“Is it still an adventure if you find the treasure and to lose it or is it just a sad fucking life?!” “I’ll do whatever it takes.” —“it’s going to take a lot of us feeling that same way.” “I was going to repay all that was given, by giving you your brother back” “If you want someone to come for you, I will be that person for you”

20 - The Vanishing

#

If somebody says they’re drawn to you for reasons they don’t know, that’s a signal to kiss.

Why are they playing straight with this ghost?

I’d like to see a cold open where they roll initiative.

Who wears 6XL?

Elodie daBaby mama How has baby Mommers everywhere?

how hard can it be to pick some interns at random? Not WHU, à la poubelle

Bolaire gigoloing Blix Anything that has an effect on reality is real, especially illusions.

Blix is Brennan

“I wonder how many friends you have that you do not know about.”

The guy in prison Will they be able to really care for a NPC Murray: “This is why intelligence and wisdom are two separate stats.”

21 - King of Cards

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“the law in its majestic equality forbids the rich and the poor alike from stealing bread”

“It doesn’t swing back on its own… Someone somewhere picks up a rock.”

22 -

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16 - Visions of Shadow & Stone

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A lot of memorable quotes in this setup episode. Particularly interesting are the interpersonal dynamics between the party where each member is becoming increasingly more at odds with the others. None of these characters like each other and it’s all they can do to not be constantly bickering and at each others’ throats.

“This is the eighth prophecy they’ve brought. At least this one mentions the sun.”

“I don’t think the past is gonna save us.” —Thaisha

“We’re traveling under the authority of revenge.” -Julien

“I have lost much, in truth I don’t know how much I’ve lost. So I don’t care for your platitudes. I appreciate the candor. I appreciate the assistance but I’m going into the darkness.” —Julien “We lose everything in the end. We lose it all. It’s an honor to have ever had. It’s only ever a time.”

“Whatever enchantment has been placed to bring together those you travel with, my Lord, who seem moments away from tearing at each other’s throats, rightfully so, the pillars of a shattered world who stand tall only in and of themselves and not in relation to each other, then let me add myself to the mix. My loyalty is as confounding as the devotion of your companions. The world is mad. Let us be madder still.” —Seremai

17 - The Place of Wings

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“No one should have to walk into the dark alone”

There was a bunch of combat in this episode with skeletons which is boring and entirely interchangeable.

18 - Vindicta & Vale

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“when you’re trying to break the world to build a new one, there can be no clean instructions to follow”

“You look down at your cousin and realize you are both failed experiments.”

Let’s say the end of the Seekers arc is widely considered to be a letdown. The final monster combat was fair despite some grumbling around the exact mechanisms. Mythologically it was a bit of a lore dump which we have to see how it’ll pay off later.

What’s most annoying about it is the party’s inexplicable return to Dol-Makjar purely for planned story reasons. A player driven campaign would probably have them go off in a totally different direction (for instance to the Golden Orchard or off to sea).

Back to amazing cold opens in this episode with the story of how Azune got sold off as a child soldier by his starving parents.

In the funhouse Taliesin as the Bohemian peasant Bořivoj Dalebro from 1403 (for Kingdom Come: Deliverance II) is absolutely hilarious.

Otherwise this episode is funny with the eagle but otherwise very much a transition episode.

“You cannot guarantee that your mind would stay friendly to your values.” (to Occtis)

“You always had to make a choice and the world was always chaos. It’s just touching you now.”

This cold open with Teor and Thimble didn’t really do anything to for me.

“Flower Doll” as a slur is a nice addition to the mythology of the world.

“The one that walks besides you is a mindless follower of a dead tyrant!”

”You are a beautiful gemstone tumbling at top speed down the mountainside. Gorgeous and off balance.” (YouTube)

“My good bitch who are you talking about?”

Finally a good fight to add some action and tempo to this arc. Tyranny definitely is the most serious of her sisters.

