Acclaimed noir puzzle game Framed was touted for its ingenuity, taking elements of comic-book panel design and implementing them into its videogame format. Much of the story, then, existed outside of Framed‘s panels, allowing players to fill in the blanks. Lead designer Joshua Boggs attributes this
Part of the national security Safety Plan in Orwell’s world is a program that employs citizens to spy on other citizens. Aptly, it’s called Orwell. As a government spy in the game’s world, you’ll be able to scour others media presence—and chat conversations—for suspicious information. Creator Osmoti
My walk to work is rife with construction; large swaths of land are cordoned off, sidewalks reworked and traffic patterns changed, all because of a big green stripe being added to our Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority maps. A project in the works since 1990, the Green Line Extension project
There’s a lot to manage in a role-playing game. It can almost feeling like having a desk job—managing inventory, grinding work, looming bosses. Add with crafting, foraging, and upgrading gear on top of that it’s no wonder I keep asking myself why I repeatedly subject myself to RPG work. Not everyone
I like to dream about space—the flowering alien plant life light years away from Earth, the planets circling a big burning star rivaling our sun. It’s water on Mars and planets made up of swirling gas that I think about, too. I’ll conjure up in my mind the planets lurking just beyond our solar syste
When Laila Shabir moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts to start school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, her Pakistani father told her to live her life as if she were a young man—to live her life without fear, something young women around the globe aren’t always taught. Shabir is the founde
Emily Is Away was released just over a year ago, and since then, Emily has amassed a lot of friends—like, 1.5 million of them. Many of which will be excited to hear that early next year Emily Is Away Too, a sequel of sorts, will be released. Perhaps “spiritual successor” is a better word; Emily from
If you like the sound of a visual novel with both computer science puzzle and romance elements then Code Romantic is for you. So far, creator Pretty Smart Games has released two of the game’s chapters, with more to come a little further down the line. Unlike Zachtronics-style programming games—where
Videogame dog saturation is at an all time high. Our goofy, dumb pals are in, and that’s not a problem. Destiny (2014) has dogs that you can’t pet, while the upcoming Watch_Dogs 2 has dogs that you can. Butt Sniffin Pugs has dog butts. Doggo has a dog park. None of these games, though, have dogs lik
GoNNER creator Mattias Dittrich—who goes by Ditto—describes his game as “tough as hell,” and he’s not wrong. It’s one of those games where I ask myself just why I keep clicking continue; death after death, I am thrown back to the beginning of the game. That is, unless I have enough currency to buy m
Cuphead creator Studio MDHR was trying to get its game out exactly 80 years from 1936—the year when a Japanese cup-headed character in a short propaganda film turned into a tank to defeat a bunch of evil Mickeys. Now, however, Cuphead will be released 81 years after Cuphead’s grandpa was introduced
This is exciting: Ladykiller in a Bind is out now on Windows, Mac, and Linux. You’ll find the visual novel—by Analogue: A Hate Story (2012) creator Love Conquers All Games—on the Humble Bundle store. For now, Valve deemed the game too sexy for Steam, but writer Christine Love hopes to get it on ther
Archivist Jason Scott is attempting to preserve the inherent historical value of videogames. The Festival Floppies is part of this project. Years back, Scott acquired a load of floppy disks that a friend found in 2009 at the Timonium Hamboree and Computer Festival in Baltimore, Maryland. Back then,
In 1986, Metroid was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Since then, Hirokazu Tanaka, Metroid’s composer, has been revered for helping create the game’s iconic, eerie atmosphere. To up Metroid’s creeping feeling of loneliness some 30 years later, composer Luminist is rerecording the game
Those who’ve devoted their lives to the Cartasian Discipline in Neal Stephenson’s Anathem (2008) are subject to rote memorization when they’ve broken the rules of their society. The book in which they’re to memorize from is filled with illogical nonsense, like nursery rhymes that don’t quite rhyme—a
That Dragon, Cancer was released back in January this year, shortly after my father’s cancer diagnosis. My first real brush with cancer, I clung to the game for guidance. That Dragon, Cancer didn’t necessarily tell me what to expect, but helped steer me through the things I needed to feel. I wished
Sometimes you have to make sacrifices. In publisher Kitfox Games’s upcoming The Shrouded Isle, those sacrifices are lives. It’s a cult village management game to be released in February 2017 by design lead Jongwoo Kim, writer Tanya Short, and artist Erica Lahaie. The Shrouded Isle is meant as a haun
Don’t know how to socially interact? That’s okay. Neither do I. And I suspect there are lots of us, too—the ones who always respond “you, too” after the movie theater ticket taker tells us to enjoy our movies; the party-goers who’d rather sit on the couch and pet cats than talk to other guests; thos
Australian milk packaging from the ’80s, designer toys made from wood, illustrations of otherworldly science-fiction landscapes. These are the sorts of images you’ll find neatly organized on GNOG creator Samuel Boucher’s Pinterest board; the sort of things that he cites as inspiration for GNOG’s mon
NYU Game Center alumni Owen Bell is the first game designer to be awarded the Public Understanding prize from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Sloan’s Public Understanding prize, in particular, is intended to support projects that blend science and the humanities; it’s for creators and researchers th
Children’s books used to have a more strange, haunting quality; think Wayne Anderson’s Ratsmagic (1976) and The Magic Circus (1978). Books had a sense of darkness, and not every tale was meant to be safe and moralizing. Growbot, an upcoming 2D point-and-click puzzle adventure, is a game that evokes
Commissioned for the No Quarter exhibition at the NYU Game Center, Loren Schmidt’s Beads of Orange Glass is now available for download on itch.io. The game is not interested in holding players’ hands through a guided narrative; instead, players shape their experience themselves as they explore the g
The Floor Is Jelly (2014) creator Ian Snyder is working on a new game, Botolo—a competitive multiplayer title inspired by games like Street Fighter and Smash Bros. With Botolo, Snyder considered three aspects of competitive play: physical skill, mental skill, and game knowledge. Physical skill, “whe
Five games from Fantastic Fest’s Fantastic Arcade are available as part of a fantastic bundle on itch.io: Nium, Alphabet, Inspector Woof, F2oggy, and Lassos. All proceeds from the Fantastic Arcade bundle will go to the next Fantastic Arcade, in efforts to bring more independent game makers to the sh
“The old dog barks backwards without getting up. I can remember when he was a pup.” — Robert Frost, “The Span of Life” /// ReCore was supposed to be about a woman and her dog—her robotic dog. Its biggest fault is that it isn’t. Joule is part of a group of colonists sent to Far Eden after Earth becam
