First look at Invert Look

Next week the fifth anniversary issue of movie magazine Little White Lies will hit the shelves, so it seems fitting that publisher The Church of London should choose the same week to preview its next big project – issue zero of Invert Look.

A computer game magazine for people who want more than reviews and gossip, the intent is clear – TCOL will be hoping that Invert Look can be to gaming what LWLies has become to movies. But if the philosophy behind the magazines is similar, the execution is quite different – take a look at the preview pages below and see for yourself. Anyone familiar with LWLies will see similarities between the two titles, but there’s clearly a conscious effort to make Invert Look that bit more lo-fi, a bit less polished than its movie star sister.

They clearly know who their readers are, and they’re making a bold bid for them. Everything about the magazine appeals to the serious gamer rather than the occasional Mario Karter, starting with the cryptic masthead. ‘Invert look’ is the in-game option in first-person shooters that reverses the controller (so ‘look up’ becomes ‘look down’) but in the hands of TCOL it  becomes an in-joke that promises a fresh look at video gaming, and a visual pun that sees the words of the masthead flipped upside down and back to front. With long articles on the history of computer games and the resurgence of independent game developers, it’s a long way from my old copies of Total Game Boy.

All Stack subscribers will get a free copy of Invert Look with their July delivery when it goes out next week – there’s still time to subscribe and get your hands on one!