Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2018 i Edge

Ask any independent developer about Keita Takahashi or his games and they’ll tell you a different story. Capy Games’ Nathan Vella has a running joke with him, for instance, which involves the Katamari Damacy man (and co-designer of this issue’s cover) begging him for a job every time he sees him. Tommy Refenes, co-creator of Super Meat Boy, recalls the night he popped his Katamari cherry; visiting a friend in Amsterdam, he’d sampled some of the local herbal remedies when he sat down to play Takahashi’s bonkers roll-’em-up. He laughed his head off. The next morning, sober as a judge and sceptical, he loaded it up again – and had the exact same reaction. Takahashi, Vella and Refenes are just some of the independent game makers we spoke to while…

WEBSITE Completionator bit.ly/completionator The year 2017 was an all-time great for videogames: many of us are stepping into 2018 with quite the backlog. Enter Completionator, a free website designed to help you work through it. Look past the ugly Impact fonts and the clumsy attempts at emulating social media, and you’ll find a tool that’s remarkably sophisticated for a service still in beta. Completionator can import your Steam and GOG game lists with a click (sadly, console purchases must be manually added) and allows you to add custom tags to titles. You can place games into a Backlog category, toggle Now Playing on ones you’ve begun, and define a completion by finishing the campaign or having rinsed the thing. There are tools for physical media collectors, too: if all else…

Illustration kaeru.com.ar The day has finally come: Puzzle & Dragons is closing. There are, however, a few caveats to this, humanity’s darkest day. Firstly, it’s not actually been confirmed yet, but as an eternal pessimist I tend naturally to assume the worst. And secondly, it’s only the European server that’s at death’s door – the still-lucrative North American operation, and the absolutely gargantuan Japanese version, aren’t going anywhere, at least yet. While things might be clearer by the time you read this, as I write all we know is that sales of Puzzle & Dragons’ premium currency are being halted in Europe in mid- January. That sounds very much like the death knell for a free-to-play game. I’m in two minds about it, to be honest. Nothing lasts for ever,…

Developer Lab Zero Games Publisher 505 Games Format PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One Origin US Release 2018 W e expect certain things from Lab Zero Games. The studio behind Skullgirls knows how to unpack a virtual punch. It’s also very good at designing memorable characters (we still can’t unsee demon nun Double unpeeling herself into a pulsating mass). It’s fiercely detail-oriented, each fighter in Skullgirls’ small roster a technical labour of love. Sprawling Metroidvania RPG Indivisible, then, is something we weren’t expecting from this studio: when you’re used to focusing on individual frames on single screens, creating an entire world must be quite a culture shock. “I’m starting to realise why RPGs have so many bugs,” says Mike Zaimont, lead design director and programmer. “In a fighting game, you spend…

Developer/publisher Ubisoft (Montpellier) Format Rift, Vive Origin France Release 2018 Space Junkies wasn’t always a giddy zerogravity Quake homage in which four players in jetpacks duck and weave through space stations and debris fields. It began life as an attempt to make the experience of VR feel cosy and sociable, rather than a vivid but lonely and physically taxing daydream. Fun as it is to lurk behind an asteroid, clotheslining foes as they pass, some of the game’s strongest moments are its least combative. Rotate your wrist while clenching the Oculus Touch side trigger and you’ll perform a selection of florid hand gestures. You can also snatch and throw objects in a robust show of networked physics, playing piggy-in-the-middle with a torch in lobby areas. It’s representative of a playfulness…

The world needs Wattam right now, a game about logical processes and the natural order of things. A seed sprouts into a tree; it drops fruit, which is eaten by a mouth, and the resulting effluent goes in the toilet. It is nonsense, certainly: we expect nothing less from the brain of Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi. But it is nonsense that works, that fits together, and when the world outside makes progressively less sense with each passing day, it feels absolutely vital. Videogames have never been bigger, yet things have rarely felt so bleak. Some of the industry’s most powerful companies seem to be more focused on taking more of a customer’s money than rewarding their initial investment. Others use dirty tricks to slow our progress, or fail to…

Developer/publisher Nintendo (EPD) Format Switch, Wii U Goodness, where to start? That is, come to think of it, the question most players will ask themselves as Link awakens and walks, blinking, into the largest and most dizzyingly open Hyrule to date. And that’s just the Great Plateau. Soon afterward, Breath Of The Wild begins again, as you float down and the world gets so much bigger still. It’s formidable, overwhelming – and utterly freeing. Nothing and nowhere is off limits. For a series that has lately been reluctant to take the training wheels off, it’s a startling change: a reversion, in fact, to the Famicom original, which similarly invited you to get hopelessly, gloriously lost. But everything else is a progression: this is a Zelda that’s learned a few tricks…

