indigenous design
Playing with Purpose: Elizabeth LaPensée's Cultural Game Design
Elizabeth LaPensée integrates Indigenous knowledge into game design, creating experiences that honor traditional ways of knowing while addressing contemporary issues.
experimental
Virtual Reality
Andrew Thomas Huang: Assembling universes with magic and motion
Andrew Thomas Huang blends CGI, puppetry, and virtual reality to create immersive worlds, from Björk's VR experiences to FKA twigs' music videos.
generative art
Zach Gage: Dreaming of systems
Artist Zach Gage moves fluidly between gallery installations, mobile games, and conceptual art, exploring how interactive systems shape human behavior and experience.
digital art
Cassie McQuater: The textures and tensions of game design
Artist Cassie McQuater transforms video game sprites and digital landscapes into hypnotic browser-based experiences, examining insomnia through interactive digital collage.
News
Are relationships worth it or not? Find out in The Door
Your fingers hover above the keyboard, hesitating to type out a response to the enthusiastic bubble that pops onto the screen, asking about your day. It’s tiring, trying to keep up the charade. When did the shift occur? At what point did communicating become a chore as opposed to a treat? A lazy res
News
An unfinished demo provides a surreal meditation on grief
Outside, the waves crash against the shore rhythmically. Inside, a broken robot suit lies sprawled on a bed, one arm yanked off and left dramatically on the floor. It’s accompanied by a keyboard that, upon further inspection, is literally made of gold. You can pick up the broken arm, or attempt to p
News
The creator of Off-Peak is making another uncanny museum
Early last year, independent game maker Cosmo D came bursting onto the scene with Off-Peak (2015), a bizarre exhibition of artifacts that is museum, musical, and story all at once. It threw you into a train station on the very edge of reality and gave you a task to do, begging you not be distracted
News
Broken Reality wants to take you on an adventure through ’90s internet
So, last time we saw the game—experiment? accident? digital hellbeast?—Broken Reality, it was more of a hyper-animated art collage than anything. A game lurked somewhere behind all the faux-Myspace popups, it was said, but there were no actual details to be found. A vague teaser trailer gave a glimp
News
You guys, Porpentine wrote a game in Google Forms
Porpentine, the matriarch of experimental Twine games, is at it again. Known as the creator of games such as With Those We Love Alive (2014), Cry$tal Warrior Ke$ha (2013), and the XYZZY award-winning Howling Dogs (2012), her trademark is evocative prose and bold subject matter: she often discusses f
News
How No Truce With The Furies is pushing videogame writing further
No Truce With The Furies, in addition to being an oil painting come to life, is a game with a very high standard for writing. Developer Fortress Occident boasts a published science-fiction author in its writing team, and the game cites as inspirations text-heavy Infinity Engine games like Planescape
News
Soft Body helps you find serenity among chaos
Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. Soft Body (PC, PlayStation 4) BY ZEKE VIRANT The words “bullet-hell” may not immediately call calm and tranquility to mind. But meditative app/game Soft Body is here to fix that. Combining the
Issue 01
Licking Her Boot
A talk with the independent gamemaker, critic, sadist, and creator of Mighty Jill Off, Calamity Annie, and Redder