ALL FORMATS

116 PAGES MONTHLY

LIFTING THE LID ON VIDEO GAMES

CASTLEVANIA
The designer who created a
Konami classic – and vanished

GAME BOY
Make an infinite runner on
genuine retro hardware

Issue 62 £6
wfmag.cc

HUMANS VS MACHINES IN A BLACKLY COMIC FIRST-PERSON SATIRE

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 LEGO Star Wars:
The Skywalker Saga finds
the light side of fandom

I  
n one of the many goofy cutscenes in LEGO or to treat every stumble or deviation from the norm as
Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, a grizzled Luke something of a personal attack.
Skywalker sidles up to the makeshift bar on But the real pleasure of being a Star Wars fan doesn’t
his Ahch-To hideaway, a befuddled Rey in tow. lie in the arguments over whether Rey was too capable
A quartet of Thala-sirens – portly, walrus-like for her own good, but in the possibility of a world
things with a cluster of udders – are hooked up to a CLARISSE so rich that it’s possible to develop a fixation on a
milking machine. The Porg bartender draws a pint of LOUGHREY character who’s only on screen for 30 seconds. And The
their green milk and slides it over to Luke, who downs Clarisse Loughrey is Skywalker Saga, with its 380 character models, caters to
it with lusty enthusiasm. I remember when Luke’s the chief film critic that obsession beautifully: finally, you can play as Klaud,
green milk habit in The Last Jedi would cause a portion for The Independent Yaddle, or Willrow Hood (the guy on Bespin running
and co-host of
of the Star Wars fandom to have a conniption fit. the Fade to Black around with an ice cream maker).
You won’t hear them complaining now. podcast. There needs to be that space for pure joy in Star
LEGO Star Wars is so loving in its treatment of the Wars, where fan service doesn’t have to feel as forced
franchise that it sucks the air right out of the cynical and and portentous as Palpatine’s unlikely return in The Rise
the unimpressed. The Skywalker Saga is the sixth title of Skywalker. That’s really where the true potential of
of its kind from TT Games, and the first to encompass cross-medium storytelling lies – in the opportunity to
all three Skywalker trilogies (The Mandalorian, Solo, and add depth to an existing world, as opposed to hacking
Rogue One all feature as DLC). And time and again, it bits off like it’s a juicy chunk of bantha rump.
takes moments that have triggered hours of circular Respawn found success with Jedi: Fallen Order, which
arguments between enraged Star Wars devotees and delivered original characters and storylines set in a post-
transforms them into a bit of offhand slapstick. It’s Order 66 world, but I’ve always been more intrigued
all covered: Obi-Wan Kenobi and General Grievous’ by the potential of games like Star Wars Battlefront II
confrontation (“Hello, there!” segues into a dance-off), or Marvel’s Avengers. Both had shaky launches and,
Stormtroopers and their terrible aim, and the many, arguably, never really found their feet, but the way

#62
many body-doubles of Padmé Amidala. they encouraged a sort of liberated, cross-pollinating
It’s exactly what Star Wars needs, especially at a approach to their respective franchises – play however
time when the franchise’s every move is treated as the you like, with whichever character you like – always
symptom of some unseen internal crisis. For whatever reflected my favourite parts of any fandom. I’m talking
brief unity there was when The Mandalorian emerged, about the cosplayers, the droid builders, the artists, and
it seemed to fall apart when The Book of Boba Fett fan fiction writers, the people who took something they
premiered to a mixed critical reaction. The fans took love and stamped their identity and creativity on it. The
up arms against each other again without hesitation. Skywalker Saga builds on that idea, with a semi-open-
That’s always been the problem with Star Wars: these world structure that encourages you to explore and test
films have formed a foundational part of several out different character combinations. And, really, how
generations’ worth of childhoods, so there’s always can watching Kylo Ren fanboy all over Darth Vader not
been a tendency for the fandom to act too defensively, bring a smile to your face?

wfmag.cc \ 03
 Contents

Contents

6
Attract mode

06. The Last Worker

It’s a post-human future in this Interface
first-person adventure-satire

12.  SCATHE 28. Castlevania

Scottish developer Damage State Tracking down its erstwhile creator,
takes us to bullet hell Hitoshi Akamatsu

16.  Eternal Threads 38. Konami classics

Travel through time and save lives in a Our pick of the 20 best games from
unique narrative-puzzler its golden age

18. Soundfall 70. Recreating the 1980s

A rhythm-based dungeon crawler? The studios making less clichéd
Sounds good to us games set in the neon decade

20. News 84.  SNK’s fighters

Another wry glance at the month’s Memories from the creative minds
video game happenings behind Art of Fighting and more

24. Incoming 90. Steve McNeil

50 Frogs, football, fighting, and lashings
of hot coffee
Celebrating the return of in-person
gaming events

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 Contents

WELCOME
There’s a vein of nostalgia
running through this month’s
issue, whether it’s the golden age
of Konami (see page 38) or our
chat to the studios who’ve set
their games in the 1980s (page
70). Video games and nostalgia
have long been natural partners,
perhaps because most of us
FREE 8BitDo discovered the medium at a

28 controller young age – several generations

have now grown up with the
with a one-year
sights and sounds of the Atari
subscription
2600, NES, Mega Drive, or later
See page 35
consoles ringing in their ears.

But just as doctors in the 17th

century thought of nostalgia
as a sickness, there’s a slight
danger of looking back at past
eras of gaming through an
overly romantic lens. Sure, there
were some incredible games
made in, say, the 1980s. Take it
from someone (just about) old
enough to have lived through
that decade of games, though:
it wasn’t all great. For every
Gothic masterpiece like 1987’s

70 92 Castlevania, there were dozens

of terrible NES games – clunky
things like Chubby Cherub,
or the legendarily frustrating
Deadly Towers.

Toolbox Rated If you had a ZX Spectrum,

games were cheap but took
ages to load from cassettes
(unless you were one of those
46. CityCraft 92. Tunic posh people with a disk drive).
If you had a console, the games
The design secrets of Mirror’s Edge So cunning, you could pin a tail on it looked better but cost so much
Catalyst’s City of Glass and call it a fox money you could probably
only afford a handful per year.
50. Game Boy guide 97. Orbital Bullet In other words, if you weren’t
around for an earlier generation
Make an infinite runner for original This roguelike has us going round
of gaming, don’t worry: you
Nintendo hardware in circles didn’t really miss out on much.
People older than you played all
58. Finding the balance 100. Itch.io roundup the bilge so that you don’t have
Get your game’s challenge pitched Our latest monthly pick of the to. Just cut to the chase and
check out Castlevania.
just right with our guide platform’s finest experiences
Enjoy the new issue!
66. Source Code 104. Backwards compatible
Make your own Guitar Hero-style Fancy GBA buttons and The House Ryan Lambie
rhythm action game Of The Dead: Remake Editor

Wireframe is published monthly by Raspberry Pi Ltd, Maurice Wilkes Building, St. John’s Innovation Park, Cowley Road, Cambridge,
CB4 0DS. Publishers Service Associates, 2406 Reach Road, Williamsport, PA, 17701, is the mailing agent for copies distributed in the
US and Canada. Application to mail at Periodicals prices is pending at Williamsport, PA. POSTMASTER: Send US and Canadian address
changes to Wireframe c/o Publishers Service Associates, 2406 Reach Road, Williamsport, PA, 17701.

wfmag.cc \ 05
 Attract Mode
Interview

Combining a handcrafted 3D art style and

satirical story to poke fun at the consumerist
future? It must be The Last Worker

E
vidence of the singularity, At first glance, the incredibly colourful,
or the point in time when cel-shaded warehouse that is the Jüngle
technology advances far Fulfilment Centre doesn’t seem like
enough to negate the need for a bad place to work. In fact, we meet
humans, seemingly surrounds protagonist Kurt at the start of the story
us more each day. It’s there whenever you during a period of his life where he’s
Google a question on your smartphone happy to merely “keep calm and carry
or scan something using a supermarket’s on”. Unlucky for him (but fortunate for
self-service checkout. Even then it’s still us), though, he won’t remain a cog in
a struggle to imagine our fridge ever this machine for much longer, when
gaining enough intelligence to, say, want the opportunity to fight back against his
to put in a nine-to-five shift at the local corporate overlord soon presents itself.
Tesco Direct. The Last Worker, however, The Last Worker is a first-person
lets players inhabit a hypothetical vision narrative adventure game that aims to
of the future where society has already explore all these heavy themes while
travelled far beyond this point. The robots keeping the tone light and frothy – always
are no longer taking over – they’ve already with its tongue firmly in cheek. We spoke
won. And now it’s your job as the titular to writer-director Jörg Tittel and lead
worker to ensure things run smoothly. designer Ryan Bousfield to find out how.

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Attract Mode
Interview
 Attract Mode
Interview

How did you land on the theme of and the whole counter was gone overnight. nonsense. There’s nothing new about that,
automation for The Last Worker? It’s almost as if they felt, ‘If we don’t do it but the thing that feels new to me is that
Jörg Tittel: I was living near Melbourne, overnight, people will rebel’. So we just have there are a bunch of [pointless] jobs that
and there was a little Tesco Direct or to do it instantly. It was this automation need replacing, and it seems like they’re
something. I walked in and overnight pop-up. Then, when you looked around, being replaced by jobs that are ultimately
there were four of the five employees that it was everywhere. All of the Tescos did it just servicing the robots. And so that’s
I knew by name, [until suddenly] there that same week, and then Sainsbury’s or wrong, too. I wanted to make something
was only [a couple] left. One of them whatever it was. about that dilemma, that bizarre crossroads
was behind the counter, and the other I thought about it more and realised that that we’re finding ourselves in right now.
employee was standing by these machines pretty much all of our thoughts are getting
that were taking up half of this front area automated as well. It’s not just our physical The game is a collaborative effort
and waiting for them to break down so lives. All the social media stuff has been between Oiffy and Wolf & Wood
they could press the reset button on the going on for so long and now we’re being Interactive. Where did this relationship
windows. I was like: ‘That’s messed up’. It reduced to binary constructs of likes and stem from?
happened so fast; there was no warning, dislikes, friends and unfriends, and other JT: It all started at Gamescom 2019.
I was walking around with my friend
from Coatsink and we were talking about
potentially doing this project together.
But then they said you should talk to Ryan
[Bousfield] because he’s awesome and I
think you guys would really get along. I told
Ryan the idea behind the concept I’d been
developing for a couple of years. It turns
out it’s a hard game [to make] today.
To create something that is multifaceted
and combines core gameplay mechanics
with hard genre elements, but all blended
together in a really non-obvious way.
Ryan Bousfield: [Jörg] popped up and it
was unlike anything as far as a concept.
We saw some of the concept drawings
 the last remaining human employee,
As that [comic artist] Mick McMahon had


Kurt’s been working in the warehouse for done, and it was weird, freaky, and quirky.
25 years. The Last Worker devises a smart
workaround to introduce new players. Just an unusual, interesting, and unique

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 Attract Mode
Interview


Just because everyday tasks are


dreary for Kurt doesn’t mean

they will be for you. Various
environmental puzzles flesh out
the warehouse setting.

 mirror attached to the top left

A


of Kurt’s pod helps you see his
reactions to the action in
real-time. No doubt this will
have a striking effect in VR.

environment. Something that kind of workaround, which I hope will amuse you.
tips into sci-fi but not too much, and tips But yeah, he’s been part of his job and he’s
into politics. But it’s not ramming it down never made mistakes. And then, of course,
your throat. We’re going to do it in a funny something happens that disrupts his
and personal way. routine after these 25 years, and his world
is turned upside down.
Tell us a bit about the main character,
Kurt. Is he just a routine jobber, or is there How did you go about making the Jüngle
something special about him? Fulfilment Centre feel like a real place?
JT: It’s quite rare to find an unsilent Is it based in an alternate universe or a
protagonist in the VR space. Here you are version of our own future?
inside the body and inside the mind of a JT: It’s a bit of both. Bizarrely, our reality
big, bearded man, and he’s quite vocal. has caught up with us during the making
If you spent 25 years alone at work, or of the game. We thought we were being
ALL-STAR CAST
working from home – as he cheekily likes completely out there, and then suddenly, a OF COLLEAGUES
to call it, even though he’s been stuck in his lot of the concepts and nonsense that we The Last Worker features a who’s
warehouse for a while – you start talking to were coming up with for the game turned who of Hollywood A-listers heading
yourself, which he does occasionally. out to be real. Corporations we may or up its voice cast. Ólafur Darri
What’s special about him is that he was may not be satirising have started actually Ólafsson of Fantastic Beasts and
The Tourist fame lends his voice –
particularly dedicated normalising a lot of
and bushy-bearded appearance – to
to this [pointless] job “We’re being reduced the behaviours that we
lead character Kurt, while The Shape
that he’s had for so were presenting as a
long. He believes that
to binary constructs sort of ‘imagine if this
of Water ’s David Hewlett takes on
the role of the Fulfilment Centre’s
doing a good job is of likes and dislikes” crazy stuff happened’ eccentric CEO, Josef Jüngle. Then
something to be proud reality. For me, it you have Jason Isaacs playing
of, and he’s clung onto it because everyone started with Mick McMahon, who is an Kurt’s constant robot buddy Skew,
else has made at least one mistake that got incredible comic book artist, a co-creator with you throughout much of the
them fired. He’s never made that mistake. of Judge Dredd and lots of other amazing adventure. Tittel describes Skew as
It’s an interesting situation to be put in worlds and characters. “a piece of broken AI,” even though
Kurt values its companionship.
as a player because you’re being sort of Hopefully, [players] will agree this is a
“They have a really interesting
teleported into the body of someone who very visually compelling and beautiful world
relationship, which will get more
has always been perfect at it, but you have with lots of places and corners that aren’t complex as the story progresses.”
to start with onboarding whether you repetitive. There’s a huge sense of visual
like it or not. We figured out a narrative variety. We approached the warehouse

wfmag.cc \ 09
 Attract Mode
Interview


Kurt has access to various tools and items


intended to make his job easier. Why
move an object around with your hands
when the perfect device already exists?

older things that you would use. Why even

use them in this world where you can
actually float above the ground? We just
classify it as old technology in that world.
That’s how we rationalise it, I guess.

Kurt himself sports a haggard look JT: It’s a dystopia we’d like to live in… I mean,


much of the time, almost carrying the

full 25 years’ worth of work on his face.
we’d rather live in. Maybe that’s the better
a bit like a city rather than as a fulfilment way of putting it, because it just feels a little
centre. So to us, it was always, ‘Let’s look bit more tangible.
at the map of Manhattan and think about
what makes a city visually interesting’. A lot of the tasks in The Last Worker are
How do you create a distinctive corner, intentionally monotonous – shifting boxes
plaza, or a river that runs through it? We around, pushing carts, etc. Was it tricky
took all those ideas and abstracted them to translate these types of actions into
into this fulfilment centre concept. fun gameplay?
RB: It goes hand in hand with the art style RB: I don’t think it has been so far because
in general because you’re taking Mick’s we gamify everything. The package dispatch
concepts and his heavy line work. It has part of the game does get interjected with
that comic feel, but without directly being a the narrative thread running through, and
MICK MCMAHON’S comic book. As you embody the character, then it takes you into stealth sections.
MAGIC even if you’re looking at sausage fingers, we We’ve got a balance where we’re constantly
Despite taking place within a still want the detail to be there. The team jumping between those two. The narrative
consumerist-driven dystopia, it has worked painstakingly, putting every line loops you through all that gameplay.
was still important for The Last in where you would expect one and where And then there’s the additional rules as you
Worker ’s future to be somewhat
we think there’d be a bit of dirt or a dent. progress, the levels get gradually larger, and
aspirational, too. The hand-painted
We can hand-draw that in on every model, you’ve still got to hit your quota.
3D art of legendary comic book artist
Mick McMahon (most famous for
every floor, and so on. I think that helps JT: There’s another aspect, which is the
his work in the world of 2000 AD, bring a bit of life to the warehouse, because disruptive side of the story. There’s a
Judge Dredd being chief amongst then you know that somebody’s been in group of activists that will want to recruit
them) was crucial, drenching the and touched all these areas. you as the only inside man in a corporation
Jüngle Fulfilment Centre with plenty JT: We wanted to make a game that was that, while you’ve been stuck in there for
of vibrant colour emphasised by about humans being replaced, [so that] in 25 years, has been doing some serious
thick black lines. “The first time we every aspect of the game you feel there’s damage to the outside world. That will
showed it to Mick we were obviously been a human that touched it and thought keep the gameplay fresh. The repetition
a little bit apprehensive,” says
about it, and deeply felt something while is something that you’ll feel but not
Bousfield. “But it gave us a bit of a
making it. And so everything just feels that have to do for too long as a player. The
boost to see him happy with it. He
was pleasantly surprised, I think.”
bit chunkier. disruptive aspects and the new skills that
RB: It’s the same with the sounds as well. you gradually have to learn in order to
No door just opens… it’s all pistons, and do something that may even go against

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 Attract Mode
Interview

your own purpose being in the place Is striking a good balance between What feeling do you want players to come
to begin with, are going to keep it fresh comedy and a heartfelt story tough, away with from The Last Worker?
and exciting. especially when presented in first-person? JT: I want people to be spurred into action.
JT: For me, this was a perfect way to And not in a way that’s, say, ‘[Screw] the
What are the benefits of playing in combine the theatricality of what I do in system’, but to get emotionally and physically
VR, that those on PC or console might the film and theatre world, actually, but engaged with the world around them.
otherwise miss out on? through gameplay and narrative, and I hope that by doing that in our game, being
JT: I personally love the game on [Nintendo] experience and interactivity. It’s a natural physically and emotionally involved in the
Switch because it feels really good and evolution, and VR gives us even more story, they’ll feel inspired and empowered to
beautiful to have this chunky, handcrafted strength to do this kind of stuff. It invites do the same in their world, because I think
reality in the palm of your hands. It just you to be more first-person than in most we’re all made to turn into more and more
feels like the perfect frame for it. But yes, other mediums. passive beings and to consumers of content.
it’s amazing in VR. And it feels great to be RB: I think that’s definitely our advantage. We’re all being automated into using these
someone who’s not the typical idea of a When we set up our first game, A Chair terms. We’re consuming brands, but I think
heroic character. in a Room, the player’s essentially acting we can be more than that. So, hopefully, by
RB: We’ve not even mentioned the it out, and we can’t stop the player from bringing in these personal stories and telling
mirror yet! For a good portion of the game laying down on the floor and looking on the them in a big way, it will inspire more people
there’s a mirror just on the top left of your underside of a table, or just doing anything to do the same. Because I think games can
pod. And as the lines crazy. You don’t have be more than just games.
are being delivered by “There’s a lot of those restraints. You
the main character, can’t just push the The Last Worker is released on PC, VR, and
you can look up and
love and passion camera at something. consoles later in 2022
it’s all delivered back going into this game” So we’ve led with that
at you as you’re going as far as the design
through the levels. When he calls a product of this, whether you’re looking at a screen
‘[rubbish]’ or whatever, you can see the or in a headset. We’re putting all these
reflection of that happening. little cues in the world to push the player
JT: It feels like a bit of an in-joke – one through and lead them towards something
where you’re in on it with yourself. The lines rather than drag them to it.
may be scripted but by embodying JT: We have lofty goals – we’re ambitious
someone else, you feel like you’re deeply with this game, and hopefully, we’re pulling
embodying the whole story in ways that we it off. I mean, that’s for players to judge
haven’t seen in a VR or any other game yet. down the road, but I can assure you that
[With] the mirror, we’re really using that to there’s a lot of love and passion going into
full effect. every corner of this game.

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 Attract Mode
Early Access

What fresh hell is this?

Scottish developer Damage State introduces its hectic FPS, SCATHE

J
ust as Housemarque’s Returnal fused enemies’ aggressive attack patterns make it a
Info

GENRE
Demon murder sim the third-person roguelike with the markedly different kind of shooter. “Once people
FORMAT danmaku shoot-‘em-up genre to play SCATHE, they realise the stark differences,”
PC, XB S/X, XBO award-winning effect, so Scottish studio Dawson tells us. “We’ve taken a blend of FPS
PS4, PS5
Damage State’s upcoming SCATHE games and twisted them to make something we
DEVELOPER
aims to take players to its own particular plane wanted… Dodging streams of bullets and having
Damage State
of bullet hell. Trapped in an infernal labyrinth, to consider your route of attack with the intensity
PUBLISHER
Kwalee
you’re confronted by an army of grotesque and of everything was greatly appealing.”
deadly enemies – many of them capable of firing Given how slick and polished SCATHE looks,
RELEASE
2022 complex waves of fiery projectiles. it’s doubly impressive that it’s the product of
SOCIAL Look at SCATHE in still images, and you’ll likely such a tiny studio. The team comprises just
@ScatheFPS think of recent entries in the DOOM series, but three people: Dawson on the aforementioned
programmer and Damage State co-founder Chris programming duties, art director and co-founder
Dawson argues that his game’s mix of non-linear Tim Hay, and character artist Manu Lopez.
level design, drop-in, drop-out co-op, and its With several years of games industry experience
already behind them, the trio got together in
2019 with the express intention of creating
something uniquely their own. “Although we
worked in the same vicinity and on similar games
– everything from mobile to triple-A – it was only
a few years before starting up that we met one
another,” Dawson explains. “We were fed up with
games companies falling into similar patterns of
 ll weapons have a
A failure and maybe lasting only a few years – then


secondary function, like the we’d be forced to relocate. We wanted to create

Hell Hammer’s rocket
launcher, which is designed a studio with a modern approach and one that
to reduce the amount of
time players spend
learns from everything we have experienced –
switching between guns. both good and bad!”

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 Attract Mode
Early Access

 CATHE ’s hellish maze is

S


broken up into small, discrete

areas with multiple exits,
making encounters short and
snappy while offering varied
paths through the game.

RED IN
THE FACE
Shoot enough demons, and
you’ll eventually notice that
your view has become so
splattered with blood that it’s
difficult to see where you’re
going. Thankfully, there’s a
solution: SCATHE ’s dedicated
After one of Damage State’s artists came up Another design choice that sets SCATHE apart ‘wipe your face’ button. “The
with an early sketch of a demonic entity called a is its array of exotic weapons. Where most face wipe was something I
Splitter, Dawson then came up with the idea of shooters start you out with a feeble pistol of added when trying out new
making a shooter set in hell – and at this point, some sort, SCATHE immediately gives you the ideas,” Dawson explains.
“We’re always coming up
SCATHE was born. And from those very early Hell Hammer: a gigantic bit of ordnance capable
with weird and wonderful
stages, it was planned of firing shotgun-like things, trying to push the
as an action-focused “We’ve taken a blend blasts, while pressing the standard expectancies and
shooter without the secondary fire button see what feels good. Coming
added trimmings and
of FPS games and will set off its rocket from working on triple-A
titles, you just don’t get the
bloat you commonly see twisted them” launcher. SCATHE’s other chance to try out things or
in modern games of its weapons are equally twist formulas as it’s deemed
type – you won’t find crafting or levelling, and big and brash, and all designed to make you risky to the audience. The
the pace won’t grind to a halt because of a fiddly feel like a powerful denizen of the underworld reception to it has been far
more positive than we ever
environmental puzzle. Even the controls are – something that makes balancing the game’s
expected as it exists as an
designed to be streamlined. challenge, well… challenging, Dawson admits. extra challenge for the player
Says Dawson: “Everything in SCATHE – like “There are so many factors in SCATHE to think to overcome.”
buttons – can be triggered by shooting, removing
the need for ‘Press E to interact’ prompts, which
is commonly the case. For example, there
are moving platforms and pillars that you can
trigger, perfect jumps to make, secret doors,
and rotating bridges, amongst others. It’s a great
balance between discovery and action. We tried
out more advanced puzzles and multi-trigger
buttons early on in development, but they just
didn’t fit the game at all.”

 CATHE ’s monsters range from the

S


small and irksome to the huge and

terrifying. You can find out more
about their design on page 36.

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 Attract Mode
Early Access

SCATHE ’s been made with



a real knowledge of the

traditional bullet hell
shooter. In a March devlog, about, from obvious ones like movement speed notes), the game will instead focus on how
Dawson name-drops the
Treasure 2D classic, Ikaruga. to more obscure things like lighting levels for much damage the player can take before they
clarity. You want to create a fast and intense finally keel over, how many demons spawn in a
experience so the player feels like a powerful, particular area, and how fast their bullets are.
unstoppable boss, but you can’t let them smash “Making sure the game sits as challenging but
through the game without challenge. Even things not unfair is the focus,” we’re told.
like jumping are a challenge, as you need to Besides, if the journey through hell becomes
jump bullets coming towards you or get out of a a bit too hard-going, the player can rope in up to
sticky situation, but you can’t jump over certain three friends to help them. There are no plans
parts of the map, like barriers and rocks. If you to add any competitive modes at present, and
change one, you break another.” neither is there friendly fire – the latter was tried
Rather than make SCATHE more difficult by out earlier in development, but had a detrimental
“ The game’s focused on having its enemies absorb dozens of bullets effect on the gameplay. As it now stands, “the


action and intense

gameplay,” says Dawson, “but (“That’s a really poor way of doing it,” Dawson drop-in, drop-out multiplayer works quite neatly,”
there are runes to collect and
secrets to uncover.”
says Dawson. “When a player creates a game
or loads their last location, they can choose
whether to play alone, allow friends – a private
game – or allow anyone. Players who want to
join will either join a friend or hit ‘quickplay’.
Regardless of where the host player is, the player
drops in right next to them and joins the play.
If they want to leave, they just quit and can come
back in whenever they like.”

DEMON SEED
As you can see in the art gallery on page 36,
Damage State has put a lot of creative energy
into conjuring up as many hideous demons as it
could for SCATHE. But while you might think that
setting a game in hell would give an artist free
licence to come up with all kinds of grotesque
critters, it’s a location that also poses a problem:

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 nemies’ rapid firing rate

E


makes SCATHE ’s combat quite
different from most other
so many other games have sunk to the same modern shooters: you’ll spend
more time dodging, weaving,
infernal depths, it’s quite hard to dream up and trying to eliminate them
monsters that players won’t have seen a dozen from a distance.

times before. “It can be really difficult to create

something fresh,” says Dawson. “Without a
doubt, clichéd enemies like zombies are always
present in these types of games in various forms,
but they’re heavily used for good reason. We
use this fact to force ourselves to be more novel, a modern shooter with the bullet-dodging
and SCATHE features some unique demons – adrenaline surge of an arcade title by the likes
‘Fleshies’ spring to mind; they’re bouncing, erratic of CAVE or Treasure. SCATHE is, if anything, a A MAZE
balls of flesh and metal. They can be a nightmare reaction to the type of FPSs Dawson and his OF DEATH
due to their unpredictability… another one is team have played – and, by the sounds of things, The goal in SCATHE is simple
the ‘Prism’, a floating, tutted at – in recent to grasp – enter a zone, kill
triangular demon that years. “We were bored every evil being you see,
“Making sure the game then find one of several
spawns lasers from its of linear games,” says
multiple eyes, burning
sits as challenging but Dawson. “The FPS market
exits – but it’s the multiple
routes that keep the game
the player and even not unfair is the focus” is dominated by linear interesting, Dawson says.
other demons. I won’t go paths, and with SCATHE, “Every zone connects to
another and makes up the
through all the others, but there’s a nice mix of we wanted to create choice. Thus the idea of
larger maze. It means players
fresh takes on what’s expected and novel ideas ‘escape the maze’ was born. Having lots of zones are free to pick their path and
that make up the enemies of SCATHE.” connected by various doors, so you could pick create their own journey. In
At a time when action games are becoming your path and discover everything at your own addition to this, each zone is
ever-more weighed down with features and pace, appealed to us. It also ticked another handcrafted as we wanted to
avoid procedural generation
busywork, it’s refreshing to see SCATHE looming box that the game saved between zones, thus
and make something that
on the horizon: an FPS that mixes the complex allowing for five-to-ten-minute bites of play – or players can learn and even
level designs and freedom of movement of you can play for a solid five hours straight.” jot down their best route.”

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Eternal Threads
Exploring the boundaries of cause and effect in
Cosmonaut Studios’ tightly-knit time travel story

A
shared house in the north of housemates was conceived and the story was
Info

GENRE
Puzzle, narrative, England mysteriously burns down, reworked and refined, so now the decisions have
first-person
killing the six students trapped a direct impact on their survival.”
adventure
inside. As 43, a time-hopping This set Johnson and the team on a path
FORMAT
PC / Switch operative sent from the future, it’s to create hundreds of different paths and
your job to prevent the tragedy from happening. outcomes for the player to explore – including
DEVELOPER
Cosmonaut Studios It’s a task matched in its ambition by the one one perfect ending, which will see all housemates
PUBLISHER Eternal Threads developer Cosmonaut set for survive and go on to enjoy their best future lives.
Secret Mode itself: to somehow tie this butterfly effect-style The sci-fi shenanigans might be set within the
RELEASE story together in a way that made sense. confines of a single building, but six people’s
2022 “Our initial efforts became a much more routines constantly intertwining still results in
SOCIAL supernatural experience,” says creative director 190-plus character decisions for you to navigate
@Cosmonaut_Info Paul Johnson. “Then, we had a crazy idea… (and potentially change) on both a small and
What if the entire story was open from the start? grand scale. They set the stage for an eight to
What if the player was free to go to any point ten-hour first-person adventure where you must
in time and change any decision they wished, play the watcher, jumping back and forth over a
as many times as they liked? This is when the week’s timeline to find out how the fire started,
idea of the house fire with the deaths of all the taking note of dialogue and actions while saving
as many characters as possible in the process.
It’s a lot to wrap your head around, no doubt,
hence why having an in-game time-map to hand
made a lot of sense.
“The original whiteboards on which we charted
the story looked like some strange mixture of
 he story of Eternal Threads
T ancient cave-paintings, alchemical scribblings,


begins at the end, with you and the calculations of an insane astrophysicist,”
playing witness to the
tragic fire. jokes narrative director Dave Bottomley. “It was
overwhelming to look at and absolutely the
 Certain sections of the
building that remain locked complete opposite of ‘easy to follow’”.
off to you at first can be
opened up by discovering
Boiling all that down into a form that players
clues and items. could get their heads around took Cosmonaut

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 ll six housemates have

A


their own routines,

which you can influence
using the Visualiser tool
to change the timeline.

 hanging a character’s
C


decision-making will
sometimes see their
room shift and change
Studios months and many iterations. “Ultimately,” in appearance.
says Bottomley, “we settled on a basic timeline
diagram, with the scenes currently active being lit
up and connected to the central line, while all the seeing their individual stories constantly fade in
alternatives were greyed out and disconnected. and out. “You can even start at the end of the
This hopefully [gives] the player a central focus, timeline, discover exactly how everyone died, and
while also showing all the possible alternatives then work your way backwards trying to change
that were available for them to connect and those circumstances. We wanted to give players
explore through the changing of decisions.” the freedom to explore and play the game
The stakes are set almost immediately after however they wanted, without fear of game-
you’re sent back to 2015. Soon after laying down ending consequences.”
the relay devices necessary to let you view the Only by influencing the timeline so events play
past ghost forms of all six housemates, you’re out in the correct order can players hope to use
warped to the end of the seven-day timeline and the butterfly effect to their advantage, getting
forced to stand in the building as flames rise to know this setting – and all six characters –
and firefighters struggle to control the blaze. intimately in the process. Northern England
From here, you’re given might not be the most
free rein to explore the “Then, we had a crazy idea… obvious place to set a
timeline, wandering game where such lofty
from floor to floor in
What if the entire story was themes and ideas are
search of clues and hints open from the start?” placed front and centre, CASUAL
crucial for helping the but by contrasting
CAUSALITY
housemates escape the building in time. In doing grandiose sci-fi against the mundanity of
43’s main device of choice
so, you come to learn more about the group’s everyday 21st-century life, Cosmonaut Studios is is what’s known as the
relationships and how they impact one another. looking to keep the human element at the heart Visualiser. Through this,
So what are the benefits of popping around of it all. they’re able to select and
the timeline out of order, as opposed to simply Eternal Threads is the Cosmonaut team’s debut switch between the different
decisions characters make,
watching events play out linearly? “Everyone title, but if it proves to be successful, Johnson is
altering the timeline to
wonders ‘what if?’. What if I’d said that, or done confident that its time-hopping formula is one potentially open up other
that, or taken that job, or gone on that date,” that could work in all kinds of other tragedy- scenarios that may have
says Bottomley. “We wanted players to scratch laden scenarios and settings. “We have so many otherwise gone unnoticed.
Moving the odd object around
that universal itch, by allowing them to freely ideas for sequels,” he says, looking to the future.
or unlocking doors might
investigate these alternatives and explore the “43 is one of many operatives tasked with fixing only have a minor impact on
multiple timelines and outcomes. Change a corruption in the timestream. There are so many events, so in some instances
decision, pop along the timeline and observe the stories we could explore, and even though this it can pay to change things
results, then change it back again afterwards if story’s goal was to save the lives of six everyday as they happen in real time.
The tool also acts as a map,
you want.” housemates, another damaged thread of time,
indicating where in the house
This also enables players to hone in and needing repair, could offer something completely to go next to watch the event
understand one character at a time, rather than different. The possibilities are almost endless.” you’ve selected.

