Kill Screen Magazine's Blog, page 45

Ian Bogost’s Play Anything and the sublimity of boredom

In the strata of books about videogames, I offer the following overly simplistic codification:

1. Books about a specific game or game developer

2. Books about a specific period of time in the history of games

3. Books about how videogames are art, dammit

And then there’s Ian Bogost’s new book Play Anything, which isn’t so much about games as distinct artifacts as it is about why games and play are an essential strategy for navigating the banality of the world.

Sometimes the experience of grocery shopping, of sitting in traffic, of attending meetings, can feel like an elaborate series of fetch-quests—a digression from the main story of our lives. Banality is, at its heart, absurd. What Bogost sees in situations like these is an opportunity to attune oneself towards the objects in one’s path, the multitude of factors that make up the restraints and limitations of the world, and appreciate them on their own terms.

we re-instill joy in the objects around us

The anecdotal linchpin on which the book rests is Bogost’s young daughter being pulled along by her father as they navigate a shopping mall. Rather than feel powerless and thwarted in the overcrowded space, she adapts, making a game of avoiding the grouted lines in the tiled floor. It’s an incredibly appealing premise; Bogost goes on to mine the spaces we usually think of as cultural dead zones for aesthetic, structural, and moral value. He intentionally conflates museums and Wal-Marts in what might, on the surface, seem like a flippant exercise, but with time comes to feel empowering, fresh, and engaged. Spaces that are easy to think of as intricate prisons of our own design can become the parameters for games of our design.

The philosophical and spiritual cousin of Play Anything is David Foster Wallace’s This is Water (2009), which Bogost references at several points in the book. In This Is Water, Wallace suggests that the path to mitigating banality while saturated with hypercommercial, irony-heavy experiences lies in developing a kind of sincere empathy with others. While Bogost maintains the value of sincerity, he breaks down the internality of constantly imagining what everyone else is experiencing, and suggests that instead we re-instill joy in the objects around us—that we move from mindfulness to worldfulness. That we contend with the world as it is, rather than with the world as it might exist in the minds of others.

At the heart of Bogost’s vernacular are assumptions about games and play that suffuse much of our writing about videogames, like escape from a diametrically opposed concept of ‘work,’ and the stratification of high and low art. The philosophical questions he examines—how to live and define oneself in relation to the world—are classic, old-school ontology in the context of our ubiquitous postmodern irony. But to place play and games so explicitly at the center of these question, and at a time when videogames have emerged as an important medium, makes these questions less abstract, makes Bogost’s solutions more readily applicable, and makes Play Anything an essential book for the readers of this site.

Find out more about Play Anything on its website.

The post Ian Bogost’s Play Anything and the sublimity of boredom appeared first on Kill Screen.

IMPRESSIONISTa lets you wander around one of Monet’s paintings

Plenty of games have toyed with the convention of going inside paintings—Oblivion (2006), Super Mario 64 (1996), and Dark Souls (2011) to name a few. But only a handful of games have been made with the sole purpose of perusing artwork from the inside out. IMPRESSIONISTa, a new exploration game from Gigoia Studios (whose games, in fact, all share this theme), is one of them.

perusing artwork from the inside out

The game transports you from a sterile gallery straight into Giverny, where most of Monet’s paintings were made. Specifically, IMPRESSIONISTa mimics the style and color palette of “Water Lilies”—arguably Monet’s most famous work.

Unfortunately, the game’s attempt to create a more vibrant feel by brightening the color palette only cheapens the understated beauty of the painting it was modeled after. And with only a small arena with muddied paths to wander it’s likely that you won’t get much more than 15 minutes of playtime out of it. The concept works but perhaps a few more paintings, or some more areas in the same style, could have been added for exploration’s sake.

This isn’t Gigoia Studios’s first stroke at a painting game the previous one was a more substantial and faithful wander around inside Giorgio de Chirico’s paintings called SURREALISTa. It seems that the studio isn’t stopping with just these two, either. The plan is to augment future works with VR support, hopefully creating a more immersive experience to match the studio’s ambitious ideas.

