This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel. If you’re reading this, you probably have internet. In fact, you may rely on the internet for a significant portion of the day. You may wake up in the morning and check the weather on your phone, or use your laptop to type out a message to yo
There was one point in my life where I thought about becoming a member of the FBI. In the months prior to my graduation from college, I had decided that I could put the 200+ hours that I had invested into The X-Files to good use. Of course, after I learned of the trials and tribulations one had to g
What you make of Quentin Tarantino’s latest genre genuflection The Hateful Eight will really come down to one thing: how many times can you tolerate a woman getting hit in the face? The gauntlet is thrown down early: Kurt Russell’s ursine bounty hunter John Ruth smashes his captive, Jennifer Jason L
I think I started writing about videogames because I was lonely. What I found in games was a sorely needed form of two-way communication. It started sometime in 2007 when I happened across the Indygamer blog (founded by Tim W., who I’ve now joined in doing similar work on Warp Door), which was regul
Header image and artwork by Caty McCarthy 25. Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime (Asteroid Base) Neon cuteness belying hardened spacefaring carnage. A manic platformer disguised as a cheerful shoot-em-up. Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime is a lot of things, and all of those things are descending on you
“2015 is the year of the board game,” I told everyone I knew. I wrote it out in emails. I typed the words out in text messages. I casually said it over the phone. If friends or family wanted to get me something for my birthday, a PlayStation gift card would not do: I had a manicured Amazon wish list
When asked about the origins of Star Wars at a Sundance panel earlier this year, George Lucas didn’t describe a mystical story some muse had moved him to tell. Nor did he frame his films as an epic family soap opera he was inspired to get on celluloid. Neither did he delve into the many filmic influ
“Why Is NASA Exploring Pluto? NASA sends spacecraft to other planets because exploring space is exciting.” NASA Educational Technology Services, 2015 The Sputnik Planum, Pluto It emerges out of the ancient, cratered highland of the Viking Terra like a great lake, rippled with vast waves and sectione
There aren’t many games where the player can be a club dancer, strapped-for-cash and performing for tips in a sleazy bar. There are fewer where that bar is filled with fish people and space bears. When Star Wars Galaxies first released in 2003, it did so under the tagline “Live in the Star Wars Univ
Yoda Stories wasn’t much more than a lightweight diversion for preteens with a propensity to hog time on the family desktop. With an overhead view, players guided a cartoonishly large-headed Luke Skywalker, ordered by Yoda to visit various planets to save his friends, collect piles of robot junk, an
A word of warning. This is an article about Star Warped, a comedic CD-Rom and a comet made of raw 1997 that swung by this planet without many noticing. Parts of this summation are painfully, extraordinarily, and sickeningly 1997, so if you’re concerned about hearing a dial-up tone in your head simil
Growing up, graphic adventures were essential. Sure, I might have gone to Greg’s house to race through some Mario Kart tracks now and then, or called up Izzy if I were looking for the vicarious thrill of watching him charge the dark corridors of DOOM (I was too skittish to actually play). But at hom
Horizon Chase mixes old-school pixel graphics with state-of-the-art polygon video game technology to give nostalgic players the ultimate arcade experience.
In 1993, LucasArts released Star Wars: X-Wing, a space flight simulator that let the player fly as part of the Rebel Alliance in missions focused on ambushing Imperial forces and gathering intelligence. The game received near universal critical acclaim for its authenticity as both a window into the
Stage One They call Hoth “the ice planet,” because that’s exactly what it is. I found that out immediately upon arriving at the Rebels’ Echo Base mere days ago. The word “Hoth” even sounds frigid, like the exhale of visible breath in winter. We’re out in the middle of nowhere on Hoth, a tiny speck o
This article was written using products provided by Alienware and the The Alienware Steam Machine First Look program. It’s been over a month since Kill Screen’s first piece introducing the Alienware Steam Machine and our blossoming relationship, and you’re probably wondering how we’ve been getting a
This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel. The eSports fever that has taken the world by storm is largely driven by its popularity throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas. But there are still billions of people on the sidelines in countries where competitive gaming has yet to take o
This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel. For an entire generation of players, there is nothing sweeter than scoring the winning kill in a Halo death-match and leading your team to victory. With the first-ever Halo World Championship, Microsoft is making a concentrated effort to get
This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel. Mental illness is a complex, nuanced subject that many forms of entertainment have tried to faithfully portray. Movies such as Silver Linings Playbook and TV series like Showtimes’ Homeland have succeeded to varying degrees, but many attempts
Rough, discontinuous edges; looming architectural masses; bulging swathes of colour—all of them luminous, or cast in shadow. These are just some of the effects you encounter in the growing genre of freeware horror and landscape games, spearheaded by the likes of ceMelusine, Kitty Horrorshow, and Con
In an interview for The Guardian, Ryan Green, one of the developers of That Dragon, Cancer, said, “We’ll have less games about saving the world and more about saving your child.” As developers and audiences grow older, more personal stories start to appear as subjects in games, led specially by the
When he comes onstage in the second-to-last panel in Tribeca Games’ “The Craft and Creative of League of Legends,” Tanet “Jacky” Puangngoen is not an immediately imposing figure. He’s on the shorter side, with a kind face and polite demeanor. Nevertheless, when he throws a mock punch in demonstratio
Buzzard, which was created in part by the forward-leaning design squad Babycastles, and recently launched at their gallery in New York, marks its own territory somewhere between a standalone game and a movie tie-in. Inspired by the recent film of the same name by Joel Potrykus, the game is less an a
Colossal Cave Adventure (or, Adventure for short) isn’t exactly a familiar title today. Developed during the early 1970s, Adventure was written by programmer Will Crowther while working for Bolt, Beranek and Newman. Crowther was an advent cave explorer, and had vast experience surveying the Kentucky
