Author: sick skills

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Crazy Justice Aims to Bring ‘Battle Royale’ Action to the Nintendo Switch

If you watch a bit of YouTube or follow wider trends of PC gaming, you likely know all about PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS. It’s taken the Battle Royale format and popularised it to an impressive degree, becoming one of the biggest active games in the world and the subject of console wars. Microsoft secured an upcoming port for Xbox, while PS4 owners get Fortnite: Battle Royale.

It’s hot topic stuff, which does leave Nintendo out somewhat. Black Riddles Studios – a small independent company – is trying to step into the void, announcing through its Fig crowdfunding campaign that its game – Crazy Justice – is now targeting the Switch for Q2 2018. It’s a shooter than in some ways resembles Fortnite more due to its options for building walls and customising abilities. Pitching itself as ‘Battle Royale’ does seem to be a push based on the available information; it seems more like an arena shooter with gameplay elements (such as a shrinking safe zone) inspired by PUBG. Whether the maps are big enough to take it beyond the ‘arena’ characterisation will be interesting to see.

See for yourself in the videos below.

At the time of writing the crowdfunding campaign is nearly 70% of the way to its $30,000USD goal, with the Switch download version added in a $15 backer category. As always with crowdfunding, backing projects is at your own risk.

As the debut game for a new studio it looks interesting, in any case; we’ll see how it turns out in 2018.

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Feature: Going Deeper With The Flame in the Flood on Nintendo Switch

We’re heading into another busy period of enticing releases on the Switch eShop, and The Flame in the Flood is certainly one to consider seriously. A ‘rogue-lite’ with a focus on survival in a post apocalyptic world may sound rote and by the numbers, but the game is more innovative than the description implies. From its visuals to its gameplay hooks and twists it aims to set itself apart, right down to an impressive soundtrack for which the composer (Chuck Ragan) immersed himself in the lifestyle of living in the country, alongside the American riverscapes that form the basis of the game.

It’s an eye-catching game, and with its arrival on the Switch eShop we took the chance to pose questions to the game’s designer, Forrest Dowling, to learn more about the release and the impressive team (The Molasses Flood) behind it.

First of all, can you introduce yourself to our readers and talk a little about your past work?

Hi, I’m Forrest Dowling, one of the founders of The Molasses Flood and the designer of The Flame in the Flood. I used to work in AAA as a level designer on shooters, including Homefront and BioShock Infinite.

The Molasses Flood was once described (by yourselves!) as a small group of “AAA refugees”; how did you come together to form a studio?

So after BioShock Infinite, Irrational Games closed and about 90 percent of the staff was laid off, including myself. Boston at the time was not a great place to be a game developer, as there had been layoffs at every major studio in the area recently. At that point it looked like the options for me were to move, or start my own thing. Fortunately, there were a lot of other talented people in the area that were also interested in starting an indie studio, so we were able to form a group from the ashes of Irrational.

The game was Kickstarted back in 2014; can you talk a little about the process of crowdfunding at that time? What were the biggest secrets to the campaign’s success?

At the time we didn’t really see any other means of funding the game, so we just kind of waded into it. It felt even by then like the wave had crested a bit and projects were getting smaller returns. I think The Banner Saga and Hyper Light Drifter were maybe the last truly original titles to get over a half million, and they were both over a year old at that point. The process itself was a lot like pitching a project for any source of funding. Come up with a bunch of stuff that communicates what you want to do, make a trailer or images that sell the idea, and put it into the world. There is the added complexity of needing to figure out rewards, price things out, determine what shipping will be, all that, but it wasn’t too tough.

As far as why it was successful, I don’t really feel comfortable saying it was absolutely one thing or another, because I really don’t know. I think it was that we told a clear story of what the experience would be, and focused on the game rather than us as creators. I don’t think that helping some bearded game dev in his mid 30’s make an independent game is a very compelling pitch, so we focused on what we thought was, which was a new take on survival in a beautiful world.

TFIF is described as “a rogue-lite river journey in post societal America”. First of all, how did the original idea, concept and look come together?

The original idea was really a merging of two ideas, one from me and one from our art director. I wanted to make a pared down survival game about real world survival, and Sinc (the AD) wanted to make a game about exploring tiny worlds… basically top down camera, limited spaces to explore. We jammed those two ideas together and everything else came from there. The river, the region, the music.

As far as the look, that was all Sinc. When I approached him about working together my initial pitch was that I wanted to work on a game that looked like his original paintings brought to life. The look was just him interpreting his existing work.

Can you talk about the soundtrack by Chuck Ragan and why it’s important to the experience?

