New Game+ (Demo)

Reading Einstein’s definition of insanity – “doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results” — you could say that creating an illustrated publication in 2021, titled after a game mode that only a handful of players reach is ludicrous. Video games, after all, constantly brings repetition into play by asking us to do the same thing over and over again — for fun. Certainly, it’s the only medium that has a dedicated mode inviting players to relive the same experience again.

Call us crazy, but there isn’t a single gamer who beat the soul-crushing Dark Souls and hasn’t started New Game+ the second post-game credits finished rolling. It doesn’t have alternative endings like Chrono Trigger, nor does it unlock new areas in the game. So why would anyone want to put himself through another round of torturous misery? Simple: Dark Souls’ games make falling to your death, again and again, fun. And starting a New Game+ playthrough makes it even more difficult...

That is enough to encourage most of us to play another round of our favourite titles. Sometimes it’s the allure of completing all of the achievements. Other times — going after that ‘secret’ ending. Still, New Game+ is all about revisiting the virtual worlds we spent some of our most cherished memories in. And developers know it.

That is why we saw New Game+ fitting for the title of a publication dedicated to the re-examination of some of our favourite games, classic and new. Now that we’re constantly barraged by an endless stream of fresh titles, and the completion rate reached an all-time low, you can call New Game+ an antidote to our throwaway culture.

Ultimately, that’s what we are all about: we select a game, replay it and try to better understand what makes it so damn replayable. And while we can’t offer you alternative endings or secret dialogue lines on these pages, we hope after reading New Game+ you will be encouraged to blow the dust off your favourite cartridge... Not that that old-fart Einstein would understand it.

Ignas Vieversys, Editor of New Game+

Illustrations by Ignas Vieversys

More often than not we tend to get excited seeing how many more polygons captain Price or our moustachioed plumber got this time around.

It’s natural, then, that we, visual creatures, often forget to acknowledge the evolution of sounds and music that make each visit to Lordran all the more bearable.

Now there are rhythm-based games, like BPM: Bullets Per Minute, that allow players to shoot hellspawns and play Guitar Hero — all at the same time.

For less sadistic tendencies, Austin Wintory’s Grammynominated soundtrack of Journey will leave no one skeptical.

Still, these games are rare. That’s why every so often we need a mindboggling reminder that sound is half of the experience and that we’re beyond the wildest dreams of Ennio Morricone.

What’s a better way, then, to appreciate the artistry that goes into video game music than to do that wearing a fedora and solving mysteries of The Big Bang? Even better: with your every click accompanied by a real-life jazz orchestra.

Turns out, making that possible is an equally complex science. “Often musicians were playing parts that someone else will later play their part around.

That leaves a lot of them playing solos and us bolting them like puzzle pieces onto the next

Before there were stars, game developers used to fill their virtual worlds with synthetic music. Now, we have entered the age when more and more indie studios are pushing past their modest budget to give their debut games an orchestra treatment.

Ignas Vieversys talks to Skillbard’s creative duo to find out what it takes to layer the intimate beginnings of the universe with smooth jazz. part,” explains Skillbard studio’s Tom Carrell, 34, and Vincent Oliver, 38. The creative duo that spent the last four years making sure Feral Cat Den’s critically acclaimed Genesis Noir got the musical treatment project deserves.

Of course, jazz wouldn’t be jazz in the traditional sense if not for its principal

element — improvisation.

The ingredient evident in the creation of our universe, as far as Feral Cat Den’s story is concerned.

“We’d always try to keep it as basic as we can,” Tom says, Vincent taking it over from there, “because we knew that when we’d get to the studio, there will be some room for improvisation and embellishment.

That’s how you get that natural jazz feeling.”

Kristofer Maddigan, 43, the mastermind behind Cuphead’s musical score, which became the first video game soundtrack to ever top the Billboard Jazz Charts, agrees with Tom. “What real players bring to [game’s] soundtrack - you can’t program that.” 12 million concurrent views of “The Music of Cuphead” series,

behind-the-scenes footage from Cuphead’s recording sessions, needs no explanation, then.

