Kill Screen Magazine's Blog, page 114

Entering Below’s deadly caves is not for the faint of heart

Below is about being small in a large, dangerous world. The game’s looming cave system dwarfs the player to little more than a speck on the screen, and its dark corners house hidden tripwires and pits that can lead to an early demise for those who are not careful. Characters only have a small pool of health which slowly bleeds out after being hit, and every enemy presents a threat.

This player fragility is core to the game’s ideas of tension and adventure, but that does not mean that the player is left entirely defenseless. In the latest build of the game from PAX East, the team at Capy Games has added a few new tools to the player’s arsenal to make diving into its intimidating system of caves and ruins just a little more approachable.

The first is the Pocket, a new area available at bonfires that calls back to the Hunter’s Dream from Bloodborne (2015). Here, players can store items for later characters to take, sacrificing some of their current character’s stash to make their next life easier. Like Rogue Legacy (2013), death in Below is permanent, but it also paves the way for a descendant of the player’s previous character to try their hands at adventuring next.

In this way, the Pocket also acts as a checkpoint, allowing the descendant to take over from the last bonfire visited by their ancestor. The cave system will shuffle around into a new configuration, but previously explored areas will remain as they were, allowing the player to find their ancestor’s body and recover any items they might have been unlucky enough to have on them when they died.

what happens when adventuring doesn’t go as planned

Second is a map system, though it is less Siri and more half-remembered directions from grandma. Rather than a direct layout, the map is instead a series of boxes showing the player’s current area, with a dotted line pointing vaguely towards an exit. The idea here is to allow players to plan out a route while still leaving the danger along the way a mystery.

In Game Informer’s Test Chamber series, we also see more of what happens when adventuring doesn’t go as planned. Characters only have a small amount of health, and every time they get hit, they will start bleeding out until they die. This can be prevented by eating food or another type of healing item, but for those who didn’t stop by the Costco on their way to the ruins, staving off death is particularly more brutal. These players will instead have to find a fire pit, which they can then light and dip their sword into to cauterize their wound. Any health lost along the way is gone, but the player remains alive.

Below still seeks to make the player feel as small as possible as they explore its towering ruins. But that does not mean they cannot also be clever along the way.

Below is planning to release later this year. For more information, visit the game’s website.

h/t  Windows Central,  HardcoreGamer,  Game Informer

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A cyberpunk RPG that dreams of rust and copper

“How would syndicates abuse their power without the oversight of a government?” asks Hannah Williams, one half of Seattle-based Whalenought Studios. That’s one of the many questions that Copper Dreams, the studio’s second RPG, looks to answer.

While RPGs are often set in vast fantasy worlds, Copper Dreams‘ cyberpunk world takes place on an isolated island called Calitana. It’s a place where the uncivilized aspects of humanity can be drawn out,  where food is scarce but copper is cheap, resulting in an economy based on the metal, and a culture obsessed with technological body alterations. “We thought it would be interesting to explore what happens if the citizens of that prosperous world are given a one-way ticket to a secluded frontier planet, then more or less abandoned for several decades,” Williams said.

Inspiration for the island setting of Calitana has come from many places, but two films had the biggest impact on its design. Hannah said that Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1985) was an influence due to how it managed to turn “paperwork into a weapon,” and create situations that were both frightening and humorous. The John Carpenter-directed Escape from New York (1981) is the other main drawing point as it presents the “grit and despair of an isolated area” that Whalenought envisioned for Calitana.

This isn’t the first time that Escape from New York has influenced videogames. For instance, it was one of the biggest inspirations behind Konami’s landmark MSX stealth title Metal Gear (1987). And, just like Hideo Kojima’s signature work, Copper Dreams will require players to use stealth to outsmart their opposition. “[Stealth is] crucial in a dystopian world where technology has enabled those in power to create a surveillance state to make sure no one is threatening their interests,” Williams explained. “Shooting out cameras, taking down bots, and turning off the electric grid are critical skills to outmaneuvering the eyes that are always watching.”

