LOOK FORWARD

THE GAMES, TECHNOLOGY AND TRENDS

THAT WILL SHAPE 2021 AND BEYOND

SPECIAL EDITION

#355
M A RC H 20 21
Hope for the future, it’s
coming soon enough
One of the best things about games is that, even now, nearly 50 years on
from the release of the first commercial example, Computer Space, it feels
like we can still see them evolving in front of our eyes. The difference
between console generations may not be as stark as it was when the ’80s
gave way to the ’90s, but anyone who doesn’t see the benefit in
upgrading, say, Destiny 2 to 60fps in 4K on PS5 cannot be paying
enough attention. Sure, it felt like you were managing just fine on your
wheezing PS4 during all those long evenings online, didn’t it? But when
you’ve made the transition, it’s awfully difficult to go back. What was once
normal soon becomes the old way, discarded for a better future.
And, you know, at the moment we’ll take whatever improvements we
can get our hands on, however small. Because, in a strange turn of events,
the arrival of a new year didn’t instantly fix all of the world’s problems. But
we’re determined to be optimistic about 2021, to focus on brighter times
ahead, and with that in mind we’ve assembled this special edition.
In 2020’s Feel Better issue, we focused on certainties, because when
you’re suddenly faced with having to traverse a world turned upside down
it’s just sensible to pick out the most reliable footholds. Today, we have at
least a handful of reasons to be less anxious, so for this companion edition
we’re casting our gaze beyond known quantities.
Of course, we’re looking towards particular games across all formats,
from indies and behemoths alike, but we’re also identifying a selection of
studios whose track records have us itching to see what’s coming next.
We’re looking at hardware and services, including technology we expect
to be playing with a lot over the next few years, but also other projects
and initiatives whose future isn’t quite so predictable. And we’re looking at
topics and trends with broader bearings on how the videogame landscape
is evolving. Yes, we still need our comfort games, and we have them on
standby, but let’s get going on finding some new ones to add to the pile.

3
 24 110

90

50

10

70
 Edge 355 March 2021

38

32

64

contents Games
8 Deathloop
66 Kaizen Game Works
72 Dreamfeel
105 Bokeh
12 Twelve Minutes 110 Echodog Games
16 Returnal
62 18 Season
22 UFO 50 Hardware
24 It Takes Two
40 The Artful Escape 64 SSDs: the real game-changer
42 We Are OFK 70 Getting to grips with DualSense
46 Open Roads 81 Playdate
53 The Good Life 102 Intellivision Amico
54 Baldur’s Gate III
60 Horizon Forbidden West
68 Ghostwire: Tokyo Trends
76 Resident Evil Village
78 Zelda: Breath Of The Wild 2 10 The return of social gaming
82 Monster Hunter Rise 26 A new wave of Roguelikes
86 Halo Infinite 32 Detective games
90 Lego Star Wars: 36 The rise of the indie
The Skywalker Saga immersive sim
94 Happy Game 48 VR’s coming of age?
108 108 Fights In Tight Spaces 84 Metroidvanias galore
106 Sable 88 Recursion
112 Yakuza 3–6 92 The evolution of Spirelikes
96 Road trips
98 The shifting landscape
Studios of live-service games

14 Enhance Games
28 Double Fine More
34 Remedy Entertainment
44 Inkle 30 Game Pass
58 InnerSloth 38 Amazon Luna
62 Simogo 50 Super Nintendo World
100 Itch.io

5
 EDITORIAL
Tony Mott acting editor Chris Schilling contributing editor
John McAllister acting art editor Miriam McDonald operations editor

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6

Developer Arkane Studios Lyon Publisher Bethesda Softworks Format PC, PS5 Origin France Release May 21
Arkane Studios has spent the
past few years establishing itself
as one of the most consistent and
fascinating triple-A developers
around – but in that time, its
games haven’t quite managed to
find an audience commensurate
with the label. Its flagship series,
Dishonored, is currently “resting”
after the sequel’s sales dip – and
that has cleared the floor for its
latest, and most convincing, effort
at breaking into the mainstream.
Deathloop spans many of the
themes we cover elsewhere this
issue. Arkane has taken its
immersive-sim heritage and
applied a Roguelike twist to it,
courtesy of the game’s time-loop
plot – please mark your 2021
bingo card accordingly. In practice,
this means playing as Colt, an
assassin blessed with supernatural
abilities but doomed to live out
the same day until he can eliminate
eight targets in a single run, before
the clock strikes midnight. How
you do it, naturally, is up to you.
The setting works like one huge
Hitman level, extrapolating the
delicate clockwork of that series to
an entire island. Learn the quirks
and schedules of each target and
you might be able to massage
circumstances to put two of them
in the same spot at the same time,
for a more efficient kill.
Complicating this, though, is
Deathloop’s big new idea: Julianna
Blake. She’s a second playable
character, and Colt’s adversary. So
as you act out plans and attempt a
clean run, Blake may be hunting
you across the island. Or perhaps
you’re the one doing the hunting,
frustrating Colt’s efforts in the
most elaborate bit of developer-
authorised griefing since Dark
Souls’ invasions. Whether this is a
revolutionary feature or one most
players will opt to switch off – it’s
optional – remains to be seen.
DEATHLOOP
But for now, what really matters
is that Deathloop’s trailers have
attracted a lot of eyes. The game’s
distinctive ’60s pop-art-meets-
grindhouse style is the kind of
thing that people who care about
Arkane games care about. But we
suspect it’s the promise of slick,
stylish action that really turned
heads during Sony’s Future Of
Gaming PS5 reveal. Deathloop is
putting guns front and centre in a
way Dishonored and Prey never did.
So with the marketing budget
of Microsoft now behind it –
provided the company is willing to
push a game that, through a quirk
of its acquisition of Bethesda
parent ZeniMax Media, will be
releasing as an exclusive on its
rival’s console – could this be the
smash hit that Arkane deserves?
Whether or not that comes to pass,
Deathloop is shaping up to be a
very welcome addition to the FPS
landscape in 2021. n
9

By now, we’re all well used to shifting release
dates. No doubt some of the titles featured in
these very pages will be delayed, as the long-
term effects of COVID-19 continue to be felt. Of
all the pleasures we’re looking forward to, though,
this one might be the hardest to pin down a date
for. Nudging a friend on the sofa at exactly the
wrong moment, just as they approach that vital
final bend in the track. Standing shoulder-to-
shoulder at a cabinet, trying not to rattle a
carefully-balanced plastic pint cup. Crowding
around a screen, not-so-quietly hoping that
victory that doesn’t go to the person who
knocked you out two rounds ago. Looking at
recent data, it’s hard to be optimistic that these
kinds of experiences will be part of our gaming
life again any time soon, though we’re trying.
We’re not the only ones who miss them. “I
dearly miss having my friends over to my place
for games so we can trash-talk, give dirty looks
and shout over one another, the way nature
intended,” says Paul Kopetko. “Some games
really work best when played in the same room
together.” Like Kopetko’s own Boomerang Fu, for
example, a knockabout party game in the style of
Bomberman and TowerFall.
His wasn’t the only local multiplayer game
which had the misfortune of arriving in a
locked-down world. “We started dev long before
there was any hint of a pandemic,” Catastrophic_
Overload director James Letherby says. The
Bristol studio put out its first game, Drink More
Glurp (left) – a slapstick sports game that really
comes to life in its 20-player Hotseat Mode – in
August 2020. “We had always planned to release
in the run-up to the Tokyo Olympics. So when
they were postponed, along with a lot of our
coverage and conventions getting cancelled, it
made for a pretty tough decision to release.”
But release they did, and these games found
a slightly different audience to the one the devs
had anticipated. “I didn’t appreciate how many
families were also in lockdown,” Kopetko says –
something that also benefitted Moving Out, an
Overcooked-style couch co-op game specifically
designed to cross the generations. “There are so
few games for the five-to-ten-year-old player
these days,” says Ashley Ringrose of SMG, the
SOCIAL GAMING
Even after a studio behind Overcooked. “And even less you
can play with them as a parent and feel equal.”
tough year, Still, there’s a certain degree of unsporting
Loading Bar conduct that won’t fly in a family environment
(at least, if you want to preserve some level of
is looking to harmony). And a single household is unlikely to
open more buy multiple copies. “Couch games spread by
word of mouth,” Kopetko says – and who hasn’t
venues in texted a friend to ask what that game was last
the future night, then immediately typed the reply into
their storefront search bar of choice?
You don’t even need to play the game
yourself. Seeing a group of strangers enjoying
themselves can be enough. “That’s definitely
something I’ve been missing the past year –
the chance to bump into something new while
you’re getting a coffee,” Loading Bar founder and
CCO James Dance says. And Loading Bars’
gaming pubs are exactly the kind of venue where
this non-algorithmic discovery can take place.
When we’re able to comfortably step out into
the world again, there are plenty of games we’re
eager to start talking about, and put through
their paces. “I think local multiplayer games
shared with old friends are timeless,” Kopetko
says – and he’s hopeful that games such as
Boomerang Fu will enjoy a second life.
Even more exciting are the seeds planted
during the past year. The success of titles such
as Among Us, Fall Guys and the Jackbox Party
Packs has introduced new audiences to pleasures
traditionally reserved for in-person meetups.
That’s fertile soil for the next wave of in-person
social games, which will grow into new shapes
because they were conceived in this period.
The same, it seems, goes for the spaces they
will be played in. We return to Loading Bar
which, even after a tough year, is looking to open
more venues in the future. “I think it’s a very
different type of growth,” Dance says, than what
might have originally been planned – something
more local, less reliant on artificial scarcity to
draw a crowd, and designed to appeal to a
community broader than self-identified ‘gamers’.
In other words, the kind of principles we’d love
to see local play rebuild itself around. That and
a bit of sofa-nudging catharsis, naturally. n
11
 TWELVE MINUTES

Developer Luis Antonio Publisher Annapurna Interactive

Format PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series
Origin US Release 2021

If you’ve played The Witness, you’re

already acquainted with Luis Antonio’s
work. As an artist on that game, he
helped shape an entire island, modelling
ruins and planting carefully-chosen
vegetation to create one of the most
memorable locations in videogames. In
his new game, his first as lead designer,
he’s working on a much smaller canvas.
Twelve Minutes takes place in and
around a single apartment, within the
narrow timeframe suggested by the title.
The cast is similarly compact: just your
character, his wife, and the intruder who
bursts into their lives a few minutes into
the game, claiming to be working for the
police and accusing the wife of murder.
Out of these sparse elements, though,
Antonio appears to be creating a sprawl.
He started work on Twelve Minutes in
evenings and at weekends alongside The
Witness, some seven years ago; a playable
version was first sighted in 2016.
It’s tempting to compare the
developer’s situation to the one presented
in his game. Because, yes, this is a time-
loop story. As things escalate with the
intruder, you pass out – or worse – only
to find yourself right back at the
apartment’s door, a dozen minutes before
your seemingly certain fate.
Time loops have come into vogue
since the project began, and Antonio has
been able to capitalise on that to attract
Hollywood talent in the form of James
McAvoy, Daisy Ridley and Willem Dafoe.
We can certainly see the appeal. Breaking
out of an endless time loop that strands
you in your own home? As we look
forward, that particular fantasy is at the
forefront of our minds. n

