#played some kentucky route zero

[paradoxgavel]

two pages of my next pokemon au comic down, two to go!!

[famewolf]

finished act 3 of kentucky route zero!

the music continues to be indescribably beautiful and the vibes are utterly eerie but in a strangely comforting way.

i find myself both unnerved but at home within the dialogue and the audio is perfect.

idk what it is about this game, but i'm totally drawn in. just spent 20 minutes on an in-game phone call learning about the strange ecosystem of a river (and also how to talk to a snake).

[multiplekittens]

It's genuinely wild how much Synechdoche, New York has fundamentally changed my brain. Almost every piece of media I like makes makes me go "ah, just like Synechdoche, New York." Incredible film. I don't think I can ever watch it again

[xamiipholia]

okay y'all seemed to like the last one so here's a few more Horizon 3 thoughts:

Aloy won’t die. It would completely upend the series’ themes and just be really nihilistic.

Since Nemesis is a gestalt entity I think it’s a safe bet that we’ll see Sam Witwer, Carrie-Anne Moss, etc again. I’m curious how they’re going to do it because at least structurally, it’s basically a reaper. Maybe it’ll use different Avatars when communicating like the Leviathan in ME3. 

It's gonna take some work to make a flashback/dream/vision not contrived but I would love to see Varl and Rost again. I think we deserve that.

Minerva is gonna have its work cut out for it blocking access to both the dormant Faro Swarm and the ZD terraforming system. 

I wouldn’t be surprised if Nemesis has some sort of corruption function that becomes the equivalent of the corruption in HZD. It would be a really fun tech showcase if GG uses Zenith nanotech for machine corruption and leans into mechanical body horror.

If we’re going to Ban-Ur I really really hope they do the work to make the Banuk less problematic and more fleshed out as a culture. A quasi-Spartan society absolutely would not survive in an extreme environment, *especially* without megafauna to hunt. The Banuk characters are lovely and well-written; they deserve a society as well thought out as the Utaru or Carja. I’m honestly fine if there’s retcons or revamps to the cultural lore because the whole “outsider barges in and becomes chief” is rooted in racist, colonial tropes and we just don’t really need that imo.

The most recent footage of Death Stranding 2 (also running on Decima) has me SO excited for the visuals. GG’s gonna knock it out. The facial rendering and animation that Kojima Productions are doing looks industry-peak and I’m sure GG’s gonna match that. Aloy’s Gay Panic™️ scene on the beach in HBS is already top-tier nonverbal storytelling through animation. Digital Foundry actually just posted a really cool tech breakdown of the current Decima engine. I’m especially excited about the environmental stuff. The ocean simulations in HFW are already incredible and I hope they increase verticality in the world. I can’t wait to see the Sacred Lands in current gen graphics. 

I really love Kotallo’s DIY arm and it’s so so important to his development but Beta and Gaia now have access to Zenith nanotech, maybe give your buddy a sick upgrade hmm?

Speaking of, I can’t wait to see Beta come into her own. She’s one of the best parts of HFW and Aloy’s character absolutely shines in a sibling dynamic. 

I wouldn’t get your hopes up for a romance mechanic. Everyone’s feelings on that aside, it would be really odd from a game development perspective to just overhaul part of how the narrative develops Aloy’s character in the last act of the story. Yeah, there are flashpoints but I would argue that the presence of choice in Horizon is smoke and mirrors- cosmetic at best. Kentucky Route Zero (which you should play) does something similar where the player is given a certain amount of control over the substance of individual conversations and scenarios and it does absolutely nothing to alter the plot, by design. I think it’s the same here - this isn’t really a choice-based RPG, the flashpoints don’t really affect anything plot-wise or for Aloy’s character development. Olin is still out of the story, Nil lives, Regalla still dies one way or another. Aloy’s character development is pretty firmly on rails (think Jin Sakai, not Shepard - you get to guide some momentary character reactions but that’s it). I don’t think HBS is a testing ground either - If they were gonna introduce a romance mechanic I think they’d just do it, and not spend two years making a direct continuation of HFW’s main quest and establishing a specific romance hard-baked into the plot, complete with multiple leitmotifs for the character relationship (which is something they haven’t done before afaik) just to introduce a side quest mechanic coming in 5 years. I genuinely can’t think of any game or dev that has beta tested a major alteration to upcoming game mechanics that way - it doesn’t really make any sense in terms of developer resources, and these games are extremely time-consuming to make. I know this is a thing a bunch of people want and I can totally empathize with that! I just think it’s probably not on the table. 

