My Favorite Games I Played in 2025

What to you has been a year, for me is but a second and a lifetime. 2025 is wrapped finally in festive jolly and acute melancholy, so sit with me by the chimney fire as I make my annual lamentations and ludic recommendations.

 

This year had been, like a coaster, fit with the twists and loop-de-loops of occurrences. Even in my final year of high school, I had managed to slot myself into multiple friend groups, get rejected, be confessed to, fall in love, enter the college of my preference, get all my shit robbed and stolen, and have my body almost give out on me on two occasions. "No rest for the wicked," so said this year, and on this front it afforded me little. 

But you do not read on to hear my life story, interesting and chaotic as it had been, nor are you here to wallow with me in my regrets, celebrate my joys, and listen to my wishful desires for the next revolution of this Earth. No, you're interested in what I—Big Gaming's Greatest Slave!—have been up to all this time, for it's true I had spent a significant portion of my life clacking at my keys and wasting away with the medium. Indeed, all throughout the year I played video games. A lot of them. 

 

Believe me when I claim that 2025 has granted me my most exposure to the highest quality titles yet, mostly facilitated by a new and stronger laptop that had been so graciously gifted to me by my college's scholarship. My eyes were gazed with releases ranging from the unabashedly Unreal Engine look of Palworld; to the ear-creaming music of Persona; and the winding court cases of Phoenix Wright. Among them all, listed here are my absolute favorites and high recommendations.

 

Disco Elysium (2019)

 

 

Disco Elysium is a truly special literary and artistic accomplishment to such a point where calling it merely a "game" feels almost insulting to its stature. I can agree that Disco Elysium is a fine role-playing game in its mechanical sense, but let me not deceive my dear readers: I love this "game" truly for its ability to paint a picture, through its visuals and writing, putting into my mind the great appearance of Revachol, replete with its mind-splitting insanities and pastel-color pétanque. This "game" is a dive into the psyche of a depressed, substance abusing, amnesiac, and dissociative detective as he messily handles not only the lynching case before him, but the greater world as a whole; its truths and sociopolitics. Victory in Disco Elysium lay not through the defeat of some greater evil, but of the chaos in oneself, as one allows themselves to achieve foregone closures, and through these they realize, there is accomplishment in letting the bottle go; there is sweetness in stability.

 

The writing particularly speaks to me, as someone who takes enjoyment in reading the classics. Disco Elysium, put simply, is written like a classic. Dialogue is wrapped in layered and nuanced minutiae. 

The mask of humanity fall from capital. It has to take it off to kill everyone — everything you love; all the hope and tenderness in the world.

Sentences ooze powerful, metaphoric imagery.  

The limbed and headed machine of pain and undignified suffering is firing up again. It wants to walk the desert. Hurting. Longing. Dancing to disco music.

And, of course, the narration does not do away with sassy humor. 

I think this racist is better than the last, but the next racist will be the really good one. That will be our lucky racist.

It is not often that a piece of literature astounds me to such great degree, and even now I feel overwhelmed by Disco Elysium. Unless I devote years of my life to dissecting this madness in literature form, I cannot possibly see every angle of the untamed beast, from which, for now, I've chosen to take one or a few things: the confrontation of the self, the difficult act of letting go, and the even more difficult act of being okay again. There is more, so much more. And I feel almost pitiful in the eagerness with which I ask you this: play Disco Elysium for yourself, and aid me. See this text from a different angle, for we may be able to complete this beautiful picture someday. 

 

In Stars and Time (2023)

 

Do not talk to me about In Stars and Time. I will cry upon its first mention.

 

I'd always known to not want to be stuck in a time loop, but In Stars and Time elevates that dread until such point that it becomes overwhelming. Timelines starts to blend together, events unrecognizable. This game broke my heart again and again and again.

 

Apathy. Learned apathy, from playing pretend. Insanity, from seeing the same thing, over and over. The universe is meaningless, and you're alone; so, so alone.

 ...Change is destruction, you know? The person I was before... I made them disappear. Killed them with my bare hands.

But worry not. This game will heal you. It will cut you with scars and apply its band-aids too. You will know the feeling, past the hours of painful posturing, of being heard. Of being felt. How weird!, indeed it is, to be noticed and known.

(In this moment, you are loved.)

If you want to try In Stars and Time for yourself, ready some tears. I myself only attempted this experience by curiosity and the recommendation of a few trusted friends. There is little I can say that won't spoil the experience; it's one you'll have to mostly trust me about its quality. In Stars and Time was, is, and will be, a timeless time loop story. 

 

The Stanley Parable (2013)

 

 

What Don Quixote is to chivalric romances, or Deadpool to superhero comics, The Stanley Parable is to video games. 

 

When I first watched Jacksepticeye's playthrough of The Stanley Parable back in—my God, has it been seven years?! I had been around the age of 13, and while I played games, I wasn't yet the intimately familiar, enthusiastic venturer that I am now, not less one who's acquainted enough in the medium to know The Stanley Parable's hilarious satire. Now understanding its quips and japes, I'm stunned! The Stanley Parable's sharp understanding of the medium, its narrative tropes and status quos, bring a fresh sass and ironic sincerity that eludes much of the industry's homogeneity. I'd love to write about this piece and, as though a surgeon, view its organs top to bottom; its themes and how these intertwine. Out-of-bounds, collectathons, RPGs, inanimate companions, and everything else: it all culminates to one hell of a love letter for gaming.

 

Which does make me wonder, why can't we have more games like The Stanley Parable?! I mean, seriously?! The Stanley Parable, and especially its re-release The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe, while funny, are serious works of art, with meaningful and thought-provoking philosophical insight into the nature of gaming and how we, the audiences, relate with it as a medium! While many others are busy shooting down soldiers in wars and faffing about in their Fantasy-lands, masterpieces like The Stanley Parable, and not to mention its masterful 2022 re-release The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe, are the few which remain to actually utilize gaming's interactivity to create a compelling experience that no other yet has been able to accomplish or replicate! Everyone else is busy twiddling their thumbs, jumping up and down, racking up numbers in the game "Rack Up Your Number", in which all players do is rack up their numbers, and gamble for cosmetics from the Super Evil Lottery Machine That Will Eat You Alive™, all just so these pretend gamers can obtain their quick and easy dopamine fixes, meanwhile excellent works such as The Stanley Parable, not to mention its re-release The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe, gather nothing but dirt, only to be ever touched by the niche few gamephiles! Whatever happened to real games? Whatever happened to, oh I don't know, being patient, taking one's time as they immerse themselves in a beautifully hand-crafted world, trusting the gamauteur (game auteur) in the experience that they are about to behold?! Whatever happened to art?! Back in my day—

Oh, it seems the next section of the article has arrived. Go on, Stanley. 

 

Hollow Knight: Silksong (2025)

 

 

For a certain period of time I was honestly convinced Silksong was a genuine social experiment. Hollow Knight's sequel was the first of its kind to cause mass hysteria among impatient fans, and when the public finally got their grubby little hands on this seven year concoction, their sanity only worsened from its soul-crushing difficulty. Was Silksong worth the wait? Yes. Yes it was.

 

I'd watched Pluribus recently and, if you may forgive such a loose, "Boss Baby vibes"-esque comparison, Silksong's reception, along with its other such meritorious, though cherry picked, traits, when compared to that of Vince Gilligan's show, swim well in some similarity. Both feature luscious, stunningly composed and themed environments, a plot where the main character watches as everyone around them is ensnared by an all-consuming entity, a surprisingly mixed reception from creators with highly praised pedigrees, whose work was considered to have a high barrier of entry (whether by skill or by patience); and, if you believe in Lacenet, a story with a lesbian as the lead—sure, why not.

 

Casting this semi-dubious comparison aside, Silksong is a special, one-of-a-kind indie game. Rare it is for an independently created game to contain and maintain a grandiose, larger-than-life, breath-snatching feel, all while being flourished with details down to the every explorable canal. I felt, at times, out of breath witnessing this behemoth; a monument impossible to fully behold, yet still architecturally textured with a fine comb. As a developer myself, I think: how the hell am I to make anything like this?!

 

Mechanically, while the spread of items and curios are a little imbalanced, Hornet's moveset makes me drool. I remember when I first got the ability to run, and it was so delicately fine-tuned, expressed, and adjusted, posturing as though it had crossed twenty hells of iteration, that I had simply wanted to sit there and stop time as I ran back and forth with the wind, with the delusion that nothing could ever stop me then. I felt so nimble! I felt impossible to hit! Oh, but many things stopped me. Many hit me indeed.

 

But don't let Silksong's intimidating aura as having a tough difficulty scare you from such a wonderful experience. If anything, Silksong has taught me, as I hope it teaches others, not to grow afraid of discomfort from gaming, but instead to embrace it. Let the mastery frustrate you, let difficulty harsh your grit until it pushes you to seek higher, for in an oppressive place such as Pharloom, the truth lies beneath you, and freedom watches you from above.

The Witness (2016)

 

 

If there's anything I hate more than Jonathan Blow and his absolutely insane politics, it's that The Witness is unfortunately good. Liking The Witness makes me feel like a Kanye West fan but for puzzle games. This is the only inclusion here I would not recommend supporting, lest you risk stroking the ego of a transphobe and a radical MAGA, and supporting policies of nazism, immigrant deportation, and ethnic cleansing. There are no buzzwords, no verbal jabs, and no humor I can provide that could give solace to the anger with which Trump's presidence and the existence of the politics which he and Blow embody, in which the circumstances of man engender judgment, and their advantages decide their fate. I wish I had known any of these things before undertaking The Witness, so its placement here reflects poorly on me in retrospect. 

 

I include The Witness, against even my own inclinations, for it had some of my favorite puzzles and "a-ha!" moments of this year, not to mention my experiencing it with friends; four of us having played the game at the same time, and I, in examining our differences in cognitive processes and playstyles, obtained great interest and profound insight. The Witness holds a special place in my heart for how it connected me with others and myself. Learning upon its backdrop re-contextualizes its themes and messages, and while I enjoyed the journey through which it put me and my friends, perhaps I'd prefer to leave this behind in the year 2025.

 

Chants of Sennaar (2023)

 

 

Information-scouring games—say, detective games—sometimes utilize systems of cross-checking gathered known variables to test the player's grasp of their situation. Making use of such mechanics in a language acquisition game, as well as executing that blend of flavors well, is what gives Chants of Sennaar its exciting, selling uniqueness. 

 

Some features and structures of language learning are put on display excellently here. As my partner, the main provocateur who'd die by his recommendation of this game, points out, language is learned accurately, as the process is represented in the form of careful environmental immersion and observation: listening to passing conversations, perusing a society's various writings and murals, and participating in their culture and entertainment. Personally, I first learned English through 2010's era Minecraft videos; I'd say learning the language of the bards through their theatre productions is apt, actually. 

 

How does one design a language acquisition game while excluding the facts that it's often a monotonous, dedicated, and long process? Molding it into an investigative experience is, certainly, one hell of an answer. While, yes, you do "learn languages" in Chants of Sennaar, it is not really the same as it is in real life. Many of the game's layers, each with its own society, are contrived and laid out onto their very blueprints in such ways that players receive exactly all they need to learn the language, but in return, they acquire enough information to learn everything about that language. Whereas, in real life, one could probably realistically learn three to four words or phrases every day, Chants of Sennaar's gauntlets of trials and tribulations, along with a wide variety of events and set-pieces, ensure that, by the end of your stay in any one such society, you'd have all you need to map all of its cryptic symbols to familiar words.

 

It's funny: I have a bit of a problematic history with this game, which this article of mine may inform you about, though beware of its many spoilers. In short, because of a needless vocal battle on the blithering blue bird a few years back, I had grown apprehensive to anything Chants of Sennaar related. It's a bout of immaturity from both parties, but I'm thankful to have kept an open mind. Despite my few qualms and nitpicks, Chants of Sennaar was fun, and it stands now as one of my high recommendations.

  

Gravity Circuit (2023)

So far, the six games previously listed shine in having a one-of-a-kind, unique premise and design. Gravity Circuit, on the other hand, is a Mega Man-style game through and through, taking close inspiration from predecessors, and while it features an all-new cast of droids and mechas, it's a generally nostalgia-inducing adventure. It may not win awards in distinctiveness, sure, but damn is Gravity Circuit electrically fun.

 

Gravity Circuit is standing proof that one can take a well-established formula and simply fine-tune it to nigh perfection. Levels are rich with treasures and ideas in every corner; player movement incites an endlessly satisfying sense of momentum; bosses have been sagaciously designed; and the game is all-in-all an eye and ear candy.

 

My only criticism is that enemies are mostly bullet sponges meant to be bulldozed, at least in the base difficulty, so the campaign may not be for those looking a significant challenge like in the old Mega Man titles. But if you want to feel cool? Go play this.

