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Over the past three weeks, the Paris Olympics have delivered some spectacular sporting moments, from incredible victories to heartbreaking defeats to Snoop Dogg standing there in an equestrian outfit. For most of us, that sporting glamour is out of reach — unless we have access to video games.
While there were no official tie-ins this year, a number of popular Olympic-inspired games have been released over the past 40 years. If you’ve got an old Commodore 64, PlayStation, Wii, or a suitable emulator on your PC, here’s how you can relive this summer’s unforgettable sporting memories from the safety of your own home.
The stars of the shooting event were undoubtedly Kim Ye-ji of South Korea and Yusuf Dikeci of Turkey, who lit up the pistol event with their cool, calm demeanor, hands in their pockets like cartoon assassins. The closest thing to a video game equivalent is the classic skeet shooting event in Konami’s 1984 arcade hit Hyper Sports. Sure, you’re using a shotgun to aim at flying skeets rather than fixed targets, but at the end of the event a cool, baseball-capped sharpshooter winks at the camera.
Pole Vault Record: International Athletics
Armand “Mondo” Duplantis broke the pole vault world record with a leap of 6.25 meters. To experience it for yourself, head over to International Track & Field, the fantastic 1996 PlayStation sports simulation. Alternate between mashing the button to run around the track, pressing X to jump, then vaulting over the pole. It sounds easy, but it’s one of the hardest events in the game. However, if you qualify on your first jump, improve on your second, and the space shuttle will pass you on your third. Not even Duplantis could do that.
aBlue skies, crystal clear waters and a fleet of boats bearing the words “Welcome to Pleasureland” – it sounds like a dream vacation, but in reality it’s a dystopia: after a great flood, the continent is submerged and diseases caused by toxic plastic are affecting all living things.
Tides of Tomorrow is nothing less than unsettling climax fiction, but its tone is lighthearted, blunt and irreverent rather than gloomy and unsettling. It’s set on the fictional planet Elynd, and lead game designer Adrien Poncet says he and his colleagues had free reign to play with the science and technology they depicted. At one point, a character inhales “ozen” from a container, an oxygen-like substance that helps keep people alive. At other times, players witness shocking and unsettling imagery, including tons of floating plastic that resemble the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
Tomorrow’s trends. Photo: Deep Silver/PLAION
Fans of DigixArt’s previous project, the border-crossing adventure Road 96, will be pleased with the amount of challenge in Tides of Tomorrow’s gameplay. Players will navigate the oceans of Erind, encountering pirates, religious cults, and deep-sea trawlers loaded with junk, sprinkling in first-person exploration, mini-games, and scripted action sequences (including, predictably, a boat-driving sequence and, unexpectedly, the odd bit of parkour). But Poncet stresses that at its core, the game is a thrilling, branching narrative. Kill a crime boss or attempt an escape? The choice is yours. You may live or die by the consequences.
It’s a new and particularly ambitious twist on this long-running “choose your own adventure” formula. Playing as a so-called Tide Walker (name subject to change), you share what Poncet calls a “strange connection” with other Tide Walkers. They appear to you as apparitions, out of time but not out of place. The catch here is that these apparitions aren’t pre-programmed encounters, but other players connected to you over the internet, already playing out the same events. Think of it as an asynchronous multiplayer system, like Elden Ring’s ghosts, except here your ghosts have a tangible impact on the game, perhaps leaving behind important items like a knife to stab the aforementioned unsuspecting kingpin.
You’ll follow in the footsteps of one player at a time, getting to know them through their decision-making impulses. Who is that player? “It could be a stranger on the internet, a friend, or even your favorite streamer,” says Poncet.
Soon, a chain reaction of decisions made by both you and your bound partner begins to pile up. Testing a game with such a dizzying narrative structure proves to be extremely difficult.[Tides of Tomorrow] “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is the first game to really push the idea of asynchronous multiplayer narrative,” Ponsetto said. “We didn’t approach this game with any blueprint or preconceived ideas. This is uncharted territory.”
Despite the novelty of this component, the lead designer claims that it speaks to the game’s deeper themes. Indeed, the mechanic doubles as a carefully considered metaphor: after all, what could survive the all-encompassing climate crisis and mitigate its worst effects other than a massive collaborative effort involving people spread across a vast continent?
“Tides of Tomorrow asks players to question our world,” Poncet says, “but especially about holding on to hope in a world where all seems lost, and helping each other in a common effort to make things better.”
pictureEarlier this week, the Culture Division asked me to recommend four games for their annual Autumn Arts Preview. Readers: I’ve been struggling. The period from September to November is typically jam-packed with AAA releases as publishers compete for space in the historically lucrative pre-Christmas period. Even in the era of “live service” games like Fortnite, Destiny, and Genshin Impact (which ignore external sales patterns in favor of their own constantly-updated season passes), autumn is guaranteed to see a plethora of big-budget game releases.
But this year… not so much. September was mainly focused on The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (below). October brought the Silent Hill 2 reboot, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, and Sonic X: Shadow Generations. For winter fun, the really busy blockbuster lineup will have to wait until November, including Slitterhead, Football Manager 2025, Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, and Stalker 2: Heart of Chernobyl. The highly anticipated role-playing game Avowed has been delayed until 2025, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is not holding out hope, with no release date announced beyond “2024.”
Why? There are a few possible explanations. 2023 was a very busy year, overcrowded with big releases like Baldur’s Gate 3, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Alan Wake 2, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Starfield, and Diablo IV. Meanwhile, 2025 is already shaping up to be a very busy year, with GTA 6, Death Stranding 2, Monster Hunter Wilds, and Civilization 7 coming on strong. And the COVID-19-induced surge in development activity has now subsided, as we see a disgraceful number of layoffs and studio closures across the industry. Perhaps a sluggish year was expected.
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. Photo: Nintendo
The good news is that fewer big, attention-grabbing titles give smaller games a chance to find an audience. September has some really interesting original and indie titles, including the bizarre adventures Phoenix Springs (pictured above) and Demonschool, the charming retro collection UFO 50, and the Atari-era nostalgia Yars Rising. My son Zac wants to play October’s Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero, and I’m an old fan of comics, anime, and the 1990s Konami arcade games, so I’ll enjoy TMNT: Mutants Unleashed. Life is Strange: Double Exposure should also benefit from the extra space given to its time-shifting murder mystery.
It may be comforting to have dozens of huge, multi-year video game series churn out in the space of a 12-week period. Like summer blockbusters, they inscribe the fabric of our years, informing us of where we were and what we were doing at key moments in our lives. In a world where old certainties are crumbling, entertainment rituals provide stability and shared expectations. We may no longer see people queuing around the block to see the latest Star Wars movie or lining up outside gaming and electronics boutiques at midnight to buy Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, but the spectacle of consumer frenzy has always had real meaning.
Still, a quiet year gives us other options. It gives us time and space to break from habitual purchases. 2014 is often touted as a “bad” year for games because there were no big releases. But it was also the year of Alien Isolation, Titanfall, and Shovel Knight. It was also the year I poured hundreds of hours into Shadow of Mordor, despite not being a Lord of the Rings fan. It was also the year of OlliOlli and The Evil Within, and The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. Games I might never have had a chance to play properly if I hadn’t had the means. I’m really glad I did.
Anyway, we were able to choose four games for our Fall Art Preview, but many more emerged when we thought more broadly. So this Fall, try something new, something original, something to share and recommend. These games will get you through the Fall and Winter, and by the end, you’ll have a story of your own to tell.
What to Play
Nintendo Switch Sports. Photo: Nintendo
With no dedicated Olympic games this year, it’s worth giving it another try. nintendo switch sports It’s a lot of fun, especially with the addition of basketball in the new update. Play alone or against friends (both online and locally). Shake the Joy-Con to dribble and flick your wrist to shoot. There are even mini-games to test your dunking prowess. The collection also includes five other Olympic sports, so you can easily organize your own slightly chaotic sports tournaments.
Available on: Nintendo Switch Estimated play time: all you want
What to Read
Among Us: An unexpected lockdown hit. Photo: InnerSloth
New rumors are emerging new half life game A reference to Valve’s development codename “Project White Sands” Found in an online portfolio The site has since removed the reference to video game actor Natasha Chandel, but the rumors continue.
I love very specific things Video game deep dive and Polygon is a great source of information. The latest article on this site is List of banned and unaired episodes of the Pokémon anime complete with explanations. It’s a wild ride.
How will Nintendo follow up on the Switch’s success? Photo: Chesnot/Getty Images
This week’s question was submitted by user X Dan Chambers he asked.
“Will the Switch 2, or whatever it’s called, ultimately find a product that can rival the Switch, or is it destined to be a comparable failure? And what are the key building blocks for success?”
Regarding Nintendo’s next game console, it will be released by the end of March 2025. Rumored specs It’s got an 8-core Cortex-A78AE processor, 8GB of RAM, and 64GB of internal storage, which is fine but not all that exciting, and no one buys a Nintendo console for its techy appeal.
Aside from the SNES, the company has always done best when it has made major updates to the form factor of its machines, like from SNES to N64, or GameCube to Wii, while struggling (comparatively) with more tech-driven updates, like the GameCube (beloved by some, but disappointing sales) and Wii U. The Switch 2 seems to fall into the latter category at the moment, with no fresh ideas being heard in terms of interface or interaction.
What’s needed is a highly visual, easily understood, game-changing concept. Something that can easily be shown with a few seconds of footage from a new Super Mario game. Perhaps there’s a new feature for the built-in screen, or a never-before-seen local multiplayer concept. The design philosophy of Nintendo’s great tech wizard, the late Gunpei Yokoi, still holds true: think horizontally with dead technology. A big OLED screen just won’t do.
If you have any questions for the Question Block or any other comments about the newsletter, Please email us at pushingbuttons@theguardian.com.
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We’re only halfway through the year, but Tactical Breach Wizards is already a contender for best video game title of 2024. Both ridiculously ridiculous and patently practical, the game’s name nicely reflects the intent of this magic-infused, turn-based tactics game. Commanding a SWAT team of wizards battling through puzzle-like scenarios with guns and spells, Tactical Breach Wizards blends decade-old jokes with a desire to solve the problems endemic to the genre that inspired it.
“This comes from playing a lot of XCOM, especially XCOM 2,” says Tom Francis, director of Suspicious Developments and creator of the acclaimed titles Gunpoint and Heat Signature. “I love the game in a lot of ways, but it’s also incredibly frustrating because so often you misunderstand or don’t understand the rules, and end up losing irreplaceable soldiers or suffering devastating losses.”
Francis wanted to create a tactical game that focused on encouraging experimentation rather than punishing players. His solution was to let players rewind their turns to try new approaches to each situation. But the game still lacked a theme to accompany the concept. So Francis recalled a conversation he had while working as a journalist at PC Gamer: “We were joking that it would be really interesting if there was a serious military game like Call of Duty. [where] The people were all in tactical gear, but some were just wearing robes and hats.”
Thus was born Tactical Breach Wizards, combining Francis’s rewinding ideas with a variety of characters who are more like magical police, from freelance storm witches to riot priests, each with their own unique abilities to experiment with in different ways. One example is the Naval Seer. Blessed with the ability to see one second into the future, the Seer can also throw time-boosting grenades that provide bonus actions to teammates. Another is the Necro Medic, a necromancer who heals characters and replenishes their “mana” by killing and resurrecting them. “She rewinds your body, your body goes back to how it was an hour ago,” Francis says. “When she resurrects you, you get your mana back.”
According to Francis, these characters first appeared as puns, but gradually became central to the game. In fact, Tactical Breach Wizards doesn’t have the free-form structure and base building of XCOM, but instead has a linear story that explores each character’s personality and motivations. “I wanted to know who these characters were,” Francis said. “They each feel like they have a story.” He likens the storytelling approach to Mass Effect 2’s loyalty missions, saying, “To me, that was the most interesting thing about the game.”
Additionally, the Tactical Breach Wizard storyline, according to Francis, ” [on] Unlike works like Tom Clancy or Call of Duty, the game also aims to subvert the authoritarian morality of such fiction. “I don’t like those stories, there’s not a lot of criticism or self-examination,” he says. In Tactical Breach Wizards, the characters you command aren’t state enforcers, but thugs and outcasts battling a coalition of elite organisations, including religious military dictatorships and private military companies. “I didn’t want them to just be soldiers in a national army,” he explains. “You need a compelling reason to commit acts of violence.”
Tactical Breach Wizards has been in development for six years, which is a big investment for a small team. Luckily, you don’t have to be a naval seer to notice the positive signs. The game is high on Steam’s “wishlist” charts, and Francis says the recently released demo has been met with positive reactions from players. “There are some people who laugh when you say ‘Tactical Breach Wizards,'” he says. “I knew those people existed, but I didn’t realize how many there were. I’m very happy.” [that] A lot of people understand that.”
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When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, it forced Krista Castro and Bryan Shin to rethink their lives. The couple, an animation director and programmer, had been working for major studios but wanted to create their own games. They decided to quit their jobs in 2021 and form A cozy gaming companion. They also became parents around the same time.
They set a goal to create a game in two years. By 2023, they had completed Fear the Spotlight, a ’90s-style horror adventure game. Although it received positive reviews on Steam, they struggled to market it and considered moving on. Then, Blumhouse, the successful horror film production company, approached them.
Blumhouse saw potential in Fear the Spotlight and offered to help. The couple was thrilled to collaborate with them as they shared a passion for horror. Together, they worked on an expanded version of the game set to release soon.
Fear the Spotlight captures the essence of ’90s horror with its atmospheric design and slow pace. Inspired by classic horror games and movies, the game aims to appeal to all horror enthusiasts, even those not typically into gaming.
The couple’s love for horror shines through in the game, incorporating elements from various horror media. With Blumhouse’s support, they look forward to sharing their vision with a wider audience.
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About 10 minutes into the latest preview build of Ubisoft’s upcoming open-world adventure Star Wars Outlaws, protagonist Kay Vess enters Milogana, a densely populated, dilapidated city on the desolate moon of Tshara. It’s surrounded by a mix of sandstone shacks and metallic sci-fi buildings, packed with flickering computer panels, neon signs, and holographic advertisements. Exotic aliens lurk in quiet corners, and an R2 droid passes by, muttering to itself. Nearby, a cantina features a suspicious patron peeking out from a smoky doorway, and a darkened gambling hall stands nearby.
As you explore, a robotic voice reads Imperial propaganda over a loudspeaker, and stormtroopers patrol the city checking IDs. To this lifelong Star Wars fan, at least, these scenes perfectly capture the aesthetic and atmosphere of the original trilogy. Like A New Hope itself, this is a promising beginning.
“We did our homework,” says voiceover director Navid Cavalli. “We looked to the original films as well as George Lucas’s own inspirations: Akira Kurosawa, World War II films like The Dam Busters, and spaghetti westerns. Great care was taken to maintain tonal consistency in the original trilogy. We needed this to feel like it had high stakes, light-hearted humor, emotional tension, character development and a hero’s journey.”
Outlaws, due to launch on August 30th, has been in development at Massive Entertainment for about five years. In 2018, the studio held an event to announce The Division 2, and at some point that night, then-CEO David Polfeldt stepped outside to talk quietly with a senior Disney official. Over cocktails, the two discussed a possible collaboration. “The first presentation was in February 2020, after we released The Division 2,” says creative director Julian Gerighty. “We had a small team of people – concept artists and game designers – and we went to San Francisco with a very short pitch deck based on three concepts: Star Wars, an open world, and a baddie story.”
Set in the years between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, The Outlaws follows ambitious city thief Kay as he rallies a crew to pull off the biggest heist of his life in order to pay off the huge bounty on his head. [the appeal of Star Wars] “He wasn’t a Jedi farm boy or a cranky old space wizard,” says Gerrity, “he was a cool guy surfing the galaxy with his best friend and the most iconic spaceship. I really focused on these archetypal characters and what they could do in terms of gameplay.”
In Outlaws, players are free to explore and roam at least five major worlds, from Tatooine to stormy Akiva to glitzy Kantonica, home to the casino city of Kanto Bight featured in The Last Jedi. Throughout Cay’s journey, she encounters crime organizations from across the Star Wars canon, including the brutal Pikes, the Hutts, the shady Crimson Dawn, and the samurai-esque Asiga. Completing missions for organizations earns credits and reputation points, unlocking more lucrative jobs and new areas of the map. Joining one gang means alienating another, but there’s an opportunity to set crime bosses at odds or even betray one another.
So perhaps the emphasis on space villains tempted the team to make a Han Solo game? Gerrity shakes his head. “We always wanted a character that wasn’t Han Solo,” he says. “Han is the coolest guy in the galaxy. Cay is a city thief who gets caught up in a bad deal and gets catapulted from place to place like a pinball, and suddenly he’s negotiating with Jabba the Hutt… We did a lot of casting, but Hanberly Gonzalez’s character was the final piece of the puzzle. Her voice, her acting, her approach to the character on the page was such a huge influence.”
The focus on gangster intrigue is what inspired the game to be situated within the Star Wars timeline, an idea that came from Lucasfilm. “We were looking for the right moment to define the gameplay and to be able to go to cool, interesting places and meet interesting characters,” says Steve Blank, director of franchise content and strategy at Lucasfilm. “So we found a place that had a lot of opportunity to tell an underworld story. Organized crime is rampant as the Empire turns its attention to the Rebel Alliance. Jabba the Hutt is at the height of his power.”