Not that many big notable set pieces this episode except for the opening. The play within a flashback within a cold open within a play is a strong story beat for Bolaire. Most of the detail we already knew except for one: How the masks and the play ended the Trickster Goddess.

• “Stages are for murder, stages are for truth”
• “Why is a lie so much better than the truth?”
• “You will leave a booed and living man.”

Notable this episode:

• The cold open with the encounter between Thjazi and Hal is a lovely little vignette. Brothers are very familiar and they also never listen to one another.
• The encounter with the Lux was comedic in the faux-naïveté of both sides.
• Occtis’s developing horror as to his new unliving body was interesting but got snowed under a bit with everything else he was doing (Disguise Self as Erlich Kerzingblad, undead vulture).
• The point where Occtis’s body got mended in an act of magical Kintsugi by Taisha’s Mend Object was lovely.
• House Einfasen and the area of ‘Riesengürtle’ are read by Americans as “German” but to me it feels much more autistic than that. I’d put it more as Nordic/Finnish.
• The handmaid getting her brain splattered on the floor was a nice shocker but definitely also somewhat suspect.

Let me take note of some highlights for each episode. We’re already pretty far in and it’s easy to forget all the things that happened since the episodes are long and the cast of characters continuously rotates.

There’s too many good bits that I can barely remember as it is.

So in this episode we have every table present.

Seekers

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The prelude seems like a standard bit of traveling through the country but it is given a ton of additional depth by this one episode. They have to take a detour and stumble on a dwarven village where people pray for the return of their shaper, the goddess of the forge, with lanterns at the site of scattered sculptures which in turn were set there to deface a site of a titan of the old path. Taisha does not take this very well.

A very brief fragment that efficiently delivers a big dollop of history, humanity and two competing pantheons.

On Instagram there’s a teaser where Aranessa recounts her situation which provides a good introduction in our upcoming foray with the seeker party.

Schemers

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The hostile takeoever of every institution in Dol-Makjar being called a ‘coup’ should drive home for good the parallels with what the Trump administrations is doing. It did for me at least.

After the schemers’ council we get to see a side of Hal we didn’t get to see yet. Instead of his usual somber and caring persona, in his interactions with the gentry he delivers fully as a thespian who plays his role in the most transactional way¹.

Soldiers

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I wouldn’t say the soldiers had much in the way of memorable moments other than their encounter with the hounds. Hounds are always a crowd pleaser.

The part where everybody is resting and reflecting at the fire would have to be the highlight especially the full interaction between Kattigan and Tyranny.

“Every little motion of the knife is a prayer, hoping that a thing she loves more than life itself will take a little morsel of food, and get a little stronger, a little bigger, a little more ready for a world she can’t predict.”

Sports and Health

#

It was a year where I didn’t seriously injure myself and could continuously practice sports. That’s already a huge improvement.

I started going to the gym regularly in the evenings after the kids are sleeping. After some initial hesitance I started doing barbell exercises. The goal is to squat and deadlift at least my bodyweight of 75kg. I’m inching this up very slowly and am currently at 40kg.

Going to the gym is made possible by my Fitbod subscription. Exercising regularly is much easier, if I don’t have to think or plan what I’m going to do. That means either a human or an app should tell me what I need to do. Given that the gym is paid for by my work, I can justify the steep monthly cost of Fitbod (here’s a 14-day guest pass).

I’m doing winter cycling on the trainers at the gym while I debate whether I should get one for at home. That makes me one of those crazy people who wears a chamois to the gym.

It was a great year for cycling. I bought a proper road bike, the Bianchi 2024 Sprint ICR and I managed to join group rides (mostly those of the MAAP LAB Berlin) more or less weekly without having a single mechanical or crash. knocks on wood

But then during a solo ride in the last week of the year I managed to slip and fall over. More than the minor damage to my knee and my carbon frame, it was my ego that was bruised.

