Sound Archives - Kill Screen

Drone Tone lets you summon dark, witchy sounds

Conor McCann has made lots of wonderful digital toys recently. Black Gold was one of them—a game that let you ruminate on life while sipping cold beer with a friend under the stars. The Echo Initiative was another, which had you keep a lost satellite company as it drifted forever through space. There’s also the reel of playful interactions that McCann made for the Pippin Bar ‘GAME IDEA’ Game Jam, the unimposing frolic that is a few ideas in no particular order. Now McCann has released a small commercial project called Drone Tone for Halloween. It’s an “ominous sound toy,” meaning that it fits in…

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Secrets sit behind the devilish sound puzzles of Told No One

“You told no one, right?” This is the language we use when speaking of secrets. Something was found out and it must be kept as unknown as possible. It’s telling that Karachi-based artist NAWKSH uses these words to title his videogame Told No One. For it seems to be a tightly woven secret itself. It’s hiding something, perhaps many things, beyond the arcane rituals it tests you with. From the outside, Told No One seems simple enough. The description reads: “five short sound puzzles / interactive experiments in greyscale.” Sounds quite pleasant. But once you head inside it’s immediately clear that…

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Firewatch shows off some Twin Peaks vibes ahead of its release

Twin Peaks. We all know it! We all love it! Even if we haven’t seen it, we know it’s a big deal! David Lynch and Mark Frost’s 1990-91 TV series has been a huge influence on videogames, from the obvious (2010’s Deadly Premonition) to … the fractionally less obvious (2015’s Life Is Strange). There’s so much to the show, so many veins to draw from: the unsettling surrealism, the amusing surrealism, the romantic swooning, the whole “dead girl” A-plot, the mystical Pacific Northwest vibe…it goes on and on. But the lattermost is what Campo Santo’s upcoming Firewatch is cheekily nodding to with this brief, gentle…