Until then, I’d suggest the film Loving Vincent as a better impressionist use of time and paint. Or, better yet, take the eight dollars it takes to purchase IMPRESSIONISTa and go to an art gallery. If you’re lucky, you might get transported to a better painting for free.

Oversaturate yourself with IMPRESSIONISTa here. 

The post IMPRESSIONISTa lets you wander around one of Monet’s paintings appeared first on Kill Screen.

Gears of War 4 has lost some weight

A number of things define Gears of War. There’s the chainsaw-equipped assault rifle used to saw murderous reptile men in half, the constant rhythmic challenge of timing a supercharged gun reload, and, of course, the brick shithouse soldiers that players control throughout. These are all constants in Gears, reliable design elements that tie the series—a trilogy and spin-off game—together, regardless of where the story itself goes.

Gears of War 4 is an intentional break from everything that came before, but, since it has that 4 on the end of its name, it’s also, in many ways, a continuation of Gears tradition, too. Much of it feels immediately familiar—there are still chainsaws and monsters and “active reloads”—but the way the characters move is different enough to give the series a shot in the arm.

they’re more like overweight tigers

New protagonist J.D. Fenix is the son of a meat skyscraper and, though he’s still a square-jawed, crate-shouldered fellow, he isn’t quite the same walking pile of rocks as his dad, Marcus. J.D. and his combat buddies are noticeably smaller. They don’t thud in straight, rigid lines as they move about the battlefield. Instead of a rampaging herd of baby elephants, they’re more like overweight tigers. (And, no, that’s not Vietnam War commentary.)

Their feet shuffle across the ground like an average person’s feet do while running. They take steps without the earth shaking in response. Gears of War 4 is very much in line with its predecessors, but it’s also something new. Run down a feature list of game modes and watch a few minutes of the player slipping in and out of cover, spraying bullets at waves of enemies, and nothing about it seems like a radical departure. Spend a few minutes controlling the characters, though, and it’s clear that something’s just different enough to notice.

Gears of War 4’s slightly changed character movement is by no means a revolutionary change to the series, but it does offer a little glimpse into the ways in which developer The Coalition is attempting to make Epic Games’ creation its own. J.D. isn’t his dad and Gears of War 4 isn’t a carbon-copy of Fenix Senior’s past adventures, even if the family lineage is clear.

To be absolutely clear: the latest Gears is still Gears, right down to its enormous, muscle-bound bones. It is still conservatively, nearly religiously devoted to the Shooter Gospel According to Cliffy B. But, it’s also, thankfully, willing to alter as it adapts—to loosen the constraints that kept both the tone of the past Gears games and their linebacker heroes barreling down a pre-determined path.

The post Gears of War 4 has lost some weight appeared first on Kill Screen.

American politics and the importance of participation

Heat waves rose from the concrete streets of central Philly as I left my office at 1pm to join a protest in the streets. I melted as I walked the two miles down Broad Street from City Hall towards Temple University. The in-between space transitioned to ghetto territory—an uncharted war zone where people fought each day to survive.

The American political atmosphere that week was especially bleak, the full-frenzied craze of it all taking place during the Democratic National Convention. Americans across the nation applauded the perfectly manicured show broadcasted on nationwide TV, proclamations of justice and equality and fixing broken things. And that show continued while everyday people took to the streets in the heat of it all, stepping to drum beats and chanting musical slogans voicing their resistance against police brutality and senseless gun violence, with the hopes that they might be heard over the broken-record slogans of tone-deaf politicians.

The Philly Coalition of Real Justice emerged as the leader of the Philly Black Lives Matter movement that month, organizing protests and educating young people on the politics and laws involved with protesting. The Up Against the Law Legal Collective—a non-profit organization supported by the coalition—provided civil rights lawyers when unjustified charges were placed against individuals. The group hosted a small informational at a city church on the corner of Arch and Broad streets, just a few hundred feet from City Hall where the Black Lives Matter DNC protest would finally convene during the week of the convention.

