Kill Screen Magazine's Blog, page 411

Playlist 4/16: Ragdoll yourself with Trials Fusion, set aside a Pink Hour, and make time to bleed with Broforce

We've got the games if you've got the time.

Pretty much everyone ever owns and plays Dota 2 (apparently)

The dark fantasy esport Dota 2 is undeniably Steam’s killer app, according to the number-crunching-smiths at Ars Technica, who found that over 25 million copies have been downloaded and played on Valve’s popular digital download service. We shouldn’t be shocked that such a hardcore, complex game—even one that takes months of practice to achieve anything close to competence—would be the game that everyone owns and plays, considering that Dota 2 is a worldwide phenomena, and that Steam is the only way to play it. 

Ars' numbers are dominated by hardcore, competitive games. With the exception of Portal, the top ten games in terms of copies owned, are all quintessential “gamer” games. One particularly illuminating chart shows that 6 games (DOTA 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Source, Counter-Strike, Civ 5, and Skyrim) get as much playtime as the rest combined. One interesting takeaway is that while a lot of games show huge disparities between ownership and actual playtime, Dota dominates on all the charts. They're like a late-90s boy band or something. 

Dominique Pamplemousse commits the sin of telling instead of showing

Over, and over, and over again.

This colossal Lego sculpture plays head-nodding Chicago house

A musician has built from Lego an old-school analogue synthesizer that plays smooth and hypnotic Chicago acid house, totally one-upping both that Lego city I built when I was 7 and my unimpressive foray into DJing. Simply called Play House, the Goldberg-esque mechanical sculpture was assembled from the classic yellow, red, and green bricks, along with the strings and pulleys of a Lego Technic kit. Those little Lego flowers? Just embellishment.

Creator Alex Allmont says that this is not the result of extreme Lego fetishism, as we’ve seen with the boom of elaborate Lego creations since Minecraft. Instead, it allows onlookers to visualize the currents of the process underneath, something you don’t get with digital sound systems or even their analog counterparts. Those little blocks actually help us understand how technology works, which was kind of always the point.

via Prosthetic Knowledge

With Rusty's Real Deal Baseball, Nintendo returns baseball to the sandlot

The sweet crack of a bat against rawhide.

Action Henk! lets you envision Sonic as a huge fat dude

At last!

The Binding of Isaac: A Postmortem

With the upcoming release of Rebirth, a look back on Edmund McMillen's Freudian nightmare.

Storium transforms the Internet into a forum for storytelling

Can you hear the crackle?

Indie rocker Mac DeMarco needs your help torturing cockroaches

Mac DeMarco writes jangly, bluesy indie rock songs. As far as I know he has no songs about burning insects with cigarettes, though I could be mistaken. He does however have a game about it. His label has just released Squish’Em, which you can play here.

Armed with a half-smoked cigarette from your choice of a pack of Marlboros, Viceroys, or Lucky Strikes, you take control of a levitating, severed hand which I assume is that of DeMarco’s—the very same hand giving you the peace sign on the start screen, which lends DeMarco’s friendly smirk an almost demented, deceptive vibe. His music is much higher quality than the game, expectedly, but this is a fun, funny way to draw attention to him.

via Pitchfork

The Doom that Came to Atlantic City updates Monopoly with harried results

Cthulhu destroys your nostalgia.