Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1903620/Killer_Frequency/

Not affiliated with, nor endorsed by, Valve, Steam, etc. in any way.

Our outro this week is “Pour Me Some“, from the Hundred Days soundtrack, by Tumult Kollekticv. Check out the full soundtrack - it’s really good.

Not affiliated with, nor endorsed by, Valve, Steam, etc. in any way.

Well, SEGA’s biggest mascot, apparently - or at least, that’s the premise for their recent release, “The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog“. It’s a bold move — something that SEGA acknowledges in its trailer for the new title.

In this tongue-and-cheek point-and-click adventure, Sonic’s allies take center stage to try and solve the mystery of his untimely demise in the wake of a murder mystery birthday party gone horribly wrong.

Fans of Aviary Attorney, the Ace Attorney series, or other visual novel mysteries will be familiar with the gameplay loop: you’ll interview party guests and other passengers aboard the Mirage Express — the extravagant train that serves as the game’s setting — gather evidence, and hopefully discover which of Sonic’s nemesis finally caught up to him.

The title is also free, released as an April Fool’s joke this year on Steam. There’s an unexpected punch-line to this joke, though:

it fucking rules.

It’s the highest-rated Sonic game on Steam right now, surpassing even the recent Sonic Frontiers in acclaim.

Fans of the series laud the story writing, art, and character dialogue as excellent, and the love and humor that went into making the game is apparent. I think a lot of people — myself included — love to see it when developers are willing to take things less seriously, and explore some unorthodox, but creative avenues. The enthusiasm for this idea is apparent — it has the heart of something conceived amid laughter and enthusiasm rather than cold corporate calculation.

That’s all for this issue of Side Stories! Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for new episodes, streams, and articles!

Streaming this week:

• Weeknights as available: Hades, Cult of the Lamb

• Thursday: Valorant, GTFO

• Saturday Morning: Resident Evil 4 (2023)

Upcoming Podcast Games:

• Hundred Days: Winemaking Simulator

That’s the attitude with which I’m wading into the discussion surrounding AI art. It’s a hotly-debated topic, and for good reason. Concerns about intellectual and artistic theft, undercutting already-under-compensated artists, and how the models source their training material are all valid points of contention in a field that’s growing faster than ethics, legislation, and philosophy can keep pace.

It’s also liberating.

As someone who is not a trained visual artist, I’ve found the technology to be extremely helpful in game development and tabletop game homebrew. A few months of experience with AI tools has shaped my opinion outside of the general discourse into one of careful optimism, with some caveats.

When I started tinkering with RenPy, the python-based visual novel creation tool behind titles like Doki Doki Literature Club and one of our Side Quests picks from late last year, Roadwarden (along with, yes, many many anime girl dating sims), I started exploring ways to create or solicit game assets. I’m a decent programmer and I enjoy writing, but I am not a visual artist.

I had some previous experience with Midjourney generating homebrew NPC, landscape, and magic-item art for both in-person and Discord-hosted Dungeons & Dragons games, so I decided to fire up the model once again for concept art and asset generation.

Midjourney, created by San-Francisco based Midjourney, Inc., is a Discord-based AI model-and-service with a focus on generating “artistic” images. Users submit English-language prompts to a bot or channel using an /imagine Discord command, with some options for tweaking the size and style of the generated output. From there, the model generates a series of images for users to mutate or upscale.

Midjourney is also the model behind the highly contentious piece “Théâtre d'Opéra Spatial”, credited to Jason M. Allen, which drew some ire for taking first place in the 2022 Colorado State Fair’s Digital Art competition.

Yep. That AI art model.

It’s worth a detour to tackle some of the arguments surrounding the technology, before I go into how — and in what ways — it seems to actually be useful.

This is reductive, but the arguments against the technology fall broadly under one of two banners:

1. Generating images via AI models does not require sufficient effort on the part of prompt-writers to consider them ‘artists‘. Ergo, creators like Jason M. Allen would not be eligible for prizes like the one he claimed.

