features: The big ones
The bread and butter
Now Playing: Reviews from the back alley
games we love, games we hate, everything in-between
Wait, who is Pac-Man married to?
Pac-Man lore is shockingly complex, especially when you’re concerned about Ms. Pac-Man.
Editorials: Columns and critiques
From our intrepid editors and erstwhile friends
Get in the robot, Reader
Recently in my internet travels, an angry forum user labeled me braindead because I like Gundam and giant robots, which irked me. Not because someone was mean to me online, that shit happens all the time. No, I was irked because Gundam doesn’t deserve to be called braindead.
Free RPG Day: The Steam Next Fest of Tabletop RPGs
On a blisteringly hot Saturday in June, I had the opportunity to run a game of Dungeon Crawl Classics for a group of four strangers. This was not the start of a monthslong campaign, just an enjoyable evening of adventure made possible by Free RPG Day.
Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Homo War
The Fire Emblem series is partially responsible for my pansexuality. There’s no shortage of queer coded characters, especially in the most recent entry, and there’s quite a history to it. Sometimes the series really drops the ball, but I think that there’s a fair amount of positive and important representation in the series.
SICK Showcase Revives Forgotten Konsole
On a cool spring evening in April surrounded by the sound of laughter and shouted conversation, Sly McMahon Jr, his face wet with tears, watches a mechanical rat shoot a slime with a heavy rifle before rocketing across a bottomless chasm.
The world’s supply of Nintendium has been exhausted
Working at a game store in the mid-2010s, a coworker of mine, in reference to the Wii U , remarked Nintendo was “all out of Nintendium.” That specific moment played back in my head as I opened up my phone at nine in the morning, navigated to Nintendo’s YouTube page, and prepared to watch the Nintendo…
Dev Logs: Interviews and Developer notes
From developers of in-progress or completed indie projects
SUPER PHANTASY FIGHTERS
SUPER PHANTASY FIGHTERS is a platform fighter developed by solo dev Andrew-P using visual assets and lore from Phantasy Star Online 2 (Sega, 2012).
That technically makes it a fangame, but that label doesn’t fully cover everything SPF has going on under the hood. Andrew-P made all the code in the game from scratch, from controls…
Things no one complained about in Tall Trails (and some they did)
I made an exploration game, Tall Trails, and released it recently on Steam. So, I wanted to catalogue a list of some of the silly, not fully polished things that shipped in the game that no one has complained about so far!
Hotdog Heaven: Chicago
Summer means two things around here: hot dogs and AllStars.
Luckily for us here at Back Alley, one intrepid team of developers crafted an experience that marries those seasonal pillars with the threat of carpal tunnel and a healthy dose of Wii-era shovelware nostalgia.
Pan
To the average person, a flute is perhaps one of the least intimidating instruments in the orchestra. To marching band survivors flashing back to piccolos trilling at full volume, it’s a bad memory. To players of Miki Straus’s Pan, it’s something else entirely. A weapon.
Rats Rats Rats
Future dystopia has never before been so full of rats.
In Rats Rats Rats, the second runner-up in the Audience Choice category at this year’s AllStars, you’re a rat. Don’t feel bad, though, everyone else is also a rat.