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june 2025

hi! last month in my parting words i forgot to wish for something lgbt to happen to you this month, and i apologize. i hope it did! but there's still time anyway.

working on egg tooth, my vn for the toxic yuri jam ^_^ i am somewhat displeased with it so far to be perfectly frank but i like the characters and setting, it's more a matter of structure. nearly all of my fiction is held by a framing device of some sort, isn't it? i struggle with endings and arcs, and i haven't yet found a way to end things without closure. well, i'm almost done with the script nevertheless.

• the board game with no rules. hi anyone has 35 united states dollars to get me this game. well, a few more for international shipping. ughhhh this seems cool as hell!
• uncredited: searching for lost board game designers. yayy checking out city of six moons' designer's youtube channel too, she's got really interesting stuff!
• horse autopsy with lizzie mcguire iceberg explained. fake videogame iceberg :)
• the forger's craft: the making of a 'renaissance' drawing. this one has been languishing in my to-watch for agesss it's super interesting.
• bríi - camaradagem póstuma. fuck this album came out last october?? i've been dillydallying for this long? well it's very good.

art

just my make a terrible comic day comic! busy with the vn and stuff.

media

games

• flesh everest (demo) (2024?): gamedevs, listen to me: if your game has head bob that can't be disabled you should be hunted down and flayed alive. anyway, mystery flesh pit esque setting, it looked promising, but there's that issue and then just... i didn't like it, kinda immediately.
• b.c. piezophile (demo) (2024): ooo incomprehensible esoteric videogame i need you... too incomprehensible for me though, i cannot figure out movement at all.
• white knuckle (demo) (2024): pretty neat but i had real poor performance so i couldn't go very far in the tutorial.
• roam0120.exe (2025): don't piss me offf. i'm a good humored gamer, i don't like them but i don't mind screamers. they're kinda quaint. a little vintage charm even. especially if i'm doing something i know i shouldn't. what sucks is the game resetting every time when it's really obtuse about its progression. specifically, it's quite unclear about interactions and there's at least one locked door you have to just. guess is locked and then come back with items to open it. it's a trial and error type thing, likely because it's meant to be solved in a community (it's part of an arg by a french youtuber or some shit), but i don't think that's a good excuse! my friends and i played it over discord and that was the only thing keeping me from being too frustrated, and even then we didn't finish it and watched the rest of the thing. and it's not even worth it. what i'll grant the game is that it looks quite nice, i like the photographs and stark presentation, i love the black censors and think they're a very clever way to bend photographs into something else (though i think, like the rest of the game, they can kinda border on edgy), i like that the screamers break what had been established as the gamespace (which is obviously passé but like. so are screamers in the first place, i like it). so i'll possibly steal those things if i ever make a game where it makes sense to use them.
• lorelei and the laser eyes (2024): GOTYYYY. this is so my type of shit. a mystery game, really fucking good art direction throughout, perfectly smooth gameplay (AND can be played single handed with either hand, leaving the dominant to rest from rsi / take notes), and every single puzzle relies solely on knowledge, not execution — and they're just the right amount of crunchy for me. and i particularly enjoy the presence of fake movies and labyrinths, plus it's got a lovely timeloopy thing to it (well, more of a "it's happening again" thing) and something close to an unreliable narrator in a narrator-less game. i think it's at a perfect length (took me just under 12 hours) but also i'm hungry for more.
• deltarune (2025*): deltyyyy. really liked the new chapters, some banging designs and music. sword route is super cool — chapter 3 is pretty brief but it's really dense in retrospect, very tasty stuff. not sure i have much to add lol i love utdr but i'm not a Fan yknow (i still don't know shit about the spamton sweepstakes). very interested in a musical analysis too... here's my "liveblogging".
• prison of husks (demo) (2025): i've had an eye on it because it looks beautiful. but it runs rather poorly to me, which doesn't go very well with my subpar skills. wish the mouse sensitivity was a little lower too, but i think it's partially got to do with the resolution it's running at due to the performance issues (that i suspect are more a matter of optimization than anything else). i'm still excited for the full thing though, i enjoyed the demo despite the struggles and i'm really hoping this game suceeds!
• morsels (demo) (2025): this was already on my wishlist and it's staying there. super charming art style and music and it plays pretty smoothly. it recommended a controller but i think it played quite well with keyboard. i like that you don't have infinite bullets (you have a little meter that recharges while not shooting), i think it suits the goofy tone where you're just a really weak mouse.
• all living things (demo) (2025): yayyy st vulture game! it's a really short demo but it's so enticing... lovely riddles...
• mina the hollower (demo) (2025): ohh i had forgotten about this! the top down platforming is really different. it's got all that shovel knight difficulty too. i think the "hit enemies to power up healing" thing is interesting, but here it isn't unlimited hollow knight style so it becomes pretty punishing. i mean, if i was having an chill time hitting enemies i wouldn't need the fucking healing now would i. so what ended up happening was wasting very low powered heals to try to prevent a death. skill issue etc it still feels bad in a way hollow knight doesn't.
• downhill (demo) (2025): really neat action rpg! i think the demo is a little too brief and at times poorly balanced (there's a timed "puzzle" that's just a bit too strict for comfort instead of using the time stop mechanic you just learned you have; you need to kill ALL enemies to get the first spell, and the second one is only available once there are no longer any enemies, so i couldn't test either; healing is scarce, which i think is balanced around the ressurection mechanic but feels bad when you know that'll have negative consequences) but it plays well, the combat feels pretty smooth. i like the visual style too, and the player-protagonist dynamic is quite neat. i'm afraid it'll be a bit of a game that doesn't shut up though (it doesn't even have a way to skip cutscenes, which is why i didn't replay to test the first spell against the boss). i need to replay oneshot.
• sinker sound (demo) (2025): this one's very cute if a little unpolished. rhythm fishing game sounds awesome but it did kick my ass, skill issue i'm sure but basically every note is held for at least a full beat (you decide between 1-4, but it has to be the full beat). and on top of that there's notes coming in a circle you have to catch with the mouse, and missing one interrupts the clicked notes. it just didn't ever feel good. it didn't click for me, and i kinda wish the beats were on the keyboard hand as a more traditional fretboard type thing.
• two the top (demo) (2025): ok the celeste ripoff aesthetic does put me off this game but it's a really solid and fun coop experience! and excruciating! this is precision platforming and it's a getting over it with bennet foddy type thing where you can lose a lot of progress on a single choke. my friend and i didn't complete the demo after nearly two hours (I'M BAD AT PLATFORMING) but it was a lot of fun and he's buying it (i ain't playing it with him though :sob: it's hard as hell). it's a very promising demo, we both thought it was really generous in length and it definitely works as a standalone! honestly: this is a mooncat-like to me (are you ready for me saying this about every platformer i like?). very difficult and pretty punishing, this is a cult classic in the making. for the freaks and speedrunners.
• peak (2025): i only played a couple runs because the laptop performance is horrendous but i did watch my friends a lot too (playing from the cuck chair). the game's pretty neat, the style is cute, the stamina bar is super elegant, and i appreciate the sharp focus on climbing with only a gentle hint of randomization (i really like the layout being the same for the entire day). i almost wish / expected it to have survivalcraft elements (not toooo much, just proper cooking and crafting yknow; i think it's a waste that you can't make fruit unpoisonous by cooking) but honestly runs are long enough already — far too long imo. i saw my friends spend almost two hours to reach the final area (not even beat the game), and while skill will doubtless get that time down (speedruns are around half an hour) i think it's kinda excessive when there's no way to save or pause at all... also the steam page says four biomes when there's literally five areas. damn is this literally a risk of rain 2-like? but in any case this is a nice fun little coop that doesn't feel like lethal company slop, so.
• compendium i (2025)
• cassandra (2025)
• nihilist syndrome (2025)
• poco (2025): really cute and quirky point-and-click, the soundtrack is a banger. and it's free.
• the rise of the golden idol (2024): saw some comments saying it doesn't live up to the first game and i think i agree... however they're both not the most memorable of games so it could be recency bias. i really like the way the puzzles are constructed in these games, and they're fun tight pulpy mysteries. and you know i'm a puzzle and mystery little freak. it does leave a weird taste on the tongue at times, i don't knowww i think they're kinda meanspirited / feel very very white, but i think there's less of that since there's less lemuria. idkk they're extremely competent games (this one had a single puzzle i called bullshit on — asking me to assign the models names based on photographs feels like it goes against the spirit of the thing, especially since the art style isn't the most consistent) but like. return of the obra dinn runs circles around them.
• landlord of the woods (2021): a lovely little half hour point and click. it's got a very mid-late 2010s tumblr bait aesthetic and i don't mean it as an insult. it feels like a flash game in a great way. toss it in your steam cart next time you're buying something. or just use the fake money from selling trading cards.

