Wireframe Magazine #57

I am midwife to a global pandemic. I’m the mother of a monster. It’s a pandemic that has infected all 3.2 billion gamers on the planet. A monster that has devoured £125 billion of our cash this year. A demon that corrupts and degrades the very language we speak, replacing it with grunts, barks, piffle, and banality. I’m talking about voice acting in games, and I was the idiot who did it first. I do not seek your forgiveness, but it’s the season of goodwill, so let me tell you how it happened. Sometime in the 1960s, Cilla Black inspired me to make a computer beep I Can Sing A Rainbow in sync to coloured lights. I was on a student grant at the time, which is all you need…

It’s easy to get a little too nostalgic when thinking back to the golden age of arcades. In reality, the coin-op era – assuming you’re old enough to remember it – wasn’t always particularly golden. If one genre yielded a hit, then arcades would suddenly be packed with almost identical clones of that game. And when arcade games weren’t copying each other, they’d rinse players for every coin they had in their pockets: bosses capable of killing you with a single hit; tiny platforms designed to have you plummeting into a deadly chasm. Every so often, though, amusement arcades would throw out something incredible. Few who were there at the time will forget the thrill of fighting alongside their friends (or a few friendly strangers) in Gauntlet or one of…

Oxenfree II builds on the foundations of the 2016 original, leading us to a world both familiar and very different. It’s the same atmosphere – the same vibe – there’s plenty of supernatural goings-on, you’ll be chatting a lot (with wonderfully written dialogue), and the story itself picks up not too long after the events of the first game. This time around, players take on the role of new protagonist Riley, a 30-something who grew up in Oxenfree II’s setting, the town of Camena, before leaving to find her way in life. She’s back for a job, returning to her roots and forced to confront not just the giant portal looming over the town, but also her past. Her life. Her hang-ups. Small-town ambience anyone from that sort of place…

Night School Studio recently announced it had been acquired by Netflix in the streaming giant’s first real move into the world of gaming. Oxenfree II is nothing to do with the deal, and questioning about the topic was off-limits. Anyway, we asked about the deal and this is what Krankel told us: “Right now, it just means that we are able to keep doing what we do without the risk of – and fear of – going under, like every studio feels. It’s been extraordinary for us finding this partnership with Netflix, because they look to us to just keep expanding on the types of stories and game experiences that we’ve built, and afford us the opportunity to experiment even more than we have. Anybody who’s in any kind of…

Krankel and Hines have worked together at Night School for almost a decade, but their relationship is slightly closer than just workmates: the two are cousins, with a relationship developing well over 30 years. “It’s odd in that Adam and I were talking about this the other day,” Krankel says, “We [haven’t yet had] any sort of supreme blowout or friction in a way that is detrimental to our own personal relationship or the studio or anything else. We’ve only been kind of, ‘yes-ing and no-ing’ each other for seven years now with this thing. It’s working really well.” “It really hasn’t been tricky at all,” Hines adds. “We’re just really in sync with our goals for the studio. It’s always nice that Sean says we complement each other with…

In the murky depths of a drowned world, you’re a solitary diver journeying to an uncertain destination. With no weapons to speak of, and only your skimpy suit for protection, you cut a thin, vulnerable figure against the vast backdrops of abandoned structures and strange aquatic creatures. All that stands between you and a lonely death is your miraculous ability to psychically control fish. It’s an ability that allows you to use undersea life to nibble through chains with their sharp teeth, or wriggle through tight spaces. This is Silt, the debut game from British developer Spiral Circus. It’s a 2D adventure heavy on exploration, and even heavier on captivatingly surreal imagery. Silt’s monochrome, ornate imagery comes courtesy of artist Tom Mead, a fine artist who’s spent the past three…