Correction - as per his usual MO, Tommy grabbed a bunch of stock music tracks from other composers and then slapped his name on ‘em.

His mother is very proud.

Of course, now I'm obliged to watch the thing just to see how they co-opted our local architecture. Fingers crossed it won't be as messy as that bridge scene from Wakanda Forever.

Especially when you have around 500 uniquely named techniques in the core rulebook that all need to be cross-checked against one another. It's all good mental exercise, but not quite what I'd expected to encounter when I first signed those contract papers.

In that latter example, "dee" indicates an art associated with the Gate of Earth, "zia" states that said technique requires use of a drawn magic circle to cast. and "barou" refers to the fact that it's a mid-level technique. The attention to detail is neat, but also requires that much more effort.

Wares-go sports a degree of internal consistency; what look like random strings of syllables at first blush do resolve into distinct words with defined meanings. "Dhar," for one, is "death," so "Dhar-Ryude" translates to "Death-Ryude" and the technique for calling undead is "Dee-zia-barou-dhar'kom."

The real hurdle is what we've dubbed "Wares-go," the conlang liberally used throughout the game text. Crucially, every last monster and arcane technique has a common name and a corresponding Wares-go translation, so, say, a gryphon will also be known as a "korral-dahl" to the people of Western Ahan.

My wife was speculating that the unsettling, weirdly square face was a product of Imagineering having to leave enough space for the various jaw-related mechanisms. Not sure where the ball got dropped, but the thing looks more like Walter Matthau than Walter Elias.

And if you're not into the whole Steam scene, good news: the Itch edition of Dates & Wires will remain on sale until tomorrow. Call it an augmented anniversary.

The Itch edition's getting a price drop to match, so pick your platform and get dating!

The ego of sloperators cosplaying as legitimate artists never ceases to amaze.

Speaking of bugs, let's just take a second and imagine what QA looks like when you're dealing with a full-length game built entirely on vibes and stolen IP.

"That bus in Level 3 is still turning into a subway car and then phasing through reality."
"Let's call that one 'non-critical' and move on."

How could anyone gaze upon this buffet of tactical options and not come away convinced that yes, imAI-powered gaming is indeed The Future™?

It also bears mention that the wide-eyed conspiracy fantasies that underpin the game's narrative are markedly less fun now that notions like "FEMA is a puppet of the Deep State!" have morphed into accepted gospel for a distressingly large chunk of the population. Ah well.