Anyway, I didn't mean to paean but y'know... I think we will still be talking about Blue Prince decades from now, and maybe it was even life-changing for some of us. It has definitely inspired me. Maybe that's just us being in this particular sphere where it hits hardest. But isn't that lucky?

You know the best part? Is anyone ever done with Blue Prince? I'm certainly not. I mean, sure, I got to a point, I solved some things and the game said, good job, and that felt good because no puzzle game ever says that to me. But oh the things I have left to explore one day! I look forward to it!

And oh the theorycrafting! The notepads, the txts, the screenshots, the spreadsheets.... never has so much air-time been dedicated to note-taking and rarely has it been so individual and enjoyable to watch! There was such kinship in collectively exercising our /particular/ brain matters!

On the one hand my highest praise is that I, a puzzle-hater, love this puzzlely game. But it feels like denigration to call it such. It feels good to play. It lets me puzzle in ways that suit my brain. It gives room to breathe. It encourages thinking without cajoling or smacking you about the head.

On a personal level as I said when it came out, I don't do well with puzzles, they don't suit how I think or feel and I had enough bad experiences with them as a child to swear off them. I just don't give them time of day. But Blue Prince... the whole damn thing is a puzzle but is it a puzzle game?

What all players of the game are united in is just how much the game captivates and inspires such thought and diligence and time investment, and how much it comes to mean (though like all great works, for different reasons and in different ways to everyone).

I think much like them I enjoy how the taut ruleset still gives such scope for every player to bring their own outlook to bear and to take an individual tack. Almost everyone approached things differently! (I made a list) Everyone discovered things the others didn't at different times. It's awesome!

I've watched a lot of people playing the game before, during and after my time with it and it quickly became one of my favourite games to watch people play. Honestly at this point it's probably second only to games like Dota or Magic in terms of the hours I've spent watching others play.

I always wonder whether it's the case that Redmond is just a hellscape where even a two-minute coffee-break task of fixing a ui labeling bug has to go through n department meetings to get on the todo list. Or just that nobody notices and fewer actually care about going the extra mile anymore.

This bug is of course more amusing and quirky than problematic, but it just sort of pisses me off to be honest when the software you pay $0 for (because open source) is incredibly responsive and works as expected whereas the one that scalps you and tries to sell you crap every day is a bugfest.

The thing is this was done because someone didn't want to spend about 30 seconds to add a simple check for whether a day had passed whenever the view is re-populated and it's in group mode. I guess again devs don't actually *use* the OS they are making, they use linux at home, so who cares right?

I guess Explorer gets todays date for group label strings when it is opened and doesn't update this (not even when the day ends?) which makes sense as in general it's update rate as of W11 in terms of the file state is poor and in many cases quite a problem (always F5 regularly).

Remember when there was some pride in being part of that platform? Yeah, I can hardly. I feel so bad for the streamers who are just doing their best to cultivate positive communities amongst this absolute garbage fire.

The irony being the images are illustrating open source/demo scene implementations, so this is probably one of the few times that content has ever been region-locked. Congrats Labour, really doing us proud.

Narrator: actually, the children are still browsing sites like Imgur but they're not telling their parents about it. Their parents are as usual in ever-growing ignorance and estranged from their childrens' experience and *their generation will never bridge a gap widened with distrust and enmity*.

But no that's cool that UK people don't get to have those kind of sources or inspirations or information or connectivity any more. I feel so safe, and the children are so safe right now too, isn't it great.