SUPERJUMP Weekly: Breakout 13, Jedi Knight, and the Mega Drive

👋 Greetings, and welcome to another edition of SUPERJUMP Weekly. This is our 30th issue! Can you believe it? To celebrate, this issue is available to all readers as a special SUPERJUMP Weekly preview. If you'd like to have this newsletter delivered to you each weekend, simply register for a free SUPERJUMP account (and of course, if you love our work and would like to support us financially, please consider registering as a Backer 🙏).

There's so much to enjoy in this week's round-up. For starters, we have a number of reviews hot off the presses, including: Colossal Cave, UnderDungeon, The Knight Witch, Lone Ruin, and Brotato.

Alex Anyfantis ranked his top 10 greatest gaming moments of 2022, fondly remembered the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, and reflected on what makes a great RPG. Joe Richards delved into Octopath Traveler's unique "eight-fold" world, and Jared McCarty reflected on Donkey Kong 64 and its storied development history.

As always, there's a lot more to discover: more stories from the last week plus our special newsletter-exclusive On the Radar special feature. I hope you enjoy our 30th issue of SUPERJUMP Weekly.

Have a wonderful weekend, and happy gaming!

James
Editor in Chief

🏆 Story of the Week

This week's must read story.

I remember when FMV games were all the rage back in the '90s. Well, to be clear, they were actually never "the rage"; for the most part, the early FMV games were flirtations with what promised to be the groundbreaking potential of something called multimedia. Though there are some notable exceptions, it's probably fair to say that FMV games were never particularly fun to play. Many of them felt like fancy tech demos waiting for a true breakout hit that never came. Gamers and developers largely forgot about FMV games for a long period of time after that initial wave (except for the occasional musings on Night Trap, or pointing-and-laughing at the old Zelda CDi games).

Things have changed in the last decade though. Her Story, released in 2015 and created by Sam Barlow, arguably represents the point at which FMV became cool again. And of course, Sam one-upped himself with the remarkable Immortality, released just last year (and featured as part of our 2022 Games of the Year celebration).

And it's not just Sam making interesting new FMV-based interactive experiences.

Breakout 13 is a fascinating new game from China that is worth paying attention to for several reasons (including its high-quality English translation, which makes it highly accessible to Western audiences). But there's a lot more going on here, including some interesting subversions of typical Chinese or East Asian storytelling tropes. Whether or not you intend to check out the game itself, I highly recommend reading Andrew Johnston's fascinating story about it. Andrew does justice to the game, but even more importantly, he illuminates the ways in which Chinese storytelling differs from its Western counterpart. Absolutely a must read.

Breakout 13 and the Nature of Chinese Storytelling

by Andrew Johnston

"This is a Chinese film that both upholds and defies the country's storytelling traditions and says something about video games solely through its existence."

📰 Stories

Here are all of the stories we published in the last week.

Colossal Cave Review
by Lucas Di Quinzio

Save the World, Save Your Job
by Andrew Johnston

PSVR2: Worth the Money?
by Ben Shelley

A Spelunky Obsession Defeated
by Priya Sridhar

Looking Back on the SEGA Mega Drive
by Alex Anyfantis

Being a Llama Isn't So Bad
by Armando Ramos Quintana

The Knight Witch Tries to Bullet Hell Its Way to Success
by Josh Bycer

Lone Ruin: Into the Heart of Corruption
by Andrew Johnston

Brotato Is a Tasty Roguelike Snack
by Lucas Di Quinzio

What Makes a Great RPG?
by Alex Anyfantis

A Rare Conundrum: Donkey Kong 64 vs the Expansion Pak
by Jared McCarty

Remembering Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II
by Gavin Annand

Octopath Traveler and Constructing an Eight-Fold World
by Joe Richards

Top 10 Greatest Gaming Moments of 2022
by Alex Anyfantis

Breakout 13 and the Nature of Chinese Storytelling
by Andrew Johnston

📡 On the Radar

Future releases you should keep an eye on.

Snowbrawll

by Alex Antra

Snowbrawll is a 2-6 player arcade snowball fighting game due for release in late Q2 this year. You'll compete against other players - locally or online - in snow-covered arenas where you can score points by taking out your opponents with snowballs. And, just like in real life, size matters. That is to say, you can take more time to make your snowball larger, which in turn means it'll do more damage.

Snowbrawll features multiple stages all with their own mechanics and unique interactions, with winners being crowned after winning a set number of rounds.

It may surprise you to learn that Snowbrawll has a bit of lore going on too; it's not all snowball-based fun. Snowbrawll is centred around a tournament that is about crowning the new King of the Animals (after the previous ruler died). All parties involved decided that the best way to find a new monarch would be through a snowball tournament; seems reasonable.

Snowbrawll is brought to us by Humble Bard Studios, a passionate team of four friends who have been creating games for two years now (with Snowbrawll being their first commercial release). The team at Humble Bard enjoy multiplayer party games like Mario Party, where the goal is purely to have fun (and not everything is a gun); this was their motivation to create their own casual multiplayer experience.

If you're interested in Snowbrawll, you can wishlist it now on Steam.

🎉 Backers

These lovely people are supporting independent, cynicism-free games journalism.

Thank you to CT Harris, Daryl Baxter, Jeff Robison, Filippo Dinelli, and Nick K for your generous support.

Why not join these fine folks and become a SUPERJUMP Backer?

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