Dollar-store junk becomes the item sprites of Lucid Blocks

Eric Alfaro photographed household clutter into a Minecraft that runs on dream logic

A crucifix USB necklace carries a Barragán video game

THE END IS NEAR, made for Victor Barragán's label by Alex Sinh Nguyen, ships as $270 jewelry.

Freshly Baked Games serves its King's Field revival crunchy

The dev jokes that teeth would wear down chewing on this game—Dark Souls's first-person ancestor finally gets an heir, and the demo is out.

You Up?: What to Play, August 21

Just a little twist of the truth.

A Sea Made of Plastic [Podcast]

We go in on a police station built wrong on purpose, films rebuilt as late-'90s games nobody can play, and why Mario 64's water still felt like water.

The Little Database expands into a desktop directory

A year after the University of Minnesota Press book, UCLA's Danny Snelson rebuilds its resources as a clickable fake OS—podcasts, reviews, and dozens of small archives included.

The health packs in POLYMORPH have to die first

Intron Interactive's biological roguelike casts you as a cancerous pathogen; the comments immediately turned healing into a moral problem.

Helsinki names Ville Kallio an Artist of the Year

The Cruelty Squad creator shares the city's annual 5,000-euro award with soul singer Emilia Sisco and knitwear designer Juha Vehmaanperä.

Murlo's Luddite rhythm games wrapped a run at Aviva Studios

Five minigames from the unreleased Something Beautiful played on Factory International's Media Wall, on a controller covered in the artist's 3D-printed sculptures.

The mouse in this AI war game is a demonic latex hand

freeculture.api built an idle game about autonomous weapons into a field-deployable hardshell case—and the critique is in the hardware.

Miles Buckle Makes Games You Can't Play

Miles Buckle rebuilds Rear Window, Amarcord and Hitchcock's Rope as late-'90s games nobody will ever play, and the impossibility is exactly the point.

A whole triennial is named for a platformer's grace period

Alice Bucknell's Coyote Time—an eco sci-fi text adventure premiering at St. Louis's City Museum this fall—gave Counterpublic 2026 its title.