multitask [muhl-tee-task, -tahsk, muhl-tahy-] 1: (of one person) to perform two or more tasks simultaneously. We’re all busy people. And being busy, we have to multitask. For instance, imagine me commuting somewhere (a rarity—working from home and all), listening to a podcast, and styling my adorabl
Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. Bound (PlayStation 4) BY PLASTIC STUDIOS & SIE SANTA MONICA STUDIO Rhythm games may use dancing animations to show a beat, but not many games engage with dance as an artform. In Bound, the bea
We were exposed to the first part of the sci-fi videogame trilogy The Fall over two years ago now. It’s about time some more info on the second part arrived—and that it has, and with a trailer to boot. You can expect it to arrive during first quarter of 2017 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Wii U, Window
Being a doctor in olden times wasn’t an easy task. With no antiseptics, antibiotics, or anesthesia, caring for patients even now wouldn’t be an easy task. You can throw on top of that constant plagues and, oh yeah, replace all modern medical knowledge with cures such as peeing into someone’s ear to
Resident Evil 7 looks really gross. But, judging by the amount of work going into it, that may be the best compliment it can be given. Speaking at the 2016 Computer Entertainment Developers Conference, people from Capcom working on Resident Evil 7 showed off some of the ways they’re using photogra
Grandpa has a big date but his house is a mess. The bed is unmade. Dinner is uncooked. Junk mail is strewn about. With only a minute to spare, can he whip the house in shape before his date arrives? Grampy Katz in: The Big Date is a short but adorable game made by Brent “Meowza” Kobayashi and Brand
Windows 95 had a lot going for it: its iconic startup sound; its soothing teal background; Internet Explorer in its earliest, purest form; and my personal favorite, the Paint program. Today, if you’re ever feeling particularly nostalgic, you can run Windows 95 in your browser. (True to history, atte
Wouldn’t it have been easier to tell Mylan CEO Heather Bresch—whose main claim to fame involves jacking up the price of Epipens in the US—to delete her account? Is The GOP Arcade’s latest release, Epipen Tycoon, a game with which we must reckon simply because Bresch does not currently have a Twitter
“Set in a distant future in an evocative African landscape … he is not from this place or time …” states the tantalizing blurb on Beautiful Desolation‘s website. Those are the only hints regarding the narrative of the next adventure game from The Brotherhood, the team behind bleak sci-fi horror adve
When ReCore’s first trailer premiered at E3 2015, the protagonist Joule and her scrappy robot dog charmed everyone with their expeditious tag-team adventure. Evoking Rey’s lone scavenger vibe from Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), the brief blast of combat at the trailer’s end promised creative,
Campo Santo has been sorta laying low since the release of Firewatch earlier this year. But that time is over. The studio has now decided it’s about time to deliver DLC for the game in the form of two new and much-requested modes. The announcement came alongside the Xbox One version’s reveal, which
It all began with a phone number hidden within Oxenfree’s in-game radio stations, or “anomalies.” When called, it played the song “Beacon Beach,” by artist scntfc, the composer behind the game’s soundtrack. Well, so what? Go back and listen again and you’ll find lines of morse code in the song, with
Have you ever been to the dog opera before? Well, you simply must go! If you haven’t, David Kanaga has you covered. Co-creator of Proteus (2013) and Panoramical (2015), Kanaga will be showing off the Oik OS Book during the Fantastic Arcade from September 26-29th in Austin TX. According to the inform
Gender norms are a pain. For women, it means that every day there’s a pressure to conform to certain standards of living that don’t always match up with our personalities. We’re told to straighten our hair. Use makeup. Wear long dresses. Don’t become videogame journalists. These are just a few of th
Let’s be frank: it’s not easy working as a woman in games. The past few years have been particularly tough for us. But as women in games, each of us feels a responsibility to help and support each other while working in this space. Especially when it comes to helping young women enter the field. Whe
Lotus Dimension, a tabletop game by Scott Wayne Indiana that’s currently on Kickstarter, riffs on the best-known parts of Dungeons & Dragons (1974)—lots of adventure, deep storytelling, and actively encouraging creativity—but removes another: combat. Gone is the hack’n’slash, the destructive sorcery
How does a videogame introduce story to the player? Better yet, how does a game invoke emotion in the constrained physical world space of a game? We’ve seen it done in ham-fisted fashion: see the much maligned “Press F to Pay Your Respects” from Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, or consider the tradit
Heterotopias is a series of visual investigations into virtual spaces performed by writer and artist Gareth Damian Martin. /// What makes a battlefield different from any other place? Our towns, cities, fields, and parks are all potential battlefields, with lines of sight, choke-points, defensible t
Warning: the content of the video included is NSFW and contains references to sexual violence. /// At the start of Paul Verhoeven’s latest film Elle, a woman is violently raped. The rest of the story is about how that woman, a French videogame executive played by Isabelle Huppert, deals with her rel
The sky is blue. That much we can agree on. Or can we? I mean, where I reside in San Francisco, it’s typically an ominous shade of grey (because, fog). In the clever new platformer Hue, from Fiddlesticks Games, the sky doesn’t have to be blue. Not always at least. The sky can be crimson red, fuchsia
Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. N++(Windows, PlayStation 4) BY METANET SOFTWARE There hasn’t been an N game on PC since the first one back in 2004. Now the second sequel, N++, has arrived on its home platform (it’s also avai
If we understand the “zombie movie” as a particular set of plot beats and characters, George A. Romero’s films are what brought that to the mainstream. There’s a mysterious disease, followed by lots of killing and running from zombies, then—in Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Day of the Dead (1985), at l
Most videogames are a battle of sorts between the player and the creators. Horror games use tone, aesthetic, sound, lighting, to scare and unease you. Carefully placed enemies and arenas offer challenging conflicts. Gauntlets of chasms and hazards await to test the player’s platforming prowess. But
Toronto-based app developer Snowman has been having a delightful amount of success lately. Its endless runner (endless snowboarder?) Alto’s Adventure (2015) is a lighthearted, beautiful game that seemed to take great joy in doing backflips over towering mountains. Its popularity was as much due to t
Ever since Hideo Kojima’s ambitious demo, P.T. (2014), got cancelled there has been a slew of similar games announced, all looking to carry its torch. Some of them have since been cancelled, while others are still ostensibly in the throes of development, with rare updates on how things are going. Ho
