Edgeの November 2022 の目次

When Namco released Museum Vol 1 in 1995, it felt like a turning point. Bringing together some of the company’s most affectionately remembered arcade hits including Pac-Man and Galaga, this PlayStation-powered compilation arrived just a year after Sony’s console debuted, and sat on shelves next to sophisticated 3D confections such as Tekken, Wipeout and Jumping Flash. It wasn’t the first time that vintage games had been repackaged for a new audience (or, more likely, the same audience that played them the first time around), but having everything served up on a PlayStation-shaped platter moved the goalposts: the retro revival had crawled out of its hobbyist niche and become mainstream entertainment. Maybe there was something in the air at the time. The Beatles’ allencompassing Anthology retrospective also arrived in 1995, just…

How does a lone developer get their game noticed in a saturated marketplace? For many, any offer of a leg up is welcome. Enter the Tiny Teams Steam festival, which ran for its third consecutive year in August, and provides just that. Organised by the indie publishing arm of the Yogscast streaming network, it showcases games created by individuals and micro-studios (defined here as a core team of five or fewer). And it’s becoming increasingly attractive for those who need a boost. This year, nearly 1,000 games were submitted for consideration, over four times last year’s tally, which means that selecting which titles to include has become a lot of work for Tiny Teams founder Alex Turner. “We need to figure out a way to make it more manageable from…

“It is encouraging that our group has become a natural and preferred buyer of creative, growing and profitable companies within gaming and entertainment.” ”This perfection of controls really runs through the veins of Japanese game developers. It’s been that way forever.” ”If Mark Zuckerberg can do it, we can do it. There is no particular event that is forcing us to change… I think it’s just overdue to do it.” “It’s really striking how engaged players are – they’re not like fans of EastEnders. People get quite opinionated about EastEnders, but this is like, ‘Oh my God!’”…

STEVEN POOLE Picture an exploration videogame that gives you a novel way to traverse stunningly gorgeous environments, an original and beautiful fusion of character and atmosphere leading to a state of relaxed aesthetic bliss. And then imagine that the traversal of this fascinating place is suddenly made annoying and stressful. Because it’s a game, right, and games have to be annoying and stressful? This has been a long tradition in games ever since Lara Croft, in her very first outing (Tomb Raider, 1996), was forced to spend altogether too much time shooting bats, and the boy in Ico (2001) expected to fight off shadow-monsters with a stick instead of gazing in wonder at the castle interiors. Since I had not read any reviews of Stray (2022) before playing it, however,…

Developer Third Shift Publisher Annapurna Interactive Format PC Origin Germany Release 2023 Photographs can be a powerful gateway to the past – to places we might not have been, or faces we might not have thought about, for years. This is a power that Third Shift co-founders Kai Brueckers and Fabian Denter understand all too well. After all, the duo might never have made Forever Ago if Brueckers hadn’t asked to borrow Denter’s camera for a trip he was taking with his family, flying from their hometown on the western edge of Germany to America’s west coast. “We basically toured from Arizona to San Francisco, and then along the Pacific Coast Highway down to Los Angeles,” Brueckers says. Alfred, the game’s protagonist, takes a similar road trip. His beaten-up camper…

Developer Rayscape Games Publisher TBA Format Quest 2 Origin UK Release 2023 For those still developing VR legs, a relaxed puzzle game is an ideal entry point. Set inside a mysterious mountain on an island upon which the player character washes up, Arcane Ascent exudes a distinctly zen-like vibe. Rayscape Games studio head Nadir Whitelaw tells us inspiration came from his visit to Tibet when he was previously working for Tencent in China. “I was really inspired by some of the philosophies they had, like the cycle of rebirth, and the mountains there,” he says. “So, what do you do on a mountain? Well, you definitely need to climb! That was a bit of a no-brainer once we decided on the style and setting.” And so it is that, once…

Founded 2009 Employees 6 Key staff Jan Hackl, Felix Bohatsch, Clemens Scott, Peter Vorlaufer, Martin Pichlmair (co-founders) URL brokenrul.es Selected softography And Yet It Moves, Chasing Aurora, Old Man’s Journey, Gibbon: Beyond The Trees Current projects TBA Development was already under way on Chasing Aurora, and Clemens Scott couldn’t settle on an art style for Broken Rules’ Wii U launch title. You could, perhaps, attribute this to second-game jitters, but for the fact that this was Scott’s first project after joining the studio as art director. And nothing he was drawing seemed to fit the concept: a multiplayer action game about the dream of flight. All it took was a particularly unproductive day while working from home, the door of an overstuffed wooden wardrobe constantly banging off his arm, for…

