When I was a child, my mother picked up a little mystery game called Nancy Drew: Treasure in a Royal Tower. That single purchase would launch a lifelong love for the wonderful mystery series and would open the door for a wider interest in mystery games, horror, travel, and history.

From halcyon nights spent beside friends, clustered around a small screen screaming gleefully at the occasional jump scare, to seeing the beautiful rendering of Nancy's story in the newest game, each time I boot up the title screen feels a lot like coming home. It's why I was ecstatic to have the chance and honor of being able to interview the creative team continuing Nancy Drew's celebrated legacy.

HeR Interactive was founded in 1995 and has produced Nancy Drew mystery games since the first release of Secrets Can Kill in 1997. The teenage detective has a storied history outside of the games, but it's in the games where many fans found a foothold. Her influence remains significant in pop culture, and Nancy's stalwart curiosity and actualization in these games continue to enchant fans. The most recent entry, Nancy Drew and the Mystery of the Seven Keys was released earlier this year.

The HeR Interactive Team members interviewed are as follows:

• Suzy O’Hara, Chief Creative and Creative Producer - Games
• Cacie Desautel, Production and Project Manager
• Penny Milliken, CEO
• Jared Nieuwenhuis, Communications & Marketing Consultant

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SUPERJUMP

Nancy Drew: Mystery of the Seven Keys is your first release since 2019's Midnight in Salem. How did you approach this game's creation with the longer hiatus between? 

Suzy O’Hara

When it comes to development, there is no “hiatus” for us. Our team is continuously developing, refining, and creating for the next game. The transition from inception to development and then production is seamless and ongoing. Our approach to the game’s creation early on includes the game narrative design and technical engineers working closely with the creative team running on parallel development tracks. 

For instance, after completing production on our first game on the new Unity engine, Nancy Drew: Midnight in Salem (MID), we immediately began looking at what we wanted to implement in the next game. We especially considered the important fan feedback, brand elements, and the technology updates needed to improve systems. We are keeping in mind not only game 34 but also future games so we can make each new game even better while keeping those essential pillars of a Nancy Drew game at the forefront. We took time to create the new dual navigation system, develop new features, update the character production and animations, and explore ways to enhance the game's visual fidelity, making technical adjustments to the game engine along the way, all to be ready for game 34 production. 

The creative team I work on has multiple stories in development as an ongoing focus. We like to have many mysteries in varying stages of development, from concept to pre-production, ready. This gives us the flexibility to select a mystery that is relevant to the timing of the release and also a location that fans have often indicated they would like to see Nancy go to for her next adventure. We consider many elements that take time to develop properly, so we select the mystery that fits perfectly with our 34 other games for the next case. Identifying story opportunities and development is an exciting part of my everyday life and what I love most about storytelling entertainment. 

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"As we work to adapt the Nancy Drew games for all audiences, we’re constantly looking for ways to reimagine old mechanics and design aspects in the 3D world of our new games."

Cacie Desautel
PRODUCTION & PROJECT MANAGER

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SUPERJUMP

Mystery of the Seven Keys is a beautiful game! I love the loading screen facts, the painterly style, and the cleaner UI. I also love that you have a first-person and a Classic setting – it's how I'll always remember playing! How did you decide what to keep or/and remix in this game? 

Cacie Desautel

As we work to adapt the Nancy Drew games for all audiences, we’re constantly looking for ways to reimagine old mechanics and design aspects in the 3D world of our new games. In the future, we will continue looking for these opportunities and improving on what we have already adapted, such as the classic mode. The dual navigation system is a great example of what we are doing to appeal to both our longtime fans and new fans alike!

SUPERJUMP

Obviously, times have changed since the original game came out back in 1998, but it seems the heart is ever-present. How do you stay "true" to the Drew identity?

Penny Milliken 

We start from a place where we understand the significance the Nancy Drew universe has played in the lives of many of our players. Nancy Drew is an icon for a reason – because much of our fan base has found themselves in her, found strength in her, and escaped with her. Countless fans and celebrities traveling different paths in life cite Nancy as a central figure in their childhood. So, it's essential for us to maintain those core characteristics that have made Nancy Drew popular for over 90 years, such as her intelligence, courage, independence, and curiosity.  These key characteristics have made Nancy Drew an enduring and beloved figure, and we work tirelessly to ensure that those characteristics are seen in our games. 

SUPERJUMP

This is the franchise's first venture to Prague. How did you research the location and the stories surrounding the mystery? I've always enjoyed the cultural snapshots of the games, from ranches to ryokans, that give a little background on where we are. What is that process for story conceptualization – do you choose locale or mystery first, or do the two sort of naturally intersect?

Suzy O’Hara

It is a pleasure to know that you are a longtime fan of the Nancy Drew game series. As you know, we are one of the longest-running series games,ever-evolving and our players, as Nancy Drew, have solved over 34 cases! 

As noted earlier, development for Nancy Drew’s next case is a continuous process. With the rich legacy of the Nancy Drew franchise, we have a wealth of ideas and concepts to draw from. Nancy Drew, our iconic teen detective, is true to her roots but is also ever-evolving as the famed female detective. The settings, stories, characters, and crimes in our games are adaptations from the Nancy Drew book series or are original ideas and game worlds like Nancy Drew: Mystery of the Seven Keys (KEY). 

For the mystery, we like to consider current interests and unique crimes Nancy hasn’t solved yet. It could be a news story, a moment in history, or travel that sparks the idea. For KEY, the locale and mystery naturally intersected. The story is rooted in history with a modern cyber spin. It is a mystery plot that could only happen in Prague, and it was inspired by a family trip there.

While in Vienna working on MID, I visited Prague and was captivated by the Bohemian Crown Jewels and their protection by the seven keys and the key bearers. The haunted corridors and tales of royals and alchemists added intrigue. I was so excited that I called Penny, our CEO, and shared several ideas for a mystery set in Prague. Having visited Prague before, and then returning to consider it as a game story, she was equally inspired. The development of the game story, researching the crime, establishing the characters, so each is a suspect, puzzles, and experiences and how they fit into the game world were all part of the first phase of establishing the game story.

Turning the story into an immersive game experience makes it all come alive by working closely with the game design team. We had to ensure the narrative offered rich opportunities for player engagement through interactions, control, and Nancy’s signature snooping. Each story element needed to be translated into puzzles and challenges that felt organic to the history of Prague and the plot. Also designing an experience where players don’t just do things on Nancy's to-do list, but they have to think and reason like Nancy and become her. For me, working hand in hand with the design team, and our brand team to bring the iconic legacy game elements into the project is the heart of what transforms a story idea into an unforgettable game. We are so glad you enjoyed playing it! 

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"Nancy’s character, with her unique blend of intelligence, courage, and independence, resonates across generations."

Penny Milliken
CEO

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SUPERJUMP

The Nancy Drew games have a thriving fanbase, and I know many of us rediscovered a love of the games during the pandemic. From bake-offs to Q&As, how do you keep up with the social aspect of the studio? And do ideas or clamor from fans ever influence the next book-based mystery or location?

Jared Nieuwenhuis

I am so proud of the creativity the social media team shows daily. They understand the brand and our audience so well, which translates into great social media content and engagement. They collaborate seamlessly, and our team is constantly sharing ideas, being inspired by our passionate fans and their survey responses, and contributing to our social media goals. Additionally, they are disciplined and organized across different departments, which leads to a holistic communications approach. This enhances our overall success, aligns with the expectations of our fans, and grows the overall awareness of our award-winning games across multiple platforms. They also take a lot of inspiration from current trends and events. From International Video Game Day to the Olympics, we’re here to celebrate and cheer on our amazing fans while tying it back to Nancy Drew games and HeR Interactive. 

SUPERJUMP

One of the things I always loved most about HeR Interactive is its centering on women's stories. Nancy was one of the heroines I resonated most with as a kid, even though I had no shortage of superheroes to look up to. Why do you think she's remained such a role model to people of all ages?

Penny Milliken

Nancy Drew’s enduring relevance as a role model can probably be attributed to several factors:

1. Timeless Appeal: Nancy’s character, with her unique blend of intelligence, courage, and independence, resonates across generations. Her relatability makes her a timeless figure in detective fiction or video games.
2. Adaptability: Nancy has evolved over the years, from her original depiction in the 1930s to modern adaptations. This evolution is a testament to her ability to adapt to changing cultural norms and interests, ensuring her continued relevance.
3. Diverse Media: Nancy Drew has made her mark in books, movies, TV shows, and video games. This multi-platform presence not only keeps her relevant but also makes her accessible to a wide audience.
4. Fan Community: We are constantly amazed by our passionate fan base who continue to celebrate Nancy Drew. Be it fan conventions, online forums, or social media, the fans are directly responsible for Nancy’s ongoing popularity.

SUPERJUMP

I know development takes a lot of different hands to move the boat, and one thing I've often overlooked is the music. The soundtrack in Mystery of the Seven Keys is as enchanting and atmospheric as the past titles. How do you craft such a smooth soundtrack for the games?

Suzy O’Hara

The music in KEY was inspired by the contrast between old-world ancient Prague with the beautiful settings, and the modern world of high-tech crimes in the story. 

Our composer, Ryan Ricks, is phenomenal, starting with the narrative and setting to craft a cohesive musical experience. We provide him with detailed scenarios and examples, for feeling and tone, and he transforms them magically into layered, dynamic pieces. These tracks often allow for a variety of combinations with different instruments, enhancing the atmosphere of each scene. Cutscenes, which are critical for story progression and emotional impact, benefit greatly from his unique compositions.

We're thrilled you enjoyed how we blended the sounds of old-world Prague, local street performers, marionettes, our cozy coffee cafe, and the whimsical elements of Old Town. The cello at the museum and the cathedral’s music pay homage to Czechia’s classic music, while medieval legends and mysterious happenings bring a haunting vibe and suspense. The Aparat computer store and certain puzzles transport players to the more high-tech elements. The music is one of the game's highlights, and we hope players will enjoy each piece.

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"Nancy operates in a world of reality and crimes, but to me, the stories woven in the case that tie in history, fiction, and some fantasy into the adventure add to the mystery that Nancy has to solve."

Suzy O'Hara
CHIEF CREATIVE & CREATIVE PRODUCER - GAMES

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SUPERJUMP

Video game designs have changed a lot from the early aughts, but people still seem to like click-and-point-style adventures. Cozy games are fairly popular too. Do you have any games or game genres that you've drawn inspiration from? What about books or movies or music? 

Suzy O’Hara

Inspiration from games I search out is usually very strong in story and character development. I simply love narrative mystery adventure games.  

I play many fun casual games that are always inspiring for our activities and mini-games. 

Those fun Nancy experiences give us the chance to develop new mechanics often played in more casual games and puzzle sim types. I like games like Monopoly, Portal 1 and 2, The Room, Countryle, and Papers Please. 

Also, games rich in investigative clue-gathering and deduction. These games to me are among the best for their unique storytelling, investigative gameplay, and often innovative mechanics. Some examples that are top on my list are Return of the Obra Dinn, the Uncharted series, and Sherlock Holmes.

As far as books for inspiration, all Nancy Drew mystery books, of course!! 

Also, fantasy books offer rich worlds and compelling stories, drawing on a variety of myths, legends, and folklore to create engaging fantasy elements in Nancy’s adventures. 

Nancy operates in a world of reality and crimes, but to me, the stories woven in the case that tie in history, fiction, and some fantasy into the adventure add to the mystery that Nancy has to solve. 

For movie inspiration for storytelling and mysteries, here is my list:

• History! Drama and the classics all offer real situations told in universally appealing ways.
• Spy and espionage
• Classic mysteries well told: Agatha Christie's Orient Express, Glass Onion: Knives Out, and Sherlock Holmes films and series. 

For Music inspiration: Music that inspired ideas for KEY drew from the classical to the mysterious and lo-fi moods, as we used in the Nancy Drew Café holiday mix that has a cozy café vibe with music from past games and as well as new tracks from KEY.  

SUPERJUMP

Of course, I have to ask, what is one of the games in the franchise you consider a favorite?

