kfwyre's recent activity
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Comment on Humble Bundle redesign leaves out crucial security features in ~games
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Comment on November 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 2 Discussion in ~games
kfwyre Link ParentChameleon Twist (Nintendo 64) Did I already have this game on my backlog? Or was I inspired by @J-Chiptunator's choice to play it for the current backlog burner? Or did I simply want to pad our...Chameleon Twist (Nintendo 64)
Did I already have this game on my backlog?
Or was I inspired by @J-Chiptunator's choice to play it for the current backlog burner?
Or did I simply want to pad our tongue stat?
The answer to all three of these questions is "yes, of course."
I never had an N64 growing up and could only ever play at my friend's house and was limited to whatever he had. So, there were a ton of cool looking games that I simply never got to try. This was one of them. I am yet again scratching a multi-decade itch, as I have been especially wont to do as of late in my old(ish) age (oh no, is this my version of a mid-life crisis?).
Chippy already covered the basics, so I'll just go ahead and say that I really liked this. The tongue-based movement is novel and well-executed, and I'm willing to excuse the perspective issues and camera foibles as products of their time.
The game is genuinely quite short (I beat it in a little over two hours), and it honestly straddles the line between tech demo and full game. A lot of the room layouts and ideas are fairly basic, and it feels like the game never fully delivers on some of its coolest aspects: like the tongue twist, or the fact that you can route the tongue around things.
Minor spoilers ahead, but I felt like they kind of ran out of ideas towards the end of the game. On the second to last level they were just like "uh, lots of random floating platforms" and on the last level they were like "uh, lots of monster spawners all in the same room." Both felt like a first draft of an idea rather than something fully developed.
Of course, as @Wes pointed out, that was just how a lot of games were made back then, and he's right. It's also a lot easier to be a Monday-morning quarterback when we've had three decades of iteration on 3D platformers. This was at the cutting edge of the genre, so it should get credit for all the basic things it did right that were genuinely new ground for the time.
I'm excited to see that there's a sequel, as I want to play around with these mechanics more. In fact, I was going to go back and try to 100% the levels, only to find out that I never actually saved my game. I'm of course used to modern autosaving, and I had only been using a save state slot throughout the game, overwriting it as I went. So, when I defeated the final boss, and it rolled credits and dumped me back to the main menu, I realized in horror that there was nothing for me to load and I was effectively facing down a fresh boot of the game.
So I'll be leaving the game at finished but not fully complete. Nevertheless, I had a good time.
Also, fun fact: my husband was bothered that a game called Chameleon Twist didn't actually have any color-changing mechanics in it. Meanwhile, I was bothered that my cool-looking chameleon from the intro cutscene changed into a not-chameleon for the entirety of the game -- but I will begrudingly admit that (minor spoilers) it made the ending much cuter.
Oh, and I thought the pool minigame was really neat, but it was kind of killed by the camera. If they'd changed the camera to give you a better view of things and let you actually line up your shots, I would have spent a good amount of time playing it.
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Comment on November 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 2 Discussion in ~games
kfwyre Link ParentThe Backlog Burner is officially a musical! I am SO into this and I don’t even know what song this is.The Backlog Burner is officially a musical!
I am SO into this and I don’t even know what song this is.
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Comment on November 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 2 Discussion in ~games
kfwyre (edited )Link ParentNeed for Speed: The Run (EA App) Hey @BailerAppleby, I found a Cannonball Run game! And by that I mean it's 50ish single races stacked on top of one another wearing a Cannonball Run trenchcoat....Need for Speed: The Run (EA App)
Hey @BailerAppleby, I found a Cannonball Run game!
And by that I mean it's 50ish single races stacked on top of one another wearing a Cannonball Run trenchcoat.
See, The Run is set up as a large, illegal 250 person race all the way across the United States: from San Francisco to New York. You have to fight your way through hundreds of competitors in order to win at the end.
If The Crew asked the question
- What if we let you drive all the way across America, but our physics are so bad you won't want to?
then The Run asks the question
- What if we pretend to let you drive across America in three-to-five minute chunks, but our physics are better so you'll enjoy it more?
