Month: September 2014

Eric Swain External Sources

Fairy Tales of Politics, Fairy Tales of Justice

September 29, 2014 | Filed under: External Sources, Recent Posts And with this podcast, we finish up our in-depth discussion on Telltale’s The Wolf Among Us. It’s been a long journey. Our first podcast on the game came out almost a year ago. It’s been a long road for what is just a few in game days of investigation. Our … (This post is lost beyond this point.) "When we suffer, we do it in silence. And the world likes it that way. We just fade, like we never existed. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Critical Distance Confab – The Founderhead

September 22, 2014 | Filed under: External Sources, Recent Posts This is the last of the archived interviews I did so many years ago and left languishing on my hard drive. In it I talk with Critical Distance’s founder and original TWIVGB head Ben Abraham. It was only after I recorded all three interviews — long after — that I ... (This post is lost beyond this point.) | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Little Money, Little Games

What to do when waiting for releases? Why look towards the free, arty games of course. In this podcast we look at Serena, Glitchhikers and A Dark Room. Serena is a game that was a free point-and-click adventure game on Steam, so of course I tried it. I didn’t think it was very good, but had some interesting formal elements that I figured could add to the genre as a whole. I still do, but since then I’ve played Jurassic Park: The Game which does some similar things, only much better. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Transitioning to ‘Transistor’

This week’s podcast we delved into Supergiant Games’ more complicated follow up to Bastion, Transistor. Transistor isn’t a game that got nearly the discussion it deserved. It’s a difficult game to parse and requires a lot of effort on the part of the player to tease out its meaning. Much of the plot and conflict is obscured early on and only slowly reveals itself over the course of making your way through the crumbling city, add on a deep combat system that yields its secrets only to experimentation and not pre-planning and the larger themes and craftsmanship of the narrative can end up taking a backseat. | more

Eric Swain External Sources

Reviews for June/July/August

The summer months are slow and that apparently makes me slow. Anyway, here are the reviews I actually managed to finish writing. When in doubt and bored with the game, make the review interesting. Daedelic Entertainment and I have a running thing with their published adventure games. I keep reviewing them and, so far, with a single exception they keep disappointing me. 1954: Alcatraz is no exception to the pattern. | more