Tag: science fiction

News

An old, controversial science-fiction film is being reimagined for VR

Who asked for this? We’ll probably never know. But anyways: the “cult classic” science fiction film The Lawnmower Man is coming to virtual reality. Beyond the VR world already in the film, to actual VR. The 1992 film is being resurrected by the VR distribution company Jaunt, according to an announcement made at the Sundance Film Festival. “The original movie was a film of unsurpassed imagination and creativity with its ground-breaking use of VR back in 1992,” said Jim Howell, a rights holder for the project, in a press release. So far no director, cast, or other information has been announced,…
Disc Room
News

Disc Room distills 1970s dystopias down to a bloody demise

If there’s one thing that Disc Room shares with Vlambeer’s games—the studio for which creator Jan Willem Nijman works under when he’s not toiling away on other projects—it’s the ability to get all the action packed into a single GIF. That and screenshake. Of course it has screenshake. Disc Room is a game of avoidance—what Nijman calls a “dodge-’em up.” You need to survive 30 seconds in a cramped arena in order to grow old in this spin-off of 70s-inspired dystopian science fiction, including Logan’s Run (1976) and THX 1138 (1971). Your only weapons against the evil discs trying to smear you across the walls are…
News

State of Mind combines transhumanism and a low-poly look

It seems like every other week we’re hearing about a new game that wants to use robots, spaceships and/or the concept of a digital future to make a larger point about the world we live in. Many of these games work well; others, not so much. The genre oversaturation ensures that any new game checking off one or many of these boxes needs some way to stand out from the rest of the crowd. And, lo, a pretty, low-poly contender just pushed its way to the front. Upcoming adventure game State of Mind explores transhumanism by creating two separate worlds:…
News

RE.CO.N takes sci-fi tropes back to the PS1 era

When you open up RE.CO.N, the second place entry in the Indie Vault Game Jam, the first thing you see is blocky grass and butterflies. Your player character is wearing a cute little hat. You have to throw things at a pig to get him to move out of your way, and then tread carefully through a yard to avoid stepping on flowers, and then the character that’s been accompanying you through these silent moments hands you a torch, gestures toward little birdhouses, and you burn them. It’s a bizarre introduction to an otherwise sensible game. The first crackling flames…
News

Undungeon’s pixel art makes the fantasy genre fresh again

A point of honesty: I still have yet to play more than the first hour of The Witcher 3 (2015). Not because the game is bad—in fact, I’ve enjoyed what I’ve seen so far—but because at this point, I’m just too exhausted with fantasy to have much interest in delving any further. How many hours have I spent playing as men in armor swinging their swords at lumbering dragons? Or, in the case of science-fiction, playing as a space ranger swinging his light sword at insectoid queens? Granted, there are fantasy stories that work to subvert these tropes, as we’ve…
Review

In Stellaris, every star looks the same

There’s a moment in Dreamer of Dune—Brian Herbert’s 2003 biography of his father, science fiction author Frank Herbert—that is worth noting for the way it skirts the idea of reference in sci-fi. It describes the Herberts’ reaction to the release of Star Wars in 1977: “The film was shocking to me, for all the similarities between it and my father’s book, Dune. Both featured an evil galactic empire, a desolate desert planet, hooded natives, strong religious elements, and a messianic hero with an aged mentor. Star Wars’ Princess Leia had a name with a haunting similarity to Dune’s Lady Alia…
News

Alien abduction game To Azimuth returns with an eerie new trailer

To Azimuth, an upcoming adventure game that failed to secure Kickstarter funding during a campaign in 2014, is back with a new announcement trailer. Described as a “Lynchian alien abduction investigation,” the game tells a story about alien abductions and, more importantly, the people who experience them. Like Lynch’s Twin Peaks, To Azimuth is built around a small town and a central mystery: What has happened to Eli Windham? As a Vietnam veteran and recovering addict, when Eli disappears from his town of Musgrove, Alabama, police assume he’s fallen off the wagon and nobody goes looking for him. Hence, the…
Review

Prominence has old-school sci-fi vibes, but it’s short on story

In January 1957, J.G. Ballard first published his story “The Concentration City” (then under a different title) in a magazine called New Worlds. It takes place in a city that spans the entire universe, where streets stretch out both horizontally and vertically, with lifts and levels expanding the city infinitely in every direction. Talk of real estate doesn’t just involve two-dimensional plots of land, but is priced and measured in cubic feet, so that even the air you breathe costs money. The biggest threat to life in this city is terrorists called “pyros,” the embodiment of a violent human impulse…