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June 2023

Edge

The must-have companion for game industry professionals, aspiring game-makers and super-committed hobbyists

Edge2 min read
Sometimes It’s Just Fine To Make It Up As You Go Along
It doesn’t feel so long ago that the open-world videogame was such a rare beast that sighting a new one felt kind of magical. The DNA of these exotic specimens seemed to be familiar only to a select group who’d unlocked parts of our gaming hardware t
Edge2 min read
Edge
Tony Mott still learning The Quill Chris Schilling deputy editor Alex Spencer features editor Miriam McDonald operations editor Andrew P Hind art editor Jon Bailes, Callum Bains, Joshua Broadwell, Will Freeman, Samantha Greer, Adrian Hon, Emma Kent,
Edge6 min read
Epic Vision
Epic Games arrived at the 2023 Game Developers Conference with a clear goal, using its keynote presentation to lift the lid on some of the company’s biggest projects, with an ambitious overhaul to Fortnite’s Creative mode front and centre. Creative 2
Edge5 min read
Catalog Shopping
More than six months since the conclusion of its first season of games, Panic’s Playdate has its own store – and, as ever, it’s not doing things quite like any of its PC or console counterparts. Until now, creators seeking to release their game on th
Edge4 min read
Pet Project
From the original Tamagotchi to Neopets and Nintendogs, there’s a long history of people forming emotional connections with pets that only exist on a screen. It’s not hard to see the appeal: all the belly rubs, nuzzles and sense of being needed you g
Edge4 min read
Repeat Pleasure
Whether adapting Jules Verne in 80 Days or Steve Jackson gamebooks in Sorcery, tasking you with unearthing the secrets of lost alien civilisations in Heaven’s Vault or getting away with murder in Overboard, British studio Inkle has always known how t
Edge1 min read
Drawing Card
It was back in E326 that we first clapped eyes on Phonopolis – or at least the cardboard pieces from which it has been constructed at Amanita’s cosy Prague HQ. Even by the studio’s assiduous standards for world-building, it has taken time to come tog
Edge1 min read
Soundbytes
Getty Images/Tom Dulat (FIFA) Keeping an eye on the coin-op gaming scene Game Enter The Gungeon: House Of The Gundead Manufacturer Griffin Aerotech, Dodge Roll, Devolver Digital Originally planned for release in 2020, this lightgun-based spin-off fro
Edge3 min read
This Month On Edge
Who Hunts The Whale bit.ly/dalewhale This briskly paced epistolary satire from former standup comedian Jane Aerith Magnet and videogame critic Laura Kate Dale follows Avery Paige, whose dream job at a triple-A developer-publisher steadily becomes a n
Edge6 min read
Dialogue
While it’s no PsychOdyssey, Panic’s podcast has been offering a behind-the-scenes look at its Playdate console. This month’s episode was dedicated to the system’s new storefront: Catalog. As someone who has spent the past decade growing weary of the
Edge3 min read
Trigger Happy
Within the world of fairytales, there is nothing especially frog-like about a frog. Stories do not go into slimy detail about quotidian amphibious life. The frog could as easily be a squirrel, or a spider. Instead, the frog serves a narrative functio
Edge3 min read
Alternate Reality
Over the past few months, millions of videogame followers have been delighted by their hobby directly inspiring one of the most critically acclaimed TV shows in recent years. No longer are the words “based on a videogame” accompanied by a whiff of de
Edge2 min read
The Start Of Something New
They say you never get a second chance to make a first impression, and that’s particularly crucial today with so many options vying for our free time. In games, once you’ve grabbed a player, the next most important thing is holding their attention –
Edge5 min read
Diablo IV
Developer/publisher Blizzard Entertainment Format PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series Origin US Release June 6 Cleaving our way through the demons of Sanctuary, we quickly learn not to get too attached to what’s around us – and not only because our p
Edge4 min read
Viewfinder
Developer Sad Owl Studios Publisher Thunderful Games Format PC, PS5 Origin Various Release 2023 The first time we pick up one of Viewfinder’s pictures and place it down in the world, it feels like magic. The contents of the black-and-white Polaroid i
Edge5 min read
The Elder Scrolls Online: Necrom
Developer ZeniMax Online Studios Publisher Bethesda Softworks Format PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series Origin US Release June 5 (PC), June 20 (consoles) Some multiplayer games, it’s fair to say, can take a while to find their feet – and that’s cert
Edge3 min read
The Thaumaturge
Developer Fool’s Theory Publisher 11 Bit Studios Format PC Origin Poland Release 2023 Given an early peek at this isometric RPG, we’re reminded of WolfEye Studios’ Weird West (p90). Not for any substantial similarities, but the shared context of thei
Edge3 min read
The Banished Vault
Developer/ publisher Bithell Games (Lunar Division) Format PC Origin US Release Summer Survival is the name of the game in this run-based strategy from Bithell Games’ new label, Lunar Division. In the cold, unforgiving depths of space, you move from
Edge3 min read
Dordogne
Developer Un Je Ne Sais Quoi, Umanimation Publisher Focus Entertainment Format PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series Origin France Release Q2 The past rarely returns to us in perfect detail. For those of us without photographic memories, at lea
Edge1 min read
Roundup
Developer/publisher Nintendo (EPD) Format Switch Origin Japan Release May 12 Developer/publisher Failbetter Games Format PC, Switch Origin UK Release June 8 Developer Free Lives Publisher Devolver Digital Format PC Origin South Africa Release 2023 De
Edge14 min read
Built Different
Game Hyper Light Breaker Developer Heart Machine Publisher Gearbox Publishing Format PC Release 2023 The city seems quiet and tranquil from here. Stepping out onto the balcony, a slender masked figure with cerulean hair, a short red jacket and a long
Edge12 min read
Net Gains
