What is Crystalline?
Glad you asked. Pull up a chair. I'll smoke a folksy pipe and regale you.
Crystalline will be an electronic and print zine highlighting the Final Fantasy series, put together by Nightmare Mode co-founder Tom Auxier and Pixels or Death co-founder Adam Harshberger. Why Final Fantasy? Because they're the games we grew up with and the games we're still playing into our twenties. We're putting together Crystalline as an attempt to talk about why these games have been so important to us for so long.
Because Final Fantasy VI wasn't the first game I ever played, but it damn feels like it sometimes. And sure, maybe Adam never picked up a gunblade or went to a military academy run by a giant alien bug, but he sure felt like Squall sometimes. And everyone who's played these games has stories like these: how they affected us, good or bad, and how they fit into our lives as gamers, as people.
The collection will feature contributions by Adam and Tom, as well as a wonderful array of secret contributors, and will present one essay for each of the main Final Fantasy titles, as well as Tactics. Each contributor will pick a game to write about: if everything goes according to plan, there will be fifteen writers and fifteen essays, each with their own unique story and point of view. It will retail as an ebook, as well as in potentially lovely physical form.
So sit back, pull up a chair, and let's talk about Final Fantasy.
Interested in contributing?
We'd love to have you. Find out more about contributing to Crystalline here.