Early on in concepting, I was working on playlists of inspirational music to use as reference, with the thought that maybe we’d get a musician to record an original piece. I didn’t realize at the time that we’d luck out and get not only an original track but an entire album. I think it’s most important because it comes from the same place that a lot of the inspiration for the game came from. Chuck wrote it in the woods, by a camp fire, while boating and fishing during the day. He got what we were trying to do immediately, as it’s about a lot of stuff that he loves. I think it does a huge amount to help ground the player in the experience of being in the wilderness.

For those unfamiliar with the game, can you talk about the modes on offer and the main gameplay loops they can expect?

There are two modes: campaign and endless. Both are procedurally generated and have the same gameplay, the only differences are that campaign also has an easier setting, and there are a few story beats that the player will encounter as well as an actual ending. The gameplay itself is a mix of river rafting and exploration. You encounter islands, stop, gather supplies, camp, hunt, craft, all that sort of stuff, then get back on the river and look for another island where you can gather more supplies. It’s sort of a constant stop and go.

What were the biggest challenges when originally developing the game? Were any particular aspects of the design tough to balance?

I think from a design standpoint, that making a survival game that’s just about actual survival, and not really about combat, was tougher than I expected as it’s surprisingly mathematical. It’s all about the numbers of how much you lose energy, how fast you get hungry, vs the frequency of supplies, how much they help you recover, and all that. It’s really a razor’s edge to balance, as on one side it’s trivially easy, and on the other it’s impossibly hard.

It arrived on PC in early 2016; what were the biggest positives and negatives of the launch? How was player feedback?

I think the positives are that we largely accomplished what we set out to do, and did so within the budget and timeline we established for ourselves. Player feedback was good overall, but there was a lot we patched up pretty quickly as well. The biggest negative was probably a really bad audio crash that we didn’t find pre-launch which took a week or two to figure out.

You released the game on consoles earlier this year, but at what point did you know it’d come to Switch?

It was only recently that plans were finalized. Really the whole port has been in the hands of Curve (Curve Digital, publisher of the game on Switch), they handled all the work with Nintendo as well as the tech side of things.

Have you had to make any notable adjustments to the game to bring it to Nintendo systems? Does it utilise any of the hardware’s unique features?

It’s really a straight port. We did need to do a bunch of UI work to make sure that everything was crisp and clear on both the portable and docked resolutions.

On a technical level, did Curve give much detail on porting to the Switch hardware in terms of its capabilities, engine support and so on?

I couldn’t really give a solid answer, but Curve was able to get the port up and running really fast. It seems like Switch support with Unreal is really great.

How do you think the game is best experienced, and how do you think Switch owners will play it? Do you see it as a game for longer sessions on TV, or dip-in play on the handheld?

One reason I’ve been excited to see The Flame in the Flood on Switch is because the pacing of it is such that it’s well suited for both short form and longer session gaming. You never spend too long on a single island or length of river, so it’s really easy to find a good spot to take a break.

Are you confident that the eShop audience will be drawn to the game’s concept and approach?

I am not, but I’ll couch that in saying that I’m not confident in my ability to predict anything. I hope so, and I think it’s a really good fit, but it’ll be up to the people browsing the eShop to tell me if it’s working for them.

Having now seen this project come to Switch, do you have plans to support the system again in the future? What are your broader personal thoughts on the device?

Personally I’m excited about it. I really love my Switch, and I think it’s really interesting that I hear the same sentiment from just about any Switch owner I speak to. I think that’s a good sign for the long term life of the console, particularly as it seems like it’s getting a lot of great support from 3rd parties. As far as doing a Switch version of future titles, assuming it continues to be a successful platform for 3rd parties we’ll definitely keep it in mind.

Finally, is there a big pitch you’d like to give out readers for TFIF on Switch?  

A big pitch! I guess I’ll say that I think the Switch is a really great platform for The Flame in the Flood, and the ability to play a river survival game while maybe even surviving on a river is pretty compelling.

We’d like to thank Forrest Dowling for his time; The Flame in the Flood launches on 12th October on the Switch eShop.

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Random: The Voice Of Mario Once Rapped As Dracula For A Corporate Video

Charles Martinet is famous to Nintendo fans the world over as the voice of Mario, and has filled this role brilliantly since the ’90s. However, it would be doing Martinet a great injustice to assume this is the only thing he has done in his illustrious career; he’s acted on stage, in film and on TV, with movies such as The Game and Nine Months to his name.