Our favorite Nancy Drew games, not including Nancy Drew: Mystery of the Seven Keys:

Penny Milliken - Nancy Drew: The Silent Spy

Suzy O’Hara – Nancy Drew: Curse of Blackmoor Manor 

Cacie Desautel – Nancy Drew: The Silent Spy

Jared Nieuwenhuis – Nancy Drew: Ghost of Thornton Hall

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I want to sincerely thank the HeR Interactive team for taking the time to interview with us! And, of course, thanks to Nancy – who taught me to be brave, kind, and always curious.

Mystery fans old and new alike should give Mystery of the Seven Keys a spin, or any of her 34(!) other mysteries, including those mentioned as favorites by the team above. As a longtime Drew fan, my opinion may be biased, but the longevity of the brand speaks for itself – these games have always been wonderfully realized point-and-click adventures. They're charming, creative, and most of all fun; so, there's bound to be a mystery (or many) right for you.

You can keep up with all things Nancy Drew via blog, YouTube, and Facebook, and other social media channels.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is all set to immerse players in the medieval machinations of warring kings and lords all over again, when it comes out on 11th February 2025.

We’ve played a few hours of the game, experiencing its opening narrative twists, as well as leaping ahead to the big city of Kuttenberg and the broader historical RPG action – you can read all about that here – but we also got to sit down with Warhorse figurehead and PR Manager Tobias Stolz-Zwilling to talk about a game that’s been a whole console generation in the making.

TSA: It’s going to have been 7 years almost exactly between games, which is basically a full console generation which is a lot of time in terms of tech, gaming and people’s attitudes. As a developer, has your approach for Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 changed compared to the original, beyond the studio simply getting so much bigger?

Tobias Stolz-Zwilling: Yes and no. No, it’s still very much the same kind of game, so we’re trying to stay true to Warhorse, stay true to KCD, and deliver what we believe is a true, authentic medieval experience, but then again, now with more people and the cushion of a successful KCD1, we can make things bigger – everyone always says it’s going to be bigger and better, but in our case we do have more people, we have the financial funding that can support the development, but we also have the technology and the skills now to bring stuff into the game that we couldn’t afford before.

For example, we and [Director] Daniel Vávra always wanted to have a city in the game, and in KCD1 they’re teasing and talking about how in Kuttenberg something is happening, but we simply couldn’t [go there], because we weren’t able to have more than a few people on screen, the task of building a huge medieval city was too big, and so in KCD1 we basically have a bunch of villages and one overblown village, which is Rattay. Compare Ratai to KCD2 and it’s like one street in Kuttenberg. Now we are confident to tackle bigger things and that is what I think has changed most.

TSA: You’ve almost already answered my next question, which is what ways KCD2 has changed from the original? The scope, of course, but are you sticking with the alchemy system, the style of combat and things like that?

Tobi: Yes, the scope is the easy answer, but pretty much every element from KCD1 is being tweaked, fine tuned and upgraded. Even the dice minigame will be deeper and there will be some badges you can earn.

I think the most prominent example is with the combat […] We said of KCD1 that combat was easy to learn but hard to master, and I think the hard to master we nailed, but the easy to learn, not so much. Many people liked it, but some struggled, so the idea now is to have different animators come to the studio so that they all feel different, but they ca also offer different playstyle. So if you want to play the intricate combat system, then you can take a sword and do all the combos and moves, but if you’re a character that doesn’t want to combat at all or want a more straightforward style, then there’s weapons like the mace where you pretty much just whack the opponent on the head!

Then in the UI there are less attacking zones, it’s a bit more straightforward, the combos are not so difficult, and so on. It’s also stayed true to each weapon historically and what it was used for – of course the crossbow was easier than a bow, that’s why they invented them, and of course a pole weapon is easier that fencing, that’s why they used them. The intent is for a more entertaining game that offers you this choice.

TSA: You mentioned hitting enemies on the head, and video game developers have got a rich tradition of exploding watermelons. Usually it’s for first person shooters, I think, but did you get through many watermelons during development?

Tobi: [laughs] I don’t want to spoil too much, but many watermelons were harmed!

TSA: It also feels like you’re taking a step forward in the storytelling and the cinematic stylings. Perhaps a lot of that is from experiencing the opening hours and getting people into the setting, but does that continue as the open world is exposed to you?

Tobi: Daniel Vávra is a huge cinematics fan, and one day wants to shoot a film himself, so of course you can see this in his games – you can also see this in Mafia and Mafia 2, his earlier products. He has this hand for dramatic scenes and sequences, and KCD 2 especially is not different.

In the beginning of the game, it’s a little bit more hands on and we bring you up to speed with the video sequences to introduce you to the game and the surroundings. This will be less through the rest of the game, however, I think we have 4, 5 or 6 hours of cinematics in the game, and they’re extremely powerful and important for us to deliver the story. We have a 100 hour game, after all, and it’s a story driven game first, and an action RPG and the fighting and so on, so therefore the cinematics are very important.

TSA: I like that you can really put Henry and Sir Hans together as two characters that have a lot of growing up to do in this game.

Tobi: And that’s what makes them so lovely! Hans Capon in the first game, if you check on Reddit and so on, most people are saying the same: “I hated this dude in the beginning, but then he became my most loved character!”

He had this interest arc in KCD where he became a friend to Henry, but still there’s the difference where he is a noble and Henry is a Squire, a bastard. This is still present, but KCD2 will focus strongly on the bromance between those two, as they face terrible situations through the game where they’re on the edge of surviving (maybe even further), and that’s a dramatic part that we have a big focus on.

Henry, in KCD1, pretty much solved everything by himself, but in KCD2 that will not be the case. He will find out very quickly that he needs friends and he needs other misfits to get things done.

TSA: I get the feeling that Hans would like Henry to still sort everything out for them! [laughs]

How important is that you kept Mutt in the game? Was that a day one addition to the plan?

Tobi: Yes, and you can finally pet him! That was a big thing and even our own guys said we have to have a pettable dog, and to go one further, we have a petable horse as well, which is great.

Some of the perks and stats we are taking over to KCD 2, like the dog for instance or Henry being able to read – it doesn’t make sense to make him learn to read all over again – however, things like combat and other intricate things, he has to rediscover.

I like to say it’s like he’s the champion of a Sunday league, but now he’s going to the Premier League, so he will suck at most things in comparison. However, he now knows how to play soccer, but now needs to step up the game to deal with armies, knights, lords, nobility and so on. It’s not like he forgot everything, it’s more like he needs to refine his skills.

TSA: He didn’t just take a mace to the head and forget stuff.

Tobi: Exactly.

TSA: There’s obviously still areas that you might still be able to improve and add in future, so you talked about not having jousting in the game, which I’m sure a lot of people would be nagging you to do. Is that the main thing that is still on the wish list?

Tobi: Honestly, I think everything that’s in the game and everything that’s not in the game is exactly as intended by Warhorse – this is how we do it, this is what we wanted to deliver, and we are looking forward to getting this out.

Jousting and these things are coming from fans that are very often used to Hollywood scenes, like A Knight’s Tale. Yes, jousting was a thing in the Middle Ages, but it definitely wasn’t as present as people might think…

TSA: Also, it was probably just for the rich folks.

Tobi: For the very rich folks. For the nobility mainly, and even then, when they were participating, it was a problem because you were actually hurting a nobleman!

But there will be tournaments: swordfighting tournaments, archery tournaments, horse tournaments and so on and so on. There will be cool stuff in there, but jousting would be a bit like a Quidditch game for Harry Potter. Of course everyone wanted Quidditch in there, but…

TSA: I mean, jousting you can understand, but Quidditch is impossible to figure out how to make into a workable game!

Tobi: Just catch the golden ball! [laughs]

TSA: Lastly, I was wondering about big picture for Kingdom Come. Obviously you will tell a story of its own in KCD2, but is there still another chapter in a grander saga? I’m not sure you’re allowed to say right now…

Tobi: I’m allowed to say anything! KCD1 ended with a cliffhanger, and KCD2 will end a story, but I don’t tell you which story. What the future brings, we don’t know yet.

In our history at Warhorse, we had two sink or swim situations. One was the Kickstarter, and the other was the release of KCD, because even then we weren’t sure if it would be a success or not. it’s not a sink or swim situation anymore, knocking on wood, but we have to wait and see how KCD2 performs. I am positive, I think the game is great and in very good shape already.

I can tell you already that Warhorse tries to aim to get bigger. We want more people, have bigger studios and again tackle bigger challenges.

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Our hands on time and chat with Tobi with Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 came thanks to a press trip to Kutná Hora, the modern day Kuttenberg, with travel and accommodation provided by Warhorse and Plaion.

With Skull and Bones headed to Steam on August 22nd alongside the game’s new season, Ubisoft Singapore is taking the opportunity to to improve the keyboard and mouse user experience since Steam is a PC storefront. The in-house “interview” talks up efforts to make the game “feel more ‘PC'” with its adjustments, discusses the feedback […]

Item sets in The Elder Scrolls Online are pretty important if you want to reach your maximum potential in the game, but the creation of these sets is a closely guarded secret. While one might think that posting an in-house interview with combat designer Nadav Pechthold would shine a light on these secrets, it cleverly […]

Itch.io – Steam

Back in 2017, a developer from France contacted me about their new point-and-click sci-fi game in the works called Ama’s Lullaby. But, it’s more than a point-and-click game, it’s also a hacking game. Now, this developer works on this game in his free time after his day job and with a small budget. Sometimes these passion projects die due to lack of time, money, motivation and/or just interest. But it looks like Ama’s Lullaby isn’t going to be one of those projects. Earlier this year, a demo of the game got released. Now, I asked the developer if he was interested in streaming this demo with us, and he did. Here is a link to part 1 & part 2. Sadly, due to overheating of Klamath’s computer, it had to be cut into two parts and the ending was quite abrupt. Now, this stream is almost a month ago, and I still wanted to write an article about this game. So, what do I think of the demo? Am I still as impressed when I saw it during the livestream, or is my opinion going to change when I’m not back seating and playing it myself? Let’s find out in this article.

Hacking The Point-And-Click Genre

The story of this demo is quite simple. Ama enters the police station and gets new tasks to aid the space colony she is in. Overall, the story is told more naturally compared to other games. Mostly, we get an opening where the main story of the game is teased, but not in this game. During interactions with the others, we get little glimpses into the world and story. Now, this is a tricky thing to pull off, since either you have to force the player to interact with everybody or risk that some players miss potentially important information. On the other hand, info dumping on the player isn’t always the best solution.

Now, in this space colony, there is an AI that makes a lot of decisions. It turns out that Ama and her dad have created that AI and the software to interact with it. She is one of the ambassadors of the human race. But it doesn’t take too long before strange things start to happen, and you notice that not everything is what you think it is.

The dialogues in this game appear above the character’s their head. When it’s cursive, you know it’s a thought. Not only that, you have simple sound effects that appear to put some additional power to the dialogues and to quickly differentiate between thoughts and spoken dialogues. Currently, there are plans to fully voice act this game, but if those plans fall through, I’d recommend to the developer to have different sound effects for the dialogues for different emotions.

Now, the game cold opens with an old school terminal as a main menu. This might be a bit jarring for new players who aren’t used to working with the command line. Personally, as somebody who knows how a command line works, I really love this touch. Since, this interface is also present in a lot of puzzles in the game. It fits the atmosphere and style of the game as a glove. To be honest, I think that with some minor polishing, it would be perfect.

There are a few things I would change. First, I’d get rid of the case-sensitive commands. The main reason is that a lot of people have the default keybinding for the Steam overlay with is… Shift+Tab. Since I love using autocomplete, it got pretty frustrating when I was holding my shift button and tabbed to autocomplete and my Steam overlay popped up.

A second thing I’d change is to allow the user to enlarge the font of terminal. The reason for that is because it doesn’t really scale pretty well with people who are using larger monitors.

Now, since this game is still in development and this is just the demo… I can totally excuse that there are features not present. Like pushing the up arrow to get the last command, or the help feature not always working correctly in all menus. For example, if you are in the options menu and use “QUALITY HELP”, you get information but if you first write “QUALITY” to see the options you can input and then “QUALITY HELP”… It bugs out and doesn’t give you help at all. Another small bug I noticed is that for some reason, the enter button on my numpad didn’t enter but always selected the whole text. But hey, during the stream the developer said that some of these things are on the list to get fixed for the full game.

