My associate Gabreazy-E was trying to engage is some kind of mystical measuring contest with Gandalf, who was called Olórin. If being a bad-ass is in any way a function of how many names you have, Gandalf is probably gonna win - even if he is just a fighter..

Starting at 2:00pm PDT, we're back at it again with the second of three sponsored streams for Gigantic. I like games that can't be easily expressed as X + Y, and I also like games that learn from their betas, and all of that stuff is happening here.

Oh! It ended up being another Zelda strip. I wasn't sure how much we'd get out of the first pack, but apparently it's almost a week of comics. This is probably a strong indication of the Pro-Zelda bias Gabriel is leaking into the writing room.

I was looking back through some of my old Thornwatch design docs the other day and saw that the earliest one was created back in September of 2012. Now I’m working on the cover of the game and I feel like I’m finally getting to ice a cake I’ve been baking for five years. It’s hard to describe just how exciting it is to see all these components coming together. In addition to Kiko and Dabe here at Penny Arcade, I also have the help of Liz Spain and Skylar Woodies over at Lone Shark games all plugging away on the graphic design. Check out how rad this game is looking!

We’ve held summer events to help support Child’s Play in the past but this year’s is unique. We’ve still got Ping Pong for you die hards, but we’ve also structured it to be more of a family friendly event. How so? Well for starters there is a bouncey house! We are calling this our Summer Faire and Table Tennis Tournament and it’s coming up on July 22nd. We really do want this to be something you can bring the family to and play some games while you learn a bit about what Child’s Play does and how your donations help. It should be an awesome (kid friendly) day! You can find all the details and buy your tickets right here on the CP site.

I have a list, in the McCarthyite sense, except it doesn't concern the communist foes of America. It's more about the linguistic crimes of word villains. I feel that something like EverRoast doesn't happen at random, can't happen at random. It's an act of conscious aggression that wobbles atop a Jengan framework of tributary evils. I had no choice but to act.

Our exquisite Josh is sick, and Tuesday is some kind of America thing. I'm going to try not to think about work tomorrow (and fail miserably).

I guess we'll see if something can top it, but I'm pretty sure The Legend Of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is Gabe's favorite game of the year and might even be his favorite game ever. "Open World" by way of Nintendo is a rare sort of creature. The first DLC just dropped, and watching how he's traversed the place over the last hundred hours or so was fascinating for him. There's places he's never managed to be funneled into, places that have somehow remained persistently dark, even though they're completely accessible, just based on the vagaries of his travel.

Black Panther was one of the best parts of Civil War, I just… I bought into him completely. He stands outside the rest of the established power structures in a way that exposes them as weird-ass pageants. 100% gonna watch this movie.

At long last! The long road that started with the "Bring Automata To Life" Kickstarter is nearing its end. Download links to watch the show have been sent out to backers. Would you like to see the trailer? Huh? Wouldja?!

Playing games with Gabriel, as I have for many years, involves a certain cadence. Around ten o'clock at night the action must pause while he obtains and then noisily processes snacks of various kinds. Historically, it was Oreos.

The Mario Marathon has been marathonning Mario in support of Child's Play for a thousand Earth years. Now they're getting into the home stretch on their 2017 run, with some Super Mario Sunshine. Check 'em out!

I am typing this at Disney World. They have invented a kind of magnet that works on money, here, and it works really, really well. They have a kind of watch you wear that doesn't tell time, but does allow you to spend money in an almost frictionless way and I have. I'm glad that I came down right after the C Team but came home before our Warmachine show we do with Privateer Press, because it provided a kind of upper bound on my losses. Also, they have a root beer float you can get by the pool only it's not root beer it's Guinness. A dangerous juxtaposition.

It's quite true: in the near future, Mike Krahulik will be running Acquisitions Incorporated: The "C" Team for an unforgettable one shot tabletop experience to remember dot com. I know what he's planning on doing, and it is not dumb but is in fact super rad. I knew shit had gotten real when he said that he had to go to Michaels. And I don't mean his house. I mean like this Michaels.

After Gabriel tried Arms during the Global Test Punch and bounced completely off the experience, I did my best to advocate for the game. There's something here, I said. Discrete, particular hands are an illusion, I said - the hand is a mutable concept. There's a way to mash buttons playing the game but that's not where it tops out. It looks goofy as hell, but don't be fooled.

I would have thought that Escape Rooms would be the kind of nerd shit that wouldn't catch.