique hardware features together with the game’s emphasis on ambient sound raises the question of whether Ghostwire – a timed console exclusive – might support the forthcoming PSVR2 headset, with its built-in 3D audio and DualSense-style haptic feedback. The will is clearly there, though Tango can’t make any guarantees. “It’s something we’re very interested in,” Kenji says. “It’s not something that I as the director can make a decision about, but immersion is definitely at the core of the game – we want to help players feel like they’re there. And VR is definitely something that would help with that. It would be very exciting if we were presented with the opportunity. It sounds very cool.”…

Where Valve’s earlier pushes into console territory saw it launch Steam’s controller-friendly Big Picture Mode, Deck uses more or less the same Steam UI as desktop PCs, with the addition of a few features to filter the familiar-looking store and your game library by Deck compatibility. “We’re taking this opportunity to make Steam better as a whole,” says product designer Lawrence Yang. “So as opposed to reimplementing a separate version of Steam, we’re doing things that are making Steam on desktop better.” We’ve seen a few examples of that already on PC, such as a recent update that foregrounds download sizes before you start installing – a small addition that’s nice to have on desktop but absolutely essential when you’re working with 64GB storage.…

Among Zachtronics’ abandoned projects is a factory game set in the comically malevolent Warhammer 40,000 universe, in which humankind has become a cyborg theocratic empire spanning thousands of planets. “We asked: what’s the deal with licensing their IP?” Barth says. “Because they have factories as a huge part of their lore. But it didn’t go anywhere. Obviously, we’d have to pay them tons of money to license stuff, and we don’t have tons of money, but also, specifically in their universe, designing new things is heresy. So we wouldn’t be able to make a game about designing anything. So that seemed like a bad fit!” It’s a captivating prospect, regardless. We dread to think of the things you’d assemble in the Emperor’s name – not to mention the materials you…

White Paper Games’ first release, Ether One, was all about the unreliability of memory. So there is perhaps irony in asking the team to take us back over a decade, when the studio’s original members were studying at Preston’s University Of Central Lancashire. As Pete Bottomley and James Burton reminisce, one event in particular stands out from the hazy mists of memory: a talk given by The Chinese Room’s Dan Pinchbeck. Bottomley acknowledges the influence of Dear Esther, The Chinese Room’s own debut, on Ether One. After all, both are short firstperson narrative games – ‘walking sims’, to use the pejorative – set in the kind of low-key British location then rarely seen in games, and both explore topics of grief and memory. This isn’t the event’s only significance, though:…

Developers/publisher SIE (Guerrilla Games) Format PS4, PS5 (tested) Release Out now There cannot be many games that aged almost as instantly as Horizon Zero Dawn. Here was a handsomely realised open-world adventure, with a vibrant, expansive and well-realised setting and an absorbing story that married grand stakes with a journey of personal discovery. And this accomplished piece of work had the added surprise factor of coming from a developer previously known for a series of largely grey firstperson shooters: the guys behind Killzone made this? If not exactly the pinnacle of its form, it didn’t seem too far off. Then, three days later, Breath Of The Wild arrived and upended expectations of what this genre could be. Rich in mechanical invention and atmosphere, understanding the value of space and silence…

Merging an open-world game with an RPG creates unexpected problems – one of which is temporal. Immediately upon our appearance in Villedor, incidental NPCs greet Aiden by name, as if previously acquainted. Then, as we return to the main quest after several in-game days of undirected exploration, a character refers to our arrival in town as if it were quite literally “yesterday”. It’s a small slip-up that tells us something about the limits of RPGs: games paced such that the player can stop and start the clock on a quest whenever they feel like it. Breaking that convention would be painful for those looking to play at their own speed. Perhaps it’s better to simply accept a disparity between the systemic and narrative parts of games such as Dying Light…

In the Post Script to our review of Rainbow Six Siege (E289), we posited that destructible scenery was about to have its moment – a moment that, sadly, never came. Aside from the brilliant Teardown, the intervening years have offered precious little in the way of smashable level geometry. This proves to be in Extraction’s favour, as the novelty of blasting peepholes and access points in walls remains fresh. Worthy of special mention is the Archaeans’ bioluminescence, which means that pointing your guns’ built-in UV beam at permeable walls will cause enemy outlines – and weak points – to give off a soft glow. Extraction’s stealth may have its problems, but few moments in videogames can beat landing a headshot through two inches of plywood.…

While some plants have heady effects, nothing is as intoxicating as the feeling of ownership you have over your little shop. Though it initially seems a pity there’s no puzzle element involved in positioning your stocks, we end up spending a good deal of time doing just that: you might (as we did) alphabetise them while keeping the fungi on a separate shelf, or you might prefer to place them according to colour. Or you could increase the challenge by refusing to label anything.…