Innehållsförteckning för July 2024 från Edge

In E397’s Soundbytes we suggested that wanting to curtail the rise of achievements and other such “meaningless rewards” in videogames might be something worth exploring. It didn’t take long for a dissenting opinion to arrive, as you can see in Dispatches (p22). And fair enough. When it comes down to it, we shouldn’t be telling anyone how to play games, not least because following someone else’s rules doesn’t feel especially compatible with the very idea of leisure time. In fact, some of the most fun we’ve ever had playing games has involved defying expectations in order to see what might happen. Driving PS1 Ridge Racer’s cars in literally the opposite direction from where they were supposed to be headed was how we discovered that its tracks had secret mirrored modes,…

The name of Caroline Marchal’s studio is a real scene-setter. In 2016, when Marchal first decided to go solo after nearly two decades at Quantic Dream and Sony, she called on ex-colleague Steve Kniebihly for help picking a name, and he suggested ‘Interior/Night’. “I immediately thought it was perfect,” she says. “It evoked the warm atmosphere of a lit-up cabin at night, in the forest. A place where you can gather with your friends to tell stories.” Of course, it evokes something else too: the screenwriting convention for quickly establishing a scene. At a time when videogames’ influence on TV and film have never been greater, Marchal and Interior/Night are seeking to bring the two closer together, but from the opposite direction. As Dusk Falls, its debut, charged you…

“I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.” “I’m sure I deserve a lot of criticism, but I don’t think my team or companies deserve all the criticism.” ”They would be thrilled to have [their] characters in Fortnite, but just only if it’s on their platform.” “I know a lot of people in the games industry that would like to work with an actor because of what we bring, the craft we bring. I don’t think you can program craft.”…

One day in the early 2000s, I was lunched by a couple of editors at a broadsheet newspaper, who asked what I thought of the then-speculative notion of ‘convergence’: that all our different gadgets would eventually become one super-gadget that did everything. I nodded sagely and brought forth my Psion 5mx pocket computer, with its gorgeous touch-typable qwerty keyboard, and the Sony Ericsson phone by means of which it communicated with newspaper and magazine ‘wires’ (servers), via infrared and 3G data. These things would remain separate, I announced like some kind of reverse Nostradamus, because to combine them would compromise the efficiency of each too much. Half a decade later, the iPhone came out, and before long I was proved comprehensively wrong. Or was I, perhaps, just before my time?…

The Roguelike’s rise to prominence seems borderline unstoppable. Not content with conquering the indie space, its structure has been borrowed by games of greater scale. If the likes of Spelunky and Hades have encouraged smaller studios to follow their lead, it’s probably Housemarque’s blistering Returnal we have to thank for the likes of God Of War: Ragnarok and The Last Of Us Part II featuring Roguelike game modes as DLC and an additional extra for the remastered edition respectively. Even Nintendo’s been getting in on the act lately, with Splatoon 3’s Side Order addon. Splitting the difference is The Rogue Prince Of Persia, which sees Ubisoft collaborating with Evil Empire, the team most responsible for Dead Cells’ various expansions. The Prince’s time-rewinding abilities make him feel at home in a…

Developer Dogubomb Publisher Raw Fury Format PC Origin Release US TBA 2024 An immutable rule in fiction says that any eccentric old person who passes away at the story’s outset must never bequeath a property to a relative without first drawing up a will insisting they fulfil a specific condition to get their hands on it. For the protagonist of this firstperson puzzler, the catch sounds relatively straightforward. On Herbert Sinclair’s Mount Holly estate sits a 45-room mansion; his grandnephew Simon must find the hidden Room 46, within which is the physical deed to the property. A simple enough task for a brilliant young mind such as Simon’s, the dead man suggests – though there’s another catch. “Do not assume the rooms you find today will be the same rooms…

Developer/ publisher Nathan O Marsh Format PC Origin US Release TBA 2024 (Part One out now) Wildlife documentaries can be a life-affirming source of wonder. Equally, they can serve as a reality check, a reminder that nature is often as brutal as it is beautiful. It’s a potent, often emotionally overwhelming combination – one which solo developer Nathan Marsh masterfully taps into with his debut game, South Scrimshaw, a visual novel that follows a baby whale and its mother trying to survive in an alien ocean. It’s speculative fiction told through the format of a documentary, exploring everything from the germination processes of a marine sprout to the lifecycle of an alien ecosystem. With only the first chapter released so far, South Scrimshaw is an ongoing project for Marsh –…

