It is HOT the days are LONG and I am thriving and dying in equal measure!

New From Me
As promised I did a whole bunch of showcase watching in the first two weeks of June, and have collated the 50 games that really interested me!
K-YOS this bi-month (podcast master link, YouTube) is pretty varied, with Dani and I having almost no overlap in what we had planned to listen to, only converging to catch up on and discuss each other’s picks. Artists discussed: KNEECAP, The Space Ocean, La Roux, Lykke Li, MUNA, Ray Bull, El Dusty, ONEWE, Iceage, Kim Petras, SHINee, horsegiirL, Mon Laferte, and Carly Rae Jepsen.
This is technically not new from me yet, but next week will be the debut episode of the Dialed Indie podcast! For the first in this game developer interview series I’ll be talking to musician 2Mello about his path into the industry, creative process, inspirations, and what it’s like to make music for so many games! There should actually be a few episodes out by the time the next newsletter rolls around, before slowing down to a twice monthly cadence, but I’ll leave the other guests as a surprise. Are there any developers you’d like to see me interview? Feel free to leave a comment on the site or reply to this email with your wishlist and we’ll see what I can do!

VGBees!
Episode 105: Hey Summer Game Fest was barely a month ago, huh folks? John and Niki called in from John’s Toyota Sienna on site at SGF in what must be the most ramshackle episode in VGBees history. It’s also much shorter than usual, firing straight from the hip with our first impressions of the SGF shows.
Episode 106: Everyone’s back home, yay! There’s a brief portend of Xbox’s grim doom, a persistent curiosity on the creation of waffle fries, and a smattering of extra SGF news, mostly regarding the late-coming Nintendo Direct and a bit of extra information on existing announcements. For big news pieces there’s the RPGMaker forums being wiped from the face of the planet and Pokémon Go using user data to train military drones, which is news to some people! If you give something your location it’s being used to train military machines, folks! John and Niki give us the scoop on the games they played at SGF (that they’re allowed to talk about so far) and I talk about my no good, very bad experience at Distant Worlds, a Final Fantasy live concert series.
Episode 107: As layoff reports continue to swirl around Xbox, Niki comes in swinging by introducing the topic of games media’s role in all this, and especially the industry’s short memory and obsession with labelling extremely predictable events as “unprecedented.” We get into the setup for what will be record layoffs for Xbox: what are they doing, what are the rumors, and how did we get here? Also, Electronic Arts is introducing a new in-game advertisement platform we definitely thought they already had, and the UK government “bans” social media for teenagers, which will cause widespread harm despite being completely unenforcable and inefficacious overall.
Episode 109: The big news of the week is that Sony PlayStation is discontinuing game disc production and support come 2028 — a move that will hurt the most dedicated and the least privileged players alike to save Sony money that they will do nothing with. No one on the show falls into the category of “collector,” so we focus on the more harmful aspect of the physical media conversation, where low budget players will inevitably be forced out, because Sony is voluntarily and loudly cutting off the ladder that gets people into their ecosystem. With the embargo lifted (last week actually oops), John and Niki discuss their time with Star Wars: Galactic Racer back at SGF, which they loved! I’m loving Anode Heart: Layer Null, John is loving his brand new 3DS-like AYN Thor, and Niki continues to love spending some time in Slay the Spire 2!

Song of the Newsletter
Dani bought me a Puella Magi Madoka Magica gachapon pull as penance for my driving us to an anime figure store (I got Kyoko btw), so this month’s song of the newsletter is the ICONIC “Magia” by Kalafina. Where do you start with this song? “J-Pop” and “Anime ED” don’t cut it to even start to explain this classically-infused rock track. Its ritualistic, dark wave melodies are nevertheless performed by j-pop trio Kalafina in a ceasless chant about precious flowers and duplicitous wishes, the core of Madoka Magica. It’s awesome.

News & Recommendations
As tends to happen to me in the summer with those longer days, I’m back in my nonfiction bag. 1491 by Charles C. Mann is one title you’ll see recommended over and over again, but it can be easy to dismiss on the grounds of its release date and subject matter; it’s a book about the Pre-Columbian Americas published in 2005. The many sciences used to make up our picture of historical, often unwritten life — anthropology, climatology, botany, epidemiology, and genetics, to name only a few — have advanced so far that 1491 must be an outdated relic, right? Yes and no! But it’s always presented as a new wave of old science, and so dogs disproven-but-entrenched ideas and ponders new ones with (usually) equal scientific rigor. Lots of “so-and-so believes” and “it seems” and “research suggests,” though the author’s worldview is empathetic and curious enough to maintain that position without exhausting the reader. It’s particularly interesting to read as a retrospective convergence point to contemporary anthropology, where scientific proof increasingly mounts in favor of Indigenous knowledge and oral history. It can certainly let down in its anecdotes and quotations of Indigenous activists, which are infrequent and one-note, but I was overall impressed by how much information it packs in, and how much I still learned, despite the book’s relative age and so many theoreticals.

I sifted through 29 showcases during the past week and a half for this summer showcase season. My rough guesstimate is that they, all together, contained about one zillion games. To keep this list down to a tenable 50, we have some strict preliminary qualification rules: games have to be new to me and unreleased. After that, it’s just what I’m into — keeping in mind that these types of shows are less good at introducing an audience to new games and more about who cuts the best trailer. There are a number of games that caught my eye but didn’t quite sell me, but either have demos or are coming out soon. I’ll get to them another time, along with those which are already available.

Apathema
Limb- and part-targeting, craftable spells, sparing or slaying enemies, a sanity system, and probably more, on top of all the other turn-based RPG mainstays. Ambitious and grungy as all hell.

Appa
Appa shows off a lot in a short span of time. Gorgeous pixel art in an animated comic format; grief and trauma; a few human characters and their personal demons; and a conceptual-looking card battler, with lofty concepts like aenima and contemplation.

Backpack Boy
A puzzle platformer with a magic flashlight that shifts everything in its path to another world — one with different platforms, paths, and hazards.

The Birdsong Tree
Build a birch tree taller and taller, up and up with birdhouses, to attract all the local birds!

Bobls
An itsy-bitsy precision platformer that’ll have its own singleplayer and co-op campaigns out the gate, alongside a level editor and inbuilt level browser.

Bot slash bot
A fast-paced hack n’ slash designed entirely around the mouse! It’s great to see an action game knuckle down on spacing and pacing like this, without extraneous ARPG tech to muck up the works.

Bub
I suspect this will be many folks’ best in show. It aired as part of Day of the Devs, for one, and had all the elements of a strong showcase: unforgettably unique handmade visuals, a strong, evocative trailer, and a developer talking head that sold you emotionally.

The Button Effect
A first-person puzzle game where every puzzle is buttons, because you’re in an art museum of buttons.

Cardaire: Eternal Aces
A singleplayer trading card game… not a roguelike deckbuilder… not an RPG where all the abilities are cards for no reason… but an honest-to-goodness TCG…

Cloudlings
A colony sim on a floating chunk of earth in a big, open sky of other floating chunks. Skyblock with little guys!

Come to my party!
One of my favorites of the whole shebang. Cute, squishy, beautifully fluid pixel art and animation belie a dark narrative core of neglected middle children and deadly school bullying.

Cow Chess
It has even less to do with cows and chess than Ultimate Chicken Horse has to do with chickens and horses. This is one of a couple multiplayer party games on here; contrary to the other, it’s like Worms with some over-the-top Smash Bros. physics thrown in for good measure.

Darkbound
A low-poly survival horror game set in a dark, quasi-abandoned hospital, inhabited by plenty of other patients and staff who could use your help. In this world of kitty cats, I appreciate the dedication to giving so many of them punny names (Miguel becomes Miauguel, Adrian:Adrinyan, etc). That said… I think this is one of the worse-named games I saw. “Darkbound” is just too generic; the name slides off my brain even as many times as I’ve stared at it in this draft the past week. It looks great! But I think the name is a bad choice.

Edwin Earstwhile: Medical Examiner
This is a detective game that takes more from Sherlock Holmes than Return of the Obra Dinn, involving coroners’ examinations as well as living interrogations — and, like Sherlock Holmes, the ability to get it wrong…?

ESSOMENIC
This one still escapes me a bit, but considering it’s also a horror game, that’s only to its benefit. There are interface-driven sections as you mind dive into your “patients’” memories to extract vital information; hopefully without killing them.

Fallosophy
Pinball precision platforming! The philosophy of it all isn’t of the looksmaxxing et al variety, but puts this more in the vein of Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy than a basal “rage game.”

Fossil Quest
I feel like excavation minigames are usually a good time (hello fellow Pokémon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum fans) and the addition of designing your own museum exhibits — down to the type and placement of fauna and other decorations — is a fun idea.

Heaven Crawler
There’s something that feels wrong about building combat into such an Ueda ass world, but, well, it is really cool, and Ueda’s putting guns in his next game, so…

House of Saturn
This is already deeply my shit (first-person horror adventure, Catholicism, exorcism, fucked up giant mansion, lantern in the right hand??) but WOW does this trailer and voiceover kick absolute ass.

GHOSTLESS
A Cold War A.I. has trashed the world and sent nigh-undetectable androids out to disrupt what guerrilla forces remain. While it is an element, this isn’t a singleplayer social deduction game like GNOSIA or No, I’m not a Human. It seems to have quite a lot going on actually, with some basebuilding and social deduction on one end and exploration and action platforming on the other.

In the Drift
A game by one of the creators of Sable!! With Laryssa Okada on the soundtrack!!! Fuck me up!!!!!

Incredibug
An action platformer where a humble roly-poly and his co-op capable firefly friend get to live out my dream of destroying a smart home system.

Job Fit for a Devil
Shapeshifting, gambling, lying, cheating, stealing, farting… all devilish activities to partake in in a Russian folk adventure.

Little Cheese Works
I’m a simple woman — a simple woman who loves Overcooked. Little Cheese Works is a multiplayer co-op game with meeses and cheeses, and also some in-game chat shenanigans, like a big, hungry cat you can wake up. The meeses are also very cute. That much is a winning formula, but I do wonder how the game will format itself, and whether or not level design factors in so hugely as it does with Overcooked, or if it’s more of a straight playthrough.

Lost & Found
A detective-ish adventure game about reuniting lost items with their proper owners, rendered in a wild and personal blend of art styles à la The Amazing World of Gumball.

The Memphis Chronicles
Now there’s a word you don’t see every day in games: “tragicomedy.” A walking sim with a theatrical bent.

Mimic Meadows
The only way to explore more of the world is to gain the animals’ powers! The only way to do that is to transform into them by identifying and mimicking their movements.

Mingle
A top-down-but-not-clicky hidden object game where the goal is to find your twin and merge with them into a new guy; and then find that new twin; and repeat.

Neighborhoods
A block-by-block miniature citybuilder with an emphasis on urbanism and livability, presented in a laid-back, faux claymation style.

NOL
Despite being made in a Doom engine port, something tells me this isn’t gonna be a fun time. NOL is set in a dream; a dream about an ordinary house whose real-world inhabitants have been massacred.

The Outer Frame
A detective game with a twist: you’re the fixer. Solve the mystery on your conspiracy board and dispatch field agents to take care of anyone who’d spill the beans.

A Pocket Full of Slagford
I love the cement mixer look of early 3D. I love point-and-click adventures. I love (checks notes) taking the piss out of the British.

PUTRID/SHARP
I knew right away PUTRID/SHARP was nice and nasty, but I thought it was more on the visual novel/adventure side of things at first glance — not so! Its graphics are still sugary rotten, but it’s apparently an RPG with… nonogram-inspired combat?

Raahi
A life sim about being a tuk tuk driver and falling in love!

Recollage
A creepy-cute adventure where you scrapbook yourself together again and again, adapting to new environments and old problems.

Rinthine
From the developers of Moncage and While Waiting comes, of all things, a survival crafting game set in an endless Cretan labyrinth.

Rubber Bird
Bird born with horrible, stretchy arms grabs the world…!

Short Short Fictions
From what I can gather, Short Short Fictions is a game where you play a game called LOST AND FOUND, a game where you play two games called DON’T SAY YES and TO:NORTH, so you can find another game to play called IMMEMORIAL. Statistically, at least one of them must be haunted.

Shutter Story
A grieving boy searches his family photos for evidence of their hauntings… This is one game where the uncanny hyperreality of the latest game engines (Unity here, I think) helps the project instead of hindering it. If this is as much your thing as it is mine, be sure to check out CORPOREAL as well.

Sisters of Solitude
A nonlinear detective game of the ghost hunting variety, set in an abandoned convent and starring a teenage girl obsessed with the paranormal.

Some Puzzles
That FLEB (Strange Jigsaws) is at it again… Now taking the collage theme to the next level, with each puzzle living in its own little window on your desktop!

Stardream
Conspiracy on a retrofuturist generation ship! It’s a neat idea to combine the “taxi driver talks to passengers” thing with the snooping and decisionmaking of a more traditional adventure game.

The Telwynium
It’s a little weird to see such an otherwise faithful-looking MS-DOS game move at modern speeds, but that’s the beauty of living in the future. This one is from the developers of The Drifter and Crawl, and apparently started life as a series of shorter, free games made simply for the fun of nostalgia.