2. The models are trained on existing art, which can be predatory, especially set against the backdrop of a capitalist economy. Artists are potentially training their (cheaper, faster) competition by creating their own works.

1. The Question of Effort

In my experience, the first argument gets murky when you start to understand the process behind using these AI models, and it’s something I can at least partially address with an example.

Let’s say, for whatever reason, I want a frame of an arcade-style fighting game, where the two combatants are a raccoon and an iguana. I also want it to be cel-shaded, because I think that’d be cute.

My initial prompt is: a raccoon fighting an iguana in an arcade-style fighting game, cel-shaded.

Here’s what I got back:

Some elements are there, but this initial set of results is unusable. So now I enter what I call the “tweaking“ phase. This involves the subtle art — yes, I do consider it that — of learning to speak to the model. It’s an iterative process, feeding strange poetry to an opaque and sometimes very obtuse printer.

In this next attempt, I tried centering what I really want first: frame of an arcade fighting game where the two fighters are a raccoon and an iguana, in a cel-shaded art style

Now we’ve got the proper perspective, but the iguana just isn’t making an appearance, and many of the raccoons have… let’s call them “anatomical irregularities“.

You’ll also notice that some assumptions are made about the elements in the generated images; the “raccoons“ are anthropomorphized into buff, bipedal creatures, due to the association with fighting games. AI-whispering involves understanding the associations the model makes, and then attempting to circumvent or upend them.

I iterated on the prompt for about 30 minutes to see how close I could get.

Ultimately, the closest I got was this:

Closer, but still hardly a usable result.

For another great example of this process, check out Karen X Cheng’s excellent compilation video illustrating the process behind her AI-generated cover for Cosmopolitan magazine. Ultimately, they chewed through thousands of options during the creative process before settling on a winner.

Generating images using any of the existing AI image models hardly resembles the simple, text-to-art laziness that critics unfamiliar with the process imagine, but the tools still represent a compression of time and effort the magnitude of which is difficult to grasp — and easy to take for granted — for those who aren’t trained artists.

It’s a shortcut. There’s no way around that. Any single one of the images from my raccoon fighter experiment would take hours to create, and those hours would rest upon the foundation of thousands spent practicing and honing the crafts of digital art, 3d modeling, or drawing.

So from here the first question fractures into more complex ones: how much effort should it take to create art? Does it make sense to measure art in effort at all? And couldn’t trained artists leverage these tools too, to compress their time and effort? Aren’t all advances in artistic tooling, from improved paints and brushes to digital art tools, about compressing or eliminating effort?

To look at those questions from a different angle, I can draw from my other experience with AI assistance, in programming.

Several weeks ago, I began using Github’s Copilot tool in my dayjob; for those unfamiliar, the tool draws on training data to offer code suggestions.

It’s somewhat useful to lower the barrier to entry in programming, but it has a ceiling, just as the image generation models do, when it comes to specific solutions.

That ceiling is still only broken by real expertise, and there’s no shortcut for that. In a similar way, I wonder whether Midjourney or DALL-E (another image generation model) could become tools that expert artists reach for to get, say 80%, of the way to a concept, and then set aside in favor of their expertise to get that last 20% done.

Ultimately, If time and effort are measures of artistic merit, then using an AI model to generate a specific vision certainly qualifies to a point. There’s also nothing stopping digital artists from combining these new tools with their hard-earned expertise.

2. The Question of Economics

I want to preface this by saying that artists should hold ownership over their art, and that means their use in training models should be contingent upon permission and / or compensation as they dictate. That much is not in question.

To address this, Midjourney has made avenues available for artists to request that their works be removed from the model’s training data, but this “ask forgiveness not permission“ approach is not one I’ll defend beyond saying it’s the bare minimum that Midjourney, Inc. should be doing. As much as I think art is an iterative process, and that putting something on the internet should come with the assumption that it could be circulated, questions about sourcing of training data have unsatisfactory answers at the moment.

