The 21 Best Horror Books of the 21st Century :: Books :: Lists :: Paste. My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix2016Grady Hendrix is building a brand: gimmicky on the outside, surprisingly scary on the inside. Horrorstör, his 2014 horror breakthrough, plopped readers into a haunted faux-IKEA full of torture instruments—beyond what the real-life stores already stock.
His follow-up, My Best Friend’s Exorcism, dials back the meta-factor; aside from the yearbook-style packaging, this tale of ‘80s gal pals dealing with a demonic intrusion could easily a have been a paperback original during horror’s boom period—and that’s a compliment. Abby and Gretchen are best friends for life on the eve of the first Bush presidency…until Gretchen gets lost in the woods and comes back different. Abby, already an outcast in her swank private school, faces as much peer pressure as she does pea soup in her quest to cleanse her best friend’s soul. “The Door Problem” | Liz England. “So what does a game designer do? Are you an artist? Do you design characters and write the story? Or no, wait, you’re a programmer?” Game design is one of those nebulous terms to people outside the game industry that’s about as clear as the “astrophysicist” job title is to me. The Door Problem I like to describe my job in terms of “The Door Problem”.
Premise: You are making a game. Are there doors in your game? It’s a pretty classic design problem. The Other Door Problems To help people understand the role breakdowns at a big company, I sometimes go into how other people deal with doors. One of the reasons I like this example is because it’s so mundane. Recent edits: Added localization, character artist, system designer, combat designer, composer, audio engineer, monetization designer, and I think that’ll be it for now. Jan 23/2015 Update: Check out this great poster made by Studio Cypher. The origins of Fire Emblem, shared in a classic interview with its creator. "I wanted to create a game where the story and game will develop differently for each player depending on the units they use.
Thus I added the strategy elements and arrived at this hybrid system. " - Fire Emblem creator Shouzou Kaga. Back in 1990, Intelligent Systems and Nintendo released the first in what would become an influential series of turn-based tactical games: Fire Emblem for the Famicom. 26 years later, Shmuplations has published translations of both a 1990 interview with original Fire Emblem designer Shouzou Kaga and a 1994 joint interview between Kaga and Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakagachi that were originally published in Japanese.
Both offer notable insight into the state of Japanese game development in the '90s, though the latter is more lighthearted and genial. For example, Kaga notes at one point that "in the beginning, the Final Fantasy series had a bit of a 'hardcore' reputation in some ways, but those elements have been progressively refined. League of Legends Champ Designer Gives Some Real Talk On Sexy Characters. With Civil War, Marvel dusted off inane source material for superfights · Back Issues. Back Issues discusses a major comic of the past, reevaluating its strengths and weaknesses while exploring the cultural context of its creation and how it has impacted the future of the comic-book medium and industry. This week: Civil War, Mark Millar and Steve McNiven’s explosive event series that pitted Captain America against Iron Man and inspired the upcoming film, Captain America: Civil War.
Civil War summary: Originally published between 2006 and 2007, Civil War opens during the filming of a superhero reality show. A group of C-list heroes known as the New Warriors get in over their heads in a fight with an obscure villain named Nitro, and their adversary unleashes an explosion near a school, leaving approximately 800 casualties, most of them children. As a response, the president pushes for the Superhuman Registration Act, which would see all masked vigilantes organized and trained by S.H.I.E.L.D. Similarly, it doesn’t even attempt to sensically function as a narrative. J.A. 5 Sci-Fi & Fantasy Books That Treat Mental Illness with Compassion — The B&N Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog. As a way to help erase stigma related to mental illnesses, the National Alliance on Mental Illness has designated May as Mental Health Month.
According to the NAMI website, 1 in 5 Americans will be affected by a mental health condition in their lifetime, and the more we talk about the subject—even in fantastical contexts—the more we can do to understand and assist those who live with the reality of it every day. Here are five works of speculative fiction that address mental illness with compassion. Borderline, Mishell Baker This recent debut novel redefines urban fantasy as we know it. The genre often relies on sexy protagonists and their equally sexy supernatural counterparts to move the plot along—werewolves, witches, and all sorts of otherworldly beings.
In Borderline, a group of deeply flawed human characters takes center stage. Every Heart a Doorway, Seanan McGuire This gem of a novella from Tor.com Publishing deals with the aftermath of falling down the rabbit hole, so to speak. Christopher Gile's Blog - Achievements are Permission. The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company. It is easy to think of achievements as something apart from the game proper. After all they are usually not referenced in game but rather in the game client, be that Steam, PS4, XBox One, and so on. Regardless of where the achievement are stored/presented though achievements are a part of the experience of a game.
Shouldn't those icons be in a diamond formation? That experience is an overwhelmingly positive one too. The one thing that achievements are that is a problem though is permission. It is good that achievements can be used to incentivise the player to do things, but we don't necessarily want to incentivise them to do things. This is basically the whole point of this essay in under 140 characters. Undertale doesn't want the player to try out every ending or see every possibility. Young Astronauts In Love — sdkay: My old tutorial! Wanna share it with you) Overwatch’s Most Mysterious Myth Yet :: Games :: Features :: Paste. With Overwatch sweeping the world of gaming fandom, there’s been no shortage of cosplay, fan art and comedic highlights. Like many other games built around an assortment of character skills, Overwatch has also inspired numerous “mythbusters” to take on some of the game’s hidden features, like Tracer’s ability to recall through a destroyed teleporter or Reinhardt’s ability to tackle D.Va’s exploding mech.
But one major mystery still looms over our intrepid heroes, and it’s causing the largest stir in the Overwatch community yet. Yes, even more than paying $20 for randomized graffiti sprays. The name of this monolithic myth? While Blizzard has yet to officially comment, hushed whispers from the fan community (and angry yelling on my voice chat) have coined it “The Goddamn Objective.” Breaking Down the Myth I first stumbled upon this mysterious “objective” while owning chumps on the Route 66 map as Overwatch’s true mascot and resident badass Reaper. Making Use of “The Objective”
Why They're Playing: Persona 4: Golden. We know you're busy making games. That's why from here on out, Gamasutra will be bringing you a regular look at what passionate game fans are talking about right now, tapping the zeitgeist to look at what makes these heroic new fan favorites tick. Sometimes cultural buzz isn't just about retail units, formal market research and sales figures. This time, we take a look at the complex appeal of Atlus' rich, explosive JRPG Persona 4: Golden. Japanese role-playing games used to be console-sellers, but things have been quite different this generation.
The titanic sun of Japan's software industry dominance has slowly set, and long-standing Eastern franchises have struggled to maintain their luster. Among those with the hardest fall from grace has been the Final Fantasy franchise, with an incredibly mixed reception for FFXIII and a disaster for FFXIV, and with its decline has come the perception that there's hardly any market for JRPGs anymore, not outside a specific niche.
Videos. Video Games.