interactive art
Why Risa Puno's Games Ask You to Be Vulnerable in Public
Artist Risa Puno transforms familiar games into intimate spaces for emotional processing, stripping away fantasy to confront feelings directly.
tabletop games
tabletop games
Making Magic: The Malaysian Artists Decolonizing Fantasy Gaming
Malaysian creative duo Mun Kao and Zedeck Siew blend Southeast Asian folklore with tabletop gaming through their illustrated zine series A Thousand Thousand Islands, reimagining fantasy beyond Anglo-European traditions.
game design
Gayatri Kodikal: Excavating the ruins of history, time, and play
Artist Gayatri Kodikal transforms an archaeological mystery of a severed hand into an immersive game installation that challenges Western notions of time and history while weaving together colonial narratives, resistance stories, and South Asian perspectives.
Review
Fall of Magic turns everyone into a gifted author
Fall of Magic is the kind of free form storytelling you could do with your friends on the floor just about anywhere. Play some Howard Shore soundtracks in the background, light a few candles, and unroll the scroll. As an engine for creating stories it’s deceptively slight. From the rulebook: “Someon
Feature
The Dismal Western Front of The Grizzled
The First World War is often referred to as The Great War, due to its immense scope, as it incited all the world’s national powers and resulted in a devastating death toll. Set within this war is the tabletop game The Grizzled, which makes no attempt to capture such scale, and instead hones in on a
News
A new tabletop game challenges you to maximize ratings as a TV executive
Operating a television network is not a game. Hold your laughter and that thought. We’ll return to it momentarily. The Networks is a tabletop game that challenges players to perform the duties of TV executives who seek to maximize viewership and, consequently, profit. You bid for shows and talent an
News
Cards Against Urbanity lets you study and mock urban planning at the same time
The difference between Cards Against Humanity and the sort of flashcards used for revision is, I suppose, that the latter can come in a greater range of colours. Sure, “a cat video so cute your eyes roll back and your spine slides out your anus” is not the typical exam prompt, but the mechanics are
News
Forget Donald. The Contender stages your own, better presidential debate
The Contender is a tabletop game that combines the rhetoric of political campaigns and the mechanics of Cards Against Humanity, all of which raises a thorny interpretive question: Would tonight’s second Republican presidential debate be improved if it were replaced by a televised game of The Contend
News
Scale is exposing the challenges of scaling videogames
Scale is a puzzle game with a straightforward elevator pitch: “You wield a device that can make any item any size.” This is a popular pitch. It earned the game $108,020 in funding from over 5,000 backers during its Kickstarter campaign. Steve Swink, Scale’s creator, subsequently created an alpha ver
News
Why are tabletop games killing it on Kickstarter?
We are in the midst of a board game boom, and FiveThirtyEight has figured out why: Kickstarter. You should read the whole story, but here’s the crux of Oliver Roeder’s analysis: “Since [2009], pledges to board and card game projects on the site have totaled $196 million, according to the company. Ni
Review
Playing with yourself in Guild of Dungeoneering
Guild of Dungeoneering cutely recreates tabletop roleplaying.
Review
Splendor exhibits all the challenges of going from tabletop to tablet
Does a great boardgame make a great videogame? Not necessarily.