Innehållsförteckning för #63 från Wireframe Magazine

Info GENRE Detective, stealth, simulation FORMAT PC DEVELOPER ColePowered Games PUBLISHER Fireshine Games RELEASE 2022 SOCIAL @ColePowered The hyper-industrialised, eighties-inspired metropolis your character finds themselves in is full of unsolved mysteries. But that’s OK, because developer ColePowered Games hasn’t managed to solve them, either. Unlike most detective adventures, which lay down a predetermined trail of breadcrumbs to create the illusion of an investigation, in Shadows of Doubt, any clue or hint you piece together is procedurally generated. The only thing players can rely on, as they try to catch a killer on the loose, is their own wit and instinct. This is a game that will truly let them step into the role of a hard-boiled private eye. Creating a simulated sci-fi noir city – especially one populated by NPCs…

01. Embrace the chaos The year of major developer acquisitions rages on; Embracer Group’s agreement to snap up revered studios like Crystal Dynamics, Eidos-Montréal, and others from Square Enix for the mere sum of $300 million being the latest example. Such a move would be viewed as monumental a year ago, but now all bets are off since Microsoft’s $70 billion Activision Blizzard purchase. The reason for Square Enix selling off most of its western arm? “The transaction enables the launch of new businesses by moving forward with investments in fields including blockchain, AI, and the cloud,” a statement read. Are you going to tell them, or should we? 02. Off the ball Following months of rumours that FIFA and publisher EA would be parting ways, the latter has finally…

We chat with the creators, developers, and community members about the potential for Panic’s new handheld Launched in April 2022, the Playdate is a pocket-sized console that, with its tiny crank jutting out of the side of its yellow case, is both striking and unique. Despite a series of production delays brought about by the pandemic, the Playdate enjoyed a positive release, with critics largely won over by its lo-fi charms and library of inventive games. What makes Playdate such an intriguing proposition for indie developers, though, is that it’s an open system, designed to encourage users to make and share their own games. Key to Playdate’s ease of development is a small team of people at Panic Inc., the Portland, Oregon-based studio that produces the Playdate in tandem with…

AUTHOR MARK VANSTONE As the seventies turned into the eighties, Nintendo began a line of handheld games: the Game & Watch. Created by Gunpei Yokoi, these featured a liquid crystal screen and simple controls – often just left and right buttons. One such game was Fire, where the player had to control a pair of firefighters as they attempted to save people jumping out of a burning building. Although the moving graphics were monochrome, there was a colour overlay showing the burning building, the ground, and the ambulance. These LCD game graphics weren’t drawn with a matrix of pixels like a computer game, but had a defined set of areas on the screen where shapes could appear. This limited the variations of possible graphics in one game, and due to…

“I always saw this as my dream job, and I always told people this is what I wanted to do” What was the game that first made you want to get into games? I grew up on the coast of Cornwall in Newquay, where there were a lot of arcades. So for me, it was a game called Black Tiger, which was a kind of platformer. It pulled me in and turned me into a bit of an arcade rat. Then I really got into pen-and-paper gaming and role-playing, specifically a role-playing game called Call of Cthulhu. I was also a fan of the DOOM PC game when it first came out. One day, my mum cut out an article from the paper – an interview with Sandy Petersen, a…

Info GENRE Strategy, puzzle FORMAT PC DEVELOPER Toukana Interactive PUBLISHER Toukana Interactive PRICE £10.99 RELEASE Out now SOCIAL @_Toukana The electricity bill is enormous. I’ve become like my father, turning off unused lights and radios playing to no one. As I tut and grumble my way around the house, it strikes me that I had no idea of the stresses and strains of being an adult back in my childhood days, when I would gambol innocently up and down the stairs, deploying toys as trip hazards. I’ve begun to understand his irritation when I rejected perfectly good food with a screwed-up grimace. Do you know how much food costs these days? Dorfromantik understands. Remarkably, the four German students that make up Toukana Interactive have formulated the perfect antidote to the…

HIGHLIGHT Mitch’s coming-of-age experience is neatly expressed in a scene where Louise allows him to drive their Cadillac on the open road. Twitchy controls suitably emulate Mitch’s nerves as you try not to veer into the desert and cautiously overtake a couple of slow drivers. If only there were more hands-on sequences like this. Info GENRE Story-driven point-and-click adventure FORMAT PC (tested) / Switch / XBO / PS4 / PS5 DEVELOPER Warsaw Film School PUBLISHER Klabater PRICE £16.49 RELEASE Out now SOCIAL @best_month_ever VERDICT A classic American road trip story that only partially does the genre justice. 55% Road trips are the perfect vehicle for a coming-of-age story, especially one that exposes the hidden underbelly of a society, pushing its fringe elements and miscreants to the surface. Best Month Ever!…

