Pushing Buttons: Big studios are making big cuts – but indie gems like Animal Well are still out there | Games

Ithis is deep unfortunate time for game developers like anyone paying attention to gaming industry this year we will know. Thousands of jobs fell victim to corporate spending cuts as current games were canceled and award-winning studios closed. The mood is furious and dejected.

“I feel such despair for the medium I love,” wrote a reader in response to last week’s newsletter. “The cuts have been so disheartening at the potential being squandered in the name of even more grotesque levels of profiteering, not to mention the impact it’s having on the people who actually make the games.” He asked: “Do you see a way forward for developers to make great games on a decent budget and pay their staff a living wage? Some hope will be appreciated.”

One of the many tragic ironies of the year in gaming so far is that at the same time as all these layoffs, closures and downsizing, we’re also seeing an extraordinary number of breakthrough successes. No one expected much from the satirical militaristic squad shooter Helldivers 2, but it has sold 12 million copies since February. Palworld may have made me feel vaguely rude, but made money. Balatro, that poker cheat stole a whole week of my free time, there were a million sales and it was made by one person. In early access on Steam we had a medieval city simulator The lords of the manor and Supergiant is amazing Hades II accumulating a huge number of players.

We’ve had so many brilliant and interesting indie (or indie) games this year that it’s been hard to keep up. Off the top of my head were the PlayStation-1-style horror game Crow Country, animated undersea souls like Another Crab’s Treasure, sci-fi survival adventure Pacific Drive, stop-motion puppet adventure Harold Halibut, relaxing puzzle game Botany Manor … and we’re not even halfway through the year. As the corporate, blockbuster end of game development seems to be getting harder and harder to survive, at the very least we’re seeing more small to mid-sized releases succeeding. That should at least give some hope.

I played this week Animal well, which I’ve been looking forward to for a while, and it’s another prime example of a smaller game that gets everything right. If you’re longing for the pre-internet era when gaming felt mysterious and unknowable, this is for you, though naturally squadrons of immensely dedicated Discord players are hard at work trying to uncover its every hidden secret. It has the lo-fi look and limited color palette of a forgotten game once played on school computers, but with exquisite lighting, sound and visual detail far beyond what any game from a bygone era could achieve.

You play a blob of eyes born in an underground maze full of creatures that mostly want to eat you, but you don’t fight them – you have to either hide from them or outsmart them. One of the first creatures I discovered was a terrifying tall-necked ostrich, which staggered towards me, emitting an unacceptably distorted croak. I screamed at the TV, then jumped into a hole to hide from it, only to have its beak follow me into the crack where I cowered. It was the perfect combination of hilarious and disturbing.

I don’t feel like sharing any more details of my time with Animal Well in case it spoils an “ah-ha!” moment for anyone else. It’s superb, and so far I’ve successfully resisted the urge to get sucked into Reddit threads about all its hidden aspects, so my findings are my own.

Animal Well is one of many reminders this year that even in the worst of times for the games industry as a whole, there are always always something interesting to play with – because people will always be driven to create. When that’s the goal, not profit maximization, there’s always room for success.

What should I play

If you think I’ve already covered all the great indie games from the past few weeks, surprise: arthouse studio Annapurna is about to release another one called Lorelei and the laser eyes. It’s a Lynchian, mostly monochrome detective puzzle game of interlocking riddles set in a haunted mansion where time folds in on itself and architecture has no interest in following the laws of physics. Atmospherically, it reminds me a bit of Eternal Darkness from 2002, the GameCube psychological horror game. The game that will have you filling a real-life notebook with insane-looking looping thoughts and theories.

Available at: PC, Nintendo Switch from May 16
Approximate playing time: Around 12-3pm

What to read

• In the past week there have been many reports about The Xbox division of Microsoft following the reported closure of Tango Gameworks and Arkane Austin. On the edge reports increased control by Microsoft’s top bosses over the Xbox division, following its $7 billion merger with Activision, which has led it to “prioritize high-impact titles.” Worrying words for all the former indie studios that Xbox has bought in recent years, such as Double Fine (Psychonauts, pictured) and Ninja Theory (Hellblade). Like Kotaku put it in his report for a town hall meeting held at the company: after buying studios, Xbox management says it doesn’t have the resources to run them.

• Following the PS5-only release of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Square Enix canceled several ongoing games and offered to do all its multi-platform games in the future. This will end decades of a close relationship between Final Fantasy and the PlayStation.

• Our Games Correspondent Keith Stewart couldn’t resist stirring the pot with a list of The 15 Biggest UK Video Games Magazines. I won’t spoil the rankings, but it was heartening to see GamesTM there, the magazine I started as a staff writer for in 2005. RIP to real.

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Block in question

Many of you wrote in to answer last week’s question about video games set in believable real-world locations, so instead of answering a new one, I’ll pass on the floor.

Reader Ethan highlights an underrated British game: “All go to the Rapture it was really the first time I felt a strange sense of normality represented in a game; inconspicuous pavements and telegraph poles, a picnic table in a beer garden, correct road sign fonts and unmown lawns were all well-observed details that combined to evoke a quiet village that I felt I might actually have walked through some moment.

There was an outpouring of gratitude for 1999 Shenmue and its sequels (a special game for me as a teenager; I think of it as the spiritual predecessor to Yakuza). “From real weather data taken from Japan’s Kanagawa Prefecture in 1986, when the game is set, to real-time day/night cycles, footsteps, changing sounds depending on the terrain, hundreds of characters that have full biographies and schedules in-game that may never even interact with the player… this game has it all,” Nathan wrote. “The original was set in Yokosuka in 1986, and as a 15-year-old at the time, the game made me fall in love with Japan,” says Benji. “When I met my (now) wife in Japan a few years ago, she took me to Yokosuka and even today there are places I recognize in real life where I went digitally all those years ago. There is a sense of place in Shenmue that is almost unmatched to this day.”

Jeanne, meanwhile, admires Insomniac’s version of New York in Spider Man. “Insomniac’s Spider-Man games absolutely get the feel of Manhattan right! According to my friends, the only thing they didn’t get right was the subway.” Mark agrees: “The biggest uncanny valley for me has to be the different iterations of New York in the games, especially Grand Theft Auto and the increasingly detailed Spider-Man games. When I went there on vacation, I had a strange feeling that I had already been to the city. Similarly, when playing the games afterwards, I would find specific places that reminded me of the holiday. …

“Even stranger was the incredible recreation of the school in The Hogwarts legacy. As a kid, I was an extra in the movies, and watching my friend fly into the yard in the game filled me with an overwhelming feeling of “Wow, I was right there…” Quite an experience for a virtual world to remind me in the real world that I was in a … fictional world.

Kenny writes: “I thought I’d just pass along what a Polish colleague told me recently. She said that the wedding in The Witcher 3‘s Hearts of Stone expansion perfectly captured those she visited as a girl. She’s generally a fan of the game, but when I mentioned that I recently picked it up again, her eyes lit up and she couldn’t wait to share that detail.”

I will answer a new question next week. If you have anything to ask about the question block – or anything else to say about the newsletter – hit reply or email us at pushingbuttons@theguardian.com.