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Release your inner hoarder with the roguelike Loot Rascals

Are you the type of player who thinks, man, RPGs like Skyrim and The Witcher 3 are great, but I wish all this lush fantasy storyelling didn’t get in the way of my iron casket and rare weapon collecting. Or maybe you were the rare voice among No Man’s Sky dissenters who criticized the game for not letting you focus enough on collecting and managing resources. You, my friend, have a looter’s soul, and the gaming world is happy to oblige your pirate-like love of digital bounty. If any of the above sounds like you, then you’re in luck because the turn-based roguelike Loot Rascals just released today.…
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Angsty adventure game Night in the Woods released after several delays

A little over a week ago, the indie-favorite 2D game Night in the Woods released after nearly four years in development and several delays. Night in the Woods focuses on narrative, telling the story of recent college drop out Mae after returning to her old coal-mining town of Possum Springs. All is not well in the Rust Belt state, as creepy supernatural happenings intermingle with economic strife. You meander through the town and get to know the many personalities that populate it throughout this 10 hour experience. Originally slated for fall of 2016, then January of 2017, then finally released on February…
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Gorgeous comic book gives Afro-Brazilian mythology the Avengers treatment

A lot of nerd culture is dominated by European mythology, from Thor to Lord of the Rings or even Harry Potter, just to name a few. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m as crazy for Norse mythology as the next girl. But far from just a disservice to African or Asian or Middle Eastern cultures, this blind spot is a an even bigger disservice to nerds everywhere. There is a huge well of awesome mythology that has gone untapped, with epic characters and stories that would make even the most dignified comic book fan salivate. That’s where Brazilian artist Hugo Canuto comes in, who decided to give the gods and…
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Acclaimed electronic musician Moiré releases glitchy hellscape alongside album

The most experimental and daring (read: LIT) indie music artists have been flirting with videogames for a while now. Grimes headlined Moogfest with a Microsoft Kinect-powered interactive installation last year; the bassist from the noise-rock band Lighting Bolt, Brian Gibson, recently created the VR-favorite rhythm hell game Thumper; and Björk literally cannot even right now with how much she loves VR. Today, architect/electronic musician Moiré joined the digital revolution, forgoing the usual music video to instead release a browser glitch art game in conjunction with his newest album, No Future. Created with interactive experience designer Isaac Cohen (AKA Cabbibo), MONOLITH consists of large, glitchy, empty spaces populated by a smattering of human avatars,…

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Issue 10

Issue 10 is out now!

Kill Screen Issue 10 has arrived! Inside you’ll find features on Vlambeer’s globetrotting Rami Ismail, gay sex game designer Robert Yang, and more, as well as a field guide to appreciating modern pixel art, a deep dive into the player-game relationship, and an extensive reevaluation of the much-maligned Wii Music. Also: the definitive ranking of videogame dogs, the legacy of Lisa Frank, and a look at Gaspar Noe’s cinema of excess.

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VERSIONS 2017, Speaker Spotlight: Charlotte Furet

The F_T_R are an interdisciplinary design studio working at the intersection of speculation, imagination, prediction, and realization. On their website, they bid themselves as “Innovation Architects.” And as the creators of projects such as the haptic suit Skinterface and the digital display of bioluminescent bacteria Living Pixels, The F_T_R have lived up to that description. At our upcoming VERSIONS 2017 conference, Charlotte Furet, a designer at the F_T_R, will be a featured speaker during our “Sensing Stories” panel. Born and raised in Paris, Furet received her BA in Architecture from Barnard College and a dual masters in Innovation Design Engineering from…
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Serve up coffee to the dead in an upcoming anime-inspired visual novel

A long, long, long, long, long time ago (summer of last year), I was a barista. I was a barista for nearly three years, workin’ away at the same ol’ shop. Brewing tea, chatting with customers, and befriending regulars. When I played VA-11 Hall-A last year, a game that marketed itself as a “cyberpunk bartending action,” I felt the familiarity of working in the beverage-serving industry wash over me. In the upcoming Necrobarista, I imagine it might evoke a similar feeling. Announced this month at Visual;Conference, the Route 59 Games-developed Necrobarista is a visual novel about a cafe in Melbourne, Australia and…
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Explore a dark, sacred world inspired by Finnish folklore

In some beliefs and cultures, the separation of Earth and Heaven isn’t so cut and dry. In some, there’s an odd space that finds itself sandwiched in between: a point of connection between the ground we know and the sky, whether it’s materialized by a tree, a totem, a mountain, a pillar, or anything sculpted by nature or man. In Axis Mundi, a virtual reality game borne of the recent “waves”-themed Global Game Jam, the so-called connection between Earth and Heaven is a grim place. Designed in Finland by Hu’ng, Kalle, Essi Tommila, Antti Kytö, and Mirka for the Global Game…
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A VR short film has been nominated for an Academy Award