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Music to our ears

Turning everything up to 11 as we blast to the beat
in rhythm-driven dungeon crawler, Soundfall

T
he debut title from Drastic Games is on Fig – but the game’s unique combination of
Info

GENRE
Rhythm, loot- a head-bopping isometric shooter twin-stick and music-based action is one that
shooter, dungeon
unafraid to move to its own groove, the team, made up of Epic Games alumni, have
crawler
largely because it forces players into had faith in right from the very start. “We were
FORMAT
PC / Switch / PS4
the exact same position. Soundfall influenced by games like Audioshield, Ikaruga,
/ PS5 / XBO / casts you as Melody Harper, an audiophile- Geometry Wars, and Assault Android Cactus – high-
XB S/X turned-weapons expert whisked off to a far-off energy rhythm and bullet hell games with slick
DEVELOPER land, the player has ample opportunity to keep an graphics and a cool premise,” he says. And as
Drastic Games army of enemies at bay using creative gunfire in far as premises go, blasting in time to the tune
PUBLISHER the endless pursuit for loot. So far, so expected. proved a tempting one. “The first breakthrough
Noodlecake But there’s more to this synth-infused dungeon on music mechanics was getting some capsule-
RELEASE crawler than first meets the eye. Because in the shaped proto enemies bouncing to the beat.”
2022
rhythm-driven domains of Symphonia, your ears Select indie releases like BPM: Bullets Per Minute
SOCIAL prove an equally important tool, as you must and Crypt of the NecroDancer have toyed with
@SoundfallGame
shoot, move, and dodge to the beat either alone this shooting-meets-music fusion before, true,
or in four-player co-op. but Soundfall ups the ante by making almost
Creative director Nick Cooper makes no bones everything procedural by design. Everything from
about the road to keeping Soundfall on track the items you can pick up, enemies you destroy,
being long – it’s been five-and-half years since to even the dungeons themselves are entirely
development began after being fully funded randomised with each new run, letting Drastic
Games maximise the impact of the content a
small studio such as itself can produce while
retaining a grand scale. How do you tie music
Soundfall ’s action can get into a gameplay foundation this unpredictable,


pretty chaotic during full

four-player sessions, but it though? That’s where the help of an audio
always looks entrancing analysis algorithm comes in.
thanks to its luminous
art style. “Everything in the game needs to be animated
and scripted so that it syncs up to the beat,” says
 There are ten lands that
make up the music world of Cooper. “For example, our animations always
Symphonia in total, all
inspired by a different genre
need to have their impactful moments land at
or instrument family. multiples of 0.5 seconds, which we then scale to

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the BPM and sync to the beat.” This still doesn’t at the time. As you’d probably expect, with music
do much to address having to account for input so essential to the game’s core, the process of
windows, however, which can be make or break compiling its soundtrack was a major – and also
in a twin-stick shooter where timing is crucial. collaborative – effort. “Our one full-time audio
Online play brings yet another huge amount of engineer-composer, Jens Kiilstofte, did a lot of
complexity to this. “Players need to feel like their tracks for the game, including the main theme,
actions and the environment are moving on-beat map themes, and one of our boss themes, among
even with network latency, which we do with a others,” Cooper says. “In addition, Soundfall has
lot of networking prediction, as well as simulating original songs from 17 different artists. Half of INFINITE
some things on the client that most games would our music is licensed through Epidemic Sound. PLAYLIST
normally make server-authoritative.” For the other half, we approached a lot of artists
Those who pick up the PC
Drastic Games is intent on not making things individually.” Choosing who to work with was version of Soundfall can look
easy for itself. It’s a fact only further emphasised a case of finding the perfect fit of what music forward to blasting along
by featuring a total of five playable characters, style would fit within each of Symphonia’s ten to their own customised
playlists of tracks. Once
each with their own uniquely music-themed dynamically different locations.
imported, the chosen
instrument that must be fired or swung to the Looking back now, on the cusp of Soundfall’s song will generate a new
beat accordingly. The aforementioned Melody, for launch, Cooper and company are hopeful that “undiscovered” region,
instance, is primarily an up-close melee fighter, its melting pot of musical ideas will jive with its creating levels using
wielding a microphone- intended audience Drastic Games’ self-built
audio analysis algorithm.
sword capable of “Everything needs to be of arcade action fans
“Attributes such as tempo,
unleashing a three-hit and music lovers. And loudness, complexity, and
combo or spinning
animated and scripted so if it does become a danceability are fed into a
attack. Lydia Stroll, as it syncs up to the beat” hit, Drastic Games machine learning algorithm
to categorise it into a genre
the game’s resident cello is prepared for the
and family,” Cooper reveals.
prodigy, is far more range-based thanks to her occasional encore. “Originally, we wanted “These are then used to
cello-bow, while house DJ Ky Hyun dishes out something we could make in less than a year, determine the environment
wave-based death using his turntable-scythe. but as we saw more potential, we expanded on type of the song; the types,
Guitarist Jaxon and rock drummer Brite are our original goals,” he says. “It’s something we’ve variations, and combinations
of enemies that appear; the
similarly equipped to deal knockback damage. continuously worked on and tried to improve.
types of loot that the players
Whatever weapon you’re wielding or And we’ll probably continue to iterate with will find; and the physical
whichever character you happen to be playing updates post-launch.” layout of the level.”
as, eradicating the evil race of Discordians
should remain possible thanks to the inclusion
of an ever-pulsating beat meter located at the
bottom of the screen. This small addition not
only ensures that fighting to the beat is always
fair and fun, but also works to help you better
navigate the symphonic world Drastic Games has
created – regardless of the musical genre playing

 he beat meter at the bottom of the

T


screen will help you keep in time. It’ll

also offer feedback depending on
how well you unleash your actions.

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News

That
was the 02

month
that was
01

03

03. Let’s (not)

01. S
 ora us coming 02. Toss a coin get physical
During a digital event celebrating the Hot on the heels of Cyberpunk 2077’s PS5 It used to be the video game industry’s
20th anniversary of the series, Square and Xbox Series X debut, developer CD go-to trade event of the summer, full
Enix went ahead and officially announced Projekt Red revealed that it’ll be handling of exciting reveals, announcements,
Kingdom Hearts 4. This was surprising the development of The Witcher 3 on next- and trailers promoting the biggest
seeing as series director, Tetsuya Nomura, gen consoles internally from here on out. upcoming games. Following several
last year made it seem like the next entry Saber Interactive, the studio responsible years of uncertainty and questions about
would be years away. The fourth mainline for bringing the open-world fantasy relevance (factors only exacerbated by
instalment in Sora and gang’s Disney- epic to Nintendo Switch in 2019, had the pandemic), however, the ESA has
driven adventure is real, though, and set previously been on porting duties. That’s finally decided to call it quits on this
to look prettier than ever thanks to the no longer the case, however, with The year’s E3. News came by way of an email
jump to Unreal Engine 5. The first trailer Witcher 3’s new-gen version now delayed sent to journalists, going so far as to even
introduced a new location called the indefinitely out of its originally planned nix the idea of temporarily switching to
Quadratum, which Square Enix described Q2 2022 launch window. CD Projekt Red an online-only presentation in lieu of the
as an “expansive city set in a gorgeous, took to Twitter to say, “We’ll update you as traditional in-person gathering held at the
realistic world unlike anything ever seen soon as we can,” but no new release date LA Convention Center. Geoff Keighley’s
before in the Kingdom Hearts series”. was given. job just got easier…

Three people arrested for Club Penguin Dead Space dev alters Plasma Cutter and
copyright infringement Pulse Rifle SFX following fan feedback

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05

04

06

04. S
 pace Piracy 05. Skate no more
06. Floods of tiers
Hello Games’ unfathomably vast space It’s all change over at Activision currently,
exploration game continues to be the gift and that includes decisions that were Following months of speculation and an
that keeps on giving, with No Man’s Sky already in place before Microsoft all-but-confirmed leaked report from
getting yet another free patch. As well as announced its acquisition of the publisher Bloomberg back in December last year,
giving player-characters a cool cape to earlier this year. One such move recently PlayStation has finally confirmed that its
wear, the Outlaws update mainly turns became a reality, as developer Vicarious two subscription services, PlayStation
its eye to the skies by making some Visions took to Twitter to confirm that it Plus and PlayStation Now, will merge later
slight but significant gameplay tweaks to has officially been absorbed into Blizzard this June. The “all-new” PlayStation Plus
how ships handle. You can now create Entertainment. “Our development will be available in three different tiers
squadrons, for instance, recruiting team will remain in Albany, NY and [is] – Essential, Extra, and Premium – each
AI crewmates that offer aid in battle. fully dedicated to Blizzard games,” the coming with different perks. PSone, PS2,
This is in addition to shields for enemy post read. “We invite you to follow us.” and PSP games will be made playable
ships, planetary raids, and the ability for This somewhat puts a dampener on the natively on PS4 and PS5 for those on
dogfights to move down from space and possibilities of a new Crash Bandicoot or the highest tier, but PS3 games remain
into a planet’s atmosphere. The sky is the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater game. The future streaming only. Will we ever get to play
limit no longer. for this veteran developer is Diablo. the Resistance series lag-free ever again?

Halo Infinite’s player count falls below Halo: Sega says cloud gaming and NFTs are a
The Master Chief Collection for the first time “natural extension” for its future games

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09
07

08

07. B
 AFTA
behemoth
09. Put a ring on it
7 April saw many of 2021’s best games 08. Remotely does it
paid their due as part of the annual It says a lot that Sega and Paramount
BAFTA game awards. PlayStation 5 Having just released Destiny 2’s biggest Pictures were so committed to following
exclusive Returnal was the bigger winner expansion yet in The Witch Queen and it up its smash 2020 box office hit so
of the night, hoovering up accolades being well received amongst fans, the quickly; a sequel was turned around in
in no less than four categories: Audio higher-ups over at Bungie also look to just two years – during a global pandemic.
Achievement, Music, Best Performer in a have been satisfied with the developer’s Well, the educated gamble looks to
Leading Role (for Jane Perry as Selene), current work ethic. “Bungie is going digital- have paid off, with Sonic the Hedgehog 2
and Best Game. Relaxing puzzle game first,” it announced in a statement. “Most breaking the record for most successful
Unpacking also made some unexpected current and future roles will be fully remote opening weekend enjoyed by a video
waves, beating out the likes of Guardians eligible in these states with more coming game movie ever. This time the blue
of the Galaxy and Psychonauts 2 for Best soon!”. Seven states, including Washington, blur was joined by Tails as both faced
Narrative as well as It Takes Two and California, and Texas, are now approved for off against Jim Carrey’s Robotnik and
Metroid Dread for the player-nominated remote work with Bungie, no doubt in the Knuckles (voiced by Idris Elba), taking $71
Game of the Year. Surprisingly, Deathloop attempt to maintain and attract a high level million in the US on its opening weekend.
died… well, a death. of creative talent. That’ll buy a lot of gold rings.

The Skywalker Saga enjoys the UK’s biggest New Subnautica game in “early development”
physical LEGO game launch at Unknown Worlds

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Correction: in our issue

61 article, The FPGA retro
10 revolution (page 28), we
11 mistakenly stated that
birdybro was the maker of
the GBA core. The core’s
actual maker is Robert Peip.

12

11. More than words

10. T
 urf war In between the upcoming The Last of Us 12. Metal Gear Easy
and God of War TV shows and the recent
Nintendo’s internal development Uncharted movie starring Tom Holland, Everyone surely remembers the bit in
capability is about to get bigger – literally. it’d be easy to forget that PlayStation Metal Gear Solid 3 where Snake climbs
The Japanese giant has bought the plot actually has yet another Hollywood game- up a seemingly endless ladder. A ghostly
of land situated next to its existing HQ, to-screen adaptation in the oven. Ghost version of Cynthia Harrell’s title track and
where it intends to build a new twelve- of Tsushima, with its sweeping vistas and the cling-clanging of steps are the only
floor centre aimed to house even more endless homages to the work of Akira sounds accompanying you. It’s evocative
studios by 2027. The roughly 10,000 Kurosawa, seems ripe for the cinematic stuff… or at least it used to be. YouTuber
metre-squared area had previously been treatment. And things look to be pressing Apel has found a way to skip the
owned by Kyoto for use as a material and ahead now, as Deadline reports that arduous climb altogether, finally giving
disaster prevention centre, but looking the movie has found its screenwriter in speedrunners a way to shave down their
ahead, Nintendo believes the space “will Takashi Doscher. On directorial duties personal best by almost two minutes.
carry an important role on reinforcing its is Chad Stahelski of John Wick fame, The exploit involves making Snake T-pose
R&D”. More first-party space not so subtly though we can’t imagine samurai Jin at the bottom of the ladder, watching
translates to more first-party game output. Sakai will be swapping swords for pistols him float briefly before shooting all the
In the words of Mario: “Whoo-hoo!” anytime soon. way up. What a thrill!

Konami’s eFootball officially enters version Job posts suggest Bandai Namco’s teaming
1.0, bringing in new upgrades and modes with Nintendo on mystery remaster

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Coffee Talk Episode 2:

Hibiscus & Butterfly
Coffee brewing once again meets heart-
to-heart conversation in Toge Productions’
long-awaited sequel to its hit 2020 visual novel.
Set in an alternate version of Seattle populated Time on Frog Island
by humans, orcs, elves, and the like, there’s
seemingly no personal issue that can’t be Washed up and marooned on an island where
resolved using a splash of lo-fi latte art and the anthropomorphic amphibians run rampant,
simple willingness to listen. Bliss! Time on Frog Island promises to be a sweet
and charming puzzle adventure where you
can explore, fish, and farm at your own pace.
Sure, you’ll need to worry about fixing your
boat by aiding and trading with local residents

Capcom Fighting eventually, but something tells us you’ll have a

tough time not getting sidetracked by the cute
Collection characters and relaxed island lifestyle.

Capcom’s celebrating Street Fighter’s 35th

anniversary in style. There’s a sixth entry on the
way, but before that we’re getting the Capcom
Fighting Collection. No less than ten pixel-art
fighters make up this compilation, stretching
beyond Street Fighter with series like Darkstalkers,
Vampire Savior, and Cyberbots all making an
appearance. With button customisation and
adjustable CPU difficulty, it’s a love letter to a
bygone era of arcade fighting.

Lucy Dreaming
As we saw back in issue 50, solo developer Tom
Hardwidge’s latest pixelated throwback follows
in the footsteps of The Secret of Monkey Island
and other classic point-and-click adventures
from the nineties with wit and cheeky style.
The difference with Lucy Dreaming, however,
is that you’ll walk between the reality and the
dream world in an effort to untangle its central
mystery: why is Lucy suffering from such vivid
nightmares? It’ll take a curious mind to find out.

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Mario Strikers: Battle League

Everyone loves a good kickabout – even Mario. And luckily, Mario Strikers:
Battle League Football (to give it its full European title) arrives just in time to
capitalise on the excitement surrounding the 2022 World Cup, in this third
outing for one of Nintendo’s most underserved sports franchises. The last
time we saw Bowser, Peach, and other Mushroom Kingdom mainstays try Cult of the Lamb
their hand at footie was back on Wii, but the wait for more Mario Strikers
looks to have been worth it as Battle League Football looks familiar enough If Animal Crossing and DOOM ever got along well
while being unafraid to make some tweaks to the five-on-five format. enough to have a baby, the resulting child would
Sure, you’ll still be dribbling, tackling, and sliding in the effort to score probably look a lot like Cult of the Lamb. This
as many goals as possible, but now you can influence each team’s stats is a deceptively cutesy action roguelike where
further using Battle League’s new gear system. Equipping different helmets you play as the ultimate fleecy deity, smashing
and boots will drastically affect your strength, speed, and accuracy, your way from dungeon to dungeon in a bid
potentially giving you a big-enough edge over your opponent to unleash to build up your flock and destroy the non-
your captain’s unique Hyper Strike shot. It’s been a while since we’ve seen believers. Rooms being procedurally generated
arcade-style football given the triple-A treatment on this scale, so it should ensures that everyone’s playthrough will be
be an open goal for Mario Strikers: Battle League Football come 10 June. slightly different, as you work your way through
five regions, each riffing on a different satanic
theme. We wouldn’t expect anything less from
publisher Devolver Digital.

Golf Gang
Part racing game, part party game, Golf Gang
lets up to eight players compete in a range of
crazy courses, customising their ball and trying
to navigate balloons, hoops, and other obstacles
while trying to sink a putt in as few strokes as
possible. This isn’t always easy when your friends
are constantly hurtling past, though. It’s pure
multiplayer madness distilled into a colourful
sports-ish game.

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The Quarry
Supermassive Games came out of the gate swinging in 2015 for its
PS4 debut, with horror adventure Until Dawn paying tribute to B-movie
slashers with its clichéd characters and a schlocky plot. Ever since then,
though, the Guildford-based developer has struggled to reach similar
A Little to the Left heights, implementing a somewhat scattershot approach with its ongoing
Dark Pictures Anthology of bite-sized horror titles. Here’s hoping, then, that
Anyone who’s struggled to keep their book The Quarry – as its first interactive drama published by 2K – will be a return
collection exactly straight or put up a shelf to form. Centred on nine camp counsellors forced to survive the night
without the use of a spirit level will know the while being hunted by zombified locals, the ensemble cast is a who’s who
frustration of seeing household items at a slant. of horror Hollywood A-listers, including David Arquette, Lance Henriksen,
Well, the oddly satisfying act of setting things level and Lin Shaye.
is the core mechanic in the aptly titled A Little
to the Left, the latest title from publisher Secret
Mode. From picture frames hung at a wonky
angle to pencils that need organising according
to size, it’s a relaxing collection of 75 cosy puzzles.

Cloud Jumper
Games have long enabled us to soar through
the skies in superhero fashion, but we can’t say
we’ve ever done so by boat. That’s exactly what’s
on offer, though, in the Studio Ghibli-inspired
Cloud Jumper. A seamless blend of 2D pixels and
3D models, the classic and modern eras collide
in this chilled-out exploration game where you
must upgrade your ship, map uncharted islands,
and discover hidden locations. From what we’ve
seen so far, it’s sure to provide quite a view.

26 / wfmag.cc
 Attract Mode
Early Access

Deliver Us Mars
Having already trapped us in an isolated and Shadows of Doubt
eerie lunar base in 2018’s sci-fi adventure,
Deliver Us The Moon, developer KeokeN Where most noir-driven detective mysteries lay out clues thoughtfully
Interactive is about to whisk us off to the red and meticulously as they lead players to a logical conclusion, the exact
planet in the sequel. Deliver Us Mars looks opposite is true of Shadows of Doubt. It’s a detective game, alright, only it’s
to be an equally atmospheric jaunt into the one where the hints, world, and plot strands are procedurally generated,
unknown, taking place several years after Deliver meaning the murder suspect you’re looking for could be any one of the
Us The Moon and focusing on a new astronaut’s innocent-looking NPCs that passes you by. Your only hope of solving the
mission. You journey from Earth to Mars after crime – which will be different from player to player – is to explore the sci-fi
hearing a distress call, hoping to recover the city to its fullest, lockpicking, tailing, and sneaking your way to the correct
colony ships previously thought to have gone outcome. There’s no strategy guide to help you here.
missing. We’re bracing ourselves for another few
hours of agonising suspense.

PowerWash
Simulator
Keeping things clean in real life can be a
nightmare, but that doesn’t mean the same
needs to be true in the virtual space. PowerWash
Simulator makes a game out of blasting stuff
with a hose, with players – either on their own
or with a friend – washing trucks, doors, garden
paths, and other grimy surfaces. It’s been in
Early Access since last May, but looks set for
a full launch soon, so get ready to clean up
the neighbourhood. Tchia
There are spectacular vistas wherever you look in this open-world
adventure set on a tropical archipelago. You explore the islands as the
titular Tchia, using her ability to adopt animal forms – and play music on
her magical ukulele – to solve puzzles and uncover various secrets located
around the place. Whether you choose to explore the world from above as
a bird or burrow into the ground as a dog, this is a physics-driven sandbox
inspired by New Caledonia, an equally picturesque archipelago located in
the Pacific Ocean. Tchia’s due to set sail this summer, and it’s a game we’ll
be taking a closer look at in a later edition.

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 Interface
Tracking down the obscure mind behind Castlevania

Tracking down
the obscure
mind behind
Castlevania
Castlevania director
Hitoshi Akamatsu changed
gaming, and then vanished
without a trace

WRITTEN BY JACK YARWOOD

ADDITIONAL TRANSLATION BY LIZ BUSHOUSE

28 / wfmag.cc
 Interface
Tracking down the obscure mind behind Castlevania

Dracula’s head flying away at the



end of the original Castlevania

was purportedly meant as a tease
for a possible sequel.

I
n 1987, Konami released Castlevania
(known in Japan as Akumajō Dracula)
for the Famicom Disk System. The side- been confirmed. We therefore set out to clear
scrolling adventure about monster up some of the mysteries and misconceptions VAMPIRE
KILLER
hunter Simon Belmont and his quest to surrounding the developer, speaking to those
kill Dracula became one of the company’s most who worked alongside Akamatsu at Konami to
beloved games, inspiring countless sequels, spin- uncover more about him. Not only did talking
A month after Castlevania
offs, and even a Netflix TV show. But strangely, to to his former colleagues reveal a more accurate
was released, Konami
this day, fans know very little about the man who picture of his time at Konami, but it also gave
published an MSX2 version
created it: Hitoshi Akamatsu. us a better understanding of the circumstances of the game that would
Akamatsu didn’t give many interviews during that surrounded his eventual departure from eventually be known
his career in the games industry. There are barely the company. overseas as Vampire Killer.
any photographs of him, and his list of credited Akamatsu had little to
projects is frustratingly incomplete. This has OSAKA TO KOBE do with this project, with
given rise to a number of rumours about his time Masahiro Inoue is a former producer who Konami designating teams
at Konami, though barely anything has actually worked at Konami on arcade games like Gyruss, based on their experience
with specific platforms, as
Crime Fighters, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
opposed to who originally
He first met Akamatsu in 1983 at Konami’s
came up with the idea. As
original headquarters in Osaka, where they
a result, there are some
were both working on arcade games, and was notable changes from the
able to provide us with a little more information original. Vampire Killer is
about the mysterious developer. According to far less linear than its NES
Inoue, for instance, before Akamatsu worked counterpart, for example,
on Castlevania, he worked on a game called requiring players to grab a
Finalizer - Super Transformation, a vertical shooter skeleton key before heading
released in Japanese arcades in December 1985. to each stage exit. There
are also merchants who’ll
This makes Finalizer the earliest title we know of
sell weapons and upgrades
that Akamatsu worked on at Konami.
in exchange for hearts.
The game puts players in control of a
Interestingly, because it
transforming jet as it battles across a scrolling was localised before the
land-mass meant to represent the United States. NES version, Vampire Killer
You could play alone or with a friend, with the was the first Castlevania
goal being to rack up as many points as possible. title released in Europe.

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Tracking down the obscure mind behind Castlevania

Akamatsu worked as a programmer on the title

but went uncredited, as was common for the
time. The majority of early Konami games never
featured comprehensive credits, with creators
occasionally hiding their initials or surnames
on high score screens or in secret messages.
This makes deciphering who did what a total
mystery unless you go directly to the source. But
finding other employees from this period can be

DRAGON just as difficult, given how many have since left The hints in Castlevania II often led to players getting


stuck from trying to replicate what lying townsfolk had
the industry. told them.

SCROLL Nevertheless, what we now know for sure

is that following the development of Finalizer,
Dragon Scroll has often Akamatsu moved from the arcade department to rogues’ gallery of movie villains that appear
been compared to The work primarily on NES games. His first release for from the Mummy to Medusa to Dracula himself.
Legend of Zelda, and it’s the console is unknown. What is known, however, Akamatsu also loved Steven Spielberg’s 1981
easy to see why. There’s
is that in 1986 he began work on what would be movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, which explains why
an open world to explore,
his most well-known title, Castlevania, taking on the protagonist Simon opted for a whip over a
dungeons to beat, and
the role of director. more traditional weapon like a sword.
special items that help you
solve puzzles. You play a Akamatsu was directly involved with Booting up Castlevania today, one of the
hero named Feram, tasked Castlevania’s design, as can be gleaned from things that’s striking is its difficulty compared to
by the god Narume with conversations with his former co-workers at other NES games. It’s very easy to get hit while
collecting a set of magic Konami as well as tweets by Sonna Yuumi – a jumping from one platform to another and fall
books and returning a sub-planner who Akamatsu later mentored immediately to your doom, or struggle with some
fearsome dragon to sleep. at another studio he worked for, Vingt-et-un of the game’s more challenging bosses, like Death
The game suffers from a Systems. Between 2015 and 2019, Yuumi or Dracula. When Yuumi questioned Akamatsu
lot of the same issues as
tweeted about his conversations with Akamatsu, about this, the older developer simply highlighted
Simon’s Quest, with the
regarding Castlevania’s design, which were then the inclusion of subweapons, which make the
puzzles being cryptic and
translated into English by shmuplations. game substantially easier in some cases, and
hard to solve, but it’s an
interesting curiosity as it According to these tweets, Akamatsu, like joked about his creation being less punishing
launched only a year and a many others at Konami, was a big movie buff, than Super Mario Bros. where players can die in
half after the original The and wanted people to feel like they were playing one hit.
Legend of Zelda. through a classic horror film. This explains the Castlevania is now regarded as a classic, and
commonly appears in ‘greatest games of all time’
lists. Of course, this success wasn’t all down
to Akamatsu but others on the team as well,
including composers Satoe Terashima, Kinuyo
Yamashita, and Hidenori Maezawa, as well as
several uncredited artists and programmers.
In the eyes of Konami, a sequel to the game was
a no-brainer, but before work got underway,
there was another project that required
Akamatsu’s attention.

THE GOONIES II AND

OTHER NES GAMES
In 1986, Konami released a Japan-only adaptation
of The Goonies for the Nintendo Famicom.
This was a loose adaptation of the 1985 Richard
Donner film about a group of kids on a quest to
 Akamatsu apparently
wanted Castlevania II ’s town find the treasure of the pirate, One-Eyed Willy.
to be populated by leaping
zombies at night. This was
It’s not known whether Akamatsu worked on this
changed to reduce difficulty. original game, but when it came time to direct

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Tracking down the obscure mind behind Castlevania

HITOSHI AKAMATSU
KNOWN SOFTOGRAPHY
1985 Finalizer - Super Transformation
1986 Castlevania
1987 The Goonies II
1987 Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest
1987 Dragon Scroll: Yomigaerishi Maryuu
1988 Jarinko Chie
1989 Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse
1990 Snake’s Revenge
I n case the cinematic influences weren’t obvious enough, Castlevania III 1990 Surprise Attack


made it explicit by incorporating a film reel on its title screen.

1992 Astérix
1993 Slam Dunk
the sequel, Konami approached the Castlevania 1997 Tsuridō: Umitsurihen
director to take the lead on the project. 1997 Jimmy Houston’s Bass Tournament U.S.A 97
The Goonies II is one of the few games
Akamatsu gave an interview for, with the article
appearing in the short-lived Konami-published
magazine, Monthly Nanda. In that article, he’s
not only pictured, but was also asked where he CVG and Famitsu, and has become something
got his ideas from. Luckily for us, a Twitter user of a curiosity today among collectors, given
named Kutsurogi scanned and uploaded the Donner never directed a true sequel to the
article, with another user, Arc Hound, providing a film. According to our sources, development
translation on his Tumblr blog. on Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest started almost
Speaking to the interviewer, Akamatsu said: immediately after work on The Goonies II
“Game ideas can be gotten from anywhere. finished, with Akamatsu once again taking on
Not just movies, music, or sports, but also from a role as director. Castlevania II wouldn’t be a
the littlest things in everyday life, such as trying to straightforward sequel, however.
slip out of school in order For the second game,
to play. That’s sufficient “Akamatsu was Akamatsu decided to
enough for one game.” change the formula from
In the case of The
directly involved with a haunted house action-
Goonies II, the plot was a Castlevania’s design” adventure to a role-playing
direct sequel to the events game filled with towns,
of the first film, with the Fratelli gang escaping swamps, and various dungeons to explore.
from prison and kidnapping Mikey’s friends, This was partly inspired by the growing popularity
along with a mermaid named Annie. The game’s a of RPGs at the time, including Konami’s own
side-scrolling platformer, with players fending off Knightmare II: The Maze of Galious.
enemies with slingshots and yo-yos to rescue the You play as Simon, with the goal being to
other Goonies. There are also some first-person collect five parts of Dracula’s corpse and vanquish
sections where Mikey can talk to NPCs to unlock the demon vampire for good. To achieve this,
hints as well as new items. you need to talk to the townsfolk for information,
The Goonies II released for the Famicom in grind hearts for better equipment, and navigate
March 1987; a North American version was the open world to tackle its dungeons.
released later that year, while Europeans had to Over the last two decades, Simon’s Quest has
wait until December 1988. Regardless, the game become somewhat of a black sheep in the series
received positive reviews from publications like due to its differences from the other NES games

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Tracking down the obscure mind behind Castlevania

A FAMILIAR FACE
Sonna Yuumi previously tweeted a fun easter egg that can be found
in Tsuridō: Umitsurihen: the character you control in the game is
apparently based on the likeness of its camera-shy director, Hitoshi
Akamatsu. The marketing team, however, didn’t get this memo, and
instead used another model for the game’s box art.

