rain world presents a planet so alive, brutal, and beautiful. its enormous collection of tunnels, hills, and metal structures are designed in a way makes the player feel like the world was not made for them, that it is a real place they're passing through. the setting is inhabited by some of the strangest creatures i've ever seen, which behave fittingly strangely. the adventure starts as a battle for survival, but halfway through, the slugcat's reason for continuing on changes, as both it and the player gains awareness. a truly beautiful video game, and i do not know if there will be many more like it. i recommend you seek out the piece on rain world, buddhism, and transcendentalism out there. it may sound strange to players just starting, but this game has a lot to say about buddhism. yeah, rain world. i love it.

ok, friends of middle school past, i now agree. castlevania rocks. though you are and have always been right, i am also. castlevania is stupid. castlevania rocks and is stupid, and i have seen the light. dumb halloween music, chunky moving, beautiful pixel art, 90s anime, this game is a himbo. a himbo masculine, stupid, and kind enough to provide us with maria -- a chiller, gunner way to castlevania -- an easy mode that removes challenge not by nerfing enemies nor bulletizing the player, but by changing movement and aesthetics to feel freer. i admit, after losing many times on stage 2 as richter, i switched to maria and beat the game. however i know i've missed alternate stages, and haven't got that richter experience, so i plan on doing that soon, now that i have the confidence i can beat a castlevania. then i'll boot up bloodlines and get past the german ammunition's factory level. an no, i'm not playing any symphony of the night nor gba nonsense. i don't give a shit about no vetroidmania right now.

i believe this game is a perfect length, though i will not share to you, dear reader, which gun-penis is MY perfect length, for fear one of you freaks may contact me.

the tearoom gamefies a moment in time. a 1960s tearoom in rural ohio, where men seek sex with other men. it's perfect because it is already play, it's impactful because the consequences are dire. this dirty bathroom can be transformed into a place they own, separate from the outside world. both the player and the various men who come in are in this for fun, and it is fun! there's a tenseness when the player looks up at the man beside him, and looks down again. the tenseness comes to a head when he approaches the player. the music gets louder and you are now sucking gun-dick and it feels right and you can get lost in the moment

except you can't, because what if the cops come in? in my first time playing, on the second man, i got busted by the cops. the music stops, the lighting changes, and both of us are in deep shit. so then, the player must constantly keep watch of police activity. while at the urinal, it is easy to look out the window, it is easy to hear a car pull up, but in the moment, licking that cocked gun, the player is turned away from the window, and the music and sound effects drown out outside noises. one must be vigilant to keep playing -- and it gives off this feeling that no space can truly ever be safe, at least in a world with people who police the public.

the tearoom. 5/5 stars

of course the presentation is beautiful-- the animated storybook style and sound design is where this game really excels. the narrative is good too, and I am always happy to see more games about Real Life. I'm torn on the cooking, though. on one hand, there's a lot I liked. I really enjoyed learning about different dishes and how they are made, it was fun to put my outside knowledge of cooking into figuring out the logic of the recipes, and by the end, cooking as Kavin was narratively impactful. on the other hand, a lot of what makes cooking a challenge is glossed over in order to make it possible to make a dish with no previous knowledge and incomplete instructions. of course, it wouldn't be preferable for Venba, after fucking up her idlis, to say, "well, honey that was the batter, sorry, no lunch for you today", but the cooking feels stuck between wanting to be a puzzle and wanting to be breezy and enjoyable and winds up feeling pretty strange in my opinion. the fact that these cooking segments are so quick, too, makes it feel a bit like food tiktoks or those subway ads where they show the supercut preperation of a dish in 15 seconds. however, the final cooking scene, even removed from any narrative weight, works great. the lower stakes of screwing up one dosa (compared to like, burning your families dinner), the fast pace of cooking on high heat, and the repetition of making variations on the same dish all contribute into making it into a simulacrum of the act of cooking. its execution makes its role in the narrative work even better.

being firm in its beliefs, umurangi generation executes its world, its gameplay, and its message stunningly. the music also rocks. what tali faulkner provides the player is a series of vignettes inching along a plot that is just barely there, with the players main job being to observe. what's genius about the gameplay is by taking photography as its core mechanic it plants a metaphor in the player's head. though the art form of photography captures things that objectively exist, different photos of the same object can be and generally are radically different from one another. taking a photo of a sculpture is creating art, just as sculpting the sculpture was. so umurangi declares similarly that while making a video game is art, so is playing it. what this photography mechanic means for the game is that player can express themselves infinitely within the finite set of actions the game designer allows them to do. there's a lot to talk about in umurangi generation, its politics, its aesthetics, its music, but i just wanted to highlight this area that it succeeds in where so many other games, especially those that are trying to tell a story, fail. by providing the player with this two-in-one metaphor and game mechanic, it encourages gameplay and story-interaction as self-expression, not as a challenge. and that feels extremely refreshing.

sweet game. it's about picking a comic book for your dad. this was hard, because personally, I would never buy a comic book for my dad. maybe that's because I don't read comic books. it's a lot easier to buy gifts for somebody if they like what you like. the first gift I bought this xmas season was a japanese import special edition switch game. the second was several records. now I need to purchase things for my family and housemates who don't like video games OR music memorabilia. (hmm... maybe I should've picked up the Essays On Empathy comic book for myself!)

but anyways, the game: i didn't play it when it came out as I was living in Spain and the only computer i owned was a polish-designed bizarro single-board ARM linux laptop.* the big thing this game does (the only thing?) is ask you to think about the emotional weight that is tied to buying gifts. the book bios (and reviews) are entertaining, as are the brief thoughts of our protagonist, however I wish that the text said less. the "Perhaps this one, but no" is a necessary part of choosing something at a store, but the fact that it is a clickable option with pre-written responses makes it feel like the writers don't actually care about my opinions on the book. (which, of course they do, given the rest of the piece.) furthermore, I had already thought "perhaps, but no because..." about every book before I realized it had pre-written responses.

anyway it's a good 15 minute piece about having a father. I like games that are about one thing. deconstructeam is good at this. everything that is not their two big releases are single concept, mostly single screen narrative pieces whose goal is to get you thinking about something. it's a 21st century way of taking in these interactive experiences (granted, one that probably doesn't make them much money) that suits this concept-loving polycule.

the polycule is the devs, not me. just to make it clear.