The great beyond

When talking to developers, particularly those who’ve spent years making one game, we’re sometimes moved to ask what possessed them to get into this line of work in the first place. When the clock strikes midnight on December 31, Riv Hester’s Pepper Grinder will enter its ninth year of existence in some form, the idea having originated in 2016. But the seed was planted long before that, when Hester and his father played Donkey Kong Country together. “One of the stages looked like Mayan ruins. There’s a really deep parallax background in that one,” Hester recalls. “My dad and I talked about how we wished we could go back there and explore the rest of the world outside the scope of the game.” Considering how that might be achieved was what first “got the gears turning”.

That speaks to a truth about virtual worlds, or certainly the most absorbing ones: that making a game is not just about considering the space the player occupies, but what exists past those boundaries. When we visit Coal Supper for another look at Thank Goodness You’re Here, developers James Carbutt and Will Todd tell us the game was originally 20–30 hours long; as more details have poured in, the scope has shrunk but the lore has only grown more dense. In a conversation punctuated by laughter, Todd briefly gets serious when citing one major inspiration. He’s the third developer this month to reference Bloodborne, itself a prime example of what happens when you think holistically about the virtual space you’re building, including the bits the player doesn’t get to see.

If you’re really lucky, you’ll have the opportunity to explore that area yourself. In Glassbreakers: Champions Of Moss, developer Polyarc is seizing the chance to showcase more of the world it created in its first two VR outings. The result reflects how deeply the studio invested in Moss, and reminds us that to build a truly captivating virtual setting, you need to think outside the greybox.