Work hard, play hard

Should videogames always be fun? It’s a question that countless developers have made cases for and against over the years. That’s not a dig: no-one would judge That Dragon, Cancer to be a rollicking old time, for instance, but there’s no doubt that it’s a powerful exercise in empathy through play. A few of this month’s Hype crop appear to be chewing over this question again – some more productively than others, perhaps.

Murder By Numbers (p44) posits a wonderfully fresh take on the detective game genre: in this ’90s murder mystery title, you figure out whodunnit by solving Picross-esque nonogram puzzles to uncover clues. For director Ed Fear, it’s about striking the right tone – often through manga artist Hato Moa’s vibrant character art – to deliver the CSI fantasy without the grisly subject matter weighing things down too much. Everybody wants to experience the thrill of being a detective, sure, but we doubt anybody fancies the lasting psychological damage and drinking problem.

Then there’s Landlord’s Super (p50). Set in Thatcher’s Britain, it’s a simulator in which you fix up a council house and rent it out to profit from the ongoing housing crisis. It seems set to communicate the mundane, often sociopolitically grim realities of being a landlord (there’s a lot of screwing doors into their frames) while also adding humorous details to lighten the mood – drinking beer at your local will colour your urine, which you can then use to stain your concrete. As you do.

From what we’ve seen so far, there’s no such glimmer of whimsy in the monotonous deliveryman role that Death Stranding (p28) offers us – well, you can relieve yourself on things, but Kojima’s taking his meditiation on human connection a little too seriously for our liking. Still, we have yet to complete the story, and we firmly believe that games don’t always have to be strictly enjoyable to be significant. But you know what they say, Kojima: all work and no play makes Sam a dull boy.