Kill Screen Magazine's Blog, page 266

This week, on HBO'S Game of Thrones presents TellTale's the Walking Dead...

We need to talk about the game-ness of last night's Game of Thrones episode.

Ingenious coffee table doubles as labyrinth

Benjamin Nordsmark’s Labyrinth Table is not Kramer’s coffee table book about coffee tables—sadly, nothing ever will be—but it’s pretty damn cool nonetheless.  

“The Labyrinth Table,” writes Nordsmark, “was created to show how a well-known object like a table can be given an extra dimension by creating a small universe inside of it.” In this case, the universe is a labyrinth housed beneath the table’s glass top. Rendered in maple, like the rest of the table, the labyrinth houses (or, depending on your interpretation, imprisons) six metal figurines. Those figurines, which are reminiscent of toy soldiers, can be moved about using magnets underneath the table. The Labyrinth Table is therefore more than a piece of furniture or a sculpture; it is a game. 

Nordsmark’s table has something of an inner life. In that respect, it brings to mind the original Toy Story, which saw toys—including Labyrinth Table-esque toy soldiers—move through a home in ways its architect could not have imagined. At a macro-scale, this is what BLDGBLOG’s Geoff Manaugh calls Nakatomi Space: “buildings reveal near-infinite interiors, capable of being traversed through all manner of non-architectural means.” The route from one end of a table to the other is rarely through its inner structure, but in Nordsmark’s case, it is.

"interiors, capable of being traversed through all manner of non-architectural means." 

 The idea of the Labyrinth Table, then, is subversive. It takes our idea of what a coffee table is and how it should function and corrupts it at every turn. It is not a surface; it has depth. It is not a container; it is an ecosystem. It is not a boring piece of furniture on which you rest your feet, even if you have repeatedly been told to do otherwise; it is a game, and a fun one at that.

Interloper is an idiosyncratic stab at an esport

Taking control, one power source at a time.

A Q&A with Amy and Ryan Green, creators of That Dragon, Cancer

"In day to day life, you don't really get the chance to say, "See me, understand what has changed me."

Rioux's latest EP realized as an irridescent glitch world

Getting inside a musician's mind is relatively easy work these days. Whereas the 20th century was mostly restricted to whatever questions Rolling Stone proffered their subjects, now we have the miracle of multimedia practically opening up their skulls as if a hungry spoon scalping a ripe kiwi fruit. Brooklyn-based artist Rioux is fond of subjecting himself to this cannibalistic act, and he has done so once more in promotion of his new Evolver EP, teaming up with Vinyl Williams to pour his brainscape into a virtual world for us to consume.

It evokes a delightful mysticism 

You can download this digital environment named "Evolver" for Windows (download) and Mac (download). What you'll find inside is a transcendental realm that visualizes Rioux's psychedelic melding of electronic instruments and more traditional sounds mostly provided by guitar string. It's a celestial patchwork comprised of palm trees and domed temples, a tableau of polygonal people, rainbow paints swirled across ceilings, and structures made from conceptual art. It evokes a delightful mysticism by combining the patterns and architecture of Islamic art with the icons of early 3D computer graphics. All these discordant parts reflect Rioux's choice of instrumentation.

But more noticeable than all of that is the way the sky box smears every object that silhouettes in front of it with an iridescent filter. It transforms this virtual world into a translucent realm that's rich in colors that smudge all of its separate parts into a singe composition. i appears to us as if a polychromatic paste. This effect encapsulates how Rioux distorts organic sounds with technological shimmer. Even his voice seems to echo as he murmurs his lyrics, smothering them into his rhythmic production to create a glorious wall of euphoric sound. 

The final piece that truly marries "Evolver" to Rioux's music is how you're able to move around in this space. As Vinyl Williams told The Creator's Project, "one can move about the virtual space as a disembodied entity, flying in any direction, and watch the breadth of any movements span out into infinity." You're able to seek out secret spaces as you move effortlessly through walls, going from enclosed shells to borderless landscapes, taking it all in on a course you set for yourself.  There are no restrictions to your exploration.

Considering Rioux describes his new EP as "a life cycle in miniature, exploring metamorphosis and the various states of being in the evolving human experience," your new phantom-like status is an appropriate transformation to undergo. 

