Games

A simple, clever, and stressful game that rewards quick typing skills.

Hello, dear reader!

September is gone, but its links remain.

It was a big month for me, as I finally finished the project I was preoccupied with for most of the summer: Incomplete Open Cubes Revisited, inspired by Sol LeWitt. I also wrote about why and how I did it.

This month’s newsletter is a few days late because I wanted to include Robtober 2018, my annual deep dive into horror films which always takes… See more →

Hello, dear reader!

July is gone, but its links remain.

Apart from brief musings on films I saw recently, my lone post in July was a recap of my vacation in Brighton, from which I was reluctant to return. The ensuing extended brain vacation kept me from doing as much internetting as usual, so the collection of links is a bit thinner this month, but hopefully you can find something below worth scraping across your… See more →

Hello, dear reader!

June is gone, but its links remain.

It was a relatively busy month on my site! I had an unexpected reason to revisit an animated student film I made 20 years ago, wrote about designing better concert listings, chronicled my experience learning about the future of typography at the Ampersand conference, and offered middling reviews of the year’s most celebrated horror films, A Quiet Place and Hereditary.

This month’s links are the sort… See more →

Hello, dear reader!

May is gone, but its links remain.

The only thing I published on my site this month was a brief, snarky review of a 69-year-old movie (nice), but if all goes well in June, I’ll have a couple of substantial posts about creative projects (new and old) coming your way.

The links below include some meaty reporting on politics and a triptych of opinion pieces on our culture wars’ state of discourse.… See more →

Happy New Year, dear reader!

December is gone, but its links remain.

I did some more film writing this month, most notably on The Disaster Artist and Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and I also published a collection of all the shorter film reviews I wrote in 2017.

This month’s links are a good mix of the topical (net neutrality, sexism, the new tax bill), year-end reflections, inspiring art and design, and more. I hope… See more →

Animated Subway Maps Compared to Their Actual Geography

These are a wonderfully concise look at design thinking.

How G.O.P. Leaders Came to View Climate Change as Fake Science

Murray Energy — despite its enormous clout with Mr. Trump and his top environmental official — boasts a payroll with only 6,000 employees. The coal industry nationwide is responsible for about 160,000 jobs, with just 65,000 directly in mining, according to the federal Energy Information Administration.

By… See more →

Blown Away

If you’re suffering from an excess of self-respect, the Corey Haim/Feldman erotic thriller is now available on Hulu.

King Crimson: Starless

RIP John Wetton. Colon cancer. Here’s my favorite King Crimson song, which he co-wrote, sang, and played bass on.

What Can Ivanka Trump Possibly Do for Women Who Work?

Before the election, her main interest in women was getting them to buy her clothing, her handbags, and her shoes. Who can forget… See more →

I’ve been looking forward to this one for awhile. July!

I’m really looking forward to this. I played the hell out of YDKJ in the late ’90s and it’s only improved with age. I do wish they could have kept doing the web version with weekly episodes and daily Dis or Dats, and I’m surprised the new version won’t be available on iOS. But whatever, I’m glad it’s back. Oh, and see if you can beat my $19,889 score on the sample game. :)

Ouch.

Opening and closing paragraphs are gold.

Forgot to share this before. The attention to detail here is astonishing, right down to replicating each character’s every costume change. It pretty much recreates the entire movie, attempts to fill plot holes, and provides hours of gameplay (thanks to numerous Easter eggs, achievements (medals), and other secret goodies), all while staying true to what makes The Room such a wonderfully inept phenomenon. Of course, that means it’s also essentially mundane and boring, but, perhaps… See more →

Of all the stuff I worked on at Harmonix, this is easily the thing I spent the most time on.

Yep.

This game can’t come soon enough.

I’m not a Scott Pilgrim fan, but this looks crazy fun.

Yes, please.

Judas Priest toured through the summer of 2009, celebrating the 30th anniversary of the seminal metal album British Steel by playing it live in its entirety every night. Now fans can celebrate too by playing live versions of all nine tracks from the album in Rock Band!

Could Judas Priest’s landmark British Steel be the most metal album in history? Let us examine the facts. To begin with, the cover depicts either an ordinary man’s hand… See more →

I share this only to semi-publicly air my shame.

Of the officially 1 million people that now possess this game on this platform, I am currently ranked 148. This achievement is due to considerable skill, yes, and that skill was accrued over the more than 17 full days (dude, 420 hours, dude) I spent playing over the course of about 7 months. That works out to roughly 11% of my waking hours during that time… See more →

This is light on actual information, but for any UI folks interested in how shit happens here, these slides give you a glimpse into the process.

Kaboom!

I can’t wait to try this. I love the Expressionist look of it, and the gameplay looks cool too. Peep the trailer here.

Has it really been twenty years already?

I still have that 90-minute cassette whose A-side contained my first copy of Megadeth’s Rust In Peace. Though I had already cut my teeth on other metal bands, I was wary of Megadeth at first. Their name alone seemed to embody everything that was supposed to be frightening and dangerous about heavy metal, and this particular 14-year-old Catholic boy was slightly less interested in rebellion than he was… See more →

Windhammer likes Megadeth.

