Clickhole is best known for ruthlessly satirical articles that take aim at clickbait, so I wasn’t sure what to think when I heard that it had posted an adventure game called The Mysterious Shadows Of Skullshadow Island.
Read the restIf you think text games are mostly just a relic of the pre-graphics age, think again: We’re in a renaissance.
Read the restAt any given moment, your social media feed is a cultural snapshot: an up-to-the-minute look at how the people around you feel about their lives and the issues that affect them. In the browser game Killing Time at Lightspeed, you get a glimpse of the future through the lens of social media, with all its pleasures and frustrations.
Read the restA photographer and makeup artist based in New York City, Ryan Burke creates characters from the best sci-fi series you’ve never seen.
“The portraits I create express a perspective on human styling that does not rely on conventional clothing, hair, makeup or accessories but rather an aesthetic derived from the use of unusual materials and makeup to create otherworldly personas,” writes Burke. (Some images may be NSFW.)
Read the restVideo games can vividly render the memories you can’t get back.
Memories such as how it felt when you were in high school, and your best friend’s parents got divorced, and when her dad got to take her out to dinner at the weekend, you got to come.
Read the restBehold The Sun, a simple, lovely interactive experience created by Cameron Kunzelman where you guide a growing flock of birds through the sky as the sun slowly sets behind them. I’m not saying it’s about brevity of life and how the connections we make to others are ultimately what give existence meaning, but it’s not not about that. Play it here. (Thanks, Maddy)
Read the restIf you’ve never tried the fitness app Zombies, Run, imagine a long series of tiny radio plays set during the zombie apocalypse that ask you to run to various locations on crucial missions—with the undead hot on your heels.
Read the restConsent can be an uncomfortable subject, an often-complex and personal form of negotiation that people rarely get a chance to practice outside the moments that precede sexual encounters. Allison Cole, Jessica Rose Marcotte and Zachary Miller of Tweed Couch Games want to help change that with In Tune, an interactive experience that asks people to “negotiate and communicate their own physical boundaries with a partner using skin-to-skin contact as the main controller of the game.”
Players form teams of two with someone they trust and don “consent bracelets” that register skin contact.
Read the restIf the anti-consumerist ethos of Fight Club were translated into a Minecraft game, it might look a little like Keep Working, an “interactive music video” by a developer known as Bean Chon.
As you navigate your blocky, repetitive life, you’re bombarded by pop-up advertisements that turn the world into a sort of walking catalog, admonishing you to stop being a loser and start living the good life.”A HARD WORKER WILL BE A SUCCESS,” insists the poster over your bed. As your daily grind grows old, and fails to offer these promised rewards, things take a darker turn. Try it out at Game Jolt or Itch.io. (You’ll need Unity Web Player to play it.)
Read the restKeiji Yamagishi, aka the composer of the music for the original Ninja Gaiden, just released a chiptunes album that sounds like an alternate dimension soundtrack to the best NES game that never existed. Listen to Retro-Active Pt. 1 for free here, or download your own copy for $8.
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“You can love the police, you can hate the police, but you can’t argue that the police wield enormous power,” writes the team behind This Is the Police, a game currently in the midst of a Kickstarter campaign. Part strategy game and part corruption simulator, it places you in the shoes of Jack Boyd, a 60-year-old police chief with only six months till retirement.
Read the restR.A Montgomery, co-author of children’s book series “Choose Your Own Adventure,” died on Nov. 9 in Vermont. He was 78. Read the rest
