Here are a few of the weird, freaky things you can do in Ben Esposito’s bizarre music video(game) for bo en’s Pale Machine: knock a buzzing cell phone off a dresser with a rolling beer bottle; brush a disembodied mouth’s teeth; knock over a bowl of Wheaties and a milk carton with an unending, extrac
A confused little article posted on Forbes seriously suggests that virtual reality will become the next China white. The argument is that videogames trigger the release of dopamine in the brain, which puts them in the same category as cocaine. Though Tom Bissell’s Extra Lives may have something to s
A teaser trailer for Eliss Infinity, the sequel to Steph Thirion’s Eliss, surfaced over the weekend, calling for a polite round of Internet high-fives among those with good taste and a good memory. Although the video doesn’t reveal much aside from a release date of Feb. 6, expect to be madly pawing
As you know, the Denver Broncos just suffered one of the most humiliating defeats in Super Bowl history. Things turned ugly quickly and stayed that way. The Broncos couldn’t match the Seahawks’ intensity and didn’t seem particularly inspired to be playing in the biggest sports game of the year. One
One of the longest running shows in history, Law & Order ran from 1990 through 2010, which means it offers an interesting take on computer history. Artist Jeff Thompson noticed this after bingeing on the show on Netflix, and began documenting the evolution of computers used from season to season, wh
Interviews with the Belgian art game collective Tale of Tales are always a wild ride, which is what you’d expect from the makers of Luxuria Superbia (a tube racer about racing down the fallopian tubes) and Bientôt l’été. But this interview with Michael Samyn and Auriea Harvey by our pals over at Gam
The Ototo is almost too adorable. So adorable that it only qualifies for our late Friday afternoon post, because what’s better at the end of a long week than watching a circuit board turn almost anything into a synthesizer. And by anything, we mean anything: hoodies, coffee, house plants, cats. (Yup
The technical prowess of esports players is amazing. They have jet pilot reaction times, process Rainman-level calculations on the fly, and can perform ten actions-per-second with their mouse cursor. But once in awhile, even the top pro players fall victim to mental fatigue, or the human requirement
This story is so Kill Screen it hurts. Burial, the hermetic electronic artist on Hyperdub known for grainy, pitch-black beats, has apologized to fans, saying that the sublime Rival Dealer EP might be the last we hear from him for awhile. Why? Well, because he’ll be consumed by Dark Souls 2, like the
In certainly the best news of the week, Treasure—the Japanese studio whose catalogue includes all-time greats like Sin and Punishment and Gunstar Hereoes—is making a game for Steam. The company has previously ported their classic polarity-flipping shooter Ikaruga to the digital platform, but now the
The South is recovering from paralyzing winter weather just as Dawn of the Plow came out. Coincidence? I think not. This little game about a trusty truck with a plow on front clearing the icy roads for vehicles is just what the nation needed, unless you’re in Austrailia, in which case enjoy your hea
The New Aesthetic continues to leave its untraceable mark on reality with Build, the browser toy for Chrome that lets you construct Lego structures right on top of Google Maps. The project was started a year ago by a bunch of Australians and now is reaching into daylight. To play it means you have t
Carlos Montero, the project lead on Black Mesa, the HD Half-Life remake, was one of the few who were invited to go face-on with Valve’s virtual reality helm, which is apparently the next best thing to lucid dreaming. So what do the lucky ones who tumble down the rabbit hole in Gabe Newell’s personal
Google has put together a sizzle reel, a term I’m using completely ironically, to show off what their Google Glass eyewear can do for games. These augmented mini-games feature not-so-riveting gameplay, such as pretending to balance books on the Android robot’s head, bouncing a tennis ball from your
The cool thing about Troubadour is that it’s kind of a game, but kind of not a game. It occupies that weird nether-region between every other artistic medium and play. The story is about digital distraction in the modern age and the lack of human-to-human connections caused by all these screens, whi
We’re giddy with excitement about episode 2 of The Wolf Among Us, which is coming in February, and you should be too. Why? Well, lemme tell you. One, because the Fable comic it’s based on is amazing. Two, because it’s a chance to play a game like The Walking Dead without being stuck in the universe
We knew Nintendo had their back against the wall. We knew they were poised to do something about it. We knew we’d find out today. But we didn’t know how the company planned to claw its way out, however, until a few hours ago, when the company revealed their refocused initiative, in the un-fun way th
The trailer for Terry Gilliam’s upcoming film The Zero Theorem has dropped and looks like a Terry Gilliam film, which is to say that it involves an eccentric, disconnected, but also genius main character. This time it’s a mad computer programmer who refers to himself as “we” and lusts over a woman i
Club Rothko Builder is a place on the web for creating glitchy, abstract digital art. Its creator LaTurbo Avedon is no stranger to the digital space, having opened art shows in Second Life and constructed impossible digital sculptures that look like crumpled silicon. In fact, we ran a feature her la
D&D Yoga is a tranquil exercise that takes a yoga class on a dungeon dive, which works far better than it has any right to. I mean, yoga is an ancient Buddhist practice that promotes flexibility and inner peace. Dungeons & Dragons, a tabletop game that promotes sitting around a table for hours and s
Unsung Story is shaping up to be even more like Final Fantasy Tactics, as Playdek has added another Square Enix employee to their ranks. This time it’s Akihko Yoshida, the character artist from Tactics, who recently designed the little witches in Bravely Default. We don’t know what Unsung Story will
The word coming out of Hotline Miami 2’s Twitter account is that it will hit “in Q3. Act accordingly.” We took that to mean to first inform you all, and then find something to criticize, and then wildly speculate, then salivate regardlessly. Here’s what we know: Devolver Digital’s ultra-violent, ul
Judging from this behind-the-scenes video, South Park: The Stick of Truth is everything you’d want from a true-to-the-source South Park game. (Minus Isaac Hayes, RIP.) There’s “authentic crappiness,” analogue fart controls, and wisecracks written by the creators of the show, Trey Parker and Matt Sto
Our days of piloting a little spaceship through beautiful firework patterns of bullets are sadly coming to an end, as the Western branch of Cave Interactive—the preeminent Japanese studio that makes impossible shoot’em ups known as danmaku, or bullet hells—is ceasing communication with the West. On
The NSA and its British chums across the pond have been using a backdoor in ad-supported mobile apps—specifically, Angry Birds—to mine sensitive data, according to The New York Times. This includes Google Map locations, websites visited, and buddy lists, according to newly declassified documents lea
