Michael Brough excels at designing systems that are simpler than they sound—better understood through exploration than explanation—and his grid-based games keep getting smaller and more complicated. In Imbroglio, his latest, your little dungeon-crawler has two health counters in the form of hearts a
With the advent of 3D printing, it’s easy to imagine a future where industry is as simple as pressing a few buttons on a computer screen. Just take any computer-generated 3D model, send it to a 3D printer, and within a few minutes to a few hours, you’ll have an actual, physical object that you can h
Brutalist architecture has gotten a bad rap over the years—so much so that Goldfinger, the villain of James Bond fame, was named after Ernő Goldfinger, an architect inspired by brutalism. Mo H. Zareei (aka mHz) is trying to fight back against this societal repulsion with his evocative sound sculptur
This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel. You can play Teen Patti just about anywhere these days. A half-sister to Texas Hold’em, Teen Patti games were once mostly contained to the felt tables of Indian casinos. All that’s changing. With the use of smartphones soaring in the country,
There are many reasons a writer might resort to fabulism. None of them are sufficient justifications, but some are more understandable than others. Chief among these reasons, one imagines, is the undeniable fact that transcription is miserable, tedious work. Steno Hero, with apologies to Donald Trum
As you walk into Gallery 625 of the European Paintings department in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, you confront a rather puzzling work. Madonna and Child, by Italian painter Duccio di Buoninsegna, is much smaller than its neighbours, barely the size of a standard US letter. While its peers float i
Lady of the Shard is the latest webcomic from Gigi. D.G., the creator of anthropomorphic bunny comic Cucumber Quest. It’s about faith, starcrossed lovers, and the different ways in which the devout relate to the holy. Following the story of an unnamed space acolyte who lives on a floating temple in
A room enclosed on all sides sits naked in grayspace. Inside is a trunk, a bed, a tube, a radiator, a light, and little else. A sharp sound swells and suddenly the room snaps out of place. Now it is upside-down. You can’t even enter through the open doorway, barely able to peer inside through the wi
At the Game Developer’s Conference in 2013, I cruised through the expo floor areas on a student pass. With such a limiting pass, I wasn’t able to do much. That was, until I stumbled upon Tenya Wanya Teens (2013), a never-publicly-released experimental party game from none other than game designer Ke
This is a preview of an article you can read on our new website dedicated to virtual reality, Versions. /// Destructive treasure hunters like Nathan Drake and Lara Croft tumble through decadent crypts, dismantling rare artifacts in their wake. Their scrabbling work, however incidental, is the antith
Liyla and the Shadows of War is a game about a young girl living in Gaza during the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you much more than that because Apple has declared it too political to count as a game in its App Store. On Tuesday afternoon, developer Rasheed Abueideh said Li
This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel. The advent of the internet created a whole new mode of self-expression, from digital and gif art to fan-fiction and fan art. Now, new virtual reality (VR) tools are primed to inspire yet another era of creators, both amateur and professional,
Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. Verreciel (iOS) BY DEVINE LU LINVEGA Verreciel is the latest entry in Devine Lu Linvega’s “sequence of linguistically involved projects,” which includes Paradise (2011), Hiversaires (2013), an
Grand Theft Auto V (2013) is a confidence trick; Rockstar is a fraud. They tell people to distrust capitalism and suspect politics—the entire world, and all its peoples, are venal. In the same breath, they promise sanctuary. “Are you young? Are you angry? Are you an iconoclast, too? Then Rockstar an
Visual artist Luis Antonio’s been around. He used to work at a couple big name game companies (Rockstar and Ubisoft). But, feeling unfulfilled, he jumped ship to work on Jonathan Blow’s The Witness, a game that incidentally inspired him to learn programming and pursue his own personal project, Twelv
This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel. While videogames have inspired a staccato of button-tapping throughout their brief but effusive history, the majority of games makes use of few motions other than a twitching of hands and fingers. There are notable exceptions, such as poking
Liam Wong, Ubisoft’s graphic design director, takes dope photographs. Perhaps this shouldn’t come as a surprise. The obvious temptation with Wong’s photography, which is posted on Instagram and sold on Society 6, is to liken it to his work in videogames. Insofar as games are our main point of refere
The job of a sports commentator is to help viewers understand the “why” of what is happening on the field. The reasons behind that 40-yard catch-and-run, the set-up behind that buzzer-beating 3-pointer, the specific actions that led to that corner kick goal—all should be made clear from the insightf
Despite being over 30-years-old, and therefore predating public internet access, it turns out that the original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) has actually been capable of connecting to the internet the whole time. All it takes is a “modem” and a little bit of hacking, courtesy of Femicom Museu
In the Abrahamic religions—and the texts that have grown out of them—Satan is a fallen angel, cast out of heaven for daring to rebel against God. Though his name is synonymous with fear and evil, it’s Satan’s tireless, implacable need to oppose everything God wills that truly characterizes him. He’s
The Earth has seen her fair share of revolutions in the last decade. We have watched them on our televisions, followed them on Twitter, witnessed them both in our hometowns and impossibly far away. In such a tumultuous period they often seem inescapable, but unless they were brought directly to your
Everything we know and love virtually is the source of meticulous coding. Coding is the backbone of videogames. Coding is in the DNA of the websites we visit daily. In fact, coding can be the reason why some of our favorite creative endeavors exist at all. Coding all too often makes the impossible p
In this fantastical world of booming technological advances in robotics, you’d probably be lying if you said you’ve never thought about sex with robots. After all, the topic has been almost unavoidable, cropping up in the news thanks to very possibly sex-craved innovators like this man, who made his
If you’ve watched enough movies or TV you would have seen a hostage situation. And almost every hostage situation involves a negotiator. Someone who is there to try and defuse the situation, hopefully with words instead of bullets. Negotiator from 4PM Games is going to let you step into the shoes of
This article is part of our lead-up to Kill Screen Festival where Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture artist Alex Grahame will be speaking. /// “These are the dark November days when the English hang themselves!” – Voltaire /// The English are known for a number of bred-in-the-bone traits but chief amon
