Welcome to Short Musings about Short Video Games

Here goes nothing...

2023 has been a funny old year for me and with that comes a constant shift in life perspectives and priorities. That being said, video games have remained a constant throughout my life and whilst I haven’t played nearly as many games this year compared to those prior, I’ve recently acclimatised to a comfortable rhythm of simply playing the games I want to when I want to – whether that’s playing a game from 1996 or only playing Vampire Survivors for four months in a row. This isn’t really a major departure from my norm; I never intend to keep up with the busy release schedule; I probably play one big-budget blockbuster title every five years; I always gravitate to shorter, smaller, indie games; and I know which genres I gel with (if you like 80-hour long JRPGS, best to duck out now). 

More purposeful curation means the games I play these days are usually ones I really enjoy and would like to write about. And so, I’ve decided to do that here. I’ll still write the occasional review where the guys at OutofLives.net kindly host them, but those are more informative and more critical in tone whilst this blog will aim to feature more informal and more personal musings - sort of like a written version of my ramblings on Tanked Up Podcast.  

Even though I play far fewer games now, I don’t expect to write about every game I play, especially the ones I don’t like and/or don’t finish. Oftentimes those aren’t mutually exclusive; for example, I was loving Hi-Fi Rush earlier this year but life stuff got in the way and I still haven’t got back to it. It’ll still probably rank in my Top Ten list for the year though, so maybe I’ll write about games that I haven’t finished, providing I have enough to say. Maybe I’ll even write about games that I don’t consider to be “short”. I guess we’ll just have to see.   

So yeah, welcome to my newsletter which, at least for now, I’ll dub “Short Musings about Short Video Games”. Hopefully it’ll be interesting for those of you who know me and are also interested in the small, unique curios found in the depths and crevices of itch.io. Those and every Metroidvania I can get my hands on that will fill the void the ever-delayed Silksong has left in my soul. For those of you that don’t know me, I hope you’ll be able to get a feel for my personality from my writing in lieu of me composing what would be a very boring bio. For those of you who don’t know me or anything about video games, I don’t know how you got here but I hope you enjoy nonetheless! And most of all, I hope I can keep up with it; it’d be grand to look back in a year’s time and see a dozen or so posts under my belt, even if it’s just one a month and nobody but myself is reading.

If you’re still reading and made it this far, thanks for checking out this blog of sorts and be sure to sign up to the newsletter lest you miss any hard-hitting criticism about a niche 2D sidescroller you’ve never even heard of. By signing up you’ll be the first to find out how this newsletter changes, morphs and (optimistically) grows along with me. Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to start writing…