UNWINNABLE MONTHLY Volume 4, Issue 2 - February 2017

A MORTICIAN’S TALE • DEAD STATIC DRIVE U N W I N N A B L E

Monthly

88 Editor in Chief | Stu Horvath

Managing Editor | James Fudge

Editor | Harry Rabinowitz

Design | Stu Horvath

Asst. Editor | Jason McMaster

Social Editor | Melissa King

Copyright © 2017 by Unwinnable LLC Unwinnable All rights reserved. This book or any 820 Chestnut Street portion thereof may not be reproduced Kearny, NJ 07032 or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission www.unwinnable.com of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. For more information, email: [email protected] Unwinnable LLC does not claim copyright of the screenshots and promotional Subscribe | Store | Submissions imagery herein. Copyright of all screenshots within this publication are owned by their respective companies This machine kills fascists. Shortform a brief introduction to the issue Letter from the Editor | Stu Horvath a cryptic message from the airwaves The Cathode Oracle | the games untouched on the shelf Backlog | Gavin Craig must-watch streaming documentaries Documentary Sunday | Megan Condis what’s new, undiscovered and unholy in metal Battle Jacket | Casey Lynch examining trends in fanfiction Self Insert | Amanda Hudgins the intersection of games and world history Checkpoint | Corey Milne ridiculing and revering everything Rookie of the Year | Matt Marrone dissecting the world The Burnt Offering | Stu Horvath a monthly soapbox Here’s the Thing | Rob Rich board games and ennui The McMaster Files | Jason McMaster art, and words about making it Artist Spotlight | Alex Bertram-Powell our monthly recommendations Playlist | Reading List | Now Playing | our monthly crossword puzzle Unsolvable | Brian Taylor

Longform an autopsy of dying in videogames A Good Death | SOPHIE TURNER take a road trip to the dark heart of America The Prettiest Nightmare | MATT SAYER it was supposed to be a simple acquisition... Orphic Crush | L. Rhodes a developer Q&A, sponsored Revving the Engine: The Watchmaker |

Contributors From the Desk of the Editor in Chief | Stu Horvath

Welcome to a new and improved Unwinnable Monthly! You’ve already seen one of the changes: a simpler, reader friendlier table of contents. From looking at that, you might have discerned another big change: no more theme section. We might bring themes back down the line for special occasions (like Halloween), but for the time being we’ll be favoring a leaner approach to the monthly. After this letter, you have our regular columns. Gavin Craig is still working on Final Fantasy VI in Backlog. Megan Condis checks out the as relevant as ever documentary Welcome to Leith, about white supremacists trying to take over a small town. Casey Lynch gives us a heck of a lot of new metal to check out and Amanda Hudgins explains why people are fanfic-ing characters from Star Wars and Judge Dredd together. Corey Milne ponders Morse code and the game Relay while Matt Marrone takes off on a tangent about Super Mario Run. I dust off my old column, Burnt Offering, to think about how we curate the things we like and how stuff we shouldn’t like sometimes surprises us. Case in point: Rob Rich is surprised he likes Resident Evil 7 and Jason McMaster is surprised he likes Zombicide: Black Plague. Our cover artist, Alex Bertram-Powell, is in the Artist’s spotlight this month. Brian Taylor’s crossword and our monthly recommendations round out our regular contributions. Our new long form section consists of four stories. The cover story, “A Good Death,” by Sophie Turner, takes a look at the forthcoming game A Mortician’s Tale, the Order of the Good Death and the death positivity movement. Matt Sayer, in “The Prettiest Nightmare,” takes a road trip with developer Michael Blackney to discuss his forthcoming horror game Dead Static Drive. L. Rhodes brings us this month’s short fiction, a story about information, alternate reality games and corporate dirty dealing called “Orphic Crush.” Finally, in our Unreal Engine 4 sponsored series of Q&As, we talk to the folks behind the upcoming platforming puzzle game The Watchmaker. I am pretty psyched about how everything came together. If you dig it, let me know! And if you don’t, or there’s something else you’d like to see, let me know that too: [email protected].

Stu Horvath Kearny, New Jersey February 13, 2017 The Cathode Oracle |

This TV is always unplugged. Backlog | Gavin Craig

The Ground on Which Our Stories are Contested

am not the first person to observe that it feels difficult to write about games Iright now. I am still deeply unsettled; I am troubled and quieted knowing there are many who have reason to feel even more unsettled. I still believe that the stories we tell and inhabit are important, and this is why I tell stories and write about games, but in this moment, it can seem that facts themselves are so endangered as to make just about everything else irrelevant. Facts do matter, and are more than just the ground on which our stories are contested, but stories matter as well, and if there is a danger in the loss of our ability to measure our stories against each other using facts, there is as much a danger in the employment of story as an exercise in power. We do not and should not inhabit a single story. We navigate, incorporate and resist the stories around us as we create our own. Facts matter, but even in the best of cases they cannot all matter in the same way to everyone. This is not the most powerful of conclusions. I am not as good with facts as with stories, but the fact remains that if we are to survive, we must maintain our stories as sites of resistance. There is no good that comes from the annihilation of fact in the name of story. The annihilation of fact by story, however, is followed by the annihilation of story as a tool of possibility rather than subjection. There is value then in the story of a group bound by purpose rather than identity, fighting a mad tyrant interested in power alone, and not just power for its own sake but the power to shape reality. It is not an allegory for the current moment. It is not a blueprint for resistance. It is just a story, but a story is a place to begin. Final Fantasy VI begins not just with a servant of empire, like Cecil in Final Fantasy IV, but a woman controlled in body and mind. When this woman, Terra, is released from the empire’s control in an encounter with an embodiment of elemental force, she finds herself lost. Ostensibly rescued by an underground resistance movement called The Returners, Terra is asked to use her power in service to the fight against the empire. In Power-Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life, Chris Kohler reports that when Hironobu Sakaguchi planned Final Fantasy II, “it was inspired by Star Wars — a group of young people get involved with a secret rebel alliance who are rising up against an evil empire. (Sakaguchi had just seen The Empire Strikes Back and was inspired.) They fight, aided by friends, turncoats and advisors, and eventually overthrow the emperor” (94). Sakaguchi revisits this setup in Final Fantasy VI, even signaling his debt, as in many Final Fantasy games, through cameo appearances by characters named Biggs and Wedge. (Vicks and Wedge in the original Super Nintendo localization.) Unlike Star Wars, however, when Terra is asked to fight against the empire, she faces a moment of uncertainty. Stripped of her own history, Terra can’t even be sure about whom exactly the sides are in the fight to shape her world. “How,” she asks herself, “will I know what choice is right?” Final Fantasy VI, like Star Wars, quickly makes clear which side is good and which is evil, but I find myself dwelling in that moment. Like Terra, not because the facts of the matter are unclear — Terra has just been freed from the most intense form of coercion; I don’t think she holds any illusion as to whether the Gestahlian Empire is a force for good or evil—but because the facts are a necessary but insufficient place to start. It is one thing to know what is right and wrong, what is true and what is not, and it is something else entirely to know what is best to do next. It is difficult to act rightly in the face of loss, and of likely future loss. It is an incredible challenge to try to change the ongoing story not for the sake of power but in the pursuit of justice. This is not the most powerful of conclusions. It is a breath, and then a beginning. U Documentary Sunday | Megan Condis

magine waking up one morning and realizing that your government has Ibeen seized by a vile crew of white supremacists led by a narcissistic Internet troll against the will of the majority of the people. No, really. Imagine. This was the nightmare facing the residents of Leith, North Dakota, a town of just over a dozen people. Leith was chosen as the location for a proposed white nationalist utopia by neo-Nazi and all around creep Craig Cobb in 2012. Cobb’s goal: to purchase cheap plots of land, convince enough of his racist Internet followers to move to the town, and take over its government through sheer numbers. Filmmakers Michael Beach Nichols and Christopher K. Walker chronicle the attempted coup in Welcome to Leith (2015), a documentary that should be required viewing for all of us Americans who found ourselves stunned when Donald Trump was elected to the presidency. While the film features dozens of dramatic moments, from cops in riot gear escorting Cobb home from a town council meeting to the mayor personally throwing gasoline on a condemned building owned by the neo Nazis and lighting it on fire, its most important arguments are quite simple: Nazis exist. And they aren’t stupid.

Nazis Exist The trouble with Godwin’s Law, the famous observation that “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches one,” is that it makes it easy to assume that there is no justifiable reason to call someone a Nazi. We have become so used to seeing Nazis as cartoon villains, as the faceless enemies we can kill with impunity in a videogame, that we forget that proud white supremacist groups are still alive and well today. Sometimes it is appropriate to call a Nazi a Nazi. The Southern Poverty Law Center keeps track of these groups in their wretched hives of scum and villainy online. In fact, as the film points out, white supremacist groups were considered the number one terrorist threat to the United States until the events of September 11 caused the federal government to prioritize Muslim extremism instead. But as the citizens of Leith discovered, just because Nazism fell off of the government’s radar, that doesn’t mean that they disappeared. Indeed, as the election of Donald Trump, the subsequent empowerment of Breitbart.com and bonafide ethnic cleansing advocate Richard Spencer, and the implementation of an executive order to “indefinitely suspend the resettlement of Syrian refugees and temporarily ban people from seven predominantly Muslim nations from entering the United States” shows, white supremacists in the United States used their time out of the spotlight wisely.

They Aren’t Stupid When it comes to groups like these, Americans tend to conflate stupidity with evil. How, we ask ourselves, could anyone with intelligence actually believe the hateful things these people espouse? Welcome to Leith reminds us that hate can be cunning, that white supremacists are capable of much more than troll posting and making empty threats online. They have spent the last decade thinking strategically about how to push their way into the halls of power, from tiny towns in North Dakota to the White House. In the coming months and years, we would do well to remember these lessons. We will not underestimate them this time. U Battle Jacket | Casey Lynch

Battle Jacket - \ˈba-təl\ \ˈja-kət\ noun

1. A denim or leather jacket or vest, usually covered with sewn patches embroidered with the names/logos of killer metal bands.

2. Unwinnable Monthly’s metal column, your best source for what’s new, undiscovered and unholy in metal.

Independent musicians and touring bands have been largely overlooked during the ongoing dialogue around Trump’s hotly contested Immigration/ Muslim Ban. Of the 10 bands featured in this month’s column, only 3 are from the United States. Touring for indie metal bands is tough enough as it is, imagine what it must be like for a doom metal band from Aleppo, Syria or a black metal band from Benghazi, Libya. Which is all the more reason to keep fighting to kill Trump’s ban – not just delay or stay it, KILL IT. Now for the love of Black Phillip, feast on the best metal of the month!

