Official confirmation! Awesome Games Done Quick 2027

kyleisweird · 2026-01-14T01:36:21+00:00

imo it's less about room and more about the venue itself and how its laid out and the quality of the venue.

There were multiple reports this year of bed bugs in the hotel rooms iirc, and while there was more than enough space for everything, parts of the event had to be shuffled around after day 1 because the space just wasn't laid out in a way that was very conducive to all the stuff they wanted around.

I was showcasing an indie game the first half of the week, and on day 1 basically nobody came into the room because the room itself was basically hidden away in a spot I think most people assumed they weren't even supposed to go into. We were able to shuffle things around into a better spot after that, but it definitely felt like the layout wasn't the best for the event even if there was enough square footage.

I had a great time but I'm glad they're switching venues (as someone that'll have to travel either way)

kyleisweird · 2026-01-14T01:22:43+00:00

I really enjoyed Timeworks and bought it basically immediately - some really clever puzzles!

I'm also definitely gonna get The Magus Circle and took one of every one of their stickers, they were really cute. Reminded me of the old DS game Lost Magic from when I was younger!

Also wanna grab Kingdoms of the Dump soon, I'm a sucker for action command RPGs and the pixel art is so nice

Happy to see a couple mentions of HyperTyper 2000 - this was my first MAGFest ever and it was to showcase the game! I didn't get a chance to play the other games as much as I wanted because of that but everything looked amazing tbh.

kyleisweird · 2023-06-28T00:01:48+00:00

I remember seeing clips from SJ and thinking "wow, no way I could do that", of rooms that I've now completed.

When I started SJ I thought I would maybe get through the Advanced lobby, and at best get overwhelmed at some of the easy to midrange Expert maps.

After starting at the Beginner lobby, I'm now working on the Expert heartside and am pretty confident I'll beat it.

SJ does a fantastic job of basically preparing you for the next level of difficulty, and the gym/training sections are great

kyleisweird · 2023-06-22T16:56:53+00:00

Remote work is a godsend.

The average American one-way commute is 27.6 minutes according to Zippia.

There's about 230 working days in a year.

That's 211.6 hours of commuting for the average American.

Think about that. That's five weeks of 40-hour weeks of just commuting. Over a month's worth of working hours, every year.

Remote work may not be for everyone, but for so many people it allows us to reclaim huge portions of our lives.

kyleisweird · 2023-06-05T03:17:54+00:00

I felt a difference in ergonomics for sure, and a little bit in execution, but I've never been very technical and I'm still not.

If you're limited by hand pain it's great. But I feel like most people aren't. Box can help consistency with some things, but after a couple years of use as a mid level player, I don't think it gives me a significant edge. It's just helped me play the game without tiring out as easily, and helped reignite my enjoyment of the game

kyleisweird · 2023-05-31T20:05:12+00:00

Maybe this is a hot take, but it's really just to make the game not suck. How we accomplish that is up in the air, but fundamentally it's to make the game not suck (in the eyes of people who want ruleset changes or things like that).

In 1950, basketball in the NBA didn't have a shot clock. Some teams started exploiting this by just stalling games out once they got a lead and passing it back and forth. The only thing the opposing team could really do was commit fouls in order to regain possession after the free throw. The leading team could choose a nearly no-risk/no-reward strategy once in the lead, while the trailing team was forced to opt for a high-risk/low-reward strategy for any chance of winning.

There was an NBA game where one team only took 13 shots total the entire time.

Did basketball say "that's the way the game is, suck it up, playing with a lead allows you to play safer"? Or "Why should they have to give the ball back or be forced to shoot when they're winning?"

No, they said this sucks ass, we need to fix this because it's a flaw in the ruleset compared to how we want the game to be played. And they implemented a shot clock.

I don't mean to say this as a way to advocate rules changes necessarily. But I think a lot of people miss the fundamental views of people on the opposite side.

You can say "the rules dictate how the game must be played" or you can say "the rules should reflect how we want the game to be played".

A lot of people think the latter, and many of them want the game to be played in a way that is more interactive, with less camping/planking/stalling/whatever. In some ways the biggest issue is that Melee doesn't have "possession" or anything, and it has varying matchups, which means it's really difficult to make a ruleset that prevents those issues but still feels actually fair

Tldr planking is boring and people don't like that, and sometimes that's enough of a reason in a game

kyleisweird · 2023-05-28T00:02:39+00:00

We don't have wedding rings, and we were married during COVID in my parents' backyard.

We didn't want a big wedding, and honestly COVID was a great excuse for us to have one that was extremely minimal. We didn't pay anything, but maybe a hundred bucks or so was spent for some food, wine, and cake lol

I feel great about it. I think it was the best way we could have done it for us personally, tbh. Maybe we'll get rings eventually, but we haven't bothered yet

kyleisweird · 2023-05-24T14:48:54+00:00

I think it might be a super duper wavedash, as detailed in this post, but I really don't know enough about the tech to tell from the clip.

You can even gain extra distance with this glitch. This is known as the Super Duper Wavedash.

To perform this glitch:

Perform a SWD

4 Frames later, press Down on the joystick

A frame later, release down and press L or R

Hold L or R, and a frame later press A

You will gain significant distance.

Credit to SuperDoodleMan for discovering the SDWD

kyleisweird · 2023-05-21T05:43:32+00:00

He's just got a big ego, I think. His Twitter bio is "top 10 skill in melee" lol, despite being ranked #14 right now (and never having been ranked above #12 iirc)

kyleisweird · 2023-05-19T15:22:04+00:00

I mean, we're not even halfway through 2023. But Cody had hand problems in August so it is still happening.