Like other Konami games of the period, Goonies II



also had some strange localisation quirks.

as well as the difficulty of its puzzles. Koji Igarashi, Scroll game that same year. We showed it to
director of 1997’s Castlevania: Symphony of the various former Konami employees, who believed
Night, has stated the game didn’t leave a good this to be the case. They also confirmed that
impression on Japanese players, due to its lying Akamatsu worked on other NES games in senior
NPCs and long loading times. Meanwhile, in the roles, including an adaptation of the slice-of-life
English version, some riddles were mistranslated, comic Jarinko Chie in 1988, and the non-canon
making them hard to solve without a guide. Metal Gear sequel Snake’s Revenge in 1990.
Regardless, Castlevania II is still a fascinating In 1989, Akamatsu worked on his last
evolution of the original game, and even inspired Castlevania game as director, Castlevania III:
Igarashi’s later work on Symphony of the Night. Dracula’s Curse. This was a prequel focusing
As for what Akamatsu did after Castlevania II, on the adventures of Trevor Belmont, Simon’s
a clue was left for us in the Famicom-exclusive ancestor, and his own battles against Dracula’s
Dragon Scroll: Yomigaerishi Maryuu. A debug evil forces. Akamatsu went back to the classic
password contained the name of its development platforming of the original Castlevania, but tried
staff, with Akamatsu being the first listed. to combine the non-linear approach of Simon’s
It’s therefore believed that after working on Quest. This time, players could take multiple paths
Castlevania II, he went to work on another Dragon through the Transylvanian countryside and even
pick an additional player to use alongside Trevor.
The reaction to Castlevania III was arguably more
positive than for its predecessor, with reviewers
for magazines like Famitsu and Total! enjoying
the return to the classic formula. Sadly, Akamatsu
never got to work on any of its sequels.
In 1990, after finishing work on Snake’s Revenge,
he switched to Konami’s arcade division to work
on new projects, and in the years following, the
development of Castlevania games bounced
between different teams for different platforms,
 Astérix the arcade game is before finding its way to Konami’s Tokyo
a beat-’em-up following the
two Gaulish warriors as they
development centre. This is where Castlevania:
take on the Roman Empire. The New Generation and Super Castlevania IV were
developed, and explains why so few people who

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Tracking down the obscure mind behind Castlevania

with former staff, though, that he had difficulties

when he rejoined Konami’s arcade division.
As Kukino told us: “I respected him when [we]
worked on the same team, because of what he
and the Castlevania team accomplished and
Text adventure Jarinko Chie is one of several titles
because he’d been in the business two years


Akamatsu worked on after Castlevania. longer than me. But as development progressed,
I realised he wasn’t fit to be a team leader because
he couldn’t decide on anything. He’s credited as
worked on those later Castlevania games met the director on the [Astérix] game that he and I
Akamatsu in person. teamed up for, but in reality, I’m the one who really
made all the decisions and directed the game.”
THE ARCADE YEARS Akamatsu disappeared for a few years after
It’s at this point that history gets a little muddy. he made the move to working in one of Konami’s
There’s a rumour that after Castlevania III failed to game centres, but after leaving the company he
outperform Konami’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, found himself directing games again. In 1997, he JARINKO
CHIE
the company sent Akamatsu to work in one of was the director on Tsuridō: Umitsurihen (loosely
Konami’s game centres as punishment. But this translated to The Way of Fishing: Sea Fishing
has never been proven and comes second-hand Edition) at Vingt-et-un Systems. This was a studio
Much like the comics,
from Yuumi, who didn’t work at Konami and specialising in fishing sims that publisher OZ Club
Jarinko Chie follows the
admitted he was only speculating. had partnered with to make an enhanced port
“most unfortunate girl in
According to the former of an earlier System Soft
Japan”, Chie Takemoto, as
Konami employees we PC game for PlayStation.
“In 1989, Akamatsu she helps run her family
spoke to, what actually Akamatsu worked at Vingt- restaurant and interacts
happened was that worked on his last et-un Systems for the next with her neighbours. The
Teenage Mutant Ninja Castlevania game” few years, helping out on game’s played from both
Turtles was a huge the company’s vast library a third- and first-person
success, especially in the North American market, of fishing games. He eventually left the games perspective, with players
so Konami was encouraged to work on more industry for good in the early 2000s, according having to select from a
list of verbs and actions
licensed games. Akamatsu, seeing this success, to Inoue.
to progress the story.
was disappointed that his games never sold as It’s still not known what he makes of
Interestingly, there’s been
well, because the teams working on the best- Castlevania’s success or his creation becoming
two feature films of Jarinko
selling games would often receive huge bonuses an acclaimed Netflix series. But hopefully, he Chie, with the 1981 version
for their work. In 1990, therefore, Akamatsu understands the significance of what he started. being directed by non-other
moved to Konami’s arcade division, where he And, who knows – maybe one day he’ll come out than Studio Ghibli director,
assisted with several games. This included the of hiding to share his side of the tale. Isao Takahata.
arcade platformer Surprise Attack, where he did
some programming and design work, and 1992’s
Astérix, a licensed game based on the French
comic, where he was credited as ‘Narunopapa’, as
confirmed by its co-director Masaaki Kukino.
Kukino was able to shed some light on
Akamatsu’s departure, as he was actually meant
to co-direct another title with Akamatsu after
Astérix – a basketball game called Slam Dunk that
released in Japanese arcades in 1993. According
to Kukino, however, Akamatsu abruptly left the
project during development and joined another
department, becoming a clerk at a Konami game 
 amed Run & Gun in western
N
centre, and all of his work had to be redone. It’s arcades, Slam Dunk was
peculiar in that it showed the
not known whether this move was voluntary or player a perspective from the
not, with some suggesting it could have been for baseline as opposed to the
sidelines. It worked
user research. It’s clear from our conversations surprisingly well.

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Column

Video gaming’s
warm embrace

O
ver the past few weeks, I’ve certainly seen some more use, not to mention
been thinking a lot about the the unmistakable joys of Super League on the
effectiveness of gaming as a means Mega Drive. Part of that is down to work, but
of coping with a personal tragedy, there’s a nostalgia for childhood, too – to play
mainly because it’s something something that I haven’t played in nearly 30
that I’ve been actively participating in. It stands years, even if I know it’s not very good, as a way
to reason, of course, that grief leads us towards of reliving simpler times. I’ve played a few games
familiar comforts and passions, but it intrigues like that recently, and for once, making a snarky
KIM JUSTICE me to see the form it takes – in this instance, the yet informative ten-minute video hasn’t been the
Kim Justice is a areas of gaming I threw myself into, as well as the end goal.
YouTuber, streamer, and ones I avoided. And then there’s the sort of games that Sophia
writer who specialises in
the world of retrogaming. Me and my fiancé Sophia were both avid enjoyed. She’d happily egg me on through typical
If she isn’t making gamers, although we enjoyed different genres action titles on stream, but games like the original
lengthy documentary
– I’m more arcade-y, and she was more into The Settlers were her passion – where building is a
videos about old games
and companies, she’s sims and city building. Those arcade-style sports key goal, with a fair bit of rivalry and competition
probably chatting and or platform games have certainly been getting thrown in. Where in the end you sit atop a
mouthing off about
them live to a dedicated attention – and often not even the best ones. constructed utopia, and not a pile of dead grunts.
handful of people. That dusty copy of World Cup Italia ‘90 has Such games aren’t usually favourites – and yet I’ve
thrown myself into them. I could think of reasons
why – a sort of channelling or vicarious living,
a means of constructing a tribute – but really,
it’s a way of remembering the good times, if it’s
anything at all. A fond aide-mémoire.
I haven’t really gone for those sorts of games
that are more story-driven or based on personal
experiences closer to my own situation. I consider
them too raw – such games may yet prove
tricky to deal with. That said, going to games like
these is obviously valid, because everyone has
different ways of coping with grief; all we can
do is try to do the best we can with what we’ve
got. With those thoughts in mind, I hope that
sharing my experiences will help anyone who
finds themselves in a similar situation. Certainly,
putting them down also helps me through my
In The Settlers, you build as opposed to own process. If there’s a hole, we fill it up and


destroy. Watching these little people

going about their virtual lives can have
take those memories on our journey. We never
the same effect on the grieving process. forget, but we do carry on.

34 / wfmag.cc
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wfmag.cc \ 35
 Interface
Gallery

GAME
SCATHE
DEVELOPER
Damage State
RELEASE
2022
WEBSITE
playscathe.com

 “With a team of only three, the

same artist responsible for the
concept will also handle the
creation of the environment
art. This means that highly
detailed and developed
concepts aren’t required, so
quick sketches, created in
Sketchbook Pro, are more
than enough to outline ideas
and move us to the finished
game art. An example of this
is the Exit Tower.”

36 / wfmag.cc
 Interface
Gallery

REA
SCATHE MORD E
toturn
page 12
If you like your first-
person shooters draped
in fire, gore, and ornate
metalwork, look no further than
“ When it comes to the concepting of weapons, they need to imply power and impact at a glance, even SCATHE. Developed by Damage


before they’re fired. To achieve this, we used large and imposing silhouettes, focusing on a first-person State, it offers a bullet-soaked
perspective. Although every gun is relatable, we stay clear of anything too realistic, keeping to the
fantastical world in which SCATHE is based.” journey through hell, with the central
aim being to blast every demonic
entity that crosses your path. Here,
programmer and studio co-founder
Chris Dawson explains how he and
his collaborators, art director and co-
founder Tim Hay and character artist
Manu Lopez, designed SCATHE’s
nightmare landscape of monsters.

“Reapers were the very first demon to make it into SCATHE. The airborne creatures haven’t


changed much to this day: they’re still darting and flinching while unloading their dual cannons.
Headshots are critical in dealing with these nasties quickly.”

“ An unfortunate Razorback has become a



Sludge. When the nightmare parasite

attaches to the skull, it’s not long before it
“ In this concept, the Scuttlers are shown in an early form. Note the flesh-coloured sack which infects and gains control, spawning an


became a green, exploding bio-sac in the end. Quick to kill, but deadly to ignore.” entanglement of poisonous vines.”

wfmag.cc \ 37
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Konami 1980s Classics

KONAMI
1980s Classics
The Japanese firm’s 20 greatest games of
the eighties – plus five honourable mentions…

T
he 1980s saw Konami’s creative powers reach WRITTEN BY
new heights. It was a decade that saw the RYAN LAMBIE

Japanese company forge a reputation for making

some of the best games of the era: as we saw on
page 28, Castlevania helped launch an action-
horror franchise that lasted for almost 30 years. Some
of Konami’s arcade games helped define entire genres.
Meanwhile, Hideo Kojima spent the eighties making some
truly innovative computer games that laid the groundwork
for his later, more celebrated work.
Later years saw Konami rely increasingly on sequels and
licensed games, and reports of some deeply unpleasant
working practices at the company made for grim reading.
But before all that, Konami easily ranked as one of Japan’s
greatest developers. Here’s our pick of some of its finest
games from that golden age, listed by the year and platform
on which they were first released.

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Konami 1980s Classics

Frogger Arcade / 1981

In the years before Frogger, Konami plodded

along making fairly unremarkable coin-ops that
looked and played much like anything else you’d
find in arcades of the era. But here, the company
scored its first true international hit: a breezy
little action game about guiding frogs across busy
roads and hazard-laden watercourses. Taito had
Space Invaders; Namco had Pac-Man; Frogger was
perhaps Konami’s biggest hitter in the arcade Gyruss Arcade / 1983
era’s golden age.
What happens if you fuse the pseudo-3D shooting of Tempest with the
aggressive attack formations of Galaga? The answer’s Gyruss – a shooter that
sees swarms of aliens hurtling at you from the middle of the screen as you
anxiously circle its edges. Gyruss is also noteworthy for being an early hit from
Yoshiki Okamoto, who later produced Street Fighter II at Capcom. So who knows:
had Okamoto not left Konami (reportedly due to disputes over pay), that
company might have made the biggest one-on-one fighter of all time instead…

Scramble Arcade / 1981

Shooting games rapidly became faster and more

complex as the 1980s wore on, and Scramble
provided the prototype for much of what Konami
would produce later in the decade. Taking place
in an unending tunnel of narrow rock formations,
it has you shooting down enemies with your
laser and blowing up fuel with your missiles – the Track & Field Arcade / 1983
latter providing much of the tension, since you’re
constantly running out of fuel and it’s only by You didn’t have to know anything about sport to enjoy this classic coin-op – you
blowing up the tanks that you’re able to replenish just needed the ability to press two buttons with incredible speed. Therein lay
your reserves. Interestingly, the concept of a ship Track & Field’s appeal, though: whether it was the 100-metre dash or throwing
that needs regular refuelling was rarely taken up a javelin, just about anyone could appreciate its collection of hectic minigames.
by most shooting games that came afterwards For years afterwards, arcades were filled with the sound of frantic button
– Konami’s hastily made Scramble sequel, Super mashing; we may never know how many joysticks and keyboards were pounded
Cobra, aside. into oblivion when the game was ported to home computers a year or so later.

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Konami 1980s Classics

Shao-Lin’s Road Arcade / 1985

Compared to much of Konami’s other eighties

output, Shao-Lin’s Road tends to get overlooked.
Maybe it’s because the home ports of the era
were so iffy. Fire up the arcade original, though,
and you’ll find a refreshingly different kind of
brawler-platformer hybrid. Stages are small
and over in just a few seconds, as you pummel
enemies with carefully timed kicks (hence the
game’s alternate name, Kicker). It’s a simple
game, but the assortment of novel power-ups
(including a fireball you can fire out from your
feet) and gently rising challenge make this one
surprisingly addictive.

Gradius Arcade / 1985 Yie Ar Kung-Fu Arcade / 1985

Quite simply, the side-scrolling shooter that defined a genre. Everything’s here: Two years before Capcom’s Takashi Nishiyama
the boss battles, the deep and rewarding weapons system, the varied levels, pioneered the six-button combat system with the
the catchy music. Originally envisioned as a sequel to Scramble, Gradius soon original Street Fighter, Yie Ar Kung-Fu took a valiant
emerged as something far more ambitious and boundary-pushing: a shoot- stab at the one-on-one beat-‘em-up. It might
‘em-up so striking and cleverly designed that rival companies would soon seem simplistic today, but Konami’s fighter is
pilfer bits from it for years afterwards. Fun fact: Miki Higashino, the composer still recognisably the distant cousin of things
of the triumphant soundtrack, was a 17-year-old student at the time of like Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, and The King
Gradius’ release. of Fighters. There’s the roster of eleven varied
opponents, each with their own weapons and
combat style; a health meter; even what could be
regarded as a Mirror Match, where protagonist
Oolong fights Blues – essentially a palette-
swapped version of himself.

Castlevania NES / 1986

This one hardly needs an introduction, because

of course you’ve read our superb feature about
Castlevania and its creator on page 28. What’s
surprising about Castlevania, though, is just
how well it’s aged; it remains a taut action-
platformer that rewards persistence – whether
it’s the precise attack patterns of enemies or the
location of items hidden behind crumbling walls,
Green Beret Arcade / 1985 or the best weapons to use against each boss,
Castlevania always gives you reasons to keep
Today, Green Beret looks like a compendium of 1980s action movie clichés: improving. The 1986 original lacked the more
there’s the lone soldier wading into battle against an army of faceless enemies. open-ended exploration of later entries, and yes,
There are huge guns and rocket launchers. And then there’s the Cold War-era some of those enemy attack patterns can feel a
plot, about rescuing hostages from what looks suspiciously like a Soviet military little cheap (those disembodied heads that knock
base (the game even had the punning title Rush’n Attack in some territories). you backwards, often over a ledge and straight
But Green Beret is also a timeless action-platformer: it’s unforgivingly tough, true, to your death aren’t exactly a high point), but still:
but with its tight controls and varied stages, it also rewards repeated play. Castlevania remains an out-and-out classic.

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Konami 1980s Classics

Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa Famicom Disk System / 1988

You’re some sort of genetically enhanced super baby capable of inflating pigs
with your rattle. You can then hit the luckless porkers again to burst them, or
clamber aboard and use them as makeshift balloons to carry you over deadly
pits. Konami lurched wildly from the deadly serious to the incredibly odd in
its eighties and nineties offerings, and Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa is undoubtedly
one of its weirdest games. It’s also a thoroughly disarming, fun platformer, with
Jackal Arcade / 1986 some imaginative level design and the kind of perfectly judged controls you’d
expect from the developer. Regrettably, Bio Miracle was only released in Japan,
A companion piece of sorts to the previous first for the Famicom Disk System and later on cartridge, which also means it’s
year’s Green Beret, Jackal is an early entry in that one of the more obscure titles to emerge from Konami’s doors in the 1980s.
rarefied genre, the drive-and-gun. Taking the
helm of an armoured jeep, you trundle into
battle, shooting (or running over, if you’re feeling Contra NES / 1988
harsh) enemy soldiers, picking up prisoners of
war, and dropping them off at evacuation points. The arcade game was decent enough, but it was the NES version that really
The weapon upgrade system’s an interesting left its mark. An aggressively fast action-platformer, Contra liberally douses the
one: by default, you have a standard shot screen in bullets and nimble enemies. Then, just to change things up, switches
and grenades; by rescuing hostages, you can perspective from side-scrolling 2D to into-the-screen pseudo 3D for some of its
gradually improve your ordnance until you’re more claustrophobic encounters. Was this originally intended as a sequel to the
firing deadly missiles all over the place. One of similar-feeling Green Beret? Whether it was or not, Contra
Konami’s lesser-known arcade classics. undoubtedly takes samples of its DNA and creates
a bigger, angrier beast: the collectible weapons
are more varied and devastating, while that earlier
game’s soldiers are replaced here by an array of
humanoids, droids, and toothsome horrors from
the depths of space. One of Konami’s greatest ever
titles – and, of course, the game that popularised the
Konami Code (see page 112).

Metal Gear MSX2 / 1987

Bosses at Konami were less than impressed

when they gave young designer Hideo Kojima
the task of designing a military action game
(along the lines of Green Beret, perhaps), only to
be presented with Metal Gear, which is about
avoiding conflict rather than engaging in it. Like it
or not, Kojima had invented the first true stealth
game. Although generally regarded today as a dry
run for Kojima’s better-known PSone entry, Metal
Gear Solid, the MSX2 original is a great game in
its own right: a tense top-down avoid-‘em-up that
contains plenty of the quirks and preoccupations
that would one day make Kojima famous.

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Konami 1980s Classics

Parodius MSX / 1988

Later entries were better-known and more

enjoyable to play, but Parodius on the MSX still
deserves a mention for spawning an oddball
series that thrived well into the nineties – at
least in Japan. A parody of Konami’s hit shooter,
Gradius, Parodius replaces spaceships and
Gradius II Arcade / 1988 deadly aliens with an array of fish, penguins,
and characters from Japanese folklore. If you’re
This shooter sequel contains one of the most striking opening levels in any looking for the definitive version, try tracking
1980s game: you navigate your craft between blazing suns, avoiding the roaring down the Parodius Portable connection for the
fire dragons that slither from their surfaces. Survive that, and you’re thrust into PSP – it contains an updated port that eliminates
an H.R. Giger-esque biomechanical landscape. Get past that level’s boss (a giant, the original’s juddery 8-bit scrolling.
mechanical eye), and you’re dodging and weaving between chunks of space
crystals. Gradius II was a stunning achievement from a technical standpoint.
Even today, though, its urgent soundtrack raises the hackles, while its stage Snatcher PC-8801 / 1988
design and difficulty balance arguably makes it the pinnacle of the series.
One year after Hideo Kojima baffled his superiors
with Metal Gear, Snatcher saw him embark on
this narrative adventure. Kojima’s film-nerd
credentials abound in its cyberpunk mystery:
Blade Runner and The Terminator are two
particularly obvious touchstones, with the plot
seeing protagonist Gillian Seed hunting down the
titular Snatchers – Replicant-like robots disguised
as humans. First released for the PC-8801
computer, Snatcher was later updated and ported
to other systems. Atmospheric, deliberately
paced, and often violent, it’s the most mature
game Konami released in the eighties.

Castlevania III:
Dracula’s Curse NES / 1989

The NES’s hardware was six years old by the end

of the eighties, but despite those constraints,
Konami Wai Wai World Famicom Disk System / 1988 Castlevania marked the point where the series
really began to feel like a modern action-
Years before The Avengers, Konami decided to create its own team-up special. adventure. The game map is bigger and more
Konami Wai Wai World gathers together a wealth of characters from the open; there are multiple characters to take
company’s catalogue for their own action-adventure. This isn’t the best game control of, and the game as a whole now feels
of its type Konami ever put out, but there’s a certain novelty to seeing the likes closer to later, celebrated entries like Super
of Simon Belmont III, Goemon, and King Kong all appear on one cartridge. Castlevania IV and Castlevania: Symphony of
Each character touts unique skills, unlocked as you rescue them at the end of a the Night. Konami’s last series entry for the NES,
stage. This was another Japan-exclusive title – perhaps due to the rights issues and a new high for Castlevania after the likeable
that would’ve emerged from having all those licensed characters in one place. yet flawed Simon’s Quest.

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Konami 1980s Classics

Bubbling under
Time Pilot Arcade / 1982
Designer Yoshiki Okamoto was ordered to make
a driving game, but made this pioneering multi-
directional shooter instead. Okamoto then moved
to Capcom where he helped develop the likes of
Final Fight and Street Fighter II.

Roc’n Rope Arcade / 1983

TwinBee 3: Poko Poko Daimo NES / 1989 An arcade platformer designed by Tokuro Fujiwara
that pioneered the grappling gun concept. Fujiwara
The first TwinBee was a charming if somewhat bare bones top-down shooter, then moved to Capcom and made the far-superior
while the sequel, named Stinger in the west, added horizontal scrolling levels Bionic Commando. And Ghosts ‘n Goblins. And
and even a three-player mode. But it was TwinBee 3 where the series truly found Strider. And Sweet Home. You can probably see
its stride, with vastly improved graphics, smoother action, and more outlandish a pattern forming here.
boss fights (one of them involves gunning down what appears to be a ghostly
jazz band). Its lack of a western release makes it one of the more obscure
entries in the TwinBee series, but this second sequel nevertheless paved the way
for better-known titles like Detana!! TwinBee and Pop’n TwinBee.

Salamander Arcade / 1986

Also released in an earlier, slightly revised form
as Life Force, Salamander is a Gradius spin-off
with a revised weapon system and less outright
punishing difficulty. It’s another top-notch shooter
from Konami, and received excellent (Japan-only)
ports for the NES and PC Engine.

Castlevania II:
Simon’s Quest NES / 1987
Director Hitoshi Akamatsu boldly pushed Castlevania
into more open, RPG-like territory with his sequel.
The results are somewhat mixed – obtuse NPC
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade / 1989 dialogue rendered even more unintelligible thanks
to some iffy localisation, for one thing – but this still
Konami snapped up the rights to Eastman and Laird’s comic-book series (or, marked the point where the series moved beyond
at any rate, the less violent cartoon series it was based on) at just the right straight action-platforming.
time, because Turtle-mania was sweeping the world by the time this brawler
emerged in arcades. Importantly, though, the game behind it is a cracking one: Combat School Arcade / 1987
an effervescent slab of action that makes full use of the quartet of Turtle heroes
Konami followed up Track & Field with Hyper
and their various weapons, while villains such as Rocksteady, Bebop, and rank- Sports in 1984, which was essentially more of
and-file Foot Soldiers make for satisfying enemies to bash into oblivion. The the same button-smashing minigames. But
experience certainly felt closer to the frivolous fun of the cartoon than the first then came Combat School – button-smashing
NES game to carry the Ninja Turtles name – a platformer with a brutal difficulty minigames, but with angry drill sergeants and
level that still makes us shudder to this day. uncomfortable army boots. It was great.

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 Toolbox
Contents

Toolbox
The art, theory, and production of video games

46. CityCraft
Exploring Mirror’s Edge Catalyst’s City of Glass

50. Drop Bear

Make an infinite runner for the original Game Boy

56. Narrative Design

Using storytelling to communicate your design ideas

58. A matter of balance

A guide to getting attacks and powers pitched just right

64. Design principles

Exploring the lasting impact of the 45-year-old Atari 2600
50
66. Source Code   rogram an infinite runner that works on
P
original Game Boy hardware in part one of
Create your own Guitar Hero-style rhythm action game our guide. See page 50.

46

 ncover the design secrets behind

U


the City of Glass on page 46.

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Contents

58

 re your guns too powerful? Is your

A


game’s difficulty putting newcomers

off? Find out more about balancing
game design on page 58.

64
 s the Atari 2600
A


reaches its 45th

anniversary, Howard
considers its lasting
impact on gaming.
See page 64.

 ake a rhythm action

M


game worthy of a
rock god with this
month’s Source Code
on page 66.

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Advice

Designing the
City of Glass
A detailed look back at the making of
Mirror’s Edge Catalyst’s urban heart

AUTHOR
KONSTANTINOS DIMOPOULOS
Konstantinos Dimopoulos is a game urbanist and designer combining a PhD in
urban planning with video games. He is the author of the Virtual Cities atlas, designs
game cities, and consults on their creation. game-cities.com

F
ollowing the original Mirror’s Edge decisions that guided the creation of its setting.
must have been a tricky task for DICE. Interestingly, Odeldahl left DICE after Catalyst’s
The 2009 game was a brilliantly release to co-found Fast Travel Games, a VR
innovative first-person parkour-‘em- game dev studio. Thankfully, despite enjoying
up, and its developers didn’t want wearing many hats and doing everything from
to simply deliver more of the same for its 2016 level design, scriptwriting, and coding, to planning
sequel, Mirror’s Edge Catalyst. Instead, it made the and budgeting, he still fondly remembers working
brave choice of transplanting what was originally on Catalyst and the city within it.
a linear experience with rigid boundaries to an
urban open world. It was set in the City of Glass: INITIAL CONSIDERATIONS
a near-future dystopia inspired by such places as When development on a Mirror’s Edge sequel
Shanghai, Singapore, and Tokyo. started in 2012, “the team leads had the mandate
 he city’s architecture
T Erik Odeldahl, design director on Mirror’s to shake things up and try something different,”


predominantly features Edge Catalyst throughout its roughly five-year Odeldahl tells us. “Personally, I wanted us to
white surfaces, which
make the oranges, yellows, development cycle, agreed to share some of the go into a direction that reinforced one of the
and blues pop out and
guide the player.
things I always liked best about the first game –
exploration. I wanted to focus more on the cool
parts where you have to combine all the moves in
your arsenal to get to a specific area. I also really
wanted us to build a game with the philosophy
of ‘If you can see it, you can get there’. We didn’t
quite reach that far, but got pretty close.”
The decision was therefore made to transform
the gameplay from the linear, self-contained
levels of Mirror’s Edge to fit Catalyst’s new open
world. “If you look at each section of the city,”
Odeldahl points out, “it still consists of ‘typical’
linear paths that allow you to dash madly
forward, but the main thing is that there are lots
of them, and that they very often intersect with
each other. There are also a lot of areas that
have no major purpose for the main narrative,
but are built wholly for exploration.”

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 or a stunning interactive
F


map of the City of Glass,
visit wfmag.cc/cityglass.
The team wasn’t exclusively influenced by the
 haracter design,
C

first game; for his part, Odeldahl “referenced uniforms, and fashion
the Metroid Prime games a lot, but also, less choices tie in and further
enrich the city’s aesthetics.
obviously, the Darksiders and Burnout series.”
As for the look and feel of the city, the team
didn’t stray much from the ideas developed in
the first Mirror’s Edge. They “wanted the city and
its citizens to shine, and be superficially beautiful,
but at the same time be a starkly sterile place”.
According to Odeldahl, “there’s not a single space primary colours all remain intact. According to
in it that doesn’t try to sell something to you, be Odeldahl, the team never even discussed any
it consumer goods or an image of a ‘better life’. alternative styles.
You can see this everywhere you look. Everything “It was clear from the beginning that we had
is sleek and straight.” to start with the sharp contrasts of the first
There’s no room for anything but what the game,” he says, “and bring them forward towards
city commands, and this “is contrasted by the something that reinforced the more developed
movement of the Runners, and specifically their backstory and world of our sequel.”
physical freedom. They can go where no others
can, and can do what average citizens cannot.” URBAN PLANNING
On the other hand, while citizens move freely Handily, one of the team’s concept artists, Nick
along wide avenues, those same avenues are Leavy, had a background in architecture. “He
almost impossible for Runners to cross. played a major part in designing the look and CASCADIA
“We experimented a lot with how close or layout of each city district,” Odeldahl says. “Even Like any decent imaginary
how far away you should be to the streets for though the player sees the city from above for city, the City of Glass doesn’t
instance”, he adds, “but in the end, we realised most of the game, we actually started by building exist in a vacuum. It’s part of a
that [it was more fun] to out the network of roads wider world, and an important
allow the player to zoom and larger avenues, as well centre in the corporate-
“It was clear that we had run nation of Cascadia.
around on the rooftops as making paths for high-
above the streets. With
to start with the first speed monorails.”
Specifically, the city’s located
by the sea to the south of
the exception of the old game’s sharp contrasts” When building the city, Cascadia Prime. It’s one of
Underground Omnistat the team also wanted the Cascadia’s two major hubs and
Tunnels, the lowest part of the game you’re ever players to be able to see its history. So, Odeldahl its third biggest urban centre.
at is the first street in the first mission. And of says, you “start out in Downtown, the oldest part It serves as both a symbol
course, the game ends at the highest point: on of the city, and gradually move outward from of Conglomerate power and
top of The Shard.” it, seeing the splendour of the Anchor, clearly achievement, as well as a node
Architecturally, Catalyst retains the style that built recently, then the construction areas where of the geopolitical struggle
defined the original game: gleaming edifices of a new district is being erected, and then the between Cascadia and the
opposing OmniState.
steel and glass, impossibly clean urban vistas, underground, which consists of structures built
and the striking contrasts of white city and bold before the Conglomerate took over.”