I could no longer just be an observer

I attended the meeting because I realized that I could no longer just be an observer, too afraid to stand up for something as basic as equal rights. I was informed of my legal rights during the meeting, in case I should be arrested in the DNC protest. I was given a hotline number to dial if a friend or fellow protester was arrested, so that he or she could be tracked through the system. I was told to pass the number on to friends and family members in case I didn’t return home after the protests that evening. I was taught to never engage with the police officers monitoring the march down Broad Street towards City Hall. I was taught to maintain a safe distance from these officers. I was taught to remain silent during questioning, in the event of my arrest. I was taught to film any unjust interactions between the police and the protesters, so that this might be used in court when necessary. This was how we, as activists supporting Black Lives Matter, could raise awareness on the issues—by filming the reality at hand.

In the age of Trumpisms, aggressive language is what it takes to catch an audience’s attention, or the media’s spotlight, or the watchful glare of a Philly PD helicopter doing circles above protesters’ heads. The language at the DNC march was passionate and loud and sent a strong message: “Resistance is justified,” “no good cops in a racist system,” “the people, united, will never be defeated,” ‘black lives matter.” All the chants and shouts and drum beats really equated to one thing: this was a march worth marching, this was a fight worth fighting, this revolution against inequality.

///

In an age of dying political rhetoric, perhaps live gameplay is the unexpected savior in disguise, providing a relaxed environment to effectively communicate and argue on the politics of gun violence. Standing testament to this is Carnegie Mellon University’s Ignite team, who debuted Give Me Your Gun at the 2016 Games for Change Festival in New York City this past June. Give Me Your Gun is an interactive piece of live theater that lies at the intersection of audience interrogations, drama, and raw gameplay. The gaming audience watches as gun violence issues are acted onstage and have the opportunity to ask and vote on questions to the characters in real time, thereby driving the outcome of the performance before their very eyes.

Sarah Tan, emerging game designer and a member of the Ignite team, was excited to see the results of the game that she worked so hard on to perfect. “Give Me Your Gun was really successful at the festival,” said Tan. “We got lots of great feedback, from things like ‘I would really love to see this on Broadway’ to ‘I’m not a gun supporter, but after playing your game, I think some people should be allowed to keep their guns’.”

In the scenario, the audience watches as Linda discovers that her friend carries a gun in her handbag. They must ultimately ask and upvote the right questions virtually as the scenario is acted out in order to learn about each character’s past, gradually helping Linda convince her friend to give up the gun. The result is something organic and raw, a real-time reaction to the emotions of the situation, an opportunity for the audience to empathize with characters onstage rather than maintaining their detachment as spectators.  

I wonder how the game would play out in a conversation between a black, unarmed boy and a white, loaded cop—a justice game of sorts: The boy backs away and says he hasn’t done anything, the cop says the boy is suspected of selling weed, the boy raises his hands and pleads, but then turns to run. The cop shoots more than once. The boy falls to the ground as a lifeless form. How is the audience going to get that conversation going? How are they going to convince that cop to give up his gun? Certainly not by remaining bystanders. After all, this isn’t just another onstage drama. This is reality.

a real-time reaction to the emotions of the situation

These blatant injustices have seeped into every aspect of society, ultimately resulting in the deaths of Tamir Rice and Freddie Gray and Eric Garner in the United States, and the recent death of Adama Traore in France, while in police custody, provoking protests similar to the Black Lives Matter rallies in the United States. These types of unnecessary and unjustified deaths have also resulted in the 2016 London Black Lives Matter protest for Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. It is now BLM that currently unites the collective force of people of color living as minorities in predominantly white nations; a coined phrase turned movement to expose the shitty truth that black lives and brown lives don’t actually matter to white society, nor does the gun violence that takes place within these communities.

