Author: Christian Donlan
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Off Topic: Il Buco is a transporting film about a really big hole
[ad_1] Last week I watched Il Buco, or The Hole, the latest film from the Italian director Michelangelo Frammartino. It’s mesmerising. With very little in the way of dialogue, Frammartino tells the story of a 1960s spelunking expedition that explored one of the deepest cave systems in the world. At first glance Il…
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Jack Move is a brisk cyberpunk JRPG-alike that’s out this week
[ad_1] Jack Move. Jack Move. Here is a phrase that tickles somewhere, deep in the back of the brain, buried under boxes and old coats. Wasn’t someone…down for a Jack Move? I want to say William Gibson. One of the early ones – or maybe one of the present-day ones? Jack Move Developer: So…
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I’ve discovered Wrecking Crew, the game where Mario can’t jump, and it’s brilliant
[ad_1] Every now and then I think, oh, I should track down Devil World, the classic Miyamoto maze game that never got a proper release in the West. This week I loaded up the Switch NES collection to see if it had somehow crept onto that, but of course it hadn’t. What I…
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In praise of the video game starter island
[ad_1] I can still remember my first game of PUBG. Well, kind of. I can’t remember how I did out there on the battlefield, which weapons I found or how far I traveled across the map. But I can remember that starter island – where everyone spawns while the game is gathering players. I…
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State of the Game: Mini Motorways – untangling the world’s cities
[ad_1] My daughter’s recently started playing Mini Motorways. It’s delightful stuff, and it makes me see her afresh. It’s fun to come downstairs and see her positioned before the TV, rigid and serious, frowning at a seemingly intractable junction or off-ramp, before pouncing on the solution, her mind disappearing back into the emerging cityscape…
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Loopmancer is Blade Runner, if Blade Runner was really concerned about how you were investing your pocket money
[ad_1] I’m not too far into Loopmancer, but I’m loving it. It’s a beautiful 2D roguelite mounted in a glorious 3D cyberpunk world. You have great wonderfully nasty weapons, the controls are swift and precise, and the polish fails at the most charming moments – your character’s hair is one, and the pleasantly stilted…
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Mothmen 1966 review – a journey to the wonderfully cursed early days of CGA gaming
[ad_1] An eerie journey back to the days when all games were a bit eerie anyway. The Mothman is my favourite cryptid. I am always willing to drop everything and make the case for him. I love the way Mothman wears the tattered grey shrouds of the most funereal of insects, and the way…
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Lord Dunsany’s chess variant is grim and kind of brilliant
[ad_1] I first read about Lord Dunsany – I am happy to report his full name was Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett – in a collection of Arthur C. Clarke’s non-fiction. In an early essay, Clarke describes going to see Dunsany, a beloved fantasy and science fiction author, when Clarke was young and Dunsany,…
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Portal’s tricksy world plucks at some fascinating video game threads
[ad_1] If you ask me, Portal’s signature moment involves putting a portal in the ceiling and another portal in the floor just below it. Thump, thump. These portals, for the uninitiated, are basically two sides of the same magical hole; walk through the orange portal and you emerge through the blue portal. In the…
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Off Topic: Love blooms on the braid in This is How you Lose the Time War
[ad_1] “My most insidious Blue.” Red writes to Blue. She leaves her letter in a pot of boiling water in an MRI machine. Blue writes to Red. She leaves her letter in a spew of magma as Atlantis is destroyed. Slowly, it dawns on me that this is – what’s the half-forgotten term?…