First Impressions
Something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently is how games and other works ask us to engage with them. Each work of art exists within a greater context, and how we parse the messages those works engender is affected…
Category Playing Games
Empty Calories
The tricky thing about procrastination is how satisfying it is. Say what you will, when your problem is that you’re stressing over a deadline, just doing nothing and letting the deadline slip is a definite solution to that problem, and…
Underneath
Why is horror appealing? The only thought more terrifying than that we might not be alone is the thought that we might, indeed, be alone. The only belief more terrifying than that there are weird and unexplainable things going on,…
Backtracking
And just like dreams the games we play fall away from us when they are complete, and just like dreams they are easily forgotten and then remembered at random many years later, and just like dreams they slip by in…
Struggle
I’ve just begun playing Dark Souls. I’m not very far into it. I’m not used to this degree of relentless pressure, this viscous viciousness that must be pressed through to progress. It’s clear that there is a path to victory,…
Sleep
“I don’t know. Why do things happen as they do in dreams?” Things are a bit confused. Things start blending together. I’ve been sleeping a lot. I remember at one point I was hanging out at one of the community…
Pursuit
I’ve always been interested in the idea of a horror game where the player is the monster. Though not generally regarded as a horror game per se, in the party game Werewolf the players each take on the role of…
Recommended Viewing for Game Designers
Inception The plot of Inception revolves around a group of specialists who invade people’s dreams to steal ideas– or, in this case, to plant an idea. This is a story entirely about crafting a world for an audience in such…
Cave Stories
Cave Story was an important game for me. It was playing Cave Story, 6 or 7 years ago, that made me realize that I still liked games– that, in that respect at least, it wasn’t me that had changed, but…
Folding Space
Recently, games-wise, I’ve been taking a bit of a break from my usual artsy and the pretentious indie fare to play a bit of Poker. Poker Night at the Inventory that is– what, did you think I had the money…