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'On the other side of the screen, it all looked so easy...'
Bithell Games founder Mike Bithell's passion for the TRON films is easy to see. Follow him on social media and you'll see him document his trips to Disneyland's new TRON ride and regular reverence for the film that broke ground on the world of computer animation.
He got to live his dream with TRON: Identity, an interactive narrative game where players took on the role of detective in a setting called the "Arq Grid," a digital realm set beyond the "Grid" of the films Tron and Tron Legacy (no I don't know why the games have capitalized names and the films don't). Now Bithell Games is back in the Arq Grid with Disney TRON: Catalyst, an isometric action adventure game that brings the world of Light Cycles and Identity Discs to life.
Highly-polished licensed games are enjoying a new heyday and it'd be easy to brush a TRON game off as advance marketing for the upcoming Jared Leto-starring film Tron: Ares. Bithell's passion for the series doesn't just represent "brand loyalty," however. In a conversation at Gamescom 2024 over a demo of Catalyst (which is being published by Devolver Digital's new label Big Fan) he explained how with this title, Bithell Games had a chance to make a game set in a world that is itself a video game world—and how he personally wants to make projects that scratch at the edges of what a game "is."
I'll be honest, I regularly forget that Tron is set in an arcade game. I'd internalized it as a world set in computer software, with characters like Crom who beg for mercy while identifying as a "compound interest Program."
Bithell reminded me in our chat that yep, onscreen and in the studio's games, the world of Tron is the world of video games. It's something the team has dived whole-heartedly into. The game's first area is named "Vertical Slice." There's a time loop mechanic that riffs on the idea of a game loop, and a game setting created by a 1980s-era game designer.
It's not the first Bithell game to be reflexive about the medium. His debut title Thomas Was Alone is regularly praised for being a compelling experience with a cast of humble characters comprised of geometric shapes, and also a game where the characters constantly seem aware of their game-driven existence and abilities. "If you're making a video game, why not engage with what a video game is?", asked Bithell. "That is definitely what's drawn us to a lot of stories about AI, robots, and aliens. It lets us play with those more video game-y aspects for sure."
Image via Bithell Games/Big Fan.
The Arq Grid's existence as a game world made by an in-universe game designer was both an inspiration and a "deal breaker" in conversations about level design, he explained. If a game level or reference was a bit too modern in nature, it had to be reworked. Bithell tossed out examples of how even though his personal love for Tron gave birth to the project, the level designers and other Bithell Games staffers were the ones giving him great inspiration to take with the game world.
At one point, as player character Exo navigated a rooftop (the city's verticality is something he said the team was excited to play with), she wanders past what appears to be a swimming pool with a "Program" (the name for humanoid entities in Tron's cyberspace) in it. Bithell hadn't seen the relaxing NPC until playing through the level himself, and had laughed so hard at it that it helped him shape who the character was and what interactions Exo would have with them.
There's an array of fun systems-driven quest and narrative design under the hood too. With Exo's "loop" regularly resetting the program of Arq city, players have the opportunity to skip past elements of the loop as they gain knowledge of the Grid, à la Outer Wilds.
Much of the minute-to-minute gameplay is standard isometric action fare (itself a new genre for Bithell Games, though it's done some isometric titles before), but it's still all a strong example of doing something a little outside the lines when working with as stringent a license-holder as Disney.
Making games about games—or films about films, books about books, etc.—can either produce thought-provoking art that explores the medium or just sort of spin out into a series of references that don't quite make it work. Bithell Games has been conservative about its self-awareness in the past, but it looks like with Catalyst, the team wants to push the boundaries of making "a game about a game" in some way.
Image via Bithell Games/Big Fan.
How? Bithell contorted his face when asked for specifics. I'd specifically asked him if the team had any chance to "push against" the game world logic, to show its weaknesses as the foundation for a cybernetic world. "We're going to have a conversation a year from now and you're going to realize how close you got to something," he said with the grin of a child with his hand caught in the cookie jar.
He seemed a bit relieved to change the subject when a fellow journalist sitting in on the demo looked up to ask if the game was fully open-world (it's not, for what it's worth). It'll be fun to see how far Bithell Games can take the premise of a game set in a world made by a game designer—and to learn what precisely, I was "pushing up against" with my line of questioning.
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