Studies

#

I read a bunch of papers (one write-up) around LLMs and found the field to be overhyped. I don’t think that single percentage point increases in performance and conversions of BFS algorithms into LLM prompts are worth writing up. Things are moving so quickly that you can’t sit around waiting for breakthroughs to make their way into the literature.

Learning Japanese continues and I’m now at Wanikani level 22. I’m not sure what my next goal is going to be. After my trip to Japan my motivation is somewhat on the rocks.

The main problem is that once you start studying Japanese, you cannot stop. I’m not stopping, but I’m dialing it down to maintenance mode.

Books

#

I already posted about how bad of a year 2025 was for reading. Not sure whether I’ll find the time to do better next year.

Movies and TV

#

I’ve moved the tracking of everything that I watch over to Trakt saying goodbye to Letterboxd.

Just like with fitness, I need an app that will tell me exactly what I need to do right now. Without it, I’ll very easily lose track of this. Trakt is excellent at this and offers it in the free version. I pay for premium to get some of the more advanced list management versions.

The movies I watched in 2025:

• Wicked
• Moana 2
• Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
• Lilo & Stitch
• KPop Demon Hunters
• Encanto
• The Greatest Showman

Trakt tells me that’s 901 minutes spent on movies.

Wicked was lovely on the big screen. Of the kids movies I watched: KPop Demon Hunters is impeccable, Moana 2 was unnecessary, Encanto was strangely forgettable, Lilo & Stitch not as bad as I would expect. The Greatest Showman may be flawed but it is full of bangers.

The tv series I watched in 2025:

• Bluey S3
• The Wheel of Time S2
• The Bear S1+S2+S3+S4
• Neon Genesis Evangelion
• Dennou Coil
• Asura
• Cyberpunk Edge Runners
• Legend of the Galactic Heroes S1
• Heated Rivalry S1
• Kaiju No.8 S1

All of these were spectacular and interesting in their own way. The Bear really meshes with so many things I like and like to do. Asura is effectively just a very long Kore-eda movie. LotGH is peak.

Trakt tells me that this is 4567 minutes spent on episodes. It’s clear who’s the winner here.

Games

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I don’t really track this anymore, but what I can note are the following.

Expedition 33 was a highlight. I saw it on Tiktok and immediately knew I had to experience it. Not having a console I played it via cloud gaming on my Macbook.

Playing a parry/dodge game over a cloud setup is pure masochism, but with difficulty set to easy, it was kind of doable. The gameplay loop is satisfying but after a while the level design formula gets a bit tedious. What stood out were the music¹, the writing and the major set pieces in the boss battles and in the environment.

Critical Role started their campaign 4 and having followed the online RPG scene through Tiktok clips for a while now, I decided to see what the fuss was about. The first episode together with the rest of the ouverture is spectacular. It’s a narrative victory of setup, emotions, reveals and backstabbing. I’m not sure if they’ll stick the landing, but for now I’m very much bought in.

I’ll have to delve into what makes this worthwhile. For now I can point to two things. There is an element of let’s play parasociality that you have with any game stream or impro podcast. Add to that a very meticulously brewed high fantasy setting that’s better than what we get on television: open ended runtime, infinite production values, no cancellation after one or two seasons.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown was discounted and became the game we played during the Christmas break. I led exploring the city on Mount Qaf with my kids on a lower difficulty following right on my heels.

It’s a great game where the platform mechanics continue to layer on top of each other together with some very nasty puzzles bordering on the outright sadistic. I’m super proud to see the grit and skill my kids have shown because easy only affects combat, not the platforming.

Persia provides a vast and mostly unknown to us landscape of culture, artifacts and mythology to serve as backdrop for this game. A lot of it is undoubtedly historically not accurate, but that does not make it any less nice to look at.

Podcasts

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The two podcasts I listen to most consistently are Ones and Tooze and Past Present Future. Those are both remnants of my Talking Politics period². Maybe I should add Helen Thompson’s podcast as well and have a full lid?

