News
Dice Have No Eyes turns push-your-luck into a fever dream
Arco artist Franek Nowotniak and coder Max Cahill made a gambling roguelike where managing your own greed is the entire design.
Pixel Art
Tools
Before making a game, Lotritsa Studio shipped the tool
Kaleidos makes Perlin noise, cellular noise and reaction-diffusion playable
Generative Art
Travess Smalley's pixel rugs get a fluorescent monograph
Vetro Editions prints 192 pages of generative weaving in UV-reactive inks, with essays by Casey Reas and Anika Meier.
Tenebris Somnia
When the pixels cut away, Tenebris Somnia goes live-action
Andrés Borghi—the VFX artist behind When Evil Lurks—and Saibot Studios shot the film sequences with real actors and practical effects; New Blood publishes October 16.
graphical fidelity
How low-fidelity pixels expose games' emotionless arms race
A new film shot on a 2008 cell phone has me convinced games have been losing an arms race they shouldn't be running—pixels and feeling were never the same thing.
game aesthetics
Why P.T. Anderson Gets Away With "Retro" But Games Don't
Why do filmmakers using vintage VistaVision get praised for aesthetic choice while pixel-art games get labeled "retro"? The difference reveals everything.
News
Is this Twitter bot the next Bob Ross?
Bob Ross is a man that needs no introduction, but I’ll write one anyway. Bob was a television host from long ago that taught the world how to paint. His signature afro, calming voice, and beautifully hand-painted vistas made him a household name in the 1980s and 1990s, until he lost his battle with
News
Pocket Kingdom might be the start to some epic pixel-art games
The pixel artist who calls himself “08–n7R6-7984” probably has too many projects on the go. The one that has caught the most attention is RE5734L3R, which follows a robot that makes its way up the class system of a mechanical cyberpunk city by stealing the social chips of other robots. It’s the pixe
News
Balthazar’s Dream reveals what good boys dream of, and it’s ruff
A soft whimper causes you to look up from your work. It’s your dog, who is sleeping peacefully in bed. Is she dreaming? Her legs twitch slightly. Maybe she’s running around in a field, chasing a squirrel. She’s too old to do that now, but you like to think that the tiny mammal stood no chance in the
Pixel Art
A Field Guide to Modern Pixel Art
Nostalgia, revision, meta and noise: the four moves by which a new generation of pixel artists is pushing the form past 8-bit pastiche.
News
One game creator’s way to overcome depression? Make an uplifting game
The blinds are drawn. The room is dark and quiet. It’s past noon, and you’re still in bed. Your eyes are fixated on the carpet, bland and beige. The walls are white and bare, the furniture is hard and stiff. What is supposed to be a safe and comfortable space feels more like a prison—you are trapped
Review
Owlboy is a masterful tale of transcending disability
My girlfriend speaks softly. She’s a ghost on the phone. If you ever met her in person, you’d lean in a little when she introduced herself. You could say it’s her personality. But you’d only be half right. The other half has something to do with a very large truck that collided with her small body w