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A fascinating look at Museum of Simulation Technology’s perspective puzzles

The first time I saw Museum of Simulation Technology was at the Experimental Gameplay Workshop at GDC in 2014. A forced perspective puzzler about using visual tricks to navigate a labyrinthine dreamworld, it’s one of those charmingly clever games that’s just delightful to watch, especially for a new crowd of people. Each success in the demo prompted some genuine cheers from the audience, and I find myself experiencing that same feeling of fascination watching the game’s latest video from Polygon. Museum of Simulation Technology seems to combine the child-like wonder and toy-like elements of (the also highly anticipated) SCALE with the…

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Oxenfree’s supernatural teen thriller is set for transmission this January

After two months of silence, Night School Studio has some exciting things to share about their upcoming “supernatural teen thriller,” Oxenfree: a release timeframe of January 2016 with a console debut exclusively on Xbox One, and a brand new teaser. This new video gives a much clearer look at Oxenfree’s story and character drama than past trailers. Take a look below. It’s been known that the game’s otherworldly happenings occur after your character Alex tunes into a strange transmission on the island she and her friends are partying on. Edwards Island, as it’s called, is home to an abandoned military base…

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SCALE creator examines how small details can have a huge impact

SCALE captures so much of what makes videogames exciting: that feeling of interacting with ordinary objects in new and strange ways, the abstraction of mundane things, the sense of wonder that comes with experimentation, and the reward when your presence in the world means something. But it isn’t all fun and games trying to turn SCALE’s mysterious, size-shifting playgrounds into a coherent whole, as evidenced by the game’s latest Kickstarter update. In the blog post, creator Steve Swink goes over the many iterations he’s made and scrapped just for SCALE’s hub, the central zone that connects each of SCALE’s individual levels and lets players…

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Dead End Road will conjure up the dread of late night driving

A couple years ago, I had a job that required me to work late. I’d have to drive home on the verge of midnight a few days a week, through an unlit part of town I wasn’t very familiar with. There were jackrabbits in the field by the office. I saw one alive once. More often I’d spot them at night after a day’s worth of traffic had its way with the area, leaving misshapen heaps of red in the street like clumps of smeared oil paint. I never hit one myself. There were barely any cars out that late…

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The toylike world of Lovely Weather We’re Having will be with us soon

Colorful going-outside sim Lovely Weather We’re Having has a release date of November 10th for PC and Mac. You can watch the Big Announcement in this totally real clip from the Ellen DeGeneres Show. Lovely Weather We’re Having is described as a “goal-free” game about spending time outside, chatting with locals, kicking rocks, and just generally enjoying the blobby scenery, rain or shine. According to its website, the game uses local weather data to simulate nearby weather conditions, so if it’s raining in real life, it’ll probably be raining in the game too. This might result in a change of…

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The Stanley Parable co-creator teases new game with mysterious ARG

Coming right off the tail of Davey Wreden’s The Beginner’s Guide, the other Stanley Parable co-creator William Pugh has begun teasing a new game of his own. The unnamed mystery game, described as “a weird puzzle,” will be the debut project for Pugh’s recently founded studio Crows Crows Crows. But aside from that bit of info, a few screenshots, and a strange ARG, we don’t know much about it just yet. The images depict a large, numbered vault locked away in a dark storage room, what appears to be the backstage area of a theater, and a pipe-filled basement with…

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Prey for the Gods brings back memories of Shadow of the Colossus

Few games have topped the truly epic scale of Shadow of the Colossus and its iconic boss battles, but an upcoming game called Prey for the Gods looks like a worthy comparison. Created by No Matter, the recently revealed Prey for the Gods will have you battling huge deities on a frozen island in a journey to find the cause behind an eternal winter. Besides a few screenshots and a reveal trailer, that’s about all the information available for now, but what’s out there looks promising. Prey for the Gods seems to understand what made Shadow of the Colossus such…

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The world of Death Trash is gross, but you won’t be able to look away

Desert punks in a puke bar. Gore on the cave walls. A giant weeping blood into a lava pit. It can only be… Death Trash! Death Trash is an upcoming game pitched as a post-apocalyptic RPG mash-up of Planescape: Torment and Ultima 7, with added helpings of sex, cyberpunk, and horror. At first glance, I’m not personally interested in the role-playing elements—what captivates me most is how casually disgusting this world looks. Sickness and violence seem to be at the heart of this abrasive new society, where sweet-talking, telekinetic punks with shotguns roam and raw, gory meat seems to burst…