Author: Chloi Rad

Chloi is a San Francisco-based writer interested in games and film.
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Relive those awkward AIM chats from your youth with this videogame

I often wonder if the internet of today will ever be as ancient a place as the internet of my youth, some 10 or 20 years into the future—if I’ll look back on my Twitter feed, the various chat programs I use with my friends, and get the same pang of nostalgia I do now from hearing Windows XP boot up and the creaking door of a friend signing-on to AIM. Given the nature of the internet today, I doubt it. Things are so permanent now. Data is sorted so neatly, documented so conveniently. I can copy and paste a…
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Electric Highways explores the eerie loneliness of virtual worlds

One thing that made cult RPG Maker horror game Yume Nikki really good was its sense of place. Whether defined by its music, color scheme, level design, or its strange lurking occupants, each location in the game world was so distinct in its own way. That’s something that I think Zykov Eddy, creator of the Yume Nikki 3D fangame, really gets, and I’m even more convinced after playing his latest project, Electric Highways. The ten levels of Electric Highways are set in a weird virtual reality world that’s being tested one last time by its creator before being sent out to…
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The magical realism of Japanese author Murakami gets its own videogame

You’d think videogames and magical realism would’ve found each other by now, but the pairing is still a tragically rare sight. Kentucky Route Zero is one of the few games I can name that embraces elements of magical realism without evolving into full-blown fantasy, but another project called Memoranda—also a point-and-click adventure—could soon join the list. Memoranda is inspired by the fiction of Haruki Murakami, whose works are often set in surreal realities that find a dreamlike charm in mundanity. In Memoranda’s case, the setting and the time period may be unclear and contain dissonant elements, but most of its…
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Cult classic horror game Pathologic will get an HD remaster before its remake

I’ve only ever met people who love or hate Pathologic. The strange Russian game about a diseased town (to put it simply) won several awards, but English-speaking players criticized it for its poor translation. Its recently crowdfunded remake aims to solve this issue, among other things, but Ice-Pick Lodge has also announced an HD version of the original game that will fix most of what made the original “bad,” while still maintaining what made it good. Ice-Pick Lodge lovingly refers to this in a blog post as “Pathologic Classic HD: Now Comprehensible.” It’s effectively a remaster of the original game,…
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Allison Road ventures into the woods with its latest horrifying reveals

The world outside Allison Road’s iconic house setting is even stranger and more dangerous than what’s previously been revealed. New concept art for the upcoming horror game shows off an eerie forest setting, a moss-covered wood in the shadow of a looming mountain and overlooking a grey lake. In one image, an old dock juts out over a bottomless void. A figure kneels on the dock near a small rowboat, which hovers above the empty lake as if all is still well. Both the dock and the lake do look normal in the image before it, which makes me wonder…
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Verreciel is a minimalist space exploration game set in a glass ship

There’s a graceful fragility to the works of Devine Lu Linvega and his latest game is no exception. Verreciel, which launches on January 10th, 2016 for iOS, will let you explore “surrounding universes” aboard a vessel called the Glass Ship. There isn’t much info about it beyond that. Its interface is sharp and fine, like glass. Wiry lettering labels its various functions—battery, hull, electricity, thruster. Stars expand beyond its angled windows into long lines the faster you go. Linvega also describes Verreciel as a “linguistically involved project” like his previous ones, including Paradise, Hiversaires, Oquonie, and Ledoliel. Follow Verreciel on Twitter…
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Creator of Stranded returns with a cyberpunk adventure inspired by Akira

Murder is the name of Peter Moorhead’s upcoming cyberpunk adventure game, which is set to launch on October 21st for desktop and mobile devices. While Moorhead’s previous game Stranded might’ve looked to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 for inspiration, Murder is rooted in the works of cyberpunk masters, including Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira), Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash), and Masamune Shirow (Ghost in the Shell). “designed and written to reward attentive and thoughtful play”  Set in Japan of the future, Murder puts you in control of a lieutenant in the Tokyo Metropolitan Police. The story is said to revolve around “the intersection of morality…
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Foggy Shore asks you to contemplate even the smallest decisions

Cold, grey beaches are my favorite. When the mist rolls in, they can feel disconnected from the rest of the world, an isolated plane of white sand, water, sky. Sights and sounds stand out against the emptiness, turning every piece of driftwood or seaweed into a landmark along the shoreline. In Foggy Shore, you’re invited to spend five minutes on a tranquil beach, making small discoveries like these along the way. The tagline of Foggy Shore is, “There’s nothing as quiet as a decision,” and here it’s true. You can choose to take the things you stumble upon, return them to…
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Mushroom 11’s new trailer demonstrates growth through destruction

It’s amazing how far Mushroom 11 has come from its original 2012 prototype. The theme of that year’s Global Game Jam was an image of the Ouroboros, a serpent eating its own tail. Creators Itay Keren and Julia Keren-Detar took this concept of cyclicality and gave it new life in Mushroom 11, which put you in control of a constantly regenerating blob that must shed parts of itself to move forward. In that first prototype, the only obstacle was moving from platform to platform, but Mushroom 11 as it is today, over three years later and set to launch on…