The racing line is perhaps one of the most crucial aspect of motorsports. Carefully modulating speed and direction to take a corner optimally is key to shaving precious seconds and fractions of a second from lap times. Cornering strategy and track condition and vehicle limits are linked in that mome
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
No Man’s Sky has been knocked by players since its release for false promises—advertisements featuring fighting factions, developer interviews that discuss rare occasions where players can meet on distant planets (which has seemingly been disproven), and more. As a result, Sean Murray—the public fac
If you mixed MTV’s Jackass series with Bob Guccione’s Caligula (1980) film, and sprinkled a healthy dose of Super Meat Boy (2010) on top, there’s a good chance the result may be developer HakJak’s upcoming game Guts and Glory. Recently launched on Kickstarter, Guts and Glory asks its players to do o
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
This tale begins with a message in a bottle and its discovery by the Brothers Beard. The message reveals a map, a seemingly ordinary one of the area’s surroundings. Curious, the brothers set sail to a nearby village to ask about the map’s purpose. When they meet an old man who seems to know about it
Some videogames exist solely to allow us to make things: Minecraft (2009), LittleBigPlanet (2008), Super Mario Maker (2015). Many more games—too many more games—ask us to make things for no good reason. Crafting systems were once grafted-on additions to games already engorged with an excess of “feat
Game designer Nina Freeman first rose to prominence with How Do You Do It (2014), a game exploring precocious sexuality based on her own experiences as a child. The following year, her senior thesis project at NYU-Poly was commercially released as Cibele, a game about online gaming, sex, and falling
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
It’s been a long time since I’ve used a floppy disk. Years and years ago I remember having a digital camera and having to load old floppy disks in it. Before that I would store small pictures and writings on a floppy disk. These days, floppies exist most in the form of save icons. But a game called
Grants submitted by CD Projekt S.A., the head company of developer CD Projekt Red and GOG.com, have surfaced online, giving some insight into the prospective scope of its upcoming game, Cyberpunk 2077. That’s the next game from the people who made The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, if you didn’t know, aka Ki
Your fingers hover above the keyboard, hesitating to type out a response to the enthusiastic bubble that pops onto the screen, asking about your day. It’s tiring, trying to keep up the charade. When did the shift occur? At what point did communicating become a chore as opposed to a treat? A lazy res
Today, I sat alone in my house on my phone, catching, stamping, and releasing virtual paper airplanes with over 150,000 people from all over the world. I was alone, but I felt part of such a large, positive community. Created by Active Theory in celebration of Peace Day at Google’s I/O 2016 conferen
The Andes Flight Disaster of 1972 is infamous for the part about the cannibalism. On October 13th, a chartered Fairchild FH-227D crashed on the spine of the Andes between Chile and Argentina. A search was conducted for just over a week, leaving the team stranded. After two months of starvation, fros
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
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
Remember Nidhogg (2014)? Before its release there was whispers of it as the 2D fencing game that people just couldn’t stop playing. After its long-awaited arrival it made its way to other platforms, until it seemed to become nearly ubiquitous—its pixels once only glanced at now brash and animated in
“On death row, feel like I am…” For Danny Brown, all is lost. Atrocity Exhibition is the most heartbreaking record in a minute. It begins, quite literally and awash in scuzz, with the “Downward Spiral,” an ongoing theme in Danny’s work since 2011’s seminal XXX. Herein: Danny, on a coke binge, contra
Heterotopias is a series of visual investigations into virtual spaces performed by artist and writer Gareth Damian Martin. /// Videogames have always had something of a preference for islands. These closed spaces, limited by a shoreline, are the perfect conceit for creating an enclosed simulation—an
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
I relate a lot to Honey Rose. Or, at least I did back when I was a scrappy university student. While Honey moonlights as a masked luchador fighter in addition to being a college student by day, I juggled school, a job to pay the bills, and a far more time-consuming job that paid zero bills (campus p
“More mysteries. They do pile up, over time, as people forget the details.” -Shannon Marquez, Kentucky Route Zero Act IV Kentucky Route Zero is defined by its voids. From its haunting, shadowy landscapes to its characters’ featureless faces, the meditative, five-part digital stage play offer
It’s hard to turn down a Girl Scout, and that’s no accident—I should know, I am one. From the start, we learn valuable business and communication skills through selling cookies (that are, objectively, pretty damn good). Community service often has an emphasis on sustainability and environmental just
The Trojan War is a comedy and a tragedy, a series of deaths that history will remember by its errors rather its feats. When they teach the Trojan War, they talk about a beautiful woman whose face was enough for an armada to be launched and a large wooden horse that defeated an impregnable city. Whe