The 2009-2010 Philadelphia Child Death Review Report reveals that 156 youths were ‘killed by gunfire’, with typical child homicide victims being black males between the ages of 17 and 21 and typical child homicide perpetrators labeled as ‘males’ between the ages of 15 and 24 years of age. Additionally, if child homicides in Philadelphia were averaged between the years 2000 and 2010, this would equate to eight deaths per month. These countless murders have broken communities, where children are being targeted by gang violence and police brutality simultaneously.

The theatrical flair of the DNC march and other Black Lives Matter protests are finally casting a public eye on an issue that has been long ignored, simply because violence in these communities is expected and stereotyped by white society. The “Say Their Name’ chants that typically echo throughout BLM protests present bystanders with the individuality of the each victim, each youth brutally murdered by the police—but should be extended to include the names of youth homicide victims as well, brought down by unfair circumstances. Black Lives Matter recently described a range of plans to uplift wounded communities with new education initiatives to change the segregated schooling system currently in place, attempting to make higher education an actual option for the youths of these communities.

#‎Ferguson protest in Memphis by Chris Wieland

///

I was 16 when I first began volunteering at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children, deep in the ghettos of  North Philly, three miles up from where I would march for Black Lives Matter eight years later. There was one Saturday that stands out in particular and one boy with brown eyes I will always remember.

There was nobody to watch him that day and the nurses briefed me before I met with him, explaining his story to me in hushed tones outside his hospital room. His father had been a part of a gang and there had been a shooting at his home, his mother had passed away in the midst of the violence and the father was in prison, awaiting trial. The little boy had been shot as well and was recovering from his wound. He didn’t know that his mother had passed away in the shooting. The nurses told me that I had to keep this information from him at all costs until he had recovered, denying him the time to grieve for his loss. Their sole focus was to keep up his will to live by denying him the death of his mother—I understand that only now.

I walked into the small hospital room, confronting him for the first time. He must have been no older than six or seven years old—too young to face such a loaded loss. He was sitting calmly in a wheelchair, hooked up to an I.V. There were large bandages covering his entire midriff, hiding the place where a bullet must have once entered his small, frail body. He watched me suspiciously after the nurses left. I talked to him, stringing words together and suggesting games that he might enjoy.

He shook his head. I want to see my mom. Where is she? I want to see her.

I pushed his wheelchair out into the hallway, towards a large window where we watched the train tracks that passed the hospital building. I distracted him by rattling off all the strange facts and imaginings I could think up about the railways, but he was too smart for me. He listened to me with a quiet patience and then begged me again—I want to see my mom. When is she going to see me?

I don’t know, I said. It was the best I could do. I could not lie to those eyes.

I want to wait in the hallway if she comes, he said. And so we did. We talked and waited for nearly an hour or maybe two for somebody who would never come, somebody he would never see again. There was no point in any of it, no sense, no pattern—just a random violence to everyday life.

///

a heated protest turned peaceful pilgrimage

I had walked a total of four miles between City Hall from Temple University that day, right back to where I started, a twisted place where left is right and right is left, returning to the very symbol of the system, but also the symbol of justice. I had started the march with so much rage, rage against the lack of resources within poorer communities, rage against a more subtle form of racism that paves the way for full-grown white men with authority to use guns like toys. But then I spent it all by walking for hours in the sun, a heated protest turned peaceful pilgrimage, perhaps because of the boy from Saint Christopher’s—a boy who must grow into a man surrounded by the guns of gang members and antagonizing police forces alike.

If there was a game for justice—if justice was something tangible to be earned by everyone equally, then we would all have been marching on the streets that day in solidarity. Unfortunately there were too many bystanders down Broad Street wearing pained, distrustful, amused, and often confused expressions as I walked through my rage and discarded it along the way—and they continue to watch me in silence.

///

Header Image ferguson dc protest 112514 6 by Neil Cooler

The post American politics and the importance of participation appeared first on Kill Screen.

Play a new videogame that looks like a storybook

Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here!

Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section.

