#bithell games

[geekcavepodcast]

TRON: Catalyst Release Date Trailer

Big Fan Games and Bithell Games' TRON: Catalyst introduces a new story into Disney's Tron universe. Exo is a resourceful program that has a power known as the Glitch, which the Arq Grid's overlords seek to control.

TRON: Catalyst launches on June 17, 2025, for Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PC.

[calvincell]

Coming away from 2+ hrs of playtime with the recently released Tron Catalyst - the latest Bithell Games-helmed Tron game; playing via my Steam Deck & I have to say, I’ve genuinely been enjoying myself and itching to endorse the game.

For any unaware, the game is a semi-open world action game played from a top down isometric perspective similar to Ruiner & Supergiant’s Hades series. Those examples also apply to the gameplay mechanics in particular where fights are hectic & swift encounters of strikes, parries & Identity Disc tossing.

Premise & plot wise (very low spoilers), the game is set within the continuity of Bithell’s previous Tron project: Tron Identity - a mystery solving puzzle + visual novel/adventure game. Despite that, Tron Catalyst doesn’t require having played Tron Identity previously. In Tron Catalyst you play Exo, a courier program who gets caught up in a serious conspiracy when one of her deliveries explodes nearly derezzing Exo at the same time. Though she survived, the question of her delivery puts major suspicion on her, landing her in the hands of the ruthless security programs gripping nearly the entire Grid in their fist. Aided by the discovery of Exo’s sudden ability to rewind time seeming caused by the strange contents of the exploded package she endured, she manages to escape incarceration and must search the Grid for answers all while being a hunted program.

As I mentioned before, combat in Tron Catalyst is definitely hectic in the same ways as Hades (less overwhelming enemy hordes but still) with the addition of a parry mechanic. So far the parry has been hard for me to proc however there is an upgrade to increase the window which I’m saving points for.

Disc combat is genuinely fun IMO especially with the inclusion of abilities to recall it, ping it off of multiple enemies & parry it on return to smack it back at enemies again.

The plot & VA work are also great so far with the central mystery being earnestly intriguing.

As far as gripes with the game, though I don’t mind the camera distance too much so far, I honestly absolutely see why others might be unable to stand it. If the functionality can be patched in, I truly feel that the devs definitely should prioritize including an option to zoom in or a handful of locked zoom distances for players to choose from.

Overall, I’m personally definitely hooked on Tron Catalyst & don’t regret buying it if for no other reason than being a fan of Tron, Bithell Games & Devolver Digital makes me happy to support the whole. I genuinely feel that any fans of Tron in particular should at least check the game out through some YouTube gameplay vids since sadly, like with so many other games these days, the demo was axed once the game proper launched.

[twohitgames]

TRON: Catalyst abre su bucle en consolas y PC

[savingcontent]

Disney TRON: Catalyst announced, enter the grid with this action-adventure in 2025

Continue reading Disney TRON: Catalyst announced, enter the grid with this action-adventure in 2025

[calvincell]

They put out a 3rd Archive now too:

Definitely a Day One purchase for me! The game looks fantastic

Two new Tron: Catalyst trailers:

Archive/01 INITIALIZATION

--

Archive /02 DISRUPTION

It's looking so damn cool.

[fizztapp]

Played through Mike Bithell's Tron Identity earlier this month. Started playing Tron 2.0 from Monolith for the first time this past weekend. Both have blown me away.

Cleaning up those corners of Tron I haven't touched yet. I think there was a comic published at one point I need to hunt down. The world of Tron really is peak

[tjjonesartwork]

Detective Query from TRON: identity

[calvincell]

100% co-signing this! Bithell Games in particular is stubbornly refusing to let Tron die the death Disney seems fine sentencing it to by canceling Uprising & letting Ares wallow in production purgatory and I’m with him all the way. I’d rather get games like this from diehard fans in the indie space than for some AAA company getting contracted to have their devs crunch for 3+ years only to deliver a subpar product with a multimillion dollar budget

Some Tron fans might be a little disappointed that TRON: Catalyst isn't a big fancy AAA game with cutting-edge graphics and whatnot, thinking that Disney doesn't care about the franchise enough to put huge sums of money into it (compared to, say, Star Wars games). But me, I was actually kind of relieved when I looked at the system requirements for the game and saw that it can most likely be run on my sligthly old, not-cutting-edge-specs computer. I'm happy that I won't have to buy a whole new computer, or a new game console, to keep up with the Tron franchise, at least not for a little while longer (who knows, maybe we'll get a big high-end game to tie in with TRON: Ares somewhere down the line?).