At a press event in Los Angeles earlier this month, I played the story’s main quest, set on Tshara, where Kay must steal top-secret information from a computer in the sprawling mansion of Pyke crime lord Gorak. It’s a large, multi-floor environment riddled with guards. You can either charge straight in with blaster fire, or hack doors as you work your way through a network of ventilation ducts, backrooms, and sneaky passageways. I also visited Kimiji, an ice planet ruled by the Ashigas, a blind swordsman-like alien race. My mission is to meet with a safecracker, but I’m being pursued by an assassin. It’s an atmospheric place to explore, with temple-like towers towering above frozen cobblestone streets, snow flurries in the sky, and a small group of shady thugs huddling around a pale orange noodle shop.
A restaurant with delicious noodles…Star Wars Outlaws. Photo: Ubisoft
Although this is a Massive Entertainment game, it feels unmistakably Ubisoft. The stealth, the combat, the balance between story and side quests all contain elements borrowed from Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and Watch Dogs. You watch enemy patrols, take down targets one by one using a variety of special abilities, and then escape. There are further borrowings from other action-adventures, such as Kay’s ability to slow down time to target multiple enemies before firing multiple volleys with a blaster, a clear homage to Max Payne and Red Dead Redemption.
It’s fun to think about exactly how to use all the toys available to you in such a large, densely designed location. But the big question is: what’s new and what’s different? Apart from the Star Wars license, there are three elements that distinguish Outlaws from other Ubisoft adventures. First, there’s Nix, Kay’s constant companion. This is a cute little creature that follows you everywhere and gives you access to parts of the environment that you can’t. You can also command him to attack or distract guards, or pick up items or dropped ammo. This is especially useful during gunfights. “Nix was inspired by our pet,” says Navid Khavari. “My wife and I don’t know how we would have survived COVID without cats, so I think it feels very natural. He acts like a dog.
Outlaws also does away with Ubisoft’s typical skill trees and points in favor of a more natural alternative: Expert Missions have you quest for powerful specialists, granting you new abilities and upgrading your weapons and speeder bikes.
A masterpiece… “Star Wars Outlaws.” Photo: Ubisoft
And then, of course, there’s space travel; you can hop off-planet at any time, and the transition happens in one seamless sequence. You’re then free to fly around your current system, fighting TIE fighters or scavenging space debris before making a hyperspace jump to a new planet. Flying is simple, and dogfights rely heavily on the lock-on feature to automatically track down your enemies. It’s a lot more arcadey than the great X-Wing and Tie-Fighter games of yore. Still, it’s a unique thrill to get an enemy ship in your sights and blast it to smithereens accompanied by the legendary Ben Burtt-esque sound effects.
I’ve only seen a few hours of the game so far, but there’s still so much to discover. I’m hoping that the missions and side quests will delve deeper into Star Wars lore and move further away from the typical Assassin’s Creed or Far Cry fare. I’m curious to see how populated and detailed the planets are away from the major hubs. I’d love to encounter Jawa transports, secret Imperial bases, and terrifying monsters that will spend a thousand years trying to devour me. This element of stumble-through discovery in the Star Wars universe is something the team has clearly thought about.
“We knew we needed to allow the player freedom, which is very much part of how Star Wars works,” says Cavalli. “We created a tonal blueprint that drew from both The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, and blended that with all of the characters and vendors in the story so that they all felt like they were part of the same journey. It took us a while to realize this, but Star Wars is particularly well-suited for an open-world game, which is why fans, myself included, have been clamoring for it for so long.”
Hollywood video game performers have voted to go on strike, bringing parts of the entertainment industry back into strike action after new contract negotiations with major game studios collapsed over protections for artificial intelligence.
The walkout, the second by video game voice and motion-capture performers affiliated with the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Entertainers (Sag-Aftra), is set to begin on Friday at 12:01 a.m. This move comes after almost two years of negotiations over a new interactive media contract with gaming giants like Activision, Warner Bros., and divisions of The Walt Disney Co.
SAG-AFTRA negotiators state that while video game contracts cover wages and job security, studios are not willing to agree to regulate generative AI. Without safeguards, game companies could train AI to mimic actors’ voices or create digital replicas of their likenesses without their consent or fair compensation, as per the union.
In a prepared statement, union president Fran Drescher mentioned that members will not accept contracts that permit companies to misuse AI.
Company representatives did not immediately respond to email requests for comment.
According to game market forecasters, the global video game industry generates over $100 billion in revenue annually. New Zoo Sag-Aftola emphasized that the individuals who design and bring these games to life are what drives their success.
“Eighteen months of negotiations have shown that our employers are not interested in fair and reasonable AI protections, but rather in exploitative behavior,” stated Sarah Elmaleh, chair of the Interactive Media Agreement Negotiating Committee.
Last month, a union negotiator informed The Associated Press that game studios had declined to provide the same level of protection from AI risks for all members, especially motion picture performers.
Last year, union members overwhelmingly voted to authorize leadership to strike. Fears about how studios might utilize AI in a strike were intensified by AI. Last year, labor unions staged a four-month strike in the film and television industry.
The final interactive contract, expiring in November 2022, did not include protections for AI but established a bonus compensation structure for voice actors and performance capture artists following an 11-month strike that commenced in October 2016. This strike marked SAG-AFTRA’s first significant labor dispute since the merger of Hollywood’s two major actors unions in 2012.
According to the union, the video game contract covers more than 2,500 “off-camera (voice-over) performers, on-camera (motion capture, stunt) performers, stunt coordinators, singers, dancers, puppeteers, and background performers.”
Amidst tense interactive negotiations, SAG-AFTRA entered into a separate deal in February aimed at indie and low-budget video game projects. The Tiered Budget Independent Interactive Media deal consists of some of the AI protections that have been rejected by larger companies in the video game industry.
TMy wife has only ever enjoyed two video games: Mario Kart, which she has happily followed closely behind her throughout her life as a family, and Crash Bandicoot, of which she was the best player in the world at one point.
She perfected every molecule of a ’90s Clash game, and I’d swear I saw her hit 105% in one of them, but this was the ’90s, so I classify that memory, along with Gary McAllister’s missed penalty kick at Wembley Stadium and the band’s menswear, as a “psychological hallucination.”
I’m not a perfectionist like her, for me platform games are the best video game genre I absolutely hate, like Manic Miner, Plumber, Hedgehog, Mega Man, Aladdin, Earthworm Jim, etc. There are too many frustrations and failures to be worth the reward.
In the late ’90s, I decided I was too old to cry over these games, so I skipped Ratchet & Clank, Jak & Daxter, and Banjo-Kazooie altogether. did I played Super Mario Sunshine in co-op with my daughter, who was 5 at the time. She beat the level and I beat the boss. It was an incredibly fun gaming experience for both of us. Ten years later, I was proud and impressed to watch her coach her younger brother through a killer level of Rayman Legends, where aliens chased her while hopping across platforms too tiny for her father’s naked eye. Clearly, a talent for platforming runs in the family. I just don’t have it.
Rayman Legends is terribly difficult. Photo: Ubisoft
But in 2020’s Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time (the best double entendre of a game title), my wife found her equal: She’s been trying to beat the game for three generations, and is currently just 48% complete after 68 hours of play.
So I thought I’d step in and show her how it’s done.
The game has a retro mode option that takes you back to the original era of gaming, with limited lives and returning you to the start of the level when you die. I chose modern instead. Why in the name of the devil in hell would I want to go back to a time when things were still fun. more difficult?Yes, this is authentically old-fashioned, but so are the mumps, the Global Hypercolor T-shirt and Margaret Thatcher, and I have no desire to resurrect them.
Age doesn’t matter. When I played games in my teens and twenties, they calmed me. When I played games in my thirties and forties, they pissed me off. But now that I’m in my fifties, I’m a total crank. My family won’t ride with me in my Honda Civic because I get so angry at traffic jams, other drivers, dirty roads, useless politicians, shrinkflation, and King Lear-like architecture. But I swear platform games are designed to turn even the happiest of people into obelisks of frustration.
The phasing levels were the most mind-blowing for me. You press a button and blocks appear and disappear. You have to jump into the ether and then press a button to make the next block appear below. Sometimes the block collapses and you have to jump again while remembering to phase in the next block. It feels like walking around with an orange peel in the front pocket of your jeans.
I yell, I scream, I curse, I curse some more, and I do combo curses where the curse words are stacked two or three times. My wife tells me to stop because the neighbors are peeking in from their yard, so I make up a whole new swear word slang, spewing curse words like hunzels, gabbabusts, and primal screams. I immediately hate myself for what I’ve become.
The early boss level, Stage Dive, nearly killed me. You have to jump over and under death-bringers, spin the bad guy around the boss three times, dash forward, climb fading blocks, and keep going until you can hit him. Repeat. Classic frustrating gameplay. But if you persevere, you magically enter an almost zen state of failing and trying again and again, but the early parts are almost soothing in their repetition. It’s like whittling wood. And when you finally beat him? The feeling of reward feels like the last day of school before the holidays.
“It’s like walking around with an orange peel in your front jeans pocket” – Crash Bandicoot 4 Photo: Activision/Toys for Bob
Maybe that’s the lesson of platform games. teeth Difficult. Fail teeth It’s frustrating, but if you invest the time and keep failing, you will succeed, and the reward will be comforting for future challenges.
Soon I found myself faced with one of the most perfectly crafted levels I’d ever seen in a game. Hook, Line and Sinker features every imaginable platform move in a variety of pirate ships. It’s a reminder that imagination combined with execution is art. Unfortunately, it’s only a fleeting joy in a forest of failure. The game gets harder and harder. I get angrier and angrier.
My wife told me to stop. She thought I was going to have a heart attack. I told her we just had to get through the level. She sat me down and very patiently taught me a jump technique I’d never used on blocks I’d never seen before that unlocked the entire level. She coached me like she did with her kids. I was Luke and she was Yoda.
I completed the level, my wife breathed a sigh of relief and let me climb into my wheelchair and scream into the clouds.
debtFor Gemma, her life is a puzzle. Ever since she was left on a stranger's doorstep as a baby, she's never felt like she belonged, and she's desperate to know what the world is like outside the small town where no one ever leaves. What's more, when she moves, the whole world moves with her, like sliding tiles, a series of conveyor belts. It's the puzzle that gets her from point A to point B.
Each scene in Arranger: Role Puzzling Adventure is its own sliding block puzzle, where you need to think a couple steps ahead to move Gemma and the surrounding objects in the right direction. Some things don't move with Gemma, like purple static-covered rocks and robotic birds, but everything else does. So you'll need to carry a sword towards an intruding monster, a key towards a door, or a banana towards a shy orangutan. As long as Gemma's path isn't blocked, when she hits the end of a row or column, she'll reappear at the opposite end, adding another layer of spatial logic.
The game is hard to describe, but strangely enough, it's incredibly intuitive to play. I'm not sure exactly how I solved some of the rooms (I had been struggling for ages with a particularly tricky one with lasers and mannequins, and then suddenly it wasn't). My brain just figured out the rules. It made sense how Gemma moved along a tiled conveyor belt. The arrangers added surprising twists to these rules, introducing rafts to cross water, joysticks to control robots, grappling hooks, and more. I'd probably play it for 30 minutes to an hour before moving on to the next idea. It pushed the sliding block puzzle idea to its limits.
The cutesy fantasy-inspired art style and writing didn't do much to complement the puzzles for me; it's not without personality, but it felt mostly perfunctory. Arranger hints at a coming-of-age story for misfits, but doesn't really deliver on it. Instead, it's full of surreal vignettes, like shearing strange creatures for a painter who uses them as muses, or a teenager trying to sneak out of her parents' house to meet up with her long-distance boyfriend. The cartoon-inspired frames indicate the action and emotion that happens between puzzle scenes, but Arranger feels more cerebral than emotional.
Sure, it was brain-wracking at times; I briefly couldn't understand the logic of the puzzle's conveyor belt, not figuring out how to get three blocks to land on three separate switches at the same time, and just moving things around in circles. But mostly I felt trapped, racing through levels, placing them almost by instinct, and feeling like I was playing Tetris. I've reached the end of Jenna's adventure, so I'm definitely done with block puzzles for a while. But it's rare to play a game that explores one great idea so thoroughly.
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When Chinese developer Game Science announced its first console game, Black Myth: Wukong, last year, it immediately created a stir. Inspired by the great 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West, the action-packed film sees the titular mythical monkey Sun Wukong battling demons from Buddhist folklore and sword-wielding anthropomorphic foxes in beautifully rendered forests. Smartphone games are extraordinarily popular in China but console game developers remain scarce, so anticipation for Wukong was at an all-time high in Game Science’s home country. Within 24 hours, the trailer had garnered two million views on YouTube and more than 10 million on Chinese video-sharing site Bilibili, surprising and delighting its creators. One excited fan said: Breaking into the developer’s office
eager for more information about the game.
After playing Wukong for an hour and a half in a London hotel suite, with a few Game Science folks nervously watching, I was convinced that, by some miracle, this masterful Dark Souls-infused take on Chinese mythology lived up to the promise of its splashy trailer, blending fluid combat with reflex-testing difficulty and the expensive cinematic sheen of God of War. Sprinting through Wukong’s jungles, ducking and dodging between hordes of terrifying flora and fauna, you’ll face everything from gi-clad toads to nightmarish giant-headed infants. Unlike many of its brutally difficult FromSoftware-esque brethren, Wukong’s difficulty feels judged by experts. My ape-man avatar met a gruesome end more times than I’d like to admit, but I persisted. Eventually I defeated enough foes to unlock new abilities. Soon I was perched on a staff mid-attack, gaining the upper hand against the savage monsters of myth. I can flit through the forest like a stealthy cicada, summon flames with my sword, and eventually take down a werewolf the size of a truck roaring atop a crumbling temple.
“We feel a lot of pressure,” recalls one of Game Science’s co-founders, Ted (who Game Science declined to reveal his full name), through an interpreter. “This is our first time working on PC and console games, and we’re a new studio, so we’re really grateful for the players’ and the market’s openness towards us. Their enthusiasm encourages us. But the Chinese mindset tends to be risk-oriented, so when faced with such great encouragement, the best we can do is to do our best to meet players’ expectations… and communicate with them in a very sincere way.”
Unfortunately, when I talk about this, I rarely get any honest communication. Report from IGN
The email was about alleged sexist comments made by multiple developers and people in leadership positions at Game Science. I offered Ted the opportunity to speak about the alleged misogynistic posts and whether or not he thought they were representative of Game Science’s values. However, I received a hasty “no comment” from the UK PR representative, followed after a long wait by a longer statement, also “no comment”, relayed through Ted’s translator. I was then told that Game Science’s US PR agency would follow up with a prepared statement later, which read, “Game Science is focused on demos at this time and will only answer questions about gameplay.”
The same thing happened to an IGN reporter. Demo in LA
It’s disappointing that Game Science chose to invite journalists to talk and play the game last month, but refuses to answer questions. Perhaps there’s nothing reassuring to say. A generous interpretation of the situation would be that the inexperienced studio is afraid to say the wrong thing. But by staying silent, Game Science is also failing to distance itself (and the game) from a number of crude, derogatory and misogynistic comments directed at its employees and management.
Journey to the West is, of course, no stranger to the world of video games; from Ninja Theory’s 2010 Xbox 360 adaptation Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, written by Alex Garland and starring Andy Serkis, to the late Akira Toriyama’s world-conquering Dragon Ball, its mythology and ape world are ripe for gaming. Black Myth: Wukong’s stunning visuals, cinematic beauty and exhilarating sense of speed make it the best playable adaptation of the fable to date, but the uninhibited excitement I would otherwise feel is trampled by the elephant in the room.
a A man in a strange, animalistic mask sits slumped in an armchair in a dingy motel room and watches you click a hand-held tally counter. He offers you $14,000 if you keep clicking until the number resets to 10,000, so you do. Occasionally he makes polite but suggestive requests: go faster, go slower, stop and try again, but he remains motionless, except for the occasional flexion of his hand.
Clicking the left mouse button, you wander around the room, admiring the paintings on the walls, the out-of-sync TV, the thermostat, etc. But as you approach the final scene, the man slowly begins to reveal bits and pieces of his life, and the atmosphere of an already dark world grows darker by the minute. This is what the game is all about.
Clickolding has been getting a lot of attention since its release on July 17th, receiving widespread coverage in the gaming press and nearly 500 reviews on PC game store Steam, most of which have been very positive. But what is it about this strange piece of interactive art that’s only 40 minutes long that has captured the hearts of critics and players alike?
That’s partly because Clickolding is a pretty obvious allegory about voyeurism and the sex trade. The man in the chair indirectly enjoys someone else’s use of his precious counter, which he describes as a lover he can no longer satisfy (“We’ve been together a long time, but I just can’t click like you do.”). The relationship between the two people in the room is deliberately left ambiguous, but we know this is no hostage situation; players are free to leave the room when they want, and opening the hotel room door ends the game. And yet, the threat hangs over the room, like a bad smell.
