Lifting the Lid on Video Games
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ALL FORMATS LIFTING THE LID ON VIDEO GAMES Issue 16 £3 wfmag.cc The Full Monty Paintings come to Pythonesque life in The Procession to Calvary Out of the box Going indie Point-and- click The escape room From triple-A Exploring the handmade genre returns to startup duo world of LUNA UPGRADE TO LEGENDARY AG273QCX 2560x1440 Beyond Designed Experiences ver a chill autumn weekend in 1997, play, whether it’s by exposing the limits of the game my best friend and I crushed Castlevania: and exploiting them, imposing our own additional Symphony of the Night. We took turns, constraints, or outright cheating. O staying awake, fuelled by Pizza Hut and I’m also thinking of Walker’s permadeath streams of Tahitian Treat, for as long as we could. One of us would Breath of the Wild. Speedrunners. Or the innumerable sleep while the other kept playing. It’s not exactly what DIA LACINA games I’ve modded, made myself immortal in, granted people think of when they think of couch co-op. At each myself the powers of flight or to walk through walls. Dia Lacina is a hand-off, we’d have to recount the adventure up to that Or how we’ve all seen just how many cheese wheels queer indigenous point. Detailing plot beats, boss encounters, zones that trans woman writer, our computers can send rolling down the side of a had been traversed. We’d forget things. Doorways to photographer and mountain in Skyrim. come back to. What was really going on with Maria founding editor of None of which is intended, but which extend our , and Richter. We embellished others (no way he didn’t CapsuleCrit.com experiences beyond the scaffolds provided. On one a monthly journal take a single hit fighting Death). We were telling the dedicated to hand, it’s to exercise our sense of ownership over story of the game not as it was or as intended, but microgenre work media, or achieve greater value for money. Just as often, as we perceived it. And in the end, we had a wholly about games. She however, it’s our desire to stay in worlds we love, to synthetic experience. It was a kind of magic that I’ve tweets too much at savour and understand these games, their construction, @dialacina been chasing in games ever since. and what they mean to us. And sometimes, these “Game design is experience design. You try to experiences leave the digital boundaries of the games scaffold and support the experience you hope the themselves and enter into our communal consumption, player has with your text,” is a quote from game discussion, and the sharing of these experiences with studies and design professor Dr. Todd Harper that one another. Streaming, Let’s Plays, criticism, game I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. It’s right. At the photography and filmmaking, fan-created works, and same time, I’ve become much more interested in how forum discussion all extend and alter the intended players can co-opt and even dismantle that scaffolding, experience of playing a game, not just for the players, not to take ownership per se, but to create alternate, but also those who are traditionally thought of as non- unexpected experiences. players. One only has to look at how the experiences In the concluding hours of Waypoint’s most recent built into Dark Souls have extended far beyond the Save Point stream, Rob Zacny and Austin Walker scope of the original design (and dominated whole took turns playing XCOM 2 while the other was #16 discourses). While those actively participating in a game blindfolded. Neither one got to see the actions of the outside of its confines might not necessarily be growing other. In effect, creating a kind of exquisite corpse sales, those experiences are no less real or important. playthrough in a tactical war game, where coordinated None of which is to say that those scaffolded action and an understanding of deployment is often experiences are less valuable, either: there would be crucial. Even if the designers conceived XCOM as being no game without them. But understanding that a well- capable of played cooperatively, it surely wasn’t like this. designed scaffold can just as easily become a playset for But as long as games have existed, once we’ve the adventurous player to explore and thrill themselves exhausted the designed experiences, we’ve sought on far beyond the original intent – it’s a celebration of newer ones. Often this is through self-directed that design, rather than an abnegation of it. wfmag.cc \ 03 Contents Contents 6 Attract mode Interface 06. The Procession to Calvary 18. Going indie A point-and-click adventure