Dog walk, dog listen, dog lost

Ruins is a 2011 PC game developed by Cardboard Computer and can be downloaded here. Self-pity runs deep through the cerebellum, rots the spinal cord to a few strands of disintegrating rubber, destroys everything outside of mind – other people, other

The Paragon Homunculus in ME

Over the course of seven days I fell in and out of love, only to find it again in the arms of another.  I stopped a genocide, only to cause two others; I talked people off ledges, helped mend broken

Testing the Waters: Five Games from the Molydeux Jam

By now you’ve probably heard of What Would Molydeux?, the 48-hour game jam inspired by the tweets of Peter Molyneux impersonator @PeterMolydeux. The concept is brilliant enough to deserve repeating: in late 2009, an anonymous game developer formed the @PeterMolydeux

(Do it like a brother), do it like a Molydeux

Game Jam, noun. The event of a group of indie game devs get together and create a game in a limited period of time. Peter Molydeux, noun. A parody Twitter account that creates outlandish video game concepts in 140 words.

How You Got Videogames Wrong: …And film…and music…and literature…etc.

Pissing you off in installments, the monthly series “How You Got Videogames Wrong” delves beyond appearances into the slimy interior of The God’s Truth (about videogames). This month we’ll be looking at “Show, don’t tell”—and how it might not mean

Devil Survivor 2 and the Personafication of MegaTen

For the last few years, the Persona subseries has stood tall as the representative of the Shin Megami Tensei series. Both Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 and Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 were successes, so why not milk that cow

Building Worlds: Element Zero of the Mass Effect series

[Building Worlds is a series where Dan Cox examines one facet in a videogame and shows you how, from that one angle, an entire society is reflected.] It’s the title. That’s how important a reaction is to the fiction of

Archie Does it Better: The Top 7 Best Sonic Characters (that aren’t in the games)

Welcome to the planet Mobius, a world unique and beyond what you know from the SEGA games . . .

This is the opening line that greets anyone with the good fortune to have experienced the fantastic universe Archie Comics has built for Sonic the Hedgehog over the last 20 years. The planet Mobius is one populated by a (literally and metaphorically) colorful group of characters far cast from the despised, one-dimensional neon woodland creatures we’ve seen in Sonic’s completely undefined game universe. The talented writers at Archie kept the crazy character designs, but added the necessary depth and personality needed to make Sonic and his friends into memorable characters and created several amazing originals. Today we’re going to look at eight of the latter.

The zoology of Dragon Quest IX

I have a confession to make: I have an undying love for the palette-swapped monsters in Dragon Quest IX. The monsters are cute, for starters, devoid of the baroque stylings of their Final Fantasy brethren, and they’ve made a consistent

The Dear Esther Interlard

You are on a macadam jetty — ostensibly shipwrecked — looking out over a briny shoreline that snakes its way out into the distance before disappearing behind a limestone cliff face. Even further stands a radio tower on which a