Category Archives: games

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Part one (and the recently released part two) of Anita Sarkeesian’s examination of the Women as Background Decoration video game trope – a thing she defines as:

…the subset of largely insignificant non-playable female characters whose sexuality or victimhood is exploited as a way to infuse edgy, gritty or racy flavoring into game worlds.

The 1970s. They never really went away.

Previously: Damsels In Distress

laughingsquid/feministfrequency

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjLIboukLyI

Released yesterday, ShipAntics – The Legend of the Kiki Beast is the latest puzzle game from Dublin based StoryToys.

They describe it as

ShipAntics stars a madcap crew of seafaring adventurers: Captain Fred, the warm-hearted skipper of the Barnacle, Amanda his precocious, wild and wide-eyed daughter, and Otto, a cheeky young tall-tale touting Octopus. Your orders are to help Amanda and Otto as they venture into the wild blue yonder, solving mysteries and puzzles with Fred and the rest of the crew of the Barnacle.

Which actually boils down to it being a nice little point-and-click type adventure game that reminds me of the glory days of Monkey Island.

It’s a cute little game and the obviously high production values make it a delight to play.

The app is available now on the Apple App Store for €1.99.

Do you have an Irish app (especially an Android one)? Let us know: Broadsheet@broadsheet.ie

As always, no favours, cuddles, or pints were given for this post. We have some guidelines on submissions.

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Pixeltrek is a part video game, part pixelgraphic simulation of the late 24th century Boldly-Gomobile wherein you can visit familiar (adorably detailed) locations and parts of the ship not featured in the TNG series, including the jacks.

Explore here.

Warning: If you’re any class of a Trekkie, long range scans detect a huge temporal productivity vortex.

io9

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Originally released in 2010, VVVVVV from Terry Cavanagh is a classic of the simple play, fiendishly difficult to master genre.

This month saw the release of the game on both iOS and Android

The core conceit of the game is rather than being able to jump, you can flip the direction of gravity. And with that ability, you need to navigate through a space station and find the other members of your ‘crew’.

There’s a great sense of achievement when you manage to navigate past a set of spikes and aliens by deftly switching literally what way is up.

If you want to have a go without downloading anything, there’s an onliine demo here.

The game is available now on the Apple App Store for €2.69, on the Google Play Store for €2.45 and is currently at half price on Steam for Windows and Mac at €2.49.

Do you have an Irish app (especially an Android one)? Let us know: Broadsheet@broadsheet.ie

As always, no favours, cuddles, or pints were given for this post. We have some guidelines on submissions.

H/T LonelyBeastApps