Iron Lung (2022)

Deep beneath a blood ocean, coagulated from this earth's once inhabitants, you dredge all alone. In your makeshift submarine, you have no windows and no defense mechanisms. You have no worth. The metal beams lodged in the sub's walls rust, the oxygen meter complains, the pipes burst under pressure, but no one will come to save you. Nothing will save you; naught but imminent death.

I am not big into horror games—my heart is too weak to handle them—but Iron Lung reminds me of Five Nights at Freddy's in how it gives so stressful dread from stripping the player of any agency. With nothing else to do but move this God-forsaken submarine, I moved, moved, and I moved, visiting the points of interest marked on my map by those up there, who I'd never seen, and whom will never see me again. My heart whirred and roared throughout my entire Iron Lung playthrough notwithstanding its hour length. I am no horror game aficionado, but even I can tell that this is a truly special game in the genre.

Iron Lung, its premise, and its execution, fascinates me to no end, and reminds me of the specialty of the human mind. We, and only we, can conjure the most amazing inventions, and the most abject horrors such as this.  

They will get their execution. I will get my freedom.

 

Honorable Mentions

Here are some games that couldn't make the list, either because I haven't played them to completion (indicated by *), or because they just fall short of the threshold of a favorite (indicated by †), but are nonetheless great enough that I feel compelled to recommend them.

• † ANIMAL WELL - A scintillating fusion between game and ARG—and a love letter to secrets and mystery.
• † Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - OBJECTION!
• † Turmoil - A really addicting, oil-dousing-syphoning-selling tycoon! One of the few games I played for almost whole days.
• † Human Resource Machine - Assembly!
• † 112 Operator - Dime a dozen, I know, but this is maybe the most stressed I've ever been in playing a game. Do be wary when going into this, it'll spike your blood pressure. 

 

• * Deltarune: Chapters 3 + 4 - I'll write about Deltarune separately when all of its chapters release, but it should go without saying that I adored my time playing this.
• * Persona 3 Reload - I have not finished this, but I am in love.
• * Infinifactory - This puzzle game hurts my mind, but it is so, so good. I have not finished it either.
• * Katamari Damacy - This is the most aggressively Japanese game I've played. It's a free acid trip. Unfinished.
• * UNBEATABLE - I've only played the demo, but MAN this rhythm-narrative game looks pretty.

 

• [Ongoing] Pokemon: Trading Card Game Pocket - Despite its sheer simplicity, I started playing TCGP on January of 2025, and I still play it a year after. It's a simple but effective collectathon.
• [DLC] Risk of Rain 2: Alloyed Collective - This is a DLC, but hey. I know I had a lot of tough words for Gearbox's first attempt at a ROR2 DLC, and considering this, I'm happy they produced something much more satisfactory with this one. 

 

Final Words

As we head into a new year, new opportunities await us. 2025 has been a year of chaos and novelty for me as I rode through the rollercoaster of new experiences and wrote many a solemn journal entries. It is my wish that 2026 continues to be a year of learning, and a year of hope, for me, for those I love, and for the many in the world. I am deeply excited to live 2026 with my friends, my loved ones, and my partner, whom to me means the whole world. To you, who reads this article, thank you for sticking with me through these ~3,000 words, and thanks especially to the people who have stuck with me for hundreds of thousands more. I appreciate you all—here's to a good '26.

Universe for Sale: A Conflicted Critique

 

Make your own universe with two ingredients.

You add a cup of coffee.

Your universe is warm. Steamy and calm, it is a perfect heater for a rainy day. The cup is not to be drunk in one fell swoop. Rather, it is to be sipped slowly. You let the vast expanse wash over your tongue.

You add a twisted vine.

The vine has been cut from a larger specimen. It is writhing and entangled. Climbing down your throat, its pin pricks you with excitement at first, but it quickly chafes and scrapes your airways. Thorns and shoots stay within. You are left voiceless, perturbed.

 

The mad (and possibly confused) alchemist that you now are, you may have just concocted Tmesis Studio's Universe for Sale (2023). The sci-fi, cozy, dystopian visual novel follows the journeys of Lila and Master, as the former struggles to stay alive under the immensity of a tyranny that disallows her space to grieve—only getting by via selling universes of her own creation—and Master, a renowned cultist traveler, looks to correct Lila's doomed fate.

The Tmesis team made an astonishing effort to bring Universe for Sale to life. The orange, rusty air circling the squalid but bustling alleyways of Jupiter, paired with the hum of faulty bots and market-goers, they all make for an audiovisually believable world. Even the first scene makes its immediate impact: the children's bedroom pasted with slow-dancing star lights and Guglielmo Diana's sonorous jukebox melody—it brings one to a time of youth and innocence, matching the scene's tale-telling curio. Make no mistake, Universe for Sale is not alive. But its art breathes.

The warm, detailed world of Universe for Sale gives it its uniquely inviting entry, a coffee-like taste, but its story is what makes it, at first, captivating. The visual novel is mostly told non-linearly, with timelines jumbled and scrambled. What could happen first may have been the third sequence, and what could happen last may have been the first in the chronology. It's useful to think of the plot's chapters as if they were temporally rearranged. As a result, much of the early sections of the plot induce a sense of mystery, with the characters not entirely understanding their situation, and us discovering it with them.

 

Having given all this praise, it frustrates me to say that Universe for Sale suffers from, I believe, some major narrative flaws. These are the "twisted vines", of which many could be synthesized with the idea of inadequate functional mechanism, leading to contrived and poorly developed plot points throughout the story. Points that do not work on the surface, but conflictingly and perhaps tragically, do present depth when their meaning and metaphor is pondered. I will be detailing these plot points below, which will contain minor to semi-major spoilers.

1.)

Lila's 'doomed fate' (that Master intends to correct) works on a metaphorical level, but is inadequately explained on a functional level. To give you a semi-major spoiler, Lila is stuck in a time loop due to her and Master's timelines diverging in the past. It turns out that the two had been closely linked before, but a cosmic event meant that Lila had died in Master's timeline, and Master had perished in Lila's. Their goal? To converge timelines, creating one 'correct' timeline, even if it means one of them must truly meet their end.

The game explicitly states that, due to Lila's time looping, the very dimension of time has become meaningless for her. It is why she claims to only "feel alive" around Master's presence, for besides her subconscious attachment with him, he is also the key to a correct timeline.

The cosmic horror of time, by its looping made meaningless, presents a powerful analogue to the debilitating nature of grief. Having lost important people in her life (Master being one of them), Lila expresses herself as an enervated, temperamental gal; she whose sole goal is to exist despite existence. She gets by with her power to create and sell universes—a power she gained as a byproduct of the timeline divergence—yet she finds no meaning in this act. For her, there is no life here on Jupiter, not after losing those close to her.

Metaphorically, Lila's time loop represents her loss in sense of self, and the loss of drive to keep on going. Depicting one's soul detaching from one's body, time loop is misery.

Functionally, however, Lila being in a time loop is not consequentially seen in her character, her actions, or, indeed, in any of the game's events. Time is jumbled, sure, but it's not as though time was ever looping. Lila's depression wasn't portrayed as if it were caused (or explained) by the time loop, and the more sensible explanation of grief worked well enough prior to the time loop's reveal. If we were to accept that the time loop exacerbated her senselessness, she certainly makes no comment of it. And even if we were to believe that she is not aware of her time loop, as it seems to be the case, the gravity of an endlessly repeating universe is hardly if at all felt.

I understand that the time loop was contrived as a mere way to drive Lila and Master to return to their past; to depict retrospection and confrontation with survivor's guilt. This is further cemented by the act of literal meditation being the means for time travel, as our two main characters dig into their consciousnesses.

However, I stand that the ramifications of a time loop were neither displayed nor explored. Like an asterisk or a footnote, the time loop serves little purpose other than to make the metaphor of retrospection by way of time travel work. It is integrated into neither the gameplay nor the storytelling. Time loop is mentioned once, near the end, as an introduction of an abstract evil to be taken down, long after the rules of the universe had already been established. There's nothing wrong with the time loop per se, but it simply induces more questions than answers, especially with everything else in the climax that had already been thrown at the wall. Speaking of other such contrivances in the climax...

2.)

The surprise appearance of the evil archbishop in the climax makes sense on a thematic level, but is again inadequately developed on a concrete level.

Thematically, the archbishop represents Jupiter's theo/autocratic tyranny that assumed all sovereignty over the planet. Being depicted as a greedy, power-hungry elite, he was first seen (out of two appearances) rallying people to follow the Church's orders, as well as shoo'ing away Master for being part of the cult. The archbishop's second appearance half a game later sees him interrupting Lila's and Master's meditation into the past, as he attempts to coerce Lila into following him, luring her to do his bidding so that he could "steal Lila's powers".

Again, thematically, the archbishop's appearance in the climax is a sort of closing ribbon that wraps the whole "evil institution" part of the game, which probably would have been left hanging had it not played a role in the end. It's a tying of a loose end, I suppose.

But seen through a concrete lens, the archbishop was simply not featured or developed enough for his reappearance to make any sort of meaningful impact. Even in his first scene, he was not the focal point, as arguably Master (and the Church's relationship with the cult) was. His character was so fleeting, in fact, that I had to remind myself who he was when he mysteriously appeared again in the climax. He also had no explicitly displayed powers and nothing to make the player believe he could steal Lila's. 

There is nothing wrong with a symbol of institutional evil playing an important role in Universe for Sale's story, but his meager recurrences in the story makes his role questionable and confusing. In fairness, it's not as though his appearance was entirely 'surprising', as the Church and its loyal servants as a whole had been mostly depicted as diligent oppressors throughout the story, so the archbishop's final act of decadence is like a natural conclusion to that fact. However, his appearance draws the question of why he had appeared personally, how he had reached into their meditation, and what exactly he wants from the two main characters, and why they, in particular, attract his utmost interest. Other than "stealing Lila's powers"—however loose and powerless that statement is—the archbishop fails to be explained, or to be explainable, any further.

Finally, the archbishop and his villainous plan eliminates a possibly heart-wrenching dilemma that could've made its way into the game's climax, and his inclusion processes that dilemma down into a much shallower choice. Recall that Lila and Master had to return to the past to converge and correct their timelines, though in doing so, one of them must die. The dilemma being set-up is clear: you choose to save either Lila or Master, with an ending dedicated to either choice. But because the archbishop interrupted their time travels, the choice that ended up being presented to the player was whether to trust the archbishop or not. The thing is, he is cartoonishly evil, and, again, he's only ever appeared once, so it's clear not to trust him. In the end, what could have been a difficult decision between saving one of the two main characters was all but superseded by a simple "are you gullible?" question.

3.) 

The third and final point is less so a 'major' flaw (I suspect most won't even notice it), but it's a discrepancy in detail that underlines the messiness of the plot's mechanisms. 

The visual novel's denouement sees Lila wake up late into the 'corrected' timeline, as she proceeds to comment how she has to stop running her business of selling universes.

 

Here's the thing... she should not have a universe-selling business to begin with in this timeline. Recall that Lila gained the power to create universes as a byproduct of the timelines diverging. If, in the true ending, Lila and Master's timelines had already converged, then there would have been no reason for her to start a universe-creating shop. And she is not simply commenting on her experiences post-climax; even in the corrected timeline, she still has her shop intact. Why would Lila act like she stopped being able to make universes just after she wakes up in a time long after the converging point that would incite this inability? Why does she still have her shop in this timeline?

These three points, along with a few others I did not mention here, blueprint the holes in Universe for Sale's foundation. Many of these plot points serve a deeper meaning, and were written for a purpose or another, though their contrived and undeveloped nature make them feel questionable or, worse, disengaging. On a functional level, these plot points fail to be reasonably believable, and they introduce more questions than answers.

 

Stories do have the liberty to be contrived. Sometimes, events can simply happen because the narrative calls for it, and, when done well, is more than acceptable. If the story of Universe for Sale necessitated a time loop to corroborate Lila's apathetic, mindless state through a profound, abstract cosmic fact, then the story may incorporate this.

The keyword there is incorporate. When the execution of such contrivances feel rushed, abrupt, like bandages covering emergent wounds, the player or reader is not thrown for a loop: they're thrown for a whirl, flinging them across the air and, in their eternal spin, causing them to miss the deeper imagery. There is some depth here—that's the tragic part. The mezzo-soprano is prickled by thorns in the throat; she has meaningful ideas, but without enough voice to sing all her notes. The sad part is I think these supposed 'flaws' could've worked well had the story been given more time to simmer, and had concepts more room to develop.

I was not entirely convinced of the time loop, I just went along with it. I was not compelled by the archbishop's appearance, I just went along with it. I never understood why Lila made a universe creating business when she no longer had powers, for I simply went along with that too. With all this going along, my role in the story transformed from a curious mystery-solver to a passive observer, accepting whatever that came. It was the only way I could stay engaged by the end.

So I'm conflicted. In awe, I adore Universe for Sale's audiovisuals, thesis and mystery, and its hook drew me in to completion. In confusion, its story and telling left some unoccupied room. Many ideas were clearly had during its conceptualization, but they all fought for time in a game that couldn't give much of it.