Steve Gaynor Co-founder, Fullbright Music plays a key role, particularly in the more characterled moments. Music is really important to us. Some of that comes from working on the Bioshock series, where an evocative piece can start playing over the PA and totally change the tenor of the space. And in Gone Home, when you find one of the tapes that Sam is listening to and put it in the tape player or you turn on a record player in Dad’s study – it tells you what it feels like to be around that person, even though they’re not present. What were the main challenges of making a larger-scale game with a bigger team? I think in future we’re going to put more time into exploring the specific stuff that…

Ah, the cover, the last refuge of the band that’s run out of ideas. Videogames are no stranger to the concept: indeed, a few too many trailer-makers have succumbed to the bizarre modern fascination with watered-down acoustic covers of famous songs. Gears Of War’s the worst culprit, with Mad World, The Sound Of Silence and Nothing Else Matters in its trailer back catalogue. Yet while it’s a preferred tactic of the marketing bods, only rarely do we see the cover version become the theme of a game. Yet in Life Is Strange: Before The Storm (p106), new studio Deck Nine picks up French studio Dontnod’s ball and attempts to run with it. A prequel spin-off made on the other side of the Atlantic – and using, thanks to the voice…

Developer Buried Signal Publisher Annapurna Interactive Format Android, iOS, PC (tested), Switch Release Out now Few games truly warrant an ovation; we’re not often struck by the desire to break into spontaneous applause. But then few games are quite as consistently ingenious as Gorogoa. We’re thinking in particular of one mid-game puzzle involving a cracked bell jar and a moth, which is woven with such intricacy it’s almost hard to fathom how it was conceived, let alone put together. Either way, we were left shaking our heads, agog in delighted disbelief – and not for the only time. Gorogoa’s creator, artist Jason Roberts, has spent over six years developing his debut game, and in these moments of remarkable, meticulous craftsmanship you begin to understand what took him so long. Its…

While we might have phrased it differently, you have to admit Josef Fares has a point. The director of Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons and the forthcoming A Way Out gave December’s The Game Awards what UK viewers of a certain age might describe as its Jarvis Cocker moment – the bit where a guest goes wildly off script and ends up stealing the show. Host, and event organiser, Geoff Keighley’s face was a picture when, during a lighthearted interview about Fares’ EA-published adventure, his guest turned to him and asked, “Can I swear here?” After Keighley gave him the nod, Fares turned to the camera and shouted, “Fuck the Oscars!” And again, and again, and again, his middle finger extending as he somehow became even more animated. Fares…

Issue 314 Dialogue Send your views, using ‘Dialogue’ as the subject line, to edge@futurenet.com. Our letter of the month wins a year’s subscription to PlayStation Plus, courtesy of Sony Interactive Entertainment Final lapse The mental breakdown at the realisation your gaming pile of shame will not diminish has, for the last few years, transposed itself to your very magazine. Sometime around late 2012 I fell a few issues behind. It has taken me five years fluctuating between a three-to-eight issue deficit to finally be bang up to date with E313. Compulsively buying the mag over the counter and seeing the pile of issues to read rise and rarely fall has tortured me. The shame. The guilt. I have truly, without exaggeration, toiled and troubled with this for half a decade.…

Illustration kaeru.com.ar Quitting a big studio is an interesting experience. When I left EA they responded by sending me a letter from a lawyer reminding me of my obligations to keep my corporate secrets secret, while at Ubi I had both a non-solicit and a non-compete clause in my contract that I was required to respect. The noncompete states that you cannot work in a competing business for a certain amount of time; it’s illegal in many places, such as California, because it’s considered a restriction of your right to work. In practice it doesn’t seem to have been enforced in Montreal (but this hasn’t been truly tested). The non-solicit is more difficult, because it means that for a set amount of time you aren’t allowed to approach anyone you…

Developer/publisher Polyarc Format PSVR Origin US Release February L eaving a hugely successful studio to work on a whole new medium may be the definition of leaving one’s comfort zone, yet for the former Bungie staff who founded Polyarc, comfort remains the cornerstone of the studio’s debut VR title Moss. “That really formed the art style,” Polyarc art director Chris Alderson tells us. “You’ll notice when you’re in the game’s lush forest environments – it’s very open, and the colours are very warm.” That’s accentuated by the adorable rodent protagonist Quill, who we first hear from the rustle of foliage before she pokes out from the trees and notices our interloping presence. Unintimidated, she approaches and offers a friendly welcome. “It’s all to make you feel good and invited.” A…

Half the population of Italy plays videogames: men and women, young and old. Games are a billion-Euro industry for Europe’s fourth-largest economy, and yet the Italian game industry employs only around 1,000 people. Economic, cultural and political factors have conspired to slow Italy’s growth as a creator, rather than consumer, of interactive entertainment – but that is changing, and in the process creates an opportunity to take a snapshot of a new development landscape at the moment of its emergence. Italy’s game industry is a little over 20 years old. Its first (and still largest) studio of any scale was Milestone, the developer of racing games such as the MotoGP series and next year’s Gravel. In the company’s earliest days (under its previous name, Graffiti) there was no native talent…