“a harpoon attached to your elbow”

While Copper Dreams’ stealth is largely a byproduct of the game’s dystopian setting, it’s not the only aspect that has been designed around it. Role-playing norms such as standalone weapons and character classes are all but gone here. “[It’s] not unlike going to a tattoo parlor, but certainly a little more painful,” joked Williams, who explained that players will be able to visit cybernetic artists who will modify their bodies with a wide variety of weaponry and armor. “You’ll be able to rid yourself of your inferior fleshy appendages in favor of cybernetics like blade arms, a harpoon attached to your elbow, pneumatic fists that generate electricity from the force of contact, and many more.”

“It’s like Lord of the Flies, except Piggy has a chainsaw arm instead of a conch,” explains Williams. She told me that players will also be able to get enhancements that impact areas other than just combat. So, if you’re having trouble with stealth, you can get “dampening legs that allow you to jump and run with the silence and grace of a cat.” Similarly, players will be able to get plated armor grafted onto the bodies that will help shield players from damage.

Whalenought has also worked hard to make sure every conversation in the game ties back to the main story. Simply talking to a shopkeeper can teach players more about the island, and the goal is for players to unravel Calitana’s mysteries at their own pace. “There won’t be a quest log,” said Hannah. “We believe that a game is more fun and rewarding if the story and important information isn’t spoon-fed to you, but discovered with your own intellect. Nothing ruins sleuthing around an open world more than a pop up congratulating you for discovering something before you’ve realized it yourself.”

Copper Dreams is currently being funded on Kickstarter and is scheduled to release on PC. Check out the trailer on YouTube .

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You are evil, or A systemical approach to rethinking how evil works

People like to think of being evil as something extraordinary—we tend to think of it as extreme, or even supernatural. However, game designer and programmer Nicky Case, points out that social psychologists have repeatedly found the opposite to be true—people who we consider to be evil, are in fact incredibly ordinary. Case’s obsession with systems, which has come through in their various projects such as, Simulating The World (In Emoji) and Parable of the Polygons, is now helping us better understand the idea of evil.

Case has been exploring the concept of “emergent evil” as part of their first collaboration with PBS Frontline. The basic principal of Case’s thinking around this is that an individual could become evil simply by the collective they are surrounded by. They use the metaphor of water molecules, either being in a frozen or liquid state, pointing out you have the exact same molecules, however, their state varies drastically depending on the larger collective context. What this means is that someone who may be considered normal and moral in a certain instance, could easily become “evil” in another.

Case’s obsession with systems is now helping us understand the idea of evil

This idea of evil as ordinary is not completely new. Hannah Arendt’s 1963 work, Eichmann in Jerusalem, popularized the idea of “the banality of evil”, which was inspired by Arendt’s observations of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the Holocaust’s major organizers. “The banality of evil” proposes that Eichmann was not a result of calculated and ideological evil, but rather someone who was lead by his sense of obligation to a bureaucracy, who valued his position and the chain of command—thoughtlessly disconnected from the full consequences and weight of his actions. However Case’s theory of “emergent evil” expands beyond the limits of Arendt’s bureaucratic evil by looking at collective systems of people more broadly, which doesn’t limit it to the highly organized or clear hierarchical structure of a government.

A big part of how we think about “evil” is that it’s something we tend to think of as a trait other people have, and not something we are ourselves. A recent study on the prevalence of “ethical amnesia” directly tackles this by showing we tend to more easily forget actions we think of as unethical. “Unethical amnesia is driven by the desire to lower one’s distress that comes from acting unethically and to maintain a positive self-image as a moral individual,” the authors write in the paper. Although this study was limited to “ordinary unethical behaviours,” the authors speculate that it may be applicable in more extreme cases as well.

Studies like this make it clear that we’re still working through our questions around morality and evil but more importantly what that means for us, our communities and the world more generally. As Case says, “understanding the idea of’ ’emergent evil’ is the best defense against emergent evil.” Considering the types of  interactive projects Case has made so far, it’ll be interesting to see how this idea inspires a future project, and whether it will be able to quell the fear that any of us has the potential to enact the unthinkable.

Be sure to keep up to date with Nicky Case’s work through their blog and Twitter.