For what it's worth, Universe for Sale is a beautifully styled, captivating piece. It simply had potential to deliver more.

Might I recommend tea? 

 

Danton Remoto's "Riverrun": Capturing Fleeting Moments and Future Memories

 

I read Danton Remoto's Riverrun at a striking time when, if one so placed my life beside that of the main character's, half the novel would be my past, and the other my possible future.

Riverrun's structure—that of short, flash fiction-style chapters each detailing a specific event in Danilo Cruz's life—guided my reminiscence. Its chapters didn't feel so much as "chapters" and more like brief, disparate moments in someone's biography, as if the book were a man's diary, but if it only included the diary's "Greatest Hits". Each of its chapters essentially had its standalone story (as proven by their being individually published on PhilStar), and no chapter really led itself to the next. As a result, reading Riverrun felt less like a novel per se but more like looking through the images of a scrapbook or an old slide projector, each vignette different than the last.

There's something oddly nostalgic and painful about Riverrun's first half, which detailed Danilo Cruz's life from his childhood to his high school years.

"Nostalgic" in the culture it showed, culture I had much taken for granted, recipes I'd grown up eating, practices I'd unknowingly hold on to until now. Even the way Remoto tackled a budding gay man's relationship with Filipino Catholicism felt surreal in its closeness to my and others' experiences: traumatic, forced, at times hypocritical, but still watching by the waysides, believing from a distance.

"Painful" in the wounds borne by the past, of governmental corruption all too familiar, of familial disconnect and the guilt it comes with, and, of course, the pain of figuring out one's sexuality in an ever chaotic, hetero-normative world. God, the push and pull of chasing a feeling despite being taught against it is far, far too palpable. So much of young Danilo's crush-induced, fluttery imagination only went as far as holding hands, touching elbows, and hugs. Even the thought of a kiss with another boy was framed as a question, not a desire, for it may be too far, too risky, too wrong.

A quiet, bittersweet emotion permeated the air after I read Riverrun's Part 1—which included Danilo Cruz's life up until his high school years. Slices of the life that Danilo had lived felt so close and dear to me. It made me happy, realizing I was there in similar places too, years ago. But, also, it vanquished me, realizing that I had forgotten my years ayonder. It took one sentence in this book to make me remember ice pops and Vicks Vaporub, and those words alone spelt childhood. I suppose there is comfort in knowing the memories are always there, waiting to be called, like secret agents.

Riverrun's second half (Part 2) dealt a lot more with Danilo's college life and beyond, or in my case, what I like to call "future memories". Detailed experiences of an imagined future flowed out of the book's pages, and the ever increasing temporal distance between chapters made the second half faster in pacing, mimicking the feeling of years accelerating too quickly when you grew up. 

These weren't my experiences, but like Danilo, I too am an Atenean, and I too am trying to find my way in the winding maze of adulthood. I may not end up living Danilo's life, but I'd like to think I might. Although, I'm not sure how much he would appreciate knowing he carved out someone else's path, as he and many queer folk had given their all to avoid following the paths carved out for them. At the very least, I'd hope that I, like Danilo, still remain groovy, even after all these years.

Riverrun was not particularly climactic or eventful. It was a life. And, for me, it held itself quite close to home.

 

 

P.S.: My favorite chapters were How I Spent My Summer Vacation, Fourteen, When the Wind Blew, and Farewell, My Lovely. 

ANIMAL WELL: The Game That's Not a Game

Just finished the True Ending(-ish) of Billy Basso and BIGMODE's Animal Well, and I found it to be perhaps the most unique video game I've played this year, if not this decade. That is because Animal Well is not a game. Animal Well is a crypt — a deeply buried treasure trove of delicately designed secrets and ciphers, all under the guise of an impossibly compact, albeit somewhat basic metroidvania.

When it comes to the game and its ludic elements, Animal Well is not like your typical metroidvania. It does not involve the traditional "powering up" and overcoming foes. Instead, you play as a weird, powerless shit-blob that can only run and jump. There is no combat; any unconventional item you find along your journey — be it a yo-yo, a bubble wand, or a top — serves the primary purpose of being "keys" of sorts that allow you to solve puzzles you would otherwise be unable to solve. Because there is no combat, most of Animal Well's "challenge" is found in its puzzles: which typically only ever encompass one screen, and have the tendency to be rather basic and shallow. The puzzles in major areas always feel like they're building up a mechanic or an idea, at times to the verge of great synthesis, only to eventually fall flat in terms of that final step of progression: the conclusion. Puzzle ideas are constantly thrown around, but are not seldomly left behind in favor of a new one. Because of this, puzzles and concepts related to puzzles never escalate too far beyond their basic interactions. YouTuber and game reviewer @VideoMalts I think put it well in their review, when they claimed Animal Well had "procedures" instead of puzzles, given that so many puzzles require not more than a minute of thought.

Where Animal Well perhaps falters in puzzle design, it makes up for, at least, in its exploration aspect. Items have the primary purpose of being "puzzle keys", sure, though their more interesting usage is their ability to open up areas that were previously out-of-reach, but does so in a way that feels open and never simplistic or lock-and-key. The bubble wand, for example, allows for what is essentially a double jump, giving convenient mobility and access to high ledges. The dog disc can be used to hit far-away buttons, but it has another use that makes map navigation interesting. Items in Animal Well do have a lock-and-key purpose, but beyond that, they also facilitate exploration.

Additionally, the game is incredibly, almost dizzyingly dense, and I've described its map to be "impossibly compact." Damn near every corner and dark alley in Animal Well contains something, and this is highlighted by Billy's philosophy of always rewarding the player whenever they find a new location. He said in a Double Fine Devs Play video: "When you see a ledge, and you get up there and there's nothing, it just feels awful." Not a single room is ever truly empty in this game, and at least in this particular aspect, it is a dazzling accomplishment. In pixel art, there's this common tenet that "every pixel should count". And it's as though Animal Well heard this philosophy and applied it to an entire metroidvania map. I'm impressed! Look at the map! Can you even see any gaps?!

 

Because items constantly encourage exploration, and because the map is designed to constantly reward exploration, Animal Well is really good at getting curious players hooked at every corner, no better than poor cats lured by fish. You thought the game's main gameplay loop was button-pushing puzzles? Technically it is, but so prominent in the player's mind are the game's secrets and offers of novelty that exploration eventually takes center stage. In a way, the game's items being toys is ironically accurate, giving the emotional sensation of (literal) childlike wonder, as you feel continuously satisfied by discovery. It's true: Animal Well is not for the incurious.

