Author: Chloi Rad

Chloi is a San Francisco-based writer interested in games and film.
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The Japanese ghost stories that give What Remains of Edith Finch its eeriness

What Remains of Edith Finch is rooted in Japanese horror as much as it is Lovecraftian. That’s why Giant Sparrow, the team behind the game, is pretty happy with its localized title over in Japan: ????????????????? or, translated back to English, What Happened at the Strange Estate of the Finch Family. The long name calls to mind some of Lovecraft’s own eerie tales, like A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson or the even longer Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family. Giant Sparrow also shared a message on the game’s Japanese site, which you can read in English on their blog.…
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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 foam from the earth, brittle trees snap upright along the path, rocks fall from the sky and take root in the ground as if they were there all along. a good look at the vast scale and dynamism of Shape of the World  My…
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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 becomes a cooking pot. What is at first a mandolin is suddenly a bowl, then a crown, then a ring. And it goes on and on. Its creators Pol Clarissou and Armel Gibson call Vignettes a “contemplative game,” something they aren’t strangers to. An older game of Gibson’s, Gulag Paradise, turned forced labor…
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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 Revolution, one of the first and most devastating examples of the Shah’s abuse of military power against his people during a time of civil unrest. Sadly, it wouldn’t be the last. “If I sit silently, I have sinned.”  The upcoming game 1979 Revolution will begin its story at…
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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 half years old—there’s a scene depicting floating platforms spread out over what appears to be a ravine in the woods. The walkway folds out to create a new path, presumably as the maze puzzles programmed into each tile are gradually solved. What looks like this same area, or…
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Tale of Tales teases new project called Cathedral in the Clouds

Tale of Tales, the creative duo behind The Path, Luxuria Superbia, and most recently, Sunset, announced in June that they would stop making games—commercial ones, at least. Sunset, despite earning good reviews, was a financial failure according to their blog post on the subject, and at that point, it simply became unrealistic for them to pursue game development the same way again. Enter: Cathedral in the Clouds. Cathedral in the Clouds is the newest project from Tale of Tales, but there’s no public information on what it is yet. Its Twitter account contains only a logo, a bio that describes…
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Sharp Flint brings a cartoonish beauty to the ice age

It’s hard for me to say no to new survival games, but only because I haven’t found the perfect one yet. The Long Dark, with its lovely low-poly snowscapes and focus on enduring the harsh wilderness rather than zombies or other creatures, is the closest I’ve come to a favorite. But now there’s a new contender: Sharp Flint, by the suitably named EATMEAT Games. Sharp Flint is a paleolithic survival sim about hunting “titans of the ice age” like mammoths and megaloceros. Its earliest images from late last year depict a cold, colorless world with detailed, semi-realistic graphics, but it’s…