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Itchmas 2024 - Days 9 + 10

Day 9 - There Is No Game Here by Zee Ham

Super weird to have an itch page explicitly without a game. I definitely didn't accidentally release some kind of memetic evil into my life that I am now attempting to exorcise!

Day 10 - A Touch of Glamour by Mahar Mangahas

A Touch of Glamour is an elegant, tightly designed game of playing fey creatures in a modern setting that I wish were more influential in the game design circles that I run in. I chalk my previous lack of awareness of it up to it being a PBTA game that came out in 2020 rather than the heyday of hacks in the 2010s.

The game does a lot of things that I wish more games would do: tie mechanics into each other in a way that fuels each of them further. Here, this is achieved using harm and tags. Each of the 4 attributes that a character has can suffer up to 4 Harm, and when it gets to 4 you can't use it as part of any Moves. If all 4 attributes get 4 Harm, you die. A typical consequence of using Moves is suffering Harm to your attributes, meaning that the more you play the game the more likely you are to rack up Harm. Now Harm has no other effect on your attributes, so it doesn't trigger a mechanical death spiral where you get hurt, are worse at using the attribute, are more likely to suffer Harm, etc., but what it does do is make you think hard about how much you want to use an attribute (even one you're pretty good at). Since you can use each attribute for any of the four basic Moves, you have some options at your disposal if you want to avoid using an attribute that has 3 Harm.

But say that you're still concerned about rolling low. That's where tags come in! Tags are in-narrative elements that you can use to give yourself a bonus or your opponents a penalty (or that can be turned against you, so be careful). You could be buzzing with magical energy or beset by bees, desperately in love or drunk and dizzy. Every tag has the potential to be used for your own ends or to trip you up, with clever enough fictional positioning. Some things you might only be able to accomplish by creating a tag in game, and others might be impossible to overcome without eliminating an opposing tag. The game very quickly becomes a dance of managing Harm and tags, creating the exact atmosphere that magical creatures in danger of being hunted to extinction would live under.

There is joy and danger to be found in the power of creation and destruction, and this game leverages both to great effect.

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no matter how you examine a bar of chocolate, there's no indication of the exploitation that went into creating it — not an atom that screams "I came into being through slavery!" and yet, the social relations of slavery and unequal exchange are facts of its existence. in the capitalist world, we're presented with an endless series of commodities, while the social relationships behind their production and distribution are hidden from us. when people understand the misery that others are forced into in order to shave $0.5 off the production costs of every t-shirt, sofa, or TV they purchase, they often feel rage at the capitalist system. that's why we must continually expose such things. don't let them be hidden from view

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Itchmas 2024 - Day 8

A new week, a new kind of recommendation: a bideo jame.

The Dark Queen of Mortholme by Mosu

This 20-minute, single-room anti-game (per the itch page's description) is maybe the best and most succinct encapsulation of the gameplay, appeal, and themes of the soulslike game genre. You play as the eponymous Dark Queen of Mortholme, reveling in the destruction of an upstart hero come to slay you and end your reign of terror. End their life by swinging a big fuckass mace, charging forward in blue flames, and/or summoning a pillar of purple energy (the evilest kind of energy) beneath their feet. But over time, the hero learns. And adapts. And gets better at dodging your attacks.

Then the dialogue begins. There's a whole world out there, beyond your throne room, and they get to experience it and grow and change. But you don't. You only have access to the same old stuff, the same old tricks. I would never call the Dark Queen an old dog, but, well...you know how the saying goes.

Anti-game is the perfect descriptor for this piece of art. It is, as far as I can tell, completely scripted, with no amount of skill or reactivity on the player's part able to change the inevitable outcome. And yet, I still found myself interested in the next part. What will the hero say on their next entrance? What more will I learn about the tragedy of power, the rot at the center of every Souls game? What new way will the hero learn to seemingly taunt me? (I may never know the same kind of frustration as me swinging my ludicrously large mace only for that little pixel fucker to be just out of reach.)

This game sounds like a shitpost (what is it like to experience Dark Souls from the boss' POV?), but it's so much more than that. It's a gorgeous little anti-game with stellar writing, and everyone should take 20 minutes out of their day to give it a try.

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Demonstrating the rope dart (繩標; sheng2biao1)

[eng by me]

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Tgirl removes ribs to be able to suck her own cock only to find god has used that rib to create a wife who can suck her cock for her

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immaculate

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one of the more interesting gender selectors i've seen

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freaks and degenerates are just so much nicer and kinder than the rest of you idk. i love you perverts with illegal and unethical fantasies thank you for being so nice to me

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oh funk i wanna get my conk sunked 😩😩😩😩😩😩

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pokemon is extremely underrated in terms of how good its cartoon bugs are. in this awful age of fleshy human faces on cartoon bugs pokemon is the last bastion of hope

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“Shame must change sides.”

Gisele Pelicot is one of the bravest and most heroic people alive.

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this callout couldve been a block button

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getting a note on a super old post

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Itchmas 2024 - Day 7

Wrapping up the first week of Itchmas 2024, I want to talk up Dice Exploder, a design podcast made by Sam Dunnewold, a friend of mine, that focuses on analyzing one game mechanic at a time. It's not actually on itch.io but w/e

Strap in, because I'm recommending one episode from each season!

Season 1 - Change The World (The Watch) with Ema Acosta

I hadn't heard of this game prior to the episode, but it's about women fighting off the Shadow that has claimed the world's men. The episode talks a bit about the gender politics at play in the game and how they're a little dated (even though the game was made in 2017), but the focus is on the move Change The World. You only make it a couple times throughout the campaign, but it gives you the chance to materially and definitively change the world for the better. This chance is improved by the number of jaded moves you've taken, so the worse off you are as a character, the more potential there is to improve the world. Ema and Sam go way more in depth into all this, but I love this episode for introducing me to a really fascinating game.

Season 2 - [redacted word] (We Are But Worms: A One Word RPG) with David Block

Lyric games! The nature of art! Worms! This episode really has it all, and is one of the show's more theoretical episodes. It highlights the range of discussions that can be had about TTRPGs, from the granular and material to the lofty and theoretical.

Season 3 - Solo Game Prompts with Seb Pines

I love solo games, so I simply must recommend the solo games episode of Dice Exploder. Writing good prompts is a whole artform unto itself, and this episode features some games that display that to great effect.

Season 4 - Speak Your Truth (Desperation) with Jeff Stormer

A real meeting of the minds for TTRPG podcasters who make shows that (usually) feature two people. I have to recommend this episode because it made me specifically seek out and buy the game in question at Big Bad Con in October. It's also an episode where you can actually listen to the game under discussion being played on Party of One, which is a particularly illustrative experience. The mechanic in question is the simple directive "Speak your truth," which happens every time you read off a card in a Desperation playset, always settings of great distress and danger. They're sort of like solo game prompts, but the specific framing of you, the player, being told to say what a character truly thinks/feels/does just hits different. Having played this game myself, I can say for a fact I've never had so much fun being so miserable.

Season ??? (favorite bonus episode) - Accessibility and Graphic Design (Mork Borg) with Mark Muszynski

Just one of my favorite episodes of the whole show. We get the perspective of someone who plays games but doesn't necessarily make them, discuss accessibility in a specific and directed way, and tackle a complex and important issue that needs to be discussed more. Plus the episode icon is a great visual gag for us sighted folks (alt text for the icon: the Mork Borg cover image [a skeleton wielding a sword against a yellow background and the text MORK BORG in black angular letters] manipulated to appear fuzzy and indistinct).