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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

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

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

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.

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.