GMTK Digest (January 2025)

Hello! Happy new year!

Sorry, it's a bit late for that. But this is also the first GMTK Digest of 2025 and I'm excited to kick off the year's newsletters.

If you're new here, the GMTK Digest is designed to get you up to speed on what just happened in the world of games. I'll share my thoughts on the newest releases, tell you the biggest headlines, and pick out a handful of articles and videos that any GMTK fan should find interesting.

Also... in last month's newsletter I said that I endeavoured to actually play some dang games so I could give proper thoughts on the latest games. You'll be pleased to hear that I've done just that, so let's start things off with a bumper new releases section.

New releases

The Roottrees are Dead

As you might imagine, I am so here for the detective game renaissance. Developers are finding so many ways to let people feel like Sherlock (see: this month's Weekender video about an upcoming detective game inspired by Geoguessr).

In The Roottrees, we turn to genealogy. When a chocolate mogul dies, and there are questions over who gets to inherit the business, it's up to you to plot the entire family tree and figure out who the blood relatives are.

This is done with a 1998-era internet connection, a massive corkboard of photos and string, and some seriously fun sleuthing. You'll be making connections and going down rabbit holes, with a pad of paper by your side. Seriously recommended for those who loved Obra Dinn, Her Story, and the rest.

Blade Chimera

Blade Chimera is a Metroidvania that leans more heavily on the "Vania" than the other bit. It's heavily inspired by Symphony of the Night with its inventory of weapons, EXP and mana systems, and general look and feel (though, replace the castle with a futuristic city, and the halloween monsters with critters from Japanese folklore).

But maybe calling it a Metroidvania is overstating it. This is a game without gates, locked doors, keys, abilities, and upgrades. It's a more linear, story-heavy game that just happens to take place on a sprawling, interconnected map.

So instead of focusing on the hunting and backtracking (the game even lets you teleport to almost every cell on the map), this one's about action. And it's mostly very fun as you combo between two weapons and a magic sword that acts as barrier, platform, and spinning mid-air chainsaw. All in all, I enjoyed it - but it didn't quite scratch that true Metroidvania itch.

Hyper Light Breaker (Early Access)

I wasn't expecting Hyper Light Drifter to get a sequel. And I definitely wasn't expecting it to be a 3D, co-op, roguelike. That's a big shift!

And, in my eyes... it doesn't quite work. Drifter's world felt evocative and mysterious. But in Breaker, it just feels barren and empty. My primary thought? It feels like a Fortnite map. Which is not how I thought I would ever describe the sequel to Hyper Light Drifter.

Nonetheless, the combat remains fun, punchy, and punishingly difficult. And there are lots of clever little touches to make the roguelike formula feel fresh - including a pressuring system where enemies drop into the world every few minutes to keep you moving and keep the action high.

Will be interesting to see how this game evolves over the course of its Early Access.

Eternal Strands

This is the debut game of a new studio (Yellow Brick Games), made up of ex-AAA devs - including Dragon Age director Mike Laidlaw. The result? A very pretty, but very familiar action RPG.

You've got a band of chipper NPC friends in a camp. You go out to fight enemies and gather loot. You come back to the camp to upgrade your gear. And then it's back out into the world to fight bigger enemies and find more loot.

It's wearing its inspirations on its sleeve: the climb-anywhere bouldering of Breath of the Wild, the giant boss fights of Shadow of the Colossus, a touch of Monster Hunter, a dash of Dragon's Dogma. But those are some very big games for a debut studio to emulate. And so Eternal Strands never quite comes together - it feels simplistic, janky, and without much soul.

Deeply impressive for a small team (70-odd) and a first studio, but it didn't grab me.

Also out this month:

More die-rolling sci-fi in Citizen Sleeper 2. Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders takes the low-poly biking game to the slopes. Cruel is a fast-paced, door-kicking score attacker. Mika and the Witch's Mountain is Kiki’s Delivery Service as a cozy game.

The headlines

Nintendo introduced the Switch 2. It's a Switch Two, alright! But at least this basic reveal showed a couple new things - a brand new Mario Kart game and maybe the new Joycons can work like computer mice? We'll see...

Electronic Arts Slashes BioWare After ‘Dragon Age’ Sales Miss - Bloomberg says Bioware is now less than 100 people after The Veilguard missed sales expectations. This puts the future of DA and Mass Effect into serious question.

Xbox Developer Direct 2025: everything announced - Microsoft showed some familiar upcoming games like DOOM and South of Midnight. But the surprise was Ninja Gaiden 4 and a shadow-dropped remaster of Ninja Gaiden 2 Black.

MultiVersus is dead - WB's multiversal melee game is going offline in May. Another live service game hits the canvas.

