Games I've written about for kritiqal.com, whether in reviews, impressions, or some combination there of.
"I really like Remember Mary’s duck. They’re bright yellow and drawn in squiggly lines with odd proportions. They eat Mary after she gives them breakfast, and it is discovered a blue duck is living inside of them. I find this sad and charming."
"The Last Quest is a dare. A game of puerile violence against meme-spouting NPCs, it begs to be overly interpreted, for you to skim the hot take fat from its eager surface and fill a notepad with deep readings on the nature of digital murder."
"Of the three issues I have reviewed thus far, 10’s zine is probably the most underwhelming. That’s not to say it’s a disaster - rather that the quality of past issues is very high - but there were fewer pages that stood out as particularly compelling. An interesting collection as always, but of more mixed quality."
"Fran Bow begins with the trappings of a deliberate authorship, but by its conclusion becomes so enamored with introducing new characters and plotlines to support ones which were never well developed to begin with, that the whole game falls in upon itself. On an artistic and conceptual level, Killmonday Games are experts at finding ways to capture the players’ attention and compel them forward, but when every path leads to a deus ex machina and an exposition dump long enough to chock on, it’s hard to feel anything but regret for having gone down them."
"The Light Prince isn’t concerned with language. It places you at the top of a tower and asks you to slowly peel back the world to gain freedom. First setting foot on the ground after escaping the tower finds the game at its strongest. You stand in an empty field, the wind buckling your body as it lifts you off the ground. The scene is vividly realized in one of the most concise paragraphs of the game; I could almost feel the barley on my skin."
"Do I Pass? succeeds not because it moves me a little further towards good allyship, but because its a well realized game that softly explores a human experience. It can and does exist outside of its empathetic utility, even if our society requires every piece of trans art to be political statement. I’m much more interested in how trans folx respond to a game like this than I am its capacity to teach cis people not to take the wrong lesson from pronouns. Not every piece of art is made for us."
"I Was Always Filled With Anger (IWAFWA) is something of a half-note between written poetry and more explicitly game-like works such as novena (written about above). The player walks from right to left and in doing so words appear within the environment, sometimes static sometimes shifting positions alongside the player. The game is a digital sheet of paper, allowing visual effects and movement prohibited by printed words but not to the degree the player is actively involved in the work itself."
"I’m entranced by the harsh violence of Sanguine Oblation. It is an ugly, ugly thing, but so is the entirety of this void. My knight may begin with compulsory pleasantries but will just as quickly con and cut down the people around him if it means living that much longer."
"I hope I never grow cynical of stories like is it that deep, bro? (iitdb?). It parallels games like Nicky Case’s Coming Out Simulator 2014 and shows like Glee, earnestly capturing a moment between two characters coming out to themselves and each other. You and Clay go to see the gay cowboy movie, but of course nobody just goes to see the gay cowboy movie."
"Games like Eat-It-All fit in my mind alongside party games more so than traditional TTRPGs, so I could see myself playing around with this as post-dinner entertainment. Something for when we’re too tired for rules but want a structure for our conversations. I’ve no idea when I’ll feel safe enough to share a bowl of fortune cookies with a group again, but if nothing else it’s nice to imagine."
"Perfect Vermin is all of us. It’s when we enable systems of oppression because it’s easy; when we hurt the people around us to ensure we hang on to whatever power we have. The higher-ups are barking at us to work harder so they can insulate themselves that much more before their organs fail. We never see what happens to the person wielding the sledgehammer. This isn’t their story, they’re just the tool by which the newscaster builds a legacy. “Massacre in an office building, more at 11.” Who’s death are we really mourning?"
"novena has no precise seam. It technically ends when the title reappears, but it’s written in such a way that it could just as well be continuing linearly. Who is to say we didn’t stop visiting the ocean after initially cheering it up? Can we trust the counter of days we made the trip out to listen to it? There’s no reason to believe novena is more cynical than its conclusion appears, but I am drawn to its cylindrical quality. The ocean will continue to lap at the beach whether I come or not. Apathy comes so easy."
"Looking at the Fucked-Up Guy Looking at You is a Hegalian solo game chronicling an unhealthy friendship with a shitlord that begins to look a little too much like you. It’s rules-lite and adaptable to just about any scenario, but the prompts are distinct enough I could immediately picture who this fucker was after the first card."
