SuperBiasedMan

I listened to the fracking episode, and it's funny but I found it a bit too dry. The more jokey/casual stuff felt very forced and scripted, a lot like another Gimlet show, Surprisingly Awesome. I'm also a little wary of the show straying from just being informative about aspects of a complex issue into making 'objective, scientific' conclusions on things. I didn't want to come out of it with my mind made up on whether fracking is good or bad, I just wanted to know more about the process and I can make up my own mind from that. I haven't dropped it, but down the line I'll try out episode 4/5 and see if the show is finding its feet at that point.

He's just trying to say that New York City has Good Bagels, they're 5/8.

It's been a year. I wish we at least understood why it's not running.

It's more that noone cares enough, rather than that noone cares. Also because ports work pretty well, except for frustrating people who already bought the game.

Oh wow, this is what second drafts are for but you're both so right about making it a reveal. When I wrote it for the audience to know the whole time, I wasn't intending for the characters to realise it at all. But as I approached the end, I realised it'd be a good capper. Going back, there'd definitely be a lot of fun to have with that ambiguity, and teasing out what's going on. @ShaunCG I also like the idea of their purposes being accidentally opposed. I wanted a dynamic where MED-e is just a naive sidekick, blindly following the nonsensical conclusions being drawn. But I think your idea could totally add a fun layer onto that, where they're pulling against each other in a non antagonistic way, and MED-e is just struggling to make their observations coherent. @twmac This had a really nice solid mood to it. It got into the auld lad feel really well, particularly with the banter. I'm surprised someone saw the people as unsympathetic or wouldn't act this way, the stiff social interactions felt really real to me. Even as someone who's not an old pensionser. One thing was that you could maybe edit the text to make something read the way it should in the conversation. Specifically this line breezes by a bit quickly: The line in the middle could be split up more. Even without spelling out a big silence, give the reader a forced pause so that in their head they can hear the beat between those two moments. Otherwise it feels like a more rushed line, which I don't think was the intention. @ShaunCG This was a really nice series of vignettes. One thing I love in writing, is getting to see someone's personal point of view close up. And the overall narrative of the piece was nice too, particularly the way you linked all these individuals together with devices that show they aren't just isolated individuals but people in a community. I don't know if anyone else got this, but it did take me a bit to clearly read it was a new person in the second passage. I briefly thought it was the same character, just now in a shop with the delivery man, but I got it halfway through and then understood for the rest of them. I think with that kind of shift, having it very obvious early the first time helps so the reader just gets it for the rest of the piece. I can update the first post thoroughly with our entries later, but for now I can announce that the new theme is "Readers Like You". This has plenty of chance to be meta, and I already had a goofy idea for how to approach it so it should be fun.

That's funny, I always feel like the 3D ones just don't make sense to me. I played 2D first, did you start with 3D?

DS1 has my vote because I actually beat it, so I'd love to see Nick's reaction to a game I have fully internalised, and I'm curious how much and how little carries over from 3.

Dibs suggested we start a shared game save to see what happens, there's a thread for it here.

Would iron man be finnicky about passing the save around? I have no issue living with my mistakes. I just don't want weird protections in it to disrupt the fun.

Please give them good, thumbs appropriate names so that I'll actually remember them. Otherwise I'll be terrible and not remember at all.

I've been way too quiet on here. During holidays I got nothing done, thought I'd get some dragting and ideas at least. Since then I was unsure what I wanted to do with it. In the end, I just ran with those dice things I posted about and wrote as I went. I literally figured out the end right as I came to it. It's more jokey than my last one, hopefully it works well. A Person Shaped Thing is a Person Looking forward to reading stories. I quickly read yours twmac but want to give it a proper read and response now that mine's done. And welcome ShaunCG, hope you had fun with it.

I had the exact same experience Bjorn, minus getting to that save before the multiple bosses. I'm glad I didn't keep going then, I didn't play that game for extreme hardness so I enjoyed what I did play before that.

Also for the record healing wasn't instantaneous in the initial release. I don't know exact numbers, but feels maybe 3/4 of how long Estus takes in DS1? I haven't played since that patch, but it feels a weird design choice to me.

pizza with ketchup?

