It is well known and well documented by now that many videogames released within the last decade are fantasies of accumulation: of experience points, of wealth, of abilities, of guns, of power. That is to say, the power fantasy that these games peddle is built on the idea of upward mobility, that so
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
French wine brand Luc Belaire is proud to announce the start of its #BelaireBacked program aimed at helping innovative Kickstarter campaigners reach their funding goals and skip ahead to the celebration. The #BelaireBacked campaign will support self-made startups by offering funding to select Kickst
When FRACT OSC (2014) creator Phosfiend Systems’s Richard Flanagan met up with Ben Swinden at the 2015 Toronto Game Jam, they found serendipitous inspiration in their shared love of snowboarding. The two quickly came up with the idea of an infinite, looping mountainscape, full of “branching pathways
Games are mostly devoid of a “making of” genre. Indie Game: The Movie (2012) and various art books may tell the story of a game’s creation, but there is no Hearts of Darkness for games, largely because the amount of work and the number of art assets that go into a game means the “making of” commenta
Honey Rose: Underdog Fighter Extraordinaire is what happens when you combine a traditional animation style and with genre-bending game challenges inspired by wrestling/lucha libre. Developed by Pierre Sylvain, Honey Rose: UFE is a life management simulation, presented as a visual novel with beat’em
In 2013, the Sri Lankan newspaper The Sunday Times interviewed Avinash Kumar, an experimental VJ (video jockey) from India, about a project he was heading: a short story that became a graphic novel that became an album with his audio-visual collective BLOT!, which then became something else altogeth
You may never have heard of Diane Lederman, but that’s only because her work is, by design, invisible. As a production designer, she is responsible for making the worlds we see on TV and film look believable. She recreated mid-80s Americana for AMC’s Cold War thriller The Americans (2013), and on HB
Crows Crows Crows, the studio created by William Pugh (co-developer on 2013’s The Stanley Parable), has launched their second game—a Twine adventure called The Temple of No. The game is relatively short and comedic, similar in that regard to the studio’s previous short, narrative title, Dr. Langesko
It’s been 30 years since the Chernobyl disaster. There’s no denying that the explosion joined the gallery of horrors that haunt our collective imagination. As such, just like the images of concentration camps or the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, it has been fueling the anxiety on which popular cu
There’s something special about the breezy wit and innocence of a great cartoon. An animated comedy, or funny graphic novel, or Sunday-morning comic strip has the advantage of telling the truth from behind a window of playful distortion—no doubt that’s why we love them the way we do. They’re funny,
Morphies Law is a strange name for a strange game. It seems reasonable that the trailer for the game would also be bizarre (make sure you watch it below). It’s a game about shooting people and in doing so, shrinking the body parts you hit. And while they shrink, you grow. So, if you shoot someone in
Forest of Sleep, the procedural adventure inspired by oral storytelling and the latest brainchild from the creator of Proteus (2013), looks more like a children’s book than a videogame. Early screenshots unapologetically resemble artwork, illustrated with bold borders and thick lines and no UI in si
Mattel’s Barbie is a woman of many jobs thanks to her careers line. Teacher, babysitter, pilot, lifeguard, nurse, chef… the list goes on. The latest addition to Barbie’s resume is game developer, and she’s been very well received, selling out on Mattel’s site in a matter of days. Whether these were
It’s tempting to describe Absolver with an endless stream of references to other games—big ones, the type for which you see cardboard cutouts at GameStop. It’s an online multiplayer game riffing on the model of Destiny (2014) or Dark Souls (2011)—not, they clarify, an MMO—with players both friendly
Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. VA-11 Hall-A (Windows, Mac, Linux) BY SUKEBAN GAMES If you want to get to know the character of a city quickly, check out its bar scene. There, you’ll find all the community’s hopes and issues
Bravely Second is as unfortunate a title for a sequel as Bravely Default was for its predecessor. Where the phrase “Bravely Default” seemed to suggest that it would somehow be valiant for you to keep doing whatever you would have ordinarily done anyway, “Bravely Second” is poised to become a snowclo
This article is part of Issue 8.5, a digital zine available to Kill Screen’s print subscribers. Read more about it here and get a copy yourself by subscribing to our soon-to-be-relaunched print magazine. /// When an architect drafts a design, they dream big. And where there’s an architect, there’s a
Hessamoddin Sharifpour’s upcoming game Lone Light draws its puzzles from the timeless dance between light and shadow, telling the story of a lone light finding its way through the cosmos. Sharifpour is an Iranian programmer living in Toronto; come September, he’ll be attending the University of Toro
In one of the most famous single season performances in Major League Baseball history, the 2002 Oakland Athletics won a league-topping 105 games on a paltry $33 million budget. Their secret? Sabermetrics—that is, the use of statistical analysis, rather than subjective judgement, to evaluate players’
The term “roguelike” was originally derived from the game Rogue (1980), a dungeon crawler that popularized procedurally generated levels and permadeath. Rogue spawned an entire genre of likeminded games. In the 2000s, game makers lifted inspiration from old roguelikes to craft wholly new generated e
This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel. Advances in technology lead to bigger, shinier games each year, but outside the mainstream flows a river of creative and entertaining independent games that play well across a variety of devices and screen sizes. Many small studios use innova
A city-building game, no matter how wild it looks, is an economic model. Everything can be mapped. Everything is built on a substrate designed to facilitate bean counting. Everything is fundamentally knowable. There are surprises for the eye, but nothing is truly surprising. The city-building game,
If we can associate genres and aesthetics with film-makers (John Woo and action movies; Stanley Kubrick and deep focus) IO Interactive, especially in its prime between 2002 and 2007, was a game-maker defined by concerns about player agency. By constantly placing her in restrictive and alien environm
My grandmother cannot be seen. She is in the room but hardly visible—consumed by the beige. Her gradual decline into camouflage was incidental; the result of years spent sunk in her yellowed sofa, watching afternoon quiz shows and staining the walls with a million cigarettes. “Nan?!” I call out into
