It’s no secret that I love Undertale. I think it’s a masterpiece of heart, soul and meta gaming commentary, and I thought I’d never play a game like it again. At least, until Halloween this year, when the creator surprise dropped… something on Twitter. A demo. A first chapter. A three hour gaming experience. A […]
Video Games
Free Choice (To Kill Feminists) in Red Dead Redemption 2
Last week, Youtuber Shirrako uploaded a series of videos centered around torturing a Suffragette character in Red Dead Redemption 2. In the videos, with titles like “Beating Up Annoying Feminist” and “Annoying Feminist Fed to Pigs,” Shirrako found inventive ways to torment the campaigner for women’s votes, including throwing her down mine shafts and feeding […]
Night in the Woods
Until the final chapter of Night in the Woods, I was convinced I was going to give it a rapturous review. The game follows the daily life of Mae, a girl who just dropped out of college for reasons unmentioned and returned to her small hometown. It’s mostly a slice-of-life visual-novel-with-minigames, as you explore the slowly […]
Never Alone
Never Alone is a puzzle-plaformer game, based on folklore from the Inupiaq people of Alaska. The game was made as a partnership between Upper One games, the first indigenous-owned video game developer in the US, and the Cook Inlet Tribal Council, and is specifically designed to not only be a compelling game, but also to share Inupiaq […]
Having A Bad Time: The Theory of Undertale
Last year, I wrote a post gushing about why everyone should play the indie game Undertale, which you can read here if you haven’t played the game. This post is chock-full of spoilers. Read at your own risk. Maybe I have a bit of an analysis addiction. Because although Undertale is an amazing, heartwarming, heartbreaking, thought-provoking video game that I think […]
Life is Strange
Yup, I finally played Life is Strange. First, a quick spoiler-free review. Life is Strange is fantastic. It’s part mystery, part philosophical musing, part coming of age story, part time-travel adventure. And you take a lot of polaroids. You play as Max, an aspiring photographer with no confidence in her abilities who suddenly discovers that she has the ability […]
Do choices matter in Telltale games?
Yesterday, the final episode of Telltale’s Game of Thrones game finally hit Steam. The game had a lot of expectations to meet — it promises, during every moment of gameplay, that your decisions will affect the story. After five episodes of strategy, manipulation and hard choices, players really wanted to see how they personally had affected the […]
Why You Should Play Undertale
OK, I’m cheating here. There isn’t much to say about Undertale from a “feminist fiction” perspective. At least, not without spoiling the game, which I really don’t want to do. But Undertale is an absolutely amazing game, and I simply had to write about it. Don’t let that simple pixel-y look deceive you. Undertale is funny, fun, surprising […]
Game of Thrones, Mira, and the Illusion of Choice
A few months ago, I wrote about how much I loved the Game of Thrones game from Telltale Games. I particularly loved the female characters in the game, especially Mira, the daughter of House Forrester and handmaiden to Margaery Tyrell, who must survive the manipulative landscape of King’s Landing around the time of the Purple Wedding. […]
Zombies! Run and Counting the Women
A couple of weeks ago, I was lucky enough to be at the Zombies! Run panel at the Nine Worlds Geekfest. Mostly I was there to fangirl the game that turned me from somebody who could barely run for 30 seconds without dying into someone genuinely considering doing a 5K. But during the panel, I actually […]