Barnaque is one of the most interesting freeware game studios to have emerged in the past few years. Comprised of the Montreal-based duo David Martin and Émeric Morin, Barnaque has made games that are often described as “batshit crazy” and “psychedelic,” mostly because the pair want to mess with pla
A strategy to use when exploring ruins in Dungeons & Dragons is to hug the wall. Have the beefiest party member (preferably a halfling barbarian) lead the way—not necessary, but a warrior knows how to survive. When presented with the option to turn either left or right, pick the latter. Always. The
Tell about the South. What’s it like there. What do they do there. Why do they live there. Why do they live at all. —William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! (1936) One of the currents running through Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!, and indeed the Southern literary tradition at large, is the difficulty of
You might not have heard of Aubrey Serr but it’s possible you’re familiar with some of his work. For the past eight years, he’s been a designer over at Wolfire Games, mostly working on the still unfinished Overgrowth—the game with the ninja bunnies—but also helped contribute to the studio’s 7DFPS en
Night Call‘s shade of noir-infused drama seems to be one part Drive (2011) and two parts Taxi Driver (1976). Upcoming for PC, iOS, and Android, Night Call will have you playing as a Parisian taxi driver who hopes to find the killer who has orchestrated a number of recent murders around the city. But
Videogames and philosophy are hardly strangers. Look to BioShock‘s (2007) exploration of Objectivism, the Determinism of The Stanley Parable (2013), and The Talos Principle (2015) with its toying of Functionalism and Behaviorism (and many other philosophies). The interactive nature of videogames, al
I work, live, and study in Washington, D.C.—undoubtedly one of the world’s most political cities. Here reside the highest stratum of politicians, lobbyists, and corporate cash-mongers. Here, too, live the downtrodden, the marginalized—systematically oppressed people of varying color, socioeconomic s
Last October, South Carolina made headlines when a thousand-year rainfall put much of the state underwater—that is, the chances of that amount of rain falling in a given year are 1-in-1,000. The storm drove residents from their homes onto dangerously flooded roads, leaving others trapped and in need
Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. Sara is Missing (Windows, Mac, iOS) BY MONSOON LAB Films like Unfriended and the recent Blair Witch have tried to bring the found footage genre into the digital age with varying success. But t
Before Civilization VI’s official release date, those with access to the unreleased version of the game were treated not to the ‘official’ theme on the game’s title screen, but with what would prove to be the theme music for the American civilization. The piece is a combination of two very different
Keyboard Sports turned my Spacebar into a couch and that is so darn delightful. Thank you for that, Keyboard Sports. I’ve never really seen my keyboard as anything other than a set of lettered keys before. I barely look at it as I jam my fingers into it every day, typing up my thoughts, but now it h
“I think games are uniquely suited to doing interesting things with spatiality, it doesn’t matter what form this takes—pure audio, pure text, pure 2D, pure 3D, or any combination of these, games are just really good at spaces.” These are the words of Orihaus, a game maker who has made some of the in
Thatgamecompany has teased its next game after Journey (2012) with an image and the promise of its arrival in 2017. It’s also been confirmed that, unlike thatgamecompany’s previous three games—flOw (2006), Flower (2009), and Journey—it will not be exclusive to PlayStation platforms. The teases came
It’s been four years since first-person, survival-horror-in-space game Routine first pinged on my radar, and I barely know more about it now than I did then. This isn’t due to negligence on my part—Lunar Software, the team making it, have been very stringent on what info they put out into the wild.
You lie on your bed, idly, unsure of what is keeping you up. It’s something that wants to stay hidden, just out of sight of your mind’s eye, a shadow ducking out of your periphery—the flash of a sly smirk as it flits around your room. While the thing on your mind dodges investigation, your hands ner
Conor McCann has made lots of wonderful digital toys recently. Black Gold was one of them—a game that let you ruminate on life while sipping cold beer with a friend under the stars. The Echo Initiative was another, which had you keep a lost satellite company as it drifted forever through space. Ther
It’s been a while since I’ve seen a warning label at the beginning of a videogame trailer. “WARNING: This trailer contains violent footage and flashing images that some may find disturbing.” That’s how the Kickstarter trailers for Agony open up, before each of them start smashing heads open with fis
Tale of Tales is looking to remake the very first videogame they made as a collective—comprised of married couple Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn. They’re trying to raise €40,000 on Indiegogo in order to update the dated technology that runs the original version of the game so that it may live on fo
This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel. A frightened woman crosses a storm-swept sea in a tiny canoe as black strands of windblown hair hit her face. Rain pours down her kimono as her fingers clutch a three-stringed Japanese shamisen. A massive wave looms over her canoe, impressing
The keyword for the Austrian art group goldextra is “experience.” The group presented its online multiplayer game Frontiers with a sentence that fed this idea: “Don’t just watch, experience the news yourself.” Frontiers had virtual recreations of spaces in the Sahara, southern Spain, and Rotterdam s
“The cards I throw away are not worthy of observation or I should not discard them. It is the cards I play on which you should concentrate your attention.” – Winston Churchill, 1912, during a bridge game on the Admiralty yacht Enchantress /// Churchill: The Man Churchill has been on my mind a lot la
This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel. A veteran explorer, low on supplies, lands on an uncharted alien planet with a cyan ocean and ruby-red grass. Enormous, dinosaur-like creatures with horns graze nearby, but at least there doesn’t appear to be any acid rain, unlike the last pl
There are a lot of horror movies on Netflix. 99% of them are awful*. So it makes sense, in terms of Netflix’s long-term plans to provide half of its own content, that they would want to remedy this situation themselves. Better curation? Okay, yes, but in lieu of that we have I Am The Pretty Thing Th
Narayana Walters, a computer science student at Appalachian State University, is fed up with seeing the same old designs in horror and survival games. But rather than sticking to moaning about it, Walters is doing the admirable thing of making his own: a non-linear, open-world survival horror game c
“Dull” reads the game’s judgement, punched across the top-right corner of the screen in a disappointed font. Dante throws his shoulder, thrusting his blade into the marionette a second time. “Cool!” Later, once Dante has become a proper daddy’s boy, he’ll impress the game he’s trapped inside to the
