Innehållsförteckning för #69 från Wireframe Magazine

We’re well familiar with the ingredients needed to achieve an asymmetrical multiplayer horror hit by this point. Take a fan-favourite slasher series (usually from the 1970s or 1980s), pit four friends together against its iconic killer within a singular location, and have them try to survive or escape the grisly scenario while completing rudimentary objectives before the time runs out. Simple, right? Except in Sumo Digital’s faithful interpretation of 1974’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre movie, it’s anything but. The Nottingham-based studio is instead taking special care to ensure that its twist on the tried and tested genre is made up of more than just Leatherface. Now it’s a family matter. “If you’ve seen the original film, he’s all about family,” explains lead designer Kelvin Moore. “Fair enough, he’s got…

01. Green Switch engage The world may be in the grip of an energy crisis, but Nintendo at least has an eye on a greener, more powerefficient future. Case in point: the revised OLED Switch, released in 2021, uses half as much energy as its predecessor. Where the first-gen Switch used 12 W, the OLED version uses just 6 W – an impressive saving, given the latter’s screen is also crisper and brighter than that earlier machine. The info came from Nintendo’s second quarter financial results, which also talk about the big N’s plans to improve efficiency in everything from manufacturing to the amount of packaging each console uses. All steps in the right direction. 02. Blockchain’s comin’ home In May 2022, FIFA announced it was ending its partnership with…

The Monkey Island games have spanned over three decades; their stories, characters, and visuals expanded on by five distinct development teams. Since director Ron Gilbert’s 1990 original, the series has defined adventure game design, and, despite its piratical theme, has contained some of the medium’s most striking towns and cities. The Monkey Island games know how to use their locations to tell stories, add character, and provide a basis for puzzles. They know how to imply a world that expands far beyond the screen. Towns are pivotal to the Monkey Island series’ storytelling. Indeed, Gilbert argues that, as a designer, it “makes sense to get people into a town as soon as possible, because you’re setting up the goals of the game through dialogue with people, as opposed to stuff in…

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Folk horror, from The Wicker Man to The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow, tends to elicit a highly specific mode of unease, one instinctively relatable to the social animal that is the human being: the vague certainty that everyone around you is privy to some vital piece of information you’re missing. This summarily describes the mood for Saturnalia’s cast of playable characters, who find themselves in the Sardinian town of Gravoi during the festival of St. Lucia on 21 December 1989. All are outsiders but somehow connected to the reclusive island community. But this is no idyllic Mediterranean paradise. Rather, it’s a craggy fortress that a feeble sun paints the colour of rotten yolk, where the sea shimmers beneath jagged cliffs like a vast oil spill, and a sulphurous mist rises…

More than just marketing spiel, the phrase “Be the Batman” came to define the Arkham series because it actually fulfilled its lofty promise. Entering a room full of 30 goons, whooping their butts, and walking away untouched was immensely satisfying for players able to master that oh-so-delicate ballet of countering and free-flow combat. It’s unsurprising, then, that in a spin-off game where you don’t get to “Be the Batman” at all, combat doesn’t feel anywhere near as fluid and the resulting experience is far more flat. Gotham Knights clearly wants to be a bold co-op spin on a template we know, but its poorly executed hodge-podge of underbaked ideas undercuts all that came before. Take exploration, for example. That feeling you’d get after jumping off a skyscraper for the first…

Peak Mini? Has the mini console era passed its peak? Looking at Sega’s recently released Mega Drive Mini 2, I’d say the evidence is there. As the name implies, it’s another miniaturised device packed full of old games – a hardware sequel to 2019’s Mega Drive Mini, but this time modelled on the smaller (and less fondly remembered) version of the console Sega first launched in 1993. This decision alone is significant: rather than go for a Master System Mini (too obscure for most markets outside Europe and Brazil) or a Saturn Mini (too hard to emulate on relatively cheap hardware), Sega’s gone for a second bite at its most successful console. And, in a sorry reflection of the global economic climate, the MDM2 is more expensive than its predecessor…

Wet and shiny. These two words have quickly come to define the new era of Resident Evil for me. And not shiny as in “Ooh, a shiny new game to play”. No, I mean the literal shine found in so many of the games’ gloriously gruesome environments. It began with 2017’s Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, of course, but last year’s Village clearly kicked this up a notch by squeezing every ounce of aesthetic detail possible from the RE Engine. Revisiting the eponymous location’s sludgy mud and the ornate halls of its accompanying castle (in honour of the DLC’s recent release) proves it. Shadows of Rose plays like an abridged version of the main story, true, but at the heart of it is a threat appropriately much wetter and shinier than…

Whereas most 2D Metroidvanias have players digging down in search of an adventure, The Siege and The Sandfox sets itself apart by forcing its titular, ill-fated protagonist to set their sights upwards. Cast out into the caverns below after being falsely accused of assassinating the ancient city’s king, proving your innocence means clambering up through the labyrinthine depths, evading enemy patrols, and mastering a generous suite of smooth parkour abilities. It’s also one of the dustiest genre entries we’ve seen from the indie scene yet, not only contributing to the game’s overall aesthetic, but also reinforcing the developer’s intention to prioritise stealth over combat. You are an assassin, after all. “There’s no killing,” says Olly Bennett, chief executive officer at Cardboard Sword, in reference to the palace guards you’ll regularly…