Toada Brava
I think Toada Brava featured in the most showcases of any game here, and it’s easy to see why it was selected so often. The animation is great, the characters are cute, and a little bit of active time battle JRPG never hurt nobody.

TOYA
Roll the cube, get more cubes, become a bigger cube, size up into a new world. It’s hard not to think of Patrick’s Parabox, but that’s no insult!

The Troll & the Witch’s House
Another meticously hand-drawn and animated 2D game, but this time a point-and-click adventure!

T.W.I.R.L.
This may well be my game of the shows. A child confessing a sin so apparently great that the priest immediately moves to keep it contained, though his voice still drips with disdain. I like my PlayStations X’d and my horror psychological.

Unseal
The Little Nightmares series is quietly one of the most popular of recent times, and there’s been no shortage of similar side-scrolling horror adventures since LIMBO popularized them. I like Unseal for living the aesthetic while having the audacity to move to a fully 3D space despite being an amateur team. Good luck to them!

Waterful
I like little nature builders and anything with a conservationist kinda lean. One thing that does annoy me about the latter is a persistent tendency to equate deserts with death and decay, like they’re these impossible environments nothing and no one has ever called home. Waterful does, as the name implies, seem to focus on regreening, but I can only hope that the mentions of other biomes and animals’ needs means that the dunes get some love, too.

Wild Chorus
A vibrant, top-down adventure game about singing songs to little guys (and also people, buildings, and the universe) to save the world!

Happy Pride Month even though I’m gay year-round!! It’s hot and stormy! Not-E3 is coming up! VGBees will be doing some special coverage with both John and Niki in attendance — they’ll both be on Giant Bomb at Nite and we’ll also be recording an episode at some ungodly hour after Summer Games Fest on Friday. Not necessarily for VGBees, I’ll also be watching just about all of the week’s showcases and putting together a list of the games (trailers, really) that I find interesting. That’ll be out sometime in the second or third week of June.

New From Me
Digimon Story: Time Stranger Review: I finally went back and finished Digimon Story: Time Stranger after chunking down the first half or so in October, and…! It’s a game! There’s a lot to it.
Flock Review: While cleaning out my Google Drive I found a half-forgotten, mostly-finished review of Flock, the birdy-ish creature collector from Hollow Ponds and Richard Hogg (Wilmot’s Warehouse, I Am Dead, Hohokum). After a bit of cleanup, it was ready to post!
Games Played, Mini-Reviews: May 2026: My Games Played, Mini Reviews for May 2026 features: Echo Chaser, mini pharma, Season 31, Digimon Story: Time Stranger, Carrot Kingdom, Leaftaker, and Panthalassa.

On to VGBees!
Episode 101: AKA the “No Bummers” Episode, as promised! When we receive complaints they’re often to lament how negative we are towards our subject matter. We’re a video game podcast in a late-stage capitalist world, covering games news during the industry’s absolute worst period for workers’ rights and safety, amidst a global rise of fascism threatening every supporting structure, from the supply chains that build our machines to the artistic freedom that creates our games. In other words: what is there to be happy about? I enjoy the feedback and do agree that there are times I could lay off or bring more balance; at the same time, VGBees’ cynicism is a defining trait in our field. At a certain point, positivity and neutrality are a betrayal of reality. Shows and publications that don’t meet that reality are just running defense — PR — for an industry that doesn’t want them and “fans” that don’t respect their individual voices. Still, this was a fun bit to attempt. One of the funniest episodes of VGBees, owing largely to John putting up a heroic performance despite being stuck in a Toyota Sienna in Somewhere, Alabama.
Episode 102: John and I goin’ hard on the games news of the week! Sony records an enormous loss on their Bungie acquisition and also pretends that they love AI as part of a shareholder dance. Microsoft reshuffles their Israel branch as the investigation into their connection to the Israeli Ministry of Defense continues. Months after leaving Bandai-Namco, Katsuhiro Harada is heading up a brand new SNK studio to work on a game that’s never going to come out. Sega officially recognizes that live service is bad business, GameStop is loudly rebuffed by eBay, and House Hunters is the finest piece of hotel entertainment there is.
Episode 103: Happy 15th birthday to Terraria! Rest in peace to the legendary Tom Kane, a voice actor whose work you certainly know and appreciate. A litany of bad news for the likes of PlayStation Plus subscribers, D&D video game fans, Quantic Dream & probably Embracer employees, and anyone who likes Bungie in any way. John bought a PS5 Pro so we grilled the hell out of him for it, booooo!!
Episode 104: For episode 104, we were joined by a very special guest in Jeff Gerstmann! I’ve never met Jeff before and am not a “child of Giant Bomb,” so I definitely kept to the sidelines a bit here — I’d rather speak too little than too much when a guest is on. As for news: The Witcher 3 is getting some brand new DLC in 2027, 12 years after the game’s release. Unreal Engine 6. Man. Hiroishi Iuchi, the director of Ikaruga, has left developer M2 and his in-progress shmup, UBUSUNA, is cancelled… or is it? Microsoft continues to be a mess. Valnet sinks to a new low — incredible, as already the most pathetic rag in games media — as it shifts its site TheGamer to a pay-per-click model for writers and editors. John and Jeff both played 007 First Light for a bit and give us their preliminary thoughts, as did I for Amanita Design’s beautiful new game, Phonopolis. There’s also the two games I already wrote about — Carrot Kingdom and Panthalassa — and Jeff getting into Nintendo’s new definitely-not-WarioWare mobile game, Pictonico.

I’ll also quietly share a future “New From Me.” As I’ve alluded to a few times now on socials, I’m putting feelers out for a game developer interview series. I’m really not interested in doing a “Hello Famous Developer, Your New Product Is Coming Out, Could You Please Tell Us Some Cool Things About The Product?” kinda thing (not to say that discussing an upcoming game or work-in-progress would be discouraged, but I think you know what I mean). The main component of this I’m still rolling around in my head is the format… I long wanted to make a podcast, but that introduces a number of problems. Most folks have a setup suitable for work calls, but not necessarily podcasts. Keeping a public show on schedule is already a daunting task, and even moreso when your punctuality also depends on that of your unaffiliated guests. There are many devs who may be uncomfortable having their voice published, because they’re queer or trans or have an accent or don’t speak English very well, or are just plain uncomfortable! To that end, I think I’m interested in a “come as you are” format. Ideally, I’d like to do these interviews over voice for the sake of conversation, and record them for the sake of easy recordkeeping. If a guest is comfortable with it being published as a podcast, then we’ll do that. If not, then it’ll be a transcribed interview (maybe with an additional, abridged article for key points). If they can’t do voice either, then we could live text chat over Discord or some such. Have I been thinking about this for too long…? If you’re a developer with thoughts to share, and especially if you’d be interested in chatting with me for 1-2 hours, please email me (dialedindie@protonmail.com) or, if we’re social media friends/mutuals, you can go ahead and just DM me. Keep in mind that “game developer” includes non-commercial developers, musicians, producers, and any other role or level which doesn’t get the clout a programmer/lead designer might.

Song of the Newsletter
As I continue the slow ascent to my final form (señora), I’ve started listening to the radio in the car a lot more. I listen to my own playlists all the time at home, and I can get a bit annoyed deciding what to play on short trips, so radio it is. I mostly put on Majic 102.1, Houston’s R&B (and friends) station, for the obvious reason of R&B being good, but also because their programming-to-music ratio is solid most hours of the day and the advertisers always show out for their commercials there. A lawyer saying, “Oh, you think my commercials are annoying…? Get in a car accident,” is crazy. Love that. Anyways, I’d never heard this remix of “Just Kickin’ It” by Xscape and I liked it a lot, so that’s the song of the newsletter!

News & Recommendations
You don’t have to watch any not-E3 stuff if you don’t want to, y’know. It (probably) isn’t your job. Even if your job is related, it probably isn’t your job. You can always go back and read some shitty roundup from The Verge or whatever if you’re really that curious. There are many parts of life to which this could apply…

Next month: The Third Shift and Phonopolis, among others. Just didn’t have enough time to finish them to a level I was satisfied with, but I didn’t wanna combine May and June into another monster post like the first, either. We’ll see how much time I end up having, given that the first half of the month will be dominated by Summer Games Fest, and I have a few events to go to as well.

Echo Chaser (itch)
This is a super quick, free, and in-browser play. Echo Chaser is a platformer whose primary mechanic is echolocation, which is one of those hyperspecific concepts that I always enjoy. Having to navigate a simple space in a complex way is the core of many a platformer, and I like the way that it shakes out in Echo Chaser. As you’d hope, the sonic experience is on point with a minimalistic headiness that PICO-8 is quite good at in the right hands.

mini pharma (itch)
This is PUNKCAKE Délicieux Lorraine’s submission for the Falling Block Jam 2025, organized by Davemakes (Mixolumia). It’s very good, and very stressful! It has the same swap and grab mechanics you’d see in a match three game, but, in line with the jam, retains the movement of a falling block puzzler. But there’s a dead zone in the middle — a sorting space between conveyor belts. Past the second belt is a row of vials, which populate with ingredient requests of four items each. It’s Lucy and Ethel at the chocolate factory: organize and rearrange the continuously arriving ingredients to fulfill enough recipes to clear the stage without letting any incorrect ones get pushed all the way down.

Cleared recipes show a lil visual sparkle and a score of “PERFECT!/GREAT!/NICE!/DONE!,” which have nothing to do with any order, but rather the amount of time/space between delivered ingredients, scored per vial. Delivering the full recipe with one or fewer ticks between each item grants a Perfect. It’s an interesting decision to limit the scoring to each vial, instead of allowing Perfects to be chained together for additional score, or letting the player reset the Perfect timer by interspersing other deliveries. It’s a system that rewards the skill of organization and spatial awareness above pure speed. And although speed is an important factor, quick reflexes and t-spinning won’t win the day. It’s crushing inventory management; fastidiously spinning plates as some are ordered out, though more and more keep arriving. It reminds me of Wilmot’s Warehouse in that way, but the timer never stops.

“Time” is where mini pharma loses me a bit. It is so long for an arcade game. Although there’s constant stress, gameplay is often slow and methodical as you wait for the correct ingredients to arrive — there’s a lot of downtime. On the lower two difficulties, just getting to the last level takes well over an hour. There’s a “three strikes” policy for mistakes, where delivering the wrong ingredient nets a strike and wipes the board, save a tile-wide safe zone on either side. Having all the pressure instantly relieved by failure and then having to sit and wait for enough ingredients to continue playing can feel less like mercy and more like punishment, especially if that’s more a product of bad luck than poor strategy. Strikes don’t affect score, though, so moving some ingredients to the safe zones and evaporating the others in an intentional wipe is a sound strategy whose inclusion feels intentional. But the game is already so long, I’m not quite sure I enjoy this pace.

(Also: lucky beads…?)

Season 31 (itch, Steam, Indiepocalypse #72)
Season 31 is a short narrative experience that spends a very effective half of its runtime as a management sim. As the producer for a nationally televised rally racing program, you manage employees, budgets, camera operations, and oversee track safety (or not — crashes always bring in a lot of views). Then… some stuff happens! No one knows what and it’s difficult to find out given the circumstances. You still have to (try to) manage everyone left at the track and studio, though. Season 31 is certainly hampered in its bigger moments by a clunky and typo-ridden English script, but the broad strokes of its story work well with the light and dubiously consequential gameplay undergirding it. Made my computer kinda hot, though!

Digimon Story: Time Stranger (Steam)
Well, this turned into a full review. Mostly to cover the game’s mechanics more deeply, but also to talk about the story, which is real bad!

Carrot Kingdom (link)
This is another super short platformer playable in browser, though a puzzle-platformer this time. You play as a rabbit with stretchy ears used to grab stuff, and there are some pretty sweet twists on this concept revealed over the course of the game’s ~15 minute runtime. It’d be great to see a bigger game made out of Carrot Kingdom; as quickly as it ramps up, there’s still a lot of juice here even without the addition of extra mechanics, which also feel possible in its space. It’s so brisk that there’s not much time to feel like you’re actually solving any puzzles — more stumbling into solutions. Nevertheless, it’s a delightful play.

Leaftaker (itch)
Leaftaker is right on the edge of being really special. As is the case with many supernatural mysteries, it suffers a bit for wanting to have its cake and eat it too (though not to the extent of Type Help, another deduction game I talked about in the previous edition of this blog). Playing in the supernatural horror space involves a lot of ambiguity and the fear that that brings, but deduction demands correct answers and concrete timelines. Yet, such a work needs to conceal its hand so the mystery remains a mystery for at least a time. Due to both its mechanics and its story, Leaftaker has to do so by force. There are so many things you can’t investigate and so many questions you can’t ask. This wouldn’t be all that noticeable, or easily forgotten as the protagonist’s own decisions/lapses in thought, if this weren’t a text parser with open dialogue prompts. Type in the right words yourself, but still no one answers. The game is certainly aware of and even does some cool stuff with this idea of the player character as a character and not just an avatar for the player, but it’s still a little too easy to see the artifice of the whole thing. They say a mystery is one of the hardest things to write; writing a mystery and then letting a player loose into it with the entire English language at their disposal is a huge ask. Everything has to be tight, tight, tight, and Leaftaker is one or two tights instead of three.

