This game came out of nowhere for me. I hadn't heard of it or seen previews for it until it was released. I saw a trailer that made me add it to my wishlist to maybe purchase if it went on sale. But when I overheard a co-worker talking about it, I decided to go ahead and purchase it and start playing, so that we would have an opportunity for some water cooler talk.

Blue Prince is, at the simplest level, a puzzle game. But simply calling it a "puzzle game" doesn't quite do it justice, because it is a wholly unique blend of different video game genres, all packaged together in a way that feels more like a board game. It is a puzzle game, for sure, but it is also a rogue-like, and an adventure game (in the vein of classic 90's point-and-clicks). It utilizes a unique tile-placement mechanic that feels almost like playing a digitized version of a board game akin to Betrayal At House On The Hill (minus the overt horror theming).

The player takes on the role of a young heir to a family estate. But the inheritance comes with a catch! The house has a shape-shifting layout, with each room being placed from a pool of randomly-selected rooms, each time you open a new door. In order to earn the inheritance, the player character must navigate the shifting mansion, solve its myriad puzzles, and find your way to the elusive, hidden 46th room. But there's another catch! You cannot take anything from outside into the mansion, nor can you remove anything from the mansion, and its layout resets each day. This creates the rogue-like element.

Blue Prince's room-drafting mechanic feels similar to a tile-placement tabletop game.

Each day, you have a finite amount of stamina, and when that stamina runs out, you are forced to your campsite outside the home to rest for the night. When you wake up the next morning, you will have to start the exploration of the house over again from scratch. Well, mostly from scratch. You'll be armed with the accumulated knowledge from your previous explorations, as well as some permanent upgrades.

As such, Blue Prince straddles the line between "rogue-like" and "knowledge-based" game. The vast majority of the board resets each day, but you do keep some persistent elements of progress, so you don't have to memorize everything or repeat the same steps for certain activities over and over again, every time.

A puzzling house

Blue Prince is a heavily-randomized game, for the better and the worse. Every time you open a new door, you'll be given a choice of 3 semi-randomly-selected rooms to draft on the other side of the door. Opening certain doors requires the use of keys, and certain rooms may require that you spend gems, both of which can be collected within the mansion. Rooms may contain a puzzle, items, clues to the over-arching story, or some combination of the 3. Rooms may also have special effects that are triggered by drafting the room, by entering it, or by using certain objects within it.

Different rooms have different abilities.

For example, there is a "Drawing Room" that allows you to re-draw new rooms, if the rooms you drew weren't to your liking. And then there are rooms like the Parlour and Billiards Room, which always contain a logic or math puzzle that awards resources if solved. There are also "red" rooms that penalize the player for drafting or entering them, such as the Chapel, which collects a tithe from your purse of coins each and every time you enter.

Perhaps equally importantly, each room also has a different configuration of doors. Some rooms only have the single doorway, turning them into dead ends. Most rooms, have 2 doorways (the one you came in through, and a second exit that goes in a different direction). Some rooms and hallways have 3 or 4 doorways. If you run out of new doors to go through, then your day will also end, on account of there is nowhere else for you to go.

This combination of room abilities, resources, puzzles, and door configurations creates a lot of strategy for how you choose to layout the mansion on any given day. Do you focus on exploring new rooms to find as many of the puzzles and clues as you can? Or do you try to bee-line due north to the antechamber every day? In any case, how do you place rooms in order to accomplish your goal?

There is a surprisingly huge collection of different rooms, along with some clever and creative abilities for some rooms. There's also items that the player can use to solve puzzles or manipulate the environment. This creates a lot of tough decisions regarding how best to spend your limited resources. However, knowing that you'll loose all of those resources in the next day, liberates the player to feel like you can and should spend your resources whenever possible. There is no point in hoarding resources, the way you might save up all your most powerful ammunition in a survival horror game, only for the game to end before you've ever used it.

The puzzles in this game are no joke! Things start off simple, but they gradually ramp up. The puzzles aren't insanely difficult to solve on an intellectual level, but they require a lot of meticulous exploration and careful observation. There are plenty of puzzles and clues that are hidden in plain sight, and you'll walk right by them dozens of times without realizing there's something there, until you find a document or clue somewhere else, hours later, that makes you say "wait a minute, those were puzzles?!"

Some rooms have respawning logic and math puzzles.

It's kind of hard to play a lot of video games while holding an infant child. It's certainly possible, but I had to accept that I was going to be less precise in my inputs whether I was holding a PlayStation controller or a keyboard and mouse. It seemed like a perfect time to try out a game that only requires a mouse to play -- a perfect time to finally try out Disco Elysium!

