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Kick Picks #1

We’ve been selected by Kickstarter to create a curated page so we can spotlight projects that we think fit in with the Kill Screen ethos. Without further ado, here are our first picks.

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Review: Tetris

A review of Tetris at 22 lines, 10 words a line.

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Let There Be Play: Nordic Game Jam 2011

When he walked past the office at 5:00 a.m. on Sunday morning, Paolo saw my wife and me sleeping facedown on a desk, sitting side-by-side on rolling chairs. On the screen of my laptop, the tail end of Kiki’s Delivery Service was squeaking away, Kirsten Dunst’s piercing voice somehow failing to wake

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Review: Dinner Date

If videogames are two things, they are spatial and temporal: concepts a Kantian would say are human instincts. Likewise, poetry often uses space (imagery) and time (rhythm and meter) to magnify the emotional details of human experience. Dinner Date poeticizes our small, unconscious tics. A tutorial

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Review: The Dream Machine

“SURREALISM, n. Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express—verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner—the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral conc

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Review: …But That Was [Yesterday]

You won’t take arms against it, but you will face a literal sea of troubles in Michael Molinari’s Flash game …But That Was [Yesterday]. An oily, churning wall—seemingly made of memories—blocks your way. Your first objective is to figure out how, by opposing, you can end it.

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Review: Super Crate Box

Things get out of hand quickly in Super Crate Box. It always feels unexpected. Maybe it’s because the game seems so simple: Collect crates to score points; careful around the enemies. The pixel style hints at halcyon days, and gameplay traces a direct lineage to the old Mario Bros. arcade game.

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Review: Effing Meteors

Effing Meteors is a game about jilted love. A very angry god (think Jonathan Edwards-level fury) has decided that he’s no longer pleased with the little planet below, and it now deserves judgment. Punishment, of course, is the domain of the meteors. As this angry god, you desire satisfaction in the

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Review: UFO on Tape

It’s a simple idea, really. A single object hovers, darts and dashes in every direction, and I am tasked with following it for as long as possible. There are no power-ups in UFO on Tape, no other levels. This is it. I’m filming a UFO.

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To Click or to Click

“What does the Like icon really communicate?” As teenagers we spoke in likes. We would articulate our thoughts about a new interest, and we would fail. We used the word “like” to cover up our mistakes. This Radiohead album is like, like, um, kind of a—it’s like, you know, those electronic undercurr

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Isolation Chambers

A famous political thriller opens with a scene of KGB officials deploying a dreaded torture technique: complete sensory deprivation. A man is suspended in a vat, in complete darkness, all his senses rescinded. The point of the test is to determine how long it takes for this man to panic to the point

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Critical Failure

I’ve never been reviewed. I’ve received angry fan letters now and again, but I’ve never had the distinct privilege (or dishonor) of having my work evaluated by a professional. That feeling of reading another man or woman’s words; their reflections, critiques, and assumptions about what I’ve poured m