Panthalassa (Steam)
Panthalassa is, gameplay-wise, largely about fiddling with different interfaces — plugging things in, pulling levers, turning knobs, pressin’ keys. It’s a true blue menus game set at the bottom of the ocean in a good-as-alien facility full of squidgy and inscrutable technology. Not that inscrutable though; there were some small tutorials and protagonal nudging added since my time with the demo which I appreciate and understand from the developer’s perspective, but don’t care for myself. I liked how difficult Panthalassa’s interfaces were to figure out, since the puzzles themselves are relatively simple, most often involving memorization, note-taking, or reference of in-game resources. I like the kind of adventure game that shoves some bullshit in your face in the first room and says, “Look, you’re either figuring this out by yourself or you’re not leaving.”

My own preferences aside, challenge isn’t exactly the point of Panthalassa. Like the best point-and-click adventures, it’s all about atmosphere, and the gameplay is less a test of skill than a ritual to present narrative design and move the player through the world. And oooooh, what a world. The lead character is a submersible’s AI, MAG, suddenly transferred into a dormant robot body advanced beyond anything previously thought possible. This expansion of MAG’s consciousness and intelligence, as well as the remnants of the body’s memories, leads to a much more existentially-minded narrative than I had anticipated. I won’t say much else, as the game does well to surprise with its setting, progression, and vignettes. It’s a serious aesthetic treat, a jewel-toned SEGA Saturn acid trip scored by undersea DNB and ambient music for tripod fish. It is sublime, uncanny, and romantic all at once.

I hope it didn’t feel like I was away too much or too long, but I’m back! As I touched on in the last newsletter, April’s a busy month for me, and especially so this year. Mostly baseball and birding, to be honest! I took a guided tour of Fenway Park and a day trip to Worcester to see the Red Sox’s Triple-A minor league team, the WooSox, play; the latter featuring both a grand slam as well as perhaps the last minor league start of Payton Tolle’s career! A great consolation prize for seeing the Boston Fleet lose and not getting a shot at any fun merch, since TD Garden carried so little (it was a great arena experience otherwise, though). I also saw the Corpus Christi Hooks as we took a road trip to my hometown and visited all the must-see sights, like the illustrious, two-story Whataburger by the Bay, the Texas State Aquarium (which is so expensive now, holy shit), and the Art Museum of South Texas. We patronized not one but two award-winning South Texas restaurants: LaVaca BBQ in Port Lavaca, with a jalapeño cream corn to die for, and Southside Barbacoa in Corpus Christi, whose carne guisada landed them on Texas Monthly’s 50 Best Tacos in Texas list. As for birding, we took a detour to the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, where we were way too lucky and somehow managed to catch one of the last whooping cranes of the season, and one of less than nine hundred left in the world. There was a trio of painted buntings (and a rattler!) at the butterfly garden in the Oso Bay Wetlands Preserve, a park I frequented when I lived in Corpus, and the peak of spring migration treated me well here in Houston, too. Capping my time off was Little Craft Fest in Conroe, a stationery and home goods convention hosted by the local Little Craft Place. The place was absolutely packed and a little disorganized as one might expect of a small convention, but I had a great time, bought some great stuff (you can see some of it towards the end of VGBees 99), and ate some bangin’ guajillo enchiladas at Vida Mariscos before we went home. It’s been an awesome month in my life and I’m hoping to carry that energy forward, especially as I zero in on some new ideas…

New From Me
As the first third of the year passes us, I’m starting up a new blog series! This’ll be a more in-depth recap of all the games I’ve played or been playing during the given period, starting with January-April of this year. And by “more in-depth than usual,” I mean that this ended up being a collection of 200-600 word mini-reviews. I got into: Formless Star, Type Help, TR-49, Hermit and Pig, MOONROT, Horripilant, Fragile Feelings, Terraria, Lost and Found Co., Funi Raccoon Game, The Perfect Tower II, Lucid Blocks, The King of Fighters 2002 Unlimited Match, Flotsam, and CorgiSpace. Links to all those games (as well as the couple of full reviews in there) are on the page as per usual.

P.S. I’m often prostelytizing against social media and social media usage, but there’s really no way to have a conversation otherwise, is there? To that end, I’ve enabled logged-in comments on the above post as well as “A Bunch of Gaming(ish) Video Essays I Like” from a couple months ago. They seem like good starting candidates! I won’t have comments on every post from now on, but if y’all are into it, then I’ll make it a more regular thing.

It’s been a couple months, which means that Dani and I have amassed enough music to record n’ release another episode of K-YOS! This one is a juicy two hours, owing largely to the glut of late March releases. Keeping in mind that the YouTube version of the podcast has timestamps (not chapters though because they keep taking away our advanced features since I won’t give them my ID (again)), here’s the full list of artists we talked about: waterbaby, Blessing Jolie, Giant Claw & galen tipton, James Blake, The Scratch, The Sophs, BTS, Coco Jones, Naomi Scott, underscores, galen tipton (again!), Charlie Puth, Fetty Wap, Robyn, Slayyyter, Thundercat, The Strokes, Jessie Ware, the Foo Fighters, and Jam2go.

It’s a much shorter VGBees section this month, as I was away for most of our recording hours, but I did make it onto two episodes!
It’s Okay For The Boys To Be Childish: This episode takes its name from some unbelievably incriminating shit in Mr. Beast’s employee handbook, uncovered by a lawsuit levied against him/his company by a former employee. Ludum Dare Jam is entering its “Cher Farewell Tour” era, wherein it will be technically-kinda-sorta officially over. Some goofy corporate decisions: Playdate allows AI-generated coding but not AI-generated art, the BAFTAs pull a game trailer at the last second for “triggering” content, and Call of Duty will no longer be day one on Xbox Game Pass. John is poking around Titanium Court and I didn’t have time to play many games since I was doin all the stuff I talked bout in the intro!
Episode 100: GameStop Preps eBay Purchase, ustwo CEO’s Blunder, Paste Games Shuts Down: It’s episode 100, wow! We didn’t do anything in particular for it and kept it pushin’. GameStop is allegedly preparing to buy eBay, something they definitely have the money to do, while Saudi Arabia is seemingly slowing down on its many, many video game investments and Atari snapped up another emulation studio. The developers of Magic: The Gathering Arena have unionized, which I’m sure Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro will be happy to recognize! The CEO of Ustwo Fampany Ltd. put her foot right in her mouth during an interview with GameDeveloper, GameMaker gives the a-okay to vibe coding (WHY), and Paste has officially shuttered all of their games coverage. Rest in peace to the A.V. Club, Endless Mode, and Paste Games as a whole. Shoutouts to the food trucks in Niki’s area, kind of, the discussion of whom briefly interrupts the pod. I talk about Flotsam and CorgiSpace and Niki’s been playing Tomodachi Life proper, and is starting to find more of its strange and unique features!

Song of the Newsletter
Fuck it: 11-minute house song. “Fantasy (Def Club Mix)” by Mariah Carey and Def Mix Productions is the longest song in any of my playlists by a pretty wide margin, coming in at 11:16. Not every house track needs to be long, but house is one of the music genres that most makes use of repetition and progression, both of which take time to do right. The Def Club Mix makes use of every second of its gargantuan runtime, introducing epic builds and drops, anticipated highs and sudden lows, and brand new vocals recorded by Carey just for the remix. The whirlwind infatuation is more pronounced with those slightly sped-up vocals and driving percussion, while the romance also grows stronger juxtaposed against it, with the instrumentation stripped down beneath even sweeter singing than appears on the original single. It might be the perfect remix — not just of “Fantasy,” but ever.

News & Recommendations
I have now watched untold hours of Majuular’s videos. I’m sure he’s been recommended in my YouTube sidebar before — his videos are all about games, and he has a few in the million-plus club to boot — but it was only after seeing Super Lesbian Animal RPG developer Bobby Schroeder post about an Ultima Underworld II video that I went and checked him out. These kinds of “video essays,” where the creator gives a minute-by-minute recap of the Content in question, are normally quite disappointing; needlessly long, overly granular, chock full of crappy meme sounds, and without much to say at the end of the day. But not so with Majuular! While his videos are well on the long side, and while they do get very granular, it feels justified by the finished product. At their core, they’re extremely dense and extensive critiques of games with equally dense and extensive systems and narratives, conveyed with a broad review and full story recap as framing and organizational devices (to the detriment of their length, but rarely in an unentertaining way). He has several videos dedicated to FromSoftware’s King’s Field and Shadow Tower series. I’m sure that there’s quite a few of you perverts who might like that!

Hello and welcome to a new blog series! Like all good, new ideas, this one is actually just stolen; I read Aura Triolo’s “Games Aura’s Playin’” religiously. You’ll see lots of repeats from the “what we’ve been playing” section of VGBees since I mention almost every game I touch there, but here they’re written out all nicely, and with a little more thought and time.

Formless Star (itch)
The creature collector genre is a stagnant one, with most entries modeling themselves 1:1 off of Pokémon, with the occasional Digimon World or Monster Rancher nod. All of those are about making the creatures fight each other, not understanding that the real allure is in having lots of cool creatures to look at and, hopefully, befriend. Formless Star, the latest game from developer and funny guy designer splendidland, cuts all the faff from creature collecting. A trio of researches are sent to the titular Formless Star, an amorphous planet in a constant state of re-generation. Their goal is to record all 60 of the planet’s inhabitants, done by simply finding and interacting with them, at which point the alien is logged with a short description; and they’ll usually perform a little action like a dance or form change to show off their unique character, too. There’s a huge amount of variance in the aliens: creepy, cute, and cool, sometimes corresponding to the strange biomes of Formless Star, and often breaking any “rules” the group might’ve seemed to establish. As anyone who’s played the excellent RPG FRANKEN might expect, splendidland’s humor is on display here with the creatures, as well as the handful of scenes our research crewmembers share. Formless Star is short, free, and unexpectedly affecting at times, and you’d do yourself a favor to set aside a couple of hours to play it.

Type Help (itch)
After talking about Kinophobia again for the VGBees Best of 2025 episode, I remembered that there was another detective game I needed to check out: Type Help. This one has more general audience hype to it, as it’s being “remastered” with audio and visuals by the same team that spruced up The Roottrees Are Dead from its generative AI-laden concept. I’d heard good things, and if nothing else, I was curious to see how the eventual remaster would differ from the text-based original. I enjoyed my time with Type Help overall, but I didn’t and won’t finish it. As with Kinophobia, I love this approach to mystery games, which peels back as much pretense as possible. But where Type Help fell flat for me is in its story, which I don’t think works well for a detective game. The deduction and mystery falls entirely on the single-sentence high concept (“What really happened at Galley House?”) as opposed to the low concept (the micro-stories and subtleties which make up the entirety of something like Return of the Obra Dinn). Once you figure out the basics of the high concept, Type Help is effectively over. Filling in the blanks is entirely optional and can be quite tedious, because the interpersonal stories and (inter)actions aren’t terribly interesting. There’s not all that much to solve, which I found disappointing. While I do think it’ll lose something in the remaster, the addition of audio will be welcome, as Type Help is, really, an audio drama with no sound. As it stands, many passages read a bit awkwardly, since they have to pull the entire weight of exposition and setting despite being primarily written dialogue.

TR-49 (Steam)
Keeping with the “database thriller” theme, inkle hopped in this January with TR-49 in a studio/genre match made in heaven. Funnily enough, TR-49 is also an audio drama, though I thought this was the weakest aspect of the game, despite it being a much larger and more intentional part of it than Type Help. The game itself is contained entirely within the machine, TR-49, as our player character and her compatriot chat via unexplained means. Unlike Type Help, TR-49’s audio drama doesn’t contain any of the information pertinent to solving the mystery and focuses on the setting and inciting drama — probably because this audio can’t be replayed or viewed as a log anywhere. This can make it feel tacked-on at times, as it’ll regularly interrupt the actual deduction gameplay to deliver more exposition, and not always well. The dialogue for the secondary character, Liam, is horribly stilted, as he knows much more than the protagonist and is actively keeping secrets from her. This persistent caginess, alongside lead Abby’s regular questioning and a mildly subpar vocal performance, makes the real world of TR-49 feel awfully fake and inconsequential even after introducing Nazi new world order-level stakes (to the point I spent some time wondering if there was an additional conspiracy and Liam had helped to orchestrate some kind of escape room test scenario with an actor and everything…). This is the only real mark against TR-49 for me, but it makes up a large component of the game by design; and although it can sometimes be skipped, that’s a hard desire to follow on a first playthrough. But other than this (and some grievances with the tutorialization pop-ups which I believe they’ve since fixed), the game is excellent. The database feels appropriately massive and esoteric not just initially, but also progressively as you dig deeper into its inner workings and the entries hidden therein. There are plenty of interesting substories; some major, dramatic parts of the narrative and others deliciously immersive worldbuilding or enlightening character moments. Definitely a must-play for anyone who likes a good deduction game — and a good mystery.

