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Author: Steven Nguyen Scaife

Brain Scratch
A screenshot from Hands, with a giant goldfish floating in front of a woman holding up her hand holding another hand that's ready for the player's hand walking on the first and second finger to head that way for a handshake. There's an alternate hand to shake on the right hand side on top of an old television

Puzzling-er and Puzzling-er

By Steven Nguyen Scaife • April 8th, 2024

Do the really good puzzle games pull more players than normal through to the very end, able to string them along with the pure thrill of discovery and positive reinforcement?

Brain Scratch
A screencap from Mr. Sun's Hatbox, with a two-dimensional library battleground with some ladders on the stacks and a few blobs shooting, climbing, and falling to their painful deaths, as a rubber ducky stares in judgement

Giving Up Ghostwire for Mr. Sun’s Hatbox

By Steven Nguyen Scaife • June 12th, 2023

And although Mr. Sun’s Hatbox has such common, game-y elements as the deified skill tree, the smaller scope allows the game to move through it with a far greater efficiency and satisfaction than other games, where all the aforementioned permadeath and neck-snapping and resource-harvesting might stand out less.

Brain Scratch
Screenshot from the game Babbdi, where a low-poly character hunches over a table with blank eyes and two teeth in a concrete room with someone sleeping on a bare mattress in the back, saying "we will get out of babbdi"

Bibbdi Babbdi Boo

By Steven Nguyen Scaife • February 13th, 2023

I’m constantly struck by how little a game needs in order to evoke places and processes, how crude its materials can appear without compromising clarity of vision.

Brain Scratch
The title screen for Apocryphauna, featuring the text of the game's title in a pulsating, off-putting font

Lonely Heart of the Cards Club

By Steven Nguyen Scaife • December 14th, 2022

The one Lord apparently has better things to do than stop the scavenger hunt for a forbidden trading card collection.

Brain Scratch
Some real gross alien architecture, brutalist Geiger, with two giant humanoid heads looming over a wet altar, all with strange vines descending like tentacles

We Scorn Friction at Our Peril

By Steven Nguyen Scaife • October 31st, 2022

A look at some smaller games that use friction to make a point, to express frustration and access emotions beyond the limited vocabulary of realism and polish.

Video Games - Comics - Sci-Fi - Pulp

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