i got into a really protracted play-argument with my gf over whether 100 metre dash is a game or not. my initial position was that it's a game and it's kind of a shit one. my gf was like wtf are you talking about. and i explained that beyond the context, it's no different than a bunch of kids saying "last one to the fence is a rotten egg!" if they were just running about chasing each other, then it would be play, but since a win/loss condition has been introduced, they have made a game out of it. fundamentally the same thing, right? and at some point i had a genious-level brainflash, exclaiming "IT'S LITERALLY CALLED THE OLYMPIC GAMES!!!"

well, it's been a few days and we've introduced friends to this debate, providing us with fresh perspectives about the nature of athleticism, the work-play distinction with olympic athletes, stuff like that. and yesterday evening, i made a diagram in mspaint which i will also try and capture in text:

EDIT!! IMPORTANT!!: check out @Pangburn's comment bc they get to the heart of why much of the following is shoddy pseud shit. i'm keeping it up even if it's wrong to use set notation bc it illustrates my initial train of thought. any further edits will be completely in block italics and datestamped like yymmdd from now on.

here's the visual diagram, just to make things easier

play = P, game = G, competition = C
G ⊂ P
(P ∩ C ∩ G') = Ø
(P ∩ G') contains such activites as: throwing stick for your dog, playing pattycake with your son, freeform rp, messing around in gmod, doing wheelies on your bike, building a cool castle in minecraft with your son
(G ∩ C') c.s.a.a.: attempting to complete armored core: for answer, attempting to complete portal 2 co-op with your son, playing pandemic board game
(G ∩ C) c.s.a.a.: being in a fighting game tournament, racing your son in forza, playing chess, playing a football match
(G' ∩ C) c.s.a.a.: fighting your son to the death over rations on a desert island
(P' ∩ C') c.s.a.a.: cycling to work, hiking on the moors, reading moby dick, cooking dinner, kissing your son goodnight

230218 @Pangburn points out that we need a space A (activities) to enclose these three sets so I suppose P, G, C ⊂ A in this line of thinking. But this will be all undermined soon enough...

the question is: is 100 metre dash ∈ (G ∩ C) or ∈ (G' ∩ C)?

can you answer that definitively or is it a matter of individual mindset, whether you go into it playfully or not? you could conceivably contrive a situation of a competition in which the personal stakes are so imbalanced that one competitor is fighting for their life or health while another is just having fun.

so these activities can shift so readily from one set to another. if either of my gf and i had started making winning our argument an active goal, it would have catapulted it into set C, but only for the one with that competitive mindset. i also think about players goofing off in spawn in pvp combat games like tf2 before attempting to achieve their objectives: same "game" technically, but players' behaviour shifts from (P ∩ G') to (G ∩ C) so easily. in fact, most of the activities listed above could shift sets i reckon!

230218 so what @Pangburn identified is that i've unwittingly undermined the whole set theory thing by inconsistently using the sets "play" and "competition" as both mindsets and types of activities. when the sets are treated as mindsets, activities can mercurially slide from one set to another based on an individual's subjectivity... but that simply doesn't cut it for set theory! so we either have to ditch the mindset thing and strictly define ontologies for the sets or we ditch the set thing and focus on subjectivity. personally, i like the second option more bc i'm a sick fuck. i have to get ready for work very soon, but here's my first thought:

the activity is determined by objective and subjective factors. objective are things like the presence or absence of a win/loss condition and/or rules, as well as whether a conflict is involved with multiple people (opponents) engaging in a zero-sum situation. subjective are things like playful attitude, hostile attitude, competitive attitude, etc… where do we go from here..?
... any thoughts on this? have to dash now...

evening thought: let's make the distinction between "free play" and "instrumental play", the former being playful engagement in an activity with no objective to optimise towards and the latter involving an objective to optimise towards. both of these can involve opposition, the former as "play-fighting" and the latter as "competitive game".

i feel like it would be worth trying to capture what it means to "engage playfully" or even strictly define "GAME" (some other time when i'm less tired; maybe you can help me!) but on considering what a non-playful engagement with an activity with an objective goal to optimise towards would look like... i come up with WORK. so... when someone plays a videogame without playfulness, maybe they're not "playing a game" at all. maybe they're just working. to my mind, "making a game of something" is an inherently playful act, so can we reasonably call videogames that when they can be made to become not-games to someone? the waters here are murky and stinky and i am literally just thinking out loud lol.

230425 what a funny week i had where i fixated on this lol. it really pushed me further into disliking categorisation as a practice. also it led me to examining the qualities that i appreciate in video games and media in general. long story short: i prefer playing to gaming and if i engage with some media just by myself i want to feel like it has changed me in some way, given me food for thought or artistic inspiration. i don't trust 99.9% of video games to do that for me.

what do you reckon?

anyway, this is the only game i ever owned with either mario or sonic in the title. i trampolined as blaze the cat.

no amount of great encounter design can make up for The Last of Us's ugly form. "trust no one", "bond with caution": it has every cliché associated with its genre but the twist is that everyone dies, sucks, or both! you can predict literally every single part of the experience if you simply assume the worst in every character. if it wasn't such a cookie-cutter game it could have probably explored some interesting angles.... but no! get along with your basic ass found family while the game sets up the next arc written entirely around a boringly artificial sad twist.

Almost everything I said in my review of Outer Wilds applies here. There's a few changes/additions that definitely make this a different experience, though.

The new stuff is much more explicitly scary than anything in the base game, which was a positive for me since I appreciated the change in atmosphere. Base Outer Wilds locations feel like passive, naturally dangerous places that don't particularly care if you're there or not, let alone if you live or die. What Echoes of the Eye adds feels like it actively doesn't want you to be there and is trying to make you go away, by intimidation and obfuscation if it can or force if it has to. It's a clear change in direction that fits what the expansion is trying to do, but some people will for sure bounce off of it.

The new music is as fantastic as you'd expect, with one modified version of an old song that plays once you've finished the expansion being my new favorite track in the entire game. They even managed to add a lot of new mechanics without changing your basic toolkit (ship/jetpack, probe, signalscope, translator, and flashlight), which is really remarkable after how fleshed out everything felt by the end of the base game.

The only real "downside" is the new stuff isn't super tightly integrated into what was already there, but I can't even imagine how it could have been since there aren't any gaps in the base game that an expansion could slot into. What little integration is there, though, is excellent.

Overall, a worthy addition to the original. Probably best played late in a first-time playthrough or gone back to after finishing the base game, considering the difficulty seems balanced for people who already finished the game 2 years ago.

Outer Wilds is a one-of-a-kind experience for me in a million different ways.

