Kill Screen Magazine's Blog, page 280

Simogo has released the first episode of their mystery podcast

More episodes to become available over the next three weeks.

Videogames and craft in a maker-filled world

A Two5Six sneak peek. 

Meet the watch that predicts when you'll die

Time is a flat circle?

Future Unfolding's team want to bring back pure, unguided childish wonder

Rediscovering what the Zelda series lost.

Restore a delightful world of electronic music in Adventures of Poco Eco

If you're not a DJ then there has probably been a time in your life when you've wanted to be one. What I've always loved about the craft is the gesticulations. Specifically, how the fingers are concentrated on spinning a concentric web of vinyl. The DJ operates machinery as a pilot would command a plane; flicking switches, spinning dials. It's that tactile display of control that gets me. Their immediate comprehension of an alien landscape—all mini domes, black pads, and sequences of monoliths—and how they then turn that hard-edged circuitry into music with a few playful swoops and swipes.

The properties and specific sounds of instruments are made physical 

I want to be able to do that. And Adventures of Poco Eco, an iOS game of all things, had me feeling a bit like a DJ as I solved its touchscreen puzzles. It's a delight. You play an odd creature known as Poco after it gets arrested by a mysterious cassette that straps itself to its chest. It then plugs Poco's ears with headphones to fill its head with dreamy electronic music. The songs are all taken from Hungarian artist iamyank's new EP Lost Sounds. The game is a a world-sized expansion of that EP.

The task is to help a tribe to rid themselves of a terrible silence by restoring the sacrosanct Sounds of their world. The cassette on Poco's chest is the key, and the totemic animals that each correspond to a musical component—beats, tones, and frequencies—must be reached. To this end, you travel across striking low-poly landscapes, triggering amps to awaken each level, and pushing buttons to configure platforms to the positions you require to bridge them. 

But it's the vivid character afforded to each level that stands out. It's as if a magnifying glass is being held to the DJ's deck and you're watching the microcosmic life that the lens reveals. After crossing the Lotus Ocean at the beginning of your journey, you have to spin the tri-colored pyramids of Cone City like tops to reach the lower levels. Later, you spin emeralds in the Crystal Catacombs to bounce light beams around. The Field of Drums is navigated by tapping out beats on big bouncy drum skins. The properties and specific sounds of instruments are made physical.

You can add to the soundtrack that sonically matches the vibrant visuals by poking the environment: the flora is shaped like drum sticks, cymbals, and horns and touching them has them respond accordingly. It's a world that you manipulate with your fingers, restoring it as you go, and so its ending makes perfect sense. You enter yet another hulking carved mountain to find a sequencer. The sounds that you brought back then need to be tapped out into a concordant loop. 

Once done, and the confetti has stopped falling from all the celebrations, you can then listen to iamyank's entire EP from your iOS device. Or you can grab it on Bandcamp if you prefer.

You can purchase Adventures of Poco Eco for $2.99 on the App Store.

Final Fantasy Type-0 HD is a serious game about kids at war, kupo

Ever seen a chocobo covered in blood?

Soon, you'll be able to smell ancient civilizations with your iPad

See and smell the past.

Hatred, Milton, and the problem of pleasure

The most controversial videogame in years is an old story.

Even with infinite possibilities, games will often feel the same

Do the math.

A game about being mom to a teenage girl tests your patience

The modern American teenager has enjoyed a spurt of attention in the videogame space as of late. Gone Home was about coming to terms with queer love when young, Life Is Strange combines high school drama with time-travelling, and both Night in the Woods and Oxenfree promise an endearing adventure with an oddball gang of teenagers. These are narratives about growing up, figuring out life, discovering new and sometimes scary paths. And they're arriving at a time when videogames as a whole seem to be experiencing similar growing pains.

But, screw teenagers for a minute, and let's take some time to appreciate the framework that allows them to exist in the first place. You know: the parents and guardians that hold everything together and clean up after these teens so they can go about their messy business. Specifically, as it was Mother's Day this past weekend in the UK, let's direct our attention towards mums (or moms), as that's what Carter Lodwick and Ian Endsley's short videogame story Little Party does. 

It's a game about restraint  

In short, it has you playing the mother of Suzanne during her all-night party hosted in your own house. You, as a single mother with nowhere else to go, have to patiently and rather awkwardly endure. You can't join in, you're told not to interfere, and so you find yourself almost imprisoned in your own house, although it's not as grim as all that. You're left to continuously puzzle what they're doing in the next room, wondering what action each noise belongs to, and perhaps worrying if they're trashing the place.

It's telling that the most significant interaction you can do in Little Party is to look down. It's the tireless signature move of most mothers: look down at the pile of dirty clothes left for you on the floor, look down at the dinner plates piled up in the sink. Indeed, you look down at your daughter as she slouches on the sofa texting her friends. Later, you repeat the motion when discovering the debris of teens ripping through the night trying to express their own discomfort and creativity. All that's missing is the audible sigh. 

And that's all you can do in Little Party: potter and fret. It's a game about restraint. You can see the cool, artsy experiments these teens are indulging; angsty self-portraits in your office, noisy songs being hacked together on a keyboard in the basement. Yet, you have to hold back from getting involved. You have to let it all happen without you. And that's hard.

a simulation of the difficult process of letting go 

In this way, it feels like a subversion of the interaction that we, as players, typically enjoy inside videogames. It almost feels like a simulation of the difficult process of letting go foisted on to parents as their children grow up. After doing everything for them for years, there comes a point during the teen years when they want to break away, and you have to learn to let them. It's agitating if necessary.

That's what this first all-night party is about: your child taking responsibility, you trusting them to take care of your possessions, hoping that they'll be loyal to your sensibilities versus being rebellious to impress their friends. You're good enough to make the guacamole before the friends arrive, but once they do, you cannot serve it, you cannot make a fuss.

But it's all worth it. Or, at least, that's what the ending of Little Party seems to say. You're rewarded for holding back by a moment that sees the Spacebar transform its "Look Down" command to "Be Proud." And so you stand there, at the back, beaming with pride as you watch your daughter find her place in the world in front of her friends. 

You can download Little Party on itch.io.