Uhhhh. I think you're leaving out some details

a funny part of the animal crossing hotel is it definitely commonly generates the user story "villager you hated and tried to evict for weeks is back for one day"

started decorating a bathroom. realized i have no bathtubs. shark karoke room

the secret to game design is that as much as players may claim otherwise they all love choosing one out of three things

going to be blocked from sending letters

Directed at @seemo.bsky.social after they told me they were going to try working a reference to narrative saliency into a marketing post after I recommmended taking it out

my main beef with many animal crossing islands is i think they overdesign for convenience, when the opportunity exists to do intolerable level design like a sorcerer subjecting people to your riddles

I'm an unemployed video game designer with 14 years of experience and multiple shipped titles. Every day I get up to apply for jobs and every day the news says this

Reminder that I'm looking for work, particularly in narrative or game design, games writing, marketing writing, any kind of writing really, data entry, whatever. ryanmcdiarmid.com

"No one can afford to buy games" is one explanation for what's going on in the games industry but it doesn't really explain the rapid contraction. I think more salient factors are: 1. dependency on external investment that has dried up 2. rapidly changing patterns of consumption post-covid

building a gyroid fragment resurrection area in coco's quarry yard and she keeps dancing by it... shes bringing them back to life...

As of today, Feb 11. I know of so many games industry layoffs in 2026 that it impacts over 50% as many people that i know of than i know who were impacted in the entirety of 2025. Its going to be a long year.

is this good for the lego brand

it will live on in my animal crossing town

I killed everyone on mad at you island. no. you're not off the hook. that's not why I was there.

OUT NOW 💀 #bandcampfriday ghoulnoise.bandcamp.com/album/growin...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8c-... Got another video put together, this one was ripped from VHS Track 6: BALANCED BUDGET (WGW) Growing Dread Bandcamp: ghoulnoise.bandcamp.com/album/growin... Ampwall: ampwall.com/a/ghoulnoise...

Been playing so much Animal Crossing. I originally bounced off New Horizons after a while but something about the 3.0 update tied everything together for me.

Redid Big Top's house. The curry is a reference to his e-reader card

Hey yall. As you've seen here - unfortunately a large portion of the ivy road team was laid off today, myself included. We're all looking for work! Gonna do a quick thread about those who were laid off today and why you should hire them:

Going to evict Big Top and demolish the hotel now.

Gotcha—let’s dig into that step by step. 1. 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗻𝗼 𝗺𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗵, because I turned you into an amorphous lump of flesh. You’re not just immobile—you’re immortal, and you feel only anguish. 2. 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗺. That makes total sense—it’s a natural human impulse, and you’ve been through a lot.

To delete your TikTok account without agreeing to the new TOS: 1) put your phone in airplane mode 2) open TikTok and go to your profile 3) go to settings and scroll down to delete account 4) turn airplane mode off 5) delete your account Credit to @ kimsaira on instagram for this

It's not exactly 'cozy' that I'm after, but more like seeing fictional or fantastical settings explored through a really thin slice of the world, or a lower stakes, marginal kind of experience of them, rather than a story about One Big Thing that defines a setting.

Feel like I'm having a different experience with New Horizons in 2026 after playing games it inspired for years. I bounced off the lack of explicit goals, but now I find their absence refreshing. The little undirected surprises like how there's new scenes with Wardell long after the HHP credits.

DEV: What if the Player Character has partial amnesia? DEV: What if the Player Character *doesn't know* they have partial amnesia? DEV: What if the *Player* doesn't know that the Player Character has partial amnesia? DEV: What if one NPC knows *everything* DEV: That's lunch, great work everybody

Yesterday, these incompetent fucks were just going door-to-door in a neighborhood near my house at 8:30 in the morning. School buses were driving through trying to pick up kids, people were out walking their dogs, and people were taking out their trash cans.

smoking a joint with Wario on this porch in the winter would fix me

Garrett and I cut over a 1200 words from my first review for the AV Club. Please come read about my experience with the worst PS5 exclusive I have ever played...

I truly love that Resetti specifically mentions that squashing bugs for you is a service he provides. That character was concepted over twenty years ago yet somehow feels like he was originally made to be a pest control worker

Additionally, Skin Deep got IGF Honorable Mentions in: - Excellence in Audio - Seumas McNally Grand Prize Wow! The Skin Deep music was by Priscilla Snow @ghoulnoise.com and the soundtrack is available here: ghoulnoise.bandcamp.com/album/skin-d... The folks who made Skin Deep happen were INCREDIBLE

🥹 This is the closest I've gotten to getting an award for my soundtrack work, I'm really proud and happy to have been included amongst all these other artists!

I am a simple person who thinks that telling the truth about things is important. I watched the video footage of this shooting, and the killing is casual and unhurried. DHS and aligned political actors are very ready to present a story of rushed, panicked violence, and it just is not true.

go ace 😭

its a shame more games dont let you choose one-off handles anymore

unlike my old laptop, i have only hostility towards my phone. when it's slow, i get mad... like a manager having to deal with a high employee

been watching through Daria and its very good

One of the best to ever do it

go listen go buy go hire priscilla to make more video games with you ghoulnoise.bandcamp.com

Between IMMORTALITY, Skin Deep, Jett: The Far Shore and Spooky Express, few composers/sound designers are doing such consistently good/varied work as Priscilla IMO

Here's my GOTY thread for 2025: Lot of good shit this year... But I haven't stopped thinking about SKIN DEEP. It's wild. And on sale. You should play it. store.steampowered.com/app/301280/S...

daria's inferno (2000)

did you know? did you know? pc gamer's immersive sim of the year is on sale until the 6th of january and it is my wholly unbiased opinion that you should play it store.steampowered.com/app/301280/S...

This is incredibly painful for me. I have never asked for help like this before. But I have had people reach out to me asking if they can help, so I am sharing my story and finally asking for help. I've been lucky to have a lovely group of followers here, please share if you can, anything helps <3

I wrote an article about dialogue choice as part of a narrative designer’s toolkit *aside* from branching, instead considering how choice can invite us to *perform* a character. My case study is South of Circle’s beautiful fuzzy meaning-making (using symbols instead of words). 💜 Give it a go!

Even the ring? No way

From the 1966 Sunset Magazine “Sunset Cook Book of Breads”

Yeah, this is the thing about it, isn't it. If you had some kind of advantage over the competition – why are you so invested in making sure everyone else has it?

And if they don’t - wow, that’s great for you! You’re going to leave your competition in the dust. “Don’t be stuck in the past,” Or what, Good Samaritan? Why are you so concerned for me? Won’t you benefit if I falter and stumble into the dust bin of history?

If devs are *licensing* their own tech, sure. But a dev saying “if you don’t use bump mapping / IK / Source Engine you’re a Luddite / stuck in the past / etc.” - why would they care? IME if someone uses tech that has self-evident value, people scramble to adopt it.