ALL FORMATS LIFTING THE LID ON VIDEO GAMES Samus to Shantae Shadow’s Edge Crafting the perfect A game designed Metroidvania to change lives Issue 19 £3 wfmag.cc UncoverUncover aa bleak,bleak, beautifulbeautiful Gothicgothic adventureadventure UPGRADE TO LEGENDARY AG273QCX 2560x1440 Gatekeeping in the golden age of video games ld video game magazines are a treasure- What is the world coming to? Can we expect to see trove of fascinating history – particularly games aimed specifically at other groups? For example, those from the early 1980s, an era when senior citizen games in which ominous muggers try to O the conceptual boundaries and even steal the elderly’s social security cheques; tall people the language of video games were still crystallising. games in which basketball players routinely step on Advertisements hail long-forgotten games as the JESS jockeys; and, finally, dentist games, in which Strawberry greatest of all time, while articles employ curious MORRISSETTE Shortcake is eliminated because she causes cavities. terminology like ‘screen games’ to describe arcade Jess Morrissette is a In case the authors’ meaning wasn’t entirely clear, machines and ‘climbing games’ to refer to the genre professor of Political an illustration (‘Cute Shoot’) depicting someone scoring we now call platformers. Suffice to say, these vintage Science at Marshall a violent headshot on a shooting gallery-style figure publications offer intriguing glimpses into the roots of University, where he with a strawberry head accompanies the article. studies the politics of video game culture as we know it today. popular culture. So, if you’re wondering how many video games had With that in mind, I was recently skimming through to be marketed towards girls before dudes started the monthly ‘Glitches’ news column in the March claiming the industry was under assault, the answer 1983 issue of Electronic Fun with Computer & Games is one. Literally. The first one. when an item caught my eye. Under the provocative Looking back at this news item today, it’s hard not to headline ‘Yoo Hoo, Feminists…’, the short piece interpret it through the lens of Gamergate and its own reported on the upcoming release of Strawberry efforts to ‘defend’ gaming from perceived bogeymen Shortcake: Musical Match-Ups for the Atari 2600. – feminists, cultural Marxists, social justice warriors. Parker Brothers marketed the game, based on It represents an opening salvo in the decades-long Kenner’s popular toy line of scented dessert-themed battle to define what counts as a ‘real’ game and, dolls, as the “first video game cartridge for young girls.” by extension, a ‘real’ gamer. As is still the case today, What I found striking about the piece wasn’t so much realness to many gamers remains a fundamentally the historical significance of an early game targeted gendered concept. Contemporary reactions from at a female audience, but rather the disdainful tone it self-proclaimed ‘hardcore gamers’ to titles like Kim struck – a tone all too familiar in 2019. Kardashian: Hollywood – mobile, casual, female – aren’t The authors (the column is jointly credited that different from Electronic Fun with Computer & to Ronald Chironna, Pat Kinsley, David Celsi, Bill #19 Games’ condescending take on Musical Match-Ups. Sillbert, and Robert Casilla) open by alluding to That the authors flippantly added a violent element “nefarious things” afoot in the “game universe.” to their criticism (‘eliminating’ Strawberry Shortcake, After briefly mentioning the emerging trend of the headshot illustration) is unsettlingly prescient when erotic games, they identify the real threat: so- considered in the context of contemporary harassment called “sexual stereotyping.” The authors go on to campaigns targeting women in the video game industry. frame the pending release of Strawberry Shortcake: Taken as a whole, the article’s a stark reminder that Musical Match-Ups as a “quantum leap backwards the ‘boys only’ mentality of gaming culture isn’t a new for feminism” due to its “cute,” girl-centric content. phenomenon. In fact, there’s evidence to suggest it was They frame the crisis as follows: there almost from the start. wfmag.cc \ 03 Contents Contents 6 Attract mode Interface 06. Inmost 18. Shadow’s Edge Hidden Layer Games on their The game designed to provide gorgeous gothic adventure hope and healing 10. 12 Minutes 24. Alien Escape A top-down time-loop thriller A solo dev’s devious world-rotating six years in the making platform puzzler 12. Telling Lies 44. Making Metroidvanias More FMV detective work From Samus to Shantae, in this Her Story follow-up SteamWorld and beyond 16. Incoming 50. Bullfrog Productions Nanobots, lunar mysteries, Profiled: the team behind 18 and giraffe detectives Populous, Syndicate and more 04 / wfmag.cc Contents WELCOME There are all kinds of skills that go into making games, from programming to design to music and dozens more disciplines besides. But the skill that overarches all those other ones is – as I’ve concluded after talking to a wide variety of developers over the past few 10 months or so – perseverance. When former Ubisoft and Rockstar artist Luis Antonio embarked on his time-loop adventure 12 Minutes in 2013, he spent hours of his spare time reworking and refining the concept. From there, he worked on the game for about three years before publisher Annapurna Interactive spotted its potential; thanks to their funding and expertise, Antonio’s now able to complete his game’s motion capture and voice acting. What began as a comparatively small solo venture has, through six years of hard work and, yes, perseverance, grown into something far more cinematic and unsettling. 