The player character must perform certain physical acts that clearly arouse the seated man, though not overtly explicit (“You’re clicking steadily. That’s good.”). But there’s also emotional labor, as the man reveals aspects of his tattered private life. Power dynamics shift subtly: at various times you’re a servant, a caretaker, a partner, a stranger, all with barely any dialogue.
One of Strange Scaffold’s other creations, an alien airport now run by dogs. Photo: Strange scaffolding
The game also captures a universal aspect of the experience of being confined to a hotel room for an extended period of time. While you’re there, it becomes a strange temporary home. It feels intimate (you undress there, you sleep there) yet alien and oddly fascinating. Who picked that floral wallpaper, that kitschy bedside lamp, that particular painting and why? How does the thermostat work? What’s outside the window? Visually, the room feels natural and detailed; it feels like a room from the latest Resident Evil or Call of Duty.
The clicker was born as an exploration of design principles: At this year’s San Francisco Game Developers Conference, members of studio Aggro Crab bought a clicker at a nearby thrift store, sat down with industry peers in a hotel lobby, and built a game to play with it. One of those peers was Xalavier Nelson Jr, creative director at the experimental indie studio. Strange Scaffoldingis responsible for such unique titles as Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator and An Airport for Aliens Now Run By Dogs. An evening of oral history at WiredNelson was intrigued by the clicker’s hyper-repetitive appeal and began thinking about how he could use it in a new gaming project.
Clickolding continues the tradition of parody games like Cow Clicker and Cookie Clicker, which were designed to critique first-generation social media games like FarmVille, in which players perform endlessly repetitive tasks to accumulate resources and level up their characters. But by adopting mainstream game design elements—realistic visuals and a first-person camera—Clickolding extends the parody to all games driven by fast clicking, such as shooters and real-time strategy simulations. Here, the man in the chair becomes a metaphor for compelling game mechanics, enticing the player to get faster, better, and more accurate.
As you approach 10,000 clicks it starts to get boring, but you feel compelled, even obligated, to carry on while the man in the chair gives you a glimpse into his fractured life. It’s strange and mundane, uncomfortable and oddly comforting all at the same time. Perhaps the reason this game has attracted so much attention is that the monotony of clicking buttons in a boring motel allows your own thoughts, feelings and experiences to creep into your and the masked man’s room. Rarely have games given you so much room to be scared.
What to Play
Arranger: A role-solving puzzle adventure. Photo: Furniture and mattresses
in Arranger: Role Playing Puzzle Adventureis a cutesy RPG-like game in which you play a young social misfit setting out on his first journey outside the town he grew up in. Except the entire world is a grid of sliding tiles, and as you move, rows of tiles move with you. This turns combat into a sliding-block puzzle where you have to carry your sword to monsters to defeat them, and turns the regular towns, forests, and graveyards into giant game boards. It took me a while to get to grips with it, but the unique mix of story and puzzles is far more interesting than a match-3 puzzle. You may recognize the artist from his groundbreaking 2010 indie game Braid.
Available on: Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4/5 Estimated play time: 6 hr
aAt the end of Metal Gear Solid 4, right after Snake crushes Liquid Ocelot, there’s a never-ending series of cut scenes. Well, that’s not strictly true. do end – 71 minutes later – I just haven’t seen that much of it. I understand that the game’s director, Hideo Kojima, is an avid film fan and took a lot of inspiration from movies, but I don’t care. Those are minutes of your life that you can never get back.
I also don’t like the 20-minute cinematic scenes that pepper Xenoblade Chronicles and Final Fantasy, or the hundreds of non-interactive scenes that detail every plot point in an Assassin’s Creed adventure. Taking away the player’s freedom and forcing their attention for extended periods of time is unnecessarily aggressive, and I think it’s time to abolish the practice altogether.
The origins of cutscenes in video games were both technical and situational. Games in the ’90s couldn’t render scenes in real time, and a lot of the narrative talent in games came from film, using tools they knew. This interestingly mirrors the evolution of film. In the 1920s and early 1930s, narrative film was heavily influenced by theater. This makes sense, because the early film industry drew most of its talent from theater — actors, directors, screenwriters, technical staff — and these people brought technology with them.
From stage to screen…Greta Garbo starred in the 1930 film adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s play “Anna Christie.”
Photo: Mgm/Sportsphoto/Allstar
The camera tended to stay still with long takes between cuts, observing the action like an audience member. Filming took place on purpose-built sets, not on location. Acting was somewhat staged and theatrical, as performers were accustomed to exaggerating their movements and emotions to be seen by an audience 18 rows back. Early film audiences were also familiar with the conventions of the stage, which helped them ease into the cinematic experience.
But as film evolved into a medium in its own right, new and intimate ways of telling stories emerged. With the invention of the dolly and crane, the camera transformed from a spectator to a moving observer in the world. Actors discovered that small gestures and facial expressions could communicate. From German Expressionism to the French New Wave to the American Auteur films of the 1970s, new storytelling techniques emerged, along with many of the lighting, direction, design, and special effects conventions that are unique to cinema. The medium came into its own.
This process is happening in games too. We see it in increasingly sophisticated fields like environmental storytelling, UX/UI, and narrative design. But despite being a medium where interactivity and immersion are everything, we’re stuck with cutscenes. Look at some of the biggest, most moving narrative games of the last five years — The Last of Us, God of War, Marvel’s Spider-Man — and most of the emotional moments happen in non-interactive, cinematic sequences that take control away from us. Like children, we’re not entrusted with participation; we’re expected to just sit back and watch the show.
No time to talk… Half-Life.
Photo: Valve
The argument is that sometimes, we need to craft the emotional development of a scene at exactly the right time to deliver the emotional element of that scene. In that case, we’re making the wrong kind of scene. If a mature interactive medium can only tell an emotional story through non-interactive sequences, something is wrong. This is frustrating, because Valve made great strides on this issue 25 years ago. The narrative sci-fi shooter Half-Life contained no cutscenes or cinematic sequences at all. Characters (scientists and guards at the Black Mesa facility) gave in-game exposition as the player explored, while at the same time the increasingly unstable environment told a tale of destruction and suspense. Valve did it again a decade later with the Portal games, combining amusingly chatty robot antagonists with a world where signs, symbols, and voice announcements conveyed all the rules and background details the player needed to know to be intellectually and emotionally immersed.
Game designer Fumito Ueda largely avoided cutscenes in his classic adventure games Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, instead immersing us in vague, mysterious worlds where the player creates their own mythology with so little information. Indie studio thatgamecompany’s 2012 masterpiece Journey featured silent characters in a desert wasteland but still moved thousands of players to tears. Campo Santo’s game Firewatch forged a rich mystery out of the Wyoming wilderness and disembodied voices heard over walkie-talkies.
In an age where in-game realism is near-photographic, relying on cutscenes for dramatic, cathartic effect feels even more incongruous and alienating. We get to explore and exist in incredibly vivid worlds, surrounded by characters capable of expressing a wide range of emotions thanks to a combination of performance capture, cutting-edge AI and physics. And that’s all it takes. These are dynamic, immersive worlds. As a player, you only need control of weapons, vehicles and a highly sophisticated progression system to take part in the story.
A voice from the wilderness…Firewatch.
Photo: Campo Santo
Or the story can simply exist in the background, as something we experience or experience second-hand. It’s an interactive version of direct cinema. From Software’s works are great examples of this. There are cutscenes, but they’re short and usually used to introduce a new enemy or show the player a moment of reaction from the world. Otherwise the story is evoked simply by moving through these bleak, gothic landscapes. Author and historian Holly Nielsen says: Expressed with X
Recently, “I’ve spent about 300 hours on Elden Ring. I can’t really tell you anything about the world, characters, or story other than a vague sense of atmosphere.”
A few years ago I interviewed Bethesda Game Studios head Todd Howard and asked him what the most important part of telling a story in a video game was. “You have to find the tone,” he said, after a long silence. “We look a lot at old John Ford films and the way he captures space. Ford’s shots make you feel a certain way. There’s a thing called tone. As a designer, you have to know how you want the player to feel. Find something outside of the game that has that tone and just stare at it.” Yes, this is another example from a film, but Howard isn’t talking about The Searchers or the Rio Grande story, he’s talking about the feel of the space that Ford created.
Tone. Atmosphere. Feel. These are different words for the same concept, arguably the basis of post-cinematic theory of mainstream game narrative. In an immersive environment, the story isn’t something the player sees but something the player enters, a space of discovery rather than performance, a playground rather than a theater. Stories should be open to broad and bold interpretation, and may even be entirely optional or subliminal. If they do happen to take control away from the player, it should be in radical moments employed sparingly, like turning the camera away or darkening the stage.
Cinematic cut scenes are tyrannical fakes. It’s time to eliminate them.
circleWhen you enter this unique boutique video game festival, you’ll be greeted by bullet hell shooters with a painterly twist. ZOE Go away! As you dodge and fire attacks at breakneck speed, the game immerses you in an intoxicating shower of pointillist color, dazzling your eyes and challenging your thumbs. Leave after reading Initially resembling dark fantasy Quake clones, these games present a peculiar challenge of checking text messages on your phone while battling through dungeons. They are subversive games that cleverly twist common design tropes.
Violating the norm, the Glasgow Independent Games Festival was previously known as the Southside Game Festival. The recent event was held at Civic House, nestled in the shadow of the M8, a concrete eyesore cutting through Glasgow. The showcased games, created by developers residing in or near Glasgow, boast quirkiness and lower budgets compared to mainstream titles. Co-founder Joe Bain aims to place these works within games’ broader cultural context, steering away from the profit-driven atmosphere of trade shows like Gamescom.
Breaking the rules with wit and fun…Glasgow Independent Games Festival Photo: Mhairi Teresa
During a panel on “Unconventional Games,” game maker Stephen Gill-Murphy from Glasgow (aka Katamites) offered a sharp critique of what he termed the media’s “cult of depth.” He argued that games often lead players deeper into virtual worlds only to reveal the lack of coherence at the end. Gill-Murphy transformed this idea into a chilling horror game with intentional flatness called Murderer’s Anthology, available for play at the event.
At the festival, participants engage in activities like making amends with deceased virtual pets through Tamagotchi Seance, where they interact with virtual animals through spoken dialogue. Another intriguing game on display is Apartment Story, a simulator showcasing the chaotic everyday life in a single room with elements of a gangster thriller and The Sims.
An unconventional convention…the Glasgow Independent Games Festival. Photo: Mhairi Teresa
Spontaneous interactions are vital at these events. Participants come together to engage in a language decoding game like Kevin (1997-2077), deciphering cryptic images and text without clear instructions. This collaborative puzzle-solving process transforms the game into a participatory artwork, offering a collective experience with no definitive answers.
While Scottish video games were once synonymous with Edinburgh’s Rockstar North, the co-founder Ryan Caulfield emphasizes the abundance of “weird and wonderful” options available today. Amidst the prevalence of profit-driven live-service looter-shooters, playing games that defy conventions with irreverence at this festival is truly exciting.
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Climbers cling to dizzying rock faces, toes digging in, knuckles white, limbs trembling with extreme tension. In this perilous moment, they have a few options: move quickly to regain their balance, rest for a few seconds, or simply let go and hope the belay can support their weight as they succumb to the massif.
Cairn, the new “survival climbing game” from French studio The Game Bakers, is full of dangerous, panic-inducing moments like this. There’s no visible stamina bar, meaning players must derive all their information from the state of their controllable climber, Aava. When under extreme stress, Aava’s breathing becomes intense and rapid and shallow, and her body begins to tremble. “We want you to focus on her posture and the railing in front of her,” says creative director Emeric Thoa.
Beneath this naturalistic presentation lies a huge amount of mathematical calculation. Using only the left analog stick, you control all of Aava’s body and limbs, and lock in handholds and footholds with the press of a button. The system calculates the stress on Aava’s limbs and core in real time, which determines the most physically realistic next movement for Aava. “Limbs are chosen automatically by the system; it predicts which arms and legs will move smoothly and easily,” Thoa explains. “The challenge for the player is to keep Aava balanced.”
This kind of dynamic scrambling is a far cry from Assassin’s Creed’s automated parkour, which has you clinging to stone walls with the pull of a trigger, or the navigation puzzles of recent climbing hit Jusant, which have you clinging to mineral outcrops on a predetermined path up a mountain. Cairn makes even the most dizzying activities even more complex by combining a freeform control system with a meticulously designed mountain, whose intersecting routes even Thoa and his colleagues don’t fully understand.
“It’s 2024, and there are words like ‘procedural’ and ‘AI,’ but we designed this mountain and built it completely by hand, placing every rock and crevice and handhold,” Thoa says. “It’s really hard work, and very iterative. I’m really grateful to our level design team.”
What sights and emotions await the player and Arva on their journey? Tore remains tight-lipped, saying only that he and the studio consulted with renowned mountaineer Elizabeth Revol, who spoke of “the intense freedom you feel when you push yourself past your limits at the top of the Earth.” Another detail that stayed in the game’s creator’s mind was that upon reaching the highest, thinnest mountain air, Revol experienced an almost delirious euphoria, “crying, screaming, going into a kind of strange trance.”
Cairn arrives with multiple game modes: the story sees Aava take on a gruelling, multi-day climb of a single mountain, and there’s an Expedition mode with additional mountains and challenges. Those willing to forgo the safety of the rope can also climb “free solo.” “This is where the real fun begins,” declares Toa, with a devilish glower, who, unlike Joussant, “will definitely die” in Cairn.
So what’s the Dark Souls of climbing games? Probably. But as Thoa stresses, “this isn’t a rage game.” Rather, he says, Cairn aims to convey “what climbing and alpinism is really about.” “You try, you fall, you try again, you fall, and then when you manage to get up, it’s very satisfying.”
yesWhile the name might lead you to think of a game about herding sheep, it’s actually a lot stranger than that. teeth They’re sheep, but they’re fluffy flying sheep that float around after you as you ride on the back of a giant, colorful bird. Every now and then, they’re sheared and knitted into new jumpers or hats with pom-poms so the sheep look like naked, purple, aerial sausages with eyes. But the majority of your flock is actually made up of flying fish. Or are they fish? Some are curvy like eels, some moo like chickens, and some look like winged whales. Like we said, it’s pretty weird.
Your job in Flock is to find them in the wild, identify them from their short but varied and obvious written clues (“drooping proboscis,” “vertical stripes,” “often mistaken for a noisy radish”), and fill a field guide full of these big-eyed, flying-fish-like creatures. They all resemble sea creatures through a slightly surreal pop art filter, but are so well drawn that you can now tell the difference between a Cosmet and a Beul, a Thrips and a Rustic. Some camouflage among weeds and leaves, others flee when you approach, and others chirp at you while sunning themselves on rocks. You can find a piper to teach the birds to sing, and then collect them like a piper into a cloud of creatures that will follow you.
I’m still not very good at charming creatures. I can’t get the timing right and often end up frightening the birds with my off-key shrieks instead of leading them into the flock. But I morning It’s good at finding them. The flying is done for you. Birds fly around trees and mossy rocks automatically, so you’re free to observe your surroundings and listen for the chirps and twitters that announce the presence of undiscovered birds and fish. I navigated by sound as often as by sight. The nature-inspired soundscapes are one of Flock’s strongest features, along with the eye-catching art and cute, witty writing.
I enjoyed my few days with Flock, though I wish it were longer. There were some really interesting environmental puzzles that made me want to find other creatures hiding out on the plateau. Most creatures were easy to find, but a few required some fun deduction from a single sentence in the field guide. Once or twice, a creature in my entourage would tell me the location of another creature or help me find something, but most creatures just follow the player around and don’t do anything. I couldn’t help but imagine a more ambitious version of this game, one where the main creatures give you interesting abilities once you’ve filled out the field guide, and you can do things with your friends in races and challenges. But in under five hours, I’d done everything there was to do.
And yet I keep firing up Steam Deck just to fly around the swamps and moss forests for a few minutes – it’s so relaxing, so fun to look at, and so endearingly quirky that it stands out from the crowd.
TThe best-selling PC game of 1997, Riven It now seems like a relic of a lost creative era. Set on a sunlit archipelago that would be swarming with Instagram influencers if it were real, the game combines computer-generated stills from postcards with live-action footage to create an elaborate island-scale escape room. Packed across five CDs, the game is a technical marvel, but its depths were only understood by those with the tenacity and tenacity to master lateral thinking. Few designers have come close to matching ingenuity or ability since. Riven– Similarities; the memory sank like a pebble in a still ocean.
After 30 years, this remake is back Riven The mysterious and enchanting world of Islands is recreated as a fully realized destination. To explore these islands, you walk over scorched cliffs and through stone-cold tunnels, rather than clicking through richly rendered still images (there’s also the option to play with a VR headset, for those ready and equipped for it). The basic beats and rhythms will be familiar to fans; you’ll still be playing with a mouse in one hand and a notebook in the other, cracking codes and figuring out how the world’s creaky underlying mechanisms fit together. But much has also changed, including the solutions to some of the puzzles. And there are new characters, including a star-studded appearance by real-life investigative journalist Ronan Farrow (who, along with his mother, actor Mia Farrow, is an avid fan of the islands). Riven And its predecessor mist).
