Developer/publisher Crescent Moon Games
Format PC
Origin US
Release TBA
Following two screens at once shouldn’t be too much of an ask these days. Indeed, our first impression as we sit down with Screenbound is that it’s like looking at your phone while walking around the house, which we usually manage without stubbing a toe. As for its multitasking demands, if we can split our attention between a TV show and a social media feed, surely they shouldn’t prove too great a problem. So why, then, is Screenbound such a strange adjustment? Simply because here the two realities are symbiotic.
image [https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1730374449/articles/Rm3SLH3gI1730456639782/3271303357.jpg]
If it’s any consolation, the two-man team at the core of the project, game director Josh Presseisen and lead developer Kyle McKeever, don’t claim to have it all figured out either. Screenbound marks a reunion for the pair, who first collaborated around ten years ago, producing games such as Morphite and The Deer God, then went their separate ways for a time. In the interim, Presseisen “worked on about a million demos,” he says, “just messing around with ideas.” The spark for Screenbound came when he saw an image of someone playing a Game Boy. “I don’t know why, but I thought that whole image itself could be a good game – the background and holding the device and what’s on the screen.”
To begin with, Presseisen envisioned a kind of endless runner, but with McKeever on board they soon worked up a range of new mechanics. “We bounced ideas off each other, and [decided] to make it more of a full first-person game,” Presseisen says, “that somehow also works in 2D.” And the real change in perspective, so to speak, arrived when they implemented a full, standard first-person control system. “That was kind of the ‘Aha!’ moment,” McKeever recalls. “It just took it up to another level where we thought, ‘This can be a bigger game’.”
image [https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1730374449/articles/Rm3SLH3gI1730456639782/0329923977.jpg]
Now, in the early build we’re given to play, Screenbound is at base a first-person puzzle game. Levels are compact, open areas, in which the aim is to collect three crystals to open an exit portal. A Game Boy-like device, the QBoy, covers the lower-centre portion of a scene comprising large, earthy rectangular blocks that you might jump between. The QBoy hardware displays a side-scrolling platform game; as you walk or jump forward in the larger world, its tiny character does likewise, reacting to the same inputs. It’s discombobulating yet somehow exciting, like donning a VR headset for the first time.
Our eye tends to drift to the 3D surroundings, since that feels like our plane of existence, but the trick is not to get fully caught up in either view, to grasp how the two environments converge and differ. And, as we do, each drop of understanding feels revelatory, not least in terms of how 3D depth translates to the QBoy’s flat landscape. The 2D view uses some depth signifiers, such as darkening chunks of the environment ‘behind’ your avatar, but appearances can be deceptive, more so when some features exist on one plane but not the other. Exploring an area, we find nowhere to go in 3D, but note a bridge of blocks on the QBoy screen. The answer is to trust the 2D display, ignoring our instincts and performing an Indiana Jones-style step of faith into thin, three-dimensional air.
image [https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1730374449/articles/Rm3SLH3gI1730456639782/2373299357.jpg]
That’s only the first piece of such puzzles, however. Thinking two-dimensionally, we see that bridge as a mere single strip of bricks, but what if it runs deeper? What if it actually stretches right back into the scene, in a way the QBoy simply can’t show? We turn left on the invisible bridge and keep walking – as if heading ‘into’ the screen on the 2D plane – and it leads us to another part of the level. Counterintuitive? Yes. Logical in its own way? Absolutely. “That sense of being uncomfortable is indicative of something interesting at play,” McKeever believes. “But, as we work on the game, it’s going to get more polished, to help players understand those ideas a little better.”
In short, even the most basic rules of navigation need to be reinvented here to apply to both worlds at once. For instance, it takes us a while to get used to doors or ladders that also only show on the QBoy, since you can’t tell precisely how far away from these things you are when you’re standing in front of them. At the moment, as long as you’re also near a wall where the door or ladder could be, you can interact with it, but McKeever isn’t sure it’ll stay that way. “There’s a lot of unique rules we have to apply,” he says. “If it feels muddy, we should clear it up.”
image [https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1730374449/articles/Rm3SLH3gI1730456639782/3190121312.jpg]
Currently, the muddiest patch in our experience surrounds the game’s enemies. ...
