While having terrible nerve pain in my neck and back in October, I was stuck for a whole week sitting up on bedrest. This was when I picked up watching playthroughs of the Silent Hill series. It was Halloween season after all, so what better time to visit a series I had been meaning to consume since I was a teenager? The only exposure I’d had to the series was the occasional Pyramid Head and Bubble Nurse cosplayers wandering the hallways of various anime conventions, obligatory fanart, and casual mentions of the movies, most of which were received by fans with mixed reactions. I knew I had my hands full when deciding to visit the story and lore of Silent Hill, a series with eight main titles and several spinoffs, but I started with the one that was and still is the most highly praised of them all: Silent Hill 2.(more…)
Natalia is a queer Latinx illustrator making queer horror art, comics, and zines. She runs MystoPress, a micropress that is home to her eerie and nightmarish works, and has been funding her comics on Kickstarter as of 2019. When she is not freelancing or working on new projects, she teaches classes to teens and adults in non-profit art centers around North Carolina.
Kentucky Route Zero is not a violent game: it has no swords, no guns, no combat. It’s not a traditional horror game, either, with no jump scares or gore or monsters. And yet… it is a game about violence, and a game that uses horror elements to drive its themes home. (more…)
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.
Welcome to the spookiest of months, when the dead return from the grave, ghosts howl from every empty room, and holiday releases start piling up until they crush you under the weight of all the conversations you’re missing out on.
This month, we’re discussing horror! We’ve previously chatted about scary games in a Twitter chat, but with new people always joining our staff, it’s never a bad time to revisit! (more…)
Melissa Brinks is Sidequest’s editor in chief, co-creator of the Fake Geek Girls podcast, author of The Compendium of Magical Beasts, and an aspiring beekeeper. She once won an argument on the internet, and tweets at @MelissaBrinks.
Sidequest was provided with a copy of Without Escape for PC in exchange for a fair and honest review.
I grew up playing the popular puzzle game MYST at my father’s knee. It was a complicated game with even more complicated lore, and I loved the way my dad took notes as he tried to puzzle out the world on his monitor. When I saw that Without Escape used MYST as a comparative title and deemed itself a horror, I had to jump in immediately. (more…)
Sidequest’s former managing editor Naseem Jamnia used to do sciencey things, but they now slam their keyboard and call it art. Their debut novella, THE BRUISING OF QILWA, introduced their queernorm, Persian-inspired secondary world; their middle grade horror debut SLEEPAWAY comes out in 2025.
Written by Whitney “Strix” Beltrán, Marissa Kelly, and Sarah Richardson
Magpie Games
October 24, 2017
Bluebeard’s Bride is an extremely unusual tabletop roleplaying game in many ways. It recreates the fable of Bluebeard, a wealthy nobleman who marries women and then kills them. All 3-5 of the players work together and against each other to play a single character, the Bride. The game is built around telling variations of one single story only, rather than the free-form campaigns of traditional roleplaying games. It always ends horribly for the Bride; there is no “winning,” only an exploration of her choices and experiences as she investigates the house of her serial killer husband. Plus, it’s printed on square pages. Who does that?
Annie Blitzen is Sidequest’s Resident LARP Expert, an inveterate player of tabletop roleplaying games, and a fair hand in video and board gaming. Sidequest writer since 2017.
Recent Comments