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 documenting his travels on Disneyland's new TRON attraction and his ongoing veneration for the film that pioneered the world of computer animation.
He got to live his dream TRON: Identityan interactive narrative game where players took on the role of detectives in a setting called the “Arq Grid”, a digital realm set beyond the “Grid” from the Tron and Tron Legacy films (no, I don't know why the games have capitalized names and films don't). Now Bithell Games is back in Arq Grid with Disney TRON: Catalystan isometric action-adventure game that brings the world of Light Cycles and Identity Discs to life.
Highly polished licensed games are experiencing a new heyday, and it would be easy to brush off a TRON game as advance marketing for the next Jared Leto movie Tron: Ares. However, Bithell's passion for the series represents more than just “brand loyalty.” In a conversation at Gamescom 2024 about a demo of Catalyst (which is released on the new label Devolver Digital Big fan) explained how with this title Bithell Games had the opportunity to create a game set in a world that is itself a world of video games and how he personally wants to create projects that push the boundaries of what a game “is”.
Disney TRON: Catalyst engages with the video game setting of the series
I'll be honest, I regularly forget that Tron is set in an arcade game. I had internalized it as a world set in computer software, with characters like Crom begging for mercy by identifying themselves as a “compound interest program.”
Bithell reminded me during our chat that yes, on screen and in the studio's games, the world of Tron is the world of video games. It's something the team dove into wholeheartedly. The first area of the game is called “Vertical Slice”. There is a time loop mechanic that is inspired by the idea of a game loop and a game setting created by a 1980s game designer.
It's not Bithell's first game to be thoughtful about the medium. His debut title Tommaso was alone is regularly praised for being a compelling experience with a cast of humble characters made up of geometric shapes, and also for a game where the characters seem constantly aware of their existence and game-driven abilities. “If you're making a video game, why not delve deeper into what a video game is?” Bithell asked. “That's definitely what attracted us to a lot of stories about artificial intelligence and robots and aliens. It definitely allows us to play with those more typical aspects of video games.”
Image via Bithell Games/Big Fan.
Arq Grid's existence as a game world created by an in-universe game designer has been both an inspiration and a “deal breaker” in level design conversations, he explained. If a level or game reference was a little too modern in nature, it needed to be reworked. Bithell gave examples of how, while his personal love for Tron brought the project to life, the level designers and other staff members at Bithell Games were the ones who gave him the great inspiration to bring to the game world.
At one point, as the Exo player character navigates a rooftop (the city's verticality is something he said the team was excited to play with), he wanders past what appears to be a pool with a “Program” (the name of the humanoid entities in Tron's Cyberspace) within it. Bithell hadn't seen the chilled-out NPC until he played the level himself, and he laughed so much at it that it helped him understand who the character was and what interactions Exo would have with them.
There's also a number of fun systems-driven missions and narrative design under the hood. With Exo's “loop” regularly resetting the schedule of the city of Arq, players have the opportunity to skip loop elements while gaining knowledge of the Grid, à la Outer wilderness.
Much of the minute-to-minute gameplay is standard isometric action (itself a new genre for Bithell Games, although they've made a few isometric titles before), but it's still a great example of doing something a little outside the box. patterns when working with a license holder as strict as Disney.
How far can you go when making a game about games?
Making games about games – or movies about movies, books about books, etc. – can produce thought-provoking art that explores the medium or simply turn 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 seems like it is Catalystthe team wants to somehow push the boundaries of creating “a game about a game.”
Image via Bithell Games/Big Fan.
As? Bithell scowled when asked to provide details. I had specifically asked him if the team had any possibility of “opposing” the logic of the game world, to show their weaknesses as a basis for a cyber world. “We'll talk about it in a year and you'll realize it how close you're on to something,” he said with the smile of a child with his hand caught in the cookie jar.
He seemed a little relieved to change the subject when a fellow journalist sitting at the demo looked up to ask if the game was completely open-world (it's not, for what it's worth). It will be fun to see how far Bithell Games can push the premise of a game set in a world created by a game designer, and find out what exactly I was “arguing against” with my line of questioning.