The Lovecraft Project: Howard Phillips Lovecraft is the father of cosmic horror – the genre constructed around the notion that we humans are just a tiny, insignificant part of the universe, which holds much bigger, ancient, more powerful beings. We are nothing compared to what lies out there, beyond our reach and understanding. The plan is to write a few …

If the first book in The Demon Cycle series is so uneven that it seemed as if it were written by two different authors, The Desert Spear certainly is written exclusively by the worst of the pair: Peter V. Brett’s fantasy novel continues to undermine the best parts of its characters while offering a troublesome take on sexism – and …

On paper, Resident Evil: Revelations 2 is a competent entry in the series, getting a lot of the basics of survival horror right. The problem is that, just like its many monsters, the game lacks a soul: its design choices and storyline are so bland and uninspired that, even though Revelations 2 is far from being the worst entry in …

*This review contains spoilers* Written by Frank Herbert and published in 1965, Dune is a complex sci-fi novel that explores false messiahs and how they hide oppression and violence under the promise of a better tomorrow. Its narrative excels when it comes to building a stifling, oppressive atmosphere, immersing us in the main characters’ paranoia, but it occasionally falters in …

Is Demon’s Souls hard? The game that basically started its own subgenre (the Soulslikes) is forever trapped in a discourse about difficulty, even though it excels not at challenging us with hard-as-nails boss fights, but at building an oppressive and somber atmosphere that immerses us in a dark and dangerous world where everything seems complicated. The story takes place after …

The first time we see Elliot, he’s out in the woods looking for a simple comb an old man dropped when he was gathering herbs. He doesn’t care that it’s not a glorious job or even that the old man won’t be able to pay him much; it’s just the right thing to do. Elliot is that kind of guy. …

The cruelty of serial killers can feel a tad unnecessary when we are perfectly capable of bringing misery to our lives ourselves. Their evil can get a bit excessive, you see: the world would still be a harrowing, unjust, and vicious place without doctors killing and eating people or anonymous dudes sending puzzles to the police. We wouldn’t exactly be …

Divided into two distinct parts that remake the previous two games in the series and weave them into a cohesive whole, Another Code: Recollection explores our often-troubled relationship with our parents and how our memories make up who we are. 13-year-old Ashley thought her parents died when she was three. But one day, shortly before her birthday, she receives an invitation …

Vampyr excels in making its mechanics, systems, and presentation mirror its protagonist’s inner struggles. It associates vampirism with disease and corruption, immersing us in a claustrophobic, hostile city whose inhabitants are at the mercy of predators of every kind – including the main character, Dr. Jonathan Reid. The game starts with a discussion on mortality, framing dying as a blessing: …

“You got kids? Sounds rough.” Hugh Williams asks his colleague Nicholas No Last Name, who promptly replies, “Nah. I wouldn’t trade it for a thing.” Parenthood is at the core of Pragmata, a game that boasts an innovative and engaging combat system, but a narrative so sparse, shallow, and repetitive that it makes us long for the next moment our …