Listen now to the Unwinnable Metal Playlist February 2017 ALBUM OF THE MONTH Jagged Vision – Death is the World RIFFCORE MELODIC STONER Jagged Vision’s Norwegian crush of riffy progressions and cutthroat vocals combine with classic Mastodon Remission and Leviathan-era heaviness to create a perfect new but familiar sound. WATCH: “BETRAYER”; LISTEN: “FEEBLE SOULS”

UNWINNABLE BEST METAL OF FEBRUARY 2017 Dool – Here Now, There Then GOTHADELIC 70s This Holland export laces throwback 70s psychedelic stoner rock with goth leanings. Imagine In Solitude and Ghost without all the theatrics. LISTEN: “SHE GOAT”; LISTEN: “VANTABLACK”

Dreaming Dead – Funeral Twilight OLD SCHOOL CROSSOVER THRASH PUNK Dreaming Dead fuse elements of thrash, hardcore, and death metal, evoking the spirit of Crumbsuckers, Sacrilege B.C. and Death. Oh, and their frontwoman/ singer/guitarist Elizabeth Schall is a total badass to boot. LISTEN: “BURIED”

Sketch the Sky – Pastel Shade INSTRUMENTAL AMBIENT PROGRESSIVE MATH Hailing from the school of Plini and Chon by way of South Africa, Sketch the Sky is the solo project of one Ethan Naidoo. His chops are as undeniable as his sweet ass Ormsby Black Machine clone. LISTEN: “WATERCOLOURS/PASTEL SHADE”

Power Trip – Nightmare Logic NEO-BAY AREA THRASH These Texans don’t get too bogged down in reliving thrash nostalgia while banging out a mash-up of modernized thrash and death metal. Think classic Exodus and Vio-lence with touches of Death. LISTEN: “FIRING SQUAD”; LISTEN: FULL ALBUM Kairon; Irse! - Ruination POST ROCK STONER SHOEGAZE GROOVE This progressive shoegaze quartet from Finland have gone full hog on this double album touching on everything from Mew, Espers and Hawkwind, to Queens of the Stone Age along the way. LISTEN: “STARIK”; LISTEN: “FULL ALBUM”

Echopraxia – Candle Cove INSTRUMENTAL PROGRESSIVE CINEMATIC DJENT The brainchild of Nashville wunderkind Austin Woodward, Echopraxia elevates the ever-growing genre of boutique instrumental djent with 8 huge-sounding tracks of polyrhythmic Fractalcore. LISTEN: “MORTAL COIL”; LISTEN: FULL ALBUM

Montfaucon – Renaissance BLACKENED CHAMBER PIANO DOOM This transcontinental duo hails from Uzbekistan and San Francisco, and play some of the most unique blackened chamber metal today, mostly thanks to their signature lead piano meets Dethklok sound. LISTEN: “THE PRISONER”; LISTEN: “THE LAST NIGHT”

Iron Reagan – Crossover Ministry EAST COAST TRADITIONAL THRASH More thrash and hardcore, this time more on the Nuclear Assault meets Municipal Waste tip. They also happen to have the best name and album art. That, and they channel Red Fang in their videos. LISTEN: “A DYING WORLD”; LISTEN: “GRIM BUSINESS”; LISTEN: FULL ALBUM

IEatHeartAttacks – Please Just Dance Death NOISE HARDCORE SCREE Made up of two brothers from Norway, IEatHeartAttacks’s brand of hardcore noise metal sounds like a more focused, less experimental version of Lightning Bolt, but with the same ferocity and then some. LISTEN: “LIAR”; FULL ALBUM U Self Insert | Amanda Hudgins

Who is Clan Techie?

ervous and lanky, his red hair hanging limply around his eyes, he’s more Nlikely to cower in a corner than stand up in a fight. He’s got big blue eyes, courtesy of mechanical augmentation at the hands of a mob boss that formerly held his genius reins. If you’ve seen the 2012 filmDredd , you might have a passing familiarity to a side character named Clan Techie. Played by Domhall Gleason, he’s Ma-Ma’s unwilling computer hacker. Before 2014, there wasn’t a lot of fiction about him on the Internet. His scenes make up only a few minutes of footage in a full- length feature and, as tragic a character as he is, he’s relatively unnoticeable. Until early 2016 and the arrival of the Star Wars: The Force Awakens fandom. Same actor crossovers are not a new thing for fanfiction. Several fandoms even incorporate these other actor characters as siblings – see the Stilinski twins, a fandom creation that usually combines Stiles Stilinski from Teen Wolf with another character Dylan O’Brien played, Stuart Twombly from the Internship. Clan Techie found his way into Star Wars fandom in much the same way as Stuart Twombly, as Domhall Gleason is the actor behind Star Wars General Hux. Early fic usually had messy and unsure Clan Techie as erudite and forceful Hux’s little brother. Later incarnations have paired him with Matt the Radar Technician (in a ship called Techienician), a SNL version of Kylo Ren. For the nearly 400 pieces of Clan Technie fic to be found on Archive of Our Own, all but a handful is related in some way to Star Wars giving new life to a character that was near forgotten. U Checkpoint | Corey Milne

-.-. … . -.-. -.- .--. --- .. -. -

Morse code is a nifty little thing. It’s a mainstay of military and maritime operations. Breaking down the essence of language into dits and dahs. Dots and dashes. Samuel F. B. Morse developed it in 1836. He and his partners needed a way to communicate through an electrical telegraph system. What better way than pulses and the silence between them? It’s just so neat! It’s also pretty much dead. That surprised me. I don’t know Morse code, but it’s certainly something I presumed still had its uses, no matter how niche that might be, military application or not. Yet even the soldiers have left it behind. It is said that the British SAS still teach it, but they are a special operations outfit. By and large, modern communication systems have rendered it obsolete. In the speed of progress, we’ve even outstripped the dots and dashes. … --- …

Relay is a game by Jon Reid that began life as a Ludum Dare entry. In it, the player is tasked with relaying Morse code messages from the front during World War I, culminating with the famous Christmas truce of 1914. You have a notepad, a pocket watch and a Morse key. The alphabet is listed on the notepad and you only have so much time to get your messages out before the end of the day. You’ll spend a lot of time requesting more men. Supplies are always running low and you need to note troop movements. Even within the relatively small timeframe, the repeated messages start to sink in. It isn’t long before you’ve committed the more common characters to memory, meaning you spend less time frantically scanning the notepad for the correct combination of dots. It speaks to the elegance of the system that it is so easy to pick up. At the end of each day, you will receive a report about how many men you lost, the number of supplies used and troop reinforcements. Overall, it’s a low impact affair. From your room in the communications trench, the war seems very far away, the messages and numbers as sterile to you as the eyes that will scan them back in London. The Morse key acts as an intermediary between two separate worlds. By the final day, you’re tapping away lines from “Silent Night,” while the tune fills the air. It’s a vertical slice of the war that doesn’t tell us much about it. .-. . -... . .-..

This was the first time I’d interacted with Morse code in any capacity. The beeps bouncing through my headphones were the same familiar beeps that enraptured thousands of people across a century; this old-fashioned system, rendered obsolete. Perhaps the Christmas truce is a fitting scenario. In the midst of fighting, the Germans lit candles and sang carols. The British, never a people to be outdone, responded with their own carols. Christmas greetings were shouted across no man’s land until both sides were coming together out of a shared Christmas spirit. Language wasn’t a barrier, because communication is more than words. Our systems are faster and more reliable now but incomprehensibly technical, and distant. We can get lost in the jumble. With Morse, you knew someone, somewhere, keyed a message just for you; each operator, committing their undivided attention to the other. Just dots and dashes. Whether they were relaying artillery coordinates for troops or weather forecasts for those at sea, Morse provided a simple, effective and altogether human touch. When the French navy stopped using Morse code on January 31, 1997, the final message transmitted was “Calling all. This is our last cry before our eternal silence.” I hope we don’t forget about morse. In the meantime, there are projects like Relay making sure it does not go silently into that good night.

---.. ---.. ...-.- U Rookie of the Year | Matt Marrone

Mario Run’s Red Scare

nwinnable Editor Stu Horvath asked us writers to keep it short this Umonth. Little did he know, I had already planned to do just that: my column is about toadstools. More specifically, it’s about the tiny toadstools who inhabit the cartoonish, rainbow-chained archipelago kingdom that exists inside Super Mario Run. And the ongoing scourge of racial inequality that plagues them. You may not be aware of this, even if you have played what’s apparently the most expensive iOS game ever, a whopping $10 wallet-obliterating Nintendo title that has baffled the overprivileged youngsters of today, who think everything they want should be free. But you should know that in this misleadingly idyllic-looking video game world – one the player sees only at a distance, towering above it like a god – those multi-colored toadstools, though seemingly living together in harmony, exist in a perpetual state of injustice, lorded over by the tyranny of the red Toad majority. That’s because, in Super Mario Run, it’s much easier to collect red Toads than blue, green, purple or yellow ones. In my own personal dystopia, for example, there are currently 7,214 Toads – a whopping 4,084 of them red, which is roughly 25 percent more than the four other colors combined. Though I’m sure there must be a Red Resistance – those Mario Runpublicans who resist the temptation of the one red Toad who lives in a mansion on the far-right island, and who, to me, although I may be seeing things, has a distinct orange hue – most of them feed on an irrational fear of Goombas and the totally rational fear that I, their gamer god, am now consciously gathering as many non-red Toads as possible, thereby hastening their already diminishing majority. In the meantime, they have shipped the jobs of the working-class blue Toads overseas, taken away healthcare from the bruised and bankrupted purple Toads, denied climate change and ignored the environment against the vehement protest of the green Toads, and have used their fearmongering propaganda machine to exploit the fragile yellow Toads. And now, I’m shocked to report, they’ve even begun referring to Bowser as “a great leader.” It’s deplorable. Now, every time I enter a Toad Rally, I am forced to select the ship level, lest I revert to a bygone era when I was forced to play the most basic levels and could only gather more red Toads. By winning the ship level, I still gather reds, but with a more equitable portion of blues, greens, purples and yellows mixed in. Which at least eases my conscience a bit. Still, my progress is slow. And, as I begin to get a little tired of the game, having now beaten the main quest and grabbed all but a few final special coins, makingSuper Mario Run great again is becoming less and less likely. U The Burnt Offering | Stu Horvath

