Edge August 2022

As much as we’d like it to be, making an Edge cover isn’t a predictable process, and we reach the goal in different ways, according to all sorts of factors. At its most basic (and often most challenging) level it’s a matter of repurposing existing artwork, possibly with an additional flourish here and there. More often, though, we’re able to work with imagery created specifically for the purpose of making page one look as appealing as possible, dropping it into place alongside our established visual furniture. And then there is this issue’s cover. In first discussing the opportunity it became clear that the team at Cuphead developer Studio MDHR wanted to try something that hadn’t been done before. “Sure,” we said. “Of course.” And then they showed us what they…

Ten years have passed since Google co-founder Sergey Brin took to the stage during the keynote of the company’s I/O event to give the world its first real demo of Google Glass. It was a defining moment in the public understanding of smart glasses, albeit perhaps not in the way Brin might have hoped, as the tech became something of a byword for misconceived tech projects. But in this year’s keynote – just in time for the decaversary – Google CEO Sundar Pichai introduced a similar demo of the company’s next smart glass project. “Subtitles for the world”, was the description that stuck, providing live captioning of speech for the benefit of the deaf or hard of hearing, or for people speaking different languages. The focus, then, was on something…

Four years ago, insurance adventure Return Of The Obra Dinn earned multiple awards and near-universal acclaim for its creator Lucas Pope – and made enough money that he could afford to take it relatively easy for a while. Still, it came at a cost: Pope was close to making that hiatus permanent, admitting to considering retirement after the game’s four-year development left him burned out. Happily, he’s since changed his mind; forthcoming Playdate release Mars After Midnight has rejuvenated his love of game-making, while he has another mystery project in the pipeline, too. After his appearance at this year’s LudoNarraCon for an online panel about detective games, he joined us for a candid and wide-ranging chat about solo creation, design philosophies, and the magic of 1bit art. You’ve talked about…

Less than a minute after typing in the URL ‘jam.gg’, Metal Slug is running in our browser. We have to admit it’s a very convenient way to revisit SNK’s run-andgunner, and the only thing that feels a bit off at this point is the presence of our webcam feed in the top-right corner, pushing the game display leftwards. If our instinct is to minimise it, though, that would be missing the point, as soon becomes clear when another player joins our game. Their cam feed (showing a masked avatar) slots under ours, and we can now communicate with them via video, chat or text in one browser tab. It’s an arrangement that, with a group of friends, turns a simple cloud gaming service into a kind of virtual couch. Jam.gg…

Alexander Goodwin fled Russia with his girlfriend in February. “We were against the political situation for a long time before that,” he says, but the pair eventually realised they could no longer make games under the regime and bought one-way tickets to Turkey. Goodwin left behind a position teaching game design at a university, but has found himself among a tight-knit community of expat developers – all the while continuing his work on Selfloss, due out on PC later this year. It’s a narrative-driven adventure game with Metroidvania elements – in terms of inspirations, Goodwin reckons, it’s around 70 per cent Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons and 30 per cent Inside. The story centres on an old man who helps grieving people by performing the titular ritual. “He’s like…

“We owe it to each other and to PlayStation’s millions of users to respect differences of opinion among ever yone in our internal and external communities.” “We are, and will continue to be, Bungie.There will never be a ‘muzzle’ big enough to stop us from standing up for what’s right.” ”We all have our own perspectives and sometimes we won’t speak, and that will be upsetting, and I understand that.” “A friend said to me, ‘I can’t wait to buy the new game you’re making Unless it’s free to play.I can’t afford another one of those’ and I haven’t stopped thinking about it.” ARCADE WATCH Keeping an eye on the coin-op gaming scene We haven’t yet chosen the categories for this year’s Alternative Edge Awards, but if we end up…