13

People. Crowds of them, walking up
escalators, flowing around giant
blocks, climbing up walls, falling
from platforms. Then fighting:
thousands of figures forming battle
lines, shooting into opposing masses.
And then some form of ascent, as
a stream of figures walks into a thin
strip of blinding light. The trailer
for Humanity (pictured), first shown
at E3 2019, holds in today’s Covid-
laced world a kind of strangeness –
so many people, so close to each
other – but that only amplifies its
power. Its surreal representation of,
well, humanity sits squarely in the
uncanny as crowds flow together at
such scale in stark environments,
counterpointed by the plain details
of their casual clothes and the
brutal simplicity of their violence.
Described as a “crowd action
game”, Humanity is being developed
by Japanese digital design studio
Tha, but it’s being published and
supported by Enhance Games, the
studio headed by Sega Rally and Rez
creator Tetsuya Mizuguchi and
longtime Japanese-English game
translator and Metal Gear Solid V
project lead Mark MacDonald.
Humanity is an ideal project for
Enhance, a combination of striking
visual design and large-scale
profundity. For comparison, just
look to the studio’s debut, Tetris
Effect, which explored the idea that
the sense of flow a Tetris player can
plug into is a kind of shared
experience, something deeply
human which connects us all.
Led by Tha’s founder and
creative director, Yugo Nakamura,
Humanity’s tone and form is quite
ENHANCE GAMES
different to Tetris Effect. For a start,
it lacks a direct inheritance from
Rez and Lumines. It was inspired by
Boids, an algorithm developed by
computer graphics theorist Craig
Reynolds, which seeks to emulate
bird-flocking behaviour. It led
Nakamura to think about how we
don’t understand how birds think,
and yet can understand how they
move. “The inspiration for our game
Humanity came from thinking of
how a transcendental being would
interpret ‘human-like’ behaviour, in
the same way we humans interpret
bird flocking with Boids,” he wrote.
But what kind of game is
Humanity? A Chu Chu Rocket-like
puzzle game about directing flows
of people? That still remains to be
seen, but Nakamura is clear about
the importance of Enhance’s input,
which comes as an assurance that it
will be a game, not some digital art
installation. Enhance, after all, has
only continued to demonstrate its
sterling game design imagination
with the release in late 2020 of
Tetris Effect: Connected, which
added transformative multiplayer
which includes a cooperative mode
in which three players fight
together against a boss.
And then there’s whatever
Mizuguchi himself is working on,
which he tweeted last year as being
a “new adventure with synesthesia”.
It’s thrilling to have the opportunity
to follow and play the creative
ventures of developers with such
singular vision, and Mizuguchi’s
journey from rally course to
audiovisual experimentalism has
been one of the most fascinating.
In 2021, it’s only set to continue. n
15
RETURNAL
Developer Housemarque Publisher SIE Format PS5 Origin Finland Release March 19
Few developers make things explode
as spectacularly as Housemarque,
and the Finnish studio has form for
this on PlayStation. The fizzy
pyrotechnics of Super Stardust HD
lit up PS3, while the cascading
voxels of Resogun gave PS4 an
opening-day indie showcase that
didn’t look out of place next to the
expensive blockbusters. And if
we’re generous enough to class four
months as a launch window, it’s no
doubt hoping Returnal will do
similar for PS5 (though the studio
has grown since the PS3 days, and it’s
now making a game with triple-A
looks and a price tag to match).
The big question is whether its
brand of hectic arcade action, which
in places veers close to bullet-hell
territory, can translate to an over-
the-shoulder thirdperson
perspective. The signs so far are
promising: the environments may
be more complex, with greater
verticality, but the action remains
frantic, fast and, crucially, responsive.
“Generally with all our games, we
have strived to make the controls
feel as tight as possible,” creative
director Harry Krueger (director of
Nex Machina and lead programmer
on Resogun) has said. “There is a
sacred and unspoken bond between
the player and the controller, and
that is something that always
demands reverence.” With a grapple
and a mid-air dash, our protagonist
(think a middle-aged Samus Aran
16
with less of a maternal instinct
towards her enemy) is extremely
nimble. And she needs to be to
dodge the projectiles, splatters of
luminous sap and flailing tentacles
aimed in her direction.
In other words, despite the
darker tone and psychological-
horror theme of the story – for
which Housemarque has drafted in
a specific narrative team – there’s
plenty of the studio’s arcade style
here. But while Returnal remains
somewhat faithful to the studio’s
heritage, this is no leaderboard-
chasing credit-muncher, and there
are no extra lives this time. This is
a Roguelike, with the alien planet
you’re on rearranging itself for your
next visit, forcing you to adapt to
your enemy and environment rather
than relying on pattern recognition.
Beyond its obvious technical
accomplishments, it’s exploring
PS5’s hardware in other ways:
squeeze the DualSense controller’s
adaptive triggers gently for regular
fire, or press them in all the way to
activate your weapon’s alt mode. But
the studio understands that controls
should be intuitive, so you’ll be able
to customise them. Krueger: “A
good control scheme is like a good
camera: if it’s working well, it’s
entirely invisible.” The same can’t
be said for Returnal, which might
offer more bang for your buck than
any other PS5 game this year. n

Developer/publisher Scavengers Studio Format PC, PS5 Origin Canada Release TBA
Amid the marketing maelstrom of
December’s Game Awards, the
Season announcement trailer was a
halcyon moment. That twinkling
Studio Ghibli piano. The wide-open
watercolour sky, clouds sketched in
with visible brushstrokes.
Sketchbooks and tape recorders and
the shifting focus of a camera
viewfinder as it’s trained on a
twitching lemur.
It’s a bewitching minute, dense
with images that demand careful
study and, ideally, framing on a wall.
But the game itself remains
enigmatic, by design. For its prior
game, Darwin Project, Scavengers
Studio threw the doors of its
Montréal studio wide open, with a
two-year early access period that
saw it change tack multiple times in
the face of the dwindling player
numbers. For this one, the team is
understandably keeping its cards
much closer to the chest.
That’s not the only thing that’s
very different this time round.
Darwin Project was a muscular
hybrid of battle royale and survival
game, but Season is, as creative
director Kevin Sullivan tells it, “the
story of a young woman leaving her
home for the first time to record
and take measure of the wider
world before it’s gone.”
“Both projects came out of the
desire to reimagine some aspects of
what a videogame can be,” he says.
“Darwin Project did it with the form,
with this new frontier of streaming
and spectator interaction and the
idea of an online videogame as a
show. Season is doing it more with
content, tone, meaning, with the
overall experience you take away
SEASON
from it, that might linger when you
move on to the next thing and,
ideally, might stay with you as you
get older.” That’s a rather lofty
promise. In terms of actual play,
this translates into exploring the
world on a slightly battered bicycle,
using the aforementioned tools to
preserve any elements that catch
your eye or ear, whether they’re
animals or buildings or even your
fellow human beings.
The game draws on the team’s
own experiences of travel – its
development blog is filled with
stories of hitchhiking across Europe
and biking into the Canadian
wilderness. They want Season to
communicate the feeling, Sullivan
says, “of being lost in the world, of
getting a glimpse of something
beyond what we know.” Which is
how you end up with the click and
whirr of chunky 20th-century
technology being used to record
ancient ruins which gesture toward
a civilisation far more advanced
than our own.
The suggestion is of a rise and
inevitable fall, and as you begin
Season, the latest cycle is about to
come to an end. The cultures you
move between are “on the cusp of
some great change,” Sullivan says.
What exactly that means remains
enigmatic but, with all of the talk of
collapses, don’t expect it to be an
entirely positive development. This
doesn’t seem like the kind of game
where you’ll be tasked with saving
the world, so much as savouring it
while you have the chance. “The
forecast is bleak,” Sullivan says,
“but the moment is beautiful.” n
19
UFO 50

Developer/publisher Mossmouth
Format PC Origin US Release 2021

We’re long overdue a catch-up with

Mossmouth’s compendium of 8bit games
made with contemporary sensibilities; we
first featured it in E312, more than three
years ago. “There’s been a lot of progress
on UFO 50 since we last spoke,” studio
founder Derek Yu tells us. “Eirik
[Suhrke] and I took a year off from it to
release Spelunky 2, but the rest of the
team has continued working hard.”
That team includes a new addition to
this indie dev supergroup, in the form of
Catacomb Kids creator Tyriq Plummer.
“He brings a lot of art, design and coding
prowess to the project, which we’re
thankful for as we eye 2021 as our release
year.” So how’s it currently shaping up?
we wonder. Pretty well, Yu reckons: “All
50 games are very much playable now,”
he tells us, “with over half of them in
near-final condition.”
Spelunky 2’s release – not to mention
making the Switch ports of both that
game and the original Spelunky – partly
explains the delay, but what else is
behind the long wait? “To be perfectly
honest, the scope of a lot of these games
has increased since we last spoke – it’s
easy to want to give all of them the
utmost love and care.”
The response to UFO 50 at pre-
pandemic conventions has encouraged
the developer to add multiplayer support
to at least half of games in the collection,
while one of the more substantial
offerings, Godsblood, has been replaced by
cutesy arcade game Magic Garden. “We
had another large RPG in the collection
already – and enough work on our plate
as it was!” Yu says. Whatever Mossmouth
serves up, we’re sure to devour it. n

22
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IT TAKES TWO

Developer Hazelight Publisher EA Format PC, PS4, PS5,

Xbox One, Xbox Series Origin Sweden Release March 26

Having followed the delightfully dark

fable that was Brothers: A Tale Of Two
Sons with the entertaining but uneven
prison-break adventure A Way Out,
maverick creator Josef Fares returns to
more fantastical surroundings with his
latest co-op adventure. You and a friend
play as May and Cody, who, in the midst
of divorce proceedings, are mysteriously
transported into the bodies of two dolls
made by daughter Rose. To return to
human form, they’ll need to fix their
relationship, working together to
overcome a variety of offbeat challenges.
As with A Way Out, because it’s co-op
only, a Friend Pass lets you invite a pal
who doesn’t own a copy of the game to
join in for free.
If its predecessor’s attempts at
gritty drama sometimes lapsed into
unintentional comedy, It Takes Two
would seem to find Fares on a surer
footing. This is a more vibrant world than
the grim fairytale setting of Brothers, too,
with its oversized anglerfish, rampaging
moles, rideable spiders and hopping
frogs. You’ll blast a tentacled beast on a
paddle steamer, which you will work
together to steer by running in giant
hamster wheels, one on either side of the
boat. You’ll pump a handcart to accelerate
down a narrow railway track as lava
bubbles below. And you’ll run across the
top of a giant mirrorball as it rolls across
a bridge, while trying to avoid the holes
in its surface. With platforming,
shooting, rail-grinding, sledging and
rafting interludes, It Takes Two certainly
has the variety to match its visual
invention. Fingers crossed, it’s equally
smooth in the storytelling department. n

24

In case there’s any doubt that 2020
was the year Roguelike domination
become total (at least within in the
indie sphere), it bears repeating that
Spelunky 2 and the full release of
Hades arrived in the same week. Along
with the likes of Noita, ScourgeBringer
and Risk Of Rain 2 – sticking within
the bounds of action Roguelikes –
it was an embarrassment of riches
for fans of procedural generation.
For games taking a fresh run at
the genre in 2021, then, the bar has
been set very high indeed. Crisp art
and responsive action are no longer
enough to guarantee an audience.
Any new entrants who decide to
throw themselves at this particular
gauntlet need their own sharply-
defined take on the format.
For Hades, this was the novel
concept that Roguelikes could tell a
story. We’re already seeing the first
successors to that approach. Going
Under brought a satirical edge to the
template, while the just-launched
Gods Will Fall attempts something
closer to the XCOM model by
generating a band of warriors with
procedural personalities for you to
grow invested in and, inevitably,
mourn. (An approach that might
sound familiar to fans of Roguelike
tactical RPG Darkest Dungeon, set to
return this year with a sequel.)
There are some neat mechanical
twists on offer too, from the
Resogun-style circular floors where
Orbital Bullet’s shootouts take place
to the corruption that builds over
ROGUELIKES
each run in Curse Of The Dead Gods
until it spills over into one of the
titular jinxes. Then there are games
attacking on both fronts, such as
Endless Dungeon, which follows
Hades’ lead in making the Roguelike
death-rebirth cycle part of its story,
while building on the tower defence
and co-op multiplayer elements of
its forebear, Dungeon Of The Endless.
Name recognition is another
potential route to success. Rogue
Legacy 2 (pictured) is resurrecting a
founding title of the early-2010s
action Roguelike boom, while
Ultimate ADOM takes things back
even further. It’s a sequel 25 years
in the making that offers an optional
ASCII graphics mode for players
who prefer their Roguelikes, well, a
little more like Rogue. For these
games, it’s precisely this stubborn
traditionalism – a lack of interest
in “what have now become the
standard Roguelike expectations,” as
Rogue Legacy 2 designer Teddy Lee
puts it – that helps them stand out.
Still, there’s one way the pair are
bending to modern orthodoxy: as
with almost every game mentioned
here, they’re being released in early
access. Supplementary content
updates have become practically
mandatory for Roguelikes at this
point. At least, until someone finds
a compelling reason to ditch that
approach, and rewrites the rules
again. It’s happened enough times
in the genre’s history. n
27