Nobody’s more excited about the prospect of reimagining Solium Infernum – a cult classic PC grand strategy game from 2009 inspired by poet John Milton’s epic vision of Hell – than Trent Kusters. Co-founder and director at League of Geeks, he demonstrates an early build to us, positively beaming about all the demonic possibilities available when vying for the infernal throne. The man (appropriately) has fire in his eyes. And looking at the significant step up in scope and art direction here compared to the quaint original, it’s easy to see why. “It’s essentially a game of politics, treachery, and Machiavellian antics,” explains Kusters. “The premise is that Lucifer has disappeared. No one knows where he’s gone or whether the Dark Prince is coming back, and it’s in that power…

In 1990, LucasArts debuted a point-and-click adventure that immediately captivated audiences with its humour, storytelling, and devious puzzles. Indeed, The Secret of Monkey Island – first released on the Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS, and Mac – is so beloved that the series is still going today; the latest instalment, 2022’s Return to Monkey Island, saw series creator Ron Gilbert return as director. The original game’s story follows the young Guybrush Threepwood, his ambition to become a pirate, and his encounters with the ghostly villain, LeChuck. Like LucasArts’ other adventure games of the era, Monkey Island combined scripted interactions between characters, animation, and interactable objects in each scene. For this sample, we’ll re-create the game’s opening, where Guybrush meets the lookout man and asks how he can become a pirate.…

What do you get if you fuse the sprite-based, first-person action of an early DOOM game, the aggressive enemies of Mega Man, and the level structure of Metroid? You get Spanish developer José Castanheira, poring over GameMaker Studio 2, trying to get to grips with the challenges of making his first 3D game. Or, more specifically, you get Exophobia: a hectic shooter that, with its limited palette and low-res sprites, looks like a first-person shooter (FPS) that’s somehow been forced to work on ageing NES hardware. Set aboard a spacecraft that has crashed on an alien planet, Exophobia has you roaming the vessel’s cavernous floors, finding keys for locks, and discovering new weapon upgrades that will help you defeat the increasingly vicious enemies you’ll encounter as you progress. If Castanheira…

Preservation wasn’t considered a pressing issue for the gaming industry until well into the 2000s. While such emulators as KGen and Snes9x allowed PC users to play Mega Drive and Super Nintendo games from the late 1990s onwards, there was no such luck on the MS-DOS or Windows front. With the Microsoft operating system abandoning the DOS architecture for good at the end of the nineties, playing old PC games started to become more and more of an issue. Around the turn of the millennium, though, a dedicated adventure game fan base began to overcome those hurdles, providing access to the output of LucasArts and beyond. The original ScummVM project was started in 2001 by Vincent Hamm and Ludvig Strigeus – the latter becoming better-known as the main developer of…

How do you follow up what many players consider one of the best soft reboots to an established first-party franchise of all time? With a sequel, of course. Obvious though that next step was, actually topping 2018’s God of War still sounded like a tall order for Santa Monica Studio. After all, while Kratos’ sombre reinvention of a character previously steeped in anger and revenge initially came as a surprise, the resulting adventure was a great rumination on the idea that change (however unlikely) is possible. Even more impressive, then, is that in just four years, the reformed Spartan-turned-god has returned with an even grander, more ambitious journey that is equal parts emotional and introspective. God of War Ragnarök is the well-oiled machine of third-person action games. The point constantly…

How do you go about capturing the essence of British culture in a video game? Village fêtes, badgers, manor houses, charity shops, grungy pubs, chip vans, and jokes about Brexit would likely top most people’s lists, and they’re all to be found within Lucy Dreaming, by solo developer Tom Hardwidge, but there’s so much more than that. Lucy’s home will likely feel familiar to anyone who grew up in the UK, and the variety of accents and temperaments displayed by the largely excellent cast go a long way towards furthering that distinctly British feel. But an homage to the things that make up the culture of our country, both good and bad, don’t necessarily make a great game by themselves, and it’s here where Hardwidge’s lovingly crafted send-up of all…

An Average Day at the Cat Cafe Angela He / Name your own / wfmag.cc/catcafe While its lo-fi autumnal beats, video vibes, and creepy-cute, knife-wielding bunnies might suggest that An Average Day at the Cat Cafe’s wholesomeness runs saccharine, there’s a certain world-weariness in its Overcooked-lite schtick that I deeply appreciate. It’s probably something to do with the unnamed proprietress’ constantly zonked facial expressions, but the game does a wonderful job capturing what a labour of love running any kind of customer service joint really is. It is, nonetheless, exceptionally cute. Donum Bitfans / €2.50 / wfmag.cc/donum If you’re not all spooked out for the year, you might want to check out Donum – a fascinating and deeply unsettling ZX Spectrum-style adventure game with what seems like similar artistic influences…

