Chris Allnutt

Moderation — real love versus the virtual world [FREE TO READ] Elaine Castillo’s wry and witty tale of workplace romance becomes a commentary on big tech’s dark secrets

"The believable was more important than the real, in the church of the immersive" – and Elaine Castillo's Moderation is a wonderfully immersive novel, if something of a missed opportunity. My review:
on.ft.com/3UMOxpj

Wheel World game review — a fun, whimsical cycling adventure [FREE TO READ] This quirky biking game lets players race against pirates, chefs and robots on a picturesque island

Wheel World dangles just enough by way of plot and subtext to make you wish there were a good deal more of it. Review for @ftweekend.com -
on.ft.com/3UzDG1L

Cricket, Christianity and the search for English identity Books by Brendan Cooper and Bijan Omrani explore two forces that once fuelled the country’s global power and now leave it pining for the past

Cricket, Christianity and the search for English identity https://on.ft.com/406wKMX

Bosnia, 30 years on: the looming crisis in the Balkans Trouble is brewing again in the ethnically divided state, exactly three decades after the Srebrenica massacre

"three decades after the end of Bosnia’s war, European officials are frantically refocusing on the tiny, still ethnically divided state, fearing trouble is once again brewing there." www.ft.com/content/e412...

Valve conquered PC gaming. What comes next? Peering inside one of the tech world’s strangest companies

A very deep dive into Valve Corporation, a video game company that prints money.

on.ft.com/4nC87SA

The Buried City — Pompeii’s director takes us behind the scenes Gabriel Zuchtriegel’s spirited part-history, part-memoir evokes the everyday life of the ancient city, and poses some very modern questions

The Buried City — Pompeii’s director takes us behind the scenes https://on.ft.com/3ThZVJi

For @eurogamer.bsky.social, I offer a close-read comparison of Nevil Shute's famously depressing 1957 novel, On The Beach, and Kojima's latest.

In the face of nuclear (and nuclear-coded) extinction events, one offers cosmic despair; the other offers cosmic hope (and a Domino's brand partnership).

God Only Knows — Brian Wilson said it was the easiest song he ever wrote [FREE TO READ] A standout track from The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds album, it epitomised Wilson’s shift into complex, sophisticated compositions

Brian Wilson was a wonderfully humbling 23 years old when he wrote God Only Knows. This is the story of the song...
on.ft.com/3ZKaW9M

Though the FT does, of course!

WeTransfer co-founder Damian Bradfield loves the macabre, Monster Munch and Cillian Murphy’s hair Life in Amsterdam hasn’t taken away the creative’s taste for beige British foods

WeTransfer co-founder Damian Bradfield loves the macabre, Monster Munch and Cillian Murphy’s hair

https://www.ft.com/content/9cf221ce-6e6b-4cf7-bc24-c9a7effd1cc0

Way to grow: the rise of London’s city farms [FREE TO READ] Connect with the land and hang out with animals at these urban oases focused on community, sustainability and experimental agriculture

How are London's city farms adapting to meet modern challenges? I visited four for FT Globetrotter to find out -
on.ft.com/4iP6YTW

Despelote gaming review — when football is all that matters [FREE TO READ] Set in Ecuador during the country’s World Cup qualifying campaign, the game explores the loss of childhood innocence

Despelote is a wonderfully evocative and unique game. But almost equally fascinated by the existence of Hernán Darío Gómez, a man who has managed SIX South and Central American international football teams over the course of his career - two of them twice.
on.ft.com/3GUDrL6

Allegro Pastel — Leif Randt’s brilliant distillation of millennial precarity [FREE TO READ] The German writer’s first novel to be translated into English tackles young hopes, lives lived online — and the angst of turning 30

Further adventures in millennial fiction, this time with Leif Randt’s Allegro Pastel...
on.ft.com/44UQs1l

Virtual photography game is a window on the world [FREE TO READ] In ‘Lushfoil Photography Sim’ players snap genuine locations, recreated digitally — but how does it compare with the real thing?