Other than that I semi-regularly listen to:

• The Adam Friedland show
• The Catskills Podcast
• Cortex
• Developer Voices
• Escape Collective (only during the Tour)
• Feminist Shelf Control
• KALT’ın Podacst’ı
• Oxide and Friends
• Podcast Filosofie
• De Shitshow
• Stavy’s World
• Vergecast

I more or less stopped listening to Trashfuture finding the jokes and the commentary repetitive and boring.

Travel

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It was a much better year for travel than most years before this.

London was a work trip in spring and it was one of my best London trips ever. I stayed in Chelsea, I cycled everywhere, drank lots of great coffee, ate a ton of great food, went to a club, went to a play on the West End. I did so much and there’s so much left to do. I don’t know what took me so long to appreciate London like this.

Iceland was the first trip we took our kids on a plane and then round tripped the island on our way to the family horse farm. Iceland is lovely but empty. Not sure what would make me go back there other than to visit family or if I could do some hard hiking/cycling/riding.

Japan drove me crazy with reports from everybody and their mother visiting so I had to go. After missing the summer window, I booked for November not knowing that that’s one of the best months to visit Japan. I walked the Ise-ji for a large chunk and then I ran around Tokyo for a couple of days. It was even better than all the social media.

Iceland and Japan in the same year is low-key ridiculous but this was also the year at work where I get 20 consecutive extra holidays.

End

#

Lots more things to cover that happened in 2025 but for now this will have to be it. Despite some marked down periods, all in all it was a good year. On to a much better 2026.

(This update has been delayed for a week because I fell quite ill just as the new year came around.)

I was so pissed off with Kojima for this because I had wanted to go to bed early but he pulled me through it and the entire thing was totally worth the 60+ hours of gameplay I sunk into it. The duration is the thing that creates the gravitas but also I don’t want to invest that much time in a game again any time soon.

It started with me seeing the trailer for the sequel which is incredibly over the top, absurd and wildly promising. It’s a movie—a Gesamtkunstwerk I called it—that I can watch over and over again, especially now that I’ve played the first part.

That got me interested and then I found out that the original game had been ported both to macOS and to iOS (!!). A hefty download later I was off to play my first AAA game in years.

There’s so much to love about Death Stranding and so much that is weird but works: the names of the characters (Heartman, Die Hardman, Deadman etc.), the endless walks across beautiful mountain landscapes, the boredom, the resource management, the likes, the weird cameos, the breaks of the fourth wall, the BB unit, the weird mishmash of lore and mythology. I could go on and on.

I didn’t think all too deeply on what the game is about but the thought that stuck with me while playing is that Bridges and its delivery operation are a pastiche on Amazon, with its expansionism, militarism and overly saccharine insistence on the ‘benefits’ of “connecting everybody.”

Now, I’ll be taking a break and going back to studying in the evenings but if I decide to go play a big game again, I’m thinking it’ll either be Disco Elysium or Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown.

But not to worry. This is probably just one shit year in a sequence of many more shit years to come. No sign of anything getting better in our near future and lots of trends pointing downward. Does it have to be like this? Not in any way but the majority of people are stupid and we all suffer together.

ACL

I had messed up my knee in late summer of 2022 during a climbing accident and after a bit of stalling figured out that having my ACL reconstructed would be a good idea.

The surgery was scheduled for February 23rd of 2023. That made a lot of the beginning of the year waiting to go into surgery which was followed by getting the surgery (a supremely weird experience), then recuperating from it at home for a couple of weeks and going back to work while doing physical therapy.

The chronology as far as I could piece it together:

• Feb 23rd, surgery
• Feb 25th, dismissed from the Charité
• Feb 27th, first outing
• March 9th, half weight bearing
• March 12th, 90 degree flexion
• April 10th, walking without crutches
• April 15th, cycled on the Christiania to get coffee
• June 16th, hospital check-up and cleared for cycling
• June 18th, first time road cycling

I got around mostly using ride shares during the first part which was fine. Turns out that I spent €474,55 on cab rides. A fair bit of that was thankfully reimbursed by my saved up mobility budget. I stopped taking cabs and started cycling on the electric Christiania on April 15th and then had my first outing on the road bike on June 18th.