Header image via Nicky Case

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StarCraft II: Battlefield of Ethics

Pale, crumbled skin and brightly glowing blue eyes. A weak but upright figure, covered in heavy, hovering armor and a blade of pure psi­-energy on each arm. The Protoss of the StarCraft universe are masters in complementing their seemingly weak physiology with highly advanced technology to produce an impressive appearance. It is their leader, Artanis, who sets out to fight in a conflict of good and evil in the newest title of the StarCraft series: Legacy of the Void (2015). At least, that’s what the general perception of the game’s story seemed to be after its release last year. It’s a perception that falls short of Legacy of the Void’s actual potential. Although often reduced to the tired theme of good versus evil, in reality, the game’s story displays subtle commentary on contemporary cultural and ethical issues.

That media artifacts such as books and movies are representative of the time they were created in isn’t anything new. If you read Effi Briest (1894), you get a glimpse of society and life in the 19th century. In his 2004 book Das Netz und die virtuelle Realität (The net and the virtual reality), Jens Schröter describes the alien race Borg in Star Trek as indicative of the fear of the internet and egalitarianism during the 1970s and 80s. The Borg are a highly advanced race of cyborgs, who are connected in a collective hivemind, through which each ‘drone’ has access to the knowledge and thoughts of every other drone. Once assimilated into the collective, individuals are improved by replacing body parts with technology and differences such as race or gender are erased, as they are irrelevant to the drone’s function. This creates a ‘society’ without lies and conflicts, in which everyone is equal. The contrast of the totalitarian and egalitarian Borg to the more individualistic (human) Federation indicates the aforementioned cultural fears. StarCraft can be read in a similar way.

The Protoss’s emotions and thoughts are connected to each other, very similar to the Borg’s hivemind. This connection, the Khala, is established by nerve cords at the Protoss’s heads, which look very much like dreadlocks, ­and is considered one of the most sacred artifacts of Protoss culture. The ‘light of the Khala’, though, is depicted much more positively than the Borg’s hivemind. One reason for this might be that the Protoss remain individuals and the Khala is rather a very advanced tool of communication, despite the way it connects thoughts and emotions means that telling lies to another Protoss is impossible.

it does not matter that we endure, at least not at all cost

Understanding the Protoss’s culture as a mirror of our own culture’s values, it seems we too have accepted a certain degree of constant connectedness, as long as everyone’s status as an individual isn’t restricted. We are not far from the Khala’s omnipresence. Through social networks we voluntarily publish the most private parts of our lives. Smartphones make us available for calls, texts, emails and any other kind of message, at any point in time and space. Applications are gathering as much data as possible about movement profiles, behaviors and preferences. If all this data was available to everyone in the network, we would have arrived at a 21st century version of the Khala. Fortunately the data’s degree of availability is constantly negotiated between companies, the government, and civil rights movements, the latest example being Apple’s refusal to unlock a suspect’s iPhone for the FBI. Interestingly, the gathering of data has drifted into the background in recent years, and the biggest concerns now are who might use the network and data in what evil way. The fear of the technology itself, as described by Schröter in the Borg’s case, has transformed into concerns about its security: in Legacy of the Void, the antagonist, Amon, enters the Khala, corrupts it and thereby gains control over all Protoss who are connected by it.

One stream of Protoss culture isn’t affected by Amon’s actions and can therefore help in the fight against him. This is the so-called Nerazim (or Dark Templar), who denied the Khala’s light long before the events of Legacy of the Void, and made it part of their culture to sever their nerve cords. The result is the disconnection from the Protoss collective mind and ultimately their exile by the Protoss Conclave. While this act itself would be worthy of a discussion ­on how we treat deviant behavior and beliefs,­ there is a much larger issue that caught my attention: the destruction of Shakuras, which is ­the Nerazim’s adopted homeworld ­in Legacy of the Void.

After Shakuras is overrun by enemy forces, Artanis, as the leader of the Protoss armada, initially objects to the planet’s destruction but is convinced by Shakuras’s native matriarch Vorazun that it is her choice, as it was her tribe that built their home on the planet. Their plan is to lure as many of Amon’s Zerg on to Shakuras and eventually to destroy Shakuras, which would cause vast casualties to Amon’s forces. It is a heroic act of sacrifice. Or is it? In 2009, Carl David Mildenberger discussed types and sources of motivations for evil regarding the issue of suicide ganking in EVE Online (2003). One part of his discussion included the examination of the deed’s outcome for the perpetrator. In suicide ganks, stronger players attack weaker players in protected areas to obtain goods, all while their own ships are being destroyed. Due to this destruction, the economical outcome for the ganker is in most cases negative. We can easily argue that this is an act of evil: the perpetrator does not gain anything from this aggression towards a weaker player.

