April 20th

Welcome back readers.

Behold! A rare, on-time (as in, actually published on Sunday) post! By contributing to our Patreon you absolutely will not incresase the frequency of these rare, on-time Sunday posts, but you will help keep our work in general going for years and years to come. How about that!

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

Blue Prints

Our first set this week moves on a trajectory from design-minded inquiry to genre think-throughs. You can kind of see how these go together.

• The “ImSim” and Interest | AURAMBLES
  Aura Triolo thinks about how imsims set the board up for maximum opportunity–with a little effort.
• Ka-Boom | Unwinnable
  Jay Castello laments the frictionlessness of red barrels and yellow paint (Further Reading – Kayin’s thoughts on the whole yellow paint thing).
• Whence metroidvania | Zarf Updates
  Andrew Plotkin seeks out the boundaries between puzzles, platformers, puzzle platformers, adventures, time loops, Zork,
• A couple of thoughts on Blue Prince | Essay Games Blog
  Nicholas O bounces off The Blue Prince… and yet…

“I want to understand it. I find parts of it very compelling. It makes me want to pay attention to everything and be clever and unlock all of its splendor and wonderment and roll its credits. But… I’m not good enough.”

Liner Notes

A mix of reflections on craft, play, pathfinding, self-finding.

• A Dialogue with Grace Benfell | Unwinnable
  Autumn Wright chats with Grace Benfell about critical dialogue, reactionary tendencies in critical games writing, longform, and more (Further Reading – Florence Smith Nicholls on interesting games writing over good).
• The Imperfect Words Of Parasite Eve | Aftermath
  Niko Stratis reflects fondly on Parasite Eve‘s malleable, imprecise allegory.
• Reflections on my Almost Five Years of Final Fantasy | Pixpen
  Sam Howitt looks back on how wanting to play one (1) Final Fantasy game turned into writing about 50 (!) of them (Further Reading – Sam’s own writeup on World of Final Fantasy).

“I’ve developed a strong connection with it all. I still want to talk about it every so often. I’m still very happy to listen to others talk about it. I will join conversations people are having about it. When I began I had positive feelings on the series, and while I’ve had my ups and downs covering it, I would say that I’ve come out even more positive on it.”

Tau Ceti Tracts

Though I’ve tagged this under industry, this is more a section for critical insights on topical material.

• What are online shooters like Marathon really about? | ReaderGrev
  Mikhail Klimentov contemplates the style Bungie is serving in their return to Marathon after the rise and fall of iPod-era techno-optimisim (Further Reading – Alli’s lookback on the Dreamcast’s aesthetic Y2K futurism).
• Gaming isn’t for everyone. It never was | Medium
  Malindy Hetfeld doesn’t see the Switch 2 as the problem–that’s just what makes the problem topical.

“I hope for every working class kid to have lightning in a bottle situations where they do get to experience games, because I love them, but the argument that the future of gaming and the gaming industry are affected by something like this is just not true.”

Critical Chaser

This closing section has really gone down the tubes.

• I’ve been consumed by Blue Prince’s true mystery: Where the hell are you supposed to pee? | Polygon
  Susana Polo is asking the hard questions about that big creepy mansion.

“As I realized the enormity of Mount Holly’s sanitary deficiencies, I began to consider the logistics of a house this massive and well-staffed having only one toilet. With growing horror, the mansion’s copious gardens loomed in my mind. Has everyone been relieving themselves over the side of the green tiles? Is this why those rooms have so many mounds of freshly turned earth?”