Goodbye forever, Flappy Bird
May you flap in peace, higher and higher, sweet creature.
Jason Johnson
Last week in boardgames: Bruno Cathala’s new game has men at work, elusive complexity
Celebrated game designer Bruno Cathala’s next game for Days of Wonder looks fantastically complicated. Not much is known about it, as it is still a prototype, but it has something to do with workers, and pyramids, and tile rotation, and a cup of espresso. Come to think of it that could just be someo
After Amnesia Fortnight, Double Fine should just hire Pendleton Ward outright
Amnesia Fortnight is Double Fine’s annual internal game jam, where members of the studio cook up a ton of rough sketches for games that are far too zany, cutesy, and preposterous to otherwise exist, like this one about a horse-for-hire that saves clumsy heros. Then, for the next six days, they’ll as
Atari porn makes a comeback in Pippin Barr’s newest tragi-comedy
Small dick vs. medium dick. Medium dick vs. small dick. Big dick vs. big dick. These are choices you should assess before entering into any dick fight. What’s a dick fight? Well, don’t google it. Play Pippin Barr’s game Lo-fi Dick Fight instead. It continues his habit of publishing funny, way-too-di
RZA to defend his chess champion title, because he is the RZA
The RZA is the grandmaster of hip-hop, and we do not mean that in like a “Grandmaster Flash” context. The dude is mega-good at chess. Next week in Anaheim he will be defending his crown at the Hip Hop Chess Federation’s celebrity tournament, which is the most RZA-sounding federation ever. He’ll prob
New PBS Game/Show asks if Zelda exploits our nostalgia for profit
When you pick up a new Zelda game, such as The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, there are certain things you automatically expect. A little elven lad in a green tunic? Check. Fractured shard of a magical triangle? Check. Wacking chickens with your sword until they gang-tackle you? Check. The
The game that imagines the terror of trying to escape from an endless loop of Apple stores
We haven’t gotten our mitts on NaissanceE yet, coming to Steam on Feb. 13th, but from the looks of the trailer, it perfectly captures the modern American recurring nightmare of desperately running through an endless number of Apple stores, each storefront leading into another, nearly identical, hosp
Al Franken is very worried about facial recognition on Google Glass
Senator Al Franken has spoken out against Nametag, one of the first facial recognition apps for Google Glass, saying that we “cannot reasonably prevent [ourselves] from being identified” by the all-seeing eye of geeks with amazing eyepieces. The app scans the faces of everyone in your vicinity and g
Jeff Minter’s new Vita game furthers his obsession with Tempest
Jeff Minter’s legacy is shaping up to be that guy who took Tempest and pushed it to its rave-y, trance-inducing, crystalline extreme. That, or sheep. We see this with TxK, coming later in February, which, well, looks like bliss. (He apologized for the trailer’s compressed video quality, which will l
The fancy camera tech that will make League of Legends easier to watch
Riot Games are working on smart cameras that automatically follow the action on-screen in League of Legends, because sometimes you just want to kick back and watch esports, the way you would any other sport. This new feature, which they’ve been granted a patent for, aims to improve Spectator Mode, w
Persona 5 director reveals that, yes, the game will be dark
If you’re like me you spent a half-morning back in November watching and re-watching the mysterious announcement trailer for Persona 5, trying to cut through the thick layer of symbolism, and still thinking about it later that day on a quiet car ride. A new interview with longstanding Persona direct
Fract is what a videogame by Kraftwerk would probably look like
Partly a synthesizer, and partly a puzzle game, Fract is essentially Portal meets Kraftwerk. What I mean by that is you’re lost in a broken machine-world and play with glow-y neon sounds. And while it’s hard to compare any electronic music anywhere to the canonized output of Ralf Hütter and Florian
This asteroid-zapping game might cure cancer
The free mobile game Play to Cure: Genes in Space was created at a madcap game jam hosted by Cancer Research UK to do just that: research cancer. You can get it for Android here and iPhone there and start blasting your way towards a cure. But listen how it works first. The human genome is teeny tiny