There are 10 main stages in the game, each with four or five substages -- of which each is its own separate race. The race types vary somewhat, but most of the time they'll have a goal like "pass 8 racers."
So, if you pass those 8 racers, you'll move up 8 positions in the ranking and advance to the next race. If you don't? You fail and you have to do it over. There's no advancing but only going 7 places, or 6 or whatnot. If you do REALLY well and smoke those 8 racers right at the beginning of the race, you can't move even further forward in the pack, because those 8 racers are the only ones on the course.
This means the entirety of your journey is pre-scripted. There will be legs where you're supposed to "make up time" in the form of competitor-free checkpoint races, but these, again, are built in completely. Why are you making up time if you did amazing on a previous leg? Doesn't matter. You're doing it anyway.
Now, it's easy for me to criticize this in the abstract, but I'll be damned if the conceit wasn't at least somewhat effective for me. I genuinely DID like the sense of progress I got as I moved "across America" and forwards in the pack, even though I know this was done entirely through the La Croix version of smoke and some very transparent mirrors. The game is genuinely just a series of isolated races tied together with a loose but somehow also rigidly lockstep framing device.
Where the framing doesn't work at all is the story. It's bad. It's got cutscenes and voice acting, but it also feels like huge portions of it were cut for time or something. For example: you have "rivals" in the race, nearly all of whom are given literally zero screentime. Instead, you get nothing more than a loading screen tooltip about them and their motivations just prior to racing them. There's no in-race banter or plot development -- just a car going against you like every other car you've raced so far. Once you win the race and beat that rival, there's no followup. You don't hear anything more about them until much later in the game when they pop back up with the same exact tooltip before their next (and final) rival race.
The rivals who do actually get some screentime are introduced this way and, well, I'll let that cutscene speak for itself.
The game also has some full QTE sections. As a Shenmue forever fan, I'm probably more amenable to QTEs in games than most players, and it's not that these are done badly in The Run -- it's that they're not there enough to be a throughline, so when they do pop up it feels a bit jarring. I think there are maybe three total throughout the course of the whole game? It, like the character bios being tossed to loading screens, feels like more was intended and but the game didn't make it out the door that way. I know it's weird to want more QTEs rather than fewer, but I think if they'd done that it would have felt integrated rather than tacked on.
The racing itself, though, feels good. The physics are a touch stiff for an arcade racer, but really that's just personal preference on my part. One thing I did like is that it is very apparent the moment any of your wheels go off the asphalt -- you'll feel the car start pulling immediately. In a lot of racing games, different terrain just equals "slower" but in this game you can legitimately lose control if you're too fast and loose with where you're putting your wheels.
Also the game looks great, especially for being nearly 15 years old. Racing games in general can cover up a lot of sins because they're showing everything at speed. The illusion of fidelity is a lot easier to create when everything's blurry anyway. But honestly, I think they did a great job regardless. It still looks good.
The game does commit two significant and in my opinion unforgivable sins though.
- 1. You literally cannot play the game as intended.
It has been delisted, so you can't buy the game anymore, but I bought my copy back when it was still available, so I can still install it and run it.
But, of course, the servers for it have since shut down.
When starting the game, it searches for its servers and has no timeout. This means that you are unable to even get to the main menu because it will spend forever trying to contact servers that don't exist.
In order to get the game to even let you get to the menu where you can play single player, you have to specifically block the game's executable from accessing the internet via your firewall.
Additionally, a lot of unlocks in the game are server-tied, meaning that they're completely unattainable by normal means now.
There are two mods that can address these issues, but I didn't know about them prior to playing, and each one just unlocks ALL the cars, rather than mimicking the original progression, which is what I would want. I played the game simply using the more limited car selection that was available to me.
So to recap: Sin #1: game doesn't run and is incomplete, but this is technically workaroundable.
Sin #2, however, is not. It made me so angry over the course of the game that I kept taking screenshots of it knowing that I was going to rant about it.
