Indholdsfortegnelse for March 2019 i Edge

We’re sure January used to be a quiet month, but 2019 has got off to a flying start. The industry was rocked this past month by the announcement that Bungie and Activision are parting ways eight years into a planned ten-year deal, with the Destiny developer assuming publishing rights of its muddled, yet intoxicating, online shooter. In Knowledge, we unpick the implications of a shocking, yet also entirely understandable, separation. The Destiny experiment is no failure, yet nor has it been a resounding success. It is, however, an excellent case study for anyone making a living game. During its four-and-a-bit years, it has been by turns enormously generous and too stingy; adored by its players, and hated by them; and the jewel in Activision’s crown and its biggest disappointment –…

There were cheers, apparently, when Bungie management told an all-hands studio meeting that it was parting ways with Activision. From the outside looking in, it’s easy to imagine why. The divorce settlement sees Bungie, which owns the Destiny IP under the terms of the ten-year deal signed in 2010, gain independent publishing rights to its shared-world shooter. It now has full creative control of a game whose near-decade in existence has been fraught with problems. No wonder that, as one source told Kotaku, champagne corks were popping. Yet it may not be as simple as that. There is much to celebrate about the notion of a 700-person studio, which gave the world Halo and Destiny, now being one of the biggest indie developers on the planet. Yet there is much…

Game Kraut Buster Developer NG Dev Team NG Dev Team was founded in 2001 by German brothers Timm and Rene Hellwig, and ever since the collective has been flying the flag for forgotten videogame hardware. Its debut game, Last Hope, launched for Neo Geo AES in 2006, and for Neo Geo CD and Dreamcast the following year; 2010’s Fast Striker was an MVS game that made it to Japanese arcades before being updated for Dreamcast. While it hasn’t made a game for Sega’s hardware swan song since, the developer has stood by SNK’s, and its latest release is its most ambitious yet. Over three years on from its announcement, Kraut Buster finally began shipping in December. It’s a 2D run-and-gun in the style of 20th-century classics Metal Slug and Contra…

Dialogue Send your views, using ‘Dialogue’ as the subject line, to edge@futurenet.com. Our letter of the month wins a year’s subscription to PlayStation Plus, courtesy of Sony Interactive Entertainment Eternal flame Robert August de Meijer (E328) finds himself short of games that allow him to be a benevolent Ubermensch with the elbow room to deviate when the mood takes him. As it happens, I have just completed the Switch edition of the sublime World Of Goo. I can’t remember a rush of omnipotence like this since Lemmings. Each puzzle element is not simply an object, but a person, capable of sleep, wonder, relief and, no doubt, countless other emotions. The puzzles are curiously involving as a result. And the Goo Balls with which one builds a way to salvation must…

Illustration kaeru.com.ar Once, a developer friend who used to run the Monty Python fan club in the US asked John Cleese whether he thought he could make a funny game, to which the comedian said no – it wasn’t possible. The most essential ingredient in any joke was timing, he said, and videogames had given up the possibility of a well-timed laugh the moment someone pressed Start and we let them walk left instead of right. I’ve spent a lot of column inches pointing out that I think a successful game needs to know what its core values are, and to try as hard as it can not to compete with heavy hitters in the same area. Now that we’re announced, though, it poses a question: where are we putting…

Developer/publisher-Supergiant Games Format-PC Origin-US Release-2019 You would think that Early Access would be anathema to such a developer as Supergiant. This is a studio, after all, that has earned its stripes making exceptionally polished, complete games that tell stories with a clear beginning, middle and end. Early Access games, meanwhile, are by definition unfinished, and often rough around the edges. So, as we speak to Hades’ writer and designer Greg Kasavin, there’s really only one way to start. “Why?” he repeats back to us with a chuckle. “It’s an excellent question.” It’s perhaps tempting to imagine that there were commercial reasons behind the decision to put Hades into Early Access. Maybe Pyre didn’t sell well enough and the studio needs money in the bank. Yet that doesn’t fit with what…

Every bone in our body is telling us not to jump. As we peer over the edge of the platform into the waiting crevasse below, it’s astonishing how strongly our survival instinct kicks in. We’re aware that it’s only a videogame, but whichever way you slice it, leaping off a cliff while wearing a hulking great mech suit feels like a terrible idea. It’s the details that contribute to the fear. To launch an Anthem session, we must first climb into our comfortably padded Javelin in firstperson view. A camera swoops around the exterior, allowing us to admire our rig: our new helmet and breastplate, every scuff mark on our custom paint job. The suit feels real, tangible – strangely intimate, like a classic car we’ve spent hours fixing up.…

