With Monument Valley 3 just months away, Ustwo Games reminiscences on developing for and beyond mobile and nonviolent games
Sep. 26, 2024“There are puzzles, there’s friction, but that friction doesn’t come from combat”
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
With the next Monument Valley game just months away, developer Ustwo Games has offered a peep at studio life as it gears up for lunch.
As part of a behind-the-scenes segment at the Mobile Games Show, the London-based studio shares that things have remained broadly consistent since its founding. The headcount has remained between 30 and 40 people, and the focus remains on games that are notably nonviolent.
“UsTwo Games is really focused on making games that don’t have violence as one of their key forms,” lead game designer Joel Beardshaw says. “Desta [The Memories Between] was the closest we got to a game with violence. There’s actually a win state and a lose state in that game, as opposed to everything else where you just kind of find your way through it. There are puzzles, there’s friction, but that friction doesn’t come from combat.”
“As everything has got more high-tech, as the phones in our pockets have got more high-tech, a Nintendo Switch and a mobile phone aren’t really that different,” Beardshaw says. “And that’s not totally different – it’s not like the days when the PlayStation 3 was an alien device and building for it was something completely different. It allows games to hop around and try to find their new home and find the audience where it is.”
Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter
Weekly digests, tales from the communities you love, and more
Iain joins the GamesRadar team as Deputy News Editor following stints at PCGamesN and PocketGamer.Biz, with some freelance for Kotaku UK, RockPaperShotgun, and VG24/7 thrown in for good measure. When not helping Ali run the news team, he can be found digging into communities for stories – the sillier the better. When he isn’t pillaging the depths of Final Fantasy 14 for a swanky new hat, you’ll find him amassing an army of Pokemon plushies.
26 years ago, a legendary Japanese arcade studio created a whole new category of Tetris - now they’re finishing their canceled sequel and bringing it to Steam
It took 34 years for someone to actually beat the original NES Tetris – now it’s coming to Switch so you can try for yourself
One of the least known Marvel Rivals heroes is back in comics as Luna Snow and her team return in their own title - but this time they’re working for Doctor Doom
