Gamers with Glasses

@gamerswithglasses.bsky.social

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Writing at the intersection of academic game studies and popular game criticism. We've got gaming stories to tell; we bet you do, too. We are a volunteer-run writing collective; you may also enjoy our podcast (find us on Spotify!).

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We added Kaiju Noir to our list! Think of this as the list that keeps on listing. What games from this year's Queer Games Bundle have you enjoyed so far? www.gamerswithglasses.com/gwg-recommen... itch.io/b/2506/queer...

Queer Games Bundle 2024 (with $10+ option!) by Queer Games Bundle and 271 othersitch.io Queer Games Bundle 2024 (with $10+ option!): 489 items for $60.00

The massive and fantastic 2024 Queer Games Bundle is still running for a few more days! We've been playing all month and we've got a few favorites to share: www.gamerswithglasses.com/gwg-recommen... Support their work here! It's, for real, the Rise of the Video Game Zinesters itch.io/b/2506/queer...

Queer Games Bundle 2024 (with $10+ option!) by Queer Games Bundle and 271 othersitch.io Queer Games Bundle 2024 (with $10+ option!): 489 items for $60.00

"What if these bosses are hard because killing them isn’t supposed to feel good?" Maybe the real Shadow of the Erdtree was the lessons we learned along the way... www.gamerswithglasses.com/impressions/...

Morality Is Shadow of the Erdtree's Big New Feature — Gamers with Glasseswww.gamerswithglasses.com Elden Ring belongs on the list of games that, however ambivalently, play like conquest simulators. And yet, for all the talk about how the difficulty of FromSoft games makes victory feel more meanin...

Is your day feeling musical yet? No? Sounds like it's time for Tof Eklund's review of Akabaka's Sucker for Love: Date to Die For, by way of The Police, Julie Andrews, and Bette Midler: "Rhok'zhan / You don't have to put on the red light..." www.gamerswithglasses.com/reviews/suck...

Sucker for Love: Date to Die For - a Review in Three Songs — Gamers with Glasseswww.gamerswithglasses.com Sucker for Love: Date to Die For dares to provide a queer, post-lovecraftian story of love, family, and transformation. It’s not all rotbloom bouquets and smooches, though. Eldritch gods can be terr...

And you thought we were done talking about Digital Eclipse's Wizardry remake! In our podcast, we uncover the finer points of the game's thoughtfully brutal dungeon design, and we think through the surprisingly deep narrative possibilities of old-school RPGs: www.gamerswithglasses.com/gwgpodcast/t...

The Gamers with Glasses Show, Episode 29: Nobody Knows Murphy, But We All Know His Ghost — Gamers with Glasseswww.gamerswithglasses.com Our adventures in the world of Wizardry continue! We were so excited to all be playing the same game that we had to do a whole podcast about it. We uncover the finer points of the game's thoughtfull...

Hey! We may have...just learned that #PointNClickFriday is a thing, but it just so happens that we've been thinking a lot about A Guidebook of Babel! Let the pointing and clicking commence! www.gamerswithglasses.com/impressions/...

The Butterfly Effect and Rewriting Time in A Guidebook of Babel — Gamers with Glasseswww.gamerswithglasses.com Sometimes, you need to give a game from a couple years ago another look: A Guidebook of Babel explores the presence of the butterfly effect in a whimsical and cartoonish world. Rather than making pl...

Sixty percent of Elden Ring players haven't gotten to Mohg because no one told them that this is a game about feeding berries to a pony

Zkymia 6 for Game of the Year kotaku.com/star-wars-ou...

Star Wars Outlaws Is The First Canonical Appearance Of A Video Game In The Franchisekotaku.com Ubisoft's open-world game confirms that gamers exist in the Star Wars galaxy

@digitaleclipse.bsky.social has rebuilt the first Wizardry into something fresh and exciting; come for the new graphics, stay for the poisonous capybaras: www.gamerswithglasses.com/features/sto...

Stories from Wizardry — Gamers with Glasseswww.gamerswithglasses.com The traditional fantasy trappings and harsh mechanics of Wizardry spun our editors off into their own imaginations. We came up with a few stories and ideas: the corpse retrieval society, the experie...

We know Zelda is supposed to be inspired by playing outside as a kid, but Animal Well understands how surreal and frightening childhood can actually be: www.gamerswithglasses.com/impressions/...