During one of my final check-ups I told my physician at the hospital that if I didn’t rationally knew I had knee surgery, a lot of the time I couldn’t remember it. There was no noticeable difference anymore.

Of course there are still lots of situations where I notice it. The difference in strength between the two legs is still there and catching up very slowly. But that things are more or less back to normal is exactly what was promised.

I’m cleared to boulder again from around Easter if I choose to ever practice that sport again.

Kids

School

The kids started their school year with the German event they call the Einschülung, something that I disagree but I have no shortage of things that I disagree with about the German school ‘system’. That’s for another blog post.

The concept of the school and how classes are setup is very cool and the teachers are young and engaged. If everything worked the way it should, things would be amazing. The only issue is that most of the time there are staff shortages that fully destabilize whatever plans or schedules had been drafted. Those shortages stem from the deep dysfunction of the Berlin civil service and mostly because of a lack of funding for the schools that need it the most.

I’m not sure what we’re going to do there but for now we’re going to see if things look up in the second half of the year.

Let it be clear that Germany is a country that in no way values kids and their education.

Father

Related to our kids going to school, on their first school day morning my dad passed away suddenly in Amsterdam. We knew he was sick but we had no idea that things would progress this quickly.

The funeral was of course in Turkey so I took a flight to Amsterdam to be with my family and see him off and then flew to Turkey with my mother to do the burial in our village. It was the first time I was back in Turkey since 2015.

That was a difficult thing to do and after that everything is different.

Holidays

I heard the news about my dad’s illness on our holiday in the Alps this year. Our first family holiday in a long time and otherwise a resounding success.

After all the affairs were wrapped up we went to Amsterdam for a week during the fall break to keep my mother company and to have the kids experience a bit of the Netherlands again. It was good to be back and to see people we hadn’t seen in a long time.

Studies

I’ve continued the trend of unapologetically self-studying things that I fancy. I can recommend it.

Abstract Algebra

To continue to study category theory I diagnosed a gap I had on basic abstract algebra and tried to close it. I didn’t finish either of the textbooks (Fraleigh and Galian) because it seems that text books are bad for self-studying people.

I worked through a couple of YouTube lecture series on the topic which gave me much more value.

Sheaf Theory

Then I continued on and off in Sheaf Theory Through Examples which is a very mixed book. It’s nowhere near as good as Fong and Spivak’s book and now nearing the end it is getting very obtuse and inaccessible. I’ll finish this and then move on to Bartosz Milewski.

Japanese

I kept studying Japanese for most of the year and on a whim I registered for the December JLPT. During registration I had a choice where I could either go for the safe but relatively irrelevant N5 level or stretch myself and go for N4.

I picked N4 and that turned out to be a lot tougher than expected. I had to push very hard on both vocabulary and grammar to get to a point where I even felt it was worth going to Düsseldorf to take the test. The 1-2 months before the test I was cramming flash cards throughout the day and studying most evenings.

The test itself in Düsseldorf was even harder than I expected and I think that it’s unlikely that I passed it, but who knows… Results are due end of January.

Even if I don’t get the certificate, stretching myself to N4 has made me study much much harder than I would ever have otherwise and I’ve advanced quite a bit. Also I got a quick trip to Düsseldorf out of it where I could eat Asian food at a level and authenticity that’s impossible to get in Berlin.

Cultural

With everything else that was going on, I didn’t have anything significant happen here. No time, no energy, no relevance.

I don’t really know how other people manage to binge dozens of crappy Netflix shows. I can’t really imagine spending entire evenings watching television. Do people do this still?

