A few days ago the Develop:Star Awards 2021, the English event dedicated to video game developers, in which, among other things, the game of the year 2021 was elected for England. Winning this year was no less than Returnal, the home roguelike Housemarque arrived as a PlayStation 5 exclusive a few months ago. Let’s take a look at all the details.
Develop:Star Awards 2021: Returnal vince il GOTY
Although there are still two months to go until the end of the year, the award that Returnal received at the Develop: Star Awards 2021 assumes importance as the first official recognition given to the Housemarque product. It is definitely about a great achievement for the studio, on the strength of having distributed one of the first exquisitely next gen products currently available on the market.
A success that is not to be taken for granted, given the skepticism with which the title was initially received. However, Returnal still managed to be loved by the community Sony, also thanks to a very high level play sector, which make it a fun video game to play and challenging enough to be continuously stimulating.
On the other hand, Returnal was born from the work of a veteran studio, which since it was founded several years ago has almost never missed a shot in qualitative terms. From this point of view, the video game was probably a testing ground for Housemarque, which thanks to the success of the title has officially become part of the PlayStation Studios, which will guarantee the company much higher budgets, in all likelihood.
It is also very likely that Housemarque is already working on a new project, although in the meantime Returnal continues to be supported with patches and updates, some of which are really interesting.
The other candidates
Competing with Returnal for the Game of The Year title were certainly interesting competitors, but undoubtedly not as refined as the Housemarque title. Staying in the PlayStation home we find Marvel’s Spider-Man Miles Morales, a product certainly interesting, but too tied to its identity as a “middle” chapter, and Sackboy at Big Adventure, the great return of the franchise Little Big Planet and actually able to fight on equal terms with Returnal, despite the different target.
He could not miss it then Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, the party game that became a social phenomenon a few months ago. The game recovers Takeshi’s Castle-style circuits in which jellies must compete to finish first and conquer the coveted crowns. Despite the stratospheric boom of the game, the latter has gradually disappeared from the radar, a real shame given the latent potential of its play formula.
Also present at the appeal The Dark Picture Anthology: Little Hope, the most recent horror adventure developed by Supermassive Games, which appears a little out of context, when compared to the giants of the sector seen so far, and The Last Campfire by Hello Games, a truly tantalizing independent video game, but not able to compete with triple A titles like those seen before.