The oppressive, murky pace won’t be to everyone’s tastes, and you’ll need a powerful machine to recreate the world as the author intended, but surprisingly, Riven‘s mystical powers have only grown stronger with each passing year. There’s nothing quite like it. As many of us count the days until summer vacation, it’s a destination without tourists, with lush scenery and tricky puzzles that, when solved, provide an invigorating, satisfying feeling.
MaAsteroids hurtling at planet-destroying speeds, glowing spheres of hot gas, black holes from which even light cannot escape: outer space can be the stuff of nightmares, but for Celine Veltman, a 28-year-old Dutch game maker who spent her childhood stargazing, it’s the stuff of dreams. She’s channeling this cosmic wonder into a video game with the most ambitious ambition: the creation of a solar system. Rocks collide with each other, chemical reactions occur, and planets and life itself are born in the depths of space.
Curiosmos’s bright, easy-to-follow visuals, more children’s picture book than Terrence Malick, express Veltman’s objectives for the project and its inception: “I want to inspire more people to become as passionate about space as I am,” she says, speaking animatedly of supernovae and protoplanetary disks.
The idea came to Veltman while she was visiting a friend with two young children in 2018. The kids begged the developer for an iPad, so Veltman came up with what she wanted them to play: a “silly” game about astronomy, one that would “make them laugh” while also teaching a lesson about the very building blocks of life.
Speaking to a backdrop of sculptures on shelves in his artist studio in Utrecht, Netherlands, Veltman explains that this whimsical space adventure relies on solid physics and programming from his colleagues Guillaume Pauli and Robin de Paeppe. Curiosmos is a game of interlocking systems that produce unpredictable outcomes: an asteroid blows off parts of the planet to expose a molten core, drifting clouds create the perfect conditions for plant life, and strange, ungainly creatures begin to waddle around. There are touches of 2008’s Spore in this primitive life simulator, but Veltman specifically references the games of renowned designer Keita Takahashi (specifically Noby Noby Boy and Wattam) for working with “goofy, unconventional concepts.”
The task of translating the universe’s almost unfathomably complex secrets into gameplay proved to be a challenge. “Sometimes I almost regret it,” says Veltman, who relied on her instincts about what key information to include, leaving out magnetic fields and including rings of debris. Ultimately, she says with a wry smile, people need to understand that “planets are fragile, and can turn into big piles of dust.”
While the subject matter might evoke a touch of existential dread, Curiosmos is designed to feel good in the player’s hands. “That was a big part of the design,” Veltman says. Hurling asteroids makes satisfying noises, and terrain explodes with satisfying sounds. Veltman, a hobbyist potter, understands the power of touch; even Curiosmos’s transforming planets look like they’re made of clay.
Curiosmos also has personal meaning for Veltman: “During development, I realized I was saddened to be an artist instead of a scientist,” she says. The game is her attempt to ease this tension and “give meaning to science by creating art.”
Veltman hopes it will have the same kind of impact, if not the same scale, as educational YouTube channels. In a nutshell“The astronomy community is a huge part of our lives,” Veltman says. “They’re the foundation of our planet. They’re the cornerstone of our planet’s astronomy.” Veltman is a scientist who translates arcane scientific concepts into videos of “optimistic nihilism” for his 22.5 million subscribers. Curious Moss has a similar energy, seeking to make the universe’s most remote, strange, and unsettling mysteries “accessible to everyone.” Perhaps this, Veltman thinks, could pique the curiosity of many new astronomy enthusiasts.
IIn 2006, I was fired from my job at EB Games. Looking back, it was a justified decision. One Sunday, I recorded myself leaping over piles of boxes and making inappropriate gestures at strangers. This grainy video of an emo kid in dark clothes was uploaded to YouTube. Ahh, the foolishness of youth.
About eight months later, my manager came across the video and promptly terminated my employment (which today might just go viral on TikTok).
A decade later, I secured a job at the video game and culture website Kotaku Australia, along with its sister sites Lifehacker and Gizmodo, which kickstarted my career.
Now, these well-known brands are no more. Nine’s Pedestrian Group, which held the licensing rights for the three titles from their US counterparts, announced the closure of all three, in addition to Vice and Refinery29, resulting in 40 job losses.
Terrifying months continue for Australian journalismRecent cutbacks include 200 job losses at Nine, 150 at Seven West Media, and significant restructuring at News Corp. While any job losses are regrettable, the shuttering of Kotaku, Gizmodo, and Lifehacker marks a grim day for Australian tech journalism with lasting repercussions.
For video game journalism in Australia, this feels like the end of an era—a catastrophic event. Where once vibrant video game journalism thrived, there now exists a vast void.
Most mainstream Australian publications have journalists covering technology, arts, books, music, entertainment, and sports, but as far as I am aware, none have dedicated video game journalists on staff.
Despite this, there is a significant demand for video game content in Australia. According to Bond University’s Australian Games Report, 81% of Australians play games, with the average player age being 35. With a majority of players falling between 18 and 40 years old, and nearly half of them being female, Australians are projected to spend $4.4 billion on games in 2023.
Video games have also permeated other media forms, from successful movie adaptations to popular series on streaming platforms like Netflix and Apple. The cultural impact of video games is undeniable, yet journalism has struggled to keep pace due to a lack of support and funding.
Video game journalism extends beyond news and reviews, encompassing cultural and business aspects such as lifestyle articles, investigations into the impact of gaming on health, and coverage of the business side of game development studios.
Journalists have been dubbed the authors of history’s first draft, but little has been documented about video games in Australia due to insufficient support. While some independent websites and blogs valiantly cover this space, the closure of mainstream outlets like Kotaku leaves a significant void.
How can we reverse this trend?
The immediate solution lies in major Australian media outlets recognizing the untapped potential in video game journalism. The closure of Kotaku Australia could spell disaster for this field, but it also presents an opportunity for rebirth. Talented individuals are out there, waiting for a chance to shine. All it takes is someone to take that leap of faith.
Furthermore, government initiatives like the Australian Government’s Digital Games Tax Credit and state-based funding for game development can serve as pillars of support for both developers and journalists. These programs have nurtured successful titles in the past and could also aid in bolstering independent games journalism.
And then there’s you, the reader. Your direct support and engagement with journalist-owned websites, like aftermath—founded by a former Kotaku US reporter—show that there is a hunger for quality video game content. Establishing a direct relationship with readers could pave the way for sustainable journalism in Australia.
While I may have left Kotaku in 2017, the closures of these outlets hit close to home. Losing my job at EB Games in 2006 felt like the end of the world, but someone took a chance on me, and I want to see the same happen for video game journalism.
ohOn Sunday, The Observer published a sensitive article about video game addiction, interviewing therapists who work in the field and affected families. Real, compulsive, life-altering addiction, whether to video games or anything else, is of course devastating to those affected. In 2018, the WHO classified gaming addiction as a specific disorder. (It is different from technology addiction.) A specialized gaming disorder center established in the UK has treated over 1,000 patients. Thankfully, judging by the figures, this is a rare case, affecting less than 1% of the 88% of teenagers who play games.
The article asks the question: “Why are so many young people addicted to video games?”, which will no doubt have struck a chord with many parents who despair at the amount of time their children spend in front of a computer or games console. But as The Guardian’s video games editor and correspondent, we believe that many of those worried about the amount of time teenagers spend gaming are not dealing with an issue of addiction or compulsive behaviour. If we want to know why so many teenagers choose of their own free will to play 10 to 20 hours a week, we should look around us, rather than pathologising gaming.
Gen Z is the most surveilled generation ever born. We blame our kids and teenagers for not going outside, but at the same time we limit their freedom and close off their space. Parents may miss spending all day outside, riding their bikes around the neighborhood, but at the same time they treat their kids’ smartphones like tracking devices, demanding regular check-ins, infiltrating their social media feeds, and building databases of their activities and friend groups. The pandemic may have subsided, but it wasn’t just lockdowns that kept kids indoors.
Where will teenagers go without parental anxiety? Over the past decade, YMCA Data It indicates more than 4,500 youth activities jobs will be cut and 750 youth centres will be closed. According to the Music Venue Trust:Every week, two grassroots music venues close. The nightclub industry is in freefall. Playing in the park invites the suspicion of overprotective adults who assume these treasured recreational spaces are for young children only. City squares, skate parks, and pedestrian zones that were once public spaces are now insidiously privatized, monitored by CCTV and guarded by private security guards.
So it’s no wonder that teenagers retreat into the online world of video games. It’s the last space unencumbered by parents or other authority figures, the last place beyond adult control. You can spend all day doing what you want with your friends in Red Dead Redemption, Minecraft or Fortnite, without being interrupted or complained about, and without having to spend £5 on a latte every 30 minutes. If you can’t get therapy, at least you can relax and chat with friends in soothing games like Stardew Valley, Unpacking or Coffee Talk. You can travel freely and for free in Elden Ring or The Legend of Zelda. In Euro Truck Simulator, elderly relatives can’t suddenly vote to restrict your access to the continent.
There’s no doubt that spending all day in bed is unhealthy and lonely, but can you blame this generation for being anxious and withdrawn? They’ve been confined to their homes for over a year recently. There’s a great deal of despair and disillusionment in a world where homeownership is an illusion, lifelong job security is increasingly rare, and young people are accused of being lazy and complacent. The country’s minimum wage for 18-year-olds is £8.60, and an hour’s work barely buys you a pint in a London pub – if you can even find a job at all.
Outside of gaming, the media landscape is dominated by news sources that ridicule, slander and criminalize young people as woke wimps. The Conservatives’ last attempt to rally support before the election was to reinstate National Service for 18 year olds to teach them respect and public spirit. This is a generation that put their lives, friendships, relationships and education on hold to save their grandparents. It’s no surprise they want to escape into the virtual world. It’s amazing they want to return to the world we built for them.
Meanwhile, real action on the environmental crisis is being thwarted by incompetent politicians who cozy up to corporate polluters and right-wing conspiracy theorists who deny there’s any problem at all. Experts are wrestling with how far protesters should be allowed to block roads, while water companies are filling the oceans with human waste. When it’s time to reap what we’ve sown, all of these people will be dead, but not Gen Z. They’ll have a job for life for sure.
Today’s teenagers are gaming more than any generation before them. They’re also experiencing a mental health crisis, with one in three reporting mental health issues ranging from anxiety and depression to, of course, addiction. Even if there is a relationship between these things, it’s not the cause. We’re eager to blame anything for the problems our kids are experiencing, from smartphones to social media to video games — that is, anything but ourselves.
circleA live jazz band plays Mario Kart, Full Orchestra Sonic plays. But there's an entire subgenre of video game music artists, who are happy to describe their sound as even nerdier. “Nerdcore has been around for 25 years – it's hip hop with nerdy themes, mostly about video games,” says Nick Box, 41, from Blackpool. Box has been in all sorts of “weird, silly bands,” including an electronic horror punk band. Hot Pink Sewer“All I did was dress up as a disabled person and play some backing tracks.” Cliff Grichard And it's weirder than you might think.
“The setting is a ZX Spectrum run by an AI clone of '90s TV presenter Noel Edmonds,” he explains. “The show starts with a Spectrum loading screen, followed by a pixelated Edmonds telling the audience that he's responsible for every celebrity death, political decision and catastrophe of the last 40 years. I run around screaming about stupid celebrities and end up fucking Mr Blobby onstage.”
According to Box, they were a nerdcore rap band based in Sunderland in the 2000s. B Type are his main inspiration and are “probably the biggest nerdy rap band in the UK right now”.
“We weren't the cool kids”… Mega run. Photo: Megaran
“In the early 2000s, there was a music explosion that mixed video game soundscapes with punk rock, hip hop and rap,” says Steve Brunton, aka BType, 39. “Final Fantasy VII was the first game that got people hooked on music, which led to remixes and covers.”
BType have covered Pokémon, Final Fantasy, Mortal Kombat and Cannon Fodder. “Each track is a love letter to the original,” he adds. The band performs with modified Game Boys and live beatboxers. “I'd describe our sound as the Beastie Boys working for Nintendo,” he says. Their shows draw “a wide variety of fans, from metal fans to nerds and geeks who you can tell from their T-shirts. When we started it was a huge untapped reservoir. Now, because everyone plays video games, a lot of people self-identify as fans.”
“What we really need to talk about is Megaran“He's a former English teacher from the US who became popular rapping about Final Fantasy VII and Mega Man and will be opening for Wheatus on their UK tour. He's a really great guy,” he advises.
“Hip hop's second golden age came in the early '90s, when Snoop Dogg, Nas and Wu-Tang Clan were releasing their seminal records,” Philadelphia-born Raheem Jarboe, aka Mega Ran, 45, told me over Zoom from Los Angeles International Airport, where we were waiting for a delayed flight to London. “Some of us were like, 'Let's just write songs,' but we weren't the cool kids, so we just wrote about our lives playing video games.”
Mega Run released his first album in 2006. He quit teaching in 2011 when he received a job offer from Capcom to write music for Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge. “The songs are still nerdy, but the lines are blurring. If you listen to a Kanye West song, you hear a reference to a video game. Before, you didn't think anyone would notice a reference to Marvel Comics. Now Marvel is one of the biggest franchises in the world.”
BxLxOxBxBxY. Photo: Connor Standfield
“Mega Run supported Wheatus on their UK tour in June this year, taking to the stage with the band and rapping during their set of Teenage Dirtbag. “It touches on Nintendo Power, AOL, Yahoo and all the stuff we did when we were kids in the early 2000s,” he says.
Have you heard of Mr B? [The Gentleman Rhymer] “They're British nerdcore artists, and instead of insulting each other, they're praising each other and battling each other. 'You're so cool, your fashion accessories are amazing.' Talk to them, they're fun.”
“It would be nice, especially if we get some positive press,” said the 49-year-old, from Brighton. Paul Alborough Also known as Professor Elemental. “Ten years ago, Michael Gove Mentioned He liked my music and it was in the Guardian. I had to contact him and tell him that if he came to my show, I would have the audience beat him with sticks.”
Alborough describes his character, Professor Elemental, as “a mad, optimistic but woefully incompetent eccentric British explorer and inventor”. He has been performing for over a decade and can be seen at Glastonbury this year in a rainbow suit and pith helmet, with chimpanzees and lions as backing dancers.
Like Mega Ran, Professor Elemental has written songs for Sega and Nintendo, and if you want him to write a personal song it will cost you £500 a song.
So what does he think of his nerdcore contemporaries? “Sometimes I hear people rapping about, say, Mr Blobby, and I think, 'I can't stand this newfangled rap, it's not proper hip-hop'. But then I remember what I do…”
Weirder than you'd think… Cliff Grichard. Photo: Cliff Grichard
The Mr. Blobby-themed rap leads us to Dan Buckley, 39, the leader of a Mr. Blobby-themed grindcore band. Underline.
“I'm really interested in the blend of music, comedy, surrealism and a good, healthy dose of weirdness,” Buckley says of his two decades in the industry.
I I don’t often miss my teenage years, but I do miss the time I had to play video games. I used to get into games late into the night, but now that I’m a busy adult, I barely have the time to do that. Outside of covering games for work, I feel like I barely have time to play. So instead of the huge, engrossing role-playing games I once craved, I prefer games I can complete in a few nights. I’m pretty much used to this. The days of 100-hour epics and live service online games are long gone. They’ll come back eventually, when my kids are older.
But more than two years have passed since the release of Elden Ring, a game in my favorite genre by my favorite director, and I suddenly found myself tired of having barely played it. I’d been playing it bit by bit on my PS5, but I’d never been able to get past Rimgrave’s (admittedly vast) starting area. I kept hoping that my partner would take the kids for the weekend, or that I’d have a week off during term time so I could revert to my teenage habits and play hours alone. But… 2 yearsIf I want to play this game, or any big game, I have to make sure I fit it into my real life, which includes work, two small kids, and all the other responsibilities.
Is that even possible? There’s one thing that definitely helps: Steam Deck. Since having kids, I’ve become a lot more reliant on portable consoles. Spending hours uninterrupted in front of the TV without being seen is nearly impossible, and I don’t want to traumatize my kids by blasting them the violent and grotesque scenes of Elden Ring. I’ve been able to play both Zelda games on my Switch because I can take them anywhere and play them occasionally. Plus, these games are huge. So a few weeks ago I bought Elden Ring again, installed it on my Steam Deck, rebooted it, and resolved to defeat the infamous opening boss, Godric the Grafted, and see what’s beyond Stormveil Castle.
At home, I spent all my free time on Steam Deck, to the point of ignoring my family. Kids watching 30 minutes of TV before dinner? Elden Ring. Partner watching Euros? Elden Ring with eyes fixed on the score. Microwaving lunch? Time for Elden Ring. I tried small, achievable adventures like running around looking for unexplored ruins and getting surprised by a dragon in the middle of a lake. I made it through Stormvale Castle and back only to be totally beaten by Godric. I got used to giving up mid-battle, retreating, and looking for something else to do. Progression felt painfully slow, and I hated every time I had to stop playing in the middle of something. At the end of the first week, I checked my playtime. It was 6 hours.
