HELLO! THANK U FOR SUBSCRIBING TO SCIENCE MT. GUIDE TO LIFE AND SCIENCE!
SCIENCE GREETING ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻
THIS NEWSLETTER COMPRISES ESSENTIAL AND INTERESTING SCIENCE UPDATES FOR INSTRUCTION AND EDIFICATION OF ALL SCIENCE LIFE, EVERY BEING THUS DRAWN FORWARD IN SCIENCE AND UNITED IN THE HEAT OF COMMON SCIENCE, ACTIVATING SELF AND OTHERS IN THE CAREFUL JOB OF SCIENCE EYES, NOTICING ALL FORMS AND SOMETIMES INHABITING THEM. -- TRUE SCIENCE VISION
READ ON::::
FOR LATEST SCIENCE AND INSTRUCTIONS FOR OPERATION:
It's pretty easy to forget how much of a wild west the late 2000s and early 2010s were for indie games. The separation we have from this epoch has seen the chaff decomposed and rendered inert for the prosperity of a chosen few. What we are left with is arguably the best of the best, but only by the standards of the day and of the now.
In time, those works which dared to do the oblique and the unique resurface as internet weirdos, myself included, try to find and claim some dustcaked artefact as a harbinger of great things to come, of tremendous unseen influence. For me it's Geograph Seal, for others it might be Ultra Resort Keroncuel or Otocky, perhaps Ryan Trecartin's feature-length video I-Be Area or Ingrid de Kok's poems collected in Terrestrial Things. It might not even need to be something we think is intrinsically good. Our encomia need only point at these figureheads and say 'this did it first, this did it best, this did what we love but look how neglected it is and was and shall always be'. In reality this praise often amounts to little more than a celebration of a trivia nugget which will no doubt be unsheathed whenever it is most apt and most pedantic.
The reason I bring all this up is so *I can now be that asshole and laud FJORDS for being so forward thinking in the miasma of Obama-era indie gaming.
IT IS OK!!!
SCIENCE PRACTITIONER!!!
☻ IT IS OK ☻
The game-breakery of Baba Is You is clearly on display in FJORDS*, although without the same player-authoritative wanton illogic seen in Arvi Teikari's work. This seemingly stiff platformer effectively pushes the player to a wall where they're forced to close out of the game or interact with its in-universe terminal. The commands available are sparse and obtuse. TRAVEL is a fast travel with two locations, the starting Pizza Place and right outside the Pizza Place. SET allows the player to toggle on and off certain aspects of the world with some options being inscrutable. SETting WATERFALLS to F is intuitive, but at no point has the player encountered a BOMB, or a GHOST, or MAGIC, or an ESCALATOR.
So maybe you change the settings of some of these just to see what will happen and proceed apace. ESCALATORs litter the landscape now. WATERFALLs have run dry. Grapple your way up and
W̶͍͊̄͋͘͝A̴̧͓̭̫͚̲̎̈̇̏̄̂R̸͚̹̦̠̻̗̋̎͛̉P̶͉̻̩̱̆̈͋
̶̧̮̗̯̤͆̀̀͂̃̈͐
you are levitating in a miasma of desaturated blues and browns, deconstructed sprites surround your bubble, stay calm and find your place and
G̴̤̈́O̵͓͋ ̴̨̋Ā̷̻N̵̟̒Y̷̪͒W̷͖̓H̷͉̀E̶͙̓R̵̭̿E̵͈̿ ̷̥́Ẃ̷̨I̶͚͌T̴̨̑H̸̼̄ ̶͍͆S̷̥̈́C̵̺̈́I̴͕͆E̴̝͝N̶̥̈C̷͕͐E̵̛͕
What follows with this revelation is that the water hazards and ferries and blocks are mere suggestions of where the player can go. With DOORS, water is a non-truth. With MAGIC, ascension does not depend on a ceiling. With WARP, the world is ripe for exploitation and exploration.
U KNO WUT I LUV ☻
P I Z Z A ☻
And with enough faffing about you come across another pixel person and get teleported back to the start. And you do it some more. Maybe you fall into an endless hell abyss where you who are not you ceaselessly spews the letter K as a plea of self-destruction.
In time your exploration of the world suggests...
THE WORLD, BEING IN REALITY SEVERAL WORLDS, AND UNITED ONLY TENUOUSLY, THE PRACTITIONER OF SCIENCE INHABITS ALWAYS THE KNOWLEDGE OF SEVERAL, AND IS SEVERAL AND MANY.
The self has been lost in dead ends with no escape, logical ends for a journey in the quest to explore and deliver pizza. Or maybe it hasn't, maybe these aren't you, maybe they are just signifiers of progress.
