The Left Behind Game Club: ‘A Short Hike’
When I began working on the Ludonarrative Podcast a few years back, one of the first things I did was look around for similar podcasts – shows that produced thoughtful, engaging, critical, and unique...
Author: Flora Merigold
The Cost of Caring: The Powerful Impact of ‘missed messages.’
It’s often difficult to argue that certain video games are “important” in the same way that knowing how to read and write is important. It’s furthermore difficult to convince a skeptic that some video...
Escaping to ‘Mutazione’ Island
I recently felt like I needed a quick vacation from massive 50+ hour games, and Mutazione was the perfect getaway. Mutazione reinvigorated my spirits, creating a relaxing but compelling narrative adventure through one of...
The Creative Library: A Critical Review of ‘Dreams’
Dreams is almost impossible to describe. Media Molecule’s digital sandbox, packaged as a video game, is one of the most unique additions to the gaming sphere in years. Dreams hits that same “weird” spot...
Day of the Demos: Highlights of the Steam Game Festival
In this spring’s Steam Game Festival – an event featuring dozens of demos mostly from smaller indie games – I found some incredible gems that have a plethora of potential and are worth paying...
Visualizing the Narrative: ‘Journey’
Introduction Journey greets us with stunning visuals of a desert landscape. An out of focus dune reaches skyward, silhouetted against the white-wash sun. A bright light streaks through the sky below thin clouds and...
The Perfect Pacing of ‘A Plague Tale: Innocence’
A Plague Tale: Innocence is a harrowing tale of familial love in the face of unimaginable and overwhelming tragedy. It is a story of life and death, of love and loss, of secrets and...
Visualizing the Narrative: Introduction
Welcome to Epilogue Gaming’s first video series. We’re calling it “Visualizing the Narrative” because we want to explore how games use interactive visuals to tell their stories. To explore this concept, we will be...
Is the First ‘Witcher’ Game Worth Playing? – Three and Out
When I got hooked by Netflix’s adaptation of the Witcher series, I was initially inclined to skip the first two games and dive into the universally acclaimed The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Against my...
A Case of the Post-GDQ Blues
Every time a Games Done Quick (AGDQ/SGDQ) event comes to a close, I feel a certain kind of melancholic sadness that reminds me of the end of summer break as a schoolkid. The GDQ...
Epilogue’s Game of the Year for 2019
2019 was not an easy year to narrow down Game of the Year picks. When we had a meeting to discuss our Epilogue staff picks for this year, it became clear that many games...
An Epilogue to the Video Games of 2019: Our Highlights
As we wrapped up 2019, our staff members wanted to discuss our favorite games from the year. We agreed on some categories that allowed us all to highlight the treats that 2019 brought our...
‘Sayonara Wild Hearts’ is More Than a Playable Pop Album
Music has been a dominating force in my life for as long as I can remember. I picked up my first guitar when I was in 7th grade, and by 9th grade, I was...
Paved With Good Intentions: A Series Review of ‘Life is Strange 2’
Life is Strange 2 is an awkwardly paced adventure game developed by Dontnod, a spiritual successor and sequel to the original Life is Strange, which fails to improve on nearly anything that made the...
Crossing the Border: ‘Life is Strange 2: Wolves’ Review
After a year of traipsing through the uninspiring world of the sequel to Life is Strange, I felt conditioned to expect that “Wolves” would be a flat note to a dull story. At first,...
A Video Game Thanksgiving: What We’re Thankful For
Thank you readers, viewers, and community members for making 2019 such a memorable year for us at Epilogue Gaming. To show our gratitude, we have compiled a list of video game things we are...
‘Death Stranding’ and Depression
For many people like me, depression is an ongoing involuntary struggle with everyday life. Though most of the time I can course-correct by adjusting my habits, sometimes depression descends like a raincloud that can...
The Polarizing Reception to ‘Death Stranding’
Death Stranding has invoked some of the most exciting discourse that the gaming community has to offer this year, with some lifelong Kojima fans prematurely lauding the game as a masterpiece and industry skeptics...
The Forgettable Home Run of ‘Astral Chain’
Astral Chain wasn’t immediately on my radar for 2019, but it instantly smashed through all expectations as review after review praised it as a contender for game of the year. And the hype of...
Sixteen Times the Irony: The Curse of ‘Fallout 76’
I’m not a superstitious person, but I am sure of one thing: Fallout 76 is cursed. Every time the game enters the news cycle, I uncannily feel like I’m reading news from a satirical...
How ‘Concrete Genie’ Paints its Narrative: A Review
When Concrete Genie arrived at my doorstep this week, I dropped everything and binged through the game. It’s a brilliant concept that focuses on wholesome themes, a unique art style, and fun painting mechanics...
Taking a Ride with ‘Neo Cab’: A Review
I took my first cab ride in Guilin, China, in 2015, and I quickly realized somewhere between the radically sharp 90 degree turns, the language barrier, and choking cigarette atmosphere that I was more...
‘Untitled Goose Game’ Review
A few years ago, Canadian Geese flew several hundred miles south to where I live for the winter, but the gaggle never migrated back. Ever since, they have become an invasive, traffic-stopping, defecating, overly...
Three and Out – ‘Kind Words’
In the age of the internet – a maelstrom of confusion, corruption, call-out culture, and hateful rhetoric – I often find myself in need of a break from digital media. The question of whether...
Why ‘NieR: Automata’ is a Masterpiece
Somehow it didn’t click at the end of my first playthrough of NieR: Automata that there would be multiple routes to multiple endings: 26, in fact. As is standard procedure through most of the...