See, the game is framed as a trip across the US. You know this. It knows this.
It uses this map all the time. Here's an example of your progress between stages, showing the path you've taken.
- 2. (deep breath)
FOR SOME REASON
I DO NOT KNOW WHY
ON EVERY SUBSTAGE LOADING SCREEN
THEY USE THAT SAME MAP
BUT THEY USE A DIFFERENT LINE FOR YOUR PATH
THAT DOESN'T LINE UP WITH THE MAP BEHIND IT
You start The Run in "San Francisco" which is actually in the Pacific Ocean, and you end it in "New York" which, as we all know, is near the Florida panhandle.
It makes no sense. I never want to be the kind of gamer that tells devs how to make their games, but also like, just take the map out of the background, or make the line fit the way that you do on the stage end screens?
Normally I wouldn't harp this much on such a small detail, but the problem is that you will see this ALL the time. Like I said, the game is probably 50 single races strung together, and despite being released nearly 15 years ago, loading times are still quite long. I estimate that, over the course of my playthrough, I had to stare at this misaligned map dozens of times to the tune of maybe a solid 20 or so minutes of real-world time to account for loading.
Furthermore, the loading screens are the main way the game orients you. Like I said, the actual "Run" in the game is just a bunch of different races tied together with
stringa line on a map, and within each one you don't really feel like you're progressing between areas so much as you're driving within one specific biome or environment. As such, the loading screens are actually the load-bearing glue that makes one race connect to the next in the first place.So, Sin #2: in your game that's already pretty tenuous in pretending to have you drive across America, it repeatedly fails to accurately represent that!
I had to learn to ignore it for my own sake. That didn’t work; I still hate it.
In the interest of not ending on a sour note, I will say that I enjoyed The Run. I don't think it's a particularly great game, and I think there are some easy criticisms to make of it, but ultimately I found the racing itself to be fairly enjoyable. The cars were nice, handled well, and the environments were well done. There was one race in particular, where you're in the mountains driving through a section where they're blasting snow and rock to prevent avalanches, that I found quite thrilling.
I'm happy I played it, and I'm happy I've got a copy of it since it's now no longer available.
But also, I still want an actual Cannonball Run videogame.
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Comment on I almost donated ten gallons of blood products in ~health
kfwyre Link ParentDefinitelyAHeroForBabies! And I totally get it, sitting there for two hours without being able to move your at all, including your arms, is pretty intimidating. A lot of non-Red Cross donation...CMV-
DefinitelyAHeroForBabies!
And I totally get it, sitting there for two hours without being able to move your at all, including your arms, is pretty intimidating.
A lot of non-Red Cross donation centers do single-arm platelets which is a lot more freeing. I keep hoping the Red Cross will switch over to that system, though I’ve gotten used to the process and now honestly kind of like the enforced chill time.
I mount an ereader and have a page turner ring that I use to read while I’m doing it, which makes the time go by pretty quickly. Also it’s nice to be able to just read and be literally unable to interrupt that by checking my phone.
Of course, it really sucks when I’ve got an itch, or when my glasses slide down my nose a little bit.
Anyway, no pressure or anything, just wanted to let you know about plasma affecting whole blood donations in case you ever do end up doing it.
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Comment on I almost donated ten gallons of blood products in ~health
kfwyre Link ParentThanks, vord. And I agree: even though it sucked in the moment, the outcome really was ideal. When it comes down to it, I’d much rather get a false positive and a deferral on donating rather than...Thanks, vord. And I agree: even though it sucked in the moment, the outcome really was ideal.
When it comes down to it, I’d much rather get a false positive and a deferral on donating rather than have someone get infected with an incurable disease through a blood transfusion.
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Comment on I almost donated ten gallons of blood products in ~health
kfwyre Link ParentThank you for the kind words, for sharing your story about your dad, and for the delightful measurements. Every time I donate, I always think about how what I’m doing is voluntary for me, but it’s...Thank you for the kind words, for sharing your story about your dad, and for the delightful measurements.