Former Guerilla Cambridge devs with a Monty Python edge discuss their leap of faith 10. Road To Guangdong 22. Escape Rooms Pootle through China in A neglected genre makes a unique road trip drama a welcome return 12. LUNA The Shadow Dust 44. Joffa Smith A hand-crafted game inspired Exploring a ZX Spectrum by Ursula K. Le Guin legend’s life and games 16. Incoming 50. id Software Detectives, dark fantasy worlds, The Texan studio behind 18 and killers in pointy hats Doom and Quake profiled 04 / wfmag.cc Contents WELCOME As I write this, the internet is aflutter with the news that Keanu Reeves has a surprise role in CD Projekt Red’s forthcoming Cyberpunk 2077. The revelation comes hot on the heels of Death Stranding's recent eight-and-a-half minute trailer, which featured such 50 entertainment industry lights as Norman Reedus, Mads Mikkelsen, Guillermo del Toro and assorted other Hideo Kojima chums scowling their way through an opaque sci-fi action epic. We're in a new golden age of celebrity video game appearances, it seems; forget about the likes of Hollyoaks’ Gemma Atkinson and martial arts sensation Gina Carano in Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 – it's hard to remember a time when quite so many fancy actors and directors were last willing to be seen in a video game. Go back 20 years or so, and you probably wouldn’t have expected, say, Stanley Kubrick and Tom Cruise lining up to appear in such a 22 56 patently surreal game, even if it was helmed by one of the industry’s most familiar names. It’s further proof, surely, that it's cool to be associated with video Toolbox Rated games in 2019. Certainly, it’s all a far cry from the time when Gordon Ramsay 28. CityCraft 56. Observation apologetically showed up in his Considering real-world materials, Systems management has own Wii game (that’d be 2008’s and simulating them in a virtual city never felt so tense Hell’s Kitchen), and his digital avatar looked like someone had placed a blonde wig on top of an 30. The power of focus 60. Void Bastards angry pink space hopper. We live Developer advice from a Splinter Cell Jon Chey’s strategy-shooter in a brave new gaming world, and Battlefield veteran was well worth the wait readers. Enjoy the new issue! 32. Save/Load 62. Mordhau Ryan Lambie A guide to saving and loading A gleefully bloody medieval Editor player data in Unreal Engine 4 combat simulator 40. Source Code 64. Persona Q2 Code your own Gradius-style Bid farewell to the 3DS Option sprites with a solid JRPG spin-off wfmag.cc \ 05 Attract Mode Mode Interview We catch up with Scottish developer Joe Richardson and his point-and-click adventure made from Renaissance art here have been numerous The Procession to Calvary is the third of was basically the whole idea for Four attempts to capture the Richardson’s games to feature his collage Last Things. This art style, but using spirit of Monty Python in art style. The first, The Preposterous beautiful Renaissance art as the T a video game over the Awesomeness of Everything, was his starting point.” decades, but few have final illustration course project at the matched the comedy troupe’s irreverent, Camberwell College of Arts. Unlike Four Public domain anarchic tone quite as well as Joe Last Things and The Procession to Calvary, When Four Last Things released, the Richardson’s Four Last Things, a point- though, The Preposterous Awesomeness of game’s artwork drew immediate and-click adventure made from recycled Everything was made up of images he’d comparisons to the animation style of Renaissance art. taken of himself – including some nude Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam, whose With his upcoming sequel, The photos – that he used to assemble the influence Richardson argues was Procession to Calvary, Richardson is hoping primitive cast of characters. unintentional, at least to begin with. to do the same again, with players this “I liked the art style,” says Richardson. “I’m obviously aware of Terry Gilliam,” time controlling a new lead character who, “I think it suited the game, but it wasn’t says Richardson. “I’m a Monty Python fan… having survived a holy war, and prompted pretty to look at. So, when I was doing so when people started saying it, by the actions of Heavenly Peter at the that, I thought, basically, what if the I was obviously very happy. That’s a huge end of the last game, travels to a region subject matter wasn’t my ugly face? What compliment. And I think subconsciously known as the South, again assembled if I wasn’t using disgusting subject matter, it probably was something that helped from a collection of Renaissance paintings.