This week on The Shift, Shane Hewitt and I talked about Spotify’s acquisition of Heardle, Inscryption coming to Playstation, the Oregon Trail Steptracker app for Apple Watch, 1Password’s summer camp, Guy Maddin’s Seances, and why people who menstruate may want to look carefully at their period-tracking apps.

Audio puzzle game Heardle has been acquired by Spotify, genre-defying game Inscryption is being released on PS4 and PS5 systems, and an Apple Watch integration means you can walk the Oregon Trail while you play the game.

Spotify buys Heardle, the daily audio puzzle

Sparked by the Wordle phenomenon, Heardle uses the same format to have you attempt to guess a song based on the smallest of samples.

And this week, Spotify acquired the game.

Heardle gives you six tries to guess a song based on snippets from the beginning. Guess incorrectly and you get a slightly longer audio sample.

When you solve the puzzle – or fail to after your sixth guess – you’re provided with the song title and artist, and a link to the song in the Spotify system.

Smart pickup by Spotify.

Inscryption is coming to Playstation

Vancouver game designer Daniel Mullins has created a version of his outstanding game Inscryption for release on Playstation.

The game will be coming to PS4 and PS5 but a release date has not been announced.

In a post to the Playstation Blog Mullins wrote that some of the Playstation-specific features include audio and lighting emanating from the controller and use of the haptics that are in the PS5 controller.

I expect to see this before the year is out. Which is fantastic. I’m keen to play again.

Walk the Oregon Trail for real, kind of

The Oregon Trail was an early educational simulation game, created in the early 1970s that continues to engage with its exploration of pioneer and settler life and resource management.

Now, if you’ve got an Apple Watch, you can virtually walk the more than 3,200 km (2,000 miles) from Missouri to Oregon because Gameloft has integrated the Apple Arcade version of The Oregon Trail with the HealthKit step tracker.

So while you’re playing the game, you can see your avatar moving across the virtual plains, visiting historical locations along the way.

You need the Oregon Trail Steptracker app to connect the game to HealthKit, and then your 10,000 steps can, over the course of a year, track your 2,000 mile journey.

Don’t let your kids have all the fun this summer. Learn about cybersecurity with 1Password’s summer camp. And watch a unique short film by Guy Maddin.

1Password’s summer camp will teach you about cybersecurity

If you’re wanting to better protect your home systems, or you’re a small business owner who doesn’t have a digital security team, 1Password’s got a summer camp for you.

Running from August 1 through August 5, the Security Summer Camp

The initiative is a series of online webinars:

• The anatomy of a data breach
• How and why hackers hack
• Building an identity and access management system

The “camp counsellors” include digital security experts from both inside 1Password and external experts.

Register for 1Password’s Security Summer Camp.

Watch your own unique short film from Winnipeg’s Guy Maddin

Guy Maddin is a Canadian filmmaking icon, known for films like The Heart of the World and The Saddest Music in the World, as well as his experimental and art films often shot in black and white and sometimes silent.

Seances had Maddin shooting scenes that he imagines might have come from silent films that we know once existed but have been lost. The online experience is a massive shuffle text, taking snippets from 24 short films that were shot in Paris and Montreal.

Maddin had some notable collaborators, including Geraldine Chaplin, Charlotte Rampling, and Udo Kier.

When you visit the website, an algorithm shuffles words to create a title and description of films, and when you see something that intrigues you, you can trigger the viewing.

The shorts you view range in length from about ten to twenty minutes. Two I got were, “Everywhere the Plummets Disappear, an 18-minute archetypal noir-inflected proto-sonnet,” and “Camille’s Three, an 18-minute hypno-abysmal glabro-phrenological proto-sonnet”.

The films mix in title cards and found footage with the Maddin-directed footage, and everything’s given the kind of stuttering, affected look that identifies those old celluloid productions.

With the number of scenes available to shuffle, there could be billions of films that can be created.

This week on The Shift, Shane Hewitt and I talked about God of War Ragnarök’s November 9 release date, Mary DeMarle joining Bioware as a narrative design lead on Mass Effect, Amazon’s Prime Day and how Camelcamelcamel and Keepa can help you get ready.

God of War Ragnarök is coming on November 9 and Bioware has hired narrative designer Mary DeMarle to lead the writing team on the new Mass Effect game.

You will be playing God of War Ragnarok on November 9

God of War Ragnarök, from Playstation’s Santa Monica Studio, is being released this fall.

On November 9, the highly-anticipated sequel to the 2018 game that placed god-killer Kratos in the lands of the Norse gods, will hit PS4 and PS5 consoles. Ragnarök was originally planned for release in 2021.

Christopher Judge and Sunny Suljic return as Kratos and son, Atreus, and Ryan Hurst is Thor in this third-person action adventure.

There are some amazing collector’s kits available and the Collector and Jötnar editions of the game each come with a 16-inch replica Mjölnir, Thor’s hammer.

You can place your preorder for God of War Ragnarök, including the special editions, on Friday, July 15.

Bioware adds Mary DeMarle to Mass Effect team

Writer Mary DeMarle will be leading narrative design on the new Mass Effect game in development at Bioware.

DeMarle most recently led the writing team on Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, which I praised for the depth in its characters and the witty banter between them.

She also led the writing on Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Both of those games were developed by Eidos Montreal and published by Square Enix.

Bioware is an EA studio, and the announcement of DeMarle’s hiring was made by Michael Gamble, who is directing the work on the new Mass Effect game.

Oh, hey!
I'm really excited to let you know that Mary DeMarle will be joining the Mass Effect team as Senior Narrative Director. You've seen her work in Guardians of the Galaxy & Deus Ex (to name a few!). She's amazing.

— Michael Gamble (@GambleMike) July 4, 2022