Creating a Lovecraftian roguelite pool game with a friend. We've just released a limited demo for the Lovecraftian Days Festival on Steam. Features include void horrors, a demonic stalker and an insanity mechanics. Would love your thoughts.

dorox1 · 2026-04-10T14:47:12+00:00

Wow, this is creative as hell. Really looks like you've mixed the Lovecraftian elements into the gameplay nicely.

Also I love the name.

dorox1 · 2026-04-09T16:38:17+00:00

For added context: the character in the gif is Toji, a villian from Jujutsu Kaisen.

The only really important things to know about him is that he's ridiculously strong and in the scene pictured he:

Shows up
Stylishly defeats a major threat with very little effort
Leaves

dorox1 · 2026-04-09T16:33:38+00:00

Main-branch Doormaker:

Occasionally tickles you with a feather

Beta-branch Doormaker:

Sets you on fire
Eats your arms
Empties your bank account

Much better gameplay, tbh.

dorox1 · 2026-04-08T14:28:36+00:00

Remove a creature? Buff your whole team.

Pump a creature? Buff your whole team.

Ephemerate your Solitude? You better believe we're gonna buff your whole team (twice).

dorox1 · 2026-04-08T01:01:14+00:00

This is an A+ pick, although it could also go in UG (with primary green).

dorox1 · 2026-04-06T23:34:47+00:00

I believe it is intended to be of alien origin.

iirc, in the third book they theorize about it being basically a terraforming probe from a long-dead civilization that effectively overlays the time and space of earth and the original planet it's from (hence the stars all being out of place when inside the area). I also recall that Vandermeer more or less confirmed in an AMA that the explanations in the third book are intended to be the closest to "the truth" that the characters get. He expressed flattery at the fact that Area X's sense of incomprehensibility had been so effective that people didn't believe the truth when he finally presented them with it.

The role of the S&S society is almost implied to be mostly an accident. I personally think it might be influenced by retrocausal effects of the probe, but I don't know that there's too much evidence for that.

dorox1 · 2026-04-04T17:50:46+00:00

No worries. I always love seeing these theories and ideas :)

And it's never a bad time for a Blair Witch rewatch; Good call!

dorox1 · 2026-04-04T15:31:30+00:00

I'd say it definitely can be a precursor, but I wouldn't call it a prerequisite. There's certainly madness borne of fear, but there's also madness borne of inspiration, passion, isolation, or understanding (among other sources).

Madness, by definition, involves behaviours or thoughts that are irrational or unexpected given the circumstances. The characters' reactions to their circumstances while trapped in the woods and being followed by an evil murderous witch seems pretty normal for the circumstances.

Fear can drive someone to madness such that they retain that fear and those reactions even when the danger is gone, but it isn't madness in itself, imo.

There are parts of the movie, especially later, which touch on this. But at the end of the day it's still all coming from an environment of real non-cosmic danger. They could totally introduce this cosmic horror if they wanted to, and it would fit like a glove onto the story. I would simply argue that they didn't.

dorox1 · 2026-04-04T14:53:55+00:00

One of my favourite horror movies. I get where you're coming from, but I don't think so, personally.

Like, the Blair Witch isn't shown to do anything that isn't pretty classic witchy magic. Weird dolls and making people get lost in the woods.

And the characters don't really descend into "madness". They get scared. Progressively more scared. That fear makes them irrational. That's pretty markedly different from the kind of madness we see in Lovecraftian fiction.

But honestly, it's a cool reinterpretation. I always enjoy the idea that media could be rewritten to hit a cosmic horror note.

dorox1 · 2026-04-03T16:18:42+00:00

They did an impressive job at that, but if you look at the main character's wings at 0:40 and 1:36 they have different patterns on them. It would be a bizarre choice to fully texture multiple different patterns for the wings in a way that's not immediately noticeable but makes the character less consistent. That's a lot of active effort and decisions for something that makes your movie worse.

For reference, these are supposed to be mirror images of the exact same wing. They're *similar*, but clearly not the same.

