Wireframe Magazine #64

It happened. They did it again. Someone described the blockchain as a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist in order to sell someone on the idea of buying into the fad, and now everyone is angry. We really should’ve seen this coming – I suppose – after the first six or seven hundred times it happened. So… what can we do now but form a collective voice to tell off the dude who said it, repeat the very clear reality of the situation back to them, baulk at the blatant ignorance of tech bros, and move on. It’s a pattern that crops up time and time again, and each time it does, I can’t help but think: why are we mad at this again? I mean, yes, obviously, NFTs…

With Deliver Us Mars shining out of the cover, there’s a distinct space theme to this month’s edition. By a cosmic coincidence, I found myself on the east coast earlier this month, and stumbled on Gray’s Amusements in Mundesley – a charming arcade that has a handful of classic, space-themed coin-ops at the back. I made an immediate beeline for Namco’s seminal Galaxian, and was reminded why playing a game on original hardware is so important to understanding its initial appeal. With those insectoid aliens whirling and shimmering down the CRT screen and the sound of lasers and explosions booming out of the cabinet, it’s an entirely different experience from, say, playing a port on a modern handheld or on a PC via MAME. Released in 1979, Galaxian was a…

Science fiction stories often deal with big ideas and grand themes. That a small studio led by two Dutch brothers (who first started out drafting ideas in their kitchen using their sister’s whiteboard) could tell such a story on a relatively tight budget was something of a giant leap, then – one that thousands of people on Kickstarter clearly believed in, given they backed their project to the tune of €103,770 in 2016. Fast forward three years since KeokeN Interactive first launched Deliver Us The Moon, its modest yet poignant near-future story concerning one lonely astronaut’s mission to salvage resources needed to save a depleted Earth, and the team now has its sights set on something bigger. With a new, fresh-faced protagonist to play as, comes a more personal mission…

One of the major changes Deliver Us Mars makes to traversal relates to the addition of climbing. Whereas the first game’s Moon was relatively smooth to navigate – by foot or rover – due to its flat surface, the sequel will frequently test your ability to clamber over the red planet’s rough terrain using Kathy’s two pickaxes. KeokeN brings a surprising level of challenge to these sections by tying the left and right pickaxe to the controller’s corresponding triggers. It’s wise to never let go of both at once on most occasions, but confident players can time their drops creatively when they want to scale tricky climbing routes that bit faster.…

Kathy’s journey to discover what happened to her lost father, Isaac, might be entirely fictional, but the version of Mars depicted in-game has been informed by real-life scientific study and research in the pursuit of creating a grounded adventure. “We spoke to a lot of experts,” reveals Koen Deetman. “Speaking to biologists and people that are big on planetary colonisation about: How does that evolve? Is it possible to grow stuff there?” The team even had the opportunity to pick the brain of retired astronauts, like The Netherlands’ own André Kuipers. “I know he’s very big on the overview effect that space had on him when he was aboard the ISS,” Paul Deetman continues. “They look back on Earth and we see the pictures. It’s great, but there’s also this…

If curiosity really did kill the cat, then nobody told the well-groomed, ginger protagonist at the centre of BlueTwelve Studio’s cyberpunk adventure. Originally revealed alongside the PS5 during Sony’s ‘Future of Gaming’ event two years ago, the cat-based antics of Stray has had players on hot bricks – aching for just the slightest snippet of more information – ever since. Well, the titular feline finally creeps their way onto PC and consoles later this month, and judging by what we saw during a recent hands-off demo, this decidedly paw-some expedition comes within more than a whisker of greatness. We presented Swann Martin-Raget, the game’s producer, with the simplest of questions to start off with: why a cat? “Part of it is that I think about 80% of the team are…