The idea that artists are training their competition — especially if their works are used in training data without their express approval — is concerning. Models like Midjourney do make visual art more accessible, but they stand on the shoulders of every artist on which they’re trained, almost always without citation.

The root of this problem is buried in the demands of capitalism. I doubt anyone would argue that making tools of art creation available to layfolk is a bad thing — but the reality of a competitive economy where art is commercialized and commodified sours that principle. In this context, the criticism surrounding AI art is just another head on the hydra of anti-automation that emerges in response to technological leaps.

The central problem isn’t AI art — it’s that our economy pits labor against progress. In the inherently competitive space of the market, no work of art is entitled to success, and keeping up with advancement is part of the competition — as it is in any field. Commercial artists may have to adopt AI-based tools to remain competitive, and I think combining these tools with their own expertise will still be lucrative when compared to AI users who can’t tweak the model’s output because they lack the requisite skillset.

None of this is to say art created without cutting-edge tools isn’t valuable, or that it isn’t exquisite work; just that it may not be commercially viable.

So What is it Good For Right Now?

Speed and flexibility.

Getting back to my original story about tinkering with RenPy: I wanted assets that I could drop into place quickly and cheaply, and I’m not a visual artist.

Enter Midjourney. Within a few hours, I’d abandoned the idea of using it for any actual production assets, but the value in rapidly prototyping things became apparent. Could I produce the exact scenes and character art I’d envisioned? No. Somewhere along the line, I’d have to enlist the help of a talented human artist to get exactly what I wanted in terms of quality and vision.

But in the meantime, Midjourney provided excellent placeholders and even iterated some new directions for the ideas I fed into it. It’s a prototyping tool, and in that niche its strengths are highlighted without encroaching on the domain of human artwork. In the context of a large project, it’s a temporary tradeoff between speed and precision.

And even in cases where AI art might suffice completely for an indie game or tabletop gaming module, I don’t see that as a bad thing.

Nobody’s good at everything — but everyone deserves to make art. AI tools make the creative process easier and more accessible, and that’s a good thing.

The other compromise that can highlight Midjourney’s capabilities is flexibility. When a player in my D&D game asks what a random shopkeeper or tavern server looks like, I can feed Midjourney a general description and get back a result quickly. I don’t particularly care what the end result looks like in specific, just that some basic criteria are met.

Moreover, in that context it’s easy to accept some of Midjourneys quirks — feet that blend into the floor, hands with questionably-numbered digits, and so on — because of the low-stakes context.

It’s also cool to just type in a title or phrase that popped into your head when ideating. It’s neat to see how, even with completely made-up concepts, names, or phrases, the model works to stitch together some understanding of the words. This is maybe my favorite way to use the service; it’s like playing a game with the model, testing how it responds to the motifs and memetics embedded in its collective psyche through training data and learned response.

AI in its current iteration is a great rapid prototyping mechanism provided the stakes are low or you have the expertise to tweak its output. It’s a tool, like the syntax highlighting of an IDE or the innumerable capabilities present in modern digital art software. They lower the skill floor, but their full potential is still only unlocked in the hands of an expert.

And when it comes to the sphere of art for art’s sake, there’s an open argument here over whether hours iterating strange poetry to a capricious, opaque model meets expectations of effort some have for the artistic process.

But then, arguing over what qualifies as art is hardly anything new.

After a great first episode of Versus Mode, we’re ready for another round, this time focused on VR: wave of the future, or passing fad?

My experience with motion controls and headsets has left me bitter and cruel towards the tech. Headache-inducing, graphically compromised visuals and nigh-unplayable pantomime controls have worked in concert to convince me that VR is nothing more than a weird offshoot of gaming, doomed to gather dust alongside the Wii and WiiU once the fad fades.

