This is not the first time Kara Stone has talked about mental health through a videogame. Previously, she had us participate in the rituals that her doctor prescribed—taking medicine, breathing exercises, practising absolute somatic control—in MedicationMeditation. Now, with her latest game, Cycloth
Key to acquiring mastery of a foreign language is putting what you learn into practice. The red-faced pressure that overcomes you when trying to speak, say, French to a perplexed native speaker forces your brain to spew out something French-like. Eventually, with enough of this traumatic practice un
What ancient Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu emphasized throughout his influential military strategy book The Art of War was the importance of information. He wrote: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” His argument is that being in the know puts
The most convincing argument for playing a Mason Lindroth game is increasingly becoming “because it’s a Mason Lindroth game.” Although you cannot predict what his next videogame will involve you can, at least, guess that it will be made of clay. Everything from hanging overgrowth coiled up into thin
Simon Flesser—better known as half of Simogo—has a distinctive talent for finding the extraordinary in the mundane. He weaves mysteries into unexpected places and listless characters in a such a way that it grips your curiosity and pulls you in. It’s what he, as a writer, brings to Does not Commute.
Tymon Zgainski is coming to the end of a four-year journey that has taken him from ennui to something closer to contentment, from teenager to adulthood. And now he has a date. His first-person exploration-adventure Rituals—formerly The Official—will be out of his hands and into the public’s on May 2
All images taken from the WADbot Tumblr. /// The virtual world of Doom is so big these days as to be intimidating. Since 1994, modders have been creating their own Doom levels with the tools that the game’s creator id Software released, as well as those they’ve made for themselves. All of these user
Fans of Stanley Kubrick’s cinematic adaptation of Stephen King’s horror-drama The Shining have obsessed over the finer details for years. You don’t have to search for long to find some of the wilder theories. There’s an hour-long documentary called “The Shining Code” about how people have decoded me
For Willy Chyr, everything is locking into place all at once. There’s probably a click echoing through the cosmos in his name right now. Don’t listen for it, but know that if it exists, it’s satisfying in the way cracking your joints is, or crunching into that first thick-cut potato chip. For the pa
Behind my television is a snake nest of electronic cables. I put it there. These coiling black and gray wires feeding the sockets in my wall, powering the appliances deemed necessary in my life; an unkempt pile of synergized technology. Likewise, the innards of my PC that I precariously clasped and
Pioneering digital artist Miguel Chevalier discovered within Islamic art a language similar to his own. His interest in the generative image, ornate designs, virtual cities, and especially algorithmic art has commonalities with the symmetrical geometry seen in Persian rugs, and mosques such as Jama
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article misrepresented MacLarty’s motivations. It has been revised following a discussion with him. Videogame designer Ian MacLarty recently took part in a game jam, as part of the Freeplay festival in Australia, that was themed upon diversity, multiplicity
If you’re a parent, or have been a parent, then Pippin Barr’s Jostle Parent will be a familiar experience. If you—like me—haven’t had kids of your own yet, then this will only put you off the idea completely. It’s what Barr rightly determines a more tragic riff on the concept behind Octodad: Dadlies
Shooting with the clarity of a drunk pissing into the brown-green water of a night club’s toilet bowl, my pool game has always been effervescent. While my friends seem to play on a smooth cloth-covered table, one primed for cue sports, when it comes to my single turn (for I will rarely, if ever, bri
When Russian artist El Lissitzky printed his 1920 Soviet propaganda poster “Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge,” he had no idea it would become iconic. It was its bold symbolism that did the trick. The Russian civil war was reduced to a potent display of shape and space. The Bolsheviks were represen
I have a friend who works in the ambulance service. He tells me stories. I ask him to. The expected tragedies aside (horrific traffic accidents, families in peril, octogenarians dying alone completely neglected), the most fascinating details of his job, at least to my eager ears, are sourced from hi
Doomdream is more of a description than a title. It’s an attempt by its creator, Ian MacLarty, to conjure up an “impression of [his] dreams after [he’s] been playing Doom all day.” That’s Doom, the 1993 hell-romping shooter, which mostly everyone is familiar with. If you’re not, all you need to know
J.G Ballard’s novel Crash is one of numerous hellish car wrecks sprayed with both semen and blood. It’s a story that marries sexuality with the excitement of traffic collisions. What you might call an “autoerotica.” This is the word that Robert Yang has used to describe the last in his erotic gay se
The Tender Cut is a game that asks a question that cannot be answered: “What the heck is going on in this guy’s head?” The guy has a name. It’s Luis Bunuel, one of the pioneers in surrealist cinema. His first film, 1929’s Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog), is infamous for its shocking opener of a
I wish I could have shown Sebastian Gosztyla’s mobile game Dual to my mother 20 years ago. Not to play it with her, she wouldn’t have allowed that, but to see how she configured it in the rules she had for me back then, when I was a child. She saw videogames as separating me from other people, as un
Behind the sunlit arches of amber stone and their elongated shadows, behind the marble busts poised lonesome in the air, behind the ivy-crept porticos sitting empty with umbra, there lies a self-portrait of the Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico. His aged quilt-like face is the last sight for you to
It’s unusual to see butterflies used as a metaphor for tragedy. Within the framework of the English language at least, they’ve enjoyed being symbols for beauty, freedom, and transformation—the English poet John Clare’s “lovely insect.” Perhaps the closest to an inversion we have to that established
Part of me wishes that Dick Poelen had gone further. His Mini Ludum Dare #68 game jam entry PACAPONG comprises four classic arcade games: Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Pong, and Donkey Kong. But why stop there? The disruptive child in me begs for more and more to be added. I want this mash-up to be taken