New Thief trailer features adult situations, thievery
Thieves will do what they do. And that’s getting nude, using strong language, finding themselves in a strong sexual context, using drugs, and committing violence. Wait, that’s just the ESRB disclaimer. In between those things, apparently, it seems the thief in Thief swings back and forth between sne
Nevermind, the survival-horror game that feeds on biofeedback, goes to Kickstarter
Most scary games just want to scare you, but Nevermind wants to scare you and then help you manage your anxiety. The concept for this white-knuckled first-person experience is really cool, taking advantage of biofeedback not just for self-help, but actually to adjust the thrills and chills as you pl
Devastating footage of four guys racing each other through Super Meat Boy
Super Meat Boy is a ridiculously hard game that requires pinpoint jumping and the accuracy of a world-champion dart player (assuming that there is a world championship of darts). So when Something Awful forum members hosted “The Super Meat Boy Races,” a competition to see who could race through it t
EVE players get the august monument they deserve
Iceland will soon be receiving a dazzling piece of modern art, as CCP, creators of the persistently-hostile online world EVE, are erecting in downtown Reykjavik a monument to the players. The 15-foot-tall structure looks straight out of Battlestar Galactica and will have the names of the main charac
Deaf Resident Evil and Onimusha composer has been faking it all along
In a scandal on par with Milli Vanilli and Manti Te’o’s girlfriend, Mamoru Samuragoch, the composer of the soundtracks to Capcom’s Resident Evil Director’s Cut and for the Onimusha series, has owned up to not actually writing any of his music for the past fifteen years, since he went completely deaf
Rain World is pretty much a .gif factory
We covered the post-apocalyptic jumper Rain World before. The plot eludes us but it seems sometime in the distant future slugs and cats become inseparably combined. The game crushed its funding goal on Kickstarter, because, well, slugcats (though after studying them closely I have a suspicion they’r
As we speak, drones are scanning the entire Earth to put it in an RPG
In what might qualify as the most ambition creative project in the history of creative projects (aside from Caligula, of course), a small studio in Montreal is scanning the entire face of the Earth with civilian drones to use it as the location for their RPG ReRoll. This triggers some obvious red fl
MirrorMoon crosses over with Gone Home and Kentucky Route Zero, has a Steam sale
MirrorMoon EP is on sale on Steam from now until Feb. 10th, so if you haven’t experienced it yet, get on it. The game is aesthetically gorgeous, it breaks new ground in orrery technology with solar-system-aligning puzzles, and it’s experimental in the truest sense of the word—i.e. you gotta figure o
The cars of the future will be spherical Volkswagens with VR headsets
Volkswagen has plopped a strange, spherical, futuristic car simulator in the middle of shopping malls. It’s called the 4DX and it looks like a Beetle crossed with the escape pod from 2001. To actually give shoppers a taste of how driving this beast into the singularity might feel, it comes equipped
Nintendo hints at mysterious new universal consoles
The more we learn about Nintendo’s next big thing, the less we know. It’s just that mysterious. The latest detail to trickle out is that the company will begin focusing on universal games that will play across numerous devices, like Apple’s universal apps, starting with their next console. “Apple i
Hyper Light Drifter delayed till end of year so it can become even more beautiful
The story of Hyper Light Drifter is of runaway success, which is impressive for a game that hasn’t reached closed beta yet. (That’s happening in June, according to an update over the weekend.) The game exceeded its funding goal on Kickstarter by something like $600,000 and then some change, back in
The Jeopardy whiz who is breaking the game with Daily Doubles
Arthur Chu has caused a stir in front of a live studio audience by taking an unorthodox approach to Jeopardy and continuing to win. Normally, contestants play the game the same way: start with an easy question for $100, then work their way down the board to pricier trivia. Chu’s strategy has veteran