There are lots of good shows still that I would like to watch (The Last of Us, The Bear, Succession, etc.) but there’s just no time.

Books

I only read 15 books this year with Galian, Genki and the sheaf theory book—none of which are listed below—sucking up most of my reading time.

Cold Enough for Snow was a nice book and it also happened to be the only piece of fiction I read this year. The rest of the books above are all highly situational and none of them are particularly interesting or made a lasting impact.

Video

I watched six movies this year. The only notable one was Heat which I first saw as a teenager in the City cinema in Amsterdam.

When it comes to television things look slightly better:

• The Sandman: We did not finish it but enjoyed the episodes that we watched.
• Spy x Family S1: Exactly the light-hearted fun anime that I needed to watch. Nothing serious here but a fun conceit well executed.
• Tour de France Unchained: An epic dramatization of the world’s biggest cycling event that is a must watch if you’re even slightly interested in the sport.
• The Witcher S3: Nothing of note happened in this season but it was still kinda fun to watch I guess.
• Attack of Titan S4P2: It was good to watch the ending of this epic series but after such a long wait it was kinda hard to pick up the relatively complex storyline.
• Death Note: An anime classic that I started which is well executed but tough as nails and not at all compelling.
• Jujutsu Kaisen S2: The long awaited Hidden Inventory and Shibuya Incident arcs turned into a treat to watch despite the continuously escalating power levels and its sprawling cast of characters and villains.

Games

During my recovery from surgery I started and finished Breath of the Wild. The irony of having had a climbing accident and making Link free-climb epic cliffs on Hyrule was not lost on me.

That was the year. Let’s see what the new one does.

5/5
iOS App Store €0,89

Proteus bevat geen echte doelen. Er is geen prestatiedruk en je hoeft je niet bezig te houden met wat je nu ook alweer moet doen zoals in andere spellen. Je loopt over het eiland en laat de ervaringen op je af komen.

Dat zijn er meer dan je op het eerste gezicht zou denken. Keer op keer ondernam ik een tocht die ik halverwege afbrak omdat ik een groepje dieren wilde achtervolgen of naar een adembenemend uitzicht ging zitten kijken. En elke keer als er een dag of een seizoen voorbij is, verandert Proteus en zijn er weer nieuwe dingen te zien en te doen.

De doelloosheid en eindeloze variëteit van Proteus maken dat je niet uitgekeken raakt. Je kunt er keer op keer terug blijven komen. Proteus is dan ook niet zozeer een spel als wel een plek die altijd op je wacht.

Windows/Mac $10
(4/5)

In Botanicula speel je vijf botanische wezens die de boom waar ze leven moeten redden van duistere spinnen die alles dood maken. Dit loopt uiteindelijk —natuurlijk— goed af.

Het flinterdunne verhaal is een excuus om mooie dingen te laten zien. Elk scherm is een botanische aquarel waarin van alles dwarrelt, deint of iets anders schattigs doet als reactie op jou. Amanita meet zich hiermee met de groten uit de animatiewereld en brengt het daar goed vanaf.

Zo prachtig als het is uitgevoerd, zo simpel is het spel. Je verzamelt zaadjes en klikt dieren aan op de boom om weer andere wezens te helpen die je verder brengen. Niet heel ingewikkeld maar makkelijker gezegd dan gedaan. Soms is ook na zoeken de bedoeling niet helemaal duidelijk en er zitten minigames in die in verhouding met de rest van het spel te moeilijk zijn.

Dit maakt dat het spel niet heel diepgaand is maar een paar uur plezier heb je er zeker wel van. Botanicula is zo’n kinderboek dat je als volwassene ook kunt kopen en wie ermee aan de slag gaat maakt dan ook niet zoveel meer uit.

(4/5)
Windows / Mac / Linux
€7,99

NRC_20120620_1_015_article3-1 Download

Wat dit spel bijzonder maakt is hoe je het moet spelen. Elk niveau is opgedeeld in kaders zoals een strip, maar deze kaders zijn uit hun verband gerukt. Loop je het ene kader uit, dan hoef je niet in het kader ernaast te verschijnen, maar kun je totaal ergens anders op het scherm uitkomen. Door die chaos zie je niet direct wat je moet doen. Alles aan elkaar puzzelen schiet ook niet echt op. De beste manier om een niveau af te ronden is door al spelende je hersenen te dwingen te leren waar de verbindingen liggen en wat je moet doen.

Bat King en Antler Ancestor hebben aardige speciale vaardigheden (dubbel springen, objecten in een schemerwereld gebruiken) maar Rainbow Spirit steelt de show. Hij kan de kaders van een niveau herschikken en kiezen in welke hij weer landt. Die mogelijkheid zet alles op zijn kop en leidt tot grote hoofdbrekers.

“Where is my Heart?”is een zeldzaam moeilijk spel maar de beloningen zijn ook groot. Een paar dingen die niet lukken worden eentonig, maar de sublieme uitvoering trekt je er doorheen. Uiteindelijk duurt het niet heel lang voor de monsters weer thuis zijn en jij thuis met een voldaan gevoel naar de aftiteling kijkt.

(5/5)
€5
PS3 en PSP minis

Je loopt met Isaac van kamer naar kamer, tranen schietend op duivelse vliegen, bewegend vlees en andere monsters. Zodra alles dood is kun je door met de buit die je verzamelt. Ga je zelf dood, dan begin je opnieuw. Behendig spelen en de juiste keuzes maken zijn zaak om te winnen van Isaacs demonen. De niveau’s zijn elke keer anders en symboliseren de afdaling in Isaacs nachtmerries.

Het is een spel van extreme contrasten. De tekenstijl is kinderlijk maar druipt van het bloed. De verwijzingen naar de bijbel worden afgewisseld met referenties naar games. Dat ligt wat zwaar op de hand voor een spel dat blijft steken bij hele simpele satire. Toch is ‘The Binding of Isaac’ wél erg leuk. Er valt veel te verkennen, de moeilijkheid neemt subtiel toe en de drempel om nog een keer te spelen ligt lekker laag.

(4/5) Steam (Mac/PC)

Phone Story van Molleindustria, doet wat de titel zegt: het vertelt het verhaal van de herkomst, fabricage, marketing en het afdanken van de gadgets waar we zo graag mee spelen. De gameplay is uitdagend genoeg, het spel bevat een voice-over die toelicht hoe je telefoon gemaakt is en wat bijtende details. Een leuk spelletje als kritiek op dezelfde iPhone waar je het op speelt.

Dat Apple het censureerde is wrang en benadrukt het punt dat Molleindustria wilde maken. De redenen van verwijdering (het weergeven van verwerpelijke handelingen) zijn willekeurig en zonder die beelden zou het spel niet waarheidsgetrouw zijn. Een waarheid die als het aan Apple ligt liever niet bekend wordt.

(4/5)
Platform: Nu wél beschikbaar voor Android
Prijs: €0,73

‘The Cat and the Coup’ is een spel dat begint op het moment van Mossadeqs overlijden. Je speelt zijn kat en moet in die gedaante de voormalig premier terug in de tijd leiden langs de gebeurtenissen die leidden tot zijn val. Je stuurt Mossadeq van kamer naar kamer in een enorme collage van Perzische miniaturen, karikaturen en andere elementen die bij elkaar voor een overweldigend effect zorgen.

De makers wilden met dit documentaire-spel de aandacht vestigen op dit onderbelichte stuk geschiedenis. De vele prijzen die het spel gewonnen heeft geven aan dat ze daarin op een bijzondere manier geslaagd zijn.

Het spel zelf is eenvoudig en kort en wil je op geen enkele manier een compleet beeld geven. De indruk die het achterlaat is er niet minder om. De visuele rijkdom waarbinnen alles zich afspeelt naast de historische feiten, zorgen ervoor dat je bijna vanzelf details ontdekt, verbanden legt en er achter wilt komen wat er nu precies gebeurd is toen.