Burly Men At Sea (Windows, Mac, iOS)
BY BRAIN&BRAIN

Burly Men at Sea takes joy in the simple things in life. As the titular three burly men, you explore everything from a sleepy seaside village to the inside of a whale’s belly. The story unfurls like a fable, with each peculiar scenario you encounter rich with metaphor. Alongside its clean, Scandinavian aesthetic, the game makes use of a vignette mechanic that requires you to click and drag to see more of the world. All of this, combined with the dialogue screens, sees the game take on a delightful storybook quality. Enjoy a folktale of both epic and human proportions—but watch out for those sirens, who are presumably the leading cause of death for brawny seamen with bushy beards.

Perfect for: Storytellers, folklorists, nymphs

Playtime: 2-3 hours

The post Play a new videogame that looks like a storybook appeared first on Kill Screen.

Here’s some women who make videogames you should follow

Until yesterday, Elon Musk didn’t follow any women on Twitter. Plenty of men, plenty of companies, but not a single woman. This was originally pointed out by Motherboard, which prompted Musk—aka, the man trying to send the first humans to Mars—to make his 55th follow Caity Weaver of GQ Magazine. He now follows one woman on Twitter.

The Guardian picked up the story by Motherboard and ran with it, pursuing an examination of the tech leaders of the world to see how many women each of them followed on Twitter. Out of the accounts The Guardian looked at, the most women any of them followed was 39, and that was Satya Nadella, the Microsoft CEO, who follows 78 men out of 165 accounts total. A trend arises from the results: Tim Cook, Apple CEO, follows 20 men and four women; Sundar Pichai, Google CEO, follows 238 men and 21 women; Brian Chesky, Airbnb CEO, follows 58 men and 12 women; Bill Gates, Microsoft founder, follows 57 men and 12 women; Reed Hastings, Netflix CEO, follows 44 men and 10 women.

None of this really comes as a surprise given how the locus of tech companies, Silicon Valley, is overwhelmingly a place for men. And while you could pick at this examination of something as ostensibly insignificant as a person’s Twitter account, it’s telling that “the world reflected in their Twitter timelines is bizarrely similar to the bizarre societies they have created in their companies: very, very male,” as The Guardian put it.

Considering all this, it seems like a good idea to compile a list of women who, not only these tech leaders can follow, but for anyone interested in videogames to follow. We could all probably do with following more women in games, right? Here’s the list:

Lea Schönfelder  – @LeaSchonfelder – website

Megan Fox – @glassbottommeg – website

Kara Stone – @karaastone – website

Ciara – @ciara3D – Patreon

Liz Ryerson – @ellaguro – website

Kellee Santiago – @KelleeSan – website

Chelsea Saunders – @PIXELATEDCROWN – website

Carol Mertz – @carolmertz – website

Jenny Jiao Hsia – @q_dork – website

Lily Zone – @neon_mask – website

Ana Todica – @themasquerader – LinkedIn

Delphine Fourneau – @dzifyr – website

Amy Dentata – @AmyDentata – website

Michelle Juett Silva – @Shelldragon – website

Natalia Fugeroa – @Urania_Orwell – website

Claire Hummel – @shoomlah – website

Brianna Wu – @Spacekatgal – website

Vaida Plankyte – @underskinnyhrt – website

Siobhan Reddy – @siobhanreddy – website

Gabrielle – @Qlynq – itch.io

Emily Short – @emshort – website

Amora Bettany – @amora_b – website

Robin Hunicke – @hunicke – website

Jane Ng – @thatJaneNg – website

Nina White – @owlcavedev – website

Jana Reinhardt – @RottenHedgehog – website

Rachel Simone Weil – @partytimeHXLNT – website

Tabby Rose – @TabbyRose – website

Anna Anthropy – @adult_witch – website

Lily Nishita – @lazerlily – website

Cornelia Geppert – @CorneliaGeppert – website

Janet Gilbert – @JanetRGilbert – website

Lucy Morris – @lucyamorris – website

Erin Reynolds – @reynoldsphobia – website

Marie Rx – @Marie_Rx – website

Porpentine – @slimedaughter – website

Nathalie Lawhead – @alienmelon – website

Brandi – @kukubee – website

Christine Love – @christinelove – website

Kitty Horrorshow – @kittyhorrorshow – Patreon 

Martina – @SantoroMartina – website

Natalie Juhasz – @Resulka – website

Julia Keren-Detar – @quiltingcrow – website

Aevee Bee – @MammonMachine – website

Lisa Brown – @Wertle – website

Mattie Brice – @xMattieBrice – website

Hannah Bown – @bownbear – website

Arielle Grimes – @slimekat – website

Samantha Kalman – @SamanthaZero – website

Paloma Dawkins – @Palomadawkins – website

Katharine Neil – @haikus_by_KN – website

Charlotte Gore – @CharlotteGore – website

Alicia Fortier – @TotallyNotBot – website

Cécile Brun – @AtelierSento – website

Karla Zimonja – @zusty – website

Jennifer Schneidereit – @nyyjen – website

Liselore Goedhart – @lizzywanders – website

Zoe Quinn – @UnburntWitch – website

Laura Shigihara – @supershigi – website

Brenda Romero – @br – website

Kate Craig – @koalaparty – website

Sophie Houlden – @S0phieH – website

Erin Robinson Swink – @Livelyivy – website

Carly Kocurek – @sparklebliss – website

Brenda Laurel – @blaurel – website

Dragica Kahlina – @gluggergames – website

Merritt Kopas – @merrittk – website

Sarah Lisa Vogl – @SaraLisaVogl – website

Catt Small – @cattsmall – website

Dajana Dimovska – @DajanaDimovska – website

Na’Tosha Bard – @natosha_bard – website

Stav Goldstein – @StavGoldstein – website

Nicole He – @nicolehe – website

Lianne Booton – @Liannethy – website

Mitu Khandaker-Kokoris – @MituK – website

Nina Freeman – @hentaiphd – website

Sarah Hiebl – @SarahHiebl – website

Charlotte Madelon – @CharlieMadelon – website

Andi McClure – @mcclure111 – website

Auriea Harvey – @auriea – website

Llaura DreamFeel – @dreamfeelx – website

Amy Hennig – @amy_hennig – Wikipedia

Hannah Nicklin – @hannahnicklin – website

Adriel Wallck – @MsMinotaur – website

Lana LeRay – @Crowbeak – website

The post Here’s some women who make videogames you should follow appeared first on Kill Screen.

A game about sacrificing villagers will challenge belief systems

Sometimes you have to make sacrifices. In publisher Kitfox Games’s upcoming The Shrouded Isle, those sacrifices are lives. It’s a cult village management game to be released in February 2017 by design lead Jongwoo Kim, writer Tanya Short, and artist Erica Lahaie.

The Shrouded Isle is meant as a haunting game that forces players to contemplate the lengths they’d go to provide for their people. This goes beyond the food and shelter they must provide for those who live in the village, as the player must placate the gods, too—by offering up a human life. It’ll be a game that evokes apathetic power outside of human grasp according to its creators. “Chernobog is a Slavic deity that conjures up such a potent image that it inspires everyone on the team,” Short said, referring to one of the team’s inspirations.

It’s normal for us to consider gods as only good

“In Western culture we’re used to thinking of evil as being lesser than good—as ‘just demons’,” Short said. She posits that this is why we find comfort in mainstream religion: it’s normal for us to consider gods as only good. But maybe they’re not. If gods can be evil, “or, at the very least,” Short added, “deeply apathetic to human survival,” then hope is lost, replaced with simple pragmatism.

These ideas came from looking at parts of culture such as Chernobog, a Slavic deity that “conjures up such a potent image that it inspires everyone on the team,” according to Short. What has been gleaned from historical sources tells us that Chernobog was considered an accursed god to ancient Slavs. And it’s this that acts as a model for the gods in The Shrouded Isle, to whom the player make sacrifices to, and then try to justify them in regards to a belief system that offers no hope, only survival.