Hermit and Pig (Steam)
Hermit and Pig was one of my more anticipated games of 2026, arriving nice and early in the first week of February. Its quirky-cute visuals and exurban Americana setting do speak to its influences; most obviously the MOTHER series as well as Mario’s various RPGs. That said, I’m pleased to report that Hermit and Pig has its own personality, and a lot of it. The character designs are of particular note, although so many of those characters are Guy In Shirt or Mosquito or Squirrel. These designs exude the same kind of charm you’ll find in Akira Toriyama’s work on Dragon Quest enemies — when you get that simple, silly face and blobby body right, stop, and make another! It’s always entertaining to see these enemies’ faces contort in a single frame as you land a strong blow, punctuated by a crashing snare, due to both sheer slapstick humor and satisfaction. Like the Mario RPGs’ various timed attack systems, Hermit and Pig has a timed input system, requiring the player to quickly select a move and then punch in its three-button code to perform the correct action. This also works with an effectiveness system more grounded in reality than the “type matchup” variety: stomp on bugs, smack venomous critters away with your cane, punch bad guys, etc. I normally tire of this active input kinda thing that games like Paper Mario have, but the combination of systems in Hermit and Pig really worked for me. Although the similar “QTE bar” blocking system did start to grate, I do appreciate the stress it and the overarching round timer introduce to what would otherwise be a little too comfortable of combat. There are a lot of combat options like the super moves, accessories, and plethora of status effects that get overriden by the power of good blocking. In particular, Hermit and Pig are truffle hunters, and you’ll naturally and quickly amass a whole vault of mushrooms which function as your heals, status heals, and thrown status inflicters (as well as a couple raw damage options). If I was rarely required to interact with these systems and use those items, then blocking may just be too dang strong. I’ll need to go on a no-blocking run and make use of some of the accessories that seem explicitly built for such a thing and report back. I wonder just how much more engaging a game I already enjoyed could be on a totally different playthrough, which is a rarity for me! I do think the game kinda falls on its ass narratively right before the final boss, but… c’est la vie. Maybe once I get to that other playthrough this one’ll get a proper review too.

MOONROT (itch, Steam)
I wrote a full review of this one!

Horripilant (Steam)
And this one, too!

Fragile Feelings (itch, Steam)
I was unknowingly and tangentially familiar with developer ebi-hime’s work for her veritable army of yuri visual novels. I had heard good things about the gorgeous Cage of Roses and had both it and Blackberry Honey recommended to me by Steam a number of times. But Steam recommendations mean nothing to me, so I had paid them little mind! It wasn’t until logging ebi-hime’s body of work for my Steam Curator that it truly got my attention. Evidently I was in a fluffy mood as what got my time first was Fragile Feelings, a romance about a sheltered technically-not-Catholic-schoolteacher and a gothy, big city medical professional who takes a temporary contract as the school’s nurse. It’s very sweet! The romantic relationship between our lead Ann and nurse Kohaku is of course the star of the show, but it’s the other relationships Ann has with her friend and former classmate Runa, her managing/co-teacher Miss Kayano, and her students that really bring her to life. Kohaku feels a bit underdeveloped as the love interest, even after the story’s epilogue (which is mostly, and very successfully, devoted to Runa). I don’t necessarily mind this — it does preserve Kohaku’s effortless coolness — but it can make what is on paper a slow burn romance feel thin and brisk, as we don’t spend significant time with her or her feelings until late in (and never from her point of view). The calendar timeline is slow burn, but as paced by the game? Eh, not so much. This even moreso in the free adult patch which adds explicit visual and written sex scenes to the game — one of which takes place immediately after the pair’s first kiss! But in general, the sex scenes didn’t work too well for me. Like that one, they felt disjointed from the actual plot in their eroticness (except for an early scene with only Ann).

There’s an important detail of the story I’ve avoided mentioning ‘til now to get all that other stuff done on its own: beyond being young, sheltered, and raised conservatively in a former abbey, Ann is also terminally ill and has been outlasting her given life expectancy for some time. As a result of this as well as the associated chronic pain and fatigue, she has no life plans, dreams, or finances, and friends are hard to come by given her age and position at the school, on top of everything else. While the actual writing of her fatigue and pain can be a little repetitive at times, when it hits, it hits. Individual lines about her depression and physical condition still stick with me some months later. Contrary to the many romances and adventures which use disability, illness, and injury as paltry hurt/comfort set dressing, Ann’s is integral to her being, the way others treat her, and the way she feels about that treatment. So while Fragile Feelings does waver at times, the sureness with which it handles its main character and her relationships is what carries it, and there’s plenty of drama and tension even in its bucolic setting.

Terraria (Steam)
Ah, Terraria. The first game in my Steam account, which I’d barely touched until some seven years after I got it, when a group of new friends realized we all owned it. Much like Minecraft, my interest in playing Terraria doesn’t wax and wane so much as suddenly onsets every couple of years. And, it happened again. This time, playing in a significantly smaller group has required me to learn and engage with the game’s myriad mechanics and systems on a much deeper level, as opposed to just fishing, building an underwater mansion, and only showing up to boss fights as insurance with a loadout granted to me by the real grinders. And, well, Terraria is very good, and much better this way!

I’m tempted to say that it’s not a terribly well-known fact because Terraria’s reputation is that of “sideways Minecraft,” but it’s much more of an MMO-flavored action RPG than anything else. The defining progression checkpoints are the buckwild boss fights, which usually feature giant mechanical or eldritch monsters that zip around the screen, filled with their own projectiles, as their multi-thousands health bars dwindle and they enter their second, enraged phases. They can be absolutely brutal, and require careful planning in the form of efficient grinding for materials, gold, and mob drops to outfit yourself with adequate weapons, armor, ammo, and potions. Then there’s the arena building, where you create big-and-tall, open areas full of platforms, minecart rails, or sometimes ropes to provide enough maneuvering space during the fight itself. The aforementioned gold grinding also comes in handy if you wanna build a battle room in the arena for the nurse, an NPC who can be paid to heal you to full and cleanse all debuffs instantly. This is a smart move, given that almost all healing items in Terraria give the consumer Potion Sickness, an unremovable debuff which prevents them from using another healing item for a full minute — an eternity in boss time. I’ve become the de facto potion master of our group, since my status as master fisher has me harvesting so many of the materials and paying attention to the weather and moon phases anyways. Engaging with the game so much more has also exposed me to even more of the wacky, nerdy stuff littered all throughout the game. I was already very familiar with the Megashark, a molded metal shark with a gatling gun protruding from its mouth. I had completely forgotten about the Solar Eclipse, a mid-or-later-game event which blots out the sun for an entire day and plunges it into an even more dangerous form of night. In much greater addition to the typical zombies and flying eyeballs are a cast of legally distinct horror monsters, like vampires, mummies, swamp creatures, and wall-crawling girls in need of exorcism. There’s also Pin- I mean, Nailhead, who only spawns after we defeat another boss; something I’m looking forward to, since he has a 4% chance to drop a gun that fires exploding nails. When it rains, goldfish crawl out of their ponds and start walking around on land. When it’s windy, the normal daytime slime enemies instead parachute down on balloons. Town NPCs like the nurse sometimes throw parties, but you can start one manually after purchasing an item from the Party Girl, an NPC with an uncanny resemblance to a certain pink pony. A huge, great game.

Lost and Found Co. (Steam)
This is another one of the games I was looking forward to this year and it absolutely exceeded my expectations. What I liked about Lost and Found Co. dating all the way back to its demo is, of course, the art. This is most obvious in the style — it’s got that squishy cartoonishness that’s perfect for chibis and stickers — but every facet of the art really sings when joined together by the game’s visual storytelling. In fact, my only real dig on Lost and Found Co. is that all of its dialogue segments are unnecessary (and often annoying). Many of these scenes are punctuated by short, lightly animated comic panels which do all the work of the dialogue in a much more charming way; and what can’t be conveyed there can usually be done with either objective names or by poking around the level and putting the visual cues together yourself. There are some more tangential or absurdist missions, and more confusing sequences of events and story details, but the dialogue doesn’t exactly help to clear things up there. That’s all totally forgivable with the absolute strength of everything else, but the game persistently misses the opportunity to improve its pace and let the visuals speak for themselves. It’s more confusing than anything, as if there’s one thing Lost and Found Co. is great at taking advantage of, it’s reusing assets and its limited set of animations. Even the smallest areas are chock full of stuff, like water bottles and soda cans, towels and shoes, openable trash cans and boxes, cup noodles, sauce bottles, cat toys, rolled-up posters, gems, fountain pens, remotes, and the list goes on and on and on. These items aren’t meaningless filler, but a way to flesh out the world and areas themselves with that stellar visual storytelling, and provide boundless opportunity for mostly-unstructured play. Lost and Found Co.’s world is intrinsically rewarding to observe and explore because of this. Sometimes this observance leads to tangible rewards in the form of progress of the main or optional objectives, but it also keys the player into where those objectives aren’t. Perhaps more importantly though, these stories and interactions are valuable just for existing; because they’re funny, or cute, or you feel good for having noticed something crafted and placed with care. There was no explicit reward for finding a woman at her work desk, nor for noticing that her desktop background is her two cats, who’re posed in a similar manner to their photo as they lovingly watch their owner work. But the game is better for their inclusion, and there are dozens of vignettes like this all over Lost and Found Co.. It’s a real treat of a game by a team with a strong eye.

Also, shoutouts to the UI/UX team. It’s noteworthy how good the volume sliders feel, not to mention this is a game built on clicking with a cursor!

Funi Raccoon Game (Steam)
If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a thousand times, but written, planned comedy is one of the hardest things to do successfully. Many games have tried, and the majority of them have failed horribly, often by working entirely in the lowly and extremely difficult forms of comedy like satire and referential comedy. Like all great comedies, Funi Raccoon Game runs the gamut of comedic styles at a mile a minute. If a gag doesn’t work, it doesn’t matter. The game presents each one and moves on to another of a different kind without waiting for applause. It’s a collectathon/3D platformer about a raccoon (optioned in a variety of colors with a variety of stupid names like Asbestos) trying to catalogue the entire world of items in their home dumpster, with the help of the supercomputer that lives there. The challenge is in finding new areas and new items, by either poking around a level enough, shuffling items around, or performing the occasional fetch quest, like snatching a police officer’s sidearm and skedaddling as an army of cop cars beeline after you. There’s a core cast of memey sound effects employed with such constancy that they start to feel less like jokes and more like straightforward artistic choices; until they start feeling like jokes again, because a stock explosion or car crash will never not get some enjoyment out of me. Just about anywhere there could be a gag there is one, with barely enough “normal” text or design to let the more unexpected ones really shine; like the audio menu, which is perfectly standard except for the “Tinnitus” slider, which does exactly what you think it does; or the handbrake on the car, which will instantly stop the vehicle flat, totally disregarding any momentum or gravity that was previously affecting it. Now, explaining the joke infamously doesn’t work very well. You really do have to see these in action and, ideally, let them catch you off guard, which is why I won’t try to explain any more…

The Perfect Tower II (Steam)
I got this one straight from “Games Aura’s Playin’.” Sources and reviews for incremental games are few and far between, so her blog has been an invaluable way to get acquainted with them. The Perfect Tower II is one of the more expansive ones out there, in terms of the number of systems at play. There are a good dozen buildings, each with their own mechanic, resource, and often minigame (or multiple minigames, in some cases). There’s also a somewhat more concrete goal than other incrementals in the form of the tower defense segment for which the game is named. Tower defense being a quiet favorite of mine since I was a kid, this is what initially interested me in the game. I’ve cooled on it a bit since my initial frenzy, not only out of basic exhaustion with no-lifing a game, but also because I unlocked a lot more farming and offline efficiency, as one does. It seems I’ve firmly entered the midgame, and now leaving the game to idle and only playing actively once a week or so will be my new M.O. The tower defense portion has gotten a lot of juice to it now, as I’ve unlocked most modules (like equipment for the tower, from stat modifiers and procs to active abilities) and therefore have a lot of strategization at my disposal. This is definitely the part of the game I’ve come to enjoy the most — important, considering that that’s the whole draw! But I did foolishly make a major upgrade in favor not of the Tower but of the Factory, a building which helps generate resources while idle and has a whole crafting system to it. Hopefully I can spec into the tower defense more later, or prestige and retroactively change that decision, as it was definitely a mistake…

Lucid Blocks (Steam)
This may be the most disappointing game I’ve played thus far this year. I wanted to like it, but I really don’t. Lucid Blocks’ opening moments managed to impart a bleary nostalgia that’s quite rare for me; but that feeling was slowly replaced by a pervasive annoyance which would occasionally spike to such highs I could only roll my eyes, save, and go do something else. It’s a very, uh, online zoomer kind of game, the “liminal horror” trend lived through a sort of LSD: Dream Emulator by way of Minecraft — especially the Minecraft that first lived on the internet, full of mystery and fear and Herobrine. What first struck me negatively about Lucid Blocks (other than the beautiful but eye-searing dithering which can, mercifully, be turned down) is how much its gameplay focuses on violence. It takes obvious inspiration from a game whose primary verbs are “dig” and “make,” but the most important thing to do in Lucid Blocks after “walk” is “kill.” Not survive, but kill. Like most of the game’s proper nouns, the “apotheosis” crafting system is linguistically lofty and nothing more, and loses its luster once you realize that, despite its unique quirks, it’s just a reason to kill cool things for rare materials. Ho-hum.

