I don’t think they know about second winter…

Ages ago, comedian and then-anchor at The Daily Show, Lewis Black, came to the town where I’d been going to college in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to do a stand-up show. My friends and I managed to get tickets for some of the last seats still available, way in the back of the auditorium, but I’m glad we went, because the way he kicked off the show still sticks with me. Not verbatim, but close enough:

“I don’t know if anyone’s told you people, but it’s April! There’s supposed to be birds singing, and flowers blooming, and fucking grass! But I look around here, and everything’s white, and gray, and dead–I want to slit my wrists, just so I can see some color!”

Welcome to da U.P., eh? Which brings us to today’s word.

isochoric, adj. – performed, maintained, or existing under a constant volume

Learned from: The Bazaar (PC, Mac, mobile [soon, as of this writing])

Developed by Tempo

Published by Tempo (2025)

The Bazaar is an interesting mix of Slay the Spire, Backpack Hero, and Team Fight Tactics, that has been devouring my free time since the open beta dropped a few months ago. It’s in full release now, and it’s still free to play if you want to check it out. There are some cosmetic purchases, and some cards you can buy–but those cards will become available for free at the end of their respective seasons, if you don’t mind waiting.

Anyway, you play as one of several heroes (though only Vanessa is available to start; you have to unlock the rest), making their way through the dangerous streets of the titular Bazaar. Vanessa is a pirate, Pygmalien is kinda-sorta a buff orc, Mak is an immortal alchemist, and my personal favorite, Dooley, is a little spherical robot pyromaniac. It’s one of his cards, the Isochoric Freezer, that taught me today’s word, a small item which freezes one of your opponent’s items for a time.

The Bazaar is PvP, but there’s no direct interaction between you and your opponents; if you’re like me, and steer away from multiplayer games in general due to toxic communities, then rest easy. So, you start out with nothing, and get to pick from one or two starting items to begin the match. These might be enchanted cards, or skills, or just extra money (I think; I never pick this option), which usually form the basis of your strategy. Pick a toxic blowfish for Vanessa’s first item, and you’re probably going to go for a poison build; pick the hamster wheel core for Dooley, and you’re probably going to focus on friend cards; etc. There are a ton of different approaches you can take, and since you start from zero each time, it’s fun to experiment.

Rounds are broken up into days, and days into six hours each. You’ll typically get four hours each day to acquire cards, have random events, buy skills and consumables, etc. Midway through the day, you’ll fight a non-player monster, to get XP and usually an item/skill if you win, and at the end of the day you’ll go up against another player, with their own deck layout. The cards in each of your decks activate automatically on cooldowns, so it’s all on you to arrange them in the most efficient way, and hope it’s enough to win. Sure, the RNG can screw you over sometimes, if your opponent has gotten better cards than you, but there’s still a lot of strategizing involved. Ideally, you fight until you’ve beaten 10 other players, but chances are, you’ll lose enough times that you’ll be out of the match before then. Still, it’s a ton of fun, whether you’re playing casual or ranked (ranked earns you chests if you do well enough, which contain cosmetic items and gems you can spend to unlock other heroes and things like that).

I know I’ve rambled a bit here, but The Bazaar really is a blast, and certainly worth checking out for the price point of free.

Guess the month! If you said anything but June, July, or August, you might be right!

Nailed it

It was very slow at work today, and the topic of conversation got around to a box of nails that had been strewn across a busy roundabout on the edge of town. It’s not clear whether it was scattered maliciously, or fell out of a truck bed, or what, but the ice on the roads this time of year is bad enough without throwing sharp metal hazards into the mix. Which brings us to today’s word.

caltrop, noun – a sharp, metal instrument designed to cause injury and/or impede movement

Learned from: Team Fortress Classic (PC, Mac)

Developed by Valve

Published by Sierra Studios (1999)

Believe it or not, back before Valve just ran the world’s most successful digital games distribution platform, they actually made games, themselves. Pepperidge Farm remembers. Though I guess I can’t really make that joke for much longer, considering they’ve had Deadlock in development for awhile now.

Anyway, Team Fortress Classic was a mod for Half-Life, based on a mod for the original Quake. But it was developed in-house, back when teams would make more content for games that weren’t called No Man’s Sky, and distribute them for free to people who’d already bought the base product. Pepperidge Farms remembers that, too.

You’re probably more familiar with the standalone sequel, Team Fortress 2, but TFC was a beacon of creativity in an FPS multiplayer landscape that was almost entirely variants of standard deathmatch modes at the time. The game was entirely based on one team vs another, and had a variety of objectives depending on the map. It might be capture the flag, or defending an area, or even one team escorting a (mostly) defenseless third party across the map, while the other team tried to assassinate them. You might be trying to fight your way to a safe room and flood the map with poison gas, or initiate (or prevent!) a nuclear missile launch. Fantastic stuff, when most alternatives were just shooting other players with rockets.