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 he city’s futuristic style is

T


further emphasised by the

shape of its vehicles.
As for the more linear missions, Odeldahl says
 Construction materials are
commonly used to create that these “were always intended to be a break
bridges, paths, and diegetic from the more free-flowing stuff on the rooftops,
connections between areas.
and allowed us to build some intricate stuff that
might be more fun to just play once”.
Treating a whole city as an open-world
obstacle course was another interesting
challenge, as was allowing for flowing, continuous
“Eventually, you reach Sky City, the pinnacle of movement across the urban fabric without using
the Conglomerate’s Architectural plans in Glass, the street level. Somehow, though, Catalyst’s
and an inspiration to the whole of Cascadia. long, cohesive city blocks and the city’s many
Overall, we wanted Glass to feel like a city skybridges all felt convincing and logical.
that’s trying to erase its past. My guess is that “Combining fun gameplay and making
if [protagonist] Faith hadn’t shaken things up believable spaces is hard,” Odeldahl admits,
so much by the end of the game, the in-world “but it’s one of those things we never strayed
city planners would have started to tear down from. The skybridges were one of the earlier
Downtown, and rebuild it from the ground up in things we locked down in the design to be able
the same style you see in the rest of Glass.” to connect larger areas with each other, while
Narrative requirements aside, the city needed still maintaining a believable physical separation
to combine open-world sensibilities, with discrete between them – usually a wide street or a body
levels and predetermined mission routes. of water.
To encourage players to discover new shortcuts “Within the districts, we always started
and optimise their traversal of the city, the [designing] with silhouettes, and peaks and
game allowed for the creation of personalised, valleys. What’s the first thing the player sees
shareable time trials. According to Odeldahl, when they enter a new space? Having defined
the latter deeply influenced the structure of its such matters, the level design team took over
spaces. “Most of the level designers had these and made those ideas playable in a deeply
social challenges in mind when they created iterative process that required a lot of back and
the open-world parts of the game,” he says. forth, and which eventually also led to scrapping
“We continuously made time trials and placed and rebuilding large parts of the city several
geotags during development, and challenged times until they got them right.”
each other to beat each others’ times. I know Landmarks were also used to help guide
some of the trickier secret pickups placed in the the player. “The Shard in Sky City, the under-
city ended up in locations where someone had construction skyscraper in Anchor, the edifice
previously placed a really hard-to-get-to geotag.” where Kruger has his apartment in The View” all

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Advice

 oloured lines subtly indicate

C


to the player which areas are

safe to slide down.

provide points of reference as they make their early designs are the ones that change how
way from one part of the city to another. As for Faith moves.”
the Runner’s Vision system, it’s almost always Several buildings and other areas were EVOLVING
available to the player. The design choice to shut also trimmed out of the City of Glass during HISTORY
it off when the player enters a ‘puzzle space’ was development, Odeldahl says. “We had plans Politics change the flow
made as the challenge there would be “to find for one more District based around several of history, and cities are
out how to use your moveset to get from point A really tall skyscrapers. I think we called this one never static. The City of
to point B”. ‘Financial’ in our planning docs. It would involve Glass thus had to show
“Both our game and the first Mirror’s Edge are a lot of climbing, and very early on we realised this type of dynamism, but
the most fun when you play through an area the we wouldn’t be able to make that fun. You’d without affecting the pace
second or third time,” Odeldahl says. “If you don’t spend too much time just looking into building of the game itself. One of
the key solutions Catalyst ’s
know what obstacles will come up in front of you, façades, for instance. There were also early plans
developers employed was
it becomes really hard to navigate and shave for a section that connected Construction and
presenting it as being under
time off your runs. In that Downtown, consisting
constant renovation and
sense it’s very much like a “Early on, we had of three- or four-storey construction. Scaffolding,
racing game.” buildings and aqueducts, unfinished building sections,
Creating a game world
designs for even more similar to certain parts and construction materials
with clear boundaries gadgets and tools” of the first game. I can’t both supported the story and
and a well-balanced scale remember the exact provided even more traversal
helped the overall experience – in fact, Odeldahl reason this was cut from the game, but it likely options and parkour paths
recalls, Catalyst’s city was originally much bigger had to do with budget and story changes.” for players.
than the one that made it into the finished While some larger elements were dropped
game. “As with more or less every game I’ve ever for various reasons, smaller touches were also
worked on, the design of the game world was added to help create a sense of a living city. The
initially larger than what we ended up shipping hackable billboards, for example, were devised
with,” Odeldahl says. “In the case of Mirror’s Edge to “allow the player to deface the Conglomerate
Catalyst, this wasn’t necessarily a budget or scope propaganda with something they’d designed
decision, but more in line with how big we felt themselves, and to give players bragging rights
the city needed to be in order to support the via light-hearted social interactions”.
gameplay we wanted. By concentrating on bold shapes, striking
“Early on, we had designs for even more contrasts of monochrome, and splashes of
gadgets and tools, and to split up the city in colour, Odeldahl and his team created a city that
a more Metroid-y pattern, but we ended up is captivating and immediately recognisable –
cutting away a lot of fat there. The only tools or even if it’s merely glimpsed by players running
gadgets that remained in the game from those along its rooftops at breakneck speed.

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Write your own Game Boy game in C: Part 1

Part 1

Write your own

Game Boy game in C
Learn the basics of making a game on original handheld
hardware with the Game Boy Development Kit

AUTHOR Download
EDWIN JONES the code
from GitHub:
Edwin Jones is a senior software engineer at Mediatonic wfmag.cc/
who’s been working in the games industry for around 17
wfmag62
years. edwinjones.me.uk

H
ow can you make your own game C/C++ wiz, you’ll probably find this easier than
for a handheld console that came previous projects, but the Game Boy still has some
out in the 1980s? It’s actually quite quirks you may be unfamiliar with. If you want to
easy, thanks to a few factors. jump ahead, I can recommend this primer from
Because the Game Boy is so old, freeCodeCamp: wfmag.cc/c-begin.
it’s simple to program. And, thanks to the open- Our first step is to configure our tools to allow us
source community, its tools are better now to write some code, compile it, and deploy it. First,
than they’ve ever been. If you have a desktop you’ll need a Game Boy or another compatible
computer, you can write code and run it on a console such as the Game Boy Advance or DS.
Game Boy. You’ll also need a flash cart to copy ROMs onto,
One of the simplest ways to get started is such as an EZ Flash: wfmag.cc/ezflash. If you
with the Game Boy Development Kit, or GBDK. don’t have access to a Game Boy, you can just
We can use this to write C code and compile it run your code on an emulator. I’m using BGB
into a Game Boy program, also known as a ROM. (wfmag.cc/BGB), which has excellent tools for
There are a few versions of software around, visualising what our code’s doing as it runs.
INCLUDES but we’re using the modern version on GitHub: Once you have these tools, you’ll need to
You’ve probably twigged that wfmag.cc/gbdk2020. install GBDK. Follow the instructions on GitHub
our ’main’ function is the code There’s quite a bit of code required for this for your preferred operating system to get it
that our program executes at project – too much to print here in full, but you running. Follow the README to get started
run time. Those lines above can download the files you’ll need from our GitHub (wfmag.cc/GBDK). Download the latest release
that which start with a ‘#’ are at wfmag.cc/wfmag62. We’ll be going over all and unzip it to the directory of your choice. Once
includes. These tell the compiler the code you need step by step, so don’t worry you’ve got that set up, we need to write some
to add some code in place of
if you don’t understand it all at first. If you’re a code. Open your editor of choice (my favourite
these lines when compiled.
is VS code: wfmag.cc/vscode) and create a file
We’re using this to import the
called main.c. Add the following text to this file:
GBDK code we’ll need to make
our code talk to the Game Boy
hardware directly. #include <gb/gb.h>
#include <stdio.h>

void main()
 Figure 1: This is what your
Hello World should look {
like. Notice how a Game printf(“hello world!”);
Boy-compatible font has
automatically loaded. }

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Write your own Game Boy game in C: Part 1

individually – it uses tiles to save on memory.

These are split into two kinds – background tiles,
and sprite tiles which are used for foreground
ON THE TILES
objects like the player character and enemies. Why so much memory per tile?
Each 8×8 pixel tile is encoded
Sprites can be 8×8 or 8×16 pixels wide.
into 16 bytes that contain which
The Game Boy can draw a maximum of 40
colour each pixel of the tile
sprites on screen at any one time with a limit of can be. That’s 64 pixels that
ten per line. We’ll avoid this limitation by making could be one of four different
sure to draw fewer than this number. The console colours the Game Boy screen
Figure 2: The player’s health, money, and equipped


items are drawn to the window layer. can also draw onto two layers: the background could draw – that’s 128 bits.
layer and what’s called a window layer. This is Divide that by 8 bits per byte
used for UI elements such as the player HUD or and you get 16 bytes.
Now run the following commands in a terminal health bars. If you go back and play some of your
from the directory you saved this file in: favourite Game Boy titles, like The Legend of Zelda:
Link’s Awakening (Figure 2), you can see where the
“{path where you installed the GBDK}/bin/lcc” layer’s been placed.
-c -o ./main.o ./main.c The Game Boy lets us scroll the background
“{path where you installed the GBDK}/bin/lcc” and move sprites freely, so we don’t need to
-o ./main.gb ./main.o worry about clearing any previously used pixels.
It even handles wrapping for us – if a background
If you open that folder you should see a new file or sprite moves too far in one direction, it will
in there called main.gb. Open this in your Game appear on the other side of the screen.
Boy emulator and you Now you understand a
should see the output in “You’ve written and bit more about how the
Figure 1. Game Boy works, let’s get
deployed your first
Congratulations! You’ve started with our own game:
written and deployed your Game Boy program” a simple infinite runner
first Game Boy program. called Drop Bear. A bear’s
Feel free to move this onto a flash cart and run it falling from the sky, dropping coins; how many
on your own hardware. can he collect before the time runs out?
First, we’ll need to create some sprites using
HELLO WORLD a browser-based tool called the Game Boy Tile
Now our tools work, let’s look at the Game Boy’s Data Generator (wfmag.cc/gbtdg). Open the
specs in more detail so we can understand how it folder the project has downloaded to, then open
works before we make a real game: the index.html file in your browser, and you
should see something like Figure 3.
• A 160×144 pixel four-colour LCD screen
(256×256 addressable, can draw off-screen)
• A four-way direction pad and four buttons
(start, select, A, B) for a total of eight inputs
• An 8-bit Sharp LR35902 CPU
• 8kB of working RAM
• 8kB of graphics memory
• At least 32kB of ROM memory from the game
carts themselves

These are the basics we need for this project.

You may notice that the Game Boy can ’draw’ to
256×256 pixels with four different colours, which
would mean we’d need at least 16kB of memory
to control the colours. The Game Boy only has half 
 igure 3: This is how the
F
of that for graphics memory. How is this possible? Tile Data Generator looks
in a browser without any
Because the console doesn’t control every pixel data uploaded.

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 Toolbox
Write your own Game Boy game in C: Part 1

LET’S MAKE A SPLASH!

There’s our splash screen! That was a lot of code,
though, so what did we just do? Well, everything
outside the main function is just asset data
for the logo, generated the same way as we’ve
described before, but with one crucial difference
– we’ve offset everything in the tilemap by the
value 0×80. This is a bit of a hack, as the Game
Boy has limited memory. We’re already using a
third of it for the font we need to print text with,
so we push the logo data into a different part of
the video memory so we don’t override the font
that’s automatically loaded with the first print
statement. You can view graphics RAM in BGB to
see it for yourself by right-clicking then using the
Other > Vram viewer menu option (Figure 6).
 igure 4: This is how the
F The first page is taken up by the Nintendo logo


Tile Data Generator looks

with a sprite loaded. – this is a form of primitive DRM as the Game Boy
Note how text has If you look at the bottom left, you’ll see two won’t boot if this logo isn’t the first thing loaded
generated to the right of
the loaded image. options under ‘formatting’ – it’s important we use into memory. We’ll override it soon, though, as
‘C format GBDK’ for all our assets as that means once you’re past the logo screen, it’s no longer
the output will work with GBDK. I’ve already needed. The Drop Bear logo is in one segment
created all the assets our game needs, but let’s of memory and the font’s in another, while tiles
walk through how to do this yourself so that you currently rendering are highlighted in green.
can make your own or edit them later. All you We’re only using a few characters of our font, but
need to do is click under ‘Input Image’ on the top all of our logo files. Note that the composed logo
left and select an image from your local hard drive reuses some of these tiles to save memory as we
to load it into the editor. When we do this with a covered earlier.
pixel art image of a bear’s face I’ve prepared for Interestingly, the Game Boy’s video memory
the project, we get the output in Figure 4. layout starts at address 0×8000 and ends at
See the text on the right under ‘Data Output’? 0×97FF. Addresses 0×8000 to 0×8FFF were
That’s the raw binary data the Game Boy needs to designated for sprite data, as you can see with
draw this image alongside the first two blocks in
a few constants, like how “The Drop Bear logo is in the bgb vram viewer
many tiles wide and high screenshot (Figure 6).
one segment of memory
the sprite needs to be – Background memory
as the PNG I’ve used is and the font’s in another” runs from 0×8800 to
32×32 pixels, we’ll need 0×97FF. “Hold on, those
four 8×8 tiles to represent the image on a Game addresses overlap!” I hear you cry, and you’re
HOLY MACRO Boy. You can see the height and width constants correct. The middle page of graphics memory
A macro is a fancy word are the number 4. I’ll include the relevant data in- from 0×8800 to 0×8FFF can be used by either
for something the compiler line when we need it, as we go along. Feel free to sprite or background tile data, but not both. This
replaces at compile time. import your own assets, though, as that’s half the is why we needed to move the logo tilemap into
You can create your own fun of making your own game. a different part of memory, so we could load our
macros to replace any text
First, let’s create the title screen. For this, we’ll logo into tile memory without overriding the font
with any other bit of code. For
need a logo asset and some on-screen text. Let’s that lives in the highest part.
instance, you could replace
start with the easiest bit, printing the text. We can We add 0×80 to each tilemap value because
‘printf(“hello”)’ with a macro
by adding a line like ‘#define do this by modifying our ‘Hello World’ program the Game Boy treats the first numbered
HELLO printf(“hello”)’ to the top – find the code you need in the file tile-screen- background tile (0×00) as living at address
of your code file, then by using code.c on our GitHub: wfmag.cc/wfmag62. 0×9000, not 0×8000. Adding 0×80 pushes the tile
‘HELLO’ in place of the formal If you compile and run this program the indices into the correct portion or VRAM where
function call. same way as before, you should see the output we’ve loaded our logo. This is because 0×80 is
in Figure 5. 128 in decimal, which is exactly how many tiles

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Write your own Game Boy game in C: Part 1

each third of the video memory can hold – 128 the code from the file background-tile-code.c
tiles * 3 blocks * 16 bits per tile = 384 available on our GitHub and paste it above your main
tiles to use. function. Then add the following lines to the end
ABOUT VBLANK
Inside the main function, we invoke a few of your main function: VBLANK is the time taken from
the end of drawing the last line
macros to clear the screen. We then call printf
on the screen to the start of
with a blank string to tell GBDK to load the default // Load tileset into background memory
drawing the next. By waiting until
font into memory without drawing anything on set_bkg_data(128, BACKGROUND_TILE_SET_COUNT, the VBLANK period, we know
screen. We move the background layer a little, background_tile_set); we’re not looping faster than
then load the tile logo into memory by setting the screen’s drawing. We can
the tile data and tile layout map. We call another // Load tile map into memory. use this to make sure each loop
macro to force the background layer to render set_bkg_tiles(0, 0, BACKGROUND_TILE_MAP_WIDTH, executes no faster than a single
and show our logo. We then call another function BACKGROUND_TILE_MAP_HEIGHT, background_tile_ frame, which takes roughly 16
to move the print cursor and print the words map); milliseconds (1 second / 60 fps =
‘Press Start’ onto the bottom of the screen. 0.01666).

Let’s move on to input. Most games have We’re loading this new tilemap to the background
multiple ‘states’. Here, we’ll keep it simple by only layer as we did with the logo – you’ll see each
using three – the game splash screen, the game tilemap entry is adjusted by 0×80, so we
play screen, and a game over screen. We can get don’t interact with the loaded font as before.
the Game Boy to wait for our input with another Compile your program again and load it into BGB.
command. Add the following lines to the end of You should now see Figure 7 (overleaf).
your main function: Now, at the end of your main program, add the
following code to the end of your main function:
waitpadup();
waitpad(J_START); // scroll the background forever
cls(); while(1)
{
These functions wait for all buttons to be scroll_bkg(0, 3);
released, just in case the user has any depressed. // Wait until VBLANK to keep time  igure 6: You can see
F

When the Start button is pressed, the screen wait_vbl_done(); the sprites that make
up each letter in this
is cleared. Try it yourself in the BGB emulator: } view. This is the same
font we used for our
press the RETURN key, and the screen should Hello World program.
clear. We can flesh out the gameplay by adding
a background that loads when we move to the
second stage. As our game involves a dropping
bear, a simple trick is to load a background we
can then scroll vertically to generate the feeling
of movement. You can make a striped tile via
the tools mentioned above, but for now, copy

Figure 5: Our title screen.



wfmag.cc \ 53
 Toolbox
Write your own Game Boy game in C: Part 1

If you compile and run your game again, then // set game timer
press Start, you’ll see the background scrolls. game_time = 600;
SHORTHAND We’ve used an infinite loop that scrolls the while(game_time)
You might have noticed we background up three pixels and then waits for {
used a new type here called
a vertical blank. This ensures the code only // scroll the background
‘UINT16’. This is a ‘typedef’:
runs once a frame. The Game Boy has a frame scroll_bkg(0, 3);
a way C programs can use
rate of ~60 fps, which means we’re moving the
their own shorthand to refer
to existing types. The GBDK background at roughly ~180 pixels a second. //decrement the game timer
defines these for us so we game_time--;
have a way to define unsigned FALLING DOWN
integers by size instead of Next, let’s add a little code to allow the main // Wait until VBLANK to avoid
using byte for UINT8 etc. game to run for a while, then stop. We can then corrupting memory and keep time
add some code that resets us back to the main wait_vbl_done();
splash screen, creating a basic game loop. We }
know that each refresh of our loop happens
roughly 60 times a second, so if we want to create //jump back to the start of the
a quick ten-second cycle, we can start a counter program
at 600, decrement it each loop, and exit when goto start;
it finishes. Add the following code to the above
main function: Recompile and run the game again. The screen
should fall for ten seconds then you should come
UINT16 game_time = 0; back to the start screen.
Next up, let’s add a player character with
This lets us store a value of 16 bits, more than sprites. I’ve prepared the bear sprite data
enough for number 600. Next, add this at the mentioned earlier, which you can find in the file
very top of your main function: player-character-code.c. Just copy this code and
paste it outside of the main function (as you have
start: previously) for now.
First, we need to define some variables to
This is a label for a goto statement which we’ll control the position of our player character. Add
use in a minute. Next, update the loop statement this code before your main function like so:
like so:
UINT8 player_x = 72;
UINT8 player_y = 32;

Now we can load the player character into

memory with a similar set of commands as
before. Add these lines to the bottom of your
main function just before the while loop:

// Load the ‘sprites’ tiles into sprite

memory
set_sprite_data(0, BEAR_TILE_SET_COUNT, bear_
tile_set);

// Set the first movable sprite (0) to be the

first tile in the sprite memory (0)
for (UINT8 i = 0; i < BEAR_TILE_MAP_SIZE; i++)
{
set_sprite_tile(i, bear_tile_map[i]);
 Figure 7: Notice how the
tiles repeat over and over }
– this is how we can make
a little bit of data useful
over a large screen area. SHOW_SPRITES;

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Write your own Game Boy game in C: Part 1

 igure 8: Here’s our bear sprite drawing

F


over the background.

You may have noticed a difference in the name of

the command from before – this is because we’re
setting sprite data, not background data. As we
need more than one 8×8 tile to draw an image,  igure 9: Here you can see
F


we also need to set multiple sprite tiles at a time, the bear sprite in VRAM.
Note how some tiles are
hence the loop. We then invoke a macro to make Here, we write some loops to go over every tile of repeated to save memory.
sprites visible. Positioning the sprites is a little our sprite and move them around based on the
trickier – add a new block inside your for loop current player x and player y values we configure.
before the wait_vbl_done() call like this: We then wait for player input to see if the sprite’s
x position should move. If you’re wondering
// move player about what ‘8’ and ‘2’ mean, the ‘8’ is the size of a
for (UINT8 y = 0; y < BEAR_TILE_MAP_WIDTH; tile in pixels and the ‘2’ how many pixels we want
y++) to move per update.
{
UINT8 yOffset = y * 8; BEAR NECESSITIES
If you recompile your game and load it in an
for (UINT8 x = 0; x < BEAR_TILE_MAP_ emulator, you should see Figure 8 if you press
HEIGHT; x++) Start on the splash screen, and if you press the
{ left and right keys/buttons, the bear will move
UINT8 xOffset = x * 8; around the screen.
move_sprite(tileCounter++, player_x If you load up the VRAM debugger view again,
+ xOffset, player_y + yOffset); you’ll see that our bear sprite has overwritten
} some of the Nintendo logo in that memory area
} (Figure 9).
// update input If you’re wondering why some tiles are
GOTO JAIL
// LEFT highlighted in this view, it’s just BGB’s way of GOTO is a simple C command
that lets you move execution
if (joypad() & J_LEFT) telling you what’s currently being drawn on
to any other part of the code
{ screen. The other tiles represent that state of
defined by a label. It’s fallen out
player_x -= 2; VRAM for things not currently being drawn. This of favour in modern times as
} can be handy for figuring out why things you load it’s considered risky, but it still
// RIGHT in aren’t being drawn – usually because their has uses now and then as you
if (joypad() & J_RIGHT) positions haven’t been correctly set. can see in our code – as long
{ And that’s it for now. In the second part of the as you keep an eye on exactly
player_x += 2; guide, we’ll add objectives, a timer, and end game where your labels are!
} states. See you next issue.

wfmag.cc \ 55
 Toolbox
Telling stories and communicating vision

Telling stories and

communicating vision
This month, Antony dives into inspiring teams and
promoting cohesion — through story time

AUTHOR
ANTONY DE FAULT
Antony is Wireframe’s writing and narrative design columnist.
He’s also a freelance video game storyteller, and you can find
his work on default.games or @antony_de_fault on Twitter.

W
hen starting a new project, listing environments and items and their key facts
particularly one where there are and we diagram them on digital whiteboards.
several people involved across a And unsurprisingly, engagement is often an
variety of disciplines, one of the uphill battle. It may all be thoroughly explained,
hardest challenges is technically, but audio designers will tend not to
communicating a coherent vision. A lack of get excited about fictional factoids. Your 3D artists
shared understanding creates misunderstandings won’t read the combat mechanics brief, either.
and wasted work, such as the level designer who Almost never will these documents move and
spends days making a dungeon as an early inspire these collaborators in their own field.
prototype level, only to be told that the game isn’t Giving someone a complete understanding of a
going to feature interiors at all. In games, bridging vision, to the point where they can ‘see’ it in their
as we do the worlds of art and computer minds and become excited about augmenting it,
engineering, the solution we fall back on is a requires a more primal form of stimulation.
technical one: documentation. We create game
design documents which explain how systems will TALE OLD AS TIME
work, with specifications of the major characters Luckily, there’s a leadership technique, a
and themes. We make internal wiki databases visualisation tool as old as civilisation itself. It
excels at uniting people in a shared
understanding. Your team is already trained to
devote their attention entirely to this technique
when it’s in use; often, they don’t want it to end.
In fact, it communicates a vision so clearly that
creators of all stripes, for all humanity, have used
it as a principal source of inspiration. I am, of
course, talking about storytelling.
From the novelist with an axe to grind, to the
tribal leader passing on knowledge through myth,
to the orator in the marketplace drawing crowds
and coins with the latest exploits of Heracles, the
human brain has a terrible addiction to stories.
 As the Laocoön and His Embedding information or opinion or just about
Sons is inspired by the
ancient storytelling of anything in a story has got to be the most
Virgil and Sophocles, so is effective way of getting someone to deeply
Assassin’s Creed by
Bartol’s Alamut (1938). engage with it that we’ve ever invented.

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Telling stories and communicating vision

they wanted to see more of, what they felt was

missing. These I worked into the next part. When
our sound designer was fascinated by a faction
called the Dreamers, I wrote a newspaper snippet
discussing them into part two, and leaned toward
them when revealing one character’s motivations.
When I cocked up and used credit chips for
currency, the game director pointed out that he’d
designed a barter economy, so I corrected my
story to enshrine this world detail.
Even before I’d finished, the magic started to
occur. The audio team didn’t need to ask, ‘What
should the gun sound like?’; they knew. They’d
heard it in their heads, in the story. The artist
 he team got hugely into my little storytelling
T


exercise via Discord. didn’t need a specification for a saloon

environment; they’d seen one in their heads, in
the story. The composer scored one of the fight
So how do we leverage this? Well, you could scenes at the weekend, and the project picked up
start by telling your team a story in the world of pace. By accident, I’d provided everyone with a
your game. Not the story, the one the game will bedrock for their own work to spring from.
actually tell. Another story, where the stakes are
lower and everyone feels confident enough to SPARKS FLY FIREWATCH
chime in, one that’s private and just for the team. This also had the effect of democratising the The idea of writing something
So, recently I’ve been working pre-production story. While keeping personal, authorial control only for the team came to
on a space western game about a bounty hunter, over the experience and avoiding writing-by- me from the very first tape
containing a mixture of interactive narrative, committee, I had involved everyone and in Firewatch’s developer
deduction mechanics, and deck-building. For enthusiastically integrated their preferences. commentary mode. It revealed
months we’d been discussing the mechanics, the After all, my teammates are exactly the target that the game’s famous intro
feeling, history, lore, and so on. But we didn’t audience, but less cynically, game-making is a sequence was never initially
know what the drama was or who the protagonist team event where co-creation and cohesion are intended to be seen by the
player. Writer Sean Vanaman
would be, and team members lacked a mental paramount. The end result is something better
was concerned that the team
image of what the final experience would be. than I could have come up with in solitude, and
would “perceive the game’s
There comes a point where this kind of something which the others feel belongs to them protagonist as a blank slate”,
planning and analysis fails; I had to just dive in, too, which they are excited to build the game on. and realised that he was writing
write a short story, and let everyone react to what This is firmly in my toolbox now, and I expect to “character profiles that were
emerged. To that end, I re-read everything we’d tell my teams stories at least once per project really bad”, so instead, he just
already established, then put it all to one side and from now on. So, if you find yourself needing to told a story. Only later did they
began scribbling a prequel to our game with only explain your nascent game’s concepts, with a realise that the players could
a loose idea for a twist I wanted to pull off. Out desire to get everyone revved up and on the benefit from it too.
poured some of my favourite writing I’ve done. same page, tell a story for their ears only.
I told the story in three parts over three weeks,
through a dedicated channel on our team chat
Firewatch: sometimes, when

tool. This bit of theatrics was quite important, as it writing only for yourself and
turned the story into a shared experience. Across your team, you might
stumble across something
three continents, the team would asynchronously accidentally genius…
read and discuss each part when I posted it. The
team became heavily invested in the story, and it
filled a void: suddenly we had a shared
understanding of the tone, feeling, details, world,
characters, and style of what we were making. It
was creatively exciting. Between each part, I
absorbed everyone’s thoughts on the story thus
far, on which bits they didn’t understand, what

wfmag.cc \ 57
 Toolbox
Balancing your game: why, when, and how

Balancing your game:

why, when, and how
Balancing games can be a challenge, particularly because
the goal isn’t to achieve perfect balance in the first place…

AUTHOR
STUART MAINE
Stuart Maine has been a designer for 24 years, across
PC, console, and mobile. He helped set up Well Played
Games and is working on an unannounced title.

A
lthough it might seem logical that INITIAL NUMBERS
we’d want to ensure each element Throughout this article I’ll be referring to
in our game is perfectly balanced, ‘elements’, by which I mean each ‘thing’ in your
that can lead to flat, uninteresting game that has numbers attached, such as
experiences where it doesn’t matter characters (health, speed, jump height), weapons
which option you choose. Instead, our goal is to (damage, reload time), treasure chests (gold
make each of the elements in our game balanced inside, difficulty to pick the lock), and so on.
enough to be a viable option but to leave Each element contributes to your game’s balance,
each with pros and cons that allow for varied with changes to one causing anything that
approaches. For example, players could control interacts with it to become more or less effective.
Ken or Ryu in Street Fighter but they were basically Games are driven by numbers, but it can be
identical, so the choice was purely cosmetic. Street difficult to know where to start your scale from.
 ighting games strive to
F


ensure each of their Fighter II’s varied characters, meanwhile, each Should your weapons be dealing 4, 400, or 4000
characters is balanced had strengths and weaknesses, making them less damage? It doesn’t generally matter whether
enough to be a viable
contender while also balanced but much more interesting. you go small or big as long as you stick to that
countering the strengths
of other fighters.
throughout, but there are pros and cons to each
end. Bigger numbers leave room for granular
balancing (+1 to 4 is a 25% increase, whereas it’s
just a 0.25% gain to 400), but can be intimidating
for players if you’re going to expose the values
to them during play. Unless part of your game’s
appeal is studying big numbers and calculating
which is better, a +1 gain is a more intuitive and
‘readable’ increase when the original number is
4 as opposed to 4000.
Riot ensures its new League of Legends
characters are vaguely balanced by creating
them like an RPG. It spends a pool of points on
the character’s various stats, then assigns them
benefits that cost points and disadvantages
which earn points back. This doesn’t produce
fully balanced characters, but it’s good enough
as a starting point, because while you might
be tempted to try and balance your game as

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Balancing your game: why, when, and how

 y mixing aspects of
B


RPGs into choosing
which weapons to use,
you input these initial numbers, you’ll find you 3. Automated testing. You can create Borderlands makes
comparing multiple
continually need to revisit earlier numbers as programs that effectively run thousands of complex numbers part
later decisions ripple out. My suggestion? Focus playtests overnight. These don’t use graphics of its appeal.

on making your game interesting and exciting from the game, but instead produce a
first, then dig into whether particular elements spreadsheet of the results. For example, the
are overpowered or underpowered later. last card game I worked on would pit cards
against each other every night and produce a
SPOTTING PROBLEMS spreadsheet. Converting that into a graph let
Once you have enough elements interacting, us see which cards were inflicting too much
you’ll be able to spot balance problems through damage or dying too quickly for their points
testing your game. Here are three approaches: cost. This is a brute force approach that can’t
spot unusual quirks like a character having
1. Run playtests with people who are new medic or thief powers, but it can still provide OPPORTUNITY
to the game. You should ask them which useful data.
elements they think are too powerful or
COST
not powerful enough as this gives a player’s Ensure you’re looking for balance issues from An important balance factor you
can play with is the ‘opportunity
perspective (more on this later). But you multiple angles, because simply studying one
cost’ of each element. This
should also watch which elements they’re set of numbers might not be enough to reveal
means it’s fine for something
favouring or ignoring, as that might indicate the problem. For example, at one point, the to be overpowered if the player
something is overpowered or underpowered, Overwatch character Mercy was so overpowered has to sacrifice several other
or just difficult for new players to understand. that every team was guaranteed to use her, but choices to use it. That could
that wouldn’t show up if you were just looking mean an ammo-hungry weapon
2. Build analytics into your game. This at her win/loss ratio because she was always on (sacrifice the shots you could
involves writing data to a file whenever both the winning and losing teams. have made with other weapons
something you want to track happens during Or in Slay the Spire, the team noted that the using that ammo) or a high-
play: What killed that enemy? What caused Madness card was in too many winning decks, cost unit (sacrifice the other
units you could have spent
that player death? What’s giving players their but investigation revealed that the card wasn’t
those resources on). You can
resources and what are they spending them too powerful – it was simply being added to decks
even use ‘time’ in balancing,
on? Almost all mobile games are tracking by an event right before the final boss. such as powerful elements
analytics across thousands of players, but they tying up manufacturing while
can still work on a smaller scale. One pitfall PERCEPTION VS FACTS they’re built, or hordes requiring
to note is that if you change something big in Something else to consider is how much you multiple turns to deploy
your game it can invalidate your previous data, should even worry about balance problems, them all.
forcing you to flush it and start again. because addressing them takes up time you

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Balancing your game: why, when, and how

could be spending elsewhere. There are two

factors here: how big an impact the problem
WARGAMING has, and how many other elements will become
As an example of how your unbalanced if you adjust this one.
game’s rules affect balance,
If you consider it logically, an overpowered
consider a game where you
element is only a problem if it prevents your
deploy a powerful unit versus
several of my weak units. If I
players using other elements (as you effectively
Only studying one set of numbers may not have
wasted your time creating those elements, and


can only activate one of my revealed that Overwatch’s Mercy was too powerful.
units at a time, then you have players might get bored sticking to the best If possible, compare multiple sets of data.
the advantage: destroying choice). But rather than endlessly tweaking
mine each time for no loss. numbers you could instead have, the game forces
But if I can activate all my players to use different elements (must use when fired. But simply telling players they’re
units together, then I have the stealth, must snipe, must use acid), reducing how wrong and that something is definitely balanced
advantage, only losing one unit often they can use the overpowered element. seldom works. Even if you absolutely know
as I destroy yours. We covered
You can also control how long it takes players something is correct, if your players perceive it to
lessons from wargaming in
to get the element and be unbalanced then you
Wireframe 47 (wfmag.cc/47),
so check that out for ideas
how much ‘ammo’ it “You can make the should look for ways to
has, letting players enjoy act on it (not necessarily
on how force multiplication overpowered element
and overkill can be used in being overpowered in changing numbers but
balancing games. moderation. Finally, difficult to use” perhaps making it feel
you can make the more or less powerful).
overpowered element difficult for new players to See Valve’s Artifact for what happens when
use, restricting it to veterans who’ve explored the developers simply ignore player feedback in
alternatives first. relation to perceived problems…
The other aspect to consider is player
perception, because you’ll often find that it’s LIVING GAMES
less important how balanced something is While you might patch a finished game to address
compared to how balanced players perceive balance problems, ‘live’ service games introduce
it to be. For example, players complained that a new factor – the long-term metagame.
one of Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory’s submachine Metagaming is the choices players make outside
A late game event caused


a Slay the Spire card to guns was more powerful than the other, but they core gameplay (such as which character to pick
appear an ‘auto-include’, inflicted identical damage and the only difference or cards to include in their deck), and metagames
highlighting the
importance of considering was that one gun had a cooler sound effect inevitably evolve towards choosing the most
balance from multiple
angles before acting.
powerful options because doing so helps players
win more games. The longer you want your game
to live through updates, the more important it is
that your metagame continually shifts in order
to avoid stagnation. How you balance your game
can have a major impact here:

Artifact ’s long, complicated matches meant a



‘hardcore’ competitive player base, so player perception

of luck being too heavily involved was a problem.

