TOSHIBA TransferJet

TransferJet is an intriguing closeproximity wireless technology that’s taken what seems like a lifetime to arrive. It was first announced in 2008, but it wasn’t until October 2014 that we first saw it demonstrated, after which it became available in Japan. Now, following a splashy Berlin launch event in September 2015, Toshiba has finally brought TransferJet to market.

TransferJet is similar to Bluetooth, in that it allows you to transfer files between smartphones, tablets and Windows computers even if you don’t have an internet connection. The £40 price quoted here gets you an adaptor that plugs into the Micro USB port on your Android device, and a full-size USB adaptor that plugs into your Windows PC or laptop. A separate Lightning adaptor for iOS devices is available separately for £35.

Studio Profile: Techland

From pirate to publisher: the Dying Light maker reflects on 25 years in the game

The development of Dying Light hit a brick wall in 2013. Several, in fact – the game’s parkour system, which hinged on level designers creating each scalable structure with a marker, was laborious. And it wasn’t until the team had placed its 50,000th marker that a better solution was found: frustrated, programmer Bartosz Kulon came in one weekend and performed some technical wizardry that allowed the climbing of anything in the world, marker-free.

The Making Of... Elite Dangerous

How a plucky British studio enlisted players to help create a game on a galactic scale

While celebrated astrophysicist and cosmologist Carl Sagan was working on science-fiction novel Contact in 1983, he documented an idea for how the story might be turned into a videogame. The project’s themes would deal with the development and preservation of galactic civilisations, but at its core would be a realistic representation of the nearest few thousand stars that would teach players about astronomy in a “context as exciting as most violent videogames”.

Battle Chasers: Nightwar

Joe Madureira goes back to his comic book roots with a new RPG

In 1998, Joe Madureira released the first issue of a rollicking arcanepunk fantasy comic entitled Battle Chasers. The larger-than-life characters, explosive action, and colorful world captured the imaginations of readers. But after nine issues troubled by scheduling problems and publisher transitions, the fan-favorite series was left tragically incomplete. Nearly two decades later, after a successful crowdfunding drive, Battle Chasers is coming back, charging into the world of video games with the help of the same creative minds that brought us the Darksiders games, and they’re aiming to shatter genre expectations in the process.

The Town Of Light

A psychiatric hospital is hardly an unfamiliar setting for a videogame, though the history upon which The Town Of Light draws is the kind that has itself inspired several contemporary horrors. This is a fictional story, but one based on real-life accounts of the conditions within a now-abandoned asylum in Volterra, Tuscany. A lifeless English voiceover isn’t the only reason to switch to Italian with subtitles: the native language lends further veracity to an already authentic rendering of the institution. The cracked plaster, exposed brickwork, smashed basins and rusted bed frames at times seem a little too artfully arranged for maximum aesthetic impact. Not so, as even the most cursory research proves, it’s all disturbingly real.

Unbox

Special delivery: a soggy, banged-up, bouncing cardboard box

Move over, Amazon drones. Unbox’s Global Postal Service would like to present the real next-gen of shipping solutions: the self-delivering box. You’re the latest prototype of this revolutionary endeavour, a cardboard cube capable of self-propelled motion. You bobble along awkwardly, but at a surprising lick, and are blessed with surprising agility for an object that’s all straight edges and sharp corners. You can jump with a tap of the right trigger, and with a squeeze of the left one you’ll perform the titular ‘unbox’, shedding an outer skin for a burst of mid-air momentum in what is surely the most oddly conceived double-jump in videogame history. Or hextuple jump, if you’re so minded.

The Solus Project

A sci-fi survival game that wants you to live

We have to admit, we’d never previously considered whether windmills were cool. Then again, we hardly expected we’d stumble across one while exploring an alien planet in Teotl’s sci-fi survival game. And yet there it is, proudly protruding from a large outcrop. “It makes no sense from a practical point of view,” creative director Sjoerd De Jong concedes. “But it’s really cool!”

Knights & Bikes

An affectionate salute to the joys of childhood

Developers often talk about their cultural influences, and when you’ve been doing this job as long as we have, you notice the same handful of names cropping up. The Goonies, it’s fair to say, is rarely one of them – which makes a pitch that name-checks it all the more intriguing. Not that you’d immediately recognise the inspiration from a first glance at Knights & Bikes. Its heroes are two young girls, a seaweed-obsessed goose, and the sentient decapitated head of a legendary knight, and they’re exploring an island just off the coast of Cornwall, throwing Frisbees and angrily pecking at the bewitched creatures that cross their paths. Our memories aren’t what they used to be, but that’s not quite how we remember it.

Paragon

Epic Games expands the MOBA template into a new dimension

Epic is keen to stress that Paragon is a MOBA. This is a contested, storied term, one that describes some of the world’s biggest games and a few of its bigger failures, too. MOBAs were the new MMOGs, and the demise of projects such as EA’s Dawngate and Warner’s Infinite Crisis reflect the difficulty that a succession of large studios have faced in trying to climb onto the bandwagon.