Similarly, the only gain the Protoss alliance gets from the destruction of Shakuras is the decimation of Amon’s forces. The actual advantage and necessity of this outcome remains unknown and the damage is not a spaceship, but a whole planet. A planet on which possibly hundreds of Nerazim and at least one other species lives. It’s also worth noting that the world existed long before the Nerazim went there, and it would exist long after the Protoss are gone. It is hard to justify the destruction of something one didn’t create and the matriarch’s motives seem rather egoistical: “I will not let this world be a den to Amon’s forces. Worlds may fall to ash. What matters is that we endure”. Who is she to make this decision? If Vorazun’s act stays unquestioned, the razing of cities during military conflict with the reason “So they can’t have it” would be perfectly justifiable.

Additionally the matriarch’s position has much more subtle, and severe, consequences. For decades mankind strived to improve its own efficiency and standard of living, disregarding the damages we cause to our planet. We burn fossil fuels that took millions of years to form, polluting our atmosphere to a soon irreversible degree. We eradicate whole races of animals for our own convenience or pleasure and are cutting down ancient forests to make room for our agricultural ‘needs’. It is the matriarch’s mindset that led us to this situation and Legacy of the Void’s glorification of Shakuras’s destruction is yet another indication of the fraudulence of our—by human egoism permeated—ethical values. Or, in other words: no, it does not matter “that we endure”, at least not at all cost.

During their struggle against Amon, the Nerazim aren’t Artanis’s only allies. He also seeks the help of the Purifiers—machines, infused with copies of great Protoss warriors’ minds ­who were once abandoned by the Conclave as well. The first Purifier to be saved from destruction turns out to be a replicant of Fenix, Artanis’s old friend. As one of the Protoss’s engineers describes the copy’s accuracy at around 99 percent, a discussion about who we are and how we become what we are evolves. Artanis asks who we were if only one percent of a lifetime’s decision were made differently or not at all. It is this question that confuses the freed ‘machine’ Fenix about his own identity. He has all memories of the person once called Fenix, but from the very moment of ‘rebirth’ he started making his own decisions. An experience we all had after the transition from one social or cultural environment into another one. The experience of being able to become someone completely different and the struggle to grasp this possibility, as we are held back by the memories of what we did and who we were. What is a matter of identity in our case, is a problem of existence for Fenix, who, step by step, develops his position from ‘I must know the truth of what I am’, over ‘I am synthetic, a replication… a lie. I am not Fenix’, to his final decision to give himself a new name: Talandar—“One with the strong heart.”

Legacy of the Void not only shows the struggle of the individual Talandar, but also leads us to the arrogance and contempt towards this creation inside the Protoss’s culture, which is well summarized by Artanis’s statement “They were and are still only machines. Do not give them such credence, Karax”. This position will certainly be prominent in our own society, after the creation of the first superintelligence and, in fact, scientists are already discussing this complex of problems. In 2011, Elizier Yudkowsky and Nick Bostrom described the commonly proposed criteria for the qualification as a moral being as “sentience: the capacity for phenomenal experience or qualia, such as the capacity to feel pain and suffer” and “sapience: a set of capacities associated with higher intelligence, such as self-awareness and being a reason-responsive agent”. While the mechanical warrior Talandar’s ability to experience pain or suffering is unknown, he is most certainly sapient, shown by his ability to make autonomous, rational decisions and reflect on his own existence. This doesn’t stay unnoticed by the Protoss leader Artanis, who eventually concludes that a ‘machine’s’ sapience is sufficient for a status as moral being.

“What do we know and how can we actually know anything?”

The leader’s progressive mindset towards the moral status of sapient machines slowly turns the opinion of most characters from hostile towards a more friendly one and he convinces the mechanical Purifiers to join him by promising them autonomy and a position at his side “as equals”. In an age where artificial superintelligence is broadly discussed, machines are able to beat humans in the most complicated games and even take employee positions in companies, Talandar’s and the Purifiers’s story is a statement: digitized minds won’t stay copies of the originals for long and artificial intelligence shouldn’t be seen as mere machines. It lies in their nature to develop, make their own decisions, and become autonomous individuals. Further, we shouldn’t see such creations as abominations, but treat them with respect and ascribe them a right to exist, just as any other being. As the Protoss’s highest ranked engineer states: “We too are machines of a biological nature. I often marvel at the architecture, the design, the careful construction of our form, our machinery”. Ultimately, Talandar’s act of renaming himself is not only the emancipation of whoever Fenix, the ‘original’, was before him, but his rightful claim of existence as a moral being in the universe. This position has important implications for the future treatment of AIs or replicated minds, and while a videogame should probably not be the basis for a political decision, Legacy of the Void participates in a contemporary discourse, joining media products such as Ghost in the Shell (1995), Transcendence (2014), Automata (2014) and, to name at least one other videogame, The Talos Principle (2014).

Interestingly, the first act of Artanis’s new ally after their release from stasis is to purify the moon Endion, which their ship was orbiting, from Amon’s Zerg, but effectively destroying all life on it. This poses another atrocity performed by the supposedly ‘good’ in Legacy of the Void. All these events are just a fraction of what is happening in the game’s story. There is much more to it, with the Protoss leader Artanis discussing matters of epistemology, or “What do we know and how can we actually know anything?”, with one of his engineers; the Nerazim’s matriarch, Vorazun, describing Humans as lesser beings and Artanis defending them, raising the question of how we decide if something or someone is worth less than us; Artanis and Alarak—­another Protoss tribe leader—­debating different methods of leadership and the whole Protoss alliance depicting discrepancies due to cultural differences between the Templar (Artanis), Nerazim (Vorazun) and Tal’Darim (Alarak).

Superficially, Legacy of the Void’s story is about a conflict between good and evil, and the stake is the whole universe. If we look closer though, this perception has to be questioned. Considering the Protoss’ alliances deeds—especially Shakuras’s destruction and the purification of Endion—the conflict is ethically seen a dispute between Evil and a lesser Evil. Besides the Amon versus Protoss conflict, Legacy of the Void’s story is about the Protoss’s struggle to overcome cultural differences within their own species as well as across species. It is about an entity lost in its own existence, striving for an understanding of what he is, and a whole civilization’s disdain towards him, their own creation.

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Don’t worry: The Last Guardian is still coming out in 2016

When we last saw the Fumito Ueda-directed The Last Guardian, it was E3 of last year. The sun was shining, as it often is in Los Angeles, and the tweet-buzz was chirping. The long-anticipated follow-up to Ico (2001) and Shadow of the Colossus (2005) wasn’t dead after all. Prior to the surprise trailer, all that we had heard about the game was from reassuring rumor-mongering whispers, hushed reassurances from Sony that the game was not dead and gone. Now, in a cover story with Edge magazine, new details have emerged about the title, including a firmer 2016 release window (though still no concrete date).

The Last Guardian stars a small boy and his enormous, bird-and-cat-like companion Trico. At the start of the game, Trico’s bothersome and wary to obey commands. But as the game progresses and trust is built, a more solid relationship is formed between the unlikely pair. “This creature isn’t like the cute pets that exist in other games, or an ally that’s really useful,” said Ueda, in an interview with Edge. “The role of the creature is ambiguous; that’s something we wanted to express in the game, and it doesn’t always do what you ask it to do. That’s one of the themes of The Last Guardian. It’s something that’s difficult, and completely different. I want to create the next thing—an experience that people have never had before.”

The ever-timid Trico’s eyes also reflect different colors to reflect its current mood, such as pink for anger or wariness. Ueda also outlined some more of the challenges and the equipment used to overcome them that will appear in the game. In particular, the boy is armed with a mirrored shield that creates a reticle on surfaces when pointed at them, perfect for directing the red lightning that emerges from Trico’s tail to solve environmental puzzles.

“I want to create an experience that people have never had before”

Trico is bound to both frustrate and delight players, but that’s intentional. Trico’s a creature that was literally programmed with its own desires in mind, making it a completely singular AI, one that even differs from its human counterpart. “It would be a lie to stay that I have no worries,” said Ueda. “But another game where you can completely control a creature wouldn’t be enjoyable for me because there are a lot out there where you can do that. I think I’ve had enough of them.”

Ueda also spoke to IGN in an interview in which he outlines further how he brought Trico to life over the course of years, starting from the earliest animation tests and right up to recent months when he felt that Trico was its own living being. You can watch that interview in the video below.

We’ll finally be able to solve some dope-ass puzzles with Trico when The Last Guardian launches sometime in 2016 on PlayStation4. A specific release date will hopefully be announced during E3 next month.

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Everyone should be squirming to play Push Me Pull You

Sweating, writhing, fleshy worms are locked in combat with each other. Their two heads and four arms struggle to maintain dominance over one another. It’s a vicious and gross game of sport. And yet it is somehow completely, utterly adorable.

Push Me Pull You lands somewhere between sumo wrestling, a soccer match, and the body-horror nightmare of The Human Centipede (2010). It has two teams of two players competing to gain control of the ball on a playfield, each pair working together to wriggle their conjoined bodies cooperatively to score points. The maneuvers available to each player at either end of these crawling torsos include expanding and contracting the length of their man-worm, all in an effort to wrap around and control the ball. Shorter worms crawl faster than longer ones, but have less power to push around the opposing team.

Hosted in an elaborate universe of double-bodied pairs, the game delights in stretching that absurd tweak to reality throughout the entire volume of its world. It’s why characters are seated in double-backed banana chairs; how else do you sit with a person attached to your rear end? The soundtrack by Dan Golding similarly takes what should be athletic fanfare and turns it into a haphazard cacophony of flutes and cowbells, squawking clarinets and a rubber-band marching band tuba bouncing along. It’s messy, but in the end it’s all so delightful you can’t help but grin, even if your innate reaction is to just simply stare at the screen, perplexed, and utter “oh no.” Not many games graciously “thank you for playing [their] videogame” in the credits and then handily provide the names of specific typefaces used—maximum attention is paid to every detail and design.

That ethos extends to the controls, comprised only of one joystick and two buttons for each skittering connected torso. What this means is Push Me Pull You excels as a pick-up-and-play title—it simplifies the idea of sports games in an effortless albeit nauseous way. It’s a far cry from the systems-heavy approach now entrenched in traditional sports games (and their related issues with representation). Yet, Push Me Pull You is still able to elicit wildly contorted faces and the controller-busting frustration as you vie for ball-controlled supremacy. The crucial difference, however, is due to the competition being wrapped in such a friendly and ridiculous exterior, it’s difficult to commit to trash-talking your opponents, mostly due to fits of laughter. The other inhibitor of more hostile reactions to the game is the fact that you must cooperate with your partner to pull off bizarre tactics like “the poke” and “the locomotive,” each of which prove essential for victory.

It’s messy, but in the end it’s all so delightful you can’t help but grin

At the end of the match, you’re treated to illustrations that deflate any sense of championship. Both teams are shown getting rained on: the winners just happened to have remembered their umbrellas, while the losers only have the sports page to help keep them dry. The idea encouraged through these scenes is that, no matter the problem, everybody’s in it together—some find better ways to deal with it, is all. That sense of welcoming is inherent to Push Me Pull You’s DNA, with wormy avatars encompassing a variety of skin tones, genders, and ages. An unobtrusive “colorblind mode” carefully swaps the game’s palette, further demonstrating that the Australia-based team House House are striving to bring everyone into the fun. You don’t even need the requisite closetful of electronic equipment to get a full four-person match going—two players can compete on either side of the same controller, physically and digitally linked together as teammates.

That’s what it’s all about: connectedness. Back in 2013, it seemed like we were bound for a local multiplayer renaissance. Titles like TowerFall (2013), Nidhogg (2014), and Sports Friends (2013) urged us back to the couch to play with our buddies for the first time since the heyday of the N64. Push Me Pull You continues this effort and manages to combine those games’ sense of competition, chaos, and approachability. While our ingrained sense of competition drives all of us to best our opponents, Push Me Pull You reminds us that it doesn’t have to manifest as a testosterone-fueled rampage. It works against the grain of sports games by allowing us all to tap into that primordial urge to win—you don’t need prior sports expertise, physical prowess, or a highly-tactical mind to approach this wormy ballfield. Exemplifying this is Push Me Pull You’s character designs: the hard bodies of sports games are exchanged for soft and stretchy conjoined torsos.

