Even in board game form, games by Studio Oleomingus are simply mesmerizing. The team behind Somewhere, a surreal stealth game set in an alternate world version of colonial India, have started work on an unnamed historical project about running a Portugese colony in 17th century Goa. In a recent post
In the United States, we tend to get wrapped up in our own abhorrent capitalist practices because, well, we’re the best at it. But we forget that ruthless capitalism is a world-wide disease, infesting the planet with hypocrisy and Marxist nightmares. Tesco, a supermarket chain ranked as the 2nd larg
I didn’t find the monster in The Howl, but I knew it was there: a looming silhouette out in the blinding white of the forest’s sparse horizon. I’d get a glimpse in the corner of my eye and ready my bow, but then the violent winds would start up, casting a layer of snowy fog to obscure my vision agai
Where, if anywhere, is the line between casually offensive videogames and transparently hateful videogames situated? How many white, male playable characters and tokenized female or minority NPCs does a game need before we declare that the whole enterprise is rotten? These questions come up with ala
Sci-fi survival horror game SOMA wants to mess with your head in every way imaginable. Set in a remote underwater research facility doing some wacky shit with robots and artificial intelligence, the player must survive the aftermath of its collapse into chaos. While recalling visuals from BioShock‘s
There’s a narrator who routinely mutters random, bewildering sentences to Adam Mathes on his Twitter feed. He’s fine with it. He put the narrator there himself. It’s actually somewhat of a comfort. This narrator exists under the Twitter handle @quest_ebooks but started out life in Sierra Entertainme
When I was a kid, I had a small plastic sandbox on my patio in the shape of a turtle. It came with a little turtle shell cover to keep the sand clean and safe when I wasn’t playing with it, but looking back on it as an adult, that stuff still probably wasn’t all that sanitary. Still, it was always o
Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. Unsolicited (PC, Mac, Linux) BY Lucas Pope Given the vacuity of the junk mail that mailboxes regularly puke onto entrance mats, you’d be forgiven to think there wasn’t a single soul behind it
Eerie adventure game Year Walk is headed to the Wii U, but rather than celebrate with a spin-off, or DLC, or other things game companies like to put out before a new release, Simogo has published an eBook called Year Walk Bedtime Stories for Awful Children to mark the occasion. Bedtime Stories for A
To be, or not to be—that is a rhetorical question, and it gets at the challenges facing anyone who wishes to convert Shakespeare’s Hamlet into a videogame. Games are about the ways user choices can shape a narrative and Hamlet—well, let’s just say he prefers to keep his own counsel. Every level mus
You know who I’ve always admired? Divine. She was only a stage persona, a high-camp drag queen and music act, but one that challenged notions of beauty and decency while entertaining the hell out of you. I first came across Divine in John Waters’s cult classic midnight movie Pink Flamingos (you may
Return of the Obra Dinn is an upcoming Lucas Pope game with visuals so quietly gorgeous and ghost-like that only a haunting story about being lost at sea could match it. Pope, seemingly having observred the beautiful 8 to 16-bit games coming out over the past couple years, has decided to double down
In game designer Morgan Sea’s Zine Fair Lady, players navigate a queer zine fair through the eyes of a transgender woman. Though such spaces often ostensibly aim to be inclusive toward people of all sexual orientations and genders, in practice, organizers and attendees focus most on the most well-un
Even people who don’t give a shit about art are aware of the masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance. If you think you’re an exception then let me destroy that notion for you. Heard of the Mona Lisa? Statue of David? How about The Creation of Adam? If you have (and, yes, you definitely have) then yo
Expect lots of awkward laughs and online chats in Cibele Discover the contours of your virtual identity and sexuality in Cibele Catch an early glimpse at Nina Freeman’s Cibele, an exploration of cyber life and sex. See past the avatar and into the soul in Nina Freeman’s latest game Cibele