The star item in Microsoft’s recent
studio-buying spree was Double
Fine, one of the oldest and greatest
independent game developers. Over
its 20-year history it has produced
a wild array of games spanning
different genres, platforms and
scales, but they’re all very Double
Fine, united by a weird sense of fun.
As studio head Tim Schafer
described its output: “I think our
whole thing is making stuff up.”
So it’s exciting to have a new
release for 2021 – Psychonauts 2
(pictured), sequel to the 2005 game
about an eccentric mind-explorer –
which for over a decade looked
unlikely to be possible. Frankly, it’s
looked fairly shaky since its 2015
crowdfunding campaign. It was
originally planned for a 2018 release
but has been plagued with warnings
about budget issues threatening to
force boss fights to be cut.
Microsoft’s acquisition was a salve,
injecting funds which have saved
the bosses, and every new glimpse
suggests the game will surpass the
inventiveness of its predecessor.
Schafer has been adamant that
life under Microsoft will be just as
creatively free as when the studio
was independent, but without the
constant financial pressure. Schafer
remains a delightful leading figure
for the studio, having honed over its
many crowdfunding updates a
charming and honest approach to
communication that’s spiced with
warts-and-all insights into the
DOUBLE FINE
creative process. As Psychonauts 2
has neared completion, his updates
have talked about crunch, admitting
how Double Fine has struggled with
it in the past and how it’s avoiding
it today, and how difficult it is to
agree whether to cut features that
need time the studio doesn’t have,
or whether to release them in a
lower-grade form. Double Fine’s
fans only appreciate the openness.
Indeed, for many years, Double
Fine has been one of game
development’s best ambassadors,
sharing its processes in 2 Player
Productions’ documentary series
Double Fine Adventure. Its regular
Amnesia Fortnights popularised a
now-common studio practice of
suspending normal work so staff
can split into small groups to
develop prototype games, a way to
revitalise creative juices while
generating seeds for new projects.
It’s pioneered various forms of
crowdfunding. It’s also behind Day
Of The Devs, an egalitarian annual
festival of indie games which we’re
assured will continue.
In fact, it’s hard to find an area of
indie game development in which
Double Fine hasn’t been a
trailblazer and advocate. It will be
fascinating, then, to watch the
studio through 2021 as it reflects
the reality of working under
Microsoft. Will it maintain its
restless approach to IP and genre?
Will it remain so open to fans and
supportive of the wider industry?
Will it remain weird? n
29
GAME PASS
Approaching its fourth year,
Xbox Game Pass continues to
tighten its grip on the title of
Best Deal In Videogames.
Provided, of course, that you’re
a very particular kind of player:
hungry enough to justify the
monthly subscription, unfussy
enough to accept whatever’s on
the buffet. But even if you don’t
fit the profile, there are still
indirect benefits to the ways
Game Pass is rewriting
Microsoft’s strategy.
For one, it’s finally given the
company a means – and a
motivation – to catch up with
Sony and Nintendo when it
30
comes to getting indie games on
its consoles. The financial heft
of Microsoft being pointed at
smaller developers, including
deals that fully cover production
costs without demanding
platform exclusivity, according
to Xbox head Phil Spencer, is an
appealing prospect.
We’ve no doubt that Game
Pass has given a second chance
to some games, not least
Microsoft’s own. After a
somewhat choppy launch, Sea Of
Thieves was granted the time to
find its audience in the rough
waters of premium multiplayer,
eventually growing into a
centrepiece of the library. (A
trick that last year’s Bleeding
Edge was unable to replicate.)
And then there are those
tentpole games which draw in
players in the first place. The
idea of being able to sample a
new Halo game on day one
without paying the full price of
entry, let alone the long-term
effects of Microsoft’s recent all-
you-can-eat acquisition spree, is
dizzying. For good and ill – our
to-play pile is already groaning
under the weight. n
DETECTIVE GAMES
Most games tap into our inner
detective in some way. Who hasn’t
pushed against the boundaries of
even the most linear game to see
what they might discover? Who
hasn’t wandered off the obvious
critical path to investigate something
curious, lured by an intriguing sight
or sound, or simply following a
whim to uncover a new mystery?
The medium is inherently suited to
indulging our nosiness, and using it
to deliver stories in unique ways:
think of how Dark Souls parcels out
its lore in fragments that only the
dedicated will assemble into a
cohesive whole, or the way chipping
away at the walls in Hollow Knight
yields optional encounters and
hidden secrets that reveal more
about its enigmatic cast.
Games in which you assume the
role of detective are often more
restrictive in how their mysteries
are constructed and the processes
by which you solve them. Yet in
recent years the genre has undergone
something of a creative renaissance.
Return Of The Obra Dinn required
careful investigation to identify the
grisly fates of a ship’s crew: a
detective game, in other words, that
required actual deduction. Paradise
Killer’s total lack of handholding,
meanwhile, felt equal parts
exhilarating and overwhelming –
here was a game as content to let
you stumble across mysteries by
happy accident as it was to allow
revelations to emerge organically
through observation and analysis.
32
You could even throw the cyber-
sleuthing of Hypnospace Outlaw into
that mix; indeed, one of next year’s
most intriguing detective games
will likely involve a bit of Internet
study. Chinatown Detective Agency,
inspired by one of the most iconic
investigators in all videogames,
Carmen Sandiego, sees you embark
upon a globe-trotting near-future
trip in which your research will take
you outside the game. You’ll need a
pen and paper to hand, with puzzles
that require knowledge – or at least
a Google search – to solve.
Meanwhile, Eggnut’s Backbone,
the first chapter of which is already
playable via Steam, puts you in
control of raccoon gumshoe
Howard. Its crisp pixel-art setting
and anthropomorphic cast set it
apart, while its story gives you a
web of potential leads to untangle.
Annapurna Interactive’s gorgeous
Stray (pictured) offers a bit of both:
in a sleazy cybercity populated by
robots, you play an inquisitive cat
hoping to solve a strange riddle that
will let them find their way home.
Talking of the squalid, there’s
the return of Disco Elysium, set to be
re-released on PC with full voice
acting to coincide with its console
debut. Here, the most important
threads you unpick are inside the
protagonist’s mind as they undergo
an existential crisis. If you’re looking
for a game where the biggest
mystery is the human condition,
Revachol is the place to find it. n

When Remedy Entertainment
celebrated its 25th anniversary in
2020, the Finnish studio was able to
boast one of the most consistent
back catalogues in videogames, if
not, necessarily, one of the most
well-stocked. It’s produced seven
titles in that quarter-century, with
stretches of five years and more
passing without a single release.
But no longer.
“The last few years have been
about a lot of change at Remedy,
becoming a multi-project studio,”
communications director Thomas
Puha says. The company’s attention
is now divided between multiple
games, letting Remedy close the
gap between releases without
having to sacrifice its perfectionist
tendencies. “I think the times when
Remedy was quiet for years on end
are gone,” Puha says. “It will not be
a quiet year for us.”
Confirmed for 2021 is the
new-gen version of Control, along
REMEDY ENTERTAINMENT
with Remedy’s singleplayer
campaign for CrossfireX –
something of a lateral step, as the
studio applies its trademark
superpowered action and esoteric
storytelling to a firstperson shooter
in the mould of Modern Warfare. We
can likely also expect to hear more
on the two unannounced titles
being published by Epic Games: a
large-scale project that Remedy
claims is its most ambitious yet,
plus a smaller game that shares the
same setting. This, surely, is the
next step in the ‘Remedy Connected
Universe’ which started last year
with the Alan Wake crossover of
Control’s AWE expansion.
Along with Remedy Vanguard,
a corner of the studio dedicated to
experiments in multiplayer and live
games, outside its usual territory,
it’s not hard to see why Puha argues
that, “in many ways, despite being a
25-year-old developer, it feels like
we’re only getting started.” n
35

Reports of the immersive sim’s death have been
around almost as long as the term itself. And we
can’t say they have been greatly exaggerated.
From Deus Ex to Dishonored, these are games
which operate like a good dungeon master, their
fingers steepled behind a cardboard screen.
You’re presented with a set of tools, encouraged
to improvise and, at their best, your game
master rolls with the punches – or lack thereof,
as the case may be – to tell a collaborative story.
And yet, for all this focus on breadth of
approach, the lineage of immersive sims has
remained narrow – a heritage passed down from
Looking Glass Studios to Ion Storm to Irrational
Games to Arkane Studios, constantly threatening
to disappear as it changes hands. With the
status of System Shock 3 less clear than ever, and
the latest keeper of the light seemingly exploring
different avenues with Deathloop, it’s tempting
to write the genre’s obituary once more.
“I think immersive sims are harder to make
than ever,” says Raphaël Colantonio, creative
director of Weird West (pictured left), “because
they have to compete on all fronts with triple-A
games that are constantly raising the bar.” He
should know: as the director on Prey and
Dishonored, Colantonio has plenty of experience
with big-budget takes on the genre. But now,
with the freshly-founded WolfEye Studios, he’s
trying something different. Notably, something
smaller, placing the studio’s debut neatly within
a new wave of indie immersive sims such as
Gloomwood and Shadows Of Doubt.
Weird West is untethering the immersive sim
from the firstperson presentation it’s generally
been associated with, in favour of a top-down
perspective more akin to Diablo. This lets
WolfEye compete on all those fronts Colantonio
mentions – “story, physics, quest design, action,
RPG systems” – with a fraction of the staff.
Shadows Of Doubt’s voxel-based world and
the throwback style of Gloomwood are different
ways of achieving the same goal, trading visual
fidelity for systemic. In Gloomwood’s case, the
simple graphics are also a hint to the origins of
the game – and, developer Dillon Rogers
believes, this new wave as a whole. “We’ve had
a hunch for a little while that this was going to
INDIE IMMERSIVE SIMS
“We want to happen,” he says. Rogers is part of New Blood, a
collective that made its name with Dusk and
capture that Amid Evil, games that sat at the forefront of the
feeling people recent retro shooter boom. “It was only a matter
of time before those developers would turn from
get the first making games like Doom and Quake to trying to
time they make the more complicated games that followed,
like Deus Ex, Thief and System Shock 2.”
play a game
like Thief” But does that risk trapping the genre in
another dead end? Shadows Of Doubt lead Cole
Jefferies hopes not: “I think it’s pretty clear
there is a demand for smart, intelligent – and
occasionally ridiculous – immersive sims that
hasn’t really been catered for yet. Perhaps
initially by the fans of the originals, but hopefully
by a whole new generation of gamers also.”
For all that Gloomwood wears its inspirations
on its sleeve, Rogers agrees. “While we do throw
around slogans like ‘it’s Thief but with guns’, it’s
actually important to me that we don’t just make
Thief again. We want to capture that feeling
people get the first time they play a game like
Thief.” To that end, Gloomwood is also drawing
inspiration from Bloodborne and early Resident
Evil. The result couldn’t feel much more distant
from Shadows Of Doubt’s detective story, where
combat is something to avoid at all costs, or the
revolvers-and-spells RPG action of Weird West.
It’s a welcome broadening of approach – and
of personnel, with only Colantonio’s team
coming out of that tight pre-existing lineage.
The only thing the three games really have in
common is a shared set of design tenets. As laid
out by Rogers: “the deep atmosphere, the sense
of place, the feeling that the world is alive and
full of interlocking systems.”
“Something that happens organically as a
result of game mechanics interacting with each
other is ten times more joyous than if that event
was scripted,” Jefferies adds. “Although that
design philosophy has become part of the
modern open-world blockbuster game to some
extent, I don’t see why it should be limited to
just that. I think there’s a whole bunch of us out
there who have been missing that a little, and
now the tools are out there that allow us to
carry the torch, so to speak.” n
37
AMAZON LUNA

Among today’s swathe of cloud gaming

platforms, Amazon’s Luna doesn’t have
many ideas of its own. That’s especially
when you compare it to Google’s Stadia,
from which Luna has taken the concept of
connecting an official (albeit optional)
Luna Controller (pictured) directly to its
server, rather than to the device you’re
using to stream the game, to reduce
latency issues. Similarly, Ubisoft is
offering its games on Luna (what new
gaming platform is complete without
day-one support from Ubisoft?). And
then there’s Twitch, which is integrated
into Luna so that you switch from
watching a game being played to playing
it yourself instantly, rather like Stadia’s
mooted State Share feature, which does
much the same with YouTube.
But just as Google’s global
infrastructure and ownership of YouTube
is the reason why Stadia remains worthy
of attention, Amazon’s clout as one of the
world’s biggest providers of Web services
and the owner of Twitch makes Luna one
to watch this year. Amazon’s server farms
are huge and they’re everywhere, which
means the potential for its quality of
service is as high as any firm can currently
manage. Early reports from its US-only
beta suggest it’s happily churning out
action at 1080 resolution. Not 4K yet:
one thing in Luna’s favour is its lack of
promises. Stadia has been guilty of
underdelivering on Google’s pre-launch
claims, and Amazon is in a good position
to overdeliver. With the success of the
new-generation consoles revealing how
far cloud gaming still has to go to prove
itself, solid performance from proven
industry leaders is its best hope. n

38
 THE ARTFUL ESCAPE

Developer Beethoven & Dinosaur Publisher Annapurna

Interactive Format iOS, PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series
Origin Australia Release 2021

Two things stand out about The Artful

Escape: the sensationally rock’n’roll name
of Beethoven & Dinosaur founder Johnny
Galvatron, and the game’s sublime E3
2017 demo that still reverberates in our
ears three years on. That’s rather apt
given this is a tale of a young musician
out to cement his place in rock history by
embarking on a cosmic quest to discover
his musical identity. Think Bowie
between personas, with a bit more
double-jumping involved.
Francis Vendetti’s journey manifests
as a mix of 2D platforming and chattier
encounters in the vein of Kentucky Route
Zero in the way they encourage expression
without derailing a linear tale. But it’s the
instrument-powered athletics that stick
with us, as Francis shreds his guitar to
pull off a Yoshi-like flutter jump, if Yoshi
were into arena rock instead of fruit
picking. Around him the extraterrestrial
flora and fauna harmonise with his music
and burst to neon life. This is world
design as concert choreography, even the
simplest stretch of path firing
pyrotechnics and spotlights into the sky.
Instead of combat – Vendetti is not
destined to become a bat-head-chomping
shock merchant – you negotiate with
galactic beasts through miniature
concerts that channel the call-and-
answer of Spielberg’s Close Encounters.
It’s a simple Simon Says exercise that
again rewards audio and visual excess
worthy of the gaudiest rock opera. As
Galvatron says, “We want the shredding in
the game to feel powerful and effortless.”
After the past year, consider us at the
front of the ticket line (respecting social
distancing, naturally). n