As with most open-world games, we start playing Saints Row on the default difficulty setting. We’re immediately pleased to discover that we can adjust the challenge at any time should we wish to up the stakes a touch – or to tone things down if we’re dying too frequently. A little over halfway into our playthrough, we reduce it to the second-lowest setting, but not for the reasons you might suspect. It’s not that we’re failing too many missions – in almost all cases, that’s either down to friendly AI having a death wish, the oddly exacting time limits of cleanup missions, or stepping beyond mission boundaries (in one instance while engaged in a shootout with the police we need to kill before the next objective triggers). Rather, it’s because…

Developer Ice Code Games Publisher Good Shepherd Entertainment Format PC Release Out now Bar-room poker games have long been a staple of the Western genre: grizzled men laying down cards around a saloon table, until inevitably someone is accused of cheating and guns are drawn and tables flipped. And from this one trope, Hard West 2’s entire design is spun. Not that the scene is ever restaged directly, you understand. Rather, developer Ice Code connects the dots between this and the casino thrill of XCOM’s to-hit percentages, with you cast as the light-fingered card sharp gambling with their life. The link is most literal in the game’s character upgrade system. Instead of levelling up along a linear path, or even the spreading boughs of a skill tree, you’re presented with…

Developer Atlus Publisher Sega Format PC, PS4, PS5 (tested), Xbox One, Xbox Series Release Out now Advances in AI are often depicted in fiction as a potential threat to humanity, but in this surprise sequel to a long-dormant sub-series (which falls under the Shin Megami Tensei umbrella), it’s up to the machines to save us from ourselves. Beneath its cyberpunk wrapper, Soul Hackers 2 adopts the mainline series’ theological overtones: Aion, a godlike supercomputer, has calculated that a war between two factions of devil summoners will trigger the end of the world. Thus, it creates and assigns two angelic humanoid agents to intervene, affording them the power to resurrect the dead with the titular ‘soul hack’. One of these agents is Ringo, who, as a fully voiced and fixed female…

Developer HAL Laboratory Publisher Nintendo Format Switch Release Out now When he’s not fulfilling his role as videogames’ most famous gourmand, Kirby likes nothing better than to tuck in those little feet of his and roll around as a ball. HAL Laboratory has made deft use of its mascot’s spherical torso since 1993’s Pinball Land: 12 months on he became a golf ball in Dream Course; another year later he was the projectile being batted around in Breakout clone Block Ball. With the likes of Canvas Curse and Mass Attack to add to the list, it shouldn’t really be a surprise that this budget-priced party game is up there with his better spinoffs: this exuberant eat-’em-up captures the knockabout spirit of Fall Guys, with a sprinkling of Super Monkey Ball…

Bella ‘Crimson’ Selwood is – along with the other two members of Team England – the first woman ever to win a Commonwealth gold for Rocket League. Aged 21, Selwood has been competing in various tournaments for the game since her teens, but the Commonwealth Esports Championships finals are the first time she’s played in front of a live audience. It’s enough to put her and her teammates, the clear favourites, off their game. “The nerves were definitely there,” she admits – resulting in an early stumble that allows underdog Scotland to snatch a couple of early goals. “Game one, the nerves were definitely there. I wasn’t able to do, mechanically, what I would have liked because you’re like, ‘Wow, this is huge, I am playing for a Commonwealth…

Game Nidhogg II   Manufacturer DSM Arcade Nidhogg II wasn’t right at the top of the list of indie games we were expecting to be turned into coin-ops, but we hadn’t factored in DSM Arcade. The boutique arcade machine developer, based in Des Moines, Iowa, operates outside of the mainstream arena inhabited by the likes of Sega, allowing it the freedom to give Messhof’s idiosyncratic game a second life in a new context. As per the consumer version, it offers singleplayer or versus play, although, as you’d expect for an indie cabinet produced in small quantities, there is no online play. With all-new Toby Dixon artwork decorating the machine, and controlled by some particularly fetching translucent bat-style Sanwa joysticks, it’s available to buy now for just shy of $6,000.…

Gamification – the use of game mechanics for non-game purposes – is all around us. It’s in our smartwatches, telling us to burn more calories to win an award; in our brain-training apps, promising that solving puzzles will boost our intelligence; in our classrooms, awarding points to children for working together and working quietly; and now, in our workplaces, turning driving for Uber or packing boxes for Amazon or answering customer service calls into a never-ending competition packed full of levels and quests and rankings. There are so many forms of gamification, multiplying and extending across every walk of life and every kind of technology, that I’ve written a book on the subject – not so much about how it can improve your life (though, at its best, it can)…

