The Drop: New PlayStation Games for 4/4/2017

Ripped from the mind of acclaimed director David Jaffe and torn from the pages of an unusually creative high school student comes Drawn to Death on PS4. And here’s a special bonus: it’s free for PS Plus members this April!

Drawn to Death puts crazy action and strategy to the fore, challenging players to shoot and brawl their way to the top of sketchbook arenas brimming with gore. Use an assortment of unique weapons and character-specific skills to deal out serious damage, and master the layout of each environment to trounce the opposition.

For a full list of new games coming to PlayStation next week, read on. And enjoy the Drop!

New Releases: Week of April 4, 2017

Air Conflicts: Secret Wars Ultimate Edition

PS4 — Digital, Retail

The arcade flight simulator Air Conflicts: Secret Wars takes you right into the heart of the action, with air combat at historical locations set in World War I and II. Take to the skies in seven exciting campaigns with a total of 49 missions.

ArmaGallant: Decks of Destiny

PS4 — Digital, Retail

ArmaGallant: Decks of Destiny combines deckbuilding with real-time strategy, creating fast-paced 1v1 or 2v2 multiplayer arena battles. Learn and evolve the abilities of electrifying creatures and magical spells, forming powerful decks to unleash upon your enemies.

Blackwood Crossing

PS4 — Digital

Blackwood Crossing is a story-driven first-person adventure game. An intriguing and emotive tale exploring the fragile relationship between orphaned siblings Scarlett and Finn. When their paths cross with a mysterious figure, an ordinary train ride evolves into a magical story of life, love, and loss.

Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition

PS4 — Digital, Retail (Out 4/7)

Step into the boots of Grayson Hunt after a crash landing on an old resort planet forces him to make a hard choice: survival or revenge. Execute masterful kills with Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition’s unique combat system that rewards you for performing the most creative and deadly kills imaginable.

Drawn to Death

PS4 — Digital (Free with PS Plus)

Drawn to Death is the latest title from acclaimed game developer David Jaffe (God of War, Twisted Metal). This competitive online multiplayer shooter provides deep gameplay mechanics by blending the nuance of a fighting game with the action of a competitive shooter.

Lego City Undercover

PS4 — Digital, Retail

Join the Chase! In Lego City Undercover, play as Chase McCain, a police officer who’s been tasked with going undercover to hunt down the notorious — and recently escaped — criminal Rex Fury and putting an end to his city-wide crime wave.

Mortal Blitz

PS VR — Digital

Become Yuhei ex-F.O.R.C.E. (governmental elite soldiers), and fight in the mission to thwart the evil plans of the Dominion’s Teratoma Destruction Plan.

PaRappa the Rapper Remastered

PS4 — Digital

After 20 years since his debut, PaRappa the Rapper returns to PlayStation! Relive the original music game and join PaRappa on his quest to win the heart of Sunny Funny and learn from favorite rap masters like Chop Chop Master Onion, Instructor Mooselini, and Cheap Cheap The Cooking Chicken.

Persona 5

PS4, PS3 — Digital, Retail

The newest addition to the Persona series follows the actions of young phantom thieves. During the day, strengthen bonds with people as a high school student living your school life, and after school, become a phantom thief that wields the power of Persona to infiltrate the world within the hearts of evil adults! An unprecedented story of social reform begins!

Plutobi: The Dwarf Planet Tales

PS4 — Digital

Plutobi (the nickname of Pluto) was kicked out of the planet list in 2006 and became a dwarf planet, because he is so small and weak. So he decided to become a planet again by showing his power to other planets in the solar system.

Use Your Words

PS4 — Digital

Grab a few friends and get ready to laugh. Use Your Words is the party game for funny people and their unfunny friends!

Virry VR

PS VR — Digital

Virry VR is the ultimate virtual safari. Head to the African savannah to play with wild animals in their natural habitats. Filmed on location in 4K VR, Virry takes you so close to real animals, you can practically feel their breath on your neck.

