A product of 90s club-kid culture, Rez is getting a fancy re-release for PlayStation 4 and PSVR this fall. If you didn’t know, the 2001 music shooter is a bit of a cult classic, mostly among those who enjoy the rhythm and graphics that permeate its stylized game world. Like a psychoacoustic trip? Th
What is a city? It’s a question we rarely consider: that word, city, being such a useful label for the dense, multi-layered, contradictory, opaque, ever-changing, utopic, perverse, magical, and mundane piles of decaying masonry where most of the world’s population spend their lives. A city can be a
What do Super Mario Kart (1992), Vectorball (1988), and Frogs and Flies (1982) have in common? The answer is that they’re now all the same game. Bennett Foddy’s new experiment, called Multibowl, is a “collage” of these and hundreds of other two-player games, thrown together in quick succession in a
Urban planning is a rules-based game. Participants in the planning process have goals they wish to accomplish and constraints governing how their objectives can be achieved. Nowhere is this more the case than in London, where a complex series of regulations and protected sightlines have conspired to
You may have seen Rebecca Cordingley’s adorable videogame Moblets on Twitter. She’s got quite the following on there, with eager fans clamoring for more glimpses of the game, which she describes as a mixture of Harvest Moon (1996) and Pokémon. Twitter is Cordingley’s main form of marketing for Moble
“What the hell did I just play?” I pause the game after it’s finished and lean back in my chair, utterly confused. The Rock and The Rock promised five minutes of entertainment and it certainly delivered, although it’s taking longer to process what exactly took place. Created by Kevin Roark Jr., The
I have never attended a fancy socialite soirée before. On the chance occasion that my mind wanders as to what such experience would be like, my imagination inevitably concocts a scenario not unlike Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death (1842) mixed with a particularly fiendish round of Clue.
I’ve never met JP LeBreton but I know him because he knows the original Doom series. He wrote what is probably the most insightful design analysis of the game back in 2010; before he became a level designer for BioShock (2007) he learned the craft with Doom‘s level editor (and then demade his BioSho
A child is standing on a scrap of paper. “This diary belongs to Izzy,” she says. As you move her across these words and to the next page, another set of words appear: “I never knew my mum. It was mostly gran who brought me up.” This is Lost Words. It’s a story-driven platformer being created by UK-b
Revolution is a big word these days. We’re hearing about it a lot on social media, on all things, but its use in modern times is always tinged with the recent memory of the Arab Spring, and before it the color revolutions and aftereffects of the Revolutions of 1989. Now it has crept into American po
Prepare for one of the most famous deck of cards to hit a felted table near you: retailer AreaWare is releasing an IRL deck of playing cards patterned after the Solitaire decks from Windows 3. Designed in partnership with the deck’s original designer Susan Kare, the Solitaire cards feature the iconi
Heterotopias is a series of visual investigations into virtual spaces performed by writer and artist Gareth Damian Martin. /// There’s an unlikely thread of domesticity that runs through the heart of Uncharted 4, alongside the exoticism of its adventuring and the breezy violence of its combat. On th
Anyone who had the misfortune of going through bible school will know the story: the Jewish people spent generations in slavery, tortured at the hands of great Pharaohs, before God inflicted 10 plagues upon Egypt to free his ill-treated servants. What wasn’t covered in the Abrahamic texts, though, w
Just hearing the name Burly Men at Sea—along with watching its trailers, filled to the brim with a bouncing, benevolent brawniness–effectively communicates what it’s like to play the game. You embark on a journey as not one, not two, but three Brothers Beard, who put the lumbersexual hipster trend t
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
You’d be hard pressed to find a song you want that isn’t on Spotify—except, until recently, beloved soundtracks of games like Halo (2001), Portal 2 (2011), and even the original The Sims (2000). The release of Spotify Gamers has further expanded Spotify’s gargantuan library, including pretty much ev
There’s a certain amount of nostalgia contained within arcades. Their dark interiors lit by bright lights, a cacophony of sound and the steady hum of people talking punctuated by laughter. At their best and worst, arcades are remembered as being sticky, hot spaces where communities came together. Th
Scumbags on the internet causing trouble again? Dropsy (2015) creator Jay Tholen knows who to call—The Hypnospace Enforcers! Hypnospace Outlaw takes players to the literal information superhighway as internet defenders. “In said future, most people work for a powerful corporatocracy all day, and cru
You drift slowly into the unnamed planet’s atmosphere, eager to set your spacecraft down and explore the endless possibilities put forward by the procedurally generated landscape. The ship begins to shake gently as you make your descent, the view outside reduced to a motion blur of saturated colors
Given the mixed reaction to No Man’s Sky—we love it, others not so much—plus the fact that you have to lay down $60 on it in one go (not to mention the troubles with the PC version), perhaps you’re hesitant to buy in. Or, perhaps you’ve played it and have been disappointed by it. That’s fine. But th
Even though the board is bared to both players, chess is a kind of stealth game. Each piece is moved in plain sight, but a successful chess player is hiding her intentions from her opponent. That opponent understands that her goal is to force a checkmate, but spends the game trying to deduce and blo
Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. Magic Wand (Windows, Mac, Linux) By thecatamites Stephen Murphy, aka thecatamites, is perhaps best known for his parody game Space Funeral (2010). In it, he deconstructs the JRPG by taking the
Devolver Digital’s new(ish) publish is crowned by the hammer and sickle, the symbol made famous by the Soviet Union, but in place of the hammer is a golden syringe. A look at the game itself sees dark corridors, growling dogs, ripped bouncers, and lots of bodies. Mother Russia Bleeds, or rather, MOT
With the majority of the 2016 Rio Olympics now behind us, it’s easy to feel a little inadequate. Michael Phelps has now won more Olympic gold medals than anyone in 2,000 years; Simone Manuel made history on Thursday when she became the first African-American woman to win an Olympic gold medal in swi
First created in 1966, Japanese candy maker Ezaki Glico’s sugary biscuit sticks “Pocky” have since become a worldwide favorite. From chocolate to strawberry, cream cheese to pumpkin, the idea is for there to be a flavor available for every occasion imaginable. It’s this kind of thinking that Glico h
