An essay series on twelve games that, for whatever reason, people just seem to love.
(Intended for 2023 but on indefinite hiatus. To return in 2024.)
Screw Attacks, Third Impacts, and Other Interstellar Horrors
As a medium, video games are defined by different forms of touch. Both the interface between player and game and the action of most games itself relies upon a set of simple rules — what kinds of responses a particular touch will engender, and what groups of pixels can and cannot be safely touched. Games have their own language for these interactions: collision detection defines the act of in-game touch, and hitboxes measure where and when that touch brings pain. In most games, this becomes a kind of broad and neutral framework: a foundation on which mechanical and narrative structures…
Keep reading
In Abandoning Perfection, Rain World Finds Nirvana
Rain World has a certain reputation in the gaming sphere: a hellishly difficult 2D platformer largely panned by critics at release, but that found a second life via a relatively small and deeply dedicated community of fans. I had tried to play it several times over the past few years, emboldened each time by various accomplishments in other “difficult” games — and each time I found myself unable to make it past the first few levels. This time, I broke through with the help and advice of some friends on the Waypoint forums, and behind that initial wall I found…
Keep reading
Disco Will Not Save the World Unless it Saves You First
At its core, Disco Elysium is a game about the “post-” in words like postcolonial, postrevolutionary, posthistorical, postmodern; it is about living in the nebulous after, in the shadow of a happening much larger than whatever small piece of the world we can identify ourselves. And so, its version of a new way forward becomes almost unrecogniable — like a creature blending with the reeds.
Keep reading
The Project
What does it mean to love a work of art — to cherish it, evangelize it, to make it an irrevocable part of your soul?
Join me each month of 2023 at points when my time and energy permit as I dive into twelve games that, for whatever reason, people just seem to love. These will range from indie darlings and cult classics to some of my longtime white whales — and maybe, in the end, an excuse to work through why we love the things we love, an investigation into what the things that imprint on our souls can teach us about art, media, and ourselves.
The List So Far —
January: Disco Elysium
February: Rain World
March: Metroid
Upcoming: Pyre, Dragon’s Dogma, Kentucky Route Zero and more!
Subscribe for updates
Want to be notified when new posts go up? Sign up!
Sunset Over Ithaca 