Every time I donate, I always think about how what I’m doing is voluntary for me, but it’s completely involuntary for the person who’s getting my donation. They’re getting it because they HAVE to have it. Not getting it is not an option.
Anyone who’s in that situation needs the help of others, and I want to be the kind of person who provides that help. Best wishes for your father. As long as I’m able I’ll keep donating for people like him.
Also, I genuinely want to change the topic title to be in barn-megaparsecs, but then I feel like I’ll let people down when they click on the topic and find out it’s actually just plain old boring gallons.
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Comment on I almost donated ten gallons of blood products in ~health
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Comment on I almost donated ten gallons of blood products in ~health
kfwyre Link ParentI’m also losing my hair. With finasteride you can’t donate blood, so that was a non-starter for me, and minoxidil is toxic to dogs, which is another no-go. Once I found all that out I was just...I’m also losing my hair.
With finasteride you can’t donate blood, so that was a non-starter for me, and minoxidil is toxic to dogs, which is another no-go.
Once I found all that out I was just like “welp, balding it is!” It’s not too bad yet, but it’s well on its way. At a recent haircut my barber told me “I left this part longer to help cover your bald spot,” which was a kindness I greatly appreciated.
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Comment on I almost donated ten gallons of blood products in ~health
kfwyre Link ParentPlatelets don’t affect your whole blood donations, but sometimes they pull platelets and plasma together, and plasma restarts the clock on the whole blood cooldown. I asked my donation site which...Platelets don’t affect your whole blood donations, but sometimes they pull platelets and plasma together, and plasma restarts the clock on the whole blood cooldown.
I asked my donation site which was more valuable, my plasma or my whole blood, and they said definitely whole blood. I then asked if they’d put a note on my file to only pull platelets, that way I can keep doing them + whole blood on my regular schedule.
Also, thanks for the thoughtful words in your other comment, Fae. 💜
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Comment on I almost donated ten gallons of blood products in ~health
kfwyre (edited )Link ParentI was in the grocery store the other day and saw the milk fridge with all of its gallon jugs lined up and was just like “hmmmmm.”I was in the grocery store the other day and saw the milk fridge with all of its gallon jugs lined up and was just like “hmmmmm.”
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Comment on I almost donated ten gallons of blood products in ~health
kfwyre Link ParentWhat @tanglisha said. No donations of any type for six months. ☹️What @tanglisha said. No donations of any type for six months. ☹️
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Comment on November 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 2 Discussion in ~games
kfwyre Link ParentOllie & Bollie: Outdoor Estate (Humble) Here's a fun little rabbit hole I just discovered: Sokpop. See, I started this game up with basically no foreknowledge about it. As soon as it started, the...Ollie & Bollie: Outdoor Estate (Humble)
Here's a fun little rabbit hole I just discovered: Sokpop.
See, I started this game up with basically no foreknowledge about it. As soon as it started, the graphical style and text looked familiar. Was this one of those "they used the base settings in Unity" games, or had I played something else by these devs?
So I looked into them. Turns out they are the Sokpop Collective and they have put out a LOT of games. See: Steam and itch.io. They've got a Patreon you can subscribe to and they attempt to put out a game every two weeks. Pretty cool. And they were doing this before AI!
With that many titles, it's undoubtedly the case that many of them are short and sweet. They honestly feel sort of like Playdate for PCs: unique, simple concept games that are well-executed, with personality and panache.
Ollie & Bollie fits that bill, feeling like a full idea while also being quite short -- an hour or less to finish.
That is, if you CAN finish.
You play as Ollie, and someone else can play as Bollie, and the two of you have several tasks that you have to do to get your little outdoor grounds back up and running. Plant an orchard, fix a cart, herd the sheep, and build a shed.
Interestingly enough, the Humble build of the game doesn't allow for co-op, so you're stuck with AI Bollie as your companion, who does the best that they can. The two of you somewhat clumsily but endearingly work your way through the tasks with simple contextual controls and a lot of experimenting to see what will and won't work.
