INKY SQUIGGLES

'That constant humiliation to survive. If you're not angry, what kind of person are you?' – Ken Loach, director I've tried not to dwell on my time on the welfare system, which remains one of the darkest points in my life. However, even though I've now been in full-time employment as a copyeditor for around two and a half years, the spectre of unemployment hangs over me. Working at a small but busy company that has previously let go of a coworker due to financial strain and knowing talented, hardworking individuals who have met the same fate, the prospect of being made redundant is never far from my mind. As my time after graduation has shown me, sometimes one's best efforts don't count for much.

This was just OK. I purchased this in the hopes of finding a spacey adventure game with an intense atmosphere like that of The Dig (both involve mostly solitary exploration of strange, desolate alien environments), but was left distinctly underwhelmed by the game in general. Morningstar is diverting enough, with sufficient mileage to absorb somewhat for a few hours, but the plot and characters are basic and lacklustre. There's also no true climax/resolution to the game –   while there's a confrontation, it's expected and occurs as a cut scene that is over quite quickly, so there's no real sense of being in actual danger at any point or discovery of anything truly shocking. The voice acting is rather poor, with some lines read as though the actor doesn't fully understand their context (although, while fluent, I suspect they aren't native speakers, so they deserve some slack). I discovered after playing that this was originally an in-browser game that was ...

The most striking part of the 20th Anniversary Edition is the transformation into polished HD graphics. The moody, detailed environments – one of the game's greatest strengths – truly shine in the re-release, enabling Jane Jensen's vision of the New Orleans locales to be fully realised. Robert Holmes' remastered soundtrack is more stirring than ever. Additionally, the rerecorded voices are strong and don't jar with my recollections of the characters – a concern when I discovered the excellent original voice cast (including Tim Curry, Leah Remini and Mark Hamill) wouldn't be returning. Otherwise, there have been slight refinements (such as a helpful new hint system) and additions (new puzzles and scenes), although nothing drastic. The game is, for the most part, faithful to the original, which can be seen as both a strength and a weakness. Although not groundbreaking, the intriguing and well-paced storyline still holds its own (check out my review of the sec...

I came into this gaming experience without really knowing what to expect. Despite never having heard of the horror adventure title from indie games studio The Astronauts before, I bought it during a Steam sale without viewing much more than the description and a brief trailer. As someone who likes to research games in depth before committing to a purchase (and as a notorious 'fraidy cat), this was an unusual move for me. Certain key phrases really sold it to me on the store page: 'immersive storytelling'; 'inspired by the weird fiction from the early twentieth century'; 'atmosphere, mood, and the essential humanity of our characters'. Sometimes, when it's right, you just know. I wasn't disappointed.

The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe , £8.99 (Oxford University Press, 9780199537419) Publication date: 1 November 2008 (first published 1794) My rating:   ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ The Mysteries of Udolpho is the story of orphan Emily St. Aubert, who finds herself separated from the man she loves and confined within the medieval castle of her aunt's new husband, Montoni. Inside the castle, she must cope with an unwanted suitor, Montoni's threats, and the wild imaginings and terrors that threaten to overwhelm her. (Penguin Classics description) I don't believe in judging classic literature according to contemporary sensibilities, which makes a review of an 18th-century novel challenging. Certainly, as other reviewers have noted, Radcliffe is due credit for her pioneering Gothic novels. Her prose is strong, her landscapes and settings are imagined on a grandiose scale and, excepting a tiresome every-other-page occasion of a fainting fit, in Radcliffe's work is a prevailing...

Photo credit: Hiroto Hata (Mili) I learned early on that I wasn't seen in the same way as everyone else. My friends and I had been playing a careless game of Block 123 with a street lamp as our target post when a passing neighbourhood kid pointed at me. 'Eurgh,' she sneered. 'Why are your arms brown? You look dirty.' It wasn't said with malice, exactly; we lived in a small, racially homogeneous village and she was genuinely oblivious  –  both to why my skin looked that way and how her words might make me feel. And, having never been confronted with the brownness of my skin before, I didn't know how to respond. Although it had nettled me, I simply pretended not to care.

Sometimes, the thing that got to me the most  about the job-hunting process  wasn't the existential dread of drifting purposelessly through life. Nor was it the employers who never called when they said they would, like fickle dates. It wasn't even the  rigorous hoop jumping I was subjected to each week to secure my paltry Jobseeker's handout . Nope. Sometimes, after a hard week's jobseeker grinding, the thing that really irked me was the desperately bad writing that pervades so many job adverts.