The message is the medium

To give a game the best possible start, developers and publishers must consider how to put their best foot forward long before its actual release. Communication has never been more crucial: at the concept stage, creators can no longer simply consider how to explain their game to players via tutorials and such like; the messaging surrounding it is equally important, if not more so. It says much that a lot of self-styled ‘indie’ games – and we continue to think carefully about how we use that term – now have publishers attached. Even if they’re not blessed with the resources of an EA or a Ubisoft, there are more people involved in telling you what a game is than ever before. (We recognise our own role in that process, of course.)

One way to manage expectations is to let players in long before a game is finished. Early Access has transformed the way many of us experience videogames, and how developers shape them. Dubium (p40), a sciencefiction social-deduction multiplayer game, is pitched as Among Us meets Dead By Daylight: a combination that sets certain expectations, and the game is generally happy to meet them. To attract a healthy userbase, Korean developer Mumo Studio has a few tricks up its sleeve; to sustain it, the studio will doubtless scrutinise how players respond to its less familiar elements.

We stay in Korea for Little Devil Inside (p34) – a surprise choice to close a State Of Play showcase, certainly, but what a delight to see this offbeat adventure resurface after a year. Rather than focus on its action elements, developer Neostream opted to highlight the game’s tilt-shifted world map segments – and we catch up with the studio to find out why that was so important.

Few developers understand the value of communication as keenly as FromSoftware. Elden Ring brings back the messaging system from the Dark Souls series, while offering so much more besides. Our impressions, based on more than 20 hours of play, begin over the page.