Mapkin is a free GPS app that gives you directions like a local, tailoring your route with hints and suggestions submitted by drivers who have driven it before. While on the road, drivers can record messages reporting obstacles or landmarks such as, “Take a left at the light onto Main Street, just p
When it comes to the summer olympic sports, diving might not be the first event that gets your heart pumping. After all, those incredible gymnasts have all those fancy, flashy costumes and the competitors in the 100 meter sprint appear to pull of super human feats. All in all, other events can simpl
It’s rare to see an isometric horror game. The 3/4 perspective affords more visibility than what is conducive to most horror scenarios, where the possibility of things lurking in the darkness or just around the bend helps heightens the tension. But in Adam, at least what’s shown in its only availabl
The New York Times has a new virtual reality offering—and no, it isn’t called Jayson Blair. NYT VR, which launched last weekend, is a new storytelling venture or, as The Grey Lady calls it with alarming frequency, an “experience.” Using the NYT VR app, you can view (experience?) video stories with a
The unfortunate thing about low-poly art, the aesthetic of simple shapes and abstract images seen in games like Final Fantasy VII, is that it never got much of a chance to take off as a legitimate art style all its own. In a medium where big companies are constantly competing over realistic graphics
With his upcoming game FAR, Swiss designer Don Schmocker says he’s looking to reinterpret the role of vehicles in videogames. It’s not anything outrageous such as making cars edible or turning planes into surfboards (although I’d happily give that game a try too). And it’s certainly not Transformers
Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. Mini Metro (PC, Mac) BY Dinosaur Polo Club New York City admits now that it made a mistake when first rejecting Massimo Vignelli’s subway map back in 1972. It had a modernist design that favo
Gardening has long been in videogames (I’m thinking Harvest Moon especially), but recently there’s been a sprig of interest in small, singular experiences that are concerned with nothing but the procuration of plants. This year alone we’ve had Viridi, Barmark, and Prune. Each of these find within th
If you’re still anxiously awaiting the hungry jaws of the big monster heads in GNOG, you’ll have to keep waiting until its 2016 release date. But, in the meantime, feel free to get swallowed up by the latest screens released by Ko-Op Mode. The screens highlight GNOG‘s polished yet playful art style,
Living in the Bay Area, Land’s End for me is the overly windy cliffside overlooking the chilly, probably densely-polluted San Francisco bay. For critically acclaimed Monument Valley creator Ustwo Games, Land’s End is something else entirely—a quiet, meditative VR game that was released today. In its
Videogame enthusiasts are pretty good at preserving their beloved medium’s history, even if it goes against the wishes of some industry trade groups. Emulators and ROMs, while technically piracy in most cases, allow old games that would otherwise be left to rot on cartridges or discs to live on in m
I’m a sucker for found footage films—the good, the bad, and the ugly, I’ve tried to watch them all. The same goes for horror games. So when something like The Tape comes along, a found footage-style horror game with a focus on “creating heavy atmosphere instead of cheap jump scares,” you immediately
Spawned from his background in photography, Ivan Notaros has come up with a beautiful way to explore a videogame world in his upcoming project Scanner. As the title reveals, it has you seeing through a first-generation robot’s eyes as it ventures into a post-humanity world, constructing 3D images wi