I would bet money the series will bookend itself and the epilogue will involve a) the naming of Zo and Varl’s kid and b) Lis’ pendant. 

Mostly I'm just looking forward to being surprised. One of my favorite things that Horizon does is use carefully established elements in the world to pull the plot in unexpected directions and keeping the world grounded while they lean into speculative science fiction. I can't wait to see what Guerrilla is cooking up

[quicksilverlightning]

Having a delightful time with my best friend, a sixty-something English professor who has become a borderline shut-in since Covid. I haven't seen him since March 2020, but we talk on the phone a lot - a variety of factors has made him withdraw from society for a while, but he's trying to break the habit a bit.

The pandemic has been hell on teachers in general, but it reinvigorated him - synchronous remote learning has been fantastic for his whole teaching style, and he's excited by all the new tools and techniques he can deploy with everyone together in the digital space. It's doubly funny since he's the oldest person in the department, and all his colleagues hate remote learning.

I recently introduced him to video essays and he's been watching one at a time and we chat about it after. He already runs a popular radio show/ podcast, and the video essay format is very similar so he's getting quite a lot out of it in terms of technical components like structure. I started him on Jacob Geller, which may have been setting the bar too high, but I've tried to include a wide variety to check out.

Anyway, what I'm getting at is that I'd like to recommend finding a friend that is significantly different from yourself in age because it's been a grand time exposing him to entire branches of media that he never would have otherwise encountered himself. He loved Over the Garden Wall; he sends me short stories and novel recommendations; I am slowly pushing him into playing Kentucky Route Zero. More than once he's brought up something I showed him to a younger coworker, who is baffled by his knowledge. We both fluctuate on a similar wavelength, but the age gap and generational difference removes enough common ground to always have something to talk about. Get yourself some intergenerational solidarity 🤝

[e-dash-lace]

My Very Own Locked Tomb Playlist

A bunch of songs that I listened to while I was doing a Summer 2024 re-read of The Locked Tomb (mostly Harrow and Nona) in no particular order. I took notes because this fandom makes you crazy and Spotify is so stupid that instead of having a notes feature, it has an algorithm that makes you a new playlist four times a day that's called something like "gut-wrenching wailing girl dinner slay brat summer afternoon." Anyway, notes under the cut (spoilers for the entire series sorry)

Psychic Wound - King Woman

The song that Ianthe puts on the radio when she needs to focus to give Harrow her lobotomy. (In all honesty though I think that most songs off of the I Saw the TV Glow playlist go kind of crazy over Harrow the Ninth. Something something horror of being a queer teenager.)

Intergalactic - The Beastie Boys

When Gideon the Ninth the animated feature length film opens, the opening credits play to this song. This song also plays during Camila's fight with Ianthe Naberius on New Rho

Go Away Little Girl - Percy Faith & His Orchestra

This song really screams Jod to me. It plays during John 8:1. Like really close your eyes and imagine it. Like there's no sound it's just like a jumbled up bunch of slow motion scenes.

My Smile is Extinct - Kane Strang

Honestly I just needed to put this song on the playlist because it's the kind of depression song that's like just goofy enough to make you laugh even when you're sad. RIP Harrow Nonagesimus. She would have loved My Smile is Extinct by Kane Strang.

Army of Me - Bjork

Another sword fight song. This song plays during Gideon and Harrow's first fight on the Ninth House. I think that my brainworms just also really wanted to bring some of that girls fighting in steampunk muted colors vibe from Sucker Punch into this playlist.

Growing Pains - Ethel Cain

The queen brainworm living in my mind demands that all playlists I make have 1 Ethel Cain song. I can't really tell you how this fits, but when I tried to remove it, I thought "no. she stays" This song is Harrow the Ninth coded but maybe like Harrow Coffee Shop AU

Jesus Is the One (I Got Depression) - Zack Fox

First House National Anthem I fear. If I had money, I would pay it to comission a Harrow the Ninth animatic to this song.

