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Rubi’s Room tests what it’s like to solve a life-sized Rubik’s Cube in VR

Rubi’s Room wasn’t always in virtual reality, but gazing at its perfectly dizzying human Rubik’s Cube antics, it wouldn’t be surprising to think it was. The game was borne during the latest Ludum Dare game jam, but in a much simpler 2D state. But for Germany-based developer David Hagemann, the idea of reworking the project for VR was on his mind all along. “The immersion and the natural interaction [of VR] are the most compelling factors for me, it is not comparable to what you’re used to with playing games the regular way,” wrote Hagemann over email. “This brings a…

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A videogame for anyone who’s felt uncomfortable on the dance floor

Team Lazerbeam, the folks behind Snow Cones and Wrestling With Emotions, started their latest game Dress To Express Dancing Success—a dancing and dating simulator—with the intention of creating their least sensible and least complicated game. And they kind of failed. “Before that we’d been on a pretty bad run of jamming, being really excited, getting super carried away, and having only random bits of our game done by the time the jam was over,” Team Lazerbeam’s Ben Rausch told me. “This disturbing trend started with Snow Cones.” Snow Cones took months rather than the allotted days. Wrestling With Emotions took…

The Rock and The Rock
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Here’s a dating sim about The Rock falling in love with a boulder

“What the hell did I just play?” I pause the game after it’s finished and lean back in my chair, utterly confused. The Rock and The Rock promised five minutes of entertainment and it certainly delivered, although it’s taking longer to process what exactly took place. Created by Kevin Roark Jr., The Rock and The Rock is labeled as a small game/interactive film aimed at telling the story of the inevitable and natural attraction of two rocks. You’re given the option of switching back and forth between the perspective of former WWE wrestler and well-loved actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson,…

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Sacramento is way too darn pretty

Sacramento is a fleeting memory, a transitory moment for one to enjoy before life resumes its course. Creator Delphine Fourneau—who also goes by the name Dziff—describes the game as ephemeral; it’s the best word I could find to describe it, too. The scenes in Sacramento are snippets of Fourneau’s own memories of a train journey taken across the United States. She didn’t intend the memories to be literal, however—that’s not what Sacramento is about. Rather, it’s about the “impressions of these ephemeral places that leave you these sweet pictures in the back of your mind,” she said. In Sacramento, players simply wander—or “drift aimlessly”—through…

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New game reminds us you can’t take the ‘disco’ out of ‘discomfort’

You can’t spell ‘discomfort’ without ‘disco.’ Or at least, that’s quite literally the scenario spelled out in game maker Fedor Balashav’s brief experimental title DISCO / DISCOMFORT . In DISCO / DISCOMFORT, the player enters a neon-flushed disco club in the midst of seemingly nowhere, an environment that quickly devolves into a sociophobia-driven nightmare. You, the player, are tasked with interacting with other people, but if only it were that simple. Not just looking at my faceless first-person character, they were looking at me Sociophobia is, by its dictionary definition, the fear of socializing. That means, the fear of social gatherings. The fear of…

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Another perfect marriage of cyberpunk and pixels

Cyberpunk worlds always seem to draw me in. Whether it’s the derelict planets visited by Spike Spiegel and his bounty hunting companions in the cult classic anime Cowboy Bebop (1997-98), or the replicant-laden world of the famed Blade Runner (1982), cyberpunk has always remained a static aesthetic in the media I’ve read, watched, and played. And freelance pixel artist Matt Frith’s bite-sized cyberpunk point-and-click adventure game Among Thorns is no exception. The setting in Among Thorns is described on as “a world suffering with a technological plague, Cora Bry is recruited for a shady job.” So, essentially, a textbook example of any…

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Design your dilapidated fantasy home in Shabby Home Designer

One of my most played games of last year was the simple and charming Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer, a game in which you designed houses according to the fancies of cutesy animal citizens. Happy Home Designer was released to a wash of lukewarm reviews, nearly all resounding with the common criticism of the game befalling no risk or reward. I agreed with these grievances, but somehow still found myself coming back to it night after night for a few months. Happy Home Designer became my nightly relaxing retreat from reality. In game developer Todd Luke’s recent Flash game, Shabby…

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Screensaver jam results in a colorful throwback to the ’90s

You don’t really see screensavers all that often anymore. I know that when my computer enters sleep mode, I just have it set to display a black screen. It’s the same thing for all my friends as well as most offices I’ve visited since turning 13-years-old. Maybe it’s a consequence of our modern habit of leaving our computers on at all times, since if your computer is constantly sitting asleep in the background, having it display a bright or showy screensaver is just distracting. Or maybe it’s because we don’t need screensavers to protect our displays from burn-in images anymore,…