• Ghost in the Shell (Music Inspired by the Motion Picture)
• Mastodon – Emperor of Sand
• G-Eazy – Step Brothers

• Split (plus bonus features)
• Teen Titans: The Judas Contract

• Archer- April 5 at 10/9c (FXX)
• Colony- April 6 at 10/9c (USA)
• Crashing- April 9 at 10:30/9:30c (HBO)

The information above is subject to change without notice.

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Tearaway: Eight Unseen Concepts for Media Molecule’s Papercraft Adventure

With PS4’s papercraft-inspired adventure Tearaway Unfolded available on PS Plus this month, we asked Media Molecule to talk us through some unseen concepts behind the game’s creation. Here, designer Rex Crowle pinpoints key design junctures in Tearway’s development, illustrated through exclusive images from the game’s early days.

1. A colorful dungeon crawler?

“This is a very early concept from Tearaway. The game went through many changes, and switched genres a few times while we worked out the best way to use the paper-world setting. At this stage it was more like a colorful dungeon-crawler.

“As we’d only just finished making LittleBigPlanet games, you can probably see a more LBP-style look here, with lots of color and pop-culture items combined together.”

2. A collage look perhaps?

“Another very early concept from me. I feel I was starting to put LittleBigPlanet behind me more by this point. The colorful collage look has transformed into something more atmospheric, and closer to the more magical and mysterious world that we finally ended up with.

“At this stage it’s not really very papery, it’s more like someone has cut up sheets of painted paper and made this collage. I was actually quite inspired by the art of Eric Carle. You’ll probably know him as the creator of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and many other children’s picture-books.”

3. What about pop-up books?

“In those early concepts you could quite easily miss that it’s supposed to be a game made out of paper, it just wasn’t bold enough. If we were going to make a game entirely out of paper, it needed to be instantly recognisable as a paper-world, with paper-characters, that look and sound papery, as that would inspire us to make uniquely papery-gameplay.

“So we met paper craft designers and learnt about how pop-up books are designed and made. This concept by Men Lu was from a period when we tore everything up, and established a much stronger style – using the bold colors of construction paper and removing all other texture. So that the world was much closer to how it might look if you tried to make it in real-life. A very different type of photo-realism for a game!

4. Meet Oola

“Any adventure needs an explorer willing to go on the journey. Originally our explorer was this little character called Oola, shown here in a concept by Men Lu. It’s a very sweet character, and I always loved the little bird-like feet that he had given to the design, especially as it ran around the world, possibly in search of some shoes.

“Unfortunately we found it hard to create the more expressive animations for the character, as a lot of their body was hidden away. So after a series of redesigns and brainstorms from the whole art-team, we created iota – the paper messenger, and then soon afterwards, atoi.”

5. How does weather work in a paper world?

“When you’re making a world from one single material, it creates all kinds of interesting questions that you have to try and answer. Does fire hurt you if it’s made out of paper? Does paper-rain make you wet? We had a lot of fun arguing about things like this.

“These concepts I put together for our genius engine-coder Mark, as we were figuring out how papery-weather would be represented in the world. I still really wish we’d been able to add those papery rays seen radiating out of the clouds, especially if you could have climbed up them!”

6. A comic book design bible

“When making a game full of ideas that everyone on the team are contributing to, it’s really important to make sure everyone is still making the same game together! The traditional way to do that is to have a design-doc, which collates everything together and contains every feature of the game in perfect detail. Obviously that makes it incredibly tedious and nobody reads it, which kind of makes it obsolete!

“That’s definitely what I learnt in the early days of making Tearaway, and I soon switched to making little comic-books (like this example page) or videos, to explain quickly the overall atmosphere of what we were trying to achieve, and then everyone on the team could work on their own elements to get us there.”

7. Getting the camera right

“Another page from one of my ‘design-doc’ comic-books. This is taken from a longer-section about using the camera in Tearaway to reward players for exploring and recording what they find.

“This feature was something that David ‘Dave Smith’ Smith really championed, and I loved how much it made you want to engage more with the world, as well as show other players what you’d found.

“This camera feature was added long before we added all the other ways of customising your character and the world around them, and became such an important feature for sharing their own personal journeys.”