"Please allow me to momentarily pontificate at the “game feel” podium: BBB feels frickin’ delicious! I could find a dozen superficially similar mobile games but none would have the crunchy pCHNnk as BBB’s jet boost, the graceful chaos of a split second change of course. It’s one-button delight crammed into 30-second runs."
"Door XP gives me the same feeling as when I’m able to do something on linux and not crash the system. It’s a command-line script-kiddie hacking game that manages to be tense with zero stakes, like a subway simulator stored on 15 blank floppy disks."
"Professor Pemda’s Puzzle Pyramid (PPPP) is a Sokoban game in the great Cool Math heritage, wherein block pushing is married to basic math and early 00s polygons-in-space graphics. It’s something I’d likely find on 300 Great Arcade Games from the closest Staples, a prototype with a neat idea that I’m happy to mess around with for 20 minutes."
"It is inspiring to see such an artistic range within this issue, the complete lack of pretensions, and an appreciation for everyone involved. I’ve already gotten a lot of joy out of this issue and I haven’t even touched the games themselves."
"It’s A Beautiful Day isn’t a somber game, not intentionally at least. I do finish it with a longing for how it might have felt in 2016, when leaving your home could still be scary but wasn’t nigh apocalyptic. But the room is comforting, I feel safe vacuuming and messing with books. I’m happy to disappear momentarily into another enclosed space. The door will open. I can go outside."
"I don't know if I've ever fallen for visual novel backgrounds before. I love the chunky lines and flat colors Distortion Nation uses. The lack of texture makes every scene feel cozy, like a paper diorama or a smiley face sticker. I want to know the names of the different plushies on the couch."
"It's wild that Prism Song works. A non-linear platformer played in a command prompt, it's a tools-based minimalism that is exciting for functioning at all, like watching Doom played on a pregnancy test."
"Maria Mison writes like the letters on the page can barely keep up. Their prose is like hot water on a teabag; the too-hot-comfort of a pair of socks straight out of the dryer; baking in dry heat under a pine tree. It lifts me up and urges me towards some ambiguous destination, but I'm happy to move, happy to meander in the company of these assorted ephemera. Friends for a moment but no less sincerely."
"I feel like I'm reaching a bit, though, with any deep reading. I don't doubt that this means something very particular to the creator but the game is opaque. It gestures at a mood, builds it up through strange letters passed under the door, but it's difficult to get a footing."
"I'm really taken by The Machine's Garden. It's short enough I actually completed every puzzle, but by the end each idea was well explored and I was only just beginning to feel like the puzzles were too complex for me. It's comforting knowing there's only ever one solution. It may seem alchemical staring at blank geometry but I as often fell into solutions as deduced them. I find that's the sort of puzzle I enjoy the most. When solving it feels almost accidental."
"I'm telling all my friends about this. I told a date about it. Vintage digital interfaces are everything I enjoy studying and engaging with, and CEEFAX is so exceptionally executed. Bonus points for being a technology I had no prior knowledge of (nothing similar existed in the US, as far as I know)."
"This is a silly little experience. It's all about existing in a 3D space and choosing when the game ends. I both want a bit more and recognize the game is meant to be nothing but exactly what it is."
"The entire purpose of the game is being undone by itself, so what message am I meant to come away from T-Gotchi having heard? That I shouldn't feel guilty for torturing this woman? That actually there is nothing wrong with player/pet relationships because they are not materially hurting anyone? It's a more shallow genre critique than the game opens with, a very strange conclusion to a game that otherwise very deliberately denies the player relief for their actions. I don't feel better because the game told me I should."
"Textreme 2 is whimsical. It has birds using dynamite. You can make your text rainbow or have the whole window shake like you're typing in an avalanche. All absolutely essential elements to the writing process."
"It's a charming zine with a few outstanding entries, and I continue to be impressed at how unique each edition is while still feeling very much a part of the larger run. Someday I'll be able to print these out or afford a physical edition, but even on my screen it's exciting to turn the next page."
Games of the Decade #2
"These are the moments that remind me why I play games. Why this silly, frustrating, horrible industry matters and what can be done when we are not chasing relevance and watching the numbers go up. I only played Wandersong on a whim. I think I saw it on YouTube and it was free and I had just finished the next game on this list and needed something lighter. The way I think about it, I could be describing falling in love with a partner or meeting a best friend. It’s just a game, still. But, if we allow ourselves to let go of our pretensions, surely it could be something more."