So I ask, who among you will take up the challenge and oppose this vision of the future? Do you see a utopian future in these weird helmets and gyroscopic wands? Has VR ignited a new passion for games? Know a VR enthusiast who likes to argue?

If so, reach out and step up for a chance to be on the show to battle it out on Episode 2 of Versus Mode!

It’s not every day I see a game that invents a whole new genre! This week’s recommendation comes at the strange intersection of two gaming niches: cosmic horror and fishing.

As a horror-lover who also enjoys fishing both on-screen and on-boat, I knew when I stumbled across Black Salt Games’ Dredge that it was a catch.

From the Steam Store,

“DREDGE is a single-player fishing adventure with a sinister undercurrent. Sell your catch, upgrade your boat, and dredge the depths for long-buried secrets. Explore a mysterious archipelago and discover why some things are best left forgotten.”

Stranded in a strange patch of ocean dotted with mysterious islands, you take the role of a marooned angler, first washed ashore at the town of Greater Marrow and then enlisted as the town’s own fisherman.

As daytime fishing expeditions give way to nighttime excursions, though, the more… aberrant aspects of the region start to surface. Strange catches, robed figures, and unexplained sounds and lights on the water all ripple out from some unseen madness lurking in the depths beneath the waves.

Dredge is best played alone, in the late hours of the morning, headphones on and lights off (or maybe with a small lantern, if you have one, preferably flickering). It’s quiet, and drifts effortlessly between creepy and charming; fans of games like Don’t Starve, Subnautica, and The Long Dark will appreciate the vibe.

I don’t want to give away too much more, but it’s an experience that has me hooked - in fact, I’ll be streaming it tomorrow (4/19/2023) at 9.30 p.m. EST on our Twitch! Be sure to stop by if you want to take a firsthand look or chat about it!

As always, thanks for reading, and if you know someone who’d like the show, stream, or newsletter, be sure to share it with them!

Big thanks to my friend and long-standing friend of the show Kenny, a.k.a. @wrkngclssgmr, for gifting me Dredge, along with a slew of my other wishlisted games, as a birthday present. I can’t overstate how awesome that was and how grateful I am. You rock.

Sam here - we’re spinning up our twitch channel! To kick things off in an official way, I’ll be streaming the new Resi 4 remake tomorrow (Saturday, 4/15/23), starting at 9:30am. I actually somehow missed the original, so this will be my first time playing Resi 4 in any incarnation and I’m hyped for it. Stop on by the stream and hang out!

Our plan is to ramp up streaming in the coming weeks, including games we’ll be featuring on the show, so keep an eye out for that. You’ll get to see the games we talk about firsthand and get a sneak preview of some podcast content. Join the conversation and help us dissect and analyze our picks via the chat - who knows, we might shout you out on the show!

We’ll also be doing some very good Sons of the Forest and very bad Valorant streaming periodically. We’ve got a calendar up on our twitch “About“ page with more info: https://www.twitch.tv/underonethousand/about

Thanks as always!

This time, we cover the crowdsourced horror anthology series Fears to Fathom from developer Rayll.

Not affiliated with, nor endorsed by, Valve, Steam, etc. in any way.

This issue, we’ve got two recommendations well-suited for spending some quality time with kith and/or kin. Grab a partner for the first one, or your entire friend group for the second, and set aside some time for some low-stakes goofy fun.

Bread & Fred

What if, in the Werner Herzog Nihilist Penguin sequence, there were not one, but two penguins headed towards a mountain in the distance? And what if those penguins were bound by a rope and trained to climb said mountain as a duo? And what if it was extremely cute?

Well, then you’d have Bread & Fred, an adorable coop platformer available now as a demo on Steam. My wife and I played through a bit of the demo, and it was a blast; we’re also making our way through It Takes Two at the moment, and Bread & Fred was very much in the same vein.

