Interlinked Mythology of the Commons By Phoenix Simms • June 2nd, 2023 While there isn’t necessarily an overtly intersectional EcoGothic tone to Folklore, it does deal with bodies irrevocably changed by nature, binaries and transformed bodies.
Funeral Rites Composing the World of Ultraviolet Grasslands and the Black City By Phoenix Simms • May 24th, 2023 Luka Rejec’s world is suffused with mind-expanding, psychedelic heavy metal and is also inspired by “the Dying Earth genre, and Oregon Trail games.”
Interlinked Less Punk and More Funk By Phoenix Simms • May 5th, 2023 What would a character like Daisy Fitzroy have been capable of if her script in Bioshock Infinite were handled by an African American writer with a Steamfunk sensibility?
Interlinked Rolling Up By Phoenix Simms • April 6th, 2023 We Love Katamari and the series it’s a part of is about the alchemy of persistence at its core. You take what’s available to you and turn it into a star.
Interlinked What We Make From the Ruins By Phoenix Simms • March 8th, 2023 Phoenix chats with the lead game narrative designer of The Archipelago about writing a game that explores both the political and personal.
Interlinked The Triple Goddess Effect By Phoenix Simms • February 2nd, 2023 Like Hades protagonist Zagreus, Melinoë is also connected to an Orphic hymn, this time one that sings of her as a “saffron veil’d” nymph that inspires both night terrors and madness in people.
Interlinked Gremlin Girl Energy By Phoenix Simms • January 5th, 2023 Greta is both a problem and a potential solution to that problem, but when read under a more feminist-revisionist lens, she’s charmingly camp, she’s a 90s icon and she’s absolutely that bitch.
Interlinked The Prince of Hades Laughs with a Mouthful of Blood By Phoenix Simms • December 8th, 2022 Zagreus is definitely a liminal figure trapped in a purgatorial space – and this metaphor extends to the entire setting of Hades.
Interlinked Half-Humans and Half-Lives By Phoenix Simms • November 3rd, 2022 At the throbbing heart of Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust is a fear of different beings mixing to create a monstrous one.
Interlinked Acquiring Phantomilian By Phoenix Simms • October 5th, 2022 Games have their own form of communication and language and, in some instances, they include constructed languages, or conlangs, that are foreign to their players too.
Interlinked The Hopeful Disharmony of Into the Doomed World By Phoenix Simms • September 8th, 2022 Phoenix talks to Javy Gwaltney about Into the Doomed World, his new short-story collection about 30 self-aware NPCs in a world that’s been sentenced to a slow apocalypse by its player.
Interlinked Catharsis through Carnage By Phoenix Simms • August 3rd, 2022 Despite DOOM being about ripping and tearing your way through various hellscapes this iconic first-person shooter is (paradoxically) pure escapism and catharsis.
Interlinked Retracing My Writer’s Statement By Phoenix Simms • June 30th, 2022 For this Unwinnaversary Phoenix compares her past writer’s statement/interests to her current state of affairs.
Revving the Engine Network Effects By Phoenix Simms • May 26th, 2022 Pull Stay is personal, pulling from solo developer Nito Souji’s experience as a hikikomori, his unique sense of humor and his favorite genre of beat ‘em ups.
A Near Miss for International Communication and Progress! By Phoenix Simms • April 27th, 2022 We have never been more aware that a man is a social creature and part of a very large web of interconnections in this world!
Interlinked Reverse-Engineering a Living Archive By Phoenix Simms • March 31st, 2022 Creative ideas in games, just like politics in games, don’t exist in isolation. Everything is a remix.
Interlinked Spiritfarer’s Recipe for Solarpunk By Phoenix Simms • February 23rd, 2022 Spiritfarer is perhaps one of the most authentic solarpunk games out there today.
