Tag: simulator

News

Along Came Humans wants to make colonization great again

What if Spore (2008) hadn’t been a complete and total letdown? What if Sim City took to the stars, with colorful aesthetics a la Kerbal Space Program (2015) and a friendlier, simplified interface? What if a smart, streamlined game could offer you all of that and more? Along Came Humans, created by Tim Aksu of Pelican Punch Studios, is promising that. The goal is simple: colonize a planet. Then colonize another planet to bolster aforementioned planet’s diminishing resources. Streamline. Reorganize. Rinse. Repeat. According to Asku, your colonies will demand a larger variety—as well as a higher quality—of goods as they expand. Your job…
News

Social Interaction Trainer will help you in life’s awkward moments

Don’t know how to socially interact? That’s okay. Neither do I. And I suspect there are lots of us, too—the ones who always respond “you, too” after the movie theater ticket taker tells us to enjoy our movies; the party-goers who’d rather sit on the couch and pet cats than talk to other guests; those of us who stare at the ground instead of making eye contact with folks we know at the grocery store. Hell, let it be known: in kindergarten, I peed my pants standing at my desk because my teacher didn’t see me raising my hand to ask to use…
News

#Everest asks if you’d die for the selfie that gets you famous

First you tested your Olympic skills from your seat, now you can summit Mt. Everest from the safety of your home—and take some bomb selfies along the way. The latest from independent game studio Team Dogpit, survival sim #Everest challenges you to climb the highest mountain on Earth and get internet famous along the way. Equip yourself and your guides with everything you need to make it to the top and look awesome doing it. Your objective is simple: rack up a high score by getting as many social media likes on selfies taken during your ascent as humanly possible. But…
We All End Up Alone
News

We All End Up Alone is an upcoming game about battling cancer

It’s late. You’re sitting on the couch staring at the TV. The phone rings. You glance away from the dim screen over at the clock hanging on the wall. You reach over to grab the phone and hold it up to your ear. “Hey, Em.” The voice on the other end sounds tired. “He has cancer. It’s … terminal.” You close your eyes as the words, sinister and cruel, plague your thoughts. Terminal Cancer. “I need you to tell your brothers for me.” You hang up and sink further into the couch. The feet of the analog clock continue their…
News

One of the most authentic hacking simulators is getting an expansion

The videogame and hacking simulator Hacknet has been praised over and over again for its dedication to realism since it arrived last year. The whole game is viewed through an interface, and the player’s tasks are all as close to actual hacking as possible, using real unix commands. It’s not a game that’s interested in babying you, but that’s all the more appropriate for the subject matter. In the original game, you were tasked posthumously by another hacker to look into his own death, piecing the plot together through careful investigation and lines of code. Now, Hacknet is getting even more…
News

My Summer Car captures the youthful spirit of trashing your ride

You like cars, right? I did for a while—car mechanic was my #2 dream job as a kid, sandwiched between entomologist (#1) and Jedi (#3)—until being passenger to a couple of semi-serious crashes meant my excitement was crushed. I still harbor some redneck-esque desire to own a really big truck one day, or to dig up a VW bus out of a junkyard and try going cross-country before I come to terms with its shitty AC, but right now, that’s the extent of my car fever. Which is good, since My Summer Car’s recent Greenlighting means that my 7-year-old self is…
News

Videogame shows you how hard it is to enter Berlin’s hottest nightclub

“Hell,” Sartre wrote in No Exit (1944), “is other people.” Presumably, the “especially at a night club”-qualifier was implicit. Some things go without saying. Here, then, is the most chilling horror videogame of all time, Berghain Trainer, which employs your camera, microphone, and a series of questions to test if you can get into one of Berlin’s most famous nightclubs. Berghain, you see, is notoriously difficult to enter. Last year, GQ’s Burt Helm read a series of online posts about gaining access to the club to its chief bouncer, Sven Marquardt. “We’ve heard all those things, too,” the man with the barbed…
Review

American Truck Simulator is here for the long haul

I didn’t get my driver’s license until I was 19 years old. This is rare in my home state of Wyoming, where most kids learn to drive manual before the first day of high school—I had to make every effort to avoid the attendant responsibilities of vehicular ownership. But the mountainous west is colossal, grandiose, and requires a car to accomplish literally everything, so of course I capitulated. Every vehicle I drove was “pre-owned” and equal parts charming and dilapidated. They had nicknames, lost mirrors in bank drive-thru lanes, played Local H and Suicide Machines tapes, stranded me on the…
News

If only Congress worked more like this game

A new teaser for Netflix’s House of Cards plays like a highlight reel of protagonist Frank Underwood’s most heinous exploits. As the show prepares to drag itself into a fourth season this March, it’s worth remembering not just how villainous Frank’s rise to power was, but also how ludicrously easy. The political journalist David Weigel once criticized the show for never exacting its proper pound of flesh in exchange for letting Frank succeed. It was as if every adversary was forced to confront him with one arm tied behind their back. As Weigal wrote, “Underwood’s enemies don’t seem to understand…