Sometimes, you just need to look at things a little differently. True innovation is hard to come by in videogames, but often, if you squint a bit, you can at least detect the outline of it. Sure, it’s the buttons we press and the keys we tap that most define the way we interact with a game. But the camera can be every bit as important, as this month’s Play crop proves. Five-and-a-half years after its announcement, Below (p104) finally arrives this month, and on paper it sounds like any number of punishing survival-exploration games that have released during its protracted development. Yet Capy’s latest feels markedly different thanks to its tilt-shift presentation and the fact that the camera sits so high in the sky. Announced as an Xbox game,…

The fate of the civilised world is at your fingertips in Impossible Bottles. It’s a rhythm game in which you must tap in time while a mad scientist shoots electricity through cables that power gigantic subterranean robots – and, in turn, the cities they move beneath. “I was always a fan of music games and illustrations that play with colours and bigger compositions,” art director and illustrator Rafael Varona says, citing the works of Tom Haugomat and Lotta Nieminen as inspiration, as well as animation studios such as Psyop and Moth Animation. The loops you set in motion are mesmerising: the huge mechanical beings stamp and flail to electronic beats, while the lights in the nightclub on the surface pulse in response. “Every looping animation and visual effect follows the…

You need only admire a few pieces of James Gilleard’s artwork to establish a familiarity with his style. His work is found in magazines and websites, and even on the cover of a limited-edition Hellboy Blu-ray. Here, Gilleard reveals how games have played a role in his art. Did videogames play a part in your desire to become an artist? The Sega Saturn was my first console, and the art that was on-screen was inspiring. I can remember doing a picture of Tomb Raider when I was in Year 9. So there was definitely a crossover. To what extent has your style been influenced by videogames? I’ve always had this in the back of my head, to draw in vector, the geometric style. I really think that comes from the…

Illustration kaeru.com.ar The dream of “interactive cinema” has been around for more than half a century. In 1967, the Czech film Kinoautomat was screened at Expo 67 in Montreal, and the action was stopped nine times so that an onstage moderator could ask the audience to vote on what should happen next. The notorious home-invasion sexploitation FMV game Night Trap (1992) led directly to videogame age ratings, and more recently there have been more sophisticated footage-based games such as Her Story (2015), and the occasional highprofile experiment such as Steven Soderbergh’s Mosaic, a 2017 TV thriller starring Sharon Stone that could be watched in linear sequence or consumed non-linearly through an app. But if you put something on Netflix, it becomes mainstream. Has the age of the interactive movie finally…

Videogames are collaborative works. While we may romanticise the notion of the lone developer toiling away in their back bedroom, nothing ever makes it into your hands without other people touching it first, be that a pal offering feedback through development, the QA team trying their best to break a game in half or the store staffer who puts the finished product on a shelf. Leading the Hype charge this month is Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 (p34). It’s the sequel to a game made, like so many others, beneath a veil of secrecy – but this second outing for Ubisoft Massive’s shooter-RPG is being built explicitly to cater to the needs and wants of the first game’s highly engaged community. Supergiant Games is doing similar with Hades (p40), its…

Developer/publisher Grapeshot Games Format PC, Xbox One Origin US Release Out now Our first foray into the high seas of pirate-themed MMO Atlas is a remarkably literal one – we spawn at the bottom of the ocean, rather than in one of the intended, very-much-land-based freeport starting points. Our second sees us spawning in a freeport, only to encounter an elephant suspended over a street like an archway, its backside and head clipping through buildings on either side and its feet making walking motions a metre off the ground. Atlas is in Early Access, so bugs are to be expected, but they’re also worth warning you about. That’s partly because the game is also being sold for just under £25 – a notinsignificant dent in one’s wallet – and partly…

What was the reasoning behind the game’s HP system? You can refill your ‘soul’ provided you’re playing quite well, so it means we didn’t have to give you a lot of health at the start – or ever. So you frequently spend time on low health, with the ability to heal if you get to a safe spot. By starting with so little health, and by often spending periods of time on one or two HP, there’s a tension that fits the scary, lost, dark spaces you’re exploring. How did you go about balancing the hit-tosoul return ratio? We got it to a level where we thought it was okay early on. Then we ran a small beta, and it quickly turned out that it was way too hard, so…

