Reading List April 2021 (Patreon)

No, you read that right. I'm a bit late on getting this patreon reward out, and I apologize for that! But I figured that everyone would be far more interested in a new video, so I worked on pushing that out instead, and now we're playing catch up. But it's here now, so enjoy the latest in great gaming takes!

Second Opinions

Whenever I finish a review, I usually end up watching a few other reviews or other related content afterwards. Here’s some of the best stuff other people have had to say about the games I’ve been talking about lately!

Evil Genius 2 Asks ‘What Kind of Healthcare Do Minions Need?’ by Ryan Gilliam: While Gilliam doesn’t review every little facet of Evil Genius 2, they do express the ultimate arrival point that all those design decisions lead a player to. Many complaints people have had about how the game works (“why do your minions never come back after a mission? Why do new minions get hired so slowly?”) are all to put you in this exact headspace.

Evil Genius 2 Interview: Rebellion Talks Crafting a “Love Letter” to a Cult Classic by Alex Donaldson: Donaldson of VG24/7 got a chance to interview Evil Genius 2’s developers on everything from the evolution of strategy management games to the game’s more narrative-driven focus.

Evil Genius 2 and Spacebase Startopia Devs on the Daunting Task of Reviving Classic Management Sims by Imogen Beckhelling: RPS was also a stop on Evil Genius 2’s pre-release tour, and alongside the Startopia team, they honed in more specifically on the topic of the resurging strategy sim genre.

Reinventing the Wheel

There’s a lot of common design wisdom out there that constitutes the bedrock of . We can’t be reinventing everything all the time, after all, or nothing would ever get released. But this month, I found a number of articles that were about challenging long-held assumptions about different genres or about how legendarily long-running games have changed over the years.

How Indies Add Flavor to Monster Combat 25 Years After Pokemon by Dan Colonna: Colonna took a brief looking at the growing number of Pokemon-likes cropping up in recent years, as well as the different ways those games improve upon the granddaddy of monster catching’s seemingly timeless formula.

Why Do So Many Games Have Tanks, Healers, and DPS? By Adam Millard: Millard went in-depth about one of gaming’s mostly deeply ingrained design structures: the Holy Trinity, talking about why it’s so prevalent, how it can better or worsen a game, and how games escape its all-encompassing design.

10 Years After Release, Edmund McMillen Can’t Stop Working on Binding of Isaac by Patrick Klepek: Klepek interviewed McMillen about the past few years he’s spent working on his flagship game, touching on challenges he faced with the Afterbirth+ expansion, his perpetual attempts to escape the game’s development before getting dragged back in, and his partnership with The-Vinh Truong.

Is The Video Game Renaissance of 2020 Rewriting the Future of Film and TV? By Jess Howard: Howard discussed the future of video game adaptations to the big screen — turns out there are a ton of different groups, both inside the games industry and out, working to flood the medium with adaptations.

The Power of a Moment

A fair few youtubers I follow were all on the same wavelength this month, putting out videos dedicated to a specific moment or beat common across multiple games, dissecting that moment as deeply as possible, and showing the many different examples of how the best games pull it off.

Vibe Checks in Video Games by Razbuten: Razbuten took the time to cover a simple but important beat in games: the brief moment between great trials or dramatic story beats where a player gets to just breathe.

Games That Save the Best for Last by Jacob Geller: Geller talked about a few games with some killer endings — games that, coincidentally, are all short enough to enjoy in just a few hours!

How Valheim Makes Exploration Exciting (Again) by Hotcyder: Hotcyder’s been spending a lot of time in Valheim, and talked about why the game

Everything Else

Gris as a Barnum Statement | Story Without Killing by Micah Edmonds: One of the most common criticisms of Gris is its sheer genericness, and Edmonds explored the game’s quality as a Barnum Statement, or a common statement that could apply to anyone, then compared its effectiveness compared to fortune telling, another cultural medium with a similar rap.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake: How Midgar is Made by Simone de Rochefort: Rochefort of Polygon talked about both the real world origins and the thematic meaning of the many different styles of architecture in FF7R’s Midgar.

A Thorough Look at Star Wars: Dark Forces/Jedi Knight by Noah Caldwell-Gervais: Gervais did his patented deep dive into the entirety of a single game series, and this month he’s been tackling half the Star Wars video gaming mythos.

Sony’s Obsession with Blockbusters is Stirring Unrest Within PlayStation Empire by Jason Schreier: Schreier detailed the woes of some of Sony’s b-listers and how some developers are falling through the cracks of the mega-publisher’s hierarchy.

Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth is a Lodoss War Game in Name Only by Dia Lacina: Lacina covered the recent metroidvania Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth (and it’s good), but she also dove deeply into the history and cultural position of the IP the game is based on, as well as some interesting parallels between that and the game’s own status as a largely mechanically satisfying game in which the narrative and background details are largely perfunctory.

A Video Game Celebrates Ramadan Through Food and Explores Personal Boundaries by Todd Martens: Martens interviewed Alanna Linayre, the maker of Good Lookin’ Home Cookin’, about the themes the game tackles. Good Lookin’ Home Cookin’ might be about trying to keep a food truck business afloat, but as Linayre and Martens discuss, it ends up being a lot more about the complicated social dynamics surrounding the process of opening up to others and the challenges of sharing one’s culture with strangers.

Twenty Thousand Hertz — Minecraft by Leila Battison: Twenty Thousand Hertz is a podcast that dives into the history of different iconic sounds, and they did an episode recently on Minecraft, interviewing Daniel Rosenfeld the origins and audio trickery behind the game’s many iconic sound effects.

The Story Behind Supergiant Games’ Bastion by Kimberley Wallace: Game Informer did a sort of oral history of Supergiant’s entire catalogue, which means that they naturally kicked things off with Bastion.

Review: The Hitman: World of Assassination Trilogy by Super Bunnyhop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5gX2XZcw3A Now that the entire new Hitman trilogy is out and you can enjoy it all as one package, SBH decided to consider the series in its entirety.

How Overwatch Changed My Life by Wizawhat: Wizawhat took an extremely personal look at their journey through competitive Overwatch.