Kill Screen Magazine's Blog, page 210

Cloud Chasers���A Journey of Hope, and the game mechanics of migration

Cloud Chasers—A Journey of Hope is a pretty game about migration, which is to say that it’s a visually appealing game about the great many ways in which this world is wretched.

In a post-apocalyptic world—aren’t all words basically post-apocalyptic at this point?—a farmer and his daughter cannot go on living in the desert. They therefore go on the sort of journey many individuals in similar positions have undertaken. The game’s player must guide the twosome on their journey and conserve the scant resources available to them. Sure, the pair is traversing a procedurally generated desert to reach a city in the sky where the privileged elite lives, but their basic trajectory is broadly applicable.   

Or is it? 

There is, on the one hand, no denying that many migrants and refugees face grim choices in their search for a better situation. The BBC’s Syrian Journey newsgame, while more deeply and apparently rooted in fact than Cloud Chasers, covered similar choices. The realities of migration are important and games developers have attempted to represent them in their work. Of course it also helps that, as a consequence of various policies and calamities, migration is a phenomenon that can be mapped onto basic videogames with considerable ease. Games like Cloud Chasers have forward motion, choices, and an end goal; you are going somewhere and must do things to reach that point.

some forms of migration can easily be mapped onto game mechanics  

For every person who sets off on a grand journey, however, many more do not. As a percentage of its population, Lebanon has accepted far more Syrian refugees than any European nation. The journey to Lebanon and the experience of staying there is meaningful, but it doesn’t translate as well to game mechanics. Refugees have been living in camps around the world for decades, but that sort of stillness isn’t obviously game-y. Their experiences are no less significant for it, but they are perhaps a bit less well known. 

None of this is really Cloud Chasers—A Journey of Hope’s fault or something to be held against the game. Yet when a site like Android Authority calls Cloud Chasers a “moving game,” one cannot help but wish that it wasn’t so obvious that the word moving didn’t have a duel meaning in this context. Stillness, egad!

Cloud Chasers—A Journey of Hope is available for download on iOS and Android. 

Technology fit for the edge of the world

An explorer and a cellphone venture into the wild to make medicine out of poison

What effect do different drugs have on the Mario Maker levels you create?

Let’s face it, Mario doesn’t make much sense. He’s an Italian plumber living in a fantasy mushroom world which is populated by living toadstools and constantly under attack from a turtle dragon. Fans usually excuse this psychedelic setting out of an appreciation for the series' gameplay and an exhaustion with how often it’s brought up by jokesters, but that doesn’t mean the topic isn’t worthy of discussion. Many have attempted to explain Mario’s weirdness through careful dissection, but others prefer a different approach.

Perhaps the series’ most iconic power-up, the super mushroom allows Mario to grow larger and take an extra hit. It’s also been the butt of many a joke which attribute the bizarre nature of the Mushroom Kingdom to Mario simply being on a shroom-influenced trip.

For years, all fans could do was snicker at this coincidence, but with the release of Super Mario Maker, Nintendo has given them the power to make their joke a reality. “I am going to create levels when I am under the influence of [a] series of different drugs,” writes Reddit user waytoogeneric on the r/drugs subreddit. “I made my first level tonight. It may be sort of dull, I wasn't on anything too exciting (5mg of xanax and 40mg hydrocodone)”

I will be using LSD, DXM, coke, aderall, shrooms, etc

The resulting level, fittingly named Alpracodone, is a surprisingly cogent ghost house puzzle course (pic below), but things are set to become much more out there once waytoogeneric gets to the rest of their stash. “I will be using LSD, DXM, coke, aderall, shrooms, etc,” he explains, setting the stage for a bevy of future levels which will finally show us what the Mushroom Kingdom would look like if it really were a drug trip.

You can play waytoogeneric’s level by inputting the code 88AB-0000-00A2-3FFC into Mario Maker, and you can also suggest additional drugs for him to use while creating levels over on r/drugs.

h/t Motherboard

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Save Brooklyn from the British before saving it from itself in this videogame

Believe it or not, Brooklyn existed before the days of beard wax, tasting menus, and lazy trendpiece shorthand. 

Brooklyn 1776, which launches for iOS next week, is about those earlier days. Much earlier. August 1776 was not a calm time in American history. George Washington (maybe you’ve heard of him?) was fresh off a victory over British forces in Boston and had travelled south to defend New York City. To put it mildly, the odds were against Washington and co. But, well, you’ve heard that story before, haven’t you? 

As developers Creative Good put it: “General Washington and his new, untrained American army are greatly outnumbered. Your mission is to help the Americans survive the Battle of Brooklyn fighting where you can, retreating where you must.”

not a calm time in American history. 

Is it a spoiler to discuss the events of 1776? Surely the statute of limitations has expired. Anyhow, if you feel that the events of the battle—if not the game itself—can be spoiled, skip ahead.

In 2015 parlance, George Washington and his soldiers lived out the first “Why I’m leaving Brooklyn” thinkpiece. They fled to Manhattan, which even then was what men of a certain age did. Then they fled New York completely, leaving the entirety of #MediaTwitter and whatever else was in the city to the British. (That last bit is not historically verifiable but it feels true enough anyhow.)

So, the fate of New York City, America, and/or the artisanal tasting menu is in your hands. Will you commit to this program? 

Subterfuge is a strategy game for parents and busy people

A game that plays around you.

The world of Else Heart.Break() is yours to hack

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Else Heart.Break() (PC, Mac, Linux) 
BY Erik Svedang

Life kinda sucks until you find out you can hack the world. That's been the through line of a lot of cyberpunk and hacker fiction over the years. Else Heart.Break() doesn't depart from this generalization but it does draw you into it more than ever before. You point-and-click Sebastian around an old European town until you discover its underground subculture of hackers. It's then that you acquire a tool that lets you manipulate the code of everyday objects. Everything from coffee cups to sliding doors can be hacked into and altered. But hacking in Else Heart.Break() isn't half-hearted. You'll have to learn an actual coding language to succeed. Yes, it can be testing, but the reward is an immense satisfaction. You'll never forget that time you worked out how to essentially get access to infinite money.

Perfect for: Adventure game lovers, coders, ravers 

Playtime: 10-15 hours

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