GAMING SPECIAL
The difficulty is that you always have to give the player something to do, so what are the different things you can make the player do?"
characters, the mechanics end up being a bit clunky and unrewarding. So you have to get through a gun fight or a challenge to have another character moment. “The difficulty is that you always have to give the player something to do, so what are the different things you can make the player do? That’s often the starting point for us; if the player isn’t just walking around shooting everything in sight, then what can we make them do instead?” Rather than raiding tombs and running away from monsters, players in Heaven’s Vault spend time on more cerebral pursuits, uncovering artefacts and deciphering inscriptions. Like a real archaeologist, rather than a bad Indiana Jones clone. “People tend to initially think it’s quite slow, but it builds and builds, and when you start to understand the culture, people really get into it,” Jon explains. “That was a real design challenge, making it compulsive without the combat element that is bread and butter for a lot of games. Starting Inkle has been completely life-changing and it has meant I’ve been able to do the things I love every day with some degree of success, which is very humbling.” While Inkle is typical of many of the small studios in Cambridge, with a core team of four and a larger group of 11 staff who work on specific projects, the city is also home to several bigger firms working on blockbuster titles. Though Guerrilla bit the dust in 2017, Frontier Developments has been on a roll in recent years, following the success of Elite Dangerous, a follow-up to the classic 1980s space trading game Elite, which has gone from strength to strength since its release in 2014.
ABOVE AgroupofpeopleplayingJagex’s RuneScapeataLANparty
Buoyed by this success, and that of follow-up releases such as Planet Coaster and Jurassic World Evolution, the company, founded by video games legend David Braben, now occupies swanky, purpose-built headquarters at Cambridge Science Park. Also soon to be in new premises is Ninja Theory, which is building a new base on Newmarket Road, complete with a gaming pub on the ground floor. It was acquired by Microsoft in 2018, but operates autonomously and delivers ground-breaking content such as Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, a game that won widespread acclaim for its portrayal of psychosis. A follow-up is in the works, while the studio has also launched Project Insight, a collaboration with the University of Cambridge combining game design, clinical neuroscience and cutting-edge technology to work on new methods of therapy for mental disorders. Perhaps the best-known name in the Cambridge Cluster is Jagex, publisher of
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