Looking at pre-established and consolidated videogame genres in new ways
Video games always want to innovate. Developers want to both make something that stands out from the crowd, and engage in new ways. The games released in 2021 are great examples of this: Unpacking made us reevaluate the puzzle genre while Wildermyth showed us the power of procedural storytelling. 2022 will build on this, giving us the courage to see the genres we like in a different way, and gaming will only benefit from it.
Take Firaxis' Marvel's Midnight Suns. Spectacular superhero movies immediately evoke action-adventure in many of us, but perhaps now that we've seen the Hulk destroy everything in Marvel's Avengers and unleash the strength of a team in Guardians of the Galaxy, a tactical card game with heroes. Marvel is probably the last thing we didn't know we wanted. Midnight Suns will propose to many Marvel fans something Firaxis is particularly good at, so we assume that many will find they develop a new passion, even if they may be initially wary of this combination.
Other great franchises will reinvent themselves: Yakuza has become a turn-based RPG and now the Metal Slug scrolling shooter will make its debut in the tactical game genre, while Final Fantasy reimagines its origins as a sci-fi action-adventure. fi. Although Final Fantasy has already tried for several years to propose an action-adventure combat, the fact that Square-Enix finally wants to give it up would have seemed incredible just a few years ago.
Marvel's Midnight Suns gameplay reveal.
Watch on YouTube. Genre blending is another way to reimagine the default design, but also a difficult thing to apply. We were impressed with the offensive action reimagining of pinball video games with 2021's Beast Breaker, and Chubai Labs gave us a golf game disguised as a metroidvania like Cursed Golf. Already the combination of the words 'golf' and 'metroidvania' is enough to make many of us ecstatic, but honestly think about what kind of huge effort it can take to intersect the design of two genres so distant from each other and create a cohesive game. The result is undoubtedly thrilling.
Beautiful genres come together! Cursed Golf, Stranger of Paradise, Stray. Sometimes it is enough to change the setting or the narrative context to make a genre appear totally new, a category that we call "why hasn't anyone thought of it before?". The cheers of amazement at the Stray, Small Kitty and Big City announcements were so loud because, honestly, who wouldn't want to explore the world as a cat?
Stray, in particular, struck me because after so many years in which so many post-apocalyptic cyberpunk worlds have been proposed to us, I am ready to find something that does more for me. Personally, I also look forward to Citizen Sleeper from Jump Over The Age, a cyberpunk TTRPG with space exploration.
Tabletop mechanics in video games are not new at all, but for some strange reason they are almost never applied in sci-fi contexts. As it presents itself, Citizen Sleepers could therefore win over several users who never imagined they would want to play such an experience.
This trend shows new and fascinating approaches to game world design, and we will move forward by collecting more elements. about it through all the games that we will happen to play. 2022 looks like it will be another fantastic year to dedicate yourself to this practice.