When the main theme played on the title screen, I was excited that it had good music. When the intro had me waking up by a campfire with an alien buddy and a "Roast Marshmallow" prompt, I knew it had charmed me. When I jumped for the first time and noticed it "simulated" a squat by requiring a hold and release to get maximum height, I suspected I was in for an all-timer.

The next 30 hours proved that my suspicion was correct.

Everything about Outer Wilds is made with such love that I'm overwhelmed just thinking about it. The movement and physics ooze a frantic, cackling glee at their own barely contained chaos. The writing and story make otherwise voiceless or long-dead characters have beating hearts. The art direction and world designs create such scale and beauty that it's impossible not to stare in awe. The music is so unbelievably perfect that, in many ways, it is the game. And the actual process of going places, learning things, and putting all the pieces together in your head is so finely tuned that you probably won't even notice it's happening.

And all of it leads up to an ending that somehow manages to confidently leap over the unrealistically high bar the rest of the game sets for it.

I have thought about this game every day for over two years. Just listening to the soundtrack is enough to make me start crying (in a good way). It's impossible for me to exaggerate how good I think this game is because my honest thoughts already sound like they're an absurd exaggeration. So the best I can do is say that Outer Wilds is my favorite game of all time and I love it deeply.

So if you play Outer Wilds, I hope you'll love it too.

Whenever I play Dark Souls 3, I can't shake the feeling that I'm just running down a very long hallway. The entire game feels like a straight line from beginning to end in a way that's sort of unsettling once you notice it. And I could see myself maybe appreciating that experience... if I liked the areas, enemies, or combat in this game. Unfortunately, I don't.

The movesets on every enemy in this game are so fast and combo oriented that it makes progressing a slog. In the previous two games, basic enemies are threatening in numbers but rarely one-on-one, especially for an experienced player. This keeps early areas and fights from being too overwhelming for newer, more cautious players. Crucially, though, it also makes repeated trips through an area frustration-free on the combat side once you do understand what's there and how to respond.

This is not the case in Dark Souls 3. No matter how many times I play it, I live in constant fear of stun-lock combos and enemies chasing me faster than I can sprint even in early areas. I never feel like I reach that point where I can use my experience to confidently cut my way through an area that I do in the first two games. Every fight potentially being a near death experience is not what I want from Souls games, yet that's what FromSoft seems to want from them now if this and portions of Elden Ring are anything to go by. And don't get me started on how much they ruined magic with this one.

The story here is also the flimsiest of the trilogy, content to just shrug and say, "Idk, all that old stuff you liked is back because the world is ending, I guess". But in a nearly Rise of Skywalker-tier display of pettiness, the "old stuff you liked" is apparently all from the first Dark Souls. Hardly a hint of 2 anywhere to be found. The NPC stories are also a step back from 2, as following most characters' quests without a guide is now hilariously obtuse. How this happened when the game is the most linear of the three is beyond me.

This is the only one of the trilogy I haven't even gotten close to finishing, my motivation always petering out somewhere around the Smouldering Lake/Irithyll section of the game at the latest. It just isn't for me, and I'm okay with that. Even if it is disappointing.

As a kid, one of my favorite ways to kill time while doing something with my parents that didn't interest me was to peel the foil layer off a gum wrapper while leaving the underlying paper layer completely in tact. While tactilely satisfying and enjoyable enough once you get the technique down, the exercise was always just a distraction until we could finally go home or get lunch or something. And even if you have good technique and infinite time, sometimes one section of foil is stuck to the paper so tight that it feels like someone at the gum company is mad at what you're doing and wants to put a stop to it.

Elden Ring is an endless series of gum wrappers that doesn't even bother to promise there's a frosty from Wendy's at the end of it all.

And you know what, everything I originally had here after that was overly long and less coherent. If I can take anything away from my time with Elden Ring, it's that I shouldn't drag something out and make it longer than it needs to be.

"Oh, hello! Don't mind me, I'm just recording my thoughts about Dark Souls 2. But please, stay! You're not a bother, and I promise my completed work will be of interest to you. Now if only I could remember where to start..."

Perhaps you've seen it, maybe in a dream
A murky, forgotten land

Dark Souls 2 does most of what I appreciate from the first game, but it also makes a huge, immediately obvious change to the original's structure. The first Dark Souls up until Anor Londo is almost more impossibly layered diorama than representation of a physical place, full of gestures toward a larger world and details hidden in whatever nooks and crannies could fit them. While not necessarily always to scale, an outside observer could understand all of a little slice of the real Lordran by studying Dark Souls' diorama of it.

But in Dark Souls 2, the diorama's layers have been scattered into dew drops on the joints of a much larger spiderweb that we've fallen into. The geography of the world is continuous but never straightforward or comprehensive. There are two different routes to the same island jail, a dead end for both inlets. Branches flow out cleanly from Majula only to lose coherence as they spiral over top of themselves. Up is down, forward is backward. We cannot comprehend Drangleic because we're trapped in it, flailing to get out.

Without really knowing why
Like a moth drawn to a flame

Flesh in Drangleic is soft and heavy. Even the smallest bodies move with a lumbering, lurching heft and respond to each blow they take with a wet thump. Death is a weighty thud into the floor and stillness thereafter. Even the cursed eventually don't have the strength required to lift themselves back up, instead simply dissolving into nothing.

Flesh in Drangleic is also highly adaptable. The curse makes dramatic changes to your appearance that can be just as easily reversed in an infinite tug of war. Lying in a coffin can reshape your entire physique. Heads and bodies live on separate from each other. People frozen in stone for ages can be thawed, emerging unharmed.

Your past, your future, your very light
None will have meaning and you won't even care

But the mind is not so lucky. Dark Souls 2 reimagines what it means to go hollow. Hollowing is not a sudden flip to the other state of a binary system, it's a slow descent where you're painfully aware of how much you're losing with each step. Characters work tirelessly toward goals even as they forget their motives. The seeming inevitability of it all is terrifying. Even the king, for all his power, could not escape becoming a shell of himself.

For that is your fate
The fate of the cursed

You can fight this of course, while you're able. The variety of weapons and spells offers something for everyone to find and latch onto for safety. Magic is at its most expressive and flexible in the series here, with mountains of sorceries, hexes, miracles, and pyromancies to choose from. Powerstancing is fun, and dual wielding in general just clicks in this game in a way that it never really does in the others.

And if you do fight on, some of the most evocative areas in games await you. Almost every new location makes me stop in my tracks to soak it in when I arrive, even on repeat playthroughs. Drangleic Castle is blanketed by an everlasting thunderstorm not for inscrutable lore reasons, but just because it's a super cool looking backdrop for the Looking Glass Knight fight and the turning point in the story. I love the unpretentious honesty of that.