“I left Godric at the castle and warped away to a safer location to just… have some fun.” Photo: Bandai Namco Europe
Six hours?! Is that all the free time I have available in a week? I was seriously depressed. It’s unnatural to play a game like this bit by bit, and when I add up all the stolen time, I’m left with a shockingly small amount of time. At this rate, it’ll take me six months to beat this game, and that’s without playing (or doing) anything else.
My problem was that I was only interested in finishing the game, rather than enjoying it. Six hours is better than zero. I couldn’t play the game the way I used to, so I had to think differently. Instead of reading guides to figure out the best way to progress through the game and trying to progress as quickly and efficiently as possible, I left Godric in the castle, warped to a safer area, and just… tried to have fun. I found a hidden boss and easily defeated it. I opened a treasure chest that teleported me to a terrifying underground mine full of insect-like wizards, then escaped and ended up in a ghostly city. I really liked the Wolverine-esque metal claws I found, but not because they were the best weapon, but because they were fun to use.
After a week of running around like this, I was relieved of the frustration I had felt before. Elden Ring is a terrible game if you try to complete it as quickly as possible in an extremely limited time frame, as most games are. It’s a great game if you focus on the adventure of the moment. I spent about 40 minutes in a smoldering little church trying to kill a red phantom warrior with a giant cleaver that could kill me in two hits, just to see if I could do it. When I managed two parries and killed her after a flurry of desperate sword strikes, I was beside myself. If I had insisted on getting through the game, I would have missed that moment entirely.
I beat Godric last night. With those funny claws that I love so much. I stopped watching the clock for how long I was playing. I stopped worrying about getting the most out of the least amount of effort. And now I’m really having fun. If you’re wondering how to play a huge game when you only have an hour, my advice is to use that hour. It’s the time you have. And an hour of enjoying a game is better than an hour spent wishing you could play longer.
What to Play
Demon’s Souls. Photo: Sony
If you’re ready to tackle a FromSoftware/Hayao Miyazaki game for the first time and want something more manageable than Elden Ring, I’d recommend the PS5 remake. Demon’s SoulsOriginally released in 2009, this rebuild fixes many of the control and camera flaws, offering a horror-infused dark fantasy vision and great, stress-free combat. It’s hard, but well worth it, and it takes less time than other Souls games.
Available on: PS5 Estimated play time: 30+ hours
What to Read
Positech Democracy 4. Photo: Positech Games
We did the cursed thing and ran a game simulating the first five years of each British party in power. Democracy 4Each party acted based on the policies set out in their manifestos, but it didn’t work at all.
Elden Ring creator Hidetaka Miyazaki mentioned the possibility of an Elden Ring movie or TV show in an interview last week. George R.R. MartinCo-wrote the game’s story. The blog suggests Something may already be in the works: “You may have heard rumours about a feature film or a TV series… but I have nothing to say. Not a word, no, nothing. I don’t know anything and you haven’t heard a word from me.”
There are several remakes of older works assassin’s creed Games in development, Ubisoft says This may also include the pirate-flavored Black Flag, but this is still the best in my opinion.
Capcom Remake announced of Dead Risinga satirical cult hit about killing zombies using items found in shopping malls, is due for release in September.
Is the consolidation of video game journalism a good thing for gamers? Photo: Josep Martinsson/FIFA/Getty Images
Reader Matt asks:
“What would be the consequences if IGN bought the video game news site Gamer Network? If Eurogamer shuts down, we’d riot.“
This may seem like an insider question, but it’s an important one for readers of gaming news and reviews — which of you, the Pushing Buttons reader, is a reader of that. In late May, the very large gaming website IGN (I’ll be honest, I worked at IGN from 2010 to 2013) announced that Bought out UK gaming websites include VG247, Eurogamer and GamesIndustry.biz (and, more specifically, I worked for all of these sites from 2006-2010 or so). There are currently just two companies that own pretty much all of the specialist gaming media in the UK: Future Publishing has GamesRadar, PC Gamer and a selection of their magazines, and IGN has everything else.
IGN has previously acquired gaming sites. 1up and GameSpyand they ended up closing down, which doesn’t inspire confidence. But you have to ask: why buy a bunch of beloved brands that are still making a profit from what I’ve heard, and close them down? In 2024, any company in online media needs all the traffic it can get; buying a competitor only to close it down would be a terrible investment in a shrinking advertising economy. That’s why IGN is cautiously hopeful that it will be a good owner of these sites and that it won’t lose a huge chunk of UK games media with this acquisition.
Why is this important? Gaming is one of the few entertainment verticals where specialized media still thrives. Music media is in decline; just look at the fate of NME and Pitchfork. TV and film journalism is mostly newspapers like this one now. But when it comes to games, mainstream media is far behind reporters and critics at IGN,
IIn 2002, a group of five Italians garnered local attention for their ambitious project. They aimed to develop games for Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance, becoming the first company in the country to do so. Armed with just a few hundred euros and basic computers, these executives dove headfirst into the world of game development without prior experience or a team of programmers. Their motivation stemmed from a shared passion for gaming, a distaste for traditional employment structures, and unwavering optimism.
Over the ensuing two years, the team poured their hearts and souls into the project. Countless late nights and minimal time off characterized their relentless pursuit to bring their vision to life. Despite facing numerous challenges, they remained steadfast in creating a groundbreaking game with intricate features. The game, named Kien, remained in obscurity for years, eventually surfacing this year. However, most original team members had already moved on to other endeavors by then, with only game designer Fabio Belsanti persevering and seeing the project through.
Kien holds a unique distinction as the longest-delayed video game release, spanning 22 years. Surpassing the notoriety of Duke Nukem Forever, Kien’s delayed launch finally allows gamers to experience the action-platformer on a Game Boy Advance cartridge.
The game commences with players selecting between two protagonists: the Warrior and the Priestess. The Warrior wields a sword against hordes of enemies, presenting a formidable challenge. Kien’s gameplay keeps players engaged with challenging encounters and respawning adversaries, drawing comparisons to the difficulty level of Dark Souls. This nostalgic experience harkens back to the unconventional games of yesteryears that captivated youthful imaginations.
Take your chance… Priestess of Kien. Photo: Incube8 Games
While Kien’s journey to release was fraught with challenges, it was not initially intended to span decades. Following completed development and failed publisher negotiations, the game languished in obscurity. Belsanti’s dedication to uncovering lost 15th-century literature and merging it with Japanese gaming influences and classic action titles like Turrican shaped Kien’s unique narrative. Despite setbacks, Belsanti remained resolute, eventually finding a publisher in Incube 8 to revive Kien for a new audience.
In a digital landscape dominated by modern graphics and technical prowess, Kien’s revival on original hardware stands as a testament to its enduring charm. Its availability on retro cartridges accompanied by multi-page manuals rekindles a sense of nostalgia and reverence for gaming’s roots.
Looking ahead, AgeOfGames seeks to create a spiritual successor to Kien, staying true to their ethos of delivering compelling gameplay experiences over flashy visuals. Belsanti’s enduring passion for storytelling through gaming underscores the timeless appeal of simpler yet immersive game design.
Embracing a new era of retro gaming resurgence, Kien’s resurgence symbolizes a return to simpler times in digital entertainment. Its rediscovery by a new generation echoes the enduring power of captivating storytelling and imaginative gameplay experiences.
Experience Kien’s revival on original hardware through Incube 8, a pioneering company championing classic console gaming. Witness the magic of Kien’s long-awaited release and embark on a nostalgic journey back to the golden age of gaming.
MaWhat I love most about Luigi’s Mansion are the little details: the way Mario’s timid little brother nervously hums along to the music as he stumbles through the spooky mansion; the slapstick animations when he falls into a fireplace or gets blasted into a secret room on a foldout bed; the laughs and goofy expressions on his face as the ghosts start to play tricks on you. As you use Luigi’s trusty ghost vacuum to flip up carpets to reveal secret trap doors (or secret spiders) and suck up bills and gold coins hidden throughout, you can’t help but notice how every little sound, scene and secret has been carefully placed to give you little moments of joy.
This ghost-busting puzzle game was a very welcome surprise sequel when it launched for the Nintendo 3DS in 2013. Its diorama-like mini-mansions and peepholes gave Nintendo’s artists ample opportunity to show off the console’s stereoscopic 3D effects, enabled by a small slider on the side of the screen. But now, 11 years later, the game has launched on the Switch and two things have changed. First, the 3D effect it was designed around is no longer there, and second, Luigi’s Mansion 3 is here and it’s vastly improved.
Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD. Photo: Nintendo
Considering Luigi hasn’t made a single spooky film in a decade now, it’s hard to begrudge him a graphically improved remake. But Nintendo has priced Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD at almost £50, which is especially infuriating when you consider it wasn’t much more expensive to begin with. It looks better – the interiors of all five mansions have been revamped, with impeccable detail on everything from sofas and spider webs to armour – but it plays exactly the same, broken up into mini-missions that interrupt the flow of the game and take Luigi out of the creepy abode he’s exploring at 10-minute intervals, and back to paranormal investigator E. Gadd’s laboratory.
Gadd is constantly calling Luigi on his little flip phone, which is very cute, but also distracts from the gameplay. While many Nintendo games suffer from too many tutorials for the first hour or two, this game has these interruptions from start to finish, making it hard to enjoy leisurely exploration. It’s not a scary game, but it would be better without the constant chatter. Maybe the levels needed to be broken down like this to fit the game on the tiny 3DS cartridge, but it feels dated now. Another irritation is the multiplayer, where two people can’t play together on the same console. Unlike Luigi’s Mansion 3, you can’t play with your child or partner.
Structural quibbles aside, there’s no disputing Luigi’s Mansion 2’s design is sound: the puzzles are great, the ghost combat is fun and clever, and the attention to detail creates an abundance of endearing moments, but Luigi’s Mansion 3 delivers on all of that. and For the same price, you get even more attractions: you can explore a haunted hotel without being interrupted by anything but poltergeist activity;
It is one of the four fundamental forces, but what is gravity? It is made of? A quantum theory of gravity doesn’t exist (yet), but that hasn’t stopped scientists from pursuing these elusive particles.
Unusual waves
Ship-sinking “storm waves” are hitting our oceans… Scientists don’t know why. But there are calls for increased monitoring to build predictive models for these deadly waves. Here’s what we know about these mysterious, seemingly random phenomena.
Glowing Cave
Contrary to popular belief, radioactive material does not actually glow (as you can see by looking at a uranium rod). The Simpsons However, a team of nuclear forensics experts is working on developing a device that will do just that. BBC Science Focus News Editor Noah Leach meets the scientists behind this revolutionary device.
What will the universe become?
Using giant supercolliders, scientists hope to discover hidden instabilities built into the fabric of existence… instabilities that could destroy everything. So will it freeze, crumble, rip apart, or get sucked away? Here’s how cosmologists are tackling one of the biggest questions of all: “What will happen at the absolute end of all things?”
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Master your motivation: Why are some of us procrastinators and others driven and proactive? It’s all in the brain. Understanding the science behind motivation might help you achieve more. We’ve created a simple step-by-step guide to help you do just that.
Zero-emission aviation: After a long wait, the world’s first zero-emission aircraft is finally a reality, but are these battery-powered aircraft really the solution we need?
How to slow down time: In today’s modern world, with phone notifications, emails, endless meetings, and caffeine breaks, your days may feel like a blur. Sensing When you have less time, it feels like you have more time.
Issue 406 is scheduled to be released on June 11, 2024
I I’m so grateful for my dual citizenship now. The horror of Scotland’s dismal performance at Euro 2024 was tempered by Canada’s heroic play in the inaugural Copa America and by the Edmonton Oilers, a Canadian hockey team that’s reached its third Stanley Cup final in 18 years – a team so thoroughly Canadian that it has a fossil fuel in its name.
Thank you, NHL 93 and 94 on the Mega Drive. Not only were those two games the twin-headed epitome of sports gaming perfection, but they’re also the reason I can walk into any pub in Canada and bluff my way through a conversation about Mario Lemieux, Steve Yzerman, and Mark Messier. I could also make the case for why Jeremy Roenick is the most underrated hockey player of his generation, if only because NHL 94 combined the four horsemen of the apocalypse into one. He was on par with Barry Sanders in Madden, Kylian Mbappe in any FIFA, the Stockton/Malone combo in NBA Jam, and other insanely good players whose teams you couldn’t beat.
The Edmonton Oilers and Florida Panthers will play in 3D. Photo: Rebecca Blackwell/AP
I hadn’t played NHL in decades, but inspired by the Oilers’ near-victory, I decided to fire up NHL 24 on my Xbox, and I was instantly neurotic. What happened to the simple game on the Mega Drive, where you skate to one side, shoot at the back post, and get one-timers into the net 4 out of 5 times? Now it’s hyper-realistic, with 50-meter control options and loads of icy inertia. In the first game, I felt like a Rebel soldier during the Empire’s attack on Hoth.
So, back to the beginning. Master the basics with free skating. Then move on to the awesome 1v1v1 mode, where three people shoot at the same goal in a variety of snowy, convenient locations. This is the perfect place to start mastering the individual skills that matter in a game where creating scoring chances is surprisingly easy, but actually scoring is like threading a needle. With the puck. While sliding. And while getting hit.
Once you’ve mastered basic individual skills, move on to a 3v3 NHL three-match. You score your team’s first goal and feel great. Then the game stops, the Hawk mascot starts dancing in frustration and you start playing as the Blackhawks. This is how it should be at the Euros. Can you imagine a beleaguered Gareth Southgate trying to explain why he chose Hartlepool’s Hangus the Monkey over Harry Kane? Or how well Scotland would have performed with the Gunnersaurus in place of the injured Kieran Tierney?
I got overconfident and tried my first trick deke move, lost the ball, Hawk got the puck, and the mascot scored on me. A mascot! And I got two points! Why? Apparently we were playing MONEY PUCK, which is a rhyming slang for what I was yelling at the screen. But I put in the hours and soon got a mascot to play on my team. And it’s fun!
I was ready to play online. But things have changed because I’m one of those people with an old EA account linked to an email address I no longer have access to. I went through 7 layers of hell that is EA Online Support and submitted a ticket asking them to link another account to my Xbox One. I was told I needed to wait 6 minutes. That’s not too bad. The number 6 shows up on the screen but doesn’t change. For 10 minutes. And then it finally switched over.
Up to 8.
So 10.
So it’s 11.
Hell, EA took all the money they ripped people off of Fifa Ultimate Team and spent it on time travel. Wait a few days and you’ll see how the dinosaurs went extinct (and probably starve to death while waiting for help from EA).
NHL 94 on the Mega Drive – Ahh, the good old days. Photo: EA
After decades, I finally connected with a human being. To access my account, I need to correctly answer six personal questions. Six! No way. The Canadian citizenship test was easier than this. Six personal questions? More than I asked my wife before we got married. Two questions are enough to access my bank account. Frustrated, I tried to prove my identity, offering to hold out my finger since I wouldn’t need it to play NHL 24 online anyway.
I tried to imitate Karen and said I wanted to speak to a manager, politely explaining that I was writing an article about the game. My “helper” said she would raise a ticket with the team and someone would get in touch. In the end, no one contacted me. Later, I realized there was an old case on my account from 2021. Clicked through the transcript. Same issue, still not fixed then.
My virtual hockey adventures will likely continue for a few more decades. I never have Something that happened on the Mega Drive.
TThe famously difficult dark fantasy epic Elden Ring is the second best-selling game in the world in 2022, and with the release of its expansion Shadow of the Erdtree last Friday, everyone is once again debating whether the game is too difficult. Every game developed by From Software since Demon’s Souls in 2009 has sparked this debate, but I’m not going to get into it, because it’s neither interesting nor particularly important. These games are what they are, and you can either choose to get into it or, of course, walk away.
This vision is inherited from the game’s director, Hidetaka Miyazaki, who rose to fame with Dark Souls in 2011 and has also served as FromSoftware’s president since 2014. Though tough, there’s also an element of faith and encouragement in this approach to game design: Elden Ring and other games believe that if you just play patiently and ask other players for help, you’ll eventually win and feel much better.
Miyazaki is an interesting character and one of the most influential artists in the gaming and entertainment world. He was named the “100 Most Influential People in the World” by Time magazine. The 100 most influential people I first interviewed him last year, just before the European launch of Demon’s Souls in 2010. Following his career since then has been one of the highlights for me. I recently interviewed him again in Los Angeles, and it might be comforting for some of us to know that playing his games is sometimes painful, even for him.
“With any game, before launch I’ll spend as much time playing it as I can,” he told me, “but after launch I don’t want to touch it too much because I think I’ll find things that I’ve missed or issues that bother me. And once I’m a player, I don’t have the power to do anything significant to change that, so I stop playing it once it’s out.”
“However, in preparation for Shadow of the Erdtree, I played through the main story of Elden Ring. I’m absolutely terrible at video games, so my approach and playstyle was to use everything I had at my disposal, every assistance, every help the game offered, and all of my knowledge as a game designer…The freedom and open-world nature of Elden Ring probably lowered the barrier to entry, and I may have benefited from that more than anyone else as a player.”