Cyberpunk Sci-fi

I was impressed with the visuals of the game when we were playing this game on stream. While I haven’t played the Blade Runner games yet, I have seen a lot of people talk about it and know the visual style of the game. This game really mimics that style extremely well. You really feel like you are in a sci-fi world with some older technology than we have compared to our own technology.

Also, something I really love in this demo is that everything is one big space. You don’t really have “screens” in this game, like in a Broken Sword game for example. No, the camera swings and follows Ama as if she was in a movie. This sells the illusion of the area even more. While I’d have loved to see the details the developer put in every scene more up close sometimes, the more zoomed out look gives you a better overview on the scene. It almost feels like you are watching Ama through security camera’s or a drone camera in a way.

The biggest thing that I want to point out in terms of the visuals is Ama herself. The game goes for a more dark and dimly light environment and with a main character that’s wearing black clothes, it’s extremely easy to lose Ama in the scenery. It wouldn’t surprise me if they gave our main character in Blade Runner a brown coat for that reason, so you can more quickly see the main character without breaking the visual style of the game. But, overall, this is almost a nitpick. Since, it didn’t happen a lot that I lost Ama in the scene. It mostly happened when I was replaying parts of the demo while writing this article.

Now, I want to talk about the command line. The tutorial in this game on how a command line works is actually well done. I love how it doesn’t hold the players hands and tries to force them to input the right thing. It really lets you experiment with it and learn how it works. All the while, a small guide on how things work is displayed on the top of your screen.

This whole command line mechanic in this game is a breath of fresh air. It’s impressive how true to reality the whole command line is. While it uses some creative liberties here and there to make it fit into the game world, overall, it might be a real command line interface that’s open in the game.

In this demo, you have a few tasks to complete. Most of these tasks involve fixing various things. One task is highly dependent on the command line. This was quite easy for me since, like I said, I know how to use a command line. Visually, it’s a bit tricky during the tutorials in the network view since it’s not really clear/easy on how you can scroll up or down while in the network view. Using the mouse mostly scrolls around the network map. I think an easier way to scroll up and down in the terminal could be useful there. Also, when you have to input a command that’s longer than the terminal screen, I’d start a second line. Since, that’s how real life works. Or move the whole thing, and not let the username stay.

Final thoughts and future wishes

Overall, the demo is quite short. If you don’t know what you are doing and exploring everything, it will take you mostly two hours to complete. But if you know what to do, you can finish this in 10 minutes. Yet, the impression I got from the stream hasn’t changed. This game has quite a lot of potential but it needs some polish here and there.

There are some minor things like some objects not being solid and Ama being able to run through them, but there are also more major issues. The elevator bug the developer Marc mentioned during the stream, happened to me. Ama didn’t go up with the elevator and she was stuck. I think it was related to another bug I encountered where the head of IT got stuck in an animation loop. Somehow it was like Ama was near him while Ama was walking in other parts of the station. I don’t know what exactly triggered that, and I have replayed the demo trice to try and get it back into that bugged state, but I was unable to find the cause and I was unable to replicate it.

Currently, there is one way to save the game. There are several terminals in this demo where you can save your game. You only have one save slot. There is also no manual saving of the game. So, remember that. You can also only load from the main menu.

Reviewing a demo is always tricky to do. Especially if the game is still in development, since you never know for sure how the final game is going to look like. Yet, this demo is extremely promising. The puzzles where a lot of fun and after playing the demo, I had the same feeling that Klamath had at the end of the stream. I want to play more or similar games like this.

I could start talking about how the sound effects are amazing but there isn’t enough music yet. But, at one hand, the lack of music really sells the atmosphere of the game a lot more but on the other hand, the music during the terminal sections is really enjoyable. But, I’m sure that in the full game we shall see more music.

Just like I’m convinced that when the full game releases and the players find bugs, they will get fixed. While I was talking with Marc during the stream, I really felt the passion for creating this game and how he wants to make it the best experience it can be for his players. So, if you are interested in this game after reading this article in any way shape or form, I highly recommend that you give this game a chance, play the demo for yourself and give the developer feedback via his Discord or any other of his official channels.

I can’t wait to see and play the final game. Various things got revealed and talked about during the stream and I have to say, it was an amazing experience and conversation. I was already interested in seeing this game when it was on KickStarter but now that I have played the demo, I think we are on a winner here. This game will put an interesting twist on the point-and-click genre and will be interesting to anyone who enjoys adventure games with a sci-fi influence or just enjoy more unique puzzle games.

I want to thank Marc for reaching out to me and talking about his unique project. You can be sure that when the full version releases… me and Klamath will play through it and most likely stream it. And I’ll write a more in-depth article on the final product. Since, I might have not talked quite in-depth in this article but I want to hold off my final opinions when the game is fully released.

If you have read my article, played the demo and/or watched our stream, I’m curious, what did you think about this game? Feel free to talk about it in the comments. Am I overhyping the game or overlooking flaws? Or is there something you’d love to see in the full game?

And with that said, I have said everything about the game I want to say for now. I want to thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

There are some activities that should only be experienced in a bottomless pool of darkness (ideally after the witching hour unless prescribed by the author otherwise). Listening to Nick Cave; one night stands (if you're lucky and are not a suspender-snapping, fedora-wearing fan of Tom Waitts' music - he's okay as an actor, though); reading "House of Leaves", the pinnacle of creepypasta; drunkenly dancing in your kitchen, or watching every 'Disturbing Things from Around the Internet' video, to name just a few. Then, of course, there are horror games, the ultimate adrenaline rush simulator which leaves even the bravest of souls resting their finger on the "Esc" button as if it was some sort of virtual escape hatch.

Listen, I love horror. I might not be the bravest kid on the block nor am I young enough to be able to survive multiple jump scares without calling it a day (or an ambulance), but I watch Ari Aster's films religiously and have a tendency to scare off potential soulmates by telling them about Sad Satan (which was the basis for my dissertation, nonetheless). Like the nightmare-inducing stories by H.P. Lovecraft for the generation who kicked rocks for fun or "consulted" an Ouija board to pass the time, Amnesia games played a big role in fostering my love for screaming in a pitch dark room.

Those who are not familiar with the Amnesia series by now should, to begin with, know that it did as much to the survival horror genre as Dark Souls did for action RPGs or David Bowie for glam rock. That goes well beyond launching careers of numerous YouTubers who were first to realize how lucrative screaming at your monitor can be.

What the brilliant madcap minds at Frictional Games did with Amnesia: The Dark Descent back in 2010 was remove the only means of protection (i.e. weapons) from the standard equation, emphasizing "Capital-S" Survival Horror. This made horror gaming fans willingly and regularly change their pee-stained undies, and while that might not sound like a big deal today, back then it felt as revolutionary as putting Solid Snake in open-world Afghanistan or getting to fight a sadistic, overlord A.I. using only physics, science and Companion Cubes.

Fast forward 13 years, with a number of horror franchises spawned in the wake of the popularity of Amnesia: The Dark Descent - including my favourites, Outlast and Layers Of Fear - and nothing much changed. We still have our amnesiac protagonists, as dictated by the franchise's cursed title. We still hide under tables in the hope that the game's Lovecraftian monstrosities won't be able to smell our fear. You'll do all that while slowly losing your sanity - both in-game and IRL - a fantastic scare tactic that Frictional Games, like some Frankensteinian scientists, have been experimenting with ever since The Dark Descent.

However, Amnesia: The Bunker, the newest installment in the franchise, does something different. Scratch that: The Bunker does a lot of things differently compared to its forebears. That's especially astonishing considering that, just like Assassin’s Creed Mirage or Fallout: New Vegas, this project was born as a DLC, originally intended for Amnesia: Rebirth.

To understand how The Bunker became its own thing, and how on Earth developers managed to raise the bar for interactive horror by including a gun (a series-first), I reached out to Fredrik Olsson, the Creative Lead behind The Bunker and co-owner of the studio, who was happy to indulge me in my quest for answers.

To my surprise, I wasn't met with some hooded, shadowy mastermind in a room lit only by candles and a single, dangling lightbulb, as I imagined most horror creatives to be. Instead, Olsson turned out to be a jolly, immersive sim enthusiast who, besides getting his kicks out of coming up with new and terrifying ways to give us heart attacks, also happens to be an avid streamer, which makes The Bunker even cooler somehow. That doesn't mean I'm stepping back into those monster-infested, maze-like bunkers that make Battlefield seem like a vacation spot anytime soon, though.

SUPERJUMP

Can you tell me what was the first horror game that you ever played?

Fredrik Olsson

Oh, it has to be Resident Evil. The first one, I think. I haven't been that much into horror games myself. It's not like I've been a big horror game or movie buff at all. But I played a few of them and that was the first one that really stuck.

I remember giving my friend the controller and having him walk down the corridor where the dogs jump through the window, and he just handed over the controller back to me... It's very terrifying! I remember playing it when I was little – it's just unnerving.

SUPERJUMP

Do you remember how old you were at the time?

Fredrik Olsson

I think it has to be when it was just released... I think I could have been 19 or 20 years old? I'm getting old... [laughs]

You know, I had Commodore 64, I even had a built-in TV console – that's really old stuff. So if you call Dungeon Master (1987) a horror game, that probably must have been my first one. I don't know if it counts as a horror game any more. But I remember us playing Dungeon Master a lot.

SUPERJUMP

You said that you didn't play horror games that much, nor did you watch a lot of horror films. Were there any other impactful horror experiences that you had like Stephen King or John Carpenter’s The Thing, then?

Fredrik Olsson

Yeah, I read a lot. I've read a lot over the past 10-15 years. I'm really bad at remembering names but there’s a lot of Stephen King books. I think one of the books that I really liked actually was "The Mist". I liked that a lot. It wasn't too long... When I started reading "It", it was such a long book that it kind of lost me halfway through. [laughs]

One of the books that really had an impact on me was "The Terror" [by Dan Simmons]. It's basically 1800s and [there's] a big ship that's supposed to try and get around the continent but then get stuck in the ice. There are tons of men on this boat and they start getting killed off by some kind of monster.

It had a bit of an impact on me because you never really see this monster. It’s more about the people living on this boat stuck in the most horrible situation. I like that type of horror where you have relationships but also have some kind of ominous being that always creates this kind of uncomfortable feeling throughout.

Actually, one of the recent movies with that guy from The Office - A Quiet Place – I really like that they based it around sound. There's one scene where they have zero audio which is very rare in movies...

It's kind of like the psychological aspect of what we did with The Bunker: when the generator is running, we have this kind of Shepard's tone that runs in the background. You can't really hear it, but if you listen knowing about it – you will hear it. It's an illusion basically of sound going downwards constantly. It creates this, 'Oh, the fuel is going out, the fuel is going out!' feeling. The second that the generator dies, the tone also disappears.

SUPERJUMP

So like some Christopher Nolan kind of mind-trickery?

Fredrik Olsson

Yes! And Christopher Nolan has that quite a lot in his movies. I think in Dunkirk there was a lot of focus on time. And so, that's where the idea came from.

SUPERJUMP

Is it true that The Bunker was supposed to be a DLC for Amnesia Rebirth? Also, how did you land on the idea to set it in a WWI setting?

Fredrik Olsson

Let's start with the second question. During the development of Rebirth, someone suggested it would be fun to have the WWI trenches. I think it might have been the writer on the previous game just mentioning [that] during a meeting. And we might have revisited it once or twice after that. The idea just stuck with us.

Then we came to a point where we came out from Amnesia Rebirth; I was supposed to start off the pre-production on a bigger project. But then I took over the creative lead role of Rebirth halfway through [the development], which meant that I came out of it having not been part of the initial design or story [development], feeling like I wasn't really done. I had more ideas. One thing I wanted to try was: 'Why don't we have a weapon?'

That kind of connected with the WWI setting, which was a setting that was not high-tech in any way. So I suggested that we make a DLC for Amnesia Rebirth. I pitched this idea because we had tried out stalking behaviour before; we tried it out on the ghouls in Rebirth, but it was such a linear story that stalking behaviour didn't make sense. (Actually, we had a version of this stalking behaviour where [ghouls] came out of holes. But we never used it in Rebirth.)

So that also tied into this idea of a bunker – now with a gun, one stalking enemy, and with WWI [setting], which was the previous idea. It all just came together that way. Everyone liked it, so we said, 'Let's try and do that!'

