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Power Drill Massacre
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Power Drill Massacre brings grindhouse horror to videogames

From It Follows (2015) to Netflix’s Stranger Things, the themes and style of ’80s horror are slowly but surely making a comeback. So perhaps it’s no surprise that such inspirations are appearing among games as well, with the once-colossal genre of slasher movies influencing titles like Lakeview Cabin Collection, Until Dawn (2015), Dead Till Daylight, and the upcoming Friday the 13th. The works of developer Puppet Combo wears such inspirations on its sleeve. I recently had the pleasure of enjoying the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) for the first time last week, and realized what made the movie such a…
Universal Harvester
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John Darnielle’s next novel is a horror story about fragmented video tapes

In the music he writes for the Mountain Goats, John Darnielle tells intensely specific stories. One song describes a breakfast of boiled peanuts the morning a parther leaves for good. Another, from the band’s most recent album, Beat the Champ (2015), mournfully describes a wrestling match in which the loser has his head shaved with a “cheap electric razor from the Thrifty down the street.” Darnielle’s first novel, Wolf in White Van (2014), is layered thick with references that situate it not just in a particular time or place, but inside a particular cultural niche, full of Conan the Barbarian comics and b-movie…
mandagon631037713_preview_07
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Climb a mystical mountain in a game based on Tibetan Buddhism

In Tibetan Buddhism, the space between death and rebirth is called bardo, a liminal period containing six—or four, depending on the source or scholar—different states, experienced in phases from birth to death to rebirth. This “limbo” is a journey in multiple senses, both to a spiritual conclusion and to a physical resurrection. British developer Blind Sky Studios explores this in-between space in Mandagon, a freeware game released earlier this week on Steam. As detailed in a blog post, Mandagon was born as the personal project after one of the team members suffered a death in the family. The game shifted…
Disc Room
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Disc Room distills 1970s dystopias down to a bloody demise

If there’s one thing that Disc Room shares with Vlambeer’s games—the studio for which creator Jan Willem Nijman works under when he’s not toiling away on other projects—it’s the ability to get all the action packed into a single GIF. That and screenshake. Of course it has screenshake. Disc Room is a game of avoidance—what Nijman calls a “dodge-’em up.” You need to survive 30 seconds in a cramped arena in order to grow old in this spin-off of 70s-inspired dystopian science fiction, including Logan’s Run (1976) and THX 1138 (1971). Your only weapons against the evil discs trying to smear you across the walls are…

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Issue 9

Our relaunched magazine is here!

Kill Screen Issue 9 kicks off our all-new relaunch. Games are exploding into all sorts of weird new experiences and we’re on the ground to let you know what’s what. From deeply reported features on Lily Zone and the creators of Kentucky Route Zero to gorgeous original photography and illustrations, Issue 9 is a vibrant, accessible vision of videogame culture that we can’t wait for you to read.

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Saint Basil's Cathedral on Red Square in Moscow
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“Augs Lives Matter”: The hollow race politics of the new Deus Ex

In anticipation of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided’s release later this August, Square Enix and Eidos Montreal have released a series of pictures depicting the current state of major cities around the globe during the events of the game, including London, Berlin, Barcelona, Rio de Janeiro, and Moscow. They are… certainly something. As far as art goes, it is at least technically admirable: it hits the exact grimy spot between “this is too normal to obviously be a dystopia” and “I had to stop playing to go take a bath,” and the cities look big and bustling and appropriately futuristic. The…
The Signal From Tölva
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Take in the quiet, robotic wastelands of The Signal From Tölva

Big Robot, the studio behind the quirky “tweedpunk” survival game Sir, You Are Being Hunted (2013) has returned with more robots. This time, however, the tone is a little more serious, with the newly announced The Signal From Tölva, which imagines a future when space-faring groups of robots spend their time searching through what’s left of long-dead civilizations. The game takes place on Tölva, where something has been found, and you must follow the signal to find it. As such, you play as a lonely robot explorer trying to discover what that something is. But that’s not entirely true. As…
More details San Michele al Pozzo Bianco
Feature

The Goat, the Devil, and DOOM

The first time Black Phillip, a perfectly normal-looking goat, appears in Robert Eggers’ 2015 horror film The Witch, the viewer is struck with a sense of unease. This isn’t any fault of Phillip’s. If anything, he should be the most reassuring aspect inthe gloomy story of a 17th century family’s exile to the New England wilderness. Within an atmosphere of dread and fear, Phillip all but mugs for the camera in every one of his scenes. He gives his shaggy head a puzzled cock in the middle of a somber barnyard tableau with perfect comedic timing. He rears up to…
House of Flowers
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A videogame tribute to growing up around the Yugoslav Wars