hen I like something – a game, a story, an album – I seek out more. WSometimes this is easy. Established authors have many books in print, and it isn’t a huge leap to assume that if you like one, you’ll like the others. This process can be difficult because my enjoyment depends upon something ephemeral. The sound of the spiraling guitar riff in the Sisters of Mercy song “Alice,” the way the scythe in Clive Barker’s Undying feels to swing, how the mysteries at the heart of John Carpenter’s The Thing never allow for a solution. How do you look for more of that? With even only a couple centuriess of mass- produced culture, we’ve accumulated a hefty pile of stuff to sift. The process of creating our tastes would look a bit like a funnel if we were to make a physical model of it. At the wide mouth, you have broad binaries that depend on nebulous personal preferences. I take dark over light, drama over comedy, unhappy endings over happy ones. As we slide down the slope, we encounter the conventions of genres, sub-genres and technical criteria. Give me a supernatural indie siege horror movie focused on isolation and paranoia with a single set and small cast, please. Finally, at the spout, we have if/thens that we reinforce (or undermine) with specific things we already love (or hate). If I love the Sisters of Mercy, then I will probably dig the contemporary band Red Lorry, Yellow Lorry, but might be a little suspicious of Rosetta Stone, a latter day knock-off. The more criteria you develop, the better the chance you have of discovering things you like. On the other hand, because this system largely draws on things you already enjoy, you run the risk of disappearing into narrow, samey niches. To account for this, I see a lot of value in poking some holes in the slope of the funnel. That way, I still get to adore a game like The Witcher 3 after loathing the first two installments, or I get to enjoy an ever-expanding definition of heavy metal (Chelsea Wolfe is metal, deal with it). Recently, though, I’ve noticed problems at the mouth of the funnel, where the decisions are the most basic, personal and difficult to define. The first happened in December. Over the years, I’ve grown wary of large, corporate intellectual properties and their cross-media tie-ins. There’s always some good to be found (the Thrawn trilogy, Fraction’s Hawkguy run) but it is mostly chaff – The( Courtship of Princess Leia, that Lost videogame). These days, I tend not to take the risk. In December, I saw a little book called Tobin’s Spirit Guide, named after the reference work frequently mentioned in the Ghostbusters franchise. I picked it up because I always wanted to know more about their system of categorizing ghosts, but I was disappointed on that front. What I got was a catalog of ghosts If you really and demons from the movies and the Saturday morning cartoon, accompanied want to know what by lovely black and white illustrations. I flipped through the book until I saw a Class 5 the pumpkin-headed Halloween spirit, Samhain. That’s all it took to convince Full-Roaming me to buy it. Is it a great cultural work? Nah. Does it make me happy? Yup. Vapor is, The second happened last week. I got an email asking if I wanted to check out you’ll have to dig up a a new indie game called Hidden Folks. I didn’t, really. At first glance, it looked copy of the too twee for my taste, but I went to the press page anyway. Man, was I wrong. Ghostbusters OK, I wasn’t wrong about it being twee. Hidden Folks has the whimsy cranked RPG from up to 11. What I was wrong about is that I didn’t want to play a sweet little game West End Games. about finding things in an elaborately hand drawn world. I totally wanted to play that, but I had no idea until it grabbed me by the collar and shook me. Hidden Folks is essentially a black and white, interactive version of the Where’s Waldo books. You have a list of people and objects you’re looking for. You poke the gorgeously illustrated environment in hopes of finding them. More often than not, you cause funny little reactions and get a sound effect of some sort. The sounds are worth noting. Try this: using only your mouth, make a sound like a creaky door opening. Got it? OK, now try to sound like a car horn. That is exactly how Hidden Folks sounds. It is endlessly amusing and surprising. That might sound like there isn’t much to it, and maybe there isn’t, but it is delightful. I played it all weekend. I want more. The thing Tobin’s Spirit Guide and Hidden Folks have in common isn’t just that they surprised me. It’s that because they are so different form my usual tastes, they stand out in my recollections as bright shining moments in a mass of dark, somber shapes. I’ve read a ton of books in the last two months, but I am still thinking about Tobin’s Spirit Guide. I spent far more time with Tyranny and Darkest Dungeon in recent months, two games that fit my criteria for hits perfectly, but all I want to talk about is Hidden Folks. How do you create criteria to find more surprises that defy your criteria?U Here’s the Thing | Rob Rich

Making Peace with Resident Evil 4

esident Evil might have been my favorite game series from the moment R I first set foot in the Spencer Mansion back in 1994. In that time, I’ve consumed just about every piece of media relating to the franchise I could get my hands on. Main series games, spin-off games, novels, movies and even a few toys. Despite this, I’m one of those people who lamented the release of Resident Evil 4 because it wasn’t true to the series’ roots and was too action-focused. When it first came to the Gamecube, I was there on day one. I had my reservations but I had faith that Capcom would do the never-ending story of Umbrella Corporation’s hubris justice. Then I found out everything was parasites and you could find ammunition everywhere. I was quite disappointed after that. To be clear, I never hated Resident Evil 4. I was unhappy with the focus on action, I wasn’t a fan of the quick-time events and my god the militaristic island portion that makes up the final third was so dumb (not the good kind of dumb). However, I did recognize that it was a good game overall. It was the name Resident Evil. It didn’t fit. The story glossed over what was arguably the biggest goal of the earlier games (the fall of Umbrella), turned Leon S. Kennedy into a generic action hero dipstick and, unbeknownst to me at the time, it also kicked off a sort of rebranding to drop the lovably hokey B-movie feel and just crank the dumb melodrama dial up to 12. That’s right, past 11. Watch the end of any scenario from Resident Evil 6 and tell me I’m wrong. I feel it’s important to share all of this because it will give you an idea of just how much of an effectResident Evil 7 has had on me with regards to my feelings on the entire franchise. The demo for the newest game in the series is pretty terrible. It’s disjointed, tries too hard to be a fake Augmented Reality “solve the mystery lol” experience and generally fails at conveying the feeling and tone of the full game. Of course, I’m a sucker for anything Resident Evil so I bought it the day it came out anyway. Resident Evil 7 is excellent. There might be some disagreement in terms of just how good it is, but from what I’ve seen, it’s been unanimously praised by everyone who thought the fifth and sixth games were “just okay” or “awful.” Regardless, it’s a very well executed shift back towards the series’ roots of spooky atmosphere, claustrophobia, isolation and never feeling like you have enough resources to deal with whatever might be through the next door. It hasn’t just been a return to the pre-Gamecube roots, though. The slightly modernized mechanics such as blocking and healing with a single button press feel much more in-line with the latter half of the series, but also manage to avoid the pitfalls of making it feel like an action game. Moreover, the majority of the settings evoke an atmosphere much more akin to the “let’s try something new” jumping off point that wasResident Evil 4. These elements have made me reconsider my stance on Leon’s quest to save the President’s daughter – still a dumb premise, of course. Yes, it was something of a radical departure, but putting that disappointment in the story aside I found myself remembering just how much had stuck with me even though I hadn’t played the game in years. The masterfully presented barn fight with Mendez; the tense game of cat-and-mouse with Verdugo; creeping through dank sewers with acid-spewing invisible bugs ready to grab me at any moment; Regenerators. This was all great stuff, and the influence it’s had on this latest release is readily apparent. Maybe I just needed time – a lot of time – to get over it. Maybe I needed to see a hybrid of the old with the new (well, less old anyway). Whatever the reason, finally escaping the Baker’s farm has me unexpectedly itching to revisit rural Spain. I’m sure I’ll still roll my eyes when Leon has to run from a giant animatronic statue, and at the entirety of the shooter wannabe island portion, but for the first time since I didn’t know what I was getting into I’m really looking forward to it. U The McMaster Files | Jason McMaster

here are two major components to a board game – the mechanics and the Ttheme. Theme is, most of the time, readily apparent. If you buy a game about tank battles in World War II, odds are that you know that you’ll be dealing with a war-torn battlefield, maneuvering your machines of death into place. What isn’t easy to tell from an initial look is how a game will play. This, my friends, is one of the reasons I believe great games sometimes don’t get their due. In this instance, I’m going to talk about Zombicide: Black Plague. When zombies started pouring into the gaming scene, it was a welcome respite from Nazis. We had a Nazi fixation for a very long time. Zombies exploded and provided an even better target for constant abuse. It’s fun to see a horror concept explored so deeply. I’ve enjoyed many of the movies and games that have come about, but as we do with all things, we drove zombies into the ground. That’s why I almost missed one of my current favorite games. Zombicide: Black Plague is the continuation of the rules mechanics of the original Zombicide. You play on a modular board, two-sided tiles that make up the streets and buildings you’ll be fighting through. The conceit is simple – you are in the dark ages and zombies have risen, so you gotta kill them good. You do that by playing six with special zombie killing powers. One of my friends told me he didn’t check it out because another friend (who didn’t play the game either) said it looked like just mindlessly killing zombies. With that set up, you’d think “sounds straight forward?” It’s not. There’s a much deeper meta to this game than people give it credit. Zombicide: Black Plague is about management. Obviously you want to kill zombies, but it becomes apparent very early in the game that you can’t possibly kill all the zombies. There’s special zombies with higher hit points that require special weapons to kill. You must have a weapon that does more than one damage, no matter how many attacks you get, to kill a Fatty, the aptly named fat zombies. It’s three damage to kill an Abomination and you can only get the tools to kill those by searching. When you search in a room, you draw a card from the mostly positive search deck that includes weapons and equipment as well as the occasional pop up zombie. Though those can be a pain in the ass, the real danger comes from the zombies spawning and moving. In Black Plague, there are spawn areas set up in several parts of the map and each zombie turn, you flip a card from the spawn deck to see what happens. These range in difficulty based on the highest level character in your party. This phase can get chaotic because of the addition of double spawn cards. Whenever these cards are drawn, you skip to the next spawn area and draw two for it. If you draw another double, you skip again and draw three, and on and on. With the amount of zombies that can pile up in the usually cramped confines of a village, things can get out of hand in a hurry. That’s where the real game begins. When you move zombies, they are attracted to the most noise generated. Each character generates one noise per turn. The zombies are attracted to the space that has the most noise, so if several characters are in one space, they can easily attract the horde towards them. However, there’s a mechanic in the game that lets you generate noise (also you can do so involuntarily by breaking down doors) and draw the attention of the mass of undead flesh bent on your destruction. This is where the games meta truly shines. When picking characters you must take into account the characters with non-combat special abilities. For instance, one character can taunt an entire space of zombies to move toward her on the hero’s turn while another hero has the ability to shove an entire square of zombies away by one space. There are characters who have superior movement and others that search in non-standard places, allowing you to cycle through the item deck in a quicker fashion. Using these characters wisely creates opportunity for the fighting characters to go about their work of clearing buildings and completing goals. That’s the pleasure of Zombicide: Black Plague – the thin balance of slaughter and management. The true heroes of the game are the ones that never get the glory. One of your teams sets up a situation that allows the other to succeed. This game manages to deliver the elusive combination of subtle, mature gameplay mechanics in a truly tongue-in-cheek setting and combat system. I’ll never overlook a Guillotine Games or Cool Mini or Not release again. Much like the zombies of the game, I’ve been converted into a fan. U Artist Spotlight | Alex Bertram-Powell

his month, we shine our spotlight on Alex Bertram- TPowell, an illustrator from Bristol, United Kingdom. Alex has done quite a bit of album art and gig posters for bands. You can see more of his work at his official site. In the meantime, Alex took a moment to discuss his history as an artist and attempts to explain why so much of his work is simultaneously creepy and cuddly.

First off, let’s talk about your cover - what’s the story there? The cover is a direct reference to A Mortician’s Tale, the upcoming death-positive game by Laundry Bear. In fact, it’s based on a screenshot from the game, complete with UI assets. The game’s low-poly, flat colour art style is so perfect for easing players into a game that involves itself so much with death, both its emotional reality and its more routine, mundane, industrialised aspects. I wanted to subvert that a little and draw one of the game’s embalming scenes with a slightly more real-looking character, to try and communicate the feelings beneath the surface of the game and the human challenge of confronting death.

How’d you get into art? Art is just the thing I’ve always done. I grew up in Bristol, UK, where I continue to live, and carried sketchbooks with me everywhere as a kid, usually taking candid studies of people walking around. I have a foundation diploma in Art & Design, but didn’t pursue a degree, honestly having felt like it just wouldn’t pan out. After about five years of working a desk job, I decided to push back into it, practice drawing properly and get my portfolio out there. It’s been a slow start, admittedly I had a lot to learn and my style has been developing constantly in the six years hence, so I’m still pressing on with it. A lot of cool stuff is starting to happen this year – none of which I’m yet able to discuss, sadly – so I’d like to think there’s more and better to come.

What inspires you? The basics – nature, people, history, buildings. If I go for long walks at heritage sites or visit museums I tend to come away buzzing with ideas. There’s an estate here in Bristol called Blaise where I’ve been going for semi-regular walks since I was a kid, and the dense woodland with its steep hills and occasional historic structures – hermitage, waterwheel, the castle house itself – tends to set my mind wandering. There’s also a rock formation called Goram’s Chair which relates to the legend of Goram and Vincent, two giants who carved out the gorges and channels around the city. That kind of sublimity, whether natural or man-made, I think is what fundamentally inspires me. Likewise, whenever I walk around spaces like that I always feel so disheartened when ordinary, modern places come into view.