(PC, Mac) (4/5)

In dit schietspel speel je een monster, dat andere monsters neerschiet op zoek naar de uitgang. Heb je die gevonden, dan verander je in het monster waarvan blijkt dat je daar net in zat en zo blijft dat doorgaan. Onderweg pik je wapens op die je volgende ik helpen om te overleven. Als dat niet lukt en je dood gaat, mag je het opnieuw proberen, of kun je zijsprongen maken door in monsters, power-ups of jezelf te gaan en dat pad te volgen.

Jason Rohrer, de maker, gaf eerder met veel succes verhaal gebaseerde spellen uit. Van verhaal is hier geen sprake. Alles in dit spel is automatisch gegenereerd van de levels tot en met de graphics en het geluid aan toe. Hierdoor en door alle combinaties en vertakkingen die het bewegen tussen niveau’s oplevert, kun je blijven spelen zonder twee keer hetzelfde te zien. Het is net als de veel-werelden-interpretatie uit de kwantummechanica. Elke mogelijke wereld bestaat, alleen onze acties bepalen welk pad we volgen.

Het spel heeft best een steile leercurve, maar zodra het begint te lopen en je vloeiend van niveau naar niveau gaat, wordt het boeiend. Oneindigheid kan saai zijn, maar hier is dat abstracte concept briljant vertaald in een simpel schietspelletje.

http://insideastarfilledsky.net/
$12, voor Windows, Mac en Linux

• Was conversational multiple-choice
• Played through a diegetic phone control
• Was set in a dystopia
• Had a distinctive art style

https://neocabgame.com/

So yeah, I’m always glad if our ideas are proven years after the fact. Something that happened quite regularly.

Ik heb mijn geld terug gevraagd en ik raad aan andere mensen dat ook te doen bij apps die onder de maat zijn.

I have been blown away by the response to and kind words about my talk. I think this is a conversation (!) worth continuing. Stay tuned for details on that.

Here now is a collection of photos I found of my talk (for my personal archive):

. @alper asks #ixd16 if we are at #peakchat. #sketchnotes @whatsthehubbub pic.twitter.com/QlEIINjVgu

— Chris Noessel (@chrisnoessel) March 4, 2016

@kaeru @alper :-) pic.twitter.com/RB148HXINS

— Nico Druif (@NicoDruif) March 4, 2016

Conversational UI: the Rise of the Chatbot! My prediction for the next Star Wars title? @alper #ixd16 pic.twitter.com/IyTeI0GI4a

— duff_el (@duff_el) March 4, 2016

Any startup with “chat” in it is gonna get funded right now. When will we reach “Peak Chat”? @alper #startups #ixd16 pic.twitter.com/rntO9PcioV

— Thomas Fogarasy (@thomasfogarasy) March 4, 2016

Chat UIs have origin in choose own adventure stories. As pattern progresses, need storywriting tools - @alper #ixd16 pic.twitter.com/lM7g3mG7JT

— Chris Lee (@cleerview) March 4, 2016

Shoutout to Clippy, the original conversational interface. @alper at #Ixd16 pic.twitter.com/Qq3uMolQ51

— Peter Bihr (@peterbihr) March 4, 2016

Chat Everything @alper #ixd16 pic.twitter.com/hN7i2J8GRe

— Sonja Heinen (@sonjaheinen) March 4, 2016

Great to see @alper talk about conversational interfaces and games about difficult choices at #Ixd16 pic.twitter.com/0OrO8koOnC

— Peter Bihr (@peterbihr) March 4, 2016

Inspirational talk about conversational interfaces by @alper Great stuff! @ixdconf #futurice #ixd16 pic.twitter.com/NKzT2gB9B6

— Matti Vahtera (@mattivahtera) March 4, 2016