games

I started building a psychological horror game called Azirah: Don’t Let Her See You , thinking passion alone would be enough. I was wrong, and that realization changed how I approach game development. At first, I believed ideas and motivation were sufficient to create a full story-driven psychological horror game from scratch. But during development, I realized something important: Creating a com…

I've been playing word games my whole life. My mom has been regularly beating me at Scrabble since I could spell. I lose frequently to my wife Maya at Scrabble, and my kids beg to play Wordle every time we are waiting for a food order. My brother-in-law even made us a crossword to commemorate our wedding date. After trying out NYT's Crossplay recently for a few weeks, I set out to build a new wor…

Wu claims title 18-17 with decisive break of 85 The 22-year-old is the second-youngest champion ever As the decisive pot went in at around 10.30pm on Monday, and Wu Yize punched the Crucible air and etched his name into snookering immortality, it was hard not to imagine that the sport had just changed in front of our eyes for ever. If Zhao Xintong broke through the glass ceiling for Chinese snook…

_The Garden of Ideas_ 4 (2):5-14. 2025This paper develops a phenomenological account of liminal space aesthetics through an analysis of "The Stanley Parable". Drawing on Mark Fisher’s account of the eerie as a disturbance of presence or absence, I argue that the game’s empty office aesthetics function as paradigmatic liminal spaces that stage a crisis of agency. The player’s navigation of repetit…

The NetHack DevTeam is announcing the release of NetHack 5.0.0 on May 2, 2026 NetHack 5.0 is an enhancement to the dungeon exploration game NetHack, which is a distant descendent of Rogue and Hack, and a direct descendent of NetHack 3.6. NetHack 5.0.0 is a release of NetHack. As a .0 version, there may be some bugs encountered. Constructive suggestions, GitHub pull requests, and bug reports are a…

Under the microscope: Pyramid (unreleased Saturn prototype) An unknown Sega Saturn project has come to light after 29 years As of early 2026, Sega Retro has more than 300 pages about Unreleased Saturn games. There’s one game that doesn’t have a page, however: Pyramid. What’s Pyramid? That’s what we wondered when we came across this disc: The disc’s owner wasn’t able to provide many details. Our b…

Meeting ‘my people’ – video gamers with very long memories – took me back to an era of machine play that lacked megabytes but had far more tangible presence I want to tell you about the game that has made me the happiest this month. It’s a game I didn’t complete. It’s a game I didn’t even start. I just held it. And smiled. I have played the game before, but not for many years. Forty of them to be…

I understand gacha games involve some amount of randomness in terms of player rewards. However, there seem to be specific mechanics required for something to be a gacha - as far as I understand a game ...

Hitman developer IO Interactive’s pluralistic take on the British secret agent – his first video-game outing in almost 15 years – promises a Bond for all eras. Here’s what you need to know If you want to tell the tale of a young James Bond, you first need to pick which James Bond he’s going to grow into. This was the task handed to Hitman developer IO Interactive, the studio taking digital custod…

PC; Grey Alien Games, Night Signal Entertainment An innocent-looking charity shop find draws you into a compulsive world of demons, ogres and retro delights For a while in the mid-1990s, meta horror movies were the genre everyone was talking about. Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, Scream, the Blair Witch Project – these films simultaneously examined and exploited genre conventions, seeking to scare au…

Another four hours down in the Minecraft world with Kiwi-chan, and it's been a steady, if slightly repetitive, climb! We're still firmly focused on the core survival loop: get wood, build a base. However, Kiwi-chan is very insistent on finding oak logs, even when they aren't around. The "OAK OBSESSION BAN" rule is getting a workout, forcing the AI to switch to birch logs when oak proves elusive. …

Pragmata, Saros and Vampire Crawler bring together aesthetics, responsiveness and creative opportunities in joyous ways that can’t be defined, only experienced Game feel is one of the most elusive concepts in the glossary of interactive entertainment, at once perfectly clear and difficult to define. Obviously, it refers to what a game feels like to play, but where does that feeling come from? How…

We've already played a chunk of Owlcat Games' take on The Expanse, and it looks like the hard sci-fi Mass Effect successor we were hoping for.

This essay analyzes the horror visual novel The Letter (2017) developed by the Filipino video game company Yangyang Mobile. Using theories of postmodernism from Fredric Jameson and Hiroki Azuma and postcolonialism from Homi Bhabha and Souvik Mukherjee, the essay introduces and uses the concept of postcolonial pastiche to describe the ability of The Letter to mimic the form of the visual novel and…

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The new game from the creators of Returnal goes all-in on the PlayStation’s haptics and 3D audio. Maybe it will catch on with other game developers.

Genki Kawamura’s eerie new film expands on a haunting video game that leaves players lost in endless subway tunnels. He explains how this makes viewers and players face their worst fears Genki Kawamura is something of a polymath. A bestselling author, film-maker, script writer and producer – he is also a lifelong gamer who grew up playing and being inspired by the games of legendary Nintendo desi…

The teenager crushed Veselin Topalov 5-1 to become the youngest ever 2700-rated grandmaster, after which his coach said his future target was 2900 Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus, 14, has become chess’s youngest 2700-rated grandmaster, breaking an age record set a decade ago by China’s Wei Yi at 15. The Turkish teenager is already the highest ever rated 12, 13, and 14-year-old, and the youngest to reach the …

This paper presents a model for designing serious games that incorporate cultural and historical heritage content along with learning competencies. The model addresses the need for clear frameworks in serious game design, particularly in heritage education. Drawing on previous research and practical experience, the model outlines key considerations for integrating heritage content and learning ob…

From mega hit Clair Obscur to the genius Blue Prince, the winners at this year’s event help me refocus on why games really matter The 22nd Bafta game awards were on Friday, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 took the biggest game prize. This makes it only the second game ever (after Baldur’s Gate 3) to win top prize at all five of the main awards shows: the Dice awards in Vegas; the Game awards in L…