Wireframe Magazine #63

DAN MARSHALL Dan Marshall set up Size Five Games in 2008 before selling indie games online was really a thing. His most recent smash-hit indie game was Lair of the Clockwork God. #63 I recently gave up on Elden Ring, and I’ve made my peace with that decision. I knew going in it wasn’t going to be a game to my tastes, because as far as I’m concerned, the two worst things in video games are a) boss fights, and b) doing the same thing over and over, so Elden Ring was always going to be a tough sell. But everyone was banging on about it being a solid 10 game of the year, and as a game designer, I suppose I felt it was my duty to check it out…

Are handheld games fundamentally the same as the ones on our big televisions, or are they distinct, more intimate? There’s no correct answer to that question, necessarily, but it’s still one that’s been batted back and forth among designers for years. The Game & Watch and Nintendo DS offered experiences you couldn’t find anywhere else, while the Switch now offers a middle ground. Valve’s Steam Deck offers nothing less than an entire gaming PC in the palm of your hand (or both hands – it’s quite a hefty beast, the Steam Deck). While approaches to handheld gaming change all the time, it’s pleasing to see the Playdate carve out its own niche. Here’s a device that sticks to the ‘withered technology’ pioneered by Nintendo’s Gunpei Yokoi: with its monochrome, non-backlit…

With every game, inkle has pushed its narrative-based games in bold new directions. 80 Days was a globetrotting adventure drenched in intrigue; Heaven’s Vault was a sci-fi epic about an archaeologist digging through tantalising clues on a strange alien world; Overboard! was a mischievous murder mystery where you played the killer. Its latest project, A Highland Song, is bolder still – an unusual combination of survival adventure, platformer, and rhythm-action game. Lead designer and studio co-founder Joseph Humfrey cites Jordan Mechner’s Prince of Persia, the animated films of Studio Ghibli, and his own teenage years hiking in Scotland as inspirations. A Highland Song is still as narrative-driven as inkle’s previous games, but as Humfrey himself says, it’s a story driven by its visuals and music rather than dialogue. Those varied…

Info GENRE Detective, stealth, simulation FORMAT PC DEVELOPER ColePowered Games PUBLISHER Fireshine Games RELEASE 2022 SOCIAL @ColePowered The hyper-industrialised, eighties-inspired metropolis your character finds themselves in is full of unsolved mysteries. But that’s OK, because developer ColePowered Games hasn’t managed to solve them, either. Unlike most detective adventures, which lay down a predetermined trail of breadcrumbs to create the illusion of an investigation, in Shadows of Doubt, any clue or hint you piece together is procedurally generated. The only thing players can rely on, as they try to catch a killer on the loose, is their own wit and instinct. This is a game that will truly let them step into the role of a hard-boiled private eye. Creating a simulated sci-fi noir city – especially one populated by NPCs…

Info GENRE Management, business simulation FORMAT PC / PS4 / PS5 / XBO / XB S/X / Switch DEVELOPER Two Point Studios PUBLISHER Sega RELEASE 9 August 2022 SOCIAL @TwoPointStudios For the next game set in its quirky county, developer Two Point Studios is taking us back to school – or university, to be more exact. This campus is sure to operate differently to most, though, simply because you get to design it yourself. Spy School? Wizardry? There’s seemingly no class (however bonkers) that’s off the table. Two Point Campus follows in the footsteps of Two Point Hospital, the team’s 2018 spiritual successor to Theme Hospital, but this time madcap illnesses are swapped for courses with an expectedly oddball spin. Nurturing students from enrolment to graduation just became fun. “We…

Info GENRE Adventure FORMAT PC / Mac DEVELOPER HiWarp PUBLISHER HiWarp RELEASE TBC SOCIAL @HiWarp In picturesque Murcia, south-east Spain, indie developer Elwin Gorman has spent the past five years quietly making visually inventive, highly personal games. After a few false starts, he embarked on PiAwk in 2017 – an adventure-puzzler about a bird-like creature exploring a devastated 2D landscape. Two years later, during a bit of downtime, Gorman came up with the initial prototype for what would become NAIAD: the story of a water nymph and her journey up a lush river. According to Gorman, the two projects then “grew up in parallel”, with work on one occasionally giving way to the other. “Every day I think about PiAwk and NAIAD,” he tells us, “about how I’m going to…