Table of contents for August 2024 in Edge (2024)

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Edge|August 2024Stand back – the Xbox juggernaut is out of controlIt’s been a while since Microsoft somehow managed to steer the Xbox bus as if Rishi Sunak was behind the wheel by deciding to shut down Tango Gameworks and Arkane Austin, and the shock has dissipated a bit, even if most of the pain hasn’t. We’re left with a lot of questions. We’re told, for example, that Microsoft is still looking to fatten its roster by buying up even more developers, but which studio owner would even entertain such an approach at this point? How much damage has been done to the company’s reputation within the industry? And what on Earth does a Microsoft-owned game studio have to do in order to survive in 2024? What do Microsoft’s flailing actions say about Game Pass? Is the Great Videogame Subscription Experiment…2 min

Edge|August 2024Community developmentLook up between the awards, expos and conference talks on the East Sussex coast this July and you might observe a few dark clouds in an otherwise spotless sky. In the months since Brighton’s Hilton Metropole previously opened its doors to Develop, there’s no escaping that the industry has sustained damage, not least counting two 2023 Star Award winners among its casualties. Back then, Roll7 stepped away with the Best Studio gong, while Tango Gameworks saw Hi-Fi Rush crowned Best Original IP. With that in mind, for all there is to celebrate at Develop 2024, discussion of hot topics will surely feel more urgent than ever. The three-day conference kicks off on July 9 with a keynote centred on indie gaming, presided over by Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Shuhei Yoshida and…5 min

Edge|August 2024ARCADE WATCHGame NBA Superstars Manufacturer Raw Thrills As an unofficial followup to the legendary NBA Jam, NBA Superstars is one of the most traditional-feeling new coin-ops we’ve seen in an age. Supporting up to four players, with action displayed on a 75” screen, the game is laser-focused on what made the original edition such a smash on so many platforms during the 1990s. That means fast-paced, foul-friendly hoops between two teams of three, drawing from a roster of 120 players across 30 teams, including even the highest-profile names in the sport, such as Stephen Curry and LeBron James. Crucially, NBA Jam commentator Tim Kitzrow has been drafted in for audio duties, while staff from the original team at Midway have been involved with the production at developer Play Mechanix. And of…1 min

Edge|August 2024Trigger HappyLong-distance Nazi-faceshooting might be a pleasure exclusive to the modern age, but the roots of the military-entertainment complex go back further than we might suppose. Of course there is the example of chess, a symbolic wargame, skill in which was required of Renaissance princes and generals. But the symbiosis between games and war really began in earnest with the Prussian tradition of kriegsspiel, or wargaming. This is explained in a fascinating new book by the neuroscientist Kelly Clancy, Playing With Reality: How Games Shape Our World, which thankfully is not a hymn to ‘gamification’ but about the cultural and political uses to which games, and thinking about games, have been put throughout history. In the late 18th century, the German mathematician Johann Hellwig created a version of chess that was…3 min

Edge|August 2024Green shootsIf you follow the game industry, sometimes it’s hard to view the future with much optimism. Between January and May, there have been more than 10,000 layoffs, already trumping last year’s tally. The media sphere is shrinking, too, with sites shutting down and others being bought out, prompting further layoffs. Rising budgets at the top end are leading to dwindling profits, forcing publishers toward ever-safer bets or more exploitative monetisation. And discoverability is an ongoing problem for smaller teams, with more games than ever but fewer outlets to cover them. Yet there are always signs of hope – and often it’s the games themselves that provide them. Kaizen Game Works’ Promise Mascot Agency, a game in which you run the eponymous organisation from a rundown former love hotel (while soliciting…2 min

