Super Rare Games has teamed up with Italian developer Forge Reply to physically release Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf on the Switch. Pre-orders open next week on 11th April for $32.54 / £29.99 / €33.99 and there’ll be a total 4,000 copies available.

The Super Rare edition of this game will include a gorgeous cardboard slipcover, 20-page full-colour artbook, interior artwork, exclusive sticker and three trading cards selected from a five-card set. Take a look below:

Here’s a bit about the game, from the Super Rare PR:

With Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf, Forge Reply has evolved the classic “choose your own adventure” format enhancing non-linear narration with actual role-playing game elements, such as a unique turn-based combat system, inventory and upgrade mechanics, as well as an interactive world map. The story fits within the official continuity of Joe Dever’s beloved fantasy saga, with a brand-new adventure in four acts. In order to prevail over his enemies, Lone Wolf will have at his disposal a diverse arsenal of weapons, powerful magical disciplines and his signature sword, the fabled Sommerswerd.

Will you be adding this one to your Switch library? Tell us down in the comments.

The United Kingdom’s Competitions and Markets Authority has opened an investigation into the fairness of different aspects of online services for PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo systems.

It’s an investigation in its very earliest stages, meaning that the authority is currently calling for responses from the public to gather more information on things like auto-renewing memberships, store refund policies, and each service’s terms and conditions.

And, for some of the companies named, the investigation comes shortly after other government bodies have voiced concerns over the legalities of restrictive refund policies and other online services.

The CMA, meanwhile, says that its investigation arose from concerns over whether some of the practices surrounding PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo’s online services are strictly legal.

The authority plans to examine if contract terms for each are fair (“do the companies’ terms give them wide discretion to change the quality of the deal, for example, by reducing the number of games included or increasing the price?”), how easy it is to cancel or refund a purchase, and the fairness and transparency of auto-renewing subscriptions.

The authority notes that it is still in the fact-finding stage and that it has “not reached a view as to whether or not the companies have broken consumer protection law” at this point.

A handful of other regulators across the globe have launched similar investigations in the past, particularly over refund policies deemed to be on the wrong side of consumer protection laws. The German Consumer Protection Authority has previously accused Nintendo of violating the EU’s Consumer Rights Direction by enforcing an “all sales are final” rule on digital eShop purchases and preorders.

Last year, both Nintendo and Sony were named by the Norwegian Consumer Council (alongside Steam and EA Origin) for violating EU consumer protection laws that ensure EU customers can withdraw from a refund or purchase within 14 days as well.

For what it’s worth, Sony has just recently altered PlayStation’s refund policies, though the changes only affect customers in the United States. Under the new rules that went live earlier this week, PlayStation users can receive refunds on digital content (including pre-orders) with 14 days of purchase, but only if that content was never downloaded to a system.

Combat is such a common aspect of many video games that engaging with it feels natural, at least when it’s done correctly.

When you’re hunting down robot dinosaurs in Horizon Zero Dawn or mowing down Nazis in Wolfenstein, it becomes easy to fall into a rhythm. See an enemy in the distance, approach, shoot to kill. Rinse, wash, repeat.

But creating combat scenarios isn’t a matter of putting enemies in the way of the player and seeing what happens. A lot of work goes into ensuring that in-game combat feels natural and fluid or intentionally uncomfortable and clunky. The enemies have to be meticulously planned out and designed, not only because they have to fit the game’s world but also because the player has to have the appropriate reaction to them. In the bulk of instances, the player has to feel comfortable engaging in violence and combat.

Sometimes it’s straightforward. You want to kill hundreds of Nazis in Wolfenstein because 1) Nazis are a culturally-appropriate villainous group of people and 2) because they have their faces covered, taking away any human connection you may have. Protagonist B.J. Blazkowicz wants to kill Nazis because their authoritarian and fascist policies cause the death of millions. But other times, the game is in a fantasy world or for a younger audience not used to violence. So, how do you manage?

