Kill Screen Magazine's Blog, page 346

Starve to death in the Canadian wilds next month with The Long Dark

The Long Dark is set to hit Steam Early Access on September 22. The game is being developed by Hinterland Games, which founder and creative director Raphael Van Lierop told us is situated in "an old mining town nestled at the foot of a mountain range" in Cumberland, British Columbia. The cold creeps into the game: it's at once a brutal post-apocalyptic survival game and a celebration of the Canadian wilderness. The game's art style is equally stark—not quite low-poly, but spare, with a painterly sense of color. 

So: what will we actually be doing in this brutal, beautiful expanse? Hunting, looting, building fires, staving off the cold, and just generally trying to stay alive. The devs promise "dozens of hours" of such activities, which is presumably equivalent to how many hours one could actually do them in the Canadian winter without dying, also. 

When we spoke to the team late last year, they spoke of how environment bred art. Or, better put: "Fuck it, I'm Canadian. This game is Canadian. Deal with it," according to Van Lierop. But even if this isn't common in videogames, said our writer Reid McCarter, it does all fit within a greater canon of Canadian art:

But its plot—an isolated person desperately hoping to survive an indifferent nature—is very much in the tradition of Canadian storytelling. Setting the game anywhere other than Canada would take away from a work that is, in essence, an exploration of a phenomenon embedded in the national consciousness. Northrop Frye's Conclusion to a Literary History of Canada and Margaret Atwood's Survival, two seminal pieces from Canadian literary criticism's belated formation in the 1970s, identified a recurring theme in Canadian art dubbed "garrison mentality." Both Frye and Atwood see Canadian work as preoccupied with the influence of the more powerful nations, like the United States and United Kingdom, that dictate the country's fate. They also, just as importantly, point to the prevalence of an anxiety that centres on the vast wilderness that comprises so much of Canada's geography.

Let's all leave this cold world and live in a LEGO house together

This week marked the groundbreaking of the LEGO House in Billund, Denmark, a massive structure that aims to be a sort of futuristic Mecca for Lego lovers, design nuts, and artists alike. The 8,500 square foot building isn’t just a building made of LEGOs or a building made to look like it’s made of LEGOs. According to LEGO Group themselves, the LEGO House should be “one place where you can experience the LEGO story and be inspired by the endless possibilities of the LEGO brick.”

The building itself is designed by Bjarke Ingels of BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group. Ingels recently designed the BIG Maze at the National Building Museum in Washington DC. Inspired by the shapes and colors of the iconic LEGO brick, Ingels’s LEGO House will mimic 21 massive LEGOs stacked in order to create an indoor space and will stand about 80 feet tall.

“For me the LEGO brick embodies the notion of systematic creativity- that the rigor and rationality of the LEGO brick allows children of all ages infinite possibilities to create their own worlds and to inhabit them through play,” said Ingels, who envisions the roof to be a “covered square as well as a mountain of interconnected terraces and playgrounds.”

Currently, the actual facilities that are going to be housed within are a bit of a secret. However, an artist rendering of the space shows a cafe, history museum, art exhibition spaces, as well as a partially covered courtyard. The LEGO House will open in 2016.

LEGO will be selling a special LEGO model of the LEGO house in and around Billund during the construction period. Of course, eagle-eyed brickheads should be able to reverse engineer the building itself from the concept video and photos.

Header image via Slate.com

h/t Slate.com

Bow before your new god, this interactive tree of lights

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Videogames begin to respond to Ferguson

"Ferguson showed the world the best and worst in journalism."

There are more adult women playing games than teenage boys. Duh.

This should be surprising to no one.

Here's a bot that wants to make Twitter less awful

Social media, you can do better than this.

"Twitter has, at best, provided vague efforts to address the problem at a glacial pace."

"Literal street style" takes street fashion very literally

The hotbed of fashion is right outside your door

Act One of Maker’s Eden fails to set up story, substance, or anything

Pointing and clicking in nowheresville.

Charting the edges of avant-garde videogames

In 2014 the hot-button theoretical debate has moved on from “can games be art?” to “what is a game?”

Ethan Carter vanishes (presumably) on September 25

The intriguing Vanishing of Ethan Carter arrives on PC September 25th.

Details about the upcoming Lovecraftian mystery game have been few and far between since the game was essentially announced via gif last year. Since then developer The Astronauts have shown a few more pretty pictures, hints at story, and talked about the need to make their story as believable as their graphics.

You play as Paul Prospero, occult detective extraordinaire on his quest to find a missing boy, the eponymous Ethan Carter, on the heels of a brutal murder. Using Prospero’s ability to communicate with the memories of the dead you must recreate crime scenes in order to progress through the game.

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter has previously been announced for PS4 sometime in 2015.