Dreii
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Dreii to bring people together in (almost) wordless collaboration

Take your fingers out your (p)lugholes and listen up: Etter Studio has let the world know that its “collaborative physics conundrum” Dreii will be drifting onto Steam (for PC), iOS, and Android on February 2nd. This is fab news. To explain, Dreii is the new version of Etter’s European Design Award-winning co-op puzzler Drei (2014). The immediate difference between these two versions of the same game is that Drei is only available for iOS (on the App Store) while Dreii is also heading to Android, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, and Wii U. It will allow for people to play together regardless of…

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High Scores: The Best Videogames of 2015

Header image and artwork by Caty McCarthy 25. Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime (Asteroid Base) Neon cuteness belying hardened spacefaring carnage. A manic platformer disguised as a cheerful shoot-em-up. Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime is a lot of things, and all of those things are descending on you at the exact same time. With the evil forces of anti-love surrounding you as you save imprisoned space bunnies, Lovers works best with two players sitting side-by-side, working together against near-impossible odds. An AI-controlled dog or cat can accompany you on your suicide mission, but facing down increasing waves of enemies next to…

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These new GNOG screens are so beautiful they’ll swallow you whole

If you’re still anxiously awaiting the hungry jaws of the big monster heads in GNOG, you’ll have to keep waiting until its 2016 release date. But, in the meantime, feel free to get swallowed up by the latest screens released by Ko-Op Mode. The screens highlight GNOG‘s polished yet playful art style, with a deep, pleasing color palette that makes you feel like you could just dive into each shot. Of course, diving into different inner worlds is exactly what the game is all about. Lead artist Sam Boucher has explained to Kill Screen that in GNOG, “Each head is kind…

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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…

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Plug & Play exposes the hopelessness of digital communication

Swiss animator Michael Frei has a strange fascination with fingers. “What I especially like about hands is their expressiveness,” he told Director’s Notes back in 2013. It makes sense: he’s an animator, he uses his hands a lot, to create, to mold, to make actual the visions inside his head. And so do we all, as the hands and their appendages are attributed with our ascendance over all of Earth’s creatures. obsessed with fitting in with each other.  With Finger Simulator, Frei had us confront our understanding of what a finger is and how it works; extending their lengths to…