For five years the indie designer known as Pizza Pranks has been publishing Indiepocalypse, a monthly "bundle-zine" of 10 experimental indie games by different developers. They're always a bit off-kilter, and they come with a helpful pdf zine where the creators of each one do a postmortem on their inspirations. It's also full of handy links to other places you'll find niche games, like the interactive fiction zine ChoiceBeat.The latest...
“People don’t understand how close D&D and wrestling are,” said Brennan Lee Mulligan. And he’s speaking from an informed perspective, ushering Dimension 20: Titan Takedown into the world this week. In the new four-episode season of the long-running anthology actual play show, Mulligan hosts four WWE superstars — Xavier Woods, Kofi Kingston, Bayley, and Chelsea Green — to a game set in a professional-wrestling-themed reimagining of Greek mythology. And despite...
Spilled! creator Lente in the boat where she lives and makes games. Push to Talk is a weekly newsletter about the business of making and marketing video games, written by games industry veteran and marketing director Ryan Rigney. Subscribe here for eclectic and spicy interviews and essays in your inbox every Friday. Of the hundreds of indie games released on Steam each week, only a fortunate few become breakout hits....
Netflix’s gleeful horror-comedy Dead Talents Society wears a lot of its influences out in the open. Writer-director John Hsu talked with Polygon earlier this month about how YouTube streamers, ’90s Taiwanese pop music, Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue and Tokyo Godfathers, and real Asian urban legends like “the little girl in red” helped inspire his manic movie about the capitalist grind of the afterlife. In Dead Talents Society, ghosts endlessly chase...
All the best Assassin’s Creed games are about family. The Ezio trilogy, long considered the peak of the series, is built on the tragic loss of Ezio’s family, and his fundamental loneliness. The game’s most iconic song — the one whose motif is colloquially known as “the Assassin’s Creed theme” — is titled “Ezio’s Family.” Assassin’s Creed Origins is the story of parents seeking vengeance after the death of their...
March is finally behind us, and with its passing comes the arrival of spring and all its splendors! There’s a ton of exciting new releases to catch in theaters this month, from the returns of major directors, like Ryan Coogler’s Sinners and David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds, to escapist genre fare like The Accountant 2 and The Legend of Ochi. Looking for something to watch from the comfort of your own...
Each week on Polygon, we round up the most notable new releases to streaming and VOD, highlighting the biggest and best new movies for you to watch at home. This week, The Monkey, the new black comedy horror thriller from director Osgood Perkins (Longlegs), screeches and bangs its way onto VOD. That’s not all that’s new to rent and purchase this week, as Steven Soderbergh’s spy thriller Black Bag, starring...
Nintendo’s Switch 2 ramp-up week started with a cheerful bang (a jingle, really) at Wednesday’s Switch 2 Direct that revealed the sleek new console’s release date, launch games, and features. Donkey Kong hype abounded online, at least until the company’s news releases started trickling out to outlets like Polygon, and sticker shock took over. Nintendo announced it would charge $450 for its console and $80 for its flagship game, Mario...
In a YouTube video Friday, Dropout.tv CEO Sam Reich announced plans to increase the cost of subscriptions to the streaming service starting May 7. Monthly subscription costs will go from $5.99 to $6.99, while annual subscriptions will go from $59.99 to $69.99. However, anyone with a current Dropout subscription will remain locked into the legacy price until they change or cancel their subscription. This means if you want to secure...
A few minutes into my first look at The Midnight Walk, I thought to myself, Wait, is this actually the game? Not a cutscene? What I was watching looked like a gorgeous stop-motion animated short film, but I soon realized the developers from MoonHood Studios were showing me real-time game footage. The Midnight Walk looks so much like a stop-motion film, a la Phil Tippett’s Mad God or old Tool...