It was Failbetter Games’s seventh birthday yesterday, and so, to mark the occasion, the London-based studio decided to make an announcement. You remember that terrific nautical adventure game Sunless Sea (2015)? The one in which you sailed across a vast, dangerous ocean, collecting a range of storie
OMORI isn’t dead but it has been delayed again. The team behind the upcoming “surreal psychological horror RPGmaker game” has released a new trailer and explained why the game isn’t out yet. To make a long story short: the team admits it “underestimated the amount of time to create a video game.” Th
A soft whimper causes you to look up from your work. It’s your dog, who is sleeping peacefully in bed. Is she dreaming? Her legs twitch slightly. Maybe she’s running around in a field, chasing a squirrel. She’s too old to do that now, but you like to think that the tiny mammal stood no chance in the
Jarek Beksa first encountered the need for audio-based games when working for Orange—the telecommunications company—in Poland. He was doing a usability study with voice recognition and speech synthesis applications, during which, one of the blind testers said, “Nobody makes games for us.” It drew Be
I work, live, and study in Washington, D.C.—undoubtedly one of the world’s most political cities. Here reside the highest stratum of politicians, lobbyists, and corporate cash-mongers. Here, too, live the downtrodden, the marginalized—systematically oppressed people of varying color, socioeconomic s
It’s been a while since I’ve seen a warning label at the beginning of a videogame trailer. “WARNING: This trailer contains violent footage and flashing images that some may find disturbing.” That’s how the Kickstarter trailers for Agony open up, before each of them start smashing heads open with fis
The Chuck Tingle adventure game is now looking to be “Kickstarted in the Butt.” If you’re not familiar with Chuck Tingle this will all come as quite a shock. He is perhaps the internet’s best supplier of smut, writing short erotica with titles like “My Ass Is Haunted By The Gay Unicorn Colonel” and
A gentle breeze rustles the tall grass that surrounds you, causing the blades to sway back and forth lazily to the soft rhythm of the wind. Up ahead lies a dirt path, leading to an unknown destination whose name was lost to time long ago. You’re curled up on a patch of soil near a bank of water, tak
There are hundreds of dog breeds, originating from different parts of the world, big and small, hairy and bald. However, I think we can all agree that pugs are one of the cutest dog breeds out there, right? Don’t answer that, as the Phoenix-based studio SpaceBeagles will back me up on this: the team
If you mixed MTV’s Jackass series with Bob Guccione’s Caligula (1980) film, and sprinkled a healthy dose of Super Meat Boy (2010) on top, there’s a good chance the result may be developer HakJak’s upcoming game Guts and Glory. Recently launched on Kickstarter, Guts and Glory asks its players to do o
Let’s be frank: it’s not easy working as a woman in games. The past few years have been particularly tough for us. But as women in games, each of us feels a responsibility to help and support each other while working in this space. Especially when it comes to helping young women enter the field. Whe
Chris Wade is a night owl. He typically won’t start doing his contract work for other games (Manifold Garden and Battle Chef Brigade, among others) and on developer tools until 1 or 2AM, when the rest of the world is asleep. But if Chris Wade wasn’t a night owl, maybe there’s a chance Sausage Sports
Ever since The Girl and the Robot’s interactive fairy tale first showed up on Kickstarter, it stood out amid a sea of games about shooting stuff as an earnest attempt to be sweet. Take a look at the protagonists or the old Europe inspired castle they wander around in, or listen to a clip of the rece
The Codex Silenda is a set of intricate wooden puzzles that quickly reached its funding goal on Kickstarter many times over. It’s the kind of object you’d expect to be hand-carved by a slightly eccentric artisan, but it’s laser-cut, and one of the reward tiers gets you the pieces, which you would th
The Republican National Convention, in the midst of the chaos that has been this election, has officially nominated Donald Trump as their candidate for President of the United States of America. This isn’t a Simpsons joke, though it was, once. It’s the world we live in, somehow. While you contemplat
No Matter, a small team of three, began working on Prey for the Gods in 2014 for two reasons: to work on their own thing, and to make games similar to the ones that drove them in this direction in the first place. It’s clear which games inspired the team, or at least, which single game had the bigge
Before the imperialism of the 19th century, or the World Wars of the 20th, there were the Crusades: a series of military campaigns in the Middle-East between the 11th and 15th centuries. During these campaigns, various Christian European powers sent large numbers of well-equipped men to what was dub
The creator of the incredibly named My Ex-Boyfriend the Space Tyrant is currently funding a follow-up: Escape From Pleasure Planet. Escape from Pleasure Planet follows the story of Captain Tycho Minogue as he battles the devilish (and dangerously handsome) criminal Brutus, who he must track down. Fo
The term “roguelike” was originally derived from the game Rogue (1980), a dungeon crawler that popularized procedurally generated levels and permadeath. Rogue spawned an entire genre of likeminded games. In the 2000s, game makers lifted inspiration from old roguelikes to craft wholly new generated e
Propelled by nature and elemental attributes, Quench’s tale of animal pilgrimage is actually ruled by human traits. It features a guidance system built around weather controls—tremors, wind gusts, and the like—that’s supported with flexible puzzle design. Different actions can surmount the same haza
“How would syndicates abuse their power without the oversight of a government?” asks Hannah Williams, one half of Seattle-based Whalenought Studios. That’s one of the many questions that Copper Dreams, the studio’s second RPG, looks to answer. While RPGs are often set in vast fantasy worlds, Copper
It’s been a while since we last heard from Tangiers, the stealth game from a team lead by Alex Harvey that’s meant to pay homage to 20th century avant-garde artists like William S. Burroughs and David Lynch. In October of 2015, the game’s team updated their Kickstarter with a statement that a planne
The Earth has seen her fair share of revolutions in the last decade. We have watched them on our televisions, followed them on Twitter, witnessed them both in our hometowns and impossibly far away. In such a tumultuous period they often seem inescapable, but unless they were brought directly to your
If you’ve watched enough movies or TV you would have seen a hostage situation. And almost every hostage situation involves a negotiator. Someone who is there to try and defuse the situation, hopefully with words instead of bullets. Negotiator from 4PM Games is going to let you step into the shoes of
Mable & the Wood is a 2D exploration game about a young red-haired girl with the ability to transform into other creatures. The idea is to get her through the titular colorful woods. However, the more you use the girl’s powers, the more you take from the forest, slowly destroying it—regardless, it’s
