The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for getting those all-important squash to water ratios just right. Before you turn on the tap, let's read this week's best writing about games.

For Vice, Matthew Gault examines how a new technique is blowing away old school Tetris records. Almost all of them are unnerving to watch.

Rolling is a variation of hypertapping where a player drums multiple fingers on the bottom of the controller. It’s sometimes called flyheccing because it’s similar to a technique pioneered by Hector “Fy” Rodriguez on arcade cabinets. A thumb or finger hovers over the d-pad and the drumming of the fingers pushes the d-pad into this waiting bit of flesh. The drumming vibration of the fingers creates speeds faster than hyper-tapping.

Over on Medium, Kitfox Games's Tanya X Short wrote about how they design coziness in games. Fishing in games is a favourite cozy activity of mine, as is home decoration.

As you approach cozy design, remember that coziness is an adjective; coziness is an aesthetic goal, a flavor that can be applied to any type of game. Some mechanics are emotionally more in tune with coziness, but any game can be made more cozy. This also means that there is no single defining genre that is “coziness”.

Nathalie Lawhead wrote up a nice post on five beautiful altgames they found on itch.io. All of these sounds like brilliant little gems.

Yesterday I stumbled on this incredible gem on itch.io… Riba is a small, atmospheric, metaphoric experience about fishing for your grandmother’s bones. You recover these touching memories of someone who lost themselves to an illness.

On the Guardian, Tom Faber wrote about the trans gamers finding freedom on Roblox.

Before she had ever heard the word “trans” or understood the concept of gender, Hannah was using the anonymity of the internet to create a version of herself that felt more authentic than her real-world body. Through her teenage years, the online community around Roblox would help her learn about transitioning, support her as she came out to her family and even help fund her gender-affirming surgery. I spoke to almost 30 trans gamers, aged 13 to 30, for this article and, while every story was different, each emphasised the important role that games played in helping them to come to terms with their real-world selves.

For The New York Times, Marie Fazio wrote about how the star of the 'Disaster Girl' meme made $500,000 by selling it as an NFT. Right, okay.

“Disaster Girl” memes have spread far and wide. Once, a group from Poland asked permission to use the meme for educational material about a dying Indigenous language. Someone in Portugal sent Ms. Roth pictures of a mural with the meme.

Music this week is Amtrac's "Just". Perfect for a road trip, or a lounge by the pool. Both of which I won't be doing for a while, but I can pretend.

Over on Hypebeast, I spotted these lovely carpets, which reminded me of Alice O's fun post on how they'd welcome an 'Oscars of gaming' if it had hot red carpet looks.

That's me. Have a solid Sunday everyone!