Trauma is an escape-the-
room -dream game with a hauntingly beautiful aesthetic that tells the story of a young woman recovering from an accident. It is a cross-platform download or can be played in its entirety for free
in Flash.
[more inside]
posted by Thomas Tallis is my Homeboy
on Aug 31, 2011 -
9 comments
Portal 2 has finally hit the streets, and despite a somewhat
rocky start with their controversial promotional ARG (
previously), it looks to be a huge success. Interestingly for such a critically-acclaimed blockbuster, the title's core ideas steam from a pair of concept projects from student design school
DigiPen: the original portal system from
Narbacular Drop (
video -
download -
previously) and the sequel's physics-altering gels from
Tag: The Power of Paint (
video -
download -
previously -
previouslier). Combine these innovative ideas with some
Lost-meets-
Life After People level design, excellent
voice acting, and top-notch writing, and it's easy to see why so many people
called in sick this past week. But playing the game is just the beginning -- look inside for a collection of easter eggs, story theories, videos, and other goodies from the post-mortem.
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Apr 21, 2011 -
425 comments
You say potato, Valve say... potato.
Just over a year after the
Portal 2 announcement ARG (previously) had people dialing up a mysterious BBS, on April 1st Valve pushed out updates to
thirteen indie games through Steam, under the tag #potatofoolsday. Some of the games
got a
little starchy straight away, but more interesting was the appearance of
cryptic glyphs, which seemed to link to other games in the set, and
nonsense phrases. Alongside a
cheeky coded shoutout to members of the
Facepunch forums, a hidden frame in the latest Aperture Science Investment Opportunity video
(1, 2, 3) appeared to confirm there are 16 glyph-and-letter sets, and 13 phrases to be found in and around the games.
But what to do with them even when the set's complete? And what of the uplifted
talking raccoon and the
blogger whose
boss's
brother has been kidnapped by
sentient potatoes?
[more inside]
posted by emmtee
on Apr 6, 2011 -
115 comments
BRUCE ROSENBAUM and his wife, Melanie, cook their food on what looks like a cast-iron Victorian stove. But the stove, like many items in the Rosenbaums' kitchen, has been gutted and repurposed. There's a modern appliance inside that antique shell, a theme that repeats itself from the fridge to their water heater.
"We created this romantic Victorian feel to it," Bruce Rosenbaum said. "But everything works."
The Massachusetts couple have
steampunked their kitchen.
[more inside]
posted by fixedgear
on Feb 28, 2011 -
113 comments
If you don't mind installing
Steam and are running a version of Windows, you can download and play
Alien Swarm for free. It's a top-down shooter with four-player co-op of you and your friends against the aliens.
posted by demiurge
on Jul 19, 2010 -
72 comments
"Few Victorian inventions have the grace and charm of the
Ictíneo, the series of two
wooden submarines built by
Narcís Monturiol i Estarrol in the second half of the nineteenth century ... The thinking at the time was that it was almost impossible to run a steam engine underwater because it would use up all the oxygen and convert the inside of the ship into an oven. To overcome this, Monturiol invented a chemical furnace based on a reaction between potassium chlorate, zinc and manganese dioxide - a process that produced enough heat to boil water to run the steam engine. To complement this ingenuity, the reaction gave off oxygen as a by-product ... While his competitors devised submarines for military purposes, Monturiol had alternative ambitions. The man was a communist, a revolutionary and a utopian who regarded his invention as a way of improving the life of the working class ... "
posted by jim in austin
on May 5, 2009 -
23 comments
Steam locomotives are dead, right?
Awe-inspiring though they might be, labor issues and diesel fuel at 4 cents a gallon killed them in the 1950's and 60's, and they survive only in isolated pockets around the world and on tourist railways.
[more inside]
posted by pjern
on Apr 3, 2008 -
51 comments
Victorian Turkish Baths - "Can the active, fox-hunting, cricketing, boating Englishman bear the same kind of treatment that benefits and gratifies the indolent, languid, luxurious Turk?"
posted by tellurian
on Jan 17, 2007 -
12 comments
