What happens to a videogame hero when they die? There are different theories floating around, the most entertaining of them seems to be that each failure creates a new universe where the hero’s death carries on, as if the game is some kind of Schrodinger box where an endless set of possible universes are created … Continue reading Stumbling Toward Victory: Failure as Creative Performance
[Originally posted on PopMatters] Toren opens with a clarity of purpose but a mystery of place that I haven’t experienced in a game since Shadow of the Colossus. Like Ico, Vagrant Story or, more recently, Journey and Dark Souls, it tells a complex story with space, light, and movement. Like Dreamfall and The Legend of Zelda, … Continue reading Toren and the Art of Mythmaking
A Rashomon, named after Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 film, is a story repeated several times from different characters’ perspectives. Each retelling adds more information from each character until, in the end, a full story emerges. The Rashomon effect is a psychological phenomenon wherein multiple witnesses view the same event but describe it with different or even … Continue reading The Ludic Rashomon
I can’t remember how many turn-based strategy games I’ve played in a row but these days it seems like the games that excite me the most involve commanding sprites along a grid in small, squad-sized skirmishes. Case in point, the most recent I played was The Banner Saga. In The Banner Saga, the player guides two separate caravans … Continue reading Resource Based Humanity
I’m not sure how to define cyberpunk. Oh, I can recognize it, but I’m not sure if I know how to pare it down to a digestible one-sentence review. I know that I can easily look the answer up online, but I’m more interested in how people categorize it not as a list of features … Continue reading Cities of Magic
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