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StarBlood Arena Has Gone Gold! Meet Elsa, Blade & Dregg

Hey all you bombardiers and bomberdettes! Quick — name something that our BloodBux coins and StarBlood Arena have in common.

Gold! That’s right folks – StarBlood Arena has gone gold!

Now that the madness is underway, here’s what you’re gonna see starting day one.

Every single one of the death-dealing ships is fitted with their own personal arsenal of self-recharging smack-down:

• Two gun systems with crazy alternate firing modes! Protip: Manage your ammo by switching between these systems and never be caught with an empty clip.
• A unique heavy weapon that hits your enemies like a sledgehammer filled with dynamite. It charges up as you both take and deal any damage, so the more you dish out, the more your enemies eat it!
• Protective shields, of course, for getting’ into the fray. Hey, it ain’t called StarDodging Arena…
• Big ‘ol rocket engines that tear through the maps. And if that ain’t fast enough, you also have an afterburner to boost your butt outta tight situations.
• Your Missile systems make things go bye-bye by turning them into flaming wreckage. You can get your missiles to home-in on your target by just staring them down for a second or two. Not every pilot has lock-on missiles, but they have other tricks up their sleeves (and in the chamber).
• And just when you think your ship can’t hold any more, you also have high-explosive Proximity Mines to drop the bomb on your foes. You’re welcome.

Did I mention that you can mod the heck outta these babies? But ya gotta earn them mods, slick!

Now, we blew through a lot of tasty goodness there, but let’s look at some sweet strategy for some of our crafty contenders!

The lovely Elsa in her ship Mandible! She’s a soldier through-and-through. All balance, no weakness.

StarBlood Arena | PlayStation.com

• Elsa’s primary is nice and fast but keep an eye on the heat build-up as you fire. When you’re ready to finish off your prey, switch to her alternate gun – the Thermic Lance and obliterate ‘em with the excess heat you’ve built up, concentrated into a white-hot beam.
• Equip Stasis Mines or use the Slow Fields in the match to your advantage. Your Heavy Hyper Cannon does intense damage over time if you can keep your enemy in its lingering blast radius.
• Don’t be stingy with your missiles! As soon as you get a lock-on, abuse that naughty missile trigger! And then, slam that Binary Launcher mod to let you spam even more missiles faster!
• Creep into a tight spot with some nasties and let the sheer area-blasting coverage of the Hyper Cannon clean it out.

How about Blade and his ship Raptor? He’s the fastest assassin around!

• Using his ship-slashing Wing Blades, this killer’s ship shoots forward faster than a missile. This attack comes in handy to speed out of danger and missile lock-ons.
• The Assassin’s primary is weaker at a distance, but up close, quite nasty. He’s all about getting up-close and personal.
• Blade is fast on the trigger, and his ship has a special advantage that allows him to switch weapons in half the time of others.
• Your Swarm Missiles are powerful as well… a swarm of missiles! If you’re skilled enough, landing all of these will almost completely wipe out your opponent.
• The Assassin’s Heavy Weapon is aptly named “the Black Death”. It’s a damage-over-time cloud that infects other ships on touch – and is communicable for its duration! Time to spread some love!
• Combo the Wing Blades with Black Death for some hit-and-run insta-kill magic!

Oh snap, son! It’s Dregg and his ship Deadeye. Few can escape the targeting sights built into his cyber-eyes! He’s one bad-ass sniper!

• Your primary gun is perfect for long-range pick-off kills and enraging your enemies with vulture-like kill-steals!
• Lure your opponents into tight corners, spin around and launch that Singularity Missile – a large, lethal slow moving bubble of doom.
• Dregg’s heavy weapon is the dreaded “Ghost Gun”. It shoots across maps. It shoots through walls. It kills fools dead. Combine this action with Doppler 9000 or Tracker mods to see through walls and double up that effectiveness!
• Dregg’s ship is mine heavy! Spread them around and lay some traps while you move to a distance and pick ‘em off.
• Don’t forget that the Singularity Missile blocks shots as it tumbles forward. If you see an opportune moment, shoot it with your guns to make it detonate, causing a massive blast.

