We wake up in a dark chamber, surrounded by corpses and rubble, and quickly find ourselves locked in combat with a gigantic monster. You could be forgiven for raising an eyebrow: the opening moments of Blasphemous 2 mirror its predecessor almost beat for beat. As we duke it out with the tutorial boss, a jester-like figure wielding a spiked cartwheel, we sink back into the first game’s Dark Souls-inspired combat loop: dodge telegraphed attacks, carefully time swigs from your healing flasks to stay alive, memorise animation timings and launch counters. Just as in FromSoftware’s action-RPG series, your progression through the harsh world of Cvstodia is measured by unlocking shortcuts and reaching checkpoints, here represented by elaborate prie-dieux. Yet if Blasphemous 2 starts out in familiar territory, it soon spreads its wings. And, as we find out, its foundations have surprisingly little in common with its predecessor.
“We threw the codebase [of Blasphemous] into the trash,” Mauricio García, CEO and studio director of The Game Kitchen, says bluntly. The Seville-based indie studio doubled its headcount thanks to the success of the first game, allowing the team to spend 18 months rebuilding its tools from scratch. “This time around, our focus was: ‘How high can we go now that we have way more resources, and way more experience?’”
Esta historia es de la edición August 2023 de Edge UK.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 8500 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor ? Conectar
Esta historia es de la edición August 2023 de Edge UK.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 8500 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles
Anyone familiar with the concept of kitbashing is already halfway to understanding what Tomas Sala’s open-world builder is all about.
Children Of The Sun
René Rother’s acrid revenge thriller – an action game with its limbs broken and forcibly rearranged into the shape of a spatial puzzler – is at once a bonafide original and an unlikely throwback. Cast your eyes right and you wouldn’t blink if we told you this was a forgotten Grasshopper Manufacture game from the early PS3 era (we won’t be at all surprised if this finds a spot on Suda51’s end-of-year list).
Post Script
What does Rise Of The Ronin say for PS5 exclusivity?
Rise Of The Ronin
Falling in battle simply switches control to the next person up, and then quick revive fixes everything
Post Script
The pawn and the pandemic
Dragon's Dogma 2
The road from Vernworth to Bakbattahl is scenic but arduous. Ignore the dawdling mobs of goblins, and duck beneath the chanting harpies that circle on the currents overhead, and even moving at a hurried clip it is impossible for a party of four to complete the journey by nightfall.
BLUE MANCHU
How enforced early retirement eventually led Jonathan Chey back to System Shock
THE MAKING 0F.... AMERICAN ARCADIA
How a contrast of perspectives added extra layers to a side-scrolling platform game
COMING IN TO LAND
The creator of Spelunky, plus a super-group of indie developers, have spent the best part of a decade making 50 games. Has the journey been worth it?
VOID SOLS
This abstract indie Soulslike has some bright ideas