A Not So Brave New World 🌐
不太美丽的新世界 🌐
📷 Nikon F4E
🎞️ Lucky SHD 400 (FF)
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Wise
Playing Terra Nil right now, and it's funny because from the promo stuff I thought I wouldn't like it much, yet I'm enjoying myself a lot. There's definitely a game design lesson to be leaned here.
I was absolutely correct in my assessment that the game feels like it's actively trying to make suspension of disbelief as hard as possible with its completely ridiculous mechanics that make absolutely zero sense. "That's... Not how that works at all!" Is basically playing on repeat in my brain.
Furthermore, the entire technosolutionist tenor of the game rubs me very much the wrong way. This compounds with the physics- and biology-defying (or perhaps -spiting) fictional layer in cases like the convenient magical radiation-absorbing buildings so that you can reverse radiation contamination with a few simple clicks to be extremely bad politics actually...
But... The mechanics do work together quite well to make interesting puzzles with good gameplay that includes satisfying variety and challenges. The art is wonderful, and the music and audio design are spot on. The the result of each level is immensely satisfying, and the pacing is excellent.
I guess the lesson I'm taking away from this is that really solid fundamentals can triumph over an absolute cacophony of ludonarrative dissonance. That doesn't mean that in every decision between ludonarrative harmony (or just straight up believability) and neat mechanics you should compromise towards mechanics, but it reinforces the idea that if you make the mechanics enjoyable in the abstract, players (or at least, players like me) will be willing to compromise a *lot* on whether it actually makes any sense for things to work that way.
I'm still bothered by the "use technology to fix everything" politics, which prevents this game from being one I'll enthusiastically recommend, but despite myself I am having a lot of fun with it.
#GameDesign #SolarPunk
The Story of the Two Towers IV 📖
双塔故事 IV 📖
📷 Nikon F4E
🎞️ Lucky SHD 400 (FF)
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The Look on the Bystander 👀
凝视旁观者 👀
📷 Pentax MX
🎞️ Ilford FP4 Plus 125 (FF), expired 1994
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Wise
Finished reading "The Trees" by Percival Everett.
Absurdist crime fiction as a vessel for some of American history's worst crimes.
In Money, Mississippi, a series of murders targets white residents, each leaving behind a corpse resembling Emmett Till. Two black MBI detectives investigate as the killings spread nationwide.
Detectives Jim & Ed's dry humor keeps it light enough for the horror to land harder. Haunting & thought provoking.
4/5 st…
Regression to the mean can explain saturation of #geomagneticStorms: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10757-4 -> Risks of solar storms may be underestimated warn researchers / New NASA Study Says Possibly No Limit to Solar Storm Effects: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/news/risks-of-solar-storms-may-be-underestimated-warn-researchers / https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/science-news/2026/07/15/new-nasa-study-says-possibly-no-limit-to-solar-storm-effects/
The NAACP on Tuesday launched a campaign
urging Black athletes, their families, alumni and fans to boycott athletic programs of public universities in states that “have moved to limit, weaken or erase Black voting representation”.
In the announcement of the
“Out of Bounds” campaign,
the civil rights giant name-checked eight states
– Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Georgia
– whose flagship public athletic progr…
Civic Museums VI🏛️
民间博物馆 VI 🏛️
📷 Pentax MX
🎞️ LUCKY SHD 400 (FF)
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Wise
Urban Ridicules ❌
都市的愚弄 ❌
📷 Pentax 6x7
🎞️ Ilford HP5 Plus 400 (6x7)
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Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire on Friday
with the largest initial public offering in stock market history for his rocket and AI company SpaceX.
The company is based in South Texas in a city controlled by Musk known as Starbase,
which SpaceX has operated from since 2014.
💥Environmental and conservation groups recently filed a federal lawsuit seeking to block a land swap approved by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that would give SpaceX more than