There is little doubt that different people are blessed with different amounts of cognitive gifts such as long-term memory and the visuospatial skills chess players are said to employ. One of the reasons chess is an "unparalleled laboratory" and a "unique nexus" is that it demands high performance from so many of the brain’s functions. Where so many of these investigations fail on a practical level is by not recognizing the importance of the process… See more →

I tweeted that one of my all-time favorite albums was coming to Rock Band soon, and apparently the fans were watching. This is one of at least two forum discussions with dozens of posts that are scouring my web site and last.fm account for clues as to what the album might be. Kinda creepy but mostly funny.

Today is awful.

I’m not usually into fan art/cosplay/whatever, but if you’re at all familiar with BioShock, this is really impressive. I just wish they didn’t use those stupid Photoshop filters on the photos. Also, don’t miss the details on how this costume was made.

This is great, but I do wish the knights were each represented with an N, as they are in proper chess notation. pushes up glasses

In 1993, Washington DC’s fertile indie rock scene gave birth to a band called The Dismemberment Plan. Musically, it skirted genre conventions inconspicuously. Lyrically, it found wisdom and poetry in the commonplace. The whole package was a rare, fun, magical blend of sophisticated and approachable, and the band built a respectable and devoted following with it.

Ten years later, not long after releasing its fourth and arguably best album, The Dismemberment Plan decided to call… See more →

Watch the video. I wish we’d see games with this caliber of distinctively gorgeous art direction more often.

I’m not sure if I’ll pick this one up, but the first Lego Indy game was ridiculously fun.

I’m not particularly interested in the boycott or the game, but I was amused by the Fail Whale graffiti in the screen shot.

I’m really intrigued by this. The look and feel is great, and the gameplay has real potential. I’d like to see a more challenging level to know if it lives up to that potential.

I can’t wait to try this.

Um. Kaboom. I can finally talk about one of the things I’ve been working on.

I really hope this has online multiplayer.

If this is in fact the final box art (and I’m really skeptical that it is), this is some seriously half-assed shit. Ordinarily I’m a fan of understatement in design, but everything about this is awkward: the composition, the wording of the new features, and especially the reworked logo (which I know IS final), complete with phoney-baloney Photoshop spray-paint effect. I feel pretty confident that my obvious bias barely factors into my opinion on this.… See more →

I was never all that into Metroid, but the Contra aspect of this looks like fun, especially since it’s a side-scroller. I’m beginning to think the limited scope of XBLA games is more appealing to me than the sprawl of most disc games, probably because I’m old.

Finally you can see exactly how difficult it has been for me to keep quiet about this game. Set mind to "blown."

Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeit.

In case you weren’t yet convinced that religion is generally just really fucking stupid.

This sounds very cool. I hope it comes to XBLA.

I initially thought all the issues were readable online, which would have been awesome. Turns out it’s just the first few. Still pretty cool.

What a year this turned out to be.

Shortly after the year began, my time with the amazing team at Happy Cog ended. It was the best thing for all concerned, even if my lack of an exit strategy left me without direction. My comfort zone was toxic, so really, any direction would do.

I set out to get healthy, physically and mentally. I got my finances in order. I drove 9,400 miles around the… See more →

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Yesterday, as we sped along I-15 en route to LA, signs started pointing us toward a ghost town called Calico. Naïve tourists that we are, we were startled to find people working there and asking us to pay them six dollars for admission. A town with employees, an infrastructure, a web site, and its name painted in giant letters on the side of a mountain can’t rightly be described as ghostly, so we continued on… See more →

See the full gallery (96 items) →

Whoever “they” are, they say you never forget your first time. And in 2005, my first SXSW was definitely unforgettable. They also say twice is nice, and as such, my second SXSW was all sugar and spice. As we all know, though, the third time is the charm, and this year’s SXSW charmed the hell out of me.

The people, panels, presentations, and parties were more plentiful than ever, but I still managed to absorb… See more →

On the Web

• Writing, Briefly: Excellent writing tips from Paul Graham.
• Typecasting: The Use (and Misuse) of Period Typography in Movies.
• Frusion Breakfast Brawl: Addictive Punch Out-style Flash game.
• “The Most Expensive Album Never Made”: Detailed history of Guns ’N’ Roses’ doomed Chinese Democracy.
• Pimp My Safari: New online hub for Safari browser customization from Jon Hicks.
• Guess the Dictator and/or Television Sit-Com Character: This online game of 20 (or more) questions is actually quite difficult to… See more →

I remain too distracted to produce contemplative opuses detailing my recent experiences, so here is some brusque vagueness about my tremendous weekend and some recent adventures in cinema:

Kevin Cornell’s bachelor party meant food, booze, billiards, and video games all night at Dave & Buster’s on Friday. The Table’s opening reception for the Land Lines exhibition meant beautiful photographs from Nicki Stager and Micah Danges on Saturday. The Incomparables’ second annual warehouse party meant rock… See more →