Animal Well and the Realistic Surrealism of Childhood — Gamers with Glasseswww.gamerswithglasses.com People say that The Legend of Zelda was inspired by playing outside as a child, but Animal Well actually understands how surreal and frightening childhood can be.

Samantha Trzinski's impressions of Duck Detective: The Secret Salami include all our best duck puns: "At any point, the Duck Detective can think over a particular question, draw a de-duck-tion, and nudge the player accordingly in the right direction." www.gamerswithglasses.com/impressions/...

Duck Detective Quacks the Case — Gamers with Glasseswww.gamerswithglasses.com Our first impressions of Duck Detective: The Secret Salami : this point-and-click caper brings a fun, cartoony sensibility to the well-known tropes of noir mysteries, never becoming pond-erous or fo...

We were so impressed with the demo that we just had to review the whole game! "Crow Country captures the feeling of a cheap small town amusement park in a specifically eerie way, and it’s a really compelling setting for a survival horror game." www.gamerswithglasses.com/reviews/crow...

Crow Country Is Retro Survival Horror Goodness — Gamers with Glasseswww.gamerswithglasses.com Crow Country captures the feeling of a cheap small town amusement park in a specifically eerie way, and it’s a really compelling setting for a survival horror game. The spectacle isn’t too grand, th...

Trying to decide what to play this summer? Have we got a list for you! It was so much fun getting the band back together for this one; so many thanks to all our fantastic editors and contributors. www.gamerswithglasses.com/gwg-recommen...

The GwG Summer Game Roundup, 2024 — Gamers with Glasseswww.gamerswithglasses.com From the Ace Attorney trilogy to Lunar Lander: Beyond and Slice & Dice, the GwG editors and contributors offer a veritable plethora of suggestions for all your summer gaming needs. Say no to choice ...

As we continue to make our way through some apocalyptic games, Samantha Trzinski asks if zombies are even supposed to be the scariest thing about zombie games anymore. Instead, she argues, "These games draw on a primal fear of losing one’s children." www.gamerswithglasses.com/features/dad...

Dads, Daughters, and the Living Dead — Gamers with Glasseswww.gamerswithglasses.com What do zombie games like The Last of Us, The Evil Within 2, and Resident Evil Village have to say about dads and daughters, domesticity and family?

As an example of the kind of work we're looking for, check out Samantha Trzinski's piece on the Turnip Boy games! www.gamerswithglasses.com/features/tur...

Turnip Boy Causes a Nuclear Apocalypse! — Gamers with Glasseswww.gamerswithglasses.com The Fallout games are seeing a huge resurgence right now, but gritty quasi-realism isn't the only way to play the apocalypse. What about...Turnip Boy?

We are a volunteer-run website, but we have a friendly editorial team who is always excited to read work by both new and established authors. We especially welcome pieces on games that may not seem at first to be particularly apocalyptic.

Friends and followers! It's been a little while since we did a themed series, but we are looking to run a group of features about video games and apocalypses. If you have an idea that you'd like to share with us, we'd love to hear from you at editorial @ gamerswithglasses.com

Gamers with Glassesgamerswithglasses.com Gamers with Glasses is a gathering place for scholars, developers, artists, and fans of video games and tabletop games. It’s a site for people who like to think about play.

We had no idea there could be so much interpretive depth behind the noodles in Undertale

Haven't you just been dying to figure out what Fortnite and The Stanley Parable have in common? In this podcast episode, we get meta with it, working our way through the hall of mirrors of self-referential games. www.gamerswithglasses.com/gwgpodcast/e...

The Gamers with Glasses Show, Episode 28: Meta Gear Solid — Gamers with Glasseswww.gamerswithglasses.com Nate, Samantha, and Luis do their best not to get lost in the hall of mirrors as they think through various types of self-referential games, covering everything from product tie-ins and Fortnite (it...

Would Mario and Luigi's mom be proud of all the times they've saved the world? Samantha Trzinski reviews the first (!) poetry collection we've covered, If All the World and Love Were Young by Stephen Sexton. www.gamerswithglasses.com/reviews/sext...