Edge|August 2024CENTUMDeveloperHack The Publisher PublisherSerenity Forge Format PC, Xbox Series Origin Estonia Release Summer Overnight, the sapling in the corner of our dingy cell has sprouted into a O full-grown tree. We click on it and are greeted with a string of Russian text. It says something for how quickly this narrative adventure from Estonian developer Hack The Publisher (a name that already suggests a darkly mischievous streak) establishes its unpredictable milieu that we assume this is intentional. It’s only after reaching the end of this early build that we check its bug list and discover it isn’t. Then again, after what we’ve just played, with its metatextual flourishes and multiple layers of fiction, we start to wonder if this, too, isn’t part of the deal. Contradiction is a smart but…4 min

Edge|August 2024ROUNDUPDUNGEONS OF HINTERBERG Developer Microbird Games Publisher Curve Games Format PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series Origin Austria Release July 18 MYTHMATCH Developer/publisher Team Artichoke Format PC, consoles TBA Origin UK Release TBA CARAVAN SANDWITCH Developer/publisher Adrien Lucas, Rémi Lefevre Format PC, PS5, Switch Origin France Release TBA CRITTER CAFE Developer Sumo Newcastle Publisher Secret Mode Format PC, Switch Origin UK Release TBA MUSIC POWER UP Developer/publisher MicroStudio Format Android, iOS, PC Origin France Release Q4…2 min

Edge|August 2024Q + A RAÚL IBARRA, ANIMATION DIRECTORWhatare the benefits of hand-drawn animation for a game such as this? I try to set the animation style in the game, and what I try to do is put my style in the gameplay. That’s why Ikumi contacted me – she wanted something that’s not realistic. My animations, they’re quite exaggerated, not only for creatures, but also for humanoid characters. There are a lot of studios that still use keyframe animation, but some will use motion capture and tweak it a little bit to exaggerate timing. We don’t want to limit ourselves or our creativity, so I prefer to directly start with handkey animation. Is each yokai hunter given their own set of specific, unique animations? And what sort of movesets should we be expecting? We are still defining…3 min

Edge|August 2024THE MAKING OFTHIRSTY SUITORSFormat PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series Developer Outerloop Games Publisher Annapurna Interactive Origin US Release 2023 Firstly, suitors. As Outerloop Games approached its second game, the developer began with the idea of arranged marriage. Having addressed themes of colonialism in its debut, Falcon Age, the team wanted to stick with its “very South-Asian-inspired cast and story”, but with a fresh focus. “We were talking about different ideas about families and relationships. That’s sort of where our minds were at the time,” creative director Chandana Ekanayake explains. Hence arranged marriage – and that eye-catching title, which Ekanayake admits he had in place before the final idea for the game. In its original conception, this idea was travelling in a “more horror-themed” direction. Ekanayake references one of concept artist…9 min

Edge|August 2024PLAYSTILL PLAYING/NEAR MISSES Animal Well PC With the majority of reviewers having drifted away from the dedicated Discord channel, we feel a gentle yearning to be back among them once more, sharing discoveries (both meaningful and meaningless) and enjoying the various attempts to identify some of the less obvious creatures: to us, the timid groundhog will forever be known as ‘cave wolf’. One particularly tricky bit of platforming later and the third layer’s reward – and it’s a good one – is duly obtained. Then, suddenly, the main Discord happens across another cipher, and the most devoted few return to discuss theories. Just when we thought we were out… Deep Beyond PC This cheap and cheerful diving-themed firstperson adventure baits us in with its unusual aesthetic (not dissimilar to squirrel-surveillance…2 min

Edge|August 2024Post ScriptRob McLachlan entered The Chinese Room in 2018, carrying a healthy portfolio of horror game design, including the Silent Hill series (Origins and Shattered Memories) and the highly acclaimed Alien: Isolation. Initially joining the team that created action platformer Little Orpheus, he then stepped up to the role of lead designer for Still Wakes The Deep. Here, he discusses finding the balance between horror, realism and the games of The Chinese Room’s past. What were the crucial lessons you learned from your previous experiences with horror games in terms of what makes them effective? Horror is both a subjective and objective thing, and it also depends on your stage in life and your life experiences. There are things that other people find horrific, but may not interest me as someone…4 min

