Kill Screen Magazine's Blog, page 261

Explore the limits of sight and empathy in Beyond Eyes

Beyond Eyes finally has a firm release window and its first comprehensive trailer after being showcased as part of Miscrosoft’s E3 press event. The brain child of Sherida Halatoe under her one-woman studio, tiger & squid, Beyond Eyes follows a young girl on her journey to find her lost cat in a world she can't see. It's to be published by Team17, and is slated to launch sometime this summer, arriving first on Xbox One followed by a PC version later in the year.

As previously reported, Halatoe’s game makes use of an impressionistic style that allows the world of Beyond Eyes to fade in and out of focus based on protagonist Rae's interaction with it through her other senses. It’s somewhat reminiscent of Giant Sparrow’s The Unfinished Swan in this way; another game that took a surreal, painterly approach to world building.

In an interview earlier this year at GDC, Halatoe said that, more than just making a beautiful game, she wanted to create one that dealt with empathy. As a result, in Beyond Eyes, Rae isn't an avatar without agency. Instead, she reacts to the world around her depending on how you interact with her. "If you force her into dangerous situations she feels really uncomfortable, her body language shuts down, she's very terrified," Halatoe explained. "At the same time if you show her nice things she gets more confident and she feels happy."

In this way, the player is meant to explore the world with Rae, helping her along and experiencing the world as she might interpret it rather than by controlling her.

You can find out more about Beyond Eyes on its website. Screenshots are below.

There's a tortoise in the new Firewatch trailer and it is everything

After over a year of teases, our tantalizing glimpses at Campo Santo's Firewatch are finally getting more concrete, with the latest trailer hinting at a missing persons plot previously unspecified. Led by ex-Telltale, Lucasarts, and Irrational Games designers, Firewatch will focus on interpersonal relationships and atmosphere. As Henry, a new fire lookout in a wild Wyoming national park, you must (literally) learn the ropes on the job. Luckily, your seemingly trusty supervisor Delilah is just a walkie-talkie away, and more than willing to help out.

In the new trailer, we see the relationship between Delilah and Henry blossom a bit more. Campo Santo previously hinted that, depending on your dialogue choices, your affinity for Delilah could take many different turns. What I'm trying to say is: things might get a little steamy in this fire department (please don't think about that pun for too long—and remember that only you can prevent forest fires). "I don't talk to the other lookouts as much as I talk to you," she says in a husky, yet vulnerable voice. "Not in the same way."

Then, shit gets real. The two girls we've previously seen in the gameplay demo released during GDC are apparently missing—and you're the last person who saw them. Then, shit gets even realer: someone is purposefully sabotaging your equipment, and Delilah is as confused and concerned about it as you are. Then, shit gets the realest, when an unknown entity decides to make a home out of your very own look out tower that's some miles away from your current location.

you look down at Sir Tortleton III (...) and his ghoulish green grin 

But, honestly, the most notable feature in this trailer is neither the budding relationship with Delilah, nor the potential kidnapping. It's the tortoise. Midway through, an adorably slow, happy little tortoise squirms around in your hand. "You think you'll take to it? Being out here?" Delilah asks, as you look down at Sir Tortleton III (he has a name now—I chose it) and his ghoulish green grin. Um, yah, Delilah. I'm gonna like it here just fine.

The trailer also comes with the announcement that Firewatch will be available on PS4. So you can enjoy your tortoise with the power of NEXT GEN as well as on Steam for Windows, Mac, and Linux. You can expect a release sometime this year.

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UPDATE: Apparently, we have Firewatch animator James Benson to thank for Sir Tortleton III, as evidenced by this absurdly adorable gif he tweeted out.

Drink, do ballet and play Viking Chess in the park with us June 17th

Looking for an excuse to drink and play some fun outdoor games? Look no further than our event this Wednesday, June 17th. 

Clutch hands with us and weep: The Last Guardian returns

Cast aside your cynicism, O internet. 

Look, everyone, you can shoot sh*t in No Man's Sky

The grandest videogame ever conceived has destructible trees.

Here is everything that happened on the first day of E3, and we are so tired

Takes, fresh from the oven.

Ashen is every fantasy game we have ever loved

The lonely beasts of Ashen are beautiful and terrible in its new E3 trailer.

The dadification of videogames will continue with Dishonored 2

Doom SnapMap will let you create maps without having to code

If you're not busy snapping chest bones in Doom 4 once it's out you can snap together your own maps and game modes. And let's be clear: "snap" is apparently the keyword here. It alludes to the apparent accessibility of the game's SnapMap feature. The boast from Doom 4's executive producer Marty Stratton is that "without any past experience or special expertise, any player can easily snap together and customize intricate maps."

Here's the translation: you can throw a bunch of oddly-shaped rooms together to make your own, better version of Doom 4. The appeal here is SnapMap's module-based map editor. From a bird's-eye-view, you scroll a menu to pick a room shape and plonk it down wherever you want inside the voidspace you're given to work within. And, yes, these modules snap together if you want them to, so you don't have to spend hours trying to line up contours by the millimeter.

a bridge between creative desire and technical know-how. 

Once you've got a general outline of your map, you can head inside it with a 3D view, adding the usual Martian military facility decoration such as explosive barrels, metal crates, and burst gas pipes. Hopefully you'll be able to change the color palette to make it a little less grey and brown too. Regardless, at least there's some room to experiment on account of granting us the ability to edit game logic. Instead of programming with code, in SnapMap you can drag-and-drop pre-defined triggers, behaviors, and events to give your map a little bit of life. Or you can go a bit deeper and fiddle with custom commands to create new game maps and modes that can then be tried and tested with online players at the press of a button.

Of course, the community-based level editing that SnapMap enables is nothing new to the Doom series. Despite the original Doom games being released in the early '90s, fans are creating new maps and tools for them to this day. Only last month "Brutal Doom"—one of the most popular Doom mods—got a new release, further ramping up the gore levels and give-a-fuck attitude by letting you kick severed limbs and heads, and rip demons in two with your bare hands.

But Brutal Doom isn't representative of the entire voluminous oddity that is the community-made content of Doom and Doom II. There's a Doom visual novel editor, a selfie stick mod, and so many bizarre maps that only a bot is capable of trawling them all (and even then it might not keep up). The appeal has and always will be the abstract level design possible with the original Doom format as well as the ease of swapping out 2D sprites with new, wilder iterations.

But what Doom has lacked over the years is a bridge between creative desire and technical know-how. That's what SnapMap aims to resolve through its ease of use. As to whether the Doom 4 base it is being spread upon will allow for the more colorful aspects of Doom modding to thrive, well... one can only hope. 

Creepy digital ghosts will keep you company in Fullbright's Tacoma

Gone Home gets zero-gravity.