Long ago, in a walled off land far to the North, a great king built a great kindgom
I believe they called it Drangleic...

I wish Dark Souls 2's attitude that prior games were not sacred carried on into FromSoft's future Souls/Souls-adjacent games. But alas, it was not to be. Dark Souls 2 is the Bad One, the one that screwed up so bad we needed 3 to "fix" the series as the real sequel. The first Dark Souls (itself a heavily divergent follow up to Demon's Souls) is now holy doctrine that must be followed to the letter. We would rather stagnate in the ever more dilapidated ruins of the past until we can't even remember why we came here in the first place than commit to a change that might be wrong.

And could there be a more fitting fate for the series after Dark Souls 2's reception than that?

AN ELEVATED MEET N FUCK

"but a machine of pure metal is a luxury."

"most often reserved for facades; to insulate the squeamish from uncomfortable realities."


As I am writing this, I am having a very stressful day. So let's destress by chatting about EROSTASIS for a little while.

It’s exactly what it says on the tin, AN ELEVATED MEET N FUCK. So you must be wondering, what is an elevated meet n fuck? What does such elevated meet n fuck entail?

You already know that I cannot answer this without indulging in the opportunity to talk about the Meet n Fuck games. You know, those point n click erotic dating sims that infested Newgrounds back in the mid 2000s? Those games that were completely jury rigged with stolen hentai art, and random assets found on the internet (like the moans from porn videos in 144p). Anyways, there are two things worth noting from these games. One, is obviously the poorly written dialogue that always has a typo, and two, the foreplay. The foreplay is the “challenge”, it is the wall in your way to getting your dick wet. How can it be done, boys? Well, it’s simple. You rub her left thigh first, DON’T DO THE RIGHT, FIRST! That’s a rookie mistake. It's the left thigh, then the right thigh. Then the hips- LEFT SIDE OF HIP FIRST- THEN RIGHT. Never touch the arms, always touch the cunt last, folks. This is the order, this is Meet n Fuck Lady’s way, and you will follow her way. You will serve the Meet n Fuck Lady! You think she’s servicing you? Bitch, if she doesn’t like your vibes, you ain’t getting in! You are constantly comforting her needs, at all times! You think you’re swooning her with the stupid shit you say? No, she loves desperate clowns that humiliate themselves to get her to smile. She responds to your bullshit with incomprehensible shit because she's not really listening to you, she's just thinking about eating you in one bite. Why’d ya think when ya cum, the game fades to black with a “The End” title card? Because she just ripped your head off like a prey mantis. You died, to sustain her desire, and you will be born again to service her at a later time.

Some people reading this is going to have the audacity to think “that isn’t Meet n Fuck at all.”. What are you going to do? Play them to prove me wrong? No, go ahead, go serve the Meet n Fuck Lady then come back, so I as well can put you in your place. I will choke you out like a rattlesnake, you fucking freak.

Ready to talk about EROSTASIS?

Actually, I know what’s best for you. No, I don’t think you are ready to talk about EROSTASIS. Let me just get this out of the way. This play is grotesque, with some vile, intense, and hysterical imagery of all sorts of perversions. Along with tone piercing sonic sounds that fit just beautifully with it. But obviously, this is not for everyone and I will talk more in depth about it (because that’s more fun for me.). If it does not sound like your thing then move on or keep reading so I save you the trouble. IF this does interest you. Then you will stop reading right now and play it. You will come back after playing it.

OBSERVE, PERCEIVE, AND CONTEMPLATE.

Erostasis begins by double tapping the BEGIN CYCLE. button, then your ears are immediately sonically challenged with this sickening high squeal of frequencies. Black waves swarm the screen, bordered by abyssal metal. The second button you double tap is SURVIVE..

You are then punched into consciousness! First thing you see is an open chest cavity with its beating heart, with all sorts of scrap metal and tubes lingering beside it. BWONG, BWONG, BWONG, BING!

“DO NOT
ATTEMPT
TO SPEAK.

IN FACT,
DO NOT ATTEMPT
ANYTHING
AT
ALL.

YOUR ROLE IS
TO OBSERVE. o”

Third button you double tap is OBSERVE..

At this point, you understand what you’re doing here. You’ve done a great job following instructions. You clicked three buttons already!

This entity that’s speaking to you is in full control of your body. You are only really blessed with the perception of it all. As it says best.

“YOU WILL WATCH
AS YOU
SERVICE
THE SHIP. o”

So it’s pretty obvious here. You aren’t a person, you aren’t Paul The Private Detective that’s trying to fuck every woman he sees to find a birthmark on their ass, nor are you some guy fucking your friend at a BDSM club. There are no Charlies or Veronicas here. Just organs, as the ship is nothing but a body of organs, and you are just one of them. So like any organ, it’s got a function that needs to be done for survival. What is your function? It’s simple, because it already told you. Your function is to service. You must cater to the other organs’ “exotic demands.”. You observe, perceive, and contemplate. What does that entail though? Where do I even start?

There’s seven accessible areas on this ship. The play begins in fabrication, duh. Then you must go through five other areas before entering the COMPUTER CORE! Starting at the top is HAEMOPONICS.

HAEMOPONICS

“the human body is a remarkable machine.

self-constructing, self repairing, highly adaptable.


it is by far the most economical form of automation"

I don’t have anything really smart to say about this quote. It’s self explanatory, really. The fuck machine ship is just spitting. Anyways, you’re going to approach this fleshy motherly figure. It’s the heart. What does the heart need? The heart wants maternal intimacy, you are going to embrace the heart and feed from it. Blood is a fuel of life, so is breast milk.(duh) The maternal relationship between mother and the baby in her womb explains the ‘self-constructing’ part of the beginning quote. A baby is constructed inside a human’s body, they share the same blood. She never gets to hold her damn kids. You really are doing this bitch a service.

VENTILATION

“I didn't dare go far
Saving oxygen
For Modern Business Hymns
Before the Warp Guard”

The lungs are dicks. Just because we don’t like to think/be self aware of our breathing, that means the lungs feel we’re entitled. Honestly, everything that happens here is just what it feels like to be sick. The times where your lungs are weak but forces you on your knees, begging for air.

“a desire for power is always a fantasy for the weak.”

Let’s just hope we won’t be needing portable oxygen tanks in our lifetime. Don’t forget to breathe.

NAVIGATION

“The pain, the pain
The pain, the pain
Relief, again, the pain
The pain, the pain
The pain, the pain
The pain, the pain”

The nerves are here and they need something beyond pleasure. Make them base, human, and animal, for a moment. Make them feel pain.

DOUBLE CLICK FUCK.

