We're all blessed/cursed to live in the age where the Internet is ubiquitous. In it we pour pieces of ourselves, in a gigantic web of communications, friendships, relationships, rivalries, petty grievances and every human interaction. Hypnospace Outlaw is like a mirror held up to us, in which we see a microcosm of our Internet selves, frozen in time in the moment we left our digital footprints. It's a story where you visit a fictional past, one unabashedly based on our actual history, whose concerns are still distressingly relevant twenty years later. Alexandria still burns, our past is still lost each passing hour. One day, this site will be no more, Steam will be no more, we will likely be no more, no matter how remote that day may be or seem. This doesn't mean being here is meaningless; even if it were, what's the point in having all the miracolous opportunities we're afforded and not using them?

Enjoy today, now. And if something breaks? There's a saying where I come from: "Pope's dead, make another".

Keep on rocking, reader. Godspeed.

These past few days I've been rereading Sapkowski's Time of Contempt, the fourth novel in the seven-part-saga of Geralt of Rivia. I had initially done so to prepare for the third season of Netflix's The Witcher. Now though, it's just an enjoyable reading experience, a fun revisit of a series I love dearly, despite its many flaws.

After finishing the exciting fourth chapter, with its tales of betrayal, intrigue and family, as I laid in bed I remembered a picture I had seen months prior. It was an illustration of Artaud Terranova, a minor character appearing in that chapter, as he tries and fails to capture one of the main characters (minor spoilers: see that owl in the background? If you played The Witcher 3 you already know who that is, and even if you didn't you can bet that bird fucks creepy Terranova up real good).

I recalled the context of me seeing the picture: a card reveal for the (at the time) latest expansion for Gwent: The Witcher Card Game, my all time favourite, uh, card game. Yet, I could not remember when that reveal took place, what expansion it could have possibly been. I realised it had been a long time since I last picked up the game, so long I had forgotten exactly when that was. There, in that moment, a piercing thought sunk in: after many years of playing and keeping up with it, I no longer know what Gwent is.

I first discovered Gwent in the Summer of 2017, after playing the excellent The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. I could play the coolest minigame since Final Fantasy VIII's Triple Triad, for free! It wasn't exactly that, turns out. The game had been through an utterly unbalanced closed beta on pc before being released on major consoles as an open beta with an all-new ruleset. I would play it daily, win my 6 rounds for a free keg (the game's slang for card pack), log off, repeat. I started climbing ranks, slowly and painfully, being trounced a lot on the way and slowly unravelling the game's intricate and rewarding mechanics. In my eyes it was the thinking person's card game, a far cry from the chaotic and (comparatively) much greedier ways of Blizzard's Hearthstone. While free to play and replete with chances of extortion monetization, you were given decent decks at the start, at least for low level play, and could quickly accrue enough resources to build stronger and stronger decks. Completing your card collection was actually easy, it just took a few months of playing, say, 30 minutes a day, in a way that was usually far from braindead.

And the cards, oh those beautiful cards! Each looks dynamic, has a strong presentation and told its own story. And then there were the premium versions. Those trascended the simple digital piece of cardboard: detailed animations, sound effects and sometimes even easter eggs, reaching a whole new level of spectacle.
An indulgent comparison here:
normal Iorveth
premium Iorveth

I stuck with it for the rest of 2017, continued through the 1.0 Homecoming relaunch, each new patch and update changing the nature of the game. Some changes were good, some infuriating, most update brought a mixture of both. And each update changed the nature of the game. To give you an idea, 2017's Midwinter update was probably the first major misstep, at least in my opinion and that of many who played at the time. In order to add around 100 new cards and maintain the balance, many existing ones had their effects altered and streamlined, or more aptly, flattened. Many of the more out there, wackier or strategic decks simply ceased to exist, you could not play the game as you once did.

2018 saw the 1.0 release of the game and in December, the release of Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales, a full singleplayer experience, with its own gimmicks and story, that of Queen Meve and her quest to take back her birthright from the evil clutches of Nilfgaard. It wasn't quite the usual tone of the Witcher, focusing entirely on a royal figure and taking many liberties with her. Yet it was an exciting time to be a fan, as the game was really fun and thematic, adding a slew of new cards and strategies. Add to that the promise of more similar, grandiose adventures to come should Thronebreaker be a success and you could tell this was a time of hope for me. Sadly, so far only one more single player expansion has been released. You're looking at its page right now. This is ostensibly a review of that same expansion. We'll talk about it in about, checks notes, a couple paragraphs.

I stuck with Gwent some more, playing it on and off throughout 2019, even creating a second GOG account in order to transfer my storied profile on pc before the PS4 servers were shut off. Sadly I played Gwent less and less, my laptop struggling to play a title that had become increasingly demanding when it came to graphics. 2020 saw a last, brief stint on smartphone when covid hit and I was desperate to find any distraction from boredom, study, and darker thoughts. By 2021, when I bought a desktop pc that could handle most modern games, my drive to play Gwent had mostly faded, replaced by newer, fresher and more intriguing experiences.

