Want to create Mario Maker levels? 7 game designers teach you how

Level design is its own kind of playful art: part theatre and part architecture, you’re making spaces to challenge and delight other people.

Is Metal Gear Solid V as big as David Bowie right now?

The musical references of this year's most daunting commercial video game are resonating in surprising and brilliant ways.

The queer masculinity of stealth games

In games, men's bodies often represent brute strength. Stealth games are the focal point for an alternative masculinity: sleek, illusory, sensitive, and self-reflective.

The millennials are all right, and so are their sex games

The sneering condescension and pearl-clutching panic about young people's relationship to sex and technology willfully misses the fruits of an impressive creative movement.

You are the seagull who will burn the world

At first, it seems like just another day at the beach for just another seagull. Then you open your tiny yellow beak and sing the song of fire. MORE

Join a colorful crew of bounty hunters in this choice-driven visual novel

A team experienced at eerie, atmospheric sci fi is developing a new visual novel with amazing illustrations and a diverse crew. MORE

Save the universe (and your relationship) by shooting aliens

Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime is a game about love, about cooperation, and possibly about what it means to save a relationship that's falling apart. MORE

This 'empathy game' reveals a real challenge for indie games

Anna Anthropy's "sequel to dys4ia" sheds light on the conflicting aftermath of the "empathy games" boom, and the fact so many celebrated creators are still alone and afraid. MORE

Like words? Play with simile and metaphor in this unusual mystery app

Your revolver is like a trusty assistant. I mean, it is your assistant, and his name is Mr. Smith Wesson. MORE

It's not always easy being a trans lady at the queer zine fair

The interactive fiction game Zine Fair Lady asks you to step into the shoes of a trans woman who's headed for an LGBTQ zine fair—a space that, in theory, should be inclusive and welcoming. MORE

Escape a shipwreck by skipping stones across the water

Rescue yourself from a desert island in a challenging puzzle game full of rocks, lilypads, and the soothing sounds of the surf. MORE

Mobile game of the week: Wuwu and Co.

It really does feel like a book come to life: With playful music, the crunch of snow and pretty, modern animal illustrations, you tilt and shake the device to interact gently with the stories and characters on all sides of you. MORE

A '70s sci-fi game about a disembodied head exploring a space station

Set in a world where the rest of humanity has uploaded their minds to robotic bodies, you play as the last vestige of meatspace, a disembodied human head roaming a space station in a rocket-powered helmet. MORE

Offworld Monday reflection: What's good, Tinder Renaissance zombies?

Last week on Offworld saw us interrogate the millennial tech panic, play games about the Renaissance, watch a couple documentaries and collect Nicki Minaj fanart. MORE

Scary Swedish bedtime stories for awful children

The creators of the game Year Walk have prepared a special treat for us: a free e-book of Swedish scary stories to tell in the dark. MORE

Developers mourn a canceled project in this short 'cave painting' about grief

After a large-scale commercial project abruptly ended, veterans of Spec Ops: The Line studio Yager Interactive decided to make a small jam game about grief and loss. MORE

$10,000 fellowship available to aspiring game developers with disabilities

A nonprofit devoted to advocating for accessibility in video games is now offering a generous fellowship to eligible design students. MORE

Flywrench will kill you until you like it

Flywrench often feels a bit like a zen koan: a game that is both punishing and forgiving, overstimulating and patient, where you die constantly, yet never really stop playing. MORE

Old Sierra adventure games transformed into lovely glitch screens

Behold the familiar forests, beaches and old houses you used to wander transformed into oddly beautiful glitches, or maybe just the face of a woman you once knew, but whose name you can't remember, half-dissolved by time. MORE

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