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Balancing your game: why, when, and how

 ive, serviced games like

L


Destiny need to keep on
top of balance to ensure
1. Tone down overpowered elements. If your players always want the
latest set of weapons
players have worked out that an element is and armour.
too effective for its cost then you can simply
 long with their strengths,
A

lower the stats of that element to bring it into the characters in Team
line. Suddenly having their favourite choice Fortress 2 were designed
with clear weaknesses,
downgraded like this can upset players, but on ensuring none of them are
the default ‘best’ choice.
the other hand, it provides a constantly cycling
metagame rather than a gradually escalating
one, which can benefit games that you want to meta themselves, meaning your game can
keep alive for a long time. suffer stagnation if they fail to do this. FOCUS ON FUN
While you might provide
2. Boost underpowered elements. The HARD AND SOFT COUNTERS methods for players to balance
opposite approach is to increase the stats Rather than balancing through tweaking their own experience, you need
of underpowered elements to make them numbers, you can affect player choices by to ensure that the balanced way
viable. This approach keeps your metagame implementing hard or soft ‘counters’. Hard to play the game is also the fun
cycling without anything being downgraded counters completely shut down a particular thing that players want to do.
but inevitably leads to power creep as your strategy, while soft counters just give an Basketball is an interesting
numbers only ever go up. How long you can advantage against a strategy. An example hard example as it evolved its rules
sustain this growth before the gameplay counter is Command & Conquer: Red Alert’s flame to counteract key players
breaks determines if this is a problem. tank, which burns any number of infantry and dominating the game, but this
led to the pace of matches
so shuts down an opponent relying on troop-
slowing, so further rules were
3. Cycle elements out over time. The rush tactics. Soft counters are seen in fighting
added to speed things back up.
approach taken by real-world card games games, where fast, agile characters prevent slow The point is that throughout
like Magic: The Gathering is to only outright but powerful characters from dominating (with this, the NBA remained focused
ban elements that turn out to have egregious other characters, in turn, countering the fast on ensuring basketball was
balance issues, and otherwise just cycle out ones). Some esports even allow each side to ban exciting to watch – it’s no good
older elements as new ones are introduced. one choice before a match, forcing everyone to having a perfectly balanced
As this takes a while, it forces players to come master a range of options in case their preferred game that’s boring.
up with new strategies to balance the current choice is lost.

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Balancing your game: why, when, and how

 here’s a difference
T


between balance and

what players perceive as
fair. Watch Sid Meier’s BALANCING You can introduce elements of chance, meaning
2010 GDC keynote for
insights into ‘balancing MULTIPLAYER GAMES everyone has an equal likelihood of getting the
in the player’s favour’. So far, we’ve talked about balancing individual lucky break that helps them win. Naturally, this
elements in your game against each other, moves the game towards a casual audience until,
but what about balancing between players in at the extreme end, you get entirely chance-driven
a multiplayer game? Everything we’ve covered games like roulette or Mario Party.
in terms of dealing with overpowered or If it’s applicable, you can let players team up to
underpowered elements still applies, as does take on the leader together, and even win as an
metagaming (with players either flocking to alliance. We covered kingmaking in Wireframe 38
overpowered elements or (wfmag.cc/38), so check
UNBALANCED coming up with counters “Making it difficult to that out for more on this
to it), but now you also kind of balancing.
BALANCE work out who’s winning
have to manage that some If your game doesn’t
Though players complain about players are simply going can be effective” allow players to team up,
balance, they complain less
to be better at your game then making it difficult to
if something is unbalanced
than others. Obviously that’s not inherently bad, work out who’s winning can be effective because
in their favour. Warhammer
Combat Cards is an interesting
but games with no systems to help losing players it avoids having people who are far behind simply
case because while you’re catch up tend towards a competitive audience, giving up. Pokémon UNITE tells you who’s winning
playing against decks made by whereas including some balancing to help but not by how much, meaning it’s worth pushing
other players, they’re controlled stragglers can attract a casual player base. on in case you’re only just behind.
by an AI. This asynchronous 1v1 games generally include MMR (Match- A related idea is giving your game multiple
gameplay means we don’t need Making Ranking), which is an algorithm that tries win conditions, which complicates what players
players to have a 50/50 win/ to ensure players are paired with opponents of a need to think about but allows you to balance
loss ratio (as they’re not directly similar skill level to ensure a 50/50 win/loss ratio. each approach against each other so that if
matched against each other)
Good MMR systems are a topic all of their own, one player is dominating in a certain aspect,
and in fact our average player
so you’ll need to research them online, but one another player can still snatch a win. Counter-
wins 70 percent of their games.
We still get players complaining
thing they all have in common is they need data Strike’s bomb defusal victory condition is a good
that the game is unbalanced to work. They collect this by tracking your wins example because it allows players to get involved,
and they always lose, however, and losses across your time playing the game, even if they’re poorly armed or not very good
perhaps demonstrating that meaning they don’t work if your game simply at shooting.
people remember their losses allows a bunch of people to get together and Finally, we have the classic balancing method
more than the wins. play. There are techniques that can help balance of including catch-up mechanics that help players
players during a single game, though. who are lagging stay in contention, with the

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Balancing your game: why, when, and how

Wolfenstein: Youngblood


allows each co-op player
to set their own difficulty
iconic example being Mario Kart giving better level without affecting
their teammate, meaning
pick-ups to players at the back. The downside players can balance the
to this approach is that it may not sit well with game themselves.

competitive players, because no matter how

skilful you are, the game won’t let you get far
ahead. You could make catch-up optional, but
you could also take the opposite approach of COMMUNICATE
allowing the most skilled players to handicap
themselves in order to keep things competitive.  hile players will obviously want to use the most
W CHANGES


powerful element in a game, encouraging or forcing

If you’re balancing a living
You can take this a step further by giving more them to use varied options keeps gameplay fresh.
game, then communicate
rewards to players who deliberately disadvantage
what you’re doing (and more
themselves, introducing a gambling aspect of
importantly, why you’re doing
greater risk for greater reward. playing the game because it’s no fun). Therefore it) to your players. They don’t
it’s in our interest as developers to ensure there’s generally have the game’s
NO SHORTCUTS no single ‘best’ option in our game, forcing long-term health in mind and
Players are inevitably going to choose their players to use a range of elements and, in doing so can get upset when forced
favourite characters, weapons, or vehicles so, keep having fun. to adapt their tactics, but even
from your game for a range of reasons, such Hopefully you can see why balancing your if you can’t force players to
as aesthetics or ease of use. That’s great, game’s elements against each other and like balance changes, you
can at least ensure they know
but there’s also a psychological factor called balancing different player skill levels is important,
why they’re happening. As an
‘medium maximisation’ involved here, and that’s though as mentioned at the beginning, the goal
extreme example, Riot put out
the reason we try to ensure each element is is to provide a range of interesting choices and
a changelog of how they were
vaguely balanced. Medium maximisation is the counters over a perfectly balanced but bland downgrading an overpowered
tendency for players to forget about having fun experience. There are no easy shortcuts here – it character but failed to actually
in the pursuit of winning. It means they’ll find simply boils down to studying your game as much make the change. That
and use overpowered elements that allow them as possible. But on the plus side, if someone’s character’s pick – and win –
to win, even if doing so makes the game boring complaining about balance issues, then you know rate went down anyway!
or repetitive (ironically leading players to stop they’re engaged by your game!

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 Toolbox
Advice

The principles
of game design
As the Atari 2600 nears its 45th anniversary,
Howard ponders its impact and lasting legacy

AUTHOR
HOWARD SCOTT WARSHAW
Howard is a video game pioneer who authored several of Atari’s most
famous and infamous titles. His new book, Once Upon Atari: How I Made
History by Killing an Industry, is out now. onceuponatari.com

A
reporter asked me recently: “Why speaking engagements (the prose and cons of
do you think the Atari 2600 is so video game history).
fondly remembered by people But here’s the thing: Atari’s remembered
today?” Which, in turn, brought by gamers because retro gaming is a big deal
to mind a recent incident. While now – largely because video games have lasted
chitchatting with a salesperson, it came out long enough that ‘retro’ and ‘current’ are no
that I’d published a book. “Oh? What’s it called?” longer the same thing. When I was making
they asked. these games there wasn’t any history. There was
“Once Upon Atari.” no such thing as an oldie. Every game was a
“Tari? What’s a tari?” So apparently, the newie. Now there is a history, and whenever
console isn’t universally remembered, let alone there’s a history, people tend to look for origins.
fondly. My god! It never occurred to me that Where did these things come from? And that
someone wouldn’t recognise the name Atari. takes people to the 2600.
Every once in a while a brand gets so big they Sure, there were games before the 2600, but
become the product identifier. Coke is one. the 2600 was the first system that really put
Kleenex is another. There was a time when Atari games out in the world. The 2600 sold in the
was that, too. It’s no mystery how that comes to millions! It was the first time any gaming system
be: a product completely takes over a market was that widely distributed, and it became
 ASIC Programming
B and becomes iconic (hopefully through quality the cornerstone of home gaming. Coin-ops


helped 2600 owners learn

how to code…
rather than advertising). both pre-dated and post-dated the 2600.
By 1979, Atari was the identifier for video The products were better and more elaborate
 although actually writing
…
games. “Let’s go play Atari”. Did you get Pitfall! than the 2600. But while arcade gaming kept


programs required users

to get to grips with these for your Atari? I’m part of a generation that turning over and turning over and turning over,
chunky controllers.
never saw a video game until adulthood. The the 2600 became a mainstay in homes for many
next generation watched Atari take over the years. It was really the mark of home gaming,
world. Now, everyone knows all about video and home computing. In fact, I believe the 2600
games, but there are adults who drink Coke, use did more to put computers in homes than any
Kleenex and have never heard of Atari. In only other PC or tech product. Because when people
two generations it went from world domination need an excuse to buy something useful, making
to forgotten lore. A mighty fall, and a quick it fun is always the best inducement.
one. But Atari was all about working fast. And Putting computers in homes, however, wasn’t
although there certainly are adults who don’t the greatest change that video games brought
know the brand, many still do. I do my part to about. Here’s the biggest one: video games
preserve the legend through my writing and turned television from a passive medium to

64 / wfmag.cc
 Toolbox
Advice

an active one. Thanks to video games, you’re 

 ds in magazines and
A
on television helped
no longer the zombie on the couch passively turn the Atari 2600 into
staring at the box: now you’re the zombie with a the Coca-Cola of its day.
controller actively yelling at the box. Change TV
and you change the world!
Think about it: what does it mean to change when tempered with reason and a bit of co-
the passive to the active? It gives people a sense operative nature. But I think it’s important for
of having an impact on their world. It gives prior generations to acknowledge that growing FIRST AND LAST
people the sense that they can change their up with a sense of being able to change things is Where was your first video
world, beyond just changing channels. There are very different from growing up with a pervasive game experience? In a noisy
lots of things that have stood for a long time as sense of not being able to change things. It’s a arcade with greasy pizza
immutable, impervious to change. This may have very different experience, and it leads to a very fingers on the controls? In
contributed to creating a world-view for many different world-view. Video games did this! your pyjamas on Christmas
morning, lying on the floor? At
of, “I’m ineffectual. Things can’t be changed. And they’re still doing it. Gamification of
a friend’s house, because they
You can’t fight City Hall.” tasks and open architectures increasingly let us
were the first in your friend
These days I hear a lot of discussion about create the world (or key pieces of it) as we want.
group to own a game system?
Millennials and Gen Zers, specifically about how And there at the head of this parade of social Mine was in the lobby of a
the world should adapt reform is the old reliable movie theatre. It was a brand-
to them rather than the “What does it mean Atari 2600, leading the new Atari Asteroids cabinet.
other way round. Boomers way. Of course, this is all I didn’t even know the enemy
and Gen Xers often bristle
to change the passive just my humble opinion. saucers were called Sluggo.
at this perceived sense of to the active?” Despite all my degrees, What do you think your last
entitlement. Well, here’s I never took a sociology game will be like?
another thing about Millennials and Gen Zers: course, so I don’t want to get too far afield.
they’re the first generations to grow up with What’s so great about the Atari VCS? It was
predominantly interactive media as opposed to the first! For an entire generation, Atari was the
passive media. Prior generations complain these gateway to a lifetime’s gaming. The following
‘kids’ have their own view of how things ought generation, born after the 2600 was gone, still
to be and just want everything their way, and it maintains an awareness of the industry’s roots by
may be true in many cases. But it’s also true that playing those early games on emulators and retro
Millennials and Gen Zers have grown up with systems. The search for origins grows deeper
customisable interfaces, affording them the ability with each passing decade. Do you remember the
to mould their environment as they prefer it first time you got to play a game? Of course you
to be. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially do, because you never forget your first time.

wfmag.cc \ 65
 Toolbox
Source Code

Guitar Hero, while


hugely popular on the
PS2, also had versions on
numerous other
Source Code consoles and computers.

Make a Guitar Hero-style

rhythm action game
AUTHOR
MARK VANSTONE Channel your inner rock god with our plucky homage

I
n 2005, a new game let players letters Z, X, C, V, and B as the five buttons. means the player can get ready to play the
live out their rock star fantasies. Then we’ll use the SPACE bar to strum the note as it comes down the fretboard, press
Having already made specialised notes as they arrive at the bottom of the the appropriate button just before it gets
game controllers for Konami, fretboard. We can make a list of Actors for to the bottom target, and if they press the
American firm RedOctane enlisted the coloured circles which we’ll then move SPACE bar as the coloured circle goes over
the help of Harmonix to help them create down the screen every time update() is the target, we fire off a ‘shine’ animation to
Guitar Hero: a game where the aim was to called. We have five strings numbered 0 indicate they’ve scored points. We can give
play along with a music track by hitting the to 4 to attach our coloured circles to, and them a little leeway so that they don’t have
right buttons on a guitar-shaped controller. these need to be organised so they hit to be too precise with the SPACE bar press.
The game was an instant hit, spawning over the bottom target points exactly when the To make the music sample easy to play
20 sequels and spin-offs over the course of note plays. along with, I’ve edited a shortened version
around five years. We don’t want the coloured circles to get of one of my own fairly slow songs where
The guitar controller featured five out of sync with the music, so the timing of the player plays the bassline. There are a
coloured buttons representing different the movement is key. We must make sure couple of tricky bits in it, but you should
notes, a strumming bar that had to be hit that the speed is consistent, regardless be able to hit all the notes without too
in time with the notes being played, and of the speed of computer or other things many attempts. You can use any MP3 or
a whammy bar to change the pitch of the going on which may make the frame rate WAV file for this, just drop it in the music
notes. The buttons corresponded with a change. To do this, we need to work out directory and change the line that reads
scrolling display of coloured circles that the time between each frame, known as music.play_once(‘themoment’). Then all you
moved down the screen as the music the delta time, and then move the coloured need to do is change the timings in the
played. If the player ‘strummed’ the guitar circles based on that value. If you’re using counterPoints list.
at the correct time while holding down the your own music for the backing track, There are other things that you could
correct coloured button, they scored points you may need to play around with these add, like having error notes play if the
and kept the (virtual) audience entertained. values, but the way this sample is set up, wrong buttons are held down. There’s also
For our Pygame Zero version, we the tuples in the counterPoints list are the that whammy bar on the original controller
don’t have access to a custom-designed string number and then the number of that may require a bit of lateral thinking to
controller, so we’ll have to use a standard seconds at which the note should be played replicate on a keyboard, but we’ll leave that
computer keyboard. We can set up the from the beginning of the song. This setup challenge to you.

66 / wfmag.cc
 Toolbox
Source Code

Download

Python Hero the code

from GitHub:
wfmag.cc/
Here’s Mark’s code for a Guitar Hero -like rhythm action game. To get it running on your system, wfmag62
you’ll first need to install Pygame Zero. Full instructions can be found at wfmag.cc/pgzero.

# Guitar Hero
import pgzrun def on_key_down(key):
import time if key.name == “SPACE”:
for c in counters:
curTime = time.time() if c.y > 490 and c.y < 525:
deltaTime = 0 if c.x == 300 and keyboard.z: noteCorrect(0)
startTime = 0 if c.x == 350 and keyboard.x: noteCorrect(1)
score = 0 if c.x == 400 and keyboard.c: noteCorrect(2)
bps = 100.5 if c.x == 450 and keyboard.v: noteCorrect(3)
firstTime = True if c.x == 500 and keyboard.b: noteCorrect(4)
counters = []
shine = [0,0,0,0,0] def drawCounters():
counterPoints = [(2,9.3),(0,11.5),(3,13.8),(1,16.2),(2,18.5),(0,20.7), for c in counters:
(2,23),(0,25),(3,27.6),(1,29.8),(2,32.1),(0,34.5), if c.y < 520 and c.y > -20:
(4,36.6),(1,38.9),(3,41),(1,43.5),(2,44.6),(3,45.7),(0 c.draw()
,48),
(4,50.3),(1,52.5),(1,53.5),(2,53.9),(3,54.5), def updateCounters():
(4,54.8),(2,57.1),(4,59.4),(2,61.7),(4,64.1),(2,66.6), for c in counters:
(0,69.8) c.y += (bps/2)*deltaTime
]
for c in counterPoints: def noteCorrect(column):
counters.append(Actor(‘counter’+str(c[0]), center=(300+(c[0]*50), global score
(c[1]-9.9)*-50))) shine[column] = 10
counters[len(counters)-1].state = 1 score += 10

def draw(): pgzrun.go()

screen.blit(“background”, (0, 0))
drawCounters()
screen.blit(“fade”, (0, 0))
for s in range(0,5):
if shine[s] > 0:
screen.blit(“shine”, (230+(s*50), 450))
shine[s] -= 1
screen.draw.text(“SCORE:”+str(score), center= (400,575), owidth=0.5,
ocolor=(255,255,255), color=(0,0,255) , fontsize=40)
if curTime - startTime > 70:
screen.draw.text(“WELL DONE! YOU ARE A”, center= (400,280),
owidth=0.5, ocolor=(255,255,255), color=(255,0,0) , fontsize=40)
screen.draw.text(“PYGAME ZERO HERO”, center= (400,320),
owidth=0.5, ocolor=(255,255,255), color=(255,0,0) , fontsize=40)

def update():
global deltaTime, curTime, firstTime, startTime
if firstTime:
music.play_once(‘themoment’)
startTime = time.time()
firstTime = False
deltaTime = time.time()-curTime
curTime = time.time()
updateCounters() Our rocking Pygame Zero homage to Guitar Hero.


wfmag.cc \ 67
 Interface
Gallery

REA
Soundfall MORD E
turn to
page 18
In keeping with the variety of its soundtrack,
Soundfall opts for a vibrant colour palette that also
reflects the bombastic stylings of its top-down action.
True, coating everything in neon has been a popular proven
strategy for twin-stick shooters before, yet here it’s a visual flourish
used to heighten the natural characteristics of Symphonia’s ten
distinct areas, as opposed to a crutch. “[They] were designed
with a genre of music and a family of instruments in mind,” says
creative director Nick Cooper. “For example, we have a metal-and-
drumming-centric volcano level, and a techno-and-computers-
centric cityscape level.” Such creativity also translates to the five
playable Soundfall characters you can see here, which also sport
luminous weapons and attire based on their instrument of choice.

68 / wfmag.cc
 Interface
Gallery

GAME
Soundfall
DEVELOPER
Drastic Games
RELEASE
2022
WEBSITE
soundfallgame.com

wfmag.cc \ 69
 Interface
Beyond synthwave

WE TALK TO THE DEVELOPERS WHO’VE LOOKED BEYOND

THE OBVIOUS CLICHÉS FOR THEIR 1980S-SET GAMES
WRITTEN BY
DAN COOPER
arish neon lighting. Muscle- Such games as 2002’s Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

G bound action stars wielding guns.

These are just some of the clichés
commonly associated with the
1980s – a decade synonymous
and, at the other end of the budget spectrum,
2012’s Hotline Miami, were both big hits, serving
up depictions of the era that were respectively
about amassing personal power and wealth, and
with excess. Stock-markets surged. Shoulder- simple, bloody vengeance. Those stories were
padded suits were cool for reasons long callbacks to the era’s cinema, such as 1983’s
since lost to time. Bigger was better, and that Scarface or later entries in the Death Wish series.
ethos extended into every aspect of culture: But while the self-interest that drove those
economies, fashion, movies, music, and video stories no doubt reflected the prevailing mood
 The peep show in the games all coalesced into a dizzying spiral of individualism that typified the eighties, they
background reflects
the seedier side of of materialism. left little room for nuance. Rather than explore
New York, an era now The 1980s is widely regarded as an era the 1980s in depth, they instead revelled in
lost to time.
stuffed full of splashy, shallow thrills, so it’s little glossy, violent nostalgia.
 ever has a ZX
N
surprise that so many high-profile games set in


Spectrum loading
screen seemed more that decade tend to highlight its shallowness. ALL SURFACE?
terrifying than in
Stories Untold. In the years since, however, developers have
attempted to present alternative takes on the
decade. These titles chart less obvious paths
in their quest to discover what else the 1980s
has to offer beyond shallow satire. For Jos
Bouman, the creative director of last year’s
Lake, the aim of making a game that would
allow players to relax made the 1980s a logical
setting. “We established that we wanted to tell
a story set in a world without mobile phones
or the internet,” explains Bouman, part of the
Dutch development team, Gamious. “Because
of our age, it seemed logical to create a game
whose setting we knew. A couple of people in
the development team grew up in the eighties,
and it’s a very interesting time – a watershed

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Beyond synthwave

wfmag.cc \ 71
 Interface
Beyond synthwave

 oody lighting and

M


foreboding sounds… text

adventures in the 1980s
were never this sinister.

Imagine Lake as a


sort of zen GTA and

you’re halfway there.
decade where we’d taken one step into the
 Some of the digital world while the other foot was still in the
residents of Lake
would like to get to non-digital world.”
know you better Lake is therefore the polar opposite of the
than others…
1980s depicted in Vice City: here, there are
no guns, car chases, or neon signs. Instead, it
depicts a charmingly humdrum, analogue world
that’s far less hectic than our own. Instead of
I n Lake, Meredith social media, there are answer machines. In


gives up the place of Netflix, there’s a video store. Its story

trappings of big
city success to find sees successful, 40-something programmer
a more peaceful
existence.
Meredith Weiss leaving her work in the city
behind for a two-week holiday in her quiet,
picturesque childhood town in Oregon.
There’s something comforting about trundling
along in Meredith’s postal van, stopping to place
parcels and letters in the hands of the local
residents whom she gets to know as the plot
unfolds. Where our contemporary existence is
filled with increasingly inhuman transactions –
contactless card payments, scrolling through
emails, stilted conversations with robotic voice
assistants – Meredith’s role as the local postal
worker places her squarely in the lives of the
local residents, and much of the game is about
friendship and face-to-face conversation.
“Lake enables you to go back to a time
where people really took more time to interact
with each other meaningfully,” says Bouman.
“We didn’t really set out with a mission to do
this, but as the game developed, the difference
between the way things were and the way they
are now became clearer and clearer.”

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Beyond synthwave

humanity in what Miąsik describes as “boring,

routine tasks” – handing out parking tickets,
questioning witnesses, and arresting petty
criminals. Like Weappy Studio’s 2016 adventure,
This Is the Police and, to a lesser extent, Team
Bondi’s 1940s-set thriller L.A. Noire, Beat Cop
uses routine and repetition as a means of
exploring and understanding the game’s world.
“Jack Kelly has more down-to-earth problems,
most of which he has to solve by running down
the street and almost losing his hat,” Miąsik

GTA: Vice City is a Lake harks back to a time says. “In his world, there’s no place for stunts


legendary title, when physical human or spectacular shootouts, and there are a lot Beat Cop adopts the


but does little to interactions formed the classic iconography of
scratch beneath foundation of relationships, of boring, routine tasks that become a real 1980s NYPD, seen in
the veneer of including how you received challenge in the game, just like in real life.” everything from Police
eighties cool. your mail. Academy to Hill Street
Blues.
FIGURE IT OUT White suits? White


The old-fashioned notion of getting involved Although celebrated for its stylish adoption of sofas? Pink neon text?
Hotline Miami draws
in the lives of strangers was an idea that Polish eighties trappings, its plethora of map icons, heavily from the eighties
developer Pixel Crow wanted to explore in its waypoints and on-screen instructions mean few synthwave aesthetic.
own game. Released would accuse GTA:
in 2017, Beat Cop is a “Lake goes back to a time Vice City of leaving the
detective adventure player to figure out
that sees you take on
when people interacted things for themselves.
the role of 1980s New more with each other” A game set in the
York cop Jack Kelly 1980s it may be, but
as he regularly patrols a single street, getting a game rooted in the design sensibilities of
to know the residents and their daily struggles. the 1980s? Not so much. One studio that’s
As he does so, he slowly earns their trust – explored the gameplay potential in blending an
which comes in handy when he’s framed for eighties setting with the decade’s unforgiving
murder and has to use his skills to find out who philosophy towards game design is No Code, the
really committed the crime. Scottish studio behind 2017’s critically lauded
Much like the postal service, law enforcement series, Stories Untold. In each of Stories Untold’s
in 2022 is radically different from the 1980s. quartet of adventure puzzlers, the player
Remote surveillance, shrinking budgets, and
targeted profiling has meant that policing has
become increasingly faceless, with officers
walking regular beats becoming an increasingly
rare sight on modern streets. Pixel Crow
wanted to tap into the gameplay potential of TESTED TO DEATH
an old-school beat cop, whom players warm to Jon McKellan believes that, although eighties computer games may be
through his interactions with others. “Even if our outdated, their unforgiving nature still has much to teach us. “If you want
protagonist is just a dozen or so pixels on the that experience of wanting to figure stuff out for yourself, I don’t really feel
screen, we want the player to get to know him, there’ s much out there at the moment that lets you do that. Most games have
help pushed on you as part of the user experience; they feel focus-tested to
empathise with him, understand his motivations,
death to make sure there’s no friction for the player. That’s great, but you’re
and be able to guide him within this little
also stripping away a big part of player agency and player discovery, and I
simulation,” says designer, programmer, and feel that’s important. I’m not trying to be the old man yelling at clouds, but an
studio co-founder Maciej Miąsik. important part of the gaming experience feels like it’s largely been lost.”
Again, there’s a contrast here to the gaudier,
flashier violence of GTA: Vice City. Beat Cop finds

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Beyond synthwave

LOST IN THE EIGHTIES

With their focus on spectacle and high-concept ideas, movies from the
1980s have an enduring appeal, and still influence game designers today.
So what movies most influenced the creative minds behind Lake and Beat “We loved this idea of being sat in front of a
Cop? “Nothing could beat Ghostbusters for the ten-year-old kid I was when
bunch of old equipment and being asked to
it came out,” says Lake’s Jos Bouman. “And although the special effects
use it, yet not really knowing how to [do that],”
don’t really hold up – which is a treat on its own – the fast-paced story, the
recalls McKellan. “And so the player has to prod
comedy, and the performances are still solid gold.”
their way around. With the exception of maybe
Predictably, Beat Cop developer Maciej Miąsik’s favourite eighties films Elden Ring and the Souls games, modern gaming
have a law enforcement theme – he still fondly remembers “the Police doesn’t really let you do that anymore. Back then,
Academy series, Beverly Hills Cop, and various police and detective films games didn’t hold your hand so much, you
we watched from pirate copies on VHS cassettes, or TV series which were really sometimes didn’t understand how to even
sometimes shown on national television. Often, they were shown with a play and you’d spend hours and hours trying
considerable delay, so we watched a lot of this in the nineties instead.”
to learn what the game actually wanted you
to do. In modern gaming there’s only really the
FromSoftware games that I can think of that buck
 ust another day on the
J that trend and say ‘you learn’, which is cool.”


job for Officer Jack Kelly.

Beat Cop packs a The first encounter in Stories Untold’s
surprising amount of
visual information into its
finds themselves seated at a period-accurate anthology of nightmarish tales seats the player
sprite-based scenes. computer, and is simply left to figure out where in front of a ‘Futuro 128K +2’ – a nod to the ZX
to go from there. It’s No Code’s contemporary Spectrum. For any eighties Spectrum user who
take on that most retro of genres, the text persevered through an hour of programming
adventure, albeit with an ingenious and terrifying in BASIC, only to be met by the dreaded ‘syntax
twist: as you interact with the parser on the error’ message, a DIY approach to problem-
computer screen, eerie things begin to happen solving, along with a generous dollop of
in the game world around you. resilience, was simply part of the fun.
As a veteran of 8-bit text adventures himself, McKellan once worked on 2014’s Alien:
Jon McKellan, creative director at No Code, Isolation, so he understood the appeal of the
understands the satisfaction that comes from the grungy, lo-fi technological aesthetic seen in
genre’s lack of hand-holding – which is something the film it’s closely based on, 1979’s Alien, as
that formed the nucleus for Stories Untold. well as its potential as a gameplay mechanic.

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Beyond synthwave

 he interfaces you engage with become more complex

T


as Stories Untold… unfolds.