Sunday - The Cranberries

Not really sure why this is on the playlist. I think it might have been an accident, but also it just sounds kind of appropriate so it stays :)

August Underground - Ethel Cain

Spotify gave me a really really good daylist ONCE that was just like atmospheric music (mostly from videogames). It was so stellar that I saved it! I listened to that playlist while I was reading like the last 25% of Nona. This song plays throughout all of NtN Chapter 28 or at the very least an extended scenes of Sex Pal and Camilla turning into Paul.

Ghosts in the Static - Ben Babitt

Atmospheric music to listen to while Nona drives through the River. A lot of the songs on the KRZ soundtrack fit that vibe. If you want music to drive on the River to, you should listen to the Kentucky Route Zero soundtrack.

Dumbest Girl Alive - 100 Gecs

I think that Gideon Nav would be a really big 100 gecs fan

Thick Skull (Re: Julien Baker) - Paramore & Julien Baker

I think that Jod would be a really big fan of Paramore. I think this song is about Jod, but it's the song that plays during the flashback scene when Gideon kicks Wake out of the airlock and she falls into the Ninth House

Bad Lil Vibe - Coco & Clair Clair

HEAR ME OUT. In my mind, Jod has gifted Ianthe a cassette player and for some reason, the only cassette that's in it is like some collectible 10th anniversary cassette tape of the album Sexy by Coco & Clair Clair. (that doesn't exist yet but it will). I feel like Coco and Clair Clair are good music for the Coronabeth and Ianthe dynamic duo, but I think that this song is for Ianthe. I think it has that evil hot mess (not like Sharpay Evans evil hot mess, more like Shego with smeared lipstick and a broken heart at the club) vibe that the Saint of Awe brings to the table.

4AEM - Grimes

Grimes TO ME ok IMO strikes me as someone who in 2015 would have been fancast as ianthe because she's blond, skinny, and like swinging around a long sword in her music videos like someone who just kind of thinks that swords are cool conceptually and will go well with the special effects but couldn't actually use one to defend themselves if it came down to it and that's really ianthe tridentarius-core TO ME. I imagine that deep down Ianthe hoped that becoming a lyctor meant she would get to be like an international pop star but more. Not to digress but this song is an Ianthe Tridentarius fight song.

Combat Baby - Metric

Actually lol okay hear me out. So actually Ianthe was also gifted a cd player by jod and this is the song that she cries to (ALONE) when she thinks about Harrow. I think Ianthe wishes she had a y2k style but she was just born in the wrong decade sorry

Pluto - Bjork

This is the song that is playing after Harrow wakes up and Gideon is inside her brain helping her fight Cytherea. I think snippets or like altered instrumental versions of this song also play in each trial that Harrow and Gideon work through. Like some version of this song is definitely playing the first time Harrow siphons Gideon to get those keys

Femininomenon - Chapell Roan

First of all, what is any playlist made in 2024 without a Chapell Roan song on it. Second, when I first wrote this note I imagined this as the song that plays immediately after mercy kills Jod and then like there's a full 3 minute music video where like Mercy is on lead vocals, she's like arguing with Augustine a bit then they're like dancing and then the song really abruptly cuts off right before the end when Jod sucks himself back together. Alternatively, this song plays every single time Nona sees a woman.

Dream Girl Evil - Florence and the Machine

Alectopause Hive International Anthem In the parallel universe where Nona the Ninth was released as a webcomic or like an AO3 fic, Taz Muir has linked this song in the Notes and there are 1000 animatics of the Nona epilogue with this song.

Springbreakers - Charli XCX

Alectopause hive international anthem 2 electric boogaloo (Remember how I said "gut-wrench9ing wailing girl dinner slay brat summer afternoon"? I meant that) I would also accept this song as the Nona epilogue animatic song

Bit of A Monster - Vylet Pony

I can't explain this one. I don't know why it's here it just has to be. If you made it this far, leave ur theories in the tags idk.

Mysteries of the Cleft - death's dynamic shroud

I think like if you asked me to I could make a whole playlist of songs about being in the River, so this is either like a planetkiller harrow song or like the song that plays when Jod takes Ianthe and Harrow through the River the first time.

