Mystic Messenger and the power of texting games

If I have learned anything from Mystic Messenger, it’s how astonishingly easy it is to get emotionally invested in a chat with a fictional character. Forget the Turing test, I discovered that I’m happy if my talking partner can pass a Turing quiz. MysMe, as it’s commonly abbreviated, is a mobile dat

Show your support for next year’s smuttiest FMV game

The Chuck Tingle adventure game is now looking to be “Kickstarted in the Butt.” If you’re not familiar with Chuck Tingle this will all come as quite a shock. He is perhaps the internet’s best supplier of smut, writing short erotica with titles like “My Ass Is Haunted By The Gay Unicorn Colonel” and

Along Came Humans wants to make colonization great again

What if Spore (2008) hadn’t been a complete and total letdown? What if Sim City took to the stars, with colorful aesthetics a la Kerbal Space Program (2015) and a friendlier, simplified interface? What if a smart, streamlined game could offer you all of that and more? Along Came Humans, created by T

Here it is, the latest nostalgia ploy for the Tsum Tsum generation

One of my favorite things to see compared are Funko POP! figures (of the United States) with Good Smile’s Nendoroids (of Japan). The two are at once comparable—both being a popular series of uniformly designed figures—but also incomparable. POP!s are chibi (small), cheap, and most of all: ugly. Whil

Representing depression through game mechanics

There is a point in the depths of depression where you will begin to drown in your garbage. I don’t mean that as metaphor—I mean literal garbage. Unwashed dishes, dirty laundry, bags of trash, boxes from take-out for all the times you couldn’t find the energy to cook (which is every time). And, of c