Mikina

UPDATE: So, apparently it's mostly fake, taken from this article [translation] (where they even mention some kind of VCS).

However, even though it's not as absurd, it's a great read and a pretty wholesome story, so I recommend reading the article instead. And I'm even more convinced that this studio really does not deserve any of the hate they are getting.

Here is my summary of some of the interesting points from the article:

PocketPair started as a three man studio, passionate about game development, that couldn't find an investor for their previous games even though they've had really fleshed out prototypes, to the point where they just said "Game business sucks, we'll make it and release it on our own terms", and started working on games without any investor.

They couldn't hire professionals due to budget constraints. The guy responsible for the animations was a random 20-yo guy they found on Twitter, where he was posting his gun reload animations he self-learned to do and was doing for fun, while working as a store clerk few cities over.

They had no prior game development experience, and the first senior engineer, and first member of the team who actually was a professional game developer, was someone who ranomly contacted them due to liking Craftopia. But he didn't have experience with Unity, only Unreal, so they just said mid-development "Ok, we'll just throw away all we have so far, and we'll switch to Unreal - if you're willing to be a lead engineer, and will teach us Unreal from scratch as we go."

They had no budget. They literally said "Figuring out budget is too much additional work, and we want to focus on our game. Our budget plan is "as long as our account isn't zero, and if it reaches zero, we can always just borrow more money, so we don't need a budget".

For major part of the development, they had no idea you can rig models and share animations between them, and were doing everything manually for each of the model, until someone new came to the team and said "Hey, you know there's an easier way??"

It's a miracle this game even exists as it is, and the developer team sound like someone really passionate about what they are doing, even against all the odds.

This game is definitely not some kind of cheap cash-grab, trying to milk money by copying someone else's IP, and they really don't deserve all the hate they are receiving for it.

Hello!

One of the things I really enjoy is unique, interesting or out-of-the box game design. It doesn't have to be AAA game, it doesn't have to be a perfect game, it can be pretty rough - but if it has a mechanic or design element that is somehow unique or original, I'm instantly in love with the game.

The problem is that such games do not usually get a lot of exposure, since it is after all a niche. And that is really a shame - in the past few years the most fun had with video-games was playing such smaller and shorter indie games with something unique or pretty clever, where I can obsess over the design and more importantly - get inspired. That leads me to my question - are there any communites or blogs or content curators that are about this kind of smaller, maybe unpolished, but original games? Or what games would you recommend that would fit into this description? I don't mind if it's a 5 minute experience. It's ok if it's more interactive art than a game.

To better illustrate what I'm looking for, I'd compare it to modern art - the kind where you get a single colored square on a canvas. I never got it, and it always felt just weird - until I had to start doing flyer design and started researching and reading about composition, space and all that stuff. And now I see there's so much going on even on a picture with a single line, that it's really interesting to think about why the square is where it is, and what kind of composition rules was he working with.

And I think it's the same for game design - sometimes you see a clever mechanic or design on otherwise really ugly and unpolished game, and it still gets you inspired and thinking.

I understand that my question is a little bit vague, so I'll give you a list of some games I consider unique, some of them are well known, some of them not-so-much:

• Immortality - you probably know about this one, but a game where the plot twist is discovering a hidden game mechanic, you could've done all the time? And the fact that you watch three movies at once in random scene order is also a really good experience.
• Against the Storm - I really like how they solved the issue with management sims - that they tend to get boring once you set everything up, by making it a roguelike.
• Different Strokes - an online persistent collaborative museum of art, where you can either leave a new painting, or edit someone's else. Each painting can be edited only once, so there are always two authors of a single piece.
• Sayonara Wild Hearts - I really like the idea of making what's basically an interactive music album. While the game design isn't anyting that interresting, the focus on music is cool - there should be more music albums with video-games instead of video-clips.
• Project Forlorn - Again, not really a game - this time I think there's no actuall gameplay, but it's the best interactive music album presentation I've ever seen. And again - I like the idea of exploring music and games together.
• Playdate - Not exactly a single game, but rather a console - but the idea behind giving you a game per day (which is I think how it started, they may all be available now looking at it) sounds amazing - which I'd also consider a game design (or rather, experience design?).
• Baba is You - Another probably well known game, but the puzzle mechanic is just mindblowing.
• Before Your eyes - In this game, the main mechanic is that you go through the memories of someone who has just passed away, but the time advances every time you blink - physically blink, because the game can use your camera. That is such a clever idea, that it definitely fits onto this list.
• Nerve Damage - This is my favourite recent discovery. The game is trying so hard to be uncomfortable to play, with it's main design build around just being unplayable. But it somehow works and once you get into the flow, it's such an unique experience.

So, does anyone has some recommendations about where to look for more experimental games? A curated list, blog would be awesome - since clicking through pages of games on itch.io is pretty hit and miss. Also, feel free to share some of your favourite unique design or experimental experiences and games!

There is one argument I've seen missing in most of the de/federation discussions, that I think should be mentioned, and warrants it's own discussion.

I've seen a lot of people mentioning that defederating with Meta means we have broken the promise of Fediverse, that you can use one account to interact with whatever service you choose, and that it should be inclusive.

But I don't agree that's the main idea. There is something that's more important, and to make sure I'm not misinterpreting it, I'll just directly quote various websites about the Fediverse I've found (I was just taking top results for Fediverse on DuckDuckGo, but I did select only the parts that are the most important point for me personally). But I do concur, I was not able to find a single source of truth, and I'm not really sure how credible the resources are, so please disagree with me if it's wrong or I've chosen some no-name site that just matched my rethorics.

https://www.fediverse.to/ has the following sentence as the main hero header:

The fediverse is a collection of community-owned, ad-free, decentralised, and privacy-centric social networks.

Each fediverse instance is managed by a human admin. You can find fediverse instances dedicated to art, music, technology, culture, or politics.

Join the growing community and experience the web as it was meant to be.

Another search result is for fediverse.party, which has the following quite in https://fediverse.party/en/fediverse/ :

Fediverse (also called Fedi) has no built-in advertisements, no tricky algorithms, no one big corporation dictating the rules. Instead we have small cozy communities of like-minded people.

The page also mentions some link for knowledge about the fediverse. Some of them are only tutorials about how to join, but there's also https://joinfediverse.wiki/What_is_the_Fediverse%3F , with the following part:

How does it compare to traditional social media?

...

Morals

• Traditional social media is neither social nor media. It is not made for you, it is made to exploit you and it is full of misleading ads and fake news.
• This is because the aim of traditional social media is to make a whole lot of money.
• The aim of the Fediverse is to benefit the people.
• The aim of traditional social media is to control and steer the users.
• The aim of the Fediverse is to empower the users to control the Fediverse.

I wasn't able to find more websites directly about the fediverse, and I did not want to quote random articles. But for completion sake, here is a list of FAQ/About sections of websites that are about the Fediverse, but don't directly support or imply the point of view I was trying to make (one that can be best summarized by the Morals in the last quite):

• https://fediverse.info/frequently-asked-questions
• https://fedi.tips/what-is-mastodon-what-is-the-fediverse/
• https://framatube.org/w/9dRFC6Ya11NCVeYKn8ZhiD
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse
• https://the-federation.info/

The split seems to be 50:50, but at least for my DuckDuckGo search results, the https://www.fediverse.to/ is the first result you find, and that one is pretty clear about what Fediverse should be. I wanted to start a discussion about what do the users here see as a main selling point of the fediverse, and whether morals and non-profit nature of the instances is important to most of the users as it is to me, or whether you'd rather have interconnectness and inclusivness.