Very early we made a prototype and realized this is so different from Rebirth. Also, very fun. Honestly, not many weeks into the development of The Bunker as a DLC, we realized, 'No – this needs to be on its own thing.' Because we were having so much fun with it and seeing the potential, we kind of just allowed the scope to grow a bit.

SUPERJUMP

Should I ask about the gun(s) or about the randomization element first? Let's go with the randomization because that's a pretty unique feature that hasn’t been done in an Amnesia game before. Just to add, maybe you will agree, but Soma and previous Amnesia titles couldn't pull it off because they were more story-centric.

Fredrik Olsson

I think it's fair to say that if you replay Amnesia Rebirth or Soma, you replay it for the story. If you play The Bunker again – you play it for the challenge. That's why we have a Safe Mode for Soma. The narrative is that important.

So, yeah, randomization is there to make it more challenging. If you came in a second time and said, 'Okay, I need to get into that room because there’s a grenade in that drawer,' you wouldn't have to explore all of the environments anymore. Also, the codes are randomized [every time] – you can't look them up on internet and find out what's the code for that locker. You need to find a corpse with the right dog tag. Otherwise, you would have a very optimized path through the game and that would immediately kill replayability (for me, at least).

The core of The Bunker is to challenge the player. It's a fairly small environment, but we mix things up within that environment to make it fun. Especially with the dynamic monster as well. Which means that if the stalker had been scripted, that would also take away [from horror] because you’d know, 'Okay, when I step around this corner, he's gonna enter this room.' It's very rare that it pops up in the same place.

---

"Very early we made a prototype and realized this is so different from Rebirth. Also, very fun. Honestly, not many weeks into the development of The Bunker as a DLC, we realized, 'No – this needs to be on its own thing.' Because we were having so much fun with it and seeing the potential, we kind of just allowed the scope to grow a bit."

Fredrik Olsson
Executive Producer

---

SUPERJUMP

Now, I want to ask about the gun. In one of his early blogs, Thomas Grip, the creator of the Amnesia franchise, wrote that there’s a prototype version of Amnesia: The Dark Descent with guns, and apparently it was "too fun." Like it distracted the players from getting scared...Now you returned to this idea but managed to pull it off. Can you explain how you came up with this idea of 'It’s time to give players the gun again'?

Fredrik Olsson

I think the very first small prototype that we had, you were able to fire the gun at a padlock. It was very early that we said the bullets are not going to kill the monster – it's going to be a tool. Then, of course, it's going to be very few bullets, so they will be valuable. As soon as you put a value to that, you have a whole different scenario. Add that firing the gun at the Stalker once will [make him] come back and take two bullets next time... That's like you just sacrificed something just by firing the gun at him.

What it does is that it gives you a tool that is much more fun. I mean, it is fun to use the gun. But it's also very much anxiety-inducing. [laughs] There's one place in the maintenance, for example, where there's a hole in the back wall. You can shoot the padlock through it. '[But] should I use it here?’ Should I use this bullet here on this padlock??'

Look at horror movies: if you have few bullets left, it's not a fun situation. I'm kind of surprised it's not been used that way before, to be honest. This way, what we could do with the gun now is that it doesn't only become this game about hiding – especially with the generator, which is running on time.

I love the fact that during design, every single mechanic we came up with we started looking at the Stalker behaviour. 'Can you just hide under a table for a while? Is that still the solution?' No. Because when you sit there, you hear the Shephard tone running in the background and you go like, 'No, no, no, no! I can't sit there for too long. The monster is here walking around. Maybe I could just shoot him and run.' That gives you more opportunities, different ways to approach the problem.

I think early on it was like images in my head that became [the Central Bunker]. Some people were saying, 'The generator might become this kind of shore that you need to fill up over and over again.' And playing the first prototype, it was a very small environment. We couldn't backtrack. We couldn't be far away from the generator. But I had this moment in my head, like video playing in my head, of you walking there having done certain things, having this progress with the save room way back there. And [then] boom! It goes dark... You hear the monster coming out. And that moment was what we wanted to achieve.

There were multiple of those moments actually with how you can shoot it. For example, loading the gun: you're sitting behind the shelf, you hear the Stalker coming closer and you go, 'Did I load that bullet I found??' Then you have to take [the gun] out and check if you have a bullet in the gun, then back and then up. It creates these kinds of [moments] you've seen in horror movies. All of those moments, they are dynamic. They're created in that sense.

SUPERJUMP

Have you seen a movie called No Country for Old Men by any chance?

Fredrik Olsson

Yeah, I've seen it.

SUPERJUMP

Do you remember the scene where the guy's sitting on his hotel bed and he's slowly turning the light off and reloading his shotgun before the psycho guy comes to the door? He's doing it all silently. So this kind of brings to mind The Bunker because you are forced to take notice of how much sound the reloading [of your gun] does.

Fredrik Olsson

Yeah, that’s cool. But I don't remember that. I've actually thought I need to rewatch that movie because I don't remember too much about it... [laughs]

SUPERJUMP

Well, it's great! Great use of tension there. Anyway, you might have heard this critique that Amnesia: Rebirth feels more story-centric compared to The Bunker, which is more gameplay-oriented. How do you balance both of these qualities without losing the best aspects of one or another?

Fredrik Olsson

I think it's very difficult. To make a story like Soma, that’s very difficult to do with systems and mechanics – it has to come from one or the other as a core. Hopefully you can find ways where the narrative can blend in.

The Bunker is gameplay-centric – it comes from that seed. We've kind of added the narrative on top of that. The setting was already there to begin with and that helped the gameplay. The narrative – the friend, the Stalker, all those things – came afterward,. Whereas in Soma, the story came first.

And I agree with you. Unless you are super lucky that they just come together, I think it's super difficult to create something that has both. When you have gameplay that is an immersive sim, the player’s mindset is like, 'I need to save this resource for later. Maybe I need this to open a door later on.' If you want them to be concerned and think about a deeper theme, for example, a philosophical theme, like you do in Soma, then you don't want them to start thinking about, 'How can I use this grenade to blow up a door later on?' You want them to focus on the narrative.

I think it's super difficult to get that strong theme and an immersive approach to gameplay. I can't really see myself like even trying that out, to be honest... [laughs]

---

"I mean, it is fun to use the gun. But it's also very much anxiety-inducing. [laughs] There's one place in the maintenance, for example, where there's a hole in the back wall. You can shoot the padlock through it. '[But] should I use it here?’ Should I use this bullet here on this padlock??' "

Fredrik Olsson
Executive Producer

---

SUPERJUMP

In one recent interview, Thomas [Grip] said that for Frictional Games' next project, you are going to "cut back a bit" on horror games "in order to give greater focus on other emotional qualities." How do you personally feel about that? Aren't you afraid that you might alienate the player base that was so in love with The Bunker?

Fredrik Olsson

No. I mean, we have two projects in the pipeline. We always have that. The way we work as a studio is me and Thomas – we are co-owners. And also now we've become the creative leads on each project. So Thomas is working on his project now and that's going to be the next one that comes out.

We don't want to look at ourselves as genre-focused. I believe Thomas also mentioned in some [of his] blogs that there could have been fewer monster encounters in SOMA so that the narrative could've felt better. It would still be a horror game, of course, because of the setting and everything.

But for me, for the next project, I can't see going anywhere but more like The Bunker; More player freedom, player reward, and challenge. That's definitely what's going to happen. But that's further down the line. Even though it might not be a horror game, it's still going to have tension and all that.

SUPERJUMP

That's very interesting. And I do personally love SOMA. It’s one of those horror games that sticks with you.

Fredrik Olsson

And it's really popular, still! And it’s not an immersive sim – in fact, it's very far from that. So I guess you need to look at our games not as a studio releasing games, but as its own identity. Especially now that The Bunker took a step outside of what we regularly do.

You could have asked me the same question after Amnesia Rebirth and said, 'So are you making immersive sims now? How are people going to feel about that?' [laughs] We like to take things wherever we find the inspiration and where we want to do things because that's usually where the good stuff comes out.

SUPERJUMP

Can we talk about the blind shotgunner sequence? Because that's one of the more memorable sequences in the entire Amnesia franchise, at least for me. One aspect I really like about it – which was pointed out by the YouTuber called Purposeless Rabbitholes – is that if you put the gas mask on, you are going to have a completely different experience fighting the guy. Can you explain how you came up with that idea? Also, what inspired this sequence altogether?

Fredrik Olsson

We wanted to have something that did break up the gameplay with the Stalker, basically. Then we started thinking, 'Okay, if we can have a gunfight with a soldier, that would be absolutely fantastic. But we don't want to do it the regular way.'

That's where the narrative came in a way. By that point, we'd gone fairly far on in the narrative. We had written a lot of notes about people going crazy down there [in the Bunker]. So let's make a super crazy guy! I even suggested he cut out his eyes. I would say, 'We need more blood on the table. We need to see that he cut out his eyes.' So yeah, that created an interesting encounter with a blind enemy. Whereas the Stalker is not blind and can spot you.

Now, about the noise. If you go into that area, you can see there's tons of things you can throw. The idea of how that encounter could best be played is that you actually throw something at the other end of a room. He fires the gun, you see the flash and you know, 'Okay, that's the dude I need to take out.' But it became too easy...

We thought, 'We had already written about the fumes [in the Bunker]. We knew that the fumes were affecting the water that your friend drank and turned him into the Stalker. So let's do that type of gas.' We needed it seeping in through the walls to make it more interesting. It should affect the player as well. 'We can have silhouettes, too!' For easy purposes, I suggested that we add the Ghouls from Rebirth. And then we used just regular people as well. So you see those silhouettes because that makes it more difficult.

We took some creative freedom on the gas mask. In WWI, the gas mask wasn't actually covering the ears, but I said, 'We need to take that creative freedom because that changes the whole thing.' If you put that on, you get limited visibility and you get muffled hearing which made it more difficult to notice him. But you didn't see the silhouettes anymore. I mean, I don't think it ever starts as one finished idea. It's always a small idea that leads to something like this.

Also, one of the things I really wanted to do – since everything else is close combat – was an enemy that could actually fire at the distance. That also was an early part of the idea. That's where the soldier came in. Then we realized he should have a shotgun.

You can actually avoid him and not kill him. If you feel sorry for him and feel that he's better off just walking around, singing his song, or chanting his poem – then you can do that, too. But if you kill him, you get another tool. So yeah, everything fell into place nicely.

SUPERJUMP

Love that! How much research do you do before giving a green light to a setting for the game? Do you research a couple of different settings and see which one has more potential gameplay-wise?

Fredrik Olsson

I think for this one, no. We didn't do that with The Bunker because we kind of felt that it's going to be a smaller thing. As the scope grew, we already knew enough about the early-tech setting.

Then all of a sudden we realized that fuel could be poured on the floor. Someone on the team mentioned that if you can pour it [in the generator], you should be able to pour it on the floor. If you fire at the fuel puddle, it'll set the fire and if there’s an explosive barrel close by, it will turn into fire. So we worked within that framework. We just said World War I. It was very simple.

During the project, there were times when I thought going with early tech was both a blessing and a curse. It was difficult to find more gameplay mechanics. Fire, burning fuel, for example, opened up a whole new thing. At the same time, WWI was very refreshing because you didn't have to think about crazy ideas. It was very limited.

Early on we found this this idea for the flashlight. When we found out about the dynamo flashlight, we were like, 'That’s it! It’s World War I. We'll sort out the rest later.' [laughs] That was pretty much how it was. We fell in love with the idea and went with it.

SUPERJUMP

Will you continue on this path, taking an idea and going with it, then? Or you will research multiple possible settings for your next project?

Fredrik Olsson

It's probably the first [route]. Like, the idea is already set. I can't say much more. I hope it's going to be clear when you see it.

In a way, it's based on inspiration from literature and things like that. So you could say that there's been research done. But it's more like things that you picked up in your spare time – that becomes the research or the thing that indicates the kind of setting we will go for.

It's rather like, 'Oh, I like these types of aspects.' Then it starts to mould in your brain. You come to a conclusion where you can see the gameplay emerging and things like that.

SUPERJUMP

Do you think it's more difficult to scare players now than back in 2010 when the original Amnesia game came out?