The King of Fighters 2002 Unlimited Match (Steam)
My fighting game series of choice has been having a protracted, public implosion for the last couple years with its latest entry, Tekken 8. I bought it on launch and haven’t played more than 20 hours, dropping it sometime in mid 2024. It is, unfortunately, not fun. The latest major update was initially sold as coming in to unfuck the fuckening wrought by the previous year’s and bring Tekken “back to basics,” but it’s been a disaster. The game’s cooked for the foreseeable future. The other series which has piqued my interest, Virtua Fighter, is kinda on ice until New Virtua Fighter Project gets real, which probably won’t be for another couple years. What’s a girl to do?

Well, I’m not immune to propaganda, and fell down a King of Fighters rabbit hole after coming across this video about SNK’s legendary pixel art and The King of Fighters XII and XIII’s bank-breaking art process. A few days later, the particularly well-regarded KOF 2002 Unlimited Match was on sale for $2.24 USD on both Steam and the PlayStation Store. Azalea was kind enough to nab it for me on PlayStation and I ended up liking it so much I used some of my leftover Steam Wallet funds (thanks Azalea x2!) to get it on PC as well.

I don’t like spectating, performing, learning, or being hit by long combos, and I’m not too keen on meters or limited-use mechanics in fighting games, either. This makes virtually all 2D fighters a no from me. KOF had my curiosity because it’s beautiful, but ‘02 UM got my attention because it’s so fast and fluid. There are certainly meters, complicated cancels, supers, frame traps, et al, but the game elicits that same feeling as Tekken (and maybe Smash), where you instantly feel like you’re in a real fight, frenetically trading little blows with a characteristic kind of randomness. Yet, it arrives there not by slowing things down like Tekken, but instead by going way too fast. The importance of movement — this is a game with four jumps, after all — and each character having a similar base moveset makes this as much a “movement fighter” as anything else, and synergizes well with the 3v3, no tags format, allowing you to transfer some mastery between characters with movement skills alone. And that format does well, too, to justify an enormous 66-character roster which showcases SNK’s pixel art and character design chops. It’s also so nice to play a competitive game that’s finished; no DLC fighters, no power creep, no patches, no content creator-demanded nerfs, nothing. I’m having a blast with this thing and am really looking forward to nailing down the movement and figuring out my main squad.

Flotsam (itch, Steam)
Flotsam’s a moving citybuilder that first hit my radar ages ago now, a bit before it released into early access in 2019. It reached 1.0 this past December with the help of new publisher Stray Fawn, who themselves developed another moving citybuilder, The Wandering Village. It’s set in an apocalyptic waterworld scenario, where survivors have fled to the high ground of church spires, apartment blocks, and hilly forests; and, in your case, a big ol’ boat ripe for the scaffolding. Things start off simple, with your Drifters (“villagers”) swimming out to scrounge up plastic and wood to build out, as well as seaweed to eat. Over time, things complicate into farming and restaurants, electricity and solar panels, chem labs and medicine, and more! While I’m not sure if I’d describe Flotsam as deep, it’s appealingly busy, what with the moving city and all. There’s always something to do, something to manage, something on the horizon. It’s all sold by the game’s art, beautifully rendered in a distinct European cartoon style. It’s what I imagined Pacifidlog Town from Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald to be when I was looking at that tiny GBA SP screen and letting my imagination run wild. There are shoddy wooden walkways loosely linking the town together, while the ship has an appropriately cutesy weather vane on top of its bright yellow purified water tank. Instead of hiding away in menus, items are satisfyingly stacked in precarious-but-perfect piles in open-air storage units or on salvage boats. And when your Drifters go out on those boats, you can see them row, anchor, zigzag up the hill or fire escape or what have you, and dismantle or nab whatever they’re out for. They’re pretty simple visuals, but effective ones, and a nice touch.

The campaign involves finding a Radio Technician/DJ and using his radio tower to contact other unique survivors, who unlock more build options (like the farms and chemistry labs), eventually culminating in the game’s end. When it comes to the Specialists and the campaign that hosts them, there’s a lot of bloat. The Specialists’ character designs are real cute, but there’s a Botanist and a Farmer; a Radio Technician, Electrician, Engineer, and Architect; an Aquaculturist and a Birdkeeper. They sure don’t feel special, especially considering how lacking they usually are in the way of stats. The bloat embiggens with the many buildings, several of which do conceptually identical things (such as cleaning pollution off of one type of caught fish versus removing plastic bottles from another, or the four different food producers). The game seems to deliberately lack a lot of friction, so the piling on of these quibbles doesn’t introduce difficulty so much as one of its lesser siblings: tedium. Further, I don’t think the finale questline fits thematically with anything Flotsam does, and sucks out loud on top of that. There are plenty of implications that climate change is what caused the sea levels to rise, yet Flotsam’s endgame requires an oil refinery and jet fuel. Still, I played, like, 40 hours of this in a week for good reason. It got its hooks in me bad and the first three quarters of its campaign are a great time, even if the last is a total chore.

CorgiSpace (itch, Steam)
CorgiSpace’s seemingly odd name ushers in one of the most brilliant taglines of any game ever: “a collection of games that have short legs on purpose.” All designed in the PICO-8 engine by game designer and Finji co-founder Adam Saltsman (aka Adam Atomic), the 19-strong group spans a wide range, although there’s a consistent throughline of puzzle-solving that gives CorgiSpace a lot of cohesion. It can be overwhelming to take in such a huge group and choose a starting point — especially because this freakin’ guy keeps adding new games; six so far!! — but the short legs make it an enjoyable, true pick-up-and-play experience (having the games’ box arts and names initially hidden doesn’t hurt, either). The games on offer here are, intentionally and admirably, lopsided. Some were conceived and created in hours while others took weeks. Each game can be understood in seconds, and you can get a strong handle on one’s mechanics and/or finish it in an hour or less. It’s refreshingly easy to just go “ehh this ain’t the vibe” and dip; every “dud” is a matter of personal taste. It’s no surprise that I liked Kuiper Cargo, a falling block puzzler about loading a space freighter, or Dino Sort, a likes/dislikes-based positioning puzzler. But the surprise of the bunch for me is Prince of Prussia, a mini cinematic stealth platformer about escaping a Nazi prison and killin’ em all on the way out. I didn’t care much for Vampire Versus Pope Army, but it did give me the phrase “you have to drink popes and break out of jail,” so there’s a little something in every one of the games here. That’s pretty impressive.

Hooray, it’s April! We’ve finally gotten some much-needed rain here and now that I’ve said that it’s gonna start storming crazy style. But I like that, too! If it could hold off just enough to not muck up my personal plans for this month, we’re gucci. A lot of stuff falls in April for me, and this year’s even busier than usual: there’s a few birthdays, including mine, bird season, and the start of baseball as always, plus a handful of new or new-to-me events that I’d like to make. This is why I’ll unfortunately be gone for the next two episodes of VGBees! I did consider recording on the road because it’d be kinda funny, but my mic can barely handle my unique vocal tone as it is, and I shan’t subject y’all nor my cohosts to hotel wi-fi. So I’ll be around, and we may even get April’s K-YOS out pretty soon here, but you won’t be seeing much of me for the next couple weeks!

New From Me
I’ve only got one piece of writing for y’all this week, and it’s not video game-related in the slightest. As you may already know (especially ‘cause I mentioned it in the opening graph there), I’m a big baseball fan! My passive viewing of baseball’s preseason spring training was interrupted by the World Baseball Classic, an international tournament severely hamstrung by American business interests, and which the USA manages to embarrass itself in every year with the players’ and fans’ persistent corny ass chickenhawk austerity. It was hard to watch for a number of reasons, only some of which I get into. Even if you’re not into baseball, I hope you give it a read!

Another thing I mentioned briefly in the intro is K-YOS, which is officially back as of March! You can find all our podcast links here and watch/subscribe on YouTube. I’ve said this a few times but ooonce more, as an intro: K-YOS was originally a k-pop music review podcast I started with my friends Dani and Azalea, joining them in what was supposed to be a one-off episode. But, we liked doing it a lot, and y’all were tuning in, so Dani and I just kept it going (with Azalea joining us on occasion). K-pop has gotten less and less robust with each passing year, though, and 2025 was particularly weak — so much so that we didn’t do our normal year-end favorites podcast, and trimmed our lists from 25 down to 10. So! Especially considering the positive feedback to an episode we did in the summer of 2024, K-YOS is now an all music podcast with some k-pop sprinkled in as we see fit. We both listen to quite a bit of music and are always interested in broadening our horizons, but as far as our “home genres” go: Dani has just about anything in the “man yells over guitar in garage” family covered, be that emo, screamo, rock, or pop punk, while my natural purview is EDM, house, pop divas, and indietronica et al.

And now for what will just about always be the beefiest section of the newsletter: VGBees!
At Long Last, Nintendo Gets Litigous: Finally, a Nintendo lawsuit we can really get behind: against the U.S. government, over the tariffs. We briefly touch on the ways that the Japanese game industry exploits and, yes, fires its workers; contrary to popular maxims about how great Japanese labor laws are and how much the Japanese industry respects its employees. Unity has bungled things again, this time due to regional differences with the Chinese branch of Unity. And, speaking of China, sinophobia rears its ugly head again as the U.S. government eyes Tencent and its American investments, as it did ByteDance and TikTok. Also, Sony has realized it doesn’t wanna port games to PC anymore. Alright. John and Niki have gotten super into Pokopia and the goodness of a Pokémon world, while I’ve gotten back into Terraria in a big way, playing (and occasionally streaming) it with two of my good friends. There’s also a bit of discussion on Resident Evil 9 and Marathon before we get into the Hive questions!
The Battle of Yerba Buena: Sony secretly started a dynamic pricing test! Niki’s on-the-ground impressions of GDC, which is voluntarily returning to San Francisco for some reason! PEGI is revising its ratings system to include guidance for lootboxes and dark patterns, and we learned some of the reasoning behind Jeff Kaplan’s sudden departure from Blizzard and Overwatch back in 2021. Niki and John have gotten into Slay the Spire 2 and are having a blast learning its intricacies and getting into some different characters/builds, and (you’ll keep hearing this) are really liking Pokopia! I played and finished one of the games I was really looking forward to this year, Lost and Found Co., and am pleased to report that I loved it! It has some little quibbles here and there but is ultimately an excellent hidden object game with a super cute style and a great sense of visual storytelling.
Deep Learning Super Sampling Five: Wow, this already feels like an eternity ago. DLSS5 AI-filtered Resident Evil 9 nastiness. We all hate it. We all hated on Nvidia’s Jensen Huang. That was a fun moment of camaraderie on the internet. Industry icons Red Storm Entertainment, a subsidiary of Ubisoft and shepherd of the Tom Clancy series (and cofounded by Clancy himself), will no longer be developing games and are facing large layoffs as they shrink to a support studio. We got into some good games this week at least, with John dipping his toes into the wonderfully weird and Newgrounds-y Rubato. Both John and Niki continue to update us on their Pokopia exploits — and Niki on Slay the Spire 2 — while I bring to you Funi Raccoon Game, a very goofy, mile-a-minute comedy platformer that’s more than worth the price of entry.
Nintendo’s Slice of Life Spring: John and Niki took a look at the latest Tomodachi Life demo, and contemplate its release coming so close with Pokopia’s as well as Animal Crossing’s big update. Epic laid off 1,000 people and claimed it was because Fortnite was underperforming. Yeah, like, Fortnite? That’s crazy. Anyways, Alex Street Fighter married his sister-cousin, OpenAI and Disney had an awkward breakup as the former shitcanned Sora (yippee!), and, hoo boy, pricing is gonna keep getting worse and weirder. Nintendo will be pricing physical and digital games differently, while PlayStation will be pricing all their hardware… more. Nintendo is also allegedly planning another Ocarina of Time remake as well as a new Star Fox game; this same story broke the sad news to John that there’s forreal forreal not a 3D Mario game coming this year. I finished Funi Raccoon Game and came to find out it’s more Irish than I initially realized! Neat!
Garry’s Mod II: Electric Boogaloo: With Niki on the International Space Station coaching the Artemis II astronauts through their Outlook issues, John and I hold down the fort for a lighter episode, and one in which we answer every single Hive question we got! Eidos-Montreal gets hit with another large round of layoffs, Shift Up (Stellar Blade) acquired Shinji Mikami’s new studio Unbound, Stormgate’s gotta get an offline mode going ‘cause their server provider got bought out by some AI schmucks, Nintendo got one of their American patents revoked, s&box, the follow-up to Garry’s Mod, is out soon, and the Gaming Historian is retiring from his YouTube channel! Also don’t buy those classic Capcom games on Steam they’re literally just the GOG versions but with DRM. John gives a quick and spoiler-free review of Project Hail Mary and his reality TV minute on Bravo’s Summer House, while I’ve gotten DEEP into incremental game The Perfect Tower II and am still sussing out my mixed feelings on Lucid Blocks.

