The Horror Game Developer Who Disappeared For A Decade

The developer for a cult classic, experimental horror game disappeared from the internet for a decade. Their sudden, unexplained resurfacing on Steam leads to more questions than answers. Yume Nikki is a game defined, in some ways, by its obscurity. It was released on 2channel, the Japanese precursor to 4chan, in 2004. Yume Nikki, which…

The Best Speedruns From AGDQ 2018

Last week was a seven-day bonanza full of exciting speedruns, as the Awesome Games Done Quick 2018 marathon raised over two million dollars for charity. Here are some of my favorite runs from the show. Final Fantasy IV by riversmccown (starts at 17:03) The first two hours of this FFIV run are a blast to…

Behold The Deadliest Crate In All Of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds

Winning in PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds sometimes means playing dirty and hiding until the right moment. Originally, I used shrubbery and plants as my secret weapon, but the new desert map of Miramar features another devious hiding spot behind a very specific kind of crate. I spent last Friday night playing Battlegrounds late into the evening, starting…

Canadian Man Accused Of Mass Twitch Spamming Faces Criminal Charges

A Canadian man is facing federal charges after allegedly flooding over 1,000 Twitch channels with 150,000 spam messages early last year. The messages, which included racial and antisemitic slurs, spurred the British Columbian supreme court to issue a criminal charge for “mischief in relation to computer data” in early December, CBC reports. He could face…

Dissidia Final Fantasy’s Mobile Spin-Off Is So Cute

While Western PlayStation 4 owners await the January 30 release of Dissidia Final Fantasy NT, Square Enix prepares a smaller helping of fantasy fighting with Dissidia Final Fantasy Opera Omnia, featuring much smaller, more adorable versions of fan-favorite characters teaming up for turn-based battles. A free-to-play offshoot of the Team Ninja-developed fighting game, Opera Omnia…

The next Scribblenauts is a party game, coming March 6 to PS4, Xbox One, and Switch. It’ll come with a four-player Showdown mode with a board-game-style map and a two-player Versus mode where you can battle in various mini-games.

Brave Man Counts One Piece‘s Most Famous Sound Effect

If you’ve read the One Piece manga, you know how often the “boom” (ドンor “don” in Japanese) sound effect appears written. A lot! YouTuber Hikaru bought all 87 volumes of One Piece and counted each boom, even as the total number climbed into the thousands. By Hikaru’s count, there are 5,678 “booms” in all 87…

Square Enix Announces Final Fantasy XV: Royal Edition for PS4 and Xbox One [Update]

On March 6, Square Enix is releasing Final Fantasy XV: Royal Edition for Xbox One and PS4. It’s filled with new features, including a new dungeon, a first-person mode and the ability to control the game’s royal boat. Update January 17 – 7:30pm: An earlier version of this story stated that the Final Fantasy XV…

So Far, The Most Inventive-Looking Nintendo 3DS Game Of 2018

This is Baku Tsuri Bar Hunter. It’s for the Nintendo 3DS, and it looks wonderfully peculiar. In English, the title means “Burst of Laughter Fishing Bar Hunter.” If the fishing reel peripheral that encases the Nintendo 3DS wasn’t self-explanatory enough, this is a fishing game. But here’s the catch: You are fishing for barcodes—not, you…

Fire And Smoke. Punta Bianca, Liguria, Italy. By Daniele Pauletto | Flickr  JPGs is a photo peek into wherever gamers might find interesting. If you’re a photographer and have images you want to share, drop us a line! 

Artist Turns Household Objects Into Cool Spaceships

Eric Geusz is a freelance artist who also happens to be a software engineer at Northrop Grumman, and he is very good at turning stuff like tongs, a PlayStation controller and a stapler into impressive starship designs. (And yes, I know this is common practice, but it’s still fun for non-artists to see inspiration laid…

Here Are Five Deleted Bloodborne Characters, Working In-Game

It’s one thing to discover all the bits and bobs in Bloodborne that ended up on the cutting room floor. But what are those characters like patched into the game, running around in the flesh? Over the last month the Bloodborne community has found a bunch of content that was either unused or left on…

Video Game Portraits Are Beautiful Works Of Art

Screenshot artist Andy Cull, whose work we featured last month on Kotaku, is part of a group called Infinite Lives. In this post, you’ll find some “screenshots” from their efforts that represent “the best in video game portraiture”, using a game as the foundation to express photographic art through. Cull has tried to “showcase shots…

I Farmed 9999 Coins So My Son Could Have The Stupid Skeleton Outfit From Super Mario Odyssey

This is what love is. Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Except for that one time my 5-year-old son made me farm 9999…

What Is Your Favorite Game Level?

Super Mario Odyssey did a fantastic job melding a nostalgic love for the older retro Mario titles and its more modern 3D games. Its levels are inspired, creatively designed to balance a sense of wonder with a good challenge. Minor Spoiler Alert New Donk City’s Traditional Festival is the perfect example of that. Mario takes…

How One Of Horizon Zero Dawn’s Most Powerful Scenes Connects Aloy’s Childhood With Her Future

I’m blown away by Horizon Zero Dawn’s breathtaking landscapes, dinosaur-mecha battles, and its emotionally powerful story. In my closing article for today’s run as guest editor, I thought I’d get into why I’m loving my time with Horizon Zero Dawn and how I almost skipped over one of the most surprisingly touching moments in the…

I Didn’t Expect To Like Bayonetta 2 So Much

There are moments in Bayonetta 2 that are such a visual feast, I wished I could slow everything down with Witch Time. Fighting an onslaught of demons and angels with hundreds of explosions assaulting the screen, I loved how Bayonetta always keeps her cool. What I didn’t expect was that the convoluted story, with some…

Ninja Gaiden II’s Brilliant Use Of Weather

When I think back on the NES era, the Ninja Gaiden series stands out for having gorgeous cinematics, tough as nails gameplay, and amazing music. The first game had one of the most engaging stories of the 8-bit era. And while the second wasn’t as strong in the narrative department, it introduced a lot of…