This spring my favorite Stanley Kubrick film is celebrating its 35th birthday. The Shining was beat up pretty badly when it debuted in 1980 — Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall’s performances were panned and Kubrick was held responsible. Of course, years later, the film is considered to be a classic by the master.

In celebration, here’s a great little video game that allows you to follow the ill-fated Torrance family to the Overlook hotel. It’s a great celebration of the film that recalls many of its most famous scenes and tropes: steer the car though the mountain pass that opens the film, help Jack type his novel, navigate the hedge maze and progress through the game as each level is designated with a day of the week title card just like the chapters in the film.

Let’s Play: The Shining Video Game here…

In addition, here’s Rob Ager’s analysis of spatial anomalies in the layout of the Overlook Hotel, one of the best documentary videos uncovering secrets in Kubrick’s masterpiece. It’s a particularly apt video for this post as the secret spatial anomalies were first revealed when a video game designer tried to recreate the setting and found it to be impossible to reconcile with itself…

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This year we celebrate the 40th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons — the original role-playing game, D&D has influenced every RPG boardgame that’s come since its first publication in 1974, and D&D‘s impact on modern video games is nearly as profound.

I haven’t played D&D since I passed on my secret knowledge of armor and poison and dragon’s breath and that flat sound of one gold coin piling on top of another to my godson back in the early 00′s. That said, this nerd-tastic doc reminded me of how much fun I had drawing dungeons as a 9-year-old.

Here is The Dungeon Masters…

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Please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I archive all of the videos I curate at Insomnia. Click here to check out more occult posts.