As Supergiant’s art director, Jen Zee (left) has defined the studio’s visual signature since 2011’s Bastion. Her distinctive character designs for Hades were central to its success, attracting players in more ways than one. Here, she discusses the process of delivering a contemporary twist on the gods of Greek mythology, the surprising martial-arts influence on one newcomer, and the importance of tonality. What sort of conversations do you have about a character before coming up with their design? Over the years, Greg and I have developed a process that provides just enough creative boundaries to make appealing characters that fit the story and also feel that they come from our hearts. From the start of development of the original Hades, we agreed it was important to draw upon classical source…

Format PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series Developer Mossmouth, BlitWorks Publisher Mossmouth Origin US, Spain Release 2020 Five little words that can spell doom in Spelunky 2: “Your voice echoes in here…” The game never explains their precise meaning, but for longtime explorers it’s no great mystery. After enough trips through these procedurally generated dungeons, you begin to observe recurring shapes in their seemingly infinite variety of levels, which are after all constructed from a finite collection of building blocks – ‘rooms’, in the game’s parlance. In most levels, these rooms are stacked four by four, for a total of 16. Should you be greeted at a level’s entrance with this phrase, however, that means you’re about to face one 36 rooms deep. You might well never see the…

Arguably not since Spelunky 2 and Hades in E350 (we’d love to pretend it’s more than serendipity that both are making their return to Edge this issue) have two major games released in close proximity felt in quite such close conversation. Strictly speaking, Animal Well and Lorelei And The Laser Eyes belong to different genres, but in so many ways their primary intent is to evoke similar feelings. Both carry an aura of mystery and danger despite being combat-free.Both have been designed to leave much unsaid or unexplained, and to leave their endings beyond easy reach. “We suspect very few will make it to its conclusion” reads a letter from Simogo supplied with our review code, while Billy Basso has suggested that Animal Well’s final layer may take years to…

Developer Rabbit & Bear Studios Publisher 505 Games Format PC (tested), PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series Release Out now Talking up the quantities rather than qualities of a game is par for the course these days, but to put it so boldly in the title naturally heightens player expectations. Indeed, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes’ final tally of recruitable allies exceeds what is promised. Although Rabbit & Bear Studios doesn’t quite manage to furnish every cast member with equal depth of character, they’re nonetheless a uniquely drawn bunch from a great many walks of life – all marching under the banner of idealistic young Nowa, who goes from joining the peace-keeping Watch as a self-confessed ‘meddler’ to building a resistance against the Galdean Empire. Under the political scheming of…

SFB’s retro-styled horror begins by rewinding to 1990. It’s where this story starts, but the date also hints toward where it calls back – a little earlier than its main inspirations, perhaps, albeit a year after Tokuro Fujiwara’s genre-sparking Sweet Home. It’s an agenda-setting moment for a game with the hallmarks of a blow-away-the-cobwebs lockdown project extended well beyond its original scope. Which doesn’t mean it’s bloated – its taut six-hour runtime is comparable with the classics – but rather that this is an evident labour of love, packed with atmosphere, detail and character. You wonder if the pandemic directly inspired the theme: you need merely add an ‘r’ to Covid, after all, to get the family of birds whose presence looms large over this abandoned amusement park. As investigating…

Developer Odd Meter Publisher 11 Bit Studios Format PC Release Out now The young nun trudges up the wet dirt path that carves the snow in two, steel pail in hand. Arriving at the well, she places it down, grabbing the chain attached to the well’s own bucket before turning the handle to lower it into the water. When it reaches the bottom, she winds the handle in the opposite direction to winch it back up, before pouring its contents into her own receptacle, retracing her steps back to a barrel into which she must deposit the water. Against this starkly convincing backdrop, a pop-up displayed in bright orange pixels appears – making it clear that this is the first of five identical back-and-forth trips that Indika, under our guidance,…

