1 September 2025
After a successful Kickstarter campaign, a newly-formed small games development company from Adelaide, Australia called Team Cherry released the computer game Hollow Knight back in 2017. Hollowknight is a game in the “Metroidvania” genre, meaning that the core gameplay mechanics are very similar to both the Metroid Prime and Castlevania games franchises - created by Nintendo and Konami respectively. It's basically a 2D side-scrolling game with large levels, where the main character explores parts of the map, gathering special abilities on the way that allow for more exploration, collection of the resources needed to fight level bosses, etc. Here's a screenshot from my playthrough of the game:
3 July 2023
As a skeptic I love a good mystery - the kind of puzzle that Arthur C Clarke would write a book or make a TV show about. A couple of weeks ago I found a set of YouTube videos about a contrived mystery - one that's been deliberately created, rather than many of life's “mysteries” that come about because of misunderstanding and a lack of scientific understanding - or real mysteries where there's nothing otherworldly, but just a lack of information that would explain the backstory to a situation.
12 July 2021
I enjoy playing computer games, and own both a gaming PC (RTX 3060 Ti, i5-10400) and a VR headset (Quest). So when I heard about an ambitious new game for PCs, VR and phones, it piqued my interest. The game is called Earth2, and is pipped to be a 1:1 copy of earth, with a faithful reproduction of the entire planet in software. Their website makes comparisons to the movies The Matrix and Ready Player One, both of which feature VR environments that are indistinguishable from reality. This sounds pretty ambitious... maybe too ambitious.