You want more? Well, StarBlood Arena will be open for business on April 11th, so start practicing your smack talking!

And we’re just getting warmed up! Stay tuned to PlayStation.Blog for more sneaky tips and upcoming announcements for StarBlood Arena!

Love and rockets!

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Destiny 2 Coming to PS4 September 8, Watch the Reveal Trailer

Hey, PlayStation Nation.

DeeJ from Bungie here with some exciting news: Destiny 2 has been officially revealed!

We’ve begun a conversation about our next adventure together. There is so much more to say before the time comes to reunite the Guardians to reclaim their city from the most dreaded threat it has ever faced. Fortunately, we have until September 8 to dive into the details.

This is a new beginning for every player. We know you have questions about the worlds you’ll explore, the enemies you’ll fight, the powers you’ll master, and (as Cayde promised) the loot you’ll earn. We’ll also show off the exclusive content you’ve come to expect on PlayStation. All will be answered in the weeks and months to come. It should be a hell of a ride.

Destiny 2 | PlayStation.com

Up next, we’ll take a look at the gameplay. Of course you want to see gameplay! Your first chance to see Destiny 2 in action will happen on May 18. We hope to have you all in the audience for that livestream.

This summer will be your chance to get your hands on a controller. You’ll be invited to help us prepare for launch by joining our open Beta. Players who pre-order Destiny 2 will be the first to jump into action, but we’ll be calling on all Guardians to give their feedback.

There will be so many other stops to make along the way. The journey that leads to Destiny 2 will circle the globe and span the solar system. We’ve only fired the first shot.

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WipEout Omega Collection Coming to PS4 on June 6th

What kind of pilot are you? Feisar? Auricom? Mirage? Piranha?

It’s almost time to join your favorite team once again, climb aboard your ship, and push your Anti-Gravity Racing skills to their absolute limits.

Yes, WipEout is back and coming to PlayStation 4 on June 6 with the WipEout Omega Collection, priced at $39.99 USD MSRP/$49.99 CAD MSRP. Featuring all the tracks & ships from WipEout HD, Fury and 2048 together for the first time, WipEout Omega Collection looks utterly stunning with remastered tracks and ships at 1080P on PS4 and dynamic 4K on PS4 Pro, all targeting 60FPS.

And with fully remastered sound effects, plus the addition of 28 licensed music tracks, WipEout sounds better than ever before. Pilot your favorite ships to killer tunes from Swedish House Mafia, Chemical Brothers and The Prodigy.

In WipEout Omega Collection, you’ll be able to race across 9 different modes, including tournaments, speed laps, time trials, Zone mode, and of course career mode. Plus, a full racebox mode will an absolute treat for WipEout fans looking to tweak and customize their own races.

If you are new to WipEout, where have you been? Join the Anti-Gravity league and play with your friends, either with split screen local multiplayer, or race online with up to 8 Anti-Gravity Racing league pilots.You’ll be able to line up on the starting grid on June 6, but starting today WipEout Omega Collection is available for pre-order on the PlayStation store.

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Plague Road Coming to PS4, PS Vita

Hey guys, it’s been awhile since I’ve written a post for Playstation Blog. But today I have exciting news.

Death Tales only came out in beta for PS4 two weeks ago. But we are getting ready to submit our new game into QA this month.

Set around a city consumed from within by disease, Plague Road tells a story of a lone doctor who having once abandoned their home, now returns in search of survivors. Over the course of the game, players will learn how the city fell victim to the growing sickness within its walls, why the Plague Doctor left, and what brought them back – in a tale of regret and redemption.

Plague Road was a game that Conrad Zimmerman and I came up with one evening at his place. I have a certain obsession with plague doctors and am really good at making turn-based strategy games, and Conrad loves roguelikes. So we combined those two game genres to make something new.

My issue with roguelikes and why I can’t get into them is because I don’t like losing all my progress and starting from zero each time. So in Plague Road you will have a farm where you will be able to unlock new buildings (by finding NPCs in the world and doing quests for them), upgrade and see the progress you’ve made. So even if you mess up while venturing out into the world, you will always be improving your farm.