Format PC
Origin US
Release TBA
Following two screens at once shouldn’t be too much of an ask these days. Indeed, our first impression as we sit down with Screenbound is that it’s like looking at your phone while walking around the house, which we usually manage without stubbing a toe. As for its multitasking demands, if we can split our attention between a TV show and a social media feed, surely they shouldn’t prove too great a problem. So why, then, is Screenbound such a strange adjustment? Simply because here the two realities are symbiotic.
image [https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1730374449/articles/Rm3SLH3gI1730456639782/3271303357.jpg]
If it’s any consolation, the two-man team at the core of the project, game director Josh Presseisen and lead developer Kyle McKeever, don’t claim to have it all figured out either. Screenbound marks a reunion for the pair, who first collaborated around ten years ago, producing games such as Morphite and The Deer God, then went their separate ways for a time. In the interim, Presseisen “worked on about a million demos,” he says, “just messing around with ideas.” The spark for Screenbound came when he saw an image of someone playing a Game Boy. “I don’t know why, but I thought that whole image itself could be a good game – the background and holding the device and what’s on the screen.”
To begin with, Presseisen envisioned a kind of endless runner, but with McKeever on board they soon worked up a range of new mechanics. “We bounced ideas off each other, and [decided] to make it more of a full first-person game,” Presseisen says, “that somehow also works in 2D.” And the real change in perspective, so to speak, arrived when they implemented a full, standard first-person control system. “That was kind of the ‘Aha!’ moment,” McKeever recalls. “It just took it up to another level where we thought, ‘This can be a bigger game’.”
image [https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1730374449/articles/Rm3SLH3gI1730456639782/0329923977.jpg]
Now, in the early build we’re given to play, Screenbound is at base a first-person puzzle game. Levels are compact, open areas, in which the aim is to collect three crystals to open an exit portal. A Game Boy-like device, the QBoy, covers the lower-centre portion of a scene comprising large, earthy rectangular blocks that you might jump between. The QBoy hardware displays a side-scrolling platform game; as you walk or jump forward in the larger world, its tiny character does likewise, reacting to the same inputs. It’s discombobulating yet somehow exciting, like donning a VR headset for the first time.
Our eye tends to drift to the 3D surroundings, since that feels like our plane of existence, but the trick is not to get fully caught up in either view, to grasp how the two environments converge and differ. And, as we do, each drop of understanding feels revelatory, not least in terms of how 3D depth translates to the QBoy’s flat landscape. The 2D view uses some depth signifiers, such as darkening chunks of the environment ‘behind’ your avatar, but appearances can be deceptive, more so when some features exist on one plane but not the other. Exploring an area, we find nowhere to go in 3D, but note a bridge of blocks on the QBoy screen. The answer is to trust the 2D display, ignoring our instincts and performing an Indiana Jones-style step of faith into thin, three-dimensional air.
image [https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1730374449/articles/Rm3SLH3gI1730456639782/2373299357.jpg]
That’s only the first piece of such puzzles, however. Thinking two-dimensionally, we see that bridge as a mere single strip of bricks, but what if it runs deeper? What if it actually stretches right back into the scene, in a way the QBoy simply can’t show? We turn left on the invisible bridge and keep walking – as if heading ‘into’ the screen on the 2D plane – and it leads us to another part of the level. Counterintuitive? Yes. Logical in its own way? Absolutely. “That sense of being uncomfortable is indicative of something interesting at play,” McKeever believes. “But, as we work on the game, it’s going to get more polished, to help players understand those ideas a little better.”
In short, even the most basic rules of navigation need to be reinvented here to apply to both worlds at once. For instance, it takes us a while to get used to doors or ladders that also only show on the QBoy, since you can’t tell precisely how far away from these things you are when you’re standing in front of them. At the moment, as long as you’re also near a wall where the door or ladder could be, you can interact with it, but McKeever isn’t sure it’ll stay that way. “There’s a lot of unique rules we have to apply,” he says. “If it feels muddy, we should clear it up.”
image [https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1730374449/articles/Rm3SLH3gI1730456639782/3190121312.jpg]
Currently, the muddiest patch in our experience surrounds the game’s enemies. ...
You're reading a preview of
Edge Uk (Digital) - 1 Issue, Christmas 2024