Tag: Insight
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Games About Unpacking: Grief, Identity, and Abuse
Content note: this article discusses grief, depression, domestic abuse, and trauma. Fishbowl is a beautiful game. But it is also painfully domestic. It follows Alo, a young woman who moves to the city for a new job, only to find that her new life begins in the total isolation of a global pandemic. Her apartment…
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Spire Pressure
Is Slay the Spire 2’s Early Access Giving Players Too Much Control? The first Slay the Spire taught me how to succeed. When to remove cards, when to take a curse, when to block, when to take a risk, when to pass on a card because it looks powerful now, but it might be the…
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Knowing The Future Wouldn’t Save Them
1 The Drifter was the scariest game I played last year. I don’t mean that as hyperbole – rolling credits left me with a creeping sense of unease that refuses to let go. The game is about one man, Mick Carter, who – within the first hour – has a bag put over his head,…
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The Politics of Play: Examining Take Us North
There is a difference between watching someone cross a border and being asked to lead them across. When a game hands you control and when progress depends on your choices, that distinction begins to blur. Even if it is only a collection of pixels on a screen, the decision feels personal. You are no longer…
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Video Games and the Psychology of Pain
Unlike other narrative forms, video games allow players to explore deep, unsettling, and confrontational themes interactively, while maintaining the comfort that comes from viewing events through a screen. They let us live in someone else’s shoes without fully surrendering ourselves to their experiences – a crucial distinction when those experiences involve pain, trauma, or mental…
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When Games Forget How to End
TLDR: Live-service games promise ever-evolving worlds with endless content. But the longer they go, the harder it becomes to stay invested. Nobody wants a great game to end — but knowing that it will makes the experience all the more meaningful. A Short Hike (Adam Robinson-Yu) is one of my favourite games of recent years.…
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How a Game Changed My Views On Life
Outer Wilds took exactly 22-minutes to change my views on life. If you have not played Outer Wilds, DO NOT READ THIS. SPOILERS AHEAD I am not easily scared. I’ve never feared spiders, snakes, heights, or anything else really. But I have always been deeply terrified of death. I don’t know what happens when we…
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Destiny 2: On the Edge
As far back as I can remember Bungie reveals have got my blood pumping. With Destiny 2 and Halo being the absolute peaks of what they have to showcase. I am a Destiny addict. And discussing that with people almost makes it feel like I’m sitting in an AA meeting admitting my deepest shames from…
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Why Climbing in Video Games Feels So Shallow
Climbing is a feature in many modern video games. Even when it’s not central to the gameplay, it can have a big impact on how much I enjoy a game. Sometimes, it drags down an otherwise great experience with slow or clunky mechanics. Other times, it becomes a compelling core mechanic — something indie developers…
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Blue Prince: Imperfectly Perfect
What was the last video game that frustrated you? From Soft games tend to frustrate me, although this is by design and likely the reason why I love them so much. The difficulty feels tuned just enough that its frustrating to perish in combat, but victory is always just within grasp. It creates a powerful…
Gaming Acuity 