Three and Out – ‘Control’
I fell in love with Control the moment I saw the first teaser trailer. Control breathed life into the supernatural space of mainstream gaming, borrowing from tropes and archetypes from series like The X-Files and Twin...
Putting Too Much Faith in A Series: ‘Life is Strange 2: Faith’ Review
The original Life is Strange series is one of my favorite games of all time. The characters, the worldbuilding, the magical realism, the soundtrack, the gameplay and how it’s integrated into the narrative themes...
Why I’m Excited For ‘Chicory: A Colorful Tale’
Chicory: A Colorful Tale, better known as Drawdog, is the charming new project by Greg Lobanov, the developer behind Wandersong – which was one of my favorite games of 2018. Even better, the game...
‘Ooblets,’ The Epic Games Store, and Toxic Discourse
In yet another tirade, the gaming community has inflicted its most toxic behaviors on a small indie developer for the upcoming game called Ooblets. I have been following the Twitter account for Ooblets for...
S.S. Spoilercast – ‘Night in the Woods’
This month, we’ve got Dakota and Ayana diving deep into Night in the Woods, a tale about millennial dread, the fear of growing up, and how to move on from your familiar past. They...
What Makes the Pokemon Nuzlocke Challenge So Great?
This weekend, I began my first venture into what is colloquially known as a “Nuzlocke” run of Pokemon Crystal. I picked Crystal because it was the game I played most as a kid. Whether...
When Storytelling Goes Adrift: A Review of ‘Sea of Solitude’
Riding the wave of 2019 releases, I had high hopes that Sea of Solitude would be an emotionally driven experience that told its story through artistic direction and style. It was reported that Sea...
‘Cadence of Hyrule’ Perfected Something Special About Zelda
Cadence of Hyrule instantly danced itself into the top spot for my 2019 game of the year contenders. I was expecting a casual offshoot to the Zelda universe, just a whimsical indie one-off. But...
Epilogue Gamescast – ‘The Best and Worst of E3 in 2019’
Flora, Marcos and Dakota break down each of the major E3 conferences – the good, the bad and the cringe. We gush over some of our favorite moments and grade each conference on how...
Three and Out – ‘Kids’
Kids by Playables, recently published by Double Fine, experiments with how our interactions we have with other people influence our perceived identity. In a nonverbal way, the game abstractly investigates social proprioception. I picked...
Did the Pokémon Direct Get Us Excited About Sword and Shield?
This article is a roundtable written by Marcos Carmona, Blake Andrea, Ben Vollmer, and Andy Webb. Here are our thoughts on the Pokémon Direct that aired on June 5th, 2019. Andy: How are we...
Reflecting on My First Year as a Twitch Streamer
The past twelve months of streaming on Twitch have fundamentally changed my relationship to video games, and now that this first year comes to a close, I think I have learned a few psychological...
Why You Shouldn’t Play ‘Vampyr’
Vampyr is an exhausting game. From annoying technical issues to an overburdened story, the game falls apart at nearly every opportunity. What seems like an interesting narrative-based action game that branches out in consequence...
Roundtable: Are Live Service Games Impossible to Review?
Josh: To what extent do we as reviewers allow the idea of games as live services affect our reviews; with the knowledge that our review may become completely inaccurate not just in technical aspects...
What is the Future of ‘Life is Strange 2’ after “Wastelands”?
The third episode of Life is Strange 2 was the make-or-break episode for this struggling spiritual sequel to one of my favorite games of all time. After playing “Wastelands,” I can say that I’m...
Should a Game’s Price Affect its Review Score?
This week in the Epilogue Gaming Discord server, a series of opinions exploded around a central theme: should a game’s price affect the way it is reviewed? It began with a discussion of Joseph...
Three and Out – ‘Heart of the Woods’
It is Flora Eloise’s recommendation that you listen to In Love With a Ghost’s “Heart of the Woods” while reading this review. I picked up Heart of the Woods expecting a simplistic, happy-go-lucky dating...
Why I Quit Playing ‘Hollow Knight’
This past weekend, after 27 hours in the game, I made the decision to stop streaming Hollow Knight. This was an emotional decision to make, because Hollow Knight is such a masterfully crafted piece...
Does ’Owlboy’ Earn its Wings?
Owlboy is one of the most visually charming and beautifully crafted video games that I have ever had the pleasure of playing. Every pixel in this retro-style 2D platformer bursts with exuberance. From the meek...
Three and Out – ‘The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is the most perfectly polished experience I have ever played. Every single aspect of this experience challenged me to be better, and I learned a lot...
Three and Out – ‘Vignettes’
Everything is connected to everything else. Life is a fluid series of reinventing and shifting perspectives. Some video games capture this message in linear, narrative ways. Other games abstractly demonstrate this schema to us,...
LudonarrativeFM: Episode 2.3 – ‘Super Mario Odyssey’
In this month’s episode of LudonarrativeFM, Preston and Blake journey through the many joyful kingdoms in Super Mario Odyssey (2017). This bouncy and boisterous 3D platformer boasts a bunch of boundless fun and movement...
Roundtable: Explaining the Trend Behind Unfinished, Unpolished Games
Question: Why are we continuing to see unfinished, unpolished games as we move into what seems to be the umpteenth year of this growing trend? Ben: This is a frustrating trend that probably won’t end...
‘Overcooked 2’: A Tale of Friendship and Interdependence
My first job was dishwashing in a pretentious restaurant that prided itself on its kitchen being run by a victor from the television show “Top Chef.” This was my introduction to both the restaurant...
Roundtable: Is Good Narrative an Excuse for Bad Gameplay?
Question: Does a strong narrative exempt a game from issues in its gameplay? In terms of difficulty, lack of engagement, or simply poor game design, is such a narrative enough motivation to push through...