However, like so many actors, Martinet has some skeletons in his closet; roles which were perhaps taken for the money rather than any promise of artistic fulfilment or critical acclaim. The 1986 corporate video shown above seems to fit this description; in it, Martinet assumes the role of a rapping Dracula, who rises from the grave to sing the praises of ECAD Systems. Later in the video, he becomes the swashbuckling Sinbad and continues to rap about things like time-saving system solutions and all that good stuff.

This may well be the best thing we’ve seen on the internet in the past year. No, make that the past decade.

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The Open Highway Leads to the Danger Zone on Xbox One

Danger​ ​Zone​ ​is​ ​a​ ​game​ ​that’s​ ​entirely​ ​focused​ ​on​ ​the​ ​things​ ​that​ ​we​ ​think​ ​matter​: ​playing​ ​a​ ​game​ ​for​pure fun​ ​and​ ​entertainment,​ ​a​ ​game​ ​that​ ​is​ ​suitable​ ​for​ ​players​ ​of​ ​all​ ​ages,​ ​a​ ​game​ ​where​ ​friends​ ​and​ ​family​ ​can gather​ ​around​ ​the​ ​television​ ​and​ ​play​ ​together.​ A ​about​ ​trying​ ​to​ ​cause​ ​the​ ​biggest​ ​car​ ​crashes whilst​ ​also​ ​trying​ ​to​ ​collect​ ​all​ ​of​ ​the​ ​bonus points.

The​ ​cars​ ​we​ ​give​ ​you​ ​to​ ​test​ ​in​ ​our​ ​special​ ​crash​ ​test​ ​facility​ ​are​ ​deliberately​ ​easy​ ​to​ ​drive.​ ​So​ ​anyone​ ​can drive​ ​into​ ​each​ ​crash​ ​test​ ​junction​ ​and​ ​cause​ ​a​ ​crash.​ ​But​ ​getting​ ​to​ ​the​ ​top​ ​of​ ​each​ ​leaderboard, ​amongst​ ​your​ ​friends,​ ​or​ ​being​ ​the​ ​best​ ​player​ ​on​ ​Xbox Live,​ ​is​ ​a​ ​lot​ ​trickier​ ​and​ ​will​ ​require​ ​not​ ​only​ ​driving​ ​skill,​ ​but​ ​also​ ​crash​ ​strategy​ ​and​ ​explosive​ ​tactics.

Danger Zone Screenshot

Skilled​ ​players​ ​are​ ​the​ ​ones​ ​who​ ​can​ ​cause​ ​maximum​ ​carnage​ ​as​ ​they​ ​drive​ ​along,​ ​checking​ ​other​ ​cars​ ​into oncoming​ ​traffic,​ ​and​ ​who​ ​can​ ​use​ ​their​ ​SmashBreaker​ ​explosion​ ​at​ ​just​ ​the​ ​right​ ​moment​ ​to​ ​rack​ ​up those​ ​bonus​ ​points.​ ​Each​ ​test​ ​scenario​ ​features​ ​three​ ​Bronze​ ​Pickups,​ ​two​ ​Silver​ ​Pickups​ ​and​ ​a​ ​single Gold​ ​Medal​ ​Pickup.​ ​Collect​ ​them​ ​to​ ​earn​ ​the​ ​“Smash​ ​and​ ​Grab”​ ​Bonus​ ​Award.​ ​But​ ​you​ ​must​ ​collect​ ​the pickups​ ​in​ ​medal​ ​order​ ​to​ ​try​ ​to​ ​earn​ ​the​ ​“Grand​ ​Slam”​ ​Bonus​ ​Award.

We’ve​ ​always​ ​loved​ ​Xbox​ ​Live​ ​for​ ​its​ friends-​centric​ ​approach,​ ​going​ ​right​ ​back​ ​to​ ​the​ ​early​ ​days​ ​of​ ​the very​ ​first​ ​Xbox.​ ​We​ ​know​ ​how​ ​much​ ​more​ ​fun​ ​it​ ​is​ ​to​ ​beat​ ​your​ ​Friends​ ​scores​ ​than​ ​those​ ​of​ ​strangers, hence​ ​why​ ​we​ ​always​ ​include​ ​Friends​ ​Leaderboards​ ​as​ ​well​ ​as​ ​Global​ ​ones.​ ​And​ ​in​ ​Danger​ ​Zone​ ​we’ve added​ ​more​ ​depth​ ​to​ ​the​ ​Leaderboards,​ ​so​ ​not​ ​only​ ​can​ ​you​ ​see​ ​your​ ​Friends’​ ​scores​ ​but​ ​you​ ​can​ ​also​ ​see how​ ​many​ ​times​ ​they’ve​ ​played​ ​that​ ​level.​ ​It’s​ ​sweeter​ ​to​ ​beat​ ​them​ ​with​ ​a​ ​single​ ​attempt​ ​when​ ​you​ ​can​ ​see they’ve​ ​tried​ ​that​ ​level​ ​50​ ​times.