Edge|August 2024Homeworld 3Developer Blackbird Interactive Publisher Gearbox Publishing Format PC Release Out now When there are dozens of expendable units on screen, often presented from a bird’s-eye view, how do you ensure that the player feels invested in the stories they have to tell? 1999’s Homeworld solved this problem by making the central character equivalent to the largest unit in the game – Karan S’jet became Fleet Command for the now-iconic Mothership, effectively erasing the boundaries between her and her vessel. Karan’s arc was likewise elevated to a galactic scale. The Mothership discovered her home planet Kharak burning, the majority of the population dead, the only hope of survival an exodus to find the survivors’ ancestral homeworld Hiigara. It’s a bold move, then, to go in the opposite direction in Homeworld 3.…5 min

Edge|August 2024CryptmasterDeveloper Paul Hart and Lee Williams Publisher Akupara Games Format PC Release Out now One of the first major decisions you face in Cryptmaster is how, exactly, to desecrate a holy altar. With the option to type in absolutely anything, your choices seem endless: you could smash the shrine, coat it in bodily fluids, or opt for something more artistic – such as graffiti. Whichever method you choose, the result feels wonderfully devious, with the altar toppling over and its furious deity cursing away in the background. Throughout your adventure, you are encouraged to be as naughty as possible, the game seemingly able to anticipate every bawdy thought that pops into your head. That’s because developers Paul Hart and Lee Williams know that once humans are given creative freedom, they…6 min

Edge|August 2024Isles Of Sea And SkyDeveloper/publisher Cicada Games Format PC (tested), Switch Release Out now Cicada Games’ sun-baked archipelago seems to come from a parallel timeline where Link’s Awakening was conceived as a Sokoban-style puzzler. Here is a block-pusher that manages to be more than the sum of its already thoughtfully assembled parts. Yes, it introduces a series of compact, intricately designed conundrums, but the process of solving them, and in turn steadily charting these mysterious isles, feels like a bona fide adventure. It’s helped by a characterfully chunky visual style that calls back to the Game Boy Color era, and a soundtrack that freely evokes feelings of intrigue and mystery. Descend below the surface, into its network of caves and corridors that weave their way back up, around and down once more, and you’ll…3 min

Edge|August 2024DOWNLOAD THE EDGE APP AND GET YOUR FIRST ISSUE FREEPREFER THE PRINT EDITION? SEE PAGE 50 Terms and conditions The free trial is only available to new subscribers, and only through the Apple App Store, Pocketmags and Amazon. If you have previously subscribed to Edge, payment will be taken immediately. You can cancel at any time during the free trial period and you will not be charged: simply turn off auto-renew in your account subscriptions page at least 24 hours before the auto-renew is due. Payment will be charged to your iTunes, Pocketmags or Amazon account at confirmation of purchase. No cancellation of the current subscription is allowed during active subscription period. This does not affect your statutory rights. Any unused portion of a free trial period, if offered, will be forfeited when you purchase a subscription.…1 min

Edge|August 2024Fighting fitWe’ve dealt with some sweaty interviews in our time – awkward questions, tiny conference rooms, and so on – but never before have we been offered a towel to mop our brow partway through asking a question. Here, though, it’s a sign that Quell is doing its job properly. We’ve just played a demo of its debut game, Shardfall, a PC/Mac firstperson Roguelike mixing exploration and melee combat, played using Quell’s Impact peripherals, a collection of motion controllers, body sensors and resistance bands. The result is the most intense workout we’ve had playing any game. It’s no great surprise, then, to hear that Quell – founded by four friends, none of whom with any prior experience working in videogames – began with the question of fitness. “Everyone knows they should…9 min