We made it boys, the service top representation that we’ve been demanding!!!! This is the real meet n fuck experience, right here. You click the word fuck, you click the word hurt, then you hear the aaahs and oooooofs. Then you leave! It’s over in that section! Like a real meet n fuck!

“30 seconds left
In a golden light”

BIOREMEDIATION

I got canceled after jerking off during Sir James Corden’s show, and now I work in the piss and shit factory. I sit in shit and piss and theres fucking ghosts in the waste and want my body. Anyways I’m trying to destroy them. This isn’t even just relief, I’m out right destroying these fuckers with my body. I guess that can count as relief, you’re letting these ghosts, waste spirits(?), move on instead of sitting in shit. Anyways, they get overwhelmed by being in my body and implode. Bioremediation. Worst part of this play? It does nothing for me. I don’t even have an edgy theory for this. Maybe it’s about people who watch porn but don’t even jerk off, they love the audio for it and they just death grip their dick the entire time, eventually cumming, maybe.

WEAPONS

This is the best part of the fucking play, right here. It does EVERYTHING FOR ME. Weapons on this ship are basically obsolete, they never use them! It makes these fuckers desperate! So what do we gotta do? Well, we gotta remind them that these weapons are nothing without us. So what I’m about to describe here, is possibly the most hysterical thing about this play. I sure hope that if you made it this far reading this, that I hope you played it so you know what I mean here. To people who haven’t. This is YOUR SECOND CHANCE! If you continue reading you are about to be robbed of an experience that’s seeing this shit with your own eyes. Okay so immediately you see a woman getting her gaping asshole filled with a TORPEDO, and of course it's making her belly stretch and inflate. These weapons are literally begging you to fill them, bro. They are so empty! What are you gonna do? Not fill them? Let them die? Of course not! Let’s load a round!

“I’ll kill and explode and explode until everything’s broken and i can suck it all in to fill me.”

Cool, I’m convinced.

LOAD TORPEDO

Bitch get loaded, it’s pleased but it wants to be fired. But it needs our permission. Are we? Gross, no fucking way.

DENY.

“you’re so cruel, my tormentor. thank you.”

There’s a world where Suda was making shit like this if he wasn’t so held back and repressed all the time.

COMPUTER CORE

Alright, relief has been given to every organ on the ship. Well, until we learn that this AI has something that needs to be fulfilled as well. Although this AI and its ship is purely amoral, there’s a simmering thirst of sadism that needs to be quenched. Luckily we’re an organ that’s very adaptable to the kinks of other organs in this post reproduction world, meaning we’re absolutely perfect for the job. It’s going to make us discharge, obliterating us completely. We’ve reached erotic apoptosis, folks. That’s right, it’s a cellular system that happens everyday, billions of times, and will happen again. Do you need relief? You got something that needs to be sedated?

Begin Cycle.

CW: Discussions of Transmisogyny

The common response to vulnerable niche play experiences like Video Game Feminization Hypnosis (2019), Cave Story Sex RPG 2007 (2021), and He Fucked The Girl Out of Me (2022), is mockery both for the boldness of name and of content. Video Game Feminization Hypnosis is a psychic-design-manifesto with lines like "i dont care about the "puzzles" i just wanna explore weird islands & mess with the machines" and "ive half-joked about my games being laced with estrogen but i wonder how powerful they could be. what if we could use video games to forcefem ppl all over the world" nested as hyperlinks throughout her vent towards a better girly gameworld. Written in lowercase text and using internet acronyms like 'ppl', she speaks with a casual concern for unfettered femme exploration games as a way to potentially rewrite the social code.

It has not been product tested for review, nor has either of the other 2 games mentioned. The problem here is that the culture of 'gaming' itself is unable to step beyond the bounds of product review. Franz inquires into this problem around Cave Story Sex RPG 2007

"Why do we seek to quantify something clearly very personal based on how much it resonates with us?

I think my problem is that I think people are looking at this game as they would a product. Like it needs to have some value to me, otherwise it's not "worth playing".

Nadia, Fewprime, Blood Machine, npckc, communistsister, bagenzo, and [pourpetine] (https://xrafstar.monster/games/). These are in my mind the most notable transfemme gamedevs and their relevant store pages for their work¹. It's obviously not a comprehensive list, but this is my notation for who is the most publicly notable and prolific within the scene. Notice that all of the games on these pages are free as are the 3 games I opened with at the start. That's because transfemme gamedevs more often have to make their corpus free just to get eyes. So what are gaming spaces assessing the 'worth' of a completely no strings attached free simulated experiences? I think its the fact we dare to make people uncomfortable and borrowing a modicum of their time (across all the devs I've mentioned I cant think of 1 that takes more than 3 hours to finish, usually only being around 20 minutes in length at most). My sisters have to cheapen themselves to 0 just to get your ear and its still just met with mockery, harassment, and belittlement².

Even when a transfemme game dev gets the chance of any success at all she is thrown down again. In pourpetine's Hot Allostatic Load (2015) she notes among a litany of pained observations that

"One of my abusers was sent a list of the nominees for the upcoming games festival Indiecade. Unfortunately, I was on the list. I ended up winning an award, ostensibly to recognize my feminine labor in the areas of marginalized game design—years of creating access for other people, publicizing their games, giving technical support, not to mention the games I had designed myself. Instead of solidarity from other marginalized people in my field, I was attacked."

Video Game Feminization Hypnosis beats to a much more Utopian drum. A belief that we can mesmerize people into a more pure goo out of this vindictive rut, create a games made out of love, show people feminine Exits.

I believe in all that. I also believe that my words and those of my sisters are constantly being cast a sidelong jeer of disposability. That I and my sisters are then to blame for when a mobbing happens and not the world's own biases and outrage. This world has made this all quite non-negotiable, no more playing along with the democratic cesspits and hateful comedy routines. Here's to reflecting on the play experience others treat as compost as if its the most meaningful urtexts in the world because to quote pourpetine again "Build the shittiest thing possible. Build out of trash because all i have is trash. Trash materials, trash bodies, trash brain syndrome. Build in the gaps between storms of chronic pain." trash art is my queendom.

I hope it suffocates society before it can flee to their patriarch Arks. As princess put it here 'flood the world and dilute the sludge'.

-------------------------------------------------------

1. 2 notable exceptions I know of with pay to play games by transfemme is princess/Girl Software's other games, and the cowriting of Aevee Bee on Worst Girl Games. Also key in on the fact here I'm making no judgements on individual pricing of games as a moral decision.