Is Lushfoil photography? Digital art? Meditation? Or just aspiration? I enlisted the help of FT photographer Charlie Bibby to find out.
on.ft.com/3Yb63G5

The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits — on the road to a mid-life meltdown [FREE TO READ] A compelling portrait of a professor driving across America in a bid to rediscover his freedom

As entertaining as the flight of its protagonist is, it's The Rest of Our Lives' depiction of America - bored, scared, vast and lonely - that really stands out. My review:
on.ft.com/4j5wcOe

Have you tried Ludocene, the ‘Tinder for gamers’? A free new app promises to matchmake you with the games you really want to play

The @financialtimes.com tried out Ludocene and they discovering Cobalt Core. Job done!?

"I fed the app a very motley selection of favourites – Rimworld, Age of Empires, The Witcher 3, Balatro... the neon-drenched roguelike Cobalt Core is now on my radar."

www.ft.com/content/1b3f...

Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico — a mirror on millennial life [FREE TO READ] The tale of a young expat couple and their Instagram-perfect life in Berlin is a powerfully observed but frustratingly cynical portrait of a generation

There aren't many books that sum up the millennial experience as well as Vincenzo Latronico's Perfection. When I say its perspective frustrated me, that's just testament to how well written it is.
on.ft.com/4hpQ3Y9

The Stone of Madness review — stealth game with unlikely origins [FREE TO READ] A painting by Goya was the inspiration for this intriguing — if glitchy — adventure

I loved The Stone of Madness's deranged 18th-century monastery, but it's held back by clunky gameplay and writing that serves more as an explanation than a story. My review:
enterprise-sharing.ft.com/redeem/fc211...

I refuse to believe it.

YouTube video by Charley Crockett Charley Crockett - "I'm Just A Clown" (Official Video)

Also in the spirit of making music and article pairings a thing, it should be read with this in the background.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlxM...

No soup thrown: meet the rebel clowns reinventing protest [FREE TO READ] Is there a better way to win support for your cause?

The story that @mattvella.bsky.social called "the most what the fuck pitch I've ever read": welcome to the wonderful world of rebel clowning...
on.ft.com/3WyVU56

Mother River — expect the unexpected Can Xue’s strange short-story collection poses a series of unanswerable riddles

There are moments of curious beauty in Can Xue's Mother River, but you'll need to wade through all manner of disorientation and some slightly heavy-handed translation to get there. My review for @financialtimes.com:
on.ft.com/4hn0USk

A Video Game Writer’s Lament: ‘We Can Do Quite a Lot Better’ (Gift Article) Jon Ingold, an author of celebrated narrative-driven games, thinks the industry fails to celebrate good writing or recognize it as a craft.

Disco Elysium aside, it's hard not to see writing perceived as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself, in lots of otherwise brilliant games.
www.nytimes.com/2025/01/18/a...

Toon Tellegen's socially anxious hedgehog has ironically become very popular - I reviewed the first English translation for @financialtimes.com
on.ft.com/4fZipqV

The Rest is Silence — standing the test of time Augusto Monterroso’s playful tale of a writer in search of a lasting legacy takes aim at the literary establishment

If you ever wondered what one of Borges's footnotes would be like expanded into an entire book, try Augusto Monterroso's The Rest is Silence.
on.ft.com/3DyoblJ

I really want to have conversations about what is good writing but it feels like that necessarily would say 'this is bad writing' sometimes, and it seems like we have no framework to do that unless the person who wrote it is also designated morally bad.

Best of Further Reading 2024: FT journalists pick their favourite non-FT articles of the year Playing the links

Enough words in these recommendations to last you until 2026 – and some of them aren't even New Yorker articles.
www.ft.com/content/7849...

Opinion | The Disappearance of Literary Men Should Worry Everyone What happens if half the population is no longer involved in reading and writing?

So on the one hand young men "need to see themselves as belonging to the world of storytelling", but also video games are culturally regressive and tantamount to pornography. Go figure.
www.nytimes.com/2024/12/07/o...

30 Birds game review — a gorgeously rendered interactive picture book A stunning 2D world evokes Persian street markets and Japanese paper theatre

500 words on 30 Birds, a gloriously drawn game of winged beasts, Persian mythology and cosmic ska.
on.ft.com/3OGsA8q

The Rise of the Golden Idol revels in the satisfaction of sleuthing — game review Puzzle game does a brilliant job of making you feel like a real detective

I went full detective mode to review the wonderfully weird and surprisingly satisfying The Rise of the Golden Idol for @financialtimes.com
on.ft.com/3CFqkLV