Fredrik Olsson

This is going to be my very personal opinion, but I think it probably is. If you look back when games were newer, people didn't understand scripted events the same way. The fidelity is also higher, which means that if something looks off, it can ruin the experience.

With the Stalker, for example, very early on we came up with the idea to have the flickering light around him. First of all, that's a benefit for the player because if they have the generator on and running, it helps them to know that the Stalker is getting close – kind of like the scanner in Alien Isolation. The flickering light also disguises the Stalker. So you don't get a clear view [of him]. There's probably certain aspects of his animations that could make the Stalker look a bit silly. But you don't see those. It's also a camouflage to put him inside the holes. That was big and actually came about halfway through [development].

Previously we had the Stalker out in lit areas. Let's say you had the lamp turned on in the barracks, and while you were roaming around in the other barracks, you could hear the Stalker going around there. That just didn't work because players were saying, 'The generator's on [but] it doesn't have an effect on the Stalker.' They didn't know where he was [because] he was just contained in those dark areas. The moment we said, 'Let's try and put him in the holes more,' and not care so much about the lit areas – that just ramped up the horror.

I actually went to Thomas and said, 'Hey, I think we might have made this game too scary.' [laughs] And he was like, 'That’s good!' But I actually felt this might be too much for many players.

Now, if you really want to scare people – and I hope we managed to do that with The Bunker – then you need to tie it into the players' actions more instead of adding trigger points on the floor. For example, when you go there and something moves at the end of the corridor. Even moving a crate in the bunker could have a potentially disastrous effect on you. And that's playing with your head. I hope more games will do that instead of being almost like a movie.

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"We took some creative freedom on the gas mask. In WWI, the gas mask wasn't actually covering the ears, but I said, 'We need to take that creative freedom because that changes the whole thing.' If you put that on, you get limited visibility and you get muffled hearing which made it more difficult to notice him. But you didn't see the silhouettes anymore. I mean, I don't think it ever starts as one finished idea. It's always a small idea that leads to something like this."

Fredrik Olsson
Executive Producer

---

SUPERJUMP

To be honest, I haven't played such a scary game since the original Outlast... It’s so scary that I couldn't play it without my lights off. And that never happens!

Fredrik Olsson

That's nice. We like to scare people. [laughs] It's a strange line of work but someone has to do it.

SUPERJUMP

Okay, the final question: is there a feature/idea of yours you are most proud of?

Fredrik Olsson

The first thing I have to say is that every unique sequence that was created uniquely for the player – that's what I'm proud of the most. We managed to create a dynamic environment that creates war stories for the players. That was a big challenge for this project. I'm super happy with how it turned out.

If I had to pick a narrative point, I think it has to be the Pillbox. So many players go up there and say, 'Hey, I can climb out of this!' It's a very strong moment where people, looking down at the hole again, go, 'Oh, I need to get back there... This is not the way out. The sniper is ready to kill me.' It makes people think it's a safe area because the Stalker can't get there.

That shot is actually fun as well because the idea came from the audio guy who just put it in and said, 'I’d put an audio stinger here.' And everyone was like, 'Ooh, that's great!' Then we added on top [of it]: you can actually hold the helmet up, and if you do – it gets shot out of your hands. It's a very nice narrative moment where you get reminded of the setting.

I really like The Chapel in the maintenance area. I just love how people run back to the Safe Room, close the door, and then take a deep breath. You can hear it on so many playthroughs. [Laughs] That's the first time they take a breath.

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We'd like to thank Fredrik for making time to sit down with us. If you'd like to read more in-depth developer interviews, check out our full interviews archive.

We reached out to the team at Crazy Viking Studios in hope of finding out more about Volgarr the Viking II, ahead of release on Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch and PC.

The post Crafting a Legend: Interview with the Makers of Volgarr the Viking II appeared first on TheXboxHub.

An MIT research team led by Professor Darrell Irvine has developed a novel kind of vaccine adjuvant: a nanoparticle that can help to stimulate the immune system to generate a stronger response to a vaccine. These nanoparticles contain saponin, a compound derived from the bark of the Chilean soapbark tree, along with a molecule called MPLA, each of which helps to activate the immune system.

The adjuvant has been incorporated into an experimental HIV vaccine that has shown promising results in animal studies, and this month, the first human volunteers will receive the vaccine as part of a phase 1 clinical trial run by the Consortium for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development at the Scripps Research Institute. MIT News spoke with Irvine about why this project required an interdisciplinary approach, and what may lie ahead.

Q: What are the special features of the new nanoparticle adjuvant that help it create a more powerful immune response to vaccination? 

A: Most vaccines, such as the Covid-19 vaccines, are thought to protect us through B cells making protective antibodies. Development of an HIV vaccine has been made challenging by the fact that the B cells that are capable of evolving to produce protective antibodies — called broadly neutralizing antibodies — are very rare in the average person. Vaccine adjuvants are important in this scenario to ensure that when we immunize with an HIV antigen, these rare B cells become activated and get a chance to participate in the immune response.

We particularly discovered that this new adjuvant, which we call SMNP (short for saponin/MPLA nanoparticles), is particularly good at helping more B cells enter germinal centers, the specialized location in lymph nodes where high affinity antibodies are produced. In animal models, SMNP also has shown unique mechanisms of action: Administering antigens with SMNP leads to better antigen delivery to lymph nodes (through increases in lymph flow) and better capture of the antigen by B cells in lymph nodes.

Q: How did your lab, which generally focuses on bioengineering and materials science, end up working on HIV vaccines? What obstacles did you have to overcome in the development of this adjuvant?

A: About 15 years ago, Bruce Walker approached me about getting involved in the HIV vaccine effort, and recruited me to join the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard as a member of the steering committee. Through the Ragon Institute, I met colleagues in the Scripps Consortium for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development (CHAVD), and we realized there was a tremendous opportunity to directly contribute to the HIV vaccine challenge, working in partnership with experts in immunogen design, structural biology, and HIV pathogenesis.

As we carried out study after study of SMNP in preclinical animal models, we realized the adjuvant had really amazing effects for promoting anti-HIV antibody responses, and the CHAVD decided this was worth moving forward to testing in humans. A major challenge was transferring the technology out of the lab to synthesize large amounts of the adjuvant under GMP (good manufacturing process) conditions for a clinical trial. The initial contract manufacturing organization (CMO) hired by the consortium to produce SMNP simply couldn’t get a process to work for scalable manufacturing.

Luckily for us, a chemical engineering graduate student, Ivan Pires, whom I co-advise with Paula Hammond, head of MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering, had developed expertise in one particular processing technique known as tangential flow filtration during his undergraduate training. Leveraging classic chemical engineering skills in thermodynamics and process design, Ivan stepped in and solved the process issues the CMO was facing, allowing the manufacturing to move forward. This to me is what makes MIT great — the ability of our students and postdocs to step up and solve big problems and make big contributions when the need arises.

Q: What other diseases could this approach be useful for? Are there any plans to test it with other types of vaccines?

A: In principle, SMNP may be helpful for any infectious disease vaccine where strong antibody responses are needed. We are currently sharing the adjuvant with about 30 different labs around the world, who are testing it in vaccines against many other pathogens including Epstein-Barr virus, malaria, and influenza. We are hopeful that if SMNP is safe and effective in humans, this will be an adjuvant that can be broadly used in infectious disease trials.

© Photo: Steve Boxall

An MIT research team led by Professor Darrell Irvine has developed a novel kind of vaccine adjuvant: a nanoparticle that can help to stimulate the immune system to generate a stronger response to a vaccine. These nanoparticles contain saponin, a compound derived from the bark of the Chilean soapbark tree, along with a molecule called MPLA, each of which helps to activate the immune system.

The adjuvant has been incorporated into an experimental HIV vaccine that has shown promising results in animal studies, and this month, the first human volunteers will receive the vaccine as part of a phase 1 clinical trial run by the Consortium for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development at the Scripps Research Institute. MIT News spoke with Irvine about why this project required an interdisciplinary approach, and what may lie ahead.

Q: What are the special features of the new nanoparticle adjuvant that help it create a more powerful immune response to vaccination? 

A: Most vaccines, such as the Covid-19 vaccines, are thought to protect us through B cells making protective antibodies. Development of an HIV vaccine has been made challenging by the fact that the B cells that are capable of evolving to produce protective antibodies — called broadly neutralizing antibodies — are very rare in the average person. Vaccine adjuvants are important in this scenario to ensure that when we immunize with an HIV antigen, these rare B cells become activated and get a chance to participate in the immune response.

We particularly discovered that this new adjuvant, which we call SMNP (short for saponin/MPLA nanoparticles), is particularly good at helping more B cells enter germinal centers, the specialized location in lymph nodes where high affinity antibodies are produced. In animal models, SMNP also has shown unique mechanisms of action: Administering antigens with SMNP leads to better antigen delivery to lymph nodes (through increases in lymph flow) and better capture of the antigen by B cells in lymph nodes.

Q: How did your lab, which generally focuses on bioengineering and materials science, end up working on HIV vaccines? What obstacles did you have to overcome in the development of this adjuvant?

A: About 15 years ago, Bruce Walker approached me about getting involved in the HIV vaccine effort, and recruited me to join the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard as a member of the steering committee. Through the Ragon Institute, I met colleagues in the Scripps Consortium for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development (CHAVD), and we realized there was a tremendous opportunity to directly contribute to the HIV vaccine challenge, working in partnership with experts in immunogen design, structural biology, and HIV pathogenesis.

As we carried out study after study of SMNP in preclinical animal models, we realized the adjuvant had really amazing effects for promoting anti-HIV antibody responses, and the CHAVD decided this was worth moving forward to testing in humans. A major challenge was transferring the technology out of the lab to synthesize large amounts of the adjuvant under GMP (good manufacturing process) conditions for a clinical trial. The initial contract manufacturing organization (CMO) hired by the consortium to produce SMNP simply couldn’t get a process to work for scalable manufacturing.

Luckily for us, a chemical engineering graduate student, Ivan Pires, whom I co-advise with Paula Hammond, head of MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering, had developed expertise in one particular processing technique known as tangential flow filtration during his undergraduate training. Leveraging classic chemical engineering skills in thermodynamics and process design, Ivan stepped in and solved the process issues the CMO was facing, allowing the manufacturing to move forward. This to me is what makes MIT great — the ability of our students and postdocs to step up and solve big problems and make big contributions when the need arises.

Q: What other diseases could this approach be useful for? Are there any plans to test it with other types of vaccines?

A: In principle, SMNP may be helpful for any infectious disease vaccine where strong antibody responses are needed. We are currently sharing the adjuvant with about 30 different labs around the world, who are testing it in vaccines against many other pathogens including Epstein-Barr virus, malaria, and influenza. We are hopeful that if SMNP is safe and effective in humans, this will be an adjuvant that can be broadly used in infectious disease trials.

© Photo: Steve Boxall

An MIT research team led by Professor Darrell Irvine has developed a novel kind of vaccine adjuvant: a nanoparticle that can help to stimulate the immune system to generate a stronger response to a vaccine. These nanoparticles contain saponin, a compound derived from the bark of the Chilean soapbark tree, along with a molecule called MPLA, each of which helps to activate the immune system.

The adjuvant has been incorporated into an experimental HIV vaccine that has shown promising results in animal studies, and this month, the first human volunteers will receive the vaccine as part of a phase 1 clinical trial run by the Consortium for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development at the Scripps Research Institute. MIT News spoke with Irvine about why this project required an interdisciplinary approach, and what may lie ahead.

Q: What are the special features of the new nanoparticle adjuvant that help it create a more powerful immune response to vaccination? 

A: Most vaccines, such as the Covid-19 vaccines, are thought to protect us through B cells making protective antibodies. Development of an HIV vaccine has been made challenging by the fact that the B cells that are capable of evolving to produce protective antibodies — called broadly neutralizing antibodies — are very rare in the average person. Vaccine adjuvants are important in this scenario to ensure that when we immunize with an HIV antigen, these rare B cells become activated and get a chance to participate in the immune response.

We particularly discovered that this new adjuvant, which we call SMNP (short for saponin/MPLA nanoparticles), is particularly good at helping more B cells enter germinal centers, the specialized location in lymph nodes where high affinity antibodies are produced. In animal models, SMNP also has shown unique mechanisms of action: Administering antigens with SMNP leads to better antigen delivery to lymph nodes (through increases in lymph flow) and better capture of the antigen by B cells in lymph nodes.

