It won awards, but it didn’t get the “overall game of the year” award from any of those 5 outlets. And, compared to baldurs gate 3 I think its quite easy to understand why. Totk was a well polished experience but it suffered quite a lot from “mile wide inch deep” syndrome IMHO. Probably one of the best games Nintendo has ever made, but it isn’t as good as baldur’s gate 3.

I understand your perspective but I guess I just fundamentally disagree. I’d be annoyed, in the same vein as you, if every character was poly (unless they were actually poly and they had other lovers and referenced your other lovers and it was genuinely part of their identity) or if a relationship with them wasn’t different from a close friendship, besides having sex (because sex isn’t the only thing separating a close friendship from a relationship).

I guess, the way I approach the kind of game that we’re both talking about is just different. I’m not interested in exploring 100% of all the content possible, but rather having a rich experience in the content that I do explore. I’ll take an authentically written gay man and an authentically written straight girl who both won’t explore a relationship with me, over the opportunity to have more content that’s shallower. But yeah, again, thats just a different approach we both have to games.

How can you make a character not attracted to men and simultaneously make their relationship not locked for characters who are men?

I’m sort of the opposite. Give characters sexualities! Make them people! Give them criteria by which they will or won’t find my character attractive! I feel gross when every NPC is pansexual and aggressively attracted to the main character for no reason. Then again, I’m acespec, so.

The Last Campfire is delightful, and feels like being read a bedtime story. God, it’s good. I could listen to the narrator read the back of a shampoo bottle.

Planet of Lana is a drop dead gorgeous side scrolling puzzle platformer with a beautiful soundtrack and world building.

Beacon Pines isn’t technically linear, in that you can complete some stuff in an order of your choosing. But the overall experience is quite linear. Its an exquisite experience, I can’t recommend it enough.

If you enjoyed Undertale, play OneShot. No question. Its splendid.

Night in the Woods is a joy as well, it makes me nostalgic for a childhood I never had. Must-play.

Stray - you are a cat doing cat things in a broken future. Splendid experience.

Mirror’s Edge is a game I think everyone should experience at least once. It’s beautiful.

Celeste - it has the best tuned difficulty curve I’ve seen in any game, and it wants you to succeed. It also tells a really beautiful story. God the platforming is good. Its so good. By the end of it, you are doing things you never thought you’d dream of doing. You’ll feel like a speedrunner with all the little movement tricks you’re able to do.

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is a thought provoking masterpiece and a little spooky.

QA is part of the game development process and its supposed to happen before it reaches end users. They’ve made some good games but they can’t act all surprised that selling a game and letting users be free QA doesn’t cut it.

I genuinely can’t fucking stand this. It never breaks away cleanly and it just makes it annoying to share because the pieces are all different sizes

If it is something they’re actually doing, I agree. But this image looks like a crafts project gone wrong. Are we supposed to believe that the bit a the bottom is like, high explosive or something and that tiny wire is the primer?

James Acaster earned my eternal respect with that whole bit

UK here, head held low

Guild Wars 2!

Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid was pretty cozy, and features primarily adult characters.

Who the fuck is Steve Jobs

There’s no jubilation at “seeing a big game fail” there’s jubilation at seeing a game fail that is developed by a studio that is doing fucked up shit, or a game that is shovelling some fucked up agenda, or the like.

We dance on the graves of any game developed by Actiblizz, Ubisoft, EA, etc not because they are big games, but because they are developed by evil corporations.

I think it may have been removed because it was a misrepresentation of fact.

In case you still want to understand, here’s a good place to start:

You said in your comment “they tend to have appearances” which in itsself alludes to the true fact that there’s some who won’t be “covered”. I was more upset by your dismissal of their experiences than I was by your game design suggestion.

I think you’ll find a good many intersex folk would have something to say about being “covered” by being entirely excluded by your arbitrary choice of categorisation.

Biological sex is far more complicated than small and large gametes. You can choose (somewhat arbitrarily) to define biological sex by one or more of

• chromosomal sex (which has a variety of variations beyond just xx and xy, so you’re fucked for choosing a binary here)
• hormonal sex (which has a variety of variations beyond just “male hormones” and “female hormones”, so you’re fucked for choosing a binary here)
• reproductive sex (which is gonna leave you defining a lot of people quite incorrectly compared to the other criteria listed)
• how receptive their cells are to particular hormones (which will vary wildly from person to person, so good luck shoving this into a binary)

The only people who think biological sex is a simple categorisation are people who don’t fully understand the biology of sex.

But like, not everybody is born one of two biological sexes, so if we’re doing away with societal constructs we may as well get rid of this nebulous concept of a rigid biological sex binary.

Fortunately no stick drift