If you’ve ever wondered what exactly a creeper is made of, we’re just as lost as you are, but we do have some ideas about why Minecraft’s most memorable character is, ostensibly, the villain.
If you’ve ever wondered what exactly a creeper is made of, we’re just as lost as you are, but we do have some ideas about why Minecraft’s most memorable character is, ostensibly, the villain.
Stray is part of a long lineage of games with animal protagonists. Do its meows measure up?
You a Barnacle Phister, Mister? What’s a player to do with an asshole protagonist?
Kirby and the Forgotten Land makes the end of the world cute! What does that say about our social values and ethics?
Is Elden Ring really an open world game, or is it closed off in all the right ways?
Atari 2600 games might not have the flashiest graphics, but their minimalism makes them poetry.
What’s so magical about parkour in videogames? It’s the fantasy of finally conquering the late capitalist city.
Amnesia: Rebirth asks what it takes to be a good mother - and if it’s worth it.
For all its promise of open-world freedom, Grand Theft Auto IV strips players of the choices that really matter. Noah Wardrip-Fruin offers a vocabulary for thinking critically about games.
Metroid’s Mother Brain is more than a brain in a jar. It also poses an existential question about what it means to have a body.
What can the morph ball ability in the Metroid series teach us about game design and exploration? When is a ball a world? When is rolling a lifestyle?
Can the JRPG remain a lively or innovative genre? Might its best chance to do so lie in its past: turn-based combat?
What is a house, when it’s left abandoned? A place to haunt. Kitty Horrorshow’s Anatomy invites players to haunt domestic space.
What’s scarier than cooking up monsters? Doing it for the camera! Read Tof Eklund on how Battle Chef Brigade reworks the tropes of reality television.
Nate Schmidt discusses the true terror of Metroid Dread: what if the EMMI were to make Samus obsolete?