Edge|August 2024DOWN BY THE WATERCalligram Studio’s striking mystery begins with a young woman looking into the disappearance of her brother. As the game’s Steam blurb puts it, though, “you already know where it ends.” That fatalism, writer-designer Jigmé Özer says, is the very essence of a good noir. “People are drawn to the aesthetic – the Venetian blinds, the ceiling fan and the detective – but they often miss that sense of doom,” he says, before alluding to Elmore Leonard’s pithy summation of the genre’s prevailing theme: “You’re fucked!” Phoenix Springs is likewise gloomy and snappy: it cuts down on shoe leather where possible, while its puzzles are never arbitrary obstacles but story beats in their own right. It eschews genre staples to “avoid the key-before-door problem,” Özer adds: your inventory holds “concepts, ideas…1 min

Edge|August 2024THIS MONTH ON EDGEBOOK Everything To Play For bit.ly/dideogames Subtitled How Videogames Are Changing The World, Marijam Didžgalvyte’s impassioned, fiercely intelligent, proudly left-wing tome has the quality of a manifesto. Which is to say that How Videogames Might Change The World would perhaps be more accurate. Didžgalvyte’s early promise to interrogate “this boundless, fascinating, grotesque industry” is an invitation to strap in, as she outlines her formative experiences with the medium before briskly, approachably outlining what games and the surrounding culture are getting right and wrong. Pertinent points about misogyny, the industry’s environmental impact, how it remains snagged in the machinery of capitalism and more are made, while the author notes that games are an inefficient way to make a political statement. You would struggle to say the same of this. WEBSITE Simogo…3 min

Edge|August 2024The Outer LimitsWith hindsight, it was inevitable that I’d reach the Backrooms eventually. As per the original coining, in a 2019 4Chan thread, this is where you end up if you “noclip out of reality in the wrong areas”. Taking the form of mundane, anonymous ‘liminal spaces’ – passed through but never truly inhabited by humans – Backrooms are made creepy by the absence of life, and by the impossibility of their dimensions, familiar scenery cut and pasted, Hanna-Barbera-style, into infinity. We’ve touched on the idea of imagined realities that exist alongside our own in this column already, and I should note that ‘liminality’ was the theme of the Now Play This event discussed in E398. (As I say, inevitable.) But still Backrooms managed to remain out of view even as they…4 min

Edge|August 2024PROMISE MASCOT AGENCYDeveloper/publisherKaizen Game Works Format PC Origin UK, Japan Origin Release 2025 Often, the easiest way to describe a game is to compare it to others: if you liked X, then you’ll love Y, and so forth. For Kaizen Game Works’ followup to Paradise Killer, that’s no easy task – even after playing it for several hours. It certainly possesses the freewheeling, experimental spirit of a game from the PS2 or even early PS3 eras. When, afterwards, we talk to creative director Oli Clarke Smith, he says he’s recently been drawn to “the kind of PS2 game where you just hang out and do stuff” – rattling off titles such as Irem’s Disaster Report and Steambot Chronicles, along with Acquire games such as Way Of The Samurai. While playing, we make…11 min

Edge|August 2024SONOKUNIDeveloperDon Yasa Crew PublisherKakehashi Games Format PC Origin Japan Release Q3 Kakehashi Games might be the biggest indie publisher you’ve never heard of. For the past decade it has provided localisation services, marketing and publishing support to western developers seeking to bring their games to Japanese audiences. In recent years it’s worked on Neon White, Hindsight, Storyteller and Cocoon for Annapurna Interactive alone, and it has a strong partnership with Devolver Digital, having delivered games such as The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, Gunbrella and The Talos Principle 2 to more adventurous players in its homeland. Now Kakehashi is seeking to take Japanese indies in the other direction, and it’s not unfair to say that one of its first projects owes more than a small debt to one Devolver favourite. You’ve probably…4 min

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Edge|August 2024SHAPESHIFTThe Final Shape, the massive expansion capping off Destiny and now Destiny 2’s decade-long Light And Darkness saga, which has defined virtually the entire realm of this science-fantasy space opera cleverly disguised as an MMO shooter, couldn’t be rushed. Bungie is glad it delayed it. The additional time – and the extra polish that enabled – was essential as the developer fought to live up to the likes of Destiny’s renowned Taken King and Destiny 2’s equally regal Witch Queen. According to expansion lead Catarina Macedo, it was about putting The Final Shape on the same high shelf as “those really good expansions.” Destiny2 players have spent years watching, romanticising and slowly approaching the horizon. It’s long been felt that the big thing always existed just ahead of the current…19 min