2. Does not remotely just happen On Backloggd³ if you think this is just a grievance I have with this site you're gravely misreading me and I urge you to slow down your social media outrage use for a bit qt~

3. Although I should not lie, social media sites are remarkably more unreliable habitats for trans people than they initially appear, this place has been a great learning experience of that in my case

CN: Shower Thought

Bookshelf Companion

"As all partings foreshadow the great final one, so, empty rooms, bereft of a familiar presence, mournfully whisper what your room and what mine must one day be. " - Charles Dickens, Bleak House

About a month ago I moved out of my parents house for the first time, and I just want to say I'm very glad I played this first before I moved out because I absolutely would have done what the text here depicts. In Minimalist (2017) you pick everything up to get rid of it, and then you are left with an empty space afterwards.

For a very short time period in 2018 I fell into a few different rabbit holes. I was out as a girl to most of my online friends but still struggling to convince the rest of the irl population I was (depressingly, I still deal with this). Most of those rabbit holes are rather dark, Otakudom, Scientism, interest in reactionary arguments (ie the peterson religiousity trap, skepticism of NB people, etc.). These are all terrible, there was a lot to like about me in this time and I wasn't some horrific bigot but I was a dumb suburban white girl with no political compass. A seemingly more benign interest was in the Minimalist movement, as a lifestyle and aesthetic. A mixture of literal CEO mindset shit like wearing only 1 shirt, and living space decisions like abandoning as much furniture and extraneous shit in your life as you can. I watched stupid ass movies like Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things (2016) on netflix. Consume a bunch of youtube videos which were an aggregate of Tiny House glorification, lifestyle aesthetic videos that showed bedrooms as if they were hospital chambers, and a touch of 'minimalist philosophy' like thinking Diogenes of Sinope was the only good philosopher because of his dedication to 'minimalism'. To illustrate here's a genuine excerpt of what I said from around the time to my girlfriend in support of how I have a smaller rating scale:

"Like in my opinion I've started realizing that minimalism is more or less how I already operate

I'm all about trying to focus on 'good' art, 'good' people (though that can be a tad more complex), etc.

Minimalism is all about trying to focus on what you like, what's helping you in life

Trying to enjoy that, and then discarding the clutter"

In retrospect this plays right into the insecurity about having 'good mental hygeine'. You see it all the time in reflexive anti consumerist sentiments. Later that same year I would buy a bunch of 'girly clothes' and throw a good 3/4ths of my boy wardrobe in the trash. 'Thats it, I dont need anymore things'. This seemed like a logical step of maturity from understanding how my family threw away all the gamecube game boxes and put it in a giant CD case. They even threw away the gamecube itself because logically, the Wii can run all that stuff now anyway. While I heavily disagree with doing that now, at the time I thought well thats minimalism isnt it, no need to keep plastic trash around the house. The problem is that logical next step would be to throw away every game disc for the playstation or xbox since the computer can technically run it. Why not take this 'digital nomadism' to its logical extreme? Why have any objects at all?

...

Well, it's not like I had some profound realization from playing Minimalist, by this point a half decade later I already recognized how silly and empty it is to have no furniture. Hell, if anything woke me up to it its probably the opening of Cruelty Squad (2021) which depicts just how pathetic and depressed doing that actually is. However, Minimalist did make me recognize that I probably shouldn't just abandon everything. I brought some books I loved from before I left, I haven't touched them at all because I read most of my books online but its nice to know that they are there just in case. More importantly, I had panicked about how many loads of laundry I have to do and that I should trash 3/4ths of it again, but this jolted me from following up on that.

More broadly, Minimalist is short and small, to the point its almost unsatisfying. These 'one room' bitsy games are, by accident or intentionally in direct commentary with the first ever bitsy game released Where did I put it? (2016) by Patrick Hale. In which you explore your small space to find something abstract you lost in messy home. Here, its inverted to be an attempt to lose everything. To lose the ego attached to 'objects' rather than trying to find it. Here's what I think is clever though, there's an emptiness in BOTH texts due to a lack of an ending. In one you find out what you're missing but never find it properly, theres no end credit loop like in other bitsy games. Here, you lose that, but you also lose the ability to prompt any more dialogue boxes since you just got rid of all the objects by interacting with them. In Where did I put it? you can technically loop the dialogue thoughts forever in an infernal mindtrap, here you have the opposite, the infernal mindtrap in not having mental prompts.

Every time you choose to own or release an object from your home, you're making an implicit decision of 'memory' just as much as of identity. Having an object anchored lets you remember what you had, so the allure of digitizing all of these memories into the computer makes sense in theory but the problem is the complexity of it never quite goes away. In 2020 or so I lost every single piece of memory stored on my computer. The reaction images, pictures of discussions I had with my ex, etc. It was devastating. Made worse by the fact I just broke up at the time with her and found out that my old discussions with her in Skype are lost to time. At least my version of skype, I lost everything. In a way this is privileged, because most people have more serious versions of this that are marginalized. Being kicked out suddenly from their home, having an abuser destroy their objects, having to flee in a war. By that reasoning, I've come into this realization of memory in its relationship to objects a little late.

On the literary level, I always knew it was there. Yet never really wanted to accept it personally, because I'm a 'digital girl'. However as both these texts accurately represent there is no real distinction between physical hoarding and digital hoarding in both how objects can arrest you and in how 'freeing' from them is just as solemn. I could just as easy consider these databases a form of memory hoarding. At any moment I could panic about how I 'dont remember anything' and try to frantically categorize what I played, listened to, and watched. I've experienced so much art at 25 that its running that panic of incoherent clutter, and odds are if you're reading this the same is likely true for you to. I'm failing in for instance movie trivia and constantly feeling I need to play catch up and create flash cards, only to then simplify it. One day I'll spend trying to categorize every 3D platformer I've played and want to play, the next I'll say to myself 'ok fuck it, only 3D mario matters now or whatever'. Do you remember everything? Or do you like me often find yourself checking quietly in a tab to make sure you're getting the information right? How good is your recall? What is really forgettable to you and how do you organize the stuff you want to remember?

Anyway, I could waffle about this all day to no fruition, but instead I want to just point out something. In Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy (2001) you have long voice acted cinematic conversations with the NPCs to move the story along, they are entertaining and endearing. However when you try to speak to them after they tell you what to do, they simply will not talk to you or repeat themselves. They'll tell you basically to leave them alone and go do this. The first time this happens its surprising, because the norm is that you should be able to talk to the dialogue givers for repeat information whenever you want. Similarly to expectations, a person who has played a lot of early JRPGs and point and click games, are going to find the lack of objects you can look at and get dialogue from in Chrono Trigger equally suprising. Yet in both these games it makes sense to do without even though it leaves behind an 'eeriness' for the player. The player being forced to either remember or recognize that they are bothering is more immersive. These 2 games, Minimalist and Where did I put it are not immersive by comparison, they comment on videogame form itself. It's limitations and how those limitations can reflect onto the player. See, this comment response the author left on the page is in my view the real ending.

