Articles by Alexis Ong, Contributing Writer

PC Gamer THE GLOBAL AUTHORITY ON PC GAMES

Alexis Ong is a freelance culture journalist based in Singapore, mostly focused on games, science fiction, weird tech, and internet culture. For PC Gamer Alexis has flexed her skills in internet archeology by profiling the original streamer and taking us back to 1997's groundbreaking all-women Quake tournament. When she can get away with it she spends her days writing about FMV games and point-and-click adventures, somehow ranking every single Sierra adventure and living to tell the tale.

In past lives Alexis has been a music journalist, a West Hollywood gym owner, and a professional TV watcher. You can find her work on other sites including The Verge, The Washington Post, Eurogamer and Tor.

Articles by: Alexis Ong

The Making of Karateka proves the best way to tell gaming history is with a game, and the rest of the industry must follow its lead

By Alexis Ong published 15 September 23

Docudrama The Making of Karateka is great. The entire industry developing docugames just like it would be even better.

2022 was a stellar year for adventure games

By Alexis Ong published 25 December 22

🖱 Pointing and clicking our way to nirvana.

How a bunch of art school grads made putrid, brilliant horror adventure Sanitarium

By Alexis Ong published 18 November 22

macabre masterpiece An oral history of DreamForge’s 1998 adventure hit Sanitarium.

How one writer became the core of early Apple II culture

By Alexis Ong published 9 November 22

🍎 Softalk magazine helped the idea of everyday computer entertainment—and games—to flourish.

These 3 adventure games are lowkey '90s masterpieces

By Alexis Ong published 31 October 22

Killer Clicks These under-celebrated adventure games hold up remarkably well more than 20 years later.

Jankcore is the new aesthetic

By Alexis Ong published 21 August 22

Wild shapes Curators of forgotten, flawed adventures and FMV are ensuring they will never die.

How '90s interior design software laid the foundation for today's life sims

By Alexis Ong published 14 August 22

House & Home The unsung influence of 3D home design programs.

Rawson Stovall sits at his computer in 1985

The world's first syndicated game journalist was an 11-year-old kid

By Alexis Ong published 1 August 22

'80s star In the early '80s, Rawson Stovall started reviewing Atari games for the local paper. Before long he was the first syndicated game critic.

Shadowrun: Hong Kong is a perfect portrait of a cyberpunk city fighting for revolution

By Alexis Ong published 24 June 22

Retrospective If cyberpunk lives on, Shadowrun: Hong Kong should be its guiding light.

Chinatown Detective Agency review

By Alexis Ong published 6 April 22

Search result Get ready to Google your own clues.

Norco review

By Alexis Ong published 30 March 22

swamp things A landmark moment for point-and-click adventures.

This stunning Deep South fable isn't the next Kentucky Route Zero—it’s the first Norco

By Alexis Ong published 22 March 22

Swamp Things Breaking down the "bummer vibes" of Norco, a striking new adventure game.

In this hallucinatory MMO, everyone's a baby and nothing's what it seems

By Alexis Ong published 14 March 22

Radio Ga Ga Lets Go! Baby! Friends World is a baffling browser-based MMO that harks back to social chatroom games.

Classic videogame designs meet modern art in Please, Touch the Artwork

By Alexis Ong published 13 February 22

Snake art, not war Snake walked so this art gallery of puzzle games could fly.

In just 2 hours, If On a Winter's Night, Four Travelers tells one of the best adventure game stories I've ever played

By Alexis Ong published 7 January 22

Clicked Don't miss one of 2021's best games—it's free on Steam and Itch.io.

Aliens, conspiracy theories, and a forged diary inspired one of the weirdest games of the '90s

By Alexis Ong published 24 December 21

👽 The story behind Drowned God: Conspiracy of the Ages is even weirder than its premise.

Ghostlore is Diablo, but with Chinese hopping vampires and Indonesian boar demons

By Alexis Ong published 6 December 21

👻 With monsters pulled from Southeast Asian folklore, Ghostlore is the first action-RPG I’ve played that feels personal.

Amy Brady and Amber Dalton with Master Chief.

The PMS Clan blazed a trail for women in competitive gaming

By Alexis Ong published 14 November 21

♀️ Twin sisters Amy Brady (Athena/Valkyrie) and Amber Dalton (Athena Twin) founded PMS Clan in 2002—now one of the oldest competitive gaming organizations in the world.

Before blockchain and NFTs, there was the real-cash MMO Entropia Universe

By Alexis Ong published 6 November 21

♠♥♣♦ For almost 20 years, Entropia players have been grinding, gambling, and selling virtual real estate to earn real dollars.

Kick ass for the Lord in retro shooter Forgive Me Father

By Alexis Ong published 31 October 21

Pistol Priest The Lovecraft-inspired FPS with comic-book art makes a strong first impression.

A couple of owl-people standing near a castle ruins in Eastshade

6 games I took vacations in this summer

By Alexis Ong published 30 August 21

Getaway When I couldn't travel for real, I decided to pick gaming worlds that offered unique escapism.

Mothmen and Shark Riders: the mind-melting fantasy of pixel-pulps

By Alexis Ong published 2 August 21

Shark Freak The indie duo behind pixel-pulps are making visual novel throwbacks to the wild fantasy of Conan the Barbarian.

Purple carrots and horrifying toilets were key to making The Forgotten City's ancient Rome believable

By Alexis Ong published 27 July 21

Food for thought How The Forgotten City used food as a springboard for the rest of its society.

Inside the groundbreaking 1997 all-women Quake tournament

By Alexis Ong published 22 June 21

🏆 For Quake's 25th anniversary, we look back at a first-of-its-kind moment in FPS history.

Let's look back at the E3 show floor of the '90s and 2000s

By Alexis Ong published 10 June 21

Time capsule Great and terrible E3 moments—and fashion choices—from the last 25 years.

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