Disco Elysium is a unique and experimental RPG that straddles the line between RPG, point-and-click adventure, and walking sim. Most RPGs have combat of varying degrees of complexity in order to give all the various character stats and progression systems something to do. Disco Elysium completely eschews those conventions. I think I fired a gun maybe three times in my entire play time with the game (across a campaign and a half that I played prior to reviewing), and one of those gunshots was against a corpse hanging from a tree. Oh and I roundhouse kicked a a racist beefcake (you know, in order to establish my own racial superiority). Not exactly Call of Duty over here.

It may not require the twitch reflexes that many "gamer bros" expect every game to have, but games like this have been a godsend for those of us who only have one free hand to hold a mouse, because the other arm is holding a sleeping infant. It also happens to be a really good game.

I maybe fired a gun thrice, and roundhouse kicked a racist once, in 40+ hours of gameplay.

Inner dialogue

Instead of channeling character stats into gauntlets of filler combat encounters as a way of accumulating experience to improve those stats for the next combat encounters, Disco Elysium channels all of its character attributes into conversation trees. But these conversations aren't just with the other characters who I interview as part of the murder mystery plot. These conversations are also with the character's own inner monologue.

You see, the skills in Disco Elysium aren't like the skills of most other RPGs. They don't determine the character's physical strength, or agility, or skill with various weapons, or a blanket "charisma" attribute that determines if people believe your lies or are swayed by your arguments. No, instead, all of the skills of Disco Elysium represent elements of the protagonist's personality and psyche. Those skills will even pop up during dialogue and allow the character to have arguments or conversations with his own inner monologue. Each skill is like a voice in the protagonist's head, telling him what to do, or how to interpret the events he encounters. Each skill is sort of a character in its own right.

The character's skills talk to him, giving the player insight into the game world and current circumstances,
and also (sometimes flawed) advice about how to proceed.

I'm reminded of the psychosis voices of Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, with each voice shouting over the others trying to tell Senua what to do or telling her that she's worthless and can't do anything right. Except in Disco Elysium, the player can actually have conversations with those voices. You can talk back to them.

These skills will pop up from time to time as interjections during conversations to make observations about what is happening or to recommend specific courses or action or responses. It's also a great way of delivering exposition and ensuring that the player knows any relevant details that the character should know. But they aren't always completely reliable. Sometimes blindly following the advice of these skills can land you in trouble.

If you want to depress yourself going into the new year, go ahead and check out the movie Don't Look Up on Netflix. It is categorized as a "dark comedy&qout; -- a parody of modern politics and plutocracy -- but it rings so true, and is so frustratingly believable given the events of the past 5 years, that I have trouble labeling it as a "comedy". It induced facepalms and fury rather than laughs, and its pervasive bleakness offers no hope for our future. It feels less like a warning, and more like a eulogy for the human race. And I recommend it so completely.

It's worth watching almost for Mark Rylance's performance of Bash Cellular CEO Peter Isherwell. His send-up of an eccentric tech billionaire (think Steve Jobs meets Jeff Bezos meets Elon Musk) is one of the few outright funny things about the movie that isn't also depressing.

I've read some people online suggesting that Don't Look Up might be this generation's Idiocracy. I'm not sure if I agree with the comparison. Idiocracy has a sort of naïve optimism that makes it charming. It is a stark warning of a possible dystopian future brought on by corporate greed, public ignorance, and the out of control birth rate of stupid people. But while the characters are all idiots, they are at least well-meaning idiots. They could and (more importantly) would do right by everyone else if they only hadn't been brainwashed by corporate propaganda all their lives ("Brawndo has the electrolytes plants crave"). It's a world run by, and completely populated by, Homer Simpsons: dumb, but well-meaning buffoons.

In Idiocracy, the average-intelligence time-traveler from the present gets a high score on an intelligence test, and is immediately sworn in as a high-ranking member of the president's cabinet. After demonstrating that watering crops with water instead of Gatorade will cause them to grow, he is promoted to vice president, and eventually elected president. The people of Idiocracy may be the dumbest humans to ever live, but they still value intelligence, competency, and demonstrable truth. There's a hopeful optimism there that things will get better if they can only be shown the error of their ways.

Copyright: 20th Century Fox, 2006.

Copyright: Netflix, 2020.

Don't Look Up is being compared to Idiocracy. I'm not sure the comparison is apt.
Idiocracy is far less cynical and more hopefully optimistic.

I do not have particularly strong opinions one way or the other about the video game sub-genre known as "walking simulators" in general. I have strong opinions about some of the games that I've played within this genre, but I would not say that I either like or that I dislike "walking simulators" as a whole genre. Some work well and are good games. Others are un-engaging or lazy and didn't particularly work for me.

For example, I hated Dear Esther and Ether One. I was immensely disappointed in Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs, after having enjoyed The Dark Descent. But on the other side of the coin, I thoroughly adore Gone Home, Firewatch, and What Remains of Edith Finch.