Yakuza 0 basks in the


bustle of bubble-economy
1980s Japan, with playable
arcade machines from
Sega’s glory days waiting to
“Part of the puzzle should be trying to figure out by Miąsik, who argues that more developers be tracked down.
if there is a puzzle, and what that puzzle is,” he should try to “show the world as it is, not
 ith its day-glo colours
W


says. “That’s a big part of what it was like to use as we would like it to be”. He also believes and straight-to-VHS
trappings, Far Cry 3: Blood
games and computers back then. You didn’t that depictions of the decade give developers Dragon offered a playful
have the internet, you didn’t have an easy way to the “freedom to address topics that are checklist of 1980s clichés.
figure out problems, you had to feel it out, and currently problematic”.
that’s something we wanted to get players back McKellan, meanwhile, agrees that while
into doing.” “pink neon grids and palm trees” are a likeable,
And while nostalgia will always be a powerful immediately recognisable aesthetic, there’s far
tool for creators to harness, especially in video more power in presenting the 1980s as the
games, Stories Untold also proves that a lingering decade actually was for the people who lived
affection for the 1980s and its chunky tech is through it. “A lot of games present this neon,
something that can be used synthwave version of the
to unsettle players. “A big “It wasn’t neon; eighties,” he laughs, “which is
part of our game’s concept not the decade I remember.
was to weaponise nostalgia,”
it was pretty grim It wasn’t neon; it was pretty
says McKellan, “to take these and grey” grim and grey, and football
things that some of us have shorts were really small. I
grown up with, like Spectrum computers, and grew up in a north-east Glasgow council estate,
use that to lull the player, so the things you and it wasn’t neon. I wanted to make a game
remember and have good associations with that touched on that.”
become a bit subversive and creepier.” Ultimately, if video games are going to be
recognised as an art form equal to its older
THE EIGHTIES REBORN cousins, cinema and literature, then the
The success of Stories Untold, Beat Cop, and Lake medium’s period pieces need to be similarly
prove there’s an appetite for games set in the sophisticated, whether they’re harnessing a
1980s that go for more than shallow aesthetic bygone era for sincerity, subversion, or social
appeal; as Bouman says of Lake, he and his and political commentary. In the two decades
team wanted to make an eighties set-game “that since GTA: Vice City skated the surface of the
felt sincere”. 1980s, however, Lake, Stories Untold, and Beat
There’s also the argument that the 1980s Cop prove that video game representations
has a texture and richness that video games of the decade are becoming increasingly
have yet to fully explore – a sentiment echoed sophisticated, complex, and real.

wfmag.cc \ 75
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 Interface
Interactive

Interactive / Pompom
Willem Rosenthal tells us all about his zany love
Are you a solo
developer working letter to the SNES era of action platformers
on a game you

I
want to share with
Wireframe? If you’d f the screenshots dotted around these Rosenthal’s affection for the SNES era goes
like to have your pages make you think of the Super beyond its visuals, too. Long before complex 3D
project featured in
these pages, get Nintendo era – a time that brought worlds and detailed character models forced
in touch with us at us such 16-bit gems as Super Mario studios to expand both their design staff and their
wfmag.cc/hello World and A Link to the Past – that’s budgets, making games was much closer to that
because Massachusetts-based developer Willem of a modern indie developer. “That era is special
Rosenthal has consciously modelled Pompom on to me because, back then, games were still made
that system and its games. “My goal was to have by small teams and driven entirely by individual
it fit perfectly as an early SNES game,” Rosenthal ideas and creativity rather than established game
says of his 2D platformer. “I took a lot of visual design philosophies,” says Rosenthal. “To me, the
inspiration from the SNES games from 1990 to idea of a modern design rule set, like the concept
“ My goal was to bring 1993, with Super Mario World by far being the of the ‘game loop’, only serves to create samey


something new to every level, biggest visual inspiration. I wanted it to feel like a games. In my eyes, those sorts of concepts were
so I always began with a new
concept, enemy, or gimmick,” game made by the same art director.” thought up really to create serotonin feedback
Rosenthal says of Pompom’s
stage design.
loops to keep players playing for longer, not to
actually create fun or unique experiences.”
Rosenthal takes a somewhat traditional
approach to game design, then, but that doesn’t
mean he doesn’t use distinctly modern tools
for his work. “Pompom’s made in Unity; a lot of
folks are surprised by that, I think because of the
retro-2D design,” he says. “It’s definitely true that
in some ways you have to fight against Unity’s
3D nature to get a retro-styled game, but it’s
honestly been a great engine to work in. All the
sprite work is done in Photoshop, just drawing
pixel by pixel. I think there’s probably better
tools out there, but due to my background in
illustration, Photoshop is just what I’m most
comfortable using!”

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Interactive

Fans of Super Mario World



will likely recognise these

insistent nods to that game’s
Ghost House stages.

Pompom began life four years ago as a game still retains the complexity and size of a full-sized
jam project called Walkie Tori. Tasked with taking game, yet fits within the strict limitations of
an existing game genre and then “removing a something that could exist on the SNES.” LIME WIRE
major mechanic” associated with it, Rosenthal Not that Pompom is lacking in ambition itself: If you’re looking for a further
came up with an action-platformer where the there are some 60 stages in total, and Rosenthal showcase for Rosenthal and
his prowess as a pixel artist,
player has no direct control over the central has evidently put a lot of time and effort into check out the stunning trailer
character: instead, they have to drop objects those sumptuous SNES-like stages. “Every level for Go Go Kudamono (wfmag.
like blocks and springs in the hapless critter’s has something unique; some levels have entirely cc/kudamono). About a regal
path so that they don’t unique art, enemies, and lime (yes, the actual fruit) on
a quest to save his kingdom
fall into deadly pits. It’s a “The concept of the mechanics that are never
from insect military rule, it’s
concept that recalls such seen again in the game. a Technicolor brawler-RPG
nineties titles as Lemmings
‘game loop’ only serves This sort of variety is really hybrid with some captivating
or Mario & Wario, but to create samey games” fun to create, but also animation and character
Rosenthal points out a demands constant creative designs. “I was shooting for
a very high-fidelity action-
marked difference in his own game. “To me, energy and is time-consuming to produce. Most adventure,” Rosenthal explains.
those are really puzzle games with some action games recycle their content again and again, so “It was a very ambitious and
elements, whereas my goal was to make a game always staying fresh and creating new ideas for complex project with many
with as much action as a typical Mario adventure every level was definitely a challenge.” mechanics and detailed
animations and visuals.”
that just happened to not allow you to control Available on Steam now, Pompom’s already
Go Go Kudamono was put on
the character.” garnering positive reviews from players; and
hold while Rosenthal worked
After Rosenthal finished Walkie Tori, he then behind the scenes, Rosenthal is working away on Pompom, but fear not: the
moved on to making another retro-inspired title, at ports to other systems. “I’m working on the game’s still set to emerge, just
Go Go Kudamono (see box). When that game’s Switch version now,” he tells us. “After that, who not for a while. Says Rosenthal:
sheer scale began to take its toll, Rosenthal knows? Where else it goes will depend on how “I hope to get back to it once
Pompom’s Switch version is
decided to start a smaller project as a palette the game performs on Switch.”
complete. It’s a massive game,
cleanser – which is where Pompom, about a so I think there’s still at least
hamster traversing a series of increasingly one year of development left for
dangerous levels, came in. “When Covid began, it. I really wanted to create an
experience that has the depth
I’d already been working on Go Go Kudamono
of a Final Fantasy game but
for two or three years, so I decided to take a with action-arcade combat, so
break to develop Walkie Tori into a full game,” obviously that’s a lot for a one-
Rosenthal explains. “All of my experience from man team. All I can say now is
art and coding on Go Go Kudamono carried that it’s come along really well,
and I think the final product is
over, but the idea was to make something that
going to really excite people.”
was sort of the opposite of Go Go Kudamono.
Pompom is an intentionally lo-fi experience that

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Interactive

Interactive / Fish Cymophis

One developer’s mission to make the underwater world
Are you a solo
developer working even more terrifying in a fishy brand of retro horror
on a game you

H
want to share with
Wireframe? If you’d ardware limitations have long forced Cymophis, a sinister fishing simulator where you
like to have your developers to come up with creative explore a lake full of deadly wildlife.
project featured in
these pages, get workarounds, with the horror genre “I really liked the concept of a horror game that
in touch with us at being a particularly fertile ground takes the guise of a different genre and uses their
wfmag.cc/hello in the days of PlayStation and mechanics in clever ways,” Richards says of Fish
Nintendo 64. Titles like Shadow Man, Nightmare Cymophis’ unique genre fusion.
Creatures, and the original Resident Evil used their Beginning life as a simple game jam project
host platforms to haunting effect, with technical designed to follow the theme ‘fear of submerged
The lo-fi look of restrictions such as poor draw distances, long objects’, Fish Cymophis was originally inspired


Fish Cymophis load times, and low-resolution textures all adding by a broader selection of hunting games before
gave Richards free
reign to get to their scares. It’s exactly this vibe that solo Richards opted to concentrate purely on fishing.
creative with the
creature designs.
developer Jonny Richards has tapped into for This allowed him to keep the game’s scope
his suite of short horror games. His latest is Fish manageable, with the story focusing on the
horrors that lurk in the depths of Cradle Lake.
The environment’s broken up into four distinct
areas, each one comprising different creatures
that the player will have to confront and catch.
“Each level’s environment is mostly underwater,”
says Richards, “which the player can’t see from
their boat. But by casting their lure into the water,
the player’s able to explore each level’s creepy
environment through the fishing lure’s point of
view as they fish.”
True to its horror theme, the act of fishing
is fraught with tension, too. “While fishing, the
player’s also vulnerable, as they can’t move or
drive away from danger,” Richards explains.
“This can create tense gameplay and allow for

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Interactive

“ The game’s primarily a



horror, and each level will

have a shift in gameplay
to ramp up that part of
the experience. But fishing
is still at the game’s core,”
says Richards.

some unique ways to scare the player with what

they see or catch in the water, and what might
attack them on the surface.”
I n between the routine frights, players will be able to


BIG FISH, SMALL POND use different types of lure to attract specific fish.
Where most fishing games are at least somewhat
relaxing, Fish Cymophis will instead use its angling
mechanics to build suspense. Equipped with just But what is it about the low-poly aesthetic
a rod and a small but manoeuvrable motorboat, that’s so scary? Often, according to Richards, it’s
you’ll need to work out how best to use the to do with what players can’t see. “It can leave GETTING THE
game’s wide selection of lures before you even more to the player’s imagination,” he says, “which PSONE LOOK
think about navigating the dangers of the lake. usually ends up being scarier than anything Making a game look retro is
Fish Cymophis won’t see your character drown the developer could make.” The retro look also common practice these days,
but making Fish Cymophis
(swimming isn’t even allows for more outlandish
look authentically PSone-
a mechanic here), but “It may be unsettling creature designs, he adds. like posed a few challenges.
water’s depth still plays “I believe the style also “One important element is
into the fright factor.
for people who have a allows for exploring crazier putting all the details into the
“As you drive the boat, fear of water” ideas or monster designs texture rather than the model,
which are kept as low poly as
there’s an in-game tool which would be more possible,” says Richards. “The
that displays the depth of the water you’re difficult to explore in a more realistic style without textures are then also kept
floating over,” Richards says. “I’ve found it can breaking player immersion – especially for lower at a low resolution and made
give a really immersive feeling of being over deep budget games.” using photos, painted by hand,
or a little of both. Using post-
waters when you see it reaching its max value of Richards has been hard at work on Fish
processing can [also] get you
32-plus feet. It may be unsettling for people who Cymophis for six months now, honing the horror really far: making the screen
have a fear of water.” skills he first gained working on his earlier work a slightly lower resolution,
Like those low-poly nineties games mentioned released on itch.io: the Christmas-themed lowering its colour depth, and
adding dithering. Otherwise just
earlier, Fish Cymophis also uses its retro look to TORNUKTU, and the playground chiller, Slide in the
keep the lighting simple and
scary effect: uncovering Cradle Lake’s mysteries woods. With Fish Cymophis, he hopes to scare a turn off shadow casting. For
will mean journeying through darkness and wider audience by bringing the game to Steam. [the] PSone-look specifically,
thick digital fog. Richards says the final game And while its unique pairing of survival horror and there are some other fun
will include plenty of graphics settings to let fishing simulation might seem like an odd one at effects such as vertex jitter or
wobble, UV warping – textures
players mimic the look of older consoles to their first, Richards insists that the end result will be
distorting when you get close –
desired degree, but however it’s tweaked, Fish as terrifying as it is unusual. “I want people to be and vertex lighting.”
Cymophis will always retain the look of an angular, surprised by how much a fishing game was able
underwater haunted house. to scare them,” he says.

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Getting into games

GETTING INTO GAMES

How I became a…
QA analyst
Pieces Interactive’s Helena Hansen tells us about
the important art of Quality Assurance

What was the game that first made you want how animations, characters, and 3D assets are
to get into gaming? made, and delved deeper into the material and
I’ve had an interest in games for as long as I pipeline for game development. I knew someone
can remember. While I grew up, my interest who worked at Pieces Interactive who referred
in games was mostly of a simpler design like me to their open Quality Assurance position once
Disney’s Dinosaur on the PC. When I played Tomb I graduated, which is the job I still have today.
Raider III for the first time when I was seven, it Networking definitely played a big part!
definitely woke up an interest in me that I didn’t
have before. I found myself sympathising with the What was the first game you worked on
“Nobody’s main character and getting lost for hours in the professionally and are you still proud of it?
incredible level design. This definitely sparked an The game I’m working on now is the first I’ve
perfect, interest in how games are made! worked on professionally. But at university I got
and the some great opportunities to work on games and
How did you break into this industry? implementations that I’m still proud of. I was
journey It was a mixture of networking and education. working with a group that created a virtual reality
I got a Master’s degree in Medialogy at Aalborg experience for indigenous people in Namibia,
to game
University in Denmark, which provided me with where they could experience some of their own
dev isn’t, the toolset to research, implement, and evaluate cultural heritage, as they don’t have access to the
games. In my spare time, I started looking into same resources we do. I think you should always
either” take pride in your work, learn from it, and carry
that knowledge on to the next. It’s always great to
look back and think, ‘I really did that’.

Did you always want to work in QA

specifically? What’s the appeal if so?
What got me interested in QA was my interest in
what separates a good game experience from
a poor one, and what the building blocks and
thought processes are that go into it. I like to
think of every game ever released as being free
research, in a way. There’s so much to learn.
For example, what steps did a development team
take to improve the sequel from its predecessor,
 Helena might be and what makes some games stand out as
new to the industry,
but she’s already masterpieces? I’ve always been interested in
gained experience
working across VR,
working as a QA and shaping the game into the
mobile, and consoles. best it can be.

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Getting into games

Studio
highlights

Away from her QA job, Helena spends her free time designing 3D characters using programs such as ZBrush.


Titan Quest: Atlantis

2019
What’s the chief responsibility of a QA games are made. Don’t be afraid to try new
analyst, and how do you achieve it? things, step out of your comfort zone, and always This third expansion to the
venerable ARPG whisks
It’s about getting an overview of the state of the ask for feedback and advice. Feedback is such
players off to the mythical
game, its levels and mechanics, providing input an important part of learning and evolving, so
underwater king, introducing
into how a mechanic or feature can be improved, never be afraid to reach out to someone and another skill tier, an all-new
and helping ensure that the game is working at ask. It doesn’t necessarily have to be someone sixth act to the story, and a
its best. It’s a lot of communication with the team within that field you’re studying or role you’re wave-based challenge mode.
about what mechanics and features are working striving for. You’d be surprised how someone
as intended, and if they don’t, figuring out why. from a different field or role can grant you a
There’s also a lot of playtesting, planning, and whole new perspective on things!
documentation. Analysing the different potential
issues and patterns of when a bug occurs, and Would you say it’s easier than ever to work in
documenting and communicating it all is a big games, or more challenging?
Kill to Collect
part of it. Efficient communication is key. We work in an ever-evolving industry, so we find
2016
new solutions and tools to help us overcome
What’s a mistake in your particular field that challenges. A great example of this is the This co-operative action
roguelike leans into its
you’ve made, but ultimately learned from? pandemic, where lots of people were put in the
cyberpunk stylings with
When I was younger I would sometimes see situation of having to work from home, which can
industrial environments
working in games as something unachievable, be challenging in different ways for everybody. steeped in neon. Up to four
so I would work really hard for a long time, burn But now we have so many tools and resources players can work their way
myself out, and want to give up. I would be so which have made it possible for us to work on through endless legions of
hard on myself when I felt like I didn’t learn fast games from our own homes. I think it’s become cybernetic enemies.
enough, and it would just fill me with such bad easier, but the challenges we face change with
energy. I know now that learning and getting time, and we overcome them the best we can.
good at anything is not a sprint, but a marathon,
and we have to take care of ourselves along What’s something people can do now to help
the way too. Learning never stops, [especially] their future chances of working in games?
in an industry like game development [which] is Dare to be curious! Learn as much as you can Magicka 2
constantly growing. There’s always something we and network with people who can help you on
2015
don’t know or could know more about. It’s OK to your journey. With all the various social media
Pieces Interactive led on
not learn and know everything at once. and resources online, networking is easier
this sequel to Arrowhead
than ever. Be kind, and acknowledge you’ll make
Game Studios’ 2011 cult
What’s one piece of advice you’d offer to mistakes along the way. Nobody’s perfect, and
classic. The result was an
your younger self, given the chance? the journey to game development isn’t either. even more irreverent and
I think it can be boiled down to keep working Great things start with curiosity and willingness to colourful top-down adventure
hard, keep being curious, and continue to learn. learn, and the right people will notice that and will where wizards use wild
It all started with me being curious about how want to help you along the way. spell combinations.

wfmag.cc \ 83
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Developer Profile / SNK’s fighting history

Developer Profile

SNK’s fighting history

Veteran staff at SNK recall the company’s 1990s fighting game
heyday – and the path leading to this year’s The King Of Fighters XV

J
apanese firm SNK has taken Kung-Fu Master, in 1984; moving over to
on many guises – and several Capcom, he revolutionised one-on-one
variations on its name – since combat with the original Street Fighter –
its founding in 1979. But while the game that first introduced the idea
SNK’s video game output has of a six-button layout for punches, kicks,
spanned genres from sports titles to and combos.
puzzles to military shooters like Metal Having been hunted by SNK
Slug (see box on page 86), the company’s shortly after Street Fighter’s release in
arguably best known for its array of 1987, Nishiyama soon had another
competitive fighting games. From 1991’s revolutionary idea: cartridge-based
 amurai Shodown (also known as
S Fatal Fury: King of Fighters onwards, SNK arcade hardware. “Until [the early


Samurai Spirits ) added weapons to blazed a trail with some of the tightest, nineties], arcade operators would have
the one-on-one fighter mix.
most vibrant fighters ever made. to purchase a machine for each game,”
For these, we partly have Takashi Nishiyama explained in a rare 2011
Nishiyama to thank – one of the key interview with 1up.com. “By creating a
figures working at SNK in the early hardware system with cheap software,
nineties, and a developer who’d helped we were able to sell a lot of games even
transform the fighting genre in the in pirate-heavy markets, and I think that
previous decade. At Irem, Nishiyama was one of the main factors that led to
created the groundbreaking brawler, SNK’s success.”

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SNK’s fighting history \ Developer Profile

Series debut The King Of Fighters ’94



served as a crossover between multiple

SNK properties, with characters from its
earlier titles making an appearance.

The result was the Neo Geo: a system ROUND ONE

that brought cutting-edge gaming From there, SNK’s roster of fighting games
hardware to both arcade owners and – if ballooned as the broader company’s
they could afford it – gamers at home. success grew through the early nineties.
The first wave of games developed for the As head of development, Nishiyama
Neo Geo had military and sports themes personally oversaw the likes of The King
(NAM-1975, Baseball Stars Professional, of Fighters and Samurai Shodown, while
Top Player’s Golf), but Nishiyama still had Hiroshi Matsumoto created Art of Fighting,
unfinished business in the fighting genre, released in 1992 – all games that received
and soon brought his expertise to bear multiple sequels as the decade wore on.
on SNK’s first one-on-one brawler for the “Working at SNK in the nineties was
Neo Geo, Fatal Fury: King of Fighters. so surreal,” recalls Naoto Abe, an artist
That game not only introduced a and character designer who worked on
number of familiar characters that would such games as Metal Slug, The King Of
continue to pop Fighters XIV, and
up in both Fatal “Working at SNK 2019’s Samurai
Fury sequels and Shodown. “The Neo
elsewhere – Terry
in the nineties was Geo first went on
Bogard and villain so surreal” sale in 1990, and
Geese Howard, to SNK was blessed
name but two – but also SNK’s approach with multiple hit fighting games. You
to the fighting genre. There were the bold could feel the company growing in
character designs and fluid animation; your bones. More were added to the
the taut combat, which required precise development line, and each dev team
timing to master; and its two-lane battle really fed into and received a ton of
arena, which allowed opponents to positive stimulation.”
move between the foreground and the Yasuyuki Oda, producer of such series
background to evade attacks. as The King of Fighters, Fatal Fury, and Art

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Developer Profile / SNK’s fighting history

of Fighting, joined SNK in 1993 at the age Nobuyuki Kuroki – who joined SNK
of 20, and remembers the excitement around the same time as Oda and most
and camaraderie at the time, with teams recently served as project supervisor
sectioned off and working on their own on The King Of Fighters XV – recalls that
separate projects. “If you had talent and teams commonly comprised around
drive, you could take on really crucial 10–15 people. The pace of work was
work,” Oda says. “The developers back fast, and, he remembers, the hours were
then were all young – I’m pretty sure sometimes brutally long. “When I joined,
the oldest was in their early thirties. SNK was deep in development of Fatal
There was always this pressure to make Fury Special,” Kuroki tells us, “so it was
something better than the other teams, literally the busiest time for us ever. Us
but it never came down to rivalry. We got newbies were debugging 24 hours a day
along really well.” on alternating shifts. It was a gruelling
process, but as Fatal Fury Special was a
really fun game, and I got along well with
my co-workers, I actually enjoyed myself
Making Metal Slug quite a bit. Also, I joined SNK because I
One of SNK’s most memorable games outside the fighting genre was arguably Metal Slug : a was a big fan of Art of Fighting, so you can
febrile run-and-gun with some of the best sprite design of its era. “There were about six artists imagine how excited I was to hear that
working on the very first Metal Slug ,” recalls its chief producer, Naoto Abe, “and it took about they were developing Art Of Fighting 2
a year and a half to draw out all the sprites. I think it’s amazing they were able to achieve so
right next to my office.”
much with such a small team.”
Although Abe notes that the team “had fun” making Metal Slug , it wasn’t without its
challenges – one of them being a location test that sent the entire game back to the drawing RIVAL SCHOOLS
board. “The game’s original protag was a tank, and after we finished it, we sent it out to SNK’s clear rival in the fighting genre
various locations to get tested by the public,” says Abe. “Apparently, it wasn’t received well.
stakes was, of course, Capcom. And while
The concept we had at the time was for a tank to move and feel like a living person. So, all the
ways it crouched and took damage looked nothing like how a mechanical vehicle would. But Street Fighter 2 and its updates were the
it turns out nothing beats a human character when it comes to connecting with them, so they clear winner in terms of global attention,
changed it.” SNK continued to carve out its own niche
The tank still remained as an occasional vehicle to clamber into, though, and Metal
Slug soon became one of SNK’s most enduring properties, with numerous sequels and an
upcoming strategy spin-off, Metal Slug Tactics , due in 2022. “In the end, that decision gave
birth to Marco, Tarma, and other characters,” Abe says. “I think it was the right choice. Also, by
changing the protag to a human, it also meant the weapons system could be expanded upon
with the iconic Heavy Machine Gun and Rocket Launcher.”

 Six artists spent 18

months drawing Metal
Slug ’s stunning sprites,
according to Naoto Abe.

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SNK’s fighting history \ Developer Profile

 lthough widely regarded as a difficult

A


series for newcomers, producer Yasuyuki

Oda argues that King Of Fighters XV
“has found a good balance, and new
players have joined because of it.”

with fighting games that concentrated just in large arcades, but

on varied combat techniques, timing also smaller shops that
of special moves, and neat additional could only had a limited
flourishes like dedicated taunt buttons. amount of space.”
Like Nishiyama, Yasuyuki Oda is By the middle of the 1990s, Midway
another developer who’s worked for had turned heads with its Mortal Kombat
both Capcom and SNK. So we had to series, which used digitised graphics Neo Geo Pocket
ask: does he think there’s a fundamental for its characters, while Sega had seen SNK’s handheld wasn’t a huge commercial
difference in how huge success with success on its release in 1999, but it’s
developed a cult following since – so much
the two studios “Us newbies were Virtual Fighter:
so that both the system and its games are
designed their a 1994 coin-op
fighting games?
debugging 24 hours a day that successfully quite expensive to collect today. Thankfully,
the Neo Geo Pocket Color Selection
“SNK was heavily on alternating shifts” fused traditional brings several of the console’s best titles
concerned with 2D combat with – including several miniature fighting
games, naturally – to modern Steam and
fighting game balance and difficulty 3D character models. Behind the scenes,
Switch. For the collection’s producer, Adam
against CPU opponents due to their SNK was also trying to move with the Laatz, it’s a means of preserving SNK’s
focus on arcades,” Oda says. “I feel like times, and exploring the possibility of legacy, with not only accurate ports of the
SNK focused more on CPU fights than using 3D models and motion capture in games, but also re-creations of their cover
art. “With the market value for many retro
Capcom because they had cabinets not the early development of 1996’s Art of
games going up, it was important that
Fighting 3: The Path of the Warrior. “Back we could preserve more of SNK’s game
then, SNK internally was still researching history and offer better accessibility to a
3D technology,” says Nobuyuki Kuroki. wider audience,” Laatz tells us. “Our project
“There were huge expectations because director Lionel Ackah and design team at
the Osaka HQ did a great job obtaining and
the thought was if you used motion
scanning all the Japanese and overseas
capture, then you can make a really versions of the game boxes and cartridges,
amazing game. Two of our staff members and coordinating with our developer
went to America for about a month Code Mystics.”
to record some motion capture for
the game.”
Ultimately, this approach proved to be
As you’d expect, there were several mini a creative dead end, though the motion


fighters made for the Neo Geo Pocket. SNK’s capture data was still used indirectly
Adam Laatz singles out SNK vs. Capcom: The
Match of the Millennium as one of the best. to help the team understand “how the

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Developer Profile / SNK’s fighting history

 SNK experimented with motion capture

and 3D models for Art of Fighting 3, but
ultimately stuck to the traditional
hand-drawn sprites.

body looks during specific moves” as they just one year after launch. But while SNK
drew the game’s 2D sprites. has had its share of ups and downs in
The one that got away recent years, it’s weathered the storm
Released at a time when interest in arcade
fighters was declining, and SNK itself
DECLINE where other companies of its vintage
was on the wane, 1999’s Garou: Mark of Inevitably, the nineties hunger for have withered and died. Now partly
the Wolves was the last entry in the Fatal competitive fighting games wouldn’t last owned by, of all people, Saudi prince
Fury series. A sequel was under way in the forever, and SNK’s fortunes began to take Mohammed bin Salman, SNK’s still
2000s, but SNK’s financial woes meant it
a downward turn as the new millennium putting out games and even the odd bit
never saw completion. “Garou: Mark of
the Wolves was the last title I worked on beckoned. Ventures like the Neo Geo of hardware: the NeoGeo Mini nostalgia
at SNK,” says Yasuyuki Oda. “They were CD or the Neo Geo Pocket handheld device emerged in 2018, while this year
working on a sequel right as I left the (see box, overleaf) failed to gain much saw the release of The King of Fighters XV.
company. The team had grown so much traction, and SNK filed for bankruptcy in
and everyone was a pro in their field, so it
was really sad to hear that the sequel was
2001. Franchises like The King Of Fighters CHANGING TIMES
cancelled. We were able to bring back Rock continued to see updates through the Today, SNK’s developers are still evolving
Howard through KOF, but I hope someday 2000s, but these were developed by and experimenting with each game they
we can see a proper sequel.” companies like BrezzaSoft and Playmore, make. King of Fighters XII and XIII used 3D
founded by former executives at SNK. models as a basis for their hand-drawn
In ownership terms, the next 15 years sprites, before the series finally made
were a turbulent time for SNK; briefly the leap to full polygonal 3D models with
owned by pachinko manufacturer Aruze, King of Fighters XIV. Although the move
the brand was acquired by Playmore to 3D assets saved on development
in 2003. The resulting company, SNK costs – hand-drawing every frame of
Playmore, made another attempt to those enormous fighters takes time,
return to the console market in 2012 after all – the transition wasn’t without
with the Neo Geo X, a poorly received its challenges. “The way of animating 2D
handheld console that ceased production patterns and 3D keyframes is completely

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SNK’s fighting history \ Developer Profile

 or 2019’s Samurai
F


Shodown, SNK
initially toyed with a
different, so recreating it is incredibly “We had a hard time deciding on an more photoreal look,
before opting for the
difficult,” says franchise stalwart and King art style we were satisfied with,” ‘anime’ style seen in
Of Fighters XV creative director, Eisuke Kuroki agrees. “The same thing the finished release.

Ogura. “On the other hand, characters happened with [2019’s] Samurai
like Ramon benefited greatly from the Shodown. It started off as being
move to 3D as his movement is rich and photorealistic, and then we tried
fluid. Another advantage is being able to other styles, eventually making it more
use the dynamic camera.” ‘anime’-looking. It was tough to get it
King Of Fighters XV also brings with it looking like King of Fighters. In the end,
another technical change: a shift from we went with an art style that can be
a proprietary appreciated at a
engine to Unreal glance, instead of
“The company, staff,
Engine 4. “With something that
the introduction and how the games was an acquired
of UE4,” Ogura are made have all taste, and I’m glad
explains, “we were greatly changed” we did.”
able to add depth Indeed, The King
of field and better Of Fighters XV’s
shaders, which really give the overall visuals were widely singled out for praise
presentation a real kick. We even use it to when it launched in February 2022,
brush up the models to make them look and the game as a whole is generally
more lively.” regarded as a worthy addition to the
“I can’t even imagine not using Unreal long-running series.
Engine 4 at this point,” concurs project As for SNK today – well, the firm may
supervisor Nobuyuki Kuroki. “It’s come in be very different, but more than a hint
really handy.” of that same creative spirit still remains.
Another challenge both Ogura and “The company, staff, and how the games
Kuroki point to, on King of Fighters XV’s are made have all greatly changed,” says
development, was the style of those 3D Naoto Abe. “But, including myself, there
visuals. “Even though we’re using UE4 are still people in the company from the
and a lot of things have become easier, Neo Geo days. They’re all in major roles
one thing that took a ton of time was in the company making games, and so
hammering down an art style that we you could say the spirit of SNK hasn’t
liked,” Ogura tells us. changed. It’s still being passed on.”

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Column

An eventful week

W
hatever your thoughts on the year, I gather it’s been created/curated by many
current ‘why bother wearing of the clever brains behind that venue’s previous
masks when we can just spread inhabitant, EGX Rezzed. I didn’t manage to make
disease everywhere’ approach it along as I was over in Norwich, but fellow
being taken to Covid here in Wireframe-r Aaron Potter confirmed there was
the UK, it’s inarguably the case that there’s a fun aplenty.
lot more things to do, if you feel happy to take Earlier in the week, the BAFTA Games Awards
the leap. returned from two years of online shows to
STEVE MCNEIL As I write this, I’ve just got back from the lovely Queen Elizabeth Hall on London’s South Bank.
Steve likes going to OLL ‘22 Video Games Convention in Norwich, I was fortunate enough to get to work on the
things, and looking where we finally got to do our show, WiFi Wars, script for the show again, although my ability
at things. He’s a
things guy. in front of a live audience for the first time in to get a Will Smith joke into the final draft was
over two years. We’ve loved doing it online, but sadly vetoed.
there’s no substitute for a room full of people My own personal grievances aside – it was a
angrily screaming at Pong. As if that wasn’t really good joke* – what is no doubt the case is
reward enough, I also had the opportunity to try that people, on the whole, are being sensible
some of comedian Stuart Ashen’s mead – not and cautious. Attendance appeared to be down
a euphemism, though it couldn’t possibly have at these events compared to what it would
tasted any worse if it was. have been before the lurgy times, people were
OLL had a distinctly retro vibe, whereas over choosing to stay away if they had symptoms,
WASD successfully in London at the same time was the distinctly and those who were there seemed to be taking


plugged the EGX more indie WASD event making its debut at the opportunity to hang out in adjacent outdoor
Rezzed-shaped hole in
our hearts, even if London’s Tobacco Dock. Whilst this was its first spaces whenever the chance arose. Thankfully,
nobody could agree
how to pronounce it.
on this occasion the weather made this a treat
rather than a nightmare, but a different forecast
could have put a literal dampener on the vibe,
and I wonder how things would have fared on a
wetter week in terms of people leaving sooner.
One place that rarely needs to worry about
the weather is California, which makes it all the
stranger that, in contrast to everything I’ve just
said, the decision has been made to not only
cancel E3 online, but in person too. Perhaps
it’s the nature of the modern media landscape
that makes it less appealing. We love getting our
hands on retro tech or speaking with the small
creative teams behind indie titles but, for the
triple-A stuff, we can all ‘gen up’ online at our
leisure. We don’t need a gazillion-dollar festival
for game trailers. Whereas, if I want to smell
cosplayers, I’ve got to go to the source.