41
WE ARE OFK
Developer/publisher Team OFK Format PC Origin US Release Spring
Teddy Dief, director and co-writer
of this forthcoming interactive
series, first met two of indie-pop
band OFK at GDC in 2018. Keyboard
player Itsumi Saito and vocalist
Luca Le Fae were both working in
the game industry at the time, they
say. “I met with them shortly after
I had left Square Enix, when I was
trying to figure out what my next
project would be,” they elaborate.
Hoping to tell a human story about
the creative process, Dief realised
they’d found the ideal subject when
Saito and Le Fae formed OFK with
producer Jey Zhang and visual artist
Carter Flores. “It just really felt like
a really serendipitous fit.”
“What we then ended up doing
is talking to the band, casting
performers who could meet each
member of the band and portray
them accurately and just hear their
story and recount it,” they continue.
The five-part episodic series that
Dief and their team is making, then,
will be a retelling of the band’s
story – “but with their blessing in
terms of the accuracy and
[depicting] the complicated shit
that they went through in getting
the music out,” they add.
So was there any pushback from
the band when it came to retelling
the story of their formation and
industry breakthrough? “Itsu took
on a managerial role, and I think
that the others sort of trusted her
instincts on what could be good for
42
them,” Dief says. “I think there was
some trepidation about telling
personal stories.” But Dief promised
to work closely with the band to get
all of their perspectives and make
sure it wasn’t too invasive. “We did
sit down with each of them
individually. I know Jey and Carter
both value their privacy in certain
ways, so it was important to get
them one-on-one and to get their
sign-off and their feelings about
how things came together.”
How, then, does the series
work? Dief says that each episode
will focus on one band member,
with the tone shifting in accordance
with their perspectives. The studio
has worked with the band “to
structure a set of singles that felt
aligned with the emotions of the
story,” they say, with both parties
agreeing that Follow/Unfollow was
the ideal debut release. “There is an
optimism and a positivity to it, but
there is also a frenzy and a bubbling
anxiety that they felt like was a
good introduction to the music, and
we felt like was a good introduction
to the type of story we’re telling.” A
combination of interactive pop
videos and choices made through
face-to-face and text conversations,
meanwhile, are how the player/
viewer will be able to experience
OFK’s rise to glory. We’ll bring you
more about this fusion of art, music
and game next month. n

Game concepts can come from the unlikeliest of
sources, and Inkle’s next release (pictured left)
definitely has a unique origin. “It’s something
I’ve been prototyping and vaguely thinking
about for around four years,” studio co-founder
Joseph Humfrey tells us. “My mum gave me a
book about bothies – these shelters that you get
in the Highlands – and she said, ‘Oh, maybe you
could make a game about Scotland?’ Because I
grew up in Scotland.” His first instinct was to
roll his eyes. “I thought, ‘Oh god, mum, don’t
start trying to give me game ideas.’ And then it
was like, ‘Hang on a minute…’”
Humfrey and fellow co-founder Jon Ingold
aren’t saying what the game’s called yet – both
refer to it as “Untitled Highland Game” and
“Highland Run” – but they assure us they do
already have a name in mind. Ingold admits
they’re still figuring out “the right order to
explain it in”, having decided to be more open
about the game’s development. What prompted
this change of approach? It’s partly about
visibility, Humfrey explains: in an increasingly
competitive market, it seems you now need to
create awareness over time. He concedes it’s not
been a natural process for Inkle. “Previously the
best advice in the industry – and what’s suited
us in the past – has been to secretly work on a
thing and only announce when you’re absolutely
sure you’ve got something ready to show.
Because you don’t really want to show it in its
rough state.” But there’s now a theory, he says,
that in an age where we’re constantly bombarded
with information, people only become truly
consciously aware of the existence of something
when they’ve seen it several times. “But it’s also
a joy to be able to talk about it, because it’s also
difficult when you’re in secret mode to contain
your excitement.” Hence, presumably, Edge
getting the scoop on the game when we spoke to
Inkle for E342’s Studio Profile.
But that’s only half the story. The response to
Pendragon, its fascinating narrative-led strategy
game, made Inkle realise that it perhaps needed
to work on managing expectations. “We’re
learning that we keep making games that don’t
work like games are supposed to work,” Ingold
says. “And when we launch them, we often find
INKLE
“We’re that this gap appears between the players who
get what we’re doing or are open to a new way of
learning that something familiar working and people who are
we keep very much, ‘I don’t like this, I don’t understand
it, it’s different to what we’re used to.’” Rather
making games than change its way of making games, then, it’s
that don’t work a matter of getting in front of the game to
ensure that players know exactly what they’re
like games getting into, he adds. “Because we’re not going
are supposed to start making games that play like clones of
other people’s games. But that comes with this
to work” cost. Even with 80 Days, there were still reviews
that said, ‘Well, it’s a strategy game, and I don’t
find it very strategic’. But that’s like saying, ‘As a
potato, this lemon is rubbish.’ I don’t know what
to do with that.”
You can expect a steady drip feed of
information about Untitled Highland Game in
the coming months, then. For now we know it
incorporates a side-on perspective with 2D
platforming elements, but also that players
shouldn’t read too much into that. There is a
significant musical element that hasn’t been
discussed publicly, but will come as a big
surprise – to anyone who hasn’t read the
aforementioned profile, at least. “There are
elements of Breath Of The Wild in that you can
look at this open landscape and traverse it and,
as you go from place to place, there are these
small narrative reveals that bind the world
together,” Humfrey says, also noting that it
shares some similarities with both 80 Days and
Death Stranding and yet is simultaneously very
unlike either of those two games. Like we say,
they’re still figuring out quite how to explain it
– though we’re fascinated to learn more.
One game that should need less explanation
is the Switch port of Heaven’s Vault (inset),
available as this issue hits newsstands. “When
you’re curled up on the sofa with it, everything
just comes together,” Ingold says, and he’s
right – we’ve played it, and this quiet, intimate
tale feels especially at home in handheld mode.
2021 is off to a stellar start for Inkle, then.
We’re confident that, with a fair wind, its hike
around the Highlands will have given us an
unforgettable journey by the year’s end. n
45
OPEN ROADS
Developer Fullbright Publisher Annapurna Interactive Format PC (consoles TBA) Origin US Release TBA
No road is long with good company,
as they say, and so it’s fitting that
Fullbright should be riding shotgun
with Annapurna Interactive for its
third game. Open Roads tells the
story of Tess Devine and her
mother Opal, beginning just after
Opal’s mother has died. As they’re
sorting through her belongings,
they stumble across something that
stokes their curiosity.
“There’s evidence of this episode
in the grandmother’s life that
neither of them ever knew about
and that obviously she had kept
hidden,” writer/director Steve
Gaynor says. “And so it sends them
on this journey to a summer home
that Opal had spent a lot of her
youth in.” It’s partly inspired, he
says, by an episode of This
American Life called The House On
Loon Lake, in which a group of kids
find an old, abandoned house and
discover a treasure trove of secrets
that leads them on a decades-long
mystery. It’s worth a listen for hints
as to where the game might end up.
The most obvious benefit of
the publisher’s involvement is right
there in the cast list. Booksmart’s
Kaitlyn Dever will play Tess, while
The Americans’ Keri Russell is
Opal, with Annapurna’s extensive
contact book ensuring it could
secure the first names on Gaynor’s
wishlist. But it’s also helped Gaynor
and his team realise a goal they’ve
46
had since before the studio was
founded. “We wanted to make a
Fullbright game where you had
another character in the room with
you,” he explains. “We went from
audio diaries in Gone Home to
Tacoma, where I was able to write
these sort of ensemble scenes, but
where you’re still an observer. And
now I’m able to write a game where
the player is directly involved with
the dialogue. Having to write a lot
of branching that’s based on the
choices you make in dialogue was
also a really exciting new space to
get to work in for myself.”
Or spaces, plural. The beauty of
the road trip format – and the extra
resources that a publisher can
afford it – is that Fullbright is no
longer limited to a single location.
Though you’ll be on the road for a
relatively small percentage of the
game (Gaynor points out that very
few classic road-trip movies spend
much time inside cars), the journeys
will give a sense of time and
distance. From Tess’s passenger
seat you’ll get to look out of the
window, fiddle with the radio, and
talk to Opal. “Having someone that
knows maybe more about the places
and the implications of what you’re
finding than you do and maybe
raises that question of how reliable
a narrator they are – that’s really
interesting to explore as a player,”
Gaynor says. We’ll unearth more of
Open Roads’ secrets next month. n

Virtual reality’s growing pains are
still uncomfortably apparent. Just
when it seems to be hitting its
stride, with games such as
Phasmophobia, Paper Beast and The
Room VR, it trips over its own feet
with disappointments such as
Medal Of Honor: Above And Beyond
and Oculus Quest 2’s mandatory
Facebook connectivity. Not to
mention Sony’s apparent step back
from the technology with PS5: a
new headset may well be in the
format-holder’s plans for this
console generation, but not in the
immediate future.
VR cheerleaders will point to
the two-million-plus sales
of the outstanding Half-
Life: Alyx – a number
that certainly isn’t
bad given the system
requirements of the
flagship title for
Valve’s Index
headset. However,
compare that to
VIRTUAL REALITY
the 26 million units shifted by
Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: New
Horizons and it’s clear that VR is
still some way off being a truly
mainstream concern.
Had it launched on any other
format, you sense, Alyx would
probably have swept the board
during last year’s awards season.
Then again, it wouldn’t have
worked on any other format, and
therein lies the beauty of VR – it
continues to deliver experiences
that simply aren’t available
anywhere else. And the coming year
promises plenty more of those.
There’s Hitman 3, which proves
transformative when you’re looking
at the world through Agent 47’s
steely blue eyes. Enhance is
continuing its VR love affair with
the arty strangeness of Humanity,
while The Climb 2, MaskMaker,
and offbeat air-guitar strummer
Unplugged all suggest this might be
the year in which VR finally escapes
its awkward adolescent phase. n
49

Bringing the Mushroom Kingdom
into the real world always seemed
like a matter of ‘when’ rather than
‘if’, and after a few delays and false
starts, that ‘when’ is now pretty
much upon us. Super Nintendo
World opens its doors at Universal
Studios Japan while this issue is on
newsstands, and it promises to be
gaming’s equivalent of Disney’s
Magic Kingdom, to which millions
are likely to make a pilgrimage –
once travel restrictions are lifted.
Nintendo has already offered an
early look, via a Nintendo Direct
hosted by Shigeru Miyamoto,
grinning as he introduced himself
as “Mario’s dad”. From a warp pipe
entrance into Peach’s castle lobby to
a recreation of Super Mario 3D
World’s Mount Beanpole, complete
with animatronic Thwomps,
Goomba towers and Yoshis,
everything seems precision-tooled
to evoke a combination of childlike
wonder and nostalgia.
Exploring the park has been
gamified, with a series of activities
that involve interactive elements.
Triggered by a wearable band that
connects to a smartphone app,
you’ll punch a ?-block to earn a
coin, or complete a minigame by
activating a POW block at the right
time to knock over a patrolling
Koopa Troopa. Your progress will
be tracked by a smartphone app,
leading to a boss battle of some
SUPER NINTENDO WORLD
description, while the bands retain
their NFC functionality beyond the
park’s boundaries, doubling as
Amiibo for the six Mushroom
Kingdom favourites they represent.
With a restaurant serving Mario-
themed dishes, and a Mario Kart AR
ride, it’s a reminder of the longevity
of the company mascot. A Super
Mario movie on the way in 2022,
meanwhile, demonstrates how far
Nintendo is looking to take its
brands beyond games. Though we’ve
been reminded lately how tightly it
keeps those brands on a leash: the
cease-and-desist for an unofficial
Smash Bros tournament is one of
several incidents that seem to fly in
the face of Satoru Iwata’s insistence
that “it would not be appropriate if
we treated people who did
something based on affection for
Nintendo as criminals”.
Indeed, with Nintendo’s mobile
output leaning into more suspect
monetisation practices, it’s a
reminder that there’s a ruthless
streak behind that friendly exterior.
The Direct was also a reminder
that, as he prepares the ground for
his retirement, there’s no current
Nintendo figurehead as personable
and charismatic as Miyamoto. Yet,
in a rare interview with the New
Yorker, he noted that the company
is working hard to “ensure the spirit
of Nintendo is passed down
successfully”. Super Nintendo World
proves the magic is still there. n
51
 M I S S ED O U T O N T H E F EEL B E T T ER
I S S U E ? G E T YO U R D I G I TA L CO P Y
TO D AY V I A P O C K E TM AG S, Z I N I O
O R T H E ED G E A P P

52

Developer White Owls Publisher White Owls, The Irregular Corporation Format PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One Origin Japan Release Summer 2021
After the lovable disaster of
Deadly Premonition 2, a game that
made Cyberpunk 2077 look
polished, Hidetaka ‘Swery’
Suehiro’s typically bizarre take
on country living has the
potential to be an irresistible
return to form.
You’re Naomi Hayward, a
New York photojournalist and
aspiring alcoholic who’s been
sent to the rural English town of
Rainy Woods to investigate a
mystery. (The notion of an
American newspaper with the
budget to do that is a puzzle
itself.) There’s murder afoot,
but we’re more intrigued by why
the town’s inhabitants turn into
cats and dogs at night. You’ll use
your feline/canine powers to aid
your investigation, jumping
around the rooftops or sniffing
out residents. Animorphing
aside, taking photos for the
paper is your main source of
income, which Naomi appears to
enjoy disbursing at the local pub.
While we’re enthusiastic
about a drunken Pokémon Snap,
much of the focus seems to be
on the more mundane side of
country living, such as growing
vegetables and learning to cook.
THE GOOD LIFE
The threat of yet another
farming game is enough to have
us pouring salt on Swery’s soil,
but Deadly Premonition was never
better than when you were
chatting with its cast of oddballs,
so a life sim might be his true
calling. Despite recent footage
threatening another zoetrope-
like framerate, there’s also
rideable sheep, a berserk badger,
and a deerstalker-sporting
detective with the wonderfully
lawyer-baiting name of ‘Norlock
Homeless’ – enough to make us
cautiously optimistic that Swery
will deliver the goods. n
53

