Edge

Even though Elden Ring: Nightreign (p30) contradicts some of the root principles that have defined FromSoftware’s most acclaimed games over the years, it’s easy to imagine how it was given the green light. Having spent so many years meticulously constructing a setting as expansive as The Lands Between, it must be difficult to push it out to the world and then, one solitary DLC expansion excepted, simply leave it all behind. Why not revisit this place, taking all of that work and remixing it for another run, albeit from a slightly different angle? Clearly it cuts down on development costs, which no one is going to resist in this day and age, and it also means that FromSoftware fans don’t have to wait as long for another fix. If Nightreign…

The strike is beginning to bite. In the US, members of the SAG-AFTRA actors’ union downed tools in July 2024, and during the past few months we’ve started to see it having a definite impact. In January, Bungie announced that the Destiny 2 episode Heresy would launch with voiceover lines missing, while Hideo Kojima announced in December that two forthcoming games from Kojima Productions, OD and Physint, would be held up as a result of the strike action. But why exactly are videogame actors striking? The answer can be condensed to a couple of words, or even just two letters: AI. Sarah Elmaleh is chair of SAG-AFTRA’s Interactive Media Agreement Negotiating Committee, and has starred in games such as Gone Home, Gears 5 and Fortnite. The union has been negotiating…

Why is the Royal Shakespeare Company making a videogame? “The RSC has been interested in this space for a really long time, for lots of reasons,” says Sarah Ellis, director of digital development. “We realised that, as much as there were differences, there were some real connection points around dramaturgy and story and worldbuilding.” Both media share a “feedback loop between the audience and the stage”, points out Vassiliki Khonsari, co-founder of Ink Stories, with which the RSC is partnering for its first digital commission. “In some ways,” she adds, “there are more similarities between games and theatre than there may be between film and theatre.” Founded by Vassiliki and her husband Navid Khonsari (a former cinematics director on GTA: San Andreas, Alan Wake and Resident Evil 7), Ink Stories…

Sitting down to talk to Aran Koning, Ruben Naus, Tijmen Tio and Tom van den Boogaart, lined up across a single Google Meet window, feels like interviewing game development’s equivalent of a boy band. Indeed, the quartet from Utrecht are all so fresh-faced, it’s hard to believe they have over 100 completed games under their belts. In part, that’s been possible because they started young, each toying with computers and game-making tools as kids, before they got to know each other through social events and game jams over a decade ago. But it’s also because Sokpop, the collective they formed in 2017, stuck for several years to a subscription model that promised a game a month. And people liked the results, and kept coming back for more. Sokpop emerged after…

Grunn Having taken van den Boogaart two years to make, Grunn is not a typical Sokpop game, although its quiet, countryside setting does reprise that of several other titles in the collective’s catalogue. Wryly described as “a very normal gardening game”, this is anything but, with its eerie blurred focus and strangers watching your every move. The garden itself is a replica of van den Boogaart’s father’s plot. “I was visiting him a lot, and I was also watching Twin Peaks,” the developer recalls. “Those two blended into what Grunn eventually became. I was also interested to see what a scary Sokpop game would look like, because we’d never made anything scary.” Chatventures Tio’s idea of squeezing a fantasy world into a chatroom environment leads to a cross between an…

Two art forms from opposite ends of the 20th century – 1920s ‘rubber hose’ animation and 1990s firstperson shooters – collide to make a 21st-century social media success story. A recent clip of Mouse: PI For Hire racked up four million views on TikTok. “Such popularity on social media is a blessing, but also a double-edged sword,” says Maciek Krzemien, lead producer at developer Fumi Games. While the team are naturally thrilled to have more eyes on their game, it comes with added pressure. “But it’s the good kind of pressure,” he says. “It keeps us going and pushes us to cross boundaries on almost a daily basis.” Playing as rodent PI Jack Pepper, the main boundaries you’ll be crossing are those of crime scenes. “Since we moved to proper…