Are "Walking Sim" games?

So what is a "walking simulator"? Well, like with most things in pop culture, the definition will vary depending on who you ask. But I think most people would agree that a "walking simulator" can be accurately described as interactive entertainment that conveys a narrative almost exclusively through the exploration of an environment and the clues provided therein. You may notice that I used the term "interactive entertainment" as oppose to "video game". I did this in order to keep this discussion's definition as non-contentious as possible. One of the criticisms of walking simulators that I specifically wish to address is the idea that they are not video games, and such critics would immediately object to the use of the term "video game" in the definition. These experiences generally lack any of the violent conflict that is present in most video games, and the mechanics rarely go beyond navigating obstacles, solving puzzles, or managing a limited inventory.

While I am perfectly content to call walking simulators "video games", there are somewhat valid arguments for why the label might not be appropriate for such entertainment products. It could be argued that they are not video games because they lack conflict; they lack a traditional win state, fail state, or any stakes at all; and they lack mechanical depth or complex systems. I personally do not accept these arguments as disqualifying walking simulators from consideration as "video games". There are plenty of universally-accepted video games that also lack one, or even all three of those criteria.

Many games have lacked violence conflict, traditional win states, or complicated system mastery.

Slumping ratings and controversy around concussions and national anthem protests aren't the only problems facing the NFL now. The NFL is going to have some competition in the form of at least two new professional football leagues!

The XFL wants to be no joke

A few days ago, the new XFL released a list of the cities that will host its inaugural teams, and I have to say, I'm a bit confused by the decisions. The cities that made the final cut are:

• Dallas, Texas: Globe Life Park in Arlington
• Houston, Texas: TDECU Stadium
• Los Angeles, California: StubHub Center in Carson
• New York, New York: MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford
• Seattle, Washington: CenturyLink Field
• St. Louis, Missouri: The Dome at America's Center
• Tampa Bay, Florida: Raymond James Stadium
• Washington, D.C.: Audi Field

XFL teams will be sharing cities (and in some cases, stadiums) with NFL teams.

I understand that the XFL would want its teams to be in large markets, but I'm surprised that every single one (except for St. Louis) is a city that already has an NFL team. So the XFL's teams will be competing with a firmly-established NFL team for fans and ticket sales in all but one of the XFL's inaugural cities. In fact, three of these teams will have to share a stadium with an NFL team. Metlife will be split between the New York XFL team, and the Jets and Giants of the NFL. CenturyLink Field will be shared with the Seahawks, and Raymond James will be shared with the Buccaneers. I was expecting the XFL to go after the largest markets that didn't already have NFL teams. Cities like St. Louis, San Diego, and Oakland were shoe-in destinations, in my mind, since they recently lost NFL teams, and so have empty, NFL-caliber (sort of) stadiums waiting for a new tenant.

Other than that, I was expecting to see the XFL go to places like Milwuake, Oklahoma City, Portland, Albuquerque, Boise, Honolulu, and other midsize markets. Las Vegas would also be a prime target, if not for the Raiders moving here in a year or two. The XFL also could have tried to beat the NFL to some foreign markets, such as Toronto, Vancuever (Canada), Mexico City, or London.

And if it were absolutely necessary to go into cities that already have NFL teams, I would have expected them go after cities that have historically bad or under-performing teams in the hopes of stealing away some disenfranchised fans. Tampa Bay certainly fits this bill. I was also thinking of places like Cleveland, Detroit, Pheonix, and Jacksonville.

Bully politics

I'll admit that I was actually excited by Vince McMahon's announcement of an XFL revival. McMahon's statements so far have indicated that he is taking the league much more seriously this time around, and that it won't be as much of a gimmicky joke. According to early reports, McMahon wants the league to be faster. He wants to reduce the game time from three-or-more hours to about two hours. How he plans to accomplish this is still not entirely known, but my guess would be that he could achieve it through a combination of shortening quarter lengths (to 10 or 12 minutes), reducing the play clock from 40 seconds (in the NFL) to 25 or 30 seconds (closer to NCAA rules), eliminating some clock stoppages (by not stopping the clock for incomplete passes, for instance), or by slowing down the game by making the rules favor running the ball rather than throwing the ball. This last one seems unlikely, as I'm sure McMahon wants the game to be more exciting, and most fans are not like me, and do not enjoy seeing long, methodical, ground-and-pound drives.

The new XFL will be devoid of some of the original's excess and theatrics.

McMahon will own and finance the league this time around, rather than the World Wrestling Federation (now the WWE). This new XFL is expected to eliminate a lot of the silly, pro-wrestling-inspired theatrics that plagued the original XFL and turned that league into a joke. Players with criminal records will not be allowed to play, and they won't be able to create silly names for the backs of their jerseys (no "He Hate Me" as a player name).

...