Gamasutra talked to a number of designers that have spent countless hours creating enemies for players to kill in-game. What we learned was that it isn’t so easy to throw a player at an enemy. There’s a lot that goes into not only ensuring the enemy is obviously an enemy, but that the player feels safe engaging with it — meaning there isn’t a lot of empathy and there isn’t any hesitation.

Enemies can’t be “cute”

 

“They look like something that can mess you up. They look dangerous, and that’s intentional. You have to make the enemies feel powerful and menacing.”

How do you, for example, create animal-based enemies that feel good to kill? Why do you feel alright killing a wolf or a bear instead of a cute creature like a kitty or a dog? One of the most important aspects of creating an enemy is ensuring that the player doesn’t connect with it through its design.

In the 2016 survival game The Flame in the Flood, by indie studio The Molasses Flood, the player has to fight against wild creatures like wolves, bears, and boars as they traverse a river in the American South. Anybody who’s seen the designs from the game can see it wasn’t just a matter of inputting photorealistic depictions of the animals in question. They’re made to look more threatening.

The wolves are especially deformed, with long spindly legs, large sharp jaws, and a guttural growl. They feel more like monsters and less like something only slightly removed from your pet dog.

“They look like something that can mess you up. They look dangerous, and that’s intentional,” said studio co-founder and animator Gwen Frey. “You have to make the enemies feel powerful and menacing.”

There are also shapes that tend to be more pleasing to the player, and employing those can make other characters easier to sympathize with. Studies have shown that human brains tend to be more attracted toward round shapes and curves rather than sharp edges. An exhibition from 2013, called “Beauty and the Brain Revealed,” posited that humans are more comfortable around round edges because it reminds them more of how organisms form, so it feels more natural. This is something echoed in character design, where things with spikes tend to feel more threatening.

“‘Safe’ designs usually work to visually convey that if the player takes the chance to fight this enemy, they will win. Round things tend to feel softer, more approachable, where as spikey more jagged things feel more dangerous,” said animator Curi Lagann (who worked on indie titles like Read Only Memories), mentioning the slimes in Dragon Quest as a good example.

Overall, you can create enemies that remind the player of animals, humans, or other familiar things, but the easiest way to ensure the player has no connection with them is to go in the opposite direction. Developers and designers mentioned that robots (or robot-adjacent creatures) and inhuman monsters make for good enemies because they can be designed to be as unrecognizable as possible. In Supergiant Games’ 2014 title Transistor, for example, the basic enemies are robotic and relatively faceless.

“We wanted players to have starting off having no empathy towards these things. They don’t look like they experience pain. They don’t look like they have emotion or anything,” Greg Kasavin, writer and designer at Supergiant, told Gamasutra. He added that because Transistor, like a lot of Supergiant games, is morally and narratively complex, Supergiant wanted to remove any ambiguity with the enemies. “There’s a lot to take in at the beginning. One thing we didn’t want players to worry about was the morality of these combat interactions. These creatures are clearly on the attack, so it goes without question that they should be destroyed.”

Aliens, zombies, and plants also make for good enemies for similar reasons. You can turn either one into something with a personality or with a face worth sympathizing with, but for the most part, they’re more difficult to relate to physically and personality-wise. Zombies are so popular in games partially because they are devoid of personality or any other features that make them seem human. When the player can’t connect with something on that level, it makes it easy to shoot through hordes of them.

“If the enemy does have a personality, make that personality some variant of “pissed at you,” freelance designer Jalan Ember added. Ember joked that developers can give an enemy “angry eyebrows,” but the idea is there. If there’s something in the eyes or face that looks menacing, then it sends a clear message.

But if a designer is in charge of creating characters that aren’t enemies, the same things must be taken into consideration. Frey previously worked on Bioshock Infinite, creating background NPCs that were separate from enemies. Easiest way to do this? Use children.

“We wanted the background characters to feel human,” Frey said. “A lot of times they’re children. They’ll hide, they’ll run, they’ll duck,  eating ice cream or enjoying their time at the park.”

