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Explore a breakup through the lonely apartment left in its wake

One of the strangest and most difficult changes that comes with breaking up is the newfound distance between you and the person you’ve shared so much of yourself with. Breaking up doesn’t just replace closeness with separation. Closeness is replaced by a sudden and violent severing, an unbridgeable chasm suddenly appearing between you and this other body—a body that felt as accessible as your own hours or days before. The narrative-driven game a•part•ment, nominated as a 2015 student IGF (Independent Games Festival) finalist a few months back, examines the empty spaces left behind by severed relationships. To coincide with their Kickstarter launch, The…

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Playlist: an elusive meditation on gender and intimacy

Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. PLUG & PLAY (iOS)  BY ETTER STUDIO  At first glance, Plug & Play is a game about binary opposites. The screen flicks between black and white, and the primary actors are male and female plugs and sockets, but from there things get complicated. Plug-headed, finger-limbed humanoids plug into other plugs, or absorb their prongs and become sockets. Connections that are made are fleeting, and far from tender. The plugs and sockets drop onto the screen hopefully, looking for a partner, but the tiny finger people that…