When you find survivors in this world, you can choose to bring them with you to help reach the city or you can retire them into buildings, which will unlock new skills. On the topic of skills, you can see in our new trailer that some of those will be quite powerful, but will require a lot of stamina – so you must be wise about when you use them. Also each survivor you collect will be unique in terms of their stats and initial skills. You’ll constantly be exploring to find the best survivors for your party.

Don’t be reckless when you bring survivors out on the road – if they die it’s permanent. But don’t fear, you can always find new ones. The only character who you will not lose due to death is the Plague Doctor.

Plague Road will be available for cross buy on PS4 and PS Vita, with support for PS4 Pro and PS TV. The game will also have a limited physical edition published by Limited Run Games. We don’t have the exact release date yet, but it will be soon!

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PS Plus: Free Games for April 2017

Happy springtime, PlayStation Nation! The PlayStation Plus lineup for April is here and we’re really excited for this special month of great multiplayer games. Whether you’re looking for couch co-op comradery or fierce online action, we’ve got great some great picks for you this month.

We couldn’t contain our excitement for Drawn To Death, so we let the news out early that this will be a launch title for PS Plus in April. From the acclaimed developer David Jaffe, Drawn To Death challenges the shooter genre with unconventional gameplay mechanics that bring this third-person shooter/brawler to life. The game takes place entirely inside the pages of a high school kid’s notebook where hand-drawn characters and levels come to life.

We’ve also got the excellent couch co-op title Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime. Pilot a neon battleship through a colorful galaxy by yourself or with up to three others. Through teamwork, triumph over the evil forces of Anti-Love, rescue kidnapped space-bunnies, and avoid a vacuumy demise. Protip: you can also play this game online with others through PS4’s Share Play feature.

Full lineup:

• Drawn To Death, PS4
• Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, PS4
• Invizimals: the Lost Kingdom, PS3
• Alien Rage – Extended Edition, PS3
• 10 Second Ninja, PS Vita (crossbuy with PS4)
• Curses ‘n Chaos, PS Vita (crossbuy on PS4)

Enjoy April’s lineup, and we’ll see you online!

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Akiba’s Beat Launches on PS4, PS Vita May 16

OK, so Akiba’s Beat! This game has been the source of much confusion, and we’ve gotten many questions about it, so I’m here to set the record straight and give you all the information you’ve been seeking. H-Hopefully. (*anime-style hand-behind-head facial emote with blushed cheeks*)

First off, release date! We have one now. The game will be arriving on both PS4 and PS Vita, physically and digitally, on May 16 in North America. If you plan to get the game physically be sure you pre-order, because pre-order copies will be shipping with a pocket plushie of the game’s lovable (?) “ugly-cute” mascot, Pinkun (at participating retailers while supplies last).

Another big one: “How does this relate to Akiba’s Trip: Undead & Undressed, XSEED’s previous Akiba-related game release?” The answer is… it doesn’t!

…Well, not entirely, anyway. It is from the same developer, Acquire, and it does share the same setting, but everything else is completely new: the story, the characters, the gameplay style, and even the tone! For those who don’t know (or can’t tell from the name), Akiba’s Trip: Undead & Undressed was a bit of a risque brawler we published back in 2014, tasking players with stripping the clothes off of vampires so they melt in the sun. It earned a well-deserved M rating from the ESRB, and was an awesome game with a great tongue-in-cheek sense of humor and a heaping helping of Japanese cultural satire. (And is available now on PS4, PS3, and Vita; buy today, don’t delay!)

Akiba’s Beat, on the other hand, is a (mostly) non-risque action RPG that tasks players with traversing surreal “Delusionscape” dungeons and fighting monsters in action-packed battle scenes. It has a much longer and more complex narrative, a bigger cast of all-new characters, a more involved and nuanced battle system, a more narrowly focused satirical tone (still satirical, but less in-your-face about it), and – most notably – no stripping. None! This one was rated T by the ESRB, and is decidedly much tamer than its Akiba forebear.

