Category Archives: Gaming Culture
Block, Block, and Block
I tweeted my link to my Depression Quest review the other day, and accidentally walked into the Zoe Quinn Twitter battle. I try to tweet my games journalism multiple times, because I’m a narcissistic attention whore, or working freelance writer, tick where … Continue reading
Is “Cookie Clicker” a Message Game?
Like Cow Clicker, Cookie Clicker is a parody of certain casual game mechanics. Players start by clicking a cookie to earn a couple points to spend on an upgrade to earn extra points. Eventually, you’re earning millions of points per second, … Continue reading
Mayflies, Collage, and Music in Super Chop Games’ Ephemerid
Super Chop Games’ new iOs release Ephemerid is a musical game, but fortunately, very little of it involves tapping in time with the background music (Ugh. How is that a genre?). Instead, players explore a paper collage world of flowers, … Continue reading
No Way Out of ‘Depression Quest’
I’ve decided to share a post I wrote for IGM last year about text-based Depression Quest. There’s an ongoing conversation about depression and suicide, and talking about games is also how I like to talk about feelings. Depression Quest is … Continue reading
Free Free Free To Play, Pay Pay Pay To Win
Indie studio Elevate Fun’s new free-to-play iOS Game, FFFFF2P, is Free Free Free Free Free To Play. Like most free-to-play games, you can, of course, pay to win. Free Free Free Free Free To Play smartly satirizes the usual free-to-play … Continue reading
PanemVille: The Hunger Games Adventures
The Hunger Games novels suggest so many good games — a minigame hunting prey with Katniss’ arrows (a popular choice for the middle-school girls in my game design classes), a crafting and survival game like Lost In Blue set in … Continue reading
An Unpleasant Combat Game
Quoted from Leigh Alexander’s blog. Posted without comment, because how could I improve this? What’s your favorite video game? Metal Gear Solid 3. It’s a game set in the Cold War that you can play however you want, but those of … Continue reading
Success Marker
One of my current App Design students took Game Design with me last year, and today he asked if I would please tell him the story of Cow Clicker again.
The Silent Age
The Silent Age is a point-and-click (I mean, point-and-tap) iOs adventure from House on Fire, a small game studio in Denmark. Joe is a janitor on an average day in 1972, cleaning up on in a high-security government lab when … Continue reading
Tappy To Flappy
Sometimes it’s awkward to be both a writer and a developer, but reading what my GrabIt colleagues wrote about what my Epic colleagues made isn’t one of those times. … Known for driving blockbuster console titles like Gears of War … Continue reading