Kizaki Lake - Satoko Shibata

One thing about me, if there's an opportunity to put a Japanese song on the playlist, a Japanese song is going on the playlist and right now the other queen brainworm in my mind is the brainworm that's been addicted to this album since it was released in February and I think everyone should listen to it. The instrumental for this song plays throughout the entirety of Day One in Nona and IF I WAS IN CHARGE Satoko Shibata would be tapped to do the score for the film because she's just that good. Go listen to Your Favorite Things!

[rotworld]

Have you heard of the video game Kentucky Route Zero? I've been playing it recently and it reminded me a little of The Drift. You play as a driver making your last delivery, in an environment that seems to be ever-shifting and bends the rules of reality. It's very eerie and atmospheric, I recommend checking it out if you haven't already.

thank you for the rec, this looks extremely cool!! i think i mentioned it at some point already but it bears repeating if anyone is looking for a similar gaming experience, the drift was heavily inspired by sunless sea

[hypertextdog]

whats ur fav video game(s)?

OOOOOH THATS A GOOD QUESTION ummm lets see. im kind of ass at a lot of games that require a lot of speed and precision so it's mostly story-based and puzzle games. ok im bad at favs but here's some good ones and brief sales pitches in no particular order ...

STORIES UNTOLD is a ~puzzle game that unfolds in four parts with mechanics varying from those of the text-based adventure to full walkaround horror shit. over the course of play you gradually get a sense of what's really going on and how all of the parts are connected. it's extremely extremely cool and feels like a weird dream sequence it's great

HYPNOSPACE OUTLAW is some kind of exploration game that takes place on a fictional second internet circa 1999. play feels not dissimilar to surfing wikipedia. it's incredibly elaborate and vast and was crafted with a lot of love for the cultural phenomena of the internet both then and now. its soundtrack is also like 6 hours and incredible

THIMBLEWEED PARK was my first ever point-and-click adventure game and it's so cool. it's a very funny game and has a lot of fun puzzles ... it's shorter but it's also got one of the best soundtracks on this list check this out

KENTUCKY ROUTE ZERO is probably the most beautiful game i've ever played. i completed it earlier this year. it's so beautifully written and there's not a character in it who isn't in competition for most compelling motherfucker there. its visuals are also just so perfect dude. i really like itttt

DISCO ELYSIUM i nearly forgot to include because i was like nah everyone in the world already knows how amazing and immersive and vast and well-done de is. it is probably the best game on this list. it takes place in the most fleshed-out fictional world i've ever interacted with and every second of it screams "this is The work of someone's life." there's also a fantastic novel "sacred and terrible air" which takes place in the same world, which i also suggest ...

PATRICK'S PARABOX is one of those really mind-fucking puzzle games like baba is you if you're familiar (which would probably also be on this list if i got further in it than i did.) it's one of those games with an extremely simple premise that contorts into one of the most complicated things you've ever tried to wrap your brain around. recursion is so fucked up dude

THE PROCESS OF ELIMINATION is a pretty good free web game that irs umm i hear its author is a pretty cool guyy and uhhh i ummmm. it's pretty good ...... it's a hypertext-based adventure about a piece of spyware which an architect uses to monitor local crime and which his son uses to stalk this redditor he's crushing on. ibwill make another one eventually

HOPE YOU ENJOYED MY GAMESLIST ... 👍

[cobrajuincy]

recently played kentucky route zero w friend and we were discussing how some things in the game probably aren't meant to be taken literally and i couldn't stop picturing a clickbait youtube thumbnail

[koskela-knights]

About Watery

Thinking about Watery and its decaying state :( The flood has made many places inaccessible, closed shops and buildings everywhere. Weathered and malfunctioning to broken attractions at Coffee World... Many locals become Taken and die or move out, turning the town almost in a ghost town with skeletal houses and constructions.

There might be a certain truth behind Alan's manuscript page on Watery. It wouldn't be far-fetched really, for the town to lose its economic income and status once the lumber mill closed down/maybe wasn't necessary anymore due to an external company's mass production. Plenty of that happens in the real world and it also reminds me of other fictional towns in games I've played.

