Kill Screen Magazine's Blog, page 233

Face the panic-stricken options of a single mother as she loses her daughter

You wake up to a series of missed messages on your phone. Shit, today’s going to be horrible. 

Today is taking place in Open the Door and Smile, an entry in the 33rd Ludum Dare game jam, and it does indeed look like it’s shaping up to be horrible. There are messages on the phone from your partner, saying that the police are on the way. You worry that he’s going to take your daughter.

The walls and blinds of your room look jagged. As you turn, they take on the appearance of razor blades. The walls are closing in on you. The ambient noise—it’s probably just a light breeze—is working its way into your head. It won’t stop. It keeps getting louder. You can’t get it to go away.

You run around your flat looking for your pills, something to calm your nerves. Where on earth are they? They must be here somewhere. Granted it would be easier to find them if your world wasn’t tessellating. But at this very moment you don’t have that luxury. Your world is collapsing around you—and, where in the name of all things holy, are those pills?

at this very moment, you don’t have that luxury 

Open the Door and Smile fits into the broad category of anxiety games, but it is interested in the source of your avatar’s anxiety more than the anxiety itself. While the latter is admittedly more conducive to gameplay, it is not necessarily the most interesting part of a story. Throughout its brief playing time, Open the Door and Smile hints at this underlying story. It would be mean-spirited to spoil that story here. Suffice it to say Open the Door and Smile contains quite the emotional payoff. If Open the Door and Smile’s pieces only make sense to you in hindsight, then you have learned a measure of empathy for the plight of others in the process. 

You can download Open the Door and Smile here.

Bring order from chaos with this NES glitch simulator

Near the top of a list of a child’s worst fears is an unsaved game crash. It comes swiftly with an onslaught of colors flashing on the screen, the crackle of the soundtrack being halted to a resonating hum, and the impending feeling of doom that you’re probably going to need to take on Bomb Man all over again.

Picture Processing is an NES CPU simulator where you try to unscramble glitched-out images from NES titles, back to their original, playable form. The entire title is a play on the colors and randomness of old NES glitches—the start screen is hundreds of multicolored pixelated shapes and symbols, with only a black bar reading “Start Game” across the bottom. The game was created by Ohsqueezy for A Game By Its Cover 2015, a game jam in which participants created real games based on fake cover art.

When the game is started, all the tiles in the images have been shuffled and mixed around out of their memory addresses, and each level looks like chaos, set to the soundtrack of the same endless loop of whichever notes the screen froze between. The idea of the game is for players to telepathically enter the internal NES Picture Processing Unit to put images back in their original memory addresses.

You can download Picture Processing for free here.

This videogame glitch wants to be an artist too

Over the weekend, Willy Chyr encountered a rare and beautiful demon inside the code for his upcoming spatial puzzler Relativity. Beyond being a mere bug, this unknown corruption has emerged from a new shader Chyr was toying around with while creating a series of conceptual screenshots he deemed the "Rorschach Test Series." When he accidentally set the camera size too small, Chyr saw that the shader proceeded to warp the virtual architecture of the game into striking serendipitous tableaus on its own accord. It dwarfed his initial experiment.

Rather than trying to eliminate the effect, as he presumably would with any other bug, Chyr has embraced it (he's even turned it into desktop wallpapers). "What is even happening!?" Chyr tweeted. "I seriously can't believe this... every angle and color combination is absolutely gorgeous." He's right. The bug seems to have an artistic eye. Divorced of human intent, the software has fragmented and discolored itself in ways Chyr probably wouldn't have, creating alluring mutant children out of the malfunction. 

wouldn't be amiss among Islamic art. 

In the images that Chyr shared, we can see that sometimes the corruption frames the architecture as a panorama. It's as if it wants us to observe the complexity of the floating staircases and towering columns, all of which appear only as blueprints now due to being reduced to outlines. Meanwhile, an abstract paint-like diffusion of violet, peach, or veridian shades fill in the blank spaces between the lines, inviting us to enjoy shape and light separately, or to merge them as an unusual overhead map.

Other times, the camera is zoomed-in, allowing space for a single architectural expression to gain its own character. An endless vertical staircase turned on its side becomes a criss-crossing pattern that wouldn't be amiss among Islamic art. A temple-like structure complete with a triangular roof and support columns sits with importance at the center of the frame surrounded by shadow versions of itself. Suddenly, these angles and shapes that previously had their individuality overshadowed by being part of a mass of virtual carved stone, are randomly chosen as specialized purveyors of architectural beauty. And, boy, how they perform when put on the spot.

You can see the images that Chyr shared on Twitter below.

Why we love Mario

On three decades of affection and obsession.

Relive the horrible experience of getting ready in the morning as a teen

"It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are." - E. E. Cummings

Looking in the mirror can feel like an assault as a teenager. Your reflection—something that used to be dependable—only brings new horrors with each morning. Some days, it's an eruption of pustules. Others, its straggly, non-cooperative hair. Most times, your face is running on a couple hours sleep. You might as well be classified a zombie, who must somehow make all this rotting, festering flesh look presentable to the outside world. Because right at the moment that your body is betraying you and changing in unpredictable ways, you're also becoming more and more aware of what people are "supposed" to look like. It's the uncomfortable, painful experience of slowly becoming self aware, and realizing you are a monster.

