Tag: the unfinished swan

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See a beautiful black-and-white world unfurl as you move

Stroke is a new short game from James Coffey that plays a bit like a movie theater roller coaster ride. You know the sort: short vignettes that advertise the brand of the theater right after the previews finish but before the movie starts. These shorts are known for their over-the-top nature and flashy effects, with coaster tracks being made out of licorice or popcorn kernels exploding in the distance as the cart swings by. There are many different versions depending on which theater you visit, but the one factor linking them all together is that something is always moving in…
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The Hollow is an interactive fairytale that enchants you into doing bad things

Fairytales, for all their other virtues, tend to be pretty easy games to hack. All you have to do before you get started on your journey/quest/trek is ensure you’ve memorized the Three Essential Pro-tips for Surviving a Fairytale: If you either a) encounter three magical creatures/witches/beings, or b) encounter one specific magical creature/witch/being on three separate occasions, be sure to get your No. 2 pencils out, because it’s pop quiz time. Be on your absolute best behavior around these creatures, because they are for sure judging your soul and worthiness. Never take the gold. Or the bet. Or the marriage proposal.…
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Explore the limits of sight and empathy in Beyond Eyes

Beyond Eyes finally has a firm release window and its first comprehensive trailer after being showcased as part of Miscrosoft’s E3 press event. The brain child of Sherida Halatoe under her one-woman studio, tiger & squid, Beyond Eyes follows a young girl on her journey to find her lost cat in a world she can’t see. It’s to be published by Team17, and is slated to launch sometime this summer, arriving first on Xbox One followed by a PC version later in the year. As previously reported, Halatoe’s game makes use of an impressionistic style that allows the world of…
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Paint your way through an invisible platformer

Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. INK (Windows)  BY ZACKBELLGAMES  Discovery defines the greatest videogame experiences. No one forgets that butterflies-in-your-stomach, swooning I’ve-never-felt-this-way-before feeling you get upon first entering a game world you know you’ll be spending a lot of time in. The really good games give you that sensation throughout, with each new rule and mechanic or narrative twist. INK blends the visual discovery embedded in Unfinished Swan with the platforming surprises (read: difficulty) of Super Meat Boy. A lonely square avatar bounces from invisible wall to invisible wall, splattering paint swabs across the newly-visible environment. You learn from the world…
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Watch this new MOCA documentary on how the FPS has evolved beyond shooting Nazis

We’ve written before about how the shooter genre is expanding into a wider variety of games that can do nicer things than shooting dudes in the head. We did a PBS Game/Show episode about that. Also, I collected interviews with the creators of games that use shooter mechanics in surprising ways, like Proteus, and MirrorMoon EP, among others.  Now Giant Sparrow’s The Unfinished Swan, a whimsical game about discovering a forgotten kingdom by splattering it with paint, is the subject of a new mini-documentary from Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. They beat a familiar drum: we need games that do…
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Celestial navigation in A Light in Chorus is a dazzling thing

A Light in Chorus looks like flying out of a major airport at night as the sources of light that dot the runway recede to tiny speckled plots and soon millions of stars are strangely delineating the arteries of the city from the black. Except this game transpires in an ethereal forest that has mythological connotations and glittering hoof tracks. If you were feeling cynical you could say its just The Unfinished Swan with a black instead of white background, minus the paint and plus a dead deer, but that would discount how beautiful it is, how the landscape shuttering…