Building on thoughts about social media and modern internet interactions. I’ve been thinking lately about who leaves reviews. I’ll set aside the bot armies that might be thrusting a vacuum cleaner to the top of the Amazon algorithm. I’m talking about the people in your town that are leaving restaurant reviews. Who are these creatures and why do I put so much faith in them when picking out a new restaurant?

Our annual travel for work, fun, and soccer has picked up in the past few years. In that time we’ve arrived at a new rule of thumb when looking for good food. Restaurants 4.5 and above. That may seem like a high bar, but we are batting 1000 when we deploy it. We end up having great experiences and even better food in every city we go to. Here too, a lot of the ABC challenge is driven off of recommendations from friends, but also online reviews.

So that is how we are operating, but that has also lead us to leaving reviews. If we had a good time we’ll drop a 5 star via Google so others might take the wisdom of the crowd and have a good time too.

Mike recently shared a link to an update on developer LocalThunk’s blog and I went digging around the rest of his site. His development timeline from 2021 to 2024 for Balatro is great. A peak into his journey from hobbyist game developer to threading the many needles necessary to make a hit game. Grab a cup of coffee and go read it too, but here are few moments that stood out for me:

I have been making games for about 10 years now and I have been doing visual art projects for much longer, and a very important habit I have developed for creative hobby projects is to stop working on something when I no longer feel the drive. This is for 2 main reasons; first, it allows me to move on to the next idea without totally burning out on the last thing. Second, and more importantly in this case, it allows me to take time off guilt free and possibly come back to the project later on without wrapping it in negative emotions.

None of my hobby’s lead to a passion day job, but I’ve struggled with the self-imposed stress of not progressing projects or getting burnt out and hating them countless times.

• My partner was learning to code in R at the time, and she asked me “How do you name your variables?” I went on some rant about casing, using descriptive words, underscores, etc. She waits until I am finished and says “I like to call mine thunk”. I thought that was just about the funniest thing I had ever heard.
• The way variables are declared in Lua is (sometimes) with the local keyword, thus local thunk was born! I wouldn’t choose this name for quite a while yet but this is the moment I looked back on when I was finally ready to create a developer handle online.

That’s an excellent naming origin, considering “Samichez” is just me thinking that is a fun way to say and spell sandwiches.

More ratings pour in, and by the time the day is done we are sitting above 90 on both Metacritic and OpenCritic. I wasn’t even thinking that this was a possibility, but it sure did build a ton of hype for launch day. I don’t think I would have rated Balatro higher than an 8 and I made the damn thing.

Him giving one of the best game’s since 2020 an 8 is really telling about how close and self-critical we can get to our own work and comparison to what other humans are making.

I hated to see Son leave Spurs this summer, but it was time. He went out on the highest note, delivering the club it’s first big trophy in 34 years. But seeing him move to LAFC and find joy early warms my heart. He reunited with Lloris too, it’s a great story so far. How long can I hold off on getting a Son jersey? We shall see!

After a 3 year hiatus A Life Well Wasted is back with it’s 9th episode since inception in 2009. A 16 year timeline feels insane, but also like the blink of an eye. Prior to making ALWW, I was a Robert Ashley fan when he was on GFW Radio and then Out of the Game. Like it was yesterday.

So here it is another Olly Moss cover piece and an excellent episode about the fall of a triple A videogame. The subsequent fall of the studio that made it, the people impact that had, and a reflection on the time, effort, and creativity that go into something that now doesn’t exist.

Bonus: Chris Plante just put out a new episode of Post Games that includes a behind the scenes with Ashley for his newest episode.

When we went to DC back in June we saw Josh Johnson who was excellent, but the unexpected treat was Mandal opening for him. I was aware of him from guest appearances on My Momma Told Me and Stavvy’s World. But hadn’t seen his stand up. Now I am seeing his stand up pop up all over. Old and new work with Rob Haze and now interviews with a bunch of great folks at Big Fun.

I can’t tell between his stand up, podcast, or comedic role as a manager to celebrities, which is his strongest suit. Thankfully I don’t have to. All of it is hilarious and every day he is popping up in more places. More Mandal comedy is all one can ask for right now.

After a drought, the Best Games of the 2020’s is back with a new entry, and a chill cat game comes off the board.

Lost in Random: The Eternal Die (2025) goes on at #39

The Eternal Die is a sequel to a game by the same title (Lost in Random) from 2021. This late in life it does not surprise me that I hadn’t heard of the original. I am old, busy, and so many games come out now. Also, turns out that didn’t matter.

The Eternal Die has plot and character ties to the game that spawned it, but gameplay wise it is a naked rip off of Hades (#4). That sounds cruel, but they pull it off. The combat is crisp and challenging, the rouge-like loop stimulates the “one more run” center of my brain, and the graphics/art direction are top stuff. Finally, Hades II is in early access, and already rating at the top of the 2025 critic list. But I’ve been avoiding playing it till they hit retail release, so The Eternal Die gets bonus points for helping me hold the line. It’s on Game Pass too!

Stray (2022) is slides out of 50th place. It had stellar art and world design, told an interesting story with very little dialogue, and had simplistic game mechanics that largely supported it’s best attributes.

I took a leap on Primal Planet. Once again it was a Besties recommendation, but I usually pair that with OpenCritic for the wisdom of the crowd. In this case that was 5 critic reviews at the time, that didn’t add up to enough consensus for them to score it yet. Regardless, the leap paid off.

Primal Planet released in late July from SeethingSwarm, a solo developer from Finland. The whole thing clocked in at 6-8 hours, played over the course of a weekend. That wasn’t a complete run, but did see me through the main plot. At it’s root it is a metroidvania lite, but without many of the gear/ability progression gates inherent to the genre.

Dinosaurs + Aliens as a theme is already a cheat code, but paired with strong platforming and semi-challenging combat is a great start. The pixel art and animation is peak SNES/Genesis and the sound track compliments it well. The upgrades via expanding your village and it’s inhabitants is a little under developed, but didn’t get in the way of progress. All in it was well crafted short game that well exceeds the $20 price tag. A nice high note to the recent wilderness.