Opposition days are days allocated in the House of Commons for the discussion of subjects chosen by the opposition parties. They’ve existed since the late 19th century, but no government has treated them with as much disdain as this one. …

This week I completed two of last year’s best games: Celeste and Dead Cells. It struck me that, while they both support their players, their philosophies regarding difficulty and accessibility could not be more disparate. Celeste’s developer describes their game as “a platformer about climbing a mountain”. The developer of…

In this, the second in a series of posts on the topic, we’ll compare the ECS and MonoBehaviours workflows in the context of the SpatialOS Game Development Kit (GDK) for Unity and explore what they can do for your game. As we explained in our first blog about Unity’s Entity…

In this, the first in a series of posts on the topic, we’ll explain what Unity’s ECS is and what it can do for your game. The headline benefit of Unity’s ECS is performance-by-default. To achieve this, ECS moves away from traditional object-oriented programming (that is, the GameObject and MonoBehaviour…

Empire recently labelled Kingsman: The Secret Service “007 cranked all the way up to 0011” and, like the film itself, this assessment hits it right on the nose. The film magnifies everything brilliant about classic James Bond films, but in the process, also amplifies some of their biggest flaws. Kingsman’s…

In the near future a coolant called CW7 is introduced into the atmosphere in order to counteract global warming. It backfires and freezes the planet, along with the vast majority of its population. The only known survivors live aboard the Snowpiercer, a rickety bullet train that travels around the globe…

Inspired by Tony Benn, Oliver Balaam searches for systems of accountability atop the world’s biggest democratic organisations, and comes away largely empty handed. When Tony Benn passed away last month, bipartisan condolences, tributes and hagiography flooded the media, along with a depressing number of easy to knock out listicles. Debates…

Technological illiteracy, willful ignorance and hyperbolic outrage are drowning the discussion of real issues writes Oliver Balaam. Last week, in the wake of the fatal shooting by Smyrna police officers of Nicholas Thomas, an unarmed 23 year old black man, Facebook users were dismayed to discover that the website had…

Troubled by Hollywood’s habit of putting style over substance, Oliver Balaam searches for meaning in Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla, but finds little more than a giant lizard. Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla is a beautiful, and fiercely entertaining film that I’d recommend watching on the biggest screen you can get your hands on…