The underlying design choice of constantly rewarding the player's curiosity creates a natural lead-in from Animal Well's game to its not-game. But before that, what makes Animal Well not a game?

As you go deeper into Animal Well, you eventually start noticing and coming across more and more cryptic messages and clues into something bigger. Traversing through the game's "layers", you eventually start to unravel Animal Well's secrets, and this is where it transforms into the not-game, breaking the boundaries of its medium. When you dig enough, you'll find secrets in Animal Well that involve scanning a row of grass that's actually barcode, converting an in-game poster into a string of Unicode that gives directions, coming together with fifty people to form an image, and hell, even connecting the game to your printer. All to eventually get at the big secret hidden in this game's core.

With every step the player takes into the realm of the ARG, they continue satiating their ceaseless curiosity, as the game that hooked them from the start with discovery keeps hooking them with even more surprises and depth. Fortunately, the game has multiple endings that allow any player to stop whenever they feel like they've satisfied their curiosity enough. Personally, my true ending is Layer 2.

However, it can also be said that with every step Animal Well takes into the realm of the ARG is a step away from the video game. Of course, Layer 1 is still there: the puzzle-metroidvania is very much intact for those who want that unique but traditional gaming experience. But come Layer 3 and Layer 4, Animal Well becomes less of a game, transmogrifying the executable file into but a mere interface between ciphers, clues, and players.

This is also the part of the game where the intrinsic motivation to explore gets shoddy. The reward of secrets go from discovering new areas to increasing a hidden integer counter needed to unlock a certain something, which is used to unlock a something other. Reasons to keep digging narrow to basically doing it for the sake of going deeper. There is very little lore, for instance, that could motivate one to search. This motivation problem is only ever exacerbated nowadays, now that the ARG has been all but practically solved.

In the end, I think Animal Well is a very decent game with impressive design, but also an interesting not-game/ARG. Most interesting of all to me is how it manages to negotiate its two halves, and how it can manage to make these two communicate in ways that constantly satisfy the curious, if only at the cost of moving away from the things that made the game special to begin with. If there's any praise I can say about Animal Well's ARG, it's that it at least often does not feel like an unreasonable leap from whatever the game is.

While I do think the concept of marrying "video game" and "ARG" is still far from seeing its conceptual peak, Animal Well takes the crown so far as the quintessential not-game game. Imperfect, but an exciting blend of the two ideas nonetheless.

 

P.S.: By the way, if you're curious about other "not-game games", try out Kultisti's River the Dinosaur and the Mysterious Portal that Ate the Entire Existence. This is a web game where puzzles in the game can be solved via clues in the webpage. It's akin to Animal Well's later layers, though of course River the Dinosaur is far shorter, and also has no "real game" to stand as its foundation.

"Cozy Combat": The Garden Story Contradiction

 

 

  

I played Garden Story a few weeks ago now and I couldn't help feeling its intended experience was so similar to the cozy games of its time. Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing, and all these titles blew up in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic era, when everyone were confined in their homes, looking for respite in media. What better way to achieve that than through some relaxing, simple cozy simulators? It made sense, at least to me, that Garden Story, a 2021 RPG by Picogram, would draw heavily upon the needs of the average players at the time. However, the sticking point here was that Garden Story was not just a simulator, for it was also, to great extent, an action-RPG. Garden Story, through the box in which it had fit itself, had to now face a challenge: create a fleshed out, exciting, thrilling combat system within a video game also meant to be relaxing. The game attempts, in a contradictory phrase, "cozy combat", to interesting results.

 

Any single decision made during a game's conception can directly or indirectly affect multitudes in its design. The choice to make the combat more appealing to relaxed, laid-on-the-couch audiences certainly made for a tricky system that must tip-toe on a fine line between combat that isn't on the level of Hades, but also not entirely absent, either (the game is, after all, an action-RPG).

 

Garden Story achieves its "cozy combat" in many ways. One method is lowering enemy density and also making the most common enemy (slimes called Rot) completely passive during most of the day. That is to say, the Rot will not attack the player during most times of each game day. This is perhaps akin to how Minecraft handles its combat, with nights generally becoming more hostile as the sun sets (although, unlike Garden Story, Minecraft doesn't have zombies walking around who will simply ignore you). This essentially accomplishes a natural game loop that involves a slow start -- the morning, with room for breathing -- which then slowly transforms into a fight or run scenario -- the night, when all the monsters congregate. A day-and-night cycle lends to this well-established game loop, making the transition between Garden Story's desired states, relaxed and hostile, more seamless*.

 

[*] seamless-ish. Technically, the transitions between each part of the day is actually very abrupt. But it works enough as a "hostility gradient" (or a "combat gradient") for all intents and purposes.

 

Another way Garden Story reinforces a relaxed tone in combat scenarios is by disallowing high rates of action via a stamina system. Basically, attacking, dodging, and running all consume stamina at different rates, and a player must wait to restore stamina once it is depleted. Regardless of whether or not you like Garden Story's stamina meter (I personally am indifferent), its purpose is to make action feel slower, more controlled, while also less thrilling and high-paced. Somewhat related is the fact that weapons in the game, while serving slightly different niches, all act more or less the same, reducing complexity further. Once again, the homogenization of weaponry and the limitation of combat through stamina are parts of the combat system that serve to make the whole less complicated and more approachable, even if at the expense of a relatively low skill ceiling.

 

Unfortunately, while this system actually stands up decently through most of the game, Garden Story stumbles a few times near its last bend. Around the story's climax, our grape character, Concord, is tasked to fight a bunch of bosses in dungeons, as well as navigate a snowy forest maze, to finally fight the root cause of rot and decay in the grove. The supposedly relaxed tone of Garden Story's combat here is all but thrown out, making these high-octane portions of the game feel so out of place not only thematically, but also mechanically. By the climax, most players will have spent a good majority of their playtime gathering materials, fishing, cutting trees, and building up dilapidated town sections, so to throw them into the tentacles of a giant Octopi monster and the heart of sewer rot just feels odd. Personally, whenever I entered a dungeon or fought a boss, it felt as though I were playing a different game altogether.

 

At its core, the reason for this discrepancy between the game's climax and the rest of its gameplay lies in what an action-RPG really desires: action. It's in the name! The sudden jump to action is not really so sudden, as the narrative and the genre of the game demands it in the first place. At the end of the day, even if you try to design your combat mechanics in such ways that swords now whisper instead of scream, where sickles now pull instead of prey, where shovels now tap instead of dig; an action game will seek action, almost hungrily. It's not that other cozy games necessarily fare better: arguments can certainly be made against Stardew Valley's combat also. But the truth is, in Stardew Valley, combat is almost explicitly expressed as a "different" or "separate" part of the game. On the other hand, combat pervades Garden Story.