That said, Bread & Fred brings something new to the table in its partner-platforming mechanics. When playing It Takes Two, the roles between the two characters, while complementary, are ultimately distinct. In Bread & Fred, you and your partner are literally attached at the hip - there’s no splitting up and no acting without directly affecting the other person.

You’ll have to learn to function as one character and leverage your shared tether to swing between platforms, fling yourselves across gaps, and pull one another up from near-death falls. Even simple jumps require coordination, lest one person accidentally pull the other off-target.

For duos with a bit of a skill (or patience) gap, it’s also got some assistance tools like manual checkpoints to ease more challenging segments. It’s overall a great concept, and a masterclass in how a simple but ingenious concept can form a great backbone for a game.

P.S. There is also a single-player mode, featuring a poor penguin tied to a rock - that’s certainly an option, but we highly recommend playing with a buddy.

Gartic Phone

You will laugh. I’m talking pee-your-pants, can’t breath, tears-in-your-eyes, stomach hurts laugh at the ridiculous, often cursed images Gartic Phone will extract from you and your loved ones.

The premise is a blend of Telephone and Pictionary; at the beginning of the game, each player in the lobby of up to 14 will write a single prompt. Something like, “Baptizing your iguana to save his soul“ or “Underwater dim-sum“. Then, each player is assigned another’s prompt, and must draw it.

Gartic Phone is a browser game, which makes it both free and extremely accessible — but the “drawing“ tools are about as complex as MS paint, and with players using computer mice to draw, the pictures are often very melted.

It doesn’t end there, though; those drawings now make the rounds, with players trying to guess what the initial prompt was. Those guesses then go out to be drawn, and the cycle continues once or twice more, until there are a few “generations“ of the prompt→drawing cycle.

Sometimes a prompt will survive the translations — but it’s often better when they don’t, becoming mutated somewhere down the line to absurd and hilarious effect. If you pick a good group, it’s a guaranteed great time.

That’s all for this issue, folks! We’ll catch back up with you later this month.
As always, thanks for reading, and give us a sub if you appreciate the recommendations!

Sam here with the mid-February recommendations; this month we’ve got two picks, the second of which was suggested (and even gifted!) by friend of the show Kenny Williams.

Kenny, if you’re reading this, thanks!

In other recent news, I was invited to talk Gaming Morning Show to talk about my recent article for space.com on the use of gravity in games. Definitely check out their channel, they’ve got some other really interesting interviews and do streams and broadcasts every morning!

Now, on to the games!

Dungeon Alchemist

This one is a little different from our usual picks — Dungeon Alchemist is actually a tool, rather than a game, but it’s worth a look for any of you Dungeon Masters or D&D players out there.

Funded with overwhelming support on Kickstarter, Dungeon Alchemist uses AI to generate high-quality, stylistic maps for tabletop games.

Choose a terrain and a map style, and then just drag and drop your way into a fully-functional, detailed map for gaming. If you don’t like a particular room, or want to re-roll the features, you can just override the initial generation manually on a room-by-room basis.

This feels like a great tool for homebrew settings and oneshots, and I’ll definitely be using it myself.

Vampire Survivors

Chances are, you’ve heard of this one by now. When I first saw it, I was sure it was some kind of idle game that mined crypto in the background; after getting a personal recommendation and a gifted copy, though, I decided to give it another look.

I immediately lost about two hours to it, and I’m officially hooked.

Inspired by Castlevania, you’ll choose one of a handful of heroes to do battle with infinite legions of monsters. Throughout each run, you’ll accumulate items and powerups throughout each run in a mad dash to stay more powerful than the increasingly dangerous fiends (although no actual vampires).

My first few runs were only a few minutes long, but soon I found myself falling back on strategies I’d used on Call of Duty’s Nazi Zombies mode years ago, corralling the beasts into a massive horde and trimming it down with every opportunity on the move.

Even then, I made it about twelve minutes before succumbing to the swarm.

Vampire Survivors feels like a fantastic arcade game, the kind you could spend an entire afternoon - or many - trying to master.

