Browsing category: Overviews
Approaching exit velocity, my tiny body spirals wildly as I desperately hope I can catch the orbit of the platform across the void. Mice have it rough out here in space, unable to travel the stars properly any longer, they resort to flinging themselves from destination to destination, floating the gaps alone. mouse sector has the player tackling the minutiae of this, showing the player a sliver of the galaxy that they can delve into, jam-packed with secrets.
The Dismount games are… something, all right. The brainchildren of Jetro Lauha (@jlauha) of Finnish demogroup tAAt, they lie at the intersection of puzzle games, stress toys, and simulators. They both meet this intersection in about the same way; they distinguish themselves from each other in their execution.
Need For Madness is the brainchild of one-man Egyptian studio Radical Play (Omar Waly). Simply put, it’s a cartoonish driving game where every stage can be won as a race or as a demolition derby, at the player’s discretion. Its current iteration is grand and ambitious, a comprehensive single-executable package including the original game, the sequel, multiplayer functionality, car and stage designers, and updated graphics. This is all well and good, but today we’re focusing on what kicked this all off: the 2005 original, in all its low-poly, childhood-forming glory.
I never finished Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, much to the chiding of my social circle. Despite this, it was still a very memorable and formative experience for me. When other ImmSims and RPGs were showing me fantastical realities I had difficulty relating to, Bloodlines was different: a painfully familiar drama, full of petty street politics and demographic struggle I recognized from day-to-day life.
Parasocial relationships are a hot topic right now, but something we don’t discuss is how we often form those relationships with some setting. We are very fond of taking a fetishistic snapshot of a city’s culture, gleaned through second-hand anecdotes or romantic portrayals in media. More than just a fan tribute to bloodlines, Santa Monica By Night, made by Outstar and 8bitmemories for the Vampire Jam, is a meditation on this concept.
Home to myriad experimental interactive pieces, the PS3 served as fertile ground for developers looking to stretch their legs in a different direction than AAA had typically allowed. Microsoft and Sony went back and forth, cultivating marketplaces stuffed with interesting and unique titles, courting small teams and individuals to produce content exclusively for either platform. In the case of Sony, some of these endeavors veered into territory fairly unknown for mainstream audiences.
Enter Linger in Shadows. Developed by Polish group Plastic, the title was adamantly touted as “not a game” by senior producer Rusty Buchert. Despite interactivity and trophy support, Linger in Shadows was positioned as a piece of interactive digital art. While only $3, games journalism at large rebuffed it, baffled as to why such a short-form experience would cost money in the first place, much less be pushed by Sony themselves.
Nearing an extinction event unlike any we’ve ever experienced, humanity veers closer to collapse on a daily basis. Rising sea levels, record-breaking heat, and vanishing biodiversity are the hallmarks of modernity. Regardless of having reached a point of no return, life on Earth has been drastically and irreversibly blighted by the forward march of industrialization. Given the opportunity, mankind destroys without remorse, and for the most part, without concern for the future. Protection of ecosystems and sustaining life longterm become priorities for societies, should they wish to avoid crumbling.
Released as a very small indie title in 2013, boxlife is a first person exploration game. Presented in flat color, minimal texturing, and abstract geometry, you’re thrust into a world with one objective: leave. To do so, you need to collect four orbs and place them atop pedestals.
Once more we brave the breach to tie up loose ends and conclude our analysis of Christoph Frey’s The Space Between. Having given an overview of the literal narrative and dissected it, the piece begins to expose its underbelly, quivering and ready to burst, full of possibility.
Persistence is key when it comes to deconstructing the mysteries placed before us by a piece such as The Space Between. Plunging the depths of a work comes not just from consuming it, but savoring it, allowing it to overtake the palette and linger on the tongue. It needs a delicate touch to work through it, to parse the meaning between the walls. These endless constructions must be torn down for us to get to a deeper understanding of what it is that Christoph Frey wants to convey to us.
Continuing from Part 1, today we take a closer look at the themes underlying and supporting the stage on which Martin’s narrative is set. Within this Hell, hopefully we can uncover some greater truth to the game, and pick apart its architecture.
All artists bring themselves around to the same question time and again: why do I create? For some, it’s to express a greater emotion, one that can’t be tackled head-on, nor conveyed through ordinary conversation. For others, it’s the simple production of a commodity. One way or another, the artist puts themselves through the creative process and, typically, uncovers some greater truth about themselves. Whether that inherently becomes part of the work, who can say. But, time and again, coming out on the other side brings growth.