Grace Benfell on Muck Rack

Grace Benfell

(She/Her)
Chicago
As seen in: Yahoo Entertainment, Yahoo Finance, GameSpot, Substack, VICE, Flipboard, PCGamesN, Paste, The A.V. Club, Letterboxd and
Covers:  Video Games, Film, Comics, TV, Pop Culture, Environmentalism, Queerness, Spirituality, Retro-Gaming, Gender and Sexuality
Writer and critic. Editor at The Imaginary Engine Review. Co-host @PodcastSafeRoom.

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Grace Benfell’s Biography

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Grace is a freelance writer based in Chicago. She is the author of Killing Our Gods: Essays On Religion, Christianity, And Video Games. She co-edits the criticism journal The Imaginary Engine Review and co-hosts the survival horror podcast The Safe Room. In her spare time, she writes horror fiction about bad Mormons and organizes with the Freelance Solidarity Project. Her work can be found at The A.V. Club, The Wand Report, Edge Magazine, and on her website.

Grace Benfell’s Journalist Portfolio

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BDS Calls for a Boycott of Xbox Due to Microsoft's Partnership with Israel

BDS Calls for a Boycott of Xbox Due to Microsoft's Partnership with Israel

The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement calls for a boycott of Xbox; here's what that means and…

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Fist to Mirror, Bullet to Temple

Fist to Mirror, Bullet to Temple

The Haruspex of Pathologic 2 grows weary and hungry, while Daniil flits from heart-pounding mania to sinking,…

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Itch Was A Bastion For 'Taboo' Developers, Now They're Not Sure Where To Go

Itch Was A Bastion For 'Taboo' Developers, Now They're Not Sure Where To Go

Itch hosted the works of developers, artists, writers, and zinesters. It was (and is) home to taboo pornograp…

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Always in the Eye

Always in the Eye

Hellblade II's cinematic aspirations and influences are clear, yet it abandons the image, the montage, for an…

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Essay Anthology Critical Hits Is a Dull Rehash that Fails to Engage with Games Criticism

Essay Anthology Critical Hits Is a Dull Rehash that Fails to Engage with Games Criticism

Videogame essay anthology Critical Hits ignores the history of serious games criticism while rehashing old id…

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Best Of 2023: Baldur's Gate 3's Best Set Piece Reaches Into Its Dungeon-Delving Roots

Best Of 2023: Baldur's Gate 3's Best Set Piece Reaches Into Its Dungeon-Delving Roots

Rosemyrn Monastery is a classic dungeon layered with sharp craft and potent emotional catharsis.

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Articles

Until Dawn 2 Finds Horror In The Sun Original

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By Grace Benfell
| GameSpot
In contrast to the snowy, mountainous landscape of the first game, Until Dawn 2 is set on a tropical island, but still involves a set of horny young people getting hacked and slashed. Just like the first game, it’s a cinematic, choice-based horror game where your decisions affect who lives and dies. The game was announced at the June 2026 State of Play.
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Older Than Empires, As Deep As Death

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By Grace Benfell
| Bullet Points Monthly
In Marathon's marketing materials, there is a key concession made to comprehensibility. Through the deaths and reincarnations depicted, each of the characters stay in the same basic shell. Sometimes they wear different clothes or have different mannerisms, but they bear the same face. This is not how it works when playing Marathon. There is a self outside of body, a consciousness which can hop from shell to shell, regardless of that shell's appearance or even its personality.
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Power and vulnerability are at play in Pragmata

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By Grace Benfell
| The A.V. Club
Note: This post contains spoilers for Pragmata. Pragmata is a “dad” game, but it is part of a broader lineage. In Pragmata, the player protects and guards an NPC throughout its runtime, like many other of the most popular games of recent years. Possible entries in this subgenre include God Of War (2018), Bioshock: Infinite, Resident Evil 4, The Last Of Us, A Plague Tale, Prince Of Persia (2008), and several more.
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Interview

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Have you ever used a typewriter?

Yes

How is social media changing news?

What a question.

Did you work for your high school newspaper? If so, what did you do there?

Wrote about video games, interviewed the new janitor and our star gymnast, and tried to sell ads to local bookstores.

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