Pictionary is a charades-inspired word-guessing game invented by Robert Angel with graphic design by Gary Everson and first published in 1985 by Angel Games Inc. Angel Games licensed Pictionary to Western Publishing. Hasbro purchased the rights in 1994 after acquiring the games business of Western Publishing. Mattel acquired ownership of Pictionary in 2001. The game is played in teams with players trying to identify specific words from their teammates.
Chinese whispers, or telephone, is an internationally popular children's game in which messages are whispered from person to person and then the original and final messages are compared. This sequential modification of information is called transmission chaining in the context of cultural evolution research, and is primarily used to identify the type of information that is more easily passed on from one person to another.
Strange Adventures In Infinite Space is a roguelike video game created by the indie developer Digital Eel and released for Windows and Mac on March 15, 2002, by boardgame developer-publisher, Cheapass Games. Releases for Pocket PC and Palm by British developer-publisher Astraware followed. In 2020, the game was updated to run on current computer operating systems of the day. It remains free to download and share.
Garry's Mod is a 2006 sandbox game developed by Facepunch Studios and published by Valve. The base game mode of Garry's Mod has no set objectives and provides the player with a world in which to freely manipulate objects. Other game modes, notably Trouble in Terrorist Town and Prop Hunt, are created by other developers as mods and are installed separately, by means such as the Steam Workshop. Garry's Mod was created by Garry Newman as a mod for Valve's Source game engine and released in December 2004, before being expanded into a standalone release that was published by Valve in November 2006. Ports of the original Windows version for Mac OS X and Linux followed in September 2010 and June 2013, respectively. As of September 2021, Garry's Mod has sold more than 20 million copies. A successor, Sandbox, has been in development since 2015.
Aether is a video game designed by Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel and published by Armor Games, released on September 3, 2008. Players control a lonely boy and an octopus-like monster that the boy encounters, solving puzzles on different planets to restore them from monochrome to color. The pair travel through space by swinging on clouds and asteroids with the monster's elongated tongue, searching other planets for life to which the boy can relate. It is also a part of The Basement Collection.
Crusader Kings II is a grand strategy game developed by Paradox Development Studio and published by Paradox Interactive. Set in the Middle Ages, the game was released on February 14, 2012, as a sequel to 2004's Crusader Kings. On October 18, 2019, the video game became free to play. A sequel, Crusader Kings III, was released on September 1, 2020. Crusader Kings II stood out from earlier Paradox games in that it attracted a more widespread audience, contributing to the growth of the company.
Blendo Games is an American independent video game development company based in Culver City, California. It was founded by Brendon Chung in 2010 and is primarily a one-person effort. Blendo Games gained more widespread exposure with the short form stand alone title Gravity Bone; the following games Flotilla and Atom Zombie Smasher were met with critical praise. The studio has also released several other games in several genres.
Draw Something was a video game developed by OMGPop based on its browser game Draw My Thing, launched on February 6, 2012. It won a Flurry App Spotlight Award in 2012. In the first five weeks after its launching, the game was downloaded 20 million times. On March 21, 2012, both Draw Something and OMGPop were bought by the gaming company Zynga for $180 million. The game's popularity peaked on the day of the sale at 15 million daily active users, and the number has been dropped to 10 million by early May.
Cube World is an action role-playing game developed and published by Picroma for Microsoft Windows. Wolfram von Funck, the game's designer, began developing the game in June 2011, and was later joined by his wife, Sarah. An alpha version of the game was released on July 2, 2013, but saw sparse updates and communication from von Funck, with many considering the game to be vaporware until he officially released it on September 30, 2019.
Proteus is a 2013 adventure game designed and created by Ed Key and David Kanaga for Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita. In the game, the player traverses a procedurally generated environment without prescribed goals. The world's flora and fauna emit unique musical signatures, combinations of which cause dynamic shifts in audio based on the player's surroundings.
William Timothy Rogers Jr. is an American video game journalist, developer, and video essayist. His work is associated with mid-2000s New Games Journalism, a style of video game journalism that emphasizes the author's subjective and personal experiences in relation to the game world. The Guardian cited his 2005 opinion piece "Dreaming in an Empty Room: A Defense of Metal Gear Solid 2" as a core example of the genre. Rogers is additionally known for his verbose writing style and his video game reviews website ActionButton.net. He has also written for Next Generation, GamesTM, Play, Game Developer, and Kotaku. He later edited videos for Kotaku before resigning from the site and becoming an independent YouTuber.
Broken Picture Telephone, sometimes abbreviated BPT, was a collaborative multiplayer online drawing and writing game invented in 2007, based on the pen-and-paper game Telephone Pictionary.
Fast travel or teleportation is a video game mechanic used in open world games that allows a player character to instantaneously travel between previously discovered locations without having to traverse that distance in real time. It is a type of warp that is specifically used to traverse the game's world rather than the inside of a level. Sometimes in-game time passes while fast-traveling, while in other cases the travel is simply implied or the player is teleported by magical or technological means. While typically used as a means of providing convenience to the player, fast travel has been criticized as detracting from games' design, as some worlds or quests are designed to incorporate it at the expense of depth, memorability or realism.
Celeste is a 2018 platform game developed and published by indie studio Maddy Makes Games. The player controls Madeline, a young woman with anxiety and depression who aims to climb Celeste Mountain. During her climb, she encounters several characters, including Part of You a personification of her self-doubt who attempts to stop her from climbing the mountain.
My Summer Car is a vehicle simulation game in development by Amistech Games. It was released in early access in October 2016.
The Steam Awards are an annual user-voted award event for video games published on Valve's Steam service. Introduced in 2016, game nomination and voting periods are concurrent with Steam's annual autumn and winter holiday sales, centered around the holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas.
The Long Journey Home is a 2017 space exploration video game by Daedalic Entertainment for Windows, macOS, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.
868-HACK is a 2013 roguelike video game developed and published by Michael Brough. The player controls a hacking program in a computer system and must grab as much computer data as possible before a defence program destroys it.
