Liu Kang is dead. It’s 2002, and after a rocky transition from 2D to 3D for the Mortal Kombat franchise with Mortal Kombat 4, players booted up the newest installment, Deadly Alliance, with feverish anticipation. They were greeted with an opening scene of Liu Kang, the franchise’s hero, training at...
X-Men: Children of the Atom: An oral history
If there’s a lesson to learn from Shaq Fu, it’s that the mid-’90s game industry would turn just about anything into a fighting game. A movie, a TV show, even just a celebrity — drop it into the template, and that was often enough to greenlight a game. So when...
Breakout tabletop RPG by Native designers imagines an uncolonized North America
Every year thousands of school-aged children from across the Midwest make their way to downstate Illinois. Along the banks of the Mississippi River, wedged between St. Louis and the world’s largest catsup bottle, they spend a day touring the remains of one of North America’s oldest cities, now known as...
Why hang a game map on the wall when you could build a world around one instead?
For indie designers, producing a tabletop role-playing game might mean learning new skills: not just game design, but layout, graphic design, marketing, or illustration as well. For Ross Cowman, designer of the award-winning storytelling game Fall of Magic and the new City of Winter, which is about to complete its...
In Hitman 3, Agent 47’s freedom is more important than yours
Early in the production of Hitman 3, the developers of the game found themselves in a bind — a conundrum of their own making. For the first two entries in the trilogy, 2016’s Hitman and 2018’s Hitman 2, series protagonist Agent 47 didn’t have top billing. The real stars of...
The next Life is Strange drops the episodic release format – and it’s out this September
The next chapter in the beloved story-driven Life is Strange series is called Life is Strange: True Colors – and you’ll be able to play it this year. True Colors is a continuation of the overall thematic style of the series but breaks away from the stories of the two...
The new official Xbox Wireless Headset is a best-in-class offering for the price
Microsoft’s entry into the gaming headset market isn’t perfect, but it’s a very strong offering for the price. The design team behind the new Official Xbox Wireless Headset plainly had two missions: first, to create a best-in-class Xbox headset at a sub-$100 price. But second, and equally important, it also...
X-COM got its name, in part, because ‘XCON’ sounded like ‘ex-convict’
Ed. note: Now on Kickstarter, Monsters in the Dark: The Making of X-COM: UFO Defense is author David L. Craddock’s latest book looking back at the history of the video game industry. Below, we have an excerpt covering the early brainstorming sessions between developers Mythos and MicroProse for the game...
Vampire: The Masquerade outdoes Gloomhaven with giant new campaign-in-a-box
There’s a new tabletop game on the way that’s set in the universe of Vampire: The Masquerade, but if you don’t shell out money for it now, you might never get the chance to buy it at a store. Vampire: The Masquerade - Chapters is a campaign-in-a-box in the style...
Candlekeep Mysteries preview: ‘Lore of Lurue’ brings D&D back in time to a magical forest
Candlekeep Mysteries, the next campaign book for Dungeons & Dragons, arrives later this month. Inside, Dungeon Masters (DMs) will find 17 new one-shot adventures, designed for players level 1-10. The book will also introduce more than a dozen new voices and their unique contributions to the lore of the Forgotten...