Q: How did your lab, which generally focuses on bioengineering and materials science, end up working on HIV vaccines? What obstacles did you have to overcome in the development of this adjuvant?

A: About 15 years ago, Bruce Walker approached me about getting involved in the HIV vaccine effort, and recruited me to join the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard as a member of the steering committee. Through the Ragon Institute, I met colleagues in the Scripps Consortium for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development (CHAVD), and we realized there was a tremendous opportunity to directly contribute to the HIV vaccine challenge, working in partnership with experts in immunogen design, structural biology, and HIV pathogenesis.

As we carried out study after study of SMNP in preclinical animal models, we realized the adjuvant had really amazing effects for promoting anti-HIV antibody responses, and the CHAVD decided this was worth moving forward to testing in humans. A major challenge was transferring the technology out of the lab to synthesize large amounts of the adjuvant under GMP (good manufacturing process) conditions for a clinical trial. The initial contract manufacturing organization (CMO) hired by the consortium to produce SMNP simply couldn’t get a process to work for scalable manufacturing.

Luckily for us, a chemical engineering graduate student, Ivan Pires, whom I co-advise with Paula Hammond, head of MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering, had developed expertise in one particular processing technique known as tangential flow filtration during his undergraduate training. Leveraging classic chemical engineering skills in thermodynamics and process design, Ivan stepped in and solved the process issues the CMO was facing, allowing the manufacturing to move forward. This to me is what makes MIT great — the ability of our students and postdocs to step up and solve big problems and make big contributions when the need arises.

Q: What other diseases could this approach be useful for? Are there any plans to test it with other types of vaccines?

A: In principle, SMNP may be helpful for any infectious disease vaccine where strong antibody responses are needed. We are currently sharing the adjuvant with about 30 different labs around the world, who are testing it in vaccines against many other pathogens including Epstein-Barr virus, malaria, and influenza. We are hopeful that if SMNP is safe and effective in humans, this will be an adjuvant that can be broadly used in infectious disease trials.

© Photo: Steve Boxall

Over the last year or so, I’ve inexplicably joined the ranks of people collecting big, bulky vinyl soundtracks. Albums are enjoying their second coming in a mostly digital era, and initially, I picked up a few with the sole intent of hanging them on a barren bedroom wall. Yet somehow, somewhere along the way, I wound up with a record player listening to the Silent Hill 4 soundtrack. It gives me a sort of haunted, pinky-out ambience.

Anyway, I’ve got no technical reason for it. My vinyl expertise doesn't extend beyond 'that sounds good' or 'that sounds bad' — and I don’t own any albums that could fund my retirement or make them worth all the fuss. Really, I just like how holding the unwieldy discs feels, and I'm especially into the ones that look a bit like vintage splatter art. I like looking at the sleeves, blowing away the dust, and using a medium society had long aged out of by the time I was born.

A lot of people making games seem to share that sentiment, too. I recently spoke with Sabotage Studio president and Sea of Stars creative director Thierry Boulanger, who seems inspired by what drives us to revisit those little rituals with older media. In the interview, Boulanger offered Destructoid a peek into the studio’s process. It's a look into making something both new and retro, maintaining integrity between mediums, and how you decide where Yasunori Mitsuda slots into all of this. 

It’s all about touch

“From the get-go, it was a must,” said Boulanger, in reference to the decision to give Sea of Stars the retail and vinyl soundtrack treatment. The studio released its first game, The Messenger, in the same nostalgic vein back in 2018. They were already familiar with the path to getting something tangible made, and with Sea of Stars, Boulanger says it was always part of the plan. 

“We want there to be intent in everything that we do. We don’t wanna just move plastic. It’s not so much about the units. It’s that we make something people want to touch, they want to own, they want to be able to keep. They want it to exist in their lives, more than the abstract, digital part of everything.” 

The holding, the touching, that’s all part of the retro experience for plenty of enthusiasts. It’s, mostly, a good-intentioned longing for different times or something comforting and familiar. For me, it usually boils down to some combination of childhood favorites and just wanting something a little simpler to manage. However, working within the limitations of yesteryear doesn't merit praise by default, despite what my nostalgia insists, and by no means is the process truly easier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YP8_dlYv78

Sea of Stars gets that, I explained as much in my review, but eschewing what’s needlessly obtuse doesn’t detract from recreating classic RPG designs with modern sensibilities. The limitations, however, still exist when you move between mediums  — like making the jump from a limitless digital library to the more restrained, plastic discs.

Sabotage’s Iam8bit vinyl collaboration is a 2xLP collection, so it doesn’t contain the entire, hefty 200-song tracklist from Sea of Stars. Instead, it has to work as a sampling representative of the OST’s best pieces, capturing the work of composer Eric Brown and his legendary collaborator, Yasunori Mitsuda of Chrono Trigger and Xeno-series fame, in a curated format. It’s a gauntlet of bangers already made within a limited framework, and for the vinyl, they’d have to be culled again. 

“In capturing retro, we do like to work with the limitations because we sort of aim for the type of experience or the type of things that emerge from really harsh boundaries,” said Boulanger. 

“So, any track has to be a two minute loop maximum. You need to have a hook in there in like three sections, you know? You can't do this drawn-out intro into a symphonic thing that just goes on. So it's, it's less of a score and more of a classic soundtrack there. But since we don't have the memory limitations of a cartridge, then we can do as many tracks as we want.”

For Sea of Stars, that meant any important cutscene could have “bespoke audio,” leading to its whopping 200 tracks. It’s not the usual setup for many of the games that inspired the RPG, so that meant the vinyl would get picky. 

“The first thing we did was [say] ‘okay, we’re doing 2xLP, right? So, we’re gonna save one side for Mitsuda, because this collaboration is straight-up legendary.” Boulanger laughs describing the process, but that harsh curation left to the rest of the soundtrack was important to get Mitsuda’s 12 tracks on the physical album. 

From there, Boulanger and Brown worked to sample a selection of its more iconic themes into something that could flow outside the larger, digital collection. They needed the basics, like the town and battle themes, but Brown was left to much of the curation process to ensure the round-up was not only representative but balanced. 

“Eric also put care into the idea of the listening experience, trying to pace everything properly. Of course, you want all the heavy bangers, but you also want to sometimes take a bit of a break. So we feel it flows really nicely, but it was really something [of a process] because when you're doing digital, you're kind of boundless, right? You can just do however much you want to do.

And this kind of brings it back to now, ‘but what if you distill your idea?’ It forces you, it puts you in this mindset of like, ‘what's the nugget? What's the, the crystallized form of it that's concise?’ It was a super fun journey to do that, even though it was a bit hard.”

Moving with purpose

I describe my own recent affinity for vinyl with a bit of annoyance. If anything, I’m mostly embarrassed to be so sentimental about just stuff. I’ve already got an untameable retro collection of cartridges, discs, and guides eating away at a finite amount of closet and shelf space. But there’s comfort in holding something, purposefully removing the cartridge, or smashing a physical reset button. It compels me into keeping a sea of N64 games. 

If anything, Boulanger’s enthusiasm for that sensation offers a far kinder look at the type of person hoarding a stash of CDs to unlock creatures in a decades-old PlayStation game. 

“There is this understanding, there is a commitment to being in the moment. If you're just playing some playlist on Spotify or whatever in your Bluetooth speaker, it's like, yeah, you just go back 10 seconds to keep getting the dopamine hit of your favorite spike in the melody, or you hit next the second you're not like 100% vibing with the current track or whatever. 

Whereas when you have a vinyl, it's kind of like, in a way,  it's a presence. It's not just a thing that you consume. And just all the steps that you have to do to even get it to play, I feel like, your entire body understands that you are committing time to listening to music more mindfully.”

It’s a process he sees as almost meditative, or at least shares roots with the grounding, purposeful steps involved in physical media. While there’s no shortage of stories from the director rooted in childhood nostalgia that leads to the creation of games like Sea of Stars, he seems just as compelled by the little processes. “For me, a vinyl is that, I’m going to actually sit down and listen to music. Not on the side, but that's my activity this afternoon, I want to listen to music fully.”

I grew up using CDs, but I’m incredibly nostalgic for the physicality of the whole playing-a-record process. It’s certainly far more cumbersome to pull out the Silent Hill 4 vinyl and listen to 'Room of Angel' on a device drastically bigger than my phone, but I just brood better that way. I’m more emotional.

Ultimately, there's always a more critical read of my desire to buy another SNES game at a pawn shop or order more pieces of plastic to stack on a shelf, and I get it. I don't necessarily need every piece of digital media I own as a tangible, physical item, but there's value in that very purposeful, involved way an old concert or vinyl setup makes me interact with it. It's certainly a commitment, as Boulanger described, and in the attention economy where focus is a constant struggle, I appreciate the occasional game or album that demands I slow down.

---

Sea of Stars launches its retail edition worldwide today and is available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox Series X. The exclusive edition with a retro game manual, digital game soundtrack, poster, and other collectibles launches in Q2, 2024. The 2xLP vinyl soundtrack is available for pre-order now and is scheduled for release in Q3 2024. A digital download code with the full soundtrack is included with the vinyl.

The post Sea of Stars creative director talks crafting physical game releases and our craving for the tangible appeared first on Destructoid.

After the success of Life Is Strange and DON’T NOD Studios’ other narrative adventure titles, players will be excited to learn of a new female-led game in the same genre. Bloom & Rage is the first in what will hopefully be a full Lost Records game series which brings some recognizable elements and some innovative features.

We were lucky enough to have the opportunity to interview some of the team ahead of its release, as well as catch an early preview of the next game trailer. The trailer is enriched with 90s nostalgia and we get to see more of the friends Swann, Nora, Autumn, and Kat. Swan Holloway is our protagonist with her trusty camcorder in hand… Will this play a big part in the gameplay? Let’s find out.

Among the myriad scourges that make playing games in 2024 so tiresome, the need for multiple different accounts to various services ranks high. Helldivers 2 players have just been told by Sony that come next week, they’ll have to link their Steam account with a PlayStation Network account, something it’s been working…

Read more...

Wow, remember Starfield? I do, just about, although any interest in it feels like a distant dream now. But not to Todd Howard! The Bethesboss had a chat with Kinda Funny and confirmed that Shattered Space, the first big DLC for the brave little space RPG that could, has a release window of "in the fall". Shattered Space adds new locations and stories and gear, and is the sort of DLC that was announced before the game came out, and you got it bundled with some of the super mega hyper awesome pre-order editions (you can still get it bundled with the Starfield Premium Edition if you want to spend an extra 30 quid).

Before that, though, Howard says we should expect (via VGC via the video) "a big update that's coming really soon", and that "we redid the map stuff, so we have some city map stuff." This is the literal first thing I complained about when I reviewed Starfield. Vindication! This is one of a number of changes teased on Starfield's Reddit community at the end of last year.

Read more

An MIT research team led by Professor Darrell Irvine has developed a novel kind of vaccine adjuvant: a nanoparticle that can help to stimulate the immune system to generate a stronger response to a vaccine. These nanoparticles contain saponin, a compound derived from the bark of the Chilean soapbark tree, along with a molecule called MPLA, each of which helps to activate the immune system.

The adjuvant has been incorporated into an experimental HIV vaccine that has shown promising results in animal studies, and this month, the first human volunteers will receive the vaccine as part of a phase 1 clinical trial run by the Consortium for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development at the Scripps Research Institute. MIT News spoke with Irvine about why this project required an interdisciplinary approach, and what may lie ahead.

Q: What are the special features of the new nanoparticle adjuvant that help it create a more powerful immune response to vaccination? 

A: Most vaccines, such as the Covid-19 vaccines, are thought to protect us through B cells making protective antibodies. Development of an HIV vaccine has been made challenging by the fact that the B cells that are capable of evolving to produce protective antibodies — called broadly neutralizing antibodies — are very rare in the average person. Vaccine adjuvants are important in this scenario to ensure that when we immunize with an HIV antigen, these rare B cells become activated and get a chance to participate in the immune response.

