fuck it man here it is

Slowly going through Silksong, was down on it to start but now I'm more ambivalent. For a 2025 metroidvania the combat design is excellent, and I'm getting "woah there's stuff here" moments, but I'm still disappointed in how creatively similar this is to HK for such a long and unconstrained dev time

Little convo on exploration in games

Rain World is an alien game transported from a different timeline where they had a deep understanding of the craft itself and the sensibility to turn that towards emotional artistic ends. Its qualities and affect doesnt feel like it belongs at all in the culture of the last decade

314 death on TGM2/TAP, my third 300 and second on Switch. This game is unbelievably hard but I persist, my consistency slowly creeps up

maddison-baek.itch.io/magentahoriz... The DRM-free version of Magenta Horizon is now available on Itch.

I appreciate that IIDX (and similar games) is a fun game to learn and improve at, but also acts as a bridge to a whole scene and culture of music that's new to me. In general I'm more sensitive now to wanting games that connect me to life, the world, myself rather than simply distract from it

pang has been putting out a lot of short reads on random games, check them out if you're interested in the evaluative review style from a more informed perspective and without the Consumer Reports style cruft bsky.app/profile/birt...

Tetris got me feeling weird, thinking about mechanically driven games. They are more sport-like in their appeal and strengths, which sits weirdly with the "artistic expression" lens I and others have used for them. If we look at lit, film, theater, etc. 1/

"TGM2, the stacking in it, the style explored, the depth of decisionmaking to it, the complexity of interweaving game elements, almost... ehh, for me, this is one of, i suppose to use the internet term, its 'peak gaming'

Random game crit take. I'm convinced that the most important skill to have is self-awareness aka sensitivity to one's own feelings. Games (other art too) are fundamentally psychological, and felt experience is the empirical evidence that will ward off rigid overintellectualized frameworks

Cracked S1 with 775 lines in TGM2. The journey goes on...

back to q+a with a question from @lorddarias.bsky.social: what makes time limits useful? and why aren't they popular today? my answer: who says they aren't? find out more in the link below!

new article where I finally tackle friction... what does it actually mean? how should you use it? or should you avoid it in favor of more precise language? check it out in the link below!

youtu.be/85TI3YhmVxY #MoonlightMaelstrom #indiegame #indiedev #blender #lowpoly #godot3d

Been sucked into the rhythm game vortex with Arcaea, and the hit rate on songs for Arcaea in particular is astonishingly high. There's something elemental with these games about the combination of physical dexterity/timing/pattern recognition set to music. I get it now... youtu.be/OW8pMvedAtM

AARON GORDON IS HIM

Russell Westbrook has had some highs and lows on Nuggets but he was huge tonight in Nuggets Clippers game 7, everyone looked exhausted and hustled with some big plays and shifted the momentum. Crazy

in tandem with our crazy taxi beach gen episode releasing, I also put together a starter guide for the routing required to get up to the game's top rank: Crazy License. if you've played before but aren't sure how to take your game to the next level, hop on this guide! link below

Beloved game which is underdiscussed for how shockingly deep its systems are. Prob our best episode in terms of adding to the commons

Feel like I've been mostly connecting with more arcadey/short games these past few months, haven't really played much else tbh. Been shifting that way in general but now I'm really feeling it

This vid is exactly why IMO it's really important to push back on the idea of "fairness" in games and just directly defend unfair design on its countless merits. Cuz the arguments in the vid aren't wrong if you adapt the fairness above all framework, it's the framework itself that sucks

Been exploring a new genre, some quick thoughts on a very strange and idiosyncratic modern entry. Some interesting ideas but not sure I would put serious time into it. hotpockethpe.neocities.org/reviews/seki...

Lightly edited this. I don't own Wilds but the video comparisons of old vs. new for the moves are jaw-dropping, a couple were slowed down nearly threefold. Devs feeling unable to use fast enemy attacks creates a lot of issues and design constraints and is a big problem in many modern games

It's time to have a serious convo about parries www.patreon.com/posts/124359...

Been an eternity since my last vid, so here's a follow-up to my Ashes recommendation from last year: www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHQw...

taking my old flapjacks bullet review thing over to my new site with some first impressions of some ps2 games from recently. nice little stopgap while I'm not beating a lot of games 😂 link below!

