'Virginia' is the video game world's answer to 'Twin Peaks'

The opening screen of Variable State's new video "feature" "Virginia" welcomes players to a small town named Kingdom. It's laid before us as if it were a board game, with little trails leading to a cave or a gas station, a schoolyard or an observatory, all of it presented with the simple cheery look of a brightly filled-in coloring book. Come in, stay awhile and bask in the beauty of small-town life, it seems to say. Press play, however, and things get twisted, and not with the typical things-are-not-what-they-seem subversion. Indeed, the first sign that something is out of the norm comes from the word "feature."