Joas

I've been slowly reading through Homo Ludens already so that was a pleasant surprise when watching it. Definitely made me more excited to finally get around to DS

GAME IDEA

SPEC OPS: THE LINE AS A COSY GAME

shigeru miyamoto's 'seal of disapproval' (styled purple text font with black shadow). his serious face is in the middle of the seal and to the right the words 'he hates you' in small black text. white background.

lamenes, website, excerpt (2001 - 2002) lamenes.myrmid.com

Yeah, me and my partner are looking at leaving within the next few years because we put in our fair share of money and effort, but the UK government keeps making it harder and harder to live here

Like, this won't "decrease welfare spending" like they state their goal is, because literally nobody on a visa is on welfare??

God this pisses me off so much every time I see people complain about "them coming here and taking our taxpayer money" when it actually costs a shit ton to get here already and then you don't get access to any public spending

I feel like this just needs to become an entire recurring jam of its own, these are too good!

But I think my desire is to make games that experiment with ideas from different mediums, and this non-literal form of adaptation in terms of translating the underlying patterns of its structure to the medium of games is what I'm looking for. Just gotta figure out how to apply it...

Instead it's more that I recognise that I am frequently inspired by non-game pieces of art, and it always feels tricky to go "I want this book, but a game!" because it feels like I maybe don't actually want to make a game, but instead I want to write a book like that.

I think it's interesting to me not because I want God of War to be more poetic, I don't think it aims to be an adaptation that way, and also not to say that these contextual elements don't matter in games. Obviously Hades is about figures from Greek myth, and SotC isn't, and that makes a difference

Something like Hades or God of War capture the surface elements, but the form that's comprised of poetic sentences, repetition, dramatic dialogue (in the sense that nothing ever happens without it being dramatic or significant) - it feels more akin to something like Shadow of the Colossus

Been thinking how Greek myth in art and media feels so different to my experience of having just read The Odyssey. The mythology of it feels more like a set of default archetypes of Western art history than any attempt at adapting Homer's epic poetry

I want a Greek myth retelling but it's about the guy who got too drunk on Circe's roof, fell off, and died

Last night I had a far too vivid dream that I was making a... *shudders* Metroidvania 😬

That said it was way cooler and more interesting than other Metroidvanias

I love Wendell Berry's essay on this called 'Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer' and it basically boils down to "I work together with my wife and doing that would make her redundent so no" and "It would allow me to write faster but actually I'm looking into how I can write slower and better so no"

In some areas it's true that the original vision was limited by technology, but I think people subconsciously include design decisions in that. Like an example that comes to mind is NES games being difficult and "oh they just didn't know any better because they were all used to making arcade games"

I've always seen at as a pervasiveness of the "games have aged poorly" attitude, and that classic games need to be replaced with a definitive version that 'enhances' the original to an objectively better version.

Joas's review of Final Fantasy V | Backloggd Played as part of the Four Job Fiesta 2025<br><br>Playing Final Fantasy V for the first time while limiting my options with its famous job system probably isn't "how the designers intended" - but who ...

Wrote a little review of playing Final Fantasy V for the first time as part of the Four Job Fiesta!
backloggd.com/u/Joas/revie...

For what it's worth as someone who is definitely not an expert on the topic, I think it's handled surprisingly well in that Scott actually seems to explore how unfounded a lot of the prejudice is rather than resorting to stereotype

Reading Walter Scott's Ivanhoe has been interesting because it's the template for every medieval adventure that has been written since, so I didn't expect it to be so slow and so focused on an exploration of division of ethnicity and class in medieval England

I desperately want the public conscience to see remakes and remasters of media as interpretation of the original rather than replacement. They can still be good, or even better than the original, but they're not! The! Same!

Oh I'm excited to engage in these thoughts eventually since I have it on my shelf, but first I must trudge through Homo Ludens

Always wild to me that she chose to have Fitzwilliam Darcy and his cousin, Col. Fitzwilliam. Like, how is this not confusing?? But also I'll take it because Fitzwilliam is a funny name

A Dialogue with Joshua Rivera - Unwinnable "I don't bill myself as a games critic. It's not good for my career prospects."

And one more time, another one from the weekend: over at @unwinnable.com, @theautumnwright.bsky.social interviewed me about games criticism. I think we had a really great, worthwhile conversation

unwinnable.com/2025/07/11/a...

Totally get this though, I struggle to discuss topics in-depth without going on tangents about other, related topics, which then just cascades to me trying encapsulate the totality of my thoughts.
But then that's both impossible but also communicates my ideas so poorly

I love de Chirico so much, and these capture his essence so well, super cool!

Sometimes I think the myth of creative genius exists to discourage people from the reality that it's actually very easy to uniquely engage with the world, or uniquely make art, if you just try a little bit to be curious about things

For real. Even if your primary purpose in creating games is to earn a living, I think you have to ensure that you have a healthy relationship to your creative practice first and foremost (unless you're not interested in being creative)

Yeah lol, I try to override it and my brain just goes "no, ew, that sounds weird"

I guess the throughline for me is a sense that there is an external judgement of quality and merit instead of a personal relationship to a piece of art