Tag: analog

Sylvio
News

Sylvio’s bringing its ghostly screeches to consoles this Friday the 13th

Can you hear it? The moans in the static. Yes, it’s unmistakable. It’s saying the esoteric, analog-horror game Sylvio is ghosting its way to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One this week, on Friday the 13th to be precise. Weird message to pick up on an oscilloscope, that. It’s not quite the original version of Sylvio that we praised so lavishly back in 2015, but a remastered version that is heading to consoles—the tweaks and improvements have already rolled out on the Steam version of the game. The changes include the ability to revisit areas in the game, better hand animations…
Small Radios Big Televisions
News

Small Radios Big Televisions finds the beauty in machine glitches

Small Radios Big Televisions, a game about the joys of broken analog tech, is coming to PlayStation 4 and PC on November 8th. Mostly, it wants you to collect cassettes and play them in a tape recorder: special attention is given to the tape sliding into the tray, the chik of it being locked in, the reel slowly spinning to unwind its contents. For someone who remembers doing this over and over as a child bored in their room, it’s a sensual few seconds; the familiar choreography plugging straight into the spectral residue of fond memories. But that’s only the beginning.…
Brendon Chung
Feature

Brendon Chung and his love for big dumb plastic switches

This article is part of Issue 8.5, a digital zine available to Kill Screen’s print subscribers. Read more about it here and get a copy yourself by subscribing to our soon-to-be-relaunched print magazine. /// The midpoint of Daft Punk’s 2013 album Random Access Memories is marked by an effusive, sprawling ode to touch. An unidentified narrator walks the listener through memories and speculation on feeling as they try to recall what seems like fading indicators of what feeling ever was. On “Touch,” we get a sense that the narrator was once organic like us. But now, metallic and glistening under a…
Sylvio 2
News

Sylvio 2 and the ghostly terror of analog technology

Sylvio was a humble ghost-hunting horror game in the foggy, abstract lineage of Silent Hill. It also boasted an indelible protagonist in soft-spoken Juliette Waters. Her resolve through all manner of supernatural phenomena makes you, the player, feel a bit better about the screaming ink-black blobs milling about as you investigate an abandoned amusement park. Using EVP recording equipment, you can capture the whispers of the dead on analog tape, scrubbing back and forth to pinpoint clues about how each spirit met their end. Yeah—Sylvio is a game about helping ghosts find peace. Now designer Niklas Swanberg is back on…
News

A road-trip game about the fiddly art of vehicle maintenance

Hac (pronounced “Hajj”) is a videogame about the worst parts of driving. Washing the mud out of the grill; changing the battery; losing the keys in the space between the door and your seat; packing suitcases and sleeping bags into a trunk that’s way too small. More than anything else, it’s concerned with simulating all the laborious tasks that take place around and inform the actual activity at hand. The funny thing is this: performing all of these micro-processes is wholly satisfying. as much of an antithesis to Formula One racing games as you can get  The game’s solo creator, Greg Pryjmachuk,…
News

The analog wonderland of Small Radios Big Televisions is coming to PS4

Small Radios Big Televisions looks like it’s going to supply a some pretty magnificent worlds to get lost in. The upcoming game, currently in development by the Canadian one-man team FIRE FACE, promises heavy doses of tape-distorted visuals, warbly oscillators, and fun with analog media (or at least the idea of it). And to sweeten the deal, Owen Deery of FIRE FACE announced today that he has secured both PC and PS4 releases for SRBT. According to Deery, this means he’s going to be able to produce a “real, full game” with about 4-5 hours of playtime, multiple factories to explore, and…
News

The uncompromising Alien: Isolation just got uncompromising-er

There are two things to know about Alien: Isolation, the Creative Assembly horror game from earlier this year based on the long-running Alien series of films. The first thing to know is that it is really, really, really good-looking. The gone-to-shit space station you explore is bafflingly dense and lived-in, and the set designers keep finding ways to transform it, from the familiar corridors of a cockpit and mess-hall to wider business and shopping plazas—riffs on Ridely Scott’s aesthetic, confidently played. All retain an ironclad sense of late-70s retrofuturism; if that whole space<—>no one hearing you scream thing weren’t already such a…