Hi! I published an extensive Minecraft post about German BedWars and compared it to Hypixel variation. You'll learn the history of German BedWars, what Hypixel got wrong and my personal experience.

The Transformers Civil War continues to rage on their homeworld of Cybertron and also Earth, which the Decepticons have identified as ripe for fuel exploitation. New reinforcements have arrived on both planets via the intermediary world of Nebulos, and the Autobots are rejoicing at the return of Optimus Prime, restored to life as a Powermaster. However, the threat of the time-travelling Decepticon warlord Galvatron remains and a new threat has been located in deep space: the mysterious…

46 years into this thing and I’m still learning! Man what a life. A quick reflection: Ran Inevitable at the pub game last night. Offered it as the start of a 3-shot but I think I won’t continue it. In attendance: my cohost’s wife filling in for a no-show, the sister of one of my regulars (who was totally baffled by showing up for the finale of Deathmatch Island last month; I told her to come start a new thing), a couple new guys, brothers I think of one of my regulars. And one guy who, sure…

I saw Wouter going mad for stickers to put on his laptop and I decided I would do the same! I have had like a couple dozen loose stickers that I got from AliExpress ages ago, some were gifts and some were included in videogames I’ve gotten, so I put a mix of eerything here and well, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out! Behold my glorious creation! My laptop with a bunch of stickers on it, enjoy! The ones I got from AliExpress are the following: The IBM computer, PSP, Game Boy Color, NES…

So Pat posted the following a while ago: the recurring complaint about throw loops in SF2-SF6 makes me wonder: has anyone ever complained about RISC in a similar way? RISC kind of has a similar effect on repeated blocking and throws, but with a far more explosive and situational payoff. — Smokage of the Burning Leaf (@pattheflip.bsky.social) 10 Sept 2026 20:24 In thinking about the question, I realized RISC falls into a category of things that I really enjoy in games, but that many (claim to)…

ULTRON THE VAULT (TOY BIZ) We have arrived, dear readers, at another Friday, so it’s time for another installment of Flashback Friday Figure Addendum! Today, we jump back a decade and some change, with a follow up look at Ultron! Countdown to Avengers: Age of Ultron: 5 days remaining. Alright, now we get to the main event! Before, I was looking at figures of the various Avengers members from the upcoming movie, but from here on out, it’s all Ultron all the time! Poor Ultron went quite a while…

The classic tabletop weird west roleplaying game Deadlands has celebrated its 30th anniversary. One of the most iconic tabletop roleplaying games of all time, the game has weathered changing financial fortunes and numerous failed adaptations to the screen to remain a mainstay of the TTRPG market.Launched in October 1996 by Pinnacle Entertainment, Deadlands used a novel rules system built for fast, six-shootin' action mixed in with magic and weird science. The game combined different die types…

As most of you who have followed me for any length of time probably know, I have an alt problem in just about any MMO I play long-term. This includes FFXIV, even though most folks will tell you that alts are not only not required, but fairly useless (aside from giving yourself more work to do in the game).

Beyond the Supernatural was always one of those games I kind of liked from afar. I bought various Palladium RPGs over the years. I always enjoyed reading them and even working on a character or two, but these days the rules are a little too overwrought for my tastes. I owned Beyond the Supernatural, both the 1st and 2nd Editions. I picked up 2nd Ed a while back at a Gen Con, and I held on to it for years. I kept meaning to play it, picking it up and reading it, but eventually sold it back at an…

NASA/ESA/P. Jefferies (STScl) Illustration of the stages of a dying star as it collapses into a black hole. A core-collapse supernova occurs when a massive star reaches the end of its life. After running out of hydrogen and other light elements to burn, the star makes a last ditch effort to counter gravity, fusing ever heavier elements at an ever faster pace. Eventually it reaches the point where heavy fusion extracts energy from the core rather than adds it. The core rapidly contracts, then…

Vicky Johnson-Dahl has dug up her 2016 NACIS presentation on maps in the movies, titled “It’s a Map, Map, Map, Map World,” and resurrected it as a blog post. She assigns movie maps to five… More

PC A mistake I think I can be prone to is allowing perfection to be the enemy of good. Certainly not in my own actions, but in the games I’ll select for coverage on this site. Which feels like a very unfairly pre-damning way to begin my review of the extremely lovely and highly commendable Maple Blade. This short, adorable turn-based action game has you playing as the Purifier, a young girl charged with walking through the spooky woods of the Sage Grounds, a grid-shaped top-down randomized area…

While companies like Henry and S&W (through Volcanic) produced some of the first lever-action rifles, the Marlin Firearms Company wasn’t far behind. Founded in 1870, the company introduced the Marlin Model 1881, a design by Andrew Burgess, just a decade later. It was then quickly followed by a series of rifles from Lewis “L.L.” Hepburn: the Models 1888, the solid-topped 1889, and the side-ejection 1893. The Marlin 1893, complete with a loading gate, solid top receiver, and side ejection (Photo:…

I’m back with another Spooktober update! In the past week, since update number 1, I have made progress on Bloomtown: A Different Story: I’ve got about 13 hours in the game. And I also started Slay the Princess, playing it for 2 hours. My initial impression of Bloomtown didn’t change much. I have this feeling that Bloomtown has the bones of a great game… but it just falls short. My main criticism is that the game is trying to do so much while at the same time really stretching the main quests to…

More gaming with nearby friends.