I felt similarly about TRON: Identity, and I might go so far as to say that I almost hope that Tron remains a "lesser" Disney franchise, if it means that we'll get more low-budget, but still well-made and interesting games set in its universe. To quote Jordan Mallory, "I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less and I'm not kidding."

At the same time, I will also admit that I'm happy that Catalyst does seem to have one important improvement over Identity: Voice acting. Even though that presumably require a slightly higher budget.

[adriaticpulse]

Najavljen Disney TRON: Catalyst

Disney TRON: Catalyst je nadolazeća akcijsko-avanturistička igra smještena u svijet TRON-a, planirana za izlazak 2025. godine. Razvija ju Bithell Games, poznat po igrama kao što su Thomas Was Alone i TRON: Identity, dok je izdavač Big Fan Games, u suradnji s Devolver Digitalom. Radnja igre odvija se u Arq Gridu, futurističkom digitalnom svijetu predstavljenom u prethodnim TRON igrama. Igrač…

[geekcavepodcast]

Disney TRON: Catalyst Announcement

BigFan, Devolver Digital, and Bithell Games' Disney TRON: Catalyst is an original story set in the TRON universe. The game is an isometric, action adventure game. "The Arq Grid stands on the brink of collapse. Wield your Identity Disc, pilot your Light Cycle, and harness the power of the Glitch loop." (Devolver Digital)

Disney TRON: Catalyst launches for Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PC in 2025.

[decepti-thots]

5 games you wished more people would play? (blatantly fishing for recs lol)

ahaha, i am happy to provide!!!

Leap Year is a short and sweet (only around an hour to an hour and a half) take on a metroidvania platformer that DELIGHTED me when i picked it up on a whim recently. basically: you are a little guy who, if you jump and then fall from your entire height, immediately dies. you can only survive falling from less than the peak of your whole jump. as you go, you discover more and more conditions to this through gradually evolving level design that reveals more 'quirks' to your move set as you progress through the levels. fantastic short little puzzle platformer; i need to play the DLC! exquisitely designed levels.

Quarantine Circular by bithell (the Thomas Was Alone dev- who remembers that one) is shockingly underplayed. it's an interactive fiction game that is told through your conversation with an alien being held after first contact with them during a worldwide pandemic; you are one of a team of scientists tasked with studying them. short and sweet and very good sci fi.

80 Days is so goddamn good and every time I remember it's not actually a game everyone played i'm like. whaaaaat. how!!! it's an Interactive Fiction retelling of the titular novel through a specifically postcolonial lens that does fascinating stuff with the metatext of the book; it's incredibly well written and the concept of asking an IF player to actually manage and make decisions around the jouney adds a really fun level of tension to it. one of my fave IF games of all time in a beautiful little package. you can also get it on phones, and that's how I played it; excellent game to have in your pocket for train journeys etc.

Long Live The Queen is a 'raising sim' where you have to help a young princess survive until her coronation; it's a really fun little simulation game with a high level of difficulty (it made me tear my hair out) and a very fun conceit (everyone wants to kill you before you get crowned; please don't die before the coronation). really liked that one, was always surprised it didn't get more attention! great introduction to the 'raising sim' genre, imo.

Diaries Of A Spaceport Janitor is an 'anti-adventure' game. it's like one of those ~cozy life sim~ games except a lot more honest than most of those about what, exactly, a life spent doing menial tasks often actually looks like. you are a Janitor in a hub world that actual adventurers depart for quests tm from; you are making a living the best you can cleaning up after them and hoping, one day, to maybe escape. it's funny and strangely a little heartwrenching and really damn cool looking; both visual and audio design are great.

[calvincell]

It’s frankly hilarious how anti woke chodes are just so blinded by their bigotry & rage against diversity that they fail to acknowledge or just straight up ignore things such as the fact that one of the 3 protagonists’ in the 1ST FILM OF THE FRANCHISE was Dr. Lora Baines, the woman who was an expert computer programmer & engineer who was fundamental in creating the very digitization laser tech which is the critical catalyst for the entire foundational premise of the franchise overall.

It’s also just one more blatant display of the complete disingenuous nature of anti woke tools who delude themselves into believing they are the only “real gamers/fans” - collectively complaining about how pronouns, minority representation and usage of diversity & inclusion consultants are all “blights” on the entire game industry; all the while explicitly ignoring massive obvious industry issues such as: worker exploitation and abuse at the hands of overpaid c-suite executives, mentally & physically debilitating levels of crunch, the degradation of game preservation, completely untenable development & release schedules on grossly bloated AAA game budgets, anti-consumer pricing & monetization tactics, efforts to rob customers of ownership rights of their game purchases, the draining & callous discarding of industry talent (individuals & studios alike) by major publishers, poor optimization & performance of supposedly complete full price releases, rabid trend chasing as seen with NFTs & live service games, etc.

New Tron game looks dope, I'm definitely looking forward to it. That being said it is extremely funny to me that the trailer dropped this afternoon and is already bringing the anti-woke crowd out to complain that Tron has "gone woke" because of the skin tone and supposed genitals of a fucking computer program.

[dbarenzu626]

01000001 01110010 01100101 01110011

...Anyone know binary?

Anyways, "TRON Ares" fanart! It's no secret that I'm a fan of the TRON franchise, Disney's underdog marriage of video game and digital aesthetics has been an inspiration to me. Whether it was popping in the VHS tape for the 1982 film back when I was but a boy of ten or heading to see "TRON Legacy" in theaters with friends when it came out in 2010 to even clocking in my time to the countless video games based off the Grid, I owe a lot to the digital franchise that could.

Of course, the thing with "TRON Ares" is that it's a bit of a significant shift in the franchise. For starters, it's a complete reset button of Joseph Kosinski's prior "TRON Ascension" pitch, since the Mouse House essentially shelved it back in the day when Brad Bird's "Tomorrowland" cost the company a couple million in losses (it wasn't that bad thoooooough). The second is the most obvious: director Joachim Ronning is a director who one can read his filmography and see mixed bag results with and trusting him with the digital experience could prove a risky one. Third? The choice of its lead actor: Jared Leto. I'm sure I don't need to explain why this choice is divisive, but if you've seen the production of "Suicide Squad" (the 2016 one, not The) and "Morbius", then you probably know why.

Nonetheless, I've grown close to the idea that perhaps Ares might have some merit behind it besides being a giant reset button of sorts: for starters, the plot is leaning in the direction of digital meeting the real world, something that was already established in "TRON Legacy" and is now seeing fruition here with a commentary on artificial intelligence. There's also the soundtrack led by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (or more properly, for this film's case, their band Nine Inch Nails, which is... insanely hype), to which, BTW, I called as far back as April 2024 with some friends on a Discord server when I shared a piece off the "Challengers" soundtrack:

All in all, while I have my cautiousness, the optimism wins here. And for a film like this, I think it's best to carry a bit of optimism because it's what may lead to more in the franchise. Besides, we're getting this and a new game this year with Bithell's "TRON Catalyst", sooo... can we get some Lorcana rep next? C'mon, you know you wanna, Disney...

For this piece, I based it off the screenshots that Disney has released so far, behind-the-scenes pics of Jared Leto in the Grid suit from their shooting in Vancouver and then what I could see from the D23 teaser (shhhhhh, I needed references), mixing it in with a "TRON Uprising"-style influence. The tricky thing is trying to keep the character and actor looking like the character and actor without losing definitive features, something tricky with Robert Valley's art style for the show, but yet something he did well with CLU's character in-show too. But all in all, between that and a near furious digital look, I think I did pretty well! Text and textless versions above, of course!

If you don't know, "TRON Ares" comes out October 10, 2025. And Disney better get the first teaser out sometime in the near future~

(P.S: If you also don't know, "Something I Can Never Have" is a song title from Nine Inch Nails album Pretty Hate Machine and amazingly enough, a reworked version of that song serenaded the D23 trailer for "TRON Ares". Doubles as a reference to both its artists and to what I'm theorizing is Ares's character!)

[shes-an-iso]

We love a brilliant lesbian scientist omg bithell games we stay winning

[everythingcounts2007remaster]

I found Tron Catalyst deeply underwhelming on a lot of levels. Mike Bithell has some neat ideas, but is a poor writer. Each time I leap into the indigo waters of his Tron games, I shatter my shins because it's only ankle deep. 

I think it annoys me because he tries to make something deeper. And it's not. I hate the shallow-ass way he does "diversity." You need more to your character than their minority traits. We learn nothing about Exo. Her traits are: Black, woman, courier, protagonist (and I got to flirt with a woman one time before it was permanently erased). It's like Exo didn't even exist before booting up the game.

Does she like her job? Is she saving up to go elsewhere? What were her goals before becoming a time goddess? Does she buy into the doomsday glitch rumors that everyone else seems to know? What did she think of Core before getting arrested -- maybe lukewarm, or uninformed, or trusting? Maybe she already harbored disdain for them since outlawing lightcycles; as a courier I imagine that was quite a blow. Does she have no connections prior to the game? You telling me she's never heard of Automata or Reset? It would have brought SO much more depth with just that simple change: "Oh yeah, I've heard of [your group here], they're [incorrect boilerplate opinion here that gets more nuanced over the course of the game]" or whatever. She meets everyone for the first time enough times that there could have been some, I dunno, character development there beyond "yeah I've done this before." Mike Bithell tells me she trusts these programs but he definitely doesn't show me. Surely she's heard of the games at least---maybe experiencing them first hand could have been enlightening. "I thought it was volunteer, they say it's volunteer..." Make her a person, make her someone who exists outside of the viewer/player/reader's eye.