Sometimes the violence doesn’t have to feel so violent

Creating enemies that look scary is easy enough, but how do you then account for all the games with adorable enemies? The Kirby series, for instance, has the most consistently cute set of enemies and bosses and our bouncy protagonist has to kill or eat them all. How do you get away with that?

 

“You have to be careful when you’re designing where your objective is to harm. You have to be careful not to make the violence — there has to be intention to it.”

Well, the Kirby series is fairly cartoony. Some series, such as Mario Bros., Zelda, and others use combat as a core piece of gameplay, but cut out some of the gorier, more upsetting parts such as blood and visible death. In a lot of the aforementioned games, the enemies “poof” away instead of collapsing to the ground or screaming on the way down.

Feedback puts a wrench in the above section, showing that you can make enemies “cute,” but with added effects. This is usually done in service of a game’s overall tone and as a way to make combat either more or less comfortable for the player. It’s likely to have a game where the point is to kill as many enemies as possible as violently as possible, but that depends on the game and how the devs want you to feel.

“You have to be careful when you’re designing where your objective is to harm,” Frey said. “You have to be careful not to make the violence — there has to be intention to it. The actual violence when you specifically have those hit reactions, it helps to have over-the-top cartoony violence.”

The enemies need understandable motivations to engage in combat

Beyond the look and design, there needs to be a good reason for an enemy to be an enemy. Not only do they need to have motivation to attack the player, but their way of fighting needs to feel natural.

 

“The temptation is to just do the pinata thing and spectacularly reward the player for killing something, [but] we want the experience to feel more thoughtful than ‘congratulations you killed something.'”

Animal-based enemies are easy to employ because designers can draw from nature and established relationships to establish a threat. In the case of Flame in the Flood, the animals have motivations to attack you, such as protecting their territory. Each of the enemy types attacks you differently — the boar will charge at you while the wolf will stalk you, for example — so it diversifies play, but it also makes the enemies feel distinct and more real. Similarly, the nameless protagonist also wants to survive and protect themselves, putting both sides on equal footing.

“If you want the player to lose themselves in the world, if you want to build the world, you want the world to respond to the player, but that won’t work unless it feels alive,” Frey explained.

“I feel the difference between a good design, and a great one for enemies is taking the design to show you something about the world you’re in. A good monster fits in, but a great one adds a little more to the world by making you interact with it,” Lagann echoed.

Animal or other real-world enemies are also easy to input into a game because the player automatically has established reactions to them. There’s little need for the game itself to set up those enemy/player relationships when it’s already understood that something like a wolf will be on the attack.

“In my experience, designing non-human enemies is easier in the sense that I can take advantage of primal instincts and preconceptions most of us tend to have, like being able to recognize a predator from prey,” freelance games artist Loukia Kyriakidou said. “Drawing from players’ experience means you don’t have to educate your audience from scratch and they don’t get frustrated trying to guess what is safe and what to stay away from.”

And because video games utilize a series of seemingly strange traditions in combat, such as the ability for enemies to drop loot when defeated, it helps if that makes sense in-universe as well. Horizon Zero Dawn, for example, allows protagonist Aloy to search destroyed monsters for parts. Since robots are automatically made out of components like wire, and because such parts are valuable in-game, it doesn’t seem out of place. In Flame in the Flood, you can search a dead boar for boar skin, which you can use to make clothing, and meat, which you can use to feed yourself.

This is quite different from old-school platformers, where enemies could drop things like coins. It still rewards the player for taking down an enemy — another incentive for engaging in combat — but it doesn’t feel out of place. In Transistor, the loot often comes in the form of information, which is important if you want to fill out the holes in the story and the world.

“The temptation is to just do the pinata thing and spectacularly reward the player for killing something,” Kasavin explained, noting Supergiant developers put a lot of work into contextualizing enemies in-game. “We want the experience to feel more thoughtful than ‘congratulations you killed something.’”