What do hope people take away from your work? Honestly whatever people feel is valid, I think. I keep aiming for something slightly uncomfortable and also slightly funny and cuddly. Playful and a little difficult.U plate 1. plate 2. plate 3. plate 4. plate 5. plate 6. Playlist |

“Love in a Cold World,” by Beastmilk “Bloodstains,” by Agent Orange “He’s A Reptile,” by The Soft Boys “Speed of Light,” by Iron Maiden “A Pillar of Salt,” by The Thermals “Your Best American Girl,” by Mitski “Falling,” by HAIM LISTEN NOW ON SPOTIFY “Mama Said,” by Cat Clyde “Some Were Saved Some Drowned,” by Selected by Stu Horvath, Ian Gonzales, Michael Wrekmeister Harmonies Edwards, Erik Weinbrecht, Gavin Craig, Matt

“Classic Man,” by Jidenna Marrone, Austin Price, Melissa King, Corey Milne,

“Via con me,” by Paolo Conte Khee Hoon Chan, Amanda Hudgins, Sara Clemens

Reading List |

The Secret of Ventriloquism, by Jon Padgett World, by Haruki Murakami

The Secret History of Twin Peaks, by Mark Judge Dredd: Hondo City Justice

Frost All Our Wrong Todays, by Elan Mastai Fallen Angels, by Jo Duffy and Kerry Gammill

The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins

Handmaiden’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood

Paris, France, by Gertrude Stein Selected by Stu Horvath, Ian Gonzales, Michael

The Secret History of Twin Peaks, by Mark Edwards, Matt Sayer, Erik Weinbrecht, Gavin Craig,

Frost Matt Marrone, Austin Price, Corey Milne, Sara

Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the Clemens Now Playing |

Tyranny – This is the first isometric RPG I’ve seriously played sinceLionheart: Legacy of the Crusader in 2003 (I tried Pillars of Eternity, but it bored me). Like Lionheart, is a unique, richly drawn world that echoes some dim-remembered past. Unlike Lionheart, about halfway through, I got tired of all the RPG combat elements and wished it was a different sort of game. And while the branching pathways make for a surprising number of outcomes, all interesting, I have to admit I was flumoxed by a number of rigid either/or decisions that beggared belief (seriously: some folks in the world of Tyranny are alarmingly quick to leap at the chance to murder babies). (Stu Horvath)

Street Fighter x Tekken – I don’t often play fighting games, but thought I’d give this a go as a bit of nostalgia for childhood Tekken tournaments on the PlayStation. Turns out, playing against the CPU is a lot harder than the days of trouncing my old chums. Still, on Easy it’s possible to feel like a bad ass firing off hadoukens and booting foes into the stratosphere. Rest assured, though, I won’t be competing in EVO any time soon. (Matt Sayer)

The Evil Within – Finally getting around to this! Now that Resident Evil 7 is out, I was able to pick this up on the cheap. Four chapters in and my overall reaction is “meh,” but I’m far from hate-playing it. (Erik Weinbrecht)

Resident Evil HD Remaster – This is my first time actually playing a horror game instead of of watching a Let’s Play and I get the appeal now. Even though the enemies and environments make me feel uneasy, I can’t help but push forward to see what’s on the other side. (Melissa King)

Flat Hunting – This is a game I hadn’t realized my flatmate and myself had signed up to until we got an email saying our flat was being sold. So far the microtransactions seem incredibly pricey, the HUD must be broken as it’s hidden the stress meter and I hear it has multiple endings dependant on choices made along the way. 2 out of 10 - would not recommend. (Corey Milne)

Gunpoint – I’ve never been particularly good at puzzle games, but Gunpoint makes me feel very smart. As spy-for-hire Richard Conway, you will be offering your hacking, sneaking and stealing services to amoral corporations for a generous fee, which you can then use to buy or upgrade your nifty spy gadgets. It’s an incredibly fun and fluid experience, if slightly too short – the game can be completed within three to four hours. Plus, perhaps due to creator Tom Francis’ previous job as a freelance writer for PC Gamer and his vast experience with games, he knew that what we really need is the ability to reload our game just a few seconds before our character passes out. Please make a Gunpoint sequel. Please. (Khee Hoon Chan)

Downwell – I promise, I play other games. Probably. I have recently migrated to a new phone and as such need to retain my location on the tower of high scores in Downwell. Can I get back to Top 10 in the world? Not sure. We’ll see. (Amanda Hudgins)

Fire Emblem Heroes – This is the firstFire Emblem game I’ve ever played. Are the characters always this attractive? I have a crush on no less than five of these fictional constructs. Being the underground commuter I am, I don’t love that there’s no offline play, but that’s a small price to pay for various hotties telling me what a brilliant tactician I am. (Sara Clemens) Unsolvable | Brian Taylor

ACROSS DOWN 1. Can’t 47. White wine aperitif 1. Person in a mask 35. Doting 7. Allergic reaction 48. Erato 2. Zip 36. Stop 11. It’s not actually dynamite 49. Bazaar 3. Oxygen-free 37. September bloom 14. Cretan, once? 52. Temperant person 4. Bacall’s beau 39. Clean-up tool 15. Pepsi, for one 55. Crafty one 5. Film with Dana and Gene 40. Rephrase 16. Run 57. Persian, e.g. 6. Chemical ending 41. Detective Wolfe 17. 38-Across + “Patronage” 58. 38-Across + “Patronage” 7. Knock off 46. Spots 18. 38-Across + “Patronage” 60. 38-Across + “Patronage” 8. Got drunk a lot 48. Light pinks 20. Ring bearer, maybe 63. End of a list 9. Medical site 49. Hotel amenities 21. Not friends 64. Weight 10. Hearty go-with 50. Speak 22. Asian sea bass 65. Street kind 11. Animal whose prehensile 51. Ancient city NW of 27. Mancunian 66. Caribbean, e.g. snout gets thinner? Carthage 28. Heaps 67. Largest of seven 12. Second generation 53. Boredom 29. Anger 68. Blue book filler (outside of Japan) 54. Cache 30. Murmur 13. Secret meeting 56. Ancient gathering place 32. Bro, for one 19. Clots 59. Govt. property org. 33. At one time, at one time 22. Profondo voice 60. Back musc 34. Knee bit 23. A show about a spy 61. Morgue, for one 38. WHO’S DAY? 24. Missile with many targets 62. Understand 42. Ancient Italian language 25. Bear in the air 43. Bad day for Caesar 26. Webbish? 44. Audio recording medium 31. Goes (for) 45. ___ de deux 33. Sicilian smoker A GOOD DEATH an autopsy of dying in videogames

By Sophie Turner ignorant. Why is that A s a problem? There’s macabre as something comforting about ignoring it sounds, death is the issue and knowing that you can slip inevitable. It surrounds us in the media, away relatively conveniently when the pop culture and our everyday lives. It time comes. Yet there are many reasons finishes us all off in the end. Why is why we should really be talking about our society still so far detached from dying and one organization has set about the realities of dying and the issues helping us do it: The Order of the Good surrounding it? How come we can spend Death. Comprised of funeral industry our days mowing down videogame professionals, artists and academics, characters but still be afraid to talk the group aims to shatter the taboos about death in the real world? We’re surrounding mortality and make death a simultaneously fascinated by and part of life. It’s impossible to change these willfully ignorant about something that deeply embedded attitudes overnight, happens to everyone - what gives? but opening up a dialogue is a vital first In the past, we’ve had a much more step. hands-on approach to death and, in some The Order’s philosophy has inspired cultures, this is very much still the case. a huge variety of work ranging from In Western society, though, we whisk the jewelry to shadow puppet theatre. Most body away, the biological inevitabilities recently, it led to a creation by Laundry of dying dealt with behind closed Bear Games. Due for release in early 2017, doors that hide everything considered A Mortician’s Tale is a videogame driven gruesome from sight. We’re reluctant by this burgeoning death positivity to confront reality and there’s a whole movement, riding its waves of change industry helping us to stay blissfully and creating some of its own. Players face the challenges of running a funeral real heartbreak. Plenty of mainstream home, from preparing cadavers to games also have hard-hitting and consoling relatives and learning how thought-provoking character deaths too, people grieve. It aims to destigmatize but ultimately they’re often used as little death and the industry that surrounds it, more than a plot device. shedding light on a very normal practice Gabby DaRienzo makes up 50% of that just happens to take place outside of Laundry Bear games, and is the artist the public eye. It seems strange that this and game designer for A Mortician’s Tale. is such an innovative idea, considering She has considered the use of death as a that videogames as a medium have device a lot while playing games and it is always relied so heavily upon death. something she wanted to address in her While pop culture’s take on mortality own work. is complicated in general, videogames “A lot of the time it seems like game in particular often use the idea of death designers aren’t truly considering in a contradictory way. In games, death whether the way they use death as a is both a plot device and gameplay game mechanic is fitting to their specific mechanic, making it simultaneously games,” she says. “I’d like to see more a traumatic experience and a boring, developers putting some real thought routine inconvenience. Unable to prevent into this.” something that occurs as part of the Although there are exceptions, Gabby narrative, the injustice of one character’s feels that cutscene deaths in particular death might move you to tears. Then, are overdone and miss a trick in terms eyes still moist, you stare unblinkingly of what games can achieve. “The at the screen as the character you do interactivity of videogames is what control gets shot in the face, safe in the makes them stand out as a medium in knowledge that they’ll be resurrected comparison to film, for example, where seconds later. Even the most child- friendly games use it as a device without fear of psychological repercussions - most of us spent our youth watching green shells clobber Mario to death and it was nothing more than a small punishment for ineptitude. Of course, some games do a good job at making death meaningful - especially the more narrative-driven titles. That Dragon, Cancer explores the life of a terminally ill child and his parents, allowing players to interactively experience another family’s stories are told linearly and without input from the audience,” she says. “So when game developers use cutscenes as a way to show a meaningful death it sometimes feels like a huge waste of the medium.” So when most other games revolve around dying, why is the idea of a game about the death industry so revolutionary? It’s something to do with the way it forces us to redefine the concept of death in a medium where it usually means something entirely different. In A Mortician’s Tale death isn’t been trying to be as accurate and honest designed to be traumatic or inconvenient as we can, while still making it easily to the player, it’s just a fact to be dealt digestible for players,” Gabby says. “The with. No shock-factor, no possibility of subject matter is uncomfortable for a resurrection, just the cold hard facts lot of people and there have been a few presented in an accessible and engaging times where we’ve excluded things in an way. effort to make it a little easier to handle. But is it fun? Or perhaps more There are no child deaths in the game, for importantly, does it need to be? “I don’t example, even though this is something think games necessarily have to be fun death professionals often have to deal to be entertaining,” Gabby says. “There with.” are lots of stories told through mediums When society has such a gaping like games or film that are sad, dramatic disconnect with the realities of death, or heartbreaking but still interesting and that kind of sanitization is necessary. entertaining. When designing the game, The game’s artistic style and pastel we’ve definitely been very mindful of color palette help with this too, making keeping the mechanics engaging and the processes technically realistic encouraging the player to progress without being visually gruesome and through the story we’re telling. Even overwhelming for the player. The game though the game isn’t necessarily ‘fun’ is ultimately a way to learn, engage and we still hope players will enjoy playing it empathize, bridging the gap between our and being entertained by the stories that thanatophobic society and a more death- are told.” positive future. Even so, it’s not easy to make something “Our biggest hope for the game,” Gabby so morbid accessible to the general public. says, “is that it will encourage players to “The biggest challenge in that regard has really think about what they want for themselves when they die, and maybe off, perhaps consider why this should be spark some much needed conversations so much easier than thinking and talking about death with their loved ones.” about real life mortality. Beginning to Sarah Chavez is the executive director consider the issue is a significant step of The Order of the Good Death, and she towards death positivity, and Sarah feels that A Mortician’s Tale is a great thinks that changing attitudes towards way to normalize the death industry. death can be genuinely valuable: “Being “It provides a unique opportunity for aware of how limited our time really is players to immerse themselves in the can help us to lead fuller lives, be more subject of death, grief and mortality conscious of our time, place more value in a way that goes far beyond just the on our relationships, and live with more stereotypical killing aspect of gaming,” intention”. she says. “One of the most important While it can seem like gaming has a things we do at The Order is try to pull handle on death, the fact of the matter back that veil of secrecy on what happens is that it often doesn’t help us to deal to you after you die, so I’m particularly with it in a meaningful or productive appreciative about how much research way. Times are changing, and becoming went into developing the game and how more open about what happens when important accuracy was to Gabby. I think you eventually bite the dust can only be so many of our fears surrounding death a good thing in the long run. You might stem from the unknown, and I hope it not quite be ready to discuss cremation will allay some of that fear for people.” over the dinner table, but it’s not too Until A Mortician’s Tale is released, much of a stretch to pop on a videogame next time you boot up your console and in private and find out what it’s all about. unflinchingly murder a rival player or We’re all going to die, after all, so we accidentally get your own head blown might as well be prepared for it. U THE PRETTIEST NIGHTMARE