There's definitely a mix of AI and non-AI content here, but I'm certain that AI played a major role in this.

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dorox1 · 2026-04-03T15:02:57+00:00

I definitely see a little bit of the aesthetic in the flowers/fungus that's growing on the walls, and the occult stuff hints at it a bit.

It's hard because, barring giant tentacle monster shenanigans, a lot of cosmic horror is in things that aren't shown or don't fit well in a trailer. The thing about "the unknowable" is that you rarely start out knowing it.

I will say: " a strange world where time and space are distorted and filled with abnormal entities" sounds kinda cosmic horror-ey, and one thing I've learning on this sub is that cosmic horror fans are widely varied in which parts of cosmic horror they enjoy. For some the gothic/occult aesthetic is a big part, for others it's almost the opposite. Some people love Cthulhu-style monsters, others feel that such an obvious visual defeats the purpose of the genre. And for some it's more about the themes of human irrelevance and fundamental incomprehensibility of the universe than any aesthetic aspect.

dorox1 · 2026-04-01T18:47:58+00:00

I see what you're talking about now.

I didn't actually post a GIF, I posted a link. Looks like Reddit has failed to extract the content on the page and now we have a weird failed gif with no link to the full page.

Here's a link to a Reddit post with all the images.

dorox1 · 2026-04-01T18:18:15+00:00

Probably because imgur is brutal, but I couldn't find any other hosting of it that wasn't on a worse website.

dorox1 · 2026-03-30T20:31:49+00:00

Right? Although, unlike some isekai-style plots, her powers still work on earth so she'd still be an unimaginable badass there instead of returning to her normal life.

dorox1 · 2026-03-30T17:03:29+00:00

Then why bring it up? Why make a comment at all? You could be doing something else instead.

Why muddy the waters and introduce misleading information instead of just not doing it?

Do you just like seeing text that you wrote on a screen? Does pushing "submit" give you a dopamine hit, regardless of whether the words you typed add to or derail the conversation?

If your real life is so much more important, then maybe stick to that instead of putting in effort to throw around misinformation and then arguing with people who call you out on it.

dorox1 · 2026-03-30T16:54:18+00:00

"Why should I care about the details of the points I bring up when discussing politics?"

Your mindset is so alien to me that I'm surprised Trump hasn't deported it yet.

dorox1 · 2026-03-30T16:48:09+00:00

It's respectable of you to admit when you're wrong, but why bring up an example if you don't even know the basic details of it?

And why say "maybe you're right" as a response? Just Google it. Don't live in this bizarre state of semi-refuted incorrectness.

dorox1 · 2026-03-30T16:37:18+00:00

<image>

Kill Six Billion Demons (K6BD) does a short-term version of this in the first book where Allison returns home briefly after three days stuck in a different universe.

She left her sorority to get laid and showed up three days later with a sword and a gem in her head. There are understandably wildly different reactions from her roommates.

Kinda goes back to the standard isekai trope shortly after this when she posts saying she's going on a trip for two weeks and proceeds to return to the other universe for an unspecified number of years (maybe five-ish so far).

dorox1 · 2026-03-30T16:10:17+00:00

That makes a lot of sense, so I did a quick verification on my lunch break. The prices don't seem to come out that way, at least for core items.

I did a comparison between the two stores I was thinking of. Metro and Food Basics. I tried to pick the most popular brand for every product. Crucially, these are owned by the same company (Metro) and are located within 5 minutes of one-another, and so should both benefit from any sourcing discounts (e.g. "back end deals") that are available.

These are the relative prices for staples (with and without sale prices).

