ALL FORMATS LIFTING THE LID ON VIDEO GAMES Issue 36 £3 wfmag.cc HoundedHounded OutOut Two canine heads are better than one in PHOGS! CARDS AND DICE YOUR STORY LOSS AND FOUND The growing influence Code an FMV Making personal games on video game design adventure game that deal with grief get in the 4K Ultra HD UltraWideColor Adaptive Sync Overwatch and the return of the trolls e often talk about ways to punish stalwarts who remain have resorted to trolling out of “ players who are behaving poorly, sheer boredom. and it’s not very exciting to a lot of Blizzard has long emphasised the motto “play W us. I think, more often than not, nice, play fair” among its core values, and Overwatch’s players are behaving in awesome ways in Overwatch, endorsement system seemed to embrace this ethos. and we just don’t recognise them enough.” JESS Why has it failed to rein in a community increasingly Designer Jeff Kaplan offered this rosy take on the MORRISSETTE intent on acting out? I argue that Overwatch’s Overwatch community in 2018 as he introduced the Jess Morrissette is a endorsements created a form of performative game’s new endorsement system, intended to reward professor of Political sportsmanship. It’s the promise of extrinsic rewards players for sportsmanship, teamwork, and leadership Science at Marshall – rather than an intrinsic sense of fair play – that on the virtual battlefields of Blizzard’s popular shooter. University, where motivates players to mimic behaviours associated with he studies games After matches, players could now vote to endorse one and the politics of good sportsmanship. With the endorsement system, another; a steady stream of endorsements would earn popular culture. Blizzard gamified the social interactions that happen occasional loot boxes and shiny badges indicating their around Overwatch with points, ranks, badges, and status as worthy teammates. If bans existed to punish rewards. Now, in addition to competing over a control disruptive behaviour, this new system commodified and point or payload, players can compete over who’s nicest. incentivised positive interactions. After all, the world So, what’s the big deal? Is ‘fake niceness’ functionally could always use more heroes. different than genuine human decency in the context of Flash forward to 2020. Overwatch 2 is in the an online game? While players bashing out ‘gg’ on their works with no official release date announced, and keyboards after a match instead of ‘gg ez’ is arguably a development of new content for the original Overwatch step in the right direction, performative sportsmanship has slowed to a crawl. While fresh character skins remains, at best, superficial. In the absence of appear with seasonal events and the perpetual cycle of meaningful options to sway the hearts and minds of gameplay balancing continues unrelentingly, Overwatch toxic players, performative sportsmanship simply isn’t has stagnated, and its player base is restless. In the durable. It lasts until it doesn’t anymore, and then the absence of new heroes, maps, and modes, a growing trolling commences anew. number of players have leaned hard into toxicity to #36 Perhaps the recent release of Echo, Overwatch’s keep themselves amused. 32nd – and presumably final – hero, will shake things As a die-hard Overwatch player, I’ve observed up a bit and reverse this backslide. If recent history has a considerable up-tick in abusive chat, gameplay taught us anything, though, it’s that Echo will only be sabotage, and other forms of disruptive behaviour. a temporary fix. Once the newness wears off, bored These problems aren’t new or unique to Overwatch, but players will fall back on bad habits, and it’s going to take they’re increasingly becoming the norm rather than a whole lot more than the occasional loot box to calm the exception. While a certain percentage of the player the toxic discontent bubbling under the surface of a base has presumably drifted away to other games as game Wired once hailed as the rare example of a “troll- development on Overwatch has wound down, certain free online shooter.” wfmag.cc \ 03 Contents Contents 6 Attract mode Interface 06. PHOGS! 18. Loss levels This co-op puzzler gives us paws How tragedy shaped Dan Hett’s for thought (sorry) unique games 10. Monster Train 22. Idle games Inside Shiny Shoe’s deck-building The devs pushing the clicker genre card game into bold new arenas 12. Love 44. Roll with it Part Rubik’s emotional cube, Card and dice rules in the part living diorama digital realm 16. Incoming 50. Profiled: Jaleco Noodles, spacecraft, and tapestry- The Japanese firm behind Rod Land, 18 based strategy City Connection, and more 04 / wfmag.cc Contents WELCOME Whether game designers mean to or not, they can’t help but leave traces of themselves in their work. It’s something you can see in several games we’ve covered throughout this issue. Some, like developer Dan Hett (see page 18) have funnelled tragic and deeply personal experiences into their games. 