December 15th

Welcome back readers.

We’re coming up on the submission deadline (December 22) to get your picks in for our end-of-year review! If you haven’t already done so, check out the announcement post for details, and if you’d like, join our Discord and submit your recommendations.

This Week in Videogame Blogging is a roundup highlighting the most important critical writing on games from the past seven days.

Tonkachi Time

Our opening section this week is somewhere on a continum between art and design, and the delightful possibility space games can inhabit when they resist the orthodoxies of both.

• Chapter 14: It Only Gets Weirder | Doomworld
  Not Jabba and rd survey a design and artistic movement within the Doom mapping community bringing together the janky, the hostile, the esoteric, and the cosmically weird (Further Reading – Boris Bezdar on MyHouse.wad).
• Hyper Mario World and Going Beyond Kaizo in Romhack History  | Jeremy Signor’s Games Initiative
  Jeremy Signor highlights a romhack series outside of Kaizo orthodoxy and its embrace of “unethical”, open-ended design (Further Reading – GlichCat7’s history of Kaizo).
• Embrace the Jank! | Inner Spiral
  Alli encourages an appreciation for the weird, the flawed, and the janky in games and art more broadly.

“This isn’t about liking bad games ironically. It’s about understanding that even the messiest games have value. They might teach you what you don’t like, or surprise you with moments of brilliance. Either way, they’re worth your time.”

Disk Collection

Now let’s look at design–and play–philosophies from the NES era.

• UFO 50 Serves Perfect Slices of Nostalgia | Unwinnable
  Levi Rubeck regards the comedic hostility of UFOSoft’s early breakout hit Barbuta through the lens of the contemporary attention-economy-driven landscape (Further Reading – Dari’s look at Party House by the same developer).
• Talking games | The Portopia Serial Murder Case | Tsundoku Diving
  Baxter Burchill parses the stark, lonely, looping spiral of Portopia.

“The murder of Portopia is a prison for everyone involved. It’s a labyrinth the cast can’t escape. Just as the game itself tightens its grip on the player, traps them in endless circles of moral decay and let’s them rot, so too does the house of the murder capture Yasu. He can’t ever leave. It’s taken him, stolen him, killed him. It’s all he is. And then it all happens again.”

Affective Play

This section deals with depression, suicide, abuse, and accountability.

• last seen online | Steven’s Substack
  Steven Santana plays a desktop simulator about adolescene, depression and digital suicide (Further Reading – Perry Gottschalk’s look at Emily Is Away).
• Hurt/Home – Mouthwashing Review | Gamesline
  Franny delves deep into Mouthwashing‘s themes of abuse and complicity (Further Reading – Taylor Hicklen on Clickolding).

“A remarkably poignant exploration of what happens when you don’t hold your bros accountable. Deeply unsettling and emotionally exhausting, the theft of autonomy isn’t just a theme so much as it’s a brick thrown at my head. In a good way.”

Green Planet

These next two picks are about gardens, trees, and green spaces in games.

• Trees in Video Games | Sidequest
  Kathryn Hemmann meditates in comic form about green spaces in games and all they represent.
• Planting the Seed: Patience & Nurture in Virtual Gardening | Femhype
  Couldn’t find an author to credit for this one–it’s a brief reflection juxtaposing the nurturing pace of gardening with the instant gratification loop dominant in popular games (Further Reading – Jay Castello on gardens as a human framing of nature).

“In relaxing play, the action and re-action loop is slowed down, and the rhythms of the game and the player are set at a sedate pace. It is in these moments that a great deal of emotion and meaning can grow. Walking through a beautiful landscape, pausing to listen to music, or taking the time to nurture and care for plants all hold quiet and humble experiences. It’s the act of humility and care that improves both the garden and the gardener.”

Infinity Nikki

The dress-up RPG Infinity Nikki has been out for a minute, so here are some thoughts and impressions.

• Infinity Nikki’s fans want you to know it’s for all genders | Polygon
  Ana Diaz unpacks a recent trend of dudes posting about their love of Nikki.
• Infinity Nikki Is A Dream Come True For Virtual Photographers | Inverse
  Robin Bea is completely engrossed by Infinity Nikki‘s photo mode.

“I spent most of last weekend playing Infinity Nikki, not collecting outfits or working through my quest log, but simply taking photos. I haven’t completed a single Styling Challenge since the game officially launched, but I have filled up a good portion of my Photo Expeditions Guide, Liked dozens of other players’ photos, and left my mark in the form of Snapshots across every inch of Miraland I’ve seen so far.”

Thought Cabinet

Here are two more pieces unpacking the RPG genre more broadly.

• Reflecting on Planescape Torment’s legacy, 25 years later | Eurogamer.net
  Khee Hoon Chan looks back at the Infinity Engine RPG they made a little different.
• The Way They Walk in Liberl | Gamers with Glasses
  Autumn Wright pulls at the threads that anchor the reductive-yet-shifting meaning of JRPG, drawing upon the irreducible Trails series to do so (Further Reading – Eithi on city-as-character in Trails from Zero).

“The JRPG could only ever be othering. In the past, the J in JRPG has denoted a place of origin, varying genre conventions, or arbitrary characteristics of form or content. JRPG’s have been fantasy, turn based, linear (more below), and console RPGs. They’ve been RPGs made in Japan. They’ve been RPGs with cartoony art styles. They’ve been whatever Western RPGs are not: medieval, fantasy, computer-, branching, open world, realistic. What people mean when they say JRPG has changed as much as its occident has shifted, the catalyst often the mainstream success of a JRPG at whatever then defines Western RPGs. What JRPG means as a genre label, as a rhetorical shorthand, shifts, always existing in opposition against, in binary with, orient to WRPGs.”

Inside Scoop

These next three selections tackle contemporary issues of communication, corporate control, and journalism.

• Matthew S. Burns on AI, Empathy, and the Making of Eliza | Circuits and Synapses
  Will Ard chats with Eliza creator Matthew S. Burns about the human element of therapy, the problems with relating to generative AI chatbots, and more (Further Reading – Holly Green on Eliza‘s deconstruction of therapy).
• Capitalism, Control, and the Company Store in Citizen Sleeper 2 | Gamers with Glasses
  Spencer Johnson examines surveillance and control in Citizen Sleeper 2 (Further Reading – Matt Horton on failure in Citizen Sleeper 2).
• Chasing Nothingburgers? | Unwinnable
  Alina Kim gets the scoop on the state of journalism in Hoenn.

“In a world in which search traffic is increasingly erratic and Google seems to have given up on curtailing AI slop, the life raft for journalism – especially tabloid journalism – is engagement and clicks. I don’t know what the newsroom situation is like in Hoenn, except that Gabby and Ty seem to be the only two producers ever around. Maybe journalism would be outright dead in the region if not for them.”

Chaos Control

How about some reflections and impressions on two more recent games?

• Mythwrecked: Ambrosia Island imagines the Greek gods as queer and kind | Polygon
  Zoë Hannah checks out a bite-sized game with a different take on the pantheon.
• Ash Schofield’s Many Christmases With Sonic Generations | Winter Spectacular 2024 | startmenu
  Ashley Schofield offers a personal account of how Sonic Generations is not only a Christmas game, but also, in its new Shadow expansion, kind of a dad game,

“Sonic Generations continues to be a part of my festive season, a truth that has only increased with the addition of Shadow Generations –  a story of finding your place within your world and accepting your past and present. What may be my brightest Christmas so far happens to come around the same time as the darker half of the game that has been with me all this time, and I find something special in that.”

Critical Chaser

It’s about Luigi.

• On Luigi | Gamers with Glasses
  Alexander B. Joy extols the heroism in the ordinary.

“In his average and unremarkable capacity, Luigi acts not only as us, but for us. It is not necessary to be superhuman, his example demonstrates. Look what the everyman can accomplish. In victory and in defeat, he validates the hope slumbering in every ordinary person: That conviction alone is needed for us all to be heroes.”