Been thinking about the common defense of AI "art" in games: "I can't afford an artist, so this is the only way to get the game made". Suffice to say, I have some thoughts. Full disclosure: I've never made a game (just played/backed a lot), so if anyone who has wants to fact-check me, feel free! 🧵

Posted this pretty late last night, so now seems like a good time to re-up it a little! If you like it when women do a bit of a kiss with each other, definitely give Our Home, My Keeper a look!

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Editing took much longer than I thought (tense consistencies were a nightmare...hopefully I got it all cleaned up!) but my review for Our Home, My Keeper is now live! Pass the yuri! 😁 olivigarden.ca/2026/05/22/o... #indiegame #gamereview #videogames #yuri #visualnovel

This is me atm whenever I look at a screen that isn't showing a game or movie. Work is draining, and the discourse everywhere else is truly rancid right now. 😓

Sunkern taking a little nap, dreaming of growing into a pretty flower 🌻 #art #pokemon #pokemonart #traditionalart

Me: *kicking myself for not getting through more games and writing in the past month* Also me: *has gotten three discrete illnesses in that time and still managed more output than the previous two months combined* Next review soon, I promise! Just need to stop judging myself...and a little nap. 😪

Here Tofu was combining weaving with fetching from a drawer! This was a super fun combo of some of the tricks Tofu already knew, and she picked up this combo super quickly - go Tofu! . I have a rat training book here! www.etsy.com/listing/1605... amzn.to/484u2Mv

Maybe it's just because I enjoy analyzing media on my own terms, but I've increasingly found that I have no interest in reviews that are longer than what's being reviewed. Why would I watch someone go on for 4+ hours about how movie X sucks when I can watch it and make up my own mind in less time?

I know I've talked about how I enjoy achievement hunting from time to time and just generally think achievements are a fun, neat little bonus when they're present in a game...but maybe they were a mistake all along.

Makes sense; takes a lot of time and energy away from game development if you're focused on shuffling abusers around your company ad infinitum. 🙄

I saw my first daylight barn owl yesterday. What a stunning bird! 🪶

Seth Rogen has more artistic integrity and understanding of creating than … whatever this is jfc. Let me revisit his words and remember that not everyone is terrible. (Via: variety.com/2026/film/ne...)

ME: What's the bear trap for? JIGSAW: For the love of... As I just said, if the bear trap is triggered this vial of acid will- ME: What's the barbed wire do? JIGSAW: I'm getting to that! If the acid is- ME (scrolling on phone): This is complicated. Let's just started playing and I'll figure it out.

Spec Ops: The Line's whole thing about, "If you didn't want to commit atrocities, maybe you should have just turned off the game?" but it's just me wanting all the cute lesbians to be happy. 😭

*sigh* Come on, Board Game Bliss...I'd like to think you're better than this. 😓 Guess I'll look elsewhere if I want to buy board games online in the future.

Been working my way through @vnstudioelan.com's Our Home, My Keeper over the past week (yes, I know I'm slow at playing games 😅), and I'm at the point where returning to it is a challenge because I *know* some sort of interpersonal conflict will emerge, and I love everyone too much! 😭

If you're a writer, write "I waited" without saying it. The twittering of birds faded, replaced by the soft chirping of crickets. My face was cast in amber, then shadow.

Idk what the solution is, but I really wish digital gaming storefronts still had a semblance of QC. The fact that browsing everything from Steam to the eShop inundates me with churned-out AI slop and other low-effort dreck is so demoralizing when I *know* there's heaps of cool stuff buried there.

The little cat meows at the wizard. He meows back. The little cat looks offended.

adhd is so stupid what do you mean i have a terabyte of installed video games and also no video games

beep beep here they come

Something I'd really like to do eventually is play through and write about every mainline Final Fantasy game. I've actually never played one (aside from maybe 30 minutes of FFXIII), but I'd quite like to! Tempted to put it as a follower or site subscriber goal, but that seems risky, haha.

