Feature

The Determination of China’s Independent Game Scene

At night, Shanghai transforms itself into a new city. Bars, restaurants, and small shops start to open in the alleyways and neon red lights begin to shine throughout China’s largest city. Its nightlife, as well as its economic growth, makes this city the best place to see how the country has changed. At the end of July each year, Shanghai also becomes the hub of the Chinese videogame scene for one week. China Joy, the largest consumer and business game show in Asia, opens its doors for people from all over the world who arrive to try to understand what’s…

Feature

The Future of Board Games According to The Cannes Games Festival

During the awards ceremony at the International Cannes Games Festival, three men walked onto the stage with Cuban hats, throwing fake money to the audience. They were the ones behind Mafia de Cuba, an intrigue and deception board game set in La Habana during the Cuban revolution. The game was one of three nominees for the As d’Or Award (Best Game of the Year) and these creators had decided to project its universe into ours by becoming the game’s characters in real life. Mafia de Cuba didn’t win, but this stage act set the mood for the following days: a…

_PRISM
News

Unfold the inner heart of solids in this zen-like puzzle game

Clint Siu went to a lakeside bench in the middle of the Swedish woods almost every day for two months, writing ideas and designing puzzles. It was June 2015 and Siu had moved to Stugan, the Swedish non-profit accelerator that started last year, to work on _PRISM, a zen-like minimalistic game in which players unfold the external layers of solids by solving puzzles and try to reach their center. As an American artist who used to work in Hollywood making FX for movies like World War Z (2013) and TV shows like Cosmos (2014), Siu found that being next to nature and away from the constant noise of big…

Article

A narrative experience where you are the cancer

In an interview for The Guardian, Ryan Green, one of the developers of That Dragon, Cancer, said, “We’ll have less games about saving the world and more about saving your child.” As developers and audiences grow older, more personal stories start to appear as subjects in games, led specially by the independent games movement. Apoptosis is a game that follows this path, telling the story of someone close to a cancer patient while offering us control of the spreading disease. it challenges us to continue the path of a disease The French team behind Apoptosis—François Rizzo, Lucien Cantonnet, Marjolaine Paz,…