"Thanks! I wanted the 'end' of the game to be a time to reflect, since there's literally nothing left to do since you've willingly got rid of everything you own. I felt like explicitly stating the character's reasoning to the player would detract from the player coming to their own conclusion. Yours is totally valid, but others might have thought of something else- maybe the character is going off to become a monk? :)"

The real end game is being so distressed that you try to interact with the creator to find a catharsis for the fiction to make sense. Because the 'ending' of the game in the text is so unreal that you cant ever feel certain its really there. After playing enough bitsy games now I've realized not having an ending is just a running bit between these people, probably a satirical response to the 'looping' thats built into the engine when it does end. You'll have to find closure somewhere else. Yet outside of this we should be comfortable with the prospect that we might just be missing the conclusion, or that there never was one in the first place. Not every memory exists to be recalled evenly, and not every game exists to be concluded upon. It's both the great curse and the benefit of gaming as an art form that it brings with it an ambiguity of intentions and expected results. Sometimes its better to just be at peace with it, for instance there was never any 'conclusive' aspect of Gasters in Undertale, yet its there and in many ways that unknown quality makes the game better. At the same time if it doesn't make sense I feel strongly that its fair to think it may be a sly commentary within genre conventions.

In closing, both these games are 'forgettable' except in rare shower excursions, but to lament or feel shame for the mental clutter they bring is silly. It was an experience that happened so theres no use in drowning it just to try and find the top ten list of all games of all time. One should not be so quick to expunge themselves of all consumption or desperately organize it for ego alone. I think its better to just let it all float out there like the junk it is. I'll keep my wardrobe intact, and my word of advice is that you probably should to.

"Actually you can not forget what has happened to you. So, don't trust your memory" - Negativland, This is Not Normal


* I never finished it. I took a 400 course I failed because I was supposed to read through this and couldn't stand it. However, it sounds appropriate enough and that's what matters. Originally I was gonna quote Trainwrecks being mad at somebody in his chat for calling his house empty but I couldn't find the clip. The only reason I mention this is because it reinforces my point about 'mental clutter'. I watched that clip at some point and now I cant fucking find it, I spent 20 minutes trying to do so before giving up. I don't even like the guy I just thought it was funny but whatever, thats life. "So it goes" - Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse 'Wrong about the events of Dresden ' Five

Firstly I'm openly reflecting upon this game so that people know that if you care about LGBT aubiographical trauma games (ie. No One Can Ever Know, Madotsuki's Closet, etc.) this is a very significant one to get to. My guess is that if you follow LGBT people, including me, youre going to see this on a lot of 'end of year' lists.

Now one thing I want to point out that is interesting is that due to how emotionally affecting this is, most people have gone on to speak about how it made them cry or reflect their own experiences. Even from people on here actually known for usually writing more erudite reflections. This speak to the power of its performance, but I'll be the one to highlight how.

Once you run the game on browser it blows up to fill your whole browser windows as large as possible, regals you the controls and then allows you to walk. Then, once you move to the edge of the screen 2 things happen:

Would you like to see trigger warnings? (Yes, No)

And then the first line of self narration from Ann: "The problem with talking about this is: I don't know how people will react"

One of the narrative vulnerabilities that segments this from other games of this type is that it will absolutely ask you as a player to think about your intentions in play. Pretty immediately, Ann covers both the fact that sex-work is often lionized and that this is fine by trans people as a narrative of independency. And also that, not simply just the 'text' but the main autobiographical narrator does NOT want this game to be used as a weapon to scold sex workers. What makes this great is that she effectively pulls this off without resorting to second person phrasing saying 'you might think' etc.

Ann is deeply unjudgemental in a general sense but also correctly figures out through her own internalizations that she doesn't really know yet who is reading that, that who could be anybody.

Ann as a character is very timid, flat, and introspective allowing for her lines to travel to the player directly and without flourish. Lines flow out of Ann completely naturalistically like "I couldn't really hear anything" rather than trying to describe it in some detail or another. This enhances the fact that its utilizing the smaller text box design of game boy games. Comprehension and clarity never become an issue during play.

The story is about how Sugaring made Ann less connected to her sense of self-worth and identity as a woman, which may explain why her avatar is a ghost rather than any attempt at depicting herself as a trans woman who just came out recently. It works as another fracture to remind the player that this is just a representation of the events reinterpreted by an older developer who views it as trauma.

Even outside of that the visual design and compositions are absolutely masterful. For example you end up seeing her crush sally from every angle in 2D space during close up scenes, when you move from walking to full on portraits. All of them are gorgeous but here's 2 examples from early on. Even for people who may not personally get much from the story itself, the mastery of the art design is to die for, especially if you're a fan of Game Boy Color games.

I'll join everyone else quickly on the more personal reflection here I admit this part is a bit TMI so skip it if you don't care:

I have always personally had a unstable relationship with the prospect of sex work, due to my own economic conditions and general dysphoria I haven't even felt close enough to the state I want to be in in order to really consider it. Hell the best camera I have for online sex work is a web camera that had its hinge broken off because a friend smacked a fly. So I have actually engaged in and desired the idea of sex work as somewhat of a liberatory function, mostly for online because I always saw irl stuff as both much more seedy and much more anxiety inducing. The matter of fact is I'm a bit of an agoraphobe in general because I can't control how im seen, not just a fear of transphobia but a functionally Weirder fear that I might be only beautiful from a specific angle and the fact I dont have a camera that shows people that angle makes me miserable. As such I tend to also imbue sex work with this mystic sensibility that anybody doing that probably feels visually just perfect, a 2nd order jealousy and dysphoria justified. To a large degree I think this is probably just my own brainrot due to dysphoria, but the reason I'm giving so much depth on this set of cognitive interactions and desires is that while Ann is not critical against embellishing sex work outright, she does show that its not all fun and games for Sally and that Sally feels sort of like she needs to put up a 'sociopathic' identity in order to detach. Even if you are stunning and beautiful, and even if you can utilize it to get independence through others. The fact of the matter is a large part of the game is about being desired yet trying not to let yourself 'know' the other person too much.