Danger Zone Screenshot

Whilst​ ​our​ ​focus​ ​is​ ​on​ ​fun​ ​and​ ​gameplay​ ​first,​ ​we​ ​also​ ​like​ ​to​ ​push​ ​the​ ​Xbox​ ​hardware​ ​to​ ​bring​ ​the​ ​best possible​ ​gaming​ ​experience​ ​to​ ​our​ ​players.​ ​We’re​ ​really​ ​excited​ ​that​ ​the​ ​game​ ​runs​ ​at​ ​a​ ​native​ ​4K resolution​ ​at​ ​30hz​ ​on​ ​the​ ​new​ ​Xbox​ ​One​ ​X​ ​hardware.​ ​​​And​ ​if​ ​you​ ​don’t​ ​have​ ​a​ ​4K​ ​display​ ​​​(not​ ​all​ ​of​ ​us​ ​have upgraded​ ​yet​ ​so​ ​we​ ​know​ ​lots​ ​of​ ​our​ ​players​ ​haven’t​ ​either)​, ​we​ ​also​ ​support​ ​a​ ​1080p​ ​resolution​ ​at​ ​60hz​ ​for Xbox One​ ​X​ ​owners​ ​who​ ​will​ ​be​ ​using​ ​a​ ​1080p​ ​display.

Three​ ​Fields​ ​Entertainment​ ​is​ ​a​ ​small​ ​independent​ ​studio.​ ​There​ ​are​ ​just​ ​seven​ ​of​ ​us,​ ​all​ ​of​ ​whom​ ​have​ ​worked together​ ​for​ ​many​ ​years.​ ​We​ ​started​ ​Three​ ​Fields​ ​in​ ​2014​ ​with​ ​the​ ​desire​ ​to​ ​be​ ​free​ ​and​ ​independent​, ​to​ ​be able​ ​to​ ​choose​ ​what​ ​games​ ​we​ ​wanted​ ​to​ ​make​ ​and​ ​how​ ​we​ ​wanted​ ​to​ ​make​ ​them.​ ​We​ ​want​ ​to​ ​make games​ ​that​ ​will​ ​entertain​ ​you​ ​and​ ​put​ ​a​ ​smile​ ​on​ ​your​ ​face.​ ​Let​ ​us​ ​know​ ​how​ ​we​ ​did!

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Review: Touhou Kobuto V: Burst Battle (Switch)

Touhou Kobuto V: Burst Battle is a fighting game spin-off from the Touhou Project – a series of video games, print works, and CDs that follow protagonist Reimu Hakurei adventuring through a haunted region of Japan. Reimu, as well as the series’ secondary character Marisa Kirisame, join a host of playable characters to seemingly fight each other for a bit and have a good old laugh about it afterwards (because why not?).

At its core, Burst Battle is a fighting game with immediate similarities to ARMS and Pokkén Tournament DX; you battle it out in a 3D arena with a variety of attacks assigned to different buttons. The ‘A’ button acts as your main attack, ‘Y’ is a sub attack, and ‘X’ is a charge attack – all three of these have a cool-down period when used too much. The attacks (and available combos) vary slightly between characters and you’ll likely find yourself preferring certain play-styles over others, although the differences are rather minimal for the most part. You are also able to jump and dash, allowing you to dodge attacks or move around the battlefield quicker, as well as being able to block with the ‘L’ button. This block seems very temperamental, though, and pressing the corresponding button often doesn’t actually do anything.

Unfortunately the fighting is never really the thrilling, well-polished and accurate experience that it needs to be. The camera isn’t the easiest to keep on top of and often you’ll lose track of your opponent’s location. When a player is knocked to the ground they seem to stay down for an entire age – during this time there is nothing you can do except sit and wait. When you pick yourself back up again you’ll be momentarily protected from attacks, which is useful, but most typically want a fighting game to feel fast and action packed; everything about this game – from the knock-downs to the general movement in arenas – feels sluggish.

The game’s Story Mode sees you play through five fights against CPU opponents before meeting the final boss (which is genuinely terrifying in its own, creepy way). You re-play these fights as different characters, seeing the same story told from alternative view points. This is a nice concept in theory but on later run-throughs you’ll start to get bored of the characters wondering what the final boss might be when you’ve already seen it countless times. Of course, the storyline isn’t really the most important part – but when that’s the only thing separating this mode from every other in the game, we would have hoped for more.