Labyrinth (1986)

A surprise gaming extra on the blog. I’ve been recently mostly writing about them in my digital garden but this one I wanted to share here. I recently picked up Ultrapool and have been playing it on my computer and phone a bit ever since. It’s a Balatro-esque pool game where each round, you need to reach a certain level of points, then you get money to buy upgrades and repeat until you win a run. How much money you get to spend? That depends on how well you’ve done. Video is a 4 second clip of…

Thurn and Taxis by Karen and Andreas Seyfarth was the 2006 Spiel des Jahres winner. Andreas Seyfarth designed Puerto Rico (published in 2002). It was hugely popular and when it didn’t win the Spiel des Jahres many people were upset. Then a few years later Thurn and Taxis was released and won the SdJ. I have played it many years ago, and at the time didn’t find it interesting.

The Traitors: New Blood episode 6 was, thankfully, a full episode, though what exactly the players were doing throughout it remains a mystery.

The 100th Birthday of Joe Kubert was last month, and DC Comics has been releasing several special issues to commemorate one of the greatest artists in comics history. This week, a collection of covers was released, including several Hawkman and Hawkgirl covers. You can read all about the special issues in the DC Comics article, so check it out! I put together a gallery of Joe Kubert's work that I've come across over the years. LOTS of great Hawkman and Hawkgirl art! Gallery

Amazing Race 39 resolved its annoying cliffhanger, and then sent the teams on a Scramble to navigate Marrakesh on foot.

Welcome back to another round of Simple Sudoku Solvers! If you are unfamiliar with the series, I suggest you start with the first post or by perusing the…

I recently gave up on running a campaign of Exalted. It’s not a friendly parting. I have many complaints with the game, and have no intentions of ever running it again. There’s a lot of angles to criticize it, if I wanted to dig into a detailed list of grievances someday. For now, however, I want to focus on a part of the system I don’t think is inherently bad, so much as, bad in context: The PCs are naturally too good at things. It’s really hard to meaningfully challenge them. A build in…

I've said it many times: I am obsessed with cohesive ecology when I do races and monsters. Overtime, I found out that using fewer humanoid races allowed me to do them much more solid, and have nuances amongst them instead of making them one-faceted. Basically I took this (2 years exactly have passed from this entry!) and kept on pushing. In my autism, the world feels now much more tangible while strangely more faithful to the mythic norse roots, but passed through the eyes of a weeaboo beyond…

Episode 3 of the Indie Game Talk Club drops next week, but if you’re eager for more great indie gaming talk before then, my guest appearance on Luke Crane, Christopher Badell and Sam Roberts’ podcast Ludological Alchemy just dropped. I had such a good time recording with this rogues’ gallery of big gaming brains, but also? What an intimidating cast to try and keep up with. Luke is the mad genius behind The Burning Wheel and currently a games professor at NYU, Christopher Badell‘s claim to fame…

Indie is not a genre.Nor is indie synonymous with “low budget”, “self published” or “small team”. Each of these definitions have counter examples–I encourage you to come up with your own before expanding the spoilers.SpoilersIf Rockstar developed Balatro, it wouldn’t be an indie game.Amensia: The Dark Descent and Luck Be A Landlord evoke wholly different experiences, despite both being indie games.Journey is an indie game despite having a publisher.Cyberpunk 2077 is not an indie game despite…

BIKER SCOUT STAR WARS: THE LEGACY COLLECTION (HASBRO) Oh, we are just rolling through different Star Wars lines around here, aren’t we? Well, next week I’m settling into a theme that should run for a bit, but before I do that, let’s take another stab into the proverbial dark with a one-off from a line I didn’t really collect, The Legacy Collection. But, it had a Biker Scout, and I sure do like a Biker Scout action figure, so I sure did get one of those. So, let’s look at that Biker Scout…

Project Aces (Bandai Namco ACES)/Bandai Namco EntertainmentPC, PlayStation, Xbox$70US/$93.50CDNBuy a discounted Steam key from Fanatical or Green Man GamingIntroductionI picked up Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies for the PS2 on a whim back in the day because I didn't have anything else to play at the time (remember when that was a thing?) and I'd read a couple of reviews that said it struck a unique balance, being not as arcadey as something like After Burner but not remotely a sim either. It…