“Well, we know you liked that Superman movie…”

Way back in the mid-1990s, when most videogame

CHILLOUT GAMES

www.chilloutgames.co.uk/sell

Mixed results

Meta Quest 3 gives MR a platform on which to shine – but what can it offer to games?

Generation game

How UK indie 3-Fold Games is shining an interactive light on the journey of the Windrush generation

Head shots

How artist Larr y Achiampong is recasting iconic videogame characters

Shoot for the moon

How Fable designer Dene Carter’s RPG passion project became a surprise Steam hit – without making a penny

Soundbytes

Game commentar y in snack-sized mouthfuls

DISPATCHES JANUARY

Dialogue

Trigger Happy

Shoot first, ask questions later

The Outer Limits

Journeys to the farthest reaches of interactive entertainment

The great beyond

When talking to developers, particularly those who’ve spent

LIFE BY YOU

Can Paradox beat The Sims at its own game?

THANK GOODNESS YOU’RE HERE!

Yorkshire meets Yharnam in this beautifully animated adventure

HOMEWORLD 3

Adagio for heartstrings

GLASSBREAKERS: CHAMPIONS OF MOSS

There’s nothing mousy about this VR multiplayer spinoff

PEPPER GRINDER

A platformer that won’t put you through the mill

INDIKA

Breaking the habit

WINDSO F CHANGE

Exploring Everstone’s extravagant plan to put China at the centre of the open-world map

WOMB WITH A VIEW

El Huer vo takes us aboard Ultros’s ‘cosmic uterus’ to discuss the art of cultivating a more constructive variety of Metroidvania

COLLECTED WORKS KEIICHIRO TOYAMA

The creator of Silent Hill looks back on a long, horrifying career – and ahead to his big return to the genre

THE MAKING OF . . . PENTIMENT

How a palimpsest of ideas evolved into a singular work of art

TEA M REPTILE

How a pair of “cold-blooded” rebels jet-setted to a cyberfunk future

PLAY

REVIEWS. PERSPECTIVES. INTERVIEWS. AND SOME NUMBERS

A link between worlds

As true section-intro connoisseurs will be aware, we often use this page to try to locate a common thread among the issue’s selection of review games. With Remedy’s Alan Wake 2 in mind, we could perhaps discuss the nature of shared or connected universes – a potential jumping-off point to discuss Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare III and Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name, with The Invincible also teasing the tantalising notion of the Stanislaw Lem Expanded Universe. Or perhaps we could focus instead on metatextuality (though in calling attention to this process, we’re sort of doing that already).

Prey

Arkane’s sci-fi immersive sim was a shock to the system, for players and its developer alike

THE LONG GAME

A progress report on the games we just can’t quit

Alan Wake 2

The darkness may conceal many things. In a

Post Script

Does Alan Wake 2 make a case for the connected universe in videogames?

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare III

You get what you pay for. And if

Post Script

To get COD out of this mess, Activision should listen to its own advice

The Invincible

During the final scene of Starward Industries’ firstperson

A Highland Song

Moira McKinnon breaks into a sprint, accompanied by

The Talos Principle 2

What is society? Is it a form of

Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name

Since its Japanese debut, Like A Dragon has

Persona 5: Tactica

Atlus certainly knows how to get the most

Last Train Home

When Bartolomèj Kvapílek is killed during one of

SteamWorld Build

As SteamWorld’s first foray into 3D, Build does

Thirsty Suitors

The game’s ‘thirstsona’ mechanic feels undercooked. Ostensibly your

WarioWare: Move It!

Several firstparty Switch games advise using the wrist strap, but here it’s a necessity: some games require you to let go of the controllers, such as when dropping a fishing line into an ice hole, yanking it out when you get a nibble

Gubbins

Gubbins’ Melbourne-based makers were assisted by Unpacking creators