Edge|August 2024What the cat dragged inDo more realistic graphics really make for more immersive games? True, a certain level of fidelity can help you more fully connect with a videogame world, but it’s seldom the whole story. The Chinese Room’s Still Wakes The Deep draws from archive documentaries for its convincing recreation of a 1970s oil rig, but it does at least as much with its groaning, creaking sound design – and especially its dialogue – to get under our skin. The volley of profanities let out by Caz McLeary when under threat makes him a more credible lead than the sort of tension-killing wisecracks that emerge from many of his contemporaries. On the subject of gruelling (and spectacular) ordeals, the binaural audio of Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II places you inside the head of its…1 min

Edge|August 2024Senua’s Saga: Hellblade IIDeveloper Ninja Theory Publisher Xbox Game Studios Format PC, Xbox Series (tested) Release Out now To say that Senua’s Saga picks up where its predecessor left off is both accurate and wildly misleading. In a narrative sense, this is a direct continuation: Senua might have called a truce with her Furies – the whispering voices representing her psychosis – but she’s not ready to suspend hostilities with the men who destroyed her home and killed her partner. Allowing herself to be kidnapped by slavers, so as to get closer to the raiders upon whom she hopes to exact revenge, her plan goes awry when a storm batters their ship and she finds herself in a fight for survival. What follows is a nightmarish sequence of shrieking, primal violence on a…6 min

Edge|August 2024Post ScriptBlackbird Interactive argues that Homeworld 3’s technology has enabled it to realise the full vision intended for the previous games. Nonetheless, given the time elapsed between instalments – even considering 2015’s remasters of Homeworld and Homeworld 2, and 2016’s prequel, Deserts Of Kharak – it is difficult to shake the sense of trepidation. Senior producer Iain Myers-Smith and lead writer Martin Cirulis outline the opportunities and perils of bringing back a revered RTS after 20 years. Homeworld has a reputation as one of the best RTS games ever made, yet a lot of younger PC owners won’t know it. How did you approach this legacy? Iain Myers-Smith In some ways, the way forward was simple: we leveraged new technologies and innovations in graphics and sound design to add stunning new…2 min

Edge|August 20241000xResistDeveloper Sunset Visitor Publisher Fellow Traveller Format PC, Switch (tested) Release Out now Above the school floats a giant, headless body, its arms outstretched. No one else has passed comment on it, so it seems we’re supposed to take it in our stride – just like how people in full-body suits are roaming these corridors at night with us, and how we’re welcomed home by a voice emanating from a dead student’s portrait. Some of these things will make sense later and others won’t, but much of 1000xResist’s slowly unfurling narrative puzzle (its opening seconds, after all, ostensibly show you the antagonist’s death) demands – and eventually rewards – your patience. You control Watcher, one of a small group of clones of a girl named Iris, revered as the ‘Allmother’.…6 min

Edge|August 2024No Case Should Remain UnsolvedDeveloper/publisher Somi Format PC Release Out now Human memory isn’t linear, nor is it reliable. Events in our past fragment and sometimes merge in our minds; we might recall fine details even as the broader strokes blur or fade. This text-based detective game from Korean developer Somi asks you to accept one contrivance – that retired inspector Jeon Gyeong can recall conversational exchanges to the letter, but not when they were spoken, nor by whom – to brilliantly evoke that sensation of straining to create order from hippocampal chaos. This frazzled veteran has been invited to reexamine a cold case involving a kidnapped girl, so that she might belatedly resolve it. Immediately, key memories flood back. You recall the desperation in the voice of Seowon’s mother, who raised the alarm,…3 min

Edge|August 2024HauntiiDeveloper Moonloop Games Publisher Firestoke Format PC (tested), PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series Release Out now The risks associated with videogames’ pursuit of fidelity have only become more evident over the past year. Beyond even the swingeing layoffs, it says much that, despite bringing in more money than Nintendo, Sony trails its rival in profits by some distance. But it’s not only triple-A where a focus on looks can become a problem. Hauntii’s monochromatic world combines hand-drawn artistry with ethereal grandeur, evoking occasional gasps of wonderment. Yet in placing attention on its aesthetic above all else, it regularly fails at the fundamentals of presenting visual information. You’re a shadowy ghost, gliding through this handsomely rendered afterlife in the hope of escaping along with an angelic spirit. To remove…3 min

Edge|August 2024Heart stringsAt 72, Argentinian musician Gustavo Santaolalla can look across a remarkably varied career, from forming his first band at the age of 17 to producing alternative Latin music, then coming to prominence with his work in film, winning the Academy Award for Best Original Score with both 2005’s Brokeback Mountain and 2006’s Babel. To many, though, he is better known for his score for The Last Of Us, its sequel, and the HBO TV adaptation. Here, during a trip to the UK to perform the series’ music in concert, he tells us how he approaches his work. What was your experience with videogames prior to The Last Of Us? I’m a terrible gamer, but I’ve always enjoyed watching people play. I love watching the guys in my band, Bajofondo, playing…4 min

Edge|August 2024SoundbytesFrankly nightmarish Microsoft/Bethesda special “What’s the point of working your ass off, succeeding at creating a game that everyone loves and is financially successful, only to get fucking vaporised to juice some stocks?”Cyan’s Harrison Pink has a question to add to our list “Closing Arkane Austin is an act of vandalism, ring-barking a decade-sold tree of game design knowledge.”Narrative designer Katharine Neil surveys Microsoft’s trail of destruction ”Making game studios publicly traded companies is the worst idea to ever happen to videogames.”Art director Lisette Titre-Montgomery picks one option from a crowded field “Microsoft’s grand strategy was to ‘spend PlayStation out of business’. Sadly they now seem to have spent the entire videogame business out of business.”Indie dev Jörg Tittel gets to the agonising detail: Microsoft bought studios to block competition…1 min

Edge|August 2024DISPATCHES AUGUSTIssue 398 Dialogue Send your views, using ‘Dialogue’ as the subject line, to edge@futurenet.com. Our letter of the month wins an exclusive Edge T-shirt Laser eyes It’s fantastic to read that teenagers such as Callum Muir are still discovering Edge – and for the same reason I got into it 25 years ago! Ironically, though, I’m here to defend the hype. While I’d rather play Capcom Vs SNK 2 or Fantasy Strike, the fighting games I would currently recommend are Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8, simply because that’s where the competition is at. Why are they so popular? Surely the story modes help, but I like to believe it has a lot to do with marketing. The truth is, it’s the casuals that determine which fighting games are the…8 min

Edge|August 2024Narrative EngineSo I was working on a game today which simulates a storyworld with multiple characters. They have agendas, interests and timetables. They intersect and affect each other. (The game’s holding page on Steam, by the way, is entitled Miss Mulligatawney’s School For Promising Girls.) We’re using code from 2021’s Overboard!, which we’ve polished from a hacky Rube Goldberg machine mess into a pretty good system for efficiently railing, derailing and colliding motivated NPCs. But the results are, sadly, not instantaneously magical. It’s like playing the 1980s text adventure The Hobbit: a panel of text pops up to say “Gandalf wanders in, chewing his beard” until a second panel informs you that he has muttered something and gone away. Sure, it’s reassuring to see the escapement tick, but, as with all…4 min

