Author: Eric Swain

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‘The Cat Lady’ and the Terror of Loneliness

This time we podcasted about The Cat Lady, an indie adventure game from 2012 about suicide, death and living. This is not a game that gets a whole lot of talk about it. It not hard to see why. It came out during a year exploding with great indies of … (This post is lost beyond this point.) Moving Pixels Podcast: 'The Cat Lady' and the Terror of Loneliness » PopMatters "While I'm gone, think of a vegetable." | more

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Itch.io Spotlight Beginnings

A while back I tried to organize myself better and get to writing at least some criticism on a weekly basis. I tried a few things, the better of my ideas was a series called Indie Games Spotlight. Here I’d take a small game and write something about it. You … (This post is lost beyond this point.) Itch.io Spotlight: Sunset Spirit Steel by Kitty Horrorshow Itchio Spotlight: The Last Night by Tim & Adrien Soret Itchio Spotlight: Tuesday/404 Not Found Itch. | more

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Slaughtering a Sacred Cow, Revisiting ‘Grim Fandango’

I’m back to writing criticism in my weekly PopMatters’ posts, starting with an evaluation of Grim Fandango. I’d like to take this chance to expand upon one point that I didn’t really explore properly in the piece: why Grim Fandango gained the title as “greatest adventure game of all time” in the first place. I do mention that resonance and evaluation of the game was elevated over time thanks to the all the attention and praised heaped on it by its fans. | more

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Reviews for January/February/March

A new year, a new slate of games to review. A bit of a theme going on here. 2015 starts off with 4 new episodic games and my attempts to review every single episode of each one. All of Telltale games, so far, are licensed games. It’s difficult not to frame their game in the light of the licensed property. I may have gone a bit too far with my Tales from the Borderlands review, but I really do not like the main Borderlands games and Tales by comparison, I am enjoying so much. | more

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A New Critical Distance Confab Undertaking

Everyone has had that thought, “why has no one written about this game?” It’s a different game(s) for every person, but pretty much everyone has had that thought. Sometimes, after finishing a game I go looking for criticism, only to come up empty. An idea came to me during last year’s end of year podcast. While as a curatorial site we mostly focus on criticism for our weekly roundups, but we have been branching out as of late. | more

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Revisiting The Great War

We continue our look at last year’s indie games with Ubisoft’s Valiant Hearts. I really like this discussion. I come out very coherent and make a lot of good points. Everyone does. We talk about the war and war in general as exemplified as a thing unto itself. We discuss the concept of identity from the nationalistic to the individualistic. We talk about the end of rationality and larger cultural forces that Valiant Hearts is playing with given its subject matter. | more

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This War of Ours

Continuing to talk about games from last year, we dig into the narrative and systems of This War of Mine. I like the game on a micro level, but feels it falls apart somewhat on a macro level. I don’t think it can maintain itself with what it has. It needs more contextual material otherwise that part of game dries up. My compatriots have different opinions. You can give it a listen here. Additionally, we’re still trying to get the podcast back on iTunes and hitting one snag after another. | more