It’s honestly a surprise that it’s taken five years into the hardware’s life before Nintendo finally decided to bring back its game-changing killer app from the Wii era. Naysayers may believe we’re over motion controls, but once a Joy-Con is in your hand and you’re swinging it like it’s a racquet, the simple joy of virtual sports comes back to the living room. Just like it was the perfectly intuitive proof of concept for Wii Sports over 15 years ago, Tennis remains a classic, as does Bowling, the latter’s mechanics making one minor change in that you no longer have to take your finger off the trigger to release the bowling ball. Sword fighting also returns from sequel Wii Sports Resort, albeit renamed as Chambara (a Japanese term, often relating…

The games for… BIG ADVENTURES Elden Ring / Bandai Namco  / 95% (Issue 61) Assassin’s Creed Odyssey / Ubisoft / 93% (Issue 1) Yakuza: Like a Dragon / Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio / 90% (Issue 45) Amnesia: Rebirth / Frictional Games / 87% (Issue 46) Death’s Door / Acid Nerve / 87% (Issue 55) The Last Campfire / Hello Games / 86% (Issue 47) Resident Evil 2 / Capcom / 86% (Issue 7) Journey to the Savage Planet / Typhoon Studios / 84% (Issue 33) The Outer Worlds / Obsidian Entertainment / 84% (Issue 28) Eastward / Pixpil / 84% (Issue 57) The games for… REPEATED PLAY Hades / Supergiant Games / 94% (Issue 44) They Are Billions / Numantian Games / 88% (Issue 20) Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice / FromSoftware…

Head in the clouds One aspect of retro gaming I’ve admittedly always been quite ignorant of is the social element. True, I’m not short on childhood memories of trying to see Golden Axe through to the end credits with a co-op buddy (which never happened, by the way). But in this modern age, I’ve wrongly considered the act of revisiting classic games to be more of a solo exercise. Is this any surprise, seeing as no one in my immediate friendship group wants to dig out their old Game Boy Color to authentically trade Machokes with me in Pokémon Blue using a link cable? It’s an oddly specific scenario, I know. Jam.gg, formerly known as Piepacker, is a cloud-based online game streaming service that aims to change the false-mindedness of…

MEDIA MOLECULE / 2013 / PS VITA, PLAYSTATION 4 Your fingers are powerful enough tools on any handheld console, but none more so than Sony’s ill-fated PSP successor. With its dual analogue sticks, gyroscopic motion controls, and appropriately “clackety” shoulder buttons, the Vita represented a significant technical step up from what Sony had tried before. It was a clear attempt to create the Rolls Royce of portable gaming devices. That said, while having multiple input methods seemed like a great way to offer players more ways to impact the in-game worlds they’d explore, it could be argued that packing in almost too many bells and whistles ultimately contributed to the PS Vita’s downfall, too. Developers simply didn’t know how to incorporate everything naturally – especially the Vita’s rear touchpad functionality.…

Info GENRE Management, business simulation FORMAT PC / PS4 / PS5 / XBO / XB S/X / Switch DEVELOPER Two Point Studios PUBLISHER Sega RELEASE 9 August 2022 SOCIAL @TwoPointStudios For the next game set in its quirky county, developer Two Point Studios is taking us back to school – or university, to be more exact. This campus is sure to operate differently to most, though, simply because you get to design it yourself. Spy School? Wizardry? There’s seemingly no class (however bonkers) that’s off the table. Two Point Campus follows in the footsteps of Two Point Hospital, the team’s 2018 spiritual successor to Theme Hospital, but this time madcap illnesses are swapped for courses with an expectedly oddball spin. Nurturing students from enrolment to graduation just became fun. “We…

Wildfrost Chucklefish’s penchant for publishing indies with a cutesy art style runs right through Wildfrost, a new card-based roguelike appropriately set to arrive in winter this year. Banishing the titular blight and protecting the town of Snowdwell will involve recruiting an ever-changing suite of card companions, and equipping them with unique charms to buff your deck’s powers. Endless replayability amidst the cold awaits! TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge Some of the best beat-’em-ups ever made – both at home and in arcades – centre on four anthropomorphic reptiles battling through the city streets in the name of pizza. That’s why, as a 16-bit style throwback, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge looks well-positioned to recapture some nineties brawler magic. With its sprites and chiptune soundtrack inspired by the classic TV series, surely…

