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Len

@len.bsky.social

3K followers 60 following 7.9K posts

Solo indie developer. Strategy/RPG/Horror games freelancer at IGN, PC Gamer, and others. Producer: Three Moves Ahead. Lover of languages, folk metal, and history. she/they
sic semper tyrannis

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Len

@len.bsky.social

"Adulthood" as we knew it growing up was always essentially a marketing scheme.

Mid-Century American Adulthood was a performance shaped by media and (probably more strongly) the advertising industry that fell completely out of fashion when the perks it was supposed to provide evaporated and so the things it asked you to give up were no longer worth sacrificing.
And in my opinion, good riddance.
If I wanted to go back and get a media studies degree this is probably what my thesis would be about.
Clerks was the beginning of the end.

Nobody did Mid-Century American Adulthood better than Don Draper and he (SPOILERS) jumped off a building (SPOILERS). That about sums it up.

November 26, 2025 at 12:24 AM

Len

@len.bsky.social

i am laughing my ass off
chat is this real?

Equipped with this we can do the math to arrive at the damage number displayed at the bottom as Damage from 2941 Men:

0.10 ⋅ 1.1552 ⋅ 3 ⋅ 1.1 ⋅ 0.9824 ⋅ 0.4386 ⋅ 2941 ⋅ 0.001 ≈ 0.4831

November 18, 2025 at 5:31 AM

Len

@len.bsky.social

I love/hate this fucking game.
forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/thread...

Unfortunately, a lot of this information is hidden behind many tooltips, in game files, or not documented at all, and some of it appears bugged. I am going to note all of those things with colours:
most of the text is white, meaning things that work perfectly sensibly, as described in-game;
some is blue, which means it's not documented anywhere in-game and I had to find it in the files or experimentally;
some is yellow, which means I consider this to be bugged – explicitly working against the documentation;
some is red, which means I have no idea how it actually works, even though I tried to figure it out.

November 18, 2025 at 5:16 AM

Len

@len.bsky.social

I really love the new deinonychus model in JWE3. It really looks like, "If they made the original film today, this is what the raptors would have looked like based on our current knowledge."
(The 'velociraptors' in the film were actually based on deinonychus skeletons. Real velociraptors were tiny.)

The deinonychus is a bipedal dinosaur about six feet tall with a recognizable sickle claw on each feet. This one has nearly full-body plumage in orange with dark stripes and a small tuft of feathers on top it its head.

November 13, 2025 at 1:49 AM

Len

@len.bsky.social

One thing that keeps bugging me about CK3's map of Asia is that Korea looks like it's bent at like a 45-degree angle. Japan looks relatively normal but I think they could make some more tweaks to help Korea not look so distorted.

A satellite photo of Korea, Japan, and Northeast China from Google Maps

Korea, Japan, and Northeast China in Crusader Kings 3 showing Korea at a very different angle

November 9, 2025 at 4:36 PM

Len

@len.bsky.social

I have had exactly one game installed on every PC I have owned since 2013. It is the only game I have ever had installed all that time. I have never uninstalled it even temporarily. It may be a more compelling review of EU5 to say, as of now: I am done. Rest well old friend. Long live the new king.

October 31, 2025 at 7:19 PM

Len

@len.bsky.social

Totally by coincidence, my EU5 review script came out to precisely 1836 words.

October 30, 2025 at 12:11 PM

Len

@len.bsky.social

This is one of the more interesting stories of 2025 to me and I think it really comes down to the fact that they made a pretty damn good multiplayer survival RPG with a not very good MMO attached to it.

A graph of the player count for Dune Awakening showing a spike of 189k peak players at launch streaking downward to about 10k average in October.

October 29, 2025 at 3:02 AM

Len

@len.bsky.social

made this after it was brought to my attention that Lies of P actually rules

Apology form
To: Lies of P
Reason for behavior:
[ ] The media convinced me all soulslikes not made by Miyazaki were mid
[ ] I didn't like that it was based on a childrens' story
[ ] I was jealous of his drip
[ ] I didn't look at the actual game
[ ] I don't know anything about the developers
[ ] Mercury was in retrograde

---

[ ] I will hereby respect Lies of P and I will NOT talk down on the future first-ballot Hall of Famer.

October 26, 2025 at 2:33 PM

Len

@len.bsky.social

We called this on @3ma.bsky.social like eight years ago.

Gamespot headline: Starfield Designer Says Game Fell Short Of Fallout And Elder Scrolls, Calls Space "Inherently Boring"

October 23, 2025 at 1:06 AM

Len

@len.bsky.social

LLMs should be sold in a pack of 4 (with one more FREE if you call in the next five minutes!) on QVC at 11:48 a.m.

No I mean when this whole craze started I did say that at least, unlike say NFTs, it does have valid use cases that exist. They're just marginal compared to the level of hype. It should be like a gadget they sell on QVC during a weekday. It does a few things that are neat and very specific.
The ShamWow did not completely revolutionize every industry forever, but yeah I'll get a couple for the specific tasks they're good at. This is like someone saying ShamWow is going to reduce the need for human labor significantly.
And unlike the ShamWow, it also does some things that seem cool if you don't understand it but are actually really bad for you, such as using it for any kind of research. Like if the ShamWow for some reason tasted really good but was still just as toxic to ingest.

October 9, 2025 at 4:04 PM

Len

@len.bsky.social

i am SORRY wizards I was not familiar with your game
butwhytho.net/2025/10/secr...

Hoo boy, where to start? This magic card is called "Demonic Tutor" and depicts a typical Western European Christian demon with big curling horns, a smoldering expression, sharp teeth, and big black wings holding onto an androgynous-looking human with an open-fronted robe and dark hair, eyes closed, one hand in the demon's and the other reaching upward to channel some kind of power. The flavor text says, 'Betray to me your innocence, and I shall speak to you of power and corruption.' However sexy you are imagining it to be, it is sexier than that. The artist is Kieran Yanner, and I owe them a debt of gratitude.

October 2, 2025 at 10:27 PM

Len

@len.bsky.social

It's very, very funny to me that blueanon thought they were going to make the general staff swear an oath of loyalty to the dictator and it turned out to basically be

A panel from the crudely-drawn Teen Girl Squad with a li'l samurai guy or something holding a naginata (probably?) emerging from a bowl of corn chips with a word bubble that reads, "corn chips are no place for a mighty warrior!"

September 30, 2025 at 1:14 PM

Len

@len.bsky.social

This is officially the most ridiculous build I've seen in Hades 2. Aspect of Thanatos V and stacking stuff that makes your normal attack faster just makes you into an absolute monster. Turned the final boss into absolute charcuterie.