My friends and I have almost wrapped up our first Blood Bowl league. We began with a round robin tournament, playing six rounds of games between the six players in the league. (I think using the power of math we could have figured out a schedule that went through the round robin portion of the league faster, something to do for next time.) We gave everyone 2-3 weeks to meet and play, which people were mostly able to do. As with RPGs, the hardest part to maintaining a long running campaign is…
The Playstation 5's time is coming. And by that I don't just mean there will finally be some good PS5 games, hyuck hyuck — though in the nearly six years since the console came out, Sony's overinvestment in live service games sure has led to a remarkably thin slate of compelling exclusives. But still, y'know. Demon's Souls. Saros. That Naughty Dog game, eventually. That's a few games!With PlayStation's PC port initiative now called off, it's up to fans to roll up their sleeves and ensure the…
It’s been a while since I shared an idle game. Here is the thing: Itch is currently flooded with idle games. I always say, it is a good genre that allow a lot of creative ideas, but sometimes it is used in lieu of game design: it is easier to make every variable grow with an upgrade tree than designing actual difficutly. Also, it became the prime genre for vibe coded games, which I will never touch. This game, however, is human made, and original and interesting. All of time and space…
Two Worlds Two Furious.
I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved a mathematical search and string substitution. (Note that this ends today.)
Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017)
It was remembered as a “joke” computer, with its 22 by 23 character screen and 3.5Kb of RAM. Revisionists forgot that at the time there was nothing else, and that within the confines of that 3.5Kb of RAM (sometimes more) we made magic happen. Brendan Jones (quoted above) we’ve seen before with three VIC-20 games from 1982, the most memorable being Fatman: Crime and Vice which invokes gritty American ultracrime stories despite being written by a teen-aged Australian. He was friends with Nigel…
The first recording today is a repeat of Pokemon: Battle Frontier – Channelling the Battle Zone. Media Centre Description: Popular animated series. Ash and Pikachu return to the Kanto region to complete the Battle Frontier – seven ultimate tests that will challenge Ash’s skills as a Pokemon Trainer. Recorded from ITV4 on Friday 9th April 2010 07:43 The next recording is a repeat of Pokemon: Battle Frontier – Aipom and Circumstances. Media Centre Description: Popular animated series. Ash and…
Judging by the title, I really expected Tiny Bullets to be another one of those excellent 3D shooting games secretly hiding in the Playstation library, like Gungage and Cosmowarrior Zero. Instead, it's more of a combination of Tomb Raider's meticulous 3D platforming and Resident Evil's simple "put the item in the hole" puzzle-solving. Also, the player character looks like a babyfaced Sonic gijinka. So, you play as this blue spiky kid, and you're exploring ruins and caves and such (though…
I've not got a competitive bone in my body so I'm not particularly motivated by streaks. It's just data: I've done a thing this many times. Streaks happen or they don't. They are a side effect of the thing. This is prompted because I've recently broken a French streak I held for over five years. It was a complete accident. Nothing in particular happened. Just, one day, I forgot to do a thing I'd done every day for five years. Those five years contained some of the worst days of my life - and I…
I hope you’re ready for something pleasingly pointless. Let’s review. In 2024 Kayinworks wrote an essay about games as models vs. toys. I’d describe the same dichotomy as simulationism vs gamism. Neither are necessarily bad, but their aims are different. Models, like model trains, take some real-world thing and try to give you its essence. Toys use a real-world thing to lend flavor to a friendlier, more accessible, but in some cases more pandering experience. That’s an oversimplification, it’s…
DESIGNING (THIS) DUNGEON'S THEMEIn the last post, I talked about how easy it was to make a simple dungeon that could fit on 2 sheets of paper, but random stocking can only get you so far. Intentionality can really help a dungeon sing! That is what Designing Dungeons is all about: gluing fragments of ideas, vibes, and inspirations together just enough to get the dungeon to the table for play. Let's look at Chapter 3, Refining Theme, and Chapter 5, Dungeon Checklist to see what we can do. We need…
The characters finish their business with the asshole pixies and help lead out the inmates from floor 2, then run into some snakes and toads. Party Members Tina the Titanic - Level 6 Fighter Telperion Desh - Level 6 Magician Vaco Adjacent - Level 5 Paladin Tobias Little, a.k.a. Lil Toby - Level 3 Cleric FollowersZorrel "Captain Nasty" Gnast (Fighter 5), Tiny Tina (Cleric 6) and Rutger (Robot 6) Session RecapTina the Titanic had spent the last few weeks of downtime sending in aid like food,…
Spoiler alert: The Odyssey is really just a nearly 3-hour condom commercial.
Z80 has turned 50. My Amstrad CPC 128 had a Z80, it was where I learned assembly. I can't help the nostalgia for a time when young me was discovering the beauty of being able to control my computer at the lowest level, to read and write directly from and to the video RAM, to jump around memory addresses. Locomotive BASIC (Amstrad's version of BASIC), and Turbo Pascal (when I booted in CP/M) were nice, but the empowerment of writing code in assembly was a class of its own. Today, I ask AI to…
Welcome to the warmest edition of this newsletter, it’s been HOT in Sweden and we don’t do well with that. This week the newsletter passed 200 subscribers (yes, you are part of a very exclusive club!). I didn’t write a new post this week (I started a new game instead), but the most popular posts on the blog this week were: Playing the Social Game, A Dolmenwood Retrospective, Prepping Myths in Mythic Bastionland, Dolmenwood Resources for You, and Improvised Daggerheart Encounters. Table of…
Take two banana tree trunks, lash them together, point them downhill and jump on board. Get your mates involved and turn it into a competition. You might not associate Easter Island with extreme sports, but they have been part of the island's culture for centuries (with the occasional hiatus). There is no doubt that the highlight of the annual Tapati Rapa Nui Festival is the Haka Pei competition. Although the festival also celebrates Rapa Nui culture through singing, swimming, cooking…
Back to the boardgame café.
In the twenty years I’ve been making games, I keep returning to the idea of blending the digital and physical worlds through ARGs like Perplex City and location-based games like Zombies, Run! It’s as if the act of mixing worlds enchants them both. That impulse is probably why I recently became fascinated by Nordic Larp (live action role playing), the closest thing we have to a fully embodied, truly participatory avant-garde art form today. So for anyone who knows me, it’s probably no surprise…
Hal Garrott (b. Chicago, Illinois, 21 June 1877; d. Los Altos, California, 21 October 1968)Hal Garrott was the working name of Henry Claggert Garrott, the son of Erasmus R. Garrott (1836-1897), a physician who became the chief medical officer of the Chicago Health Department, and his wife Florence Lee (1844-1930), who were married in Chicago on 20 December 1867. Hal was the second of four
I visited Kyushu, Japan on a family holiday. Needless to say, being a gamer, I looked up boardgame stores to visit well before the trip, and also took the opportunity to look for games at bookstores, 100 yen shops and such when I was there. I found some games at Don Quijote. Don Quijote is a discount store which sells lots and lots of different stuff. Most of the games I found seemed to be
The smoke is clearing and I’m slowly getting back to the games. Played a bit of Noita and the Reanimal and Vein demos with my friend Artwo. Vein seems like a 3D Project Zomboid. Reanimal brought to mind Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and Munch’s The Scream, which may be a “sign of the times.” I may return to it, if I muster enough courage to play it alone, but I think it’ll be another game.
The first recording today is Pokemon: Battle Frontier – We Harley Drew’d Ya. The friends have arrived at the indigo plateau for the culmination in May’s coordinator competitions. There’s a big crowd there, including Jessie, pretending to be Jessibella, and even getting to be one of the presenters at the competition. The Aipom from the previous episode is following Ash, and is still stealing hats. Their friend Drew is there, also to compete. Also there is Soledad, who’s a friend of Drew. Also…
Fighting games tournaments can still be great#Last week I took a plane to Lyon, France, to participate in a Street Fighter 3: Third Strike tournament. You might have notice that I wrote a a few notes about the game recently, but I also wanted to write my feelings about the tournament.The introduction of Street Fighter 3: Third Strike.Street Fighter 3 is a very peculiar game in all its aspects. First of all, it doesn't feel, play or even functions like a traditional Street Fighter game, even…
The making of Don Matrelli’s Legacy, a mod for Grand Prix Circuit Part I: the engineering Some weeks ago I released an expansion for the only Formula 1 game I ever liked: Grand Prix Circuit (GPC), a 38-year-old work by Distinctive Software1. This project was by far my most ambitious to date: it took more than two months and required learning the basics of many disciplines, but I’m very satisfied of how it turned out. This post series will tell how this mod, Don Matrelli’s Legacy, came to be.
It helps when your game controllers perchance match your recently acquired vinyl
During a Sumo stream, the streamer I watch mentioned he was playing “Manage your stable” game in his browser, so I checked it out. Uchi No Heya (“Inside the stable”) is … OK. I mean, I played for several hours. The game is still in Beta, with several issues (including seeing several “NaN”s where numbers should be), but the idea is sound. You recruit and coach young rikishi (sumo wrestlers) and guide their training; the matches are auto-battlers1. You can watch it play out or just hit “Quick” to…
Reverse Medusa. A rejected image from an upcoming project. #KelvinDrawsThings
Bethesda have issued a major update on their game projects and franchises, confirming that they are deep in development on Elder Scrolls VI, in pre-production on Fallout 5 and are partnering with Obsidian Entertainment on a new Fallout game. They also confirm that remasters for both Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas are in development.There's quite a lot packed into the update. They confirm that Fallout 4 (2015) has surpassed 35 million sales since a boost from the popularity of the TV series.…
CultureIt doesn't take much browsing of (non-5e) tabletop roleplaying hobby spaces online to see that much of the conversation on games is centred around rules, how to use them, the differences in rules between one game on another, System Matters, and so on. I think Elmcat speaks for many of us - particularly in regard to the frustration often felt when discussing the tabletop roleplaying hobby online - with the excellent post 'Cultures, not games'. I won't reiterate Elmcat's points, except to…