And man, did the game emphasize teamwork, because there were 9 character classes you could choose from. Engineers who built turrets and provided armor, spies who could look like enemy players, medics who fared about as well as healers ever do in multiplayer games–team composition really mattered. And then there were the scouts, who moved faster, and had their grenades replaced with caltrops, to try and control the movement of the enemy team. I have a lot of fond memories of the innumerable hours I sunk into this game over my parents’ dial-up connection.

Believe me, this looked a lot more impressive in 1999…

Always look for the humour

We are certainly living through interesting times–in the Chinese curse sense of the term–here in the US. It’s barely been a week into the new administration, and from one day to the next, you can pick a random group of people, and there’s a good chance that the status of their employment, healthcare, liberty, etc. will be anything but certain. Entire swathes of our society are already being reworked, and by this time next year, our cars are probably going to be running on coal, and doctors are going to be relegated to diagnosing illnesses as imbalances of the four humours. Which brings us to today’s word.

splenetic, adj. – spiteful, ill-tempered, or melancholic

Learned from: Astrologaster (PC, Mac, mobile, Nintendo Switch)

Developed by Nyamyam

Published by Nyamyam (2019)

Astrologaster is an odd little adventure game, where you play as a freelance physician in Elizabethan England, who believes that superior medical treatment can be provided by consulting the stars. You go through the story meeting various (sometimes famous and powerful) clients, listening to their complaints and symptoms, and after consulting your star charts, offering what astrology claims is the proper diagnosis and cure, like prescribing cherries to a particularly splenetic individual…or warning them away from cherries; I don’t exactly remember what the stars said, but I remember cherries were involved in the consultation.

Along the way, you can lie and try to screw over clients you don’t like, have love affairs, dodge draconian regulations, try to get rich by nefarious means, and more. Your character isn’t a particularly good person, as you come to learn over time (spoilers), and my main gripe with the game is that you have very little say in this. As far as I can tell, certain events play out regardless of what you do, and whether you’d want your character to act in certain ways or not. Still, it’s an interesting, and quite different narrative adventure game, and worth a look if you can find it on sale.

If nothing else, it’s funny to diagnose someone with the plague, and tell them their only hope lies in daily enemas of honey and prune juice or whatever.

Hit me with your best shot

It’s Thanksgiving here in the US, which means long hours in the kitchen, eating enough calories to feed a small, third-world country for a week, and then burning all those calories doing everything humanly possible to avoid uncomfortable political arguments with family members. Especially this year. But aside from dodging uncomfortable topics, the centerpiece of the meal is turkey. Usually just bought from the store, you can get permits to hunt them in some areas. Which brings us to today’s word.

blunderbuss, noun – a large-bore firearm, precursor to the modern shotgun

Learned from: American McGee’s Alice (PC, Mac)

Developed by Rogue Entertainment

Published by Electronic Arts (2000)

Playing this, I had no real idea who American McGee was. Apparently he worked on the Doom and Quake series, but the only name I really knew from id Sofware was John Carmack. At any rate, the idea of a twisted, grimdark take on Alice in Wonderland, imagined as a third-person action game was enough to hook me, regardless of who this guy was.

American McGee’s Alice takes place years after the books, with Alice in an insane asylum, the only survivor of a house fire that awakened her from her earlier dreams of being in Wonderland. Perhaps as a psychological break, she finds herself beckoned back through the looking-glass to save Wonderland from the Queen of Hearts’ machinations. Like I said, pretty grim.

The gameplay however, was a lot of fun. The environments were colorful, the platforming was well-designed, the enemies were all dark versions of classic characters, and there was a nice variety of tools with which to dispatch them. Alice’s primary weapon was a knife, but there were more series-specific weapons like playing cards and a croquet mallet shaped like a flamingo. Then there was the blunderbuss.

This was the strongest weapon in the game, but it only fired one shot. I don’t remember if it took forever to reload, or if ammo was incredibly scarce, or both, but it would kill most enemies in one hit. And like everything else in this game, it was hyper-stylized, with a barrel that flared out at the end to comic proportions, as if you were shooting buckshot out of a gramophone.

Happy Thanksgiving. Just remember not to give any table scraps to your cat–no matter how emaciated he might look.

