ALL FORMATS LIFTING THE LID ON VIDEO GAMES Eternal coders The veterans making games on mobile Reviling rodents Point Blank Why rats continue to Code your own infest our video games shooting gallery Issue 20 £3 wfmag.cc Stealth meets Spaghetti Western UPGRADE TO LEGENDARY AG273QCX 2560x1440 F2P game makers have a responsibility to their players ree-to-play has brought gaming to billions offer: any player can close their account and receive of new players across the globe: from the a full refund for any spending within the last 60 days. middle-aged Middle Americans discovering This time limit gives parents, guardians, carers, and F hidden object puzzles to the hundreds of remorseful spenders a full billing cycle to spot errant millions of mobile gamers playing MOBAs in China. spending and another cycle to request their funds People who wouldn’t (or couldn’t) buy games now have WILL LUTON back. It’s also a clear signal to our players and the an unfathomable choice, spanning military shooters to gaming community that F2P is not predicated on Will Luton is a veteran interior decorating sims. one-time tricks but on building healthy, sustainable game designer and F2P is solely responsible for this dramatic expansion product manager relationships with players. of our art across the borders of age, race, culture, and who runs Department How such a refund policy would be publicised and continents. The joy of gaming is now shared by nearly of Play, the games adopted is a little more tricky. But faced with mounting industry’s first the entire globe. Yet many inside and outside the calls for censorship in the 1950s, the comic industry management games industry see F2P as a blight, where the model’s consultancy. He is formed Comics Magazine Association of America to success is down to its ability to trick unsuspecting the author of Free- self-regulate. Today, the UK’s UKIE and the United players into spending. to-Play: Make Money States’ Entertainment Software Rating Board, along Having spent nearly a decade making F2P games, From Games You with Google, Apple, Valve, and other platform holders, Give Away, and has I know that this isn’t an accurate picture of the average worked with Sega, could build a similar association. spending player. The titles most prolific under the Rovio, and Jagex. The 1940s saw Fiorello LaGuardia, then mayor, take model are successful because they become meaningful He is also an avid to the streets of New York with a sledgehammer to to players’ lives, with spending healthily repeated retro games and destroy pinball tables. Much of early gaming history is pinball player. over months and often years. I’ve personally spent an now lost, and the evolution of pinball was stunted until average of £1500 per year on Magic: The Gathering over New York lifted the ban in the 1970s. Without self- many years, well within the limits of my income, and regulation, F2P faces a metaphorical sledgehammer. have no regrets. The game has brought me a lot of joy We’ve already seen regulation in F2P, with Japan and introduced me to some of my closest friends. outlawing a form of monetisation called ‘kompu gacha’ But it would be foolish to suggest that there aren’t in 2012. Kompu gacha, meaning ‘complete gacha’, is a players who make purchases in F2P titles that they mechanic where players are rewarded for completing live to regret, especially if they do so with impaired character sets dropped from gacha (also known as reasoning, as is often the case with children and loot boxes). Since then, political pressure has been vulnerable adults. I appeared on the BBC News back mounting across Europe and the world. in 2013 talking about children accidentally spending #20 The F2P industry stands on the brink of regulation, money in games, and now, six years later, the BBC’s which may cause endless headaches for developers. still running stories on the problem. Governments have been proven not to understand Some may say that the responsibility to protect lies video games, and their presence could tie developers with platform holders, parents, and carers. But this is in bureaucracy rather than focusing on what really a shirk. Game makers have a responsibility to protect matters: making great games. As game makers, their players, even if it’s from their own actions, and I we need to avoid censorship and regulation, push believe there is a simple way to do so: refunds. boundaries, but also accept responsibility for our It’s possible to see the F2P industry adopt a simple players. And if we fail our players, then we need to policy, one which I know many studios already secretly make things right for them. wfmag.cc \ 03 Contents Contents 6 Attract mode Interface 06. El Hijo 18. Rodents everywhere Honig Studios tell us about their The meaning – and prevalence – of unique stealth western rats in video games 10. The Bradwell Conspiracy 24. Revita More than just another day The lone dev behind a great- at the office looking roguelite 12. Chicken Police 44. The eternal coders We uncover a brooding, bonkers Meet the 1980s programmers still noir adventure making games today 16. Incoming 50. Shinji Mikami Cavemen, Geralt, and Kojima’s Inside the mind that gave us 44 lucky ladders Resident Evil and lots more 04 / wfmag.cc Contents WELCOME It’s all gone a bit animal crackers this issue, what with chicken cops on page 12, an infestation of rodents on page 18, and our pick of some top-quality in-game creatures (a suspicious number of which are of the canine variety) on page 22. With this in mind, I dusted off my old copy of Growl (also known as Runark) – a Sega Mega Drive port of Taito’s relatively obscure beat- ’em-up from the early nineties. Now, by most yardsticks, Growl 12 is a pretty bad game; its colours are drab, the music’s forgettable, and it’s possible to brawl your way through the entire experience by repeatedly jump- kicking everybody. There is, however, one great thing about Growl: its premise. Cast in the role of an animal rescue ranger of some sort, it’s your job to pummel your way through an army of evil, heavily armed poachers. As you variously punch, kick, and gun down said poachers, you can free animals from their cages, who’ll return the favour by occasionally joining in the fray. This means that, just when the novelty of using rocket launchers and machine guns to fight men in flat caps 18 56 begins to pall, a convocation of eagles will descend and peck a bunch of villains to death, or an elephant will enter stage left to headbutt a tank into oblivion. Toolbox Rated It’s all brilliantly daft, and builds to a rousing finale that involves a mutating boss in a 30. New rules 56. Sea of Solitude red top hat and a garage full of Tips for building better dev teams Set sail in a striking study of dancing wildlife. loneliness and turmoil Growl simply adds to our 32. Distributed (highly unscientific) theory that 61. adding animals to even the development SolSeraph most mediocre game will make How even large studios can now A nineties homage gets caught it ten percent better. Enjoy the work remotely in the ActRaiser new issue! 36. Live coding 62. They Are Billions Ryan Lambie A guide to using shaders to An enthralling real-time war Editor entrancing effect of attrition 40. Source Code 64. Hamsterdam Make your own mini shooting We hope the sequel’s called gallery in Python Jason Stathamster wfmag.cc \ 05 Attract Mode Mode Interview The good, the bad, and the We catch up with Berlin-based developer Honig Studios stealthyto find out more about their stealth western, El Hijo he most immediately presentation: the monastery, where the striking thing about El Hijo is game begins, is all candlelight and long how boldly its theme goes shadows, as monks quietly sweep floors or T against the grain of a typical trudge up and down its gloomy hallways, sneak-’em-up. Where most seemingly lost in thought. of the biggest stealth games tend to go for As El Hijo threads his way through military themes (Metal Gear, Splinter Cell) the building, clinging to low walls or or far-eastern settings (Tenchu, Shadow hanging back in the shadows, he – and Tactics), El Hijo is instead inspired by the by extension, the player – needs to find spaghetti westerns of director Sergio ever more ingenious places to hide and Leone. Its protagonist, meanwhile, is far methods to avoid getting caught. When from a hardened gun-slinger; following the we got our hands on the game earlier this destruction of the year, we constantly family homestead “That plot is one of found ourselves El Hijo’s creative producer, by vicious bandits, many allusions to smiling at the care Maria Grau-Stenzel. six-year-old El Hijo is developer Honig left in the safety of the work of maverick Studios have put a monastery by his Chilean director into its design and in our hunt for freedom. Later, however, mother. Determined Alejandro Jodorowsky” animation: the outdoor areas provide fewer places to to be reunited with way El Hijo nimbly duck, and marauding bandits only add to her – and track down the villains who ducks behind curtains, jumps into tubs the escalating sense of threat – El Hijo’s burned down his home – El Hijo decides to of water, or scuttles down the sides of a catapult is handy for causing diversions escape from the monks’ care and traverse crumbling building to the next hiding place.