Interlinked Don’t Fear the Reaver By Phoenix Simms • November 3rd, 2023 Raziel, the tragic wraith protagonist of the Soul Reaver series, contains within his arc a nuanced portrayal of how an energy vampire is made and unmade.
Interlinked Grounding The Games Industry By Phoenix Simms • September 29th, 2023 Games, despite all their innovative trappings, are trash. To be more specific – games can create a lot of socioeconomic trash.
Interlinked Squall is Extradimensional By Phoenix Simms • September 8th, 2023 When Laguna knew Squall and his allies were there but felt they were like faeries hovering in the ether unseen, wasn’t that what early encounters on forums and instant chat services felt like?
Interlinked Uprooting Time By Phoenix Simms • August 4th, 2023 Déraciné is an interesting rumination on what makes game narratives convincing, but it’s also a game that effectively communicates EcoGothic fears of being at the mercy of nature.
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.
