Things I Liked Last Month: February 2024
01 March 2024
Welcome to another dispatch of Things I Liked Last Month! Check out January’s dispatch here.
From last month: The Prince
I saw the Prince right at the beginning of January and it slipped my mind when writing last month's dispatch, so here’s some thoughts:
With YouTube getting progressively shittier, I recently forked out a lot of money for a lifetime subscription to Nebula. Nebula supports some of my favourite creators (for game stuff check out Jacob Geller, Extra Credits and Jet Lag: the Game, all of whom are also on YouTube) and I've discovered a handful of new channels on there that have also caught my interest (check out Chaos Corp and the Cursed Judge, who are also also on YouTube), I definitely plan on writing about a couple of these creators eventually so keep an eye out for those posts!
I'm a huge fan of Abigail Thorn and her work as Philosophy Tube (on YouTube and Nebula), and I was so excited to watch the Prince, her play about queerness in a backdrop of a Shakespeare Multiverse. To say I was impressed would be an understatement. This was one of those pieces of media that reached deep within me and changed me as a person forever. I'm so grateful that a play like this, with such deeply profound things to say about the queer and trans experience, exists and I'm so excited for Abi’s future projects.
Baldur’s Gate 3
I'm finally playing it! And having loads of fun. One of the things I'll always praise D&D for is its breadth of character options, which is directly caused by how popular the game is and how many designers they can have working on it. And just like in 5e, building characters in BG3 is super fun. My first playthrough is as a Warlock for that sweet Repelling Blast crowd control. Act 1 has been amazing so far, and I can't wait to get further into the game! My current party is Astarion, Wyll with a Paladin dip, and Shadowheart.
MORK BORG
Lots of finallies in this issue as I also finally read MORK BORG! This game is great and its aesthetic and voice are super inspiring for me. I've had a lot of ideas for game supplements recently that feel perfectly at home in MORK BORG, I won't speak too much about them yet but hopefully they see the light of day soon!
The Genius
I finished watching season 1 of the Korean game show The Genius and it’s honestly one of the most fun and engaging game shows I’ve ever seen. I watched the Devil’s Plan on Netflix last year, which has the same producer, and loved it, so I knew I needed to check this out too. Most of the games are really interesting, although I think one of the big flaws of the Genius and the Devil’s Plan is that they both had games near the beginning where each player had a unique role, and with 14 new people and roles to keep track of, I found I got lost very easily. Geoff Engelstein shared this opinion in his review of the Devil’s Plan on Gametek.
One of the things I especially love about the Genius is that the player who loses the main game of each episode gets to choose another player to take into a death match, meaning they get one more chance to save themself from elimination if they were unfairly screwed over by other players’ alliances (something that happens quite frequently).
Splatoon 3: Side Order
The Splatoon 3 DLC released this month and I’m absolutely in love with it! I feel like roguelikes have fallen out of fashion in video games recently, but I still love them for their arcade-style, pick-up-and-play gameplay. It never feels like I have to commit too much time to a roguelike, which I love for the same reason I love films over TV shows, and TTRPG one-shots over year-spanning campaigns.
Splatoon is one of the most unique and creative shooters I’ve ever played, and getting to play it in that arcade-y way feels so good. The variety of builds you can create is just broad enough that every run feels different, but not so vast that I forget about my options. It looks gorgeous too, the dead coral aesthetic is so haunting and sombre, and, coupled with the totalitarian antagonist called Order, you can immediately tell what this game wants to say.
Death Game
I backed Death Game by Laurie O’Connel as part of zine month this year. Death Game is a TTRPG about the people who take part in dystopian games like those in the Hunger Games, Battle Royale, or Squid Game. Me and my friends love this kind of setting, so I’m super excited to play it. Backers have already received a playtest manuscript, and it’s a pleasure to read! One of my favourite mechanics is Promises. When you share an emotional moment with another character (either PC or NPC), you can make a promise to them. When you work to achieve a promise, you gain benefits to your dice roll, but the juiciest part of this mechanic is that if you witness a PC die, you can inherit their promises and complete them in their honour.
The game also has a rotating GM! If a PC dies, their player becomes the GM and the GM takes over an NPC. I love this player dynamic because it means no one player has to be “on” as the GM for the entire session. I love this so much that I used it in my game Abode.
Quinns Quest
Quinns of Shut Up and Sit Down and People Make Games has branched out into a third YouTube channel. When will he be stopped??
In Quinns Quest, Quinns takes his review prowess to the world of TTRPGs with an 80s home video aesthetic. His first two videos (on Wildsea and Lancer) are amazingly produced and really piqued my curiosity about Wildsea, which I hadn’t heard about previously. Quinns has absolutely mastered the art of games journalism, and it’s amazing to see this skill applied to my favourite medium.
(Sidenote: On the topic of TTRPG journalism, shoutout and congrats to Rascal News on their launch! I haven’t subscribed yet but they’ll probably make it on one of these lists when I do.)
Layering History Like Elden Ring
Finally, over at the Indie RPG Newsletter, Thomas Manuel discusses a worldbuilding and map-making method inspired by Elden Ring. I love it when worlds feel like they have deep and intricate histories, and this method of creating eras and then creating a number of landmarks from each era relative to how long ago it was is a really slick and simple way for GMs to do that. I’m definitely going to steal this for a game some time!
Thanks for reading the Things I Liked: February 2024! Share your favourite things from this month in the replies!