by Kathryn Hemmann | Apr 22, 2025 | Essays, Video Games
Crow Country is a game about zombies. The year is 1990, and you (ostensibly) play as a police detective named Mara Forest. Mara is investigating the disappearance of Edward Crow, the owner of a small amusement park called Crow Country. Two years prior, Crow Country shut down and closed to the public after the injury and subsequent hospitalization of a teenage girl. What Edward Crow doesn’t want anyone to know is that the girl was bitten by a zombie. That girl is Mara, and she knows what she saw. She also knows that her health isn’t improving, which is why she’s determined to get to the bottom of the strange phenomenon at the abandoned amusement park. That strange phenomenon is zombies, and these “zombies” are climate refugees. (more…)
Kathryn is a writer and comic artist who lurks at the center of a digital labyrinth in Philadelphia. They post about books, plants, and video game villains as @kathrynthehuman on Bluesky.
by Melissa Brinks | Nov 15, 2023 | Mobile Games, News, Video Games
Hello from your favorite trash mobile gamer! I’m here to bring you the latest news in the mobile gaming sphere, despite never having played Fortnite or Genshin Impact. Generally, I think it’s not cute to be purposefully ignorant of something, but the sheer amount of trashy mobile games I play juxtaposed against my refusal to play the two biggest mobile games is in fact quite funny to me. I hope we all enjoy my struggle to explain what’s going on in the world of Fortnite. (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.
by Melissa Brinks | Jun 30, 2023 | Roundtables, Video Games
We may be past the height of the daddification of games discourse, but bad dads are eternal. This month, in celebration (?) of Father’s Day, we’re returning to our series of listicles in which we nominate our favorite (?) bad dads and our Patrons vote on which bad dad reigns supreme. (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.
by Naseem Jamnia | Mar 30, 2021 | Roundtables, Video Games
In theory, March is about renewal—the weather warms up, the little flowers that grow in grasses spring up, and the month marks the Persian New Year. (What do you mean I’m the only person who cares about that??) Anyway, this kind of renewal has us thinking about rebirth (we already talked about renewal in games, after all!), and rebirth in games means remakes and remasters. (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.
by Emma Kostopolus | Jan 27, 2021 | News, Video Games
Hey, everyone! This week was… kinda weird, on a lot of levels. Doing my research for this weekly curatorial piece felt kind of like I was cognitively ping-ponging back and forth between being shocked, disappointed, made vaguely uncomfortable, and yet unable to pull away from the big stories of the week. So, without further ado, let’s dig in. (more…)
Emma is a PhD candidate in Rhetoric and Composition who studies how play impacts learning. Her words have also appeared in Critical Distance and Unwinnable. When not writing, she enjoys passing the controller between friends for runs of Silent Hill. She can be found @kostopolus on Twitter.
![A screenshot from the Cozy Grove press kit overlaid with "GET YOUR GAME ON" and "[COZY GAMES]".](https://sidequest.zone/wp-content/uploads/wordpress-popular-posts/107896-featured-200x75.jpg)
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