Mira

Why are you allowing silly YouTube videos to control your life this much

Graphics and sound design are great, story is so-so, controls and overall gameplay are on par with bad NES platformers of the AVGN kind. I'm sure it's not as bad with a gamepad but when you only have a mouse and keyboard at your disposal this is almost unplayable, what with the complete lack of momentum retained from running, and instant death resulting from even slightly misjudging the stiff controls. Even disregarding that though, a lot of the puzzles seemed to rely on rote memorization, lining up pitch-perfect shots and generally progressing as slowly as possible. It started out fun enough but gradually ended up so tedious I just didn't even want to look at it anymore.

The atmospheric horror equivalent of an Arthur C. Clarke story, and that's a very high compliment. An amazing experience, only mildly hampered by pixel hunting and wonky movement controls (which is to be expected anyway when you're floating in space). Totally worth the investment.

I just finished playing Observation which the developer made after this and I thought it was way better. If you enjoyed Stories Untold then please do yourself a huge favour and give that one a try as well.

Aerannis, a game that was in the 1000+ games racial justice Itch.io bundle from last year and ended up in Ross's "maybe" pile when he sifted through that, so he might actually get to it eventually... ? I think it's pretty remarkable nonetheless. It's a stealth/action metroidvania with a personality, accentuated by great pixel art and an awesome synth soundtrack, but also with a lot of design quirks and idiosyncrasies that make me wonder if the developer maybe hasn't played too many games. The button configuration and overall controls are confusing, your weapons are mostly useless, a lot of the gameplay revolves around stealth puzzles that feel quite sloppy and ad hoc in how you're supposed to solve them, and the story cruises from one insane plot twist to the next without ever really making sense of all that's going on, but the game somehow still manages to feel compelling all the way through. I mean, I am biased since it's about a trans girl cyborg in a cyberpunk dystopia but I do have standards and I found this totally rewarding despite the frequent frustration and bewilderment; pretty much the best I could hope for from a virtually unknown indie game.

Go & Arrow was a short game jam game I worked on in 2017 with two other people, with myself comprising the music and sound effects department. While the game itself sadly never progressed beyond the "square-and-circle-game" stage (courtesy of our artist bailing on the project at the last minute!), I did give it my all when creating the soundtrack and received a positive response so I figure it might be worth posting here: The title theme was recently revisited and extended by me because I felt it could use more development and better mixing. As of recently I have also succumbed to the temptations of Mammon and have begun accepting commissions as a freelance composer; if you happen to be interested in giving me your money hiring me to score your creative endeavours, feel free to visit my website.

I burned the entire Half-Life 1 portion of the series onto a CD that I listen to when I can't sleep. Ross's rambles and screams have an amazingly soothing and reassuring quality to them.

To be fair, said heavy industry and power plants only account for that pollution because they meet a demand from consumers, so if enough people were to stop reproducing that would in theory bring down emissions in the long run, were it not for the fact that any benefits resulting from this decision would in all likelyhood not really go into effect until long after the methane deposits in the Arctic are released into the atmosphere and catastrophic climate change events become inevitable. Generally speaking though, if I may stray from the topic at hand a bit, it bothers me how disdainful some activists are towards changing one's individual behaviour/consumption patterns when the entire way we've structured our economy and essentially our entire way of life are inherently unsustainable. In my view, to transition towards an emission-neutral society on a global scale before the climate crisis assumes its most ruinous form would require a string of miracles at this point but it will be impossible to achieve without limiting people's access to fuel, meat, etc. and if one currently has the financial means to start accustoming oneself to that future then I see no reason not to do so.

Plays almost exactly like X-Com, except more rough around the edges. I don't expect Ross will find himself to be part of this game's target audience

Mixed feelings. Good atmosphere and visuals, and I felt compelled enough by it to play it through till the end but the gameplay does have a frustrating trial-and-error element to it: The game is extremely stingy in regards to resources and it's best to avoid combat when you can, but the game will frequently lure you into "trap rooms" that'll leave you strapped for health and/or ammo, often with no reward. I found myself reloading to the last checkpoint a lot for that reason in order to maximize my resource efficiency, which got a bit on my nerves in the end. The shelter music is lovely:

Yes, truly inconceivable that someone would want to make a movie about one of the most destructive and traumatic events of the twentieth century if there weren't some ulterior zionist agenda at play. How dare people see importance in the continued awareness of the Holocaust at a time when 23% of Americans between 18 and 39 years old believes it to be a myth or to have been exaggerated and 12% has never heard of it. Being informed and reminded of the ultimate consequence of demonizing a group of people for the nature of their birth or some other arbitrary trait over which they have no control definitely only serves da juice and not other minority groups and ultimately humanity in general. Blaming the victim, how classy. Transgender people didn't "create" anything; it's not just because it seemed like a thing to do that all throughout recorded history and across widely different cultures people have made the decision to present as a gender other than what they are assigned at birth and in many cases face massive social stigma as a result, but because for those people it is an absolutely necessary step in their path to happiness and a sense of belonging. I would rather die than live an entire lifetime inside the body and gender role that fate handed me at birth; I never asked for this and truly wish I didn't need to carry that burden but I didn't get to make that choice so I'm just gonna have to make the best of it and try not give a damn what other people may think of it. Your disgust towards people whose appearance you find aberrant is not more important than the right of those people to exist as equals in society. Trans memes in the United States complain about Republicans a lot because they are the ones in that country who consistently seek to stymie and roll back equal rights for trans people; it makes no sense to draw it any broader than that. If your aim is to intimidate or demotivate me with that sentence then that's going to be rather lost on me seeing as how I myself am fortunate enough to live in a country where trans rights are not a hotly contested topic of political debate at all, virtually no politician would publicly speak out against trans rights and the few fringe figures who do are strongly criticized all across the political spectrum. It seems like no one here really gives enough of a shit about what trans people do in the bathroom (no pun intended). In fact, right-wing politicians here actually proclaim themselves to be the protectors of the LGBT community against immigrants from the Middle East with a more conservative outlook on those matters. You'd be the real fish out of water over here.