Hidetaka Miyazaki at the E3 Expo in California in 2013. Photo: Daniel Botsarski/WireImage
Watching Miyazaki pick up the controller and agonize over the world he’s created (and its imperfections that only he would notice) made me laugh heartily. It’s a true commitment to his game design philosophy of improving through failure, a mantra that seems to permeate his entire life. Miyazaki is a very hands-on director, and all of his games clearly bear his influence, but during his decade as president of From Software, he has tried to pass on his knowledge and artistic approach to others, giving them the space to fail as well.
“The budget, the size, the scope, everything has expanded to a level where I think there is not as much room for failure as there was before,” he told me. “From Software has its own way of hedging, so to speak. For most of our projects, we have partners who fund the projects. … From a business management perspective, we are not betting everything on one project. At the same time, we need to find the right projects where we can afford to fail. Even if they are small in scope or size, or a small module within a bigger one, we need to have room to fail. I think that’s where a lot of young game directors can try and learn from. Understanding and identifying where we can afford to fail is how we develop talent.”
Miyazaki considers Elden Ring a “turning point” for FromSoftware: “There will be a clear difference between before and after Elden Ring… [2023’s mech game] “Armored Core VI,” he says. He expects to see more games from the company’s other directors soon, rather than just himself. “I think Elden Ring is the limit for FromSoftware right now, in terms of scale. We’ve used all the resources and talent available to us. … There are concerns about scaling up even further. Perhaps having multiple projects is the next step, and other younger talents will have the opportunity to manage and oversee the game design of smaller projects.”
Shadow of the Elder Tree is the end of Elden Ring for now. With the exception of Dark Souls, Miyazaki generally doesn’t make sequels. Demon’s Souls, Sekiro, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring are all standalone works, and I get the impression he likes it that way. Interestingly, though, he wouldn’t mind someone else continuing The Land Between in a different medium.
“I don’t see any reason to rule out another interpretation or film of Elden Ring,” he told me, “but I don’t think myself or FromSoftware have the knowledge or the ability to create something in another medium. That’s where a very strong partner would come in. We’d need to build a lot of trust and agreement on whatever we’re trying to achieve, but I’m certainly interested.”
If any Soul Geek readers work in arthouse film production, consider this an opportunity to jump on.
What to Play
Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD. Photo: Nintendo
Now, let’s talk about something completely different. Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD This week there is a welcome blast from the past (I Reviewed by IGNOriginally released on Nintendo 3DS in 2013, this fantastically unique and spooky adventure is better than any Ghostbusters game ever made.
Mario’s clumsy, timid little brother has five elaborate diorama mansions to clear out of ghosts and secrets. The animation here is unparalleled, the ghosts are brimming with personality along with ectoplasm, and Luigi himself is an underrated star of slapstick comedy.
Available on: Nintendo Switch Estimated play time: 12 hours
MaA lot has changed for Hidetaka Miyazaki in the past decade. In May 2014, he became president of FromSoftware, the Japanese game developer known for the dark fantasy blockbusters Demon’s Souls (2009), Dark Souls (2011), and Bloodborne (2015), all of which he directed himself. At the time, FromSoftware’s games were critically acclaimed and had a devoted following, but they sold poorly, only selling a few million copies each. But in 2022, the company released the gloriously imposing Elden Ring, a collaboration with fantasy author George R.R. Martin. Not only is it Miyazaki’s best work, it’s also his most popular to date, having sold 25 million copies to date. FromSoftware is no longer a niche company that produces cult hits; it’s now a company that produces bona fide blockbusters.
Has this changed Miyazaki’s thinking? Given how unforgiving and ruthless his game world is, it may not be surprising that he’s not the most optimistic person you’ll ever meet. “Elden Ring was in a league of its own in terms of success and critical acclaim, but what we try to do as a company is to never assume that it’s going to happen again in future games,” he told me in an interview in Los Angeles. “We never make decisions based on the assumption that because we did it once, it’s going to happen again. Allowing for this fairly conservative prediction gives us room to fail, which ultimately leads to better games and better decisions. Indirectly, I think that the assumption that we’re not going to make hits anymore, that conservative outlook, inspires and helps our game design.”
Miyazaki and the From Software team Comfortable. And even if they did, it’s hard to imagine they would have made a game as demanding, ambitious, and at times brutal.
Shadow of the Eldtree, a major expansion for Elden Ring, is released today. It takes players to a terrifying land of shadows, filled with amber skies, fearsomely grotesque monsters, and vengeful, forgotten warriors. From Software’s games are notoriously difficult, demanding extraordinary grit, determination, and drive from the player. Shadow of the Eldtree may be the hardest yet. Shadow of the Eldtree will put even those with 100 hours of Eldtree experience on the back foot. But it handsomely rewards persistence with a complex, fascinatingly opaque storyline and memorable battles against fearsome entities, from ghostly, leaf-adorned dragons to giant walking cages of human ash. The sense of accomplishment you feel when you finally conquer the unconquerable in a Miyazaki work remains unmatched.
The harsh nature of Eld Tree feels like a dump of cold water on me. Maybe it’s because I’ve been playing this game for 15 years, but Elden Ring feels just a little more approachable than other FromSoftware games. If you get stuck somewhere, you can move somewhere else, rather than charging at the same near-impossible boss over and over again. There are more options, and you can always try a different approach. It doesn’t feel like you’re having your face shoved in the dirt, as I said to Miyazaki. all At the time. Does he think this is part of the reason Elden Ring has garnered more fans than Dark Souls or the 2019 ninja fantasy Sekiro?
Miyazaki: “I’ve always felt that the world is a really harsh place.” Photo: FromSoftware/Sony
“That’s certainly part of the intention. Elden Ring gives players a lot more freedom because of its open-world nature and game design,” he muses. “At no point in the game did we want players to feel boxed in or overly limited in the scope of what they can do and experience in that world. It’s not a very gloomy, dark fantasy that we’ve become accustomed to in past FromSoftware games… The same starkness and coldness is still there, but we wanted to create beautiful moments. Conceptually, there’s a bit of high fantasy in there. It feels like you have a break, both in terms of the difficulty and the learning curve, but also in the world setting.”
Every new FromSoftware release brings up a bit of a discussion about difficulty and accessibility in modern games. Some developers choose to offer easier modes for less experienced or time-poor players. Sometimes they even remove enemies from the game entirely.
But this doesn’t suit a game like Elden Ring – difficulty is what the game is about, and reducing the difficulty stifles creativity.
“If you really want people all over the world to play your game, you can just make the difficulty lower and lower, but that wasn’t the right approach,” Miyazaki said. “If we had taken that approach, I don’t think the game would have turned out the way it did, because the sense of accomplishment that players get from overcoming these hurdles is a very fundamental part of the gaming experience. If you lower the difficulty, you take away that joy. I think it ruins the game itself.”
For Miyazaki, improving through failure isn’t just a game design principle, it’s something of a personal philosophy. As president, he creates a work environment where developers can experiment and ideas don’t get bogged down. No one project dictates a developer’s entire future. His big break came in 2006, when he was put in charge of managing a struggling fantasy project at FromSoftware. The game would become Demon’s Souls. “I thought if I could figure out how to manage the game, I could turn it into whatever I wanted,” he told The Guardian’s Simon Parkin in 2015. “The best part was that if my idea failed, nobody cared. It was already a failure.”
“To be honest, I don’t think it’s that different now than it was 15 years ago when we were making Demon’s Souls,” he laughs when I remind him of this. “What I try to foster in our environment is to make sure that young directors and game designers have the same kind of experience that I had when I was working on Demon’s Souls, that if this game fails, it’s not the end of the world. I think that mentality and attitude helps people grow.”
Mr. Miyazaki is different. The first time I met him In 2011“I’ve always been a big fan of the game,” he said at Tokyo Game Show, just before the release of Dark Souls, the game that would thrust him into the spotlight. Quiet and soft-spoken, his eyes glued to the carpet, he says he used to shy away from being the center of attention. But now he’s much more confident and comfortable talking about both business and game design. When he thinks, he looks up at the ceiling, not down at the floor. He’s now a father to a young daughter and leads a company. And like players of Dark Souls and Elden Ring, he’s emerged as a more capable person.
However, he remains as hands-on as ever as a game designer. “Regardless of my title or position in the company, there is always the joy and satisfaction I get from making games,” he says. “I enjoy helping to nurture and develop young directors who will take the company to the next level. But sitting in an administrative office all day is not my style. I want to really get my hands dirty and continue to make games together, and through that, pass on my process to other generations of talent. I’ve held the title of president for almost 10 years now, but I’d say about 95% of my work and time at the company is devoted to game making and game direction. In this ratio, I’d say I’ve only had about 6 months of actual experience as an executive!”
The world is also very different from when Demon’s Souls was a big hit. I think the reason why more people are resonating with the work of Hayao Miyazaki and From Software is because we’ve become accustomed to a feeling of helplessness. For those who have lived through the last 15 years of pandemics, political turmoil, and looming climate disaster, bleak situations are not so foreign. What Elden Ring gives us is a glimmer of hope that, perhaps, if we are strong and persistent enough, we can triumph against all odds.
“A lot of From Software’s games throw you into this barren wasteland and make it a very harsh, harsh, cold experience… I don’t think what we’ve done in the game has changed, but maybe the world will change. Have “The last few years have been exceptional in terms of what’s going on around us, but even before that I felt the world was a very harsh place. I’ve always lived with that worldview, that value system. So this idea of being cast out into the wilderness and planting the seeds of growth feels almost universal to me. Maybe more people are discovering that now.”
I think what a lot of people miss in From Software’s games is a sense of hope. First Interview In a 2010 email exchange with Miyazaki, he told me about the origins of Demon’s Souls’ unusual multiplayer, in which players can summon anonymous helpers to help them get through a particularly frightening area or boss encounter. He was driving up a hill in the winter when everyone got stuck. It wasn’t until everyone in the back started helping by pushing the car in front to the top of the hill that someone finally made it. He called it a “connection of mutual aid between fickle people,” adding, “Oddly enough, that event will probably stick in my mind for a long time. It sticks for a long time precisely because it was so fleeting.”
Elden Ring is filled with these fleeting moments of beauty and friendship, and they’re all the more meaningful because they’re so rare. In a harsh world, moments of respite are precious.
“If I look deeply into my history, there are definitely experiences that have influenced my identity, the worldview that drives me to make games,” Miyazaki said. “I’ve never taken a step back and thought about what triggered it, but there’s definitely something that’s the reason these are the types of games I want to see and make. If I looked in the mirror and took a hard look at myself… if I went on a soul-searching journey to find out why, I might be disappointed in myself. It would force me to face how boring and ordinary I am. Maybe I’m intentionally avoiding that. That’s what keeps the creativity flowing.”
TThe film’s premise is a classic of the genre: one day, workers on the oil rig Beira D hit something with their drill, and soon a nameless monster descends on the vessel, killing the crew one by one. At the same time, Glaswegian electrician Cameron “Caz” McCreary is already on the verge of leaving the rig, having been fired from his remote workplace where he took refuge from the police after a huge bar fight. It is in his work boots that we step on as he desperately searches for a way out.
The team behind Still Wakes the Deep is hardly the same as The Chinese Room, the developer behind previous hits Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, both of which share the same trademark high visual fidelity, realistic soundwork, and emotive acting. Still Wakes the Deep is set on perhaps the most realistic oil rig ever seen in media, down to the hundreds of tiny hissing valves and labyrinthine metal staircases that groan dangerously. This wouldn’t be the place for health and safety talk, even without the terror looming from the deep, and the rig is by far the game’s most prominent character.
Still Wakes the Deep is also probably the most Scottish game you’ll ever play, and there’s a surprising amount of it. Each snippet of dialogue is a great example of how natural conversation should be, whether Kaz is talking to his few remaining colleagues or reflecting on the events that led him to Beira D. But at around six hours, the game is short, and there isn’t enough time for character development beyond a perfunctory introduction, which makes it hard to empathize with the characters, and isn’t helped by the clumsy device of having several characters call you in succession only to die over the phone.
The most realistic oil rig ever made in media…and yet it awakens the deep sea. Photo: Incognito mode
This is one of The Chinese Room’s most interactive games, doing more than just walking around and looking at things. But its gameplay design has one big problem: me, the savvy player. All of Still Wakes’ gameplay devices are used in so many games that I couldn’t help but groan the first time I saw yellow paint splattered on a ledge to grab onto. After that, yellow is everywhere: yellow tarps showing you where to climb, yellow edges on targets you can jump through, etc. Beira D goes from an interesting maze to a smooth parkour course.
When enemies appear, Caz can’t fight them; instead, he must sneak through them. Areas are littered with crouching spaces and items you can throw as distractions, and they’re often in rooms that you’ll need to cross multiple times before you can take cover. Ideally, this should be a source of tension, but as with navigation, the game makes it very clear what’s coming (and what’s going: at one point a rig worker literally shouts across a loud, echoing room that a monster is actually leaving), so there’s little you can do as the player other than follow the path.
Still awaken the abyss. Photo: Incognito mode
I was frustrated when I found the light from my headlamp didn’t bother the monsters, making it incredibly easy to sneak around. Or I’d fail a jump for purely camera-related reasons and have to listen to McCreary swear as he falls to his death multiple times, and I felt the tension melt away. The ever-present desire to help the player contrasts with horror games’ need to leave us in the dark sometimes. Every time the illusion crumbled, I left the game to put up with just to see what would happen to a character I wasn’t particularly attached to.
Still Wakes the Deep manages to create an atmospheric portrait of an ordinary person with no special skills simply trying to survive in the harshest environment imaginable, but there aren’t enough real scares or compelling moments to make it memorable beyond that.
IThere's been a lot of speculation regarding the outlook for the games industry in 2024. Following a surge of investment during the pandemic, the industry experienced a temporary boost in growth as people sought entertainment and social interaction while adhering to safety measures at home. However, this year has seen a correction, with studios and companies that expanded too rapidly now scaling back, leading to layoffs and studio closures. Job opportunities for developers have decreased, and games that faced delays due to the pandemic are taking longer to release, resulting in fewer titles compared to the previous year.
The Summer Game Fest, which has taken the place of E3 in Los Angeles, reflects this industry slowdown. What was once a grand trade show is now a more modest event held in smaller venues away from the main convention center. The shift from elaborate press conferences to online livestreams signifies a change in the industry landscape. However, amidst this decline, there is a bright spot in the success of indie games.
Indie games like Palworld, Helldivers 2, and Hades II have emerged as top sellers on platforms like Steam, showcasing the creativity and innovation present in the indie gaming scene. In contrast, big-budget blockbusters from major publishers are facing challenges, with titles like Redfall and Suicide Squad receiving mixed reactions. The industry’s focus on franchised games and live service models is leading to a lack of fresh ideas and risks being taken.
UFO 50, a collection of 50 games. Photo: Mossmouth
However, the indie gaming scene is thriving, with a multitude of creative and unique games being showcased at events like the Summer Game Fest. Titles like UFO 50, Tales of the Shire, and Fear the Spotlight offer players fresh experiences and showcase the diversity of the indie game market. As the industry shifts towards more indie success stories, there is hope for a resurgence of innovative and original content.
While the gaming industry’s major players continue to rely on established franchises and blockbuster titles, it is the indie developers who are driving forward with new ideas and creative approaches. With initiatives like Outersloth supporting indie developers and new entrants like Blumhouse entering the gaming space, there is a sense of revitalization and excitement surrounding indie games.
As the industry evolves, it is clear that the future of gaming lies beyond the traditional giants. With a global community of players and creators, the possibilities for innovation and growth are endless. While the big names may dominate headlines, it is the indie scene that is truly pushing boundaries and shaping the future of gaming.
What to Play
Star Wars: Hunters. Photo: LucasFilm Games/Zynga
For a fresh gaming experience, try out Star Wars: Hunters on platforms like the Nintendo Switch and smartphones. This team-based arena shooter offers diverse characters from the Star Wars universe and engaging gameplay mechanics. With a focus on intuitive controls and immersive visuals, this game is a must-try for Star Wars fans and gamers alike.
Available on: Nintendo Switch, iPhone, Android Estimated play time: 20+ hours
What to Read
No guns in sight… Catto's Post Office is one of the cosy titles featured on Wholesome Direct. Photo: Inn Shambles Studios
What to click on
Question Block
Elden Ring…can't swim. Photo: Bandai Namco
This week's Question Block explores the dilemma of how video games handle water-related challenges and the consequences of immersion versus gameplay mechanics. The debate over drowning animations and failure states in games highlights the complexities of creating authentic yet engaging gaming experiences.
Whether a game opts for realism or streamlined gameplay, the approach to water mechanics can shape the player’s experience and immersion in the virtual world. As the industry evolves, designers face the challenge of balancing authenticity with player engagement to deliver memorable and enjoyable gaming experiences.
For more insights into game design and industry trends, stay tuned to Question Block and other engaging content related to the evolving world of video games.
Helldivers 2, reminiscent of the sci-fi military satire and hyper-grotesque brutality of Starship Troopers, took the gaming world by storm upon its release in February. This cooperative action game offers immersive and hilarious gameplay, pitting players against terrifying insects and crazed robots in various desolate landscapes. Each battle feels like a part of a grander narrative, amplified by Arrowhead Game Studios’ adept use of social media channels.