Nobody could have been especially surprised by the news, in November 2021, that Netflix was officially launching its own videogame division. The company made its first attempt at a Stranger Things tie-in game back in 2017, after all, and has been exp
Edge8 min read
The Making Of. . . Weird West
Format PC, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series Developer WolfEye Studios Publisher Devolver Digital Origin Various Release 2022 When you think of an immersive sim, it’s unlikely that you’d picture an isometric game. Where genre stalwarts such as Deus Ex and T
Edge12 min read
The Wisdom Of Crowds
Most of us have at some point experienced the phenomenon that is the Tetris effect – the term coined to describe the way Alexey Pajitnov’s seminal puzzler tapped into the subconsciousnesses of players who’d spent a lot of time playing the game. Tetsu
Edge2 min read
Play
Marvel Snap Android After months of matches against strangers whose only means for boiling our blood is a pass-agg Ms Marvel thumbs-up emoji at the wrong moment, it’s strange to find ourselves sitting across a pub table from our opponent. This is cou
Edge8 min read
Keoken Inter Active
Talking to Paul Deetman, one half of the sibling duo that founded Keoken Interactive, you get a sense that space was the studio’s destiny from the start. It was partly in the Deetman DNA, after all – their grandfather, a keen astronomer, had built te
Edge2 min read
Misery Business
Is everyone OK? We have to ask because, well, this issue’s Play selection suggests that today’s game designers are not exactly the happiest of bunnies right now. The Last Worker, for example, paints a vividly bleak picture of humanity’s future, casti
Edge5 min read
Dead Island 2
For the survivors holed up within the quarantine zone, LA must seem like hell on Earth. But it’s more perilous for the zombies shuffling around the gated communities of Bel-Air, the lobby of the Halperin Hotel and the sands of Venice Beach. After all
Edge3 min read
Post Script
The crescent blades are classed as a Frenzy weapon in Dead Island 2. This means, as opposed to the Maiming-class weapons (useful for limb removal), the brute-force Bulldozer class and the Headhunter types (take a wild guess), you can mash the right t
Edge5 min read
The Last Worker
Given the recent developments in generative AI, concern about robots taking over our jobs is surely at an all-time high. And so, while its dystopian future is built from an earlier iteration of these fears – that automation would replace the labour o
Edge4 min read
Post Script
Jason Isaacs is a fixture on just about every conceivable screen, whether in cinemas in The JDeath Of Stalin or on TV in Star Trek: Discovery. But his resume also includes many videogames, including Marvel’s Midnight Suns, El Shaddai, the 2016 reboot
Edge5 min read
Deceive Inc
You can listen back to the exact moment Ubisoft coined the term ‘social stealth’, onstage at E3 2006, on YouTube. But the genre kickstarted by Assassin’s Creed has since been largely abandoned by triple-A studios – bequeathed to indie developers who
Edge4 min read
Everspace 2
Rockfish’s sci-fi sequel junks the Roguelike format of its predecessor for the grand expanse of the open world. In many ways it typifies a formula honed by the likes of Assassin’s Creed over several iterations – except, of course, that almost all of
Edge5 min read
Terra Nil
For most of its duration, this self-styled ‘reverse city builder’ is, in fact, nothing of the sort. Rather, it’s a reskinned city builder, one with eco-consciousness at the fore. As with most games in this genre, you start out with a barren wasteland
Edge4 min read
Have A Nice Death
From Death’s Door to Grim Fandango and even Kentucky Route Zero, it’s become more commonplace for videogames to depict the afterlife as a macabre bureaucracy. Have A Nice Death’s rendition of the hereafter, then, isn’t quite as imaginative as it woul
Edge2 min read
The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR
For all that it strives to present itself as a potential future for the medium, VR game design often takes us back in time: to videogames’ roots in the arcade, and even before that, their predecessors at the fairground. Rarely has that been more expl
Edge2 min read
Dredge
There’s never enough time in the day. All those fish to be caught and hauled back to shore before the price drops; a hole in your hull in need of patching; a shipwreck to be stripped of goodies to help pay for the hull repair. All standard concerns o
Edge2 min read
Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries Of Honjo
Opening with a cheerful reminder of death’s immutability, this visual novel’s mercurial host asks what you’d do given the chance to resurrect the dead. Would you cede the power to another? Would you do it even if it meant sacrificing yourself or anot
Edge2 min read
Raiden III x Mikado Maniax
When Raiden III debuted in arcades in 2005, it felt like a statement of intent. This was a time when the bullet-hell sensibility dominated 2D shooter design: contemporary releases such as Cave’s Ketsui and Ibara were elevating the form while upping o
Edge2 min read
The Wreck
O ne of the unfortunate quirks of the human brain is its habit of recalling unpleasant memories – often at the moment you’re least equipped to deal with revisiting them. Having been blindsided by the news that her mother has been placed on life suppo
Edge2 min read
Can Of Wormholes
D uring one particularly furious bout of headscratching, we wonder if Australian designer Ben Taylor came up with the name of his ingenious puzzler first and then figured out how to create a game around it. How else could anyone have conceived the id
Edge9 min read
Final Fantasy XV
Developer/publisher Square Enix Format PC, PS4, Xbox One Release 2016 Cindy the mechanic looks like a Victoria’s Secret model and speaks like an oldtimer of the Gold Rush era. As the first NPC you meet out in the world of Final Fantasy XV, she sets t
Edge2 min read
Citizen Sleeper
You have good days and bad days. In advance, it’s hard to know which is going to be which. While the likelihood of a bad day can be mitigated – by eating well, by taking the right medicine – even that isn’t a guarantee. These help to set the ceiling