There is also an Arcade Mode which sees you play match after match, aiming to beat your high-score of successive victories. Your health only recovers slightly after each round so it becomes a test of stamina, trying to ensure you lose as little health as possible each time. Score Attack mode is exactly the same as Arcade except for the the high-score setup. Instead of accumulating victories, you gain points depending on how well you performed in each round. As before though, your health only recovers slightly and you just fight until you lose.

If you’re after a more relaxing experience (although all modes are rather sedate in truth), you can play against the computer in the ‘VS Com’ mode just for fun, altering your opponents’ difficulty level, or just do some training if you prefer. Despite there being a training mode, no real guidance is given as to how to play – some attacks and combos are listed in a menu but the game never explains what the ‘Charge’ and ‘Action’ bars on the fighting screen actually do. It also never explains how to use a Spell Card – a particularly strong attack that appears to work in the same way as Pokkén’s ‘Synergy Burst’ or ARMS’ ‘Rush Attack’.

As well as this you have the option to play against others locally via split-screen, or local wireless connection (which is confusingly called ‘VS Online’). The split-screen mode works exactly as you might expect, one player takes the left side of the screen whilst the other has their own view on the right, and runs just as the main single player mode does. Playing via local wireless allows to users to play on their own consoles independently – one must host a room and wait for their friend to join. There is no option to play with players around the world online, however.

The presentation within the game’s menus and storytelling is beautiful, featuring wonderful illustrations of characters from the series. Unfortunately, though, the same cannot really be said for the fighting gameplay itself – the characters look a little ‘clunky’ and to move they actually float along the ground rather than walk. This sums up the game on the whole; it all feels a little weak, never quite realising its ambitions and falling flat at every step. With such great fighting alternatives already available on the console, the only reason we could really see for wanting this is to grab yourself a cheaper alternative. The problem here is that it isn’t actually that cheap; the difference in price between this and the major fighting releases does not accurately reflect the difference in quality.

Conclusion

Fans of the Touhou Project might get some enjoyment purely from seeing their favourite characters on the big (or little) screen once more, but this isn’t a quality fighting spin-off. The game’s slow pace, disinteresting plot, and lack of any serious fighting credentials leave an awful lot to be desired. If the game was considerably cheaper you could potentially justify a purchase for having quick, easy-to-set-up fighting rounds; as it stands, though, this may well be best left alone.

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DOOM Provides a ‘Good Reference Point’ to What Wolfenstein II Will Offer on Switch

With DOOM and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus heading to Switch, many are understandably intrigued to see exactly how well they will perform on the system. Recently we shared details on how DOOM is set to look on the console – perhaps most notably including the fact that it will run at 720p in both docked and undocked modes – and, thanks to a Gamespot interview with the game’s director (Jens Matthies), we now know to expect a similar performance for Wolfenstein II.

When asked about the experience we can expect to have with the Switch version of the game, Matthies mentions DOOM as being a good “reference point”, emphasizing that both games are running on the same engine. This should, in theory, mean that both games will perform equally in terms of things such as their graphical output and framerates. It’s also reiterated that, beyond that, “it doesn’t really matter what kind of platform you’re on, it’s still the same game”.

As you may well be aware, DOOM is scheduled for release this holiday season with Wolfenstein II following in its footsteps sometime next year. Once we can get our hands on the former properly later this year we should have a better understanding of what to expect for the latter. That said, we were pleased with what we saw when we played it in the handheld mode not too long ago.

Are you looking forward to these games coming to Nintendo Switch, and do you think they’ll hold up well on the hardware?

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Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga Takes Number One Spot in Japan, Switch Still on Top

It’s the middle of the week, which means we have the Media Create chart results out of Japan; there are some interesting points to consider in what was clearly a relatively quiet week in the market.

Starting with software we have Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser’s Minions making its debut at number one. That’s a positive, but its sales of 25,788 units are undeniably modest; for comparison Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam shifted nearly double that number when it launched in late 2015. That’s it for new Nintendo system games in the top 20, though in a quiet week we do have Splatoon 2 and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe ticking along nicely in 2nd and 3rd.

