It's December Y'all

Oh damn, it's December. The time of year that everyone is trying to sell even more things than usual. Let's talk about November instead.

Last month, I released:

• A funky little twine game about a tree that never wants you to leave, and traps you using video game dialogue rules

• A video going over the basics of video game narrative - This was a short video idea I used to test my new filming setup, including a new camera, a lav mic that sounds a lot better in my unsoundproofable filming room, and a new black backdrop.

• I reviewed Bravery and Greed, which is an interesting contrast to roguelites I've reviewed in the past like Blade Assault. While both games have similar combat systems, the specifics of how they use stagger, comboes, knockdowns, abilities and enemy animations create vastly differing experiences. I might make a video going into the specifics of combat design like this in the future!

• I reviewed Goat Simulator 3. I could write a whole lot about the comedy in this game, but I won't. It was pretty good!

• I reviewed The Knight Witch, which is a super polished little gem. Kind of frustrating to play at times, but definitely one of the better indie games I reviewed this year. The story had interesting nods at ideas like government censorship and control of the populace through media, though I'm not sure how much impact your moral choices actually had on the story. I also think the final boss is very bad.

• I started writing guide content for The Escapist. I won't be sharing these going forward unless I feel they're particularly interesting, since they're extremely basic explainers that probably won't help people who follow my work. This month I wrote about Pokemon type weaknesses (1, 2, 3,) the main Sonic games in order, the best Persona 5 Royal mods, and some other stuff. If you want to read them you can check out my Escapist profile, which shows everything I make for the site.

Twitter's staff has been gutted, alongside many accounts banned for hateful conduct being unbanned. On top of this, accounts aren't getting banned for outright calls to violence. I suspect in a few months to a year the site will either be unreliable and abandoned or so filled with toxicity that the current communities I enjoy on twitter will be gone.

This is one of the reasons for this newsletter, but the other is simply to share what I'm up to. In that spirit, here's some stuff from the internet I enjoyed this month.

• People Make Games did a piece on Valve's skin gambling issues, which Valve seems to have no plan to address

• Hbomberguy released an extremely funny video about Tommy Tallarico and the origins of the Roblox Oof sound

• This article by Chris Zukowski about the 6 types of games that sell is an interesting way of looking at game ideas.

• This video about World of Warcraft and instrumental play by Folding Ideas was really good, and touched on some topics I want to make a video on in the future.

Vague Plans for Next Month

I am gonna be pretty busy with reviews, but my top three priorities are:

• Film and edit the next Youtube video (it's about battle passes)

• Start work on my next videogame. It'll probably be another Twine game that is less silly than the last one, centered around a fishing village trying to survive during an invasion.

• Do a bit of work on my novel. I've gotta get this thing done damnit.

That's it for November! Keep being creative, and I'll seeya next month.