We particularly discovered that this new adjuvant, which we call SMNP (short for saponin/MPLA nanoparticles), is particularly good at helping more B cells enter germinal centers, the specialized location in lymph nodes where high affinity antibodies are produced. In animal models, SMNP also has shown unique mechanisms of action: Administering antigens with SMNP leads to better antigen delivery to lymph nodes (through increases in lymph flow) and better capture of the antigen by B cells in lymph nodes.

Q: How did your lab, which generally focuses on bioengineering and materials science, end up working on HIV vaccines? What obstacles did you have to overcome in the development of this adjuvant?

A: About 15 years ago, Bruce Walker approached me about getting involved in the HIV vaccine effort, and recruited me to join the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard as a member of the steering committee. Through the Ragon Institute, I met colleagues in the Scripps Consortium for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development (CHAVD), and we realized there was a tremendous opportunity to directly contribute to the HIV vaccine challenge, working in partnership with experts in immunogen design, structural biology, and HIV pathogenesis.

As we carried out study after study of SMNP in preclinical animal models, we realized the adjuvant had really amazing effects for promoting anti-HIV antibody responses, and the CHAVD decided this was worth moving forward to testing in humans. A major challenge was transferring the technology out of the lab to synthesize large amounts of the adjuvant under GMP (good manufacturing process) conditions for a clinical trial. The initial contract manufacturing organization (CMO) hired by the consortium to produce SMNP simply couldn’t get a process to work for scalable manufacturing.

Luckily for us, a chemical engineering graduate student, Ivan Pires, whom I co-advise with Paula Hammond, head of MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering, had developed expertise in one particular processing technique known as tangential flow filtration during his undergraduate training. Leveraging classic chemical engineering skills in thermodynamics and process design, Ivan stepped in and solved the process issues the CMO was facing, allowing the manufacturing to move forward. This to me is what makes MIT great — the ability of our students and postdocs to step up and solve big problems and make big contributions when the need arises.

Q: What other diseases could this approach be useful for? Are there any plans to test it with other types of vaccines?

A: In principle, SMNP may be helpful for any infectious disease vaccine where strong antibody responses are needed. We are currently sharing the adjuvant with about 30 different labs around the world, who are testing it in vaccines against many other pathogens including Epstein-Barr virus, malaria, and influenza. We are hopeful that if SMNP is safe and effective in humans, this will be an adjuvant that can be broadly used in infectious disease trials.

© Photo: Steve Boxall

An MIT research team led by Professor Darrell Irvine has developed a novel kind of vaccine adjuvant: a nanoparticle that can help to stimulate the immune system to generate a stronger response to a vaccine. These nanoparticles contain saponin, a compound derived from the bark of the Chilean soapbark tree, along with a molecule called MPLA, each of which helps to activate the immune system.

The adjuvant has been incorporated into an experimental HIV vaccine that has shown promising results in animal studies, and this month, the first human volunteers will receive the vaccine as part of a phase 1 clinical trial run by the Consortium for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development at the Scripps Research Institute. MIT News spoke with Irvine about why this project required an interdisciplinary approach, and what may lie ahead.

Q: What are the special features of the new nanoparticle adjuvant that help it create a more powerful immune response to vaccination? 

A: Most vaccines, such as the Covid-19 vaccines, are thought to protect us through B cells making protective antibodies. Development of an HIV vaccine has been made challenging by the fact that the B cells that are capable of evolving to produce protective antibodies — called broadly neutralizing antibodies — are very rare in the average person. Vaccine adjuvants are important in this scenario to ensure that when we immunize with an HIV antigen, these rare B cells become activated and get a chance to participate in the immune response.

We particularly discovered that this new adjuvant, which we call SMNP (short for saponin/MPLA nanoparticles), is particularly good at helping more B cells enter germinal centers, the specialized location in lymph nodes where high affinity antibodies are produced. In animal models, SMNP also has shown unique mechanisms of action: Administering antigens with SMNP leads to better antigen delivery to lymph nodes (through increases in lymph flow) and better capture of the antigen by B cells in lymph nodes.

Q: How did your lab, which generally focuses on bioengineering and materials science, end up working on HIV vaccines? What obstacles did you have to overcome in the development of this adjuvant?

A: About 15 years ago, Bruce Walker approached me about getting involved in the HIV vaccine effort, and recruited me to join the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard as a member of the steering committee. Through the Ragon Institute, I met colleagues in the Scripps Consortium for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development (CHAVD), and we realized there was a tremendous opportunity to directly contribute to the HIV vaccine challenge, working in partnership with experts in immunogen design, structural biology, and HIV pathogenesis.

As we carried out study after study of SMNP in preclinical animal models, we realized the adjuvant had really amazing effects for promoting anti-HIV antibody responses, and the CHAVD decided this was worth moving forward to testing in humans. A major challenge was transferring the technology out of the lab to synthesize large amounts of the adjuvant under GMP (good manufacturing process) conditions for a clinical trial. The initial contract manufacturing organization (CMO) hired by the consortium to produce SMNP simply couldn’t get a process to work for scalable manufacturing.

Luckily for us, a chemical engineering graduate student, Ivan Pires, whom I co-advise with Paula Hammond, head of MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering, had developed expertise in one particular processing technique known as tangential flow filtration during his undergraduate training. Leveraging classic chemical engineering skills in thermodynamics and process design, Ivan stepped in and solved the process issues the CMO was facing, allowing the manufacturing to move forward. This to me is what makes MIT great — the ability of our students and postdocs to step up and solve big problems and make big contributions when the need arises.

Q: What other diseases could this approach be useful for? Are there any plans to test it with other types of vaccines?

A: In principle, SMNP may be helpful for any infectious disease vaccine where strong antibody responses are needed. We are currently sharing the adjuvant with about 30 different labs around the world, who are testing it in vaccines against many other pathogens including Epstein-Barr virus, malaria, and influenza. We are hopeful that if SMNP is safe and effective in humans, this will be an adjuvant that can be broadly used in infectious disease trials.

© Photo: Steve Boxall

I had the pleasure of interviewing Case Esparros, an independent filmmaker from Los Angeles, about his sophomore feature, The Absence of Milk in the Mouths of the Lost. It's an experimental narrative featuring Gary Wilson, outsider pop music extraordinaire with an original score by Aaron Dilloway. — Read the rest

The post Interview with Case Esparros, independent filmmaker and director of "The Absence of Milk in the Mouths of the Lost" appeared first on Boing Boing.

An MIT research team led by Professor Darrell Irvine has developed a novel kind of vaccine adjuvant: a nanoparticle that can help to stimulate the immune system to generate a stronger response to a vaccine. These nanoparticles contain saponin, a compound derived from the bark of the Chilean soapbark tree, along with a molecule called MPLA, each of which helps to activate the immune system.

The adjuvant has been incorporated into an experimental HIV vaccine that has shown promising results in animal studies, and this month, the first human volunteers will receive the vaccine as part of a phase 1 clinical trial run by the Consortium for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development at the Scripps Research Institute. MIT News spoke with Irvine about why this project required an interdisciplinary approach, and what may lie ahead.

Q: What are the special features of the new nanoparticle adjuvant that help it create a more powerful immune response to vaccination? 

A: Most vaccines, such as the Covid-19 vaccines, are thought to protect us through B cells making protective antibodies. Development of an HIV vaccine has been made challenging by the fact that the B cells that are capable of evolving to produce protective antibodies — called broadly neutralizing antibodies — are very rare in the average person. Vaccine adjuvants are important in this scenario to ensure that when we immunize with an HIV antigen, these rare B cells become activated and get a chance to participate in the immune response.

We particularly discovered that this new adjuvant, which we call SMNP (short for saponin/MPLA nanoparticles), is particularly good at helping more B cells enter germinal centers, the specialized location in lymph nodes where high affinity antibodies are produced. In animal models, SMNP also has shown unique mechanisms of action: Administering antigens with SMNP leads to better antigen delivery to lymph nodes (through increases in lymph flow) and better capture of the antigen by B cells in lymph nodes.

Q: How did your lab, which generally focuses on bioengineering and materials science, end up working on HIV vaccines? What obstacles did you have to overcome in the development of this adjuvant?

A: About 15 years ago, Bruce Walker approached me about getting involved in the HIV vaccine effort, and recruited me to join the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard as a member of the steering committee. Through the Ragon Institute, I met colleagues in the Scripps Consortium for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development (CHAVD), and we realized there was a tremendous opportunity to directly contribute to the HIV vaccine challenge, working in partnership with experts in immunogen design, structural biology, and HIV pathogenesis.

As we carried out study after study of SMNP in preclinical animal models, we realized the adjuvant had really amazing effects for promoting anti-HIV antibody responses, and the CHAVD decided this was worth moving forward to testing in humans. A major challenge was transferring the technology out of the lab to synthesize large amounts of the adjuvant under GMP (good manufacturing process) conditions for a clinical trial. The initial contract manufacturing organization (CMO) hired by the consortium to produce SMNP simply couldn’t get a process to work for scalable manufacturing.

Luckily for us, a chemical engineering graduate student, Ivan Pires, whom I co-advise with Paula Hammond, head of MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering, had developed expertise in one particular processing technique known as tangential flow filtration during his undergraduate training. Leveraging classic chemical engineering skills in thermodynamics and process design, Ivan stepped in and solved the process issues the CMO was facing, allowing the manufacturing to move forward. This to me is what makes MIT great — the ability of our students and postdocs to step up and solve big problems and make big contributions when the need arises.

Q: What other diseases could this approach be useful for? Are there any plans to test it with other types of vaccines?

A: In principle, SMNP may be helpful for any infectious disease vaccine where strong antibody responses are needed. We are currently sharing the adjuvant with about 30 different labs around the world, who are testing it in vaccines against many other pathogens including Epstein-Barr virus, malaria, and influenza. We are hopeful that if SMNP is safe and effective in humans, this will be an adjuvant that can be broadly used in infectious disease trials.

© Photo: Steve Boxall

Since the summer of 2020, Unknown 9: Awakening has only existed as a 90-second cinematic teaser trailer. In it, a young girl called Haroona is chased through the narrow streets of Calcutta by a rabble of boys armed with sticks. It's not clear why she's attracted their ire, but as one moves to strike her, a shockwave pulses out from her small body, the world turns grey, and time slows down. As she deftly moves out of harm's way, she turns back to look at her stunned onlookers, a confident smirk rising on her face.

It was a striking, if utterly ambiguous debut, and with talk of accompanying podcasts, books, comics and a web series also on the way to help build out this new world even further, it felt like developers Reflector Entertainment were really setting out to make a bold and ambitious first impression. But it's now been four years since that trailer. The books, podcasts and comics have all come and gone, seemingly making little impression, and Awakening, the game aiming to pull this big, expanded universe together, has arguably slipped from both time and memory. Perhaps this will change with its newly-dated summer 2024 release window on the horizon, but having seen a small, hands-off slice of an early mission in the game at publisher Bandai Namco's offices a couple of weeks ago, Awakening's certainly got its work cut out for it.

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An MIT research team led by Professor Darrell Irvine has developed a novel kind of vaccine adjuvant: a nanoparticle that can help to stimulate the immune system to generate a stronger response to a vaccine. These nanoparticles contain saponin, a compound derived from the bark of the Chilean soapbark tree, along with a molecule called MPLA, each of which helps to activate the immune system.

The adjuvant has been incorporated into an experimental HIV vaccine that has shown promising results in animal studies, and this month, the first human volunteers will receive the vaccine as part of a phase 1 clinical trial run by the Consortium for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development at the Scripps Research Institute. MIT News spoke with Irvine about why this project required an interdisciplinary approach, and what may lie ahead.

Q: What are the special features of the new nanoparticle adjuvant that help it create a more powerful immune response to vaccination? 

A: Most vaccines, such as the Covid-19 vaccines, are thought to protect us through B cells making protective antibodies. Development of an HIV vaccine has been made challenging by the fact that the B cells that are capable of evolving to produce protective antibodies — called broadly neutralizing antibodies — are very rare in the average person. Vaccine adjuvants are important in this scenario to ensure that when we immunize with an HIV antigen, these rare B cells become activated and get a chance to participate in the immune response.

We particularly discovered that this new adjuvant, which we call SMNP (short for saponin/MPLA nanoparticles), is particularly good at helping more B cells enter germinal centers, the specialized location in lymph nodes where high affinity antibodies are produced. In animal models, SMNP also has shown unique mechanisms of action: Administering antigens with SMNP leads to better antigen delivery to lymph nodes (through increases in lymph flow) and better capture of the antigen by B cells in lymph nodes.