I work with enough people who use AI regularly that it's made me feel less inclined to share my 100% human writing with peers because I worry there'll be an underlying assumption of, "Oh yeah, but she definitely used AI to write a lot of this, because I totally would." And that sucks ass. :(

I really wish I didn't have such a fixation on achievements in games. To be clear: if a game doesn't have them at all, that's a-ok with me. My problem is if it does have them, my FOMO often keeps me from buying on Switch, even though so many games are ideal for optional portable play.

A reminder that today is the perfect day to move off of Substack.

This is just vinyl nerd crap, but I got really jazzed when the deluxe reissue of MCR's Danger Days got announced today as a 2LP set, and then really bummed when I learned they were still squeezing the entire 54 minute album onto one record, with the second being exclusively bonus material. :(

Time for another bee interview.

Look! A Good Thing!

pivoting to late night host

brain buffering 🦈 #art #sharks

A little tip: if you're buying Humble Bundles, be sure to open the "Adjust Donation" drop-down and select "Custom Amount" to tweak the values. By default, Humble gives a frankly pathetic amount to charity while lining their own pockets (that they often use to push AI book bundles) quite generously.

Good morning! 🪶

Allowing mentally ill people to use AI chatbots is tantamount to abuse.

Friendly reminder that the old domain has now expired, so olivigarden.ca is the only valid URL for my work going forward! More information can be found here: olivigarden.ca/2026/03/29/i...

We are saddened to hear of the passing of Yuji Ohno. A legendary musician who was the heart & soul of most of the music of Lupin the Third for nearly 50 years will certainly live on as his music & themes will continue to be synonymous with the famous thief.

If Terraforming Mars appeals to you but you don’t want to support people with a public record of transphobia, may I suggest a much better game made by much better people Daybreak is incredible.

Just realized there are so many levers that can be pulled now when it comes to PC game performance that I literally forgot to include anything about actual "core" graphical settings (e.g. low vs. ultra textures/shadows, ray-tracing on vs. off, etc.) in this aside from resolution. What a mess...😅

Time to take a look at a recently-released card game/auto battler and delve into the logistics of translating board game mechanisms into the digital world. Let's talk about Blades, Bows & Magic! olivigarden.ca/2026/05/10/b... #gamereview #indiegame #videogames

It's funny, previously any time I judged a game as having "high-end" 3D graphics, I bought it on PC, figuring, "Well then I can make it look its best!" But with the popularization of upscaling tech and subsequent degrading of performance standards, suddenly console versions are much more appealing.

you should still cancel nitro. Xbox is BDS. don't give them attention.

Today, miniatures are nearly always seen as gray plastic, but scholars postulate that they were originally meant to be covered in bright, vivid paint. Using sophisticated imaging techniques, researchers can reveal how these figures were possibly intended to appear:

Got kicked out of @hard-drive.net and @thehardtimesnews.bsky.social cause I pressed the current editor in chief about running this racist fucking headline at the behest of the owner of both sites. lol

I love how years ago, I was 100% that person who said, "Please," and, "Thank you," when talking to Google Assistant or w/e, but now that AI stuff is everywhere and people keeping waxing poetic about how close it is to consciousness (press X to doubt), I'm just like, "Nah, shut up ya stupid clanker."

I wrote some dumb jokes about one of the even dumber recent video game discourses. Excited for weird people online to be super normal about it.

I'm pretty sure the number of times I've typed a reply to someone on here, thought about it for a second, and then deleted it, having decided, "Nah, that's stupid/pointless/etc." outnumbers my actual replies by at least 2:1. 😅

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Time to take a look at a recently-released card game/auto battler and delve into the logistics of translating board game mechanisms into the digital world. Let's talk about Blades, Bows & Magic! olivigarden.ca/2026/05/10/b... #gamereview #indiegame #videogames

Question for fellow writers: I remember hearing years ago (can't remember from whom, though I've seen quotes attributed to Hemingway and Pratchett) that you should always throw out your first draft, but is that a thing people actually do? It genuinely sometimes makes me anxious that I don't.

This week’s paw paintings by my sweet rats Crumb and Pistachio - they and all their buddies did an amazing job! . If you would like to commission your own rat paw painting, you can do so here: ratpaintings.etsy.com