movies and series

• memento (2000): hi carrie-anne moss. anyway, final nolan movie for me! well, insomnia is a stretch goal after i watch the original. but in any case i maintain my position that nolan's at his best when he doesn't have infinite money and a carte blanche. the movie's quite good, the "twist" works and i love that it's never overexplained. nolan women count is 7.5 alive / 6 dead in-movie / 1 pre-dead wife. this is of course Thee dead wife movie but unlike inception's mal, she doesn't exist enough to qualify as a pre-dead wife. just a little more and she could have been a .5 so i ended up with a round number. oh well.
• viy (1967): aw there's some nice whimsical jim hensonesque visuals / effects here i found super charming, but i think the movie overall is just. fine. idk maybe i just hated the protagonist. for the love of god close your fucking shirt and shave your fuckass beard.
• capsule (2012): intriguing.

as the lenin quote goes, there are months where no movies are watched.

books and manga

• reloj de arena (enrique anderson imbert): yeah this was an interesting read. cool to see what arises from comparison yknow.
• eyetooth (mars adler): unremarkable.
• all the horses of iceland (sarah tolmie): lovely like folklory novella, read in one sitting. we're so back.
• menewood (nicola griffith): save me nicola griffith... this book is impossible to put down, like hild before it. they just feel very grounded in the period, and hild is a very interesting character.

bye!

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