Developer/publisher Llamasoft Format PS4, PSVR The urban myth goes that Polybius was a 1980s arcade game that doubled as a psychological experiment designed to provoke powerful psychotropic effects among its players. There could hardly be anyone better positioned to bring that particular legend to life than Jeff Minter, really. Minter’s Polybius isn’t dangerous, of course, though at times it feels like it – especially when you reach top speed and your eyes widen, trying to take in the rush of bright colours and strange patterns Up to a point, it’s a game where you’re free to control the pace. You’re not forced to pass through the narrow gates spread across each of the 50 courses here, but you’ll be tempted to do so anyway, your speed and score picking up…

BEST SPINOFF AUDITION POKIO Developer/publisher Nintendo (EPD) Format Switch Also known as The Captain Toad Award, though Nintendo makes you wait longer for Odyssey’s show-stealing cameo. This pointy-billed bird is a versatile wonder, poking Spinies into Bowser Kingdom and launching firework bombs at breakable blocks. Best of all, he can dig his beak into walls like a piton before springing upward, making Nathan Drake look like an amateur. SPIKIEST SPIKES SNAKE PASS Developer/publisher Sumo Digital Format PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One All that fuss about Cuphead, and we didn’t come close to throwing a controller in anger. The office Switch, however, barely survived Sumo Digital’s devious serpentine puzzle-platformer – specifically, a checkpoint-free gauntlet in Level 6, which takes the concept of difficulty spikes rather literally. Poor old Noodle ended up like…

Turning down the chance to work on one of the world’s biggest games was probably the toughest choice of Simon Iwaniszak’s career. In the end, it might turn out to be the wisest. Iwaniszak had been with Rockstar Leeds for close to five years, having worked on the likes of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars and Red Dead Redemption. He’d just finished work on LA Noire, and he knew exactly what was coming next. Grand Theft Auto V was, of course, a tempting offer, but Iwaniszak had always had an ambition to start his own business, and the prospect of another long dev cycle made his decision easier. “I knew if I went onto that project, because of the way that I am, I wouldn’t leave until the game was…

Developer Deck Nine Publisher Square Enix Format PC, PS4 (both tested), Xbox One Release Out now They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Indeed, it’s charming when, towards the end of Life Is Strange: Before The Storm, Chloe Price dyes a chunk of her hair blue: an unconscious tribute to her crush, Rachel Amber, who wears a long blue feathered earring on the same side. Just 16, Price is clearly still figuring out her identity, magpieing elements of those around her and repurposing them into a new image What an apt reflection of Before The Storm. A three-episode spin-off born of the popularity of Dontnod’s choice-based episodic drama Life Is Strange, it is designed to tell the story of the events that lead up to Max Caulfield’s time-bending…

Jason Roberts was working outside games as a software engineer when the first wave of successful indie games, spearheaded by Jonathan Blow’s Braid, emerged – and suddenly his simmering creative impulses began to feel like a potentially viable new career path. Gorogoa began as first an interactive comic and then a card game/dominos hybrid before Roberts drilled down to the simplest realisation of his central idea: combining images with game-like rules. Here, he discusses the challenges he’s encountered while making his debut. Did the puzzle designs or the narrative elements come first? The story came later. I built the original [2012] demo from loose, abstract themes. I was still exploring the story in my head and where I wanted it to go when I made that demo. I had to…

Masaya Matsuura is the founding father of music games. While best known on these shores for the pioneering Parappa The Rapper, he’s renowned in Japan for his prog-pop group, Psy-S (pronounced ‘size’), which released 14 albums in 11 years, disbanding when Matsuura decided his future lay in games. He’s still committed to music, however – when we speak, he’s busy preparing for his next tour, which will take him from Tokyo to Osaka and finally Nottingham, where he’s a headline guest at All Your Bass, a new videogame-music festival being held at the National Videogame Arcade in January. Matsuura, however, doesn’t see a distinction between these two seemingly discrete parts of his career. “The early ‘80s was a huge time, a revolution in using computers for music production,” he tells…

CHILD’S PLAY As well as Sonic Boom, Denton is also a writer on Nick Jr show Sunny Day, which has an even younger target audience. “The secret for writing comedy for kids is just write stuff that you personally think is funny, and then make it appropriate for kids,” he explains. “I’m not going to worry about it going over the heads of the audience. I respect kids and I feel like they get it more than we give them credit for getting it. Growing up watching The Simpsons, they were throwing Citizen Kane jokes before I even had any idea what they were, but it didn’t hurt me – I liked it even more after I started getting them.” Alan Denton is a writer for children’s TV, and was…