Review: Stephen Sexton, If All the World and Love Were Young — Gamers with Glasseswww.gamerswithglasses.com Samantha Trzinski reviews If All the World and Love Were Young by Stephen Sexton, a debut poetry collection that considers the loss of childhood innocence and the death of one’s mother against a bac...

Contributor Dylan Atkinson shares some impressions of the Crow Country demo! "Crow Country doesn’t appear to be reinventing the wheel, instead looking at what’s been successful and carefully replicating those concepts." www.gamerswithglasses.com/impressions/...

"Even when you think you’re ready for it, it’s hard when you realize that your university, like any other colossal organization, can be wielded as a tool of repression and violence." Nate Schmidt on games, protest, and being on campus last weekend: www.gamerswithglasses.com/features/uni...

Power, Protest, and Playing to Win — Gamers with Glasseswww.gamerswithglasses.com As universities respond to student activism in increasingly violent ways, Nate Schmidt takes a look at a historical example of a protest game, considering the relationship between simulated and actu...

We know everybody's thinking about Fallout right now because of the show, but we'd just like to ask: hast thou considered...Turnip Boy? Samantha Trzinski shows how there is more than one way to represent the apocalypse: www.gamerswithglasses.com/features/tur...

Looking for a quick, not-too-scary horror experience that still taps into some of our most primal fears? Samantha Trzinski shares her impressions of Rental, Lonely House's cute nightmare: www.gamerswithglasses.com/impressions/...

The Cute Nightmare of Rental — Gamers with Glasseswww.gamerswithglasses.com Rental is shorter gentler than many other horror games, but it still explores some of our most primal fears.

"So yes, in Highwater, most of the Earth's population is dead or dying, but we deserve it. The punk-rock grandmas among us accept this because they know the kids are alright." Don't miss Tof Eklund's review of Highwater; it's a fantastic ride. www.gamerswithglasses.com/reviews/high...

Highwater's Surrealist Farce and Lost Children — Gamers with Glasseswww.gamerswithglasses.com Highwater mixes its dark themes with a heaping spoonful of what-the-fuckery in the vein of 90's surrealist films.

Nate Schmidt reviews Replay, the new graphic memoir by Jordan Mechner (@jmechner.bsky.social): "It’s about peeling back those layers...to figure out where the stories that made you in the past intersect with the stories that shape your future." www.gamerswithglasses.com/reviews/jord...

Review: Replay, by Jordan Mechner — Gamers with Glasseswww.gamerswithglasses.com Nate Schmidt reviews Replay, the new graphic memoir by Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner.

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The latest issue of the 𝐉𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐨𝐟 𝐒𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐌𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐜 𝐢𝐧 𝐆𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐬 is now out! online.ucpress.edu/jsmg/issue/5/2 #jsmg #vgm #ludomusicology #ucpress

Hey! Both @aguaspoints.bsky.social and Samantha Trzinski were in the Critical Distance roundup of the best game crit from last week! Check out Samantha's piece on cozy games and Romanticism, and Luis's interview with Paolo Pedercini on the NYT Simulator: www.critical-distance.com/2024/04/15/a...

April 14thwww.critical-distance.com Welcome back readers. Per my lofty aspirations last week, I did technically manage to publish our Fansite Jam Roundup before the next TWIVGB–even if I had to fudge things a bit and put this i…

"In the New York Times Simulator the effects of your actions aren’t explicit...you have to make educated guesses about their outcomes." Luis Aguasvivas (@aguaspoints.bsky.social) interviews NYT Simulator creator Paolo Pedercini! www.gamerswithglasses.com/interviews/n...

The New York Times Simulator Is Not About Understanding the Press, but Changing It — Gamers with Glasseswww.gamerswithglasses.com Luis Aguasvivas interviews Paolo Pedercini, creator of The New York Times Simulator, on media literacy, SEO, and the degree to which games are praxis.

We know what you're thinking: "This Stardew Valley update really has me thinking about William Wordsworth!" Samantha Trzinski offers a phenomenal interpretation of cozy games, Romantic poetry, and the ways we try to escape from industrialism: www.gamerswithglasses.com/features/coz...

Cozy Games, Romantic Poets, and (Anti-)Capitalist Sentiments — Gamers with Glasseswww.gamerswithglasses.com Cozy games and Romantic poetry both invite us to “return to nature,” but what does that really mean? Is escape from industrialism the best we can do, or are these texts asking more complicated quest...