£3 ALL FORMATS LIFTING THE LID ON VIDEO GAMES Destiny Video game The story of its producers lost soundtrack Why it’s better to be Picard than Kirk Dual Universe EVE meets Minecraft in Novaquark’s new MMO Issue 4 £3 wfmag.cc WHAT KIND 04 72000 OF COP ARE YOU? 16 Go rogue in 2019’s trailblazing 7263 detective RPG, Disco Elysium 97 LIMITED EDITION #1 RAGE £3 ALL FORMATS LIFTING THE LID ON VIDEO GAMES Destiny Video game The story of its producers lost soundtrack Why it’s better to be Picard than Kirk Dual Universe EVE meets Minecraft in Novaquark’s new MMO Issue 4 £3 wfmag.cc WHAT KIND 04 72000 OF COP ARE YOU? 16 Play by the book in 2019’s trailblazing 7263 detective RPG, Disco Elysium 97 LIMITED EDITION #2 REASON Subscribe today 12 weeks for £12* £3 £3 ALL FORMATS ALL FORMATS LIFTING THE LID ON VIDEO GAMES LIFTING THE LID ON VIDEO GAMES Getting started Cyberpunk Mega Man 2077 The changing face of with Unity a console icon Adapting tabletop How to make a RPGs to video games first-person shooter Solid Snake Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima profiled Doom to Dota 2 Thrunt XL When modders An indie game made turn professional without a line of code SCARE TACTICS X-COM’S JULIAN GOLLOP ON HIS CO-OP HORROR FROM NEW GAME, PHOENIX POINT THE DIRECTOR OF BIOSHOCK 2 Issue 3 £3 wfmag.cc Issue 2 £3 wfmag.cc 03 02 03 9772631672000 9772631672000 Visit: wfmag.cc/12weeks to order * UK Price. 6 issue introductory offer Games for the ages n YouTube, there’s a video with especially egregious example.) They exist, over 19 million views. It’s never certainly. Flemeth from Dragon Age and Sully O going to get featured in articles from Uncharted are perpetual favourites of mine. about how to make your YouTube But I want more Gandalfs who have something video go viral, but the number of views is JESSICA PRICE significant to impart to us, not just quest-givers remarkable because its subject is so mundane: Jessica Price is a and exposition-droppers. I want characters producer, writer and it’s a video of an older woman patiently manager with over a who have some genuine wisdom to share that explaining how to fold a fitted sheet. decade of experience extends beyond the borders of fictional worlds, in triple-A, indie and The games industry is still, by and large, tabletop games. and for that to be authentic, I think it needs to populated by the young. (I know exactly one come from real-world experience, not merely dev who’s actually retired.) But as the twenty- from our imaginings of what it’s like to be old. somethings of the 1990s and early 2000s FPS What I’m saying, I guess, is that I wish more boom have moved on to the next stage of their games would turn to actual elderly people for lives, we’ve seen the games they make shift stories and dialogue and character building. focus. The Dishonored, God of War, and BioShock They’re about wish fulfilment, after all, and franchises have turned their eyes to fatherhood. sometimes you want to save the world, but Parents are present and increasingly taking sometimes you just want your grandpa to take starring roles in triple-A games, and I’m glad to you for a walk and point out what’s changed see it. But what I want is more grandparents. #04 and what’s stayed the same in the vistas you’re Maybe it’s because I’m an older millennial – our surveying, or your grandma to teach you a worldview and values are supposedly closest recipe and talk through a thorny moral dilemma. to those of the Greatest Generation, not those Opportunities to spend time with older people of our Boomer parents – that I’m longing for are usually presented as being for their benefit more elders in my games. Maybe it’s because – it’s hell to get old, they’re lonely, they have I and most of my social circles are transplants, nothing to do all day. But as anyone who spends living far from our families, stuck figuring out significant time with elders can tell you, the adulthood without much of a connection to past benefits go both ways. And that’s true in terms of generations, and feeling a little bit like Wendy who’s telling our stories as well. and the Lost Boys. Life and the stories in which we practice I want elders in my games. I want genuine navigating it are lonely roads to walk when elders, not just old kung fu masters or there’s never anyone ahead of you to break the characters who happen to have grey hair but trail. Let’s bring in more people who’ve lived are