U KNO WUT I LUV ☻
P I Z Z A A A A A A A A A A A ☻
This is only half the story, however, and if anything this self-made ruleset isn't even the most interesting aspect of FJORDS.
This is a SHARECART1000 game. A brief flicker of an idea with minimal documentation online, with no explicit creator, with a bizarre purpose. SHARECART titles all use the exact same savefile, meaning your progress in FJORDS affects your save for Michael Brough's POST-FUTURE VAGABOND, for Theta Games' A Colored Topology, Andy Sum's ap drive, Damian Sommer's YOUAREABOUNTYHUNTER. Your play order of these titles thus affords you a wholly different experience to everyone else. FJORDS is not limited to how it can be broken in-game, but across games. The SHARECART1000 idea is the hypothetical notion of blockchain gaming a decade before your mom asked you what a bitcoin was. It's a crossplay not for one game across platforms, but for one platform across games. And like those blockchain games from the beginning of the 2020s, a lot of those SHARECART1000 titles are effectively lost to time.
For as much as I love Michael Brough's work, I might never get to play POST-FUTURE VAGABOND. I can't even get some of the still-online titles to work with FJORDS. There is this incredible idea of an indie landscape that is non-accessible to me and will probably never be accessible again since it withered on the vine.
What else are we missing out on?
IN THE UNLIKELY EVENT OF TERMINAL WORLDS DISSOLUTION
IT IS THE EXPRESS RESPONSIBILITY OF ANY SCIENCE PRACTITIONER TO MAKE IMMEDIATE AND TIMELY REPAIR TO THE FOLLOWING VARIABLES
As a queer historian, my research has operated at the far periphery of a history that society sought to erase entirely. What is available is largely circumstantial, or self-referential, or operates on assumptions, or makes up a truth where one is absent. It is a pain in my heart. Of course information must inevitably be destroyed in an increasingly unstable world and universe. Nothing will survive the passage of time.
And yet, you and I and all of us should take the time to exhume those forgotten soldiers, to look at our past with reverie and curiosity.
Look for the weird, the esoteric, the obscure, the forgotten, the misconstrued, the auxiliary.
Dig deeper.
Write about it.
Share it.
U KNO WUT I LUV ☻
P I Z Z A
U KNO WUT I LUV ☻
U R P A S S I O N ☻
Recommended by roboSteven as part of [this list]
SCIENCE GREETING ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻
THIS NEWSLETTER COMPRISES ESSENTIAL AND INTERESTING SCIENCE UPDATES FOR INSTRUCTION AND EDIFICATION OF ALL SCIENCE LIFE, EVERY BEING THUS DRAWN FORWARD IN SCIENCE AND UNITED IN THE HEAT OF COMMON SCIENCE, ACTIVATING SELF AND OTHERS IN THE CAREFUL JOB OF SCIENCE EYES, NOTICING ALL FORMS AND SOMETIMES INHABITING THEM. -- TRUE SCIENCE VISION
READ ON::::
FOR LATEST SCIENCE AND INSTRUCTIONS FOR OPERATION:
It's pretty easy to forget how much of a wild west the late 2000s and early 2010s were for indie games. The separation we have from this epoch has seen the chaff decomposed and rendered inert for the prosperity of a chosen few. What we are left with is arguably the best of the best, but only by the standards of the day and of the now.
In time, those works which dared to do the oblique and the unique resurface as internet weirdos, myself included, try to find and claim some dustcaked artefact as a harbinger of great things to come, of tremendous unseen influence. For me it's Geograph Seal, for others it might be Ultra Resort Keroncuel or Otocky, perhaps Ryan Trecartin's feature-length video I-Be Area or Ingrid de Kok's poems collected in Terrestrial Things. It might not even need to be something we think is intrinsically good. Our encomia need only point at these figureheads and say 'this did it first, this did it best, this did what we love but look how neglected it is and was and shall always be'. In reality this praise often amounts to little more than a celebration of a trivia nugget which will no doubt be unsheathed whenever it is most apt and most pedantic.
The reason I bring all this up is so *I can now be that asshole and laud FJORDS for being so forward thinking in the miasma of Obama-era indie gaming.
IT IS OK!!!
SCIENCE PRACTITIONER!!!
☻ IT IS OK ☻
The game-breakery of Baba Is You is clearly on display in FJORDS*, although without the same player-authoritative wanton illogic seen in Arvi Teikari's work. This seemingly stiff platformer effectively pushes the player to a wall where they're forced to close out of the game or interact with its in-universe terminal. The commands available are sparse and obtuse. TRAVEL is a fast travel with two locations, the starting Pizza Place and right outside the Pizza Place. SET allows the player to toggle on and off certain aspects of the world with some options being inscrutable. SETting WATERFALLS to F is intuitive, but at no point has the player encountered a BOMB, or a GHOST, or MAGIC, or an ESCALATOR.