I thoroughly enjoyed the game -- until I tried to build the shed. It was the most complicated of the tasks, and also the one I was least sure how to do. Unfortunately, this is where AI Bollie started to let me down. Once I figured out what to do, it then became a challenge to get AI Bollie to cooperate with me. I'd had to sort of manage and nudge them around throughout the course of the game, but it wasn't too significant. The shed, however, was considerably more challenging.
There's no saving in the game -- it's a one and done single-sitting kind of thing -- and I was playing it on a fixed schedule before another obligation on my calendar, so I ended up having to stop the game and watch the rest of it (which was only a minute or two more) on YouTube. It was then that I checked the Steam page for the game and found out that Shed Building With AI Bollie is a primary complaint, with some saying it's too difficult and others saying simply "skill issue."
I think I could have made the shed work with more time, but I'm also not against calling in professionals to do housework when I myself am out of my depth, so really my ending was canon to the way I would approach the task in real life.
Overall, it was cute. It was entertaining. It would be a fun couples' game for a night in. It's free on the Humble app, and it's $3 USD on Steam and itch.io, which I think is the right price. It's not groundbreaking or anything, but if you think of it as a fun and whimsical little sidequest, it fits the $3 bill.
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I almost donated ten gallons of blood products
Previous discussion about five gallons here Sorry for the somewhat clickbaity title, but it's got relevance: Ever since I hit five gallons last year, I've been donating away, excitedly working...
Previous discussion about five gallons here
Sorry for the somewhat clickbaity title, but it's got relevance:
Ever since I hit five gallons last year, I've been donating away, excitedly working towards that ten gallon milestone. I do whole blood donations every eight weeks, and I try to do platelets once a month.
I literally had ONE donation left to get myself to ten gallons when I got a call that nobody, especially no gay man, ever wants to get: the blood tests from my last donation came back as potentially reactive for HIV antibodies.
To say I was tilted would be an understatement. I know that the prognosis for HIV is significantly better than it used to be, but as someone who grew up in the shadow of the AIDS crisis, I still had a significant gut reaction. It hit me hard.
After I had time to calm down, however, I was better able to process the information. First, the results were preliminary and not a confirmation. Second, I do not engage in any practices that would risk HIV transmission. My husband and I are mutually monogamous and have been so for the better part of two decades. And the only time I deal with blood is when it's my own and I'm donating. Also, the donation site I use is meticulous about cleanliness and sanitation, so there's no way it could have been from them not following proper protocol.
As such, it was significantly more likely that the test was a false positive than an actual one.
I immediately got myself tested and, sure enough, it came back negative. The Red Cross also did confirmation testing on my blood, which also came back negative. In digging around to find some actual data on this, I found this graph from this page which, if I'm reading it right, shows that they have a 96.2% false positive rate. Pretty high! But, it makes sense: apparently the tests they use are VERY sensitive. They do not want HIV entering the blood supply like it did back during the 80s, so better to trigger more false positives than allow any actual positives to get through.
I got a letter from the Red Cross confirming my negative results, along with bolded text that clearly states:
The Red Cross cannot accept blood from donors who have reactive test results for any infectious disease. This means you are no longer allowed to donate blood for others.
Again, I was devastated. I waited my whole lifetime to be able to donate blood because, as a gay man, I was considered a high risk for HIV and therefore not allowed to. And now, once they finally changed the rules and I finally got the chance to actually do it, I was cut off right as I was just getting the ball rolling -- all because of an incorrect preliminary test result for that very same HIV.
I called the Red Cross to discuss the results and learned that, thankfully, the moratorium is not a lifetime one but only for 6 months (this is mentioned nowhere in the letter, by the way). After that, I'm eligible for re-entry testing, upon which a negative result will clear me and I'll be able to donate again.
Given the incubation time of HIV it is technically a possibility that I do actually have it and it's just not triggering the confirmatory tests yet. However, as previously mentioned, I do literally nothing that would put me at risk for it, so I feel comfortable in saying this was, definitively, a false positive.
