Pixel Horse 🐎 @[email protected]

Hi, I'm Mandrake and I'm a horse! 🐴​ I've been part of Elekk's community since November 2017. I enjoy listening to #darksynth and mostly post about #indiegames, such as what I've been playing recently and whether there's anything good being given away for free. I also have a collection of every single game I've played on itch.io, which I regularly update with short summaries for each: https://itch.io/c/895727/played #introduction #reintroduction

Very glad I rediscovered this video which plays audio from an appallingly-bad BBC report on North Korea over footage of Royal Family celebrations from 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pnt_uT5YzQ

"But doctor, I *am* the individual solution which you've proposed for a structural problem!"

#Hearthstone now has a non-binary character called Varden Dawngasp, a Blood Elf Mage voiced by trans voice actress, Kayleigh McKee https://playhearthstone.com/en-gb/news/23658052#Varden https://mobile.twitter.com/GhaspeyVO/status/1374443796797136903

Godspeed You! Black Emperor have released the following demands:
* empty the prisons.
* take power from the police and give it to the neighbourhoods that they terrorise.
* end the forever wars and all other forms of imperialism.
* tax the rich until they're impoverished.
https://godspeedyoublackemperor.bandcamp.com/album/g-d-s-pee-at-state-s-end

I've already done my part by saving a local copy of "How do I become a horse?" https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120106100510AAtpz20

Yahoo Answers is being deleted on May 4th after 16 years. Hopefully someone will be able to archive this massive repository of content: https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/5/22368488/yahoo-answers-shutdown-may-4-internet-era-over-rip

Once you've played through Course 4 of Portal 2's co-op campaign without dying with someone else, you're essentially friends for life

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 6 is getting an anime adaptation: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2021-04-04/jojo-bizarre-adventure-part-6-stone-ocean-manga-gets-anime-starring-ai-fairouz/.171450 #JJBA

Over 2,200 digital-only titles will become unavailable to purchase when Sony closes the #PSP, #PSVita and #PS3 stores this summer. Of these, about 120 exclusives will be lost forever: https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/analysis-2000-digital-only-games-will-disappear-when-playstation-closes-its-stores/

Mario's Early Years CD-ROM Collection has a rather sweet Easter Egg which was only discovered last year - the developers included personal messages for their own children which play if you enter either "-MARISSA", "-ALI", or "-JOSH" during startup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsDeZ9pAB9I

"Phew! The snowstorm can't get us here!" 🦆 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qN_x6aC3-qU

EGS is giving away a Tales of the Neon Sea, a cyberpunk point-and-click adventure, for free: https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/p/tales-of-the-neon-sea #freegame

The best worst stream on Twitch right now is "Holding Myself & Chat Hostage by Playing Chug Jug on loop until a secret phrase is used" https://www.twitch.tv/revscarecrow #Fortnite #Vinesauce

Had a nightmare that I accidentally spent £40 on microtransactions in an Activision Blizzard game after watching this week's Jimquisition. This is entirely Bobby Kotick's fault.

Earlier this month, Gazelle Twin and NYX: electronic drone choir released Deep England, the collaborative album that this wretched country deserves: https://nyx-edc.bandcamp.com/album/deep-england

Epic are giving away Creature in the Well, "a top-down, pinball-inspired, hack-and-slash dungeon crawler." https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/p/creature-in-the-well #freegame

Basically, this game is "We Have Secret Little Haven At Home". Please play that one instead.

Recently I played through Emily Is Away. It's a very well-known interactive story about a faltering relationship between two teenagers, presented through an early-00s instant messenger client. It does a fairly decent job at capturing the zeitgeist of that era, even if it's mostly in the form of "hey, remember this band/film/AOL?"

Unfortunately, this is a game where you play as a Nice Guy ™️​. Granted, the main character is a teenager and would therefore lack emotional maturity. But there's a serious lack of clarity over whether the player is expected to sympathise with him for being "friendzoned" or despise him because of his passive-aggressive and emotionally manipulative behaviour. And the fact the ending is always the same no matter which choices you make presents a very uncomfortable "damned if you do, damned if you don't" subtext.

This critique goes into more detail about this game's poor writing, along with wider discussions about consent and how video games reviews consistently lack textual analysis:
https://medium.com/mammon-machine-zeal/emily-is-away-a-review-4e609247ca91