Possum Springs from Night In The Woods is also a dying town. The mines are no longer needed, people moving out to other cities, the current jobs don't pay well enough. Small & local businesses shutting down or being bought/replaced by big brands, etc. Funnily enough, it also has a Cult. Although their motivations are very different. Instead of protecting the townspeople, it tries to bring PS back to its former mining glory by wrongfully sacrificing people they deem unworthy ("lazy" people) to be in this revived PS.

Multiple locations in Kentucky Route Zero. There are towns neglected and abandoned by big corporations and its inhabitants and people are in debt and fighting to stay at their old homes. There are many ghost stories to be found in that game. Kinda similarly in Watery, glimpses of the past as told through articles and environmental storytelling can be found that also give this feeling of a slightly better past.

Lol, you can even see town decay in Cars, that movie about the sentient cars. Radiator Springs used to be a thriving town, until the new highway made the road through RS obsolete. It was only after McQueen put the town back on the map, did it manage to revive. So yeah, maybe Watery does need a miracle too (and a system that keeps the people from poverty).

But despite the decline, people still try to make the best out of it, even in terrible and gloomy circumstances. I remember there's this Coffee World review page you can find where the author calls the owner/Ilmo a greedy bastard. But if you look at the state of the park and Watery in general, it's kinda understandable? Yeah, some of the prices at the gift shop (as someone pointed out to me) were eh... not cheap lmao. I guess it's a desperate final resort, hoping to keep the money rolling. And I assume the Koskelas aren't super wealthy, they remain down to earth and it seems they put all earned money back into the community anyway. It's not like they're making a big profit from their multiple ventures.

[famewolf]

I tried to get into town today so I could work but all my rides fell through because of how genuinely awful the weather is.

going to attempt it again tomorrow since I have a place to crash once I do get into town, but until then ... I think it's time to wind down and unspool my tightly wound anxious brain with some casual gaming and reading

[cpericardium]

Other recs that came to mind:

Katana zero. It’s a lot like hotline miami (also play hm if you haven’t)

Vampire survivors. Deceptively simple, one of steams most played games in the last few years

Adios. Under two hours and it still had me bawling my eyes out.

Cloudpunk. Great story game. Illegal delivery driver in a cyberpunk mega city. Do gig work in a flying car.

Control. Really good. One of those sorta open world/sorta story games. Similar in structure to bioshock.

Fallout: new vegas. Need I say more?

Hollow Knight. super cute metroidvania.

Inscryption. Deck building game. Very good.

Kentucky route zero. Makes a lot of those “top ten pc games of all time” lists. I wouldn’t shut up about it for a few months.

Outer wilds. Really fun puzzle/exploration game. Explore a mini solar system to discover what happened to its previous denizens and maybe complete their life’s goal along the way.

Return of the obra dinn. Really cool puzzle game. DISCLAIMER: I don’t remember the story anymore but someone I follow (txttletale) says it has some racist stuff in there.

Super hot. Fun fighting game.

Sorry if this list is too long but I live to recommend games to people.

That's a long list of stuff to look at! Thanks. I guess I should play Control, huh. Since mutuals put it on my dash. And I really love Bioshock.

Fallout New Vegas is great. Did you notice Number Man is in it??

Even with the mod stuff it was always crashing every twenty minutes but you know what, I continued. Because of him

[raven]

the question of what is "bad" gameplay is so big. persona 2 sticks out because i really like it and the gameplay is bad but since u have to emulate it these days anyway u can skip basically all of it and just get the story so i dont necessarily consider it a bad gameplay game, as in, a game where the gameplay is an active barrier to the story. some people will be like "story is all that matters!" but a lot of games with good stories have the best gameplay FOR those specific games. disco elysium, kentucky route zero, etc may not have tons of classic gameplay but the ganeplay is perfect for them. i feel like the only people who actually have a say in this are like, drakengard 3 fans. or like, rule of rose and other games like that (eg meant to be hard but had no balance to make sure they werent extremely frustrating. although, anything u can emulate at least has save states and often cheats). then theres the argument that some games should feel bad to play, like pathologic classic. definitely intentional, so does that keep the gameplay from being bad? is the gameplay of pathologic even that bad i dont really think it is but its an oft used example. do all fighting games have bad gameplay because i never played them as a kid so i never built the neural pathways of using a controller like that and so im really bad at them

[talenlee]

September 2024 Wrapup!

There’s often a joke about ‘wake me up when September ends.’ It’s a reference to a song, a good song I like a lot that’s about a meaningful emotional thing from a queer artist. Thing is, this September, nah, I didn’t want to sleep through any of it.

This September, I wanted to remember every night of it.

(Especially the 21st night of it.)

This month’s Game Pile articles were:

Apiary, a Stonemeier game of bees! in! space! that I found extremely good in all the ways that Stonemeier games tend to be good.

Infidel, and Circling to Failure, a classic infocom text adventure about how the game frames you as a crappy dude. The unreliable narrator and the failure end point has not been revolutionary for a long time.

Kentucky Route Zero and the Three Games About America, a video about finally putting to the page an incident that I think is hilariously awful and reflects the parochial vision of American centrism that defines games culture.

Pine Shallows, a really cool adventurey TTRPG!

Over in the Story Pile, we got

Girls Band Cry, a revolutionary 3d anime in that it’s not revolutionary just in that it looks really, really cool!

Manhunter, a live action movie about this ‘Hannyball Lecktor’ guy, and the way that, turns out, serial killers aren’t amazing superminds?

Hokkaido Gals Are Super Adorable, a tourism brochure for Hokkaido, a part of Japan defined, thanks to this series, by snow and massive tits.

Hoot, a Jimmy Buffett movie which of course I’m going to wind up watching because I am such a sap for Jimmy Buffett’s work, and the resultant movie kinda belongs in a sort of Pride Month closet key collection.

Then There Were Five, which goes up tomorrow and you’ll get to enjoy as I grapple with a classic novel from my childhood that set up a status quo and didn’t deliver on it.

If you come to this blog for worldbuilding, fantasy, and generic tabletop kinds of conversations? Well, I covered the Inevitables and Modrons from 3rd edition Dungeons & Dragons, the thing we call a ‘druid’ and where that fits in and out of character fantasy, and the way that convenient magic creates an everyday industry. I talked about how in Cobrin’Seil, the Ogre represents not a species but a choice, and player options for if you want to play a bird person, in the form of the Aarakocra and Harpies and how they fit into Cobrin’Seil.

In other articles, I talked about the fantastic event called ‘the miracle of the brick,’ some great anime OPs that outweigh the anime that they present, the criminality of Pokemon in the vibes they project, and some good, old fashioned complaining about a badly made ASMR video by a media mill called Chefclub. And, not related to that particular waft of internet fartings, I talked about why I am resistant to calling my own work content these days.

I also designed a set of shirts inspired by Animorphs:

a black shirt with white text reading ‘Jake & Cassie & Marco & Rachel & Tobias & Ax’

a white shirt with black text reading ‘Jake & Cassie & Marco & Rachel & Tobias & Ax’

a black shirt with white text reading ‘Jake & Cassie & Marco & & Tobias & Ax’

a white shirt with black text reading ‘Jake & Cassie & Marco & Rachel & Tobias & Ax’

a black shirt with white text reading ‘tiger & wolf & gorilla & bear & hawk & ax”

a white shirt with black text reading ‘tiger & wolf & gorilla & bear & hawk & ax’

There are more designs, which are present as a collection over on my Redbubble.

What happened in September? Work was work — fully online classes mean I spend lots of time inside and don’t have the time to get up to things between classes. That’s an interesting challenge in my day to day life that means I’m just not leaving the house a lot, something that’s bothering me a little. Walking the dog, enjoying the weather as best I can in the late hours I walk him – because the dog’s got anxiety – that’s something that puts me out in the air, in a space where I can breath cool air.

What else, what else…

Oh yeah!

When this post goes up, Cohost is two days away from being put into Read-Only mode, and it will be closed and deleted at the end of the year. If you weren’t on it, and didn’t care about it, Cohost was essentially a type of social media website that didn’t work the way any of the other ones worked.

There’s a lot of talk about Cohost that wants to compare it to platforms like Tumblr or Twitter or Bluesky or Mastodon but none of them were really like it. It’s much easier, for me, to tell you what Cohost did: It let you post some pictures, it let you post text, it let you use some CSS or HTML to do things that I understand were pretty fun. To me what Cohost presented as a platform where I could draft articles in public, where there was a commentary culture, and where people would use tags and spoilers to control and present what you were writing or making.