Just as anyone in their 30s cut their teeth on dorm room Goldeneye (1997) and Mario Kart 64 (1996), I can only hope some freshmen right now are figuring out the best way to settle an argument is with some two-on-two worm wrestling. Online multiplayer can connect us to everyone in the world, but local multiplayer games can bring us closer to our best friends (and help us make a few new ones in the process). Push Me Pull You proves that the “new arcade” of previous years is not dead; it’s been developing into something weirder, funnier, and brighter than we’d expected.

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Don’t just listen to this videogame’s music, analyze it

A Game About Conservatory is somewhere between being a game and guided meditation. It is also, I guess, music criticism, though not of the Pitchfork variety.

The game does what it says on the tin. You are in a music conservatory, discussing scores, recordings, and practice with your fellow students. That said, carrying out deeply structured conversations is not the point of the game; the conversation trees often provide only one option for you to focus on. There are choices, but they are few and far between.

has more to say about subjectivity than music itself

Where A Game About Conservatory succeeds is in highlighting specific elements in its soundtrack. The choppy structure prevents the music from simply washing over you in a luxurious haze. The characters highlight what it is about these songs that stand out to them or how they feel in the moment. You see very little of the conservatory or the world at large, but what there is serves to highlight space’s effect on characters. Music is subjective, and A Game About Conservatory has more to say about subjectivity than music itself.

That is not the game’s only point. A Game About Conservatory also serves to highlight the vast troves of music available through Wikimedia Commons. This, of course, is the source for the game’s music and in that respect the whole affair is a proof of concept. But, in their analysis of the game’s music, the characters also discuss Wikimedia Commons as a source of inspiration.

They are doing sub-textual analysis, highlighting both the sounds that interest them and the differences between recordings. These are points that seem obvious in hindsight, but aren’t always obvious when distractedly listening to music. A Game About Conservatory, by chopping up and interrupting music with scenes and dialogue, forces you to notice these beats. It is critical discourse in an unconventional package.

You can download A Game About Conservatory over on itch.io.

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One way or another, Tangiers is hoping to release by end of summer

It’s been a while since we last heard from Tangiers, the stealth game from a team lead by Alex Harvey that’s meant to pay homage to 20th century avant-garde artists like William S. Burroughs and David Lynch. In October of 2015, the game’s team updated their Kickstarter with a statement that a planned additional funding source had fallen through, meaning that they would have to delay the game’s beta until they got more resources in place. What followed was a long period of radio silence, but thanks to a new post from May 19th, it seems as if the game’s team now has a plan to bring the project to fruition.

In the update, Harvey explains that since we last heard from him, much of the team has had to split their time on the project to keep themselves afloat, leading him to gather together some personal funds and work towards finishing the game on a full-time basis. After suffering some health issues that kept him from making updates, he now has a “fully and robustly functional” build with a “good cross-section of content to demonstrate.”

he now has a “fully and robustly functional” build

The plan now is to acquire additional funding and publisher opportunities. Should that not be an option, Harvey is looking into taking the game to Steam’s Early Access program to release the final product as a series of three episodic acts. It is not his ideal solution, as it would involve reducing the game’s scope somewhat, but he prefers the idea of Early Access to outright cancellation.

In the next couple of weeks, Harvey will be editing his new footage into a trailer for the game, as well as streaming a few sessions of him playing the game. He’s also released a publicly available project itinerary detailing the current state of each area of development. The project does not have a complete release schedule as of yet, but Harvey hopes to “get Tangiers in people’s hands by the end of Summer at the latest.”

For more info on Tangiers and its progress, visit its Kickstarter page.

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PaRappa the Rapper creator has made a new kind of music game

Imagine you’re sitting in a forest, soothing melodies chiming in all around you. There’s a keyboard in front of you, and color-coordinated blobs approach you. Instead of repeating the melody you hear as in most other rhythm games, you must hit the keys according to the pitch you hear. This is furusoma, the new mobile game from music-game connoisseur Masaya Matsuura.