The person at the Red Cross did mention that allergies can trigger it, and my previous donation I had done shortly after getting my monthly allergy shots, so it's possible that was why the blood test flagged in the first place.
Unfortunately, this means that instead of hitting my 10 gallon goal this year like I was hoping to, I have to sit on the sidelines for a while and wait it out. A bit of a bummer, but genuinely better than either finding out I actually did have HIV and/or that I was ineligible to ever donate again.
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Comment on Humble Bundle redesign leaves out crucial security features in ~games
kfwyre LinkOff-topic, but is there a reason everybody seems to use purple gradients and accent colors now? Is that a Claude/vibecoding thing? Purple is actually my favorite color, so I thought it was cool...Off-topic, but is there a reason everybody seems to use purple gradients and accent colors now? Is that a Claude/vibecoding thing?
Purple is actually my favorite color, so I thought it was cool when I started seeing it more, but it seems like it's everywhere now -- especially on sites/apps that people accuse of being vibecoded.
Purple was never part of Humble's color scheme in the past, so it's weird to see it so prominent in this redesign.
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Comment on Humble Bundle redesign leaves out crucial security features in ~games
kfwyre Link ParentI can see mine under Payment Method on my account page. Also, there's no actual way to delete it, so it's stuck there. (Everyone feel free to roast me for saving my credit card information to a...I can see mine under Payment Method on my account page.
Also, there's no actual way to delete it, so it's stuck there.
(Everyone feel free to roast me for saving my credit card information to a site. I deserve it.)
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Comment on November 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 2 Discussion in ~games
kfwyre Link ParentGoodhart's law in action. We humans are perennially destined to ruin good things because we can't resist systematizing them. (I'm still going to pet the dog though. I can't not.)Now it's just a checklist item to satisfy the demands of the internet at large.
Goodhart's law in action. We humans are perennially destined to ruin good things because we can't resist systematizing them.
(I'm still going to pet the dog though. I can't not.)
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Comment on November 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 2 Discussion in ~games
kfwyre Link ParentBurning Rangers (Saturn) I want, nay, LONG to play a really good firefighting game. To date, this has never happened. I have played a lot of them, but every single one I’ve played has been flawed...Burning Rangers (Saturn)
I want, nay, LONG to play a really good firefighting game.
To date, this has never happened.
I have played a lot of them, but every single one I’ve played has been flawed — often critically so. Burning Rangers keeps that pattern going.
The game is a late-in-life Saturn release from Sonic Team themselves. You're a firefighter tasked with entering a burning building to rescue survivors, so it doesn't share a lot of DNA with Sonic outside of the famous "rings" mechanic.
In this game, the rings are crystals. You get them by putting out fires, and having any amount of them acts as a shield. Get hit by fire, and you lose your crystals. Get hit without any crystals and you lose a life. If you've played any Sonic game ever, you're already familiar with the concept.
The game puts you in labyrinthine levels full of fires and corridors and people waiting to be rescued. It's actually quite a cool setup, and I think, by the standards of the time, it's really neat.
One main game mechanic is that fires will burst out of certain spots, potentially harming you if you're nearby when it happens. The game gives you an audio cue for this, so a lot of the game is advancing, hearing the cue, and then dodging backwards to not get hit. It's a good way of making the fire threatening, rather than you just safely putting out the fire from a distance.
Additionally, the levels are convoluted. There's no minimap, and they can change -- for example floors can collapse, closing off or opening up new pathways.
"Convoluted" has a negative connotation, but I think it actually works really well in the game. If you're a firefighter, you're entering unfamiliar territory and don't know exactly where to go. It helps with the urgency of the game. Additionally, it also creates what I think is the coolest feature of the game:
At any point, you can press a button to talk to your dispatcher, who will then tell you which way to head from your current location (e.g. "go straight down this corridor" or "turn left" or "you're going the wrong way"). If you boil it down to its basest elements, it's nothing more than an on-demand quest arrow, but implementing it as communication with dispatch is novel, interesting, and helps lock in a strong firefighter "feel" for the game.