GAME Game Boy Camera Gallery: Mystery Show bit.ly/artstopping The Game Boy Camera remains one of the great videogame follies: the kind of idea that makes no sense whatsoever and yet is somehow strangely essential. Over the years it has retained its curious allure, such that Scratching Post Studio has now created a new iteration of its Game Boy Camera Gallery – effectively an interactive exhibition of photos taken with the hardware. The latest situates its imagery within a haunted house, which feels wholly fitting: the grainy results always had an inherently cursed quality, after all. As you study them, though, you’ll find yourself in a ghostly point-andclick adventure, as a spectral presence makes itself known and your inquisitive reporter begins to investigate. It’s gently spooky rather than scary, but, like…

Can games be art? Apologies to anyone who’s just suffered a flashback to the pop-culture wars of the mid-’00s, but that’s not how I mean it. That matter has surely been long settled – indeed, in an academic talk, at the very event where this question begins swirling, it’s proposed that videogames might constitute a ‘total’ artform, the Gesamtkunstwerk sought by Wagner in the 1840s. Lest we fall down that rabbit hole, though, I should be more specific. The event in question is Somerset House’s Now Play This exhibition. The question in question is: Can games function in the context of traditional art, framed on a gallery wall? Now Play This has been a stalwart of the London Games Festival since their shared origin in 2014. Those ten years haven’t…

Developer Everstone Studio Publisher NetEase Format PC Origin China Release 2024 Over a dozen or so hours we cover a lot of ground in Everstone’s RPG, but it doesn’t feel like adventuring so much as rambling. Rarely do we pick a point on the map, place a marker and head off as the crow flies. Instead, we may as well be obeying the breeze, as we sway between eye-catching sights and curious situations. When our time with the game is over, we don’t necessarily understand how everything works, only that there’s plenty of it, and at no point were we anything less than engrossed. In the opening region of Where Winds Meet, Qinghe, play seems to be dictated by an overwhelming sense of serenity. Sure, violence erupts now and again, but we…

Gwyn, Lord Of Cinder, falls beneath your sword. It’s the culmination of a long, hard journey, after many hours fighting your way through this ceaselessly hostile world. Now, as the music fades away, all that’s left to do is choose. Will you preserve the Age Of Fire, or beckon in an era of darkness? It’s a significant question, with resounding consequences, yet many who reach the ending of Dark Souls might ask themselves another one entirely: What on Earth just happened? To answer that question fully, you’ll need to piece together the descriptions of hundreds of items found throughout Lordran, and cryptic conversations with NPCs. It’s a tall order, enough that even VaatiVidya, the YouTuber whose name has become practically synonymous with ‘lore’ over the past decade, has to admit:…

Entering Splash Damage’s offices, in the leafy London borough of Bromley, we’re immediately greeted by the studio’s mission statement, filling one of the reception area’s walls: “We make team-based games that forge lifelong friendships”. Our inner cynic might be tempted to write it off as a bit of corporate malarkey, were it not for the rest of the architecture backing up the assertion. The entire ground floor (save for a row of PCs at the far end where an internal playtesting session is currently underway) is a dedicated social space, host to everything from staff boardgame nights to life-drawing classes. Meanwhile, the company’s servers are displayed, behind what we’re told is pressurised glass, at the entrance to the cafeteria. “A home away from home” is how Splash Damage co-founder and…

Q+A, Billy Basso, creator, Animal Well Billy Basso (right) began making Animal Well as a solo hobbyist side project seven years ago, before eventually committing to developing the game full-time – bringing on former Nintendo and Xbox alumnus Dan Adelman for marketing assistance and then becoming the first signing for Bigmode, an independent publisher set up by YouTube personality Jason ‘Dunkey’ Gastrow and his wife, Leah. Here, Basso reflects on the challenges and successes of the game’s long development journey. When we first discussed Animal Well two years ago, you talked about wanting to blend Metroidvania and survival horror, and the subsequent tension between empowerment and disempowerment. Did you consciously keep that in mind throughout development, and did you find yourself leaning more towards one over the other? It’s definitely…

For Stellar Blade’s protagonist Eve, certainty is a slippery commodity. When she lands on a broken Earth from an orbiting space colony flanked by a squadron of buxom warriors, her purpose is clear: find and kill the Alpha Naytiba, the prime mover among a plague of grotesques that wrecked the planet and sent humanity packing. When her sisters in arms are decimated, though, she begins to discover that things aren’t so straightforward, and there’s more to do besides parrying, pirouetting and impaling monsters. As Eve confronts an identity crisis, however, Stellar Blade goes through one of its own. Indeed, the only real certainty here is that Shift Up wants to pay homage to Nier: Automata. The soundtrack, which includes contributions from Automata composer Keiichi Okabe, is a giveaway, but so…