So maybe you change the settings of some of these just to see what will happen and proceed apace. ESCALATORs litter the landscape now. WATERFALLs have run dry. Grapple your way up and
W̶͍͊̄͋͘͝A̴̧͓̭̫͚̲̎̈̇̏̄̂R̸͚̹̦̠̻̗̋̎͛̉P̶͉̻̩̱̆̈͋
̶̧̮̗̯̤͆̀̀͂̃̈͐
you are levitating in a miasma of desaturated blues and browns, deconstructed sprites surround your bubble, stay calm and find your place and
G̴̤̈́O̵͓͋ ̴̨̋Ā̷̻N̵̟̒Y̷̪͒W̷͖̓H̷͉̀E̶͙̓R̵̭̿E̵͈̿ ̷̥́Ẃ̷̨I̶͚͌T̴̨̑H̸̼̄ ̶͍͆S̷̥̈́C̵̺̈́I̴͕͆E̴̝͝N̶̥̈C̷͕͐E̵̛͕
What follows with this revelation is that the water hazards and ferries and blocks are mere suggestions of where the player can go. With DOORS, water is a non-truth. With MAGIC, ascension does not depend on a ceiling. With WARP, the world is ripe for exploitation and exploration.
U KNO WUT I LUV ☻
P I Z Z A ☻
And with enough faffing about you come across another pixel person and get teleported back to the start. And you do it some more. Maybe you fall into an endless hell abyss where you who are not you ceaselessly spews the letter K as a plea of self-destruction.
In time your exploration of the world suggests...
THE WORLD, BEING IN REALITY SEVERAL WORLDS, AND UNITED ONLY TENUOUSLY, THE PRACTITIONER OF SCIENCE INHABITS ALWAYS THE KNOWLEDGE OF SEVERAL, AND IS SEVERAL AND MANY.
The self has been lost in dead ends with no escape, logical ends for a journey in the quest to explore and deliver pizza. Or maybe it hasn't, maybe these aren't you, maybe they are just signifiers of progress.
U KNO WUT I LUV ☻
P I Z Z A A A A A A A A A A A ☻
This is only half the story, however, and if anything this self-made ruleset isn't even the most interesting aspect of FJORDS.
This is a SHARECART1000 game. A brief flicker of an idea with minimal documentation online, with no explicit creator, with a bizarre purpose. SHARECART titles all use the exact same savefile, meaning your progress in FJORDS affects your save for Michael Brough's POST-FUTURE VAGABOND, for Theta Games' A Colored Topology, Andy Sum's ap drive, Damian Sommer's YOUAREABOUNTYHUNTER. Your play order of these titles thus affords you a wholly different experience to everyone else. FJORDS is not limited to how it can be broken in-game, but across games. The SHARECART1000 idea is the hypothetical notion of blockchain gaming a decade before your mom asked you what a bitcoin was. It's a crossplay not for one game across platforms, but for one platform across games. And like those blockchain games from the beginning of the 2020s, a lot of those SHARECART1000 titles are effectively lost to time.
For as much as I love Michael Brough's work, I might never get to play POST-FUTURE VAGABOND. I can't even get some of the still-online titles to work with FJORDS. There is this incredible idea of an indie landscape that is non-accessible to me and will probably never be accessible again since it withered on the vine.
What else are we missing out on?
IN THE UNLIKELY EVENT OF TERMINAL WORLDS DISSOLUTION
IT IS THE EXPRESS RESPONSIBILITY OF ANY SCIENCE PRACTITIONER TO MAKE IMMEDIATE AND TIMELY REPAIR TO THE FOLLOWING VARIABLES
As a queer historian, my research has operated at the far periphery of a history that society sought to erase entirely. What is available is largely circumstantial, or self-referential, or operates on assumptions, or makes up a truth where one is absent. It is a pain in my heart. Of course information must inevitably be destroyed in an increasingly unstable world and universe. Nothing will survive the passage of time.
And yet, you and I and all of us should take the time to exhume those forgotten soldiers, to look at our past with reverie and curiosity.
Look for the weird, the esoteric, the obscure, the forgotten, the misconstrued, the auxiliary.
Dig deeper.
Write about it.
Share it.
U KNO WUT I LUV ☻
P I Z Z A
U KNO WUT I LUV ☻
U R P A S S I O N ☻
Recommended by roboSteven as part of [this list]
Reviewed on Oct 18, 2022