Nicklas ‘El Huervo’ Åkerblad is perhaps still best known for the art he produced for Dennaton Games’ Hotline Miami. As such, it’s no surprise when he invokes perhaps its most famous quote, in which the game’s protagonist – and, by extension, the player – is confronted with an uncomfortable question: do you like hurting other people? “Violence talks to us in a weird, weird way,” he says. But when developing the debut game from Hadoque, the studio Åkerblad set up with Mårten Brüggemann six years ago, he began to consider a less destructive alternative for progressing through this psychedelic world. If most videogames aim to provoke one of two types of physiological response – either ‘fight or flight’ or ‘tend and befriend’ – Ultros presents a space at which those approaches can coexist.
That apparent dichotomy – one of several in a world Åkerblad describes as both a uterus and a sarcophagus, death and birth constantly in close proximity – is reflected in the game’s protagonist, Ouji, whose role came into sharper focus when he painted her as a saint, as seen in the image on p68. “Saints of old were almost schizophrenic,” he says. “People would say, ‘You have the
