Interview: Discovering “The Secret of the Mermaid,” a New Keepsake Game

Interview: Discovering “The Secret of the Mermaid,” a New Keepsake Game

There are many fun and interesting ways to make roleplaying games feel immersive, but my new favorite has been the “Keepsake Game” sub-genre, which has been gaining a lot of popularity since being pioneered by Shing Yin Khor and Jeeyon Shim a couple years ago. Keepsake games guide you through creating an artifact that’s an important part of the story, therefore immersing you, the player into the story as an important part of it yourself.

The Secret of the Mermaid is a brand new keepsake game currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter that aims to involve the player in a research project about mermaids via a series of beautiful and immersive postcards and ephemera. The game creators, American Kevin Dann and German Margit Schäfer, take immersion very seriously, fully taking on the roles of researcher Dr. Dann and ritualist Clarissa, who will guide the player through the game. We had a chance to chat with both of them about their vision for The Secret of the Mermaid.

4 sample postcards from the Secret of the Mermaid, depicting imagery of the sea, Rome and mysterious women

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Confront Aliens (and Your Own Feelings) from the Comfort of a VR Mech in ALTDEUS: Beyond Chronos

Confront Aliens (and Your Own Feelings) from the Comfort of a VR Mech in ALTDEUS: Beyond Chronos

Listen, I’m a simple person with simple needs. I like mechs. I like watching anime that feature mechs. But as any nerd that likes mechs will tell you, what I really want is to pilot a mech. (Or at least feel like I’m doing so; I don’t necessarily assume I have any natural talent for it.) And that’s what got me excited about ALTDEUS: Beyond Chronos. Piloting a mech in a video game is one thing, but doing it in VR on my Oculus Quest sounds like the closest I’m going to get, for the foreseeable future, to actually being inside a mech—and I wanted in. (more…)

December Roundtable: Games That Got Us Through 2020

December Roundtable: Games That Got Us Through 2020

Wow, it’s December 2020! The Year of Eternal March is somehow drawing to a close, and we can only hope that things will be brighter in 2021. We’ve all no doubt found our own ways to make it through this uniquely difficult time, but as this is a gaming site, let’s talk about the games getting us through it.

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By Night Studios Provides the Vampire-Themed Bath Bombs We Deserve

By Night Studios Provides the Vampire-Themed Bath Bombs We Deserve

When I got the first promotional email that By Night Studios was introducing a new line of bath & body products, I was… surprised. You see, BNS is already a very important company in my life. They’re responsible for the Mind’s Eye Theater branch of White Wolf’s classic World of Darkness setting. I know, the White Wolf licenses are confusing, but Mind’s Eye Theater essentially covers all the Live Action editions of games you know and love—Werewolf: the Apocalypse, Changeling: the Dreaming (which just had a new release come out), and most importantly, at least to me, Vampire: the Masquerade.

The items mentioned below were received for free in exchange for a fair and honest review.  (more…)

October Roundtable: Love to Be a Monster

October Roundtable: Love to Be a Monster

Happy Halloween! Let’s talk about monsters, or, more accurately, the construction of monstrosity and its connection with marginalization. And boy is there a lot of that!
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