Prashast Thapan: To live and die
Through his upcoming game "1000 Deaths," designer Prashast Thapan examines mortality and perspective by having players cycle through multiple lives in condensed 15-minute experiences.
death
Data rot: Death and dying in the virtual age
This is a preview of an article you can read on our new website dedicated to virtual reality, Versions. Illustration by Gareth Damian Martin /// “And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to reproaches and everlasting abhorrence” (Daniel 12:
Climb a mystical mountain in a game based on Tibetan Buddhism
In Tibetan Buddhism, the space between death and rebirth is called bardo, a liminal period containing six—or four, depending on the source or scholar—different states, experienced in phases from birth to death to rebirth. This “limbo” is a journey in multiple senses, both to a spiritual conclusion a
An upcoming game about a dog looking for its dead owner
Katabasis, a term describing a hero’s descent into the underworld, is seen often in Greek myth. Odysseus spoke to spirits during his voyage and was frightened by the looming depths. Hermes rescued Persephone from her unwilling marriage to the god of death, granting her half of every year above groun
Inside wants to devour you
Everyone who has ever played Éric Chahi’s Another World (1991) remembers the “Beast.” Emerging from a pool of water, you see a four-legged silhouette perched menacingly on a nearby ledge. The creature then exits to the right. On the next screen it appears momentarily in the background, but you’re di
Kologeon, the new roguelike-like-like for you to marvel at
The term “roguelike” was originally derived from the game Rogue (1980), a dungeon crawler that popularized procedurally generated levels and permadeath. Rogue spawned an entire genre of likeminded games. In the 2000s, game makers lifted inspiration from old roguelikes to craft wholly new generated e
Mourn your favorite Game of Thrones characters in this virtual graveyard
Warning: this story will allude to events up to Episode 5 in Season 6 of Game of Thrones. Featured image is censored because I don’t want to get yelled at on the Internet for spoilers. What is dead may never die. Valar morghulis. Hodor. HBO’s bleak fantasy epic Game of Thrones, based on the book ser
The many faces of grief in Fragments of Him
Content warning: Death, PTSD, graphic imagery I don’t have many memories from when I was eight-years-old. It feels so long ago, and if I try to think back on them now, they tend to blend together. But there’s one night I’ll never forget, even in the smallest details. We had pizza that evening. I got
A landscape of memory; returning to Shadow of the Colossus
This article is part of PS2 Week, a full week celebrating the 2000 PlayStation 2 console. To see other articles, go here. /// It’s hard to calculate the distance from the clifftop to the sea below. My body, my eyes, the trembling in my legs tells me it is far, too far. Yet I can make out the marblin
Philosophical mobile game reimagines Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal
Rocco Salvetti might be not your typical videogame maker. After studying philosophy, he decided he wanted a new adventure in IT. “I had a good job, but curiosity took over. I left and started all over,” he said. He moved from Italy to England, finding in London the right place to settle down and to
A pretty game about a fox will explore how we cope with death in the family
David Wehle is a game designer and recent father now coping with the loss of a loved one. Life and death have been, to put it lightly, on his mind. His upcoming game The First Tree is a personal, painful reckoning with a universal experience. The First Tree is a game with two parallel stories: one f
Make murder look like an accident in Death’s Life
If you were to rap your knuckles across Death’s wooden door you might expect a black hooded cloak wielding a scythe to welcome you in. This is the most well-known image of Death over here in the contemporary west. But the personification of our greatest fear has a rich history and comes in many form
New podcast is dedicated to discussing death and videogames
A new podcast called PlayDead explores the intersection of loss, death anxiety, death positivity, and game mechanics. It’s hosted by Gabby DaRienzo, who openly confesses to being obsessed with “death positivity.” And, in fact, DaRienzo wrote a piece for Kill Screen last year, titled Death Positivity
Blackstar won’t tell you how to die
I spent a lot of time this week listening to “Subterraneans,” the last song on 1977’s Low, by David Bowie. I didn’t know what else to do. Like a lot of other people, I had a feeling—this response to death we all have, with varying degrees of terror and/or sadness attached to it—combined with the use
Orchids to Dusk lets you find a quiet place to die
Be warned: This article spoils all the surprise of Orchids to Dusk that is so crucial to the first-time experience, so it’s best played before reading. /// The fallen astronaut in Orchids to Dusk is not eager for adventure. You can see this in their hands, which are timidly held together, head shyly
A somber "graveyard simulator" finds the stories behind epitaphs
On hallowed ground.
The 100 Million Deaths of the Martyr We Call Mario
What happens to Mario when he dies?
Death Positivity in Videogames
Changing the mechanics of mortality.
Experience the slow crawl toward death and decay as a lonely old lady
I watched the movie Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles in a film class during college and it brought me to the brink of insanity. For those who are not familiar with the three-and-a-half-hour Belgian movie released in 1975, it predominantly consists of the mundane activities of a si
Dark Souls III’s new trailer shows us the face of death
There’s a giant skull fella leering out of the darkness towards a pale light in the new Dark Souls III trailer. As it has no flesh, you can’t tell if the facial expression it might pull as the torch-bearing knight walks up to it would be a sneer of anger, or a less hostile and quizzical one. All we
Killing Lara Croft
Our 20-year obsession with the Tomb Raider’s demise
Fragments of Him multiplies its tragedy to reflect how death affects us all
This is a complete coincidence, but a year ago—to this exact day—I reached into my gut to pull out feelings I’d forced to exist down there for a long time. Today, I’m doing the same, as I wrote about Fragments of Him then, and I’m doing the same now. It’s a first-person drama that explores how a guy
Memory Burn wants you to imagine digital death. That’s real enough.
The Sims as a series of macabre social experiments.
A videogame that captures a son’s final moments with his dying father
Stephen Clark on making a game about his father’s final months battling ALS.
The deformed, lonely bodies of Kyttenjanae’s colorful worlds
Kyttenjanae depicts loneliness and sickness in an unusual way. It’s almost always as a rainbow-flavored mix of gross-out and grace. The signature animated art that she shares on her Tumblr page is recognizable for the eyeless humanoids that ebb and flow as if made of pink and polychromatic liquids.