The only way this could be good is if it was a slapstick comedy where Frodo is completely serious and forlorn and Gandalf is high as shit. And Gollum is, like, the name of Sam’s pet goat who has escaped his pen

Reeeally loving the Trails in the Sky remake. My first Trails game. My brain: "This rocks and also seems like it would be really story-driven game-over-game, I should probably play them in order--" Maybe I'll just finish the Liberl arc and then skip to the newest one, spoilers be damned, hahah

I watched @paigeedits.bsky.social play FF16 recently and… that game seemed so good?? I had skipped it because the reveal looked sooo boring and edgelord-y and seemed to show no women characters AGAIN. And the last time I had loved an FF game was 10, 24 years ago But i think I’ll like this one

ME: yeah could i get the impossible burger with cheese. THE VIZIER WHO'S BEEN ADVISING ME: ahh, an excellent choice sire. an imitation of the genuine article. there are some "friends" of yours to whom it bears a passing similarity ME: you want anything VIZIER: [chuckles] what i want is of no import

Has there ever been a party-based RPG that, midway through, unexpectedly increased your party size after you thought you’d hit the limit? Closest I can think of is when Golden Sun: The Lost Age starts letting you swap between the two parties at will in battle

If someone is sharing political opinions in your mentions with a newly made account and nobody you know is following them, block them Doesn't matter what the opinions are. They're a bot or might as well be, they're not someone you need to listen to or dignify with your platform or attention

Absolutely sick at the horrors my country continues to inflict on innocents around the world

Since I love procgen / high systemic story generator games, I decided to finally pick up Rim World. But I did not like it, which did not make any sense. So I spent a bunch of time trying to figure out why and made a little graph.

There are many year-end lists, but there's only one that truly matters: @paigeedits.bsky.social and I's favorite anime opening songs from 2025 My favorite: ReawakeR, from Solo Leveling S2, by LiSA and Felix www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0zM...

I was wondering what Mamdani's first executive order would be, and I'm not disappointed by this. He has wiped off the books EVERY Eric Adams executive order issued on or after September 26, 2024, the day Adams was indicted on federal bribery charges.

Emergency room nurse, paraphrased: “I can see your skull right now! Pretty cool, right?” I asked if anyone could grab a mirror so I could see it, but they said no Curses

Hmm I am having a hard time picking a GOTY this time. Nothing landed that strongly for me. All the games everyone else is picking either aren’t my style (ie, Blue Prince) or had issues that stop them from being slam dunks for me (ie, Clair Obscur, Silksong). I don’t recall ever being this unsure!

Here are ~90 photos of weapons, armor, & costumes from the Lord of the Rings films--likely used as reference by the LotR: War in the North dev team. I found these during my data recovery efforts. Some photos have data loss, but this is still good reference for LotR fans! archive.org/details/lotr...

It’s a real commercial with the energy of ye olde biscoff spread video youtu.be/_BZsIY6PUPU?...

GOOD NEWS! Researchers have shown Alzheimer’s disease can be REVERSED- not just prevented. Using a potent neuroprotective compound called P7C3-A20, they found RESTORING balance to a central cellular energy molecule (NAD+) not only PREVENTED disease features but REVERSED them, EVEN at late stages.

I got a whole list of stuff to go listen to from this. Love to see this kind of thing

Game history folks that follow me: Is there any consensus on whether we can trust the quotes in Sheff's book (Game Over, 1993)? I know that the book has a less-than-stellar reputation as a source of truth these days, but I'm not sure if that extends to the actual quotations being wrong or not

another robot highlight for 2025: man wearing humanoid mocap suit kicks himself in the balls

Colorgrave, the indie studio that made this, seems to be living the dream: they're a tiny team (~5-7 folks?) putting out small GB/SNES scope games on average of about 1 a year At this point in my career that sounds like heaven, lol. I really hope they're finding a path to sustainability

This game is a huge blast. It’s basically a spelling game combined with Balatro. The good shit. Two things: 1. Man that name has some of the all-time worst SEO 2. I desperately wish it was on mobile and it’s very weird that it isn’t store.steampowered.com/app/3586660/...

I've been playing Prodigal, it's good fun. I've played MANY top-down Zelda-likes over the years, I rarely enjoy them. This is probably the best of all that I've tried. It's vibes are right. I love the GBC color palette on what FEELS like how GB resolution felt in my memory

It's been hard to buy my siblings games for a long time, because they tend to have very specific or nostalgia-oriented taste and don't play much. My youngest bro is now dating a woman who likes action-adventures, I am excited to FINALLY buy gifts for someone whose taste I fully understand, hahah

Well this game looks cool as shit Halberd Studios is based out of Mexico too, it looks like youtu.be/5K139b5y_so?...

