Edge

Remember 2011? Not a bad 12 months for games, that. Big hitters such as Skyrim, Portal 2 and Dark Souls. Indie delights including Bastion and Frozen Synapse, plus Limbo’s arrival on PC/PS3. And not forgetting one of the year’s most singular treats, S

Tony Mott acting editor Chris Schilling deputy editor Alex Spencer features editor Miriam McDonald operations editor Andrew P Hind art editor Jon Bailes, Sam Barlow, Matthew Castle, Grace Curtis, Andy Kelly, Emmanuel Pajon, Jeremy Peel, Dominic Peppi

Seeing gaming concepts defined shakily in a court of law has, broadly, been a source of comedy during Apple and Epic’s trial. But the mischaracterisation of Itch.io has made for difficult listening. The indie storefront was welcomed into the Epic Sto

According to Steve Jobs’ authorised biography – the same adapted for the screen by Aaron Sorkin – the co-founder of Apple came up with the company’s name on the way home from an orchard, a pilgrimage during “one of [his] fruitarian diets”. But in 202

Longo leaving his role as Halo Infinite’s creative director grabbed headlines in 2019. So how does it feel to watch the game’s gradual unveiling from the outside? “It’s a bummer to not be a part of it, but I’m excited for them.” He says he can see “a

Endwalker’s most welcome additions include letting players travel between Data Centers, the MMORPG’s terminology for its localised servers, allowing players to roam the globe. Meanwhile, players in Australia and New Zealand, who currently have to put

By now, we’ve become accustomed to live events being cancelled and replaced with awkward digital substitutes. But still, the show must go on. After cancelling its 2020-2021 world tour, including what would have been a London stop this year, Final Fan

Discs are perhaps not the best medium for an evolving MMORPG, and given 85 per cent of Shadowbringers’ sales came digitally it’s no surprise that Endwalker marks the end of Final Fantasy XIV expansions being sold at retail. Nonetheless, Square Enix i

Game The Mandalorian Manufacturer Stern Pinball Pinball doesn’t feature in this section very often, but that’s more a reflection of where it is nowadays rather than any aversion to the silver ball in Edge’s fantasy arcade. The big names from the indu

Videogames put us right at the centre of their worlds, often positioning us as the most important person within them. Yet even in the most traditional power fantasies, playing as a self-appointed ‘Chosen One’, we’d rarely get anywhere without assista

Game Builder Garage Switch Some Edge readers will already be tinkering away with this, but Nintendo’s increasingly secretive MO means we’ve not seen it at the time of writing. Still, while it effectively sounds a death knell for Labo, we’re intrigued

World’s unobtrusive narrative involves you going on a road trip with four oddball skaters. Skateshop owner ‘Dad’ is our favourite, since he boasts a weakness for horrible puns – fitting, from the studio that subtitled its sequel Welcome To Olliwood.

Kazdal didn’t want Song In The Smoke’s prehistoric setting to fall into the usual caveman clichés (“there’s no sabretoothed tigers or woolly mammoths”), which is why he enlisted artist Katsuya Terada, whose celebrated works include illustrations of T

Controlling your creations is currently a little too clumsy (something Schneider assures us he’s working on), but that frustration can also be a source of comedy. An early experiment with thrusters has us howling as our vehicle launches directly into

Developer Radiangames Publisher TBA Format PC, consoles TBA Origin US Release Q4 2021 Luke Schneider has plenty of experience in building things up just to knock them down again. He spent five years as lead tech designer on Red Faction: Guerrilla, a

Not all clues wait politely to be plucked from the crime scene. Mystery substances are identified in an equation-balancing minigame, while eavesdropping on residents enables you to sift through snippets of idle chatter to find vital nuggets, some rev

Developer/ publisher Frogwares Format PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series Origin Ukraine Release 2021 The island of Cordona bulges with curious cases, but the one that leaps to mind is that of Benjamin Button. With each outing, Frogwares’ Sherlock gr

Developer/ publisher Vodeo Games Format PC, Switch Origin US Release Q3 How do you follow a phenomenon such as Threes? Asher Vollmer’s mobile smash left him puzzled about where to go next. “It’s been this giant presence in my life that I’ve been tryi

Developer Straka Studio Publisher Superhot Presents Format PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series Origin Slovakia Release TBA We find ourselves, once again, in a dungeon. We switch between swords and spears, as swarms of ghouls and gribblies lurk just at the edge

Straka’s previous games were on iOS, but he’s made the leap to PC and console for Loot River – and is frank about his reasons for shifting. “The mobile sales for premium games started going down like this” – he mimes a crashing aeroplane, with accomp

The human voice is one of the most crucial components of Rohrmann’s score and sound design. It partly stems from the use of Sacred Harp singing – a type of religious choral music originating in North America, but which through missionaries has become

Establishing a base camp is one of the earliest and most important goals. Since it’s a place you’ll return to time and again throughout the game, Adams was keen to make it more than just a functional setting. This is, after all, the anchorites’ new h

China’s preference for mobile doesn’t mean its playerbase has been limiting itself to certain types of games. Indeed, with premium franchises getting the touchscreen treatment, from Call Of Duty: Mobile to the forthcoming Diablo Immortal, as well as

Even after the end of the console ban, Chinese consumers still opt for importing via the grey market simply because there’s very little incentive to invest in official consoles that not only arrive late but come with too many restrictions: Xbox One i

How much of a part do western studios operating in China play in shaping the Chinese game industry? Since being founded in 2008, Ubisoft Chengdu has been primarily a support studio, working on games such as Scott Pilgrim Vs The World. However, the st

Founder, Hidden Fields Are there influences from other games in Mandaan? I didn’t look at specific games for inspiration but there are for sure elements in Mundaun of games I loved in the past. The rural setting and atmosphere of Resident Evil 4 alwa

Stonefly PC Flight School’s followup to Creature In The Well always seemed like a quick turnaround. While the concept is promising - tiny mechs hopping from branch to briar and riding on the wings of enormous aphids - and realised with visual flair,

Skipper isn’t alone on their beast-hunting quest: as you progress you’ll meet characters with a variety of abilities that can help during the preparatory stages and the battles themselves. Dandy (or Lord Dandelion Gladiolus du Fritillaria, to give hi

You can squeeze another six hours from Rift Apart by mopping up collectables and finishing the handful of side missions. Three tiers of arena battles await below Zurkie’s bar, while Spybots give you a potted history of the area in which they’re found

Developer/publisher SIE (Insomniac Games) Format PS5 Release Out now Something goes wrong in the opening 15 minutes of Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. That in itself is not a surprise: it’s how videogame stories often begin, after all. But this developm

The Ratchet & Clank games have always been unusually chatty blockbusters, largely by dint of keeping their two heroes together for the duration. Both have someone they know well to bounce off, whereas their triple-A peers tend to favour lone heroes –

In Spirit Tracks, Link’s magical musical instrument is panpipes played with the DS microphone. The tunes are terrific, the cutscenes when you play them with legendary train conductors (complete with Zelda’s spirit dancing along) are a delight - and i

The game was not always called Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP. “The working title for the game was Poopsock,” Piotrowski says, laughing. “It was a term for a game that you sit down and play until it’s finished. And what allows you to do that is…”

Developer/ publisher 17-Bit Format PSVR, Quest, Rift Origin Japan Release Q3 2021 Since picking up Oculus dev kits on day one, Jake Kazdal has been “blown away” by VR. So much so that when it was time to plan a new game after launching 2D shooter Gal

Despite the science-fiction premise, what we see of Icarus – the game and the planet – feels earthbound. The woodlands and waterfalls, bears and deer – it’s all very idyllic, and the map we play on stretches from parched desert to arctic climes, but

Our hero is equipped with a kind of spiritual sonar that she can release to highlight key environmental features and trigger objects such as crystals. One simple early puzzle sees her command the Rot to reposition a crystal so this limited-range puls

Piotrowski pays tribute to Capy programmers Jon Maur and Frankie Leung, who he says “made every single thing in that game on the technical end.” It was, he says, Leung’s first job. “He was barely out of school when he started working at Capy, and the

Developer/publisher RocketWerkz Format PC Origin New Zealand Release TBA There’s a catch of panic in Dean Hall’s voice that has to be genuine. The New Zealander gained a level of celebrity in the early 2010s as creator of ARMA 2’s DayZ mod, before le

Guthrie makes an appearance in the game, plucking away on a string instrument in a grove next to a sprite circle. The song he’s playing is And We Got Older, a bonus track on the album which has proven one of the most popular of all Sworcery tracks. A