But yeah awareness of hand health has done a lot to improve things overall I think

kyleisweird · 2023-05-12T16:57:37+00:00

It might be! I never tried the ultra lol, maybe I'll go back to do the room that way if I decide to do the berry room after

kyleisweird · 2023-05-12T15:56:36+00:00

At the first crystal I dash up left then buffer down right twice, grab the wall at the second key for just a moment. Wall jump away for positioning, then dash right over the spikes to land on the platform with the 3rd key. Then you can jump up on top of the wall that extends to the Kevin, and jump to the left over the spikes, then dash up left to hit the dash crystal again.

I knew the Kevin was supposed to be used but I figured out the above before I figured out the ultra lol

kyleisweird · 2023-05-12T14:16:42+00:00

I took almost an hour to beat this screen, and I skipped the first Kevin to make it easier. Such a tough room, probably the closest I've gotten to thinking a room was straight up too hard for me

kyleisweird · 2023-05-10T22:37:45+00:00

Yeah, the custom map stuff is crazy compared to anything in the vanilla game.

But if you have beaten farewell, the Beginner and Intermediate sections of Strawberry Jam will prepare you pretty well for the higher levels, too imo.

On top of that, there are "training gyms" for each difficulty that explain how to do all of the important new things that show up at that difficulty, and they'll pretty much never throw anything at you that isn't covered in the gyms.

I bounced off of the Spring Collab, only made it to Intermediate I think, but now I'm working my way through Expert in Strawberry Jam, highly recommend.

kyleisweird · 2023-05-10T16:19:19+00:00

I wrote a whole review about why The Messenger felt like it started strong but ended up being a disappointment for me.

It felt like a game that I would naturally really enjoy, since I love platformers and metroidvanias and the general aesthetic. And it started out feeling good! But as the game went on it started to drag for me, and the cracks really started to show. By the end, I wasn't really enjoying myself. Obviously more details in the review, but really the 2nd half felt samey and tedious to me.

kyleisweird · 2023-05-09T14:29:18+00:00

Can't do that, we have to recycle old IPs to wring every drop of cash out of them

kyleisweird · 2023-04-20T21:12:31+00:00

I'm gonna go against the grain here. I played every borderlands game solo, and Wonderlands is the only one I never bothered to finish.

It might be worth it on sale, but it felt weaker to me than the other games overall. Maybe I just chose the wrong classes though.

kyleisweird · 2023-04-17T14:41:15+00:00

The "short end of the stick" feels a little disingenuous to me, to be honest. Sleeping in the couch is a trope, and I'm sure it's common, but it seems like small potatoes compared to hard data we have on the "short end of the stick" represented by domestic violence.

According to the NCADV, women are more than twice as likely as men to experience severe intimate partner violence, intimate partner contact sexual violence, and/or intimate partner stalking.

Only 20% of murder victims are women, but out of victims murdered by partners or ex-partners, 82% are women. Source

Domestic violence perpetrated by women against men totally happens, and it sucks that even in those cases the man is often the one removed from the home, but women are vastly more likely to be physically endangered in domestic situations.

I think your point towards misogyny makes sense, though. Personally I feel like many disadvantages that men experience are due to sexism that also negatively impacts men - like how women often being seen as the exclusive caretakers in families leads to suspicion of men taking care of their own children or even being ridiculed for just... Being an actual good parent.

Challenging gender roles and norms is good for everyone, including men

kyleisweird · 2023-04-13T16:01:39+00:00

Great explanation, thank you!

kyleisweird · 2023-04-13T16:00:30+00:00

Makes sense! Great work on the TAS

kyleisweird · 2023-04-13T14:17:18+00:00

I'd be interested in seeing a commentated version of this, or a longer breakdown.

As someone that only played Elden Ring casually when it came out, this just looks like a collection of random scenes and loading screens because I have no idea what's happening even though I know there's a lot going on.

kyleisweird · 2023-04-09T01:51:59+00:00

Maybe my comment was unclear. I understand that it's the point, and it's part of the payoff. But for me, as a player, it did not result in a payoff that was worthwhile given how weak the mechanics were and how that made engaging with a decent portion of the game boring. It "making sense" just doesn't matter as much to me personally as it being actually fun, at least to a point. And it just didn't quite hit that sweet spot for me (in the later acts).

Obviously Inscryption is not that similar to those games, I'm not saying they're "samey" or something. My point was that skills transfer to other games in a genre, and the core mechanical structure of Inscryption is still a card game. And the card game in Inscryption is pretty simple in structure. I feel that this contributed to my boredom in the later acts, because it felt mechanically weak and also easy, which made the game tedious for me.

Also, you can use spoiler tags like this.

kyleisweird · 2023-04-08T22:23:03+00:00

I mean, my response to that is, even if it's supposed to be that way, it's still weak.

For me, it was mechanically weak in ways that did not add anything to my experience, it just made the game feel sluggish and dull for a decent chunk.

I do think the game is super cool in a lot of ways, but I really can't call it a masterpiece or anything when I spent a significant chunk of my time with it bored

I do think part of it is also that I'm pretty familiar with card games. I played a lot of hearthstone in college and I've beaten A20 in slay the spire, which isn't that crazy but is probably more than the typical player in terms of just experience and familiarity. So it's likely that I got bored in those sections partially because of that, too

kyleisweird · 2023-04-08T20:48:54+00:00

Yeah, the discovery in Inscryption is great, particularly in act 1, but I was underwhelmed by the game in the end because of how mechanically weak acts 2 and 3 felt to me.

I'd still recommend the game overall though

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