Asa spiritual successor to the Suikoden series created by the late Yoshitaka Murayama, Eiyuden Chronicle has been a major undertaking for Tokyo’s Rabbit & Bear Studios, particularly its three development leads, all former Konami employees. Here, designer Junko Kawano (who worked with Murayama on the first two entries), producer and art director Junichi Murakami and director Osamu Komuta tell us about remaining faithful to the PS1 era of JRPGs, as well as the benefits of using modern technology. How did this collaboration between Konami veterans – some of whom had not previously worked together – come about? Junko Kawano There was actually a setting where ex-Konami people were coming together for celebratory drinking events. These meetings were not intended for any other purpose, but we were reaching a certain age,…

Developer ILCA Publisher Bandai Namco Format PC, PS4, PS5 (tested), Xbox Series Release Out now As dry, barren places that can stretch for miles with little variation in the landscape, deserts hardly seem the ideal choice for an open-world game. Based on the manga of the same name, from the pen of the late-lamented Akira Toriyama, ILCA’s adaptation captures the atmosphere of a desert perfectly. Not surprisingly, the game suffers for it. Part action adventure, part Mad Max road trip, Sand Land follows demon prince Beelzebub, sheriff Rao, and old trickster Thief as they travel across the country in search of a legendary spring to bring water to the citizens. Along the way they meet mechanic Ann and uncover the real reason for the absence of water, while also helping…

Game Pac-Man’s Pixel Bash For Charity Manufacturer Bandai Namco One of the things that maintains our interest in the arcade scene is that, in among all the predictable fodder that emerges every year, it’s still capable of throwing up surprises. We didn’t expect, for example, that this month Bandai Namco would reveal a new coin-op that is all about raising money not for the operator’s bank account but for good causes. Pac-Man’s Pixel Bash For Charity is a rejigged version of the 2018 Pixel Bash cabinet, a more upright kind of stance increasing its chances of standing out next to machines with shinier gimmicks. Crucially, the remodelled unit has transparent panels in its base, allowing you to see just how much dosh could be on its way to a local…

Rage against the machine As a 19-year-old whose last physical magazine subscription was to Doctor Who Adventures, I am ecstatic to have found Edge. As someone whose concerns shifted to my undergrad and filmmaking, I have been swayed back into the gaming industry. It has been fascinating to read about indie games, industry personalities, and about the dire state of the industry for its hard-working developers. Reading well-written pieces on gaming has been refreshing, especially after the hours spent on clickbait articles and unfounded videos. Which leads me on to my concern. It seems that so much of the discourse surrounding the gaming industry has morphed into a Pretty Hype Machine. Gaming companies, publications, celebrities and social-media pundits have dedicated themselves to clickbait titles and teasers surrounding new hardware or…

So I played a game today – a charming indie affair with lush character designs and gorgeous animation. Characters were going through dramas and tight situations articulated in a low-key style, but it was always OK because every time something difficult was raised, the other characters were just really, really nice about it. Everyone was understanding and, honestly? Pretty cool. Certain individuals were confused, yes, but their social group never piled on the pressure. It was a supportive, warm and wholesome environment. I hated it. can understand the desire to create games like this – ‘cosy narratives’, if you will: our real world can be a bleak place full of undeserved suffering and intractable problems. We’ve seen in the past decade how callous the powerful are, and how much…

Developer Publisher Format Origin Release Evil Empire Ubisoft PC France Out now (Early Access) Few long-running videogame protagonists seem quite as well suited to starring in a Roguelike as the Prince Of Persia. The variations of the character point to a legend told and retold, the details changing a little each time: we surely needn’t elaborate why this makes him a comfortable fit for the genre in a narrative sense. And his temporal powers – not present in Jordan Mechner’s original vision but long since established as part of the deal – handily dovetail with the live-dierepeat structure of the Roguelike. Evil Empire, the development team set up by Motion Twin to take custody of Dead Cells so it could pursue other projects, clearly thought so, too. As game director Lucie Dewagnier tells it, at…

