Blippo+ is more of a unique means of telling a story than a game. I’m brought to mind of Portal, not Valve’s 2007 weird kinetic puzzle-action game, but Activison’s 1986 even weirder storytelling experience, about exploring a planet-wide information system to discover what happened to its missing inhabitants. In both Blippo+ and (older) Portal, all the “gameplay” is in a system of presenting information to the viewer/reader.

There is a story that progresses through a series of updates. On the Playdate it was timelocked, so it was like it was passing in real time. In the new Steam and Switch versions, the story unfolds more at your own pace; after you’ve seen most of one set you can “download” the next “packette” of shows, but also go to previous packettes whenever you feel like it.

I said shows, because Blippo+ presents itself as the television of a distant planet. I have avoided calling it an alien planet, because it’s really a lot like Earth, and while there’s definitely some unexpected elements (a scientist talks to long-dead inhabitants who are brains in jars) most of it you wouldn’t have been surprised to have seen on Earth TV in the early 90s. There’s a self-centered teen show, an exercise program, an entertainment news show that feels like it’s from the MTV of old, a show with a character much like Max Headroom, and many other callbacks to cable television of three decades past. There’s even a scrambled porn channel, although there’s really no porn behind it, other than “Tantric Computing,” which is but video clips of a lady’s hand lovingly fondling old-style computer mice and monitors.

There’s a show about two space-faring cowboys. A claymation kids show. The “Fighting Trillions” series of action movies, of which we only ever see trailers, narrated by a virtual soundlike of the late, great Gary Owens. (All of the shows have really great voice acting!) A D&D-themed trivia gameshow. The weird Julia Child-like cooking show Snacks Come Alive. And more. One of the shows is just different kinds of static. Another is info cards for local programming. The “Tips” channel is, wonderfully, just a sequence of error messages.

It’s all rounded off with a Preview Guide-style program listing channel, and a Ceefax-like information presentation service that’s somehow one of the most affecting parts of the whole package.

Each show, of about 20 in all, is only two minutes long. It’s easy to load it up and watch the entire contents of one or two of the channels, either intently or as background to other things.

It really needs to be experienced to get the idea across. This collection of first week clips on Youtube (11 minutes) that should demonstrate to you what it’s like.

Blippo+ (Playdate $10, Steam $15, Switch $15 currently on sale for $12)

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“We scour the Earth web for indie, retro, and niche gaming news so you don’t have to, drebnar!” – your faithful reporter

Scott Stein at CNet (they’re still around) says his favorite gadget of the year was the Playdate.

Wes Fenlon at PC Gamer says that Tarn and Zach Adams, have become millionaires from the Steam release of Dwarf Fortress. Earth blogger John Harris, a.k.a. rodneylives, says they’ve communicated with Tarn several times, including a couple of interviews at Game Developer (formerly Gamasutra), and that this could not have happened to nicer people. The article notes that, despite the windfall, they’re being cautious with the money. Steam DF was made specifically because the brothers need healthcare, and whatever long tail DF has is pretty much it, since they aren’t making a sequel or expansion pack.

At Inverse, Mo Mozuch describes the accomplishments of Carol Shaw, creator of Activision’s Atari VCS hit River Raid, one of the first vertically-scrolling shooters, and early woman pioneer in gamedev.

Rock Paper Shotgun’s C.J. Wheeler tells of a situation where the developer and publisher of The Outbound Ghost are feuding, which resulted in the game being temporarily pulled from Steam. Lead dev Conrad Grindheim has accused publisher Digerati of unethical practices, and Digerati claims to have been “blindsided” by the accusations.

Anthony Wood at IGN has a piece noting that, while Sonic Frontiers certainly has vocal detractors, that hasn’t stopped it from selling 2.5 million copies!

There is a great article on PC Gamer from Corwin Hayward about controversy with a certain extremely rare mount in World of Warcraft that, due to a couple of bugs, became extremely unrare among a small base of players for a short while. It’s a primer about the way the game’s loot system has been perceived and exploited for over a decade, and how it finally resulted in the relaxing of a whole category of ultrarare mounts. The article is long but very rewarding!

NPG’s Megan Lim speaks with Atari founder Nolan Bushnell on 50 years of Pong. Bushnell’s always been a bit of a huckster figure, but I’m glad he’s still kicking and talking with folk.

Scott McCree at Nintendo Life has a review of River City Girls 2 from favorite developer Wayforward! His premise is that it’s great, but ultimately not really differentiated from the original that much?

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“We scour the Earth web for indie, retro, and niche gaming news so you don’t have to, drebnar!” – your faithful reporter

Found on Nintendo Everything and reported by Brian, the Wii shop channel is back online after an absence of months. It had been down for “maintenance.” Mind you, it’s still impossible to buy software that hadn’t been purchased before 2019. It’s still just a way to reacquire things you had already bought. Sigh.

Ed Smith at PCGamesN notes a speedrunner at this year’s SGDQ has admitted to faking parts of his run, passing off a played-back video instead of performing it in real time, and has been banned from future events. While SGDQ was held in person this year, a few of their runs were still done remotely, and the faked run was one of those. The player in question is Mekarazium, and the run was for Metal Gear Rising (focusing eyes on paper) “Revengeance.”

At NintendoLife, Alana Hauges reviews Square Enix’s remake of the classic Japan-only JRPG anthology Live-A-Live, which I’m given to understand is pronounced like “Lighve Alive,” with long-I sounds. It’s been given the Octopath Traveler treatment, with pixel art akin to the original game placed in a 3D environment. It’s structured like a collection of short stories, all greatly different from the others. I have experience with the original game, and it contains several extremely interesting sections, including a space mystery, a Wild West puzzle segment, and a hugely complex and interesting ninja infiltration scenario where the player has to make many choices that each affect the outcome. While in the end all of the stories are linked together, on their own each is a small complete game in its own right. It’s long been a shame that the game as been unknown outside of Japan, and I’m excited to see it getting a chance elsewhere.

CBR’s Zachary Pilon rhetorically asks, why are roguelikes so popular? WHY INDEED IT IS AN MYSTERY. (Note: rodneylives spent like four years writing about them back at GameSetWatch.)

At The Verge, Andrew Webster states that the Playdate’s launch was a unique opportunity for small dev. People who bought the device have access to a number of games released periodically in a “season,” but software can also be loaded onto the system separately, and itch.io has an active community of these developers.

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Polygon’s Nicole Carpenter: 22 Games To Look Forward To In 2022. They are: The Garden Path, Venba, Citizen Sleeper, Call Me Cera, Dordogne, Serial Cleaners, Frank And Drake, Chinatown Detective Agency, Spirit Swap: Lowfi Beats To Match-3 To, Mothmen 1966, A Shiba Story, Validate: Struggling Singles In Your Area, Super Space Club, She Dreams Elsewhere, Hindsight, Norco, Terra Nil, Card Shark, Bear And Breakfast, Afterlove EP, Silt, and Thirsty Suitors. Descriptions and videos are in the article!

Looking back over their history, and forward to that Metaverse thing Zuckerberg things is something new and ground breaking, is Lessons From 19 Years in the Metaverse. That’s from an Atlantic newsletter. You might be interested in New World Notes, a long-running blog covering Second Life. They linked to an old Daily Show with Jon Stewart piece “covering” Second Life.

Group recreates New York City in Minecraft, part of a project to reconstruct the whole damn world.

Polygon’s Ben Betoli looks into the Playdate‘s crank control.

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