Last Stop Pulls Out Every Stop with Great Camera Work

As I mentioned on Channel F this week, I’m really enjoying Last Stop, the latest game from Virginia developer Variable State. Like the previous game, it’s a relatively forthright experience: a...

Enjoy the Hunky Queer Magical Boys of Fairy Ranmaru

My favorite anime are the ones where I sit down every week and gleefully scream “what the fuck is this?!” at the top of my lungs. The sheer number of shows being made every season means that there are...

The Unlikely Fan Remaster of Shrek SuperSlam, A Game Revived by Memes

No one would have paid attention to Shrek SuperSlam if it wasn’t for the Internet. Even its developers at Shaba Games knew the game they were building wasn’t a hit. Against all odds, Shrek S...

Subnautica: Below Zero is Another Landmark in Video Game Horror

There are people who, I am told, feel relaxed when they play Subnautica. They find it pleasant to swim through an underwater alien world where distinct and colorful biomes seamlessly melt toget...

Video Games Expanded My Ability to Teach During the Pandemic

I panicked last year when my university announced that classes were moving online during the pandemic. Like most professors, I had never taught online before, and didn’t even know where to start. For...

Kai Leng Would've Sucked Less if He Shut the Fuck Up

The following will contain spoilers for Mass Effect 3.

Games Are Reimagining Nature in the Age of Climate Catastrophe

Even in Arcadia is one of the most faithful portrayals of nature you’ll find in video games precisely because it is so breathtakingly fake. In Phoebe Shalloway’s far-future satire of space capi...

The Big Con is a Radically 90s Scammer Fantasy

From the original confidence man’s early ruses in the 1800s, to Soulja Boy selling janky game consoles in recent years, scamming is a cruel yet integral part of the North American ethos. After just a...

Thank You Bioware For Giving My Gay Ass a Heart Icon to Flirt With

On episode 36 of 99 Potions, Fanbyte’s weekly RPG-centric podcast, our News Editor Imran Khan raised some valid concerns about Bioware’s implementation of a heart icon to indicate romantic interest wi...

Final Fantasy XIV Player Mods Emet-Selch Romance Into Stardew Valley

When I interviewed Final Fantasy XIV director Naoki Yoshida in May, I asked him about the community’s enduring enthusiasm over the concept of NPC dating. It’s a request he gets often, so it’s...

The Story of Hi-Tech Expressions, the Original Rockstars of Gaming

There was a popular saying at Hi-Tech Expressions, the Manhattan-based video game publisher and developer: “To work at Hi-Tech, you have to play an instrument.” 

The 20 Best Sims 4 Gameplay Mods (November 2021)

The list of possible Sims 4 mods is basically endless. You can spend hours and hours looking through various websites, trying to find out whether a given mod is useful or just a waste of time...

The Mystery of the Real-Life Ryu

For decades, Street Fighter‘s Ryu has had one consistent characteristic: he wants to fight and then move on to the next battle. Ryu doesn’t care about money, he doesn’t care abo...

Interview: Atsushi Onita Still Believes In the Power of Pro Wrestling

[Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.]

16 of the Best Space Games Available on Steam

Does anyone else sometimes crawl through Steam tags looking for the next game to play? More often than not I find myself doing this when I’m on the hunt for the next game set in space to scratch my ex...

A Conversation with Diego Garijo: Fighter, Artist, Drag Performer

Content warning for drug use, violence, weight, mental illness, and a brief mention of violence against trans and GNC people.

Video Games Are Leading the Return of the Y2K Aesthetic

Were you around for the release of the PlayStation 2? Were you televisually bombarded by all its weird commercials promising a new, immersive future for gamers everywhere? What about back even further...

Remembering Brodie Lee

Jon Huber, known in wrestling as Brodie Lee and Luke Harper, passed away suddenly on December 26, from non-COVID related lung issues. He was 41. In a year rife with shock and tragedy within the wrestl...

Valheim's Developers on Popularity, Polygons, and People

There’s no strict science to a game’s success. Every developer hopes their game will become the next viral sensation — on every Twitch stream, millions of sales in a matter of weeks, and concurrent pl...

The Resident Evil Fan Artist Whose Work Was Used to Dupe the Internet

With Resident Evil Village out, protagonist Ethan Winters is on a lot of people’s minds. Unlike series’ mainstays Chris Redfield or Jill Valentine, Ethan has starred in two Resident Evil...