What began as a casual experiment has grown into an obsession. It all began when I purchased a Sega Game Gear – a battered relic from the early nineties that, like so many others, had long since stopped working. But doing a bit of research online revealed that it’s actually quite simple to resurrect a Game Gear by changing its capacitors – and so, despite not having touched a soldering iron for years, I ordered the components and set about trying to get the tired old console working again. Flushed with success, I fixed another Game Gear. Then I discovered that it’s possible to buy replacement screens – modern LCD screens that offer a substantial upgrade over the existing one – so I installed one of those. Before I knew…

GAME Shadows of Doubt DEVELOPER ColePowered Games RELEASE 2022 WEBSITE colepowered.com Although the mystery players are tasked with solving is always entirely randomised, lead developer Cole Jefferies still cites Shadows of Doubt (see page 14) as having elements of handcrafted design that helps complement the city’s procedurally generated elements elsewhere. Such a healthy blend ensures that a fresh experience is offered up every time, while the environment still retains its noir atmosphere – making it feel like a living, breathing place. “When you boil a procedural game down enough, you’ll usually find elements that need to be handcrafted and modularised to some extent,” says Jefferies. “For us, it’s mostly about the space; the interiors of buildings feature manually designed layouts with designated areas for different purposes – think apartments, shops,…

Are you a solo developer working on a game you want to share with Wireframe? If you’d like to have your project featured in these pages, get in touch with us at wfmag.cc/hello Like many people during March 2020’s initial lockdown, history undergrad Louis Waloschek sought a creative avenue that he could pour time into when not tied up with university work. Having already made a small name for himself by making mods within the Minecraft community, game development seemed like a great choice – especially since it’d also be an opportunity to tie in his love for his chosen area of study. The one thing he didn’t have at that time, however, was a love of lizards. “It started because I was teaching my friend how to code at…

Consistency is key when building a science fiction universe. None more so than Warhammer 40K, though, where it continues to evolve and expand into multiple mediums. Games Workshop’s fantasy magnum opus may have started out as a war miniatures game played on tabletop, but it didn’t take long for its space military stylings to also invade books, films, and of course, video games; It hasn’t really stopped since 40K was first dreamed up in 1987. But how do you maintain the property’s consistency in all these facets, ensuring that every new series instalment is in keeping with the established tone and (perhaps more importantly) what your fan base has come to expect? Well, when it comes to sound at least, it helps to have an experienced ear you can always…

HIGHLIGHT There are at least plenty of different guns to play with in Wildcat Gun Machine, with new models to find or purchase appearing throughout. Range, fire rate, and power are the variables to consider when picking your loadout, or simply whether you prefer dealing death by laser, flamethrower, or ricocheting buzzsaws. Info GENRE Twin-stick shooter FORMAT Switch (tested) /PC / PS4 / XBO DEVELOPER Chunkybox Games PUBLISHER Daedelic Entertainment PRICE £12.99 RELEASE Out now SOCIAL @ChunkyboxGames VERDICT An arcade-style shooter with plodding pace and underwhelming audio. 45% It’s a good name, right? Wildcat. Gun. Machine. Words that invoke images of adrenaline-laced shootouts, chunky ordnance, screenfuls of bullets, and pounding industrial music. While Wildcat Gun Machine is a twin-stick shooter, however, it rarely hits those highs. Not so much a…

For a chap with such a big appetite, Kirby’s always been something of a lightweight in the platforming world – this is, after all, a character who doesn’t need to rely on precise jumps when he can just puff out his cheeks and float in the air. But with 2022 being his 30th anniversary, HAL Laboratory has decided to raise his game, having finally pulled the pink puffball into the third dimension, for a second new mainline outing that’s appeared on the Switch before Nintendo’s other heavyweight sequels. But if the post-apocalyptic world Kirby finds himself in, with its abandoned shopping malls and buildings reclaimed by nature, has the air of execs wanting to make an edgier sequel in the mould of The Last of Us, rest assured this is…

