Christina Neofotistou (she/her) joins me to discuss how she approaches a project, what she values in pixel art, and teases an upcoming project for the Playdate console. She also gives some backstory on the Steven Universe game that almost was (maybe some day)
Read MoreAubrey Isaacman (she/her; they/them) comes on to discuss how her games approach intimacy and emphasize player emotion, and the importance of physicality in game design.
Read MoreJoe Russ (he/him) joins me on Kritiqal Care to discuss the release of Jenny LeClue: Detectivu last fall, how its structure evolved from episodic to a two part series, and how Apple Arcade influenced the game’s development.
Read MoreJack King-Spooner (he/him) is my guest on episode 5 of Kritiqal Care. We discuss the importance of seeing the people behind art, how queer has evolved (and is still evolving) from a derogatory term to one of self acceptance, and the way our desire to find a "silver-lining" in all of this might be blinding us to the real pain caused by the pandemic.
Read MoreLeo Bunyea (he/him) joins me on episode 4 of Kritiqal Care to talk the biases of game engines, how to make academia more accessible, and the joys of the Animal Crossing tag system.
Read MoreNear Death consistently hits the highs of the best survivalist fiction, so engrossing as to cause me to turn up the heat in my own home out of fear. But it is a story we have heard before.
Read MoreWelcome to episode 3 of Kritiqal Care. I'm joined by indie game dev Marina Kittaka (she/her), known for her work on Even the Ocean, Secrets Agent, and Anodyne 2. She joins me to discuss authenticity in art, returning to old projects, and how nice it is that we're (mostly) not in winter anymore.
Read MoreEpisode 2 of Kritiqal Care features tabletop rpg designer Jamila "Jammi" R. Nedjadi of Sword Queen Games. Jammi's games focus on queerness, filipino culture, and accessibility. They join me to discuss their creative process, what life looks like in the Philippines during the Covid-19 pandemic, and why Bioware won't let us look at Garrus' butt.
Read MoreOn episode 1 of Kritiqal Care, I speak to indie developer Florian Veltman, creator of Lieve Oma, The Endless Express, and previously of ustwo. He is currently working on The Other Side, a puzzle game about ghosts learning to understand life in the afterlife.
Read MoreKritiqal Care is a show about games, community, and hope in the midst of a global pandemic. It is my small attempt to give people something positive while life feels incredibly bleak.
Read MoreOrwell tries to introduce safeguards into the surveillance operation but in doing so further highlights how futile these measures are in protecting from false imprisonment and machine bias. If we are beginning the conversation at “how do we ethically implement a mass surveillance system” we have already lost.
Read MoreZoomed out, Corruption 2029 looks like what you’d expect The Bearded Ladies to do next. But there is no soul, no justification for the game’s existence, and numerous moments where it feels actively inferior to a game that came out two years ago.
Read MoreI like so much of what *Mutant* is attempting to do. It's so frustrating that everything begins to fall apart right as the game comes into its own.
Read MoreWandersong may not reference tarot cards directly, but its thematic questions are such that they map almost too well to be purely circumstantial. Whether you believe tarot cards hold any spiritual power or are merely a useful tool for introspection, I hope this analysis helps you appreciate how cleverly Wandersong employs and subverts archetypes that have existed for generations, and, more broadly, how tarot cards can be used to explore narrative and the act of interpretation.
Read MoreI do believe Tiger & Squid had good intentions, and Beyond Eyes is far from paving any roads to hell. I just wish they had spent as much time considering Beyond Eyes’ framing device and mechanics as they did editing its trailer.
Read MoreTruffle Troubles has given me no answers to the wonder and bemusement I felt from that old magazine. It has filled me with the purest and most incomprehensible unease, the way one feels when they find something molding in the back of their refrigerator.
Read MoreEpistory recognizes that typing is no longer a novelty. Everyone will be coming to the game with their own typing quirks, and rather than try to strong-arm the player into finally using their pinkie, Epistory wants every player to enjoy typing on their own terms.
Read MorePathologic 2 deconstructs the player/game dichotomy even as it celebrates how affecting that relationship can be. It is rich and dense and uncompromising. That it exists at all is an anomaly, but one I can only hope doesn’t stay that way.
Read MoreUnbound Creations’ Headliner: Novinews is a hyper-compressed exploration of how society reflects the stories it tells, and what this means when the powerful hold all the pens.
Read MoreTokyo Dark is so bizarre and mangled that it is difficult to pin down where it falls off the rails. It can be both deftly thoughtful and entirely distasteful within the same scene, as if two different games were stapled together and forced to fight to the death.
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