By Matt Sayer orror in videogames is tough to story to tell. And even though you’ll grow Hget right. Too many titles rely on wiser through your travels, Dead Static grotesque imagery and cheap jump scares Drive is definitely no power trip. to get a reaction out of players, conflating In the wake of its impressive PAX shock and revulsion with genuine fear. showing, I spoke with Blackney to get a Even the Dead Spaces and Resident Evils better idea of the road Dead Static Drive’s that choose tension over lazy shock taken to get here, and the horizon that tactics betray their horror roots in favor lies ahead. So buckle up; it’s time to drive. of delivering the videogame power A quick heads-up: Dead Static Drive still fantasy. By upgrading weapons and has a ways to go before release. Blackney unlocking new abilities, the player goes is currently targeting a late-2017 release from feeble everyperson to unstoppable window, so some of the features he talks super soldier. Formerly deadly monsters about have yet to be implemented. As such, are reduced to mere distractions, terror they may change between now and the final and tension obliterated by a maxed-out release. machine gun. Michael Blackney has spent a lot of time thinking about this problem. To him, horror is about breaking rules, about constantly upending the player’s expectations and never letting them feel too comfortable. This philosophy led him to start making Dead Static Drive, a strikingly gorgeous road trip survival horror game he recently showed off at PAX Australia. Set across a string of small towns in the US, the game tasks you with plotting a course through numerous slices of classic Americana, from truck- stop diners to run-down motels to middle-of-nowhere farmsteads. Michael Blackney always wanted Ostensibly, your goal is to reunite with to make games. From a young age, he your family, but along the way, things loved programming and the challenges start to get . . . weird. As you scavenge each it presented. He taught himself how to location for fuel and a safe place to sleep, code back in the BASIC days, honing his you’ll encounter monsters of flesh, of skills through high school and heading spirit and even of your own mind. Every straight into university to study games town you pass through has its own terror and multimedia. Campus life, though, to torment you with, its own horrifying didn’t agree with him, and he ended up dropping out. Young and unfocused, for it: it was time to go independent. he kicked around working retail for Thus was Dead Static Drive born. a time before landing a position at Futuretronics, a gaming accessories * * * company similar to Mad Catz. He spent a year there programming Blackney often describes Dead Static peripheral drivers and testing new Drive as a sort of X-Files monster-of-the- hardware. Though it was a great place to week scenario, where each town you visit work, one regret kept gnawing away at has its own discrete mystery to unfold. him: he wasn’t making games. He wasn’t In truth, though, that’s just a convenient following his dream. So, with a year of shorthand. Most of his inspiration has valuable life and industry experience come from horror short stories, a format under his belt, he left Futuretronics he believes is perfect for the genre. and returned to university to finish his “It’s hard to sustain fear and tension degree. after you’ve introduced it and the reader’s It was there that he met Damian used to it,” Blackney tells me. “You want Scott, a modder who had worked on the to get in there and surprise them and get original Team Fortress mod for Quake. them to be a bit spooked but then get out Scott was a big proponent of Unreal of there as well.” Engine, and together he and Blackney In Blackney’s opinion, horror is at its built numerous mods to test the limits of best when it’s exploring a single idea. If both Unreal and their own skills. In doing that idea is drawn out too long, both the so, Blackney quickly discovered that it reader and the player figure out what’s wasn’t just programming he enjoyed; he coming around the next corner. They loved every part of making a game, from start to see the story purely in terms of level design to 3D modelling. narrative beats or, in the case of games, Blackney’s experience with Unreal led mechanics. With Dead Static Drive, he to a job at Transmission Games where, aims to subvert this. You won’t want to despite knowing absolutely nothing linger in the game’s twisted towns, not if about cricket, he helped make Ashes you value your life. Death never sleeps, Cricket 2009. When Transmission Games and neither do the game’s monsters, closed down in late 2009, Blackney went pushing you to refuel and move on on to work at TrickStar Games, making before your pit stop becomes your grave. yet another cricket game he knew If you’re adventurous enough, you nothing about. He didn’t spend long there can even drive straight through towns before realising that the cog-in-the- without stopping. Pushing on has its own machine lifestyle just wasn’t for him. He consequences, though. wanted to make his own games, his own “As you drive, you become more tired, experiences. There was only one thing but you also become more exhausted,” Blackney explains. “They’re two separate “I want that as a bit of a break period, values the game keeps track of. If you so that if you left town and it was really drive between two or three towns, you intense, then you don’t suddenly get into get tired, you’ll feel like you need sleep, a new intense moment,” Blackney says. and you can go sleep and that will make “And if the player likes driving, then you feel better. You can also drink coffee they’ll just be able to do that for a bit and push on. That makes you feel less longer.” tired, but it doesn’t make you feel any I can vouch for how good the driving less exhausted.” feels; I spent a lot of time just drifting up Eventually, if you keep pushing on, the and down the highway in the demo build world around you will start to change. of Dead Static Drive. I expect to be pulling NPCs will look like monsters, monsters plenty of burnouts in the final game, will look like allies, and you’ll lose the nightmare creatures be damned. ability to distinguish between good and bad. Blackney wants to mess with you, to * * * stop giving you the kinds of messages you expect from a videogame. There won’t be As you make your way across small- a whole lot of fourth-wall breaking, but town America, you won’t be upgrading you will need to tread cautiously. your items or your stats. Your only hope for survival comes from hunting down * * * special hexes scattered throughout the world. Once learned, these hexes will Of course, a good horror story needs afford you temporary protection against islands of calm to break up its waves the terrors of the night, provided you’ve of terror. In Dead Static Drive, after gathered the chalk, salt and various surviving each location, there’ll be a animal parts necessary to cast them. transition sequence before the next Since you’ll learn these powers at fixed town, where it’s just you, your car and locations in the game, on subsequent the open road. playthroughs you might plan out your road trip differently depending on what hex you want to learn first.Blackney likens it to the first Dark Souls, and the multiple paths branching away from Firelink Shrine. “I loved that idea,” he says, “and I want to make sure while balancing the demands of a family the player can do that here.” and a teaching job at a local university. The biggest challenge to working * * * alone, in Blackney’s mind, is overcoming the sense of stagnation. He might spend Perhaps the most impressive aspect of three weeks building animations for a Dead Static Drive is that, apart from the feature he hasn’t programmed yet, and at music – composed by fellow Melbournian the end of those three weeks, the game Jeremy Dower - Blackney is building it will still be in the exact same state it was all himself. The stunning comic-book- when he started. He’ll need to spend inspired art, the stylish driving physics, another three weeks programming the scrappy survival systems - it’s a lot before seeing the progress in-game. It for one person to achieve, especially can be pretty disheartening. “When you work in a big studio,” Blackney says, “[if] you don’t work on a Saturday and everyone’s in crunch, you come back on the Monday and the game looks completely different and it’s got new menus in it. You’ll be like ‘Wow, this game looks great!’ None of that for me now.”

* * *

Beneath its beautifully creepy facade, Dead Static Drive wants to be to be more than a mere nightmare generator. “I want to have it so there are themes behind it,” Blackney says. “Themes of family, themes of home, themes of change. I want to have the player reflect on what things might mean and what’s important to them in their life.” Blackney summarizes his ambitions with the same brevity of his favorite horror stories. “I want to make it different.”U Fiction | Orphic Crush By L. Rhodes