And that's not even touching the boring as hell dialogue. God. Every single sentence is doing exactly one job and it's exactly what it says on the tin. No foreshadowing, no beautifully blended exposition, no worldbuilding except if you explicitly ask for it, nothing. At least we get every single beat for beat goodbye sequence though!! Ugh. If there was any subtext it was solely in Bithell's head and we aren't given access to it.

And I don't believe these things can be blamed on low budget. Games like Night in the Woods, Tacoma, Gone Home, etc do a masterful amount of worldbuilding and characterization with a fraction of the writing.

I suppose it's easier to list the things I did like about the game:

- lightcycle was fun - i ran into a lot of things but the lightjet was enjoyable - Query's voice - some of the art - that blink-and-you-miss-it container marked kflynn/storage/bin/permanentserver or whatever it was (an ounce of foreshadowing yayyy!!!) - the handful of references to better Tron stories but alas, a nostalgia button push does not a good story make - the antifascist vibes even though the execution was deeply lacking (like seriously crack open any edition of Clarkesworld and you're bound to find a short story pulling it off better)

[ideas-on-paper]

Thoughts on Tron: Identity (quick review)

Finally, I closed the biggest gap in my Tron education: I played Tron: Identity at last!

And let me say, it was an amazing experience - short, but amazing.

I really love that the game digs into the "spiritual" themes of Tron, like the Users being akin to gods for the programs. At the same time, it's kind of funny since all of the programs on the Arq server are ISOs, so none of them were written by any Users - technically, they don't have any gods at all, since they spawned out of nowhere. Still, despite having no higher-ordained function, they're looking for purpose by organizing themselves, and some of them - like Prinz - even turn to the Users for guidance. (I guess programs are not too dissimilar from Users in that regard…)

Also, I really enjoyed the inclusion of the Automata - I love the idea of a faction of programs wanting to evolve beyond the predetermined parameters of the Users, and who place greater value on finding their own path and information being free to access for everyone. (I'm a big fan of AIs valuing their otherness, if you can't tell. xD)

Nevertheless, I think that the theme of control of information/information as power present in the game is very relevant, probably more so now than ever. In the age of the internet, the value of information and data will only increase, and whoever holds them will have control over pretty much everything - and wherever there is power, you can count on someone being there to abuse it.

Aside from this, Tron: Identity also has some pretty existentialist themes, like dealing with the realization that God has abandoned you and that knowledge is sometimes more of a burden than a boon. I can relate to both of these very well, and I love the way they implemented this little bit of philosophy into the game.

From a gameplay perspective, Tron: Identity was my first visual novel, and I have to say I quite enjoyed it - due to the nature of the story, I found myself thinking really hard about some decisions, and to my own surprise, I actually really liked the puzzle minigames intermingled in between. (I'm usually not that big on puzzle games; I think that's because most of the time, there's only one correct way to solve the puzzles, so I'm glad that the minigames in Identity allow for multiple approaches.)

[Spoilers from this point onwards!]

Still, I somehow feel like I got the worst ending possible - Proxy took off with Prinz, Ada turned to voxels from Cass's explosion, and Grish was royally pissed at me. xD In the end, I didn't have much of a choice but to derezz Grish - I considered handing over Cass to him just to keep both of them alive, but I couldn't bring myself to betray Cass. Sorry, Grish, but I had to protect my precious baby. xD

However, from what I've read in some guides, it could've gone much, much worse - if you try to stop Proxy from taking Prinz, you will accidentally hit Prinz with your disc. I was considering to defend Prinz, but I was worried about him being in the line of fire, so I didn't take that choice. (Good call on that one, I guess... ^^')

I suppose 3/5 survivors isn't the worst you can do (since Sierra can't die anyway), but maybe I'll do another run in the future to see some of the other outcomes.

Either way, Tron: Identity is a fantastic addition to the Tron franchise, and you can really tell that Mike Bithell put a lot of love, effort, and care into the story. I just hope we'll get a sequel to it soon, and that your decisions from the first game will have an impact on the second. (When I freed Sierra, I was kinda hoping he would help you out as an ally later, so that's something I'd really like to see.)