INKY SQUIGGLES

Touted as the spiritual successor to Gabriel Knight , I really wanted to love this. An intriguing murder mystery/supernatural crossover setup, a strong female lead and Jane Jensen as a story consultant; this has a lot going for it. However, I never really felt that this had the heart that some of the best adventure games have, such as the Gabriel Knight and Blackwell series. You're plunged into the action from the get-go, but I missed those quieter, reflective moments that give more insight into the characters through idle chit-chat, relationship building and even the protagonist's home space. You never visit Erica's home (the closest thing is her work desk  –  this tells you something about her, but nothing particularly meaningful) or learn much about her outside of her job/predicament. The other characters are similarly sketchily drawn. Your partner/best friend is resigned to his desk for the majority of the game, interactions with your romantic interest don't...

⚠️  This review contains spoilers and refers to sensitive issues, including sexual assault and abuse . After 21 volumes and 80 chapters, I've finally come to the provisional* end of a manga series whose characters have taken on the familiarity of old friends. Endearing, relatable and, at times, hopelessly infuriating. Saying goodbye to them was accompanied by a quiet sense of loss I'm sure the two Nanas would implicitly understand. So what was it about Nana that made me stick with it for so long? Nana follows two young women who move to Tokyo in search of their dreams at key junctures in their lives. A frivolous airhead who attaches herself to men too readily and a fiercely independent punk rocker set on making it as a lead vocalist, on the surface, Nana K. (a.k.a. Hachi) and Nana O. share little more than a name and the same train journey. Nevertheless, they make an improbable connection.

Photo credit: Rick's Photo Thing Last September, I started a new chapter in a book I had convinced myself I had long since finished. Resuming higher education through an MA in Publishing wasn't something I'd mapped out as part of any five-year postgraduate plan. Though I had toyed with the possibility as a recent graduate, this was more out of a sense of obligation than anything else. Besides, I wasn't exactly grief-stricken to see the back of late-night essay-writing frenzies and endless grade-chasing. While I went on to pursue journalism training, this turned out to be one of the most unbalanced and stressful periods of my life. Why, then, was I potentially putting myself through something like that again?

While I found Dreamfall Chapters immersive and enjoyable, the various disparate narrative threads simply didn't come together at the end for me. I ended up looking forward to Zoë's parts of the game much more than Kian's, who I found somewhat dull. In keeping with this, I found Stark, Zoë's futuristic cyberpunk world, more compelling than Arcadia, which presents a much more typical magical fantasy setting. Because of this, I was disappointed at the fragmentation of the gameplay into three different main characters and settings, all of which had intrigue but none of which felt fully fleshed out (particularly Saga, the third character, who mostly remains a mystery throughout). While Stark and Arcadia appear large, atmospheric and interesting, most of the buildings are simply decorative and cannot be entered, and most of the city inhabitants cannot be interacted with meaningfully, only eavesdropped in on. Similarly, Riverwood and the Purple Mountains are stunning ...

The interviewer looked me in the eye and smiled. "Where do you see yourself five years from now?" "When will people stop asking me this ridiculous question?!" I groaned. "How am I supposed to know?! Anything can happen! Life can change dramatically in one afternoon, one year, let alone five! Having goals is one thing, but why do you have to put a timeline to it?!" Alright, I didn't say that. Out loud, anyway. I certainly thought it. There are two questions I never know how best to answer: "Where are you from?" and "Where do you see yourself in the next five years?" From this article I grew up moving between towns, cultures, and countries  –  I spent my formative years in England, South East Asia, and the United States. Thanks to my parents' work as pastors and missionaries, life could be shaken up overnight  –  an exciting, sometimes heart-breaking reality. Occasionally I wondered if I was alone in my struggle to ans...

Enter if you will, gentle reader, pull up a stuffed armchair by the fireside and join me in a true tale of small-town terror. As young teenagers, one of the biggest and most important obstacles my friends and I faced was convincing all our parents to allow us to stage spontaneous sugar-fuelled sleepovers and backyard 'campouts'. We would listen to cheese-rock ballads on a temperamental Walkman, play pass-the-buck-style dramatic storytelling games, conjecture wildly about our dream futures and generally achieve little to no sleep.

The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald  (Simon & Schuster, 9780743451505) Publication date: 25 June 2002 (first published 1922) My rating: ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ Would-be Jazz Age aristocrats Anthony and Gloria Patch embody the corrupt high society of 1920s New York: they are beautiful, shallow, pleasure-seeking, and vain. As presumptive heirs to a large fortune, they begin their married life by living well beyond their means. Their days are marked by endless drinking, dancing, luxury, and play. But when the expected inheritance is withheld, their lives become consumed with the pursuit of wealth, and their alliance begins to fall apart. (Vintage Classics description) 'Things are sweeter when they're lost. I know--because once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly, Dot, and when I got it it turned to dust in my hand.'