Edge|August 2024WILD BASTARDSDeveloperBlue Manchu PublisherMaximum Entertainment Format PC, PS5, Switch, Xbox Series Origin Release Australia Origin Release 2024 Don’t let the Bastards trip you up. Blue Manchu’s latest game might be another firstperson shooter-strategy hybrid with a smattering of Roguelike elements and sharp-edged cartoon visuals, but it’s far from a simple cowboys-and-aliens reskin of Void Bastards. Not that we’d baulk at such an idea. As creative director Ben Lee tells it, though, that’s just not in the studio’s nature. “Historically, our first game was Card Hunter, our second game was Void Bastards,” he says. “There was almost nothing in common with those, apart from the people working on them.” For the third game, a similarly huge leap was considered, Lee adds: “A lot of team members had different ideas. I don’t remember…7 min

Edge|August 2024TINY GLADEDeveloper/publisherPounce Light Format PC Origin Sweden Release Q3 Construction in videogames often feels like making a model; at its best, digital building evokes the satisfaction of snapping together a Lego set. Creating bucolic dioramas in Tiny Glade, however, feels closer to painting – but using magic brushes that read your intent and embellish your strokes. Trace a path with your mouse pointer and the grass parts to let it through; keep going as you approach a wall and an arch forms, so the path can continue around the back. We reach for another brush, and dab patches of purple and white flowers into existence as if we were Bob Ross. Indeed, the game’s mellow ambience is as soothing as the late painter’s soft-spoken words of encouragement to his viewers. Tiny…4 min

Edge|August 2024SMOKE AND MIRRORSWhen we visited Ikumi Nakamurain E394, it was just prior to her appearance to officially announce Kemuri at the Game Awards in Los Angeles, a high-profile event of a similar stature to the one that catapulted her into the public limelight at Bethesda’s E3 presentation in 2019. A lot changed between those two appearances. No longer under a big publisher’s yoke, today she is her own boss at Unseen Inc. While the studio is based in Tokyo, its staff, up from 50 to 60 people since we previously visited, are located across the globe. The crossregion, remote-driven approach to game development is the picture of modernity, but the group’s debut project sees Nakamura looking into the past. Kemuri is an action game combining the kind of freewheeling urban parkour traversal…23 min

Edge|August 2024FULL CIRCLECharles Cecil was just as shocked as everyone else by the recent closure of award-winning studios Tango Gameworks and Roll7. The Revolution Software co-founder is certain that the independent York-based developer would no longer be around today if it had been snapped up by a big publisher in the past. “Absolutely no question,” he says. Instead, as Revolution celebrates its 35th anniversary, Cecil reflects with horror on the mismanagement that has led to acclaimed studios being thrown onto the bonfire. “The problem with all of this is the huge spike that happened during lockdown,” he says, referring to the boom in game sales during the COVID pandemic. “It was inevitable that it was going to come back down again, and anybody who couldn’t see that has no vision whatsoever. And…22 min

Edge|August 2024STUDIO PROFILE TEYONWhen you’re young, reality needn’t interfere with your dreams. So it was for Mateusz Makowiec and Michał Tatka when they met at school in 1999 and began making games together, at the age of 15. Their first project of substance – working with another friend, Mariusz Sajak – was an RTS. “We thought we could compete with Age Of Empires, just the three of us,” Makowiec recalls. But reality soon bit. “After two years, we realised we had like five per cent of Age Of Empires,” Tatka says, “and it’s really not possible to compete with big studios.” It’s a realisation that, in many ways, has defined the story of Teyon ever since. The studio was founded in Krakow in 2006 by Tatka (CEO), Makowiec (COO), Sajak (VP) and two…9 min

Edge|August 2024Still Wakes The DeepDeveloper The Chinese Room Publisher Secret Mode Format PC (tested), PS5, Xbox Series Release June 18 Leaving the subtitles settings on their default ‘English’, we quickly discover that they apply a filter to the script. As Glaswegian protagonist Caz McLeary ponders how much he misses his ‘weans’ on the mainland, for instance, the text replaces the word with ‘kids’. Our first instinct is that this feels heavy-handed, sucking flavour from speech that strives to manifest a specific sense of place and time. Yet we soon realise that it’s not only optional (you can select a one-to-one transcript instead) but also likely essential for those less familiar with the game’s Caledonian dialects. It’s one of a few areas, in fact, where Still Wakes The Deep makes small compromises so that it…9 min