o answer when Errol Strell “It’s not as though their financial futures N(namesake of Strell Enterprises) were on the line,” he muttered. called at 8 p.m. That was to be expected, “Sir?” said the bartender. Strell had perhaps, but frustrating all the same. Nor forgotten he was there, white sleeves was his mood improved by the ambiance. and crimson vest, stripping foil from the The hotel lounge was overdesigned, he neck of a bottle. felt, with a heavy reliance on brushed “I said, try not to drown the whiskey steel and indirect lighting. Worst of all this time.” He gulped down the last ounce was the ridiculous sinusoidal bar. If your and set the glass back onto the bar with a goal was to look posh while chatting perilous clack. up some diplomat’s daughter over Just as the new drink was arriving, his cocktails, it did the job, but the shape phone buzzed, but it wasn’t Hex. Rather, was significantly less practical if all you a masked number, which meant Bahne. wanted was to drink out a jag in your “Anything?” she asked from the nerves. other end of the line. It was a voice The monitor at the far end of the bar that suggested broad shoulders, cubist was tuned to one of the 24-hour news features, a platinum coif cut to Spartan networks and, for a brief moment, simplicity. If it came to it, Strell felt Parrish’s implacable face and graying sure that he could pick her out of a line- temples appeared onscreen, professing up, even having never laid eyes on her optimism and resolve. Polls had begun to before. close in some areas; early margins were “Nothing yet,” he answered. taking shape. Did Candidate Parrish “Well,” she asked in the slow, tetchy worry? What was the joke the pundits tone you might use with an evasive child, loved so much? “Parrish the thought.” “have you tried calling?” “I have every confidence,” he said, “that She might put some faith in my reasonable people will get out to the polls compliance, Strell thought, given all the and make their voices heard.” trouble her people had gone through. Reasonable people: Strell relayed the Apparently, her orders were to ensure he euphemism into the tumbler at his lips. felt their breath on the nape of his neck The personnel at AR Hex were not, in the with every step. “Not ten minutes ago,” parlance, reasonable people, but even he told her. “They’re still sorting out the they might be out casting their ballots details, I suppose.” tonight. Or perhaps they had taken a “I suppose they’ve got a vitamin break to watch the returns trickle in. deficiency,” she shot back. Strell could hear how the circumlocutions grated on tendrils of congestion through the city. her. She was a party woman; otherwise, Good thing the bars would be open late she’d have preferred plainer language – tonight. He was going to need another coarser, no doubt. “And Sin Ben Chang? drink. A bottle, if the deal went south. Anything there?” At the first traffic signal, a cluster of Certain she had meant it as a sign of marchers in knit caps and quilted jackets disregard, he didn’t bother correcting crossed out of turn, blocking traffic. They the mispronunciation. Of the half dozen took their time across the intersection, names on the list, Xin Bianjiang was the lofting placards that read RECOGNITION only other option left – or had been, IS NOT UNREASONABLE and ASK ME anyway, right up until EQC Robotics ABOUT MY ETHNICITY. Horns blared announced their intention to acquire from the stymied cars. Laughing, spirits the company early last week. “The sale still buoyant, the protestors jeered back. was approved shortly after market close Strell doubted even half of them were old today,” Strell reminded her. enough to vote. “AR Hex.” Bahne grunted her His phone buzzed. Not Bahne, he noted, disapproval. “Last chance. Better keep at relieved. “Terry?” he answered. “Terry, it.” As though he needed reminding. are you alright?” “Hi, pop. Everything’s fine.” Strell * * * stopped the other ear with a finger, listening for telltales. “Are you watching Another hour slipped by before the the news?” answer came through. “I’ve been over the “The election coverage.” offer with their executives,” said Sabato. “Yeah. I’ve been watching, too. I was “With a few minor modifications, I think thinking, it seems pretty important. they’re ready to sign.” Some of the things that one guy has been Strell knew better than to quibble over saying. You know, Parrish.” He rambled the phone. His driver had been nursing off a mostly coherent account of Parrish’s an ice water at the end of the bar, but at most discussed statements, probably a signal she rose to fetch the car. “Keep gleaned from recaps the news channels the tab open,” he told the bartender. “I had aired earlier that night. shouldn’t be more than an hour.” “Sure,” Strell said at intervals, paying Once on the road, though, he saw how attention more to the tautness of Terry’s improbable that was. He had established voice than to what he was actually saying. base camp little more than a mile “Sure.” from the AR Hex office, but traffic was “So I was thinking, I should do gridlocked. Anti-Uniform protestors something,” Strell sensed that he was had gathered near polling stations, coming to the crux. “Vote, I mean.” spilling out into the streets and sending “I see.” “I was gonna get a car on the app, * * * but I’m kinda broke right now.” A long moment passed while Terry waited for Hexagonal Inc. had been a mid-tier his father to make an offer. Then: “Could developer of apps for digital devices, you text me some money? Just enough to not quite disreputable, but no one’s idea get me there and back. It’s for voting.” of a tech juggernaut. Then, with the Strell pulled in a draught of air through departure of a key founder, followed his nostrils. “Tell you what, Terry. How by a round of savvy hires, the company about I just send a car over?” pivoted to game development under the “You don’t have to do that, pop.” name AR Hex. “I think that’ll be better. Less expensive To distinguish itself, Hex concentrated than using the app. You know how their on a growing niche: augmented reality. rates go up on nights like this.” The idea was to use the multimedia Terry’s hand rustled over the mic while functions of smart phones and tablets to he conferred with someone nearby. turn the player’s physical surroundings Either he had already found a way to his into the playing field for digital games. dealer, or he’d found an accomplice who Point the camera of your phone at a was willing to take him there. “It wouldn’t room, and when you looked through the be me, Terry,” Strell assured him. “I’m display the game would superimpose traveling, on business. An acquisition. computer-generated images onto the Ever heard of a game called Orphic Crush? scene. Between your couch and credenza Maybe you’ve played it…” the game might put a malicious little “Uh, hold on, pop. I’ve got to…” His imp. Tap the screen and you might voice trailed off. strike him down with a bolt of lightning. Strell forged on. “Why don’t you just Step outside, and another game might tell me where you’re staying, and I’ll superimpose amiable faces on each send over a car. The driver can take tree along your street. Talk to them, you wherever you need to go. Or pick and they talk back. Look up from your a place nearby, and the driver can meet phone, and the tree is just a tree. Look you there. A restaurant, maybe. Or a back down and it might tell you where corner shop.” Another long silence, this in the neighborhood to buy a decent one without end. CALL ENDED, read the falafel. (The recommendations, Berkman screen. confided during their initial tour of the “Change of plans, sir?” his driver asked, offices, were sourced by consulting data her eyes on his reflection in the rearview leftover from Hexagonal’s discontinued mirror. consumer review app.) Strell shook his head, too disappointed Though videogames had never to care that she hadn’t been minding her particularly interested Strell, he had own business. to admit there was a certain magic to the technique. Done well, augmented were already racking up heavy debts by reality turned your digital device into a the time the first viral video landed. fairy stone. Looking through it gave the The same facets that gave Crush mundane world hidden dimensions. It its steep learning curve also gave it made the invisible visible. flexibility. Players were encouraged All the same, AR Hex barely scuffed the to develop strategies unanticipated by market at first. They released a string of the designers themselves. Six weeks decidedly small-scale games, marginally after release, one of the better Orphics, charming but not quite “fully realized,” as players were called, devised a move the reviewers wrote. After eighteen that was both devastating and elegant. months, the company had barely enough She captured its debut on camera and liquidity to stay afloat while they worked uploaded it to an unofficial online forum. on something more ambitious. Better than any of the marketing Hex Unlike other genres, AR games had bought, the video made the devious encourage players to interact with thrill of the game immediately obvious to the world around them. Hex’s players outsiders. It quickly leapt from platform could been seen wandering distractedly to platform across social media. through public parks and acknowledging Within a week, Orphic Crush picked up one another on subway cars. If they 7 million new players and counting. For wanted a hit, the company’s two nearly two years, you could spot them remaining founders decided, they needed everywhere, in parks and restaurants, in a strong social dimension. Get enough offices and on highway overpasses, one people playing at once, in close proximity shoulder raised to block your view, their to one another, and that conspicuousness phones held close to their diaphragms would drive consumer interest. A game while they tapped in their moves. Then could build its own momentum on that someone across the room would glance sort of visibility. down at a notification on their own The strategy was not without an phone and swear at the “crush” that had element of risk. For weeks after its been placed on them. Moments earlier, official release, Orphic Crush languished. you’d have never guessed that anything Reviews were largely positive, and the connected the two people. Maybe nothing early adopters reasonably active, but the did, apart from the game. It tied people company lacked the name recognition into a network of duplicitous relations, necessary to build much anticipation held together by little more than cellular prior to release. Moreover, there was data and the playfully paranoid vision a chess-like complexity to the moves its augmented layer had imposed on the in Orphic Crush, which made it difficult world. to communicate the game’s appeal to For a time, Orphic Crush seemed observers. Hex had bet the farm, and indomitable. Even after a widely read tech blogger exposed how its privacy brick and iron renovated for commercial policy understated the extent to which and residential use, squatting on an the app collected information from its uphill block just west of midtown. player’s phones, consumers continued to Welded shut, the original glass and iron flock to the game. AR Hex quickly pushed entrance now gave diners in the public out an update that curtailed the greediest concourse a scenic view of the city’s west of their data-collection practices, pasting end. Around the corner, a former loading over the rest with a revised privacy dock had been renovated to favor a grand policy. The founders hustled around hotel entrance, all gilt finish and sodium- the public relations circuit, assuring vapor bulbs. consumers they had gotten their house Coming to a stop beneath the canopy, in order. The game’s growth rate faltered Strell’s driver pointed out the other car. several points, but quickly rebounded. It idled next to a meter at the entrance Soon, the episode was all but forgotten. to the block, headlamps doused, tinted Then, for no discernible reason, the windows gobbling light. “I spotted it just rate of new players joining the game after we left the hotel,” she said. “I wasn’t peaked. The number of active users sure it was following until we turned off went into decline shortly thereafter. of International.” Now flush with cash, AR Hex added A black sedan, Strell noted. How cliché. new dimensions to play and launched a Sabato greeted him at the broad new marketing campaign. The numbers double doors and guided him through continued to fall. Industry-watchers the hushed entrance hall to a central bay chalked it up to “market fatigue.” Derived of escalators. “They had a few concerns primarily from in-game advertising, they hoped we could address,” he said revenue flatlined. The game survived, as they ascended to the third floor, “but but its fortunes dwindled. Hex followed I think you’ll be satisfied.” As he spoke, up with new games, none of them he rapped the rubber railing with the successes. Word around the industry was knuckles of one hand, his gaze fixed that the remaining founders, Berkman on their trajectory. Strell noted the and Lin, were eager to try their hands uncertainty and wondered how much his at something new. Their intention to attorney had guessed. Certainly, it was sell came just as Strell Enterprises found out of character for Strell to handle an itself in the market for a mobile software acquisition this way, himself and a single firm. lawyer on a rushed, two-day trip. But Sabato was steadfast. He would keep his * * * own counsel. An administrative assistant, crisp and AR Hex was headquartered in the old professional despite the hour, waited at Gas and Light building, five stories of the private exit to admit them. He led them through a vestibule and across the Lin Wu-Ming deliberated over a small back of the cavernous main suite, opposite buffet table as Strell and Sabato entered an outer wall of steel-frame windows the conference room. Eyes spaced over, that overlooked the glimmering city. Glen Berkman sat slouched in a chair at The sprawling bullpen of whiteboards the table. They both tuned in long enough and workstations that dominated the for handshakes, then resumed their space was quiet and, except for a spectral positions while the lawyers recapped the screensaver here and there, dark beneath day’s deliberations. the rafters. “A few modifications,” Sabato had Their path led past an open rec area, its said, but in fact, there were more than a margins bounded by a ping-pong table, dozen. Strell made a show of negotiating beanbag chairs and a sectional couch. several. It would hardly do to let on that A dozen haggard employees reclined his desire for the company was wholly there, watching the news on a monitor indirect. He nodded through the others, you could have laid flat and used as a letting Sabato formalize his assent. His parking space. From yesterday’s barrage own thoughts drifted back to the phone of introductions, Strell recognized them call with Terry. What might he have said as the team heads – seniority, technically, to prolong the conversation, to coax his though most were likely Terry’s age or son into letting him send a driver? What younger. They had, no doubt, logged a hadn’t he tried before? week’s worth of overtime, hustling to It was Berkman and Lin’s last prep the Hex for acquisition. condition that finally commanded his It occurred to Strell that he should attention. “What exactly are we talking decide what to do with them all. about,” he asked, “when you say you Silently, the assistant guided him and want to ‘dissociate data from personal Sabato behind the couch and toward identifiers?’” the conference room. Only one face The glance that passed between the turned to mark their passing, a young founders was indecipherable. “Maybe we woman crouched against the wall, hands had better bring in our chief data admin,” tucked into the broad front pocket of said Berkman. Strell could see no point her sweatshirt and a hood pulled over in that – they surely knew the details her hair. Obstinate black eyebrows well enough to explain – but decided to sat low above her eyes. What was her affect indifference. While they waited, name again? Mir something, was it? he busied himself assembling a plate of Or something Mir? Strell thought he canapé that he had no intention of eating. detected accusation in the expression, When the assistant returned, the young but perhaps the call in the car had shaken woman from the rec area was with him, his judgment. Best set that right before her expression unchanged. “I believe you the haggling began. met Khalida yesterday,” said Berkman. Strell shook her hand across the table. Berkman’s drawn out nod was a As Khalida Mir explained it, each concession that Strell had pulled at the datapoint AR Hex had collected over right string. “You would have to start the years (including some left over rebuilding the profiles that allow for from Hexagonal) was linked to the user narrowly targeted advertising.” account that had provided it in the first “You could still plan campaigns around place. Some of that information (for the trends discernible in the unsorted example: credit card numbers, billing data,” said Lin. “For example, our users addresses), could be used to identify the tend to favor footwear that replicates player outside of the game. The rest was vintage fashions . . . “ descriptive: useful for building a model “Sure, sure,” Strell agreed. He made of the person’s traits and behavior, a gesture of impatience to move on. but not, on its own, identifying. Given “Between dissociating the data and the enough descriptive information, though, other modifications you’ve specified, I a skillful analyst could sometimes think we can come to an agreement for, infer information the player