There’s a scene in Alien (1979) when Nostromo captain Arthur Dallas climbs into the ship’s tangled air ducts to seek out the Xenomorph on-board. The crew, looking on from a computer terminal, sees only two dots on a map—Dallas and the Xenomorph—until the tracking system malfunctions, and neither Dal
State of Emergency (2002) seemed real dumb even to a 14-year-old kid reading its EGM cover story. A chaser to Rockstar’s monumental Grand Theft Auto III (2001), State of Emergency wanted to carry on the torch, but only for Grand Theft Auto’s chaos and edginess. It was a Crazy Taxi (1999) for rioting
Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. Abzû (Windows, PlayStation 4) BY GIANT SQUID Abzû is the next game by Matt Nava, who was previously the art director at thatgamecompany, most notably on Journey (2012). Nava and team trade des
Inside The Void evokes a similar sense of isolation horror as Solaris (1972) or Event Horizon (1997). Both films place their protagonists on rescue missions; neither of which sound all too promising for the rescue crew—and both of which quickly descend into a series of mysteries and hallucinations.
We are very fond of Playdead’s Inside, the Danish designers’ follow-up to 2010’s Limbo. It’s bolder, more gut-wrenching, and alive. Until today it was only available on Xbox One and PC, which means most of you probably played it on PC. But Playdead have just announced that on August 23rd, Inside is
Pocketwatch Games, the studio that brought us bungling co-op heist game Monaco (2013), is back with Tooth & Tail, an arcade-style strategy game based on the Russian Revolution. While still deep in the development stages with Tooth & Tail, the studio does have a video that shows how matches are able
This article 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. /// In 1884, Edwin Abbott Abbott published Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. It was told from the perspective of A Square
There’s something classically European about animal heroes. It’s why Ghost of a Tale looks and feels classical in the first place. From Aesop’s Fables to the golden age of Disney animation, cute and brave animals have been at the center of heroic adventure stories. Ghost of a Tale asks the player to
A big part of playing videogames is doing so collaboratively. We like to talk about and share our experiences. Before now, arcades were the place to go for this, where you could gather around arcade cabinets, watching your peers smashing high-scores and giving commentary as you wait for your chance
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
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 th
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 exil
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 a
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 Di
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
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 compl
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
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, the
When I try to picture what the ocean depths must have looked like near England’s Jurassic Coast, 300 million years ago, I picture something like Van Gogh’s Starry Night (1889). I picture a space of stillness but also turbulent life, things moving ceaselessly in the restless dark; I picture everythin
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 r
As a 6’7 (2m) man, the cramped quarters of submarines are anathema to me. So, when I saw the teaser for Jujubee Games Studio’s submarine survival game Kursk last year, it’s fair to say I was horrified, and more than a little uneasy. It wasn’t only due to the small virtual spaces of the game, either.
This is a preview of an article you can read on our new website dedicated to virtual reality, Versions. /// Header illustration by Gareth Damian Martin Although videogames have been around since the early fifties, the first known electronic shooter actually appeared in 1936. The Seeburg Ray-o-Lite,
“FAIR FIGHTS ARE GOOD, IF YOU ARE IN A MOVIE, OR WOULD LIKE TO BECOME DEAD.” This is told to me by a crystal in the middle of a desert, surrounded on all sides by dust and cacti and one single, solitary highway. It’s the third of these I’ve found, sprouting carelessly out of the cracked earth, there
Recently, Honig Studios tweeted out some incredible visuals that were part of a collaboration with artist Rafael Varona, the animator and illustrator of upcoming mobile game Impossible Bottles. Based in Berlin, the production company is made up of designers, developers, and writers whose goal is to
The Professor Layton series of puzzle-adventure games has always been about one man and his boy sidekick. But that’s changing. As Gematsu reports, Level-5 has announced what I suppose you can call a reboot of the series with Lady Layton: The Millionaire Ariadone’s Conspiracy. As the title alludes to
