Mouse Smash

JC Lau's blog about geekery, gender and other rants

Tag Archives: Art


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Cassius is More than Just “Ass-Kicking Roman Lesbians”

Cassius1I’ve read a lot of comics in my time, but I’ve never really found many that address my non-comic political interests. A possible exception has been Mike Carey and Peter Gross’ The Unwritten series, which discusses things such as metastories and political philosophy, but that’s just one instance. Exceptions are rare.

This is why I was super excited to have the opportunity to review Cassius, which on the face of it, was going to address some of my other interests: I love history, I love Shakespeare, and I love dynamic female characters. Cassius has all of these things in scads, which pleases me immensely. Continue reading →


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Games as Art

I started contributing to International Games Day @your Library, which is a non-profit, volunteer-run organization to make games inclusive in library collections. In my writing for them, I analyze some issues in games and write down my thoughts. This piece originally appeared on their blog, and was republished in the Games Round Table of the American Library Association.

Reynolds_SecretsofSarlona02

Can games also be considered art? There are games that, to be sure, are described as art, and games that are visually appealing, but can games as a whole be considered an art form?

In this article, I’ll consider the artistic value of games. This can be a heated and controversial topic, so I don’t expect this to solve any age-old debates. However, I hope that I can generate some thoughts on the relationship between games and art, and how games could fit in to the world of art. Continue reading →


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Review: Tormentum – Dark Sorrow

Tormentum

Tortmentum is not your regular point and click adventure game. Polish indie studio OhNoo promises a deep philosophical story of redemption, where the player’s moral choices affect the outcome. How well the game does this is debatable, but it is still worth playing for the amazing sensory experience.

The protagonist starts the game as a hooded, nameless amnesiac locked in a metal cage under a flying machine, his companion being a giant talking rat. From there, he has to escape from a hellish dungeon, travel across a desert and find out why he only has a memory of a particular statue. This sounds easy enough, although there are choices that the player makes along the way, such as lending help to one character over another, which are designed to influence the game’s outcome. Continue reading →