I don't really care about it as a game but it's cool that Clair Obscur is set in Belle Epoque France. I'm tired of storytelling that uses the real-life inspirations of its setting (especially "medieval Europe") as aesthetic wallpaper instead of engaging with the real lived experiences of those times

Monster Hunter's structure has had a foundation of trend-chasing from the start, the series began as a PSO derivative with all the inelegant MMO baggage that implies. This is just a switch to the AAA template. Occasionally they have tried to be more ambitious (Dos, World) to mixed success (cont.)

Finished Pentiment, what an excellent experience. The nuance and maturity on display with its character writing and sense of history is so unique, especially in games. Legitimately moved me, confident this is Obsidian's best having not played most of the others. God bless you Andreas Maler

Reminder to not only get into emulation if you haven't but also help your homies set up emulators too. People are scared of emulating and as a result they end up not playing some of the best and most important games ever. Companies won't preserve a god damn thing long term

Tetris TGM2's death mode is outrageous. The sheer speed conveys a forbidding hostility to life, alien conditions which one can survive in only by adaptation and transformation of the self. Truly, the Hyper Demon of funny falling block games...

Whenever I expand a world-building idea, I start with a train design. It's like a ritual for me.

as I continue to fall in love with the strider reboot, I wanted to look back on the original arcade title. it's a maligned experience in many ways, but one that plays with the player's movement tools in a way few of its contemporaries did. link below!

stinger-magazine.com/interviews/b... I got interviewed by Stinger magazine. I'm a big boy now.

Cresent Colossus. Probably related to my new planned solo project.

#MagentaHorizon finally reached 100 reviews, and you can get the trading cards now!

after getting sidetracked by magfest and the unstoppable crazy taxi grind, I finally finished off layton and the unwound future. I love the premise that it sets up and a story that actually integrates layton himself, but the plot falls back on issues that plagued previous entries. link below!

Short article about some of the advantages of non-combat action games over combat ones. Mainly just food for thought hotpockethpe.neocities.org/essays/advof...

If you're a dev who's working on a beat 'em up adjacent game and want to get into the genre more seriously, I made a list just 4 u : www.patreon.com/posts/121267... Can consider it boot camp

After a lot of time and effort, I finally managed to clear SpikeOut: Final Edition on the Hardest difficulty: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcA4... I'll be working on adding commentary to the run soon. Will also be making a video on differences between DBO and FE and a how-to-play guide as well

Tetris TGM2 is melting my brain, I am seeing tetrominoes when I walk around, do work, sleep. I'm not even good at this game and I'm getting brainwashed...

Since #NinjaGaiden4 is on the horizon, why don't you give a shot to a 2D combo action game #MagentaHorizon in the meantime? The signature on-landing charge attack, IS ninjas, and tons of enemies... It has EVERYTHING that will prepare you for Ninja Gaiden 4! #actiongame #indiegame #solodev

might have gone and made the first game EVER to involve memorization skills and card flipping. be a dear and give it a lookie <3 it's pretty polished and awesome i think www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/... #newgrounds #gamedev #indiegame #gamemaker

Trading card illustrations for Magenta Horizon are in the making. More of them coming soon.

been playing for years but I finally broke through and got a crazy rank. tried to both lay out my progression in mechanics learned while demonstrating the power of the game's chaos, the depth of its handling, and the nuances of its routing. link below!

I don't think we will gonna see the highest difficulty run done by completely new players for some time, so here I am doing all of them by myself. I don't want my game to be seen as a mindless hack and slasher, you know. Starting with Act 1. youtu.be/sfssXMSIKm4?...

(I tested this game voluntarily) It's rare to see a small game tackle this genre beyond imitation, but this unique blend of the bouncy looseness of traditional DMC-likes with true chaotic crowd control. The most forward-thinking action game of the decade, and 1-of-1 in every respect.

I forgot that Magenta Horizon is leaving early access today as well! A very neat, very purple, very weird character action game. Think Devil May Cry or The Dishwasher set in a funky, surreal underworld. A little bit of Mommy's Best Games vibes to the art. store.steampowered.com/app/2109060/...

An underrated art to bullet hell design is making bullet patterns that also look and move pretty. Capture patterns in particular have a lot of room to show off since most of the screen space will be blocked off