Developer/publisher Larian Studios Format PC, Stadia Origin Belgium Release TBA
If life were a D&D campaign then
2020 would’ve rolled a one: a critical
miss. But for those playing Baldur’s
Gate III the year didn’t seem that
bad. Not only did this chunk of
early-access adventure provide a
distraction from the outside world,
it also gave a lesson in its unfair
hardships. Rare is the encounter in
which you aren’t required to throw a
die to pass a skill check. The rolls
are cruel, the results often worse:
children killed by snakes, friends
driven mad, and one exceedingly
unpleasant moment of foot kissing.
Did 2020 ask you to suck a goblin’s
toe? No? Consider yourself lucky.
Larian’s decision to show the roll
on screen taps into the clattering
drama of tabletop games. And if the
temptation is to save scum, such
do-overs only serve to skip the work
of writers striving to make failure as
interesting as success. Where many
RPGs follow branching dialogue to
similar destinations, the Heartlands
of Faerûn are stuffed with reactive
tissue. Whether settling territorial
disputes or placating opposing
allies, consequences snowball.
Consider how one act might impact
on future events and it’s dizzying.
Then there’s the most pressing
fate of all: your own. Devils can’t be
trusted, but they are handy for a
plot synopsis. Explains one: “One
skull, two tenants.” Yes, your brain
has a housemate, an Illithid tadpole
BALDUR’S GATE III
set on turning you into a Mind
Flayer. It grants you the power to
telepathically dominate others, but
the more you engage it, the stranger
your dreams become, with violent
new powers manifesting when you
wake. If you won’t deal with your
personal demon, others will: druids,
witches, devils and healers propose
fixes, turning this part of the game
into a gauntlet of temptations. And
who’s to say your companions aren’t
making pacts of their own, especially
if controlled by fellow humans? As
an engine for confrontations we can
name few more exciting.
Larian is in familiar territory
when things do get physical, with
the turn-based tactical combat of
Divinity: Original Sin providing solid
foundations for D&D rules. Baldur’s
Gate III has simpler movement/
action delineation, but even the trip
to level four (the maximum in early
access) sees the clear-cut classes
blossom. And if there’s less room
for battlefield alchemy, it’s made up
for with deeper stealth. In fact,
avoiding combat demonstrates one
beneficiary of the game’s time in
early access. A recent patch added
experience gain when negotiating
peaceful solutions. Throw in less
eye-rolling from one of your surlier
companions and we see a game
setting out its stall for 2021 in a
more flexible, kinder way. Just don’t
drop your guard around goblin toes.
The dice aren’t done with us yet. n
55
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57
INNERSLOTH
You can cobble together a narrative
of responses to the horrors of 2020
from the games that shot to fame at
different times. Early on, we looked
for games that helped us understand
the COVID-19 crisis – Ndemic’s
virus sim Plague Inc topped iOS
charts in February, eight years after
release. Then, as the lockdowns
kicked in, we sought out games that
offered refuge. For a while, the
socially distant game of choice was
Animal Crossing: New Horizons. We
became more reliant on games as
social spaces, and especially those
that hinted at physical contact –
see Fall Guys, in which players jostle
together like kids in a ball pit.
Now, weary of government
failures and paranoid about whether
our neighbours are following the
rules, we seek consolation in games
of treachery, where the disasters
without are mirrored by enemies
within. InnerSloth’s Among Us
launched to zero fanfare in 2018 but
is now one of the most-played
games on Steam. Here, teams of
squishy astronauts carry out
drudgework on claustrophobic maps
while trying to expose one or more
bloodthirsty imposters. Whenever
a corpse is reported, a meeting is
called, and players have 60 seconds
to vote on a culprit for execution.
The work of just three people,
Among Us is a reminder that the
right concept at more or less the
58
right time is worth any amount of
marketing money or self-consciously
topical framing. But its success isn’t
just about backstabbing the zeitgeist:
it’s a great example of a game in
which simple rules create endless
opportunity for mayhem. Unlike the
similar Unfortunate Spacemen, it
doesn’t emphasise manual skill –
rather, strategy is about social
dynamics. Some imposters throw
off suspicion by leaping to the
defence of others. Shy souls,
meanwhile, can’t help but look like
they have something to hide.
Crucially, all this is as much fun to
watch as to play. Among Us remains
a Twitch favourite months after its
player count spiked in July last year,
with no less than Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez streaming the game
over the winter.
InnerSloth planned a sequel, but
is now updating the original instead
to avoid splitting its audience.
We’re not sure much needs to be
added. Where the comforts of
‘wholesome’ games ring hollow after
a while, Among Us offers a more
complex and enduring catharsis. On
the one hand: yes, there are people
who are trying to end the world, but
if we pull together we can flush
them out. On the other: watching
imposters escape justice is a
powerful tribute to human ingenuity
in adversity. It’s terrifying, but in a
way reassuring, to realise just how
awful other people can be. n

Developer/publisher SIE (Guerrilla Games) Format PS4, PS5
Origin The Netherlands Release Q3/4 2021
The new console generation has
only just begun, but already Sony is
ahead of the competition. PS5
shifted around 2.5 million units on
day one, putting it ahead of
Microsoft’s Xbox Series numbers.
It was starting from a position of
strength, having become the clear
market leader during the PS4 era.
The value offered by Game Pass
could yet be crucial over the coming
years, but for now Sony has stuck to
the approach that worked last time
around. Those early adopters have
invested in PS5 because they want
to play high-quality big-budget
PlayStation-exclusive blockbusters.
Between Demon’s Souls and Miles
Morales (not to mention Astro’s
Playroom, and Bugsnax on PS Plus)
PS5 had a robust day-one offering.
Plenty of timed- and console-
exclusives are coming throughout
2021, from Deathloop to Ghostwire:
Tokyo, Housemarque’s Returnal
and PS Plus car-combat game
Destruction AllStars. But, perhaps
understandably given Covid’s
impact, there are no dates on the
potential system-sellers: Ratchet &
Clank: Rift Apart appears to be the
closest, with God Of War: Ragnarok
and Gran Turismo 7 likely but not
certain to launch this year.
That leaves us with Guerrilla
Games’ sandbox sequel, which is
pretty much the epitome of Sony’s
PlayStation strategy. Indeed, ‘pretty’
HORIZON FORBIDDEN WEST
and ‘much’ sum up Forbidden West:
using a souped-up version of the
studio’s Decima engine, its world
looks even more vibrant and
detailed than the original. It will,
according to director Mathijs de
Jonge, be bigger, too, and deeper –
underwater exploration is one of
many additions. Greater
climatological diversity is also
promised, with Aloy’s journey
taking her from post-apocalyptic
Utah through Nevada to coastal
California. And, of course, she’ll
face off against a range of new
machines, ranging from giant
turtle-like Shellsnappers to
Sunwings: effectively mechanical
pterosaurs. In other words, it
sounds like exactly what you’d
expect from a sequel to Zero Dawn.
Yet given the impact of Covid on
operations and the extra effort
needed to realise larger worlds, and
not forgetting that Guerrilla is
making the game for PS4 too and
will want to avoid the kind of
headlines that Cyberpunk attracted,
we do wonder whether a 2022
launch is more likely. (Tellingly, at
the June PS5 event, de Jonge only
said the studio was “aiming to
release the game next year, in
2021”.) Either way, we’re confident
the wait will be worth it: if
exclusives are the most important
part of its arsenal, Sony will be
doubly keen to ensure its biggest
guns are firing on all cylinders. n
61
SIMOGO

The success of Sayonara Wild Hearts

must have been a double relief for Simogo
given the time it had taken to pull the
game together; it’s easy to forget this was
effectively the studio’s make-or-break
moment. It could have been forgiven for
keeping things simple for its next game,
then – but that was never really on the
cards. The Swedish duo has always
marched to the beat of its own drum, and
its next release, codenamed Project Fuzzy
Optics, is no different. Which means, of
course, it’s extremely different. If Sayonara
was an upbeat crowd-pleaser, this is its
more challenging counterpart.
It’s a response, the studio’s co-founder
Simon Flesser explains, to a growing
sensation that videogames are becoming
increasingly safe – “not made to express
a unique vision from creators, but instead
fulfilling needs of an audience which
already knows what it wants.” Though
we’re not sure we entirely agree with his
assertion that “the 2010s [have been] the
most culturally bankrupt decade for
mainstream culture as a whole,” he’s not
wrong when he says it’s been a good
while since mainstream games dared to
be genuinely odd.
So what’s on the developers’ mood
board this time? we ask. “I’ve been
replaying games like the first Silent Hill
and Resident Evil,” Flesser says, “thinking
about games like Sanitarium and Echo
Night, [while] absorbing other media,
such as The Book Of Illusions, Last Year
At Marienbad, 8 1/2, and They Live.
I think all of these will be apparent
influences on Project Fuzzy Optics once
we reveal the game with its real title in
2021.” We can’t wait to see it. n

62
From left: Simon Flesser and
Magnus ‘Gordon’ Gardebäck
SSDs

With the constant distraction of social

media and a seemingly ever-increasing
number of streaming services vying for
our attention, it’s no wonder that
Microsoft and Sony are prioritising speed
and convenience as a new console
generation begins. PS5 and Xbox Series
S/X may not revolutionise our free time,
but they’ll certainly let us squeeze more
into it. Which, ironically, should mean
less squeezing for videogame
protagonists: those narrow gaps (and, for
that matter, tedious elevator rides) that
have so often been used to mask load
times in blockbuster games should be
surplus to requirements from now on.
While Microsoft’s Quick Resume
feature is a godsend for those who like
to have several games on the go, PS5’s
solid-state drive certainly has the edge in
raw speed. That’s reflected in the loading
times of Spider-Man: Miles Morales,
where it’s a matter of seconds from
booting up the console to being ready to
swing into action. The times for
thirdparty games, such as Assassin’s
Creed: Valhalla, are less impressive –
if still appreciably quicker than their
prior-gen counterparts – but will reduce
as developers acclimatise. And it’s not
just big studios that will capitalise.
Ko-Op’s Saleem Dabbous, co-director
of Goodbye Volcano High, says PS5’s SSD
has allowed the studio to deliver “a
perfectly smooth, no-waiting experience
that emulates the preciseness of loading
up a Netflix TV series, choosing your
episode and just going [straight in].”
When that’s your competition, cutting
down the time barrier can only be to the
medium’s benefit. n

64
KAIZEN GAME WORKS
“We thought Paradise Killer
was going to be one and done,”
Rachel Noy, Kaizen Game Works’
art director, admits. Creative
director Oli Clarke Smith and
technical director Phil Crabtree
exhausted their savings making
the game, with Crabtree only
half-joking when he says he
expected “about ten people would
play it”. Yet critical acclaim and a
66
glowing audience response meant
that while, in Clarke Smith’s
words, “no one’s buying a yacht”,
neither co-founder will have to
look for another job just yet.
Indeed, Kaizen Game Works is
already working on a new project.
Crabtree says Paradise Killer’s
success has been validating. “Way
more people have been into this
than I ever expected. It’s made
me think we can definitely do
it – that our philosophy of
designing a game we love, and
then other people will like it
too… that feels good now.” At the
same time, it means a new kind of
pressure: “There’s that difficult
thing of, ‘Are they just expecting
Paradise Killer 2?’ Is that what
we’ve got to make? Or should
we do something different?”
 The studio chose the latter
approach – “it’s very different”,
Clarke Smith says, adding that
its next game will feature more
mechanics and be “more gamey”
than Paradise Killer (pictured).
“We managed to do this with
very little in the way of tutorials,
and let the player have that
element of discovery. So that’s
something we will push forward
with.” He’s also keen to lean into
positive character representation
when it comes to sexuality:
“If people can have a positive
experience, and if it can improve
their lives through seeing that
representation… we want to do
that, and we can learn from this
and hopefully do it better.”
Having already inked a deal
for its next game, KGW has had
to shelve plans – temporarily –
for Paradise Killer DLC. “We
haven’t got the bandwidth, and
the other problem we’ve got is
that doing Paradise Killer 2 is
impossible in a lot of ways
because any character could be
alive or dead,” Clarke Smith says.
“We don’t want to pick what we
think the canonical ending is and
dismiss everything that other
people have done in their
playthrough.” But don’t give up
hope. “We had a cool idea for a
what-if scenario that would give
us a way of revisiting Paradise,”
he adds. “It’s just finding the
time to do it because we want to
make sure it’s substantial.” And
KGW isn’t done with the original
game either. “We had hoped to be
able to make an announcement
before the end of the year. But it
turns out getting dev kits around
the turn of a new generation is
pretty hard!” he says. No format
details yet, then, but it’s safe to
say that Paradise will welcome
more visitors in 2021. n
GHOSTWIRE: TOKYO