You can download Evolver for free on Windows (download) and Mac (download). Listen to and purchase Rioux's Evolver EP on Bandcamp.

h/t The Creator's Project

The dark ways stealth games work on your mind

Thief, stealth, and the psychology of the forbidden.

It's about time there was a lo-fi Blade Runner videogame

Our present reimagined from the future visions of the 1980s.

The terror of surrealist films stripped down to a traumatizing bone

Frank wakes up covered in blood and I may never sleep again. Game developer Daniil Ermakov, also known as Da Neel, combines the horrors of cult surrealist directors David Lynch and Alejandro Jodorowsky and produces a mish-mash of terror and humor in the face of human trauma. A Box Full of Joy is a surreal adventure story where you play as Frank and, through the poetic justice of the story and plot, you learn absolutely nothing.

It perfectly emulates works like Jodorowsky's fantasy The Holy Mountain and Lynch's psychological thriller Lost Highway. While a lot of games evoke these director’s works, A Box Full of Joy completely takes out the more linear aspects of Lynch-inspired games like Alan Wake and Deadly Premonition and replaces them with sheer terror and gore.

It also has a little in common with Groundhog Day, following a repetitive path between waking up outside of a bar, and travelling between it and a dance hall. Frank, the protagonist, has five modes of action: He can moonwalk in either direction, he can examine and interact with people and objects, he can pop pills, and he can slowly walk towards a destination.

the more the game mentions fear, the scarier it gets

Ermakov changes up the pace by taking away certain actions and adding in different settings, increasing the unease possibly experienced by the player. At one point, Frank, who also answers to Stan, even enters his familial home, complete with wife and kid. The game's nods to its influences can be startlingly direct: each “sequence” ends with a Lynchian close-up, zooming in on Frank until you can see each individual pixel; the music feels like it was taken straight out of one of Jodorowksy’s soundtracks; the background of the living room in Frank's home looks like it was taken out of The Holy Mountain, complete with the 1970s style swirls, bright colours and blood splatters.

And, to be sure, it's completely terrifying. At one point, Frank wakes up as a pair of legs attached to a bloody cross, reminiscent of Jodorowsky’s acid western El Topo; the “Pure Beast,” a skinless horse-like creature you can choose to slay or set free, bears a striking resemblance to the crucified lambs of The Holy Mountain. Golden-haired love interest Her's scream evokes Sarah Palmer’s scream from Twin Peaks, and the Distinguished Gentleman speaks about his beer glass the way the Log Lady might speak about her log. Just as the works of both directors bang around in the viewer’s mind for days or weeks afterward, A Box Full of Joy has multiple endings, encouraging the player to revisit the horror again and again.

You can play and download A Box Full of Joy for free on Game Jolt.

Home is Where One Starts��� reflects on the power of memory

Relive a day in the life of a young girl who grew up in the rural South.

Mortal Kombat meets Nigerian politics in devastating satirical short

Nigeria, Africa’s largest exporter of oil, has recently been suffering from a severe oil shortage. The country’s fuel marketers and distributors have spent much of May on strike over government subsidies that have gone unpaid. In response to the strike, black market fuel prices have soared beyond the government’s mandated levels and businesses have suspended their operations. Even though the strike officially came to an end on Monday, Reuters reports that African telecom giant MTN Group is struggling to resume operations in Nigeria.

Oil shortages, particularly when they are accompanied by broader troubles, are not normally occasions for mirth. But don’t tell that to Kanso Ogbolu, who used the occasion as inspiration for a Mortal Kombat inspired spoof of Nigeria’s governmental dysfunction. In his minute-long video, members of the national assembly face off in their normal chamber, yet this time videogame-inspired scores are listed over their heads. Moreover, their moves, which range from swinging fists to chairs, echoing actual parliamentary brawls.

a brutally effective piece of satire. 

Ogbolu's satire ends with an attempted necklacing, the practice in which a person is wrapped in a car tire and lit ablaze. There’s only one catch: the fuel shortage has made it impossible to complete the necklacing. Though this ending spares the viewer from witnessing further violence, it pulls no punch. Ogbolu uses the language and history of videogames to create a brutally effective piece of satire. Unfortunately, the video doesn’t double as fuel.