Toying with a variation on monochrome, The Shrouded Isle’s striking art only adds to the “bleak, oppressive” atmosphere of the game—but it was originally influenced by a time constraint. Lahaie initially restricted the palette to meet deadlines on the game’s prototype, which was made in three days during the Ludum Dare 33 game jam. It worked in the game’s favor, though. The Shrouded Isle will continue to play up its bleakness past the prototype’s expanded isle: it’s a symbol of the isle’s lack of “clear path to prosperity or happiness,” Short said.

All of the community members in The Shrouded Isle—who are each a part of one of five families—will have procedurally generated virtues, flaws, and relationships, all of which will impact how they relate to each other and to the player. They’ll react to the sacrificial decisions being made, which will, in turn, determine the player’s outcome in the game. “The prototype was primarily an arcade game of surviving as long as possible,” Short said. “The Shrouded Isle will offer alternative conclusions.”

Kitfox Games’  The Shrouded Isle is scheduled for release in February 2017. See the trailer on the game’s official website.

The post A game about sacrificing villagers will challenge belief systems appeared first on Kill Screen.

Slayer Shock is the videogame equivalent of a vampire B-movie

Slayer Shock is an effort to make a tense, smart vampire survival game, but it ends up feeling more like a B-movie version of a classic genre. It’s not offensively bad or anything like that—it has a worse fate. It is bland.



In the wake of a vampire epidemic, Slayer Shock tasks you with wandering a procedural Nebraskan town, completing tasks such as going on patrol or killing elders. As you walk around exorcising vampires, you can collect “vampire dust” that can be exchanged for weapons or abilities. You can sneak through tall grass, surprising enemies or come at them head-on and aggressively. It’s all fairly run-of-the-mill stuff, and that’s exactly its problem.

Slayer Shock feels like a game made by someone who grew up loving Looking Glass Studios which, in the case of creator David Pittman, seems to be the case. It shares the same blocky, dark look of games like System Shock (1994) and Thief: The Dark Project (1998). But, unfortunately, Slayer Shock doesn’t live up to those games, nor does it evolve beyond its inspirations in any meaningful or unique ways.

it feels like an homage to games I love

You stalk around a blocky town for a bit, kill some enemies, and move on. The only time I even felt challenged was when an enemy sneaked up behind me, getting in several hits before I could realize what was going on. But even that was more annoying than anything else.

I believe there’s heart in Slayer Shock; it feels like an homage to games I love and look back on fondly. However, if it’s a love letter to games of a bygone era, then it’s a letter full of typos and grammatical errors. Though it seemingly does its best to tell a story of a town ravaged by monsters, the result is little more than a stale copy of John Carpenter’s Vampires (1998).



Slayer Shock is available to buy now. Find out more about it on its website.

The post Slayer Shock is the videogame equivalent of a vampire B-movie appeared first on Kill Screen.

Find out how terrible you are in The Monster Inside Me

Ana and Jakob are hunched over and bickering by the fire, as usual. You try and ignore them and throw some crumpled up newspaper into the pit. The fire laps up the paper, hungry for more. As you stare into the flames, their arguing becomes harder to to tune out. Everyone is tired and hungry and stressed. It was a miracle you found this place untouched and managed to keep it fortified to ward off the curious.

Just as you were about to shout at your friends, a scream is heard from outside. The three of you freeze. “What was that?” Ana turns her head. “Ignore it.” Jakob mutters into his arm. The scream sounds again—Ana looks at you, her eyes wide. “They’re in trouble! We need to help.” You bite your lip and stare at the ground. Ana takes your silence as a “no” and curses. “You’re all fucking monsters.” You didn’t correct her. She was right.

//

The Monster Inside Me is a game written by Alice Rendell and programmed by Gauthier André. Inspired by a prototype created during Ludum Dare 33, this interactive fiction takes place in a post-apocalyptic world. The actions you take during the four weeks you’re holed up at your camp will have consequences, as “the game remembers each decision you make and has multiple endings based on them.” Some of these choices will change the course of the story, as expected, but will also have an effect on the “fragile relationships” of the people around you. This is reinforced through “morale,” which increases and decreases depending on how you choose to react to certain situations.

