Les pidges.

Doing work planning for the next six months and looks like I'll have slots available for freelance work, esp around Feb-April. So if you need someone to write STUFF or do narrative /story consulting, HMU! Things I've worked on over past few years (and am not NDAd about) include!

Happy New Year! My best friend and beloved already has me at the gym. We’ve become that kind of couple, gross I know. Anyway, here’s the person who makes my life one of joy, who encourages me to successes. @thewizardlockwood.bsky.social thank you for being you.

I’m not a ‘yells at TV’ kinda guy, but I’m about two more away from giving up. I really feel like it’s not even trying to make sense? Even action movie logic sense?

Watching THE GREEN KNIGHT again

"The product of writing is not words but meaning. And generative AI can’t understand meaning, or perspective... It can only algorithmically guess at what you expect to hear, with varying levels of success." Thanks RPS for talking to our Narrative Director @chrisgardiner.bsky.social for this one.

Walk friend

The Excavation of Hob's Barrow by Clock and Dagger is 55% off during the Steam Winter Sale! Explore the moors of rural Victorian England as you uncover the mysteries of Hob's Barrow. What lies beneath the soil? Find out here: store.steampowered.com/app/1182310/...

More lifting-posting, I’m afraid. Finished up the training block, so testing progress. 170kg x 4 on the squat, which is wild to me as this was my 1rm a few months back.

Christmas Jay.

good stuff about using your body here from Jenny Odell www.thebeliever.net/no-one-gave-...

In our last Mandrake dev thread of the year, we'd like to consider that most festive of topics: the unquiet dead. #indiedev #gamedev

Most of us did not choose to write or draw or design so that we could put products on the shelf. We chose to do it because it’s a set of skills we enjoy exercising, that give us fulfillment. It’s like asking a pro pitcher to just let a machine pitch for them. Fuck off and give me the ball.

This is such a misunderstanding of why writers, artists, and designers do research to begin with, which is to find something unexpected, not capture the average or find reference for the default. And, as always, the biggest misapprehension: We don’t want to NOT do this part. It’s fun to learn shit

Sam's done some incredible work this year and her Neurocracy 3.0 trailer might be my favourite trailer of the year. A tremendous showcase of her creative instincts and extensive skillset.

Derek just did a thread of trailers for visual novels that he thinks are very good, and three out of seven of them were mine. In conclusion: consider hiring me to make VN trailers.

Really pleased with how these are coming along. Even if I still turn into a beetroot.

I played Dialect a few months back, and on the day realised I was not in a good brain mood for improv roleplay scenes. Really uncomfortable. But putting my glasses uncomfortably halfway down my nose and sinking into my chair? Those unlocked a whole character for me. 'Adopt the trait' is so good.

You do not have to be a coward. You do not have to let this shit beat you up. There's no real downside to standing up for humanity. Nobody who wants to defend or equivocate about this shit is your friend or even useful to know. We don't have to resign ourselves to being disposable.

I could only see the alien landscape through pink bars until I read the word of what the other image is and then I saw that immediately

A pretty grand rook watching over us on the Pembrokeshire coast path above Whitesands Bay this afternoon; tame & pretty intelligent looking 🐦‍⬛

Skin Deep rocks, go play it.

Larian's horrible hirring process is an open secret in the industry – insane amounts of unpaid work in "writing tests", excessive numbers of interviews, months and months of back and forth, etc. Everyone in games narrative circles has heard the stories at this point, probably from multiple people.

The process is the fun part. Throwing shit at the wall with your colleagues is where the growth happens. The journey of distilling many ideas and iterations into something tightly focused and beautiful is what I enjoy. The frustrations are part of the growth. AI strips you of that.

sigh

Doing that bit of writing today which is carefully cutting and refining and tweaking and adjusting lines in pursuit of something really specific. And I *hate* that it's yet another thing that prompts me to think about GenAI. Because this is the damn *work*, and it cannot do it. Not even close.

Remember how biased and leading the questions were in favour of the AI companies? And this was still the response.

The public dislikes the Plagiarism Engine, who would've thunk?

Also we've fetishized "debate” in these spaces as some kind of civic good, when what matters is competence, trust, shared purpose. Medicine, engineering, boardrooms aren’t organized around debate or requirements of false balance. We've poisoned public discourse by insisting it be adversarial.

I’ve struggled a lot this year with reading books and playing games. I normally read ~50 books a year; this year will be less than half that. I think a big part of it comes down to information overload. I’m excited to read, to play. I love it. But I freeze up trying to take yet more input.

Narrative role on work with indies! www.workwithindies.com/careers/unco...

I can enjoy a fiction novel written by a friend. I would not enjoy an equally compelling story my friend told me if it were in the context of lying to my face. There is a social contract we enter into with one another in which good faith and honesty are assumed; when they’re not, that erodes society

The cliche that ‘having an idea’ is the hard part of writing is persistent and pernicious. Realising the idea is the craft of it. That FAQ of…

[to the turn of Love is an Open Door] 🎶 Crow in the Big Asdaaaaa 🎶

I've been inching my way towards finishing Cyberpunk with all the rapidity of a concussed snail, and I really love how it's put together narratively. I've been thinking specifically about the way it uses timers on certain dialogue choices. (Image from the web since I lack handy screenshots.)

Hobbity crob

A non-autistic friend who cancelled plans is really sorry to give you five hours of your delicious routine back, it has been rumoured.

Your QA team has been Ludovico Techniqued into panicking at the sight of magenta even outside of games! Take advantage of this work-induced brain problem!

We figured out yesterday we can make placeholder text this same garish colour, with the bonus that it’s also then much easier to consistently track down in the game script.

My favourite thing I heard of like this is a debugging feature in Alien Isolation where instead of hissing the Alien states aloud what it's thinking about. "I heard you. I am hunting you. I am hunting you. I am hunting you. I have found you."

This is dangerously good

Unironically Olivia’s sneaky gym photos have helped me figure out why my squats keep shifting to the right.

This man is a walking[1] stereotype, but this short breathwork routine has been doing a lot for me most mornings. www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWmS... ^[1] actually 'sitting-in-the-lotus-position' stereotype

We watched both the Accountant movies over the past week. They certainly have Problems, but I had an unabashedly enjoyable time with them.

There's danger in the dark, but at least we're giving you a lantern. Here's art director Toby Cook with a look at how we're creating light and shadow in our upcoming rural life sim, Mandrake.

Everytime people try to tell me AI writing is just like human writing...no. It's avuncular salesman Skeletor, delivered in a yes sweetie tone w/a side of passive aggression, bc it has trained in all the most annoying places, AND eaten literature, so we also get ill-deployed dashes of Ripley.

It was hill sprints this morning. @babelfishwars.bsky.social looks surprisingly happy.

I think the idea that technology is inherently or always good, or that our default attitude towards new technologies should be gee-wiz assuming that it's good, properly belongs in the trash heap of history because it's an attitude that's proven eminently exploitable by bad actors

Interested in game-writing? In early 2026 we'll be publishing a kaleidoscope: short articles by 100+ game writers - experts, freelancers, and juniors - about the craft. ~1/3 of them are in: multiple bangers, from some very famous names and games. Sign up to be notified when it's ready here: