Wireframe Magazine #59

Just as it felt like humanity was starting to understand that we urgently needed to steer the runaway donkey cart away from Total Environmental Collapse Avenue and instead down Pretty Chill Street, along comes the blockchain to utterly ruin everything, for no real tangible reason whatsoever. God, I’m angry about this. That’s right! It’s the blockchain, the gut-wrenching waste of everyone’s time that’s responsible for pumping out enough CO2 emissions in 2021 to negate the entire global net savings from all the people who forked out loads of money for overly expensive electric vehicles. The blockchain produces the same yearly electrical output as a country the size of Argentina. Great job, humanity. Well done. Big clap. And now, here comes the blockchain to start messing up your video games as…

In a change to our regular programming, we don’t have a video game on the cover of this month’s issue. Instead, we’re highlighting AKUMA – an upcoming short film that’s all elaborate samurai hats, raging fires, and flashing blades. Why? Because London-based studio Dimension has used a combination of Epic’s Unreal Engine 4 and MetaHuman Creator to bring AKUMA to life. It’s the perfect illustration of what can be done with those tools – and a signifier, perhaps, of where independent video games and film production could be headed in the months and years to come. Where studios working to a tight budget might once have had to find artful ways of avoiding putting detailed, humanoid characters in their games, they can now use MetaHuman to freely add textured, fully…

Samuel Shepard. Nathan Drake. Lara Croft. Until recently, 3D characters like these were largely the preserve of the industry’s biggest game developers – the time and expertise that goes into building realistic human characters being far beyond the budgetary grasp of most indie studios. All that could be set to change, however, with the advent of Epic Games’ MetaHuman Creator. The cloud-based app made its Early Access debut last year, and allows its users to freely create digital humans which are fully textured, rigged, and ready to animate. MetaHuman has already been used by the likes of Italy’s LKA, the studio behind the upcoming Martha Is Dead, our cover game from issue 49 (turn to page 68 for more on how it was used). It’s also been seized on by…

That samurai warrior staring out from this month’s Wireframe cover? It was made with a combination of MetaHuman Creator and Unreal Engine 5, but it isn’t a video game: rather, it’s AKUMA, a forthcoming short film from Dimension Studio. The Londonbased firm has long mixed traditional filmmaking techniques with game engines to create a variety of content, from VR experiences to short films, and AKUMA – an atmospheric, ten-minute story about a “samurai meeting his demon” – is the latest showcase for its talents. With its feudal Japanese setting and elaborate costumes, AKUMA is the kind of film that would’ve required an impractically huge budget had it been shot with real actors and sets; but using performance capture and digital filmmaking meant that director Rob McLellan could realise his film…

The fame of Japanese animation house Studio Ghibli has only continued to grow since it won an Oscar for Best Animated Feature with 2001’s Spirited Away, and game developers have increasingly drawn inspiration from its output in that time, too. Case in point: Lost Twins 2, a platform-puzzler with a look and feel we can only describe as ‘Ghibli-esque’. About two youngsters traversing a gentle yet vibrant fantasy world, it mixes 2D animated characters with 3D backgrounds, creating a world that feels not unlike Ni no Kuni – a series of games which, of course, began as a collaboration between Level 7 and Studio Ghibli. Where the Ni no Kuni games were typically sprawling RPG epics, however, Lost Twins 2 is altogether more intimate. Its levels are small puzzle boxes…

here aren’t enough toy-based games. There are loads, of course, but it always feels like there aren’t enough – after all, what’s a better setting for video games than to bring to life the toys of our childhoods? Nothing is better. Probably. Anyway, Tin Hearts sees you guiding a troop of tiny (tinny) soldiers through levels riddled with puzzles in a modern-day Lemmings by way of Toy Story. But likely with not as much taking pleasure in the death of our wee charges. “Back in 2016 when Rogue Sun was forming,” explains Kostas Zarifis, the studio’s creative director, “as one of various micro studios to spring to life out of the ashes of Lionhead, one of the items on the agenda was, of course, what our first game should be.…