That's a great idea! Are you going to be decorating it, or just matching the taste?

I'm a bit late but I did make my enchiladas, you can see em here: They were mostly black beans, onions, peppers and sweetcorn, with a tomato sauce I made and some vegan cheese draped over them. Very tasty, though I had to cook in 4 separate receptacles, which was less nice. Worth it tho, after 2 holiday weeks of not cookin. And it's also time for a new theme. We've wrapped around to the start of the list again, which means I think we're all in for a treat as we pick our theme. So, why not have some cake! We've cooked plenty of dinners, now we could have chocolate cake, banana bread or a bunch of muffins. If you wanna stay savoury, you still can. How about crab cakes, or just a nice 'cake' of mozarella and sundried tomato. If you wanna just bake bread and call it cake, that's fine (and is probably what I'll end up doing). So go forth and make some cake! EDIT: Quick note about theme order. I'm just going back to the start, intending to get in contact with each person as we go, giving everyone notice so they have time to decide, or bow out if they want. (reminder, you can opt out of choosing themes, but still take part in the cooking just fine) If you want to tell me in advance to remove you, or bump you down the list, just shoot me a message and I'll adjust accordingly.

I did also play and I'm pretty surprised to hear it getting lauded. My immediate question is, are those from people who had played 999 and VLR already, or just heard about them? I agree with your crits generally. I didn't think the pacing was as bad as you say. Or at least, it was better in this game. And they mechanically nailed you not having to repeat parts, compared to 999 where they actually made you re-solve puzzles. I didn't think much of the ending, but wasn't expecting a lot after the end to VLR had some fun reveals but ultimately felt hollow. I would definitely say this is a solid middleground for the games. 999 is a fun individual game with lots of rough edges, VLR had the best polish and pace. The overall story was fun, but ultimately meaningless. Spoiler thoughts on ZTD

They might have just wanted some distance from Nick "Jeff Goldblum" Breckon.

Now I'm EXTRA bummed this wasn't the episode title.

This Idle Thumbs episode title generator is still a masterpiece.

The in game stuff isn't that much of the appeal. The experience of wandering around the world, the collecting and the social aspects are what people seem to care about. That and the refresher of Pokemon for a lot of people who have lapsed from the games and just have memories of when they first got into it, so they can collect the vaguely familiar cute creatures and give them nicknames.

I think Chris spliced in the same voice clip a bunch of times.

* whom else

I finished Zero Time Dilemma on the 3DS. For the uninitiated, this is the last in the trilogy of games about people being kidnapped and forced into a Life and Death situation with puzzles, philosophy discussions and intricately explained game theory. The other two games are 999 and Virtues Last Reward. I liked the series a lot, though it's definitely pulpy nonsense. Many times the series will set up intricate logic for things, and base them on some science but mostly made up theories and things I presume the writer thinks sound cool. They're solid visual novels with passable puzzles, and I like the gimmick of what the multiple endings/paths mean. Which... I can't really explain without spoiling it. Even if you don't generally care about spoilers, this is the kind of story that hinges on them because it's ends up being dramatic and twisting rather than anything deep. For ZTD specifically? It was probably my least favourite of the three, tho I still enjoyed it a lot. Not having a more specific game to frame your branching decisions probably gave them a lot of freedom but felt a little more hollow. As did the villain, who was a non presence for so much of the game, and was still weirdly underplayed even when they were on screen more visibly. That said, I liked a lot of the weird conclusions they brought in. I wasn't expecting a good ending (and didn't get one*), but there was some nice ways of tieing up loose ends that made me not care so much about where the game ended. ' I... think. I'm in two minds about the ending. In some ways I like the choices they made intellectually. But I think the choices would be more suitable for a game that was better written and had good character or thematic development. Instead, as pulp, these choices just didn't fit well. Also it looked baaad. 3D models looked out of date but might have been ok if not for the stiffest animation I've seen in a long time. I wish they'd stuck with 2D, it looked much better.