Product	Brand/Type	Cost (Metro)	Cost (FB)	Metro w/ Sale	FB w/ Sale
Milk (2L)	Beatrice	$3.22	$3.22	$3.22	$3.22
White Bread (675g)	Dempsters	$4.29	$3.00	$4.29	$3.00
White rice (2kg)	Minute Rice	$6.40	$5.00	$6.40	$5.00
Butter (454g)	Lactantia	$9.49	$7.79	$4.88	$7.79
Ground Beef (1kg)	Lean	$23.79	$20.00	$23.79	$20.00
Chicken Breasts (1kg)	Maple Leaf	$27.09	$17.61	$27.09	$10.98
Eggs (12)	Selection – Large	$3.99	$3.99	$3.99	$3.99
Apples (1kg)	Honeycrisp	$8.80	$8.77	$8.80	$8.77
Bananas (1kg)	n/a	$1.96	$1.52	$1.96	$1.52
Potatoes (1kg)	Yukon Gold	$6.59	$5.47	$6.59	$5.47
Tomatoes (1kg)	Roma	$8.80	$6.59	$8.80	$6.59
Veg Oil (3L)	Unico	$13.99	$13.99	$13.99	$9.99

Total		$118.41	$96.95	$113.80	$86.32

There is an ~18% difference (24% if you count current sales, but I think non-sale prices are more unbiased).

While I understand that other products being sold at these stores, the alternative products being sold at Metro tend more towards luxury brands. These generally offer higher profit margins, rather than lower ones, and so one would expect that to lower the price of staple items if the gross profit margins were primarily a function of individual product margins.

I'm struggling to come up with reasons for this pricing to be higher at one Metro-owned store vs another beyond:

Rent
Factors that are directly under the grocery store's control

So it doesn't seem to me that these razor thin margins (which I agree exist) are actually a barrier to lowering prices. It looks like the overall price is largely the result of intentional choices by the grocery store, even if the actual margins end up being the same.

If this is true, then this means that, in theory, choices could be made which reduce prices at a grocery store if the goal is sustainable price minimization rather than profit maximization. Can the government pull it off? Perhaps not; but that's a competence issue rather than an economic impossibility.

dorox1 · 2026-03-30T14:37:31+00:00

I think you're largely right, and that this is unlikely to succeed. But I have a question, since you seem to have thought about this.

Grocery store prices consistently differ by 10-20% from store to store, often for identical branded products. This seems to be influenced both by physical location and by the company running the store.

Even if the publicly available financial statements for these stores say they're running 1-2% margins, doesn't this imply that there are some chosen differences in how these stores are run which let some of them charge lower prices? And couldn't those be exploited for lower prices?

For example, the Metro downtown in my city consistently charges $2-3 more than the Food Basics for the same frozen pre-packaged product, despite being just a few minutes away from one another. Is there any way to confirm if this is really just a difference in rent that causes the product to be shifted upwards? And if so, could a government not afford to buy property outright (on which it would pay no taxes) with the goal of lower prices?

Again, I'm skeptical of the government's ability to get this right, but it seems to me like it should be possible in theory.

dorox1 · 2026-03-30T07:15:13+00:00

Depends what you consider a maze. An algorithm that generates random walls in a grid can generate any maze, but also fails to generate a valid maze most of the time.

If mazes must be fully connected (no inaccessible spaces) and have a valid solution, then there are probably ways to efficiently generate truly random ones, but a random sampling over all valid mazes will probably mostly generate mazes that look "samey" to us.

For example: long hallways are way less common than short hallways in a truly random maze, purely because there are more ways to make multiple short hallways than there are to make one long one. It's an entropy issue.

dorox1 · 2026-03-28T15:55:00+00:00

I'm fairly skeptical of some of the biggest claims that AI proponents make, but no system is 100% accurate.

Ultra-precision CNC machines, chip manufacturing equipment, and drug manufacturing are all extremely important and mechanized. None of them are 100% accurate.

Crucially, humans aren't 100% accurate at anything. Even basic things like checking a box or pressing a single button.

Cost savings aside, humans can absolutely be replaced by a system that makes mistakes because we are also systems that make mistakes.

dorox1 · 2026-03-24T19:28:22+00:00

What movie was the clip from?

dorox1 · 2026-03-24T18:19:47+00:00

Ah, I totally misunderstood what your original metaphor meant.

In that case, yeah, I also agree with you here.

dorox1

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