56 Others, like Tim Bekkers, creator of Imagine Lifetimes (see page 48), have made games initially built around their somewhat cynical outlook, only for their perspective to change as development has progressed, and they’ve grown older and more positive. As Shane McCafferty, designer of LOVE: A Puzzle Box Filled With Stories, points out on page 12, the medium has long been a venue for drama and human stories – but games that explore the more delicate, nuanced areas of existence are comparatively rare. “By and large,” he says, “games that try to tackle tougher emotions are still the exception rather than 44 30 the rule.” Kudos, then, to the designers that dare to explore those trickier sides of the human experience: loss, regret, and a Toolbox Rated smattering of existential dread. Video games are an escape, of course – and god knows we need a bit of escapism with 28. CityCraft 56. DOOM Eternal the real world being the way B.A.T. creator Hervé Lange on his id’s sequel adds platforming to its it is right now. But like poetry, sci-fi cities frenzied blasting novels, music, or any other art form, games are also a valuable mirror, offering reflections that 30. Your Story 59. Kunai can be comforting, thought- Make your first FMV adventure A Metroidvania with a sharp provoking, or plain disquieting. with Twine traversal mechanic Ryan Lambie 36. Making Anew 61. Deathtrap Dungeon Editor The latest entry in Jeff Spoonhower’s With Eddie Marsan, world-class dev diary Dungeon Master 38. Source Code 64. Backwards Compatible Make your own Side Pocket-style The wonderful world of retro-themed pool game model kits wfmag.cc \ 05 Attract Mode Interview 06 / wfmag.cc Attract Mode Interview GoneGone toto thethe PhogsPhogs Coatsink’s Jack Sanderson talks us through the studio’s playful co-operative puzzler e have a bit of a soft spot It’s a game that lends itself well to the to series like Mario, Spyro – even Dark for games with unusual question: what is PHOGS!? Souls – to help develop the themes of the control systems here In PHOGS! you play as a stretchy-bellied environments and characters. W at Wireframe Towers. double-ended dog with two heads. Back in issue 23, we Together, you explore three strange and Why specifically a two-headed dog? reminisced about Namco’s half-forgotten wonderful worlds and co-operate – either Both from the perspective of why two Libble Rabble, designer Toru Iwatani’s with a partner or between the two halves heads, and why dogs? Why not a four- follow-up to Pac-Man, which involved of your own brain – to help the inhabitants headed squirrel, say? simultaneously moving two cursors to in unusual and surprising ways, like hosing The idea began as simply an animal that stretch marquees around objects. There’s water in Food World to dragging around could connect two pipes to become part of a hint of Libble Rabble in Noby Noby Boy orbs of glowing light in Sleep World. the pipe itself. Then we imagined it – Keita Takahashi’s charming interactive grabbing and fetching things, being cute toy, which involved stretching two ends How did the idea come about? Noby Noby and lovable… And with the focus on of the same character using the twin Boy naturally springs to mind. co-operation – specifically between two analogue sticks. And traces of Libble Rabble We wanted to create something none of people – a double-headed dog was the also made their way into PlatinumGames’ us had played before, and honed in on the obvious choice. Astral Chain, where you could move two idea of the double-ended dog. Then we characters to ensnare enemies with its explored gameplay possibilities, looking at “ With the focus on titular weapon. games like Noby Noby Boy and Push Me Pull co-operation, a double- All of which leads us to PHOGS!, an You before settling on a puzzle-focused action-puzzler that continues the head- direction. We also wanted to pack in tons headed dog was the scratching tradition of those earlier games. of charm and personality, so we looked obvious choice ” Either on your own or with a friend, you take control of a two-headed dog as it stretches and bounces around a cosy 3D world; but unlike those earlier games, PHOGS! is more specifically focused on solving environmental puzzles. Whether it’s using your critter’s body to roll along objects, or gripping onto bits of scenery with your teeth to traverse tricky obstacles, PHOGS! is less eccentric than Noby Noby Boy, and more broadly approachable than Namco’s frighteningly hard, arcade- focused Libble Rabble.