E-soterica Cheap Golf Is An Ode to Inelegance By Khee Hoon Chan • November 20th, 2018 Snarky, amoral AIs and retro aesthetics are nothing new, if not wearisome among today’s growing library of games, but at least Cheap Golf has the gumption to be peculiar and honest about it.
E-soterica Three Shades of Depression By Khee Hoon Chan • October 25th, 2018 The candid portrayal of depression in these itch.io games is both striking and devastating.
E-soterica Sokpop’s World In Miniature By Alyse Stanley • October 17th, 2018 Terrariums let you play god with none of the responsibilities. The Sokpop Collective’s Simmiland lets you do it in real time.
E-soterica Foul Play in an Elementary School By Khee Hoon Chan • October 10th, 2018 “I wanted to work with something fun and lighthearted. I was actually watching a lot of Mindhunters on Netflix, so I wanted to do something detective-adjacent but still semi-family-friendly,” said Pico, the developer behind P.E. Noire.
E-soterica My Brother Rabbit Tackles Seriousness with Surrealism By Alyse Stanley • October 3rd, 2018 Under the guise of a point-and-click puzzle game, My Brother Rabbit shows the helplessness and horror of battling illness at a young age.
E-soterica Bork in the U.S.S.R. By Alyse Stanley • September 12th, 2018 Russian Subway Dogs brings arcade mania and hecking good boys to the Motherland’s underground.
E-soterica Sunless Skies Rewards Imagination By Khee Hoon Chan • August 29th, 2018 Roguelike elements convey the harshest qualities of Sunless Skies. They carry the relentless trials and tribulations their protagonists face in nautical fictions and literary voyages like Moby Dick and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
E-soterica Finding Peace Where I Can Get It By Alyse Stanley • August 2nd, 2018 These indie puzzle games have particularly calmed my mind, providing a soothing digital sojourn in this whirlwind news climate.
E-soterica In Space Everyone Knows You’re Gay By Alyse Stanley • August 1st, 2018 During an interstellar war for humanity’s future, three women find themselves inexplicably drawn toward one another. It’s destiny. Or maybe just physics.
E-soterica The Domestic Horror of Perfectly Ordinary Ghosts By Alyse Stanley • June 28th, 2018 Perfectly Ordinary Ghosts details the horrors hidden just out of sight in the most sacred of places: our quaint suburban homes.
E-soterica Exploring Japanese Transgender Themes in One Night, Hot Springs By Khee Hoon Chan • June 12th, 2018 “I didn’t want the game to be too heavy or dark because there are already too many games out there with bad endings for LGBT+ people,” shared KC. “I wanted to approach the topic in a way that would leave players with a lighter heart”
E-soterica Exploring Spaces in These Indie Platformers By Khee Hoon Chan • May 15th, 2018 In most platformers, we waffle a little, and then take a leap of faith from one scaffolding to the next, and perhaps over a deadly pit of lava and spikes.
E-soterica The Quiet Exclamation of ASMR By Khee Hoon Chan • April 3rd, 2018 “We don’t really choose our bodies, or the way they fail us, and I feel this is one reason trans people seem to connect with the theme of body horror,” said Soria. “For me, it’s mostly the way I’m seen that feels different from who I am.”
E-soterica Speed Dating for Ghosts: A New Lease on Death By Alyse Stanley • February 22nd, 2018 Speed Dating for Ghosts proves that even the afterlife can get boring if you don’t have someone to share it with.
E-soterica Experience Melancholia In Just Two Minutes By Khee Hoon Chan • February 13th, 2018 30 Seconds to Midnight brings to mind the sublime but sorrowful Lars von Trier film Melancholia, which depicts the world’s end in an unorthodox manner—a inevitable planetary collision, devoid of typical Hollywood bombast.