Developer Tango Gameworks Publisher Bethesda

Format PC, PS5 Origin Japan Release October

When the godfather of survival horror

says he’s in love with an idea, you know
to sit up – or cower behind a pillow.
While his bloodied Resi fingerprints are
visible all over The Evil Within, Tango
founder Shinji Mikami told documentary
makers Archipel that for him the appeal
of Ghostwire: Tokyo was in stepping back
to support an original vision from his
younger staff: “It was love at first sight
and it didn’t come from me. I just want
to bring it out there.”
The world in question is Tokyo’s
Shibuya, where 99 per cent of the
population has vanished. Great news for
PS5 stock, less so for the ghostbuster
purging angry spirits from the district’s
landmarks. Instead of using traditional
weapons you summon spiritual shunts
and binds with Kuji-kiri hand motions,
making this effectively a firstperson
gesturer. Softening up ghosts to expose
their rippable cores feels like a blend of
Doom and Luigi’s Mansion, starring the
lank-haired frighteners who’ve been out
of work since the fifth Fatal Frame.
Despite drawing on Japanese folklore
and contemporary urban legends, this
isn’t the straight horror you might expect
from the house of Mikami. Director Kenji
Kimura calls it an action adventure, with
those combat tricks – including
elemental magics alongside telekinetic
punts – also used to explore and solve
puzzles. And far from the dank
slaughterhouses of its previous work,
Tango’s empty streets channel some of
the humdrum charm of Yakuza, albeit
with deceased salarymen to send packing.
Fighting invisible entities to return life to
town centres? It’s 2021 in a nutshell. n

68
 DUALSENSE

Yes, some will dismiss it as nothing more

than force feedback with bells on. But
you only need look at the ecstatic
response to Astro’s Playroom to see how
many people have been bewitched by the
DualSense’s haptic-feedback qualities. As
a showcase for what the controller can do,
it sets a daunting standard for other
studios to live up to, however, and few
other launch games come close: the
combination of the controller’s speaker
and haptics adds subtle differences to the
likes of Dark Souls and Miles Morales, but
neither game suffers significantly for
their absence when you turn them off.
Yet the efforts of thirdparty studios
suggest that it won’t just be future
firstparty games that make meaningful
use of the tech. The implementation in
Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War might be
mixed: added trigger resistance and
feedback makes individual weapons more
distinctive, though competitive players
have complained it has a detrimental
impact on responsiveness. But in
WRC 9’s PS5 update, it strengthens the
connection between player, car and road,
with the tension of brake and accelerator
pedals clearly distinguished, and haptics
that reflect different surfaces and even
vehicular wear and tear. It’s not hard,
then, to imagine how Gran Turismo 7 –
not least given director Kazunori
Yamauchi’s famous attention to detail –
might take advantage. With indie game
studios also hinting at the potential of
DualSense, what could have been a flash
in the pan promises to have a life far
beyond the novelty factor. n

71

A distinctive, intensely personal
coming-of-age story about a trans
teenager growing up on Ireland’s
Achill island, the award-winning If
Found (pictured) was 2020’s most
memorable breakthrough. “It’s been
a hell of a journey,” Llaura McGee
– who wrote, designed, directed and
produced the game – tells us. After
a whirlwind final year of
development, McGee has taken
away one valuable lesson. “We
learned about the value of having a
tight script – of knowing the full
picture – as soon as possible.”
Dreamfeel’s next game, she says,
will be very different: “It’s partly a
response to If Found in that we’re
trying to create something that is as
unlike it as possible.” Yet if
expectations of the studio have
shifted in light of If Found’s critical
acclaim, McGee isn’t daunted by
them. “It’s often the case – say, like,
you made Antichamber and it’s like,
‘Oh, shit, I’ve been working on this
for seven years – how do I follow it
up?’ Whereas this is, like, a seven-
year overnight success. So I’ve got
all these other game [ideas], and
they’re all ready to go.”
In the meantime, Dreamfeel’s
Breogán Hackett has developed
Unity plugin Flatgame Maker, which
is designed to encourage budding
creators to make their own personal
tales. The concept of flatgames goes
back to 2016, when McGee was
DREAMFEEL
teaching a class of students to make
games using physical materials. She
wanted to bring a little spontaneity
to game design, she says, and
created a six-minute game called
The Isle Full Of Noises, in which all
the art was made using marker
pens, within a self-imposed time
limit that encouraged her to
repurpose and reuse those hand-
drawn assets. “I wanted to show
that these were intentional choices,”
she explains. “I was using markers
as a decision and an expression
rather than a limitation.”
She released it alongside a
manifesto. A flatgame was a
handmade game created in limited
time with simple mechanics,
designed to evoke a place or a
memory – typically one personal to
its creator. Hackett asked if she
could create something along similar
lines, and the first Flatgame Jam
was born, with Dreamfeel running
it every year since (apart from 2019,
when If Found was at a crucial stage
of development). “Flatgames are so
accessible,” Hackett says. “Yeah, it’s
like punk music,” McGee adds. “It’s
shitty guitars and shitty amps, and
that encourages other people –
they’re like, ‘Well, fuck, if they can
do it, I can do it too.’” Whether or
not it results in other creators
making their own industry
breakthrough, it’s more evidence
that Dreamfeel sees the fuller picture
with greater clarity than most. n
73
RESIDENT EVIL VILLAGE

Developer/publisher Capcom
Format PC, PS5, Xbox Series Origin Japan Release 2021

Elsewhere in this issue, Siren creator

Keiichiro Toyama suggests that large
budgets are at odds with what makes for
good horror – though there are always
exceptions that prove the rule. That said,
Resident Evil has been more of a horror-
inflected action thriller for a while; the
Southern Gothic-themed Resident Evil 7
was supposed to be a return to the series’
spine-chilling roots, but even that
couldn’t resist bringing out the big guns.
Capcom is taking that game’s
canonical ending (in which naïve
everyman Ethan Winters and wife Mia
both survive their ordeal at the Baker
plantation) as the starting point for this
new adventure. The couple aren’t able to
put their traumatic past behind them for
long, with the arrival of series regular
Chris Redfield – seemingly carrying
some extra lockdown weight – setting
Ethan on a path that sees him wind up in
a village in Europe. We all know what
happened the last time Resident Evil
began in a sleepy hamlet, of course – and
there’s an oddball merchant here, too.
Yet with a remake of Shinji Mikami’s
extraordinary Spain-set blockbuster
apparently already in the works, it’s no
surprise that Capcom is striving to set
Village apart. Early rumours hinted at a
swerve into folk-horror territory, though
its murky palette and vicious enemies
don’t exactly suggest Midsommar.
Rather, you’ll face off against groups of
werewolves that work together
intelligently to overpower you. Sounds
like we could do with those big guns,
after all, in what reports suggest is the
most substantial Resi campaign since…
well, take a wild guess. n

76
 BREATH OF THE WILD 2

Developer/publisher Nintendo (EPD) Format Switch

Origin Japan Release TBA

Last year Nintendo coasted to record-

breaking Switch sales, largely off the back
of Animal Crossing: New Horizons
becoming the quintessential lockdown
game. Yet the COVID pandemic
otherwise contributed to surely its
weakest software lineup in many a year,
as it struggled to adjust its traditional
methods of operation to accommodate
working from home. Not that any Breath
Of The Wild sequel was ever seriously
likely to be released before the end of the
year (though, decent as it may have been,
a new Hyrule Warriors can’t have been its
original strategy to deal with the twin
threat of fresh, attention-grabbing
hardware from Microsoft and Sony).
While at the time of writing Nintendo
has yet to show its hand for 2021, there
are a couple of certainties: that it has
games in reserve, and that it will happily
revisit older ones to fill any gaps caused
by delays. Super Mario 3D World +
Bowser’s Fury, due a fortnight after this
magazine hits store shelves, is the latest
of those, and there’s even a suggestion we
could get a Skyward Sword remake –
though that game’s motion controls
would naturally need a total overhaul in
order for it to work on Switch. With all
this in mind, plus Monster Hunter: Rise’s
March release sure to shift units in Japan,
there’s no need to rush here.
Given that and the undoubtedly
enormous pressure of delivering the
sequel to one of the best and most
influential games of recent times, a late-
year release seems most likely for what
producer Eiji Aonuma has hinted will be
the darkest game in the Zelda series to
date. We’re happy to wait. n

79
FOR PEOPLE WHO RETRO GAMES
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The little console with the crank
remains one of the most exciting
hardware developments in recent
times – and we’re not just
saying that because it was
revealed via this very tome.
Rather, it’s the fact that it offers
something out of the ordinary:
Panic is releasing a bespoke
handheld at a time when even
Nintendo is out of the portable-
only market. Indeed, Playdate
promises to offer something akin
to the creatively fertile period of
those early days of the DS, that
little wind-up handle on the
right side of the console opening
up new forms of interaction in
the same way as the combination
of stylus and touchscreen did in
the mid-noughties.
It’s not that Playdate is a
return to more accessible controls
or simpler times – anyone with
a phone or an Analogue Pocket,
say, can experience that – but
that Panic’s approach feels truly
forward-looking. Games will be
released in ‘seasons’, the first
promising new releases from the
likes of Keita Takahashi, Zach
Gage and Bennett Foddy, but also
less familiar names, including
minority game developers.
PLAYDATE
These, we’re told, will be
revealed soon, though Panic is
hoping to preserve a sense of
mystery by only announcing
titles and genres until the
console is released. The idea of
a new surprise each week is
exciting, likewise the fact that
games can be sideloaded onto
the device, opening it up to
creators outside of the seasonal
structure. As a showcase for
blossoming talent and the
ingenuity of some of the
industry’s brightest indie lights,
Playdate may be diminutive,
but its potential is massive. n
81
MONSTER HUNTER RISE
Developer/publisher Capcom Format Switch Origin Japan Release March 26
While World delivered Monster
Hunter’s (and Capcom’s) biggest sales
to date, the series has always felt
most at home on smaller screens.
Its own rise began, after all, on PSP,
when Japanese players would gather
in public for wireless co-op battles.
So it’s no surprise that Rise should
focus on mobility – your hunter has
never been more agile, nor able to
get back to the front line so quickly.
Still, it’s ironic that Capcom should
espouse the value of a wired
connection. Yet your bond with the
new Wirebug, a multi-faceted
insectoid ally, is transformative.
When you’re exploring, it acts as
a kind of grappling hook or web
slinger – you can use it twice before
it needs to cool down, though if you
find more in the wild they’ll
temporarily increase the gauge. You
can use it to cross gaps, or latch on
to walls to run up and along them
until your stamina meter is depleted.
It opens up a recovery move that
gives you a softer landing when
you’re swept off your feet. You can
perform a vertical or horizontal
dash – the former ideal for leaping
over a swinging tail or a jet of water;
the latter letting you close the space
between you and your quarry.
But the most game-changing
ability it delivers is Silkbind, which
opens up weapon-specific gambits,
and with successive attacks can
leave a monster vulnerable to being
82
mounted. Rather than the usual
bucking-bronco minigame as you
try to get in as many blows as you
can before being thrown off (a timer
ticks down when you’re in the
saddle, but slowly), you can now
assume a degree of control over
even the largest beasts, the tensile
strength of the wire letting you
wrangle pretty much anything. As
such, we end up bringing a Rathian
to a Mizutsune fight, our light and
strong attacks transferring from
hunter to beast. This fills another
gauge that lets you pull off a
Mounted Punisher – alternatively,
you can launch your ride into a wall
or obstacle and it’ll topple onto its
side, letting you get in plenty of free
hits (or regroup).
We’ve seen Monster Hunter’s
beasts fight before, but we’ve never
played such an active role in making
it happen. And with the Wirebug
opening up acrobatic dodges and
collaborative plays – how about
steering a wyvern into position just
as a fellow hunter is winding up a
charge attack? – Rise’s combat feels
more satisfying than ever. With
many of World’s quality-of-life
features retained, plus an added
focus on using indigenous life for
stat boosts, it’s also more accessible
than Monster Hunter has ever been.
Naturally, it doesn’t have World’s
spectacular looks, but what could
easily have been a downgrade might
just be a new series high. n
 METROIDVANIAS

We’re not huge fans of the term

(‘Metroid-like’ would be our preference),
but we’ll recognise that ‘Metroidvania’
has long since passed into the gaming
lexicon. The fact that it’s so commonly
used and understood says a lot about how
many of the blighters there are these
days. But that underlying structure
continues to endure the test of time.
The gradual sense of empowerment.
The steady unfurling of a world as the
player character’s new abilities allow
them to see more of it. The opportunity
to face once-dreaded opponents with
the confidence of the overpowered.
The shortcuts and the secrets.
Little wonder, then, that we’re going
to be awash with them in 2021 – the
flipside, of course, being that the level of
saturation is such that some of these
games will struggle to set themselves
apart from their peers. High-quality pixel
art alone is no longer enough. Starsoft
Entertainment’s Savior has precise
parkour and Punch-Out!!-style pattern-
recognition combat to help it stand out.
Vernal Edge is as much a character-action
game (complete with a DMC-style
grading system) as a Metroidvania. The
aptly-named Grime, meanwhile, leans on
grisly body horror, as you use living
weapons to defeat enemies before
consuming them to mutate into new
forms. Surely the two most exciting
propositions, however, are Tom Happ’s
Axiom Verge 2 and last month’s cover star
Hollow Knight: Silksong (pictured), both
games refining originals that themselves
managed to reinvigorate those old
standards. By the time Metroid Prime 4
gets here, the series that gave the genre
its name may well have been gazumped
by the games it has inspired. n