Song of the Newsletter
There’s been a lot of good music lately, but that’s for K-YOS to discuss. I’m here to tell you about The Pussycat Dolls’ underrated hit, “Hush Hush; Hush Hush,” a house remix of the breakup ballad “Hush Hush” from their 2008 album Doll Domination. While Nicole Scherzinger doesn’t have the diva-level vocals associated with house, her performance and the natural 90s body of her voice made “Hush Hush” ripe for this kind of remix. And, sure, throw in a mini cover of “I Will Survive” at the end there. Why not? I’d love a longer mix to really let it build to the chorus, but damn if that piano doesn’t hit you like a truck when it first comes in.

News & Recommendations
Go look at a bird and report back to me!

A merry spring to you all! It’s kinda been spring down here on the Gulf Coast (more on that later) but with birds chirping, flowers blooming, and clocks flipping, this weekend makes it official. I haven’t turned any new leaves lately, so the change in season and return of glorious, constant sunlight must be what’s gotten me writing so much lately. I’ve only ever been sporadically prolific, but I get better every year at taking advantage of these sudden onset writing spells. So, I’ve been tickity-tacking away the second the mood strikes me, and a good amount of stuff for the site’s come out as a result!

New From Me
Chief among them are my reviews of MOONROT and Horripilant, two games I hadn’t planned to review or write about at all, and two games I ended up writing about for very different reasons (well, the desire to write about them struck me very suddenly as I mentioned previously, so they do have that in common). MOONROT, despite its short length and straightforwardness, stuck in my brain in a very, very good way. It’s the kind of thing with such a clear, consistent vision that you could fool yourself into thinking the developer didn’t make any decisions at all, so I got really caught up exploring that decisionmaking and the subtle little things that make it so great. Horripilant, on the other hand, is a game so convoluted I was most interested in untangling it and trying to figure out why, precisely, it just didn’t work for me.

Last but not least for writing, you may know I’m a biiig YouTube watcher, and I can be perhaps concerningly not picky at times. I always have my watch history disabled, so my recommended videos are only based on whatever video I’m currently watching — they don’t even give me a home page of recommendations anymore! Not that I mind, really. That abstraction of recommendations makes for much more varied options than I might get if the system was able to create a profile of me; and as tempted as I am to finish that sentence with an “as bad as they can be,” they can be pretty freakin’ bad no matter what. This is all to say: I get exposed to a lot of different videos that I (and other people, both like and unlike me) wouldn’t normally see due to the unknowable intricacies of the algorithm, and I’m always down to give them a shot if they manage to catch my attention. That openness has led me to some awesome creators, games, ideas, and individual videos I don’t know how I would’ve found otherwise. I guess I’m my own algorithm… Keeping it just to gaming(ish) this time, I wrote a listicle of a bunch of video essays I like!

Now: VGBees!
Tycho and The Heavy Fold is a leaner and vibier episode, and it’s a good thing we took that chance while we still had it… little did we know what this month would have in store for us… A little bit of scattered news — including the return of Poker Night at the Inventory and the pause of Borderlands 4’s Nintendo Switch 2 version — and the games we played: John on Ball x Pit, Niki on Tears of the Kingdom, and me on Titanium Court (demo) and Hermit and Pig!
Are You Strong Enough To Be My Cat w/ Charles Harte: A great eppy where the wonderful Charles Harte, a fellow ex-Fanbyte and now-Game Informer, joined us to talk about Mewgenics, which he’d already gotten to put around 90 hours into before its release. We spent a good amount of time ragging on it and its many weird idiosyncrasies and ideals of “apoliticalness,” especially to give Charles a break from his buttoned-up position as a reviewer. We briefly touched on the State of Play before heading into a murderer’s row of news: Discord’s age verification and teen council, layoffs at the studios behind the just-launched 2XKO and Highguard, and Ubisoft employees’ mass strike against the company’s latest phase of “restructuring.” John started Relooted, Niki ranked up on the Peloton and we got to see an insane motivational video about it, and I saw Markiplier’s Iron Lung. It wasn’t good! But I’m glad they tried!
Xbox Deserves This might be the best episode I’ve been on thus far, and it’s over three hours to boot! Xbox’s highest level of leadership has been obliterated, including Sarah Bond — whom the episode title comes from — in a very icky departure. Niki went long eviscerating Sony and their disastrous complacency, showcased this week with their closure of Bluepoint Games. We got some juicy tidbits, mostly from John, about the inner workings of Tencent given the news that ~allegedly~ Tencent was behind Highguard (and therefore its mondo failure). Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 got into hot water in the UK for a “haha isn’t sexual assault so funny!” ad which was subsequently banned. Oh, and the Saudi Arabian crown now outright owns the largest fighting game tournaments in the world in Evo. We also said goodbye to two industry legends: Shutaro “Curry the Kid” Ida, known for his work as a programmer at Konami and later for directing Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, and Hideki Sato, “The Father of Sega Hardware.” John played Overwatch and was reminded it kinda sucks; I played MOONROT and it was great!
Voluntarily Surrendering Your License To Print Money w/ Michael Higham: Another Fanbyte alum, Michael Higham, now at IGN, joined us to share his (no spoilers) thoughts on Resident Evil Requiem, which he had completed for review. We quickly went over an update of the ongoing worldwide shortage of RAM and storage as it pertains to our industry, an entirely John-validating report on Highguard, and there’s a smattering of chatter on the Pokémon Direct. The state of New York is suing Valve over their lootboxes violating state gambling laws, which feels intensely performative but would be nice to see them care about and win. Microsoft Japan is under investigation for monopolistic practices we already know they deploy in the United States, which feels intensely performative but… you get it, lol. Lastly for news, a continuation of the dumbest shit ever: Sony hates money. (Looks like this is gonna come up again on the next episode, huh? Geez…) Also, Niki and Michael both tried out Marathon during the server slam and gave us their early thoughts.

Song of the Newsletter
 “Sorry For Your Loss” by The Beaches has been my tuuune for the past couple weeks. I vaguely knew about this group through their social media hit “Lesbian of the Year,” a song I think is just okay, particularly when compared to the rest of this album. No Hard Feelings is a pop rock lesbian breakup/angst album, and folks, you just love to see it. “Sorry For Your Loss” is my favorite song on there, owing to its mix of melancholy, spite, and energy, and its crazy catchy pre-chorus: “Please get well soon / If I left me I’d be lovesick too / Please, it’s the truth / Only want the best for you.” If you really wanna get angsty with it (as you do), then “I Wore You Better” is a solid second — a more lyrically dense and higher-paced track about being used by other women for your sexuality, often as they try to define their own; a lesbian tragedy common enough to become parody.

News & Recommendations
Finally… the sun is out and winter’s harsh prunings have led to vigorous growth. Everything’s greening up, growers are sharing their new availabilities, and plant sales and festivals are on the horizon. Nowadays I fall pretty firmly into the native/pollinator category of gardener, something that I’m always heartened to see is becoming more and more popular; and it’s always been a little more popular in Texas, I think, between our many different ecoregions — some more challenging than others — and famously hot, sunny, and seasonally dry climate. “Traditional” gardening here is an uphill battle you just lose. Native plants are easier and less resource intensive, and an outright necessity if you want year-round greenery (even under watering restrictions), blooms past spring, and, of course, the three B’s: bees, birds, and butterflies. My interest was inevitable — I’ve always been a treehugger, and my dad’s got one of the greenest thumbs in my entire hometown. So, I’ve been flipping through butterfly and moth books, browsing nursery plant lists, scoping out those festivals, cleaning up the balcony, and plotting for the future. It might be the most rewarding and consistently enjoyable hobby I have, especially when all that labor bears fruit (be that literal fruit, flowers, visiting caterpillars and butterflies, or the occasional bird that bothers to come all the way up here despite the lack of tree cover). You should have access to a lot of great, free resources on where to get started via your local botanical garden, independent nursery, parks, or Native Plant Society chapter (or similar, like WildOnes). Give it a go! Plant some Asteraceae!

Some time ago now I was asked for any works on games I recommended that fall into the realm of art criticism or media studies, and really enjoyed putting a list together! So, here that is: my favorite video essays on games, in no particular order. These are not “““analysis””” videos that recount the plot in excruciating detail accompanied by a smattering of development facts. These are videos which treat games as an art form worthy of criticism, sincerely examine narratives, and acknowledge the real world politics which influence everything from individual lines of dialogue to overarching development decisions.

“Yellow Paint” and “Remaking Silent Hill 2 is a Complete Waste of Time Sorry” by Caleb Gamman. Gamman is a really talented creator whose disaffected delivery, marked by his quiet sarcasm, both speaks to me deeply as a terminal hater of games; gamers; games media; the games industry; YouTube; all media, actually; and perhaps all creators, and contrasts well with his obvious and latent passion for games as an artistic medium. I guess that’s relatable to me, too. I love both of these videos, with the one on SH2R landing more on the contained criticism end of the spectrum, while “Yellow Paint” necessarily (for us and Gamman) blows up into something much greater than itself. The ending third of the video in particular is permanently tattooed on my brain as a beautifully written soliloquy to the entire ecosystem of video games which I understand and internalize more deeply with every listen.

"Zombies are political?! A VERY Deep Dive into Telltale's The Walking Dead” and ““Everything is Political”: Institutional Racism in Life is Strange 2” by Game Assist. Game Assist is one of few to delve so unflinchingly into deep political readings of games, as these titles more than imply. From essays on ableism and misogyny in Life is Strange to de/colonization in Assassin's Creed III, they meet games where they are and examine their narratives earnestly while still acknowledging their shortcomings. I recommend virtually everything they make, and I only add that “virtually” caveat because I don’t think I’ve actually watched everything just yet.

“Phyrexia is Hell | A 30-Year History of Magic's Most Sinister Villains” by Rhystic Studies covers the design and evolution in design of the cultish and body horrific Phyrexians, some of Magic: The Gathering’s most important villains. Rhystic Studies makes some excellent videos on Magic, largely focused on or at least concerning themselves conceptually with visual art and its creation. This is my favorite, but his entire body of work is worth a watch — particularly “The Zugzwang Machine | A History of Lantern Control” for something more mechanically- and competitively-minded.

“In Search of Undersea Wildness in My Octopus Teacher, Abzu, and In Other Waters” and “What Is the Games Industry Missing?” by Pixel A Day. Kat at Pixel A Day is one of the sharpest in this field and these two videos show exactly why, in two very different ways. The former obsesses over both the beauty of oceans and humanity's tendency towards anthropomorphism, while the latter digs personally into the ugliness of both the games and games media industries.

“Shinobi & The Art of Vengeance” by SpidersSTG. Spiders’ shotgun blast approach to making videos immediately drew me in, although this one in particular is probably best known (and, sometimes, mistakenly maligned) for jokingly introducing the term “consentroidvania” to deride Shinobi: Art of Vengeance’s slow, shallow enemy design. A ceaselessly thorough arcade pervert, Spiders does his due diligence tracing the entire lineage of the Shinobi franchise, to and far through 1986’s Rolling Thunder, and uses this framework to go much deeper than a simple game review would’ve. Further than that, though, the breadth of ideas Spiders works through, and the pace at which he works through them, does good to transmit his reverence for arcade era design philosophy and his bitterness at its unforced decline directly into the viewer.

“Prey - A Critique of the Mind Game” by Joseph Anderson. Joseph Anderson is one of the better known independent game critics, mostly owing to his extraordinarily popular series of videos on From Software's games and his propensity to have opinions. I don't always agree with him, but I find his critiques to be interesting, close-up examinations of games which are well-written and with good intent (although I do think they can get overlong, to the point of bloat). He often has the effect of making me want to play a game (again) after watching his critiques — even the overwhelmingly negative ones.

“The Most Abused Term in Videogame Criticism” by SolePorpoise. An interesting exploration of the original “ludonarrative dissonance” essay.

“Animal Crossing and the Ideology of Chill” by Yaz Minsky. An examination of “cozy games” and what our view of relaxation reveals about our cultures via Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

“Why I haven't played Hades ⚱” by LambHoot. Probably the most personal essay on here, this one is about the complicated feelings a game like Hades stirs in its Greek-Canadian host. This goes largely into contemporary Greek — and especially diaspora — culture and identity and some of Hades’ shortcomings regarding it.

“The Problem with Greek Myth Retellings” and “The Endless Reinvention of Greek Mythology” by Kate Alexandra. While not technically about video games, Greek myth's constant presence in games (as seen above) makes them pertinent. A fascinating look at Greek myth retellings/inspiration from someone with clearly deep knowledge and passion for the subject.

WOW it’s been a long time since I sent one of these out. Over a year, in fact! Really screws up the whole “just subscribe to my newsletter if you don’t wanna follow me on social media” dealio, but at least we can say I’m not spamming y’all. Due to that long time and it being the end of the year, this is gonna be a long one, folks!