Developer Lancarse, Square Enix Publisher Square Enix Format PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series Origin Japan Release September 22 Beyond its tabletop RPG-inspired style, the most immediately striking thing about The DioField Chronicle is its character names. The initial trio of mercenaries under your command are royal bodyguard Andrias Rhondarson, cavalier Fredret Lester, and the unimprovably named shield-wielder Izelair Wigan. Not long after you’re joined by expert bowman Iscarion Colchester, followed by noblewoman and healer Waltaquin Redditch. (We’re very much looking forward to adding Beauregard Knutsford and Euphegenia Dewsbury to our ranks later on.) Those striking handles fit a game set in what co-director Takahiro Kumagai calls “a northern European kind of fantasy world”, with nods to the Industrial Revolution. But it draws influence from Japanese history, too.…

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that most of us have spent a good portion of the past few years indoors, but it’s noticeable that the most popular videogames of recent times have allowed us to set up a new home – an escape from our own four walls that offers similar comforts, a digital place in which to simply exist. Think of the pandemic success of Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley – heck, even the steadily expanding hub in Hades came to feel like a safe haven for Zagreus, not least with such a handsome range of decorative options. Cult Of The Lamb’s instant success, then, is no great surprise – not least since it combines elements of all those games (albeit with a macabre edge…

Developer Roll7 Publisher Private Division Format PC, PS4, PS5 (tested) Release Out now Could grinding a rail be the perfect means of videogame traversal? The notion runs counter to our understanding of good design – the importance of choice, of dimensions beyond the first – but if you’re willing to surrender to its directional whims, there are few things that can provide such a pure thrill of speed, such a connection with the virtual geometry, such a shortcut into that elusive state of flow. And there can be no acolyte more dedicated than Roll7, as the developer goes back to the grind for the second time in six months. Of course, there are a few vital differences between OlliOlli World and Rollerdrome. Where Roll7 toyed with adding depth to the…

Developer Two Point Studios Publisher Sega Format PC (tested), PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series Release Out now We’re about 20 hours into Two Point Campus when we decide to build the university from Hell. Playing in sandbox mode with an unlimited budget, we set about devising a chef college that satisfies all human requirements on paper while being an affront to decency. The ordeal begins with the toilet, which can only be reached by means of a superheated death maze of false partitions lined with drinks machines and pictures of waterfalls. The lecture theatre is designed to cultivate eyestrain: it fills an entire building, with the audience seats located a few hundred metres south-east of the podium through a wilderness of potted cacti. Elsewhere, we take cues from…

Developer Massive Monster Publisher Devolver Digital Format PC (tested), PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series Release Out now Massive Monster’s diverting hybrid of settlement-builder and dungeon-crawler is built around a pretty good gag. As a sacrificial lamb, you’re led to the slaughter, only to wind up in a strange realm with a shadowy figure offering to resurrect you in return for setting up a cult in their name. Before accepting the red coronet that grants you power over others, we recall an earlier warning to “take heed; for a crown cannot sit on two brows”. Nevertheless, it seems a sweet enough deal. We accept and so sheep becomes shepherd; it’s the other anthropomorphic beasts of this world that adopt a herd mentality, as you inculcate them into your flock.…

Needless to say Last year, in E359, you published a letter from me where I argued that gaming being seduced by the trivial convenience of digital downloads has been a self-destructive folly that has diminished us into a precarious generation: you own physical media but you only ever lease digital media, where you have no security of a binding contract and its terms can be changed at any time. Recent events have borne out the truth of my statement. I was initially prompted to write this follow-up because at the time of submission the Internet has been all a-twitter with Warner Bros Discovery making a bonfire of its online content, abruptly deleting numerous shows from a variety of streaming services, from HBO Max to even YouTube channels, without warning. And…

We’ve been thinking a lot about names this month, largely thanks to Square Enix’s latest strategy RPG, The DioField Chronicle. We won’t spoil the surprise for those who haven’t had the pleasure of playing through the game’s demo; suffice it to say, you should turn to p42 to behold some of the finest videogame character names we’ve ever encountered. Videogame titles, of course, are even more crucial: something simple can be an attention-grabber, but if it’s a popular term then Google’s algorithm might well push you down the list when someone searches for it. Ideally, they should also conjure an image in the player’s head: in the case of Flock, we automatically think of sheep or seagulls (which reminds us: it’s been a while since we rewatched La La Land),…

Developer Unknown Worlds Entertainment Publisher Krafton Format PC Origin US Release September 29 (Early Access) For a certain subset of Warhammer players, the tabletop game is known simply as ‘The Hobby’. The point being that this one thing can expand to fill all of your spare time. Not just playing the game itself but painting miniatures, reading fiction and match reports, admiring the work of talented painters and ‘kitbash’ remodellers – and, of course, lusting after especially ornate miniatures on a scale that tests the limits of that word, knowing you’d need to take out a mortgage to ever buy one. This, it seems, is exactly the role that Unknown Worlds Entertainment wants Moonbreaker to fill, minus some of the associated expense. This turn-based tactics game seems to be a…

Developer Cloak And Dagger Games Publisher Wadjet Eye Games Format PC Origin UK Release TBA 2022 Eyes widening, the vicar lurches forward, clearly in some discomfort. Doubling over, he clutches his stomach with one hand, the other pressed against his lips. He takes another faltering step, his palm now outstretched as a warning to stay away. Finally, nature takes its course – the camera shifting to a more distant view to spare us the full horror – but we’ve already been made to feel similarly queasy. And that’s before he asks you to relieve his suffering by cutting into his arm with a shard of glass from his broken spectacles. It turns out this is merely the result of picking and eating the wrong kind of berry during an impromptu…

Format PC Developer Geography Of Robots Publisher Raw Fury Origin US Release 2022 Norco’s protagonist Kay stands in the front yard of her family home and recalls how the house flooded three times when she was growing up. Should you click through her thoughts, she will describe each occasion, clearly still haunted by drenched carpets, lost possessions and forced stints in hotels. The details of these accounts feel deeply personal, and for good reason. “My home that I grew up in was flooded quite a few times,” explains Norco’s lead developer, who goes by the name Yuts. “I’ve lost pictures and memorabilia and clothes and all kinds of things to floods over the years.” A strong current of lived experience flows throughout Geography Of Robots’ surreal debut, which explores a…

Developer Volition Publisher Deep Silver Format PC, PS4, PS5 (tested), Stadia, Xbox One, Xbox Series Release Out now The Saints’ boss sighs deeply, as her plans for a team-bonding day are spoiled yet again by a rival gang. “How many motherfuckers do we have to kill to have a goddamn day off?” she growls. Our thoughts precisely. The shootout that follows is, like almost every other encounter in Volition’s misguided reboot, aggressively protracted: one more bout of effortful but numbingly repetitive carnage involving waves of moronic but frustratingly hardy enemies. This one is complicated slightly in this instance by your AI teammates’ unfortunate habit of walking into explosions, but at least when one perishes we’re not forced to sit through the introductory preamble we usually get when restarting a mission.…

At Rollerdrome’s school of especially hard knocks, learning is achieved via the three Rs: repetition, repetition and repetition. Which has been something of a theme in the class of 2022. We’ve chased quicker times in Neon White, tunnelled the same levels a dozen different ways in Teardown, and revisited OlliOlli’s tracks over and over in pursuit of that final cat-shaped inflatable. In some ways, Rollerdrome is similar to its Roll7 stablemate – and in turn genre ur-text Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. As in those games, here you’re offered a menu of optional sidechallenges: beat the high score, collect the five tokens, pull a specific trick in a specific spot. But what makes these other games work is that repeating stages is largely voluntary, or at least it feels that way.…

Developer/publisher Glumberland Format PC (tested), Switch, Xbox One Release Out now Across the ocean a lone boat sails, dropping you off at the pier in Badgetown. This is home to the Ooblets, critters born from seeds that can turn into anything from a mushroom with a smiley face to a little upright frog to a potion bottle with eyes. There were no Ooblets where you lived before, and thus no dance-offs, the card-based battles that become a staple of life in your new home. Before you get to those, there are other matters to attend to as you start a new life in this colourful community. While Ooblets offers farming, crafting, collecting items and so on, there is nothing to win, per se. The art design and systems paint a…

Developer Team Hindsight Publisher Annapurna Interactive Format PC (tested), Switch Release Out now At some point, we have all looked at an inanimate object and found ourselves transported – our brains latching on to a memory attached to it, temporarily spiriting us away to another place, or time, or both. Hindsight is by no means the first videogame to explore this idea, but it’s hard to recall one that does quite so much with it. Director/designer Joel McDonald and writer Emma Kidwell seize this opportunity to confront some of life’s (and death’s) biggest questions with a rare elegance and maturity. Its story centres on Mary, a chef preparing to open her own restaurant when she gets a life-changing phone call. Her mother has died, and Mary must return to her…