I'm a writer, editor, and narrative designer working at Blendo Games. I am also a pathological cyclist and transit enthusiast who frequently goes on strange...
I am currently rebuilding a Fuji S10-S, a road bike from the 1970s. This bike belonged to my dad and is in very good condition. I watched it get rebuilt a couple different times over the course of my childhood, but have never ridden it. I'm posting about it to basically start a timer on myself. This bike is in very good condition and doesn't need much fixing, but the quill stem is seized into the…
When you work in games, you are often painfully aware that there are still, somehow, hordes of people out there in the world who think that all consoles are "a Nintendo," or that all videogames are for 12-year-old-boys, or that your dream job would certainly be to work on Fortnite. Many game developers have these kinds of people for parents. When I used to discuss my job around family, I could see…
I just found this blog post from Adam Le Doux, the creator of bitsy, a very tiny pixel art gamemaking tool that anyone can learn to use in almost no time at all. It hit me like a truck because: holy fuck, bitsy is ten years old??? I remember it coming out! What the fuck! I made a bunch of games when bitsy came out. You can see all of them here. They were made with an early version of bitsy, back…
I sat down and plowed through Knytt Classic in a single sitting. While I was doing it, I had a lot of thoughts about why this game was so influential to me and others, and what it was like to be "in" the "scene" of indie game enjoyers who were talking about this game, and others like it, in the late 2000s. I think the biggest thing I have to remind myself about games like this is that they were…
It's hard to overstate how important Nifflas was to "the indie games scene" when I first got involved in indie games. Back then, Steam barely existed, and most PC indies weren't releasing on it. "Indie games" were, to me, free web games - mostly flash games, and mostly on sites like Newgrounds. I only knew about a couple downloadable titles. I think the first one I ever got was Seiklus. Knytt blew…
If you haven't seen the second movie from Studio Ghibli: it's a documentary they funded with the profits from Nausicaa, and it's very good and weird, and you should watch it! I've now watched it twice! It is about a city called Yanagawa which has a large number of canals running behind residential homes and around tourist attractions. By the 70s, the canals were clogged with trash and overgrown…
I've played several hours of Big Walk by now. It's a multiplayer puzzle game where you look like this: And solve puzzles in buildings that look like this: In a much more "realistic" forest environment that looks like this: That contrast between the game's bright and toylike tools, structures, and characters and the much more noisy, "realistic" environment is super interesting. I think this game is…
I've posted about this game before... it has a demo now!! Here's the demo trailer: I found it insanely mentally difficult to play this demo [laudatory]. I actually did not get very far because I knew I was too tired to mentally steel myself for the rest of the experience, so I took a break and plan to come back later. It's extremely torturous, mentally!! This is a good thing. The game is a…
Here are some more (mediocre) photos from various things I've experienced recently around LA, including my experience in the secret tunnel, an experience attending a live Pokemon Go event that I haven't yet written up, and some other random shit I've done lately. I stand by my often-reiterated claim that if anyone living in LA is ever bored, they are simply stupid. It is impossible to be bored in…
I'd lived in LA for nearly 11 years without ever visiting the Getty Villa. I finally managed to get my ass over there last week. It was fun! I enjoyed it. I think I was surprised by how small the Villa is, but upon reflection, I shouldn't have been surprised at all. It is a weird house that a guy was hoarding art in. I should not have expected it to be as large or full or dense as the Getty proper…