Illustration kaeru.com.ar The gradual erosion of the distinction between public space and private space is never more annoyingly demonstrated than when you are in the cinema or the theatre and someone decides to shine a flashlight into your eyes, in the form of using their phone to check Facebook or whatever. You could certainly argue that anyone willingly entering an auditorium also enters into a pact of darkness for the duration, and if they break it they ought to be summarily ejected. Another way to do it would be for the establishment to install a phone hijacking beam to ensure that, if anyone turned on their phone, all they would see would be the message: “Look at the big screen” or “Look at the stage”. In a way, this is…

Getting comfortable is often a short hop from boredom. While plenty of game makers are content to stick to what they know, others push at their creative boundaries. For many developers, constantly challenging their own expectations of their games – and indeed, of themselves – is what keeps their nine-to-five, if you can call it that, fresh. As virtual reality grows ever more sophisticated, so do our basic expectations of its games: mainly, that they won’t require us to revisit our lunch. Polyarc is taking care to prioritise a comfortable user experience in VR platformer Moss (p46). Hopping around in firstperson view as Quill could have been a nauseating old time. Instead, a considered blend of thirdperson platforming and firstperson contributions from the unseen player – tackling enemies, say, or…

Developer Foam Sword Games Publisher Double Fine Format PC, PS4 Origin UK Release TBA W hen you’re a small-town kid, the greatest weapon you can wield is your imagination. If there’s a boring job that needs to be done, you can fancy it an epic adventure: delivering a letter becomes a mission to transport a secret code, and tracking down a neighbour a hunt for a rare creature. In Knights & Bikes, two friends embark upon a dangerous and magical journey through dungeons and castles on the fictitious, sleepy Cornish island of Penfurzy. Yet to the diminutive Demelza and her new pal, Nessa, this quaint tourist getaway is a huge battleground. They see everything differently. Bits of lint, pebbles and worms are precious treasures to be hoarded. Grumpy adults have…

Developer/publisher Nintendo (EPD) Format Switch A good fighting game is all about feel. And Arms is, in every possible sense, the feelgood brawler of the year – from its Day-Glo yellow livery and roster of madcap characters, to its springy limbs and joyful championing of motion controls. And that theme song. Upon booting up, the game bursts into a musical announcement of the excitement to come that’s been locked in our cranial disc trays ever since. Perhaps Arms’ infectious spirit was insurance of a sort. If a riff on the genre didn’t chime with players, the Technicolor trimmings would capture that feelgood factor. In truth, Arms hardly needs them. Just as Nintendo made bombing about in cars fun for everyone with Mario Kart, so, too, it found a way to…

Developer/publisher Nintendo (EPD) Format Switch If Breath Of The Wild was about Nintendo redefining Zelda for the future, Odyssey feels like the company closing the door on the past. Mario has always been a plaything, but this is the videogame equivalent of the teacher unlocking the toy cupboard on the last day of term, setting in motion a fast-paced, chaotic, dizzying display of free-thinking creativity. BOTW was open and elegant; Odyssey’s kingdoms may be large, but they are busy, and bonkers. It’s a weird game, and at times a weirdly uneven one – but that’s the price you pay when you seek to reward players of all skill levels at just about every turn. Odyssey’s moons dole out the same reward for a lengthy platforming section as for a ground…

REVIEWS. PERSPECTIVES. INTERVIEWS. AND SOME NUMBERS STILL PLAYING The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild Switch For supposedly story-focused DLC, there’s not much story in The Champions Ballad. Rather, this is a fresh series of trials, beginning with a fraught return to the Great Plateau and a weapon that’s as deadly to Link as his opponents. There are no one-hit-kills thereafter, thankfully: locating and then completing outdoor challenges reveals a dozen more Shrines and a terrific final dungeon, while a surprising climactic battle unlocks a wonderfully silly – albeit useful – motorised reward. Who needs Epona? Star Wars Battlefront II Xbox One We’re saving the story component of Battlefront II’s first major update until after we’ve seen The Last Jedi – deadlines, you understand – but it’s the first…

Zak Garriss began his industry career as a designer at 38 Studios, working on the ill-fated EA RPG Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning. Since then he’s been a teacher, a TV researcher and a writer before joining Deck Nine as narrative director in 2016. Here, he discusses how a new studio made a spin-off to a beloved story – with a little help from a bard. How did you go about replicating Life Is Strange’s detailed choice system for Before The Storm? Dontnod hasn’t worked with us directly on Before The Storm – we’ve shared work, shown what we’re doing. But when it comes to the ways in which we intersect with the lore and narratives of the first game, it’s really just a product of our own fanatical passion, and…