The Darkmore Archives

Introducing: The Darkmore Archives | May Update
Update

Introducing: The Darkmore Archives | May Update

Howdy folks. It's been a minute since I've posted up on any sort of blog, and I've been meaning to get back around to this for sometime now - so needless to say I'm very happy to writing this little update.

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Perpetuating Digital Landscapes | The Dissolution of Information Through the Framing of Digital Landscapes in Late 90's Media
Essay

Perpetuating Digital Landscapes | The Dissolution of Information Through the Framing of Digital Landscapes in Late 90's Media

By generating such ideas, these digital landscapes enable the fragmented dissolution of information, and the control of information by external forces by proxy. By normalizing these ideas, such examples of media both expose but also inhibit these developments within digital spaces.

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Altruism in Temporal Space - How Tenet and Undertale Highlight the Fragility of the Human Experience Using Implied External Narratives
Review

Altruism in Temporal Space - How Tenet and Undertale Highlight the Fragility of the Human Experience Using Implied External Narratives

Both Tenet and Undertale propose a temporal continuity that so vastly overshadows our own, yet exposes us to them through very grounded, human experiences — highlighting the importance of the unimportant, as it is all subjective upon our own altruistic motivations.

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Curiosity Killed the Sailor - How Dredge Explores Humanity's Need for Companionship
Review

Curiosity Killed the Sailor - How Dredge Explores Humanity's Need for Companionship

Dredge evokes a feeling of dread-sparked curiosity. You're simultaneously lulled into a false sense of humble security while also stirred with suggestions that something bad, that you can't even imagine, is out there.

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Horrors of Virtual Ignorance - How the Blair Witch Project and House of Leaves Forego Medium Assumptions to Create Unfamiliar Terror
Review

Horrors of Virtual Ignorance - How the Blair Witch Project and House of Leaves Forego Medium Assumptions to Create Unfamiliar Terror

When we lack the need for suspension of disbelief, we can truly be exposed to visceral, heart-stopping terror. This very same sensation is captured in the 1999 film The Blair Witch Project — and in Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves.

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Mechanics that Explore the Narrative - How Jusant Highlights Themes of Naivety and Ignorance through Liberating World and Mechanical Design
Review

Mechanics that Explore the Narrative - How Jusant Highlights Themes of Naivety and Ignorance through Liberating World and Mechanical Design

In a market oversaturated with mediocre open world games, Jusant embraces linearity by saturating its world with detail — detail that contributes to the entire tone and narrative in tandem with the mechanics to allow for a fulfilling experience in what is otherwise a story about climbing up a big tower.

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Player Intuition as a Catalyst for Change - How Decarnation and Slay the Princess Utilize Player Perception to Empower Agency within their Narratives
Review

Player Intuition as a Catalyst for Change - How Decarnation and Slay the Princess Utilize Player Perception to Empower Agency within their Narratives

By having the player's personal perception of the game world constantly play so much in the deciphering of puzzles and mechanics, when the narratives revolve around trusting oneself and keeping your core values above those who objectify and surround you, the player can truly appreciate the inner workings of these narratives and connect to the characters' thoughts directly.

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New Gods of the Old Religion - Prologue: The Blackburn Cult Massacre
Writing

New Gods of the Old Religion - Prologue: The Blackburn Cult Massacre

A dreadful fog had crept over the still town of Black Hill in the early morning of what would become the parish's final congregation.

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Since the Power Went Out
Writing

Since the Power Went Out

It's been a year and twenty seven days since the power went out, though admittedly it's been harder to keep track the further we get from outage day.

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Deferring Narrative Authority - Agency Against Unreliable Narration in Game Narratives as a New Form of Writing
Essay

Deferring Narrative Authority - Agency Against Unreliable Narration in Game Narratives as a New Form of Writing

Both The Stanley Parable and Slay the Princess develop a relationship between the player and the narrator which challenges both their roles in the text and the authorial intention behind said roles. Both these texts resist closure and finality by allowing the pursuit of multiple narrative ends in accordance with the player's response to the narrator's instructions.

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Weathering the Rain World | Emergent Subjectivity and Transcorporeal Entanglements in Rain World's Playable Ecology
Essay

Weathering the Rain World | Emergent Subjectivity and Transcorporeal Entanglements in Rain World's Playable Ecology

The medium of video games is one that has grown to allow players to explore diverse subjectivities through game worlds that often destabilize the centrality of the human.

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Connecting Toward a Future | Asynchronous Collaborations and Affective Communities in Death Stranding and Elden Ring
Essay

Connecting Toward a Future | Asynchronous Collaborations and Affective Communities in Death Stranding and Elden Ring

On asynchronous mechanics, affective communities, and the way Death Stranding and Elden Ring let isolated players grapple with uncertain futures together.

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Recent transmissions
Player Intuition as a Catalyst for Change - How Decarnation and Slay the Princess Utilize Player Perception to Empower Agency within their Narratives
Review

Player Intuition as a Catalyst for Change - How Decarnation and Slay the Princess Utilize Player Perception to Empower Agency within their Narratives

By having the player's personal perception of the game world constantly play so much in the deciphering of puzzles and mechanics, when the narratives revolve around trusting oneself and keeping your core values above those who objectify and surround you, the player can truly appreciate the inner workings of these narratives and connect to the characters' thoughts directly.

Continue reading
Deferring Narrative Authority - Agency Against Unreliable Narration in Game Narratives as a New Form of Writing
Essay

Deferring Narrative Authority - Agency Against Unreliable Narration in Game Narratives as a New Form of Writing

Both The Stanley Parable and Slay the Princess develop a relationship between the player and the narrator which challenges both their roles in the text and the authorial intention behind said roles. Both these texts resist closure and finality by allowing the pursuit of multiple narrative ends in accordance with the player's response to the narrator's instructions.

Continue reading