NINTENDO R&D1 / 1989 / GAME BOY Imagine a parallel universe where the Game Boy completely tanked. It was 1989, and the gaming public simply wasn’t interested in buying a handheld console with a blurry screen that you could only see in a certain light. The system sat on store shelves for a year or so before quietly fading into history as the Super Nintendo took flight across the globe in the first years of the nineties. This never happened, of course, but it’s worth remembering that Nintendo was entering a largely untapped market with the Game Boy. Sure, it had captured imaginations with the Game & Watch years earlier, but these were comparatively cheap devices; the Game Boy was a true, cartridge-based console. For a possible glimpse at Nintendo’s…

It all began with one artist and a single image. About five years ago, Swedish artist and developer Adam Stjärnljus opened Photoshop and began working on what would eventually become Planet of Lana’s key art. It depicted a solitary young girl dwarfed by a lush alien landscape, a small, canine-looking creature standing loyally by her side. For over a year, Stjärnljus kept working on that germ of an idea, about a girl on a quest to rescue her sister from invaders with Mui, her animal companion, helping her traverse the treacherous landscape. From there, it would be another two years before Stjärnljus’ fledgling studio, Wishfully, could get the funding it needed to finally get the game into production. But throughout, that initial piece of artwork has remained the team’s “guiding…

You could call it Chekhov’s Mech: if there’s a giant robot in a game, you can guarantee that it’ll punch or shoot something eventually. Not so in Lightyear Frontier, though, where the hulking staple of Japanese anime is well and truly tamed: instead of giant swords or laser rifles, your mech is the farming equivalent of a Swiss Army knife. With you at the helm, it can plant seeds, water them, harvest the resulting crops, and even build other bits of tech and equipment to help your growing farm run more efficiently. It’s the distant future, and you’re a pioneer striking out on a lush alien world. As Lightyear Frontier begins, there’s just you, your shiny red mech (which you can customise, naturally), and your crashed spaceship, which doubles as…

Stranded: Alien Dawn Made by Haemimont Games, this one’s a survival strategy sim set on a lush yet deadly alien world. The tasks you’d expect to find in the genre can be found here – farming, hunting, managing resources, expanding bases, and researching new tech – but it’s the detail on the planet itself that has us intrigued. Changing weather patterns, and great plains where buffalo-like beasts roam in packs all hint at a living place that existed long before we came along to tinker with it. More on Stranded: Alien Dawn in a future edition. ARK 2 It seemed like an eternity since Studio Wildcard announced its survival sandbox sequel, but then we looked it up and discovered it was two years ago – not that long, really, in…

Right up there with roguelikes and Metroidvanias, another old-school genre that continues to boom is the throwback 3D platformer. Yes, games in which you must carefully guide a character (often alongside a cutesy companion) as they jump, hop, or bounce from one scenario to another are firmly back in fashion, as indicated by Spyro and Crash’s recent-ish remasters and the several indie homages that followed. One person to have foreseen the style’s potential for glorious return is Rob Wass, who first decided to do something about its absence some twelve years ago. “Around 2010 or 2011 I’d been noticing how few 3D platformers there were on the market; it seemed the genre was all but dead,” Wass remembers. “I even went as far as creating a YouTube video outlining my…

A Little to the Left is further evidence that tidying up can make for a powerful gaming hook. Last year’s Unpacking showed the way with its moreish take on filling shelf space, but the potential has been apparent since at least Tetris, where nothing is more satisfying than making uniform lines. Now Max Inferno’s domestic puzzle experience asks you to zoom in on the finer details of putting stuff in order. The sales pitch here is aimed squarely at anyone who can’t stand to see a picture hanging off-centre, and the first of A Little to the Left’s single-screen puzzles presents precisely that scenario. If you instinctively guide your mouse to correct the wonky edges, it has you in its grasp. Now, how about putting a row of books in…

How to Say Goodbye is a love letter to the glorious heyday of illustrated book covers. Back in the Victorian age, books were mostly bound between slabs of monochromatic cardboard. But between the start of the 20th century and the late 1960s, there was a fantastic surge of creativity as artists explored different ways of brightening up the hitherto drab world of publication. Illustrators like Tomi Ungerer and Hans Tisdall became famous for their strange, often wild, cover art, and publishers would clamour to have them design the cover of their latest book. The printing technology available meant these artists often had only a handful of colours to work with – perhaps just three – and How to Say Goodbye faithfully replicates that distinctive look, with a limited colour palette…

Read-’em-up You’re always guaranteed two things when it comes to the tomes Bitmap Books regularly puts out: meticulously researched text about a specific genre or franchise, and page after page of beautiful video game art. The publisher’s latest release, I’m Too Young to Die, penned by author (and regular Wireframe contributor) Stuart Maine, is no exception, proudly announcing itself to be “the ultimate guide to first-person shooters”. It mostly lives up to this bold claim, and that’s despite wisely choosing to limit its range between 1992–2002 for fear of collapsing the bookshelf of anyone who purchases it. The heft is warranted, however, as the book comes stacked with interviews, articles, and facts covering almost every FPS from that period you can think of. As a child of the nineties, my…