Review

Games I Played in January 2026

Games, Review
Michelle is a stylish survivor in Sorry We’re Closed | screenshot by me

Sorry We’re Closed (á la mode games) is a survival horror game with immense amounts of style. The art (which is one of the first things that attracted me to it) is stunning, both the nostalgic computer graphics and the character portraits. The music hits the perfect vibes and the gameplay adds to the survival horror experience.

Michelle is a young woman working in a corner shot in a small neighborhood in London. Though on another continent, the community feels very much like some of the counter-culture neighborhoods I’ve seen in San Francisco, being full of charming punks, oddballs, and weirdos. Everyone seems a bit on edge, considering the number of disappearances in the area.

Continue reading →

Games I Played in October & Novemeber 2025

Games, Review

Looks like I forgot to share October’s games, so here are both months at once. Whoops!

October

Page for selecting video clips, showing he clips arranged in rows. One clips is highlighted for selection.
Selecting video clips in Immortality. | screenshot by me

I finished Immortality (Sam Barlow / Half Mermaid Productions), and it’s phenomenal. To learn how to play the game, the player really just has to dive in and discover how to play the game. The mechanics of pulling up videos, scrubbing them (playing, fast-forwarding, and rewinding), and then zooming in on objects or people in scenes allows for an impressive amount of discovery and exploration of this multi-layered and powerful narrative.

Marissa Marcel was an up-and-coming actor, who starred in three films — none of which ever aired. The game presents itself as a retrospective, allowing the the player to delve into clips from these films along with behind the scenes footage to discover her story. In the end, it’s so much deeper than the surface story, revealing a fascinating perspectives on how artists strive for a kind of immortality through their craft.

Continue reading →

‘Blue Prince’ Is the Best Game I’ve Played That’s Ultimately Not for Me

Games, Review

Blue Prince is a beautiful puzzle adventure game with a blend of strategy and rogue-like elements. It is also the first game from Dogubomb, an indie game development studio founded by Tonda Ros, who developed the game over ten years. In an interview on the Play, Watch, Listen podcast, Ros explained how he built and rebuilt the game over the years, at one point starting from scratch to ensure the game played as smoothly as possible.

The care with which Ros approached the development process—from the level design to the intricate puzzles—is evident in the final game. Since it was released in April, Blue Prince has garnered significant praise from game critics and gamers alike, and rightly so.

And yet, despite experiencing an initial joy playing Blue Prince, I eventually came to the realization that this one is not for me.

Continue readong on The Ugly Monster…

Games I Played in June 2025

Games, Review
Entry hall in Blue Prince. | screenshot by me

Blue Prince (Dogubomb) is probably the best game I’ve ever played that ultimately is not for me. The game is wonderful in so many ways. It opens with an interesting story premise — a young man inherits a mansion, which will only become his if he can find the mysterious 46th room — and features beautiful illustrative-style art with muted undertones.

The gameplay is also quite fun, allowing the player to figure out how to play through the process of playing. As you enter the mansion, you are given a brief note and then open a door and are presented with a card draw of three rooms to build, and from that room (as long as it’s not a dead end), you build more and more rooms, constructing a path deeper into the home. You are able to continue building, exploring, and collecting supplies and zeroes until you run out of steps and are forced to take a rest, resetting the entire house to zero — creating a roguelike feel.

Continue reading →

This is Not a Game: The Kid A Mnesia Exhibition

Games, Review
“Echo Chamber” in Kid A Mnesia Exhibition

Radiohead’s “Creep” is one of those classic ’90s grunge songs that fed my teenage years, allowing me to reflect on my own feelings of being a creep and weirdo. Over the subsequent years (and now decades), Radiohead has remained on my peripheral radar, drawing me in with their experimental soundscapes blending electronica and grungy undertones, with a mix of melancholy or moody vibes.

Recently, I’ve discovered a renewed interest in the band through the Kid A Mnesia Exhibition, a digital museum in which each room creates a unique audiovisual experience paired with specific songs from the band’s Kid A and Amnesiac albums. I find myself now immersing myself all over again in their work and even delving even more deeply into their albums, following this interactive experience.

Continue reading in Counter Arts.