Latest articles by Alexis Ong
The Making of Karateka proves the best way to tell gaming history is with a game, and the rest of the industry must follow its lead
Docudrama The Making of Karateka is great. The entire industry developing docugames just like it would be even better.
How a bunch of art school grads made putrid, brilliant horror adventure Sanitarium
macabre masterpiece An oral history of DreamForge’s 1998 adventure hit Sanitarium.
How one writer became the core of early Apple II culture
🍎 Softalk magazine helped the idea of everyday computer entertainment—and games—to flourish.
These 3 adventure games are lowkey '90s masterpieces
Killer Clicks These under-celebrated adventure games hold up remarkably well more than 20 years later.
Jankcore is the new aesthetic
Wild shapes Curators of forgotten, flawed adventures and FMV are ensuring they will never die.
How '90s interior design software laid the foundation for today's life sims
House & Home The unsung influence of 3D home design programs.
The world's first syndicated game journalist was an 11-year-old kid
'80s star In the early '80s, Rawson Stovall started reviewing Atari games for the local paper. Before long he was the first syndicated game critic.
Shadowrun: Hong Kong is a perfect portrait of a cyberpunk city fighting for revolution
Retrospective If cyberpunk lives on, Shadowrun: Hong Kong should be its guiding light.
This stunning Deep South fable isn't the next Kentucky Route Zero—it’s the first Norco
Swamp Things Breaking down the "bummer vibes" of Norco, a striking new adventure game.
In this hallucinatory MMO, everyone's a baby and nothing's what it seems
Radio Ga Ga Lets Go! Baby! Friends World is a baffling browser-based MMO that harks back to social chatroom games.
Classic videogame designs meet modern art in Please, Touch the Artwork
Snake art, not war Snake walked so this art gallery of puzzle games could fly.
In just 2 hours, If On a Winter's Night, Four Travelers tells one of the best adventure game stories I've ever played
Clicked Don't miss one of 2021's best games—it's free on Steam and Itch.io.
Aliens, conspiracy theories, and a forged diary inspired one of the weirdest games of the '90s
👽 The story behind Drowned God: Conspiracy of the Ages is even weirder than its premise.
Ghostlore is Diablo, but with Chinese hopping vampires and Indonesian boar demons
👻 With monsters pulled from Southeast Asian folklore, Ghostlore is the first action-RPG I’ve played that feels personal.
The PMS Clan blazed a trail for women in competitive gaming
♀️ Twin sisters Amy Brady (Athena/Valkyrie) and Amber Dalton (Athena Twin) founded PMS Clan in 2002—now one of the oldest competitive gaming organizations in the world.
Before blockchain and NFTs, there was the real-cash MMO Entropia Universe
♠♥♣♦ For almost 20 years, Entropia players have been grinding, gambling, and selling virtual real estate to earn real dollars.
Kick ass for the Lord in retro shooter Forgive Me Father
Pistol Priest The Lovecraft-inspired FPS with comic-book art makes a strong first impression.
6 games I took vacations in this summer
Getaway When I couldn't travel for real, I decided to pick gaming worlds that offered unique escapism.
Mothmen and Shark Riders: the mind-melting fantasy of pixel-pulps
Shark Freak The indie duo behind pixel-pulps are making visual novel throwbacks to the wild fantasy of Conan the Barbarian.
Purple carrots and horrifying toilets were key to making The Forgotten City's ancient Rome believable
Food for thought How The Forgotten City used food as a springboard for the rest of its society.
