Author Edmund Toomey

08/06/2017

Welcome to Potato Week, Outermode's celebration of all things spud-ly, inspired by the rather singular Spaceplan. To read more, check out the rest of the Potato Week collection. In honour of Potato Week ...

EXPLORING THE SPUD SCIENCE OF SPACEPLAN

15/05/2017

Spaceplan is probably the best idle game currently available for $2.99/£1.99 – and you can’t say fairer than that. With a sales pitch as beguiling as it is bonkers, Spaceplan’s ‘total misunderstanding of Stephe...

IN LITTLE NIGHTMARES THE MONSTER UNDER THE BED IS CONSUMERISM

03/05/2017

The puzzle-platforming worlds inhabited by cartoon-headed videogame children are always high-stakes of late. In the kinds of stories popularized by Limbo and Inside, and their many imitators, death is waiting a...

COSMIC STAR HEROINE IS A LOVE LETTER TO THE 16-BIT RPGS OF YORE

28/04/2017

90s SNES classic Chrono Trigger is a game that has haunted me from a young age. Not in a Woman in Black kind of way – more a Casper the Friendly Ghost style haunting. I first witnessed its enchanting pixelated ...

THE RINGED CITY BRINGS DARK SOULS TO AN OPEN END

17/04/2017

On sitting down to review the final piece of the Dark Souls puzzle, I'm confronted with the most daunting of questions: ‘Is there anything left to say about Dark Souls?’ The answer is no. Not only is the ans...

ABZÛ MAKES ENVIRONMENTALISM INTERACTIVE

04/04/2017

It's a truism, post-Jaws, to say that the great white shark has taken on an almost fabled status – symbolic of the abject terror that the oceans hold for those hairless bipeds that would dare to brave its depth...

HIDING, HEALING, HOARDING: AN INTERVIEW WITH FIREWATCH’S THREE HENRYS

06/02/2017

Interviews

In a burnt-out, distressingly sticky dive bar in Boulder, Colorado I met with three versions of the same fictitious man to discuss the events of last year’s breakout indie darling Firewatch. While the three Hen...

AMBIENT MIXTAPE 16 OFFERS BAD DESIGN BY DESIGN

21/12/2016

What do we gain when we abandon traditional ‘skill’ in games? The fascinating thing about all of the games in Ambient Mixtape 16 is that they provide new and terrifying modes of experience, and that they do so ...

SMALL RADIOS, BIG TELEVISIONS EXPOSES THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF DIGITAL DECAY

02/12/2016