I’m reminded of one my all time favourite thrillers; Rope by Alfred Hitchcock. In Rope two friends have murder someone, hide his body in a chest, and then host a dinner with the victim’s family with the corpse just nearby. It’s a powerful film and the murderers are very sure of their intellectual superiority. Prodigy, […]
Questing Beast reviews Hex Kit
Hex Kit is a multi-platform desktop app that helps GMS design and build maps for their RPGs. You can pick it up for just $15 from Cone of Negative Energy. Cecil Howe’s project was a Kickstarter that raised $17,148 little under a year ago. It’s not just Windows and Mac that have support; Linux too. […]
Signs of the End Times – a review of Pax Cthuliana
If I could pin down the spark in Pax Cthuliana, it comes down to a combination of excellent handouts and the cult of personality. At heart, Pax Cthuliana – a 72-pages investigation, written by Jarle Haktorson, with art and handouts by Joseph Diaz and Even V. Røssland – runs a fairly linear path from start […]
Multiple Misaka: A Certain Scientific Railgun S review
I really enjoyed the first season of A Certain Scientific Railgun and subsequently was looking forward to the sequel. Somehow, though, I started to wonder whether A Certain Scientific Railgun S was more a reboot than a sequel. It’s not, but it does weave into the story arc of A Certain Magical Index. That’s the […]
Wizards vs Nuns: A review of A Certain Magical Index II
The subtitle for my review of A Certain Magical Index was easy to come up with: Wizards vs Science. It’s just as easy for the sequel. In this story Kamijo and Index find themselves up against all sort of foes but especially churches and their penguin-esq army of nuns. Yes, nuns. If this doesn’t make […]
Flexible or flawed? Oath of the Frozen King review
Absolute Tabletop’s Oath of the Frozen King’s goal is to persuade DMs like me that it solved the pre-written adventure dilemma. I don’t buy pre-written adventures. They’re never written in the same flexible style as my own prep notes and then, once adapted to suit, become an adventure I could have written myself. Does that […]
Magical anime: A review of “Fireworks, Should We See it from the Side or Bottom?”
This is a review of the 2016 anime and not the live action film by Shunji Iwai which has the same name. What a name, huh? The question of the fireworks is a big one that runs though this magical anime so let’s get straight too it. Are firework explosions flat like a disc or […]
This time it’s personal: A review of Late Fees – Samurai Slasher
Samurai Slasher is a comic by Mike Garley based on an imaginary 80 horrors film. You know the genre, though, college students turn up at the lake for some skinny dipping and smoking weed only to encounter an immortal samurai determined to slaughter them all. Late Fees is very different. This comic, limited to a […]
Whimsically winning: A review of The Night is Short, Walk on Girl
Masaaki Yuasa’s animation The Night is Short, Walk on Girl is not a visually beautiful anime in the traditional sense. This adaptation of the hugely popular Yoru wa Mijikashi Aruke yo Otome by Tomihiko Morimi is sometimes told with some very simple graphics. Nevertheless, once you get over your initial shock at the style and […]
Human emotions. Inhuman threats. A review of Beyond the Boundary the Movie
I reviewed the Beyond the Boundary series back in January 2016 and called it a dangerous urban fantasy. It’s 18 months later and I remember it fondly – more fondly than I come across in that early review. On reflection I think that’s because the characters were so strong. As it happens I also reflected […]