Kill Screen Magazine's Blog, page 434

Master the musical puzzles of Circuits by listening closely

It turns out that angsty teenage expression resulting from mind-numbing boredom does have a use beyond pissing off your parents (it's what got me into writing about games, after all).

The months and—I dread—years that I spent pushing pre-made loops of electronic noise into formation, alongside the distorted screams I recorded with a $10 microphone in GarageBand, are the reason I haven't made a single mistake in Circuits yet.

the taps and slides of the interface turns you into a cosmic DJ. 

You don't need a background in creating something-that-resembles-music to excel in Circuits; a patient ear should be enough. The puzzles are snippets of songs. First, you listen to the music and attempt to pick apart its many layers. Then you're given the tools to further dissect it so you can pick out the right samples, then drag and drop them into place.

Even though your efforts are only replicating burps of electro, or the first soothing seconds of an ambient track, the taps and slides of the interface turns you into a cosmic DJ. Somehow, even though Circuits isn't a creative tool (unless you're deliberately going wrong, in which case, more power to you), it comes with the satisfaction of being able to say, "Yeah, I did that" upon playing back your small tune.

Unfortunately, you can't scratch the record, but you can use a slider to wind it back and forth for easy repeat listening. That's close enough. With a few taps you can also divide the track and listen to the individual instruments and the loops tied to each one.

The most clunky, but perhaps my favorite, of the tools involves holding your finger down on a circle (in which the loops are contained) and having a rotary dial sprout out from it, just as if a retro telephone. This is for telling a loop how many times you want it to repeat, and obtaining that number is the challenge that will probably have you straining your ear the most in Circuits.

Unless, that is, you're like me and aren't fond of auto-tuned voices that seem so corrosive against the delicate tinkle of a piano; then you may be straining your ear with pain. Luckily, that describes only one track in Circuits. The rest contain musical elements that are at least concordant enough to enjoy as a whole. Grouchy bass lines and all.

Circuits is available to purchase on the App Store. You can also vote for it on Steam Greenlight.

Gods Will Be Watching trailer teases an abundance of pixelated torture

No kneecap is safe.

The teletext photo editor turns your selfies into beautiful, abrasive pixels

Teletext the World is a photo-editing website and tool that can transform any photo into primary, abrasive teletext imagery. It kinda looks like an Anna Anthropy game. 

But what’s a teletext anyway? A brief history lesson: teletext predated the World Wide Web by transmitting info like news and weather to television sets in bright bold colors. The lone remnant of it in the digital television era is closed captioning, although I believe there are some troopers out there somewhere in Europe sticking with it. 

The web app reminds me of Christine Love's Interstellar Selfie Station, but with less emphasis on the selfies, since this software renders your chiseled high cheekbones beyond all human recognition with the slightest bump of the slider. But it’s fun to play around with, so give ‘er a whirl.

img and source via Prosthetic Knowledge

Fantasy esport Dota 2 gets fantasy leagues; fantasy to ensue

Fantasy football has the natural ability to turn even the most casual of pigskin fans into rabid stat-obsessed fanatics, and soon that tenacity will be rubbing off on DOTA 2. With the newest patch, fantasy DOTA leagues are now a thing. They work pretty much like their somewhat-distant football cousin, with a pool of friends drafting rosters of professional DOTA mid-laners, carries, and supports, and then waiting for the fallout. Also, plenty of bragging. 

A big draw in fantasy football is a cornucopia of stat-porn, giving you all the more reason to care about Cam Newton’s QB rating, and fantasy DOTA could do that even better, considering the raw potential for severe stat-crunching that’s generated by the game’s server farms. Right now, scoring is calculated by about ten finely tuned details, such as points per kill, death, assist, XP earned, and enemy stuns. 

This sounds like an awesome way for esports to develop players into celebrities, and also to rally some outside interest in the upcoming season. Read more about it here.

People play Europa Universalis IV and Crusader Kings 2 an average of 190 hours, or 136,800 Flappy Bird lives

In news that is probably only surprising to people who have not been sucked into their vortex of systems and emergent narratives and lusciously illustrated maps, Paradox Interactive is reporting that their flagship games Europa Universalis IV and Crusader Kings 2 tally an average of 190-hour playtimes. "I see the amount of hours players sink into our games as hard evidence that gamers want freedom," Johan Andersson, Paradox's studio manager, told The Escapist.

He's right. Both games have fairly steep learning curves but the converted come away with wild eyes, telling stories that you just don't hear about from other games. In Crusader Kings 2, for example, a recent batch of DLC contains a set of characteristics and circumstances that, over time, you realize is the birth of the Antichrist. Freedom, indeed. 

New PBS Game/Show asks why we get so attached to NPCs

From Ellie, to Clementine, to, yeah, even Claptrap, the advent of believable non-playable characters, or NPCs, is one of the biggest developments in games in recent years, and also one of the strangest. Unlike the occasional actor and television personality that we form unrealistic attachments too, NPCs are clearly not human, but a manifestation of algorithms under a pixel-thin layer of polygons. Yet we love them just the same. This week’s Game/Show looks at the scientific, sociological, and psychological reasons that we do, and then for fun counts down the 10 best NPCs, according to this evidence.

Watch the episode and let us know if you agree with our picks in the comments!

Strider is a lesson in videogame austerity

Hot butter say what the sword charge.

Is modding a dying art?

We talk to Black Mesa dev Robert Yang about the future of the form.

The deathly lessons of Out There's spacey melancholia

In space, no one can hear you hit restart. 

Is this the first glimpse of Dark Souls 2's world map?

I believe it is. You can scope it on a dry erase board at From Software’s studio at the 4:23 mark of the mini-documentary Namco Bandai released yesterday. It’s hard to make out much—some castle ruins scribbled chaotically in red and blue marker, possibly a shrine with a Japanese symbol I can’t read above it, two number 5s labeling a turret—but it’s definitely some sort of level layout. 

I’m especially curious about the large red figure perched on the tower, which looks like a inhospitable winged reptile. The rest of the board is every bit as twisted and branching as you’d expect. The impossible architecture of the last game is mythic, as Chris Breault did such a beautiful job explaining in his feature on how Dark Souls is basically the most important game of the generation. If you haven’t read it, do that right after you finish marveling at what kind of crazy shit the next game has to offer.