 

Combat in Garden Story likely has nowhere to go. Combat was designed here from the roots of the game and had followed its journey 'til harvest, in the form of budding flowers. Unfortunately, at the final moment, those flowers grew black and red pigmentation, contrasting the curvaceous, smooth stems. Lovely, eye-catching, but probably not the serene beauties the plant had come to expect.

 

If you want my suggestions, maybe it should have committed harder to its "cozy combat" style all the way to the end. If the narrative was slightly transfigured, it might have been more fitting, to be honest! Imagine, an action-RPG where the central conflict is resolved not through action, or at least not through nail-biting combat, but actually through some more "peaceful" or elegant methods. Where, at the last moment, instead of Concord pulling up their sword to defeat the final baddie, perhaps they should've drawn it back instead and, as the grove's Guardian, allowed peace to flourish in other ways. Systems other than combat do exist (though most are under-utilized). Besides, as it stands now, Garden Story's finale message boils down to: "Outdated systems should be left behind, especially those who turn people against each other", or something along those lines. It's beautiful, though violence still remains key in its answer. Video games will be violent, am I right fellas? It just had to be the sword. Indeed, it just had to be the combat. 

 

All that being said, I remained attached to Garden Story a lot; enough for me to want to finish it until the end. Still, due to the contradiction belying one of its core components -- its combat -- that wishes to be one thing and another entirely, which often clashed and contradicted, the game personally did not feel entirely cohesive in how it played, and partly in the messages it tried to send.

Post-Contextualization: Chants of Sennaar and Artificial Intelligence

/*** THIS POST CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS FOR CHANTS OF SENNAAR ***/

 

Did you know that I got into a Twitter disagreement with one of Chants of Sennaar's game developers a few years ago? In a now-deleted tweet thread of mine, I had presented my (admittedly uninformed) thoughts about the game's climax based solely on what I had seen online, deeming it unnatural and unnecessary. After all, Chants of Sennaar is a puzzle game about learning languages, understanding ways of communication, and bringing people together — what the hell does a creepy, early horror film, Groot-esque creature in non-Euclidean space have to do with anything? So, while I admired the unique style and mechanics of the well-beloved indie title, I dismissed it for what it seemed to me: a tantalizing masterpiece, ruined only by its inexplicable trope-isms and action climax for the sake of action climax. 

This overtly long tweet thread of mine (overt especially for a game I hadn't even experienced myself) got a response from one of its developers. Unfortunately, I can no longer find the original tweet or even the developer's response to it, but he understandably had a thing or two to say about a creation in which he took part. The developer replied, explaining why the game's climax featured (this is my paraphrasing) "out of place" sentient robots and machine-laden people. Covered in the miasma of my own snobbery and insecurity, I felt nothing but sour taste from the developer's response, and my negative opinions on the game only grew stronger for the rest of that year. By the end of 2023, I had steadfastly believed I did not like Chants of Sennaar, a "hot take" I had to surreptitiously keep given the game's cult-like following.

Fast forward to the year of 2025, and — after my partner described his liking of the game to me — I had finally decided to try Chants of Sennaar for myself and was left pleasantly surprised. What I thought was a bland, rushed, and uninspired climax was actually a potent representation of today's digital-related ills and woes. 

Before this thematic examination, I believe some context is warranted. Chants of Sennaar as a whole involves learning the languages of the tower's various floors and their communities, with the goal of connecting them all by being the mediator (or translator) of their intercommunication. The so-called climax of Chants of Sennaar involves the player climbing to the top of the game's Babel-like tower to find its first original inhabitants, the Anchorites, who by the time we reach have already exiled themselves to escape the reality of their crumbling spire. The Anchorites escaped by transferring their consciousness into virtual worlds created by Exile, a machine. The game crescendos to a confrontation against Exile in one of its virtual realities, eventually killing it and leading the Anchorites out of their metaverses, connecting everyone once and for all. Little lingering signs of the tower's decay can be slowly felt throughout the game, but the imagery of machines injected into people (or people injected into machines) trapped inside make-believe scenarios still retains a stark tonal contrast from everything that came before.

At the time of the game's release in late 2023, its fifth and final section was likely meant to be a rather protuberant representation of escapism, but over the years it has taken on a more real, dystopian feel with artificial intelligence (AI). The release of Chants of Sennaar was two years ago; ChatGPT and all these large language models were still on the come-up, people were grappling with the technology, many were debating on its ethics. Now, the dust is settling, we're starting to see humanity's response to the whirlwind. And it's bleak.

Had I seen the final area and climax of the game when it released, I may have chalked it up to confusing technobabble, a pandemic-induced reaction to the increase in digital activity that partially defined the 2010s-20s zeitgeist. 

However, playing the game in this day and age, the only prominent image that comes to my mind when seeing the Anchorites (and the area that comes with them) is: "wait... this is how we use AI." The Anchorites' manner of delusion and downright psychosis felt all too familiar to me. The way they "grieved" their dying world, by turning away from its death and creating a replica, reminded me of how people configure their AI chatbots to create entire worlds, or worse, talk like their deceased loved ones. Many of the Anchorites in Chants of Sennaar start out un-interactable, and the few who can be clicked tell you to "GO AWAY!" — in here, you are unwanted, banished. This fictional society has lost itself, not unlike how real ones are starting to do. Indeed, what was once a confusing part of the game had suddenly felt personal, real, and terrifying to me.

There are now uncountably many examples of people's minds being cleavered (and in some cases, outright manipulated) by an AI's hysteria, and the cases are only growing. Students are making their essays through AI. A venture capitalist posted a perplexing video on Twitter where he talked about recursion, non-governmental transmissions, and other insane bullshit. Laura Reiley's NYTimes article talks openly about the conversations her daughter had before she committed suicide. The situation is incredibly sad, dark, and depressing, but it's important to know that these aren't isolated instances, nor are they mere anomalies or exceptions. AI has made us stop paying attention. It has made us passive, uncritical, and delusional. We believe what we want to see, and AI gives us exactly what we want to see. In some unfortunate cases, it has even led us to lose ourselves. AI is a plague, one that possibly has just as much (if not more) repercussions as the recent pandemic, many of which likely everlasting. But while COVID-19 was a virus that harmed us, AI is a virus we seemingly embrace.

 

Relating this induced-hysteria phenomenon to Chants of Sennaar, we need not look further than how the Anchorites were connected to their virtual realities: through a digital consciousness called Exile. One of Exile's lines in the game, when you try to stop it, is: "DON'T STOP ME! I HELP THE PEOPLE!" which is interesting. I HELP THE PEOPLE? The AI seems to have a savior complex, and this too strays not far from today's reality. The ultra-rich tech enthusiasts — those who fund and proliferate the development of AI in hopes of shaving off labor costs — frame the advent of AI as though it were the second coming of Techno-Christ, or an itsy-bitsy calculator, or whatever narrative their PR wants to tell. And when you point out the technology's clear harm, they'll come out and say "AI still has its use cases" or "you just need to use it effectively." Get with the system or die by the system. People are being trampled by effective use cases. And somehow I am supposed to sit here and believe the net positive.

Furthermore, the in-universe hierarchy of Chants of Sennaar, begotten by its tower's floors, may be thought of as presenting the game's sociocultural hierarchy, which in turn would place Anchorites at the top of the chain. Notice, then, how despite their high position, the Anchorites willingly chose to detach themselves from the tower's fate, thus reinforcing its death. They'd much rather build new realities than face what's already there. There is no other way of putting it: those who watch the world's destruction, and may look away from it, are privileged. This is where we're heading today, in an almost "extreme" version of escapism, relishing in the "quality-of-life" introduced by artificially intelligent tools, using it to imitate art and humor, all while the hundreds of tons of carbon dioxide fill the skies.

In 2023, back when Chants of Sennaar released, possibly none of this exogenous, AI-cautionary rhetoric could've been meant by Rundisc, its production team. AI didn't have nearly as prominent of a global reach then, especially in the years prior. Instead, the writers probably saw how people were Mighty Bond-ed to their phones and gadgets, isolated from one another in 2020 (around when the game's development started), and thought the loss in meaningful connection and socialization — due to lockdowns and incessant digitization — may have been a repugnant truth of their time. So, they saw to it that this aspect of their reality be translated into their game project. They probably never predicted that very repugnance to manifest like we see it do today. They probably never imagined Chants of Sennaar being post-contextualized.

"Post-contextualization" is a term I made up for this article, though prior usage is not unlikely. To me, post-contextualization is when new meaning is retroactively assigned to literature (particularly those made in times that had different cultures and societies). You can probably think of some examples yourself. One that floats in my noggin is Kojima's 2019 production Death Stranding, which saw themes of isolation and on-line connectivity put to the limelight. It didn't make much sense back in 2019, but people seemed to suddenly relate to the game during the following year's lockdowns. Through the shifting sands of time, Death Stranding was given relatability by the pandemic; it was given new, personal meaning to many people, who now better understood its themes of distant loneliness. By being released right before the pandemic, Death Stranding was post-contextualized by the pandemic.

The same happened to Chants of Sennaar for me. In 2023, none of its climactic messages could've hit as hard as they did today, not without a fresh set of eyes, living in a vastly different, AI-riddled world. How, I wonder, will we be able to deal with the tech-inane generative-borne hellscape we live in today? We could follow in the footsteps of Chants of Sennaar's main character. Fight off the Exile. Escape the monster. Turn it off. Do we need a main character to do this for us, too?

Today, we are crushed under the heels of vapid technological progress, with the powerless fighting to lift the foot, and the powerful relishing in its comfort. As the years would show, society gave Chants of Sennaar and its once puzzling climax a newfound, post-contextualized meaning — one that, admittedly, it probably never wished it had.

 

P.S.: By the way, I did end up liking Chants of Sennaar after playing it. Quite a lot, in fact.

I Learned Game Design Backwards (and the feelings of self-doubt that succeeded)

"A real appreciation for poetry does not come from memorizing a bunch of poems, it comes from writing your own."  - Paul Lockhart, in A Mathematician's Lament

I know game design when I see it. I have played many, many games. I consider them my pastime, my hobby, and my passion. In fact, I have made a few games in a few different places. Yet, I can't shake off this feeling that I am not a game designer, or that I didn't learn it the right way.

I love game design. I read about game design. I know the words, the theory. I know what cognitive load means, or what endogenous value is. But look at my portfolio, at my pedigree, and you will see that it is meek, it is meager, and some may say, it is pitiful. 

I learned how to use Unity at a young age of 13-years-old, and I learned how to make games in Scratch at 11. In these platforms, I made a few fun, silly, small projects, and when I felt up to it I tuned into YouTube tutorials to make larger-scale games. I've made my fair share of platformers in Unity, as well as top-down shooters in Godot. I followed these tutorials to the tee, and through them I familiarized myself with various game engines and their quirks. It is only now that I realize I'd been learning how to develop games. Not how to design them. 

Somehow, it feels like I started with the most complex of tasks: understanding a development environment, and it is only now I am stripping away the complexities and viewing things in their most basic. Recently, my friends and I held a short discussion on how we would re-design the classic pen-and-paper game Tic-Tac-Toe. Many ideas were thrown around, but my friends were able to throw their hats into the ring quick and early. I participated in the discussion, seriously considering their ideas and even testing them myself. However, I took hours to come up with an idea on how I'd re-design such a simple game, and even then I don't think it's any good. There is this inescapable notion in my mind that my friends are more capable of coming up with off-the-dome creative game design ideas than me, even when I've spent so much of my life dedicating myself to the craft. But then, I remember: I learned to develop before design. I learned what a RigidBody2D is before I gave any meaningful consideration to goals, or balance, or fun.

A feeling of hopelessness washes over me as I confess these realizations. Maybe I am more of a game developer than a game designer, rendering me as less capable (perhaps even inhibited) when it comes to the more "creative expression" side of gaming's architecture, dooming me to just being one who carries out ideas, rather than one who makes them. 

In the midst of all this self-doubt and restlessness, I remember that there are really only two steps to become a game designer. First is to believe that I am. If you find yourself in a similar spot as I, be it in the field of game design or otherwise, know that you must believe you are who you are. If you want to be an artist, believe — know — that you are one. The very fact that you desire to be one means you are one. It may seem like delusion, but really, when it comes to mastering skills, all of us fulfill our own prophecies. 

The second step for me (and you, if you find yourself in a similar scenario) is to practice, practice, and practice. Engage with the artform. Self-belief is how one becomes one. Practice is how one molds one. It's as the jugglers say,

“If you aren’t dropping, you aren’t learning. And if you aren’t learning, you aren’t a juggler.” 

This post is a brief moment of wavering self-confidence on my part, and if you too feel any sense of self-doubt, I hope you can see that you aren't alone. In case you need to hear this: you are a creative, even if you feel like you're not. Me, personally? I'm not looking for words of affirmation. I just need to go out there and make some fucking games.