Mike Mezhenin captures the pressure and impossible task of being satisfied with your reflection from the age of 14 to 18. Mixing hidden object-style challenges with the classic customization conceit of a dress-em-up, Mornings of a Seventeen-Year Old Girl explores the panic and self-loathing of the average American high school and middle school student's daily routine. Armed with an entire cabinet-full of merchandise to correct, conform, and mask your face into acceptability, you are given a time limit and told to do your best. You will never get everything done in time. At best, you manage to disguise the repulsiveness of your natural state. And whatever you run out of time to mask, you apologize for with a quick selfie-polaroid and a self-deprecating or ironic caption that is your last layer of defense.

disguise the repulsiveness of your natural state 

There's an interesting distinction between the classic customization options (like changing clothes) and touch-up mode (like fixing pimples, black heads, hair kinks, under-eye bags). Hovering over the touch-up options causes visible targets to appear on your face, highlighting what's wrong and how you can attempt to fix it. For the first few rounds, the flaws are all you see. Racing against the clock, you pick and prod at your blemishes, without ever realizing you could spend your time coloring your hair wacky colors instead. As with life, the better you get at the game, the more you come to realize that it's less about focusing on flaws, and more about reclaiming whatever you can with a personal touch. So let that cold sore fly free, and cover up your whole face with some high-fashion shades instead. Leave the dandruff in your hair, and alternatively opt for a nice shade of blue for those locks.

Though Mornings of a Seventeen-Year Old Girl—created in 48 hours for the 33rd Ludum Dare—follows the jam theme of showing how "you are the monster," there's a light at the end of this tunnel. After completing the routine enough times, you begin to worry less about the clock or the blemishes, and more about discovering new ways to express yourself. What was at first a nightmare that cast you as the monster turns into a daily affirmation, casting you as the cool kid who doesn't care what everyone else thinks.

You can conquer your adolescent fear for free on Mac, Windows, or your browser here.

The hell of being Mario

The uniquely hellish ramifications of Mario 64’s start screen.

Find Solitude by the sea in Trawl

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Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section.

Trawl (PC, Mac, Linux) 
BY House of Wire

Environments affect creativity. And while the internet might help us collaborate on a more global scale, some see the digital age as the antithesis of a creative atmosphere. With a constantly connected world only a click away at all times, it can be hard to find the moments of solitary introspection needed to create. Atmospheric game Trawl feels like a vacation from the sound of text messages and Facebook notifications. You are an explorer in the middle of the ocean during a storm, manning your vessel searching for treasures. Only these aren't your typical video game artifacts or collectibles. Trawl encourages you to rediscover the ordinary, uncovering broken tea cups and rusty tools and asking you to tell their story. Complete with a typewriter simulator, Trawl is a return to an antiquated world where nothing can distract you from diving into your own thoughts and inspirations

Perfect for: Ernest Hemingway, literary buffs

Playtime: As long as the eye can see

We are all Mario

Understanding the everyman of videogames.

What we were playing at Ace Hotel Tuesday night

Hoops were scored, trees were pruned and two hearts were united at the Ace Hotel last Tuesday night. If you missed Playlist, our monthly public arcade, here's what we were playing:

Prune

Through minimalist design and a meditative soundscape, Prune builds an atmosphere for creation rather than competition. This is a space for calm cultivation only, where a virtual garden springs forth a very real peace of mind.

Where to get it

Specimen

If your passion involves mixing paint to attain specific tones, then Specimen should come easy to you. Is it that shade of purple you're after? Or is that one?

Where to get it

Tough Love Machine

In Tough Love Machine, as in real relationships, there is no undo button. Though this puzzler has a simple premise--unite two hearts--things can get more complicated than you might expect.

Where to get it

Backer Reward

The makers of this game want to thank you for backing their Kickstarter. In fact, they want to make sure you're involved every step of the way.

Where to get it

Feist

In the darkly alluring forest of Feist, it doesn’t matter how adorable you are; you are small, you are squishy, and unless you master your environment, you’re going to die.

Where to get it

Kasketball

Kasketball is a game of surprising strategy and temporary alliances. It’s also a game about a bunch of race car drivers playing basketball. Like whiskey and pickle juice, the combination turns out better than you might expect.

Where to get it

Badass Inc

In Badass Inc, you’re a feline contract killer on the trail of a pricey target. Your gun is loaded, but you’ll need to think a bit more outside the litter box if you want to get paid.

Where to get it

Reflections

Reflections is set in a world much like ours. Your choices not only shape the story, they literally color the world around you.

Where to get it

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Outer Wilds is like Groundhog Day in space

Even though it took the Seumas McNally Grand Prize and Excellence in Design awards at the Independent Games Festival earlier this year, Outer Wilds is something of a mystery. It was still in very early alpha when it was being judged for this year’s Game Developers Conference, and has flown under a lot of people’s radars since, especially in the shadow of a game like No Man’s Sky. Both games feature an open, explorable universe at their core, but Outer Wilds differs in a lot of ways.

why does the universe keep resetting? 

The defining factor of Outer Wilds is time. What there is to see and do in its wide open galaxy depends largely on when you make your visit. Certain planets or cities may be destroyed at specific points during the time loop, so if you make it there too late, you’ll have to wait until the next universal reset before flying over.

But why does the universe keep resetting after 20 minutes? That's part of the mystery. This time loop mechanic has been compared to Majora’s Mask, but its creators at Mobius Digital also point to games like Myst and Kerbal Space Program as inspirations.

Outer Wilds currently has a crowdfunding campaign on a new service called Fig, a curated platform that merges elements of Kickstarter with investing. The team is asking for $125,000 to add more interactive elements, new locations, a fully fleshed out story, improved graphics, and more.

Check out Outer Wilds on its crowdfunding page.