Our Review: “Everything about this game is incredible, including the incredible things it sets out to do.” Read the full review
Animal Well
An ethereal joy…Animal Well. Photos: Shared Memories
Animal Well may seem like a niche game where players control a blob trapped in a well, but it surprises with its twisty puzzle-platform mechanics. This atmospheric and dreamy adventure features visuals reminiscent of a lost 1980s arcade game peeked through a window. Navigate the well, acquire new skills, and encounter charming creatures in this unique experience.
Our Review: “In an age where major video game companies are focusing on developing video games that are designed to function like sports, what a treat to see a game this complex and restrained on offer.” Read the full review
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
A skilled warrior…Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. Photo: Ubisoft
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown marks the return to the roots of Ubisoft’s iconic adventure series. Straying away from modern 3D exploration, this game offers precise 2D platforming as players embody the skilled warrior Sargon on a mission to rescue Prince Ghassan. Traverse labyrinthine fortresses, master jumps and dodges, and engage in intense boss battles in this new classic of the “Metroidvania” genre.
Our Review: “It’s been 13 years since the last all-new Prince of Persia game, so if this is a new direction, I’m excited to see what the results are.” Read the full review
Dragon’s Dogma 2
Capcom’s epic role-playing adventure, Dragon’s Dogma 2, may seem like a standard genre offering at first glance. However, this quirky and sometimes awkward game is filled with unique lore and quirky characters, offering a fun and hilarious experience reminiscent of a 1980s fantasy film.
Our Review: “To sum up this game in one sentence, it prioritizes fun over functionality. What you need to understand is that Dragon’s Dogma 2 is a very silly game.” Read the full review
Crow Country
Horror ride…Crow Country. Photo: SFB Games
Embark on a creepy survival horror adventure in Crow Country, where something sinister lurks in an abandoned theme park near Atlanta. This game takes inspiration from classic horror titles of the mid-90s, offering a spine-chilling experience reminiscent of games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill.
Our Review: “Crow Country is more than a collection of PS1-era classics; it’s a true triumph in itself.” Read the full review
Lorelei and the Laser Eye
Immerse yourself in a mysterious and bizarre adventure with Lorelei and the Laser Eye. Navigate through an abandoned hotel, unraveling a twisted mystery that intertwines art, film, and perhaps even murder. Each room presents a new puzzle to solve, offering hours of cerebral and stylish gameplay.
Our Review: “An engaging puzzle game that uses creepy visuals and a puzzling storyline as an essential part of the experience, not just a design gimmick.” Read the full review
Cinematic…Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II. Photo: Xbox Game Studios
Embark on a dark and chilling journey with Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2, as troubled warrior Senua navigates through the frozen and terrifying landscapes of ancient Iceland. Dive into Viking legend and explore themes of pain and determination in this extraordinary cinematic experience.
Our Review: “Hellblade II is a work to be cherished. Who knows how many more intelligent masterpieces this risk-averse industry will produce in the future?” Read the full review
Baratoro
A fascinating card game…Balatro. Photo: LocalThunk/Playstack
Balatro is an indie gem that combines poker, solitaire, and deck-building gameplay into an addictively fun experience. This roguelike card game features special abilities and a challenging gameplay loop that keeps players coming back for more.
Our Review: “A trippy take on poker that seamlessly blends different game elements. Read the full review
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
Enter the world of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, the middle installment in Square Enix’s revered Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy. Join eco-hero Cloud on a quest to defeat his nemesis Sephiroth after recovering from a climactic battle with the malevolent Shinra Corporation. Immerse yourself in detailed storytelling, strategic combat, and a captivating RPG experience.
Our Review: “Longtime fans will devour every morsel of sweet fan service here and savor every moment spent with this much-loved cast.” Read the full review
Tekken 8
The technique that shakes the monitor…Tekken 8. Photo: Bandai Namco Entertainment
Tekken 8 emerges as the preeminent fighting game among a resurgence of iconic titles like Street Fighter 6 and Mortal Kombat 1. With a diverse roster, powerful moves, and innovative fighting mechanics, Tekken 8 captures the essence of classic PlayStation 1 fighting games, delivering an exhilarating combat experience.
Our Review: “Familiar yet innovative, quirky yet intuitive, Tekken 8 provides a satisfying gameplay experience with its dynamic fighting system.” Read the full review
Honorable Mention
Hauntii, Sea of Thieves (PS5 version), Botany Manor, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, and Supermarket Times.
It is one of the four fundamental forces, but what is gravity? It is made of? A quantum theory of gravity doesn’t exist (yet), but that hasn’t stopped scientists from pursuing these elusive particles.
Unusual waves
Ship-sinking “storm waves” are hitting our oceans… Scientists don’t know why. But there are calls for increased monitoring to build predictive models for these deadly waves. Here’s what we know about these mysterious, seemingly random phenomena.
Glowing Cave
Contrary to popular belief, radioactive material does not actually glow (as you can see by looking at a uranium rod). The Simpsons However, a team of nuclear forensics experts is working on developing a device that will do just that. BBC Science Focus News Editor Noah Leach meets the scientists behind this revolutionary device.
What will the universe become?
Using giant supercolliders, scientists hope to discover hidden instabilities built into the fabric of existence… instabilities that could destroy everything. So will it freeze, crumble, rip apart or get sucked away? Here’s how cosmologists are tackling one of the biggest questions of all: “What will happen at the absolute end of all things?”
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Master your motivation: Why are some of us procrastinators and others drive and proactive? It’s all in the brain. Understanding the science behind motivation might help you achieve more. We’ve created a simple step-by-step guide to help you do just that.
Zero-emission aviation: After a long wait, the world’s first zero-emission aircraft is finally a reality, but are these battery-powered aircraft really the solution we need?
How to slow down time: In today’s modern world, with phone notifications, emails, endless meetings, and caffeine breaks, your days may feel like a blur. Sensing The more time you have, the more time you will feel like you have.
Issue 406 is scheduled to be released on June 11, 2024
Xbox has faced some challenges this year. Leaked announcements in January and February about games previously exclusive to Xbox coming to PlayStation and Nintendo Switch caused uproar among fans, leading to concerns about Microsoft’s commitment to Xbox exclusivity. However, only four games remained exclusive, as clarified by Xbox executives. In May, Xbox closed two popular studios, Tango Gameworks and Arkane Austin. Meanwhile, sales of Xbox Series X/S consoles have been slow, with analysts noting a significant increase in PlayStation 5 sales.
The Xbox Games Showcase aimed to turn the tide for Microsoft, featuring big-budget games like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, a new Indiana Jones game, and the return of Gears of War. Microsoft’s Game Pass service, which offers a monthly library of games, received a $1 billion investment. Following the merger with Activision Blizzard, Microsoft now boasts a vast number of game studios.
Exclusive Xbox games showcased included Perfect Dark and State of Decay 3, among others. The event also featured trailers for upcoming games like Fable, STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, and Flight Simulator. The show ended with a reveal of Gears of War: E-Day, set against an alien invasion.
The showcase also featured independent games like Mixtape and FragPunk, offering a diverse range of gameplay experiences. Overall, the event was well-received by Xbox fans and provided a positive outlook for the company after a challenging year. Compared to PlayStation’s game lineup, Xbox’s offerings for 2024 and 2025 appear more robust.
I
If Franz Kafka were alive and commenting on the video game adaptation of his work, Playing Kafka, the big question might have been: “Where’s the sex?” This interactive version of The Trial has branching narratives, but it’s lacking in sexuality. It’s not hard to imagine the author and playtester being infuriated by the lack of sadomasochism or desire. Overall, the choices made in this literal and lightly interactive adaptation seem tuned to be appropriate for leaving it running on an iPad in a museum. The barrier to entry is low with simple binary choices and touchscreen controls, and there’s no imagery to frighten classroom visitors.
Playing Kafka, released just a few weeks before the 100th anniversary of Kafka’s death, is a collaboration between the Goethe-Institut and developer Charles Games (a studio, not an individual). It adapts Kafka’s unfinished novels The Trial and The Castle, along with lengthy, critical letters Kafka wrote to his father about their relationship.
Playing Kafka.
Photo: Charles Games
The Trial lost the most in translation, speeding through the text and stripping away the complexities of its protagonist, reducing him to a hollow, docile avatar. Video game mechanics can offer stories and experiences other media can’t, but in this case they’re not enough to make up for what the developers gave up. And Kafka’s letters to his father don’t gain emotional weight from formulaic dialogue and pattern-matching puzzles; his father probably would have loved them.
Bigger and deeper than any of Kafka’s plots is his world and the Kafkaesque sense of an anonymous institution that is indifferent and incomprehensible to its participants. This contrasts with the practice of good game design, which demands clear rules, victory conditions, and systems that work as you expect them to. In Kafka’s world, the court is unknowable. It’s outside the courthouse, in attics and tenements, in wallpaper and lamplight. There may be no courthouse, no rules, no meaning at all.
So Playing Kafka doesn’t suggest that you can achieve anything with the experience. It’s full of movement without progress, choices without consequences. It can be a boring video game for players and purists. The German character light is adapted to the system and language of a mobile game with a story choice.
A screenshot of playing the Kafka video game.
Photo: Charles Games
This is where The Castle works best: Kafka didn’t give the novel an ending, which may have relieved the developers of the pressure to reach a certain point; their version is free of burden and admirably silly and playful, a boring exercise in what is probably nothing.
Would Kafka approve? Of course not; he never wanted to publish it in the first place. But if Kafka’s adaptation doesn’t satisfy the author, it will trap him in a hell of his own making. Playing Kafka Playing Kafka would have been Kafka’s ultimate nightmare: lost in a maze of his own words, stumped by unclear (or non-existent) objectives, bewildered by dialogue options that offer no alternative, and ultimately unable to proceed after a glitch prevents his lawyer character from smashing through the floor. There’s something at least a little Kafkaesque about the idea.
Sui Basecamp, the first global conference of the Sui ecosystem, opened today in Paris, welcoming developers and entrepreneurs from around the world to celebrate Paris Blockchain Week. Sui Basecamp, his two-day event held at two venues, will feature his Web2 and Web3 speakers spanning industry verticals from payments to gaming to e-commerce to Major League Sports. Celebrating and exploring the latest developments in Web3, this event takes attendees to presentations on cryptography from the world's leading technologists, fireside chats on improving market liquidity, and panel discussions on real-world technology use cases. You will be invited.
Key announcements from the conference include:
Introducing SuiPlay0x1 – A lightweight handheld gaming device designed in collaboration with Playtron. SuiPlay0x1 runs Playtron's device-independent gaming operating system, building compatibility with a variety of hardware configurations, gaming storefronts, and direct download gaming partners. SuiPlay is the first handheld gaming device with native Web3 functionality and is expected to be available in stores worldwide in 2025.
first digital lab launches FDUSD, the fastest growing stablecoin in cryptocurrencies, on Sui, becoming the ecosystem's first native stablecoin. Initially deployed on Ethereum and BNB, there are plans to expand to other blockchains, and Sui will be the first blockchain that FDUSD has expanded to since its creation. FDUSD was established in August 2023 and already has a market capitalization of over $3.5 billion. Last week, FDUSD's trading volume was his fifth highest in the entire industry, with daily trading volume exceeding his $8 billion.
Enoki – Mysten Labs, an original Sui contributor, announced the launch of the Enoki platform, the gateway to next-generation customer experiences. Within the Enoki portal, businesses can access, leverage, and embed public ledger solutions within their applications, products, and services thanks to his SDK that leverages Sui's native functionality, zkLogin. The following partners will be integrating Enoki at launch:
blue fina perpetual DEX with super-fast payments and a seamless trading experience.
dry lifeis a blockchain-powered decentralized ride-hailing platform that aims to empower both drivers and commuters.
quantum templea digital platform for immersive cultural travel.
This is a two-day event starting on Wednesday, April 10th at 9:30am local time and ending on Thursday, April 11th at 4:15pm Central European Time. On Wednesday nights, registered guests are invited to a Sui Soiree. Enjoy a night of cocktails, snacks and dancing, along with performances by Boyz, a German electronic music record producer, songwriter and DJ, His Noise. Learn more about. sui.io/Basecamp.
About Sui—Sui is a first-of-its-kind Layer 1 blockchain and smart contract platform designed from the bottom up to make digital asset ownership fast, private, secure, and accessible to everyone. An object-centric model based on the Move programming language enables parallel execution, sub-second finality, and rich on-chain assets. With horizontally scalable processing and storage, Sui supports a wide range of applications at low cost and unmatched speed. Sui is a step-function advancement in blockchain and a platform that allows creators and developers to build amazing user-friendly experiences. learn more: https://sui.io
About Mysten Labs—Mysten Labs is a team of leading experts in distributed systems, programming languages, and cryptography, and its founders were senior executives and lead architects of pioneering blockchain projects. Mysten Labs' mission is to create the foundational infrastructure for Web3. learn more: https://mystenlabs.com
About First Digital Labs—First Digital Labs is a brand name of FD121 Limited, a Hong Kong registered subsidiary of First Digital Group. First Digital Labs focuses on cutting-edge research and development dedicated to the innovation and advancement of digital assets. First Digital Labs is the issuer of his FDUSD stablecoin. For more information about First Digital Lab, please visit: https://firstdigitallabs.com/.
About Playtron—Playtron builds a lightweight gaming OS optimized for a new generation of powerful handheld gaming PCs and beyond. Play all your games from any store, including Steam, Epic, and GOG. Playtron's founders oversaw an operational systems team of several hundred people to break the existing mobile monopoly while developing Android for a billion users. Playtron is backed by Samsung Next, Polychain, Circle, Mysten Labs, Alumni Ventures, and others. Playtron-powered devices will ship worldwide later this year, ready to join his next 100 million core and casual gamers.
TEnnis is one of those sports that only intermittently works well through video games. The odd major series like Pete Sampras, Virtua Tennis, and Smash Court come along, but more often than not we end up relying on old favorites (Take a Bow, Super Tennis). It's been 13 years since TopSpin 4 was released, and the title is considered to be an authentic simulation of the sport that people love. Still looking for a copy until today. But perhaps not anymore. 2K Games has finally produced a sequel. This is a true champion contender.
From the get-go, TopSpin 2K25 has all the details you'd expect from a modern licensed sports sim. All major stadiums and championships are here. However, the playing environment is only well-detailed and not the spectacular theater of photorealism you've come to expect from EA Sports. The opening roster features 25 star players, from Emma Laducane to Andre Agassi. The selection isn't huge, and the quality of the caricatures varies, but it's good enough, and 2K says they plan to add more in the future.
If you don't want to cosplay as Carlos Alcaraz, you can join the full career mode as your own player. Mine is shockingly adorned with his pink Lycra and neon yellow sunglasses, a look that looks like it could easily carry over into real life. There are exhibition matches that you can easily knock out against the AI or up to three friends (online or split screen), and you can also participate in ranked and friendly online tournaments. Your appearance and skillset are fully customizable with a variety of outfits earned through play or (a feature that now seems inevitable) by purchasing a season pass or browsing the store. is. It's great that you can also choose to build a player with a prosthetic leg.
Of course, what really matters is the experience on the court, and that's great. The control system is complex but easy to access, with joypad buttons giving you access to flat, slice, lob, topspin and drop shot options, with power controlled by how long you hold the button down. As with TopSpin 4, timing and positioning are important skills. This is not a Mario Tennis style hit and hope game. If you take your shot too early or too late, your shot will end up in the net, flying off into the top of the stands, or giving another player an easy smash. At the same time, you're always thinking about where your players are on the court relative to the shot you're about to make and the likely return from your opponent. The physical nature of very good players makes the decision-making process even more demanding. It reproduces the weight position and body momentum with delicate precision. Are you so proud of that rushing cross-court slice shot you just landed? Good luck getting back to baseline for Serena Williams' comeback.
For players used to the more visceral feel of Virtua Tennis or the generous forbearance of Mario Tennis, there's a tough learning curve ahead. This is highlighted by the presence of his TopSpin Academy, an in-depth instructional mode that steadily teaches players from basic ground strokes to advanced serve tactics and individual player techniques. Just learning the timing will require several hours of play. If you're just playing the odd knockabout with your friends, there's no need to stress too much, but if you want to progress through Career His mode or play against human opponents online, give yourself a “good” shot. It would be better to hit it. “Perfect” timing at least 75% of the time.
But this is a good thing. 2K Games has created a game that feels like a proper simulation in terms of the array of tactical options available at any given moment and the demands placed on the player's skill. By completing TopSpin Academy, I learned a lot about real tennis strategy and how professional players differ in the way they use their baseline and net plays. There's also plenty of room to grow as a player by experimenting with power shots, perfecting tricky drop shots, and redistributing player attribute points to support different tactical approaches. it is clear.
Thirteen years is a long time to wait for a new tennis sim, but TopSpin 2K25 is well worth it. If there's one thing this game teaches you, it's the value of determined patience.Well, and you can Looks great with pink Lycra and yellow sunglasses.
WWhen Apple introduced its gaming subscription service, Arcade, in September 2019, it garnered significant attention, as is typical for the company. The offering of 100 premium mobile games (without ads) for a monthly fee of £4.99/$4.99 (now £6.99) aimed to replicate the Netflix subscription model in the gaming industry.
