global game jam

Nothing like a 2-bit beach, 8-bit sounds, and real sand to get in your shoes

I’m not a beach person. I don’t like when sand gets in my shoes. And I don’t like wearing sandals to avoid that very problem either. I live in San Francisco, where the beaches are notoriously windy and cold, not sun-kissed and surf-ready. When I think of beaches, I often wish I were thinking of some

How virtual reality reinvents party games

This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel. Though virtual reality can be an immersive, solitary experience, multiplayer games are bringing people together for a new kind of group fun. With all the enthusiasm and excitement surrounding virtual reality (VR) games this year, it makes sen

The Breakfast Club adds absolute silliness to your morning routine

Making breakfast is easy. If I can regularly manage to pour myself a bowl of cereal in a half-asleep stupor after I wake up then it’s a testament to just how little brain power breakfast usually requires. However, breakfast isn’t quite as easy as it seems in The Breakfast Club, a product of the 2016

We’ll Meet Again takes collaborative gaming offline

The Ear Force PX51 is a lot of headset—$296.95 worth of headset, to be precise. It is billed as an “advanced gaming audio system.” It comes with many features that are prefixed with “dual-”, which makes sense insofar as most people have two ears. All of that is a complicated way of saying the PX51 a

Hitchhike across a small-town conspiracy in The Long Way

Last year, games such as Glitchhikers and Three Fourths Home addressed us from behind somber masks as we drove down their lonesome roads. The former took us on a spiritual journey to have us question the direction our lives were headed. While the latter acted as more of a reminder to continue to tre

Höme Improvisåtion: if IKEA made videogames

No no, it’s not official, but it does look like a group of game designers may have managed to capture the infernally infuriating experience of putting together IKEA flatpack furniture in virtual reality. Höme Improvisåtion as the game is called (complete with appropriate Scandinavian accents) is app

Tokyo 1923 conveys one of Japan’s worst natural disasters

In reading Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa’s memories of the Great Kant? earthquake of 1923, there appear two images more striking than the rest. The first one is the bloated corpses that lapped up against the bank of Sumidagawa River: a dirty red assemblage of death that made Kurosawa’s knees

The Global Game Jam game that teaches you how to do it, kinda

How Do You Do It? is a quick game about one of those precious formative moments, when as a child, you realized that there was such a thing called sex that people did to each other, and though you were uncertain about the specifics, you undressed two dolls and tried to get them to do it. (Full disccl