  1. [3DS] Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser’s Minions (Nintendo, 10/05/17) – 25,788 (New)
  2. [NSW] Splatoon 2 (Nintendo, 07/21/17) – 22,338 (1,212,901)
  3. [NSW] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Nintendo, 04,28,17) – 13,392 (734,133)
  4. [PS4] FIFA 18 (Electronic Arts, 09/29/17) – 13,169 (69,088)
  5. [PS4] The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III (Limited Edition Included) (Falcom, 09/28/17) – 12,581 (99,841)
  6. [NSW] Pokken Tournament DX (Nintendo, 09/22/17) – 11,831 (88,768)
  7. [PS4] Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen (Capcom, 10/05/17) – 11,666 (New)
  8. [PS4] Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 (Ubisoft, 10/05/17) – 10,825 (New)
  9. [NSW] Fire Emblem Warriors (Nintendo, 09/28/17) – 8,024 (49,514)
  10. [PS4] Pro Evolution Soccer 2018 (Konami, 09/14/17) – 6,266 (97,712)
  11. [NSW] The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Limited Edition Included) (Nintendo, 03/03/17) – 6,196 (604,865)
  12. [PSV] Tokyo Clanpool (Limited Edition Included) (Compile Heart, 10/05/17) – 5,197 (New)
  13. [3DS] Fire Emblem Warriors (Nintendo, 09/28/17) – 4,952 (23,309)
  14. [NSW] Monster Hunter XX Nintendo Switch Ver. (Capcom, 08/25/17) – 4,785 (151,668)
  15. [NSW] FIFA 18 (Electronic Arts, 09/29/17) – 4,660 (17,276)
  16. [3DS] Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age (Square Enix, 07/29/17) – 4,370 (1,737,922)
  17. [NSW] Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 for Nintendo Switch (Bandai Namco, 09/07/17) – 4,339 (40,424)
  18. [3DS] The Snack World: Trejarers (Level-5, 08/10/17) – 4,126 (176,959)
  19. [NSW] Arms (Nintendo, 06/16/17) – 3,340 (232,688)
  20. [PS4] Destiny 2 (SIE, 09/06/17) – 3,205 (91,893)

Moving on to hardware numbers are down for the top two, with Switch losing nearly half its sales from the previous week but still coming out well on top. The New 3DS LL and New 2DS LL (XL) both saw increases, however. Results are below with last week’s sales in brackets.

  1. Switch – 38,204 (73,231)
  2. PlayStation 4 – 16,680 (22,822)
  3. New 3DS LL – 12,658 (9,915)
  4. New 2DS LL – 8,534 (8,359)
  5. PlayStation 4 Pro – 5,869 (6,547)
  6. PlayStation Vita – 3,545 (3,732)
  7. 2DS – 1,594 (1,655)
  8. New 3DS – 265 (392)
  9. Xbox One – 186 (71)
  10. PlayStation 3 – 72 (64)
  11. Wii U – 45 (68)

A reasonable week for Nintendo, though the sales of Superstar Saga’s re-release are a little disappointing; it likely reflects a mix of its remake status and declining interest in 3DS titles. As for the Switch, it’s still comfortably leading the way in hardware; here’s hoping Nintendo gets plenty of units in stock as the shopping season heats up.

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Shadow of War dev says to be a better lead, ‘make yourself obsolete’

Matthew Allen loves shaders.

“I love putting on the headphones and writing shaders,” he told Gamasutra recently, while chatting at an Xbox press event. “It scratches the technical itch and the artistic itch, because I get to make things look shit-hot by writing code.”

But there’s a problem: Allen loves shaders a bit too much. He most recently served as the technical art director on Monolith Productions’ Middle-earth: Shadow of War, and in the early stages of the game’s development, Allen created a bit of a bottleneck for the team by allowing himself to become “the shader guy.” 

He loved writing shaders, but couldn’t devote enough time to both them and his other duties to keep up with the pace of production. To solve the problem, he removed the bottleneck: himself.

“I realized, you know what, this is cool, I do it well and it’s awesome, but…I need to find a better way,” he said. “So I ended up finding a super awesome woman, just out of college, and she wanted to write shaders, so she basically became our shader queen. She’s written almost all of the shaders in the game.”

This is a practical, timely example of how Allen solved a production problem, something he believes game devs should constantly be looking to do if they want to be good leads — even when it means making yourself obsolete.

‘Make it so you come into work every day and you don’t have anything to do’

Hiring someone new onto the team helped dislodge Allen as a bottleneck, since shaders were someone else’s full-time responsibility now. That also meant he suddenly had a bit more free time in his work day, and to fill that time he went looking for something to solve.

“I moved on and started looking at what our problems would be,” he said.”One of the big ones we ended up tackling was all the facial animations for all of our orcs, and the 40,000+ lines of dialog, and how we were gonna animate all that with all the actors.”