There are instances where enemies in game combat are purposefully meant to evoke feelings of discomfort and hesitation (Nier Automata is one recent example where some of the enemy robots are meant to instill empathy), but even that is something to consider when creating enemies and can add to the player’s experience in a particular world. Combat may not feel safe after that, but if that was the intended purpose, than something was done correctly.

If the developers didn’t want the player feeling any empathy or hesitation towards an enemy, and the player didn’t, that’s also alright. The path to a “safe” enemy is long and sometimes arduous, but the results are worth it when the player can engage with your world and leave satisfied.

We know you’re busy and might miss out on all the exciting things we’re talking about on Xbox Wire every week. If you’ve got a few minutes, we can help remedy that. We’ve pared down the past week’s news into one easy-to-digest article for all things Xbox! Or, if you’d rather watch than read, you can feast your eyes on our weekly video show above. Be sure to come back every Friday to find out what’s happening This Week on Xbox!

Xbox Game Pass at PAX East 2019
The Xbox Game Pass team is excited to announce we’ll be packing up and heading to Boston for PAX East from March 28-31, where we’ll showcase an array of new gaming experiences so you can discover your next favorite game! Whether you’re joining us in person or following along… Read more

State of Decay 2 Free Choose Your Own Apocalypse Now Available
Starting today, the ever-growing State of Decay 2 community can take the ultimate zombie survival game to its deadliest level with the launch of the Choose Your Own Apocalypse Update. This update introduces the Dread Zones and Nightmare Zones as two new difficulty modes… Read more

Classic RPG Final Fantasy VII Now Available on Xbox One
When it was released in 1997, Square-Enix’s Final Fantasy VII was lauded as an instant classic by gamers all over the world. Combining a deep turn-based combat system, never-before-seen character and party customization options, gorgeous full motion video cutscenes, cutting edge 3D graphics… Read more

All The News from ID@Xbox Game Pass
Today, during the first-ever episode of ID@Xbox Game Pass, we gave fans a closer look at upcoming ID@Xbox program titles set to arrive with Xbox Game Pass the same day as their global launch, as well as shared new details of ID@Xbox and Xbox Game Pass activities at PAX East… Read more

New Games with Gold for April 2019
Welcome to another Games with Gold reveal for Xbox One and Xbox 360! In April on Xbox One, survive Mars as a feared mage-warrior in The Technomancer, then experience the remake of a sci-fi classic in Outcast: Second Contact. On Xbox 360, and Xbox One via Backward Compatibility… Read more

Enter the World of Demons and Magic in DC Universe Online: Justice League Dark
Have you sensed the coming darkness? The DC Universe is full of threats – some tangible, visible, straightforward – and the superheroes who rise to face them are well known. But there are other threats, darker threats, dangers more nebulous, arcane, and ancient… Read more

Now Available on Xbox One with Xbox Game Pass, Operencia: The Stolen Sun from Zen Studios
Hard to believe, but we’re finally here – launch day for Operencia: The Stolen Sun! On behalf of all of us at Zen Studios who have poured our hearts and souls into this first-person dungeon crawler for the last two years, I’d like to invite you to check out our launch trailer…and then perhaps… Read more

Control Time as Paladins’ Newest Champion, Today on Xbox One
Paladins’ new Champion, Atlas, the man out of time, joins the Realm today! For the past few months, the team here at Evil Mojo Games has been hinting at Atlas’ existence as part of an ongoing lore story that brought the Paladins and the Magistrate to the Shattered Desert… Read more

Control is Available Now for Pre-Order on Xbox One
Hi, Xbox fans! Today is an incredibly exciting day for the teams at 505 Games and Remedy Entertainment. We’re thrilled to announce that the Xbox One community can now pre-order Control digitally on the Microsoft Store. Set in a unique and ever-changing world… Read more

Keep Farming Like Never Before with the Anderson DLC for Farming Simulator 19
We’re exceptionally proud of Farming Simulator 19, the biggest and best game we’ve ever made at Giants Software, but that doesn’t mean we can’t keep making it better. We’ve been improving the game with great free features and patches, but now we’re releasing on Xbox One… Read more