85
HALO INFINITE
Developer 343 Industries, Skybox Labs, Sperasoft, Certain Affinity Publisher Xbox Game Studios
Format PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series Origin US, Canada, Release Q3/Q4 2021
Microsoft made one of the boldest
decisions of the new console
generation by choosing to delay its
most obvious launch-window
system-seller. In light of the outcry
surrounding Cyberpunk 2077, that
seems a smarter move than it did in
August. Yet a delay of a year for
such a flagship game, if not
unprecedented, is certainly unusual.
Covid has, the publisher admits,
“contributed to development
challenges”, but it’s not the only
explanation for the postponement.
The response to its gameplay
showcase at Xbox’s July event will
certainly have been one reason;
Infinite’s visuals, largely thanks to
some poorly-chosen screenshots,
but also Microsoft’s decision to
prioritise performance over fidelity
for the event, were immediately
subjected to online ridicule. A
paused frame of footage, meanwhile,
led to one Brute – dubbed Craig –
becoming a meme in his own right.
To its credit, Microsoft has
responded in good humour, with
Phil Spencer claiming 343 Industries
has had Craig T-shirts printed.
Nonetheless, it’s a costly delay, not
only since it leaves Xbox Series
without a potential killer app, but
because an extra year of development
won’t come cheap. 343 issued
denials of any creative difficulties
in 2019, when executive producer
Mary Olson left the project less
86
than two months after the
departure of creative director Tim
Longo. With studio director Chris
Lee taking a step back following the
July backlash, series veteran Joseph
Staten has been brought back on
board to steady the ship. Given the
extra year of development will mean
another 12 months of escalating
player expectations, Infinite will
need a reliable hand on the tiller.
Its problems raise questions
about the sustainability of the
modern blockbuster, particularly
given Infinite will be available to all
Game Pass users at launch. Granted,
it’ll sell plenty of subscriptions on
its own, but can it hope to make its
development costs back? Perhaps
the answer lies in its 120fps-
supporting multiplayer component,
which will be released as a free-to-
play affair, letting those who aren’t
fussed about the campaign jump in
without paying a penny. That might
seem an unlikely way to claw back
that budget, but no doubt Microsoft
will have been learning from Call Of
Duty: Warzone, which contributed a
large chunk of the $1.2bn Activision
made from microtransactions
between July and September 2020
alone. Whether or not that gamble
pays off, Infinite remains one of
2021’s most fascinating triple-A
games – not just for what it is, but
what it means for the future of its
publisher, the Halo series, and the
firstperson shooter in general. n
 RECURSION

As a component of fractal geometry and

a programming technique, recursion has
been a fundamental part of games for
a long time – though it’s only in the past
few years that creators have started to
really explore how it might work as a core
mechanic. Manifold Garden’s infinitely
repeating architecture is one striking
example, while Innerspace VR’s escape-
puzzler A Fisherman’s Tale presented
worlds nested within worlds, like a
particularly complex Russian doll. The
concept was recently explored by game
developer and YouTuber Sam Hogan, who
released free 16-level puzzler Game Inside
A Game on itch.io (available at bit.ly/
hogan_recursive): here, you jump into and
out of square rooms to grow and shrink,
with gravitational twists, infinite
staircases and double recursion enabling
you to make multiple copies of yourself.
This year, the IGF-winning Patrick’s
Parabox will offer a similarly intricate
matryoshka of puzzles, its Sokoban-style
challenges requiring you to push entire
miniature worlds around – each
containing smaller versions of yourself –
or to squeeze your way into and out of
them. And Annapurna’s Maquette
(pictured) uses the concept to help tell a
love story. In it, manipulating objects
inside a scale model allows you navigate
the world beyond it, and vice versa.
The blockbuster space has so far
resisted the temptation to attempt such
Inception-style trickery, which is a
surprise given Nolan’s film’s obvious
debt to the medium. But at a time when
triple-A sandboxes are getting bigger and
their horizons more distant, it’s
heartening to see some game-makers
turning their gaze inward, and finding
creative magic within the very
foundations of videogames. n

89
 LEGO STAR WARS

Developer/publisher Warner Bros Interactive

Entertainment (TT Games) Format PC, PS4, PS5, Switch,
Xbox One, Xbox Series Origin UK Release Spring

If there’s a common criticism levelled at

Lego’s world domination over the past
decade or two – the eco-friendliness of
its chosen medium aside – it’s that
creativity has been squeezed out in favour
of studiously following a template. And
the same has increasingly been true of
the videogame adaptations.
In 2005, Lego Star Wars: The Video
Game managed a minor miracle, spinning
family-game gold out of the prequel
movie trilogy. The formula was refined by
its followups, and has been adhered to
ever since, with each year bringing at
least one new Lego game. Until 2020, that
is, when the annual churn finally paused
to allow for a ground-up rebuild.
TT Games – formerly Traveller’s
Tales – certainly hasn’t lost the original
plans: all the series hallmarks, such as a
huge roster of switchable characters and
slapstick recreations of iconic scenes, are
present in Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker
Saga. But as the studio returns to its
roots, this time adapting the full trilogy
of trilogies, there’s a sense of renewed
playfulness too.
All nine films will be available from
the off, with an orrery of planets ready to
be dug out of the box and visited at any
point. So if there’s a particular set-piece
you’re eager to experience, you can hop
straight to it (all freshly reimagined for
this title), or you can see what awaits at
the outer reaches of the films’
storytelling. It’s an intriguingly ambitious
notion, and one that suggests The
Skywalker Saga might just be – dare we
say it? – a new hope for Lego games. n

91
SPIRELIKES
There aren’t many developers who
can say they invented an entire
genre. Anthony Giovannetti,
though, along with his Mega Crit
collaborator Casey Yano, can stake
a claim. As Giovannetti points out,
Slay The Spire was predated by the
likes of Shandalar and Dream Quest,
but “we really popularised the
melding of deckbuilding and
Roguelikes, and became the formula
that other games seem to follow.”
That formula involves the player
picking a randomly-shuffled path
through card-based battles,
interspersed with the option to gain
new cards, until they either reach
the finale or it all comes crashing
down. It’s a very specific itch but,
since Slay The Spire brought it to
our attention, one that’s become
increasingly easy to scratch.
“It has been wild watching the
genre explode,” Giovannetti says.
“I have even seen a lot of people
and some media outlets start
referring to them as ‘Spirelikes’.”
None of these games have quite
managed to, ahem, slay the Spire,
though last year’s Monster Train
came closer than most, iterating on
the ideas of its inspiration so well
that it can count Giovannetti among
its fans. “Monster Train did some
neat things with our Ascension
system, by showing where your
friends are in their own Ascension
climbs so you can kind of compete.
I liked that feature.”
Looking forward, the next
challenger for the throne could
be Vault Of The Void, a traditional
card battler with presentation
reminiscent of Hearthstone – and
92
another game that gets the
Giovannetti seal of approval. “It has
a neat endgame mechanic where
you choose two of four mini-bosses
to fight to get various boss-specific
benefits,” he says.
Most exciting to us, though,
are the games which push
Giovannetti’s genre alchemy with
a little melding of their own. Turn-
based tactics is an obvious lateral
step, and one that’s working well for
Fight In Tight Spaces (see p108) and
Trials Of Fire (pictured). The latter
combines a fantasy quest framing
with hex-based battles, where
success requires careful positioning
as well as deck management.
Then there’s Klei’s Griftlands,
which started life as an open-world
sci-fi RPG. All the tropes you’d
expect are still present in its
current early-access form, but it’s
been rebuilt around two card games,
each with its own deck – one for
combat, one for negotiation, where
each card represents an attempt to
influence, intimidate or broker
peace with your conversational
sparring partner.
Giovannetti, who’s clearly been
enjoying playing the games that
have followed in Slay The Spire’s
wake, says he’s optimistic about the
future of this hybrid genre. And with
Spire’s updates seemingly winding
down, he’s keen to get back to the
table himself. While Mega Crit is
also considering other projects
outside the world of Roguelike
deckbuilders, he says, “we are
definitely not done experimenting
with it ourselves.” n
 HAPPY GAME

Developer/publisher Amanita Design

Format PC, Switch Origin Czechia Release Spring

There’s something subversive about

Amanita Design announcing a psychedelic
horror game during a Nintendo Direct.
This is miles away from the gentle shivers
of Creaks: Jaromír Plachy’s follow-up to
Chuchel is gory and genuinely disturbing.
Was challenging expectations part of the
appeal of making it like this? “I’ve always
enjoyed the idea of making Happy Game
right after creating the poetic Botanicula
and cheerful Chuchel,” Plachy tells us.
We’ve had the chance to play roughly
two-thirds of an early build and it is
explosively weird. Happy Game tells the
story of a young boy whose pathetic
whimpers are unsettling even before we
get to the part where we’re dragging a
doll’s arms to detach its own head, or
using a guillotine on a rabbit we’ve lured
into position with a giant carrot. It’s
more point and drag than point and click.
That slight change makes you feel all the
more guilty as you grab this poor lad and
drag him towards a variety of horrifying
sights, or grip onto the limbs of mutated
versions of childhood toys and pull and
stretch until… well, that would be telling.
As ever, the joy (if that’s the right
word here) of an Amanita game is in the
surprising responses to your actions. The
key difference in Happy Game is that
they’re more shocking than amusing. “It
is really strange,” Plachy says with glee, “a
mix of absurd humour, weirdness, blood,
and death. I dare to compare it to my
favourite series, Twin Peaks – quite often
you don’t know what to think about it,
but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it.”
As long as you’re above a certain age.
“Don’t give this to your kids,” Plachy
says, mischievously. “We warned you.” n

95
ROAD TRIPS

Games have long understood the appeal

of the open road. Often it draws us to
some important goal. But in 2021, it looks
like we’re due a rash of games more
interested in what happens along the way:
the unexpected stops, the detours, the
conversations that only start when there’s
a long, blank stretch of tarmac ahead.
This isn’t exactly new, of course. From
Jalopy to Final Fantasy XV, plenty of
games have decided it’s the journey that
really matters, not the destination, in
recent years – but when Open Roads,
Season and Road 96 (pictured) were all
announced on the same day in December
2020, it was clear that something was in
the air. All these games look wildly
different, which as it should be (the road
movie, after all, is less a genre than a
loose structure). There’s plenty of room
to accommodate grounded mother-
daughters, wistful fantasy and the more
action-oriented Road 96, with its
Tarantino- and Coens-inflected style, let
alone the monster hunters and posties of
Titan Chaser and Lake, and whatever form
Minskworks’ teased spiritual successor to
Cold War journey Jalopy ends up taking.
It’s incredible timing, given that most
of these titles’ development predates the
locked-in world now inhabited by the
players they appeal to. But most likely the
reason they’ve all come along is simple
recognition that games make a perfect fit
for road-trip fiction, which can smooth
anecdotal encounters and the lulls in
between into a semblance of story. Look
at any open-world game that gives you a
vehicle and a horizon to point it towards
and you’ll find players telling these kinds
of tales themselves. It’s only natural that
developers would want to take their own
turn in the driving seat. n

