What I Played:

Blood Orange (Decent Treatment)

The premise of the game is that the POV character is in the Amazon rainforest, looking to photograph “river dolphins.” As you might expect from a game with the, “psychological horror,” tag (among others), things go sideways from there. The game plays like something made with RPG Maker, but with only two options: movement (including a sprint button) and interaction. The game also includes a straightforward photography mini-game and “cassettes” to find. The music was suitably moody, and the visuals were certainly unsettling at points. I wouldn’t go so far as to call either “mind warping” like the store page, but the game was free so I won’t complain.

I won’t spoil the endings (there are at least 4), but I will say that there isn’t a lot of difference between 75% of them (ie the difference is a sentence or two of text). I also wouldn’t have found some of the endings without a guide. This could’ve been much more frustrating if the game wasn’t free, but it is; virtually all of my complaints fade away in that context. To the game’s credit, it does include a sprinkling of voice acting and LGBTQ+ representation, both of which are a plus in my book. Ultimately, if the game piques your interest, it’s worth a look (especially given its price and run time of under two hours).

Disc Room (Terri, Dose, Kitty, JW)

My one-sentence summary of the game is as follows: “it’s basically a bullet hell where your goal is to survive a room full of saw blades (discs).”

The player also has six different abilities to help extend their survival time, though only one can be used at a time. Moreover, the game is broken into rooms, each of which constitute a 5-30+ second challenge. Each of the rooms are then categorized into a zone, with each zone having a theme ranging from “generic space ship” to “body horror meat area.” The short levels and quick “respawn” time means the game is incredibly engaging. I often found myself saying, “just one more go.” To the game’s credit, the art style was cartoon-y and sufficiently silly to keep it from feeling gross, and the music was fun and tonally appropriate. I also found it fascinating how the game managed to squeeze in a few puzzles (even if I found them a bit obtuse).

With that said, the game had a few stumbling blocks in my view. The story was … fine. I was irritated by the fact that some of said story is locked behind hard mode completion, though. Moreover, though it may be a “skill issue,” I found some of the power much more usable than others. I won’t list them out here to avoid spoilers, but I’d say half of the powers were MVPs for surviving the rooms while the other half were better suited to puzzle solving.

What’s my final take on the game, then? Given that I rolled credits in under five (5) hours, I’d give the game a thumbs up. The game was able to give me an interesting, self-contained experience that was free of both micro-transactions and “season passes” (bleh). Give me a tightly designed game over the industry’s bloated AAA titles any day. Ultimately, if you like bullet hells, this one is worth a look.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (Ubisoft Montpellier)

First and foremost: FUCK UBISOFT.

My one-sentence summary of this game is as follows: “a 30 hour romp through the greatest hits of the Metroid-Vania genre with a trick or two of its own up its sleeve.”

With regards to the “tricks,” I’d point to: 1) the in-game mechanic to take a screen-shot that appears on your map and 2) the ability to play with time (beyond simply slowing or stopping it). I wish the screenshot ability wasn’t locked behind an in-world collectable, but at least I was never asked to fork over “real money” for more screenshots. It’s … something, I guess. I’d say they’re eligible for the “not-as-shitty-as-you-could-have-been award.” Wow. The game also has flashy (anime-inspired, even) finishing moves for both standard enemies and bosses that can be incredibly over-the-top.

Beyond that, I found the characters in the game “archetypal,” and struggled to connect deeply with them as a result. (If you’ve ever played a Metroid-Vania before, you’re unlikely to be surprised by the cast: from shopkeep and trainer to healer and plucky secondary character). The same could be said of the music, story, and level design (though the ocean frozen in time on the far east of the map was pretty cool). This issue is made worse by the lack of enemy variety. Sure, you get re-skins, but “mook” vs “pirate mook” vs “fishman mook” isn’t going to win any awards. I also beat the end-game bosses in an attempt or two. I don’t say this to flex my “alpha gamer” status, but to point to a lack of variety in their move sets and a lack of punch in their attacks. Also, the fact that I had to install Ubisoft’s launcher to play the game was, in a word, bullshit.

Ultimately, I’d describe Prince of Persia: the Lost Crown as comfort food. It didn’t expand my palette or challenge me, but it did satisfy a certain kind of craving. Also, to the game’s credit: it is competently made. I couldn’t call it “comfort food” if it wasn’t. With that said, I doubt I’ll come back to it; I had my fun, but (to complete the metaphor), I’m ready for a more interesting / challenging dish.

What I Read / Listened To:

It Can’t Happen Here (Sinclair Lewis)

I picked this book up apropos of nothing. There’s definitely no larger geopolitical happenings that encouraged me to read it. None at all.

Anyway, the story is primarily told via Doremus Jessup, an American newspaper editor turned counter-propagandist to the fascist regime of Buzz Windrop. As one might expect from a work touching on this subject matter, the story includes depictions of espionage, torture, and concentration camps (though it never struck me as “torture porn,” just a stark depiction of the difficult reality of living under a brutal fascist state). To the work’s credit, it contains many quotable lines, and it’s easy to see why it has remained relevant and prescient (especially with the rise of the ‘alt-right,’ neo-nazism, etc). The fact that the work was written four years before the start of WW2 is also staggering (though, for reference, the Nazi party had been gaining power in Germany for some time, with “Nazi Germany” starting in 1933).

With that said, the work still fell short of my expectations in a few ways. In some passages, Doremus is more critical of Communism than “Corpo-ism.” I found this odd, especially given the governance he espouses at the end of the book sounded a lot like socialism (in addition to a rejection of Capitalists / Capitalism). On that line of thought, if you are hoping for a likeable POV character, you’re likely to be disappointed. Doremus is the kind of man who will bang on about his principles while committing adultery. Moreover, the work is much more concerned with the rise and maintenance of fascism than its fall. As such, the book’s back third felt rushed; only a handful of chapters were spent on the regime’s unraveling. Moreover, readers looking for a happy ending or easy answers are going to be disappointed. Lastly, did Lee Sarason need to be queer-coded? We get so little insight into his perspective / inner life, and yet he is dispatched by the regime (seemingly due at least in part to his queerness) all the same. Yikes.

Ultimately, I feel I got more out of the work than the harrowing subject matter drained me. I wouldn’t call it “breezy reading” of course, but I absolutely found it important, powerful, and thought-provoking reading.

The Bookshop (Evan Friss)

The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore provides a broad overview of the American bookshop over the course of the country’s history (ie from the late 1700s to the early to mid 2020s). It includes both deep dives into individual shops (e.g. the Strand, Barnes and Noble, etc) as well as “intermissions” about the book business more broadly (e.g. “the UPS Driver,” the “Guy Who Never Buys Anything,” etc). In addition to the historical overview, Friss also argues that bookstores have served (and continue to serve) a critical role in American society from their inception. In his view, they’ve served as a “third place,” a community hub, a place where politics and ideology are spread, and a place where social change is spearheaded.

With that said, the book came across as a bit “navel-gazey.” This was especially true at the end of the work when Friss discusses books set in bookshops. (That section was comparatively short, at least). Moreover, for as much as the work lionizes bookshops, libraries are given no such time in the limelight. I know what’s not exactly a fair ask for a work titled The Bookshop, but I’ve seen libraries do all the work of a bookshop and more. With that said, I found the book entertaining and educational enough to finish, even if some of the interstitial sections struck me as apocryphal. Given that I was able to listen to the book for free after checking it out from the library, I really have no complaints.

Lastly, here’s a broad overview of the “eras” of the American bookstore described in the work: founding / foundations –> proliferation & specialization –> Indies v Superstores –> Everyone v Amazon (which is about where we are today).