Here's the Thing MST3K and My New Appreciation for Bad Movies By Rob Rich • May 14th, 2024 The semi-recent discovery of a perpetual Mystery Science Theater 3000 marathon has made Rob realize that a lot of bad movies really aren’t so bad. On paper, anyway.
Forms in Light Stone to Screen By Justin Reeve • May 10th, 2024 The monumental structures at Göbekli Tepe offer plenty of potential for modern fields of study including videogame level design.
Noah's Beat Box Going to Extremes By Noah Springer • May 9th, 2024 Drawing lines between Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things and Nikos Nikolaidis’ cult favorite Singapore Sling. Did the latter influence the former?
Casting Deep Meteo PAX East 2024: Family Time By Levi Rubeck • May 8th, 2024 We wandered the show floor and the convention center for two days, getting boba, shitty pizza and standing in plenty of lines. All in service of the greater question: What’s the youth take on gaming today?
Area of Effect A Wilderness of Thoughts Grown in Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley By Jay Castello • May 7th, 2024 The garden is not the park, although the tension of its civilizing influence is never resolved.
Rookie of the Year Minecraft Menagerie By Matt Marrone • May 3rd, 2024 So . . . how many pandas does it take to crash Minecraft?
Mind Palaces Empathetic Magic By Maddi Chilton • May 2nd, 2024 Wiktor’s entire mode of interaction with the world is one of applied empathy, concentrated and made into magic through the indefinite occultisms of thaumaturgy.
This Mortal Coyle The Lyktgubbe from Bramble: The Mountain King By Deirdre Coyle • April 30th, 2024 My adult brain feels desperate to chase after lights in the forest, lights I haven’t seen in some time. As a child, I knew better.
Run It Back 2011 By Oluwatayo Adewole • April 26th, 2024 Tayo heads back to 2011, taking a look at two films which show us how the world beyond etches itself onto our reality.
Musings The Everlasting Allure of the Shitty City By Blake Hester • April 25th, 2024 I feel like I’ve never truly cared about where I live, and as such, places have never felt truly comfortable. But I do care about Astoria, about New York.
Noise Complaint My Google Home is Cursed: A Cosmic Horror Story By Ben Sailer • April 24th, 2024 When Ben’s smart speaker refuses to play music from specific artists, he begins to believe it’s cursed. Could his delusions of demonic possession be true?
Funeral Rites The Tower, The Fool, The Meatgrinder By Noah Springer • April 23rd, 2024 “His Majesty the Worm is very focused on megadungeon-crawling, and I wanted players to have this sense that surviving the dangers means something.”
Feature Excerpt Apocalyptic Pregnancy By Natasha Ochshorn • April 19th, 2024 Perhaps an emotional response to a presidential election year, the weather, uncontrolled rent, or genocide – people on a large scale are questioning parenting as an ethical choice.
Feature Excerpt It’s Not a Loop, It’s a Spiral By Autumn Wright • April 18th, 2024 Maybe Alan Wake is like me. Maybe I’m like Alan. Trying to write my way out. Maybe the writing is just incidental to this compulsion, something we’re drawn to.
Here's the Thing Why I Watch YouTube Reactions By Rob Rich • April 12th, 2024 React videos, as eye-rolling as the concept can be, are a way for me to relive important moments for the first time by proxy.
Forms in Light Disdain and Devotion By Justin Reeve • April 11th, 2024 Similar to how some videogame levels have been criticized but later hailed as masterpieces, many buildings have transcended their initial criticism to become beloved landmarks.
Noah's Beat Box Smashing Pumpkins – Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness Vinyl 4LP Boxset By Noah Springer • April 10th, 2024 Of all the albums from the ’90s alternative rock scene, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is one of the most deserving for a deluxe treatment like this.
Casting Deep Meteo Mega Man X Doesn’t Begin Until Dr. Light Sings “My Blue Suit” By Levi Rubeck • April 9th, 2024 Gamers have some idea of flow state but we do not debase ourselves with general gamerisms here.
Don’t Hurt Girls When You Dance (Or Any Other Time) By Juno Stump • April 5th, 2024 We may never know for sure, but I think there’s a reason that so many trans women have been able to identify with Kurt Cobain’s joy, pain and suffering, so strongly.
