ΤΗΕ MAKING ΟF...LAST STOP

How Variable State moved continents, cut stories, and dumped a scooter in search of its second game.

- ALEX SPENCER

Format PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series

Developer Variable State

Publisher Annapurna Interactive

Origin UK

Release 2021

When Variable State pitched its second game to Annapurna Interactive back in 2017, the developers took with them a pitch video. One that as we discover when they dig it up from some dusty corner of an old hard drive for us - bears little resemblance to the game that would be released four years later. There are no familiar faces to be seen: instead of John, Donna and Meena, here the spotlight falls on a postman doing his rounds, and some kind of amateur teenage detective. Nor, even more strikingly, is there any sign of the London setting that tied together Last Stop's anthology of stories.

You'd be forgiven for assuming this was a different game entirely. Because, in a way, it is. As a dramatic title drop in the video's final moments informs us, this game isn't called Last Stop at all, but Moon Lake. That was the name of the original setting, a slice of small-town America, with suburban streets lined by picket fences and mailboxes with little flags, overlooked by a water tower and a range of squat sandstone mountains. If that all sounds a bit archetypal, well, it was one reason for the relocation.