Arcade was positioned as an alternative to the predominant free-to-play and ad-supported mobile games market. The presence of popular games like Genshin Impact, Clash of Clans, and Candy Crush had made it challenging for paid premium games to gain traction. However, Arcade changed the game by providing a diverse selection of titles playable on various Apple devices without ads or in-app purchases. Moreover, the games could be enjoyed offline, eliminating interruptions during gameplay.
Five years later, the landscape has evolved significantly with the emergence of new subscription services for TV, movies, and games, competing with Apple Arcade. This raises questions about Arcade’s continued relevance and priority for Apple.
Alex Rofman, a senior director at Arcade with a long history in mobile gaming, reflects on the successes of 2023, highlighting the launch of Hello Kitty Island Adventure and What the Car winning Mobile Game of the Year at the Dice Awards.
“Very silly and original”… What a car trailer.
Apple Arcade has positioned itself as a platform for delivering premium, engaging, and ad-free gaming experiences to a wide audience. The focus on innovative and family-friendly titles like Assemble With Care, Card of Darkness, and Hello Kitty caters to tech-savvy parents seeking safe gaming options for their children.
Bright spot…Neo Cab. Photo courtesy of Chance Agency
Despite the shift towards family-friendly games, Apple remains committed to supporting indie developers and fostering unique and creative ideas within the gaming industry. The success of titles like What the Car and Sneaky Sasquatch exemplifies Apple Arcade’s role as a platform for showcasing innovative indie games.
While facing criticism regarding canceled projects and declining royalty payments, Apple defends its commitment to supporting developers and reinforcing the importance of gaming within its ecosystem. The future of Apple Arcade includes games designed for Vision Pro, Apple’s spatial computing device, offering new gaming experiences and innovation in gameplay.
“Vision Pro opens up a whole new world of possibilities.” Photo: Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images
Despite challenges and competition, Apple Arcade continues to play a crucial role in the mobile gaming industry, offering curated gaming experiences for families and indie game enthusiasts. With a focus on innovation and inclusivity, Apple Arcade aims to solidify its position in the gaming sector as it navigates the evolving landscape in the coming years.
'TThe part where the mother and child get separated on the Red Mountain is a level fairly early in the game where you have to go back and find the mother. I was completing the sound design and music in the hospital. She was right next to my mother as she slept while she was recovering from open heart surgery. ”
Todd Baker pauses for a moment. He recalls the development process for Monument Valley 2, a 2017 indie puzzle game. Biggest success stories It will remain in the history of mobile games. The second game is more experimental than the first. The number of stories has increased and the atmosphere has changed. While the first title was all optical illusions and impossible objects, the sequel moves away from his MC Escher-inspired towers and spiers to non-Euclidean geometry and brutalism.
At the center of it all are a mother and daughter, wordlessly walking back and forth in each other's paths, desperately trying to stay together as the world heaves and undulates and does its best to tear them apart. It's about women's heritage and relationships, and for Todd there were parallels between fiction and reality. “The fact that this game is about a mother and a child, and the fact that I lost my mother at the end of the year when I was making this game, is very heartbreaking.”
“I wanted the music to speak and tell the story”…Monument Valley 2. Photo: ustwo
Monument Valley 2's soundtrack is the kind of music you want to listen to when you're not playing. Even when separated from the parent game, it's still very enveloping, very rich and textured, and provides a comfortable background for whatever you're doing. Waves of warm, organic tones and ambient, soothing sounds wash over you. This was always Baker's intention. Even before the unfortunate coincidence of fictional and real losses, Monument Valley 2's soundtrack was designed to be soothing, familiar, and gorgeous.
“Basically, what I was trying to do was create the sound of a really warm hug,” Baker said with a laugh, referring to one of the early stages of the game, when the child first comes to his mother. He described the moment he was held in his mother's arms. “At that moment, the kid comes in and I hug him, and there’s a lot of bass going on…I needed a really warm, fuzzy feeling, like this is where I want to be right now. .”
This moment in the game is very important. It's all about setting what's at stake. Yes, this story is abstract and minimalistic, but this moment has such power. Baker creates an impromptu acoustic guitar melody that he layered on three tracks and played on an EBow for a slightly supernatural sound, all backed up by an intoxicating supporting bass note, but it's not unlike the visuals here. I am doing a very important job. Establish everything that's at risk, Apple/iOS friendly, “bright on white”. If you don't watch the game to the end, you'll never see these two reunite.
That resonated with the audience, Baker said. “What's amazing is that now I get messages from people saying, 'This was the soundtrack of my childhood,'” Baker laughs. “They talked to me as adults now who were playing this game when they were 11 or 12 years old and said this is nostalgic and it's a safe space for them. It touches people's hearts. , they have a lot of nostalgia for it now.”
'It touched people's hearts'…Todd Baker performs music from Monument Valley 2 at London's V&A. Photo: ustwo
Baker was responsible for not only the music for Monument Valley 2, but also the entire sound design. Things like how a chime sounds when you swipe or tap on certain interactive elements, or how a little music plays as you explore a curious geometric world. It gets sucked in. This was an opportunity for him to emulate the approach Martin Stig Andersen took with Limbo and Inside. Both games had a huge influence on Monument Valley 2's audio, even though they couldn't be more different in tone.
“From the beginning, I was confident that I could do this. We were able to do the whole project holistically, including discussions about whether to license the music or use other artists for the trailer.” But for this one…I had to bring it myself. I wanted the music to speak and tell the story, and I wanted the rest of the development team to be really excited about it.”
As Baker says this, he imitates a hug and brings it around himself, recreating the hug he tried to evoke in the hearts and ears of players in the game's early moments. A decade after the original game was released, Apple still promotes both Monument Valley and the sequel on the App Store, with the latter installed on at least 30 million of his devices. There's no doubt that millions of people heard echoes of that hug and Baker's relationship with his mother. If you've never played this game with the sound on, find your headphones, head over to the App Store, and give it a try. I promise you, it's worth the effort.
I I've been watching the last few episodes of the Fallout series on Prime Video. It's funny and gory, sometimes sentimental, and sometimes silly. In other words, it's exactly the kind of game that oscillates between quiet, tragic moments in which you explore traces of America and scenes in which you run out of ammunition and are chased down a hill by an irradiated scorpion.
Fallout's ensemble cast – highlighted by Walton Goggins' near-immortal ghoul and Ella Purnell's wide-eyed vault-dweller – deftly compartmentalize the different facets of the game's personality. As director Jonathan Nolan pointed out in an interview last week with Bethesda's Todd Howard, game director, this is a common device in television storytelling, but rare in games. Grand Theft Auto V does it well. Each of the three main characters represents a different part of his DNA in GTA (Trevor of violent chaos, Michael of authoritative crime drama, and Franklin of Compton realism).But in most games we play One Or we shape the character so that it becomes unique to us.
It makes it difficult to adapt the game to the screen. But instead of trying to convey the experience of playing a game, Fallout takes a step back to let the broken yet strangely optimistic world of Fallout take center stage, with each character exploring different aspects of that world. is showing.
“Even if you say you're adapting Fallout 3, whose Fallout 3 are you talking about? Because the way you play that game is very different from the way I play it. Because it could have been different,” Nolan told me. “That's the beauty of this kind of game.” [Bethesda] I'm drawn to the types of games that make the most of the medium and decide who your character will be within that world. Obviously, it doesn't lead directly to the series. ”
I was interested: how did Will Nolan play Fallout 3? “I always play as a Boy Scout first because I think my parents are watching,” he said. “So I'm going to make the smart decision and try again and play as a complete heel. But then I get weird, I get uncomfortable, I end up falling into a morally compromised middle ground.” It's a little pitiful.
Aaron Moten, right, one of the stars of Fallout. Photo: Jojo Wilden/Prime Video
I can relate. chaotic good In most games where it's allowed, I'm willing to cause chaos wherever I go, and happily align myself with characters and factions in power, but I’d never do anything to hurt people. I know it’s a game, but Assumption I want it to be a no-consequences place where I can experiment with morality, but I can’t bring myself to play the villain. This is in contrast to many players I know. They immediately start causing chaos in the game world just to see what happens. The kind of person who shoots horses in Red Dead Redemption.
“Every time I get a game and test it, I immediately think, “What will this game be able to do?” No matter what we do, every time we hand the player a weapon, the first thing they see is I’m going to shoot anyone who does,” Todd Howard said with a laugh. “It could be their mother. They’ll shoot whoever it is. Then they’ll be like, ‘Well, I’ll reload.’ ”
Trying to design a choice-based game based on the random whims of the players must be a nightmare, but Howard and Bethesda have decades of experience with it. When I interviewed him over the years, he talked about how players and systems interact to create new stories, and how games make what they do in-game real and meaningful. He spoke eloquently about the unique mechanism that makes you feel as though you are in the dark. You can’t do that with TV or movies. But as the Fallout show proves, if it’s made by people who really understand it, can We tell unique stories that still capture the essence of the games people love.
Fallout is great because, while this is also true of other successful game-to-movie adaptations in recent years, Appearance Yes, the sets are perfect, and they nail the game’s retro-future, nostalgic aesthetic. That’s because Nolan and screenwriters Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner actually played Fallout, understood it, and felt the power of its storytelling for themselves. Rather than trying to clumsily adapt the game’s story into a TV script, they wrote an amazing game expansion fan fiction on a very high budget. I’m all for this approach. Now that we have a generation of TV producers and filmmakers who grew up with games and truly understand them, I would like to see more of them.
YYou might recall the Reigns series, known for its tie-in with Game of Thrones. The hallmark of the game is its Tinder-esque card swiping, where you swipe left and right to make instantaneous decisions before witnessing the outcomes. After crash-landing on a random planet, you find yourself becoming a part of an intergalactic rock band. This seems like an obvious choice, considering that you accidentally kill the band’s guitarist on a ship that spirals out of control. From there, you embark on a journey across the stars, visiting planets, picking up stowaways, encountering eerie space creatures, and occasionally uncovering secrets about space (or ships with mystical consciousness).
You’ll also experience numerous deaths. Rarely have I played a game where death occurs so frequently yet remains entertaining. I’ve succumbed to deadly space germs, suffocated by fluffy space bunnies, and even had my head bitten off by a shark-like manager. I’ve encountered explosions, gasped for air, choked, and starved. On one occasion, I accidentally wiped out all life in a solar system by plugging in a guitar amp. Each time you die, you’re reborn at the last planet you visited and ready to embark on another journey. With Reigns, there are no lasting repercussions, only temporary and catastrophic setbacks.
This doesn’t entirely eliminate the frustration. I lost most of my space battles, which quickly became tedious. When you aim to progress by acquiring a new guitar or visiting specific planets, random mishaps can lose their charm. Repetitive scenarios begin to surface fairly soon, within a few hours. However, Reigns never fails to be engaging, and I find myself eager to jump back in to see what absurdity unfolds next.
Reigns Beyond serves as a wild space adventure that you can dive into for brief 10-minute sessions, and the swift and witty dialogue is impressive. However, I began to question why I was part of a band. While you may land on a planet and perform a concert, these musical interludes are repetitive, unchallenging, and trivial. It’s amusing and surprisingly expansive as a space ensemble comedy, but somewhat superficial as a band buddy comedy. I also ponder if the title is facing any resistance at this point. “Reigns” made sense when it focused on being a monarch of varying competence, but it doesn’t quite embody comedic sci-fi, so it receives a pass. Sacrifices were made. It’s a minor tragedy. Because you won’t encounter anything as ludicrous as this multi-hour space journey for under-fives.
IIf you were to ask director Jonathan Nolan what his favorite movie of the year was from the late 2000s, he would most likely name a video game instead. “I started playing Pong years ago with my brother Chris because I grew up watching the whole history of the medium, and the storytelling, the tone, the things that we were doing in the game had this level of audacity. That’s when I started,” he says. “That's what I felt [2008’s] Fallout 3: Audacity. Frankly, I didn't feel that way in the film and television industry at the time. ”
Director Nolan, who has just finished directing the first series of Amazon Prime's Fallout TV show, will be sitting next to video game director Todd Howard, who led the development of Fallout 3 and 4, and will be attending a number of premieres for the first series. Two episodes told to me before time. It's clear within minutes that Nolan understands the game almost as well as Todd. He says he's drawn to games where your options are open, where you decide for yourself who you want to be, and where your decisions affect the world around you – games like Todd Howard's . The two meet like old friends, are comfortable around each other, and are passionate about each other's work.
A scene from Amazon Prime's Fallout. Photo: Amazon Prime
“I talked to a lot of people about making a Fallout movie or TV show, and I kept saying no to everyone,” Howard says. “I loved the work that Jonah did in film and television, and in some of the interviews he did, he mentioned his love for the game…I told someone he was perfect. I said, ‘Can someone help me?’ We met and luckily hit it off. I found out he was very familiar with Fallout.”
That conference took place in 2019. At the time, there was no precedent for a proper video game animation, despite many ill-fated attempts over the years. (We're in a different place now; the curse of video game movies is broken, and there are now plenty of TV and movie adaptations.) Todd also envisioned Fallout as a movie. There wasn't, he says. “My take in 2019 was that it’s hard to translate games because a lot of games are about specific characters you play. But for me, it’s the world of Fallout, the characters…the people always wanted to condense Fallout 3 and 4 into a two-hour experience, and I always felt that way too. But high-end television can tell a long story.”
The first two Fallout games punished '90s computer RPGs with a dark sense of humor and a strong anti-nuclear message. As the show's writer Graham Wagner points out, they could have been written by: adbusters. Over 200 years after the first bomb was dropped, he emerges from an underground vault as a survivor of a nuclear war and quickly realizes that life above ground is short, cruel, and dangerous.
Jonathan Nolan attends the world premiere of “Fallout'' in Hollywood. Photo: Tommaso Boddi/GA/The Hollywood Reporter/Getty Images
When Bethesda revived the series in 2008 with Fallout 3, it brought a bit more hope and lightness to its wasteland, maintaining its retro-futuristic aesthetic and dark humor while still offering its biting satire, punishment for nature. , toned down some of the overt anti-American rhetoric. Military expansionist message. Fallout 3 and 4 have a lot of emotional stories, but they also have a lot of mini Nucruncher weapons and comic violence.
The show leans into this vibe. Unlike HBO's The Last of Us, this isn't a self-indulgently serious look at a post-apocalyptic world. Featuring cowboy mutants, terrifying wildlife, toxic vault dwellers, a malfunctioning jetpack, and plenty of jokes. bemany of Goa. Like the game where you cheerfully scavenge while turning on the radio, it can turn into a life-or-death battle with super mutants in a matter of seconds, and the series changes its tone from comedy to horror from moment to moment. . . One scene shows the horrifying moment a nuclear war breaks out, while another sees a slapstick battle with an irradiated bear.
The show plays with different aspects of Fallout's personality quite cleverly by splitting the perspective between three characters. Lucy is a Vault-dwelling genius with a tough personality that makes her the most suitable replacement for the player. Her behavior when she leaves the vault is very similar to my behavior in the game. She approaches people to greet them, peeks into abandoned buildings to find something useful, and inadvertently gets caught up in escalating fights. And pranks.
Ella Purnell (Lucy) in Fallout on Amazon Prime. Photo: Prime Video (via AP)
That wavering tone is a challenge for filmmakers, but it's exactly what Nolan loved about the game. “It was a world and a tone! I had never experienced anything like that. [mix of] Darkness and emotion – the politics of it are so delicious and fun and it feels alive and important… There are all these weird pockets of a previous world that has escaped the apocalypse and metastasized into something else, but with elements of comedy There is also. I had never really worked on it in my career. ”
“I think that was the hardest thing they had to do, to weave it onto the screen in a way that you would be there.” do not have I’m in control,” Howard said. “When you play the game, you Please be the director. ”
I've always viewed the world of Fallout as somewhat nihilistic. Most video games, especially the post-apocalyptic ones, offer some degree of hope for saving or restoring the world. You have a reason to be a hero. But in Fallout's wasteland, the world is already broken, so you might as well do what you want. Nowhere is this more evident than in Obsidian's Fallout New Vegas (2010), with its faded but still glittering city of vice and morally ambiguous story.
But Nolan sees it the other way around. “Look at the great Cormac McCarthy and The Lord. It's a fucking black hole. No light leaks out of that story. Nobody's going to make it. On the other hand, one of my favorite things about Fallout It feels like the beginning of a thousand new worlds, not the end of the world.”
Todd Howard at the world premiere of Fallout. Photo: Leon Bennett/Getty Images
Ironically for a TV show based on a video game, the Fallout series has very few CG effects. Everything from gore to retro-futuristic aesthetics was achieved with practical effects. Howard says it was amazing to step into the world of Fallout that the television production team had created in real life. “I thought there would be more movie magic because we were going to do a set, but they literally just built a multi-level vault,” he laughed. “They were obsessed with everything. I went into the superintendent's office and sat down at the desk and there was a pile of papers and someone had written a note. Then I turned it over and it was about the power in the safe. There was a report. There was also a real jet pack!”
“At that point I almost lost the support of the producers,” Nolan interjects wistfully. “I just thought it would happen. Better If only I had a real jetpack. ”
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