It’s strange how many games have announcers and narrators now. Though Bastion was noteworthy for the extent and character of its narration, the seeds were sown earlier – somewhere in the gap between the expected announcers of sports games and…
The discussion of what’s fun and interesting in games is necessarily also a discussion of what’s boring and tedious. Finding the points where a design begins to work against itself, begins to push the player down paths of rote task…
Yeah. the title just didn’t feel quite right without an exclamation mark. I’m not sure why ‘JazzPunk!’ isn’t the official title, because if any game deserves exclamation marks it’s this one. The entire experience of JazzPunk revolves around Surprise! With…
moderate spoilers Space is fucking cool. I mean there’s a lot more to say about The Swapper, but I think that may be its most lasting impression of the game on my mind. No other 2d platformer has captured the…
There are probably some spoilers here if you care about such things. It’s incredible the symbolic weight we can lay upon the simplest of stories. Each such story extends beyond itself like tree roots and tangles into matted carpets of…
I didn’t finish it. I guess that’s a good place to start. I dunno, I generally feel like I should finish these games if I’m going to write about them, but if I’m not that into playing it it can…
[moderate spoilers for Neverending Nightmares] I like dreams, and stories about them. Though they never capture quite what it feels like to exist in a dream space, though they never quite emulate that constantly shifting boundary that builds itself based…
[Ending spoilers for Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons] I originally chose Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons as a game to write about because Transistor had taken a day or two longer than expected and I wanted something I…
[slight spoilers for Transistor and Bastion] Change is the status quo. Some people fight against that change, and some people embrace it. One side calls themselves a revolution and the other calls themselves tradition, but when we have a tradition…
I’ve been having a hard time thinking of things to write about. This is probably largely because my heart just isn’t in it as much any more. For a couple of years this blog was the anchor of my week,…