*
Following a video where a car breaks down:
“Looks like the Oscars isn’t the only awards
ceremony with battery issues.” Come on!

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 Rated
Contents

Backend Contents
Reviews, retro games, and lots more besides
92. Tunic PC, XB S/X, XBO

94. Abermore PC OUR SCORES

95. Janitor Bleeds PC, XBO, XB S/X 1–9
Trash. Unplayable; a broken mess.
96. NORCO PC 10–19
A truly bad game, though not
97. Orbital Bullet PC necessarily utterly broken.
20–29
98. LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga Still awful, but at a push could be
PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, XB S/X, XBO fun for two minutes.
30–39
99. Sol Cresta PC, PS4, Switch Might have a redeeming feature,
but otherwise very poor.
100. Itch.io roundup PC 40–49
Adds in more redeeming features,
but still not worth your time.
50–59
Average. Decent at best. ‘Just
about OK’.
60–69
Held back by glitches, bugs, or a lack
of originality, but can be good fun.
70–79
A very good game, but one lacking
spit and polish or uniqueness.
80–89
Brilliant. Fabulous fun. Everyone
should at least try it.
90–99
Cutting edge, original, unique, and/
or pushes the medium forward.

 age 92: Issue 5’s cover game has

P
100


been a long time coming, but was Never say never, eh?
Tunic worth the wait?

PLUS
101. Stream of
Consciousness
Online gaming and fitness fanatic
Tazziii dishes the details

102. The HOTLIST

Our pick of all the top PC games
you can play right now

104. Backwards compatible

Modified hardware and
modernised cult classics

108. Now playing

Ryan’s attempt to save an ancient  age 104: Ryan gives his Game Boy Advance
P


civilisation over and over again. a much-needed facelift, courtesy of RetroSix.

wfmag.cc \ 91
 Rated
Review

Review

TUNIC
GENRE Manual transmission
Info

Zelda-like,

F
action-adventure
FORMAT rom the moment you wake up on is also more than a cosplay, as the game reveals
PC / XBO / the beach of a mysterious island, layers of depth under that soft, tilt-shift lens:
XB S/X (tested)
TUNIC looks and feels like a dream, something more hardcore that tests both your
DEVELOPER or perhaps more like déjà vu. The mind and mettle. I say reveal, except that would
Andrew Shouldice
low-poly aesthetic, soft pastel colours, be a generous description of how TUNIC explains
PUBLISHER
and serene music hints at a cosy time, though its world and its mechanics to you. In short, it’s
Finji
the comfort is also down to familiarity as the intentionally – some might say wilfully – cryptic,
PRICE
£24.99
adorable little fox cub you’re controlling evidently even using a glyph-like language for most of
reminds you of someone else who sports a its text, though if you’re lucky, you might come
RELEASE
Out now similarly iconic green tunic. Sure, the perspective across the one translated word to give you a
SOCIAL may be isometric rather than top-down 2D, but vague idea of what these trinkets you’ve amassed
@tunicgame you could be fooled that you’re playing a lost in your inventory do, or where you’re meant to
bootlegged Zelda game, all the more so given this be going.
is not on a Nintendo platform (yet). If you’ve ever played a classic Zelda game, you’ll
Those references are deliberate from at least have an idea of what to expect. There
solo developer Andrew Shouldice, although are treasure chests to open, tools you can map
REVIEWED BY its similarities to the 2019 remake of Link’s to face buttons of your choice, and McGuffins
Alan Wen Awakening are arguably a coincidence. But this to collect from challenging dungeons. However,
there are also plenty of other items that might
bring back hoarder syndrome, especially as
you’re given little inkling of what they do, which
also intertwines with a whole upgrade system
that the game is very hands-off about, making
the normally esoteric FromSoftware seem
comprehensible by comparison.
Yet figuring out TUNIC is as much a part of the
game as playing it. Part of that comes from page
fragments of the game’s instruction manual,
delightfully inspired by the ones for NES-era Zelda
games, from illustrations of game mechanics and
 Fictional languages can be a
fine line between mysterious bosses to maps. These fragments don’t come in
and obtuse. Fortunately, this
page opts to make the basics
page order either, with many you definitely can’t
clear in plain English. find until later on, setting up a new mystery or

92 / wfmag.cc
 Rated
Review

 ho doesn’t love an
W


underdog (or underfox?)

story. Still, this fight seems a
bit one-sided.

 elescopes let you zoom out

T


to get the lay of the land a
bit better, although you
don’t get to change the view.

teasing something else to anticipate (that each

page is double-sided also means one side might
only have filled in the gap for another half, only
for the next side to allude to half of something
else). It becomes more than just a reference
guide, but its own clever, non-linear narrative.
While there’s some fun in poking around the
clues and meanings in the manual, navigating
TUNIC ’s world isn’t always as effective. That’s knackered and the gauge is flashing an alarming
partly due to its isometric perspective, which red hue). Still, as a Zelda-like, the methodical
sometimes means the fixed angle might obscure clunkiness feels a bit ill-suited compared to a
HIGHLIGHT
your view, or that it’s not clear if certain platforms breezier arcade speed like A Link to the Past or Accessibility options include
an invincible ‘No Fail’ mode as
are the same accessible height. Although your last year’s Death’s Door. It can still feel satisfying
well as the ability to turn off
cub appears as a silhouette when venturing in one-on-one encounters, such as learning the the stamina gauge. Whether
behind walls, traversal can still be a bit of a patterns of a gargantuan boss as you chip away this was a call from Shouldice
nuisance, particularly because shortcuts are at their health bar, but it becomes more of an or publisher Finji (who also
often hidden from view. issue when tackling mobs published Chicory, another
Zelda -like with a generous
These may be intentional, “Figuring out TUNIC is and struggling with the
suite of accessibility options),
much like the fake walls of targeting system (I found my it’s likely more players will
Souls games, while NES-era
as much a part of the shield wouldn’t always block come in expecting a chilled
Zelda had its share of secret game as playing it” an incoming attack unless vibe from TUNIC, rather than
frequently hearing the cub’s
rooms too, but there’s an I was explicitly targeting
distressing death yelp.
inconsistency here, especially on the occasions the enemy performing the action). Some
when the camera does whip around to show enemies also scamper away just out of reach
you a different angle. Just trying to figure out the of your slashes, and while tools like a magic
solution to opening the mysterious sealed doors rod or hookshot can close the distance, you’re
in the game is enough of a challenge as it is. restricted by a limited MP gauge, which you won’t VERDICT
Speaking of which, combat also leans more always have a means to recover. A charming and deceptively
on the Souls side, from stamina management Despite these quirks, it’s hard to fault an clever (if often obtuse)
to clunkier movement, which might make TUNIC incredible achievement that could have easily Zelda -like that’s more than
the most wholesome-looking Soulslike ever. just coasted on nostalgia. TUNIC builds on just a little tribute.
It’s more generous in some ways too, such as those familiar foundations but adds a modern
how you only drop a fraction of your currency
and running doesn’t take up stamina (on the
flip side, you receive more damage when you’re
intertextual quality that rewards interrogation.
It’s the missing link that PC and Xbox players
have been looking for.
80%
wfmag.cc \ 93
 Rated
Review

HIGHLIGHT
The most entertaining mission is
also the most macabre, as a shady
NPC asks you to collect blood
samples using a jar of leeches.
Cue a session of knocking out
unsuspecting victims, chucking a
parasite at them, and waiting for it
to have its fill before collecting the
Review engorged result.

Abermore
All your vase are belong to us

I
t’s a brave move for an indie studio to cameras, which force you to keep your eyes
create a first-person immersive sim, with peeled and carefully manage inventory space.
GENRE
Info

all the complex systems that entails. Yet unfortunately, different objectives are
First-person stealth
Especially, as in the case of Abermore, the only real source of variety in Abermore.
FORMAT
PC (tested)
when its industrial-fantasy fiction seems Map layouts are procedurally generated, but it
intent on inviting comparisons with Dishonored. barely matters and the décor and interactive
DEVELOPER
Four Circle Interactive Four Circle Interactive (previously responsible components repeat, until it feels like you’re
PUBLISHER for the slick 10 Second Ninja X) perhaps deserves robbing the same house over and over. Nor do
Fireshine Games, plaudits for giving it a shot, then, even if the result you need to alter your tactics and equipment – a
Sold-out Software is a rather bumpy ride. decent stock of tranquilliser darts and lockpicks
PRICE Your aim in Abermore is to sneak into should see you through most situations,
£13.99 the homes of the city’s elite over 18 nights, providing you take care to stash bodies and
RELEASE completing favours and swiping trinkets to unplug alarm systems along the way. The latter, in
Out now prepare for the daring rescue of your captured fact, is often the difference between swift failure
SOCIAL mentor. Before each mission, you chat with and consequence-free bungling, thanks to some
@FourCircleInt
NPCs and visit dealers around town to learn of wonky AI. Should someone see you, they make
opportunities, gather side quests, and ready a run for the nearest alarm switch, unleashing
your supplies, then head off into the darkness security systems that force you to abort and
to complete, hopefully, some perfect crimes. escape. If you’ve already disabled that switch,
REVIEWED BY The greater your success, the easier you should however, they stand frozen next to it, and nothing
Jon Bailes find the finale. happens at all.
The premise is compelling and provides Other issues come from minor bugs (some
much room for mischief once you get into the larger problems have now been patched out)
swing of things. While skulking around sprawling and a messy interface that makes your efforts
mansions, you might lure servants and residents unnecessarily awkward or confusing. Inventory
VERDICT into knock-out traps, or deploy enchanted tarot management is fiddly, while tutorials and
A well-conceived cards to, say, grant yourself a short spell of explanatory text miss out important steps – like
plan that doesn’t quite invisibility, or even turn a victim to stone. Staying how lockpicks actually function – or fail to log
come together. in the shadows is paramount, of course, so you quests in useful detail. Combine all that with a
wind through vents and peer into keyholes, in plain visual style and wooden animation and it’s

50% your goal to pocket glowing trinkets. You’ll also

have a shopping list of requests to try and fulfil,
such as collecting circuit boards from security
enough to ensure that while Abermore can be
enjoyable, it feels more like a promising prototype
than a polished gem.

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 Rated
Review

HIGHLIGHT
While playing Janitor, your
field of view is locked on the
cabinet, meaning you can’t
turn around when you hear a
sudden thud from behind or
see a reflection moving on
its screen. These moments,
with your back exposed to the
shifting darkness, are easily
the tensest in the game.

Review

Janitor Bleeds  he arcade’s parking lot is

T


packed with cars. Oddly,
there’s no sign of their drivers.

Stranger pixels

T
wo years after joined-at-the-hip out neon cathedral, and an already odd situation
anthologies Haunted PS1 Demo Disc takes a turn for the sinister.

Info
GENRE
and Dread X Collection coalesced into Exploring the labyrinthine venue in first- First-/Third-person
a rallying cry for horror developers, person and effecting changes in that gloomy horror
the popularity of their nostalgia- environment via our progress in the coin-op FORMAT
fuelled nightmares shows no signs of abating. forms the crux of the Janitor Bleeds experience. PC (tested) / XBO /
An irresistible combination of moody, low-poly Barricades will be removed and doors unlocked XB S/X
visuals and out-there concepts that would be as long as we keep feeding the hungry cabinet DEVELOPER
summarily dismissed by any sensible higher-end with quarters (found littering the establishment’s Korpus
studio, some of the ideas presented in nascent grimy carpet or hidden among plastic ferns) PUBLISHER
Bonus Stage
form therein have inspired longer, standalone and solving its rudimentary puzzles. It’s a basic
Publishing
versions by their creators. Such is the case but effective premise elevated by appropriately
PRICE
of Janitor Bleeds (first appearing in the 2021 glitchy visuals, signifying reality spilling over from
£10.99
instalment of the former compilation), a game one screen to another – not least the entity now
RELEASE
that, despite its title, features little gore but prowling the darkened halls – and by the chilling Out now
oozes atmosphere. leitmotif that somehow channels the chiptune
The titular caretaker isn’t a person but the “bloops” from a forgotten NES title and the theme
hottest new acquisition of a backwoods arcade, of a lost John Carpenter movie simultaneously.
as revealed by a series of increasingly obsessive There’s a nagging familiarity, the impression
notes strewn around the abandoned venue that we’ve seen these crude polygons and heard REVIEWED BY
we break into after a car accident leaves us these ominous synths a few times too many that Alexander
Chatziioannou
stranded in the middle of nowhere. The exact Janitor Bleeds only just manages to keep at bay on
location is indeterminate – think the outskirts of the strength of its excellent presentation.
Everytown, USA – but the time we can surmise What it doesn’t avoid, though, is a certain
after discovering a fully functional cabinet locked tedium during the late game when it runs
away in a disused storage closet like some dirty out of ideas and sends you round in circles, VERDICT
secret. Judging by the primitive pixels on the as if to stretch playing time to a respectable An atmospheric, if
blurry CRT screen, we’re sometime in the early length, a flaw nowhere more apparent than derivative and occasionally
1980s. The game itself is a fairly innocuous affair, an unnecessarily drawn-out sequence of false rambling, entry to the lo-fi
tasking you with cleaning up a simple maze to endings that turn a surprise mechanical twist horror canon.
unlock its next level. But after a short first session into something of a chore. Not quite botching the
culminates in an encounter with an amorphous,
vaguely threatening entity, the power goes out,
something stirs on the other side of the blacked-
landing, then, but proof that making a fascinating
demo is one thing; sustaining its promise in a full-
fledged game is quite another.
57%
wfmag.cc \ 95
 Rated
Review

HIGHLIGHT
Although NORCO stands strong
on its text alone, that doesn’t
mean the gimmicks of minigames
in-between don’t make for a
welcome break for the eyes.
Activities vary from manoeuvring
Review a motorboat through the Louisiana
bayous via a top-down map to a
memory-based QTE-style combat

NORCO
system, which has hilarious
results on a store owner’s cat
you’re just initially trying to pet.
 he gorgeous haunting
T


pixel art perfectly captures

both Norco and its Louisiana Route Zero
multifaceted people.

A
fter five years on the road, your It’s all captured deftly by Geography of Robots’
rebellious runaway protagonist Kay writer and designer Yuts who also grew up in
returns to her oppressively bleak Norco, riding on the lineage of Southern Gothic
GENRE
Info

home following her mother’s death style, though this game’s sense of magical
Point-and-click
from cancer. It might sound like the realism also interweaves with cyberpunk, socio-
adventure
start of a noughties contemplative tragicomedy political commentary, and a lengthy discussion
FORMAT
PC (tested) and all the feelings of returning to small-town about diarrhoea.
life, but that couldn’t be further from describing Which is to say that NORCO is far from the
DEVELOPER
Geography of NORCO. It’s not even a town – the real place dour, serious narrative you might assume,
Robots it’s based on in Louisiana has the depressing shifting in tone as well as style. One particularly
PUBLISHER classification of a ‘census-designated place’, notable shift is when the game no longer has
Raw Fury only this is set in a distant sci-fi future where you merely speculating on what happened to
PRICE memories are backed up Catherine, Kay’s mother,
£11.39 on headsets while climate but instead puts you into
“Also interweaves a
RELEASE collapse and military her shoes a few weeks
Out now juntas rage on in the
lengthy discussion earlier. That change in
SOCIAL background. It’s still a story about diarrhoea” perspective similarly comes
@roboticgeo
about a family reunion, with a change in mechanics
albeit that being the goal, as you’re trying to as she makes use of her smartphone for her
find your brother who went missing just before investigations, from an AR app belonging to a
your arrival, which, in turn, has you investigating weird cult to using the voice recorder to record
what your mother had been up to before her dialogue to use as evidence.
REVIEWED BY
Alan Wen
untimely demise. There’s little in the way of obtuse old-school
It’s a journey that takes you through Norco’s point-and-click adventure puzzles – indeed some
run-down community and marshes in still life, its characters are perhaps too eager to provide hints
inhabitants rendered both abstract and unusual – even though the moment-to-moment does feel
by the striking pixel art. But what really brings more involved than, say, Kentucky Route Zero, as it
VERDICT the place and people to life is the text, from playfully shifts with the form, including moments
A sublime point-and-click the dreamlike poetry of the prose delivered in when you find yourself in an unlikely party-based
adventure with this year’s second-person to the distinct cadences of its RPG battle. I’m not entirely convinced its third act
finest writing. characters with deeper dimensions than your entirely works – certainly not if you were hoping
average NPC, from fugitive androids to boozy for a tidy or upbeat conclusion. The journey

80% detectives to a cult of young men dressed

like store employees, embodying both online
radicalisation and shopping mall capitalism.
in NORCO is fleeting, as if a dream, but what a
journey it is, delivered with a sharp, distinct voice
confronting the nightmares of our bleak future.

96 / wfmag.cc
 Rated
Review

HIGHLIGHT
Part way through the campaign
you should unlock the Eternity
Tower, an extra game mode
that represents the Orbital
Bullet experience at its most
Review distilled. Trimming out the
minor exploration element of
the main game, you blast your

Orbital Bullet
way to the top of 50 floors or
simply survive in Endless Mode
as long as you can.

What goes around comes around

O
rbital Bullet has you running in comes to range – choose from shotguns, sniper
circles, but that’s just fine. As a rifles, and everything in between.

Info
squat cyberpunk mercenary, you Orbital Bullet’s rogue-lite credentials are GENRE
Rogue-lite platform
hunt killer robots around cylindrical similarly well-considered, ticking all the
shooter
towers, like skirting a giant oak tree, expected ‘metagame’ boxes based on an initially
FORMAT
letting fly with bullets that follow the curve. Each bewildering array of upgrade currencies. Along PC (tested)
stage of your oil-soaked, rogue-lite rampage is with mid-run skill points and credits for shopping, DEVELOPER
divided into bite-sized floors with a simple aim – you’ll gather three further types to spend back SmokeStab
destroy all machines. Fittingly, it’s all very neatly at your home hub, unlocking new abilities for PUBLISHER
executed. Squint a little, in fact, and you could each character class, various starting boons, and Assemble
almost be playing a Housemarque game. Sure, more weapons (with the aid of blueprints you Entertainment
Orbital Bullet doesn’t wield quite the same grade find in the field). Once it clicks into place, it makes PRICE
of bombast as Nex Machina, but the metallic shine for a balanced challenge. Potentially repetitive £24.99
of its chunky dystopia and the industrial bass in early stages melt in minutes and you inch into RELEASE
Out now
its soundtrack evoke that amped feel. untamed territory with each attempt.
Control, too, is comparably slick. A double jump There’s no denying, however, that we’ve seen SOCIAL
@SmokeStab
and dodge roll will stop you from getting boxed all these systems before. There are lumps of
in, while guns are rapid and punchy. At times, the Dead Cells and other rogue-lites in Orbital Bullet,
curved view causes visibility issues, like when you and although developer SmokeStab has clearly
can’t see enemies firing from over 90 degrees picked the parts with care, they’re still second-
away, but mostly the rotating landscape is visually hand. The question, then, is whether it’s enough REVIEWED BY
intuitive, and even when layouts are complicated to reuse them proficiently, while nailing the action Jon Bailes
with a second inner ring, hopping between them fundamentals. If your answer’s yes, then Orbital
never breaks your flow. Bullet is well worth a spin.
It’s a good job, because you need to stay on
your toes against an array of homicidal machines
whose attacks have a habit of combining to flesh-
searing effect. Once you recognise their individual VERDICT
threats, the combat puzzle is about finding A polished action
space, using platforms to gain height, and picking rogue-lite that delivers
your shots, until the next biome introduces new where it counts.
antagonists that force you to adapt. Of course,
there’s more than one way to de-chrome a droid,
and the weapons and skills you select along the  ini-challenge rooms in the
M
74%


shape of dimensional rifts

way will affect your play style, especially when it pop up from time to time.

wfmag.cc \ 97
 Rated
Review

HIGHLIGHT
The voice cast features a good
mixture of talent from both the
movies and TV shows, with
the likes of Anthony Daniels
(episodes I-VII) and James
Arnold Taylor (The Clone
Wars) returning as C-3PO and
Obi-Wan Kenobi, respectively.
Liam Neeson as Qui-Gon Jinn
is absent, but Harrison Ford’s
voice double is uncanny.

Review

LEGO Star Wars:

The Skywalker Saga
Bringing piece back to the galaxy

D
id you know that Tantive IV, Princess here – but it’s done in the effort to maintain some
Leia’s personal starship that Vader semblance of cinematic coherence. Because
GENRE boards during A New Hope’s opening while you’ve likely crossed lightsabers with Darth
Info

Action-adventure scene, has a coffee machine in it? Maul or fought off Rathtars as Rey in LEGO Star
FORMAT In fact, it has several. And I should Wars games before, you haven’t done it quite like
PS5 (tested) / PS4 know because I’ve blasted most into bricks in this. Each scenario has been reimagined from
/ XB S/X / XBO /
my relentless search of studs – as I have several the ground up, placing you behind the shoulder
Switch / PC
items in LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga. In of your favourite heroes to better immerse
DEVELOPER
Traveller’s Tales, some ways, it’s a shame that TT Games has gone you within a toyetic galaxy far, far away, where
TT Games to great lengths to replicate the look and feel of freedom is encouraged.
PUBLISHER such iconic locations, only for me to come along Playing as non-Jedi heroes essentially
Warner Bros. and destroy everything on sight. But then that’s transforms the game into a third-person shooter,
Interactive the mindset LEGO games have conditioned us with optional barriers that can be broken down
PRICE into, and it remains a tactile joy even 17 years and rebuilt for cover. Clashes between Jedi and
£49.99 after the first series entry. Sith, meanwhile, no longer descend into button
RELEASE Much of the familiarity stops there, however, as mashing thanks to the addition of combos,
Out now
the scope for this definitive, brick-ified translation blocking, and dodging offering just enough depth
of cinema’s most famous sci-fi universe has to be considered thoughtful without fear of falling
been exponentially widened. No longer are you into overcomplexity. There are ten different
REVIEWED BY limited to exploring familiar scenes on a level- classes in total that each of the 300+ unlockable
Aaron Potter by-level basis, only to be spat back out into one characters fall into, all with their own RPG-like
generalised hub; now there are nine movies’ skill tree and enhanced abilities that offer more
worth of planets, ships, and environments to excuses to explore.
VERDICT blast and build through. The Skywalker Saga The return of online co-op would have been
It’s not just the LEGO is easily the most ambitious LEGO title ever, appreciated, true, but re-experiencing the Battle
bricks themselves that maintaining the basic franchise hallmarks while of Hoth, Invasion of Theed, and Ben Swolo’s pecks
shine brighter than ever. substantially iterating elsewhere to become the in plastic brick form are still as enjoyable either
The Force is strong in true leap forward this series desperately needed. alone or via local split-screen. All this is to say
almost every aspect. It starts by having you select the first episode that The Skywalker Saga celebrates Star Wars to
in your favourite trilogy. Initially, you might think a degree that few other games given the licence

86% it disappointing that you can’t immediately jump

into, say, The Last Jedi or The Rise of Skywalker
– both of which make their LEGO game debut
ever have. Regardless of your preferred era, this
is the funniest, boldest, and most detailed a LEGO
game has been. A must-play for any fan.

98 / wfmag.cc
 Rated
Review

Review

Sol Cresta
HIGHLIGHT
Sol Cresta sounds far better
than it looks, thanks to a
typically driving soundtrack
Fun in the sun by veteran composer, Yuzo
Koshiro. His energetic beats

L
and triumphant melodies are
the perfect accompaniment
et’s start with the most glaring
to the silky-smooth action.
issue first: Sol Cresta looks positively
hideous. Fiddle with graphics settings
all you like, it’ll essentially look the
same: 2D elements like your score and
bullets descend into a smeary mess, while 3D
objects like enemy ships and tumbling asteroids
shimmer beneath some kind of faux CRT effect. 
 witching formations
S
feels tricky at first,
Thankfully, there’s more to Sol Cresta than its but soon becomes
iffy looks. Reviving a 1980s series few are likely second nature.
to have heard of outside Japan, PlatinumGames
has crafted a thrilling vertical shooter here.
Harking back to an era before the humble shoot- pummelling an area boss even as you’re fleeing
’em-up was consumed by barrages of complex from the lasers it’s spitting out in your direction.

Info
GENRE
bullet patterns and tiny hitboxes, Sol Cresta’s It’s the perfectly judged balance between
Shoot-’em-up
challenge lies in the speed of its enemies and the simple thrills and complexity that reminds you
FORMAT
manifold possibilities of its weapons system. that Sol Cresta’s co-director is Hideki Kamiya,
PC (tested) / Switch
Running at full power, you control three the mind behind such games as Bayonetta and / PS4
ships that can be undocked and repositioned The Wonderful 101. As well as the charged attacks DEVELOPER
in different configurations, with each formation listed above, there are also attacks you can use PlatinumGames
boasting its own attack. Taking down enemies by collecting the relevant power-ups, before PUBLISHER
or collecting coins and medals fills up a gauge, triggering them by moving your ships into the PlatinumGames
which at full charge allows you to unleash a correct formation – these range from three-way PRICE
stronger attack unique to each configuration: this lasers to a gigantic Phoenix capable of clearing £30.99
writer’s favourite is a gigantic crimson laser that the screen in a burst of flame. Couple this with RELEASE
cuts through just about anything in your path. certain enemies that are killed more efficiently Out now
But then you may find the yellow attack – a by shooting them with the correct coloured SOCIAL
@platinumgames
stubby, pointy laser that trades range for power weapon, and power-ups that improve your shield
– handy for close encounters, while the blue and speed, and you have a retro shooter with a
attack’s homing missiles mean you can keep surprising, borderline intimidating level of depth.
Sol Cresta is also refreshingly accessible,
though: the weapons system may seem REVIEWED BY
overwhelming to newcomers and some of the Ryan Lambie
area bosses put up a real fight, but your ships can
take a lot of damage before they blow up. Those
looking for a less punishing experience can lower
the difficulty level too, which makes mastering all VERDICT
those formation attacks less pivotal to survival. A traditional 2D shooter
After just a few minutes in Sol Cresta’s company, with truly modern levels
the ugliness of its presentation is soon swept of depth in its scoring
away by a surge of lasers and adrenaline. and weapons system.
By fusing the immediacy of 1980s shooters
with the flexibility of a modern brawler, Kamiya
has created one of the most absorbing new 2D
shooters we’ve played in years.
83%
wfmag.cc \ 99
 Rated
Review

Why not try…

Itch.io roundup
Picking out some of the platform’s standout titles | REVIEWED BY Nic Reuben

Bad Writer
Riddle Fox Games / $3.99 / wfmag.cc/bad-writer

A sweet little rumination on motivation, creativity, and

support, packaged as a stamina-management sim. You play
as the recently laid-off Emily, who decides to grow daffodils
from dirt and pursue her dreams as an author of short
stories. To write, you’ll need inspiration, which can quickly
lead to distraction if, for example, you accidentally down
three pots of coffee and clean the whole house instead of
doing research. The

Shotgun King:
goal: just succeed in
a notoriously fickle

The Final Checkmate

industry without getting
demotivated by near-
constant rejections! Truly
the Dark Souls of LitSims. PUNKCAKE Délicieux / Free / wfmag.cc/shotgun-king

It’s chess, with a shotgun! Sort of. This Ludum Dare 50 entry
is best described as a chess-themed roguelike that obeys
some classic movement rules, but still takes liberties with
upgrades, shields, ammo collection, and the like. They’re all
fine additions. This is too satisfying and cleverly designed
to write off as a parody. Finally, the lazy devs of the highly
overrated chess have given us a sequel.

Ghost in the
Washing Machine
RiPiT HOOK
foxdogstudios / Free / wfmag.cc/washing

A frankly captivating ode to working class heroism, cleverly

△ / $1 / wfmag.cc/ripit disguised as a disorientating, mundane but moreish
occupation sim presented like a Chris Morris anti-sketch.
Described by the devs/curators as a “100% experimental Rapidly press keys to repair washing machines, level up,
physical custom pop-art asset, using a ready-made restored and move on to bigger and better things, all of which
original pinball machine”, it’s no surprise this somewhat are also washing machines. Manages to evoke both the
playable, audio-visual experiment in game curation is a pain drudgery of experiencing literally anything as an English
to even navigate through. However, neither this, nor the person, and also, strangely enough, Silent Hill 2.
fact the developer uses a pretentious triangle symbol as a
pseudonym, is enough to stop me recommending you part
with a dollar to poke around in here, if you’ve got any interest This month’s bonus game is Anatidaephobia: Out of Milk (wfmag.cc/out-of-milk).
in melted vaporwave visuals or bizarre passion projects, or I have no words, but I’m a better man for having played it.
Disney’s Captain Hook.

100 / wfmag.cc
 Rated
Stream of consciousness

STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Streamer, podcaster, and fitness enthusiast

Tanya “Tazziii” Ellen talks her gaming past

What’s your favourite game of all time?

Picking a favourite game is so difficult! There’s
so many great games out there and so many
I’ve played. How do I choose one favourite?
And what makes a game a favourite? Fondest
childhood memories, most fun with friends, most
compelling story, time spent playing, a game I
go back to? For the sake of satisfying others with
an answer, I can just say The Legend of Zelda:
The Wind Waker as it’s definitely a game I have a
special relationship with.

And what is it specifically about that game

that chimes with you so much?
The GameCube was my first console. As a
younger sibling, consoles were always shared,
often being player two or getting little time to play
myself. The Wind Waker was a game I had a lot of
fun completing – and I actually did complete it.