Developer/publisher Capybara Games Format PC, Xbox One (tested) Release Out now An often magnificent, and frequently maddening, dungeon-crawler from one of Canada’s finest studios, Below isn’t your average hero’s journey. It’s hard to think of your characters as heroic, after all, when they arrive in an endless supply, each bounding into the stormlit surf next to the wreckage of their predecessor’s boat. Rather, Below is the journey of a shape, a diamond design that runs through the game’s sunken island labyrinth like an artery, repeating itself as though trying to get at its own meaning. You first notice the design glowing on your shield, helping you locate your character against brooding landscapes that are viewed from a punishing remove. There’s another one pegged out by obelisks in the long grass…

Ten dark grey bars lie in the middle of the screen, arranged like rudimentary dominos. Click on the first and it turns a creamy white. Click on the second, and it too lights up. Ditto, the third. But on the fourth click, they all reset to their original colours. It takes a while to realise what you’re supposed to do: curb your natural instinct for instant gratification, leave a longer gap between each click than the previous one and you’ll eventually light up all ten. And that’s the game. This is Tempres by Melbourne-based developer Tak, the inspiration for a yearlong interactive art project set up and curated by Vlambeer’s co-founder and staunch indie advocate Rami Ismail. Meditations is the work of Ismail, a small team of helpers, and more…

BOOK Speedrun Science: A Long Guide To Short Playthroughs bit.ly/speedrunbook Another Awesome Games Done Quick is behind us, but if your speedrunning curiosity still isn’t satisfied, Eric Koziel’s book Speedrun Science: A Long Guide To Short Playthroughs might tide you over until the summer event. Speedrunner and computer engineer Koziel, aka Omnigamer, gives a potted history of the niche hobby (including some great photos of the very first GDQ) and community, examines the many motivations behind speedrunning and also offers a guide to getting started. Things do get fairly technical, fairly quickly, but Kari Fry’s charming illustrative diagrams help keep things light. Preorders are live now, with shipping expected to start mid-to-late April – and handily, there’s a free preview PDF to check out if you’re uncertain whether it’s for…

Illustration kaeru.com.ar The inevitable day has come: my fiveyear-old has annexed my Switch. I needed it at work one day while he was on his Christmas holidays, and I was out for drinks that night. When he found out he wasn’t getting his post-dinner Mario Kart 8, there were scenes. And so over the Christmas break I barely got a look in, while he spent his screen-time budget on his favourite pastime: sitting on the starting grid until he’s in last place, so he’ll get the best items. He finishes in ninth place, or thereabouts, but at least he’s got a Bullet Bill or two out of it. I wouldn’t mind, but he’s doing it online as well. I have a reputation to maintain. So, with Switch, and the gaming…

The 12 basic principles of animation, introduced by Disney’s Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas in the 1981 book The Illusion Of Life: Disney Animation, are a great foundation for any animator. Ultimately, however, they were written with the concept of linear entertainment like TV and film in mind, and the move to 3D kept all of these elements intact due to the purely aesthetic change in the medium. Since 3D animated cartoons and visual effects are still part of a linear medium, they will translate only to certain elements of videogame animation – often only if the game is cartoonish in style. As such, it is time to propose an additional set of principles unique to game animation that don’t replace, but instead complement, the originals. These are the five…

As it approaches its tenth birthday, Failbetter Games is a studio in rude health. Its browser-based free-to-play debut, Fallen London, remains an ongoing concern with a loyal player base almost a decade after launch. It’s about to release its third major game set within that same universe in horror-inflected narrative adventure Sunless Skies. And if CEO and art director Paul Arendt’s Twitter feed is anything to go by, there are plenty still playing and enjoying its predecessor, Sunless Sea. Not bad for a developer whose stock-intrade is disaster – or tempting its players towards it, at any rate. “The clue is in the name of the company,” Arendt tells us. “Failure’s fun. Spiralling catastrophe is kind of our thing.” In many ways, Failbetter’s output so far has been the antithesis…

Below was announced at E3 2013 during Microsoft’s press conference, with Phil Spencer sporting a Capy-branded T-shirt for the occasion. It’s been a long and bumpy road from there to the game’s eventual release, with the studio openly admitting its struggles. Here, Capy president Nathan Vella reflects on how the studio found the soul of its deepest, most richly systemic game to date. Why did you decide to add thirst and hunger mechanics to Below? Everything in the game was meant to be a pretty distilled version of itself, a distilled version of a Roguelike – and I’m air-quoting because it’s not literally a Roguelike, and people will slaughter me if I say that it is – but a distilled version of survival, a distilled version of UI, tutorials, story.…