The Literary Heritage of Sunless Sea
Or: why all those poor captains had to die.
The rhythm game genre is about to get a whole lot darker
You were lured in by the sight of a skeleton astronaut, weren’t you? Or is that just me? The idea of an astronaut left to rot in space grips me as one of the horrors of the future. At the moment, as far as public records show, there are no dead people floating around in space. But we have to suppose
Everybody hates you (in Dropsy the Clown)
The trials and tribulations of a repulsive sweaty boneless clown-thing.
An upcoming videogame takes a heartfelt look at depression in Tokyo
We expect our surgeons to have steady hands. Some of the time, our lives depend on it. But what happens when that steadiness deserts a surgeon? Like a golfer with the yips, one crisis leads to the next, spreading outwards to affect the surgeon’s professional life and his emotional state. Suddenly, t
Corpse of Discovery is Franz Kafka for the twenty-second century
Corpse of Discovery recreates banal office life in deep space.
New Shape of the World gifs show off strange creatures and falling monuments
Shape of the World is pure joy. It’s a game about finding your place in the world as much as it is being lost in it—about learning how to be lost while still feeling like you belong. As you wander through its colorful biomes, life sprouts up all around you, in real time. Shrubbery bubbles up like fo
Merrily Perily is a comedy of errors about poison and pooping yourself
There’s a certain type of prank prevalent on YouTube where the prankster dribbles hot sauce onto a friend’s food and also into their drink, so that once they eat the food and realize the predicament they’re now in, reaching for their drink will only make things worse.Merrily Perily takes that prank
For the consumer who has everything, it’s the phone that does nothing
At least it cannot be damaged by water.
Life’s problems are given a beautiful mystique in WEAVE
Problems are no longer immaterial in Nadav Tenenbaum’s “abstract journey” WEAVE. They rise up silently from the seas as huge spheres of ebony, blocking out the sun. Or they take up all your living space as unconquerable Sisyphean boulders. Problems cannot be ignored and they will find you. This is w
Turning down the volume on Volume
Mike Bithell’s game is primally fun, but preachy.
Vignettes will tell a wordless story through shapeshifting objects
Vignettes is an adorable looking game about rotating adorable tiny objects in such a way that transforms them into other adorable tiny objects. The little shapeshifting things tell an “underlying story,” making each individual item a vignette of their own. A telephone becomes a television set which
The horror of Resident Evil 2’s police station
The impossible spaces of Resident Evil 2 recall The Shining’s Overlook Hotel.
Make friends and hack reality when Else Heart.Break() drops on September 24th
Else Heart.Break() makes me want to smoke cigarettes. It’s not that I don’t value my health. It’s that being a smoker seems to be the easiest way to people’s hearts in the game. If you smoke, you can say “yes” when strangers ask if you have either a) a lighter, or b) a smoke. With that icebreaker a
Fight monsters or kiss them? Undertale will let you decide when it arrives next week
Kickstarter darling Undertale came into our lives in 2013 with the scent of butterscotch-cinnamon pie. It cradled us in its furry arms, gave us comforting and encouraging glances, before leaving us to rot—cold and alone—for two long years. Now, it’s finally returning next Tuesday the 15th, and I can
1979 Revolution remembers the Black Friday massacre in animated short
On September 8th, 1978, the Iranian government opened fire on a large group of protestors in a public square in the country’s capital of Tehran, killing almost 100 and wounding several more. The event came to be known as Black Friday. It was one of the pivotal moments in the burgeoning Iranian Revol
Who We Aren’t Anymore
A look back to understand who we are now.
Before summer ends, Dracula wants to go to the beach
For a character who has already died, Dracula sure is a chill dude. In Hotel Transylvania, the 2012 children’s movie that has a sequel coming out this month, Dracula is clumsily adjusting to domesticity. In Mel Brooks’ 1995 parody of traditional vampire stories, Dracula: Dead and Loving It, Dracula
What does the future of esports hold?
Distribution, methods of play, and the games themselves are all in flux.
Oceanheart is too precious to ignore
“Oceanheart is a chill exploration game about sailing away and making a home.” That’s how co-designer Karen Teixeira describes the fledgling new project on her website. Teixeira began development on the game in late April of this year. Since then, she’s slowly been revealing new details and video sa
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is an unending battle
In MGSV, war may be hell, but it’s also boring.
The Witness is close, but these new screenshots make us wish it was closer
New screenshots from The Witness, pulled from its upcoming trailer, provide a look at the varied locations you’ll visit on the vast and mysterious island where the game is set. Some of the shots look familiar. About a minute into the last trailer—which creator Jonathan Blow points out is two and a h
To catch ’em all in Pokémon GO you’ll need to explore the world around you
Pokémon GO is a videogame that—get this—sees Pokémon invading “the real world.” Yep, you don’t have to sit in a stuffy room by yourself staring at a grey and green screen of mere inches in size to play Pokémon any longer, as I did for hours as a child. You can go outside and find a Pikachu poking it
The sequel to dys4ia explores the failure of empathy games
Despite being about “the experience and aftermath of getting hit by a car,” you’ll probably expect Anna Anthropy’s latest autobiographical game, titled Ohmygod Are You Alright?, to take the subject lightly at first. Get a little further into it, however, and you may understand why Anna says that “yo
This is probably the closest we’ll get to that Hunger Games videogame we want
When the reality show Survivor first aired on May 31, 2000, it almost immediately become a national phenomenon. Viewers tuned in to watch the drama of a group of supposedly average people trying to compete and survive in the harsh wilderness. Like loyal sports fans, they rooted for their favorites,