So Allen and other folks on the Shadow of War team spent about a year “completely redoing” the animations for the game’s monstrous maws, revamping how many bones were in each face and how they move in response to the data they’re fed. Looking back now, Allen isn’t sure it would have happened if he’d kept happily writing shaders.

“The best thing you can do, for yourself and for us, is to make yourself obsolete. Make it so you come into work every day and you don’t have anything to do.”

“If I hadn’t said ‘alright this thing that I’m doing, that I love doing…I should move on,’ if I hadn’t thought through that, then all of that updated face tech, that improved pipeline….well, it probably would have existed, but the system was already sort of long in the tooth, and by focusing on it, I think we got it to a lot better place than it would have been otherwise.”

Allen shared this specific example from Shadow of War‘s development to illustrate a piece of game dev career advice he wants other devs to think about: always look for new problems. Someone told him that once, when he was feeling stuck, and it’s stuck with him ever since.

“I once got really great advice from Samantha Ryan, who used to run WB [Games], and before that was Monolith’s studio head,” said Allen. “She was my manager, and she said the best thing you can do, for yourself and for us, is to make yourself obsolete. Make it so you come into work every day and you don’t have anything to do.”

There’s a lot to unpack there, this notion of going to work every day and looking for ways to make your job extinct. Allen acknowledged that it can feel counter-intuitive, but suggested devs who want to be good leads think of it less as eliminating their value and more as solving problems.

“It seems very counter-intuitive; I was like, are you just gonna fire me then?” Allen recalled, with a laugh.

“And she’s like ‘no, because there’s a certain personality type that will always look for the next problem. And if you’re too busy focusing on existing problems, you’re not doing the thing that’s best. The best thing for you to do, would be to look for the next problem. Because when you look for those problems, and solve those problems, we as a company are better, and you are more valuable. So really her whole point was, shift responsibility onto folks. Which seemed counter-intuitive and weird, but I don’t know, I loved it, and I’ve lived by that ever since.”

Of course, many devs will feel like they’re in a position where they can’t shift responsibilities onto others — if they’re working alone or in a small team, for example, or doing remote contract work.

Allen acknowledged this as well, noting that his experiences are most relevant to devs at large studios but can also serve as a general reminder to try and solve problems permanently whenever possible. If you can figure out a permanent solution to something you regularly spend time working on, you can move on to solve bigger and better problems.

“Always look for new problems. Look to solve new problems, look for people to help you solve them. Being stuck someplace is really about not pressing through, sometimes,” added Allen. “Our industry is unique in that, the whole point of the job is constantly solving problems…so every day you can sort of learn something new, solve a new problem.”

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This is the Police Gets Switch Retail and eShop Release Dates

THQ Nordic has been quite supportive of the Switch in its early days, opting to target the budget retail space with releases like Sine Mora EX. Next in line is This is the Police – confirmed during the Summer, it now has firm release details.

Confirming that it has an M rating from ESRB, it’s been announced that it’ll arrive on the eShop on 24th October and at retail on 5th December.

This is the Police is a strategy and adventure game set in the crime-ridden city of Freeburg. You assume the role of Police Chief Jack Boyd – voiced by Jon St. John (Duke Nukem) – and have to tackle a wide range of crimes, assigning officers to certain jobs and facing numerous moral dilemmas along the way. The ultimate aim is to raise $500,000 in 180 days, but you can choose to do that in any way you wish.

So, are you planning to pick this up?

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Blog: Open-world RPGs and the Hinterlands problem

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

This article contains minor spoilers for the first act of Divinity: Original Sin 2, including location and quest names.

As the market for modern role-playing games grows, developers are under increasing pressure to appeal to as many niches as possible. This is a problem endemic to mainstream game development – AAA development in particular – but Western RPGs are arguably the hardest hit by this. In this genre, attempting to accommodate every type of player results in a vast diversity of viable approaches to quests, story, and combat, but can give rise to disparate elements of the game and its narrative clashing with each other, resulting in a final product that feels vague, unfocused, and unguided. This pushes players into feeling bored or frustrated, which can quickly translate into disengagement and unfulfillment.