What you’re getting here is a story-focused mystery about disenfranchised millennials trying to understand the world we live in today, set in a faithful recreation of Tokyo’s Akihabara district – the so-called “Electric Town” most renowned these days for its bevy of game and anime shops, maid cafes, arcades, used goods retailers, and electronics specialty shops. The cast of characters is, as you might imagine, an eclectic representation of the types of people you might find in such a place, including a jobless nerd with an aversion to responsibility, an aloof visitor from afar, a junior pop idol with a can-do attitude, an emo teenage fanfic-writer who’s too cool for school, a “Gothic Lolita” with a privileged upbringing, a world-weary ex-programmer filled with self-doubt, and the ever-present anime staple of the childhood friend with a conflicted heart.

Oh, and it’s fully voiced. As in, FULLY voiced. As in, there are nearly 22,000 lines of voice-acting on offer here, from over 180 different unique characters, presented in both English and Japanese. And our English voice cast features the likes of Chris Patton, Erica Mendez, Tia Ballard, Robbie Daymond, Cherami Leigh, Ed Bosco, Ray Chase, Mick Wingert, Cristina Vee, Todd Haberkorn, and Brittney Karbowski appearing in her first ever video game role as the game’s mascot character, Pinkun – among many, many other talented people, of course!

So, yeah. This is a big game, and we’re doing everything we can to make sure you guys get your money’s worth out of it. So go preorder today! The streets of Akihabara are calling your name…

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Watch 9 Minutes of Ghost In the Shell

As a filmmaker with an intense interest in visual storytelling I have long had great respect for Ghost In The Shell and the anime feature that it inspired. That film is a milestone in the history of modern cinema given the way it blends a quintessentially Japanese milieu with popular science-fiction tropes. It set the standard for a futuristic global aesthetic and is simply spectacular.

To translate all of this into a live-action film, I first returned to the visual language of the original manga, which really caught my imagination. That imagery has enraptured fans all over the world and it was the cornerstone for us as we developed the movie. We didn’t want to copy it frame for frame, but we also didn’t want to reinvent it from the ground up since it is so essential to how fans experience the story. My goal was to build a bigger film around the source material while honoring the heart and philosophical essence, as well as the iconic images that have made the story universally popular. It was important to me to keep so many things that, as a fan, I was obsessed with, like the Geisha, the trash truck and elements of the Hanka Corporation.

In addition to the visual elements, the other critical component of the story is clearly Major, who is powerful, sexual and just a fundamentally exciting character. Her duality of being both human and a machine combined with the intricacies of her character make her extremely intoxicating to me as a filmmaker. Although there are conversations about humanity, technology, and dualism, our film is primarily a journey of discovery. Major is in pursuit of a bad guy, but she finds herself asking who this guy is and what his motivations are. As she follows each lead, she starts to understand that her path and his path are closer than she thought.
And as we went down the path of creating a new incarnation of this lauded property, it was also important for us to honor the ongoing legacy of Ghost In The Shell. We wanted to be a part of this line of storytellers, and we wanted them to be a part of our project. The vision for this film was to create a multicultural, multi-ethnic future world, but not one that is pristine or idyllic, but rather one in which the lines of humanity have blurred so much that even people and technology have combined to create something new and not yet completely defined.
And that’s the heart of this film, as well as the original manga: Who are we? What makes us human? How do we define humanity? These are the questions Major is seeking to answer, along with the rest of us.

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What’s the Story with What Remains of Edith Finch?

A few years ago, Giant Sparrow made a whimsical little game called The Unfinished Swan, which I (and many others) loved. A couple years later, they revealed their new project: a decidedly darker experience titled What Remains of Edith Finch. We’re nearing Edith’s release on PS4 (April 25 as part of the excellent Play Collective lineup), so I jumped at the opportunity to play a short section of the game and talk to its creative director, Ian Dallas.

If you played The Unfinished Swan, you might be surprised when you start playing What Remains of Edith Finch. If Swan was a storybook, Finch is a dusty old diary, passed from generation to generation and filled with mad ramblings, inspiring insights, and everything in between. It’s a different experience than their debut, but it’s still very much a Giant Sparrow game.

