best of palace games escape rooms: houdini, roosevelt or edison?
Over the years, I’ve been lucky enough to have played all of Palace Games’ in-person escape rooms. Located at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, Palace Games offers the trio of The Great Houdini Escape Room, The Roosevelt…
all league of legends challenges and titles, and how to earn them
League of Legends released its achievement system, Challenges, earlier this month. However, the challenges aren’t very well-organised and the system is rather complex. Titles that can be displayed under your name were also released, but it’s difficult to find out what…
raft is a video game about raft-building, not survival
Raft is a raft-building game first, and a survival game second. The open world video game was developed by Redbeet Interactive, and published by Axolot Games. It was released on Steam as an early access title in May 2018, and…
hearthstone battlegrounds: a card-based auto battler experiment in game design
2019. The year before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the world. In games, this was the year of the auto battler. Dota’s Auto Chess mod debuted in January, becoming a resounding success. By June, Riot had jumped on the trend,…
arcane’s silco is not league of legends champion material
The success of the League of Legends animated series Arcane has a lot to do with its characters. Namely, villain-turned-father-figure Silco became a standout favourite of the series. For Riot, one might imagine that this television property would serve as a goldmine for…
comparing hearthstone’s game modes: battlegrounds, duels and mercenaries
Hearthstone has evolved significantly over the past two years. In 2020, the introduction of its first new class, Demon Hunter, and the initially contested new rewards track have been two of the largest changes the game has seen so far.…
hogwarts legacy story details revealed: deep dive
During yesterday’s State of Play (17 March, 2022), Avalanche and Sony showcased a 20-minute special on Hogwarts Legacy. 14 glorious minutes were dedicated to gameplay footage on the PlayStation, and the game itself looks magnificent. But, as I’ve mentioned before,…
wingspan game review: the best cards match strategy mechanics to real birds
If there’s one game that’s captured my imagination — and my time — recently, it’s Wingspan. I’ve played dozens of rounds of the bird-themed board game, against friends and against the AI on Steam. Wingspan is about collecting bird cards…
a study of gender and roles of heroes of the storm heroes
A year ago, I wrote a blog post analysing the gender and roles of League of Legends champions. Unsurprisingly, the video game stereotype of females in support roles1 was reinforced by the distribution of gameplay roles amongst LoL‘s 150+ playable…