It’s In The Name

In Dragon Age: Inquisition, released 2014, a zone called the Hinterlands perfectly embodies this problem. It’s the first open-world area players visit, and it’s gigantic: larger than the entire playable areas of the first two Dragon Age games combined, according to the developers. It’s also densely packed with non-player characters, enemies, and quest content. In total, it contains more than fifty sidequests, which is a dizzying amount of content by any standard. This should be laudable, but in practice it’s a gigantic (and avoidable) misstep. When players were exposed to the zone, they got trapped in endless checklists and meaningless, irrelevant busywork that actively hindered story progression. Where BioWare tripped up in this situation was their failure to provide and, most importantly, maintain narrative and systemic motivation for players to continue out of the Hinterlands. There are a number of potential solutions to this: having sidequests require travel to other zones, for example, or designing some sort of in-game narrative event temporarily pushing players out of the Hinterlands to a scripted story segment (again, in another zone). A fundamental part of the Hinterlands Problem is that any momentum the story had before players entered the zone quickly dissipated. Something along the lines of these solutions would leave the Hinterlands and its fifty-four sidequests largely intact, but push players back into progressing through the game’s narrative.

Of course, Inquisition was hardly the first, or last, role-playing game to suffer from this – it’s just a highly visible example. Overly large amounts of quests and sidequests have historically been a selling point for RPGs, especially in BioWare’s earlier titles. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that a large number of quests, or amount of narrative content in general, is the problem. The Hinterlands Problem is a complex beast, but a large contributor to it is the overall design itself being just a bit too shy to lend players a gentle nudge (or a firm shove) towards progressing through the game, narratively and systemically. It’s easy to understate the difficulty of doing this well: game designers constantly walk a tightrope, balancing the need to allow the player the illusion of organically advancing through the game with the need to make sure they’re actually advancing through the game and not wasting time rescuing lost cows. The solution isn’t just in removing the meaningless busywork or putting less context in: it’s a problem that has to be attacked from multiple angles, and it can require a multidisciplinary set of skills to fix.

Writing Narrative Cheques Your UI Can’t Cash

Divinity: Original Sin 2, an open-world RPG released this year, also suffers from the Hinterlands Problem. When the story and gameplay are heavily scripted (the narrative bottlenecks, so to speak) the game is lush, exciting, and does a splendid job of allowing the player to devise creative solutions to the narrative and combat-based puzzles that it provides. However, when the player is released into open maps such as Fort Joy and Reaper’s Coast, the narrative thread very quickly unspools into a tangle of half-finished quests and hinted-at storylines. Unlike in Dragon Age, though, most of these quests aren’t meaningless busywork. With few exceptions, they’re interesting, quirky, and humorous. Where many sidequests in Original Sin 2 do fail is in maintaining the game’s narrative cohesion, and this is a problem with potential solutions in tweaks of both its narrative design and its user interface.

When we look at Original Sin 2, we see a flawed gem: a sequel that had to live up to a hugely well-received predecessor, while introducing new mechanics and ambitiously pushing the envelope of how game systems and narrative interact. The downfall of the game is in its ambition: while the line-to-line quality, and the quests themselves (viewed individually) are stellar, the narrative cohesion falls apart when the player finds themselves pursuing any more than a few of the dozens of elaborate, impressive sidequests. It’s not a given that the average player can keep track of all these narrative threads, and a major contributor to Original Sin 2’s lack of guidance and cohesion is the game’s quest log (or Journal, as it’s referred to ingame). In a title that executes well on almost everything it tries, the Journal stands out as a piece of the user experience that disincentivizes its own use and largely fails to guide the player through the narrative as a whole. Progression-related quests are given no special markers, and there’s no way to “bookmark” a quest, so players must constantly bounce back in and out of the menu system to keep track of what they’re meant to be doing. Not only does this break the game flow, it contributes to the failure of the Journal at the one thing it’s there for: guiding the player through the process of completing quests. Divinity: Original Sin 2’s version of the Hinterlands Problem is one where an overabundance of narrative threads and an undercooked UI element crash into each other to cause a muddled, unfocused open world experience, and the game is the lesser for it.

Snip Your Threads Judiciously

The Hinterlands Problem can be summed up as being a situation where too much optional content and a failure to provide a clear forward path for the player causes frustration, boredom, and a decrease in narrative cohesion. No game designer designs systems with these outcomes in mind: rather, the Hinterlands Problem is a common and natural byproduct of good-intentioned, if myopic, design. It’s the result of a failure to keep the bigger picture in mind, and, again, nobody does this on purpose. It just happens. To mitigate the chances of this happening, narrative designers and game designers must continually interrogate the means through which players will consume and advance through content; they must have open dialogue with systems and UI designers; and above all, they must play through and review each other’s content. Too much work in studios of all sizes takes place in isolation, and that status quo is the perfect breeding ground for problems like this.

 

Damon Reece is a narrative designer from Adelaide, Australia, passionate about open-world and modular storytelling. Damon prefers gender-neutral pronouns (they/them), and hates talking about themself in the third person. You can follow them on Twitter, or look at their portfolio if you’re having trouble figuring out whether to take them seriously.