Developer Arbitrary Metric Publisher Serenity Forge Format PC, Switch Origin UK, US Release TBA 2024 At the end of the day, you walk into the sea. And who could blame you? After all, at this luxury resort, you are the only one doing any work: for its handful of demanding guests you must be bellboy, concierge, waiter, repairman, cleaner, mixologist and all-round gofer. Deliver this message, check me in, fix the lift, fetch me a margarita. There is a forlorn quality to your trudge down the beach as evening turns to night. Perhaps partly because you know you’re going to have to do the same thing again tomorrow – and, indeed, the following day. As if to rub it in, the final thing you see as you step toward…

Game Hades II Developer/publisher Supergiant Games Format PC Release Out now (Early Access) Surprise is one of the foundational principles of any good Roguelike. The potential of procedural chaos is the tradeoff for surrendering a degree of authorial craft – the heart of this genre, after all, is found in those moments when systems combine in unexpected ways to produce unanticipated results. More simply, every Roguelike run should be in some way notably distinct from the last. Which, particularly with the announcement of Slay The Spire 2 fresh in our minds, naturally raises a few questions when it comes to making sequels in this genre. When your audience already knows what to expect, how do you recapture that all-important element of surprise – particularly when you’re an established studio that…

Game developers and publishers have always competed for our time, but the fight has never been more desperate than in recent years. According to VG Insights’ 2024 PC games market report, the number of games released on Steam has been shooting up of late, especially since the COVID pandemic, from a total of 9,907 in 2020 to 13,900 in 2023. Simultaneously, more of those games are hoping to monopolise a player’s attention for years on end. The 2023 Game Development Report, from Griffin Gaming Partners and Rendered VC, found that over 500 studios – 95 per cent of those surveyed – are currently working on a service game in some capacity. It’s not hard to see why this might be the case: you need look no further than Fortnite’s impact…

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door Switch Yes, fans have been clamouring for a remake for years, but Nintendo isn’t one to cave to demand (Mother 3, anyone?) and this makes for a curious choice of revival in many ways. Since TTYD, the Paper Mario games have consciously strayed from the traditional formula – partly to differentiate the series from the Mario & Luigi RPGs (that they’re not around any more might provide one hint as to why Nintendo has relented). Their return to the Mushroom Kingdom, meanwhile – as discussed by Intelligent Systems – was down to the parent company establishing new branding rules around its mascot. As such, it’s a surprise that Nintendo would opt to remind us what we’ve been missing, in an adventure that takes Mario to…

Simogo’s ninth release – a puzzler clad in the garb of Nouvelle Vague cinema and late-’90s survival horror – is, if you hadn’t already guessed, a game of contrasts. That is immediately clear as a stylishly attired woman arrives at her destination in a utilitarian car. Within its glove box is both a digital instruction booklet for the game you’re about to play (dating back ten years) and a typewritten letter from your host, with a hand-scrawled signature, the date (1962), and two words underlined in deep pink – the first colour you see in this monochromatic world. Already, then, the lines between fiction and reality have been blurred, matching the indistinct quality of the Polaroid image that subsequently falls out: a woman’s corpse, face locked in an anguished scream,…

They say a change is as good as a rest, and Tales Of Kenzera: Zau is a case in point. Metroidvania games are so abundant these days that you may indeed feel like a break before you dive into yet another, especially one that borrows liberally from Moon Studios’ Ori games and bears more than a passing resemblance to Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown. But by planting its feet in a cultural idiom rarely seen in games of any kind, Tales Of Kenzera underlines the value of transporting the familiar to new horizons, and excavating the mythologies within. A sad reality is brought to the surface here – that we don’t see much of Africa in videogames, and when we do it’s often depicted as a modern war zone,…

Developer Arika Publisher Nintendo Format Switch Release Out now Arika has been working with Nintendo for two decades now, but even the Shinagawa-based studio must have been surprised when it got the call to make a new entry in its genteel scuba-diving series. It has, after all, been 17 years since the Wii original and 14 since follow-up Adventures Of The Deep. Perhaps, though, its resurrection is about more than just a trawl through the archives, the delay to Switch’s successor having left Nintendo – keeping its biggest guns in reserve for its arrival – with an empty release calendar to fill. An audience that looks back on their Wii with nostalgic fondness is reasonably well catered for here – albeit in some ways more than others. Luminous’s central conceit…