I’m not sure what I just played, but it’s brilliant.

We try to avoid doing comparative analysis, yet it seems impossible to pull Starstruck apart from it’s obvious influences: Part Earthbound, part Little Big Planet, part Scott Pilgrim, with an added dash of…….. Gitaroo man?? Katamari?? Truly a sublime cocktail of inspiration. It’s rare to see a game bold enough to dive head first into the experimental spirit that defined both the Dreamcast and the late PS2 era, let alone one that does so with such finesse.

Come down to earth with us as we explore the wonderful world of… Neighborhood.exe

Read the rest of this article »

We sit down with James Interactive to talk about The Legend of Bum-bo, the upsides of the indie development community, game stores, the importance of itch.io, James’ career, the importance of having interests beyond video games, parallels with the maker community, and art house games!

Read the rest of this article »

The Majestic Douglas Fir, the most underrated video game character of all time. For all the memes and jokes out there about how people who enjoy games don’t go outside, we seemingly fixate on them endlessly. The grand Pacific Northwest with all its ancient growth forests has anchored itself as the 21st century bespoke pastoral fantasy for the soothing and the weird.

Horror games? Mystery games? Relaxing games? Time and time again we revisit the green underbrush of the temperate rainforest locales native to the western states of America and Canada.

But why? Is it simply our fascination with holiday ornaments, or maybe something far more evergreen that keeps our mind’s gaze locked on these richly verdant year-long landscapes?

Read the rest of this article »

If Gordon Freeman was the emblematic poster child for the Silent Protagonist, then for a time his foil, Adrian Shephard, became the iconic parallel for the faceless ones. Gordon’s robust Gen-X “nerd turned combatant” archetype was intended as an answer to the typical grunting brawn-over-brain space marine motif we have come to endlessly celebrate in every perennial iteration of DOOM, subverting the expectant trope audiences had grown accustomed to over the years.

Gordon had a ponytail, he didn’t speak in one liners or at all, and the player’s perception of who he is was built up entirely from in-world clues and inferring meaning through NPC commentary. A theoretical physicist seemed like an unlikely protagonist for 1998’s hit action game blockbuster, so when it came time for Gearbox to approach Valve to make an expansion pack, they had to come up with a character that not only built upon this framework, but also made a powerfully distinct protagonist. Thus, Adrian Shephard was born and swiftly embedded into the adolescent imagination of thousands of gamers.

Read the rest of this article »

We sit down with Russell Lees, creative director / writer on Inscape’s The Dark Eye to talk about his career with Ubisoft, anecdotes about working with William S. Burroughs, and how Inscape and the game came to be in the first place. Don’t miss this one, folks!

Read the rest of this article »

A mysterious note, a stranger in a car park, and an insidious disk with dark secrets. Oh yeah, right, and everyone is some kind of bird.

Fragmentation exists at the fascinating intersection of adventure games and immersive sims. So get those gears turning and ready up for some intuitive sleuthing, you’re going to need to keep your head straight if you want a clean way out of this tangled web of conspiratorial intrigue.

Read the rest of this article »