On a larger point this is not the only occupational ability given this degree of fixation as a liberation tool in Transfemme spaces. The Blackpaper by Nyx Land is a now slightly dated manifesto that makes a dramatic argument that Transwomen and coding are intertwined, using a quite conspiratorial logic via connecting the word UNIX to biblical references. Seeing this as a 'high IQ' form of liberation, a lot of trans women also imbue coding with this sort of liberatory function, and I feel I should stress that it's actually mostly harmless. While the Blackpaper is weird it imbues a lot of transwomen with a faith and narrative to move on. The reality is just that just as Ann shows an inability to endure to the standards of her field the other reality is that even though its a coping mechanism, we shouldn't actually expect queer people to individually 'be' good at something. For one, it takes a lot of time to get to where you want to be anyway, being a good coder or a good sex worker is not that much different a skill than, say, being good at makeup. In the same way its not ok to push transwomen to be better at makeup or tell them they haven't tried hard enough so to does it reflect here. On top of that for non-transfemme people the sentiments we are good at Hoi4, Fighting Games, Coding, Game Development, are all culturally accurate on a large level but still stereotypes. I'm not good at any of this stuff and a result can mean that people often ignore what I am good at or want to be good at. There are a lot of people out there that fail to meet any of these abilities and are seen as unexceptional, the irony is that Ann or more to the fact the author, Taylor, is 'good at Game Design' (or maybe more art design) but that's not core to the narrative at all. She just wants to exist and this happened a decade ago. So when trans people (of any gender) tell you they just want to exist in peace this is more what we mean! We shouldn't have to find a skill that makes us separated from transphobia, wherein the leisure time to improve in these lionized skills is usually dramatically truncated in comparison to a cis person anyway. The desire to 'overcome' is inherent in anybody looking to escape the chains of capitalist exploitation but we are creatures first, not workers. And as such the narrative of overcoming implies by its own design that others didn't overcome, and until we listen to what they are saying and help them, things aren't going to get better.

Anyway, I straight up don't trust anybody who gave this a 1 out of 10, and I'm summarily blocking all those fuckers in advance. A natural memoir about transphobia and trauma and you give it a 1? Get the fuck out of here with that. A 3-5/10 I can understand, but a 1 is just showing transphobic ass in a way that's 'subtle' enough not to get reported. If you're reading this and you did that, fuck you, I don't want anything to do with you. Scumfuck bastard.

Edit: Franz mentioned to me that these people have a history of doing this. I knew I was onto something. Keep an eye out on these dudes..

     ‘This was the only earthly love of my life, and I could not, then or ever after, call that love by name.’
     – Umberto Eco, Il nome della rosa, 1980.

Capturing the contours of a sixteenth-century society in the Holy Roman Empire is a difficult task. Central Europe was undergoing complex transitions as a result of demographic recovery, religious innovation and the administrative mosaic of Germanic territories. Recent historiography emphasises the interlocking and overlapping of forces that shaped regions and societies: it is difficult to generalise local observations to the rest of the Empire, but it is also unwise to paint the portrait of a village on the basis of generalities alone. For example, the forms of feudalism differed on either side of the Elbe. A theoretical simplification is to consider the regions south and west of the Elbe as being under the rule of Grundherrschaft [1]. This form of feudalism developed from the 14th century onwards with the decline of the traditional smaller lords and the demographic collapse caused by the Black Death. This situation allowed the surviving peasants to expand their farms and establish stronger hereditary rights over the land. Although still subject to the authority of their local lord, they had greater freedom of action.

     History, fiction and myth: the Umbertian gaze

Towards the end of the fifteenth century, friction between the nobility and the peasantry increased as the former sought to assert their authority over land that seemed to have been de facto freed from serfdom. Another factor in the social crisis was undoubtedly the demographic upturn from 1470 onwards, which swelled the cohort of landless peasants, while small landowners were no longer able to take advantage of the economic opportunities of the previous century. In some southern regions of the Holy Roman Empire, agricultural production was no longer profitable, so it became mainly subsistence farming. These factors led to a widening gap between the peasants and the lords. The lords, sometimes nobility, sometimes clergy, were in latent conflict for other economic and political reasons.

It is difficult to summarise several thousand pages of social history in a few lines, so these few elements of context will suffice. Pentiment makes the bold choice of setting its action in this complex historical background, in a locality centred around the village of Tassing and Kiersau Abbey. The project explicitly borrows from Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose (1980). Although the historical context is different, the themes and structure are similar. Eco's readers will find themselves in familiar territory: Pentiment allows the player to assume the role of Andreas Maler, a Nuremberg artist commissioned by the Abbot of Kiersau to illustrate a Book of Hours as part of his certification as a master artist. During his stay in Tassing, Andreas gets to know the many members of the local society, until a murder takes place. For personal reasons, Andreas is thrust into the role of detective and must unravel the many secrets of the community.

Like The Name of the Rose, Pentiment multiplies points of view and semantic layers. The game is at once a general dissertation on the social history of the Holy Roman Empire, a detective story, a philosophical debate, a theological meditation and a discussion on the value of storytelling. It is through this literary device, borrowed from Eco, that the title manages to find a great deal of coherence in its storytelling [2]. The investigation – i.e. the criminal story – is interwoven with the socio-political narrative, so that the player is constantly confronted with both general and specific elements. Andreas Maler acts as a bridge between these two worlds. Firstly, because he finds himself at the crossroads of very different social universes: as a traveller, he is used to many cultures; as a young artist, he associates with the powerful without being fully part of their universe. Above all, he is a stranger to Tassing, and his gaze is that of a witness whose interest in local politics, however altruistic, is rather weak. In other words, his view is certainly subjective, but it is all-encompassing. These characteristics are very similar to those of William of Baskerville, who had a complex theological background.

     Depicting the Middle Ages through the new social studies

In terms of narrative economy, such a protagonist captures the player's attention in a number of ways. For classically trained historians, Andreas provides access to the ancient and medieval literary world; for mystery fans, his role as a detective is crucial. The choice of Andreas' background means that, in addition to the interactive gameplay typical of CRPGs, players can personalise their experience around the themes that interest them most. As a Latinist, I was pleasantly surprised to see Pentiment commanding a very solid Latin, and to read the classical locutions quoted by Andreas. The title has a rare encyclopaedic quality, in tune with recent scholarly developments. There remain a few very minor approximations, such as certain onomastic choices (Else Mülleryn should rather be spelt Müllerin) and Kiersau's remarkable and exagerated interregionalism. On the latter point, the choice was certainly motivated by Umberto Eco's vision of a universalist abbey and a political response to Kingdom Come: Delivrance (2018): the figure of the Ethiopian priest Sebhat seems a rather explicit foil to Daniel Vávra's ultra-conservative claims about the absence of people of colour in fifteenth-century Bohemia.

