The game I’m most looking forward to right now is Big Walk, the latest title from House House, creators of the brilliant Untitled Goose Game. A cooperative multiplayer adventure where players are let loose to explore an open world, I’m interested to see what emergent gameplay comes out of it. Could Big Walk allow for a kind of community archaeology with friends? I certainly hope so.
When games use environmental storytelling in their design – from the positioning of objects to audio recordings or graffiti – they invite players to role play as archaeologists. Game designer Ben Esposito infamously joked back in 2016 that environmental storytelling is the “art of placing skulls near a toilet” – which might have been a jab at the tropes of games like the Fallout series, but his quip demonstrates how archaeological gaming narratives can be. After all, the incongruity of skulls and toilets is likely to lead to many questions and interpretations about the past in that game world, however ridiculous.
I used to work as an archaeologist in the analogue world, where my work consisted of excavations, fieldworks and assessment of potential development sites across the UK. Now I’m doing a computer science PhD focusing in video game archaeology, where I get to come up with novel ways to record gameplay experiences, like doing in-game walking interviews with players in the MMO Wurm Online, or recording the location of player messages in Elden Ring.
Because I know what being an archaeologist entails, I often find myself thinking about games that just have you play as a person with that job title, such as Tomb Raider or Uncharted, versus those that have you engage in work similar to what we do in the field. Walking sims like Gone Home and What Remains of Edith Finch invite you to explore a space and interpret what all of the objects left behind in the landscape mean. Dr Melissa Kagen, assistant teaching professor in interactive media and game development at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, refers to this interpretive gameplay in walking simulators as “archival adventuring”.
It’s not just walking sims though. There is a growing genre of puzzle games that I would argue also puts you in the role of an archaeologist, piecing together clues about the past from material remains and archival material. Some people refer to these games as “Metroidbranias”, but I’m personally quite fond of them. Essentially, “information games” (as developer Tom Francis calls them) require players to come up with theories based on the information they have, to in turn use those theories to acquire more knowledge. With its central mechanic of deciphering an ancient language, Heaven’s Vault is an obvious candidate, but I would argue that other information games like Return of the Obra Dinn, Her Story and Outer Wilds (which literally has a special “archaeologist edition”) also encourage you to role play as an archaeologist, searching for clues in the environment and past records.
In my own work I investigate how to preserve contemporary games, as carefully as you would an ancient artefact. So I’ve been thinking a lot about parallels in the game world too: how players record their own experiences through screenshots, map-making and diaries, and these are also methods used by real world archaeologists. Some games use these recording methods as central game mechanics. A great example is Season: A Letter to the Future, in which you document the world on the eve of its destruction in your journal. Games that inspire you to take notes also arguably result in a record of the gameplay experience – a good example is 2025’s puzzle sensation Blue Prince, which explicitly encourages players to record anything interesting they see in each of the clue-filled rooms as they explore an ever-shifting estate.
Rather than raiding tombs, if you want to be a video game archaeologist, look out for those skulls next to toilets. Better yet, record them. A future games archaeologist will thank you!
What to play
We’re seeing a lot of classic 80s arcade games being rediscovered at the moment, with Gradius Origins pleasing shoot-em-’up purists and Bandai Namco’s Shadow Labyrinth thrillingly reimagining Pac-Man.
Next, here comes Sega with Shinobi: Art of Vengeance, a compulsive and stylish adventure platformer based on its classic series of ninja brawlers. A vast range of fighting skills, weapons and combos come into play as you leap across hand-drawn cyberpunk environments, all rich in detail. French developer Lizardcube has done amazing work marrying the old school immediacy of the original titles with modern features and considerable Gallic visual flair. Come for the nostalgia, stay for the blistering execution moves, which let you take out multiple enemies in a claret-soaked dance of death.
Available on: PC, PS4/5, Xbox
Estimated playtime: 15 hours
What to read
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Want to find out more about Nintendo’s approach to game design? Forthcoming book Super Nintendo, from Pushing Buttons’s own Keza MacDonald, is now available for pre-order. It’s an in-depth look behind the scenes at the legendary game and console maker, with incredible access to the design teams, including Miyamoto himself. Essential stuff.
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Over 450 Diablo developers have voted to unionise, according to theCommunications Workers of America union. As Team 3 Senior Software Engineer Nav Bhetti puts it: “My entire career as a developer has seen my peers and I paying the ‘passion tax’ for working in an industry that we love.”
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Have you heard of “friendslop”? Nicole Carpenter dives into the emerging genre of social games such as Peak, Lethal Company and Content Warning, and asks what developers can learn from their emphasis on essentially messing about with your mates.
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What to click
Question Block
This week’s straightforward question comes from Richard B via email:
“Are the console wars over?”
This is a question the whole industry seems to be pondering at the moment. In February, Xbox chief, Phil Spencer, told XboxEra that he was no longer looking to take gamers from PlayStation or PC. Three months later, the previously exclusive title Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was released on PS5, and Gears of War: Reloaded is also bound for Sony’s platform. Meanwhile, Sony has brought Helldivers 2 to Xbox and more titles are likely to follow, if a recently spotted Sony job advert is to be believed.
Of course, cross play – the feature of online games such as Fortnite and Apex Legends which allows people to compete against each other whatever machine they’re using – started us off in this direction. Now, in an industry where smartphone gaming is dominating (figures by NewZoo indicate mobile games were worth $92.5bn to the global economy in 2024, compared to $50.3bn for console), and the idea of two games hardware titans expensively competing on proprietary tech and software exclusives seems increasingly anachronistic.
And yet … Gamers are intrinsically territorial and always have been, while brand loyalty is a key facet of fandom (and, let’s face it, capitalism) – see also Nikon v Canon, Nike v Reebok or Android v iPhone. Tech specs are only ever part of these conflicts – style, image and identity come into play too. So don’t expect Xbox and PlayStation to, in the near future, become mere apps on a multitude of faceless platforms. Several battles may be over, but the war lumbers on.
If you’ve got a question for Question Block – or anything else to say about the newsletter – hit reply or email us on pushingbuttons@theguardian.com.
