Tag: philip k. dick

News

Acclaimed electronic musician Moiré releases glitchy hellscape alongside album

The most experimental and daring (read: LIT) indie music artists have been flirting with videogames for a while now. Grimes headlined Moogfest with a Microsoft Kinect-powered interactive installation last year; the bassist from the noise-rock band Lighting Bolt, Brian Gibson, recently created the VR-favorite rhythm hell game Thumper; and Björk literally cannot even right now with how much she loves VR. Today, architect/electronic musician Moiré joined the digital revolution, forgoing the usual music video to instead release a browser glitch art game in conjunction with his newest album, No Future. Created with interactive experience designer Isaac Cohen (AKA Cabbibo), MONOLITH consists of large, glitchy, empty spaces populated by a smattering of human avatars,…
Review

Californium can’t get past writer’s block

Growing up in the heyday of graphic adventures has caused me to live in fear of the pixel hunt. It used to be that I’d load up the otherwise innovative Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) or the visually sumptuous Riven (1997), only to spend hours stuck, madly combing the screen for details that were secretly interactive. I would click every gradient of a stone wall, every book on a library shelf, but nothing would happen. Next screen. Click, nothing. Click. Click, click, click, click. I might cry out expletives in a raspy whisper at the height of my…
Californium
News

The videogame tribute to Philip K. Dick is out today

Philip K. Dick may be decades-dead but the extraordinary visions that lined the pages of his fictions are more alive than ever. There is perhaps no better proof of this than Californium—a videogame that weaves Dick’s influential stories with his own drug-fueled delusions into a multi-dimensional trip. It’s out today in full for PC over on Steam. It should also become available for free over on the ARTE Creative website, but only the first episode for now, with the following three to be released in order on March 1st, 8th, and the 15th. surrendering itself entirely to his sci-fi notions…
Californium
News

Californium brings Philip K. Dick’s vision of the world to life

“Life in Anaheim, California, was a commercial for itself, endlessly replayed. Nothing changed; it just spread out farther and farther in the form of neon ooze. What there was always more of had been congealed into permanence long ago, as if the automatic factory that cranked out these objects had jammed in the on position.” —Philip K. Dick,  A Scanner Darkly, 1977. /// Dimensions merge in Californium like pools of spilled ink on paper. Each one is given a predominant color so that they easily contrast—it makes the strange effect lucid if not any easier to get your head around. A cold, austere blue…
News

Philip K. Dick is getting his very own videogame tribute

Californium doesn’t have the look of a videogame about Philip K. Dick. We’re used to the somber, rainy cityscapes of Blade Runner when we think of the sci-fi author. Yet it may be the truest adaptation of the man and his work yet—the vibrant wash of summery hues included. It’s to be a first-person exploration game made as tribute to Philip K. Dick. “You just have to walk around, talk to people, look around, and search for things that are not normal,” explained producer Noam Roubah to Ars Technica. So far so typical for the genre, then. But Californium will also delve into…
News

SOMA’s creepy tendrils threaten to reach out with reality-questioning horror soon

Frictional Games, creator of 2010’s infamous horror hit Amnesia: The Dark Descent, has announced that its latest title SOMA has hit beta—it looks and plays near-exactly as it will in its final version, in other words. All that’s left between now and a release date is waiting for Frictional to gather feedback from its 40-or-so testers and get to work on the finishing touches. The first-person sci-fi horror game takes place in and around an underwater research facility called PATHOS-2. You play as Simon, a man who is mysteriously stranded in this derelict installation as the world around him is transformed…