Creature Feature: Rokurokubi

Rokurokubi is another youkai from Japan. These creatures look and act like normal humans, but at night their necks elongate, freeing their heads to move around almost independently from their bodies. Most Rokurokubi are women, and they take pleasure in scaring regular humans. Rokurokubi are also apparently fond of licking the oil used to light […]

Creature Feature: Kuchisake Onna

Kuchisake Onna (lit. “slit-mouth woman”) is a monster from Japan. Her defining characteristic is her mouth, which extends from ear to ear in a horrible, permanent smile. As the story goes, a samurai mutilated his lover in a jealous rage in order to destroy her beauty. She became a vengeful spirit, and nowadays can sometimes […]

Rule of Rose Controversy

Rule of Rose is a game with some pretty disturbing scenes. Kotaku has a story about the game causing controversy in Europe. It looks like the debate stems from the game’s use of children as antagonists, as well as some misinformation about scenes depicted in the game (one news agency erroneously reported that the game […]

Mechanical Narratives and Flawed Arguments

There is a debate among game industry pundits about what games as a medium are about. If you roll with the groups that like to argue academics about video game design, you’ve probably heard of ludology. Ludology (from the Latin ludus, meaning “game”) is the study of video games (and other types, such as board […]

Harker

Thanks to forums member alz for the heads up on The Collective’s new horror-action game Harker. 1Up.com has a fairly detailed preview, including some videos. It appears to be a horror themed beat-em-up with vampires as the main antagonists (hence the title). It’s unclear if this is really survival horror material or a good candidate […]

Article: How to Make Fear

There’s a pretty good article over at Next-Gen.biz about the creation of fear through media like film and games. It’s all rather general and doesn’t really get into any specifics with regards to games or movies, but the author makes a lot of valid points. If you are interested in the mechanics of building tension, […]