Matsuura has created some of the most inspirational rhythm games of all-time. Some would even credit his first title, the quirky hip-hop styled PaRappa the Rappa (1996), as popularizing the rhythm game genre. Given this, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise to find out that Matsuura’s a musician outside of his involvement with videogames. From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, Matsuura rose to fame within the prog-rock-pop band PSY•S, before announcing their eventual disbandment in 1996. This was around the same time that Matsuura flung himself headfirst into game development, founding game company NanaOn-Sha back in 1993. Through his company, he created some of the most iconic PlayStation titles of the console’s lifespan.

It’s not so much about complementing the music, but making it come alive

The mobile furusoma’s a new type of music game. Instead of relying on parroting melodies or syncing up notes simultaneously with the music, the goal instead is to match pitches. The pitches are color-coded per ominous blob that approaches and shines its hue onto its corresponding keyboard key. “You must respond to the pitch to move the music forward,” explained Matsuura in a pre-recorded presentation for the IGDA Switzerland Demo Night. Hit the wrong note, and points are deducted from the player’s overall score. It’s not so much about complementing the music, but making it come alive.

While Matsuura’s hardly been at the forefront of music games since his iconic PlayStation classics, he’s remained prolific in the industry. He’s generated a few sleeper titles (like the 2007 iPod game Musika), and a couple critical misses (even within another collaboration with PaRappa the Rapper character designer Rodney Greenblat). He even contributed music to the Apple TV-based Harmonix game Beat Sports (2015). But where he brought the rhythm genre to prominence with the undeniably charming PaRappa the Rapper and UmJammer Lammy (1999), and proved his worth as an innovator with the uniquely generative Vib-Ribbon (1999), furusoma doesn’t leave Matsuura with anything left to prove, just that he’s here to stay.

Don’t give up, you gotta believe (and download furusoma now on iOS or Google Play for free).

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Japanese artist convicted of obscenity for sharing 3D prints of her genitals

Megumi Igarashi (better known as Rokudenashiko or “Good-for-nothing-girl”) is a Japanese artist whose work, which revolves around female genitalia, has sparked legal action to be taken against her. According to Japan Times, Igarashi lost an obscenity case over distributing 3D data soon after getting acquitted over a different obscenity case. Igarashi was convicted of spreading data across the internet from October 2013 to March 2014 that would allow users to create an exact replica of her genitals. Because of strict censorship laws, the data was deemed too detailed, and the Tokyo District Court judged the 3D data “obscene.”

Even though Igarashi is an artist and a mangaka, her work was considered too “sexually titillating” in nature and had no artistic measure because of it. Article 175 of the Criminal Code of Japan Censorship in Japan states that individuals who sell or distribute obscene materials can be punished by fines or imprisonment. Pornography must be partially censored, although the amount of censorship of the penis can vary. Pornography can take various forms—there’s video, hentai manga, anime, magazines and, of course, the internet. But what counts as obscene material in Japan? As evident through Igarashi’s work, it’s the vagina. However, her pop-art replicas of the female anatomy are not considered lewd enough because they don’t “look like real female genitals.” That could explain why Japanese media depicting a stylized female form (vagina) goes unpunished.

But what counts as obscene material in Japan?

The court acquitted Igarashi of the separate charge of “displaying obscene materials publically” (she was exhibiting vagina-shaped plasterwork at a Tokyo sex shop in 2014) because the items were made with colored materials that didn’t resemble a real vagina. Caricature figures of vaginas and anime proportioned boobs from hentai may pass the strict censorship laws in Japan because they’re stylized, but that doesn’t address the real issue: women’s bodies are considered obscene. Real bodies are seen as offensive while cartoonish counterparts are not. What does that say about the value of Japanese women? Igarashi told reporters that she was happy that the recent ruling saw her work as art, as much as the public misunderstands her efforts. She says that her artwork is intended to challenge taboos in Japan where the vagina is considered indecent. She also plans on appealing to a higher court, maintaining her innocence as her work is not meant to cause sexual arousal.  

 h/t Japan Times

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