The result of an 8 year collaborative process between Snøhetta and Norwegian artist Bjarne Melgaard, “A House to Die In,” is now on display at a new exhibition Tjuvholmen in Oslo, Norway.

February 6, 2018 by Art Holcomb I’ve seen several thousand students in my career and, from that vantage point, trends and patterns appear. One of those trends details things that all developing writers get wrong in the beginning of their … Continue reading →

The post Three Things You Have In Common With All Writers appeared first on Storyfix.com.

Nasty characters can be important and necessary in larp; and then somebody has to play them. This article looks at the practical issues of taking on such roles; at the social and psychological implications of this kind of play; and at the important things to consider when coming out of play.

The post Playing Nasty Characters appeared first on Nordiclarp.org.

Pokemon Go and games like it may soon allow you to play together with others in augmented reality (AR), if an announcement by the game’s maker Niantic is any indication: Niantic revealed Thursday that it has acquired Escher Reality, a Bay Area-based startup that has developed technology to build advanced AR games and experiences. Escher Reality’s […]

Into The Breach, the next game from the creators of FTL, is sort of like a cross between XCOM, Advance Wars, and FTL itself. But maybe it’s best described as beautiful kaiju chess.

Here’s the premise: You, controlling a gang of three time-traveling mech pilots, must defend a cluster of islands from alien invaders. To do so, you embark upon a series of small turn-based battles, on randomly generated 8×8 grids full of aliens and obstacles. Your goals will vary from mission to mission, but your main task is always the same: Protect the buildings. Every time a building is damaged, you’ll take a hit to your power grid, which is essentially your overall health. That number sticks with you from battle to battle, so losing too many buildings in a single mission can leave you vulnerable in the next one. Once your power grid hits zero, you’re dead—you’ll have to start a brand new run, although you can select one pilot (along with his or her bonuses and levels) to go back in time with you for your next run.

Battles unfold similarly to Advance Wars, but there are a few big twists. For one, you’ll always know what your enemies are going to do, because they’ll show you what they’re about to hit. Instead of trying to anticipate their attacks, you’ll have to find ways to stop those attacks from happening. If you know one spider-alien is about to assault a precious power plant, you can use a mech to push him one tile down, causing the alien’s attack to hit nothing but air. But if there are five aliens attacking, you’ll have to think creatively, because you only have three mechs. You can try to use multi-directional attacks to take out multiple aliens at once, you can put together creative combos, or you can make sacrifices in hopes of winning the larger battle.

You’ll frequently feel outnumbered and hopeless, but with enough strategy and thought, there are usually ways to solve any problem. Because there are no XCOM-style probabilities, every attack will always work the way you expect it to work. By playing around with new abilities and manipulating the environment, you can build clever death machines. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll start feeling like a genius—at least until the next group of aliens crushes you. Each battle takes 5-10 minutes, and an entire campaign might take a couple of hours, as you try to get further and further each time you play (much like FTL).

Into the Breach is out February 27 for PC, with Mac and Linux versions to follow. And yes, I know, everyone wants it to come to Switch. It’d be perfect there. I know.

Infrared filters are known for creating a weird, eerie mood in pictures, no matter what you’re capturing. That is why taking a filter like that to an already haunting-looking place like Chernobyl might make the scenery pictures you take look even more impressive.
Photographer Vladimir Migutin did just that on his trip to the town in Ukraine that suffered the infamous nuclear disaster.

Scientists have successfully grown human eggs to maturity in the lab. This research could lead to a new reproduction option for individuals at risk of fertility loss.

The post Human Eggs Developed to Maturity in the Lab for the First Time appeared first on Futurism.

Today, at the World Government Summit held in Dubai, Michio Kaku presented his vision of what life will look like in the next twenty years. From AI walls to contact lenses that speak to you, he unveiled a remarkable world.

The post Today, Michio Kaku Described What Life Will Look Like in Twenty Years appeared first on Futurism.

Recently, we wrote about octogenarian Jackson Kibor. He’s the guy who armed his car with deadly spikes in order to run people off his property. This made me curious, so I dove a bit deeper into Kibor’s history and discovered a dude who is still stirring up trouble well into his 80s.

Read more: Jackson Kibor Is The Most Eccentric Character In The World

"To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence."