Grab tickets here! We at Kill Screen are thrilled to announce our partnership with Tribeca on the first ever Tribeca Games Festival. When Tribeca said they wanted to work with us to put on this incredible event, it was an opportunity we absolutely could not pass up. The Tribeca Games Festival is goi
This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel. Improving skills led “n0thing” into competitive esports, but fine-tuning his PC helps him outplay others. Jordan “n0thing” Gilbert was 16 when he gave up ice hockey to focus on conquering a new, uncharted frontier: the competitive esports wor
In partnership with NEW INC, we are excited to announce a series of workshops to accompany our upcoming Versions conference. Versions workshops offer participants a chance to learn best practices from the pros, get hands-on and investigate the practical side of creating compelling experiences for VR
This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel. Neko Atsume is a smartphone game where players can watch cats. They can’t pet them, or call to them, or scratch behind their ears. The most a player can do is buy a treat or toy and place it in a backyard. If the player is lucky, the toy will
Torment: Tides of Numenera is, in its own words, “chewy and full of strangeness.” The game’s beta sets players down in the city of Sagus Cliffs, where weird humans and alien “visitants” live in squalor beside buried spaceships. You meet citizens who can’t stop sprouting extra toes, others who drink
When the Wachowskis transported bullet-time over from Hong Kong cinema to The Matrix (1999), mainstream western audiences were wowed. This was the beginning of something new for action cinema, the ability for the camera to pivot around action, playing a moment from a multiplicity of angles that stun
This article is part of a series called Shut Up, Videogames, in which critic Ed Smith invites games old and new to pipe down, or otherwise. In this edition, he looks at today’s atmosphere of “gaming positivity” in games criticism. Rather than challenged by the emergence of different games and differ
I have never been to Paris. In my provincial life I’ve never even left the United States. Despite or, perhaps, due to my localism, I was beguiled by the vision of the city given by Luc Sante in his 2015 book The Other Paris. Sante provides an underground history of the city, of its crime and prostit
A series of opaque circles flicker around a crudely rendered pool table like digital fireflies. As you choose your shot, a program simulates the aftermath, allowing brief insights into the future before you’ve even decided what to do. The game is Oracle Billiards, named after, and partly inspired by
Tharsis begins with an event of astronomical improbability. Somewhere in the interplanetary medium, a meteoroid floating through space at 25 miles a second occupies the same bit of spacetime as the spaceship Inktomi, which is hurtling towards Mars at 11 miles a second. The ship and its crew have bee
This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel. For anyone who has tried to get down to a catchy pop song while holding a controller during a round of Just Dance, or missed a clutch tennis shot because the Wii didnt sense the swing, hands-free depth-sensing technology is a saving grace. W
This article is part of a series called Shut Up, Videogames, in which critic Ed Smith invites games old and new to pipe down, or otherwise. In this edition, he looks at the most recent addition to the legendary first-person-shooter series, DOOM. I know DOOM has a contingent of fans and critics who e
This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel. Indian game development is booming—or at least it is compared to where it was just a decade ago. Shailesh Prabhu, founder of Yellow Monkey studio and a lead designer on their isometric puzzle game Socioball, says that, “When I started working
This past summer saw, within a month of each other, the arrival of two of the year’s most unwanted works: Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman and Tale of Tale’s Sunset. No one asked for, and no one is celebrating, Watchman’s publication. Leaving aside the troubling context surrounding the “discovery” of
This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel. Asami Shigemitsu is nothing if not enthusiastic about her art. A freelance video director and illustrator, Shigemitsu is a graduate of the Kyoto Seika University School of Design. She’s had success with creating commissioned illustrations for
Though virtual reality has existed in some form since the 1960s, and in the realm of science fiction for much longer, 2016 promises to be a breakthrough year for the technology, with high-profile product launches and major releases in games and film. With that in mind we are thrilled to announce our
The Thing is one of the most peculiar media series to try and wrap your head around. For starters, as far as series go, it struggles to qualify, mostly orbiting John Carpenter’s 1982 film, with a small and loose assemblage of multimedia offshoots (a comic series, a prequel film) dancing at the edges
This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel. When Space Invaders dropped into Japanese arcades, the alien shooting gallery was such a phenomenon that the 100 yen piece, the equivalent of an American quarter, became a rarity. The games action was straightforward and exacting, and the na
In English, the word “apocalypse”—ety. Greek, n. apo (un-) + kaluptein (-veil)—has three non-exclusive uses. The first and most common is simply the end of the world, whether by divine punishment or whatever transpires in movies directed by Roland Emmerich. The second is any form of calamity, repres
This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel. Today, almost everyone can access entertainment on their PCs, consoles, tablets and smartphones. Anyone eager to own a new virtual reality headset, however, must first find out if their trusty computer is up to the task. Oculus released its c
This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel. After the 34-17 loss at the Rugby World Cup semi-finals last October, Australian fans could do with some escapism. But if they’re looking to relieve their broken hearts and reclaim the cup through a videogame fantasy, they’ll find that the me
My father always says there are two sides to every story. There’s one party’s side, the opposing party’s side, and then the truth tends to fall somewhere in the middle. Most videogames, however, exist in a vacuum of storytelling, where the player takes control of a set of heroes out to destroy a set
Generally when literature alludes to other media—Facebook, texting, film, the song “Hey, Soul Sister” by Train—my first reaction is to cringe. At its worst these mentions feel unnatural, lazy—the author’s gawky attempt to connect to the modern world or to an artistic tradition by simply referencing
