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Overland envisions Edward Hopper’s America as an altogether filthier place

America as depicted in the work of the American realist painter Edward Hopper is almost unbearably quaint. The majority of his paintings and prints involve remarkably calm, perhaps lonely, people leading blissfully mundane existences in vintage diners, full service gas stations, and excessively tidy drawing rooms. It is easy on the eye, but you can’t help but despise these privileged, perfectly normal human beings who had nothing better to do with their time but sit gazing out of windows, halfway nude, at skylines and crap. Thankfully then, Finji is introducing these quiet, placid Americans of our national heritage to the…

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Chesh reinvents Chess for the people

Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. Chesh (iOS) Damian Sommer It seems nothing is safe from the dubstep-happy clutches of remix culture, not even the ancient and tried game of chess. Damian Sommer’s new iOS game Chesh can be thought of as chess if chess was a person who went to Firefly, took MDMA, and had a “life changing experience” while listening to DEADMAU5. Like many remixes, Chesh is pretty selective about what it borrows from the original. There’s still a heavy turn-based strategy element to the board. But instead of…

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Jason Rohrer’s new game involves gambling real money to win amulets

Jason Rohrer is weird with money. Previously, he gave away $3,000 to players of his last game, The Castle Doctrine. You’d think him affluent with a gesture like that, but two years before that he told Paste how his family lived off $14,000 a year while somehow earning less than that. Now, I’m sure with Rohrer being a family man that he is careful with money. But the way he’s treated it in the past gives the impression that he sees cash as a game piece—something to experiment and play with. ritualistic instructions on how to make a husband faithful …

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Sature proves that painting and turn-based strategy can get along

Ian Sundstrom has managed the impossible. At least, in my mind he has. He has found a connection between painting and turn-based strategy. My mental landscape positions these two concepts at polar opposites: painting is joyous and expressive, while turn-based strategy is stern and composed. One is a child’s dance across a grassy field, the other is an old man brushing a speck of dust from his pristine military uniform. a “chess-like dance”  A former painter and artist, Sundstrom says that when it came to forming the idea for his first game, he drew from the process of mixing colors on…