I’m just glad it doesn’t cost real quarters!

Month one of 2023 is almost up, insane as that is. As we continue through the crispy winter months, we’ve got two new radical recommendations.

Shredders

The premise of Shredders is simple: hit the slopes, pull off tricks, make sick videos, meet pros, and even compete to top the local invitational.

From the developers:

A love letter to snowboarding, Shredders takes inspiration from a lot of awesome snowboarding movies, the Amped games from the original Xbox and the snowboarding heroes on Instagram. Shredders is a passion project for riders, by riders.

Shredders draws a lot of comparisons to the Skate franchise, both on the developer site and in the reviews, in that it leans into the simulation aspects of snowboarding and tries to stay true to the feel of the sport, rather than going all-in on an arcade interpretation.

It’s also got online, cross-platform multiplayer, so grab a copy for a buddy and you can both shred! You can also check out the game’s official Discord for tips, updates, and general camaraderie.

If you were ever a fan of the Tony Hawk, Skate, or SSX franchises, this is definitely worth a look!

Hi-Fi RUSH

Where the hell did this game come from?!

With almost no warning, Hi-Fi Rush hit online stores just two days ago to almost universally positive reactions. In it, you’ll play as Chai, a fledgling rocker who gains rhythmic powers after a shady corporate experiment grants him a robotic arm and an implanted mp3 player.

You and a squad of teammates will take the fight to said shady corporation, doing battle with robotic minions and insane execs, all to the beat of absolutely rad music. You might even look cool doing it - the game features a rating system a la Devil May Cry, so the especially ambitious can shoot for those sweet, sweet S rankings.

To me, Hi-fi Rush and its confident quirkiness hearkens back almost to the Ratchet and Clank era of gaming. Might just be rose-tinted glasses, but something about that period of gaming put goofy fun first in a way that’s becoming less and less common.

That’s all for this one!

As always, thanks for reading, and be sure to share us with folks who might be interested! Also feel free to reach out with suggestions, games we should highlight, and requests - we’re open to all of it!

We’re kicking off this year not with a bang, but with some sleepy boops and bops wrapped in soothing violet hues. This week’s (extremely chill) game is Melatonin, from the appropriately named indie dev Half Asleep.

(Seriously, check out the trailer if only for the music).

In Melatonin, you’ll play a number of dream-themed rhythm minigames designed to explore the space between waking life and dreamland. Along the way, you’ll piece together major events in the main character’s life.

Before working in game development, Vancouver dev David Huynh (the human behind Half Asleep) worked in U.X., graphic, and interface design, and his background shines through in the best way in Melatonin’s intuitive musical challenges.

The game features a broad spectrum of challenge, too - everything from an unlockable “hard mode” for the very rhythmically-inclined to assistance tools for those that need a little extra help.

My suggestion for this one?

Stay up till the clock flips to a.m., throw on a roomy hoodie, flip off the lights, and sink into the vibes.

—

If you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe for more game highlights and updates on the u1k podcast (it’s free, unless you want to give us money)!

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As always, thanks for reading, and if you like the recommendations, share the ‘stack with other folks!

It’s cold out for us northern-hemisphere folks, which means there’s more reason ever to cozy up with a cup of something warm and a new game to explore.

This week I’ve got just one recommendation, but it’s perfectly suited to a frosty indoor December evening - Roadwarden, from developer Moral Anxiety Studio and publisher Assemble Entertainment.

From the Steam page:

YOU ARE THE ROADWARDEN

A brave stranger putting your life on the line to make a difference in this grim fantasy world. While most people would never risk a solitary journey through the wilder parts of the land, you willingly accept the struggle. You guard travellers, connect isolated villages, support merchants, and repel attacking creatures, bandits, or even undead.

