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Author: Phoenix Simms

Interlinked
The title screen for Kara Stone's Known Mysteries, a delightfully low fi design that hearkens back to the video graphics of the 90s.

Designing for Land and Body

By Phoenix Simms • June 4th, 2025

Kara Stone is one of the game designers to watch when it comes to designing in an eco-conscious manner.

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The Brutal Legend game box art reworked as a vinyl record sleeve rests on a wooden counter. Two hands point at a sticker on its face which reads "PRESS START."

Nostalgia²

By Phoenix Simms • April 11th, 2025

There’s a curious folding of time and space, or at least our personal perception of time and space when it comes to ludic memory.

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Key art from South of the Circle shows a bundle-up couple walking through knee-deep snow towards a downed prop plane.

Rhythm of Stillness

By Phoenix Simms • February 6th, 2025

There’s a poetic quality to having deliberate pauses within a game world.

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Close-up on a microscopic COVID-19 spike protein with its distinctive crown of spikes.

Status Ailment Era

By Phoenix Simms • January 14th, 2025

Do status ailments and their treatments in games perpetuate toxic mythology about diseases and disabilities?

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A still from It Follows shows a young woman with long blonde hair looking over her shoulder as she approaches a decrepit house.

Zoning Out

By Phoenix Simms • November 8th, 2024

Being anywhere is better than trapped in the suburbs.

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A collection of PS3 games displayed spine-out on a shelf.

Out of Reach, Out of Mind

By Phoenix Simms • October 4th, 2024

When you strictly define games as a commercial product you devalue the prominent place games and their rhetoric now have in our current zeitgeist.

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The hexagonal gameboard of Nikhil Murthy’s Syphilisation, each cell a different color.

Advancing Together

By Phoenix Simms • September 5th, 2024

Nikhil Murthy’s Syphilisation emerged as a way to address some enduring colonial-imperialist assumptions in the 4X classic series Civilization.

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Art from Dragon Age: The Veilguard shows the adventuring party standing in a large ruined temple, staring out across a lush and green valley.

Bio Domes

By Phoenix Simms • August 8th, 2024

Dragon Age: Veilguard is being released during a period of global climate change, which makes some players view the game and its devotion to world building with an ecological slant.

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An illustration of two maidens staring outward as a giant moth spreads its wings behind them, rendered in bright orange and gold.

Oh Mothra, Advance With Silk and Song

By Phoenix Simms • July 10th, 2024

Mothra is at once an icon of ritual and tradition as well as one of feminine transgression.

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A beautiful watercolor image of a roster holding a bouquet of red wild flowers in its beak.

Intergenerational Design

By Phoenix Simms • June 4th, 2024

Despite all the technical aspects of game design, it’s human involvement that makes the process vibrant and organic.

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