The Dome

by Eric Gossett

Adam Green & Binki Shapiro – Adam Green & Binki Shapiro
Adam Green is most famous for his first band, The Moldy Peaches, with singer Kimya Dawson. Their song “Anyone Else But You,” was featured in the popular indie film Juno and brought the duo into the national spotlight. Green has released several solo albums in the last decade, but his newest project is his most exciting. He is teaming up with Binki Shapiro for his latest endeavor. Shapiro is most notable for helping form the band Little Joy, with Stroke’s drummer Fabrizio Moretti. The sample tracks from Green and Shapiro’s album make me wonder why the two musicians have never teamed up before now. Green’s classically styled vocals blend perfectly with Shapiro’s elegant tone. The album reminds me of a Velvet Underground and Nico type of project.

The Lone Bellow – The Lone Bellow
Miss The Civil Wars? The Lone Bellow have arrived to fill the folk-shaped hole The Civil Wars left in our hearts when they broke up last year. The Lone Bellow are a folk trio from Brooklyn, although all members are originally from the south, that have every music critic and folk-lover buzzing. Their music is inspiring and most of the songs come from a very personal place. Lead-singer/guitarist Zach Williams began writing songs after his wife was involved in a near-fatal horseback riding incident. Williams used songwriting as a way to deal with his emotions during that time. The songs have such a raw emotion and stripped down nature that really makes this album stand out.

Local Natives – Hummingbird
Local Natives help kick off this year’s new music releases with the follow-up to their debut album, Gorilla Manor. Local Natives hail from sunny California, but they are by no means a surf-rock type of band. The sound that Local Natives creates is a collaborative flow of intertwining harmonies contributed by each individual band member. Overlaying vocal and instrumental parts on sample tracks like “Breakers” and “Heavy Feet” show that the songwriting of Local Natives is just as, if not more, complex and intricate as Gorilla Manor.

A$AP Rocky – LongLiveA$AP
A$AP Rocky returns to the spotlight after his 2011 debut Live. Love. ASAP. A$AP gained massive attention and internet buzz from his debut single “Purple Swag.” He then turned that popularity into the highest rated hip-hop album of 2011. The follow-up, LongLiveA$AP, seems to be doing the same. The album is A$AP in his finest form. For me, the collaboration tracks are what sets this album apart from his first. Some notable artists on this record are Santigold, 2012 breakout artist Kendrick Lamar, and yes, even Skrillex.

Ra Ra Riot – Beta Love
Ra Ra Riot are probably one of the hardest working bands in the music scene today. It seems like they are always on tour and have released three albums in the last five years. Their 2008 debut album, The Rhumb Line, brought them into the national spotlight and was widely praised by critics. Although their 2010 follow-up, The Orchard, wasn’t as successful, Ra Ra Riot’s latest album will bring them back to indie prominence and make them one of the most beloved bands of 2013. Their latest release Beta Love takes all the classic sounds of Ra Ra Riot – stringed instruments with some light keyboards – and adds a new layer of pop and synth to bring them into the electronic age. Adding more digital aspects to songs seems to have exploded in the last year and there’s no end in sight. Members of Ra Ra Riot and Vampire Weekend collaborated on a side project band, Discovery, back in 2009, and this album leans more towards the sounds of Discovery than the band’s traditional sound.

Ludere: Year Walk

by Stephen Campbell

Imagine if Grim fairy tales got a new coat of paint from the early Silent Hill games. That’s Year Walk. It’s not often that I find a iOS game that captures my interest quite like Year Walk.  In fact, it’s rare I find any kind of game quite like Year Walk.

Created jointly with developer Simogo and folk lore expert Theodor Almsten, Year Walk tells the story of a young man who goes on a vision quest (or “year walk”) one New Year’s Eve in 19^th century Sweden. Along the way, creatures from Swedish folk lore appear to challenge him. The less I tell about the game the better, as it’s fairly short (I clocked in a little shy of two hours, though I’ve gone back for multiple playthroughs) and much of the game’s enjoyment comes from the mystery of what’s around the next bend.

Despite being creepy as all get out, this is actually the most helpful “creature” you encounter.

But enough being cagey about the game, here’s why you should buy Year Walk. Atmosphere. There are a couple horror games where it’s best to play in a quiet room with the lights off. This is the first time I can ever recommend something like that for an iOS game. If you’ve got some good headphones you’ll be thanking yourself for them. On the year walk, you’ll encounter several strange and horrific creatures out of Swedish folk lore. Some of these creatures are fairly benign, even helpful, others are decidedly less so. The story book art style thankfully(?) leaves more to the imagination, so despite covering some gruesome subject matter at times, the game always has a melancholy charm to it all. If you’ve ever read an Edward Gorey book, will know what to expect.

Look at his suit! Clearly this gentlemanly water horse is an alright chap!

