Electron Dance Highlights
Discussion: Cyberdunk
Welcome to the year-late December newsletter (sign up if you want to read it):
Some have hoped that studio bosses will wake up and smell the Cyberpunk coffee, exclaiming, “Jesus, all that death march crunch is really bad for our games!” I think the more accurate analogy will be those hurrying past a violent mugging in broad daylight, grateful that it wasn’t them this time.
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Discussion: They Hurt You
Welcome to the November newsletter (sign up if you want to read it):
What they’re trying to say - and good luck finding a headline that lays this out clearly - is that videogames aren’t hurting you.
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Discussion: The Assembled World
Welcome to the October newsletter (sign up if you want to read it):
Videogame developers design their worlds with purpose and often sprinkle it with procedurally-generated sugar. That pizza box is placed to tell you someone ate here and didn’t tidy up, or left in a hurry. The child’s playroom is full of handcrafted toys because they were loved and maybe one parent was a woodwork enthusiast.
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Side by Side: Season 5 Deleted Scenes
Side by Side is a video series on local multiplayer games. This is a bonus episode for the fifth series.
Due to the pandemic, Joel Goodwin of Electron Dance and Gregg Burnell of Tap-Repeatedly haven't been able to meet up to make a YouTube series they love, nor Side by Side. We're sorry for this.
But Joel had always planned to put out a "deleted scenes" episode for Series 5 (if you remember, we did say there would be a "bonus episode in January") and he kept putting it off because he was working on another film which was "important". Fortunately, he has come to his senses and realised his excuses have run out of gas. Enjoy the moments that were not included in the series simply because the episodes were already long enough. Even if most of them feature Daka Dara.
Bonus fictional game currency for anyone who figures out which Season 5 game does not appear in the deleted scenes.
If you enjoy the series, please like our videos and subscribe to the Side by Side channel.
Watch the video here or direct on YouTube.
Before The High Tide
This is the final in a series of five musings on Control. Previously: Behind the Poster, Use of Weapons, Reverse Shock and Slave to the Rhythm.
There will be spoilers.
So: you reach the final boss. It’s what you’ve been working up to. Sometimes a game sticks the landing, sometimes it fluffs it and the magic withers.
But what happens if you get there and you just don’t know how to proceed? Like that one level in a puzzle game that you just can’t best. You give it your all but it isn’t enough to get you through. The energy wanes. You lose interest. You put the controller down. Maybe you don’t pick it up again.
This isn’t what happened in Control; this is an analogy for what happened to this essay, my final post on Control.
Discussion: Low Score
Welcome to the September newsletter (sign up if you want to read it):
I suppose the series' focus on money was inevitable. What the public knows are iconic titles and their associated corporate colossi: the story of pop videogames is the story of videogame money.
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Fearful Beauty
No, this isn't a new Electron Dance film but, guess what, I did lend my vocal talents to fifteen seconds of someone else's video. If you like my films you'll likely dig this, too.
In this smart 25-minute video essay, Pixel a Day discusses the Romantic concept of "the sublime" in the context of Subnautica and The Long Dark. Don't worry, we've already made some noise in her YouTube comments about Outer Wilds.
Watch below or direct on YouTube.
Discussion: Towers
Welcome to the woefully late August newsletter (sign up if you want to read it):
During the halcyon days of FPS mods, not a week seemed to go by without someone showing off a cool gun render. That was the most boring thing about a mod I could imagine. I understood it was helpful to distance themselves from the source material but a hunger for weapon renders, particularly the more realistic, was baffling.
Dear subscribers, if you feel like chatting about anything at all from the newsletter, please speak your mind in the comments here.
Puzzleworks, 3: Akurra
In April, good Electron Dance friend Maurycy Zarzycki, who designed the short, free puzzle game Machine at the Heart of the World (Evidently Cube, 2018), tweeted this right at my face: "You should check the demo of Akurra if you haven't yet heard about it. It's a bit of a cross between Sokoban, Legend of Zelda and The Witness - a freeroam puzzle game by [Jason Newman]. Something tells me you'll like it."
Come on, you can't namedrop The Witness carelessly like that in a tweet. That's like saying "if you like Citizen Kane, you might enjoy this film." Bwahahaha. Anyway joke's on me because I had far too much fun with Akurra.
Nutshell: Open-world Sokoban-variant rife with secrets to discover, still in development.
The Sun Always Rises
Hello. If you are fortunate enough not to have played Outer Wilds (Mobius Digital, 2019), then here is everything you need to know right now:
- You should play Outer Wilds.
- When you start Outer Wilds, you will struggle to understand why people say “you should play Outer Wilds”.
- When you finish Outer Wilds, you will tell others “you should play Outer Wilds”.
- You should not read the rest of this spoiler-rich post.
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"I'm glad to hear it Maurycy Zarzycki because I had two online friends in the space of about 12 hours earlier in the week tell..." – The Sun Always Rises
"Actually, just last week, I was shown Rogue Fable and it’s kind of the closest to the middle (but closer to the “great” side so..." – Discussion: Tabletop Christmas
"And I finally got to play this gem, only half a year after reading about half of the article. Thank goodness I forgot almost everything..." – The Sun Always Rises
"Thanks Shaun. I have a feeling there was a bloody-minded determination to buy CDPR whatever happened and even though console fans will be pissed off,..." – Discussion: Cyberdunk
"Well, Joel, I think the newsletter pretty much covered it all on this one. :) I think CDPR announced selling 13mn copies initially, against a..." – Discussion: Cyberdunk
"I also subbed specifically to read this article and am unable to find it. Maybe change the information from "subscribe to read" to "it's no..." – Discussion: The Rogue and The Artiste
"I kinda wanted to say "Yes, but..." (I'm actually not 100% sure what you're saying "I dunno" to.) Back to games! I have played two..." – Discussion: Cyberdunk
"matt: I dunno, power is power ¯_(ツ)_/¯" – Discussion: Cyberdunk
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