Reading List

Design

Read - Quality of Life - "If you're a designer, you should pretend that there is no such thing as a Quality-of-Life change."

Watch (17 mins) - How Space Marine 2 is Designed to Punish Heretics - "We explore how Space Marine 2 is designed to force players into the fray, how it rewards those who stick it out in the toughest of encounters, and punishes cowardly heretics".

Read - There is No Wheel: A Framework for Creating Emotionally Resonant Game Mechanics – Polaris Game Design Retreat - "When seeking to develop a novel emotionally resonant mechanic, the first place the designer should look isn’t at the mechanics themselves, but at the contexts around them".

Watch (7 mins) - Modders Fixed the Worst Character in Half-Life 2 - Mr Wendal explores how virtual reality lets you embody Gordon Freeman and finally make him more than a floating gun.

Development

Watch (25 mins) - How I Won The GMTK Game Jam - Little Slime Blows Up was one of my picks for the 2024 jam. The dev shares a super charming dev log about the game's creation.

Read - Building The Roottrees are Dead - Developer Evil Trout talks about making this genealogical detective game in Godot.

Watch (10 mins) - Recreating Mario Party's Board - Mix and Jam returns, this time using splines and nodes to make Mario Party in Unity.

Watch (7 mins) - I Rebuilt Monument Valley, Here’s How - Want more game dev recreations? Here's how to use an orthographic camera and other clever tricks to mimic MV's impossible architecture.

Business

Watch (23 mins) - Were there too many games in 2024? - Chris Z pushes back on the point that too many games came out in 2024. Why? The vast majority of new games are invisible hobbyist-level stuff.

Read - Is there a ‘best’ month to release your game in? - "The original reason for release windows being vital for games - retail ordering and space for boxed games - is increasingly irrelevant".

Watch (51 mins) - 100 Slaps: The Breaking News The Games Industry Ignored in 2024 - "Almost four years after our reporting on the games industry's unseen crunch at outsourcing studios in SE Asia, Chris received an email that demanded we return to this story once again". Content warning for abuse, here.

Culture

Read - Culture Shock - Polygon created a week-long feature series, with articles about cultural differences, translation, and localisation. Highlights include a piece on Angry Kirby, and the weird challenge of exporting American celeb Drew Carey in The Sims.

Watch (16 mins) - Why is Nintendo 64 emulation still a broken mess in 2025? - "The Nintendo 64 has always been a difficult machine to emulate correctly. But in 2025 - we should be well and truly past all of it right?".

Read - The Gentrification of Video Game History - "If we live in a US hegemony, where US-based media, academia and culture dominates the conversation, then it’s only logical that the examples & omissions come mostly from Americans writing about their interests".

Critique

Read - On its 10th anniversary, it’s time to admit that Life Is Strange was never simply a love story - "It was a watershed moment for games that tell hella authentic, human stories".

Watch (39 mins) - The Cool Games of 2024 - hotcyder picks his favourite games of the year. And no, I'm not just picking it because Mind Over Magnet made the special mentions list. Okay, maybe a little bit.

Watch (11 mins) - Hideo Kojima Has An Identity Problem - "Through the lens of his recently released documentary and book, let's talk about the effect Hideo Kojima's identity problem might have on his future games like Death Stranding 2".

Artistry

Read - How Doom’s Combat Evolves Alongside Modern Metal Music - "A history of Doom's soundtracks, and how The Dark Ages is continuing the series' metal legacy."

Watch (14 mins) - Wario Land 3's Soundtrack Secret - "Wario Land 3 has one of the coolest 'musical moments' that almost nobody would notice on a normal playthrough of the game".

History

Watch (12 mins) - library.gamehistory.org — Now in early access - "Access thousands of video game history materials, from development documents to magazines to press kits and more. The future of game history research is at your fingertips".

Read - Scans for the memories: why old games magazines are a vital source of cultural history – and nostalgia - "What can titles like Crash, Mega, Edge and GamesMaster tell us about the early days of gaming?"

Read - How 'Tekken' Became the World's Most Popular 3D Fighting Series - "For over 30 years, Bandai Namco's virtual brawler has reigned supreme thanks to its diversity — both within the game and the people who play it".

Watch (52 mins) - The Making of LEGO Island: A Documentary - MattKC digs deep into the making of a childhood favourite (of both Matt and mine!).

Watch (23 mins) - Dinosaur Planet: Inside Rare's Cancelled Zelda Clone - It's well-known lore that Star Fox Adventures was built from the bones of an unfinished dinosaur game. Luck Stat dives into what we know of its development.

Beyond Games

Watch (19 mins) - He Really Was One of The Greats - Thomas Flight's ode to David Lynch, who died this month.