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Below is about being small in a large, dangerous world. The game’s looming cave system dwarfs the player to little more than a speck on the screen, and its dark corners house hidden tripwires and pits that can lead to an early demise for those who are not careful. Characters only have a small pool o
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“How would syndicates abuse their power without the oversight of a government?” asks Hannah Williams, one half of Seattle-based Whalenought Studios. That’s one of the many questions that Copper Dreams, the studio’s second RPG, looks to answer. While RPGs are often set in vast fantasy worlds, Copper
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People like to think of being evil as something extraordinary—we tend to think of it as extreme, or even supernatural. However, game designer and programmer Nicky Case, points out that social psychologists have repeatedly found the opposite to be true—people who we consider to be evil, are in fact i
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Pale, crumbled skin and brightly glowing blue eyes. A weak but upright figure, covered in heavy, hovering armor and a blade of pure psi-energy on each arm. The Protoss of the StarCraft universe are masters in complementing their seemingly weak physiology with highly advanced technology to produce a
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When we last saw the Fumito Ueda-directed The Last Guardian, it was E3 of last year. The sun was shining, as it often is in Los Angeles, and the tweet-buzz was chirping. The long-anticipated follow-up to Ico (2001) and Shadow of the Colossus (2005) wasn’t dead after all. Prior to the surprise traile
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Sweating, writhing, fleshy worms are locked in combat with each other. Their two heads and four arms struggle to maintain dominance over one another. It’s a vicious and gross game of sport. And yet it is somehow completely, utterly adorable. Push Me Pull You lands somewhere between sumo wrestling, a
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A Game About Conservatory is somewhere between being a game and guided meditation. It is also, I guess, music criticism, though not of the Pitchfork variety. The game does what it says on the tin. You are in a music conservatory, discussing scores, recordings, and practice with your fellow students.
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It’s been a while since we last heard from Tangiers, the stealth game from a team lead by Alex Harvey that’s meant to pay homage to 20th century avant-garde artists like William S. Burroughs and David Lynch. In October of 2015, the game’s team updated their Kickstarter with a statement that a planne
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Imagine you’re sitting in a forest, soothing melodies chiming in all around you. There’s a keyboard in front of you, and color-coordinated blobs approach you. Instead of repeating the melody you hear as in most other rhythm games, you must hit the keys according to the pitch you hear. This is furuso
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Megumi Igarashi (better known as Rokudenashiko or “Good-for-nothing-girl”) is a Japanese artist whose work, which revolves around female genitalia, has sparked legal action to be taken against her. According to Japan Times, Igarashi lost an obscenity case over distributing 3D data soon after getting
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Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. Soft Body (PC, PlayStation 4) BY ZEKE VIRANT The words “bullet-hell” may not immediately call calm and tranquility to mind. But meditative app/game Soft Body is here to fix that. Combining the
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War games have consistently failed at making me feel like an invader. Their stories, almost always, involve Western troops on top secret missions behind enemy lines—myself and my AI squad mates are supposed to be interlopers, constantly vulnerable amid a foreign, hostile environment. And yet, we mas