Then, Gwent: Rogue Mage dropped during the Summer of 2022. It was unceremoniously dropped on the GOG storepage, with seemingly no fanfare. I immediatly bought the deluxe edition. It was out of a sense of love, like trying to rekindle a friendship which had waxed, waned and eventually dissolved itself. I wanted Rogue Mage to make me fall in love with Gwent again.

It didn't, it probably never could have. I have little patience for Roguelites, which this game is. If I went back to October 2017 and told myself Gwent would spawn a roguelite spinoff, I'd have laughed in my older self's face. The idea was inconceivable.

I did not dig deep into Rogue Mage's mechanics. I dipped my toes into it, half-heartedly attempted a run, then uninstalled the game. I didn't feel betrayed. I felt numb. Nothing, except maybe a hint of frustration. I felt stupid for wasting so much money on a game I knew I wouldn't have liked had I bothered to do a minimum of research on.

I was even under the illusion I liked it, gave it 3.5 stars on this very website. Sure, not my cup of tea, but hey, it's good because it's Gwent!

Perhaps mankind's most powerful ability is that of self-delusion, distorting reality in such a profound way one doesn't even realise the reality of one's own condition. I thought I still liked Gwent until yesterday. Now I have to admit I don't know where I stand anymore. All I know is I don't particuarly like this one version of it.

We live in an age of Games as a Service, terminology ripped straight from the lingo of cloud software development. Game development has always been a balancing act of of software, business and (ideally) art, but nowadays the mainstream industry, of which CD Projekt Red is an ingrained part of, feels like an endless parade of games that would like nothing more than chain you down with dailies, endless grinds, innumerable premium currencies. Paid freemium titles such as Square Enix's Marvel's Avengers being the most egregious example of this. A game has to last forever, include roadmaps, reinvent itself constantly. I don't know if that's a good or bad thing. I hate the predatory monetary practices, the all but enforced developer crunch, yet find fascinating how a game can play with its own identity one update after another and maintain a lively audience willing to stick with it year after year. I see all the people, strangers and friends alike, enjoying the likes of Fortnite and Genshin Impact and it makes me feel like an ass for saying I don't enjoy them, like I'm fundamentally missing something.

Gwent's ultimate trajectory didn't work for me, and that saddens me. I got burnt with Gwent. All kinds of burnt. Burnt out after grinding long seasons of daily matches. Burnt by impulsive purchases blowing up in my face. Burnt by the realisation it had become near unrecognisable, after seeing its evolution and mutation in real time.

I'm probably never going to play it again, something I'm only managing to accept now, after years of frustation. Rogue Mage is nothing exceptional in itself, but it was my breaking point. For that, it's notable and I have to thank it. I can make a clean break and accept that, just as all good things must come to an end, so too has my history with the original card game.

I don't know if I like Gwent anymore. I don't know if it's good or bad. I no longer watch the tournaments, visit the subreddit or post in its discord server. I broke away slowly. Only now, writing down these long fermenting thoughts do I feel like I've lifted a weight from my chest. Now I can forever cherish the good memories, that's the least I can do.

Thank you Gwent, so long and good luck on the path.

Swallow the Sea is, at heart, a spawn of Spore. Maxis' overhyped and underdelivering 2008 flagship title left a bitter taste in the mouth of many who played it expecting a gaming revolution. Yet the core idea of gamifying evolution persists, the meme is still appealing enough that some still harbor the dream of being able of going from the most humble form of life forms to something much greater. Determined, ambitious, or just straight up stubborn (mostly inexperinced) designers would attempt to make "Spore, but good", with titles like Revolutionary Games' Thrive and Wickworks' Crescent Loom. The result are projects that have been in development for years and have little hope of being completed. The process of designing the very systems of life itself becoming a neverending series of stumbles through the darkness. Some might even call it a nightmare. How ironic that the game that most strives to be one would be the only release to see the light of day.

Swallow the Sea works because of its laser-focused approach, that of a survival horror experienced through the lens of Spore's most compelling early gameplay loop: being a small, slowly growing cellular creature that goes from scavenging scraps to become the "big dog" leaving such scraps behind; from hunted to hunter. It helps that the setting is a positively rotten seascape inhabited by a fauna that strikes a delicate balance between cute and horrifying.

What separates Swallow the Sea from the rest of the pack is its willingness to explore what it means to evolve beyond just gameplay mechanics. It employs a grim (and almost comically unsubtle) commentary on the cycle of life, which is only reinforced with its ending. Did evolving actually make us "better"?

Does it even matter?