Many people have voiced their opinion about New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe being just too sodding easy for their tastes, and whilst we don’t think the whole game is a cakewalk in the traditional sense, it isn’t exactly the Dark Souls of platformers to use an overused and somewhat polygonal expression.

So to ramp up the difficulty a smidgen and a half we thought it would be a “good” idea to slap a makeshift blindfold over our peepers and try to hammer our way through just the first level that the game offers. So after literally several attempts to memorise the layout, we managed to procure enough footage to make the video above, so give it a watch.

The mobile gamer can look back at 2018 with an affectionate and misty eye, secure in the knowledge that gaming on mobile devices gets more diverse, sophisticated and polished with each year. In this respect, 2019 also is shaping up to be a banner year on this front.

Roughly speaking, the most exciting upcoming games can be split into three groups: the name-brand megahits-in-waiting, boardgame adaptations, and indie projects. Read on to see what the who’s who of mobile gaming are cooking up for this year’s treats.

Evolution (Board Game)

This was on the ‘MIA’ until recently, when North Star Digital announced that it would finally be releasing on February 12th. This is a digital adaptation of the popular boardgame of the same name, where you play as emergent species attempting to survive and adapt. You must use cards and combine traits to make sure your species gets the food it needs to live. This is a game of up to four players, and will feature a solo campaign vs. AI, as well as cross-platform online multiplayer.

Mario Kart Tour (Racing)

It’s been practically a year since this title was first announced and outlined with few concrete details added between now and then. Nintendo’s mobile offerings have run the gamut, from the premium Mario Run, the Miitomo social & style app everyone tried and forgot about, to the successful and generally great Fire Emblem: Warriors. Mario Kart is a treasured and classic franchise, even amongst Nintendo offerings, so that reputation guarantees some level of careful handling. It remains an open question whether the game will be a premium or freemium model, but the launch date is still projected to be March.

Diablo Immortal (Action RPG)

Diablo Immortal will draw some side-eye and mockery, having been already made notorious because of its horribly mistimed announcement. (Yes, we have phones, but read the room, Activision-Blizzard). Even more puzzlingly, the game is being created in partnership with NetEase, a Chinese developer whose resume already includes ‘Eternal Realm’ (无尽神域) itself essentially a Diablo clone. Weird stuff: the official license merging with a pretender to the throne to make a hybrid project together. Concerns about endless grind or re-skinning of Eternal Realm are well-founded, but while most of us will be as judge-y as possible we’ll also probably still give the final product a try. Good action RPGs live or die by loot, character progression and above all, delicate-yet-accurate controls, so it will be interesting to see if Diablo Immortal will be a good game as well as the inevitable cash cow.

Artifact (CCG)

Two juggernauts of early-aughts gaming, Valve and Richard Garfield, collaborated to create Artifact, a lane-based card game with its theme and heroes lifted from DOTA 2. Launching on desktops this November, the game has been universally praised for its gameplay and just as roundly (and soundly, I might add) panned for its multi-layered pay scheme, which presents significant barriers to entry and requires quite the investment. The game is a purchase upfront, with tournament tickets and the chance to earn cards in-game through other methods both requiring further shills at some point. Yes, there is an individual card market which allows powerful and rapid deckbuilding, but at what cost? Amazing game with an incredibly rocky launch, but its trade winds are already shifting. The game is excellent and its market & monetization can only improve. Watch this space.

Five Tribes (Boardgame)

Five Tribes, oldie but goodie, will make its digital debut this year. Days of Wonder has been updating and digitising its catalogue at a steady pace and with fantastic results. Five Tribes central mechanic is just like mancala. Pick a space and drop the meeples one by one along the path. Dead simple, but if you think it makes the game easy, you’d be dead wrong. The Five Tribes each possess unique scoring criteria and effects, and the turn-order bid means timing depends on correctly valuing the current layout. Many simple bits add up to make a nigh-perfect game.

Scythe: Digital Edition (Boardgame)

In another history, the Great War also ruined Europe and annihilated a generation, but its nations and technologies faced the blight and devastation quite differently. With large mechs, steampunk agricultural combines and faux-Eurasian player nations, Scythe gives each player a unique entity to steer to victory. Engine building games are always efficiency races, conversion puzzles, but Scythe’s unique setting, eye-catching miniatures and indirect player confrontation quickly made a it a fan favorite amongst the gaming community. Its rollout on Steam has been smooth experience, with decent AI and a robust tutorial. The assets and UI will translate well to mobile and what used to cost near three figures will be available to most anyone for a fraction of the price.