Q: How did your lab, which generally focuses on bioengineering and materials science, end up working on HIV vaccines? What obstacles did you have to overcome in the development of this adjuvant?

A: About 15 years ago, Bruce Walker approached me about getting involved in the HIV vaccine effort, and recruited me to join the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard as a member of the steering committee. Through the Ragon Institute, I met colleagues in the Scripps Consortium for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development (CHAVD), and we realized there was a tremendous opportunity to directly contribute to the HIV vaccine challenge, working in partnership with experts in immunogen design, structural biology, and HIV pathogenesis.

As we carried out study after study of SMNP in preclinical animal models, we realized the adjuvant had really amazing effects for promoting anti-HIV antibody responses, and the CHAVD decided this was worth moving forward to testing in humans. A major challenge was transferring the technology out of the lab to synthesize large amounts of the adjuvant under GMP (good manufacturing process) conditions for a clinical trial. The initial contract manufacturing organization (CMO) hired by the consortium to produce SMNP simply couldn’t get a process to work for scalable manufacturing.

Luckily for us, a chemical engineering graduate student, Ivan Pires, whom I co-advise with Paula Hammond, head of MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering, had developed expertise in one particular processing technique known as tangential flow filtration during his undergraduate training. Leveraging classic chemical engineering skills in thermodynamics and process design, Ivan stepped in and solved the process issues the CMO was facing, allowing the manufacturing to move forward. This to me is what makes MIT great — the ability of our students and postdocs to step up and solve big problems and make big contributions when the need arises.

Q: What other diseases could this approach be useful for? Are there any plans to test it with other types of vaccines?

A: In principle, SMNP may be helpful for any infectious disease vaccine where strong antibody responses are needed. We are currently sharing the adjuvant with about 30 different labs around the world, who are testing it in vaccines against many other pathogens including Epstein-Barr virus, malaria, and influenza. We are hopeful that if SMNP is safe and effective in humans, this will be an adjuvant that can be broadly used in infectious disease trials.

© Photo: Steve Boxall

Rocket Rat Games co-founder John Guerra remembers the exact day he started working on Cobalt Core's first prototype. He and his fellow co-founder Ben Driscoll had just spent a week playing Daniel Mullins' mysterious roguelike deckbuilder Inscryption at the end of October 2021, but the combination of a bad storm and a power outage ended up forcing Guerra to decamp from his home in Massachusetts and stay with some family until it all blew over. "I got back late on Halloween, just in time to put out a bowl of candy for some kids, and then the next morning we started Cobalt Core," he tells me.

The pair had been working on a range of different prototypes in the months leading up to this lightbulb moment. As development on their debut game, the spaceship building puzzler Sunshine Heavy Industries, began winding down, "we were throwing all kinds of stuff at the wall," he says, including games in 3D, a platformer, with Driscoll revealing they even had "a Terraria-like one for a couple of weeks" with a grid-based world that characters bounced around in. But it was playing Inscryption that brought everything to a head. Both had spent hundreds of hours with Slay The Spire, but "Inscryption proved to us that there was still a lot of space to explore in the genre," says Guerra. And with increasing calls from Sunshine Heavy Industries players begging them to let them fly the ships they were creating in its shipyard sandbox, "you can kind of see how that went from A to B".

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Could there be a more than universally relatable quote shared by indie developers than: "We really just wanted to make a small game"? Of course, there's little to complain about when games like Cuphead or Owlboy finally see the light of the day, demonstrating what wonders growing ambition can often bring.

Having said that, I’m not entirely surprised that Vladimir Semenets, the lead game designer of Militsioner, sits in front of me on Zoom and tells me how they initially envisioned a six-month project, "something very fast". Yet, here we are, three years and more than a dozen developer vlogs since TallBoys' surreal runaway sim first captured everyone's attention (including one state-owned Russian news channel). If not for its Kafkaesque premise, which pits players against a ten-story tall looming policeman in a quest to escape a small town, then definitely because of the game’s ambitious voice recognition feature that promised real-time conversation instead of pre-written dialogue.

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“Ever since the very first Yakuza on PS2, the Like A Dragon series has always tried to capture the cultural zeitgeist of Japan, reflecting and satirising whatever’s trending around when the game comes out. This means that the way people speak in Like A Dragon is constantly evolving to match the times,” says Dan Sunstrum, senior translator at Ryu Ga Gotoku’s localisation team. Keeping things current is, says Sunstrum, “a challenge in some ways but also means we’re justified in using modern English slang to match, whereas such modernisms might feel out of place in a game set in a completely fictional world.”

Sunstrum uses an example from the studio’s latest, RPS Bestest Best winning RPG Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth, where permed protagonist Ichiban Kasuga meets a dating app designer. “The app’s creator goes on a mini-rant about ungrateful, entitled users, complaining how when anything goes wrong they’re quick to demand wabi-ishi,” slang for free premium currency. “This would have been a tricky word to localise, but it was made easy by the fact that fans of gacha games had already done it for us: they refer to them as ‘apologems’, and that’s what we ended up using in the game.”

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An MIT research team led by Professor Darrell Irvine has developed a novel kind of vaccine adjuvant: a nanoparticle that can help to stimulate the immune system to generate a stronger response to a vaccine. These nanoparticles contain saponin, a compound derived from the bark of the Chilean soapbark tree, along with a molecule called MPLA, each of which helps to activate the immune system.

The adjuvant has been incorporated into an experimental HIV vaccine that has shown promising results in animal studies, and this month, the first human volunteers will receive the vaccine as part of a phase 1 clinical trial run by the Consortium for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development at the Scripps Research Institute. MIT News spoke with Irvine about why this project required an interdisciplinary approach, and what may lie ahead.

Q: What are the special features of the new nanoparticle adjuvant that help it create a more powerful immune response to vaccination? 

A: Most vaccines, such as the Covid-19 vaccines, are thought to protect us through B cells making protective antibodies. Development of an HIV vaccine has been made challenging by the fact that the B cells that are capable of evolving to produce protective antibodies — called broadly neutralizing antibodies — are very rare in the average person. Vaccine adjuvants are important in this scenario to ensure that when we immunize with an HIV antigen, these rare B cells become activated and get a chance to participate in the immune response.

We particularly discovered that this new adjuvant, which we call SMNP (short for saponin/MPLA nanoparticles), is particularly good at helping more B cells enter germinal centers, the specialized location in lymph nodes where high affinity antibodies are produced. In animal models, SMNP also has shown unique mechanisms of action: Administering antigens with SMNP leads to better antigen delivery to lymph nodes (through increases in lymph flow) and better capture of the antigen by B cells in lymph nodes.

Q: How did your lab, which generally focuses on bioengineering and materials science, end up working on HIV vaccines? What obstacles did you have to overcome in the development of this adjuvant?

A: About 15 years ago, Bruce Walker approached me about getting involved in the HIV vaccine effort, and recruited me to join the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard as a member of the steering committee. Through the Ragon Institute, I met colleagues in the Scripps Consortium for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development (CHAVD), and we realized there was a tremendous opportunity to directly contribute to the HIV vaccine challenge, working in partnership with experts in immunogen design, structural biology, and HIV pathogenesis.

As we carried out study after study of SMNP in preclinical animal models, we realized the adjuvant had really amazing effects for promoting anti-HIV antibody responses, and the CHAVD decided this was worth moving forward to testing in humans. A major challenge was transferring the technology out of the lab to synthesize large amounts of the adjuvant under GMP (good manufacturing process) conditions for a clinical trial. The initial contract manufacturing organization (CMO) hired by the consortium to produce SMNP simply couldn’t get a process to work for scalable manufacturing.

Luckily for us, a chemical engineering graduate student, Ivan Pires, whom I co-advise with Paula Hammond, head of MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering, had developed expertise in one particular processing technique known as tangential flow filtration during his undergraduate training. Leveraging classic chemical engineering skills in thermodynamics and process design, Ivan stepped in and solved the process issues the CMO was facing, allowing the manufacturing to move forward. This to me is what makes MIT great — the ability of our students and postdocs to step up and solve big problems and make big contributions when the need arises.

Q: What other diseases could this approach be useful for? Are there any plans to test it with other types of vaccines?

A: In principle, SMNP may be helpful for any infectious disease vaccine where strong antibody responses are needed. We are currently sharing the adjuvant with about 30 different labs around the world, who are testing it in vaccines against many other pathogens including Epstein-Barr virus, malaria, and influenza. We are hopeful that if SMNP is safe and effective in humans, this will be an adjuvant that can be broadly used in infectious disease trials.

© Photo: Steve Boxall

An MIT research team led by Professor Darrell Irvine has developed a novel kind of vaccine adjuvant: a nanoparticle that can help to stimulate the immune system to generate a stronger response to a vaccine. These nanoparticles contain saponin, a compound derived from the bark of the Chilean soapbark tree, along with a molecule called MPLA, each of which helps to activate the immune system.

The adjuvant has been incorporated into an experimental HIV vaccine that has shown promising results in animal studies, and this month, the first human volunteers will receive the vaccine as part of a phase 1 clinical trial run by the Consortium for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development at the Scripps Research Institute. MIT News spoke with Irvine about why this project required an interdisciplinary approach, and what may lie ahead.

Q: What are the special features of the new nanoparticle adjuvant that help it create a more powerful immune response to vaccination? 

A: Most vaccines, such as the Covid-19 vaccines, are thought to protect us through B cells making protective antibodies. Development of an HIV vaccine has been made challenging by the fact that the B cells that are capable of evolving to produce protective antibodies — called broadly neutralizing antibodies — are very rare in the average person. Vaccine adjuvants are important in this scenario to ensure that when we immunize with an HIV antigen, these rare B cells become activated and get a chance to participate in the immune response.

We particularly discovered that this new adjuvant, which we call SMNP (short for saponin/MPLA nanoparticles), is particularly good at helping more B cells enter germinal centers, the specialized location in lymph nodes where high affinity antibodies are produced. In animal models, SMNP also has shown unique mechanisms of action: Administering antigens with SMNP leads to better antigen delivery to lymph nodes (through increases in lymph flow) and better capture of the antigen by B cells in lymph nodes.

Q: How did your lab, which generally focuses on bioengineering and materials science, end up working on HIV vaccines? What obstacles did you have to overcome in the development of this adjuvant?

A: About 15 years ago, Bruce Walker approached me about getting involved in the HIV vaccine effort, and recruited me to join the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard as a member of the steering committee. Through the Ragon Institute, I met colleagues in the Scripps Consortium for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development (CHAVD), and we realized there was a tremendous opportunity to directly contribute to the HIV vaccine challenge, working in partnership with experts in immunogen design, structural biology, and HIV pathogenesis.

As we carried out study after study of SMNP in preclinical animal models, we realized the adjuvant had really amazing effects for promoting anti-HIV antibody responses, and the CHAVD decided this was worth moving forward to testing in humans. A major challenge was transferring the technology out of the lab to synthesize large amounts of the adjuvant under GMP (good manufacturing process) conditions for a clinical trial. The initial contract manufacturing organization (CMO) hired by the consortium to produce SMNP simply couldn’t get a process to work for scalable manufacturing.

Luckily for us, a chemical engineering graduate student, Ivan Pires, whom I co-advise with Paula Hammond, head of MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering, had developed expertise in one particular processing technique known as tangential flow filtration during his undergraduate training. Leveraging classic chemical engineering skills in thermodynamics and process design, Ivan stepped in and solved the process issues the CMO was facing, allowing the manufacturing to move forward. This to me is what makes MIT great — the ability of our students and postdocs to step up and solve big problems and make big contributions when the need arises.

Q: What other diseases could this approach be useful for? Are there any plans to test it with other types of vaccines?

A: In principle, SMNP may be helpful for any infectious disease vaccine where strong antibody responses are needed. We are currently sharing the adjuvant with about 30 different labs around the world, who are testing it in vaccines against many other pathogens including Epstein-Barr virus, malaria, and influenza. We are hopeful that if SMNP is safe and effective in humans, this will be an adjuvant that can be broadly used in infectious disease trials.

© Photo: Steve Boxall