jessica defino talks about how contemporary beauty culture is skewed towards the algorithmic gaze and rejection of "human" qualities: it's poreless, filtered, digitally and surgically altered, faces made uncanny through use of botox and filler. this kind of tech mirrors that rejection of humanness

even from a pure technical perspective, it's clearly throwing out a bunch of the actual lighting information in the scene to replace it with essentially a pre-baked yassified valley face. it's the Samsung moon thing but for video game characters' faces

Seven-Part Pact, my fantastical and ornate TTRPG about the seven most powerful wizards in a fantasy world, is coming this summer to kickstarter!! www.kickstarter.com/projects/sjg...

MARATHON MARATHON MARATHON MARATHON MARATHON aftermath.site/marathon-bun...

For folks curious, a chunk of my concepting was for Field Maintenance in Dire Marsh and designing the big harvester vehicles. What @ninehydras.dev and the world art/palette team did is so so rad

From the publisher that brings you Sprigs & Kindling (that's me!), in collaboration with @jesseross.com and @pemetawe.bsky.social comes a new anthology of one shot incursions for Trophy! Sign up to be notified of launch 😄 www.kickstarter.com/projects/fir...

Played more of the Marathon Server Slam tonight, but this time with two friends, and I'm sold. Solo is extremely punishing, but the game really isn't balanced for solo (at least right now). As a squad, though, the game shines.

Marathon is so stylish. Aesthetics are really working for me. Environments, lighting, sound... SOUND. Oh man. Just want to listen to this game, wander around and poke at things. Story surprisingly interesting, too. Vibes off the charts.

Wow. I have no idea if it will retain a playerbase, but Marathon is one of the most exciting visual and storytelling statements of intent I've ever played. I'm considering buying an extraction shooter for the narrative; the actions of a madman

GUYS have you seen this. antarctica on google maps. go look at it. this is tech struggling to process the Sublime

I've started a blog writing PbTA moves for games that don't exist. Here's today's entry. https://onamiss.bearblog.dev/3/

the crowd is chanting "machine zone, machine zone, machine zone". there's a biplane flying overhead trailing a banner that says READ NATASHA DOW-SCHULL'S 'ADDICTION BY DESIGN'

free level design advice for creating an FPS arena that people will call the best multiplayer map ever made for generations.

Cool new book alert! With an open access digital edition, too.

extremely wild story from @nicolecarpenter.bsky.social (yes that one): aftermath.site/nicole-carpe...

if you think about it, a megadungeon is the ultimate walkable city

One easy fix would be to eliminate categories based on genre or whatever “indie” means and instead get granular about craft (best level design, best world, best combat, etc) which would probably pose other problems but at least make for more interesting conversations and honor specific people

"video game mechanics?" Actually, they're called developers.

I played Horses this weekend and I wrote down some messy thoughts not only on the game but especially on the specter of formalism that emerged to haunt us all for a moment. transgamerthoughts.com/post/8023277...

I have written a new blog about what an OSR is. I am told there is a lot of discourse about this, but am confident that this should settle the matter once and for all. thegardenbelow.blot.im/what-is-an-osr

Surprise, we're getting pretty close to the final version of REALIS! ICYMI: I've been making a TTRPG about mystical moons and living spaceships and sentences that can kill you. A preview is available now (see my pinned post), but the full version draws near! www.kickstarter.com/projects/cru...

Ohhh yeaah, narrative RPG + Zola, I'm here for it.

it's on miro. it's literally on figma. you have to log into okta. it's in jira. it's on zoom. it's on pureref. it's on flow. it's on perforce. it's on slack. you can find it on slack. you can go to slack and find it. log onto slack right now. you can slack it. slack has it for you. it's on slack.

The webpage for our upcoming book has the cover on it now which is enough of a milestone for me to write another post about the book we have coming out soon. www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?b...

Can confirm, this was nice and easy to complete!

Here We GO! Come along, my dearies! www.kickstarter.com/projects/lum...

i wish people would be substantially more careful with their choice to dismiss art/games they don't like as "not art / not a game"

Check out this nice review of FICTIONAL GAMES that @steinea.bsky.social did for ARB a while back: ancillaryreviewofbooks.org/2023/05/26/i...

