Category Archives: Your Mid-week Mission

[Game: Mewgenics, Edmund McMillen/Tyler Glaiel, 2026]
Across the Mewniverse:

On the Considerable Strengths and Notable Weaknesses of the Feline Tactics Game Mewgenics

  By ,

 

Introduction:

Mewgenics is a tactics games, meaning it resides in a subgenre of turn-based strategy games in which you move a team of units around a (usually grid-based) battlefield. That’s a type of game which has captured a lot of my time and attention over the past decade. A sampling of the titles matching that description which I’ve played to completion at least once in that time includes XCOM: Enemy Unknown, XCOM 2, XCOM: Chimera Squad, Phoenix Point, The Banner Saga, Ikenfell, Advance Wars, Advance Wars 2, Wargroove, Tactical Breach Wizards, Invisible, Inc., Chroma Squad, Civilization V, Into the Breach, SteamWorld Heist, SteamWorld Heist II, Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, and both the physical and digital versions of Gloomhaven.

And the games by Edmund McMillen and his collaborators that I’ve played through on a similar timescale include . . . all of them. All of them on Steam, anyway. Even Fingered, The Legend of Bum-Bo, and everything in The Basement Collection. I’ve also played Tyler Glaiel’s most famous project apart from his collaborations with Ed, the puzzle game Closure.

So, the question I’ll be answering here is: where do I find the time? Just kidding. The real question is: from that vantage point, how does Mewgenics stack up? How does it measure up to its peers in the tactics genre, and to the impressive catalogs of its creators?

Continue reading

[Game: Mewgenics, Edmund McMillen/Tyler Glaiel, 2026]
Across the Mewniverse:

On the Considerable Strengths and Notable Weaknesses of the Feline Tactics Game Mewgenics

 was last modified: March 25th, 2026 by Daniel Podgorski

[Game: Hollow Knight, Team Cherry, 2017]
Little Ghost in the Machine:

A Thorough Philosophical Analysis of Mind in Team Cherry’s Original Hollow Knight

  By ,

 

Introduction:

Hollow Knight offers one of the most engaging and intriguing experiences in the medium. Its engagement comes in equal measure from its sweeping orchestral music; intricate-yet-open level design; grand-yet-unobtrusive narrative; precise-yet-flexible mechanics; and charmingly illustrated and densely layered art. Its intrigue, on the other hand, derives principally from the fact that Hollow Knight is an interrogative text, meaning that it asks many more questions than it answers.

Some of its deliberate mysteries pertain to the history and plot of its world, but others are open thematic questions. The former group has been combed exhaustively by the game’s community since its release, but the latter have received comparatively paltry attention. The focus here, then, will be Hollow Knight’s oft-overlooked thematic questions, which predominantly revolve around the topics of intelligence and consciousness. To draw out what these questions are, why they are important, and why so many of them remain unanswered (in both the game and reality), in this analysis we will be primarily employing resources from the philosophy of mind.

Philosophy of mind is the field that covers (obviously) the mind—what it is, what it does, and how or if it relates to everything that isn’t the mind. Frameworks and concepts developed by those working in the field will help us to clarify Hollow Knight’s treatment of topics such as intellect, memory, thoughts, dreams, and, well, hollowness.

Continue reading

[Game: Hollow Knight, Team Cherry, 2017]
Little Ghost in the Machine:

A Thorough Philosophical Analysis of Mind in Team Cherry’s Original Hollow Knight

 was last modified: December 15th, 2025 by Daniel Podgorski

[Game: Spiritfarer, Thunder Lotus Games, 2020]
Spiritfarmer:

Comparing Fundamental Mechanics of Spiritfarer to the Same Mechanics in Stardew Valley

  By ,

 

Introduction:

In narrative, setting, and artstyle, Stardew Valley and Spiritfarer are very far apart: the former is about rejuvenating a grandparent’s abandoned farm and embracing a rural lifestyle in pixel art; the latter is about coaxing souls onto a boat and ferrying them to their final rest in high-res illustration. But in terms of tone and mechanics, they’re extremely similar. They’re both laid-back 2D indie management sims with farming, ranching, crafting, cooking, fishing, mining, beekeeping, foraging, rigid day-night cycles, base building that involves resource checklists, minigames for basic actions, optional co-op, slow traversal with fast travel nodes, and a cast of quirky NPCs that give quests and offer benefits if you make them happy.

Yet it is a stark fact to me that the implementation of the individual mechanics in that list is done, by and large, far better in Stardew Valley than Spiritfarer. For immediate clarity, I’m not here to point out that Stardew Valley is the more complete and varied experience. It’s true, but it’s also a trite, obvious, and uninteresting observation. Spiritfarer hasn’t received the boundless support and resources which allowed Stardew to steadily expand in features across the past decade. It is (of course) impressive that Stardew Valley, in a manner reminiscent of Terraria, has been subject to so much free expansion since its release. But that’s simply not what this article is about.

The comparison I’m here to make is between the handling of specific mechanical elements in Spiritfarer and the handling of the closest corresponding elements in Stardew. The quantity and variety of such elements in each game will be, for this exercise, ignored. Their aesthetic and narrative differences will also be mostly ignored here. They could swap themes and artwork and I’d be writing the same article. In fact, they could swap practically everything other than the details I’m about to discuss, and a session spent playing Stardew Valley would still be preferable—due to the mechanical functioning of many basic interactions with the gameworld.

Continue reading

[Game: Spiritfarer, Thunder Lotus Games, 2020]
Spiritfarmer:

Comparing Fundamental Mechanics of Spiritfarer to the Same Mechanics in Stardew Valley

 was last modified: December 17th, 2025 by Daniel Podgorski

[Game: Mini Motorways, Dinosaur Polo Club, 2019]
Mini Metrics:

5 Ways Mini Motorways Improves on the Studio’s Earlier Release Mini Metro

  By ,

 

Introduction:

Both Mini Metro and the studio’s more recent iteration on the formula, Mini Motorways, are a noticeable step up in execution from similar chill takes on the strategy genre such as Islanders and Reus. Unlike those other games, Dinosaur Polo Club’s mini city sims have a deceptively high skill ceiling, bear cohesive and striking visual styles, and include randomized elements in a way that offers a worthwhile challenge and texture rather than a source of frustration.

More than anything, though, what impresses me about Mini Metro and Mini Motorways is their elegance: the restraint of their visuals, including plain flat polygons and muted complementary colors to evoke utilitarian subway maps and route guides; the way their entire soundscapes are reliant on context-dependent sound effects and almost no music, starting things calm and naturally transitioning to a unique and sonorous cacophony later in a round; and the understated deftness of how the complexity of the playfield increases (in part) simply by zooming out the camera at a glacial, almost-imperceptible pace.

But the two games are not created equal. When the developers returned to the drawing board after Mini Metro and altered the design, I feel they took full advantage of that opportunity. Mini Motorways is a great example of what a video game sequel can and should do; despite feeling like an incredibly similar game in terms of both style and substance, it is a noticeable refinement of the template established by Mini Metro in numerous ways, five of which I’ll cover now:

Continue reading

[Game: Mini Motorways, Dinosaur Polo Club, 2019]
Mini Metrics:

5 Ways Mini Motorways Improves on the Studio’s Earlier Release Mini Metro

 was last modified: April 23rd, 2025 by Daniel Podgorski

[Game: Journey, thatgamecompany, 2012]
Not Lone nor Level Sands:

A Thorough Ecocritical Analysis of thatgamecompany’s Journey

  By ,

 

Introduction:

The first and most dominant visual motif of Journey is . . . sand. As the game begins, an unfathomably vast desert of fine-grain sand stretches in every direction. Clouds of it move through the wind, and block out the sky. The area is a beige-tan wasteland of desolate, arid sediment, which unimpeded winds have gathered into rhythmic and monotonous dunes. And directly before the player-character lies one such large ridge of sand. Trudging up this dune reveals a landmark: a distinctive bifurcated mountain thrusts through the sand up into the air, undaunted by its dusty environs, emitting a glow at the point of union between its dual peaks. The destination is set, and with a slide down the obverse of the dune, the eponymous journey begins. It won’t be until that journey is roughly 80 percent over that, on emerging from a tall cave-bound temple, one actually finally exits the dust, dirt, and sand.

Yet, for all this emphasis, I have found that extant analyses of Journey have disappointingly little to say about sand. That is, the landscapes of the game—so foregrounded by Journey’s lack of HUD, lack of dialogue, distant camera position, and relative mechanical simplicity—are treated as irrelevant set dressing by those who have provided interpretations of the game’s content.

Now, why does that matter? Well, because: it means that, though people pontificate endlessly about the vague resonances between Journey’s campaign and a human lifespan, and about the several arguable overlaps between some of its story beats and the religious beliefs of different human cultures, they have ignored some key details of its literal narrative, which are intimately connected to its setting. And in particular, they’ve thereby ignored a theme which this quiet game is trumpeting fairly loud: its allegorical discussion of a relationship between intelligent beings and their world.

Continue reading

[Game: Journey, thatgamecompany, 2012]
Not Lone nor Level Sands:

A Thorough Ecocritical Analysis of thatgamecompany’s Journey

 was last modified: October 24th, 2024 by Daniel Podgorski