Feature
The glorious ideas and terrible, terrible puzzles of Cradle
Cradle reminds us why videogames are obsessed with transhumanism
Puzzle
News
Piece your life together by piecing together broken pottery
I have but one question to ask about puzzles: if at some point a creator had a complete picture, why on earth would they smash it into pieces just so we would have to do more work before enjoying it? Kintsukuroi, an Android “experiment” by Chelsea Saunders, attempts to answer this question. It takes
Feature
The new King’s Quest looks to the past
King’s Quest shows the virtues and the limits of nostalgia.
News
Find peace by gardening the harmonious landscapes of Barmark
Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. Barmark (Android) BY Stormhatt Studios The characters in Barmark are all damaged in some way. You can see this as they wander the rigidly-cut pastoral landscapes guided by your finger. They a
News
We’ll Meet Again takes collaborative gaming offline
The Ear Force PX51 is a lot of headset—$296.95 worth of headset, to be precise. It is billed as an “advanced gaming audio system.” It comes with many features that are prefixed with “dual-”, which makes sense insofar as most people have two ears. All of that is a complicated way of saying the PX51 a
News
Mind-Mecca introduces you to the enormous world of inky black cryptology
The dark, cutting lines and enormous Nihei-inspired megastructures of last year’s NaissanceE gouged open a hole. It hit a crest among those using videogames to explore an idea: one that combined wordless, inky concrete cities with abstruse glyph puzzles, all bearing a byzantine approach to structuri
News
Prune is a breath of fresh air
Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. Prune (iOS) BY Polyculture Whether your thumbs are green or usually poised over a joystick, Prune will have something for you. As the virtual botanist/god of the universe, it’s up to you to h
News
Back to Bed’s creators on bringing surrealist architecture to videogames
From the melting clock to the overgrown green apples, the paint-chipped fingerprints of René Magritte and the flamboyant moustache of Salvador Dali are all over the topsy-turvy dreamscapes of Back to Bed. This puzzle game about escorting a somnambulist named Bob back to his duvet using the physical
Review
Pneuma has things to say. Don’t listen to them.
I babble, therefore I am
News
Tough Love Machine: a puzzle of 8-bit companionship
Like relationships themselves, representing the struggles of love in a digital format can be difficult. Andrew Morrish does just that in his newest game, Tough Love Machine.Tough Love Machine offers up a simple premise: unite two hearts. Like so many puzzle games before it, in execution this becomes
News
Feast your eyes on the lovely low-poly art of Traces of Light
“She belonged to a different age, but being so entire, so complete, would always stand up on the horizon, stone-white, eminent, like a lighthouse marking some past stage on this adventurous, long, long voyage, this interminable—this interminable life.” – Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway Sometimes, a vi
Review
Road to Gehenna is the harrowing of an online hell
It’s the New Testament to The Talos Principle’s Old Testament.