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Lara Croft GO (2015) — A Board Where Distilled Memory Still Moves
In 2015, Square Enix Montreal followed Hitman GO with a second Go-series title, Lara Croft GO. Its method was to distill only the idealized feeling of an old game, remembered rather than replayed, onto a board of nodes and lines — a method that swept critical honors even as the studio itself was shut down in 2022. Because the game shipped as offline, server-independent software, it outlived the company that made it. This piece traces that method, and where it ended up.
Hitman GO (2014) — The Year an Assassin Became a Board-Game Piece
In 2014, after its console Hitman project collapsed, Square Enix Montreal shipped Hitman GO, a turn-based puzzle played across a board of nodes and lines. Born from paper prototypes, this "distilling" design method spawned Lara Croft GO (2015) and Deus Ex GO (2016), and eventually reached Steam. This piece traces the lineage of a method that turned a AAA brand into a board-game piece.