Boromir, in slow motion, as the first arrow hits him: “FUCK—“

Yeah. When I was in school I was big into “networking”, I would read networking guides, constantly redo my business card, think about how to stand out, etc I made a lot of linkedin connections! …None of which have ever been even 1% useful. That whole concept is worthless

Reading old magazines, the EGM reviewers had a very different experience with MM than the rest of us xD “Lighthearted and playful” my ass, hahah

I have seen a metric fuckton of hallmark Christmas romcoms. This is because they happen to be playing nonstop in my house all december every year xD Therefore I feel qualified to say: The best of all Christmas romcoms is Love At The Christmas Table

Nice, it was just a couple months ago that I listed Yona of the Dawn as a show I was super sad only got one season (in 2014) Until NOW

Yeah. Indies can hit fidelity like our old hits, but something like, say, Final Fantasy 6 could never be made today. It was cutting edge & made by a big team who were the best in the world at what they did The sheer scope of writing, music, etc is almost as much work now as it was then.

Are folks successfully developing and launching games from Linux machines? Games for PC, console, and mobile, built on modern engines? I have a deeply ingrained "you pretty much have to do game dev on Windows" lesson from a million years ago that I haven't interrogated much since I was a student

Damn Spanish gamers've still got a sick-ass monthly gaming magazine it looks like, consider me jealous

Fire Emblems 6-8 used an RNG system with a pre-set list of numbers that the game just incremented through. There was only one way to increment the RNG list without committing to an action, and technically you could use it to see if the next RNG number was high or low I will illustrate:

I guess it’s not really my problem if someone wants to be _told_ what to do or make by Sam Altman’s sloppy plagiarism machine But uh, it would be a _truly_ foolish move. Even having no design documentation at all is much, MUCH better than having chatgpt’d docs

The Christmas Doom that I place upon all who love me: Repetitive motion injuries

The IGAs Nomination Committee is officially retracting Debut Game and Game of the Year, awarding both categories to new recipients. Additionally, we are retracting one of the Indie Vanguard recipients. Full details can be found in our FAQ under Game Eligibility: www.indiegameawards.gg/faq

This was fun to contribute to. Coming up with the 10 that influenced me the most was HARD! I submitted: Link's Awakening Chrono Trigger Harvest Moon 64 Pokemon Snap Final Fantasy Tactics Advance Shadow of the Colossus Super Mario Galaxy Persona 4 Xenoblade Chronicles Breath of the Wild

This kinda made my day tbh, you love to see it And my impression for well over a decade has been that Quantic Foundry takes their survey science pretty seriously, not just some twitter poll

It is impossible to put into words how infuriating it is to see someone ruin a friend's promising career for capricious and racist reasons and then, 15yrs later, run into them at a new company where they're thriving and seemingly liked by all. While that friend is struggling and barely scraping by

I did not expect this excellent analysis of Tolkien’s writing to both give me new insight and then make me tear up in this doctor’s waiting room, yet here we are

It's [a pretty good day in December], so post a video game banger xD By Hiroyuki Sawano, aka the Attack on Titan, Kill la Kill, and Promare composer. Dude is unstoppable www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlZE...

I feel we haven't discussed enough how gorgeous the Sultan's Game is. It's similar to Cultist Simulator but turn-based instead of real-time (I much prefer it this way). Only ~1,000 English reviews, but over 20,000 Overwhelmingly Positive Chinese ones.

Damn those are some good words

I should be able to right-click on any word in a post and select "mute this term for [1|7|30] days" Let me immediately solve my problems right where they are occurring without committing to some permanent overkill, hell yeah

Ah, well. I was considering giving kingdom come a try, but I guess even it’s own lead says it’s full of completely generic stuff

I loved this game when I was 8. It's the sort of game that comes to mind when people say "post a game that nobody's heard of". But while reading a random interview yesterday, fucking _Shigeru Miyamoto_ suddenly mentions the time when he "made" this game I guess people _have_ heard of it, damn

everyone in the whole world except me hates uv unwrapping but i think it's fun it's like if tetris was evil

@paigeedits.bsky.social made me “girl lunch” It was delicious Apparently it is a charcuterie board but in a _bowl_, a worthy innovation. Highly recommend girl lunch

For yrs I've pondered a paradox: 1) The fact that crunch is poisonous to creative work 2) The fact that many of my favorite games were made with crunch My answer: Crunch allows a team to naively reach a crucial creative state, at high personal cost. It can be reached w/o crunch #GameDesign🧵