Year Walk hearkens back to classic point and click adventure games, using the touch screen to scroll through and interact with the environment. Occasionally the game makes use of the iPhone’s ability to detect orientation and multitouch, but most of the puzzles are fairly straight forward and rewarding. I’ll own up to using a guide on one penultimate puzzle, which despite having a fairly clear solution would otherwise have required either a ridiculous memory or a ridiculous amount of backtracking. Backtracking and getting lost are actually a bit of a problem, I often didn’t know where to go next until near the end of the game. You could maybe chalk it up as intentional to harass the player and give a sense of confusion and fear, but if that’s the case it just comes off as frustrating.

But Year Walk is not simply one app. No that’d be too simple, apparently. Year Walk is split into two applications, the game which costs $5 (admittedly a bit steep for the app store, and for so short a game), and a peculiar companion app. The companion app acts as a guide to fill in the narrative, working like a miniature textbook. It doesn’t take long before you realize it actually works as a powerful tool when progressing through the game, revealing weaknesses and habits of most of the monsters you encounter. Without spoiling anything, getting through the final encounter, having recently read up on what I’d likely run into is one of the most satisfying moments in the game.

The companion app is also required for a secondary ending. After clearing through it the first time, the game gives out a code to be used in the companion app, opening up a sort of developer diary/ARG style journal. Closer inspection reveals something akin to a Marble Hornets sort of story, and a means of getting a different ending in the main game. Regardless, the companion app is free and worth looking into as a sort of palette test to see if you’d be interested in the game.

Final Recommendation: Small missteps in direction aside, Year Walk is one of the most exciting games I’ve stumbled onto and a strong argument for games on the iOS platform. I was disappointed with the brevity of the game, but if I was left begging for more and not begging for it to all end that probably speaks to the game’s quality. If you’re a fan of horror, folk stories, or point and click games (preferably all 3 things) then you should probably give this game a try.

Year Walk is available for iPhone and iPad for $5
I played it on the iPhone 4 with no problems at all, but I can only imagine how good it looks on a larger screen

http://simogo.com/games/yearwalk/

Ludere: Antichamber

by Stephen Campbell

Hello, welcome to Ludere, where I’ll try and keep up with recent game releases and you can read about what I thought. I like to dig into independent releases and often times I’ll try to find things you otherwise would not have heard of, so hopefully you’ll like what I write about and you give it a try.

As with any review style writing, it is fair to keep in mind that I have opinions. These opinions may differ from yours and they tend to mean that I enjoy particular kinds of games more than you. That’s totally alright. Having opinions is awesome and gives us the ability to critically think about someone else’s opinions.

With that said, let’s talk about one of the most puzzling games I’ve seen in a long time. Antichamber is a PC puzzle game much in the same style of games like Portal. You adventure around stark empty rooms from a first person perspective and solve puzzles using a sorta-kinda-but-not-really gun like instrument. That’s about where the comparison ends. Portal is rather linear and tells a story with dark and witty writing. Antichamber is about getting the player out of their comfort zone by tossing you into a labyrinth of non-euclidian geometry the likes of which M.C. Escher could only dream of.

There’s no real story going on in Antichamber, and there doesn’t need to be, you’re there to solve puzzles and have your head tilt sideways in confusion. The only tid bits of “story” the game gives you are little black panels with cartoon pictures and quips, usually acting as an obtuse hint to the puzzle in the room. And oh dang, the puzzles. An early room tells you right up front what this game is about. You find a path with two staircases, one red and one blue. You can proceed up either and you’ll find yourself right back in at the start of the two stair cases again. You can continue this for however long you like until you finally decide to turn around and go back only to find the way you’d come has changed into an entirely different area since you’d last looked.

The real treat of the puzzles is that they all start following a certain kind of logic targeted at getting you out of your comfort zone as a player. You’ve come to expect certain things about how a game world works, and this game sits you down, slaps you across the face and says “No, this is how it works now!” The game gets all the trickier as you discover new block tools (the aforementioned “portal guns” of the game). Initially the tool lets you manipulate colored blocks to deactivate tripwires and open doors, but as you find new models of the tool you gradually build up a repertoire of impressive abilities to get you through the game’s harder rooms. These tools just add another layer to the game, and give a nice change from the surreal puzzling of the environments (although the game does start making you really think about how you use the limited resources of the room’s blocks before too long).

There isn’t a whole lot in terms of conclusion, the game just spits you out at the end of your little trek and calls it a day. And that’s alright. You were there for the puzzles, the ability to see some really fantastical imagery and game world, and you get that in this game.

Final recommendation: If you like puzzle games, or have a thing for M.C. Escher paintings, this game is going to be a real treat.

Antichamber is currently available on PC through Steam for $20

http://www.antichamber-game.com/