Although using professional ensembles to make a game’s score stand out is not that uncommon today - particularly, after Cuphead’s success paved the way - the unpredictable current climate doesn’t seem the right fit for costly spending. “Just to have things breathe, as a live group playing together in the same room,” Tom says, “that would’ve been the ideal way to do it.”

Much to their surprise, the music industry was already ahead of the challenges presented by the pandemic. “Even before Covid orchestras used to do a lot of remote recording,” Vincent tells us.

“I think it’s pretty normal today for a TV studio in LA to phone in all the way to Budapest. So, the whole remote system was pretty much all set up.”

Looking back, both Skillbard’s duo and Cuphead’s Kristofer seem to share the same relief after successfully handling these Herculean feats. And though Kris doesn’t plan to be working on another game soundtrack anytime soon, all three musicians agree with one thing — more indie developers should follow in their studios’ lead. “If more studios took same risks, I’d think we would end up with more interesting projects.”

We couldn’t agree more.+ Read the extended version of this article here.

02

Illustrations by Ignas Vieversys

Italo Calvino’s fairy-tale imagery and quirkiness seem like an infinite pool of ideas. And yet, Feral Cat Den’s Genesis Noir is only the second game to be inspired

by Calvino’s inventive storytelling. Ignas Vieversys tries to untangle this mystery.

L

ooking at Genesis Noir‘s inspirations, we can‘t help but notice Italo Calvino‘s name on the list. Despite being one of the first true postmodern authors, famous for his puzzlelike narrative structure and fairy-tale imagery, we’re not particularly gobsmacked there are only that “many” games influenced by his prose.

Having written so many fictional short stories and entire novels to fill one’s entire bookshelf, Calvino might be every sci-fi writer’s writer.

When it comes to inspiring games, though, Jonathan Blow, the celebrated game developer, came up with what might be the most fitting explanation of why Calvino’s work is not the first place game developers seeking inspiration go to: “If you’ll try and copy the structure of Invisible Cities [to your game],” one of the author’s most popular works, “you’re just going to destroy yourself.”

Mind that this was said by the guy who was called ‘the Thomas Pynchon of gaming’ by the Guardian — another acclaimed, reclusive postmodernist whose name is not existent anywhere besides his own pages (and that one Paul Thomas Anderson 03 The Genesis Noir Issue

film). Same developer whose debut, critically acclaimed title Braid was possibly the first video game that managed to translate Calvino‘s mind-bending ways of narrating a story onto the screen and make sense.

So, hearing how Blow playfully (but somewhat correctly) assumes people that “if the wouldn’t internet have the existed attention back span to read then, something like Invisible Cities, before an entire live audience — it’s no surprise, then, why Jonathan is the only game developer who’s name comes up when searching for the “video games inspired by Italo Calvino.”

At least, that was the case before Genesis Noir creative lead Evan Anthony decided to base his next project on Calvino’s more easily digestible Cosmicomics, a collection of twelve philosophical, pseudoscientific short stories released more than half a century ago.

Reading them – from the opening “The Distance of the Moon”, a story about a love triangle among people who used to jump between the Earth and the Moon, which

not surprising is also full of cottage cheese ; to “The Form of Space” in which unnamed narrator is falling through space in trajectory parallel to that of a beautiful woman, or one about a intergalactic game of marbles back before the universe had formed much more than particles (“Games Without End”) — it starts to make sense why the nonlinear structure of Cosmicomics made for the right fit for Feral Cat Den’s Genesis Noir which plays on the same infinite mysteries of the universe.

While Blow might be the first indie developer able to decode complex, postmodern narratives and bring them to our screens without lowering their highbrowness, Genesis Noir is the latest testament to the riches of Italo Calvino‘s prose which many believe to be ahead of its time.

Possible contender for “inspired by Calvino” sticker, you ask? Our chips are on Six Memos for the Next Millennium. Don’t get too excited, though: seeing that we get one “Calvino-inspired” adventure per decade, we might just be waiting for another ten years.+

Read the extended version of this article here.