I have a whole new appreciation for the art of game design after watching Rodney Thompson and Mike Selinker inspect and construct Thornwatch. I knew I had a cool idea and some genuinely new mechanics but I had hit a wall. Rodney came in and looked at what I had done and saw all the little problems, but more importantly he saw what I wanted the game to do. He cut out old rules that only hurt that game and built new rules to support the Thornwatch I wanted. When Rodney isn't working at Bungie or helping me design Thornwatch, it turns out he is making his own game! Tycho and I actually played the game, and we both loved it. It's true! You can watch the video of it for yourself:

You'll be playing Horizon: Zero Dawn soon enough here, but since you need to manufacture practically every shot you fire from your weapons, it might be worth keeping an eye on what you're putting out. Sony's had fairly strenuous limitations on streaming the product, much more strenuous than you might think for a game whose reviews came out a week ago and are all incredible. I asked them, actually, because I wanted to stream it last Wednesday with Mr. Gribbz. Alas; there are authentic mysteries here, most people still don't know much about the game, and they want to safeguard that for as many people as possible

Hey! I backed Banner Saga hard, like, so hard that I got to write a Godstone for the sequel and create an item and stuff. I was asked to help with a promotion for The Banner Saga 3, and I know the second one was a rough ride for the studio so I said yes several times in rapid succession.

Horizon: Zero Dawn comes out on the 28th here in the States, and March 1st in Europe. My feeling is that you should buy it.

A torrent of generosity from the Internet washed the whole situation away, essentially - but there was an opportunity to make a lasting improvement to their Play Therapy department by supporting the playrooms and stock a new teen room they'd planned. Travis over at Child's Play did a write up that includes the overwhelemed response from the hospital; you can find it all here.

I like Star Wars, not as much as some but I do like it; there's always new words in there for me to learn. "The Last Jedi," as a piece of nomenclature in English, has a lot of potential weight and finality to it because of how "the" works. "The" abuts singular or plural nouns, and Jedi can refer to one or more completely mad star wizards. It is ambiguity adorned with uncertain, enigmatic fixin's; you're getting it coming and going.

I know that it totally looks like something we already have a mental construct for, one hundred percent, but it's not actually that.

He's up to his ass in Thornwatch shit, watchin' them thornz, but I was able to get him over to watch me lose a few times, which is really all I wanted. All I needed! Then he can go. I think my timing on this one was just wrong; I need to remember that he is like the MCP. In many ways, obviously, but chiefly in that he is surrounded by a whirling shield, and cultural projectiles must be carefully timed to pass through.

I have the official release that the Warehouse team put together down below, but: we have a warehouse, a big one, and if handling fulfillment isn't fulfilling for you or your company, I'd love to introduce you to my crew. Hit us up at biz@penny-arcade.com to talk more. But! We need a couple people down there, so I'll leave this up through the weekend. If the below sounds good to you, kick a resume over to pawhfulfillment@gmail.com. Here goes:

I'm always telling him to check out my shit, and he's always telling me to check out his; the joke is that we don't really do that. But I think I'm gonna look at his "whatever it is" this time and actually try to understand it.

Hey! The shirts I was telling you about just hit. The Omin and Jim ones!

Beat-the-shit-out-of-players survival games are a thing, an entrenched thing, and making players naked and terrified is just an outward manifestation of the mechanical goal, I suppose.

The ritual one undertakes unlocking heroes in Fire Emblem Heroes creates a kind of dangerous, addictive momentum. Each time you go to expend your Orbs and summon stalwart allies, you draw an initial hand of five "stones" that you can choose from to become a character. But. Each new stone you turn over is cheaper than the last one, so not turning over all five is as difficult as not eating an entire cylinder of Pringles. For me. Maybe you can do that: maybe it's possible for you to pop, and then, having popped, stop. I've never been able to.

Good God; I always wondered what would happen when Nintendo went hard on mobile, and we're starting to see it. Super Mario Run and Fire Emblem Heroes couldn't be more different in terms of their relationship with the platforms, but they represent a kind of flanking maneuver on phones that increases not only damage but chance to hit.

It's my actual, real birthday today, which is a little scary, because from a perceptual standpoint I feel like I just did all this shit. Partly because of how the PAX half of the year is constructed, and partly due to the ossification of my brain with age, the second half of every year is the going-down-very-fast portion of the roller coaster and I often find myself waking up here in February or so, blinking as though at a bright light. I put it this way last year, and I have no qualms with that presentation - it still feels more or less true, from the harrowing draconic imagery up to the heartfelt thanks enunciated at its culmination.

Gabriel got home from PAX South a day before I did, so he had a chance to dig into Astroneer. I don't have time or inclination anymore to play everything that Steam decides is important; I've had a very similar experience with what rises there, over and over and over, the bizarre, strappy, masochistic fetish gear that runs rampant in that space which reliably delivers experiences of the form: