Neko Atsume (2014), the beloved cat game for smartphones, is being turned into a live-action movie. Meow indeed. That means it’ll feature real cats—proper little fluffballs that deserve all the strokes—so perhaps it stands a chance at being the best videogame-to-movie adaptation (not that it would t
Montreal-based programmer Brie Code has set up a new studio called Tru Luv Media that aims to make videogames with the help of people who don’t like videogames. The reason being that she wants her friends and people like them to care about games. These are people for who videogames do not resonate a
Chirag Chopra, the founder of New Delhi-based game studio Lucid Labs, got interested in finding out more about Asperger syndrome after watching a few movies about it, including Fly Away (2011) and A Brilliant Young Mind (2014). After doing research into the subject, Chopra decided that he wanted to
It’s only right that sci-fi point-and-clicker Samorost 3 gets a physical version. It’s a game that emphasizes tactility through its biological textures: from the gnarled knots of a planet made of tree bark to the soft sprigs of moss on one of its greener planets. The “Samorost 3 Cosmic Box” addresse
The students that made Quur say it’s a game about the impact of violence. But it’s not full of blood sloshing around the dirty concrete of some decrepit virtual city. Quur has the look of a game so innocent that you’d think it doesn’t even know what violence is outside of a kid stealing its lunch mo
Blame! (1998) is getting everywhere these days. The dark, vast architectural spaces of Tsutomu Nihei’s manga series seem to be steadily rising in popularity, like sentient tower blocks growing stories at a time, casting a deeper and deeper shadow over popular culture. Next year it’ll likely hit the
Rob Milus isn’t saying much, but it’s enough. He’s working on a game called Ekko with fellow game maker Peter Dijkstra, one that he’s only showed glimpses of on Twitter—abstract shapes floating across a space lit by a distant sun. I wanted to find out more, a lot more, but he only responded with a f
When I was a kid, my best friend and I used to spend hours playing various Tycoon games. I remember how excited she was to get the Zoo Tycoon Complete Collection (2003) for her birthday and how we stayed up all night crafting the perfect zoo. This was one of my first experiences with videogames, but
I was expecting Tom Kitchen to be reserved when talking about his upcoming vignette game Emporium. He’s shown plenty of images on the game’s TIGSource thread but not said a lot when it comes to what it’s about, leaving me to believe he wanted to keep it secretive. So I was taken aback when he came s
Barnaque is one of the most interesting freeware game studios to have emerged in the past few years. Comprised of the Montreal-based duo David Martin and Émeric Morin, Barnaque has made games that are often described as “batshit crazy” and “psychedelic,” mostly because the pair want to mess with pla
A strategy to use when exploring ruins in Dungeons & Dragons is to hug the wall. Have the beefiest party member (preferably a halfling barbarian) lead the way—not necessary, but a warrior knows how to survive. When presented with the option to turn either left or right, pick the latter. Always. The
You might not have heard of Aubrey Serr but it’s possible you’re familiar with some of his work. For the past eight years, he’s been a designer over at Wolfire Games, mostly working on the still unfinished Overgrowth—the game with the ninja bunnies—but also helped contribute to the studio’s 7DFPS en
Night Call‘s shade of noir-infused drama seems to be one part Drive (2011) and two parts Taxi Driver (1976). Upcoming for PC, iOS, and Android, Night Call will have you playing as a Parisian taxi driver who hopes to find the killer who has orchestrated a number of recent murders around the city. But
Videogames and philosophy are hardly strangers. Look to BioShock‘s (2007) exploration of Objectivism, the Determinism of The Stanley Parable (2013), and The Talos Principle (2015) with its toying of Functionalism and Behaviorism (and many other philosophies). The interactive nature of videogames, al
I work, live, and study in Washington, D.C.—undoubtedly one of the world’s most political cities. Here reside the highest stratum of politicians, lobbyists, and corporate cash-mongers. Here, too, live the downtrodden, the marginalized—systematically oppressed people of varying color, socioeconomic s
Last October, South Carolina made headlines when a thousand-year rainfall put much of the state underwater—that is, the chances of that amount of rain falling in a given year are 1-in-1,000. The storm drove residents from their homes onto dangerously flooded roads, leaving others trapped and in need
Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. Sara is Missing (Windows, Mac, iOS) BY MONSOON LAB Films like Unfriended and the recent Blair Witch have tried to bring the found footage genre into the digital age with varying success. But t
Keyboard Sports turned my Spacebar into a couch and that is so darn delightful. Thank you for that, Keyboard Sports. I’ve never really seen my keyboard as anything other than a set of lettered keys before. I barely look at it as I jam my fingers into it every day, typing up my thoughts, but now it h
“I think games are uniquely suited to doing interesting things with spatiality, it doesn’t matter what form this takes—pure audio, pure text, pure 2D, pure 3D, or any combination of these, games are just really good at spaces.” These are the words of Orihaus, a game maker who has made some of the in
Thatgamecompany has teased its next game after Journey (2012) with an image and the promise of its arrival in 2017. It’s also been confirmed that, unlike thatgamecompany’s previous three games—flOw (2006), Flower (2009), and Journey—it will not be exclusive to PlayStation platforms. The teases came
It’s been four years since first-person, survival-horror-in-space game Routine first pinged on my radar, and I barely know more about it now than I did then. This isn’t due to negligence on my part—Lunar Software, the team making it, have been very stringent on what info they put out into the wild.
Conor McCann has made lots of wonderful digital toys recently. Black Gold was one of them—a game that let you ruminate on life while sipping cold beer with a friend under the stars. The Echo Initiative was another, which had you keep a lost satellite company as it drifted forever through space. Ther
It’s been a while since I’ve seen a warning label at the beginning of a videogame trailer. “WARNING: This trailer contains violent footage and flashing images that some may find disturbing.” That’s how the Kickstarter trailers for Agony open up, before each of them start smashing heads open with fis
Tale of Tales is looking to remake the very first videogame they made as a collective—comprised of married couple Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn. They’re trying to raise €40,000 on Indiegogo in order to update the dated technology that runs the original version of the game so that it may live on fo
The keyword for the Austrian art group goldextra is “experience.” The group presented its online multiplayer game Frontiers with a sentence that fed this idea: “Don’t just watch, experience the news yourself.” Frontiers had virtual recreations of spaces in the Sahara, southern Spain, and Rotterdam s
