by Emily Durham | Aug 31, 2021 | Roundtables, Video Games
It’s August, which we refuse to think too deeply about. But you know what’s great to think too deeply about? Stars. On nice, clear summer nights, you can see all kinds of stars if you’re lucky, even if those stars are in games. So let’s talk about them! (more…)
Emily Durham is a freelance writer by day and a Sidequest copyeditor by… also day. When they’re not editing or playing with cats, you can find them playing Celeste or Hollow Knight, sewing korok cosplays, or… playing with cats. You can find their tweets at @sedimentalvalue.
by Madison Butler | Dec 31, 2020 | Roundtables, Tabletop Games, Video Games
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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Madison Butler is Sidequest’s self-proclaimed jock editor. She co-founded the blog Critsumption and once got really into powerlifting via Fitness Boxing for the Nintendo Switch. She tweets at @_maddilo.
by Emma Hartley | Nov 5, 2020 | Essays, Tabletop Games, Video Games
The game will tell you what you want. Then, it will tell you how to achieve it. Of course, this is exactly the premise on which most games operate. Yet the copious hours I have dedicated to Animal Crossing: New Horizons have helped me realise just how this fundamental process can reveal troubling assumptions about what the players are expected to value. (more…)
Emma is a student and freelance writer. You can often find Emma in the lost property box.
by David R. Howard | Oct 19, 2020 | Essays, Video Games
Randomness in games is often talked about purely in terms of strategic cost-benefit analysis. Random number generation (RNG) is good when it is fair, or used in procedural generation processes, otherwise it is bad and must be avoided. But randomness can also be aesthetical a la aleatoric art—pardon the tongue twister. Celeste‘s gameplay is wholly deterministic, which is a part of why speedrunners like me admire it, but in actuality it uses RNG for its various particle effects. One game series which uses RNG in both a mechanical and aesthetical way is Nintendo’s Animal Crossing, and not only in its island-creating algorithm. (more…)
David R. Howard is a writer from Southern Ontario, Canada. They can be found on Twitter @rhombical.
by Emily Durham | Aug 10, 2020 | Fiction, Video Games
This piece is a loose work of fiction inspired by Animal Crossing: New Horizons. The author is not actually in love with an anteater. (more…)
Emily Durham is a freelance writer by day and a Sidequest copyeditor by… also day. When they’re not editing or playing with cats, you can find them playing Celeste or Hollow Knight, sewing korok cosplays, or… playing with cats. You can find their tweets at @sedimentalvalue.
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