dreamless
@elemund.bsky.social
Reposted by dreamless
Really enjoyed reading through these. It's cool to see what everyone else says was foundational to them.
We asked 167 pro game designers what games influenced their work, and aggregated the results into a top-100! I'll thread the list here, but if you wanna cheat, head on over: polarisgamedesign.com/the-polaris-...
Podcast with more nuance: www.gamedeveloper.com/design/are-t...
Podcast with more nuance: www.gamedeveloper.com/design/are-t...
The Polaris List
Polaris is a non-profit committed to improving and refining the art and craft of game design. In order to get a snapshot of current game design thinking and reference points, we wondered — what do wor...
polarisgamedesign.com
January 5, 2026 at 2:31 AM
Really enjoyed reading through these. It's cool to see what everyone else says was foundational to them.
Reposted by dreamless
oh shit just found out about vstools github.com/morris/vstools
December 7, 2025 at 11:20 PM
oh shit just found out about vstools github.com/morris/vstools
A coworker saw me playing SINGOU BREAKA シンゴウブレイカ and I was like "It's one of those! I'm glad they're still making them" but didn't have a good genre name for him.
(The game itself is neat but I never got the knack of its combos, and so many of its modes are score attacks of one kind or another.)
(The game itself is neat but I never got the knack of its combos, and so many of its modes are score attacks of one kind or another.)
January 2, 2026 at 6:54 AM
A coworker saw me playing SINGOU BREAKA シンゴウブレイカ and I was like "It's one of those! I'm glad they're still making them" but didn't have a good genre name for him.
(The game itself is neat but I never got the knack of its combos, and so many of its modes are score attacks of one kind or another.)
(The game itself is neat but I never got the knack of its combos, and so many of its modes are score attacks of one kind or another.)
Reposted by dreamless
Let's start a campaign to add the tag "Arcade Puzzle" to games like Tetris, Lumines, Puyo Puyo, Petal Crash, etc on Steam. These games get lumped in with great but completely different genres of puzzle games like Portal and sadly sidelined. Steam users have the power to carve out this niche!
January 2, 2026 at 1:24 AM
Let's start a campaign to add the tag "Arcade Puzzle" to games like Tetris, Lumines, Puyo Puyo, Petal Crash, etc on Steam. These games get lumped in with great but completely different genres of puzzle games like Portal and sadly sidelined. Steam users have the power to carve out this niche!
i have two go-to new year's songs and 2025 definitely calls for this one www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj_s...
End Of A Year
YouTube video by Embrace - Topic
www.youtube.com
January 1, 2026 at 6:20 AM
i have two go-to new year's songs and 2025 definitely calls for this one www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj_s...
Reposted by dreamless
I wrote about this in "The Unaccountability Machine" - when you describe leveraged buyouts to ordinary people, half of them say that it should be illegal and the other half are often convinced that it already is.
Buying a company by taking out a massive loan, then making the company you bought responsible for paying off that loan, is so patently evil that it should be beyond illegal. The kind of thing that inspires enlightened societies without corporal punishment to bring back the death penalty as a one-off
September 29, 2025 at 4:21 PM
I wrote about this in "The Unaccountability Machine" - when you describe leveraged buyouts to ordinary people, half of them say that it should be illegal and the other half are often convinced that it already is.
thecityofroses.com/news/Forebea... - man i used to care so much about these genre battles and just can't anymore, but the history's still neat; fritz leiber!
September 17, 2025 at 9:56 PM
thecityofroses.com/news/Forebea... - man i used to care so much about these genre battles and just can't anymore, but the history's still neat; fritz leiber!
i understand how we got here--positioning and judging distance is harder in 3d and the more you bring in the camera for "immersion' the worse it gets--but as someone who likes movement and hates timing i wish it was different
Yeah, the modern "high skill game" player has no sense of spacing and no intuition to solve problems by *not being there*.
"This boss isn't fair it has an unreactable grab"
then why are you standing in its face!!!! 😭
"This boss isn't fair it has an unreactable grab"
then why are you standing in its face!!!! 😭
The abstract form of the parry and i-frame style of combat is the rhythm game, which we see demonstrated in Sekiro: attacks are like a rhythm pattern you learn and respond to, with timing paramount. The logical conclusion of avoidance response combat, though, is the shmup, with spacing paramount.
September 11, 2025 at 9:40 PM
i understand how we got here--positioning and judging distance is harder in 3d and the more you bring in the camera for "immersion' the worse it gets--but as someone who likes movement and hates timing i wish it was different
this is it, it's about you, not the game--the same thing is "friction" if you like the game and "disrespecting time" if you don't
“this game doesn’t respect my time” has become kind of a weird complaint imo — it’s not necessarily a wrong thing to say but i think people perceive it more globally than personally (an issue across all media critique/commentary honestly)
September 5, 2025 at 8:53 PM
this is it, it's about you, not the game--the same thing is "friction" if you like the game and "disrespecting time" if you don't
Reposted by dreamless
my second-favorite piece of golem lore: golems can move and act, but without a soul (only god can create souls) they lack the power of speech
Shit @rusty.todayintabs.com nailed it www.todayintabs.com/p/we-need-to...
July 28, 2025 at 6:13 PM
my second-favorite piece of golem lore: golems can move and act, but without a soul (only god can create souls) they lack the power of speech
ah, i love these games!
July 15, 2025 at 7:14 AM
ah, i love these games!
tim sweeney's "hey you'll be able to use AI to make games in unreal really easily!" makes me angry for all the normal reasons but also because fuck you, you have had zero concern for being able to use UNREAL to make games in unreal really easily >:(
June 4, 2025 at 7:32 PM
tim sweeney's "hey you'll be able to use AI to make games in unreal really easily!" makes me angry for all the normal reasons but also because fuck you, you have had zero concern for being able to use UNREAL to make games in unreal really easily >:(
www.ign.com/articles/wor... some interesting parallels between this and the autocombo debate in fighting games; i didn't realize that mods had gone from 'more and better cooldown tracking' to 'we'll tell you what button to press next' and that there was associated social pressure
World of Warcraft Is Getting a One-Button Option That Will Automatically Cast the Ideal Next Spell — but at a Cost - IGN
Blizzard is preparing to add a new feature to World of Warcraft that might sound strange at first: an option to have the game tell you what spell you should optimally cast next in combat, with an addi...
www.ign.com
April 30, 2025 at 10:44 PM
www.ign.com/articles/wor... some interesting parallels between this and the autocombo debate in fighting games; i didn't realize that mods had gone from 'more and better cooldown tracking' to 'we'll tell you what button to press next' and that there was associated social pressure
the modern version has a windshield >:(
March 6, 2025 at 9:06 PM
the modern version has a windshield >:(
personally on the question of "what are mechs for?" (it's not just one thing!!!) i'm more aligned with this take, from too like the lightning
March 1, 2025 at 7:54 PM
personally on the question of "what are mechs for?" (it's not just one thing!!!) i'm more aligned with this take, from too like the lightning