44 58 Similarly, German student Kim Seitner spent three years working on his platform- puzzler Alien Escape, fitting its development around his studies. Toolbox Rated After being picked up by an indie publisher, the game’s now on Steam and the Nintendo Switch 28. Design Principles 56. Bloodstained eShop, giving it a potential Howard Scott Warshaw on Koji Igarashi brings us another audience of millions. Technical tuning your game’s difficulty slice of baroque action ingenuity, design flair, intuition and luck all played important roles, but without their creators’ 30. CityCraft 58. Fujii drive to see them through to the Devising your own post- Gardening in VR is beautiful bitter end, those games would apocalyptic metropolis but blooms all too briefly never have existed. 32. Fantasy World Dizzy 60. Etherborn Ryan Lambie The code and tricks behind a Escher-esque environments, Editor ZX Spectrum classic existential elegy 40. Source Code 63. Supermarket Shriek Make your own arcade-style A noisy kart racer that has us continue screen rolling in the aisles wfmag.cc \ 05 Attract Mode Interview RetroRetro gothicgothic Three characters exploring a benighted pixel art world; two indie devs battling to make it. We find out more about the gothic adventure, INMOST ideous monsters that had spent several years working together Is this a personal game? Have your feed on suffering. A gothic on a string of mobile and Flash games, personal experiences informed the landscape battered by wind before a desire to make something bigger game’s tone in some way? H and rain. Look around at the and more ambitious began to take hold. Alexey Testov: Not directly. Inmost doesn’t gloomy pixel world of Inmost Testov and Vinchkovskiy worked solidly tell about events that happened to me or and you probably won’t immediately for two months on creating a prototype, people I know, but of course, I’m trying to connect it to Dizzy, the series of cartoon pouring considerable effort and studio inject into it my personal thoughts and games featuring a bouncing, grinning funds into their dark proof-of-concept. emotions. I’m trying to make egg first released in the 1980s (see page With Hidden Layer Games’ coffers running the game raise questions 32). And yet, for Lithuania-based artist low by this point, Inmost might have gotten important to me. When and game designer Alexey Testov, Dizzy lost in its own form of limbo without I started writing Inmost’s was one of the many influences that additional funding, but salvation came story, I hadn’t seen my went into Inmost: an atmospheric and when it won an indie game competition wife and two-year-old visually striking platform-adventure that in Minsk. The cash prize from that victory daughter for several months. also takes in elements of such classics helped finance the meat of Inmost’s They were unable to join me in as Flashback, Another World, and modern development; meanwhile, the game’s Lithuania because of documents issues, indie darling, Limbo. growing reputation attracted London- while I was unable to move back to them Inmost takes chunks of those varied based company Chucklefish, which later because I just didn’t have enough money. 2D games and makes them its own: here stepped in as publisher. I was very depressed. In many ways, you’ll find a puzzle-filled tale that’s more Inmost, then, is shaping up to be a exactly that part of my life defined the contemplative and deliberately paced captivatingly melancholy adventure – and game’s tone. than most retro-influenced games we’ve the story behind it is similarly emotional. seen in recent years. It tells the tale of We caught up with Alexey Testov and three characters whose fates are, divided Chucklefish’s Katy Ellis to find out more though they are by time and space, about its making. closely intertwined. There are obstacles to overcome and enemies to vanquish, but Inmost is equally about soaking up the details of its dank, desaturated world and uncovering the stories behind its three lost souls. Initial work began on Inmost in 2017; by this point, Testov and Hidden Layer Games co-founder Andriy Vinchkovskiy 06 / wfmag.cc Attract Mode Interview wfmag.cc \ 07 Attract Mode Interview Can you talk a little bit about Inmost’s story, and how its three characters interconnect? Katy Ellis: Inmost’s story is a dark one, exploring three playable characters – each with their own gameplay style – and one interweaving narrative, told through each of the characters’ journeys.