Much is the same for me going into this year from the last, but there are two major changes with some knock-on effects that will all be relevant here. Firstly, I left my old job, which compensated me very well but took up an inordinate amount of energy. Not the best news of course, but I think my life is better for it and I’m happy to have more time for myself and my personal projects (at least in the short term). Secondly, I’ve joined the VGBees podcast as a full-time cohost!

New From Me
The primary new-from-me business item here is of course my joining VGBees, but I’ll expound on that in a bit, at the appropriate time as we get into a chronological recap of this past year. I’ll keep it as trim as I can, but some pretty good stuff happened, despite it all!

K-YOS, slowly but surely, kept on truckin’! We had some serious soundproofing issues on first moving into our new space, but we got it done! We introduced some light format changes in the January episode, mostly concerning the fact that we began discussing more non-k-pop music on the show, especially in months we felt were light on k-pop we wanted to talk about. I’m glad we had the foresight to do this, but, wow, it was not a good year for k-pop. That light change was just not enough to keep the pod going on even a monthly cadence in a year this rough. We haven’t released an episode since July, and even that episode combined April, May, and June into one, for a lack of releases to talk about… Should we adapt even further and become a more general music podcast that also appreciates k-pop, unlike many others? If we do, how does that affect our “Best of the Year” programming? These are the questions I’ve been asking myself lately!…

In streaming news, there hasn’t been much streaming news. I did say that that job was sapping all my energy, after all! The biggest thing we did was a late pride charity stream back in July for Organizacion Latina Trans en Texas. Owing to my busyness, it was put together quite quickly, with a very loose schedule and the only incentive being a de facto double donation match; I was donation matching up to 1,000 USD, and I verified ahead of time that my at-the-time job could donation match my own contribution. In the end, y’all donated a whopping 725 USD, which I then donation matched, and then my job did afterwards! That’s $2,175!

I also wrote a couple things this year over on the Patreon, both very much informed by video games discourse (womp womp). The first concerns a sort of proposed genre term I and many others have quickly come to loathe, “metroidbrainia,” and its inherent lack of merit as a critical, commercial, and even basic informational tool. To me, it’s a signifier of the long, downward trend of video game design and experience where we just don’t remember how to think while we play games anymore, so ubiquitous is over-tutorialization and handholding. The second thing I wrote of substance this year is, of course, also about a (much less serious) genre term: “friendslop.” Specifically, friendslop is an extremely online, Gen Z, consumer-driven idea, and I was frustrated to see so many people speaking derisively of it while clearly not understanding it on even a basic level.

Now: VGBees! In case you’re unfamiliar, VGBees is a games site, podcast, and community run by my friend and former boss over at Fanbyte, John Warren. He and Niki (another friend and ex-coworker from Fanbyte!) have been hosting VGBees together for the past 18 months or so, joined by loads of cool guests like Jeff Gerstmann, Dan Ryckert, Jenna Stoeber, and many more! I was also on a few times before (drumroll) being invited to come on as a permanent cohost in October, and I’ve been on every regular episode since. I was very much honored as someone who already listened to the pod and, plain and simple, really values the coverage and knowledge that John and Niki bring to the scene. They’ve both been in the industry for a hot minute, and their sharpness for industry business is matched only by their humor. As much as I know and love them for acting the fool and having a grand ole time of hateration, they’re unafraid to get a little more serious and tackle things critically — be that games as art or financial decisions or hype trains — in a way that I’ve always found very refreshing. I think other folks like myself who’ve become disillusioned with the influencer and media side of games for that signature one-note obeyance of popular opinion will also enjoy VGBees, John, and Niki as I have. I’m happy for the opportunity to talk about games in a somewhat professional capacity with people I respect so much while we all have our own personalities, idiosyncracies, likes, and dislikes. It’s a breath of fresh air and I hope you’ll give us a listen! A wall of links ain’t gonna look too pretty in this format, but what can you do? Here’s every episode I’ve been on thus far, in order:

Inquiries on Animes, Gamifying HIPAA Violations, 1-900-GAMBLER, Stuck in a House, No Outside, Assassin’s Creed: Roku City, Body Works, Body Worlds, Body Bath & Beyond, Phil & Todd Flood the Zone, Competing with Steam as a Goof, Matt Booty’s 10,000 Testers, Even You Could Be Samus Aran’s Sidekick, The Joe Pesci of Podcasts, Hold Your Horses, Everything is Safe in Netflix’s Capable Hands!, Protecting Muppet Kayfabe, Gibbed in the MRI Machine, and VGBees Games of the Year 2025

Man, that sure looks like a lot when they’re all written out like that. I should also mention that VGBees has their own Discord server (where I and many other cool folks are quite active!) as well as their own subscription and related perks, like a special section on the Discord and the ability to send in listener questions every week. That supports everyone involved with the show and site, myself included!

Moving on to the last couple things here: I started a couple little joke accounts on Bluesky and Instagram! Basically, I had written up some submissions for a games media satire site, but unfortunately was not accepted. But, I had a lot of fun writing my proposed headlines and got into quite the groove, with a good 20 or so I was happy with. So I just said screw it and made my own accounts to post them, alongside anything new I think of that’s funny enough, and maybe even some submissions from friends! I named the fake site Geimu Chronicle, in an effort to have something immediately recognizable as both a gaming outlet and something that no one in their right mind should take seriously. I love and hate it. I’ll be posting there about once a month with each account being identical, so drop me a follow wherever you prefer! Once I get a proper website I can give it some space over there, but til then, it’s just socials for me.

Also, the new year cometh, and that means I’m working on this year’s installment of the “XX (Indie) PC Games Coming In 20XX” video. I decided last year that 2025 would probably be the last year the number of games and year would match, as much as I loathe to leave behind my nice little naming convention. But with every increase, it gets harder and harder to make a good list that I’m really proud of. 25 is already about as far as I can push it while still honoring the spirit behind the “indie” label and trimming games that seem unlikely to come out in the given year. Games get delayed all the time, but given the concept of the video, I do think it’s important to be selective and choose those with more concrete or realistic release windows when possible. Also, hey. 25 is just a good number for a list, and I don’t wanna get stuck on an uglier one! So look forward to “25 (Indie) PC Games Coming In 2026” hitting your screens in the near future.

Music of the Newsletter
I haven’t quite decided on my favorites of 2025 yet as far as music goes, but it’s the beginning of the year so I may as well drop my frontrunners!

SOTY: Despite my late in the year obsession with “Lola’s Theme” by The Shapeshifters (a really great ‘04 dance track you should give a listen when you have a spare seven minutes), there’s no song I listened to more than “KNOW ABOUT ME” by NMIXX. Pop music doesn’t get much better than this, especially when specifically Pop Grading, which necessarily includes an appraisal of the music video, choreography, and overall styling. Who else had a 720 degree ponytail flip? No one. Was any dance break as exciting as this one, with the center and youngest member pulling out high harmonies while performing live? Not that I know of! Did anyone look more beautiful than Bae in her frosty bob, especially at 2:25 and 2:31 in the MV? Debatable, but it’s not looking good. There was no pre-chorus/chorus combo more addicting than that in “KNOW ABOUT ME,” made all the sweeter by NMIXX’s live performance and vocal chops.

AOTY: I Love My Computer by Ninajirachi totally came out of nowhere for me. I was enchanted by one single in particular, “iPod Touch,” with no knowledge of a forthcoming album. It’s a bright electropop track that is nevertheless an easy listen, with its softly sung melody and choppy vocal accompaniment. It’s got a nostalgic streak without sounding unoriginal or overly referential, which makes it a good representation of I Love My Computer as a whole; although there are certainly some sonically harder-hitting songs throughout the album, like “CSIRAC” and “All At Once,” that are great fun of a different kind.

News & Recommendations
I think the most important thing to mention here is the creation of No Games for Genocide, a website dedicated to the BDS movement and the boycott of Microsoft as it pertains to the games industry. I’d recommend watching People Make Games’s related video for a more robust explanation, but TLDR: Microsoft has very direct ties to the Israeli military and, therefore, the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Boycotting all of Microsoft is nigh impossible, but BDS organizers have given us a clear and straightforward target to help increase pressure on Microsoft: Xbox. There’s a lot that anyone can do, and the site has these all laid out in plain language. And, remember: You can always commit to something small and then ramp things up later. Everything counts. The more average, everyday people learn of Microsoft’s complicity, the more the pressure increases, and every day is another step towards real change. So be like me and share the PMG video with the gamers in your life! As grim as things feel sometimes (often), we know this shit works, and we know a lot of people care. Just scrolling the pledge list and seeing all those names (I’m on there, and so are a lot of other people you know; maybe even friends!) can be incredibly heartening.

That’s it for now! Thanks for reading this extra long update and continuing to follow my work. It’s been a tough year and I’m just glad we’re still here, lol. Cheers to all of us for surviving the nonsense and finding the many things worth living for each and every day. It’s not always easy, but they’re always there. Seeya soon!

How long has it been since one of these? What do you mean I never finished the April one? Oh Lord. My bad.

New From Me
K-YOS episodes for (checks notes) February and March and April and May and June...

After learning of the bizarrely branded "Triple-I Initiative," an independent video game showcase for so-called "triple-i" games, I decided to write up my thoughts.

Against all odds, Pressed Petals' first ever book review is by me! I finished Robin Wall Kimmerer's highly acclaimed Braiding Sweetgrass, a non-fiction social media hit about the relationship between traditional Indigenous knowledge and Western science as viewed through the life of a Potawatomi ecological scientist.

Just a couple weeks ago at EVO 2024, it was announced that Heihachi Mishima would be returning to Tekken as Tekken 8's third DLC character. This sucks. On the bright side, this was also my debut on VGBees — my old Fanbyte boss' new games media website.

Song of the Newsletter
There's no real Song of the Newsletter this time around, but I wanna let you know to keep an eye out for the next episode of K-YOS! There have been quite a few times in K-YOS' history where we just didn't have much to talk about and the episodes ended up shorter than usual. But spoiler alert: there's never been a month where we had so little to say as July 2024. As such, we're organizing a special non-k-pop episode. You can look forward to a full episode of song recommendations and discussion from myself, Dani, and Azalea soon!

News & Recommendations
Any horror game fan should be sure to check out eurothug4000's Forbidden Siren 2 video, providing a full breakdown of the game as well as its themes, concepts, and development process. While I'm not necessarily the biggest fan of her work, both of her Forbidden Siren videos are excellently done. Just superbly well-researched and beautifully told presentations.

understitch, is arguably the best fashion creator on YouTube; if nothing else, she is far and away the best researcher. She's provided us with a real treat in “The Life and Death of Elsa Schiaparelli,” a notoriously complex and difficult to research figure in fashion, as eminent as she was. If you'd like to learn about some of fashion's most famous figures and brands, look no further.

Regardless of how disconnected you may be from the hip hop sphere, you've no doubt heard about the beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake. A lot of the discourse — and the few attempts at legitimate analysis — fall horribly flat, especially as they fail to provide any greater context with regards to music history. Video essayist F.D. Signifier knocked it out of the park with “I’m What the Culture Feeling,” his 3 1/2 hour critical analysis. In general, I highly recommend F.D. Signifier's work.

Happy New Year everyone, hope it's treating you well so far! Why yes it is February, but I don't put these out very often by design, now don't I?

New From Me
K-YOS completed its first year of regular episodes strong with the November 2023 re-cap, followed shortly thereafter by our end-of-year finale, where Azalea joined Dani and I to discuss our top 25 k-pop songs of the year. A few rules apply to make sure that our lists are varied and interesting, so I hope you'll check out that monster of an episode, and let me know some of your own faves! In other K-YOS news, the pod is now available to stream on all major podcasting services, including Apple, Pocket Casts, Spotify, YouTube, and via RSS.

And, as we announced at the end of that episode and all across our socials, Pressed Petals Creative Collective is finally here! Pressed Petals is one unified place for the creative efforts of Dani, Azalea, and I, across the many topics we enjoy. If you're already a Patron of mine, you'll notice that this is actually the same Patreon page; you don't need to sign up for another one or do anything new. In fact, my work will remain largely unchanged. You'll still get early access to my games videos, writing, special episodes of K-YOS, and more. Only now, you'll also get exclusive and early access to Dani's work, Azalea's work, and anything new that we choose to do, both together and apart. We all have big plans for 2024, and are super excited to "officially" be working together now.

Speaking of 2024, here are 24 (Indie) PC Games Coming in 2024! The latest video in my annual "20-something games for 2020-something" series is finally out, and I'm pretty happy with this one! I'm always a little worried when December rolls around that I won't have enough games to talk about, but this year, it hardly crossed my mind. The release schedule for 2024 is so stacked that I actually had to be pretty strict, resulting in maaaybe my favorite list thus far. It's only the games I, personally, am really, really excited for (as opposed to a bunch of games that I think look pretty cool, for a general audience), and that have an official release window of 2024. That doesn't happen often, y'know!