The game is a fusion of text-based RPG, isometric visual novel, and interactive puzzle game. It’s got no shortage of acclaim, earning an Overwhelmingly Positive rating with 854 reviews, which praise the writing, mystery, and attention to detail. The vibe I get from the whole thing is a kind of “enhanced fantasy novel“.

So if text-based RPGs or fantasy novels are your thing and you’re looking for something to brighten up the dark winter evenings, set aside some time to make a cup of hot chocolate and boot up Roadwarden.

We’ll be back soon with a new episode — we’re actually pulling from our Side Quests recommendations for this one — so enjoy your holiday and keep an eye out for that.

If you’re swept up in the giving spirit, give us a recommendation to someone you know that loves games - it really helps!

Hope this finds you in a contented post-feast haze; this week we’re coming at you with two thoughtful, colorful adventures perfect for a cold day in.

Chicory: A Colorful Tale

First is Chicory: A Colorful Tale from Canada-based developer Greg Lobanov.

Once upon a time, Chicory was one of the earliest games that made it to our candidate list for the show; unfortunately, it’s no longer eligible, but that shouldn’t stop you from checking out this coloring-book-inspired adventure.

In Chicory, you take the role of renowned painter Chicory’s biggest fan after she mysteriously disappears - along with all of the color in the world. Taking up the mantle of her magic Brush, you’ll solve puzzles, help your animal friends, and bring color back to the game’s frankly adorable world.

Everything about this game charms me - the earnest and cheerful soundtrack, the cartoonish art style, the creative leveraging of the paint theme, all oozing with the care and intent that mark something of real quality.

Color me impressed.

Check out the trailer below:

Hue

Next is Hue, from UK-based developer Fiddlesticks, which sees a young man named Hue navigating a grey colorless world in a quest to find his mother, who’s gone missing since an experiment in her color research went awry.

You’ll utilize one of the inventions she left behind - a color wheel - to alter the world around you, removing obstacles and revealing new paths.

Like Chicory, the game has a charming simplicity and sincerity to it that again shines in an inspiring soundtrack and cartoon cast; if I had to make a distinction, I’d say that Hue appears a touch more introspective and puzzle-focused.

It’s also worth noting that it features top-quality voice acting along with accessibility features to make the game available for those with colorblindness.

Check out the trailer below:

That’s it for this week, folks!

We’re already working on a new episode of the podcast, so stay tuned for that; as always, thanks for reading and listening, and be sure to spread the word about us to folks who might be interested.

Finally, we’ve been toying with the idea of a master list of games we recommend; as people who know games, our primary goal is to help people connect with the art form in a way they’ll enjoy, and so we thought compiling nice, organized a list of games we consider to be quality experiences might be something people are interested in.

Let us know what you think via the poll below!

Sam here; this week I’ve got two recommendations, both of which have been on my radar for a while.

HYPER DEMON

First up is HYPER DEMON, from developer and publisher Sorath.

Now right off the bat - HYPER DEMON is intense.

From the Steam Store:

While the game has a number of innovative mechanics, the secret sauce is the sensory overload the game throws at the player through two features - a spherical projection view that gives the player a near-180-degree field of vision, and a red holographic “rear-view“ overlay that completes the sphere of awareness.

Ultimately, these two features work to give the player a full 360-degree field of perception. Combine those with a usual lighting-strike-on-cocaine level of intensity that boomer shooters are known for, and you get an experience designed to test the limits of the human mind.

Reviewers attempt to describe the sensation as “feeling like their soul is on fire“, “perceiving higher dimensions“, and “how it feels to chew five gum“, and the game includes both an addiction warning and a photosensitivity warning.

I think that illustrates what you’re getting into pretty well; if you like boomer shooters, experimental mechanics, or transcending the limits of human perception, check it out.

Hyper Demon Steam Page

It Steals

Next up is It Steals, from developer and publisher Zeekerss.

Now, I promise I wasn’t intentionally trying to be sadistic this week, but It Steals is… also extremely intense.

