[My Gamasutra colleagues had an editorial meeting in Animal Crossing - here’s evidence!]
We’re back again with Video Game Deep Cuts on Substack, folks. I got some good feedback on the revamped newsletter, so there’s going to be a couple of tweaks, hurrah.
(Specifically: tactical bolding of words/phrases, plus the use of emoji to show whether the linked piece is a video📽, article📰, podcast🎧, etc.)
Since I’m on sabbatical from the dayjob, I could actually make multiple of these ‘core’ free VGDC newsletters per week. But it’s a slippery slope timewise. So I’ll be keeping it to two newsletters per week (one for free, one for paid subscribers!) for now - enjoy!
- Simon, curator
The Current: Recent Games In The Spotlight
The Final Fantasy VII Remake is here, it’s weird as heck, and yet it’s still “one of the most audacious [classic JRPG] remakes that we’ve ever seen in any medium.”📰
Medieval ARPG Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord is voraciously awaited and still in Early Access, but generally classified as ‘buggy but brilliant’. 📰/📽
The design anatomy of an individual DOOM Eternal combat encounter. 📽
An epic delay for earthquake sim Disaster Report 4 (pictured) has led to “an absolute mess that’s well worth playing”.📰
Horror remake Resident Evil 3 might be a great way to deal with the horrors of the COVID-19 pandemic. 📰 [Bonus review: why the game is ‘fun while it lasts’.📰]
Also out & notable: Python-esque Renaissance adventure game The Procession to Calvary (Steam), the trash-cleaning beat-em-up Scrappers (Apple Arcade), mystic RPG card battler Ancient Enemy (Steam).📰
The Culture: Game Culture & Deep Dives
Yes, people are holding weddings in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. 📰 (And even hiring bouncers for turnip trading protection, haha.📰)
A deep dive from the creator of Baba Is You into its sentence-based game design rules. 📽
What to do if you’re running an escape room during a coronavirus outbreak. 📰
Noted novelist Robin Sloan (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore) is blogging the creation of a new text-based game with procedurally generated maps.📰
Going behind the scenes of the in-game locomotion in Valve’s acclaimed Half-Life: Alyx. 📽
Why pro video game streamer is one of the most coronavirus-resistant jobs out there. 📰
The Past: Game History
How 30 different people play Level 1-1 of Super Mario Bros.📽
A detailed cultural history of Trilobyte’s ‘90s FMV adventure The 7th Guest. 📰
‘The Uncredited’ discusses “the rise of the American computer game industry from the point of view of three women who worked… at Sierra On-Line.”📽
First-hand sources on the creation of the surprisingly good console port Doom 64. 📰[Bonus: how - technically - the game was brought to new consoles.📽]
Implausibly, PONG Quest exists, & uses the phrase “humanized paddle” in its official announce. *pokes corpse of Atari experimentally* 📽
The Other Goodness
How China’s game industry is coping with - and reacting to - Covid-19.📰
A feature-length compilation of star YouTube game essayists on ‘how we talk about games’.📽
The five deadly sins of game attractiveness, from a dev perspective. 📰
Bitesized new streaming network Quibi has a daily video game culture show, Speedrun. 📰
Borderlands 3 is the latest title to include in-game ‘citizen science’, “helping advance medical research by mapping the human gut microbiome.”📰/📽
Who’s roving the U.S. buying Switches & flipping them on eBay? This guy. 📰
Thanks for reading, and see you next week!
Simon.