Enter for a Chance to Win a Pair of Custom Xbox One X Consoles inspired by Shazam!
When you were a kid, did you ever wish you could be a super hero – or at least be best friends with one? With the upcoming release of New Line Cinema’s new DC movie “Shazam!,” from Warner Bros. Pictures, we’ll get to see this wish come true for Freddy Freeman, whose best friend… Read more

Killing Floor 2: Cyber Revolt Seasonal Update Bolts onto Xbox One Today
The cyberpunk revolution is back this year in Killing Floor 2 and we’re packing heavy new Horzine tech hardware to push back the relentless Zed horde, fresh new cyber gear and outfits, a brand-new map, and a litany of quality of life improvements. Have you ever wanted to hold the power… Read more

Some Secrets to Success in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
Well, they’ve done it again. With Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, FromSoftware has succeeded in creating a game that pairs highly technical risk/reward combat and ultra-tough foes to craft a game that is at times very challenging, but always extremely rewarding. Much like their previous games… Read more

Celebrating Latinx in Gaming 2019 Recap
Moving into the middle of the week of Game Developer’s Conference the show gets into the general sessions of talks and the expo floor opens up. It’s also the busiest day for our Gaming for Everyone team as we throw three community events in one day! Starting the day with brunch… Read more

Build Your Own Cars, Planes, and Hovercrafts in Trailmakers
Have you ever played a racing game and thought to yourself: “I wish I could put a jet engine on this car. Maybe two … or five?” If you just said “YES!” out loud, then today is your lucky day because Trailmakers is launching onto Xbox One Game Preview. In Trailmakers you build your own… Read more

Multiple Adventures Await as Stories: The Path of Destinies Arrives on Xbox One
If you’re yearning for adventure you’ll be thrilled to hear that the award-winning action-RPG Stories: The Path of Destinies from developer Spearhead Games is now available on the Microsoft Store for Xbox One and it contains an array of daring escapades for you to embark upon… Read more

Metro Exodus Adds New Game+ and More with the Free Ranger Update
Metro Exodus owners get a free update today – the Ranger Update adds a New Game + mode as well as a host of new features, improvements, and fixes. New Game+ is a new mode that unlocks on completion of the story and allows you to start a new campaign with all the weapons… Read more

Introducing Miles & Kilo, Out Now on Xbox One and Windows 10
When playing a platformer, do you ever find yourself throwing caution to the wind and start racing through it masterfully like an unstoppable daredevil? That feeling and playstyle are what I really wanted to tap into when I first started making games. Before Miles & Kilo… Read more

Next Week on Xbox: New Games for April 2 to 5
Welcome to Next Week on Xbox, where we cover all the new games coming soon to Xbox One! Every week the team at Xbox aims to deliver quality gaming content for you to enjoy on your favorite gaming console. To find out what’s coming soon to Xbox One, read on below… Read more

Sega’s Yakuza games don’t really have much of a history with Nintendo’s platforms, but somehow questions continue to be asked about the possibility of the series coming to the Switch.

During an interview with IGN Japan recently, series producer Toshihiro Nagoshi said the third-person action adventure games had not been considered for the Switch, at least for now. While it’s not much, it is slightly different from the response we heard last July, about Nintendo’s hybrid system not being the right platform for this series.

This followed on with a question asking if there was a chance of Kazuma Kiryu and Goro Majima – two lead characters from the series – appearing as DLC characters in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Nagoshi seemed to find this amusing and jokingly said the game’s director Masahiro Sakurai wouldn’t want them.

The last time the Yakuza series graced one of Nintendo’s platforms was during the Wii U generation when Sega gave Yakuza 1 & 2 HD a Japan-only release in 2013. Sales bombed and the bundle shipped less than 2000 copies in its first week.

Would you like to see Yakuza given a second chance on a Nintendo platform? Have you ever wanted to see this series represented in Smash Bros? Tell us down below.