If that is a highlight of gamefeel, well, I'm sorry to say that there's a lowlight too.
Saving people (your main mission) takes FOREVER. You can watch a clip of it here. The cutscene starts at 13:17 and goes for a whopping 28 seconds to 13:45. Also, it is almost entirely dead air. It's also like this EVERY time.
If there were two or three survivors per stage, this wouldn't be too bad of an issue, but there probably at least 10 total (maybe even more, I'm not sure). It absolutely obliterates pacing. You're urgently putting out fires and trying to save lives, only to have an unnecessarily lengthy interruption in which a whole lot of nothing happens. It made it so that I didn't actually want to save people which is of course counter to the whole premise of the game (but admittedly did give my character a darkly sinister "let them burn" persona that was, at the very least, thematically interesting).
The game is also an early 3D game with a bad camera and especially crunchy graphics that are aesthetically cool but hard to read. So, after an hour of playing the game and clearing the first two (of four) stages (they're quite big), I decided to stop. It's not that the game itself is bad (I honestly think it's really cool by the standards of the time), just that it hasn't aged well.
A modern remaster/remake of this could be genuinely awesome. It's got a great premise and aesthetic, as well as some cool ideas. Give the game more readable graphics, better controls and camera, and fix those absolutely horrendous pace-killing survivor cutscenes, and you'd have something pretty special.
Until then, I'll keep seeking out my dream of a firefighting game that does everything right. There's got to be one out there, right?
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Comment on November 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 2 Discussion in ~games
kfwyre Link ParentI really wanted to like Racket: NX but I found landing shots in the game to be nearly impossible. Not sure if it was a configuration issue or just me being bad at the game (it was probably me...I really wanted to like Racket: NX but I found landing shots in the game to be nearly impossible. Not sure if it was a configuration issue or just me being bad at the game (it was probably me being bad at the game). HoloBall gives me all the satisfaction of hitting something without any actual skill demands, which I appreciate.
Best of luck with your stress too. Hopefully it dies down.
I actually took today off work...
...not to relax but because I caught a particularly nasty cold that's going around my school -- one of the many perils of working in a petri dish!
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Comment on November 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 2 Discussion in ~games
kfwyre Link ParentYou only joined Tildes in 2024?! It feels like you've been here a lot longer, Chippy! (I mean that in the best way possible, for the record). And no worries about writing at length! I grew up...You only joined Tildes in 2024?! It feels like you've been here a lot longer, Chippy! (I mean that in the best way possible, for the record).
And no worries about writing at length!
I grew up reading gaming magazines, so long-form writing about games is genuinely a preferred format for me. I actually recently subscribed to Edge magazine for gaming news, simply because I like the idea of having a more stable, regular "base" for reading about games than my usual habit, which is a constellation of random articles and comments across internet sites. The older I get the more scattered and unfocused that feels, so I was craving something more defined.
Anyway, as we started up this current Backlog Burner, I realized that we're essentially creating our own little digital magazine for this event. An issue of Edge has several different writers, each with their own voice, and each highlighting and talking about different aspects of games. Some articles are long, others are short. Some are serious, some are funny. But on the whole an issue is a collaborative community writing piece that covers a broad slice of gaming while still delving individually into each title.
And that's, well, exactly what we're doing here!
(And also we don't have ads every two pages)
So, thanks for being a writer for our biannual Backlog Burner magazine! I look forward to every new article and issue. :)
2FA is back for me, working with my old TOTP code, so that's good.
Also, whether it's just careless oversight or them quietly sunsetting it remains to be seen, but there is currently no way to download the Humble App and no mention of it on the Humble Choice page. There's still an old support page here, but the download link only directs you to your subscription page.
Also, the pre-existing Humble App itself now looks to be broken. It'll open for me (I already had it installed), but I get a "Download Error" whenever I try to install any game.
It's not a huge loss or anything, but there are a number of exclusives that are now unattainable officially as a result (that is, if they don't end up rebooting the app).