Giada Zavarise

Stephen "thecatamites" Gillmurphy is a familiar presence in RPSland. In the past years we covered many of his games, from the blood-soaked RPG Space Funeral to the Kafkaesque Murder Dog. His latest game, 10 Beautiful Postcards, is a wandering simulator about exploring hotels — and like all his games, it's wonderfully weird. But where does this developer get inspiration for his ideas? Are DRUGS the…

Tagged with A Panel Shaped Screen, feature, interview, stephen murphy, thecatamites, webcomics, 10 Beautiful Postcards, Murder Dog IV: Trial of the Murder Dog, Space Funeral.

It’s the newest instalment of A Panel Shaped Screen, a monthly column about the way comics and games influence each other. The article promises to tell you everything about interactive webcomics. What will you do? > Click on “read the rest of the post”

Tagged with A Panel Shaped Screen, Andrew Hussie, call them comics, feature, Homestuck, Anchorhead.

This here is a game with one of those plots. You know how it goes: our hero — a hot-headed girl called Ajna, in our case — lives in a peaceful fantasy village. One day, the forces of evil arrive, destroy everything, and kill the hero's beloved mentor figure. The hero then sets out for revenge. During their journey they unlock hidden powers, learn shocking…

Tagged with 505 Games, action platform, feature, indie, Lab Zero Games, review, wot i think, Indivisible.

If you're a digital artist, or have a friend who is a digital artist, then you're intimately familiar with the dread associated with the following phrase: "Your job looks easy, the computer draws everything for you!" Art is not a game, but games can help produce art. In the hand of capable webcomic artists, games can become brush and canvas and muse, and be ripped…

Tagged with A Panel Shaped Screen, Animal Crossing, Comics, feature, pokemon, Sonic.

Every writing class has an over-enthusiastic writer. You know the type. All his writing exercises are set in the same elaborate setting: the fantasy world he has been working on since he was sixteen. He’s currently writing his debut novel, the first in a trilogy. He already has three more trilogies planned out. He also plans to make a videogame about this cool side-character, and…

Tagged with A Panel Shaped Screen, Eipix Entertainment, feature, Lightstep Chronicles, round-shaped evil AIs, Lightstep Chronicles.

It was so much easier to just enjoy things back then. You know, then. The good old days. If you liked a game, you played it. If you wanted more, you looked for mods or became involved in the fandom. Once in a while, Hollywood would announce the movie adaptation of some popular game you liked, like Doom. Movies about games were always terrible, but…

Tagged with A Panel Shaped Screen, feature, Pepe Silvia.

I am not a religious person, but I must admit some phenomena can’t be explained in a rational way. Like the inconceivable vastness of space. Ghosts sightings. The Brexit. Or United Independent Entertainment’s decision to release Woodcutter Simulator 2011 on Steam in the year of our Lord 2019. I discovered it by chance, a tweet by our dearly departed John Walker casually appearing on my…

Tagged with feature, United Independent Entertainment, Venice, Woodcutter Simulator 2011.

There's a child in front of a door. You know how the story goes. You know behind that door lies a fantastic world, and our little protagonist will get lost in it. You know the child will meet new friends and strange wonders, and will end up saving the realm. You know this because you read this story so many times already, the same plot…

Tagged with A Panel Shaped Screen, feature, isekai.

Drawing a comic book is like playing Tetris with narrative beats. You have to somehow put on a page everything the script requires you to draw, give the right amount of space to important moments, make sure the reader’s gaze flows naturally from panel to panel, and all your panels must look nice and clear but also in harmony with each other. So you, the…

Tagged with A Panel Shaped Screen, Annapurna Interactive, Buried Signal, feature, Fellow Traveller, Gwenpool, Loveshack Entertainment, Richard McGuire, Framed, Gorogoa.

I am not hip enough for A Maze, the international games festival held in Berlin. Like every game developer convention, its schedule is dotted with workshops, talks and games to play. But during the festival I also helped make a zine, learned how to not read tarot cards, got my nails painted, and helped deal with the byproducts of paper-shredding game The Book Ritual. There…

Tagged with A Maze 2019, feature, 0_abyssalsomewhere, Bird Alone, Glyphsprache, Hanahana Full Bloom, Nommos VR, Small Talk, The Longing, Vecronom.

WARNING: basically every single link in this article is NSFW. Duh. Remember being fifteen and desperately looking for porn on the internet? Perhaps you googled basic terms like “boobs”, like the protagonist of You Must Be 18 Or Older To Enter. Or perhaps you held on to familiar characters, and searched for “Naruto hentai” on Newgrounds to play wonky flash games.

