It’s bad enough that Zynga clones games to make their money. But something about making those videogames into board games just makes me MAD. Reyhan Harmanci at BuzzFeed has the complete list of atrocities. Below are Words With Friends and CityVille Monopoly. Just buy Scrabble, people!
My husband played all the Zelda games growing up, and when I bought him Skyward Sword I thought he’d love it. But he didn’t get very far, noting that “I feel like I’ve played this before.” For him, the pleasure of a Zelda game was not just figuring out what the game wanted, but exploring a world ful
Good Old Games (GOG) decided to make digital downloads analog. Take a look at “the GOGBook,” which is “literally as fast as light.” Okay, so this was a joke to promote the fact that GOG is selling games for the Mac now, but it was a good one.
This quiz game gives you the name of a cheese or a font and asks you to discern which one it is. It’s a fun way to realize that the two are weirdly similar. If you do well, you’re probably some kind of cheese or font snob, or both. It’s okay, we still like you.
Howard Phillips, of Howard & Nestor fame, has started a Kickstarter for an educational game that distracts you from learning. Basically, image and audio are paired in tiles that players have to match up for score combos. The distraction of figuring out how to get a high score makes it seem like you’
It’s time to break out your DS flash cart or emulator and play the homebrew ghost story Pokémon (Creepy) Black. You could read most of it here, but I found it far more creepy using the DS game retelling. In true ghost story tradition, the game’s gradual unfolding is part of what makes it creepy, so
Pippin Barr, the man behind Pongs and this article about sadist Pong, has made a game about playing the game Johann Sebastian Joust called Ludwig Von Beatdown. If you can’t make it to one of those artsy conventions, you can play at home! …kind of.
The game Apotheon is still in development by Alientrap for release next year, and judging from their play trailer I think I would play it for the gorgeous ancient Greek art style alone.
A business school professor at NYU predicts that, without the option to sell back a game, not as many people would buy it new. Price Charting summarizes how the study’s simulation of how the absence of a used market would impact the new game market: Because gamers who buy new games no longer have th
Even if you haven’t been sucked into the MMORPG Guild Wars 2, you can appreciate this breathtaking concept art for their Halloween update. Craig Pearson at Rock, Paper Shotgun has the details: The Shadow of the Mad King update will bring a new four-part story based around the returning trickster. Th
Game developers and journalists switching jobs doesn’t necessarily result in the best media, but it’s a learning experience for both sides. Famed gaming journalist Leigh Alexander’s text adventure has a self-aware streak that reminds me of D.F. Wallace, or maybe just Daniel Handler. Check out her co
Vault Boy, the iconic mascot from Fallout, is giving fashion tips to other famous videogame characters.
Chris Donlan’s grandfather was an L.A. cop in the 1940s, and Donlan’s father grew up there. Of course, this means Donlan had to play L.A. Noire with his dad, at least to show him the long-since razed Richfield Tower. I’ll never forget the moment we found it. Dad could just about remember the cross-s
The tradition of letter-writing hasn’t yet died. On dearada.com, anyone can write a letter to Ada Lovelace, the first programmer. Lovelace was the daughter of poet Lord Byron and inherited some of his aptitude for creating scandals; Lovelace wasn’t afraid to do things that were considered improper.
The Vita game library is still small, so Dokuro, out for download today, is a welcome addition. As a little skull man, you lead a princess across obstacles by arranging things just so. The game’s visuals are inspired by storybook illustrations. Before the development team had even begun work on Doko
State of Play is a series of interviews with videogame professionals. Their most recent interview with Edmund McMillen of Super Meat Boy fame shows him reflecting on Indie Game: The Movie: how he had to distance himself from fans, and the necessity of creative production for his mental health.
The Indie Royale Fall bundle offers a chance to play five great games for a meager price. It includes To the Moon, which has some of the best sci-fi storytelling in a game I’ve seen recently, as well as the lauded adventure game The Blackwell Deception. The bundle also offers the adorable god-game R
Someone asked Financial Times columnist Lucy Kellaway to judge the GameCity prize for videogames. She agreed, as a way to get in touch with her sons. She found the experience of playing videogames for the first time frustrating and baffling. Her experience playing Fez: This was developed by a young
Jason Johnson briefly interviewed legendary indie developer Jason Rohrer over at Paste. They covered the Diamond Trust of London debacle, how Rohrer lives off of $14,000 a year, and how he considered making a devilish version of Passage 2 to profit off of. Passage 2 would make a lot of money. That’s
Look, this is a PSA for gamers who are trolls, and we know you’re out there. Internet trolls are rude, but do they have cultural value? Whitney Phillips, who wrote her dissertation on trolls, argues that the Internet bullies are telling of aspects of Internet culture. Trolls are cultural scavengers
Two-player games usually give each player their own controller space. But sometimes you want to fight over control, like in Michael Brough’s iPad game O, which looks like air hockey with many colored pucks. Balls appear on the screen in three colours. You score points by collecting a sequence of bal
It seems completely unecessary to make an orchestral version, since the synths were my favorite part, but this sneak peak of an upcoming orchestrated Fez soundtrack has me thinking it shouldn’t be too bad.
Foxconn, the company that makes iPhones, iPads, and most gaming consoles, doesn’t have the best history. In 2010, 14 employees committed suicide due to terrible working conditions. The iOS game In a Permanent Save State imagines their afterlives. Kate Cox at Kotaku reports: Like Molleindustria’s Pho
Andy Robertson’s son saved diligently for a used Gameboy Micro, convinced that it was the next new handheld from Nintendo. It was released in 2005. I was ready with a whole range of explanations for him once his starry-eyed wonder turned into the realization that this wasn’t in fact a new device at
There are plenty of racers inspired by NASCAR or science fiction. But what about one inspired by minimalists and constructivists? Brandon Boyer takes a look at Chalo Chalo over at Venus Patrol. Looking every bit like an even further abstracted & awesomely organic take on Nintendo’s bit Generations c