“They’re both about the experience of the unknown and the sense of the sublime.”

“There are definitely some shared themes,” Dallas remarks. “Even though The Unfinished Swan and What Remains of Edith Finch look very different, they’re both games that are, at some level, about the experience of the unknown and the sense of the sublime.”

I played a short portion of the game that introduced Lewis Finch — Edith’s brother — who had all-too-recently departed this mortal plane. Lewis’ daily routine as a factory worker made for an equally routine gameplay segment, using my controller’s right analog stick to repeatedly move fish into place for a guillotine to lop off their heads before tossing them onto a nearby conveyor belt.

Right around the time I started to empathize with the monotony of Lewis’ professional life, his imagination began to take over. What began as a simple line maze gradually gave way to a fully realized imaginary realm where Lewis set sail on the open sea and ventured to faraway lands. Fish continued to pile up in one corner of the screen for processing, but as I became more invested in Lewis’ imaginary world the act of head-chopping took a mental back seat — my brain essentially shifted that process into autopilot until I forgot I was even doing it.

Dallas explains how Giant Sparrow built this bond of mundanity between Lewis and the player: “From the beginning, the goal was to make an experience that reminded people of monotonous jobs or experiences they’ve had in their life. But obviously in a game you can’t be too monotonous, so we tried to have a light touch where players would get accustomed to doing this action (chopping fish heads).

“What we found is there’s something unique about the way people approach video games: it’s very goal-oriented. So when you give players the goal of processing the fish so they don’t pile up, you’re actually able to kind of divide the mind in half. One of your hands is busy doing this one action, and it’s just enough that it just kind maxes out. We tried to put Lewis’ story — someone who’s at a boring job daydreaming so much that it overwhelms him — into something that felt like what the player was actually doing.”

“It’s about the feeling of being in a space and a universe that you don’t fully understand.”

A frequent question in discussions about What Remains is where it lands on the spectrum of horror. One could be forgiven for assuming Giant Sparrow has ventured into the realm of Resident Evil and Silent Hill, but that isn’t quite the case:

“Personally, I feel like a horror game is designed to scare you,” explains Dallas. “This game, ultimately, isn’t designed to scare you. It’s more about a sense of ominous things around you and the feeling of being in a space and a universe that you don’t fully understand. It’s a game that gives you a chance to see the world from a different perspective.”

A trailer for What Remains of Edith Finch, first shown at PlayStation Experience 2016

On the topic of sophomore efforts and the expectations that come with them, Dallas isn’t shy: “I think the biggest piece of learning is that we’re not very good at this. We think we know how to do it, and all we have to do is put it in front of players to know ‘oh man, we’re so wrong.’ I think not being as surprised about it this time helped a lot — having gone through The Unfinished Swan, each of the main areas of the game got redone from scratch at least three times.

“We’re not very good at this.”

“I think the house is the place where things changed the most,” Ian elaborates. “It took us a while to figure out what role it should play in the game. We always wanted it to be something that provided a backbone; the stories are all so crazy and different, and the house would be a way to bring those things together.

“For a long time we thought it should be like a puzzle game, where you’d be looking through these bedrooms and you’d have to like, ‘turn they key on this music box to solve the puzzle’. We ended up scaling a lot of that back because there was already so much going on in people’s heads when they were looking around these bedrooms that we didn’t need to add mechanical detail there. We’re always trying to strip it away to highlight the things that are really working well.”

“I hope players will have a renewed appreciation for how short and amazing our lives are.”

Finally, I asked Ian what he wants players to take away from What Remains of Edith Finch once they’ve experienced its story. I suppose, having just played a portion of it, I shouldn’t have been surprised by his slightly bittersweet response: “I hope players will have a renewed appreciation for how short and amazing our lives are,” he began.

“Along with that, just having a sense of the way that in any given family or relationship, death isn’t the end of everything. I mean, it’s the end for one person, but there are so many people who live on after that, and the way that changes everybody else around them… everything keeps going on without you.”

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