I was shocked by this outcome

As expected of a post-apocalyptic scenario, you don’t get to make easy decisions in the game. I used my first playthrough to test the waters of consequence, hoping not to drown in the weight of my decisions. I weighed each choice as if I were in the shoes of the character. The game asks, “Can you keep the fragile bonds of friendship in tact and hold on to those you need to survive?” Be it no surprise that I failed and had my friends accidentally murdered.

At first, I was shocked by this outcome. I did everything right. I told myself. I took the route of cold and calculating, not wanting to give strangers the benefit of the doubt—but ultimately caving when it came to letting people in who had food. That decision got Ana and Jakob killed, which, well … oops. Tensions also ran high between the two of them, which made it stressful when making one or two decisions. For the most part, I didn’t care about their feelings. I just wanted to make sure they stayed alive.

There’s an established relationship among the three of you, but the game is short, which makes it hard to form an attachment to either Ana or Jakob. That said, The Monster In Me is a great reminder that, when push comes to shove, survival of the fittest still reigns supreme, and that can bring out the worst in us. Playing through a few times to figure out how things could have been handled differently by making opposite decisions is highly recommended.

To play the game for yourself and learn more about it, click here.

The post Find out how terrible you are in The Monster Inside Me appeared first on Kill Screen.

Queer Quest to be an adventure about self care in the LGBTQ community

The kidnapped girlfriend is a well-worn trope, sure. But Queer Quest: All in a Gay’s Work is an upcoming game that takes this cliché and does something fresh with it, exploring not only how it affects the main character, but the community at large.

In the Kickstarter description for Queer Quest, it says you must help Lupe find her kidnapped girlfriend Alexis by “deciphering clues, talking to lovable weirdos, and navigating self care.” The first two parts of that description are what’s expected of a point-and-click adventure game, but the last isn’t.

“how a community deals with tragedy”

I asked Mo Cohen, the programmer and writer behind Queer Quest, about why self care was such an important part of the game. “I realized the importance of self care during the aftermath of the Pulse shootings,” she explained. “When the shootings happened, half of me was spiraled in grief and the other half was taking notes. I was taking notes about how friends and strangers were responding and handling their grief. And the community’s response was self care and to hold each other up.”

She then turned to the specifics of what this looks like within Queer Quest, saying, “Lots of games deal with the kidnapped femme trope, but so few of them explore how fucking awful that would feel. Lupe happens to approach self care similarly to how I do, by helping other people. Also sometimes by just laying on the ground and staring at the sky. Or by talking to friends about feelings, or talking to friends about anything-but-feelings, or by smoking weed or by drinking (not all self care is harmless).”

For Mo, focusing on this self care was absolutely necessary for showing what is so beautiful about the queer community. This is also explored through the vibrant cast of characters, including people (and a dog) who love things like butts, zines, fast food, 90s dance parties, and tarot. Videogames that are explicitly “queer as fuck” like Queer Quest, have the opportunity to show a queer community, rather than just a single queer character, and in doing so can show how varied the people in these communities actually are. Although the setup may seem like the story is about Lupe, almost all the puzzles seem to center around other characters, showing that this is really, as Mo says, a game about “how a community deals with tragedy” rather than a single person.

Queer Quest is obviously inspired by some of the classics of the point-and-click genre. Mo herself describes it as “a really gay Monkey Island (1990), meets a feminist Leisure Suit Larry (1987).” But it’s also inspired by the work of other queer folks, such as Anna Anthropy and Midboss, the team behind Read Only Memories (2015). Queer Quest is another entry into the burgeoning landscape of queer games, and with any luck, others will soon be naming it as their inspiration too.

You can check out Queer Quest on Kickstarter.

The post Queer Quest to be an adventure about self care in the LGBTQ community appeared first on Kill Screen.