Our Brian riddles his way through the monochrome dark and light of 4L Games’ moody puzzler, FRACTER Descending into a mysterious and dark world, guided by an ethereal floating light, our nameless protagonist enters the […]
Features
This is where you’ll find all our written features such as opinions pieces and reviews
The joys of gaming on Linux
“Software is like sex: it’s better when it’s free.” – Linus Torvalds Linux affects everything we do in our lives. From the websites we visit to the operating system in our smartphones, it is highly […]
The developer’s influence on revealing the hidden in Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap
Joshua Robinson takes a closer look at the level designers’ approach to hiding things in Lizardcube’s 2017 remake. Most games have secrets. How difficult those secrets are to find isn’t always the same. Wonder Boy: […]
Into the Breach: Why I’m so invested in what happens on an 8×8 grid
Subset Games’ 2018 kaiju puzzle game might seem simple, but a couple of hours with it show immense depth beneath the cute pixel art and grid-based battles. Not to mention if you play it for, […]
Luigi fears
After all his ghostly encounters and triumphs, why is Luigi still such a chicken? A clinical psychologist explains. For the last few weeks, I’ve been playing Luigi’s Mansion 3 in co-op with my five-year-old daughter. […]
Sunset
A strange, irreverent, opening gambit, but follow me on this. Since childhood, I’ve had an infrequent, recurring, abstract nightmare that’s laughable to others and chilling to me. Here goes… in essence, I am the paddle […]
Ultracore
Leon gets to grips with DICE’s abandoned ‘Eurostyle’ run and gunner, which has emerged blinking into the light after more than 25 years I’ll admit that the legend of Ultracore had pretty much passed me […]
CrossCode
Brian Edwards reviews CrossCode, the action role-playing game developed by Radical Fish Games. Every time I watch a YouTube video titled “Top 65 Upcoming Indie Games” or something these days I’m relatively certain that I am going […]
Sekiro travelogue: Visiting landmarks featured in FromSoftware’s magical realism version of Japan
Jon Cheetham followed the trails of Sekiro and gained a deeper appreciation for the depth of From Software’s magical realism Sengoku masterpiece NB: Major story spoilers for Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice follow From Software’s challenging, […]
STONE
Not everyone drinks. I do. While I’ve definitely had my moments of overindulgence, though, I can’t say that I’ve ever had a ‘morning after’ that started with a missing person. Maybe that just means I’m […]
Come out to play: 1970s NYC gang culture and the origin of beat ‘em up iconography
When Technos brought their pioneering Yoshihisa Kishimoto designed 1986 beat ‘em up Nekketsu Koha Kunio-kun overseas, they changed its name to Renegade and altered the game’s graphics quite drastically, from representing a very local Japanese […]
Blog of the year 2019
It’s the end of another year and it is time for Klax. Oh, wait, that’s not right. Let’s try this again. It’s the end of the year, and I asked members of the Cane and […]