had never say, half the standing offer.” volunteered: where they lived or worked, By their raised eyebrows, he could see if they had a particular medical condition the gambit had paid off. He pressed on: — even, within a margin of error, their “Well, you understand, of course, that identity. your current targeting capacity is a major “What we’re proposing,” said Berkman, selling point, correct? We could build “is splintering the descriptive data off back up to the sort of targeted advertising into a separate database, and breaking you’re doing now, but dissociating that it up into unsorted categories to make data will set us back five years. Well, not inference more difficult.” that much, perhaps, but at any rate, what “We feel that this will benefit AR Hex’s you’re offering me now is a head start, future owner,” Lin added. “Consumers not a –” (what was the phrase?) “– a fully are increasingly aware of the hazards realized operation. of data insecurity. Assuring players that “But you knew all that. I’d rather have measures have been taken to ensure their the database intact, but the general data privacy will go a long way toward trends are still worth something. And, to preventing account closures when the be honest with you, I’m tired of spinning company changes hands.” my wheels on this. This is new territory Strell nodded over steepled fingers. for me, and I’m eager to get started, After a carefully measured interval, he especially if even buying my way in is responded. “Seems reasonable enough. going to leave me playing catch-up with Though, correct me if I’m wrong: isn’t the rest of the industry. the descriptive info used to personalize “So I’ll tell you what. Let’s say 60% of advertising?” the original offer, and you go ahead and dissociate the data. Or, leave it as is, let so to compensate they had adopted a me worry about establishing trust with strategy of insinuating their policies the userbase, and I’ll tack an additional, into otherwise non-partisan bills. Little I don’t know, 3% onto the original offer.” more than a line item in a lengthy rider Berkman deferred to Lin. Lin gnawed to the periodic Census Renewal Act, the at the inside of his lip, then shrugged Parity Clause prohibited census-takers back at Berkman. “Thank you, Khalida,” from asking about respondents’ race or said the latter. “You’re excused.” ethnicity. There was never any doubt over * * * which party had included the clause – “speaking race is racist speech” had On his way out, Strell caught the tail long been part of the Uniform Party’s end of the usual spiel. “Uniform stands official platform – but the potential for for social order,” Parrish’s campaign damage seemed limited. It applied only manager was saying. “Uniform stands to the census and the difficulties it would for the rule of law. It’s the uniform of create were theoretically surmountable the police, of the armed forces, of the by supplementing it with data collected judiciary. No reasonable person wants to from other agencies. Failing all else, the live in a society without law and order.” new restrictions could be stripped away A covey of party functionaries hovered when the census came up for its next behind her, each well-scrubbed face renewal. Moreover, Uniform’s support beaming a 1,000-watt grin directly into was crucial to passing the whole rider. the camera. In the interests of securing their own “Don’t you want to be like them, provisions, other minority legislators everyone?” asked the art director on swallowed their distaste for the party the sectional couch. “Look how uniform and voted in favor. they are!” Indeed, as soon as Strell’s Only afterward did it become clear attention was drawn to it, the physical that they had voted for a substantially commonality of the onscreen group different version of the clause. A last- glared out at him. The AR Hex staff – minute revision had altered the agreed my staff, he corrected himself – was a upon language and the bill went to a cultural expo by comparison. vote before most legislators even noticed “Haven’t you heard?” answered one of the change. By then, it was too late. The the programming leads. “We’re all alike revised clause barred all agencies from now. It’s against the law to say otherwise.” keeping records of race and ethnicity. By that he meant the Parity Clause, Color-blindness had become official Uniform’s most significant victory to government policy. date. The party had never won enough The difficulties this occasioned quickly elections to hold a legislative majority, became apparent. Much of the framework of civil rights and social welfare law Clause served their purposes. The party had been structured for periodic had long fashioned itself as committed readjustment according to demographic to reducing civil strife by leveling changes revealed by the census. Dozens of the differences that contributed to government agencies relied on its results it. Scratch beneath that veneer, and to plan and coordinate the services they it became readily apparent that they provided. The longer the Parity Clause were committed instead to the cause of remained in effect, the more their data concentrating power in the hands of the were sure to diverge from reality. ethnic majority. Though promoted as a Moreover, the terms of the clause measure for shielding citizens from an mandated the destruction or deletion of intrusive government, the clause’s real previously gathered data as well. Only function was to obscure the problems an ambiguity in the timeframe allowed facing minority communities. That, agencies to delay while legislators in turn, served to undermine their worked on a repeal. In the meantime, collective welfare and civil standing. the obvious expedient of interagency So perverse were those results that the sharing was curtailed, since no agency public soon rechristened it the Parody head dared risk the legal consequences of Clause. Centrists and progressives divulging that they were keeping banned maligned it in the press, but always records on hand. Agencies that had never with the suggestion that repeal was, if retained a budget for independent data not imminent, at any rate inevitable. collection were effectively hamstrung. Non-Uniform legislators declared their As the months wore on, anti- intention to excise it, but hoped to do discrimination policies began to falter. so without undermining the bill’s other Reports of individual prejudice and provisions. Opponents came away from systemic bias began to circulate. Even each failed attempt full of optimism for those reports could be difficult to the next time. Maybe after the coming substantiate. With the “race/ethnicity” round of elections, they said. field truncated from the newest batches Then came Parrish. If Uniform’s efforts of state-issued IDs, many citizens found to obscure their real objective from it impossible to prove minority status mainstream voters had traditionally when their complaints went to court. proven crude and unconvincing, Parrish Low-level bureaucrats – many, but not represented the culmination of a more all of them, Uniform supporters – found recent campaign to draw in mainstream themselves free to discriminate with voters. Confident and professional, virtually no recourse for the aggrieved. earthy but well-groomed, he was Those consequences were hardly Uniform’s first truly viable candidate unintended. In fact, Uniform’s leadership for higher office. His rise threatened to was gratified at how well the Parity make the Parity Clause more than just an embarrassing legislative snafu. It began “Is that when you’ll give me Terry’s to look rather like a harbinger of things location? When I’ve given you access to to come. If Parrish were to win, not only AR Hex?” would the prospects for repeal grow dim, “Is there some hurry, Strell? Are you but the whole of Uniform’s platform worried he’ll wander out into traffic? would suddenly be up for consideration. No, you’ll get the information you want when my team has gotten everything * * * they need from the system. A day or two. Not more than three, if they’re any The black sedan made no move as good.” She sounded dubious about their Strell’s car pulled onto the street. Would competence, which alarmed Strell, but Bahne be inside, he wondered, or had she then, as best he could tell, no one was sent a subordinate to keep an eye on him? competent enough for Bahne. Among the many particulars Strell did They had driven midway back to the not know about Bahne was her grade in hotel when his driver pointed out that the Uniform pecking order. they were again being followed. His driver had hardly pulled into “Let them have their games,” he traffic when Strell’s phone began to buzz, answered. “I’ve grown bored with the caller’s name and number masked. unlisted numbers and black sedans.” “Well?” she demanded. “Green, actually,” the driver corrected. “It’s done,” he replied. Acknowledging “A hatchback.” it aloud sent a wave of relief down his Strell laid his head back into the soft body. He quaked, as though feverish. leather of the headrest. Closing his “Everything as we asked?” eyes, he tried to will the tension from Strell assured her that he had secured his muscles. “I suppose I don’t merit the the conditions she had given him. Even full treatment now,” he said, as much to so, she went through each item on the list, himself as to his driver. “They’ve gotten making him confirm each one. Satisfied what they want out of me.” that he had not botched the job, she turned Whether from Bahne’s cruelty or the to next steps. Once Strell Enterprises had desperation of his own situation, anger taken over administrative functions, simmered within him. He had begun to he was to provide her team with covert believe it was audible when he realized access to AR Hex’s servers. that the boiling noise he heard came “And your end?” Strell asked. from outside the car. Marchers thronged The question threw her, and for a the sidewalk, many more now than moment, she made no answer, finally before. All day, long lines had formed at covering her confusion with irritability. the polling stations, and the last of the “Why the hell would we give you access voters were finally exiting to join the to our end?” protests around the city. Thank God you’re in here, Strell told “You just bought an entire company himself, but the thought was wholly for him, didn’t you?” reflexive. In truth, he felt constricted, Since reclaiming his barstool, Strell as though buried in the cabin of the car. had divided his attention more or less It seemed plausible he might never see evenly between the news and drink. daylight or breath fresh air again. Now he worked to focus on the source As he opened his door, he told the of the voice. Incongruous in her hooded driver, “Go on back and wait for Sabato. sweatshirt and jeans, Khalida Mir was After that, the night is yours.” From the settling onto the stool adjacent. sidewalk, he heard her startled voice Strell contorted to scan the room protest: the hotel was only three blocks behind him. She had come alone. “The away. Then the door closed behind him green hatchback,” he said. “That was you.” and the mass of people swept him along. She gave a sharp laugh, whether at Above the clamor of half-shouted having been spotted, or because he had conversations, he could make out a inadvertently answered her question, chant: “Justice is not uniform! Uniform is Strell could not say. “Leave the cloak and not just!” There was no audience nearby, dagger stuff to the politicians, Miss Mir. no cameras or bystanders. The crowd You haven’t the knack for it.” chanted to conserve momentum. People She let that one lie as she waved off around him took up the slogan, then the bartender. “They don’t play fair, do dropped it to speak with their neighbors. they? Your politicians, I mean. Tell me, do “Are you reasonable people?” demanded you think they’ll follow through on their a stocky man walking alongside him. The promise?” man’s hands grasped the shins of a young “Which promise is that?” boy who rode astraddle his shoulders. “Finding your son, of course.” Strell was suddenly conscious of standing That was the end of Strell’s bravado. out. The shock of recognition had reduced “Me?” he replied. “Hardly at all.” the liquidity of two stiff whiskeys to mere wooziness, but the mention of his * * * son was like dropping a cinder block into a puddle. Mir, too, had lost her boldness, “Your man might pull it off,” a voice and was staring intently at her own commented somewhere off to his left. It hands where they rested on the bar. “We might have belonged to a contralto, had tried to locate him,” she explained. “He it been at all musical. wasn’t in our data. If he had been one of “Perish the thought,” Strell replied. our players, we could have found him for Finding the phrase spoiled, he quickly you. He just wasn’t there.” corrected himself: “What makes you “A pseudonym,” he suggested, but once think he’s my man?” negotiations began, they would have had enough information on Strell to connect They hadn’t counted on getting this far so any Orphic back to him, wouldn’t they? quickly, and now they have to go outside As Mir had explained in the conference the government agencies to decide who room, they could have inferred Terry’s doesn’t belong in their country. So they identity. sent you out shopping for an archive.” Deep in the amber of his drink, the Strell fired back with a challenge, “Why reflection of an overhead bar light agree to drop that provision if you’re so gleamed like false hope. Gradually, he worried about what the buyer’s doing put it away. with your data?” “He just wasn’t in the data,” she “Not everyone at Hex is as concerned repeated, and her voice sounded a note by what’s happening in this country. of apology. From the vast interplanetary Glen thinks the color of his skin is distance to which he had removed enough to protect him. Wu-Ming has himself, Strell thought that decent of her. dual citizenship. For all I know, he’s “I didn’t think anyone knew about packing for Taipei right now. The only Terry.” reason they included that last provision “People close to you were concerned,” was to satisfy the rest of us, but when it she replied. “As much for you as for your comes down to it, Hex is their property. son.” They might have even called off the deal Strell made an effort to untangle if you had broken into a musical number his thoughts. To whom could Mir have about internment camps, but short of talked? Who might have talked back? that, they were never going to turn down Surely not Sabato, who had built a a solid offer. vocation on confidentiality. He seized “Anyway,” she finished, regaining on the answer so quickly that it popped composure, “you played your hand well.” directly out of his mouth. “The driver.” “How gratifying to know that I haven’t The look in Mir’s eyes turned to lost your respect completely.” It had pure scorn. “You’re thinking like a real dawned on him that an employee had Uniform man now. Trying to decide little right to talk to her employer the who deserves to suffer when what you way she had. should be thinking about –” She paused, “Is that what you’re afraid of losing, recalibrated, started again. “Do you Mr. Strell?” think Uniform is any more interested “I think you know what I stand to lose. in videogames than you are, Mr. Strell? I’d go much further to bring him back.” If Parrish wins, they’ll have a chance to “If it’s any consolation, we understood put some of their big ideas into action, the difficulty of your position when we the ones that don’t work without a list made our request to Glen and Wu-Ming. of undesirables. That’s where the Parody I suppose we’ll all have difficult choices Clause bit them in their collective ass. to make if Parrish wins.” “Is that why you followed me here? To where the largest demonstration had play Ghost of Christmas Past? To show gathered. A chant was spreading through me the error of my ways?” the crowd, and when the people near her “No, Mr. Strell, I have plenty of joined in, she picked it up as well. Their consciences to mind without worrying words crackled in the night air. Her voice myself over yours. Remember: my team felt unfamiliar, like a knife held with built the database you’re handing over to fingers benumbed. Uniform. I just thought . . .” She could not foresee whether what An uncertain distance arose in her she had done would matter all that much. eyes. “Maybe Parrish’s people already The party would hardly have staked know where your son is, but if they don’t the success of their plans on a single . . . What I mean is, if the idea was to use acquisition. It would be a costly setback, our database to find him, I wanted you to the corruption beyond salvage of Hex’s know, when they don’t, that it’s because data, but they were almost certain to he was never there.” have explored other sources. Depending She gathered herself to leave as she on how many they had managed to said this, pulling the hood back over her secure, the loss might leave gaps in their hair and descending from her barstool. demographic information. Strell said nothing. Having fixed his gaze Arriving at the square, Khalida climbed forward, all he saw of her departure was the base of a statue and surveyed the the diminishing ripple of her reflection crowd. Beneath the banners and placards, in the display shelf of bottles behind the several thousand people milled. Invisible bar. tethers bound them back to their digital Maybe it was the liquor reasserting eidola, rough facsimiles of their identities itself, but he couldn’t make her last words roaming a netherworld of servers. She add up. Why would Mir care if he blamed had loosed a few, and hoped that would Uniform for reneging on their end of the be worth something in the months and deal? years to come. U