Terraforming Mars (Boardgame)

Terraforming Mars sounds like a noble goal for all of humanity. In reality, the game is a push-and-pull competition for corporations to garner by prestige by…terraforming Mars. Three categories: oxygen, temperature and ocean coverage dictate the endgame, but to get there, players will reshape the red planet into a bright blue hope. It’s a Euro though-and-though: precisely balanced, intricately co-dependent and inevitably point-based. But the close match between theme and mechanic makes this game deeply satisfying and intuitive to learn and explain, and the action selection mechanic is uniquely innovative and inspired. Just when I think boardgame design is tapped out, something truly exceptional rises to the top.

Mew-Genics (Sim)

This one has been incubating forever but should be worth it when it finally gets here. Ed McMillen (of Binding of Isaac fame) has been teasing this cat-breeding simulator for ages. The game has been described as a mix of Tamagotchi, Pokemon and the Sims, with its signature art style courtesy of McMillen. All bets for a playful wild game about the weirdness, sweetness, malice and all-around havoc of cat-raising seem to be right on the money. The ideas are there, the premise is promising, the only question remaining is when it will get here.

Overland (Finji) (TBS/Survival) 

Overland is tactical turn-based survival meets cross-country road trip (from hell). Each waypoint is a battle, a flashpoint conflict over some minor life-extending objective. Its overland map and procedural generation seem reminiscent of FTL (or its follow-up Into the Beach) but the setting here is familiar people struggling with post-apocalyptic daily hardship. Water, medicine, gas, weapons: the items are banal but vital. The game uses minimalism and scarcity to great effect, sketching characters and strategic scenarios alike with the barest elements.

Impossible Bottles (Rhythm/Action)

Various robots move about in their bottles and raging about like a bull in a china shop. Each level presents one of these Impossible Bottles for the player to fix by manipulating the environment and repairing the situation, or at the very least soothing its sole occupant. A scientist built these robots as part of a perpetual motion machine for unlimited energy, but they don’t quite work as is. The secret to fixing everything is music, or in gameplay terms: rhythm. One-touch gameplay and lush, fantastic art, with a slated mid-year release.

Nowhere Prophet (Card Game)

Nowhere Prophet: this one is a doozy and a little secretive. The dark horse of this race, if you will. In the game, post-apocalyptic leaders trek across a scabrous landscape to gather supporters and supplies, occasionally clashing with foes or environmental dangers. This card game has grid-based combat as well procedurally generated encounters. It’s a card-battler roguelike, essentially, with a unique setting and what seems to be a robust battle system.

Heaven’s Vault (Interactive Fiction)

Inkle (of 80 Days interactive fiction fame) has been teasing their mechanically ambitious Heaven’s Vault for some time now. An archaeologist-slash-xenolinguist explores the dusty remains of an alien civilization on an unknown planet, with a vivid backdrop of sienna sand and celestial blue. There’s some pretty nifty procedural tricks behind the code-breaking and translation, and while its approach to storytelling is a little less handcrafted, it has the potential to have even more surprises and replayability than the globe-trotting 80 Days.

Other Missing Games From 2018

As a reminder, here is a quick list of some other games we were expecting last year, but never turned up:

• Void Tyrant (card game/RPG)
• Bad North (RTS)
• Exodus: Proxima Centauri (Boardgame)
• Dungeon Warfare 2 (Tower Defence)
• Epic Card Game (Card Game)
• Lord of the Rings Living Card Game (Card Game)
• Monster Slayers (Card Game) 
• EVE: War of Ascension (MMO)

Seen any other games coming out this year you’re excited about? Let us know in the comments.

Headup Games has brought a lovely little collection of games to Switch over the past year and a half, publishing the likes of Runbow, Slime-san, The Inner World, Bridge Constructor Portal, and Earth Atlantis to name a few. Now, the studio has got in touch to share some of its best and biggest games launching this year, and four of them are coming to Switch.

Some of these have already previously been confirmed, but we now have updated release windows and information for each title. So, shall we?

Trüberbrook

Release: Mid-March

A highly-stylised graphic adventure arriving on all platforms, Trüberbrook comes complete with its very own ‘Interrogation’ trailer (which we’ve included below). The blurb sets the scene for this one:

“The past few weeks a lot has happened in our little Trüberbrook: Most of the villagers have been given their voices, all the houses, squares and secret science labs have been built and the team is about to go on a great journey…”

Windscape

Release: End of March

Described as being a Zelda-like game, Windscape has you playing as a young girl living on your parents’ farm, set in a “lovely world made up of floating islands in the sky”. As you discover the world you learn that something has gone terribly wrong, however, with islands breaking apart and falling from the sky.

Dead End Job

Release: Q2 2019

Dead End Job is a twin-stick shooter that sees you take on the role of Hector Plasm, (an employee of a paranormal pest control company called ‘Ghoul-B-Gone’). Your aim is to become the employee of the month, at which point you will be deemed ready to avenge the murder of an ex-coworker.

Silver Chains

Release: Q3 2019

The debut title from developer Cracked Heads Games, Silver Chains is a first-person horror coming to Switch a little later in the year, slightly after its Q2 release for PC. The game uses Unreal Engine 4 to bring to life the “hauntingly beautiful” interiors of an early 20th century English manor. This Victorian architecture is said to play its part in creating an eerie atmosphere throughout.

Do any of these games take your fancy? Will you be keeping an eye out for them as they arrive over the next few months? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

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.

Following the research done for “Videogame Dialogues: Writing Tools And Design Ideas” (a quite popular Gamasutra post on game dialogue’s user interfaces written by Daniele Giardini and myself) when I had the chance to get back to developing the narrative part of Football Drama I decided to create further layout tools for the writer, building upon the research done then.

One of the observations of the linked post was how mature and feature rich are dialogues in contemporary comics with respect to today’s games, as in the examples below.

Our dialogues in Football Drama were more or less in this format:

From that Pino Panzarella and I started designing possible evolutions, like in this draft:

An obvious fact that makes evolving the design of dialogues in games not that easy is that dialogues are generally at least partially generative (and so is the case for our Football Drama game), so its normal that the dialogues are generated by structures like these:

This is our internal dialogue editor, Outspoken (developed in Unity by Daniele Giardini). What would be great would be to have the possibility to (1) configure single nodes’ balloon appearance and (2) configure alternative layouts of sequences of nodes.\

(1) For single speech balloons, we opted for having four classic layouts: thought, scream, speech, whisper.

(2) For the alternative layouts, we have three cases,

• 
  

  A full-screen layer that sends some message before or between dialogue exchanges

• 
  

  A node with a question and then choices (as the first column in the draft illustration below).

• 
  

  A couple of dialogue nodes where in the second node we want to zoom in the character (second and third columns in the draft)

You can see our solution in action for both cases (1) and (2) in the following video:

So I hope this gives you some inspiration in designing tools for your game dialogue’s layouts.

You can follow me on twitter here.

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.

[An excerpt from the forthcoming Virtual Cities atlas of video game cities by game urbanist Konstantinos Dimopoulos, and artist Maria Kallikaki.]

You haven’t died until you’ve visited Rubacava. The liveliest, most vibrant place throughout the Mesoamerican Hades. The town that never died. An extravagant, cheerful yet forlorn city where heartbroken lovers await their soulmates, and the ancient dead dance wildly through countless nights. Rubacava: a city of long shadows, papier-mâché skeletons, bright lights and unexpected fogs, where the biggest of the bone bands play the finest bebop tunes, and where jazz and mariachi get married to andean melodies. This is the great post mortem melting pot. The town where lost souls are bound to be found, and hardened criminals can watch the occasional saint embark the Nada Mañana cruises towards a restful afterlife.

This high-life port town of the Land of the Dead is located on the coast of the Sea of Lament, and thus serves as a crucial waystation on the four year journey to the Ninth Underworld and eternal rest. Reaching it means braving the Petrified Forest, and then, upon arrival, buying passage across the ocean as quickly as possible; yet somehow this almost transient place keeps on growing. Souls tend to linger here in waiting, after losing hope in a better hereafter, or by being swept away by this breathtaking urbanistic embodiment of Mayan, Aztec, Toltec and Mexican metaphysical beliefs.

Rubacava, not being a theologically detailed location, didn’t always exist, but is far older than anyone remembers. Its turbulent history has a palpable weight to it as the dead refusing to leave the afterlife behind are always the more intriguing ones, and their city, teetering between a full on mob-town and a revolutionary hub, could never be anything but fascinating. The moon of Rubacava has definitely seen much as the tiny transit town by the sea grew to become today’s metropolis, and geographers have long argued whether nostalgia or allure is the main centrifugal force boosting its population.

Sense of loss aside though, this is an undeniably stunning, intoxicating city. The sea laps mesmerizingly against lofty bridges, sublime bas-relief decorations can be discovered in the most unexpected of places, the shadows of emphatic buildings hold countless secrets and drinking holes, and sudden explosions of scale and spectacle regularly impress. Add in the blimps’ sky-traffic, the gargantuan cat racing track, an unrivaled nightlife, eye catching sky-signs, the lively masses of the dead and a thousand promises, and the city’s gravitational pull makes absolute sense. The sights are countless, the colours dizzying, the music perfect, the scope awe inspiring, and the aesthetic experience of getting lost worth dying for. One path might lead to an abandoned lighthouse, another to a forgotten pier, and a third to a cliff-carved elevator towards a new section of town complete with massive casino.

Rubacavan life isn’t confined to savouring spatial delights, holding a job, or playing the kitties. Things often get exciting, dangerous, and even hopeless in this city of the poor masquerading as the cosmopolitan town of the rich. Demonic bouncers abound, skeletal birds mock, and betrayal, passion, and passionate betrayal are as common as tensions and stark divisions. Shattered illusions, shady schemes, the occasional miracle, an unashamedly corrupt police force, and the popular desire for post mortem justice make for an explosive mix that only temporarily abates during the Day of the Dead. The single day of the year when shows, clubs, and slot machines stand abandoned, and when the overworked masses are allowed a moment of respite.

Walking the streets on any other day reveals a staggering menagerie of characters. Posh lawyers, hip club owners, exhausted or defiant workers, gangsters, agents of the Department of Death, artists, sailors and gamblers roam the shadows of emblematic skyscrapers, and gather around stepped pyramids and vast plazas. Rarely, the occasional former florists researching the forensic side of botany can also be glimpsed. Second death by sprouting is a notoriously flowery and complex affair apparently; one only florists can analyze, and only mob bosses can turn into macabre gardens.

It is in the harbour district though, in the oldest part of town, where the vibrancy of unlife truly explodes. The gigantic Feline Meadows race track effortlessly dominates the area and sets the tone, even if locals know that the old town can offer more than bets and transit. Hidden in an old Scrimshaw tank, for example, lies the infamous Toto’s tattoo parlour where liquid nitrogen and drills are used to create stunning tattoos on bare bone, whereas up on the magnificent bridge connecting the two harbour clifftops, under the statue of Justice, hides a morgue. A steep climb down to sea level reveals the beautiful, golden and blue, Art Nouveau Blue Casket club owned by Olivia Ofrenda; the very heart of beatnik Rubacava, and the spot to discuss revolution, drink coffin shooters, and recite poetry in a building nurturing defiance, and standing out in an Art Deco modernist city of gleaming towers.

It’s not just architecture that alludes to 20th century modernism. As the city grew past its initial waterfront core it was almost certainly influenced by functionalist ideals, possibly even by Le Corbusier’s Radiant City plans, and adapted a predominantly gridiron structure with regularly spaced diagonal avenues to its needs. Wide boulevards now allow unreasonably powerful demon-driven cars to achieve ludicrous speeds, and connect pastoral suburbs with a bustling downtown that’s developed both vertically and horizontally. Activities have been modestly organized, though, admittedly, the sheer fluidity of death’s reality had to lead to haphazard implementations, unfinished avenues, labyrinthine alleys and clashing functions. Adding to the confusion, Rubacava’s recent civic explosion has been driven more by speculation and money laundering than planning forethought, allowing for odd configurations and even unnaturally big crocodiles in badly maintained sewers.

With the exception of the few newer industrial areas, the labyrinthine harbour and its surrounding leisure district remain the city’s core economic hub. Gambling and entertainment are soaking up the cash produced by the hardy Sea Bees working on ships suspended in thin air, while gazing at the well kept docks where opulent ocean liners await their lucky passengers.

Just as the harbour is divided between extravagant pleasures and hard toil, so is the rest of the city. Death wasn’t the great leveler after all, class lines are being drawn, and tensions rise as the rich keep on exploiting the poor. Even the pious seem capable of suffering in this cynical economy when the Chief of Police is a notorious, bribable gambler, and upstanding crime lords like Hector LeMans can seemingly do as they please. The police are only interested in running protection schemes and arresting striking union members, inadvertently fuelling the flames of the fledgling resistance. And as the Sea Bees, the workers’ vanguard, come closer to the incendiary ideas of the beatniks, and the name of almost mythical revolutionary leader Salvador Limones keeps on inspiring defiance, it is evident that a revolution is brewing; just as the mob moves on to take over the town.