As a self-described “experiment in survival horror“, It Steals has five modes, each of which represents an escalation of unpredictable monstrosities and tense stealth mechanics.

Since it’s horror, I won’t spoil too much more, but It’s also notable for having a 99% positive review rating with almost 600 reviews. Reviewers laud the game for its innovation and its ability to cultivate intense paranoia - many mentioned how difficult it was to even open the game after experiencing the terror it induces.

If you didn’t get enough scares in October, pick this up for just $5 (plus the cost of therapy for the inevitable night terrors and anxiety).

It Steals Steam Page

This is Sam writing this week, and it’ll be a shorter edition since I’ve been in Athens for the past week, and Jacob is preparing for a big trip overseas as well; that said, we still wanted to check in and drop a pretty major update — after a number of folks suggested and asked about this, we’ve decided to start a Discord!

In addition to providing a community for folks who just like games to talk and hang, we’ll be streaming U1k games that we play for the show, hosting discussions, taking suggestions for future games, and potentially even asking members for short interviews for the show.

So, If you like the show and want to chat, click here to hop on in and hit us up, or copy and paste https://discord.gg/EBzVw9qugx into your browser.

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In addition, if you know folks who are interested in games, we’d appreciate a recommendation. It’s really easy - just click the link above!

As always, thanks for reading!

we’re happy to announce that, after a brief hiatus from the show to make room for some big life milestones and changes, we’re back in more ways than before to highlight indie gems and talk all things games!

Moving forward, we’ll be making announcements, posting articles, and exploring new series on the show, with our Substack as the hub. We’re pumped to be off of the social media grind, so we can be 100% focused on playing, talking about, and writing about games.

First,

if you haven’t already, checkout our Latest Under One Thousand main series episode on Citizen Sleeper, an artful and poignant cyberpunk story RPG from Jump Over the Age.

Second,

Check out the first episode of a new series from Sam called Versus Mode, in which he airs his spiciest gaming takes and gets roasted for it. Episode one covers The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Sam hates it).

Finally,

keep an eye on your inbox for our new set of quick recommendations, a series we’re calling Side Quests. These are quick recommendations that we’ll email out periodically as they come up, and will include main series candidates, games we missed the boat on, or other indie games we feel deserve some attention in general.

Our first Side Quests recommendation:

Signalis, from rose-engine.

I’ve just played the first hour or so of Signalis, and I can tell it’s going to be a masterpiece of scifi horror. This is my favorite subgenre of game, and so it takes a lot to impress me, but Signalis’s first hour has me hooked.

I see touches of other masterworks and cultural icons: Resident Evil, Alien, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Dead Space, even old point-and-click adventures like Myst, all synthesized into something new and tantalizing. If you have a strong stomach for horror and an interest in science fiction, it’s a must-see game.

From the Developers:

That’s all for now! Be sure to subscribe for more updates, notifications about our episode releases, Side Quest recommendations, and more!

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And, if you like the show, please leave us a review on iTunes, Spotify, etc, and recommend the newsletter. It really does make a big difference.

For the first episode, we're talking BoTW: Sam hates it, and he talked to some folks who didn't. We analyze what it means to be a Zelda game, the merits and pitfalls of open world, and more!

Special thanks to guests:

• Will McGee (@willgmcgee on Twitter, movie reviews and insights on Letterboxd at https://letterboxd.com/BillyMac/),

• Dan Pennington (@DanDangerously on Insta)

• Jon Dantzler (Bread and Circuses on YouTube, @luv2cuss69 on Twitter)

Note from Sam:

We talk about a lot in this episode, and that's because there's a lot to love. 

I think one thing we should have talked a lot about is the writing; we took it for granted in reviewing the episode, as the x-factor that bound all of the elements of the game together. It's beautiful, and if we're sticking with the space theme, it's the vital air that animated and sustained all of the characters on Erlin's Eye.

 I won't make a habit of issuing errata for our episodes, but I felt it bore mentioning.

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