Author: Chris Tallant

One of Europe’s best-kept secrets is The Dark Eye series of RPG tabletop games.  The Dark Eye started as a paper and pen game in Germany back in 1984, outselling Dungeons and Dragons in many areas of Europe before reaching North America in 2003 renamed as the Realms of Arkania.  In relation to video games, the first title gracing the Mac within The Dark Eye universe was The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav, released by Daedalic Entertainment in 2011. Chains of Satinav’s beautiful artistic rendered backgrounds along with a story-book fairy tale integrate the player into the world unlike other adventure games...

In some rare cases, the tremulous history about how and who made a video-game is almost more interesting than the game itself. Fez is one these rare games. Canadian development studio Polytron, founded by the always animated self-proclaiming perfectionist Phil Fish, spent five years designing Fez, a game where the result matched the original planned imagination “almost perfectly,” a rarity in any creative project. Fez, at first glance, looks like a nostalgic retro Nintendo game: 8 or 16 bit graphics, simple gameplay and hours upon hours of pure fun. These factors, among others, are what give Fez the charm and wit to...