* * *

Outside, Khalida tucked her hands into her sweatshirt pocket and fell in with the procession. The carnival atmosphere had dissipated some time ago. The last of the election returns were due soon, the margins too narrow for levity. She let the crowd bear her along southward, toward the public square REVVING THE ENGINE A SERIES PROFILING THE RECIPIENTS OF UNREAL DEV GRANTS

THE WATCHMAKER

This series of articles is made possible through the generous sponsorship of Epic's Unreal Engine 4. Every month, we profile the recipient of an Unreal Dev Grant. While Epic puts us in touch with our subjects, they have no input or approval in the final story. Click here to learn more. or Marco Gonzalez, game development has been a struggle. F He started in the industry back in 2005, at 20 years old and worked with a business incubator called Andinatech to develop five games through 2007. Then, the economic crisis and lack of development support in his native Chile forced him to retire from the industry. Five years later, in 2012, he was back in, opening the studio Micropsia with childhood friend Oscar Cerda. Their first game was Infocus Extreme Bike, a mobile game based on urban downhill biking. Other games, developed for outside companies, followed. All the while though, they worked on their real passion: The Watchmaker. The Watchmaker is a third person puzzle-adventure. Players take the roll of Alexander, an inventor with amnesia who is trapped inside his greatest creation: a mysterious clock tower. Someone has sabotaged the device and time inside has collapsed, causing Alexander to rapidly age. He must repair the tower, find the culprit and restore order before time, and his life, run out. When Epic awarded Micropsia a Dev Grant, it allowed the studio to focus on The Watchmaker. Overnight, the team grew to ten people. “My colleagues told me that we were crazy and that we should stick to developing mobile games,” says Gonzalez. “We knew we could make this game and it’s what we wanted to do. Why develop games at all if we can’t make our own? The Watchmaker is proof to the world that our dreams are possible and that all you have to do is keep standing up whenever you fall.” Gonzalez and his team are busy aiming for release on Steam in the second quarter of 2017, but took some time out to discuss the project with Unwinnable.

What inspired you to make The Watchmaker? What are you hoping to accomplish with it? Our inspiration came from our own fascination with time and many great old games like Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Ocarina of Time and Prince of Persia, among others. We wanted to create a new game, a different game, and having enemies take away your life was predictable. On the other hand, not having enemies would have allowed the player to live forever. That is how we came up with the foundation for our videogame: time is the only true killer. Developing The Watchmaker was very complicated for us, not only because we weren’t very experienced in developing this kind of games, but also because it is hard to come up with such projects here in Chile.

How is the game development scene in Chile? Is there a lot of public and government support? Game development in Chile is seen as madness, for many reasons. Business companies won’t buy videogames, the government doesn’t fund game development and, despite us having existed for 12 years, it’s only in the last three years that potential distribution has emerged. We’ve all been trying to survive. Survive is the right word to describe the situation. Chile has a population of no more than 17 million people, so the market is still very small. We’re also pretty much living at the far edge of the world. We’ve spoken with partners from other countries like Canada, Norway, Germany, the U. S. and Japan; their reality is so different. No matter how things are in Chile, though, as we say in here: “Le ponemos el pecho a las balas,” which translates to “We take the bullets in the chest.”

The first thing that struck me about the game is the trailer reminded me an awful lot of early 3D platformers, particularly Crash Bandicoot. Is there a relationship between The Watchmaker and games of that type? Yes, the art is very similar to that of Crash Bandicoot because we believe that today’s games focus too much on realism and we were born in a time of cartoonish styles. It’s a matter of personal taste, but we hope that players feel nostalgia when playing The Watchmaker.

The aging mechanic intrigues me. Can you explain how it works and how it influences gameplay? Aging is the most important mechanic in The Watchmaker. As I said before, time is your worst enemy. If do not act, you die! This mechanic gives you a feeling of restlessness that adds to the game experience. You begin as a 30-year-old Alexander and every 10 seconds ages you one year. If you reach 90 years old, you die. Enemy attacks accelerate this process, but don’t worry, The Watchmaker has many tools up his sleeve. You can rewind your age in two different ways. The first: by reaching a checkpoint. Age ranges are from 30 to 50, 50 to 70 and 70 to 90. Let’s say you are currently 55 years old and you get into a checkpoint, your age will rewind back to 50, but if you were 45 years old, you would go back to 30. The other way of reducing age is using a key. With it, you can repair your life clock and recover up to 20 years, no matter your aging stage. Early in development, the game used a first person camera, because of the mechanical glove. We changed it due to other important features, like Alexander’s aging. In third person, we can see how as he ages, how his animations change, the skin, the speed, his athletic skills; the screen get more and more blurry and the music slows down. The idea is that you have to be smart enough to complete the puzzles while you manage your time to avoid dying.

What do you hope players take away from The Watchmaker? We want players to be aware of time. The story teaches its importance, especially in light of today’s accelerated lifestyles.

It is hard for me to see the name The Watchmaker without thinking of William Paley’s watchmaker analogy (that creations that have a design, like a watch, or nature, imply that there is a designer - a watchmaker, or a god). Further, your game plays with subjects like time, aging and (presumably) death, as well as man’s ability to build technology to manipulate the same. So, are you trying to make some larger theological or scientific statements withThe Watchmaker? That is a great question. Our intention is not to give a direct statement, we’re just sharing our thoughts. You are correct: the themes of aging and death are present at all times in our lives. We may never talk about them, even though we know we’ll have to face them one day, and that is relevant to the story. Time is a gift. We must seize it.

How does Unreal Engine help in developing a game like The Watchmaker? Are there any unexpected benefits or challenges? Unreal Engine is a great tool for developers, it’s a very powerful engine that indie developers have access to and it’s also very well supported. I think that without Unreal, we would not have been able to make The Watchmaker at all. It has huge potential. U Contributors

ALEX BERTRAM-POWELL is a freelance ROB RICH has loved videogames since the illustrator from Bristol, United Kingdom. He 80s and has the good fortune to be able to works using a combination of pencils and write about them. Catch his rants on Twitter at digital medium and is primarily known for @RobsteinOne record sleeves and poster art. JASON MCMASTER is a writer and editor STU HORVATH is the editor in chief of with a lifelong passion for games. When he isn’t Unwinnable. He reads a lot, drinks whiskey and working on Unwinnable, he’s either on his PC spends his free time calling up demons. Follow or playing a board game. Follow him on Twitter him on Twitter @StuHorvath. @mcmaster

GAVIN CRAIG is a writer and critic who lives BRIAN TAYLOR lives and works in Pittsburgh, outside of Washington, D.C. Follow him on Pennsylvania. Twitter @CraigGav SOPHIE TURNER is a is a writer, geek and MEGAN CONDIS is an English Professor at social media goblin from the UK. You can Stephen F. Austin State University. Her book, usually find her wandering around looking at Playing Politics: Trolls, Fake Geeks, and the Game dogs, or on Twitter at @sophvturner of Masculinity in Online Culture, is forthcoming from the University of Iowa Press. She also MATT SAYER is an analyst programmer designs video games based on her research, from Melbourne, Australia, with a passion which are available for free at her website for psychology and the cognitive biases that subconsciously influence our daily life. You can CASEY LYNCH is editorial director of Square follow him on Twitter @sezonguitar Enix where he works on Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, Hitman and more. His first metal show was L. RHODES lives in Atlanta, where he writes Anthrax, Testament, and Metal Church in 1987. and produces for television. Follow him on Djent with him on Twitter @Lynchtacular Twitter @upstreamism.

AMANDA HUDGINS is an occasional writer, former rugby player, and wearer of incredibly tall shoes. Follow her on Twitter @barelyconcealed

COREY MILNE is an Irish freelance writer who likes to poke at that strange intersection Illustrations where games meet history. A roundup of his writing can be found at coreymilne.com. You All screenshots, film stills and promotional can join his Rad-Lands motorcycle bandit gang images courtesy of their copyright on Twitter @Corey_Milne holders. All photography is in the public domain unless otherwise noted. Original MATT MARRONE is a senior MLB editor at works and Creative Commons licenses ESPN.com. He has been Unwinnable’s reigning below. Rookie of the Year since 2011. You can follow him on Twitter @thebigm. Cover: Alex Bertram-Powell