Roll with Advantage: Creative, Collaborative, and Critical Responses to Dungeons & Dragons (Play Story Press 2025) edited by Suzanne Richardson & Edmond Y. Chang: playstorypress.org/books/roll-w... - in print or open access PDF! #analoggamestudies #creativewriting #dungeonsanddragons #dnd

Silksong true ending as praxis, in this essay I will

The Mist, Phantom, Cogwork Dancers last night. Unlocked Whiteward before going to sleep. This game, man. Mechanically, aesthetically, just so impressive. And the WRITING! Achingly beautiful. Talking with the Caretaker in Songclave, some real gut-punch lines.

I'm starting to get texts about this now so I guess I need to say something: There is a fundraiser going around about a "preservation disaster" raising money right now that I highly advise you to stay very far away from. A particular British tabloid is running with it unquestioningly. Thread:

Wow, these ToCs are awful. I've made my research available on several platforms for a while for exactly this reason, as well as syndicating on my personal site. This was an easy few clicks to delete my Academia page. The site has rapidly worsened over the last few years, so I'm not sad to leave it.

THEY LET ME WRITE ANOTHER BOOK "You’re Not Overthinking It" is available for pre-order right now. It collects the most meaningful essays of my career alongside hundreds of new annotations on each piece’s creation, background, and legacy. Far more details below: www.lostincult.co.uk/overthinking

Spot on. I do not have the fastest reflexes, but it's been incredible to feel Silksong teaching me to *slow down*. I beat Widow and Last Judge when I was able to actually calm myself and stay still in the arena. Panic is my #1 cause of a failed boss run.

Beautifully written. The whole review is worth a read, captures a lot of what I love about this game. May we be like the bugs, indeed!

I ran through Sinner's Road tonight and it is evil and mean and incredible. So many awful curveball surprises which made for great early game tests of all the tricks I've learned so far. Liz describes it perfectly here.

"I want games that I can argue with, games that trust me to read them closely, games that demand I think through them."

Digging into Silksong, and of course it’s beautiful, but it also SOUNDS so good. All those crunchy rocks and rosary beads rolling around, the voices, and the music.

Silksong GOTY

Steam and Nintendo eShop both down lmaooooooo

"The only thing that that amount of wealth is necessary for is the domination of others. In other words, at a certain point, wealth shifts from being something that enables freedom to something that can only be used to take freedom away from the public"

So hyped to be part of @peow.bsky.social’s ExMag volume 6! I had the pleasure of working on an original sci-fi short with one of my all time favourite artists, @decassette.bsky.social, telling a story of deep time and alien ecologies 🌱 Back the anthology here: www.kickstarter.com/projects/peo...

Ohhhhhh yaaaaaa "Something's wrong with the world and everyone knows what it is" feels extra true right now

New fund from the CMF and Creative BC is cool, though I find the parameters strange: 200K potential grant, but only for "mid-level and experienced studios." 200K would be life changing for a new or solo dev, but feels small for the targeted studio category. cmf-fmc.ca/news/cmf-cre...

"It all feels like such a colossal waste" Excellent reportage from @chrisbratt.bsky.social and PMG. Especially appreciate the transparency and integrity of the opening segment looking back at the original doc and all the complexities of reporting on such a tangled story. youtu.be/lZEAs6M1wts

More fantastic work from @jacobgeller.com: "we are so quick to ignore the intricacies of our interactions with machines." Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith the game meets Sudnow's Pilgrim in the Microworld—a perfect pairing. youtu.be/cSrP1ipkes0

"a necessary reminder of how humanity plays a pivotal role in conservation efforts, and that we, in turn, can only benefit from the ocean’s well-being"

Sword of the Sea is lovely so far. Perfect, chill Friday night activity after some grueling weeks of work. Nice balance after all the Nightreign recently, too (I said NOPE to Everdark Libra, and Everdark Gladius will have to wait—I'm busy doing tricks on my swordboard).