Reading List October 2021 (Patreon)

With the quarterly wrapup out, I got a chance to whip together the October reading list, complete with a whole bunch of great stuff on the recent bevy of wrapup games. Enjoy this brand new pile of games crit from the past month full of hot and interesting takes!

Second Opinions

The Best Game of 2021 You Haven’t Played Yet by HeavyEyed: HeavyEyed highlighted Unsighted’s ticking clock system and why it’s so brilliant, from encouraging multiple replays to engendering speedrunning.

Unsighted Drops Majora’s Mask into an Overwhelming 2D Apocalypse by Moises Taveras: Representing the other side of the conversation, Taveras’s review gave a voice to those frustrated or overwhelmed by the game’s time limit.

Unsighted Is the Best Metroidvania of the Year by Renata Price: Price compared their experiences as a trans individual inside a medical system that regularly stiffs them with the slow medical decay spurring Unsighted’s central conflict, talking about some of the game’s more interesting points along the way.

Mini Motorways Is Helping Me Get Through the Year by Monti Velez: Like a lot of people, Velez has been having a long and difficult year, and Mini Motorways has been the game getting her through it no matter the situation.

Postmortem: The Ramp by Paul Schnepf: Schnepf did a postmortem of their time developing The Ramp, focusing less on the technical aspects of game design and more on lessons learned with time management and proper work-life balance as a solo indie dev.

Mothmen and Shark Riders: The Mind-Melting Fantasy of Pixel-Pulps by Alexis Ong: The creators of Shark Riders got interviewed by Ong over at PC Gamer a while back, talking about the visual and pulp-y inspirations behind their games.

Silicon Dreams by John Walker: If you want a more in-depth review of what was probably one of the best games in this quarterly wrapup, Walker over at Buried Treasure has you covered!

Politics? In MY Video Games!?

It’s more likely than you think! Sometimes, games like to get expressly political, and of course, that leads to a whole bunch of interesting commentary on their messages, such as these articles that came out this month.

That Time a Punk Band Did Games Criticism by Kaile Hultner: Hultner chronicled the time Propagandhi went all out blasting the existence of America’s Army, that military shooter made by the actual army as a recruitment tool.

How Disco Elysium’s Centrist Path Observes the Player by Ruth Cassidy: Cassidy talks about Disco Elysium’s “centrist” path on the game’s political alignment compass, and how it bucks the trend most RPGs go for with their “neutral” alignment by pointing out that in politics, a choice to not have an opinion is, itself, political.

Far Cry 6 Missed Out By Not Casting My Dad by Moises Taveras: Taveras took the piss out of Far Cry 6 for its casting choices. While their tone is tongue-in-cheek, it’s all in service of prodding at Far Cry’s longtime practice of wearing complicated, politically charged settings like set dressing without ever trying to truly capture or embody them.

Business Gabbing

From interviews about lootboxes to larger shifts in work culture, this month also produced some interesting stuff on the business side of the gaming industry. While not directly relevant to the channel, it’s still worth getting these glimpses of how the sausage is made.

Covid Is Forcing Video Game Companies to Rethink Remote Work by Jason Schreier: Schreier reported on some changes in the video game industry now that developers have gotten a taste of the pros and cons of remote work.

Game Developers Say It Helps When Fans Realize They’re Human by Ian Birnbaum: Birnbaum interviewed several developers about how they’ve used discord to help build communities around their games, discussing both the ways it improves feedback prior to release and humanizes developers in the eyes of their most rabid fans.

The Big Interview: EA, FIFA, and Loot Boxes by Wesley Yin-Poole: Yin-Poole sat down with EA’s Chief Experience Officer, Chris Bruzzo, to discuss FIFA’s infamous loot boxes.

Everything Else

Subnautica and Snell’s Window by Scruffy: Scruffy took a deep dive into how Subnautica simulated a real world phenomenon with how water displaces light to properly sell its underwater environment.

Analysing the Sequels to Tetris by Hotcyder: Hotcyder went through history to look at 16 of the most influential follow-ups to Tetris, covering everything from attempted mechanical evolutions to aesthetic refinements to entire genre leaps.

Breaking No One Lives Under the Lighthouse by Chariot Rider: Chariot Rider chronicled their experience playing through indie horror game No One Lives Under the Lighthouse as they encountered something...not entirely intended by the developers.

The Terrific Visual Novel Renaissance of Vampire: The Masquerade by Joshua Wolens: As Bloodlines 2 slowly evaporates before our eyes, Wolens decided to highlight several smaller projects set in the same universe that have flown under the radar.

How Do You Turn a Game Idea Into Reality? By Game Maker’s Toolkit: Mark Brown has embarked on a journey to put all his game dev tips into actual practice and build a game, and this month, he explored the ideation step of developing a game, talking about past failed projects, the process of prototyping, and how to start your game development process off right.

Halo 3 — A Literary Analysis by Games As Literature: Games as Lit recently revisited the Halo series to finish their retrospectives on the original trilogy, and came away from the finale a bit underwhelmed by the way the game abandons much of the thematic content built up by its predecessors.

Exploring Queer Identity in Final Fantasy XIV by Sam Hentschke: Hentschke detailed their experiences as a queer individual in FFXIV, as well as the queer-coded plotlines they’ve discovered in the game.

I Do Not Understand Hotline Miami 2 by Jacob Geller: While the title might just mention 2, Geller covers the entire duology, using the original’s straightforward and focused theming to juxtapose against the significantly more complicated and incoherent sequel as he goes on a quest to try and extract any sort of overriding meaning from Hotline Miami 2’s many, many disparate ideas.

The Inside Story of Mass Effect 3’s Endings, Finally Told by People Make Games: PMG interviewed several ex-Bioware devs about Mass Effect 3’s endings, both how the original ones came about, as well as the journey weathering fan backlash and recreating the conclusion afterwards.

The Design & Philosophy of Death’s Door by Noclip: Noclip interviewed Acid Nerve, the studio behind Titan’s Souls and Death’s Door, discussing how the game transitioned from their freshman effort to their current one, the razor’s edge of balancing a difficult but not punishing game, and more.

The WORST Video Game Music OF ALL TIME by ThorHighHeels: THH used popularly disdained video game music as a jumping off point to discuss the subjectivity of art, pointing out a whole bunch of neat details about the music covered along the way.

In Capturing Loneliness, Ico Inspired the Video Game Companion by Noel Ransome: Ransome discussed how Ico played with themes of loneliness (and the resolution thereof), using one scene from the game as a metaphor for his own life experiences.

The Video Game Review Process is Broken. It’s Bad For Readers, Writers, and Games by Mikhail Klimentov: Klimentov discussed the many ways our current game review system (namely, developers’ habit of dumping a game on reviewers two days before release) is not only damaging for reviewers, but also the quality of the reviews themselves, thus hurting everyone involved.