Slay the Princess
Slay the Princess is a weird game. We’re going to start with that right from the opening. You are in the woods, on a path, and a narrator tells you to go into a cabin, grab a dagger, head down into the basement, and slay the princess held captive there. What...
Color-changing glasses
Photochromic lenses, the ones that change from clear to dark in sunlight, have been around for decades. While the quality of the effects have been refined, the basic operation remains the same: expose the clear lens to sunlight and it will darken, then when exposure...
Darkest book in all of fiction
A common thread running through the various Black Ocean series is the Tome of Bleeding Thoughts. It’s a cursed book that afflicts its few survivors with power and a gnawing madness they must constantly resist. Or, you know, give in to. Is it the darkest book in all of...
Donnie Darko
The movie that set the bar for weird movies Donnie Darko is a story about a highschool boy who doesn’t die when a jet engine crashes into his house. He was warned. He got a second chance. In the process, he got an imaginary friend/enemy/mentor/guide/psychotic...
Oxenfree
Choices echo through time in this game Oxenfree is a narrative choice game where you play as Alex, a highschooler from a small town, going to an island with some friends for an overnight beach party. The setup has a sort of Spielberg/Hughes vibe, with a bunch of...
RobotCop
Robot unemployment hits all-time high...Maybe it did TOO good a job? The town of Dublin, Ohio has fired a police officer. This particular officer had no recourse. They weren’t a union member, had no political connections, and nobody seems to be stepping in to look out...
Dark Crystal
The Dark Crystal got a somehow darker prequel In an era of increasingly rare practical effects, it’s a small miracle that Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance even got made. But getting to work on a beloved classic with Jim Henson Company muppets as opposed to CGI...
Gibbous, a Cthulhu Adventure
A light take on a dark universe Gibbous, A Cthulhu Adventure, it a point-and-click adventure revolving around the discovery of the Necronomicon and your cat learning to talk. While the genre of point-and-click games runs the gamut from “read it your damn self” to...
City-Cooling Bricks
Smart bricks for hot cities Cities get hotter than the surrounding countryside. Heat Islands are a long-known phenomenon, largely attributable to dark roofs and pavement soaking up solar energy throughout the day. This is where a new type of cooling brick comes in....
Watchmen
A look at the dark side of heroes Watchmen is a classic 1986 comic by the legendary Alan Moore that became a movie in 2009. Just as the original was a reaction against a somewhat sappy optimism inherent to (most) comics of the time, the movie adaptation found...