Nathan Grayson

The Internet Reacts To That Goose, You Know The One

For most of our lives, we’ve all been ordinary people, content to live ordinary lives and maintain a functional social order. Then, last Friday, Untitled Goose Game came out. Now we are all the goose, a feathered hellion who believes property is theft, and theft of property is good as hell as long as the…

Speedrunner Blazes Through Untitled Goose Game In Four Honking Minutes

What do you do when a goose is on the loose? Your best bet, according to Untitled Goose Game, is to try and go about your daily business despite the knowledge that society’s rickety scaffolding will soon crumble in the wake of that most foul of fowl. But what if that goose can defy the…

World of Warcraft Classic Reunites Players Who Haven’t Seen Each Other In A Decade

World of Warcraft has its stalwarts, players who’ve been around since the good ol’ days of Onyxia and Ragnaros. It also has its transients. Maybe they were diehard players for a couple years in high school. Maybe they were living that sweet bachelor life. For whatever reason, they left. Now, thanks to the recent release…

Untitled Goose Game’s Developers Stopped Work On Launch Day To Attend The Climate Strike

Today is the long-awaited launch day of Untitled Goose Game, the avian sensation that’s been sweeping multiple nations since its first trailer came out in 2017. It’s also the day of the Global Climate Strike, meaning that people across more than 150 countries are walking out of school and work to demand urgent action in…

Untitled Goose Game: The Kotaku Review

The way Untitled Goose Game’s goose moves, I think, is what makes it so endearing. Its self-assured waddle. The way it leans its feathered neck forward, with an almost innocent inquisitiveness, before turning on some poor guy’s sprinklers and drenching him. How it flaps and flutters after its plans have been thwarted by a human,…

In the wake of complaints from developers earlier this week, Valve is conducting an experiment with game pages’ “More Like This” sections. Developers of unreleased games, especially, complained that recommendation sections were no longer surfacing their creations, leading to significant drop-offs in page traffic and wishlists. Valve’s experiment, which it told Kotaku has gone out…

French Court Says Valve Must Allow Steam Users To Resell Games

Back in 2015, Valve got sued by a French consumer organization called UFC-Que Choisir (not to be confused with non-French, non-consumer organization the Ultimate Fighting Championship). UFC-Que Choisir had a multitude of bones to pick with the longtime Steam steward, the biggest among them being that Steam doesn’t let users resell their games. Four years…

Disco Elysium, an off-kilter detective RPG I’ve had my eye on for what feels like forever, finally has a release date. It’s coming to PC on October 15 and boasts an inventive dialogue system rooted in a tremendous number of skills, where your character’s thoughts talk to you and tempt you. You can make your…

Eight Tips For Using The New Steam Library

Yesterday, Steam’s first big library overhaul in eons entered open beta. The fresh coat of paint and (virtual) new shelves make for welcome additions, but it’s going to take some getting used to. Then there’s the new community-centric game page display, which somewhat ironically has the community divided. Here are some tips to help you…

Twitch’s Latest Crackdowns On ‘Sexual’ Content Are Leaving Streamers Baffled

Earlier this week, Twitch suspended a streamer named Quqco for wearing a cosplay of Street Fighter heroine Chun-Li on stream, deeming her outfit “sexually suggestive.” This took Quqco—and many others—by surprise, given that the outfit was not overtly risqué. But this was not an isolated incident. In the past few days, Twitch has been cracking…

Fallout 4 Mod Lets You Pet Any Dog

Fallout 4 first came out in 2015, and it shows. In the base game, you can only pet a single dog—your dog, Dogmeat—and you can only do it once, during a cut-scene. 2019, emboldened by the Can You Pet The Dog Twitter account, will not stand, sit, lie down, shake, or roll over for that.…

Steam’s Big Discovery Update Is Hurting Some Indie Developers’ Games

Last week, Valvereleased an update as part of a recent push to make it easier for users to find new, under-the-radar games. The update purported to decrease the presence of popular games in Steam’s recommendation algorithms, increase overall variety, and give people a more personalized selection of games. However, the update appears to have produced…

Track: Keep Your Mouth Shut | Artist: Anthony Green (ft. Summer Swee-Singh) | Album: Would You Still Be With Strings

The Secret To The Success Of Bastion, Pyre, And Hades: No Forced Crunch, Yes Forced Vacations

It’s been ten years since Supergiant Games opened its doors. The team put all of their hopes into the studio’s debut game, Bastion, an action-RPG with a narrator. It succeeded with flying colors. Since then, the studio has released Transistor, Pyre, and Hades, every single one receiving critical acclaim and financial success. The team’s big…

Tales From Off Peak City, Volume 1 is the first in a series of games set on, around, and under the same street corner. It’s a follow up to one of my favorite games of 2017, The Norwood Suite, which took players to a dreamy hotel that’s still one of the most uniquely arresting video…

Steam’s Recommendations Will Now Show Popular Games Less Often

Last October, Steam’s algorithm briefly went haywire, filling users’ “More Like This” recommendation sections with popular games while negatively affecting under-the-radar indies who needed the exposure. At the time, Valve chalked this up to “a bug” which it said it corrected, but smaller developers complain that Steam’s recommendations have continued to let them down ever…

Developer’s Close Call With Raccoons Somehow Inspired Noir Detective Game

During a PAX-adjacent Microsoft event in Seattle last week, I’d just finished playing the demo of Backbone, a noir detective game starring a raccoon in a rainy, animal-run Vancouver. I was fascinated by the setting, the themes, and the dialogue. Recorder on, I approached narrative designer and studio co-founder Alex Korabelnikova. “The game came about…

Haven Is A Sci-Fi RPG About Being In A Long-Term Relationship

Usually, video game romances are about hot and heavy beginnings or fiery ends. Even visual novels often focus on the new and novel, rather than relationships that are doing their best to withstand the test of time. Haven, set to release next year, is different. It’s a game about a long-term relationship—ups, downs, squabbles, awkward moments,…

If Found is a game where you uncover the story by erasing the main character’s diary. It’s a neat-looking mechanic that sounds like it’ll be paired with some fascinating subject matter. First and foremost: a black hole that’s about to destroy the earth. “Erase her diary, uncover secrets, meet a diverse cast of characters, go…

Why Super Meat Boy Forever Is Taking Forever

Super Meat Boy designer Tommy Refenes knew that the name Forever was cursed territory in video games. Originally, he wanted to give the sequel to his pioneering tough-as-nails indie platformer a different title: Super Meat Boy ∞, pronounced “Super Meat Boy Infinity.” He decided, though, that it’d have been too confusing. “I took the curse…