Area of Effect Some Questions I Personally Find Interesting About Paint By Jay Castello • April 5th, 2024 Cloud Strife might be a cleric. Yes, sorry, I’m talking about the yellow paint.
Rookie of the Year Beers of the Osa Peninsula By Matt Marrone • April 4th, 2024 Consumed at any temperature lower than brain-freeze cold, they are uninspiring at best. When found frigid on a deliriously humid day in the rain forest, however, they are a revelation.
Interlinked A 16-Bit Memorial Garden By Phoenix Simms • April 3rd, 2024 If All the World and Love were Young is not only a stunning elegy for Stephen Sexton’s mother, but an ekphrastic piece about the nature of play and memory.
Mind Palaces Lost in Translation By Maddi Chilton • April 2nd, 2024 I’m reading War and Peace for the first time, and probably the only time, and I’d like to do it right.
Past Presence Octopia is a Sweet Farming Sim That Rewrites Eastward’s History By Emily Price • March 29th, 2024 Simple stories don’t have to overcomplicate themselves to be good.
Funeral Rites Between the Skies and Beyond the Horizon By Justin Reeve • March 28th, 2024 Designer Huffa Frobes-Cross refers to Between the Skies as “rules minimalist, fiction maximalist.”
Feature Excerpt Ueda, Buddha & Me By Perry Gottschalk • March 27th, 2024 Don’t come to these games as experts of others, come to these games as someone who has never played one.
Feature Excerpt This is Your Badness Level: Lilo & Stitch and Mental Health By Orrin Grey • March 26th, 2024 Sometimes watching a cute little blue alien struggle with the same things we struggle with can make it a little easier, at least for a while.
Here's the Thing I Might Be Done with Dreams By Rob Rich • March 15th, 2024 Rob reflects on his previous hopes and dreams, as well as why he doesn’t really have any more of them now. (But not in a depressing way, promise!)
Forms in Light Weaving the Bountiful Threads of Being By Justin Reeve • March 14th, 2024 At what point does a bucket of bolts begin being a person? Does it ever?
Noah's Beat Box Watching Kubrick on My Phone By Noah Springer • March 13th, 2024 To be fair, I have never seen a Kubrick movie in theaters, so this entire thing may be flawed from the get-go.
Casting Deep Meteo Road House Ronin By Levi Rubeck • March 12th, 2024 Miyamoto Usagi and Dalton’s stories aren’t totally parallel, but they rhyme in a lot of ways.
Area of Effect Seasonal Space By Jay Castello • March 8th, 2024 I played one section of Beasts of Maravilla Island and then I got on a bus, and the naked tree branches seemed more interesting than ever.
Rookie of the Year Atomic City: U2 Go Nuclear at the Sphere By Matt Marrone • March 7th, 2024 If I lived in Las Vegas, I wouldn’t be writing this column at all, because I’d be at the show. Again. (And then again.)
Interlinked Making Leaps By Phoenix Simms • March 6th, 2024 Sometimes a certain long-running series will grow alongside you, its relationship with you and your associated subtexts with it morphing over time.
Here Be Monsters In Defense of the Jump Scare: A Manifesto By Emma Kostopolus • March 5th, 2024 Jump scares function as a necessary pressure-release valve for the experience of watching horror, thus allowing the experience to be less unrelentingly tiring.
Mind Palaces And the Crowd Goes Wild By Maddi Chilton • March 4th, 2024 It’s never quite established what Rollerdrome’s sport is reflecting in the society that watches it.
Past Presence What Time Loops Mean to Me By Emily Price • February 29th, 2024 Time loop games give us the opportunity to grow alongside the main character.
Run It Back 1995 By Oluwatayo Adewole • February 28th, 2024 In both Fallen Angels and The Doom Generation we follow dreamers.
Noise Complaint Militarie Gun Rings the Bell By Ben Sailer • February 27th, 2024 A punk song appearing in a Taco Bell commercial forces Ben to hit the drive-thru while reconsidering the gatekeeping attitude of his youth.
Funeral Rites Embarking on a DuckQuest By Alyssa Wejebe • February 26th, 2024 “What if ducks weren’t the comical sidekick? What if ducks were the heroes of the adventure?”