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As the lovely Steve McNeil correctly observes on page 26, it’s almost impossible to look back over a decade of games and come up with any kind of ranked list of great titles. But what we’ve tried to do, in our epic feature on page 16, is look back at ten years of industry events, new systems, studio closures, indie 16 games, mobile games, triple-A games and oddities that defy classification, and provide a snapshot of just how diverse and vibrant the industry became between 2010 and 2019. It was a decade where a solo developer could change the entire gaming landscape with a single game (that’d be PUBG); where a mobile game like Candy Crush could rake in as much cash as a triple-A title; and where , a lo-fi game fundamentally about making things, could win the hearts and minds of a generation of loyal players.

There’s little value in arguing whether a tiny mobile game like Monument Valley is better or worse than, say, SIE 56 44 Santa Monica’s God of War, or Contents 6 whether a three-person indie title like Celeste is artistically comparable to something like Attract mode Interface Toolbox Rated Red Dead Redemption 2, which took the population of a small town to produce. Maybe it’s better to hold all these games 06. OMNO 16. A decade in review 28. CityCraft 56. Death Stranding up – and countless others like Jonas Manke talks us through his Looking back at ten years of How to capture a city’s essence in Digging into Hideo Kojima’s them – and champion them as ethereal adventure indie games and tech a Deliveroo simulator the products of an ever-growing, ever-evolving, and ever- maturing industry. 10. KUNAI 26. Steve McNeil 32. Latency 58. Communist Planet TurtleBlaze’s upcoming ninja The futility of making A guide to minimising delays and Aliens arrive to save us from We can’t wait to see what the new decade brings. robot apocalypse ‘best games ever’ lists optimising games our capitalist overlords

Ryan Lambie 12. Touch Type Tale 44. ’s Bad Fur Day 38. Uncharted territory 60. Planet Zoo Editor It’s Mavis Beacon meets real- Making a cult classic, and what Looking beyond games to Mucking out the ocelot enclosure: time strategy its devs are up to now create new experiences the video game

14. News 50.  40. Source Code 62. Moons of Madness A wry glance at another busy The studio’s history and Code your own Boulder Lovecraft at large on the angry 50 fortnight in gaming greatest hits Dash homage red planet

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