Lumino City is an award-winning game made by State of Play Games that explores the ins and outs of a beautifully hand-built world. To succeed in the game, the player must use investigative skills to work their way through the different machines and processes that structure the city. Through its handcrafted design, the game stimulates the player’s creative side and strives to promote the creation of sustainable energy through the use of reusable objects.
USM Game Studies is proud to announce the winners of its second annual interactive writing contest.
Summer Dream (Laura Renfroe)
You’re Dead, Charlie Brown! (Jamie, Amber, Duck :V)
The USM Game Studies Group is excited to announce its second annual interactive writing contest, “Texts & Twine.” Using Twine, Inform 7, or another digital tool for writing interactive texts, we invite students to write, design, and submit an interactive text in any genre they wish—fiction, nonfiction, poetry, scholarship, game, memoir, creative nonfiction, interactive narrative, etc. Selected submissions will be featured here on Quest Log and compete for a few small prizes. Judges will consist of the editorial board of Quest Log and select members of the USM Game Studies Group.
Find everything you need to participate (Twine tutorials, articles and resources, etc.) here. Click “Read more” to find out the submission details and contest rules!
In the absence of light, darkness reigns supreme, amplifying feelings of terror and tranquility. The interactive video game A Blind Legend, published in 2015, captures these emotions by conveying the sensation of being blinded, while also fostering gameplay accessible to the visually impaired. Raising awareness about blindness, DOWiNO and France Culture—the developers behind A Blind Legend—focus on the journey of an old legend: the blind knight, Sir Edward Blake.
Played as a serious game, Ndemic Creations’ Plague Inc. effectively incorporates these elements to underscore its purpose as a game designed to inform players about disease transmission and pandemic culture. Plague Inc. is a single-player video game in which the player takes on the role of a disease and attempts to infect and eliminate the entire global population.
Designed by Lucas Pope, Papers, Please (2013) is a border-security simulator in which the player is “assigned to the Ministry of Admission in the war-torn dystopian nation of Arstotzka” (Pope 2012). While the player carries out their daily duties of verifying passports and identities, they put their meager earnings towards providing for their family and paying down their debt. As the days pass, players are presented with more and more responsibilities—bribe offers, pleas, and threats—as the State of Arstotzka demands disciplined performance from its employees and pays only by person processed. No time can be wasted in the 12-hour work day, lest the player fail to earn enough to support their family.
The USM Game Studies Group is excited to announce the launch of “Texts & Twine,” our first annual interactive writing contest. Using Twine, a digital platform for writing interactive texts and branching narratives, we invite students to write, design, and submit an interactive text in any genre they wish—fiction, nonfiction, poetry, scholarship, game, memoir, creative nonfiction, interactive narrative, etc. Selected submissions will be featured here on Quest Log and compete for a few small prizes. Judges will consist of the editorial board of Quest Log and select members of the USM Game Studies Group.
Find everything you need to participate (Twine tutorials, articles and resources, etc.) here. Click “Read more” to find out the submission details and contest rules!
The world of Little Nightmares is——frankly——disturbing. With every open door, players are forced to uncover the secrets of this uncanny world for themselves——all while facing grotesque enemies and environments. As we work our way through this analysis of Little Nightmares, we will take a closer look at its disturbing fictional world, distorted sounds and graphics, grotesque characters and settings, and darkness——allowing a fresh focus on stealth——to give players a truly horrifying experience.
Andrew Mayers, who also goes by Andrew Malique as an artist, has been drawing and playing video games for a long time. Designing illustrations has given him the chance to express his love for video games and the impact gaming has had on his life. He is currently a freshman at USM. More examples of his art can be found on Instagram at @andrewmalique.
The key turns in the latch and I open our apartment door. To let as little light in from outside as possible, I shinny myself in, almost dropping what I’m carrying. It’s impossible to see in the pitch black of our living room, but the glow-in-the-dark clock I bought to hang right next to the door tells me it’s one in the morning, which means it’s really three o’clock; I always set this clock two hours behind before I leave at night, so if my mother ever catches me coming home this late she’ll see the clock next to the door and think I’m two hours earlier than I actually am. I take my shoes off at the door, careful not to wake her up. She gets so worried when I come home this late.
I stop off at the TV and do what I need to do before I make my way to the room that Bobby and I share. I creak our door open as silently as I could, and I see his covers rising up and down with his breath. Creeping, I go to him and nudge him awake.
Undoubtedly, the last decade was known for its big-budget games. Games like Grand Theft Auto V, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt made headlines for their massive worlds, epic stories, fun gameplay, and huge sales. But the highest selling game of the decade (and of all time) was an independent game made by a small company called Mojang. A game with blocky graphics, basic gameplay, and a simple story.
Minecraft was the first smash hit from the independent side of gaming. Before its release, games with small budgets and little known developers rarely made headway in the gaming market, with notable exceptions including Braid, Super Meat Boy, and Limbo. It was Minecraft that finally showed how indie games can be just as popular as games made by developers with far more resources and manpower.
Because many video games nowadays feature prominent characters that fall under the LGBT+ category, this type of emotional investment that’s built on the in-game interactions with these characters can provide an impact on how the player views people who identify as LGBT+ outside of the game’s magic circle. The increase in LGBT+ representation in Triple-A games puts players in the position of empathizing with characters that fall under the LGBT+ category. Games like Dragon Age: Inquisition and The Last of Us, specifically the game’s DLC, are two early examples of games known for their representation of the LGBT+ community and the strong reaction they received from critics and players alike.
