Chico's Rebound - Gametrodon Chico's Rebound offers a bunch of interesting twists on Breakout, but is somewhat hamstrung by it's basic controls.

This weeks writeup is on Chico's Rebound! I have mixed feelings on this one. Also, I've got a new a theme on the website!

JK, did it tonight.

Me standing in Barnes & Noble with a copy of my game “High Tide” in my hands!

It really hits something different when you can see and feel your game in a store! ✨

I never imagined I’d hit this point—now with many more games on the way!

Never expected my “unpublishable” abstract game would soar this far. You never know who else will fall in love with a simple idea! 🌊

I think this weekend I am going to finally do what I have been putting off for like 3 years, and update Gametrodon to use a new theme.

Also, I played another set of Sealed Strixhaven, and I maintain my OG take: this is an incredibly grindy format. Did much better this time then Friday, going 3-0 in rounds with Quandrix, and making it finals before being knocked out.

I had a lot of other chores today, and another card game tourney, and so I didn't get home until 11:31 PM, which only left me with about 30 minutes to try to go as far as I could, as fast as I could.

Signed version of the Twilight Sprinkles card in Once Upon A Galaxy.

An image of the rewards track, showing the players final round being day 2 round 2.

It's not as far as I would have liked to go, but I'm still pretty happy with even just making it to day two in this months event in @playgalaxygame.bsky.social!

(Fun fact, I played all my rounds in under 30 minutes! Might put up a video of it this week if anyone wants to see!)

Game results screen in Deadlock, showing Gametrodon at Phantom Rank.

Finally got Phantom in Deadlock! Will I drop back down immediately? Probably, but that's not the point.

Tournament Arc - Gametrodon Tournament Arc is an incredibly funny game inspired by sports anime, in which someone breaking their arm is the least of your problems.

For anyone who hasn’t heard of this before, it’s tournament arc! I wrote a bit about it last year. I really like it.

gametrodon.com/tournament-a...

Image of the board game Tournament Arc and the “Doodle” version of the game.

Look what came in! @little-creature.com

An image congratulating the user for qualifying for day 2 of the Once Upon a Galaxy monthly tournament.

Hell yeah we in for day 2! (I had some coaching from a buddy.) #OnceUponAGalaxy

Some quick thoughts on Secrets of Strixhaven sealed: This is the grindiest limited magic I've ever played.

A large green circle with a checkbox, under it, the text "Your Review was submitted" is shown.

Doing my part!

Incredible to see High Tide go from this to Barnes and Noble… but I’ll always cherish my night market copy

High Tide - Barnes & Noble webpage A red circle highlighting the “Write A Review” button

On the B&N website, click the “Write A Review” button—then fill out your details and you should be good to go!

You don’t need to have bought the game on B&N in order to leave a review!

www.barnesandnoble.com/w/high-tide-...

“I was a streamer until I got sucked into this slop game! Now if the servers go down, I die! Quest for a million players!”

Everyone’s always reincarnated into an old school fantasy RPG. Where’s the poor bastard who ends up in a live service slop/terrible Gacha game?

Spring Cleaning Writeup - Gametrodon Every game I just never got around to doing a full writeup on over the last year and half or so. Some are great! Some are very much not.

It's the spring cleaning write-up, by which I mean my apartment remains as much of a disaster as ever, but at least I've emptied my drafts folder. Come read about a bunch of great things, and a few terrible things from the last year I just never got around to giving a full writeup.

wreksyft a post-mortefesto

and if you want more good TCG ideas, you should read my friend phyrex's post-mortifesto about her own semi-TCG-ish game, wreksyft: substack.com/home/post/p-...

Image of a card that deals 89 damage to the enemy hole.

Zoom out revealing that the card in question is part of graphic design on card sheets for being put into a binder.

It does WHAT type of damage?
(Found in a WalMart)

And while in the long run, it means you end up dying to Magic like everyone else, I do have to wonder if stuff like that first $8 mil Kickstarter makes the traditional business model of this stuff too tempting to develop anything else.

Like, Altered and Cyberpunk prove that there is an audience of people who want something new, it’s getting them to stick around that’s hard. Hell, even MetaZoo showed that.

Trying to capture all of that stuff, and compress down the experience is the design goal of @max.resonym.com and my Card City Critters, though we’re not 100% there yet. But I think it can be done, I just also think when you remove the blind box monetization, you run into other problems.

There are a lot of really cool experiences you can only have the first time you onboard onto a new TCG. Some are card discoveries, some are interactions, and some of just cool gameplay moments and sharing it with other folks.

I'm sorry, FIFTY FOUR TO ZERO?!?

Okay, 18 drafts in my folder have been cleaned up into 3 finished articles, and 4 drafts I'm still sitting on, and that would be great, except the goal for today was to sit down an review Chico's Rebound, which I have not done yet.

Just to be clear, I'm not trying to be a hater for engagement here, I'm just reallllll salty that I spent $450 on a console to play a $70 game that just sort of fried my brain for 16 hours, and not much else.

The gangplank galleon song in this is incredible though.

Donkey Kong Bonanza - Gametrodon When I got out of the fugue state Donkey Kong Bananza put me in, all I could think was "Wow, I really regret buying a Switch 2 for this."

This is technically a writeup about Donkey Kong Bonanza, but realistically it's a longer rant about the cost of the Switch 2, and Switch 2 games.

Surely today I will actually finish some writing.

I'm one of those trans women. I worked ground ops for Artemis I.

I am torn between celebrating the success of my friends and peers and grieving how my dream of working for NASA was shattered by hateful assholes in Tallahassee