Author: Chris Priestman

Chris is interested in videogames, architecture, and data errors. You'll find him rummaging around in lesser known corners of the internet.
RiME
News

RiME showcases the sights, sounds, and creatures of its Mediterranean fantasy

When RiME burst onto our radars with a minute-long trailer back in 2013, it showcased scenes that evoked games like Ico (2001) and The Wind Waker (2002). The camera swooped across a serene Mediterranean island with high walkways and cliff edges to traverse; there was an illusory door that opened into a mountain, where inside dark figures moved towards the protagonist’s campfire; it ended on a huge looming shape, dinosaur in size, moving through the veil of a morning mist. All of that is present in RiME‘s new trailer but it also moves in closer, finally giving us a proper show of the protagonist’s face, as…
Jenny LeClue
News

Yep, Jenny LeClue will still be your teen girl detective for 2017

Oh, look at that, it’s 2017. You want some new games to look out for this year? Well, my dear, let’s start by focusing our lens on the upcoming teen girl detective game Jenny LeClue. Its creator Joe Russ has re-confirmed to me that Jenny LeClue will be out for Steam later this year. It will also be coming to PlayStation 4 and mobile but only after the Steam version is out. Got that? Good. However, you don’t need to wait any longer to actually play the game. There’s a playable teaser of Jenny LeClue available on itch.io that is meant to…
OMORI
News

Surreal horror game OMORI won’t be a recluse forever

OMORI isn’t dead but it has been delayed again. The team behind the upcoming “surreal psychological horror RPGmaker game” has released a new trailer and explained why the game isn’t out yet. To make a long story short: the team admits it “underestimated the amount of time to create a video game.” The original estimate for the game’s release date when it was funded on Kickstarter was May 2015. That means that prediction is drawing close to being two years early. But there’s more to it than mere naivete. One of the major setbacks for the OMORI team has been…
Kellee Santiago
News

New documentary focuses on the struggle of making independent games

Devolver Digital has published a new documentary on Steam called Surviving Indie. The idea of the documentary is to bring more attention to the struggle of being an independent game maker. In some ways, it feels like it might be a response to Indie Game: The Movie, which has been criticized by some since its release in 2012 for glorifying the vocation given that it mainly followed three successful game makers: Jonathan Blow, Edmund McMillen, and Phil Fish. What Surviving Indie sets out to do is to get game makers “with varying outcomes of success and failure” to talk about their struggles and…
Escape the Loop
News

Videogames are finally experimenting with the time loop of Groundhog Day

Before I had even watched Groundhog Day (1993), my childhood was fringed with the fantasy of alternate experiences of time due to a British children’s TV series called Bernard’s Watch (1995-2005). Bernard, the lucky bugger, had a stopwatch that could freeze time. Each episode he’d perform this miraculous feat, usually to enact some good deed, or at least get himself out of trouble. Thank god it was good boy Bernard that had the watch and not someone more perverse, eh? The image that sticks with me the most from that show is Bernard running across a grassy field as someone frozen…
Kimmy
News

Nina Freeman’s game based on her mom’s childhood comes out in January

Nina Freeman has announced that her next game, called Kimmy, will be out on January 6th 2017. It will be part of the Humble Monthly Bundle and so the price of the subscription you’ll get Kimmy and some other games. That’s something to look forward to in the new year, then. As Freeman revealed to us before, Kimmy is based on her mom’s experience growing up and babysitting around urban Massachusetts in the 1960s. Specifically, it’s based on her mom’s recount of a certain summer that involved playing lots of street games, as well as babysitting a kid with “kind…
Antioch
News

Antioch: Scarlet Bay’s multiplayer approach to storytelling seems fresh

Antioch: Scarlet Bay looks like it’s set to take storytelling in videogames in a worthwhile direction. Out on April 6th 2017 for iOS and Android, it’s an adventure game set in the titular dark metropolis where you play as a detective investigating a homicide. That’s not the cool bit. It’s the fact that this is an online multiplayer game that should make you sit up and pay attention (it can also be played solo). Yes, there are two detectives working on this case, and you’ll have to cooperate with each other as you work through the game’s story. You’ll each set out into…
Mirror of Spirits
News

The independent studio behind some of Lara Croft GO’s best levels

Lara Croft GO came out for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita on December 3rd this year and brought with it a time-exclusive set of levels. Called “Mirror of Spirits,” these levels take the grid-based puzzles of the game’s dioramas in a radically new direction than the main levels and the first expansion, “The Shard of Life.” Whereas before Lara was dodge-rolling through jungle and underground caverns, concerned with the paths of rolling boulders and pursuing lizards, in “Mirror of Spirits” she enters a new reality through the titular mirror, where a completely new set of rules change the makeup of…
The Employee
News

The salaryman’s tragic tale turned into an efficient videogame theater

Videogames about the drudgery of working in a dead-end job, pushing piles of paper off a desk, are as old as, well … almost as old as videogames. One of the first was probably Takeshi no Chōsenjō, the 1986 game directed by Takeshi Kitano (known for the game show Takeshi’s Castle as well as starring in and directing his own films), which began by having you roam a Japanese city working as a salaryman. You stuck to the dull daily routine of a salaryman until you quit the job and worked out what else you could do. But Takeshi no Chōsenjō wasn’t meant as a…