maybe only adjacent to your wants: coral island is a stardew/harvestmoon/etc-like that has a major underwater component, but it's much more like diving than swimming!

so some of us are still holding those memories, and it's definitely not like that anymore! (even though ofc everything in a given set of Nintendo Powers was still a small subset of what was releasing, it felt like a much smaller, more curated world.) now our methods of curation are rly fractured!

i think about this a lot as someone who loves writing books too (no one tries to keep up with every book). agree w/ another answer that games are relatively new + had such centralized critique/news resources that when we were kids, maybe you COULD play every big release you saw in Nintendo Power

omg brighton i love this!!!

in exchange for your sins against my crit pages you must write this bc i want very much to read it

and I was so glad to see it! always a great feeling when an extremely niche concept is something you had a ball implementing a version of

It was an effective way to make a simple puzzle setup really fun! For example, hiding tools the indoor players needed in ways you could only see via certain windows, having tasks that required two people, etc

Players outside could talk to the other outside-players and switch windows, but inside players could only hear their airpod-controller's commands! It was awesome, we framed it as a "half of you are going into a pitch dark warehouse, the others are viewing/directing you via 'security cams'"

Ran a mod last year where half the players were blindfolded indoors doing a (very safe) set of tasks, wearing noise-canceling airpods, and half the players were outdoors looking in through windows, communicating to their player partner through the airpods tasks they needed to do + avoid hazards.

YESSSSSSS CONGRATS

Omg what a gorgeous cover! I'm eating up this excerpt, release day can't come fast enough 😍

congrats malik!!! trailer looks great!

congrats!! so cool!!!

1. i hope you feel better soon and 2. i had a similar experience after grabbing it to play as a reward for mainlining a burst of game-related work on my flight home/day after GDC and then realizing what it was about... wanderstop's really calling out every game dev 😭 rest up!

omg this makes my heart sing!!!! congrats! you deserve it zeebs team!

spirit swap looks incredible and it's out today. go support some rad devs in this hellscape and play a game made with a ton of love.

grabs your hand. listen to me. this book is so good. lesbian oceans 11 in space. go get it.

they needed to count on the fact they'd gained enough common understanding and touchpoints to keep a functional relationship going. and they had. anyway. i love making sure game themes match mechanics. and i love fridge magnet poetry.

in the end (that finale sequence deserves its own thread sometime), they had to burn all their words one by one, describing all the word could mean, to give other entities the ability to communicate again while permanently sacrificing their ability to talk to the bunker folks they'd grown to love.

"spicy" became a way to say something was bad or difficult, "yummy" was yes, "Go with honor, baby" became the universal signoff for both casual and devastating goodbyes. and as time passed we gave them more words to match how their relationship w/ the bunker folks was deepening & getting specific

about 30 words written on individual post it notes on a table, including "spicy", "shit", "yummy", "go", "why" and more.

players gained new words every event, starting w/ ~30. we playtested these ahead of time, aiming for evocative, multi-meaning words-- "shit" was loadbearing as an adjective, a noun, and a statement of feelings; we didn't give them yes & no. instantly, this shaped the playerbase's language

players met a group of humans (surprise! bunker ppl) that had never gained the ability to communicate w/ flora & fauna. they spoke in static & their body language was imperceptible. the only way to talk to them was via fridge magnet poetry on a plant grown from a fallen satellite (the "talk table")

everything in this game was about communication & relationships. humans in this world could talk to plants and animals, but in unusual ways-- we did a lot of puzzles like learning how to "read" a string of beads to communicate with the roots of trees, or concept boards to talk to mushrooms, etc

a small purple flower poking out of grass.

this year some incredible staff and i ran a post-post-apoc larp about building community on a disconnected earth. i wanna blab about a mechanic i'm super proud of: fridge magnet poetry

finished the end of asunder by kerstin hall in one big gulp last night.. sci(?)fantasy with intricate awful saint-magic, politics, an annoying clever man bound to the shadow of a scrappy lady MC to prevent his imminent death… weird worldbuilding, a dash of body horror, & pining... v good

i loved this one! it felt very kind & clear to read, and also organized such that i feel like i can hop back to the relevant useful passages at any phase of book making

ahhhhh congrats heidi!!!!!

lex i'm screaming !!!!

literally makes my day whenever i hear of a new lex WIP getting cooked up

Issue 15 / Winter 2023 Download Hexagon Issue 15 / Winter 2023 – PDF Hexagon Issue 15 / Winter 2023 – EPUB Contents “The Maze of Many Faces” – by M.S. Dean (3320 words) “The Library of…

"Allies" is about an alternate version of yourself trying to assassinate you; or, how to get out of a slump in your 20s. read it in Hexagon Magazine here: hexagonmagazine.ca/issue-15-win...