96

Making it big in live-service games
is one of the tallest orders in
modern publishing, but when the
rewards are so great, putting
literally billions of dollars in the
bank, you can see why everyone
wants a slice of the pie. Hit on a
formula that resonates and the
party need never stop – just ask
World Of Warcraft, whose
Shadowlands expansion was released
in November last year on the 16th
anniversary of the core game’s
release, or the even crumblier
Runescape, now 20 years old –
surely longer in the tooth than
many of its target players today.
For new entrants – and there
will be a bunch of those in 2021 –
the market is particularly tough to
crack because there is no single
established route to success to
follow. Two of the biggest players in
the mainstream space, GTA Online
and Fortnite (pictured), sit at
opposite ends of the spectrum.
Rockstar’s game, for all its excesses,
looks positively conservative when
you compare it to Epic’s approach.
GTAO’s map has barely changed
since the game arrived two entire
console generations ago, while
Fortnite is defined by its desire to
reinvent itself completely on a
regular basis, tearing the map apart
and throwing it back together in a
new shape, discarding fan-beloved
fixtures along the way. Rockstar,
meanwhile, maintains the potter’s
LIVE-SERVICE GAMES
wheel method, adding more lumps
of gameplay clay over time, feeling
its way towards the future, creating
a work of complexity and scope that
can be daunting to newcomers.
Somewhere between them lies
Destiny 2, launched as a traditional
game, transformed into an F2P
experience in 2019, and then
reworked massively with the release
of Beyond Light in November last
year, entire planets removed from
its universe in the process. It was a
bold move necessitated by bloat –
and we’d very much like to see how
it’s affected player numbers.
Given the scale of these games,
what happens next is a big deal for
the game industry as a whole. What
will Fortnite become as it evolves
closer towards what Epic boss Tim
Sweeney envisions to be “something
like the Metaverse”? What happens
to GTA Online when Grand Theft
Auto VI arrives? (And how much is
GTAO’s ongoing popularity holding
back the arrival of a full-blown
sequel? It’s worth noting that the
PS5 and Xbox Series versions of
GTAV don’t even arrive until later
this year.) On a selfish note, will we
ever get the chance to return to
some of our favourite Destiny
hunting grounds? More importantly,
just how many live-service games
can we possibly find the time to fit
into our lives in a way that feels
worthwhile? We’re hoping that
2021 will provide a few answers. n
99
ITCH.IO
In June 2020, Itch launched the
Bundle For Racial Justice And
Equality in support of protests
against police brutality in the
United States following the death of
George Floyd. It began as a pay-
what-you-want bundle of 749
projects but more developers joined
during its ten-day run and by its
end it included 1,704 games, books,
tools, soundtracks, comics and
more, raising an astonishing $8.1
million. The scale and breadth of
the bundle was a snapshot of what
Itch had become since it was
founded by Leaf Corcoran in 2013.
The places we can buy games
have always played a central role in
game culture, but in today’s
distanced world, digital storefronts
exert a greater dominance over our
attention, engagement and access.
Walled gardens such as Apple’s App
Store and PlayStation Store maintain
control over what’s published, while
Steam and Epic Games Store fight
over PC gaming’s mainstream. In
parallel, GOG and Humble aim for
a consumer-friendly approach,
assembling value-rich bundles.
You have to wonder where game
developers lie in a landscape defined
by storefronts vying for platform
control and player-first incentivising.
Which of them is interested in the
people who make games, hosting
whatever they make, no matter how
weird, unfinished or ungame-like?
Only Itch – and games as a whole
100
are richer as a result. It’s a place
where tools such as ChipTone sit
alongside asset packs for
GameMaker, entrants in a game jam,
and Among Us, Untitled Goose Game
and Wide Ocean Big Jacket (pictured).
All take advantage of not only
Itch’s pay-what-you-want pricing
model but also its ‘open revenue
sharing’ programme, which allows
developers to set how much revenue
they share with Itch, from 30 per
cent to nothing at all. And while
Itch has expanded its externally
facing storefront with features such
as recommendation pages and an
app, its real focus is on its
developer-facing tools. Developers
appreciate how easy it is to release
and update a game on Itch. There
are rewards systems and ways to
open access to files depending on
how much a purchaser has paid.
The sales page is customisable and
flexible. It’s easy to manage and
promote game jams.
All these features serve Itch’s
interest in indie developer culture,
and it’s developed a universe of
small groups and special interests.
In many ways it was inevitable that
something like the Bundle For Racial
Justice And Equality should come
from it. After all, this egalitarian,
patchwork place for expression and
experimentation is ripe for raising
grassroots movements. In games,
there’s nowhere else like it. n

Growing up in the ’80s, Tommy
Tallarico’s favourite console was
Mattel’s Intellivision. It was a
passion that never really went away,
to the extent that many years later
he pulled a Victor Kiam (ask your
parents) and bought the company.
The result is that now, in 2021, a
new Intellivision console, Amico,
is preparing for lift-off.
Having worked as one of the
most prolific musicians in games,
hosted fan-favourite TV shows
including Electric Playground, and
toured his acclaimed Video Games
Live concerts around the world,
Tallarico has a track record of
delivering the goods, so if someone
was going to resurrect one of the
most fondly remembered brands
from gaming’s formative years, why
not him? His starting point was to
create something for a “forgotten”
gaming group: the family.
Thus, all Amico games are
designed to be accessible and easy
to understand, and in 2D – or 2.5D
in some cases. Importantly, they
emphasise multiplayer, attempting
to bring players of all skill levels,
from multiple generations, around
the same console. “We’ve done a lot
of focus-group testing with casual
gamers and non-gamers,” Tallarico
says, “and they all said they’ve been
waiting for something like this for a
long time, and that they typically
still play the Wii.”
Nintendo’s console may have
influenced the vision for the Amico
INTELLIVISION AMICO
project, but importantly it delivers
on the Intellivision legacy. An
obvious opportunity was to pull a
selection of the original console’s
most beloved titles back into the
workshop for a 2021 makeover,
with reboots of games such as
Astrosmash, Night Stalker and Tron:
Deadly Discs on their way. Equally,
the hardware itself resonates with
the past by allowing its controllers
to ‘nest’ in the base console, just as
they did in the original design –
although nowadays this isn’t so
much about keeping a tidy play area
as it is providing wireless charging.
Each controller is home to a
pressure-sensitive disc (as opposed
to a D-pad or stick) and colour
touchscreen, along with speaker,
mic, gyro, accelerometer and force-
feedback functionality, plus four
physical shoulder buttons. The
design exceeds what you’d expect
from a platform that is simply not
intended to go up against the likes
of PS5, but then Tallarico has never
been short on ambition.
“Why not tell myself we’ll sell
100 million-plus units, like the Wii?
It’s always good to dream big and try
to achieve the impossible,” he says.
In reality, Amico needs to shift more
like 200,000 units in order to break
even. With 100,000 preorders and
retail purchase orders signed – more
refused because demand couldn’t be
met – the reborn Intellivision is off
to a positive start. n
103
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104

Leave it to the director of Siren
and the original Silent Hill to go
through 2020 and decide what
the world needs is to be more
horrified. Keiichiro Toyama has
left Sony Japan Studio to go
independent, founding Bokeh
Game Studio with Junya Okura
(lead designer on Gravity Rush)
and Kazunobu Sato (lead
designer on Edge favourite The
Last Guardian). A glimpse of
some monstrous concept art
appals us in a good way.
For years Toyama’s been
saying spiralling development
costs are antithetical to good
From left: Junya Okura,
Keiichiro Toyama and
Kazunobu Sato
horror game design. Indeed, the
likes of World Of Horror and
Phasmophobia prove his point:
low-budget horror is enjoying
something of a renaissance.
We’re probably in for something
less esoteric here, with Toyama
suggesting he’s focused on
delivering “a broader
entertainment experience, rather
than a hardcore horror game.”
Meanwhile, Sony Japan Studio
is shedding talent elsewhere.
Bloodborne and Demon’s Souls
remake producer Teruyuki
Toriyama has also departed,
despite Jim Ryan stating recently
BOKEH
that “the Japanese market
remains incredibly important to
us.” So, what changed? Given
Toriyama’s previous project was
a remake and Toyama’s a sequel,
perhaps a resistance to fresh
ideas at the start of a console
generation is off-putting to its
most experienced creatives?
Still, maybe it’ll work out for all
parties – Toriyama’s already
stated his intentions are to create
new game IPs, while Toyama’s
excruciating brand of creeping
dread is always worth a petrified
look. We’re shaking with… let’s
call it anticipation. n
105
SABLE

Developer Shedworks Publisher Raw Fury

Format PC, Xbox Series Origin UK Release 2021

It captured us from its first appearance

in November 2017: a tweeted GIF of a
hovering craft kicking up a trail of dust
across green terrain under a purple sky,
all picked out in pastel planes and sharp
outlines. The tweets continued as the
game, which would later be named Sable,
took further shape: the craft became a
hover bike and gained a delicious sense of
momentum as it zoomed across expanses
of open land. A character wearing a
movement-expressing red cape was
added, expanding the game’s premise as a
thirdperson open-world adventure game.
Scenes followed of platforming and
exploring, all within a graphic world of
crashed spaceships and vistas punctuated
by weathered rock formations and giant
fossilised ribs, further building the
game’s promise. Sable wears its influences
(Moebius, Ico, Breath Of The Wild, Studio
Ghibli, Journey) on its sleeve, marks of its
creators’ excellent taste.
Perhaps the delays to Sable’s release –
the developers originally hoped to release
it in 2019 – are indicative of the
challenges of meeting expectations set by
citing such illustrious influences, but
during that extra time its visual appeal
has been steadily backed with greater
substance. Meg Jayanth, writer on Sunless
Sea and 80 Days, has been creating the
many stories you’ll uncover and unravel,
developing this sun-baked world and
your reasons to travel it. You’ll unlock
upgrades for your hover bike and discover
puzzles to solve in its ruins. Steadily,
Shedworks has filled in some of the gaps
between its beautiful GIFs, revealing a
strong foundation for a mystical world
that begs to be explored. n

106
 FIGHTS IN TIGHT SPACES

Developer Mode7, Bithell Games

Publisher Ground Shatter Format PC, Xbox One,
Xbox Series Origin UK Release Early 2021

As any good action hero will tell you,

beating the bad guys is only half the battle.
Looking good while you do it? That’s how
you secure your place on the dorm-room
walls and DVD shelves and YouTube
compilations where real heroes are
remembered. And this is something that
Fights In Tight Spaces knows all too well.
Developer Ground Shatter is taking
cues from the likes of Mission:
Impossible, Oldboy and John Wick to
bring that brilliantly what-it-says-on-
the-tin title to life. Think lifts,
bathrooms, corridors, the back of a van –
any confined space just big enough for
the kind of tightly-choreographed
collisions of muscles and sweat that end
up clipped from their original context to
be admired like a butterfly preserved
under glass by action fans.
The way it realises these cinematic
ambitions, though, might come as
something of a surprise: turn-based
battles play out on chessboard grids,
with visuals that draw equally on
Superhot and Saul Bass. It’s also a card
game, of the Roguelike deckbuilder
variety where each fight rewards you with
a fresh selection of options to slot into
your deck. In this case, it might mean
choosing between a split kick, a throwable
tranquiliser dart or a manoeuvre to slip
past an opponent just in time to push
them in the path of a bullet that
originally had your name on it. Each card
triggers a beautifully crafted animation,
and by stringing together a few moves
you become the director of fight scenes
that feel worthy of admiring alongside
those of the game’s own heroes. n

109
ECHODOG GAMES
The LA-based studio behind last
year’s Edge Artisan Award winner
can reflect on a more successful
2020 than most. A card game about
communication – “not exactly a
deck-building game but a deck-
developing game,” creative director
Dyala Kattan-Wright says – Signs
Of The Sojourner was a triumphant
debut for Echodog Games, albeit
one that didn’t quite reach the
number of players it deserved on
PC. That should change in 2021: a
Switch version was mooted last year,
and Kattan-Wright confirms it’s
being brought to more formats
besides. “Yeah, it’s coming to current
and next-gen – or is it current and
previous gen? – platforms, so PS4
and 5, Xbox One and Series X. We
don’t have an exact date yet, but it’s
going to be early this year.”
Having self-published Sojourner
on Steam, Echodog is now working
with Digerati Publishing, which is
handling PR duties. And we’re
delighted to report that this will be
an enhanced version of the original
game, including new story threads
and several additional characters.
(PC owners will get a free update.)
Yet not all of the newcomers are, in
fact, new. “Some of these characters
we’d actually had in an earlier
version, and then cut due to
resources and just deciding [we’d]
rather have more fleshed-out but
fewer characters,” Kattan-Wright
tells us. But with Holly Rothrock
110
having already supplied the art for
these NPCs and with plotlines the
studio was keen to develop further,
it made perfect sense to add them
back in now Echodog had the time
and resources to do them justice.
“Part of it is about wanting to
incentivise people to come back
and replay it,” Kattan-Wright says
of a game that’s already very
replayable. “Maybe we’ll get people
to pick it up who have been on the
fence so far. There are also quite a
few quality-of-life updates that
we’d still like to be able to do, and a
lot of that is kind of dependent on
how the ports [perform].”
The studio’s certainly
hopeful that there might well be
more Signs – and sojourners – to
come as it considers its next step.
“We’re in the early stages of
thinking about what the next game
might be – I’d say too early to really
want to talk about it,” Kattan-
Wright says, suggesting that if the
console versions of Signs are well-
received then it might not be quite
ready to move on just yet. “Whether
we spend time on additional
features or even larger content DLCs
for Signs, possibly localisation and
those kinds of things… a lot of it is
really up in the air at this point
whether we focus more on Signs or
dive into a new project.” Wherever
its cards may fall, we can’t wait to
see what the team does next. n
YAKUZA
Developer/publisher Sega (Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio) Format PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series
Origin Japan Release January 28 (3–5), March 25 (6)
Microsoft may have repeatedly
scotched rumours that its next big
acquisition would be Sega, but the
two companies have certainly
become chummier of late. The most
eye-opening evidence of this
blossoming relationship came in
November, with Yakuza: Like A
Dragon making its new-generation
console debut on Xbox Series X
four months before its PS5
counterpart. This was a startling
development for a series with such
a long-standing association with
PlayStation, even given the prior
arrival of Yakuza 0, Kiwami and
Kiwami 2 on Game Pass. By the
end of March, the whole of the
mainline series will be available
on the service – so whether you
own an Xbox or PC, you will be able
to play through Kazuma Kiryu’s
story in its entirety. If Like A Dragon
was your first encounter with the
112
series, you could conceivably
spend most of 2021 catching up.
Yakuza 3, 4 and 5 – bundled
together as The Yakuza Remastered
Collection – are due to launch on
the day this issue hits newsstands,
while emotional finale Yakuza 6:
The Song Of Life is set for a March
25 release. Could Microsoft’s
commitment extend further still?
RGG Studio’s Kamurocho-set
detective game Judgment would no
doubt be welcomed by many, the
zombie-centric Dead Souls rather
less so. But English-language
versions of the frequently fan-
requested samurai spin-off
Kenzan and its Edo-era follow-up
Ishin would leave Sony with
something of a bloody nose.
Which, given the punishment
Kiryu dishes out to his many
would-be assailants, would be
wholly apropos. n
 #356
February 25

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