Kill Screen Staff

High Scores: The Best Videogames of 2016 – 16 to 13

This is part of Kill Screen’s list of the best videogames of 2016. To see the rest of the list, check out all the other parts. /// 16. Abzû Abzû is an underwater opera about the precious cadence of ecosystems. Its ocean world feels like a fantasy as you swim downstream with dolphins and weave betwee

High Scores: The Best Videogames of 2016 – 20 to 17

This is part of Kill Screen’s list of the best videogames of 2016. To see the rest of the list, check out all the other parts. /// 20. Darkest Dungeon Darkest Dungeon will punish you. The “dungeon,” a dusty and generic RPG fixture, is twisted into a locus of psychological torment and trauma. Relentl

Here’s a tip: Break games to find new ones

Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. Broken Breakout? (Browser, Windows, Mac) By Tim Garbos One person’s trash is another person’s treasure. That’s how the old adage goes. But can it be applied to videogames? Tim Garbos seems to

An online chatroom isn’t where you’d expect to find a platformer

Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. Walkie Talkie (Windows) BY DANIEL LINSSEN Daniel Linssen must see platformers everywhere. He’s already made one inside a computer interface and one that works in tandem with a separate game. N

SHENZEN I/O is here to make you code like it’s the 1980s

Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. SHENZEN I/O (Windows, Mac) BY ZACHTRONICS Some games and educational apps try to ease you into the art of writing code. SHENZEN I/O isn’t so soft. It’s a throwback to the 1980s, when there was

From small beginnings to Esports stardom

This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel. After church on Sunday, 13-year-old Christine “Potter” Chi followed her brother and his friends to an amateur Counter-Strike tournament at the Mug and Mouse LAN cafe in Dallas, Texas. While sipping boba tea, Potter and her reluctant friends w

Rearrange a world of typography in unWorded

Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. unWorded (iOS) BY BENTO STUDIO A hospitalized writer reflects on his life with the strange tales he has read and written over the years. This is the premise narrative puzzle game unWorded. It’

New platformer wants you to know the environment is screwed

Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. Even the Ocean (Windows, Mac) BY ANALGESIC PRODUCTIONS Even the Ocean is a warning. It’s a game that wants to raise awareness of the human impact on the environment and for its players to spre

Tyranny is an RPG about being properly evil

Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. Tyranny (Windows, Mac) BY OBSIDIAN ENTERTAINMENT The alternative title for Tyranny is, presumably, “50 Shades of Evil.” It’s an isometric RPG in the traditional style that takes place in a wor

Dating sims don’t get much more awkward than One Night Stand

Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. One Night Stand (Windows, Mac, Linux) BY KINMOKU What did you do last night? This is the big question that visual novel One Night Standopens up with. And for your first couple playthroughs you

Sara is Missing is some good text-message horror

Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. Sara is Missing (Windows, Mac, iOS) BY MONSOON LAB Films like Unfriended and the recent Blair Witch have tried to bring the found footage genre into the digital age with varying success. But t

20 free horror games you should play on Halloween

There is no short supply of free horror games. Hell, the rise of reaction videos in recent years has actually brought a surge of them. People have raced to to make a videogame that’ll scare the pants off their favorite YouTubers so they can watch. But that’s also a problem: a lot of these small, fre

Manual Samuel makes a slapstick comedy about being alive

Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. Manual Samuel (Windows, Mac, Xbox One, PS4) BY PERFECTLY PARANORMAL Manual Samuel could be described as QWOP (2008) with a story. It’s about a man who is hit by a truck, dies, and is then resu

Kill Screen is looking for a new Editorial Director

Yesterday, Kill Screen‘s Editorial Director, Clayton Purdom, announced his departure in the only way he knows how. We’re sad to see him go. But that does mean we’re now looking to fill that gap he has left behind. In short, we’re looking for someone who can steer the ship of all of Kill Screen‘s edi

Weekend Reading: America’s Ghost Wanted

While we at Kill Screen love to bring you our own crop of game critique and perspective, there are many articles on games, technology, and art around the web that are worth reading and sharing. So that is why this weekly reading list exists, bringing light to some of the articles that have captured

SUPERHYPERCUBE is here to make VR worthwhile

Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. SUPERHYPERCUBE (PS4) BY KOKOROMI In this new dawn of virtual reality, people will try to port all sorts of things into VR that shouldn’t be there. Yet for every egregious Until Dawn DLC, there

Weekend Reading: Closing Time

While we at Kill Screen love to bring you our own crop of game critique and perspective, there are many articles on games, technology, and art around the web that are worth reading and sharing. So that is why this weekly reading list exists, bringing light to some of the articles that have captured

Your next mobile game fad is here

Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. Picky Pop (Windows, Mac, iOS) BY FROACH CLUB Some videogames are lambasted for their ostensible purposelessness. “Time wasters” is the term usually attributed to them by their critics. Picky P

Weekend Reading: The Ugly Truth

While we at Kill Screen love to bring you our own crop of game critique and perspective, there are many articles on games, technology, and art around the web that are worth reading and sharing. So that is why this weekly reading list exists, bringing light to some of the articles that have captured

Play a new videogame that looks like a storybook

Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. Burly Men At Sea (Windows, Mac, iOS) BY BRAIN&BRAIN Burly Men at Sea takes joy in the simple things in life. As the titular three burly men, you explore everything from a sleepy seaside villag

Here’s some women who make videogames you should follow

Until yesterday, Elon Musk didn’t follow any women on Twitter. Plenty of men, plenty of companies, but not a single woman. This was originally pointed out by Motherboard, which prompted Musk—aka, the man trying to send the first humans to Mars—to make his 55th follow Caity Weaver of GQ Magazine. He

Weekend Reading: Planes, Trains, and The X-Men

While we at Kill Screen love to bring you our own crop of game critique and perspective, there are many articles on games, technology, and art around the web that are worth reading and sharing. So that is why this weekly reading list exists, bringing light to some of the articles that have captured

Is it time to stop using the term “walking simulator”?

The history of the term “walking simulator” is short but heated. It’s only seen wide usage over the past few years and is often applied frivolously. There’s a lot of uncertainties around it but the one thing that’s for sure it it’s a divisive term. Some people see it as a useful way to bunch togethe

Pavilion’s sublime architecture wants to be solved

Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. Pavilion (Windows, Mac) BY VISIONTRICK MEDIA Ancient murals on the walls of Pavilion‘s labyrinth depict you as an all-seeing eye and a huge hand from the sky—you are both. Able to see the path

Weekend Reading: Real Funny, Scary Funny, Real Scary

While we at Kill Screen love to bring you our own crop of game critique and perspective, there are many articles on games, technology, and art around the web that are worth reading and sharing. So that is why this weekly reading list exists, bringing light to some of the articles that have captured