Ringed City is bittersweet for me, as a staunch Dark Souls 3 critic. In a sense it was finally what I was waiting for in a Souls sequel: Answers. Payoff. The game was finally gonna say something about the central events of the series. What is the Dark Soul? Where did the furtive Pygmy go, after being so easily forgotten? What was Gwyn so afraid of? What were the secrets that set Kaathe and his Darkwraiths or Yuria and her Church of Londor on their paths of dubious mischief? What was gonna be at the heart of it all, what would the grand mystery ultimately reveal itself to be?

But god damn do I hate the answers I got. Oh it was just a bunch of old dudes sitting in the desert dimension. Gwyn moved heaven and Earth to create a pocket-prison at the distant edge of the world just to lock up some fuckin geezers and I just…. I dont even know what I wanted. Would I have ever been happy with the answers? Was there any conclusion that could have pleased me? There IS a metaphor here, with Ringed City and the grand conclusion of the Dark Souls series.... but I guess I just pictured so much more. Maybe I was doomed from the start, so at least I can say all the bosses are excellent. They even had Old Monk 2.0 so how can I even really complain? It had a lil covenant to go with it and everything.

Alright, look: I very much want to have something to say about this DLC other than “Yes, I Do In Fact Remember Dark Souls 1” but there isnt a single piece of this content that isnt about the state of The Painted World in the far-flung cycles of the future, much like every other aspect of Dark Souls 3. Honestly, this would have been very cool if the base game had a more original focus and the trip down memory lane had been reserved exclusively for this DLC, but alas we’re in the suboptimal timeline where everything is "Pretty Good" but not "Great".

Heres some nice things I can say: wolves are cool, glad to see some big honkin wolves. Despite my qualms, its all very fun, running through winding woods and up and down cliffs and through the crusty bird-ass village and all that. And you know what, this one was the birthplace of Fromsofts absolutely deranged relationship with boss phases. They had the balls to not only have three phases on one fight, but four health bars. Absolutely zooted, Fromsoft became mad scientists pulling levers and screaming “Yess!” as the lightning crackled around them bringing new horrible concepts into existence.

Its hard on some level to talk at length about Ikachan, considering it is essentially a tech demo for Cave Storys engine, probably not even especially intended for major public consumption to begin with. In this case the value of Ikachan is in the small bit of biographical reference it represents for the oeuvre of one of, if not the original one-man dev of the modern indie scene.

Can you imagine that? That there was a time where video games were some marvelous, inscrutable concept exclusive to companies and professionals and experts in some high-tech ivory tower far away from your humble lil grocery store electronics section? Except that was never really the case behind closed doors, video games have always been the result of someone tinkering around. Even at a low-concept engineering level, you think they just know how to make the polygons happen? There wasnt major institutional knowledge until very recently but even in those cases theres alot of unorthodox fixes and incubations happening when devs have a moment to tinker. They might want to make you think otherwise but its always been more of an art than a science.

I think Ikachan is one of the first public-facing examples of the iterative practice inherent to the medium of making video games. It helps dispel the notion that video games are just the lofty piece of media the polished end product might lead you to believe they are. Video games are dynamic beasts that are often hard to nail down and capture at any single stage of development. Studio Pixel was one of the first to pull the curtain back and reveal the various stages of his own journey - and frankly even for what it is, Pixels impeccably charming and neat design sensibilities come through in Ikachans austere simplicity.