features: The big ones

The bread and butter
A drawing of a brown backpack next to a rock

Ain’t about how fast you get there

For me to enjoy a review, I need the author to be screaming into the void about their most obscure, nerdy interests. I don’t care if you mean to entertain me. I want the road you’re leading me down to be one you’re unabashedly interested in. So today I’ll take cues from a little polygonal bird…
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Now Playing: Reviews from the back alley

games we love, games we hate, everything in-between
towerbolt

Towerbolt

*SUBSCRIBER EXCLUSIVE*
Towerbolt manages to successfully pull off a piece of advice often thrown at indie projects: do one thing and do it really fucking well. To be clear, the thing in question is jumping, which is pretty much all you’re going to be…
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A black and white photo of a man at a piano

The Talented Mr. Kondo

Few albums can withstand the test of time; but Super Mario 64’s soundtrack is an exception, truly defining a generation of video game music.
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Editorials: Columns and critiques

From our intrepid editors and erstwhile friends
dispatch 12 25

Fuck Spotify, I’ll wrap it myself

I’ve conned you all into reading another column about music.
So, because Spotify lies – I’ve become convinced of this, both because of their links to weapons manufacturing and the fact I obsessively track my own listening stats – I’ll wrap it myself.
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A group of people in a convention space

CIGS Lights Up, Crashes Servers

If there was one takeaway from CIGS this year, it was that there is a growing appetite for independent video games in the Midwest. Like a katamari rolling through the cosmos, CIGS continues to get bigger as it rolls along.
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Dev Logs: Interviews and Developer notes

From developers of in-progress or completed indie projects
wordlock (4)

Wordlock

In programmer Nick Kalita’s world, Mavis Beacon teaches magic. Wordlock, Kalita’s top-down, illustrated dungeon crawler, merges the word-based combat of Typing of the Dead with the frantic pace of Enter the Gungeon.
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avitium (2)

Avitium

Loyalty is a difficult thing. Some have it for themselves, others for a leader, and others still for a place. Avitium, Studio MiK’s 2025 card battler, asks its audience to stand behind their ideals or die trying.
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dock king (2)

Dock King

Cozy life simulation games have gained massive popularity since the early 2000s, with series like Animal Crossing and titles like Stardew Valley (ConcernedApe, 2016) taking over the gaming world. In a post-lockdown world, escapism is popular. Go figure. However, the appeal of kind neighbors and mist-cloaked forests is lost entirely on Keith Thomas, developer of Dock…
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cold calling (1)

Cold Calling

Ah, the switchboard. One of history’s most important and unsung political tools. If legend is to be believed, total nuclear annihilation was narrowly avoided by a single telephone operator routing international calls.
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carnivory (2)

CARNiVORY

Kill, loot, boss, repeat, return. This is the gameplay loop of CARNiVORY, an upcoming roguelite shooter from Chicago-based studio Chowdahound.
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Archive: Icg Zine (2024)

Writing and event coverage from the ICG Zine
A pixel art man with a drone above his right shoulder, and the text "Detect-Dev" to his left. The "C" is a magnifying glass.

Detect-Dev Interview

Detect-Dev bills itself as an alternative to the usual sleuthing fare in games, shifting its focus from hardboiled detectives to a near-future version of Chicago (“New-Chi”), featuring psychic powers, advanced AI sidekicks, set within a narrative game that seeks to provide a new lens on…
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