What in Carnation?! Schnumn / Free in browser / wfmag.cc/carnation An incredibly sweet, funny, and well-written short visual novel, centred around students with autism who meet at a university’s botany club. A warm, empathetic depiction of social awkwardness and overwhelming social situations, brought to life through a sort of narrative meta humour that finds the fun in constant self-analysis. The prose is full of lovely, jubilant details, making playing feel like the closest thing to leaving your computer and touching grass without actually having to deal with the world outside. It also reminded me to water my plants, which they’re very thankful for. Sorry, We’re Open Oates / Name your own / wfmag.cc/sorry-open Part surreal management game, part uncannily mundane horror JRPG, this darkly comic headfudge does for supermarket management…

1 Elden Ring / 95% (Issue 61) A game of massive scale, packed with intelligence and mystery. A towering achievement. 2 Disco Elysium / 94% (Issue 28) Smarter and deeper than anything else; truly an RPG in a class completely of its own. 3 Hades / 94% (Issue 44) Proving ‘roguelike’ isn’t a dirty word, learning-and-dying is a joy from start to finish. 4 Assassin’s Creed Odyssey / 93% (Issue 1) The point where Ubisoft realised over-the-top adventures were the right direction. 5 Telling Lies / 92% (Issue 24) This FMV mystery asks more of the player than most, with rewards to match. 6 If Found / 92% (Issue 44) A compelling and beautifully illustrated narrative, as moving as it is memorable. 7 Yakuza: Like a Dragon / 90% (Issue 45) A…

There are certain sorts of restaurants I’ve read about – the posh ones I can’t afford – where they’ll keep bringing out surprise dishes in between courses. You’ve finished your starter of wild mushrooms, and all of a sudden a waiter will shove a tiny plate of deliciousness under your nose. You didn’t ask for it, you weren’t expecting it, but crikey does it taste good. I’ve managed to get a vague insight into how this feels with a couple of shoot-‘em-ups that have unexpectedly emerged this year. One was Sol Cresta, PlatinumGames’ surprise sequel to defunct developer Nichibutsu’s shooters of the eighties and nineties. It was a surprise for two reasons: one, it was a wonder why anyone would revive a series that hardly anyone outside Japan remembers in…

With every game, inkle has pushed its narrative-based games in bold new directions. 80 Days was a globetrotting adventure drenched in intrigue; Heaven’s Vault was a sci-fi epic about an archaeologist digging through tantalising clues on a strange alien world; Overboard! was a mischievous murder mystery where you played the killer. Its latest project, A Highland Song, is bolder still – an unusual combination of survival adventure, platformer, and rhythm-action game. Lead designer and studio co-founder Joseph Humfrey cites Jordan Mechner’s Prince of Persia, the animated films of Studio Ghibli, and his own teenage years hiking in Scotland as inspirations. A Highland Song is still as narrative-driven as inkle’s previous games, but as Humfrey himself says, it’s a story driven by its visuals and music rather than dialogue. Those varied…

Info GENRE Adventure FORMAT PC / Mac DEVELOPER HiWarp PUBLISHER HiWarp RELEASE TBC SOCIAL @HiWarp In picturesque Murcia, south-east Spain, indie developer Elwin Gorman has spent the past five years quietly making visually inventive, highly personal games. After a few false starts, he embarked on PiAwk in 2017 – an adventure-puzzler about a bird-like creature exploring a devastated 2D landscape. Two years later, during a bit of downtime, Gorman came up with the initial prototype for what would become NAIAD: the story of a water nymph and her journey up a lush river. According to Gorman, the two projects then “grew up in parallel”, with work on one occasionally giving way to the other. “Every day I think about PiAwk and NAIAD,” he tells us, “about how I’m going to…

Well, here it is: the world’s first hipster handheld. Announced in 2019, this is Panic Inc. and Teenage Engineering’s artisanal, craft beer take on a portable console: it’s retro, cute, and wilfully offbeat. Its talking point is, of course, the crank on the side – an addition that seems so counter-intuitive that it positively invites attention. How does it feel? Is it much more than a gimmick? The only way to find out, really, is by trying it out for yourself. Measuring a diminutive 76 × 74 × 9 mm, the Playdate’s considerably smaller than most mobile phones or other handheld gaming devices on the market – Valve’s Steam Deck looks positively titanic by comparison. But it’s also weighty and solid, and even the crank, which folds out from an…

