malvasia bianca

When I was growing up, I had a subscription to Games magazine. It’s a puzzle magazine whose main feature is the “pencilwise” section that takes up the middle chunk; crosswords are always most prominent in that section, but they’re always in a minority, with a wide range of other puzzle formats keeping them company. Lots […]

(Short game spoiler disclaimer: Small Worlds takes about 15 minutes to play.) Small Worlds is the first in what I hope will be an irregular ongoing series of short game posts. And, as such, it leaves me nervous: while I imagine many of y’all will be just fine with me not writing 1500 words every […]

As I mentioned last month, I’m planning to write more about short games. Which is, I fear somewhat at tension with my current policy vis-a-vis spoilers, namely that I don’t worry about spoilers at all. I don’t go out of my way to highlight them, and probably the fact that I discuss game plots relatively […]

So many experiments to try in schools. (Via @Brinstar.) The most interesting response I saw to that Clay Shirky piece a month ago. (Via @deirdrakiai.) Why Firefox doesn’t support H.264. (Via @timbray.) Tale of Tales’ Realtime Art Manifesto. (I particularly liked the Ueda quote contained therein, “Reduce the volume, Increase the quality and density”.) (Via […]

This year I’ll be putting down my pencil and calculator and doing my taxes on a computer for the first time; any recommendations for software I should use? Either something web-based or something that will run on a Mac is fine with me.

There was a time towards the end of 2008 when it seemed like everybody in my twitter feed was talking about Yakuza 2. It was apparently a Shenmue-style action RPG (also published by Sega), but (as Steve Gaynor so eloquently outlined in the 2008 holiday confab) filled with delightfully quirky side missions, missions that added […]

I was planning to mention With the Light in my blog post the other day on juvenile and adolescent games, but I forgot. Actually, though, I’m kind of glad I did, because it’s a good enough work to deserve its own discussion as a positive example of those themes. So I’ll discuss it (or, rather, […]

When Michael reviewed MySims Agents, I knew I had to get it for my daughter for Christmas, and my hopes for the game weren’t misplaced: it looks both fun and charming, she loved it, my wife blazed right through it, and I’ll give it a spin as soon as I’m done with Mass Effect 2. […]