Notices by 13 barn owls in a trenchcoat (hauntedowlbear@eldritch.cafe)

Second track from the forthcoming Ghost Bath album is extremely my thing and has been on repeat today.

Ghost Bath - Well, I Tried Downing
https://ghostbath.bandcamp.com/track/well-i-tried-drowning

CW if you close-listen or click through for lyrics : they involve violent and bloody suicide arrangement imagery, implied noncon on behalf of dispatcher?

@taylormccue @RoseThorndyke

Yeah, that's the one. But I have extensive form on publishing that flavour of cosmic horror/melodrama. :D

"wow I have cool tentacles" : ) : ) : )

This sounds like a super fun ... person? .. to date, though.

@Kay it's dogwhistles all the way down

@Kay the book was by Andy Ngo, so there's not really any doubt on that front. (I'm familiar with his work and had the misfortune to interact with him a few times.)

I'm glad they sorted that out. If there's one thing being in the black metal scene taught me, it's that a zero-tolerance approach to far right rhetoric is the only way to prevent its normalisation.

@fesshole that Barbican high walk tho...

@Kay they fired the member that outed himself as a fascist, right?

@vampiress Vimeo would definitely be the place I'd expect to go for that, rather than YT.

The person who ported DoomRPG and DoomIIRPG to PC now also made Wolfenstein RPG available to a whole new audience:
https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/151475

This week's #ThursdayFiveList theme is giving me text adventure vibes. It's #360Degrees : songs that have any compass points or directions in them.

After three tracks that came to me all had a certain point in common, I followed through with the rest and have a concept list on my hands.

Please enjoy the expansive variety that is the oeuvre of electronic music giants, Ulver, with a particular (but not exclusive) emphasis on their drone electronica era (they're currently making anti-imperialist alt disco, which is also great, incidentally).

Ulver - True North
https://ulver.bandcamp.com/track/true-north
Coming in at over 16 minutes, this the kind of drone that you feel, that wraps your body, drags you under, and infests you with glorious sensation.

Ulver - Østenfor Sol Og Vestenfor Måne
https://ulverband.bandcamp.com/track/stenfor-sol-og-vestenfor-m-ne
Tender and dramatic acoustic folk with lovely choral vocals. This was the album that I discovered Ulver with.
"East of the sun and west of the moon
There you will arrive late or never
To the end of the world it goes"

Ulver - Southern Gothic
https://ulver.bandcamp.com/track/southern-gothic
Pulsating electronic soundscapes and Garm's disco-infused vocals feel like a vision of unborn future.
"I want to tell you something
About the grace of faded things"

Sunn O))) & Ulver - Western Horn
https://ulver.bandcamp.com/track/western-horn
The shades of spaghetti western soundtracks occupy the soundscapes of this collaboration, with distant jangling guitars, the implication of voices lost in the electronics, and a growing atmosphere of oppression.

Ulver - Enter The Void
https://ulver.bandcamp.com/track/enter-the-void
A little more ringing, melodic drone to finish off and leave you somewhere gentle and heart-wrenching as it collapses into organs and overdriven hauntings to seize you by the throat.
In keeping with my text adventure influenced reading of the theme, "enter" is here taken to be a direction.

@DarkestKale Ooooh, this the one from Iced Earth?

@eniko Huuuh. Steam Deck 256GB LCD starts at 419 EUR. You have to pay 569 EUR for OLED tho.

I've not peeped the new Switch's specs, but that's not really the point, is it? (I ask rhetorically, as a thousand gaming YouTube channels run to make exactly the same comparison.)

It's that you get that first-party and exclusive library, and that family friendliness.

So, I get that if you are THE BIG HERO ON THE IMPORTANT MISSION, maybe you don't have time to stop for the animals.

maybe if you are THE ROGUE BASTARD, maybe you're just too jaded to care about the animals.

But most 'adventurer' characters, just starting out, SHOULD STOP FOR THE ANIMALS.

TIL (because I was using some tools to hack on the files) that Wing Commander 1 lipsyncs the dialogue in the briefing scenes, and it does it by having a second copy of the line that's spoken in the dialogue file, but it's a simplified pseudo-phonetic version:

Text="We've got a lot of work to do, people, so let's get to it."

LipSyncText="wevgotalotofwerktodopepulsolesgettoit"

@richard he was
Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, which is the more senior title

(I absolutely had to go and look up the name of his chair)

Idle clicker fans! Check out the latest release from @DamonWakes

Gold Brick Simulator
https://damonwakes.itch.io/gold-brick-simulator

@cyo rip :(

TFW you have to subscribe to Netflix for a month for work purposes :blob_disapproval:

This week's #'TuneTuesday theme is #StormyNights

I was strongly tempted to drop some melodic black metal in the form of Dissection (my personally significant problematic fave) but the Storm of the Light's Bane referred to in the title Retribution is symbolic and metaphorical... and we're looking for weather, right?

Well, maybe we don't have to be. The terrestrial weather aspect isn't quite grabbing me, so I've settled on a different personal favourite that just sits particularly well with my current mood (ecstatic apocalyptic nihilism? Is that a vibe? That feels like a vibe.)

Dark Tranquillity - Inside The Particle Storm
https://darktranquillity.bandcamp.com/track/inside-the-particle-storm-2

"Inside the particle blaze
A chamber of dissolution
Proclaiming the end of days
We leave now, nothing will follow, nothing at all
The cleansing flames of entropy to devour us all"

Lyrics: http://www.darklyrics.com/lyrics/darktranquillity/fiction.html#6

Incidentally, I find this track interesting to compare and contrast with Iridium from We Are The Void

@mynameistillian @cyo It's a hard choice, because we love all of these (yet hilariously are not explicitly a noise fan)... but that was where we settled, too

Look at this extremely cool game jam that's ongoing with plenty of time still left:

Narrative Alchemy Jam 2025
https://itch.io/jam/narrative-alchemy-jam-2025

*This is a jam for transformative narrative games of all kinds. It will be judged by me (Chance). Since I prefer to cultivate a collaborative rather than a competitive environment, and since judging is often highly subjective, I have chosen to use the word "Favorite" rather than "Best" for the award categories:

Favorite Educational Game - Open to educators and non-educators, as long as your game teaches something intended to be useful for players' personal growth or learning.

Favorite Therapeutic Game - Please enter only if you're a therapist, social worker, psychologist, counselor, life coach, neurodiversity researcher, etc. Games about therapy or therapeutic topics are allowed in other categories; this category is specifically for games intended for use as part of a therapy session.

Favorite Spiritual or Religious Game - You don't need to be clergy to submit to this category. Religious fundamentalists, including militant atheists, are not welcome.

Favorite Recreational Game - This is for games primarily intended to be fun to play, while also exploring a thought-provoking or emotionally resonant theme / genre.

Favorite Serious Game - This is for games intended to be thought-provoking, emotionally intense, or culturally important, but not necessarily fun or light-hearted.

Entering multiple categories is allowed, as long as it makes sense for your game. The only two categories that are mutually exclusive are "Favorite Recreational Game" and "Favorite Serious Game".

Since I'm a TTRPG and LARP designer with academic training in transformative role-playing game design, this jam is primarily geared toward analog, physical games. But if you're a CRPG or visual novel designer with an idea that fits, go for it! Some of my favorite transformative narrative games are computer games (e.g. The Longest Journey, The Talos Principle, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, Disco Elysium).*

#GameJam #narrativeGames #TTRPG #CRPG #VisualNovel #transformativeGames