otherwise indistinguishable from younger in worlds now vanished to share their wisdom characters. (Sindel from Mortal Kombat is an while it’s still available to us. wfmag.cc \ 03 Contents Contents 6 Attract mode Interface 06. Disc o Elysium 18. Destin y’s lost score We catch up with the makers of Composer Marty O’Donnell opens up 2019’s most cerebral RPG about Destiny’s long-lost soundtrack 10. Stormworks 22. Int eractive: Devader The future’s bright for Sunfire The eye-popping twin-stick shooter Software’s sandbox rescue sim from Switzerland 12. Hypnospac e Outlaw 44. What do producers do? A one-of-a-kind indie game set in the Who they are, what they do, and what early days of the web it takes to be one 16. Inc oming 50. C apybara Games Monsters, mountain bikes and The creators of the wonderful Sword 50 dystopian farming simulators and Sworcery profiled 04 / wfmag.cc Contents 60 WELCOME We first encountered Disco Elysium earlier this year, and something about its chilly, dystopian fantasy world immediately lodged in our minds. In essence, it’s a detective RPG about a grizzled lawman interrogating subjects, solving mysteries and battling his own demons; the oily, hand-painted environments are full of atmosphere, while the soundtrack by British Sea Power, among others, adds to the sense of foreboding. Overwhelmingly, Disco Elysium is about decision making, and how the game’s virtual world shifts and reacts to the kind 30 56 of cop you want to be. Hence Wireframe #4’s pair of special, limited-edition covers. Do you choose to go rogue as a rage-filled lawman, or play by Toolbox Rated the book as a more cerebral detective? You can find out more about the nuances of developer ZA/UM’s game in our 28. City Craft 56. Just Cause 4 in-depth interview on page six. Clever tricks to make our video game Avalanche’s latest sandbox adds We’re not sure whether their cities seem bigger and busier balloons but mislays the joy hardboiled thriller will have a happy ending, whichever path 30. 58. we choose, but we’re really Source Code Fallout 76 looking forward to finding out. How to recreate the thrust motion in We look at the current state of Atari’s coin-op classic, Asteroids Bethesda’s creaky MMO Ryan Lambie Editor 34. Publishing on itch.io 60. T etris Effect Our step-by-step guide to publishing A classic puzzler adds rhythm action, and selling your games with mesmerising results 40. Getting into the industry 64. Dark siders III Some professional advice for anyone The apocalyptic action saga makes hoping to make games for a living a welcome return wfmag.cc \ 05 Attract Mode Mode Interview Police state Disco Elysium’s hand-painted of mind artwork looks truly special. A focus on looking and acting different has earned Disco Elysium early plaudits – we find out why it may well be something special uch of the focus on Disco When you started Disco Elysium – when well – possibly because we were thinking Elysium has been on its it was known as ‘No Truce With The of it as a smaller thing. art style – and with good Furies’ – you posted a blog saying it [We then found] that the resolution of M reason. It’s a gorgeous would be ‘a smaller game to work out our everything in this so-called ‘smaller’ game looking game, reminiscent big mechanics and storytelling methods’. got amped up to like a hundred. If we of the bold, thick strokes of many of What went wrong? started out with something huge, then history’s best oil painters. It is, in short, a RK: That completely spiralled out of took a tiny chunk out of it, we then blew conversation starter. control. I think the game we had planned that tiny chunk up to something massive Below that painterly surface lies a would take about 20 years to make. It was again. So here we are four years later… policing RPG with some seriously deep about 40 times bigger than what we’re and we’re just reining it in now. trappings. Disco Elysium isn’t just about working on. its looks; it’s about diving into the psyche What happened was this so-called What was that hook? What was it that of a cop trying to find his way in a broken ‘smaller game’ had a really nice narrative made you think you had something world, while nursing a broken mind. hook – once I had the beginning written special – that you had to make it bigger ZA/UM Studio, the team of ‘artists, out it started connecting with people really than the initial plan? writers, entrepreneurs, and socialists’ nicely.