Edge|August 2024Post ScriptReviewing Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice in E310, we concluded that “what was intended as a thoughtful depiction of a terrible mental illness has ended up casting it as something of an asset: a helpful superpower that can give you the strength to soldier on through the darkness, so long as you can put up with the odd breakdown here and there.” Ninja Theory has, for the most part, avoided repeating that mistake (though it has fallen into the same trap of using its protagonist’s psychosis as visual set dressing for stale puzzle designs). But if, as we suggested, that focus on Senua’s condition was such that the studio had failed to build much of a game around it, at least Senua’s Sacrifice had a clear vision for the story it wanted…3 min

Edge|August 2024RKGK/RakugakiDeveloper Wabisabi Games Publisher Gearbox Publishing Format PC Release Out now At this point in late-stage capitalism, we’re as receptive to the opportunity to indulge in a spot of anti-corporate rebellion from the comfort of our living rooms as the next slacktivist. As such, the hook of this 3D platformer from Mexico’s Wabisabi Games is immediately appealing. You’re punkish graffiti artist Valah, who has taken it upon herself to challenge the autocratic regime of bald Bezos/Robotnik hybrid Mr Buff, painting over propaganda and destroying the mechanical minions of B Corp to bring vibrancy and self-expression back to the futuristic Cap City. Even without any kind of threat, you would need little impetus to get to work. This urban dystopia is all stone and steel, grim slabs of ugly brutalist architecture…5 min

Edge|August 2024Paper TrailDeveloper/publisher Newfangled Games Format iOS (via Netflix), PC, PS5 (tested), Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series Release Out now We accept our bias without apology: paper is one of humanity’s greatest technologies. There’s nothing quite like the delicate crumple as you turn a page in a magazine, or the way a blank page bends to your own designs. Newfangled Games’ puzzle adventure celebrates this tool of creativity through a delightful combination of intricate paper-folding and wide-eyed storybook wonder. Combining creativity and geometry, elevating mathematics into something of beauty, origami requires discipline. It’s fitting, then, that Paper Trail’s protagonist Paige should be a budding astrophysicist, who dreams of going to university and experiencing life beyond her village. Her mother and father are worried about her ambitions – though their concerns seem to…5 min

Edge|August 2024Little Kitty, Big CityDeveloper/publisher Double Dagger Studio Format PC, Switch (tested), Xbox One, Xbox Series Release Out now The artist looks nonplussed as we knock over the paint pots in his back yard and stride nonchalantly across the canvas, leaving a multicoloured trail of pawprints, before – just to rub it in – nuzzling into his legs so he can’t possibly get mad at us. The builder? Well, we can fully understand his exasperation as we trot across his freshly laid cement, but we simply don’t care. The pre-release comparisons to Stray are as perfectly understandable as they are wrongheaded: Little Kitty, Big City is not a thirdperson action adventure whose protagonist just so happens to be feline, but a game in which you fully inhabit the role of a loveable, casually malevolent…3 min

Edge|August 2024The HexDeveloper/publisher Daniel Mullins Games Format PC Release 2018 Six videogame characters walk into a bar. The Hex has the setup of a classic music-hall joke, delivered by one of the medium’s most dedicated comedians. Not too long ago, in E396’s preview of Pony Island 2, developer Daniel Mullins described the mechanically inventive twists that characterise his games as “pranks”. It made us think about the way other games employ basic comedic structure: introducing an idea, letting it sit for a moment, then subverting it in some unexpected way, jiggling your neurons just so to produce an involuntary bodily reaction. Which is not always, necessarily, laughter. Consider how FromSoftware’s games delight in wrongfooting your expectations, with a well-hidden trap or extraneous boss phase, or the ways that in Super Mario Bros…9 min