Christian Donlan

3 weeks ago | eurogamer.net | Christian Donlan

Harlan Ellison used to say that I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream was a game that nobody could win. I gather now, having looked at a few wikis, that this is not entirely true. But back in the mid-1990s when I first encountered this weird, horrifying video game, it certainly felt true. I Have No Mouth was... not a hit, exactly, but certainly the subject of a sustained mania in my student house at the tail end of the last century.

4 weeks ago | eurogamer.net | Christian Donlan

Published on March 27, 2025 I have a wonderfully vague memory of a game my older brothers used to play on the Commodore 64 back in the day. It was a platform game, with pixel heroes and floating gantries and ladders and all that jazz, but there was also a wheelbarrow, and you needed the wheelbarrow to hold all the collectibles you picked up.

1 month ago | eurogamer.net | Christian Donlan

Published on March 22, 2025 There are, on balance, a couple of things I am always ready to read about. One of these things is to do with anytime some academic type puts an oil painting in an X-ray machine or something like that and discovers all these mysteries in the underpainting. Paths not taken or half taken. Forgotten faces suddenly looming out of the streaked grey murk, black eyes burning. The other thing tickles the exact same part of my brain.

1 month ago | eurogamer.net | Christian Donlan

Can a game make not doing much truly sing? The answer's fascinating. While Waiting is a game that belongs in a gallery. It's installation art, and maybe you know the kind. It's a lark, but a difficult, complex, ponderous lark, if such a thing is possible. It's WarioWare designed by Beckett. It's Super Bartleby Bros. It's a game about waiting, a state of being that so many games are designed to try and minimise or avoid entirely (or sell you ways to jump past, granted).

1 month ago | eurogamer.net | Christian Donlan

Come for the clowns and cavemen, stay for the zombie capitalism. One of the great magic tricks of the Two Point management games concerns how the series tackles subjects that a lot of people struggle to agree on. You know, like healthcare and education. And yet, with a few chirpy cartoon characters wandering around, a bit of silliness in the detailing, a handful of goofy names in the resume stack and some light satire playing over the tannoy, the whole thing rushes past in a cheery blur.