It was also, to me, most importantly, a place where a bunch of my friends were hanging out. Not all of them — it sure seems to be a place biased towards white folks — but it was a place where what they offered was a meaningful chunk of my friend group.

Cohost was a place where the kind of people I like to show things to, the people whose input matters to me, felt okay talking about things. I could get feedback and responses and interest (even modestly) and people weren’t afraid that William Rando Hurst was going to wander into the conversation and accuse them of hating waffles. I have a very small fund of money I think of as my ‘spend on the internet’ kind of money. One of the only places I spent that money was on Cohost Plus, which gave me access to, as far as I know, nothing. I paid for Cohost because I wanted Cohost to succeed, and I wanted people who couldn’t afford to pay for Cohost to not feel they had to shoulder a burden.

And it’s going away.

I loved Cohost, and I’m going to miss Cohost. I get to do that. I’m so glad I get to miss Cohost. I’m glad I get to think about the things that Cohost taught me about how to be a person on the internet and I’m happy of that. It showed me ways the people around me are creative and how they are sad and how they are willing to be when they don’t feel like they’re in risk of being threatened for existing.

I’m gunna miss you, Cohost.

Keep on eggbugging.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[good-fwiend-in-wome]

i bought a couple of games for the steam spring sale and that has got me on a bit of a kick for artsy story games. i replayed oxenfree for the first time in a long time, played oxenfree 2 for the first time which i absolutely loved, replayed firewatch with a more mature eye than i had when i played it for the first time, i'm playing night in the woods for the first time, and i'm planning to play kentucky route zero and maybe dujanah afterwards.

i dunno, i guess after a while of only playing multiplayer games, sandboxes, and roguelikes it's refreshing to come back to some more narrative games. i'm enjoying myself a lot. any similar recommendations?

[cyberpunkonline]

The Role of Poetry in Gaming

In the modern era of blockbuster games with dazzling visuals, fast-paced action, and intricate narratives, one might wonder where poetry fits into the gaming universe. Yet, the interplay between gaming and poetry has been significant and, in some instances, transformative. This article will explore the deep-rooted connection between these two seemingly disparate worlds.

Emotional Depth and Immersion The first and perhaps the most significant role that poetry plays in games is in delivering an emotional depth that is often hard to achieve with visuals or gameplay alone. Much like in the real world, where poetry has the power to move souls, in the virtual realm, it can evoke strong feelings and immerse players in a game's universe. The delicate use of words, rhythm, and imagery can instantly transport players to different realms, making their experiences richer and more profound.

World-building Narrative-driven games, especially those set in fantasy or post-apocalyptic worlds, often use poetry and songs to create a sense of history, culture, and depth. By sprinkling verses, chants, and epic poems throughout the gameplay, developers give players a glimpse into the beliefs, traditions, and legends of the in-game societies. This poetic lore serves as a foundation, making the game world feel lived-in and authentic.

Puzzles and Challenges How many gamers remember being stumped by a riddle or a poetic clue that stands between them and the next stage of their quest? Poetry has often been used as a tool for creating challenges, whether it's deciphering a riddle in "The Legend of Zelda" or understanding a cryptic message in an indie title. These poetic challenges not only engage the player's intellect but also showcase the beauty of language in an interactive setting.

A Bridge Between Art and Technology The cyberpunk and tech-art subcultures have always found a unique synergy between technology and art. In this context, poetry in games serves as a bridge, melding the artistic with the digital. Games like "Kentucky Route Zero" or "Dear Esther" challenge traditional gameplay mechanics and instead focus on poetic narratives, merging tech-art ideals with mainstream gaming.

A Marketing and Memorable Device Let's not forget the iconic lines and verses that players remember long after they've finished a game. These poetic snippets can become synonymous with the game itself, serving as powerful marketing tools and creating a lasting emotional connection with the audience.

In conclusion, while poetry might seem an old-world art form, its incorporation into the gaming industry showcases its timeless appeal. Games are, after all, a form of storytelling, and what better way to tell a story than with the age-old beauty of poetic expression? Whether it's for narrative depth, emotional connection, or a cerebral challenge, poetry has carved a niche for itself in the digital playground, proving once again its universal allure.

- Raz