Author: Nicole Carpenter

Nicole is a freelance writer and reporter from Massachusetts. She has a cat named Puppy.
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Framed 2 will bring more comic-panel shuffling to videogames

Acclaimed noir puzzle game Framed was touted for its ingenuity, taking elements of comic-book panel design and implementing them into its videogame format. Much of the story, then, existed outside of Framed‘s panels, allowing players to fill in the blanks. Lead designer Joshua Boggs attributes this idea to Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics (1993): “The level of detail and investigation [McCloud] does in Understanding Comics was absolutely pivotal for Framed, and still is to this day.” Announced last week, Framed 2 will be released in early 2017, acting as a prequel to the first game. Panel switching is an important element in Framed 2, too, but it won’t be exactly the same. “For Framed 2, we’ve…
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Orwell wants you to spy on people over the next few weeks

Part of the national security Safety Plan in Orwell’s world is a program that employs citizens to spy on other citizens. Aptly, it’s called Orwell. As a government spy in the game’s world, you’ll be able to scour others media presence—and chat conversations—for suspicious information. Creator Osmotic Studios started rolling out the five part story last week; the first came on October 20, with the second coming on October 27. Episode three follows on November 3, with four coming on November 10, and the final installment on November 17. “The weekly release structure is a nod to the thriller nature of the game,” publisher…
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Mini Metro now lets you fix the subway, while you’re riding the subway

My walk to work is rife with construction; large swaths of land are cordoned off, sidewalks reworked and traffic patterns changed, all because of a big green stripe being added to our Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority maps. A project in the works since 1990, the Green Line Extension project only actually started to take shape in 2012. The MBTA started to put down the bones. And then it was halted. Revised. There’s a new plan now, but things still seem shaky. As it turns out, reworking a city’s transit system isn’t is easy as plopping a line down on a map. But…
Kingsway
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Fantasy RPGs always felt like a desk job anyway

There’s a lot to manage in a role-playing game. It can almost feeling like having a desk job—managing inventory, grinding work, looming bosses. Add with crafting, foraging, and upgrading gear on top of that it’s no wonder I keep asking myself why I repeatedly subject myself to RPG work. Not everyone loves crafting, after all. Andrew Morrish’s upcoming Kingsway is a fantasy RPG that riffs on the idea that the game is like a desk job, “pointing out the similarities between managing an RPG and daily tasks on a computer,” Morrish said. Players will have to rifle through a Windows 95–inspired operating system to navigate a…
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The perfect videogame for people into stargazing

I like to dream about space—the flowering alien plant life light years away from Earth, the planets circling a big burning star rivaling our sun. It’s water on Mars and planets made up of swirling gas that I think about, too. I’ll conjure up in my mind the planets lurking just beyond our solar system’s reach, though some day I won’t have to: in January, planetary scientists Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown discovered evidence of what they believe is a Neptune-sized planet that orbits our sun every 15,000 years: Planet X. Unlike me, Batygin and Brown are actually searching for new planets—perhaps to make…
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A short documentary about the future of women in videogames

When Laila Shabir moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts to start school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, her Pakistani father told her to live her life as if she were a young man—to live her life without fear, something young women around the globe aren’t always taught. Shabir is the founder of Girls Make Games, a series of international summer camps put on by educational company LearnDistrict aimed at teaching girls the skills needed to make videogames. Camps were first introduced in the United States and later went global. Shabir discussed the organization in Girls Level Up, a recent short documentary made as…
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Start editing your away messages: Emily Is Away is getting a sequel

Emily Is Away was released just over a year ago, and since then, Emily has amassed a lot of friends—like, 1.5 million of them. Many of which will be excited to hear that early next year Emily Is Away Too, a sequel of sorts, will be released. Perhaps “spiritual successor” is a better word; Emily from the first game isn’t being carried over for the second game. Emily Is Away Too will have new characters—and a new Emily. Someone named Evelyn, too. Oops, wrong IM “The sequel behaves much more like a chat application,” creator Kyle Seeley said. “It features embedded links to websites,…
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Code Romantic, a visual novel about love and programming

If you like the sound of a visual novel with both computer science puzzle and romance elements then Code Romantic is for you. So far, creator Pretty Smart Games has released two of the game’s chapters, with more to come a little further down the line. Unlike Zachtronics-style programming games—where players learn fictional systems—Code Romantic is teaching players using C#, a coding language folks use a whole bunch. A game like Zachtronics’s Shenzhen I/O teaches more logic-based theories, while Code Romantic is starting more traditionally with the basics of code semantics. No prior programming experience is necessary, as the game starts off with very simple commands—stuff you’d learn in an intro…
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Wobbledogs has the wackiest videogame dogs yet

Videogame dog saturation is at an all time high. Our goofy, dumb pals are in, and that’s not a problem. Destiny (2014) has dogs that you can’t pet, while the upcoming Watch_Dogs 2 has dogs that you can. Butt Sniffin Pugs has dog butts. Doggo has a dog park. None of these games, though, have dogs like Wobbledogs. Wobbledogs’ puppers are wacky. They’re entirely unpredictable. Sometimes they do bewildering things. Just like real dogs, right?  With that in mind, I come, today, bearing good news: Wobbledogs can have puppies now. As if Tom Astle’s virtual pups weren’t adorable—and horrifying—enough, they now lay eggs. And puppies come out of those…