While last year the Emmy’s recognized the Oculus Story Studio short film Henry, this year another awards ceremony is taking notice of virtual reality—the Academy Awards. Pearl, a VR short from Google, has been nominated for the 2017 Academy Awards for Best Animated Short Film. Pearl, released in 2016, stands out among the 360-degree, mobile VR, and room-scale VR tales told by Google’s Spotlight Stories. The short is directed by Patrick Osborne, the same of the Oscar-winning short Feast, which screened before the Disney film Big Hero 6 in theaters. But Pearl is a different beast than Feast, because it plops the viewer directly…
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Nothing like a 2-bit beach, 8-bit sounds, and real sand to get in your shoes

I’m not a beach person. I don’t like when sand gets in my shoes. And I don’t like wearing sandals to avoid that very problem either. I live in San Francisco, where the beaches are notoriously windy and cold, not sun-kissed and surf-ready. When I think of beaches, I often wish I were thinking of something else. But Virtua Walker ‘87, a virtual reality game borne from last weekend’s Global Game Jam, imagines a different kind of beach—one that I might even fancy walking along. The 2-bit color limited Virtua Walker ‘87 was developed by the Scotland-based Robin Sloan, Paul…
Chocolate - Still 3
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Chrome-tinged cats come to life in this colorful VR music video

Most virtual reality music videos feel the same. They’re all impressive on a technical level, rotating 360-degrees so viewers can take in all their surroundings. Yet little of them inject the most integral feature: interactivity. That is, except for Tyler Hurd, an animator known for injecting life into those typically stagnant virtual reality music videos and making them colorful, fun, and most of all—somewhat playable like a game. At the Tribeca Film Festival last year, the animator unleashed “Old Friend,” a zany, psychedelic dance party where the player shimmied alongside a cartoonish conductor. In Hurd’s follow-up, a collaboration with Viacom NEXT, interactivity roots…
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Explore Norse mythology in a captivating snow globe-bound puzzle game

From January 20th to the 22nd, the annual Global Game Jam blanketed the entire world as developers from every corner of every country quickly devised games. In total, 7217 games saw completion—which according to Global Game Jam, accounts to about 60 percent of Steam’s entire library. Some games were about knife-wielding crabs, others were calming vignettes, but every project found itself carefully crafted in accordance to a single theme: waves. In Australia-based developers Jennifer Scheurle, Gerard Delaney, and Emri Can Deniz’s entry, waves took shape in a familiar place: Norse mythology. The Serpent Cycle is a game of vignettes, taking place entirely within…
lawnmowerman
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An old, controversial science-fiction film is being reimagined for VR

Who asked for this? We’ll probably never know. But anyways: the “cult classic” science fiction film The Lawnmower Man is coming to virtual reality. Beyond the VR world already in the film, to actual VR. The 1992 film is being resurrected by the VR distribution company Jaunt, according to an announcement made at the Sundance Film Festival. “The original movie was a film of unsurpassed imagination and creativity with its ground-breaking use of VR back in 1992,” said Jim Howell, a rights holder for the project, in a press release. So far no director, cast, or other information has been announced,…
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Playdead teases new title with mysterious image

Earlier today, the Twitter account of Playdead, creator of Kill Screen’s #1 game of 2016, emerged from its slumber to drop something special on this day of days. Thanks for your warm reception of INSIDE. Since release, Playdead founder Arnt Jensen and the team have been working on the next adventure. pic.twitter.com/RfejnH39mR — Playdead (@Playdead) January 20, 2017 And away we go! So short, so sweet. Let the speculation commence. Although one fan has already named it: @Playdead "Outside" — Devon Wiersma (@Devon_Wiersma) January 20, 2017 We’ll reach out to Playdead for more info.
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Rubi’s Room tests what it’s like to solve a life-sized Rubik’s Cube in VR

Rubi’s Room wasn’t always in virtual reality, but gazing at its perfectly dizzying human Rubik’s Cube antics, it wouldn’t be surprising to think it was. The game was borne during the latest Ludum Dare game jam, but in a much simpler 2D state. But for Germany-based developer David Hagemann, the idea of reworking the project for VR was on his mind all along. “The immersion and the natural interaction [of VR] are the most compelling factors for me, it is not comparable to what you’re used to with playing games the regular way,” wrote Hagemann over email. “This brings a…