Find out more at: 8bitdo.com/pro2 WORTH £30 Those lovely, lovely people over at 8BitDo are offering a free Pro 2 controller for UK subscribers. Simply take out a 12-month subscription to Wireframe magazine and you’ll receive one of these fabulous pads, compatible with Nintendo Switch, PC, iOS, Android, Raspberry Pi, and Steam devices. With custom profile switching, an ultra-comfortable design, and a generous 3 m-long USB cable, the 8BitDo Pro 2 is a versatile controller for gamers of all kinds. Here are all those specs in more detail: Two Pro-level back paddle buttons Custom Profile switch button, three profiles, switch on the fly Ultimate Software (Windows) Enhanced grip Modifiable vibration Adjustable hair triggers Customisable turbo function Plug-and-play SUBSCRIBE TODAY! £45 for 12 months UK ONLY Visit wfmag.cc/freecontroller or call 01293…

AUTHOR BEN EVERARD Ben’s house is slowly being taken over by 3D printers. He plans to solve this by printing an extension, once he gets enough printers. hsmag.cc Download the code from GitHub: wfmag.cc/wfmag63 Over at HackSpace magazine, we tried to 3D-print a guitar, but misunderstood the stresses on the neck and oriented the neck in the wrong direction on the print bed. This was made worse by us printing in a cold room that may have affected the layer adhesion strength. It may not have worked even if we’d done everything right, since there are a lot of forces on the neck of a guitar and it has to hold up to them very well in order to work. The end result was that the neck snapped in many…

How Nintendo grew from a small playing card business to the gaming giant we know today Nintendo is globally recognised as the company behind hits such as Super Mario Bros., Metroid, and The Legend of Zelda. But its history goes much further back than the period in the 1980s when it first became a household name. In 1889, Japanese businessman Fusajirō Yamauchi founded Nintendo as Nintendo Koppai, a card manufacturer on Shōmen-dōri street in Kyoto. From these humble beginnings, it grew into one of Japan’s largest playing card companies, before pivoting into other products like toys and electronics. Nintendo rarely talks at length about its pre-video game history, but it helps explain how the company came to be: from its early targeting of families with its products to why it…

Are you a solo developer working on a game you want to share with Wireframe? If you’d like to have your project featured in these pages, get in touch with us at wfmag.cc/hello If you’ve played any of Sucker Punch Productions’ games, you’ll almost certainly have spied some of Sooyun Jang’s work. As a character animator, Jang worked on Ghost of Tsushima’s wonderfully fluid combat sequences, for example – so if you ever marvelled at its graceful swordplay, you partly have him to thank. Away from the big budgets and complex character models of the triple-A industry, meanwhile, Jang’s been working on a very different beast. P.3 is a hectic vertical shooter with a unique two-button control mechanic: pressing left and right will fire a regular laser, while pressing both…

A set of constraints can help enhance a game’s mood when they’re implemented on both a thematic and mechanical level. Case in point: We Were Here Forever’s maddening, brilliant walkie-talkie. In the steampunk wasteland of Castle Rock, where our two protagonists are reunited and separated again, each play their part in a joint quest for freedom. The seemingly trivial effort of pushing a button to speak and releasing it to listen becomes an apt reminder of that forced, troublesome distance. And, with a collection of puzzles mostly about conveying quasi-abstract visual clues, a device that only allows for stuttered, frequently overlapping two-way communication becomes its own hurdle to overcome. Even toward the end of our shared journey, my partner and I would still be confounded by its simple operation, often talking…

Info GENRE Action RPG FORMAT PC (tested) / XBO / PS4 DEVELOPER WolfEye Studios PUBLISHER Devolver Digital PRICE £30.99 RELEASE Out now VERDICT Crude combat mechanics and repetitive quests drain the life off Weird West’s arresting premise and evocative setting. 55% What do we look for in an open world? The freedom to roam unshackled by the demands of linear narrative? A similar sense of scale to the one early European settlers presumably felt when first setting eyes upon the vastness of the North American expanse? Those wondrous moments when you find something unexpected at an unmarked corner of the map? Weird West provides all of those, that is until humdrum mission design and lacklustre combat mechanics cloud its sheen like a sheriff’s badge coated by desert dust. The drastic…

From a young age we’re led to believe that we can be anything we want when we grow up. It just requires a good deal of time, effort, and commitment. For Nobody, however, the pale-skinned, unassuming protagonist at the centre of Drinkbox’s latest indie hit, all you have to do is pick up a magic wand and… Poof! Suddenly you’re a bodybuilder. Or is it a zombie, or potentially a mermaid? Sometimes it can be tough to keep track. That said, this constant element of surprise – combined with the ability to take on each of these forms’ various zany traits – is this top-down adventure’s chief appeal. Suddenly, being a hero doesn’t seem so far out of reach. It all kicks off when an ancient calamity reawakens, jeopardising the…