Tagged with A Panel Shaped Screen, Christine Love, feature, SEX now that I have your attention, Ladykiller in a Bind.

I played so many Disney games as a kid. It wasn’t really on purpose, it’s just that I was an avid reader of Disney comics, and sometimes they were bundled with games. Most were simple minigame compilations, parts of the Disney Hotshots series. Others were more elaborate, though they all felt nearly identical. Aladdin, The Lion King, The Jungle Book: the same impossibly hard platformer,…

Tagged with A Panel Shaped Screen, Disney, feature, Why doesn't Donald Duck wear trousers?, Disney Infinity.

My first videogame memory is about falling. I remember a blue sky and green land and some yellow rectangle where I was supposed to land, but couldn’t, because I was three or four years old and videogames were new and confusing. Unable to control my plane, I could only watch it spiral and crash. The game was Hellcats over the Pacific. I learned this only…

Tagged with feature, mac, Apeiron, bubble trouble, Bumbler Bee-luxe, Burning Rubber, GliderPRO, Glypha, Marathon, Nanosaur.

Talking about a game’s influences is always a tricky business. Sure, developers love to give long talks about the artists they admire. About their inspirations, the concepts they remixed, the idols they wish to surpass. But there’s a difference between the influences they are trying to evoke consciously, and the many-finned chimeras swimming just under the surface of consciousness. Take Sable, for example. When the…

Tagged with A Panel Shaped Screen, feature, Moebius, Raw Fury, Shedworks, Sable.

I worry about Geralt. The Witcher series may be over for now, but this hasn't stopped Geralt from taking odd jobs here and there, slaying beasts in Monster Hunter: World, or stabbing folks in Soul Calibur VI. Is Geralt getting adequate retirement benefits? Have witchers unionized yet? I hope he can get some rest, or at least find more contract work that doesn't involve exterminating…

Tagged with CD Projekt Red, feature, Dream Daddy, Hitman 2, Jurassic World Evolution, Limbo, Stardew Valley, Subnautica, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

The Darkness II is a game about being a mafia hitman, shooting everyone, and feeding the hearts of your enemies to the black abomination coiled inside your chest. But it’s also a game about fighting your darkest self, doubting your own mind, and finding salvation in love. When John reviewed it, he said: “I was genuinely expecting a brash, stupid shooter, noise and bluster and…

Tagged with 2K, A Panel Shaped Screen, Digital Extremes, feature, The Darkness II.

You might have heard of Berserk already. A few people have pointed out the similarities between Hidetaka Miyazaki’s Souls series and the manga Berserk. Perhaps you’ve even gotten curious, toyed with the idea of getting into it, but without a clear idea of where to start. Or perhaps you got the impression that Berserk is not for you. You may have heard Berserk is filled…

Tagged with A Panel Shaped Screen, feature, From Software, Koei Tecmo, Omega Force, Berserk and the Band of the Hawk, Bloodborne, Dark Souls, Dark Souls II, Dark Souls III.

2018 has been strange as hell, I think we can all agree on this. And yet, some bits of news can be even more baffling than others, the definitive proof we are living in the weirdest timeline. Our world may be literally burning, everything is a mess, and The Brexit still looms upon us. But thanks to popular hits like Del Toro’s Shape Of Water…

Tagged with Astralore Games, Beautiful Glitch, Copychaser Games, Failbetter Games, feature, Michelle Ehrhardt, Ryan Rose Aceae, Zack Wood, Fallen London, Monster Lover, Monster Prom, Monstrata Fracture, Speed Dating For Ghosts, Sunless Sea.

2018 is the year I played Symphony Of The Night for the first time. Can I just rave about Symphony Of The Night for the whole article? No? Fine. Here are some other games that aren’t too shabby, either.

Tagged with Best Games of 2018, Chumbosoft, Deconstructeam, Devolver Digital, feature, Greg Lobanov, Larian Studios, Divinity: Original Sin 2 Definitive Edition, Heartbeat, The Red Strings Club, Wandersong.

When you hear the words “battle royale”, most people in 2018 immediately think of the trigger-happy Plunkbat or the cheery Fortnite. But a decade ago, those same words only evoked bleak battles between crying teens, fought on the black-and-white pages of a manga -- a Japanese comic. Art doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Creators absorb ideas and translate them to different mediums, in a web…

Tagged with A Panel Shaped Screen, Epic Games, feature, PUBG Corp, Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, Fortnite Battle Royale, Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma.