Author: Jess Erion

Jess loves wearing sleeveless shirts and hates black olives. She's really into lighthouses and is currently studying American literature.
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Upcoming point-and-click mystery brings a fresh vision to future Florida

As a college student, my professors are pretty important to me, and not just because they hold the future of my GPA in their hands. My professors have been endlessly patient with my classmates and me, providing us with guidance, insight, and even free dinner once or twice. If one of them went missing without a word, I’m not sure exactly what I’d do. When a professor suddenly disappears after making a mystical discovery in the upcoming point-and-click mystery game The Last Goddess, an unlikely investigative team of four comes together in Florida to solve the mystery. Each of the characters…
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Overcooked’s next update lets you cook Christmas dinner with friends

A lot of folks associate the holidays with good food and home-cooked meals. For me, that means a vast assortment of cookies and baked goods, as well as surullitos (a Puerto Rican snack) made with much care by my mother. In the spirit of combining winter festivity with cooking, independent studio Ghost Town Games is releasing Festive Seasoning, a new DLC for their game Overcooked. The original game, released in August, is a chaotic co-op cooking frenzy for up to four players set in the world of the Onion Kingdom. you can even cook meals with a flamethrower! Levels are…
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Check out the animations on this upcoming ASCII adventure

Thanks to the events of 2016, a lot of us are starting to get used to the concept of living in a society filled with evil. Stone Story is way ahead of you. The game is set in “a dark and vile world,” populated with haunted trees, reanimated skeletons, giant snails, and antagonistic bats. The protagonist is on a quest to change it all. carefully animating the game for over two years Stone Story features four boss fights, six unique locations, and multiple cutscenes, all animated in plain text ASCII style, with characters and weapons built from recognizable keyboard symbols…
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Kids use Club Penguin to protest against the president-elect

As an American college student, I’m no stranger to protests. In the past month, I’ve attended roughly two or three per week regarding issues like health care, systematic racism, discrimination against undocumented students, and most recently, our president-elect. After the election on November 8th, protests immediately began appearing all over the country. In Boston, thousands took to the street the very next day. Going out to march in crowds filled with signs saying things like “not my president” and “I’m with her” is one way to exercise freedom of speech and express dissatisfaction, but not always the safest. With these…
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Upcoming industrial-age simulator has cities with a personality

When I was a kid, my best friend and I used to spend hours playing various Tycoon games. I remember how excited she was to get the Zoo Tycoon Complete Collection (2003) for her birthday and how we stayed up all night crafting the perfect zoo. This was one of my first experiences with videogames, but also one of my first lessons in playing with capitalism. Inspired by games like Transport Tycoon (1994), Project Automata seeks to kindle that nostalgia and revitalize the genre of industrial simulations. specific personalities and unique behaviors that change quickly In Project Automata, you start…
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A theatrical game about the difficult art of conversation

A Ghost in the Static doesn’t tell you anything. All you know is that you’re a figurine constructed out of some sort of wire and are left to explore a dark, mysterious room. Then you encounter another character in the room with you, and that’s when something unique happens. Much of A Ghost in the Static focuses on narrative development through dialogue. What’s interesting about it is that you control both sides of the conversation—kinda like you do in Kentucky Route Zero. This allows for a number of different paths in each conversation. Some exchanges might be about the planet…
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Japanese artist creates music with obsolete technology

A lot of newer music has been deemed inane and ridiculous for sounding like broken technology. Dubstep’s sound, for example, has been compared to the sound of hitting a metal pole with a chainsaw, the sound of robots dying, the sound of a root canal. According to Wendy’s: “Dubstep sounds like a broken Frosty machine.” Dubstep sounds like a broken Frosty machine. — Wendy's (@Wendys) March 6, 2012 However, artist Ei Wada embraces the sounds of the old and broken with music that repurposes obsolete fans, TVs, and radios by turning them into instruments. Wada’s work with such technology tends…
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Beard Blade might be the manliest videogame of them all

Inspired by SNES, Genesis, and GBA classics, Beard Blade is an eccentric 2D platformer that follows the adventures of a farmer as he struggles to rid his town of troublesome imps. After an encounter with a magically-skilled barber, the farmer takes on the pseudonym Beard Blade, and his beard becomes not just a physical manifestation of his masculinity, but also his greatest weapon in battle. The Kickstarter trailer for Beard Blade begins with an animation of the pirate-like imps attacking the farmer’s village with cannonballs, but he saves the day by catching a projectile with his beard and using it to…