May 5th

Welcome back readers.

One last push for this one: at time of publication you’ve got twelve hours left if you’ve yet to pick up the Palestinian Relief Bundle over on Itch. You could always get the bundle for a friend, right?

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

New Games Plus

Our first section this week is a bit of a catch-all bringing together industry topics as well as new games/game content.

• ‘Survive Til 25’: How Game Studios Are Keeping The Lights On Amid the Layoffs | IGN
  Trone Dowd talks to the developers trying to make ends meet through the layoffs epidemic impacting the industry.
• On what the BRAVE Arsenal offers | Destiny 2 Is Good, Actually, And I’m Tired Of Pretending It Isn’t
  Kaile Hultner checks out Destiny 2‘s new prologue content in advance of The Final Shape’s release next month (curator’s note: Kaile works for CD).
• Endless Ocean Luminous isn’t very good and I sort of love it | Eurogamer.net
  Christian Donlan finds Nintendo’s new marine exploration game to be, for all its arguable flaws, a whole vibe.

“If there was more to it, I probably wouldn’t want to be here for its own sake in quite the same way. If Endless Ocean Luminous was slightly better at being a game, I would have moved on already.”

Reflect and Refract

Archives and memoirs take centre stage in this historically-minded section.

• Steve Reich’s Music in Jordan Mechner’s Graphic Memoir Replay | PopMatters
  Luis Aguasvivas makes connections through history and media in Jordan Mechner’s graphic novel memoir.
• 25 years of Games That Weren’t | Games That Weren’t
  Frank Gasking chronicles the first quarter century of an invaluable archival project focused on games that never saw commercial release.

“I’m not sure why I was surprised, considering the openness of the Internet, but I began to get a good stream of emails from people on a regular basis, contributing suggestions to add to the archive. These often included a download to add to the site, a snippet of information or a magazine scan. As a result, the site began to grow quite rapidly, and also lead to some unexpected results…”

Designed Spaces

Next up, indies and mods feature in this design-flavoured segment.

• This Indie Game Captures The Alluring Liminality Of Pools | Kotaku
  Willa Rowe finds a nostalgic connection in the slightly backrooms-flavoured ludic meditation on indoor public pools.
• The Impossibility of Mods Makes Them So Valuable | Unwinnable
  Elijah Beahm is here to remind you that yes, there’s a mod for that.
• Indie Side — Robots, Murder, and Emos | Medium
  Mira Lazine sits down with developer Rileylessthan9 to chat about robots, transhumanism, the aftermath of bullying, and more.

“I’ve read many stories where bullying is a topic. But often it’s talked about while it’s happening, while the bullying is being done by others, often to the protagonist. There aren’t many stories I feel like, maybe people who read this can correct me, where it’s talked about, okay, what happens with this person after the bullying? What happens now?”

Binding Ties

Here we’ve got two examinations approaching the topic of community (and its stress points) from different angles.

• Revisiting Days Gone After Five More Years of American Decline | Paste
  Madeline Blondeau looks back at an underappreciated game about the hubris of colonizers and persistence in ugly circumstances.
• Empathetic Magic | Unwinnable
  Maddi Chilton explores a game that allegorizes its themes of community and empathy through its magic.

“The Thaumaturge rejects the segregation of difference that tends to haunt video games in particular, as the medium lends itself to neatly-legible maps and the logic of finding a character from x group in y place, instead placing Wiktor inside a fluid, dynamic world in which the fears and hopes of its citizens are a direct concern of their neighbors, whether they share in-groups or not. He cannot go anywhere without tasting the life within Warsaw, and he’s only able to stand up against the occupying power of the Tsar when he connects himself – as intimately as any human can – with the others around him.”

Deep Lore

In a larger section now we move through different meanings and locations of lore, including worldbuilding, fandom, localization, and more.

• La historia de Stellar Blade explicada, análisis a fondo del ‘lore’ | GamerFocus
  Julián Ramírez chronicles Stellar Blade‘s entire in-universe history (Spanish-language article).
• Turnip Boy Causes a Nuclear Apocalypse! | Gamers with Glasses
  Samantha Trzinski examines the juxtaposition (and synchronicity) between Turnip Boy‘s cute aesthetics and post-apocalyptic lore.
• Aeons, Eikons, and Espers: The Localization History Behind Final Fantasy’s Iconic Beasts (Part One) | Anna Cairistiona
  Anna Cairistiona explores the ever-changing history of and terminology for summons and summoning across different localizations of the 2D Final Fantasy games.
• That’s Just a Theory: On MatPat, Five Nights at Freddy’s, and Saying Goodbye | Sidequest
  Kamie Wootan reminisces on experiencing lore, nostalgia, and fandom through the years with her son.

“I think that the special thing about my relationship with MatPat was that I wasn’t playing a video game alone anymore. I wasn’t experiencing these franchises alone. After playing the 2021 sequel Five Nights at Freddy’s: Security Breach, Saiben and I watched Markiplier play it. Whenever he’d find something “golden,” a reference to the theory that anything gold in color meant that it was part of the hidden lore of the franchise, Markiplier, Saiben, and I would yell, “The lore!,” referencing MatPat. These channels and franchises have become interconnected, and the communities are enthusiastic and welcoming. Playing these games has become such a communal experience, and letting one of the community go feels like losing a dear friend.”

Critical Chaser

See you next slime!

• Ode To Dragon Quest Slimes | Videodame
  Latonya Pennington celebrates one of gaming’s most emblematic silly little guys.

“I save the world
and see its glory
in wild scribbles
and rainbows.”