Ivan Notaros appears in Issue 9 of Kill Screen’s print magazine. It launches on August 8th, but you can get 10 percent off before that date with the discount code RELAUNCH. /// Ivan Notaros is constantly flooded with new game ideas. It’s the result of endlessly tinkering with videogame physics and art styles, letting his curiosity spill out onto his humming computer—each click of the mouse could result in another potential candidate. In my time speaking to him over the past few months for Issue 9 of Kill Screen‘s print magazine, he has released one game, dropped work on a larger one,…
Ugly
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Ugly embraces broken computer animation to tell its story

The progress of computer graphics often seems like a long race towards photo-realism and precise, natural movements meant to mimic the world as we see it. But there are projects that seek to show the world as we feel it, and when an artist has that in mind, you end up with works similar to Nikita Diakur’s upcoming short film Ugly. Sourced from an internet story posted by an anonymous writer, Ugly will follow a Native American Chief and an Ugly Cat (the titular “Ugly”) as they try to find peace in a destructive neighborhood. Apart from the story, the most distinct aspect…
On Rusty Trails
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On Rusty Trails, a videogame about the absurdity of racial prejudice

While On Rusty Trails may look like yet another 2D platformer at first, its creators at Black Pants Studio took it beyond that simplistic impression by enabling a discussion about race through the game’s primary mechanic. “It was one of those days where I read the newspaper and there was an article about guys beating up people for having the wrong skin color,” said Tobias Bilgeri, the game’s designer. “I read another article where a German politician said: we do our best, but the people who come to us have to integrate themselves. Then I thought, even if they eat bratwurst, drink…
reigns
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A kingdom management game in the style of Tinder

You’ll know how addictive swiping can be if you’ve ever downloaded Tinder. Yes, the dating app does encourage you to be shallow (like, really shallow), but the simple choice of swipe-left or swipe-right really speeds you through prospective dates. It’s the appeal of quick decisions and minimal complexity, save the occasional tap to see more photos or—if the semi-anonymous subject is really lucky—the coveted (read: creepy) SuperLike. To some extent, Tinder has the same appeal as endless runners—swipe-up, swipe-down—in its repetition, though it trades leaping between buildings for leaping between college guys who think salmon shorts make them look slick. Though the…
hackyzack_concept_2
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HackyZack is about living with anxiety, but you probably won’t realize

HackyZack is a “shitty metaphor” for creator Zack Bell’s thoughts and feelings on his own past. (“Shitty metaphor” is his phrasing, by the way.) It takes a Super Meat Boy (2010) approach to platforming—its meaning abstracted and then scattered among undeniably crisp platforming challenges. But where it differentiates from other platformers is in its multitasking. In HackyZack, players have to bounce around a plethora of obstacles all while maneuvering different balls to a goalpost. So let’s get to it: HackyZack is about living with social anxiety—trying to escape its grasp by imprinting it onto a person or object that simulates comfort and security. For HackyZack’s…
Anthrotari
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Anthrotari explores growing up as a queer furry in the ‘90s

Dial-up modems, Windows 95 floppies, IRC channels, and free American Online disks. Ask anyone who lived through the internet boom of the ‘90s and these are guaranteed to be some of the first things that come to mind. But for New York-based game developer J.C. Holder, who uses they/them pronouns, there was another aspect of their identity that marked growing up online: the anthropomorphic furry community. Holder’s upcoming game, Anthrotari, is a visual novel that casts the player in the role of a furry roleplayer named Alex. Through IRC channels, Alex hangs out with a group of anthros across the…
Wolverine: Admantium Rage
News

A Wolverine game from 1994 did grime music before it was cool

Producer and DJ Sir Pixalot has rediscovered what is perhaps the first “grime” instrumental piece in the boss track from the 1994 SNES game Wolverine: Adamantium Rage.  Grime is a genre of music that finds its origins in East-London from the early 2000s. The birth of the genre can be found in some rap albums, the lyrics of UK garage music, as well as the thumping rhythms of dancehall and early electronic music. However, this track from 1994—a full eight years before the birth of the genre according to FACT—is throwing a curveball into music history. It seems as though Dylan…