Pentiment always uses its encyclopaedic knowledge wisely to illustrate medieval mentalities. Arrogantly imparting knowledge is the best way to undermine the friendship and support of the game's various characters. The game constantly seeks to highlight the limits of Andreas' knowledge and the subjectivity of the concept of truth. As such, Pentiment seeks to portray the situation of women in the Middle Ages with real nuance. The game's fictional micro-history project features women who are involved in their village's economy and are pillars of the community. Discussions with the Benedictine nuns also provide an opportunity to explore women in religion, and Pentiment clearly illustrates the prejudices of the time, as well as Andreas' very masculine perspective. In contrast to the Christian tradition, which leaves no place for women in its traditional hierarchy – women's religious offices generally disappeared in the central Middle Ages, which is exactly the situation described for Kiersau Abbey – and restricts them to religious life or marriage, Pentiment constantly emphasises their agency and the ways in which they can circumvent the restrictions. Amalie illustrates the extreme spiritual experiences that women can voluntarily inflict on themselves through her retreat and mystical visions. Illuminata embodies a mastery of the literary classics, while the other sisters stand out for their practical knowledge and integration into Tassing society.

     To write, to read and to die in the universal library

Like Umberto Eco's library, that of Kiersau Abbey is intended to be universal. It seeks to circumscribe all known knowledge through the possession of rare volumes, be they erudite treatises or chivalric romances. Writing and rewriting are at the heart of Pentiment's project. The narrative is subjective and subject to numerous corrections: when the dialogue is presented, mistakes punctuate the text and are corrected in front of the player. Similarly, the choice of script depends on the impression the speaker makes on Andreas. He presents the discourse of the educated clergy in a Gothic style, while the villagers have a much less polished script. Above all, it is noteworthy that Andreas changes his representation according to the information he receives. For example, when he learns that the shepherd is actually an avid reader of Latin books, he updates the script used in the dialogue. These elements are linked to a concern for memory, and Pentiment sets out to question what deserves to be left to posterity, rejecting the idea of a monolithic history. The truth is in a constant state of flux and varies from different perspectives: it is this insight that guides Andreas' investigation into the various murders. The game is less about finding the culprit than about writing Tassing's story. The game forces the player to accuse one of the suspects for each murder, but it is remarkable that all the solutions seem unsatisfactory. Pentiment is not about solving murders, but about understanding how Tassing society reacts to events that upset its internal balance.

Pentiment borrows its idea of humour from The Name of the Rose [3]: laughter is used to subvert the order of the world, because it reveals – through sarcasm or astonishment – the way in which the world turns. The comic scenes in the game anchor the narrative in a plausible reality, not just a cold, theoretical illustration of 16th-century Tassing. Pentiment's dialogue system is not so much a mechanic that supports 'choices' leading to different endings, but rather a sincere exploration of the world. Comedy is necessary because it is an instrument of freedom and truth, which all the characters seek in one way or another: to laugh is to break free from social bonds, hence Saint Grobian's irreverence. Conversely, silence allows the player to conform to the social mould, to maintain the status quo. Such a position is sometimes necessary to make progress in an investigation without alienating potential allies. The great strength of Pentiment is that it strikes the right balance between laughter, speech and silence. The characters, including Andreas, have to take a stand, and the question is how to do it.

There are no straightforward answers, and the game is never preachy or pretentious. The complexity of the world, of social relations and social transformations explain the hesitations. Uncertainty is part of the truth: Pentiment shines through its unique artistic direction, borrowed from manuscripts and engravings. In a stroke of genius, the game moves drawn characters on fixed backgrounds. There's something magical about seeing sketches move in this way, evoking a kind of collage. The practice of cutting out and reusing figures and backgrounds is well documented in the production of medieval manuscripts, underlining the plasticity of art in the representation of history [4]. In a fifteen-hour adventure, Pentiment creates such a vast universe. I find it difficult to write more, given the extraordinary richness so elegantly condensed into a game, from religious issues to economic innovations. In this respect, it is worth mentioning the welcome presence of an indicative bibliography in the game's credits. Umberto Eco concludes The Name of the Rose with a variation on a line by Bernard of Cluny: 'Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus', he writes. The original rose lives on in its name, we keep the names naked. To Bernard of Cluny's 'ubi sunt...?', Eco adds the persistence of memory. The memory of people who existed centuries ago should persist even more; Pentiment is a sublime fresco in their honour, coming as close as possible to the historical truth without ever being able to fully circumscribe it: 'Since I tell to its end my story, then joyful shall be my days.' [5]

___________
[1] Joachim Whaley, 'Economic Landscapes, Communities, and their Grievances', in Germany and the Holy Roman Empire, vol. 1, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2012, pp. 122-142.
[2] José-Marie Cortès, 'Itinéraires interprétatifs dans Le Nom de la Rose', in Synergies Inde, no. 2, 2007, pp. 289-306.
[3] Michel Perrin, 'Problématique du rire dans Le Nom de la Rose d'Umberto Eco (1980) : de la Bible au XXe siècle', in Bulletin de l'Association Guillaume Budé, no. 58, 1999, pp. 463-477.
[4] Anna Dlabacová, ‘Medieval Photoshop’, on leidenmedievalistsblog.nl, 18th February 2022, consulted on 13th June 2023.
[5] Wolfram von Eschenback, Parzival, II, XVI, l. 676 (trans. Jessie L. Weston), c. 1210.

-No little german dev don't go to the anime cave!
+Oh mein Gott zees is ein cave full of geimu inhalt

The other heavily anime inspired sci-fi game with a latin title that released this year, and easily the most memorable of the two, Ilya Kushinov eat your heart out.

An extremely satisfying inclusion to the survival horror genre, this game does just the right work on the true and tested formula of earlier games like Silent Hill and Resident Evil to make it feel, with a spotless resource management system that really has you sweating over long corridors or cursing yourself over every diminute mistake you make (the auto lock on worked flawlessly for me, which made it even more desperating whenever I missed a shot by panic clicking) and some pretty entertaining puzzles that are easy to follow, sans one or two somewhat long trial and error puzzles where you just have to turn a bunch of stuff around until it goes click.

Where the game loses me is in its presentation. Whenever the game is about the inner workings of this future wasteland of a galaxy we have come to inhabitate I'm completely hooked, even more with the main character's position in all of it and how it's shown ingame. The problem is, a huge part of the aesthetics of the game felt to me as just moody anime, sticking out of the other styles it's packaged with to the point I dreaded to see a cinematic play out whenever I entered an important looking room, hoping it would not be just another anime girl looking at the camera with melancholically sad eyes. It doesn't really help that the last part felt like a pretty rushed copy of Silent Hill.

All in all, this one's for the road. I really recommend it to anyone who has even a passing interest in survival horror, aand I bet it's even more enjoyable if you aren't burned out of the internet anime noosphere. Weebness be damned those Casque à pointe can work a game!
No 9/11 joke today, I haven't really felt disco in a couple of weeks.