Tag Archives : videogames

Notes on An Evening of Modern Dance: Deliberate Gestures

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Joseph Parker’s An Evening of Modern Dance presents itself, at least at first glance, with all the self-serious trappings of the real form on which it’s based. The stage before you is dark, stark, with a mise en scène that’s empty save for the dancers and the spotlights trained on them. There’s a classic red curtain and an apron, and the wall-to-wall smoothness of Unity textures make the place feel unreal, serene, and ghostly, as if carved from clay and finely sanded.

Ways of Playing: Eastern Mind: The Lost Souls of Tong-Nou

This entry was posted in Ways of Playing and tagged art critical LP criticism surrealism theology video videogames on

Welcome to episode 2 of Ways of Playing! Continuing my investigation into the works of Osamu Sato and OutSide Games, this episode takes a somewhat truncated look at their first ever release. Metaphysical questions abound in this atmospheric 1994 adventure game about self-actualization and spiritual growth. Eastern Mind: The Lost Souls of Tong-Nou draws from an indulgent mix of aesthetic, literary and religious influences, as well as an impish (maybe even downright mean) sense of humour to bring its themes home. Considering how much there is to discover in this game, I only hope I did it justice.

Screenshot - Homesickened

Notes on Homesickened: Back for the Holidays

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[TW: This piece contains a reference to suicide and self-harm.  Also, spoilers abound as always.]  Homesickened is a cruel and beautiful game. In it, the player must embody the fixed, first-person role of an unnamed protagonist visiting their hometown for the first time in what I interpret to be a long time. The player begins with a […]

Guest Post: Theatre, Artifice, and the Flawed Emulation of Cinema

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By Omar Elaasar  Sufficiently Human’s latest guest post comes to us from Chicago-based writer, artist, video producer, and Editor-in-Chief of clickbliss.net , Omar Elaasar. You can find him him on Twitter, Medium and YouTube as @siegarettes. In this piece, Elaasar discusses the aesthetic and expressive potential of drawing from theater, particularly the set and stage, in […]

On Genre and the Ludic Device

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I’ve been wondering about genre labels like “first-person action-adventure procedural puzzle game with platforming elements” for some time now. I’ve been wondering if they describe anything in particular anymore. I’ve been wondering for some time now what a platform does for a videogame that’s different from what, say, parataxis, does for verse. I don’t mean […]

Notes on SURREALISTa: The Nostalgia of the Infinite

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[This piece contains heavy spoilers!] It would feel like a categorical mistake to focus on SURREALISTa as a “puzzle platformer.” Strictly speaking, it contains both the ludic devices of puzzle-solving and platforming, and so one inclined to focus on its value as a game may be tempted to lavish attention on these qualities. But—and I […]