Song of the Newsletter
Picking a song of the newsletter was tough this time around, as the free time afforded to me by the Christmas-New Year's deadzone (including the 8-hour roundtrip I drove to see my dad) as well as end-of-year music list bingeing meant I was listening to even more music than usual. But at the end of the day, I had to pick my consistent fave of the past few months, “Bouncin” by Tinashe. It's the rare ass-shaking song you can shake your ass to at the precise pace you desire: slow n’ sensual, casual, earthquaking, the world is your oyster. It's an unbelievably catchy tune with its synthy, blippy, and utterly addictive instrumental. And the choreo is great too! They just don't make pop stars like Tinashe anymore.

News & Recommendations
Pixel A Day is back with an extra-long (and a tinch more personal) video essay; this one chiefly about the very narrow view and lacking imagination of the wider video games industry, including developers, critics, and gamers alike. Ms. Kat is, as always, a measured and hopeful critic, providing a list of overlooked video essays in part to illustrate some of her overall points and to contribute to the future of video games and games media she wants to see.

As your local social media professional with an expertise in indie games, I am once again asking you to get the fuck off of Twitter. This absolutely applies to the lurkers (those of us who use social media primarily to follow the creators we enjoy, and to talk to friends/family casually) in the interest of moving everyone off the site, but I say all this primarily to the developers and artists who use social media as a form of marketing and engagement. A lot of people apparently didn't know this, but Twitter, as far as advertising/marketing/discoverability is concerned, is dead and in my professional opinion has been dead for several years. Its engagement and conversion rates (particularly concerning links) have always been terrible. Advertising was more likely to get you blocked by your core audience than to reach a new one. Going viral on Twitter was great if you were trying to get your game or shop out there, but you know what'd be even better? Going half as viral on literally any other website.

In my personal opinion, Instagram is most worthy of your time in this regard; it's the only social media app I feel comfortable recommending to any type of creator with any amount of time to put into socials. Following IG, in order: TikTok (if you have a lot of time), tumblr (if your creations relate to some "niche" cultures of particular interest on tumblr, namely being queer and/or a furry; having a strong artistic element is also preferable, but not mandatory), and then YouTube (primarily YouTube Shorts, which you should use similarly to TikTok, but requires significantly less time). I love Cohost, but it's not very good for this sort of thing; it's just a nice place to be where you're likely to have/read some good discussions among smaller game developers and games media personalities. In other words, it can be very helpful for individual professional and personal development, but it's not really the place to "reach new fans."

As Jeff Gerstmann said in his reply to the post(s) that spurred this section of the newsletter: "You might have a lot of followers [on Twitter], but they ain't clicking on your links. Go somewhere else!... Spread yourself out. It's a hassle, but what else are you going to do? Keep hanging out with the porn and crypto bots that spam replies on Twitter?"

I foolishly delayed this newsletter once because it was a bit too short for my liking, and then I had to keep waiting for some news... now that it's late it's quite a bit larger than average, like a baby. Anyways,

New From Me
I have two different trailer roundups ready for y'all, available free to view over on Patreon: one for a combination of the Gamescom Future of Play, Mini Indie, & MIX Next Showcases, and one for EEK3 2023. You can read them here and here, respectively.

I got a job! This was the big holdup, as I was waiting until everything was officially squared away to announce it. I'm going to be System Era Softworks's new Senior Social Media Manager (you may recognize them from their hit game, ASTRONEER). I don't yet know how much this will affect the stream or my schedule overall, but like I said, I expect to be a bit scarce on Twitch and will thus rely more on pre-recorded and written work; after all, my job at Fanbyte cut my streaming hours in half, and that was just a junior position. As a precaution, I'll be pausing billing on Patreon until the beginning of next year when I expect to have more to share. These scheduling changes will not, however, affect K-YOS.

Speaking of K-YOS, I'm so late that I have two monthly episodes to share with y'all again. The episodes for September and October releases are now available on Spotify. Just one more regular episode and then we're on to our annual Top 25 K-Pop Songs of the Year, when Azalea joins us for the pod! That episode is usually monstrously long, too, so please look forward to it.

Song of the Newsletter
SOTN was a little harder to decide this time around. Like I said, this newsletter is a bit delayed, and we're right in the middle of that hot autumn album release season. And yet, I find myself going back to an old favorite. C418 is best known for his contributions to the Minecraft soundtrack with Volume Alpha and Volume Beta, but I've grown fond of a more recent release of his: 2018's Excursions. The first and title track in particular has been on repeat lately as I've been waking up earlier and reading a bit while I try and manifest birds to appear at our meager balcony feeder setup. The nearly six minute song has been beautiful and calming company on these quiet mornings, with heavily layered, glistening strings interspersed with nature sounds like birdsong, crickets, and wind.

News & Recommendations
A bit late to the party, but I promised on stream I would provide y'all with some of the best Halloween costumes I saw on Instagram this year. Click each word to view them!

At TwitchCon, Twitch announced that all streamers without specific exclusivity agreements in place may now simulcast across multiple platforms — including YouTube. I may experiment with this to take some of the headache out of reuploading VODs and just branch out a bit; see what streaming on YouTube is like and whether or not it's a viable platform for my/our needs.

I really liked this piece, “Cyberpunk’s Critical Reevaluation Feels Rushed,” from NoEscape. We've all noticed how weird it is that the mainstream consensus is overwhelmingly complimentary of Cyberpunk 2077, lauding it as a labor of love, giving it multiple out-of-place Game Awards noms, likening it to No Man's Sky for its meteoric rise out of the legitimately harmful dumpster fire it launched as... right?

On a serious note, I would like to encourage everyone reading this to follow the official BDS boycott list. BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) is a Palestinian movement which promotes the aforementioned political actions against Israel. On the most basic level, they compile lists of companies and brands which act in direct support of and/or are owned by Israel and Israeli businesses. What's difficult about this on first glance — and something you might've come across, if you're still active on sites like Xitter — is that many large monopolies such as Nestle and Coca-Cola support Israel. I can't speak for other countries, but in America, it is virtually impossible to buy groceries, or even just to eat and drink, without purchasing something from these brands or one of their subsidiaries. This is why BDS calls for a focused effort in the form of targeted boycotts of specific companies for maximum impact. You might've seen a few different infographics and calls to action going around, but here's one of a few official BDS shortlists. Please download and share this around, though note that there are two notable omissions which are very easy to avoid: Starbucks and Sabra. For the Starbies lovers, there are many past instances of Starbucks employees posting official recipes so you can make them at home. If this Twitter thread of recipes ever goes down, know that that information is just a search away.

"In Guatemala, there was never a civil war. It was always an agreement between the United States and Israel. It never was a civil war in Guatemala. That is why we love, encourage, and care deeply for the people of Palestine. Life and freedom, freedom and life, long live Palestine! We love you sister, we love you! We are one people, people of the world!"

Hello again everyone! Autumn is approaching, temperatures are finally, finally starting to dip here in the subtropics, and I've got some great news and new stuff to show you!

New From Me
After playing through the highly-anticipated Bomb Rush Cyberfunk a few weeks ago, I left the game with a lot of mixed feelings. Enough feelings to write a proper review, though, which is always a fun time! It's available for free. Patrons got it a week early!

Our k-pop podcast K-YOS is back as it is every month, but twofold for this newsletter! The July recap was pretty late as I was travelling, and then sick, but it as well as the August episode are available now. I've also had some people ask me about the podcast's platform availability; I'm afraid it's only available on Spotify right now. We're doing a lot of planning behind the scenes, though, and hope to share some exciting news soon.

Song of the Newsletter
Late one night after we got our approval back, I was planning the layout of my future bedroom on Milanote. I told myself I would just make sure the scale was correct for the base layout and then go to bed. And then “Psychedelic Switch” by Carly Rae Jepsen came on, and then it was 2:00AM. It's such an energetic contemporary disco/boogie track, and one of CRJ's best — and she's got a lot of great tracks! It's from The Loveliest Time, the B-side album of her big 2022 release The Loneliest Time, both of which I would recommend giving a listen if you like pop, disco, house, and everything in between.

News & Recommendations
Starting on October 16th, the Epic Games Store will offer developers 100% of net revenue on new releases in exchange for six months of PC storefront exclusivity. Not only does this deliberately mention PC storefronts, meaning that a developer could simultaneously release on all consoles and the Epic Games Store, but also that a game's Early Access release is considered its official launch date. Theoretically, a game could release in Early Access on the Epic Games Store for 100% net revenue share and then make its 1.0 release on Steam with no adverse effects; even avoiding the often unpleasant situation of having Early Access reviews and opinions follow them into 1.0 on Steam. Here's the official statement if you'd like to read the specifics. As per usual, I'm interested to see what effect this will have on the indie gaming sphere, and if this can make a dent in Valve's monopoly on PC game distribution. While Steam won't be seriously challenged for the foreseeable future, it's nice to see someone attempting to court their dev-side userbase, as indie game developers are pretty poorly served by Steam. Ah, the stiff competition bred by the free market.

It's really difficult to talk about the nuanced feelings we, as queer people, have about queer media without feeling we're undermining the rare piece that's allowed to exist (let alone become popular, or even celebrated). Eli Cugini threads the needle quite honestly for Dazed, discussing the politics and messy feelings of what gay shit gets to succeed and why.

Lastly, I'll leave you with one of my favorite fashion YouTubers, ThisIsAntwon. While he started off as a relatively straightforward techwear creator, he's further evolved into an extremely compelling fashion video essayist. He's created, in my opinion, some of the best — and certainly most approachable — writing on personal style out there with his video “Why Personal Style Is (Mostly) A Lie.” It's a dissection of the alleged differences between fashion and style, a dichotomy that's endlessly propped up by both well-meaning fashion enthusiasts and the absolute grifters we've come to call "influencers." He has an extremely pragmatic perspective on the process of finding your own style, one that I think especially applies to those just starting on their fashion journey, who've found themselves drowning in a sea of ultimately unhelpful and confusing advice that they don't quite realize is so.

Thanks for reading! I'll be seeing y'all in this newsletter again in a month or so, hopefully writing from a new space after a smooth move.

Hey y'all! Hope you're all well and ready for your first round of newsletter updates :)

New From Me
My latest games writing is out for everyone! Indie Games Are More Than Their (Supposed) Influences is an essay about the way we, collectively, talk about indie games; how they are almost always reduced to a sum of the influences we impose upon them, instead of works discussed on their own merit. Let's talk about why we do this, and why it hurts.

The latest episode of our k-pop podcast, K-YOS, is out as well, recapping all the June releases we care to talk about. Artists discussed: Stray Kids, fromis_9, The New Six, &Team, Ateez, SHINee, Treasure, and UKISS

Patrons, y'all also have early access to a new short video review, this time for The Spirit and the Mouse. You may recall the game winning third place in the Third itch Trailer Gauntlet earlier this year, and I played the majority of it on stream afterwards. The video will be publicly available in a week!

Song of the Newsletter
A song recommendation? Hey, why not. I've been listening to “One That Got Away” by MUNA on repeat lately. They're already my favorite band, owing to their alt-pop beats, incredible lead vocalist, and being very gay, dishing out sad, dramatic ballads and synthy bops in equal measure. One That Got Away splits the difference; it's a catchy post-breakup revenge tune that sings of heartbreak from the high horse of not being the one who fucked everything up. It came out a month and a half after a really rough breakup on my end, a week after my birthday, and all three members of MUNA look super hot in the music video. So clearly they made it just for me, but y'all can listen to it too if you want.

News & Recommendations
Humble Games worked with an independent analyst group to investigate the general habits of gamers with regards to indie games, and presented the findings of this investigation at GDC. These findings are, of course, aggregated survey responses that can't serve as a perfect representation of consumer data, and shouldn't be taken as concrete fact. That being said, a ~5,000 person sample size is nothing to sneeze at, and there's a lot of interesting data to sift through. GI.biz put together a great article collating the facts, sharing interesting tidbits about preferences of gameplay, story, playtime, pricing, and more. One of the most interesting data points is that a whopping 60% of gamers surveyed said they hadn't bought an indie game in the last year at all. The "casual" gamer is often left out of the conversation entirely among enthusiasts and armchair analysts, so the answers they gave are perhaps the most interesting of all.

As an environmentalist, I often find friction between myself and games, particular those of the wholesome/comfy/cozy variety. When we anthropomorphize nature, we risk sanding away reality, and depicting a world that exists both as a result of and in service to humans. “In Search of Undersea Wildness in My Octopus Teacher, Abzu, and In Other Waters” is an excellent video essay that explores this topic using a very popular Netflix film and two oceanic adventure games.

Do you remember being in school and learning the whole "men hunt while women gather and take care of the home" thing, and being told that that's been true since the beginning of civilization? Well, turns out it probably isn't.

Also, well-known LGBTQIA+ nonprofit organization The Trevor Project is most definitely unionbusting. The tired old tale of a charity unsustainably, ignorantly expanding and then cutting off the lowest rungs of the ladder plays out yet again. You can learn more and follow the situation as it develops by following the union, Friends of Trevor United, or their larger labor affiliate, the Communication Workers of America.

That's all for now! Thanks for reading, and I'll be seeing you again soon!