Can you remember the game that first got

you into gaming? Do you have a favourite
memory of playing it? For you, what’s the appeal of regularly “I’ve always
I grew up playing games so there isn’t a single streaming to a mass audience?
enjoyed being
game that got me into gaming that I remember, So many reasons make me want to stream! I’ve
just a blur of early memories and accounts from always enjoyed being on camera. Just like gaming, on camera.
my family. I played a lot of children’s PC games it’s always been a part of my life. You should have Just like
like this one game, Adiboo. I remember playing seen the video calls, streams, and videos me and gaming, it’s
games like Sonic 2 on Sega Mega Drive and Mario my best friend used to do in our teens. One time
on SNES. One time I tried to play Resident Evil on we left the camera running while we waited for
always been
PSone, which was mixed up with my games. I was pizza to arrive. It was so funny, though, and really part of my life”
way too young and now I am NOT a fan of horror cringe. When I started, I wanted people to talk to
games. I learned my lesson. about the [single-player] games I played and find
people to play multiplayer games with. It was also
Has there ever been a time when you felt the a great way for me to not feel guilty for spending
need to take a break from games? too much time playing video games on my own.
Yup, in my early 20s I felt I just didn’t have the
time. It’s actually one of the reasons I wanted to To watch Tazziii stream on Twitch, go to
stream. I wanted time playing games to be more wfmag.cc/twitchtazziii or find her on YouTube
than just playing games. at wfmag.cc/YTtazziii.

wfmag.cc \ 101
 Rated
The Wireframe HOTLIST

The best PC games, according to Wireframe,

catering for whatever your mood might be

The games for… SOLID STORY TIMES

Disco Elysium / ZA/UM / 94% (Issue 28)

Life is Strange: True Colors / Deck Nine / 89% (Issue 57)

Mutazione / Die Gute Fabrik / 86% (Issue 26)

Whispers of a Machine
/ Clifftop Games/Faravid Interactive / 85% (Issue 14)

The Forgotten City / Modern Storyteller / 85% (Issue 55)

Mythic Ocean / Paralune / 84% (Issue 36)

Sunless Skies / Failbetter Games / 83% (Issue 7)

Arise: A Simple Story / Piccolo Studio / 82% (Issue 31)

The games for… BIG ADVENTURES
Assemble with Care / ustwo Games / 81% (Issue 27)
Elden Ring / Bandai Namco / 95% (Issue 61) The Walking Dead: The Final Season
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey / Ubisoft / 93% (Issue 1) / Telltale Games/Skybound Games / 81% (Issue 11)

Yakuza: Like a Dragon / Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio / 90% (Issue 45)

Amnesia: Rebirth / Frictional Games / 87% (Issue 46)

Death’s Door / Acid Nerve / 87% (Issue 55)

The Last Campfire / Hello Games / 86% (Issue 47)

Resident Evil 2 / Capcom / 86% (Issue 7)

Journey to the Savage Planet / Typhoon Studios / 84% (Issue 33)

The Outer Worlds / Obsidian Entertainment / 84% (Issue 28)

Eastward / Pixpil / 84% (Issue 57)

The games for… FIRING UP BRAIN CELLS

The games for… REPEATED PLAY Telling Lies / Sam Barlow / 92% (Issue 24)

Hades / Supergiant Games / 94% (Issue 44)

Kentucky Route Zero / Cardboard Computer / 90% (Issue 33)

They Are Billions / Numantian Games / 88% (Issue 20)

Slipways / Beetlewing / 90% (Issue 53)

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice / FromSoftware / 87% (Issue 11)

Total War: Warhammer III
/ Creative Assembly/Feral Interactive / 87% (Issue 60)
Streets of Rage 4 / DotEmu/Lizardcube/Guard Crush / 86% (Issue 40)
Heaven’s Vault / inkle / 89% (Issue 12)
Trials of Fire / Whatboy Games / 84% (Issue 50)
The Pedestrian / Skookum Arts / 84% (Issue 35)
Katamari Damacy REROLL / Monkeycraft / 84% (Issue 4)
The Legend of Bum-Bo / Edmund McMillen / 83% (Issue 31)
Spelunky 2 / Mossmouth / 83% (Issue 44)
A Monster’s Expedition / Draknek & Friends / 82% (Issue 47)
Hitman 2 / IO Interactive / 82% (Issue 3)
Total War: THREE KINGDOMS
Alba: A Wildlife Adventure / ustwo Games / 82% (Issue 46) / Creative Assembly/Feral Interactive / 82% (Issue 16)

Slay the Spire / Mega Crit Games / 81% (Issue 45) It Takes Two / Hazelight Studios / 81% (Issue 51)

102 / wfmag.cc
 Rated
The Wireframe HOTLIST

PC Top 10

The games for… HIGH-INTENSITY PLAY

Tetris Effect / Monstars Inc./Resonair / 90% (Issue 4)

Sayonara Wild Hearts / Simogo / 89% (Issue 25)

Chivalry 2 / Torn Banner Studios / 88% (Issue 54) 1 Elden Ring / 95% (Issue 61)

Hot Wheels Unleashed / Milestone / 86% (Issue 56) A game of massive scale, packed with intelligence
and mystery. A towering achievement.
Star Wars: Squadrons / EA / 86% (Issue 45)

OlliOlli World / Roll7 / 84% (Issue 60) 2 Disco Elysium / 94% (Issue 28)

Devil May Cry 5 / Capcom / 84% (Issue 10) Smarter and deeper than anything else; truly
an RPG in a class completely of its own.
Black Bird / Onion Games / 84% (Issue 3)
3 Hades / 94% (Issue 44)
BPM: Bullets Per Minute / Awe Interactive / 83% (Issue 45)
Proving ‘roguelike’ isn’t a dirty word, learning-
Resident Evil Village / Capcom / 82% (Issue 52)
and-dying is a joy from start to finish.

4 Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

/ 93% (Issue 1)

The point where Ubisoft realised over-the-top

adventures were the right direction.

5 Telling Lies / 92% (Issue 24)

This FMV mystery asks more of the player

than most, with rewards to match.

6 If Found / 92% (Issue 44)

A compelling and beautifully illustrated

The games for… CURING THE INDIE ITCH narrative, as moving as it is memorable.

If Found… / DREAMFEEL / 92% (Issue 44) 7 Yakuza: Like a Dragon / 90% (Issue 45)

Can Androids Pray A bold, brash, and joyous rebirth for the
/ Natalie Clayton/Priscilla Snow/Xalavier Nelson Jr. / 90% (Issue 21) long-running gangster series.

Tales From Off-Peak City Vol. 1 / Cosmo D / 89% (Issue 39)

8 Tetris Effect / 90% (Issue 4)
Baba Is You / Hempuli Oy / 88% (Issue 10)
The question is ‘how do you better Tetris?’
TOEM / Something We Made / 87% (Issue 57) The answer is: like this. This is how.

Afterparty / Night School Studio / 86% (Issue 33) 9 Kentucky Route Zero / 90% (Issue 33)
Witcheye / Moon Kid / 86% (Issue 30) Abstract style meets concrete commitments
in this fantastic magical realist adventure.
Hypnospace Outlaw
/ Tendershoot/Michael Lasch/ThatWhichIs Media / 86% (Issue 11)
10 Can Androids Pray / 90% (Issue 21)
Haunted PS1 Demo Disc / The Haunted / 85% (Issue 39)
A healthy dose of existential anxiety in a
Chicory: A Colorful Tale / Greg Lobanov / 83% (Issue 54) minimalist, bite-sized package.

wfmag.cc \ 103
 Retro
Backwards compatible

WRITTEN BY RYAN LAMBIE

A clear winner
Not everyone has the time, patience, or patience – oh, and some heat. I’ll get back
inclination to pick up a soldering iron and to the heat in a minute.
start tinkering around with an old console. Handily, those lovely folks at RetroSix
Still, there are an increasing number of (retrosix.co.uk) sent us a couple of its
options available to people who want latest products to sample. First, there’s
to modify their old hardware without its new-fangled Crystal Clear GBA shell,
having to worry about things like flux or available in shades of blue, red, black,
capacitors (or indeed flux capacitors). or clear (I opted for the natty blue one).
One of the simplest yet most effective Then there’s its Elite Brass buttons – a
 y existing Game Boy Advance: scuffed, tired, and
M


mods you can do to an ageing system is replacement set of A, B, and direction with some curious yellowing around the speaker.
simply replace its shell and buttons; for buttons made out of solid metal. The
the past few months, for example, I’ve had latter aren’t cheap at £18, but they look
a tired-looking Game Boy Advance sitting smart and, as I’d later discover, add a First, you’ll have to take care when
in a drawer. Its shell is scratched and dull, pleasing extra touch of weight to the removing the GBA’s motherboard and
its buttons discoloured from years of use. handheld once installed. screen from the old shell. After removing
But by rehousing its innards in a shiny Again, switching shells isn’t a difficult the two cross-head screws holding the
new exterior, it’ll immediately look like a task. All you’ll need are a Y0 tri-wing motherboard in place, you’ll need to
new piece of hardware again – and all I screwdriver and a PH00 cross-wing carefully disconnect the screen’s ribbon
need are a couple of screwdrivers, some screwdriver to disassemble everything. cable, which is held in place by two plastic
There are only one or two areas that might bales. With the motherboard out of the
catch out the unwary. way, you’ll then need to gently prize the
screen from the shell – it’s held in place
with adhesive, so it’ll need a bit of coaxing
 he GBA, now in its spotless new
T
before it lifts away from the plastic. Once


home. The brass buttons add a

touch of glamour, and feel quite freed, the screen guard (a kind of rubber
nice under the thumbs, too.
gasket) surrounding the screen should still
be sticky enough to be affixed to the new
shell. If it isn’t, you can buy new screen
guards from places like RetroSix.
Next there’s the Game Boy Advance’s
glass lens; you could simply buy a new one
since they’re relatively affordable (RetroSix
sells them for £3.98). But if you want to
reuse an existing one, they can be quite
difficult to remove from the GBA’s shell
since they’re bonded in place with some
fairly heavy-duty adhesive. If you try to

104 / wfmag.cc
 Retro
Backwards compatible

Just Kidding
About five years ago, Sega fan Ian Wall,
better known online as ian8bit, put out
a physical release of Alex Kidd in Miracle
World 2 – his unofficial sequel to the
Master System platformer. Made in
limited quantities, copies soon became
scarce, predictably leading to some
ridiculous asking prices on eBay. If
you missed out the first time, there’s
good news: Wall’s now selling a new
2022 edition of the game, which again
comes in an authentic-looking box with
a cartridge and poster. There’s even a
Game Gear port available if you’re after
a handheld version and don’t want
to play the Master System cartridge
through a converter for some reason.
prize the lens off with a knife, as I’ve seen out of the shell as you clip the two halves Essentially a ROM hack, Alex Kidd in
some people suggest online, you’ll likely back together. Patience and a steady hand Miracle World 2 offers more of the first
find that the glass will simply shatter. are all that’s needed here. game’s 8-bit action: there are bikes
This is where heat comes in handy; I used A couple of minutes and a handful of to ride and enemies to punch, while
a hot air rework station dialled to a fairly screws later, and my Game Boy Advance Wall’s solidly designed levels are filled
low setting, but a hairdryer would likely is successfully rehoused. And – as you can with secrets and hidden bonuses.
work just as well. see from the images dotted around these In essence, this is a glimpse of what
After gently heating up the edges of words – the results are pretty impressive. might have been in an alternate reality:
the lens and the shell for a few minutes, The clear blue shell evokes that early while Sega published several sequels
and teasing at the corner with a small flat- 2000s period where see-through iMacs to Alex Kidd, none of them followed
bladed screwdriver, I was able to gradually were all the rage, while the brass buttons quite the same formula, and one (Alex
soften the glue and ease the glass away add an eye-catching bit of bling. Kidd: High-Tech World) was itself a ROM
from the shell without damaging it. You’ll hack of an entirely unrelated game
need to keep the air gun (or hairdryer) called Anmitsu Hime.
moving to avoid applying too much heat, You can play Alex Kidd in Miracle
but you should find that the lens will come World 2 via an emulator right now by
away cleanly without any harm. Again, I downloading the freely available ROM
found there was enough adhesive still from wfmag.cc/alexkidd2. If you like
on the lens to affix it to my shiny new things in boxes and fancy treating
GBA shell. yourself to a physical copy, though, you
Reassembly isn’t particularly tricky, can email the manufacturer directly
though you may find that the shoulder at [email protected] for
buttons have a tendency to flip themselves shipping prices to your region.

wfmag.cc \ 105
 Retro
Backwards compatible

WRITTEN BY AARON POTTER

Reanimating the dead

Time Crisis. Point Blank. The House of the populace deserves to indulge in a bite of
Dead. These three lightgun games were nineties horror nostalgia… as a treat. That
arcade royalty when I was growing up, with leads us to today, where The House of the
the latter, in particular, scaring the living Dead: Remake is indeed real and released,
bejeebers out of me every time I passed by very much staying true to the spirit of
it; this was much to the dismay of my mum, the original – right down to the words
who only sent me off to get a quid’s worth “Hold your fire” flashing in the lower-left
of coinage for the 2p machines. Sega’s during cutscenes, and some deceptively
ghoulish rail shooter from 1996 now rears silent zombies primed to slash the screen
its undead head back into the conversation each time the camera turns a corner.
by way of a Nintendo Switch exclusive The visuals have been entirely overhauled,
remake. And, well, it’s all rather cheesy, although I wouldn’t quite go so far as to say
isn’t it? Not that there’s anything wrong modernised. But it’s good to see that the
with gunning it past cowering men in white game’s schlocky tone has been maintained.
coats, muscular flesh-eaters, and literal bat Blasting through the titular mansion
men in a bid to rescue the girl. I encourage sees memories of seaside piers, noisy slot
it, even. It’s just taken me 20-odd years to machines, and being constantly bled of
realise how fine a line there is between coins all come back to me. Of course, the
spooky and hammy. Hammy House of the beauty of The House of the Dead returning
Dead. That’s what this remake could have to home consoles is that you no longer of each boss enemy and creature type
been called. have to remortgage your home in order will help rack up the points somewhat.
This is a series that’s never garnered to see the gruesome adventure of Agents Even then, though, you’re always better off
much critical acclaim per se, but that hasn’t Thomas Rogan and “G” through to the end. aiming for the hand rather than the head,
stopped publisher Forever Entertainment Quick reaction times are still required as it’s bound to be holding something
from deciding that the game-playing to minimise the number of hits you can sinister (and sharp) when thrown.
afford to take, true, but no less than three Where The House of the Dead Remake
new difficulty modes makes the overall does unfortunately slip over its own guts
challenge – and experience in general – feel somewhat is in the control setup. You’d
much less cheap. think that the detachable Joy-Con would
I don’t envy the task Forever be a perfect means to replicate the original
Entertainment took on with this remake. arcade experience. However, gyro-aiming
Going in and touching up any cherished on Switch isn’t as accurate as a good
title for the modern age always requires old-fashion lightgun, as it happens. I lost
a delicate hand. Doubly so for a game like count of how many times my Pro controller
this, where the runtime comes in at well failed to register slight turn gestures, and
under an hour for the average player. recentring the reticle back to the middle of
Four chapters is all you get in The House the screen with a frequent button tap isn’t
of the Dead’s story mode. And in that time, ideal. It’s still better than using the left stick
you’ll venture from castle courtyard to to aim, but I never could get the sensitivity
underground science lab, running through to my liking when playing handheld.
it just once before it becomes a matter of As a piece of gaming history brought
score chasing. Knowing the weak points back from the dead, re-animated to be

106 / wfmag.cc
 Retro
Backwards compatible

Advance Effect
Hypothetical video game ‘demakes’ are praise on the straightforward yet still
a trend I’m constantly fascinated by. satisfyingly wholesome presentation and
Not just because it’s fun to imagine design of Super Rare’s Grapple Dog. Long
what a modern experience would look may this continue, I say. Even if it means
like if it was rendered in pixels rather we only get to fawn over a theoretical
than polygons, but because it’s further Advance Effect that presumably exists
evidence that at the heart of every somewhere in an alternate universe.
beloved game is a great idea, not just At least we’ll always have GBA Garrus’
great graphics. YouTube channel 64 little legs to remind us of what could
Bits recently cemented this belief by have been. Take a closer look here:
reimagining BioWare’s seminal 2007 wfmag.cc/GBA-Effect.
space opera Mass Effect as a GBA title
from the early 2000s. Crewmates like
Liara, Wrex, Tali, and even Commander
Shepard are all chibified, with combat
enjoyed by a fresh audience, The House playing out Advance Wars-style from a
of the Dead Remake is an intriguing if top-down view. In other words… a tactics
hokey arcade artefact. There’s not really spin-off I never knew I needed.
enough difference here (aside from Only in the last issue did I wax
a horde mode and step up in visuals) lyrical about how Game Boy Advance
to warrant a return trip for series throwbacks and homages were starting
stalwarts, and new players will likely be to bubble up in popularity, heaping
left scratching their heads at what to do
next when credits roll after 45 minutes
of play. For me personally? It feels good
to finally conquer a childhood fear in
blitzing, B-movie fashion. I only wish I
could do so with a proper lightgun in
hand, rather than an inefficient imitation.

wfmag.cc \ 107
 Now playing
Let’s go round again

Let’s go round again

With the lightest of spoilers, Ryan goes loopy for the
time-hopping adventure, The Forgotten City

T
he bottle sits on a table in the But then I ponder on why I’m thinking about
marketplace, practically begging pilfering the bottle in the first place: there’s a
me to nick it. If this were Alice desperately ill woman in the city who needs the
in Wonderland, the bottle would medicine contained in it. The problem is, the
probably have a label with “Steal guy who owns the bottle, a scheming merchant
me” written on it. But still, I hesitate: in the named Desius, wants to sell it for a cripplingly
strange underground city I’ve found myself exorbitant sum. So if I steal the jar of medicine
in, my choices have deadly consequences for and save a woman’s life, isn’t that justified? Does
everyone else. If one person sins, everyone is it even count as a sin at all?
mercilessly hunted down by living statues, shot As I grab the bottle from the table, though, I
with arrows, and turned into lumps of solid gold. soon learn the answer, as a voice booms from
the sky, “The many shall suffer for the sins of the
one”, and suddenly, everyone’s being shot with
arrows and turned into screaming figurines.
Fortunately, I have an escape route: located
in a shrine at the top of the city is a portal which
takes me back to the start of the day. It’s here
that The Forgotten City teaches me one of its key
rules: anything I’ve collected (or flat-out stolen)
on the previous loop will still be in my inventory
on the next. This means I can take my purloined
medicine to the woman in the marketplace, cure
her malady, and Desius will be none the wiser.
This is the earliest of many logical and ethical
conundrums that The Forgotten City presented
to me during my eight-hour-plus playthrough.
Yours will likely be different, since Modern
Storyteller’s game is an ingeniously intricate,
miniature sandbox of interlocking mysteries

108 / wfmag.cc
 Now playing
Let’s go round again

Wireframe
Recommends

Flower, Sun, And Rain

NINTENDO DS, PS2
A lesser-known game from
Suda51 (No More Heroes), this
time-looping adventure suffers
from some iffy graphics
and gameplay, but its quirky
story – about a bomb plot on
a picturesque island – keeps
you’re left to uncover for yourself. There’s scratching your head, but not so many that things fresh. Can we get a
version for Switch, please?
the question of how you wound up in this you’re left feeling lost or overwhelmed. It soon
subterranean Roman enclave, some 2000 years becomes clear that your fate is closely bound up
in the past; for that matter, it’s a wonder how its with everyone else’s; if you’re going to break the
other inhabitants wound up down here, or who time loop, then you’ll also have to help others
even built the city in the first place. And what break out of their own personal hells.
kind of cruel deity would create The Golden There are only one or two occasions where the
Rule – the constant threat of divine punishment game falters; I’d somehow missed (or perhaps
that leaves everyone around you terrified of forgotten) one tiny sliver of dialogue, which Minit
committing even the most mundane of sins? meant I failed to understand what was ailing PC, PS4, XBO, SWITCH,
Fortunately, the citizens of The Forgotten another character, which in turn meant I spent ANDROID, IOS
City are a talkative bunch, several loops fruitlessly Picking up a cursed sword
which almost threatens to “Exposes the fault asking different questions in leaves you stuck in the same
be off-putting at first. Your an effort to work out what to 60-second time loop; like The
line between laws Forgotten City, though, you
questions are often met with do next. There are also one
incredibly lengthy replies, and morality” or two brilliant moments of
get to keep all the items you
find in your race against time.
delivered directly down the horror that give way to an
Packed with charm and funny
virtual lens by a slightly glassy-eyed character action sequence that outstays its welcome. dialogue, this 2D adventure is
model. It’s a testament to the strength of writing, These are minor sins, however, when weighed an immaculately crafted gem.
really, that The Forgotten City’s characters are against the whole. On a philosophical level, The
so lively and distinct – within a loop or two, I’d Forgotten City exposes the fault line between
become engrossed in the personal woes of laws and morality; for example, why is stealing
Galerius, the guileless farmer who becomes your considered an unbreakable rule, but price
helper of sorts; Duli, a hapless thief; or Iulia and gouging isn’t? Most would agree that murder’s a
Ulpius, a couple stricken by slavery and debt. Bad Thing, but what about killing in self-defence?
By this point, it became clear that The The Forgotten City’s biggest triumph, though,
Forgotten City’s chattiness is the opposite of a is its characters. It was only when I reached the Outer Wilds
drawback: I found myself wanting to talk to the last (and best) of four possible endings that it PC, XBO, PS4, SWITCH
20-or-so citizens milling around the crumbling dawned on me just how attached I’d become Another time-looping opus,
Outer Wilds is a mix of
metropolis, not just to solve puzzles and to its group of chatty misfits. I was left smiling
big ideas and tiny details.
progress through the game, but also because at the people whose lives I’d improved, and
Your goal is to unlock the
I was genuinely interested in finding out more saddened about the handful of threads I’d failed secrets of a dying solar
about the people themselves. to resolve. But that’s the beauty of a well-crafted system, but your ship looks
It helps that so much of The Forgotten City is time-loop game: it’s always possible to turn back like a dustbin and bounces off
perfectly judged. There are enough characters the clock. Time to head back into the portal to planets like a pachinko ball.
and interweaving story threads to keep you see what else I can fix? Sure, why not. An instant classic.

wfmag.cc \ 109
 Now playing
Third strike’s the charm

Third strike’s the charm

Aaron recharges his beam katana for a return
trip to Santa Destroy in No More Heroes 3

C
alling Travis Touchdown video I say this as someone who enjoyed the original
gaming’s biggest loser seems a little two slash-’em-ups back on the Wii a lot, even if
harsh, even if it is apt. After all, this Suda51’s ambitious scope vastly dwarfed the
is a slouch that’s worked his way up technical ability of Nintendo’s pre-HD console.
through a rogue’s gallery’s worth of So here I am, revisiting Santa Destroy ten years
cartoonish villains not once, not twice, but three later once again and oh, environmental pop-in is
times now. And if third time really is the charm, still this city’s single defining feature, huh? At least
then No More Heroes 3 most definitely sees this there’s plenty of bosses to carve up – and now
loveable deadbeat go out on something of a high. they come from outer space.
In some ways it shouldn’t be a surprise to
see Suda51 look to the stars when seeking
inspiration for Travis Touchdown’s big bad
this time around. This is an underdog series
that has made a name for itself by ratcheting
up the stakes, pitting you against increasingly
outlandish foes each time, and now the bounds
of reality are slipped entirely when an alien
army commanded by the menace FU suddenly
decides to swoop down and destroy humanity.
So up Travis gets from his toilet, beam katana in
hand, ready to do what he does best.
The use of motion controls might not be as
keenly encouraged as it was back in the Wii days,
but the act of slashing, dodging, and repeatedly
beating opponents feels just as tactile here on
the Nintendo Switch. That Y button truly does get
a workout during Travis’ effort to move upwards

110 / wfmag.cc
 Now playing
Third strike’s the charm

changes; it’s just a standard mixture of light and

heavy sword attacks shaken up with the odd
Death Glove ability thrown in. Rather, it’s the
crazy scenarios themselves that help keep things
interesting, with No More Heroes 3 using the
enemy’s intergalactic origins as a way to surprise
via leftfield environments and some seriously Wireframe
psychedelic battle sequences.
Recommends
I’m not sure that players without context for
Travis’ previous boss-bashing exploits would get
as much of a kick out of, er, kicking the crap out
of enemies on this scale. We’ve come a long way
from dodging Dr. Peace’s gunfire in a baseball
stadium. It makes you think about what Suda51
through the intergalactic rankings, but it’s just a could potentially accomplish if he wasn’t limited
tad more forgiving here thanks to the new Death by the console No More Heroes is still tied to. Assassin’s Creed
Glove abilities. Using these, Travis can throw Because while fighting your way up to the mighty The Ezio Collection
extra-terrestrial minions around like rag dolls, FU can be a blast, Travis’s third outing doesn’t PC, SWITCH, XBO, PS4
flinging them from one side of the arena to the wow that much in any of its open-world elements. It may have originally released
other using a psychokinetic push, only to then True, Santa Destroy is now made up of multiple in 2009, but Assassin’s
Creed II is still an impressively
teleport-kick them into oblivion. What No More areas this time instead of the one, but all six – as
realised open-world title – also
Heroes lacks in visual flair it clearly makes up visually diverse as they may be – suffer from
now available on Nintendo
for in the rugged style and panache Suda51 is barren landscapes, monotonous side jobs, and Switch. Less pop-in than Santa
known for. It helps elevate what would otherwise a general lack of life. One could argue that this Destroy, too.
be the best ever 6/10 third-person action game, is the point, though my suspicion is that Suda51
and little else. chose to focus more where it counts: on the set
Back to the aliens, then, and the first foe I come piece brawls.
up against is a fellow called Mr. Blackhole, and By the time the end credits roll, it’s these
as his name might suggest, he’s rather fond of bombastic, unpredictable encounters that stay
laying down portal traps. with me. All the times I was
Turns out they’re easy “Up Travis gets forced to mow the lawn or
to avoid providing I have hunt down shiny scorpions LEGO City: Undercover
Travis move quick on
from his toilet, beam (just to build up enough PC, SWITCH, XBO, PS4, WII U

his feet, dancing around katana in hand” funds to compete) fall

TT Games’ first attempt at
an original open-world LEGO
them until Mr. Blackhole away, and I’m left feeling
game is also its last, but
takes a dive only to let me wail on him. I do this proud that Travis has accomplished his goal playing cops and robbers as
six or seven times before the screen whirls black, for the third and (surely?) final time. No More police officer Chase McCain is
and suddenly Travis is trapped in the vastness Heroes 3 might not be the most polished open- pure brick-based fun.
of space. It’s only the first boss and already world actioner, true, yet there’s a sense that it’s
we’ve entered interstellar territory? Suda51 isn’t exactly the sort of send-off Suda51 wanted to
pulling any punches. Anyway, before I know it, I’ve make. This threequel is scrappy and imperfect,
transformed into a mech and sent Mr. Blackhole just like the wannabe hero at the centre of it all.
into the void from whence he came.
I’m pleased to report that all nine other boss
battles are equally as bonkers, with some of my
favourites being the fakeouts. A great example Saints Row IV:
of this is the eighth encounter, where Travis is
Re-Elected
SWITCH, XBO, PS4
supposed to face-off against Black Night Direction
If ever there was an open-world
(are we noticing a theme?) before he’s swiftly
actioner equally as bonkers as
done away with a Gray Fox-looking wannabe Travis’ latest slash-fest, it’s the
known as Native Dancer. We both showed up one where you’re kidnapped by
for a fight, though, gosh darn it, and a fight aliens and forced to fight in a
we had. What’s being asked of me never really VR metropolis.

wfmag.cc \ 111
 Killer Feature
Gradius

Gradius
Celebrating the birth and incredible half-life
of the Konami Code

KONAMI / 1986 / NES

F
or proof that humans are absolutely useless at answer, we can turn back to that 2003 interview: Hashimoto
keeping secrets, just look at the Konami Code. describes a chaotic and fast-paced working environment at
A series of inputs that yielded things like power-ups Konami in the mid-eighties, where the most experienced
or extra lives depending on the game, the Konami programmers worked on arcade titles, while “the employees
Code has grown into a pop cultural touchstone who didn’t know a thing about programming or game creation
that has appeared in all kinds of unexpected places. You’ve were put into the custody of a single ‘teacher’ who would teach
probably even seen T-shirts with the symbols for Up, Up, Down, them all to program as they went along”.
Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start on them. With small teams of young designers developing games in
That’s quite a lot of fame for a cheat that was never meant a matter of months, and staff often sharing roles – “originally
to publicly exist in the first place. You may be familiar with the there really wasn’t anybody exclusively in charge of planning;
origin story: back in the mid-1980s, programmer Kazuhisa we’d bring material over from the arcade games and have a
Hashimoto was given the task of porting the arcade hit Gradius sort of duel of ideas”, Hashimoto recalled – it’s easy to see how
to the Nintendo Entertainment System (or its something small like a cheat code could slip
Japanese counterpart, the Family Computer). “It’s possible that the through the net.
Hashimoto found the game incredibly hard, It’s more difficult to know when the
iconic sequence of
and decided to put in a cheat code that gave Konami Code first became public knowledge,
him a full suite of power-ups. “I hadn’t played presses will outlive us all” but word of it clearly spread quickly around
it that much and couldn’t beat it myself, Konami’s offices. The NES version of Contra,
so I put in the Konami Code,” Hashimoto recalled in a 2003 released less than a year after Gradius and programmed by
interview published by Siliconera. “Because I was the one who Shigeharu Umezaki, became the second game to feature the
was going to be using it, I made sure it was easy to remember.” Konami Code. And, thanks in no small part to its popularity
Porting Gradius took Hashimoto and his team of three co- in the US, it was Contra, and not Gradius, that became most
developers around six months – long enough for Hashimoto to closely associated with Hashimoto’s hidden cheat.
forget about removing his cheat from the finished game code. From there, the code evidently became a kind of in-joke
By the time the cartridges were produced and in shops, it was among Konami’s programmers, since it appeared in many
too late: the cheat was out in the wild, waiting to be discovered. of the company’s games in the years that followed. What the
It’s worth pausing here to ask exactly how the Konami Konami code did varied from game to game: in Contra and
Code was seemingly forgotten about in the first place. For the several subsequent titles, it granted the player 30 lives; in

112 / wfmag.cc
 Killer Feature
Gradius

B A START

The Konami Code in the wild

Programmers the world over have clearly enjoyed slipping the Konami
most Gradius sequels and spin-offs, it activated power-ups. Code into all sorts of random places. Repeat it to virtual assistants like
Interestingly, the Konami Code didn’t appear in the first three Alexa and Siri, and you’ll probably be greeted with an amusingly nerdy
response (“Super Alexa mode activated…”). Type it into Overwatch ’s
Castlevania titles created for the NES, suggesting that the teams
website, and you’ll see a smattering of D.Va mechs trickle down the
behind those games were less interested in continuing the screen. Perhaps the weirdest venue we’ve heard of, though, is the Bank
tradition. The 1990 comedy spin-off Kid Dracula, meanwhile, of Canada’s website. Head to a page advertising a commemorative
had the code built in, but using it simply triggered a message $10 banknote and type in the Konami Code, and you’ll unlock a rainfall
that translated to “There’s nothing here” in English. of dollar bills and a warbling version of the Canadian national anthem.
Try it for yourself at wfmag.cc/canada-code.
The Konami Code’s fame only grew through the nineties,
though, as it showed up in later Konami franchises like Dance
Dance Revolution and Metal Gear Solid. By the 2000s, it had even
begun to appear in games produced by other studios: The
Bard’s Tale, LittleBigPlanet 2, BioShock Infinite, and Just Cause 4
are a few of the high-profile titles that used the Konami Code
as an Easter egg.
Hashimoto passed away in 2020, leaving behind a small but
important body of work: besides Gradius, he worked on hit
Konami games Ganbare Goemon and Lethal Enforcers. His most
lasting legacy, though, is undoubtedly the code he accidentally
gave the world over a quarter of a century ago. Indeed, it’s
possible that the now iconic sequence of button presses
will outlive us all: when the human race finally goes extinct,
maybe passing alien visitors will stumble across the remains
of a Konami Code T-shirt left billowing among the debris of
a forgotten city, and wonder why this arcane collection of
symbols meant so much to us.

wfmag.cc \ 113
Next Issue
Editorial
Editor
Ryan Lambie
Email [email protected]

Features Editor
Aaron Potter

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Sub-Editors
David Higgs & Vel Ilic

Design
criticalmedia.co.uk
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Lee Allen
Designers
Sam Ribbits, Harriet Knight

Contributors
Jon Bailes, Alexander Chatziioannou, Dan
Cooper, Antony de Fault, Konstantinos
Dimopoulos, Edwin Jones, Kim Justice,
Clarisse Loughrey, Stuart Maine, Steve
McNeil, Nic Reuben, Mark Vanstone, Howard
Scott Warshaw, Alan Wen, Jack Yarwood

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infinite runner guide reviving ageing handheld tech Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0).
ISSN: 2631-6722 (print), 2631-6730 (online).
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