Jinkies

The 1990s were an interesting time in the United States. The “Satanic Panic” of the ’80s was dying down, but panic over AIDS and street crime was kicking into high gear. Sleeping with an intern was somehow enough to trigger impeachment hearings for a sitting president. The “war on drugs” was unironically going full-steam ahead, and even before the “war on terror” kicked off, the military was beginning to dabble in wars–excuse me, “military operations”–for oil. And despite all the chaos and absurdity of that decade, looking back at it, those were simpler times. Which brings us to today’s word.

jink, verb – to abruptly change direction

Learned from: Desert Strike (Genesis, Amiga, Game Boy, Game Gear, Atari Lynx, Mac, PC, Super Nintendo, PSP)

Developed by Electronic Arts, Foresight New Media (PC version), Ocean Software (Game Boy version)

Published by Electronic Arts (1992)

Operation Desert Storm, the quick assault on Iraq after they invaded Kuwait, was the first thing approaching a war that kids in the ’90s were really exposed to, and to say that it captured the public consciousness is an understatement. I mean, just look at how many platforms this hastily-coded game released on. Still, despite capitalizing on a contemporary, real-world conflict, Desert Strike created a splash (and several sequels) for good reason.

First, it was different from pretty much everything else on the console market at the time, with impressively large maps and complete freedom of movement. Desert Strike wasn’t really a shmup; it was slower-paced, the levels didn’t auto-scroll, and you could move your helicopter forward, back, left and right, and even jink on a dime to try and dodge projectiles. Add in a decent array of weapons and enemy vehicles, and the experience was really quite memorable.

I couldn’t really see something like this getting released today, for a variety of reasons: the problematic game-ification of a questionable military assault; giving the leader of a fictitious Middle Eastern country the name “Kilbaba”; etc. But like I said, simpler times.

Also, back then we used to at least *pretend* we were fighting against tyranny…

Hope you enjoy the series finale

It’s July 4th (Independence Day, for those of you outside the US), as I write this, and I find myself in a rather melancholy state of mind. This has always been one of my least-favorite holidays to begin with–it’s loud, the events are always crowded, and most of the festivities take place outside during the hottest stretch of the year–but given recent events, I feel like there isn’t much reason to celebrate at all. Er…I mean, everything is totally fine here, and we definitely haven’t just handed the president the powers of a king, which the felonious maniac whose cult will probably elect him in November will wield to punish any opposition once he’s back in office, and never abdicate the throne. Everything is great. Just great. How are you? Let’s talk about eagles.

eyrie, noun – an eagle’s nest

Learned from: Shivers (PC, Mac)

Developed by Sierra On-Line

Published by Sierra On-Line (1995)

I really kind of miss Sierra On-Line. You could argue that their adventure games weren’t as polished as the ones made by Lucas Arts (also RIP), but man, were they memorable. Take Shivers, for example. The game starts with you, a teenager, being dared to spend the night inside Professor Windlenot’s Museum of the Strange and Unusual–a Ripley’s Believe It or Not type of place, that never finished construction after the eponymous Prof. Windlenot disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Being that it was abandoned, you have to get creative about finding a way in, and once you’re inside, you find yourself trapped with the evil spirits from one of the exhibits that likely killed the professor. From there, it’s a struggle for survival as you make your way through all the weird (sometimes cursed) stuff Windlenot collected over the years, searching for a way to contain the spirits and get out alive.

Part of the fun of Shivers was never quite knowing what you’d find in the next room. You’ll go from exhibits about torture devices, to ancient Egypt, to an entire section devoted to optical illusions, to strange things found in nature–like the world’s biggest eyrie. As I remember, it takes up most of the room it’s in, and I was always worried something was going to reach/jump out from inside it, as I edged my way around its massive bulk. But it was just one memorable scene from a game that was full of them. Sure, it’s a bit dated at this point, but it’s still worth a play.

And, it’s like six bucks on GOG.com: https://www.gog.com/en/game/shivers

I’ll take “Things I haven’t had much of for a few weeks,” for $400.

So, I caught COVID for the first time recently, and it’s really taken the wind out of my sails. Even in the aftermath. I’d hesitate to say I have “long COVID” at this point, but I’ve been dealing with some stuff, not the least of which is that I seem to be getting tired more easily than I used to. Which brings us to today’s word.

vim, noun – energy, exuberance

Learned from: Diablo (PC, Mac, PS1)

Developed by Blizzard North, Climax Studios (PS1 version)

Published by Blizzard Entertainment, Davidson & Associates, Electronic Arts (PS1 version) (1997)

The first Diablo was a formative experience for me. I’d played a few roguelike games before (from Fatal Labyrinth on the Genesis, all the way back to AD&D: Treasure of Tarmin on the Intellivision), but Diablo was the first game of its type I played that A) Had real-time combat, and B) Told a cohesive story, with NPCs and everything. It was also much more of a power fantasy than anything that came before it; despite its grimdark setting with the forces of Hell rising up to take over the world, your lone rogue, sorcerer, or warrior would be slicing through hordes of demons like butter, as magic items fell from them like rain. Well, you had a lone hero unless you ventured into the lawless, buggy, cheater-filled wasteland of online play. That was fun in its own way, but you never knew when someone was going to use an exploit to steal that shiny new sword you just found.

And man, was that gear shiny. You never knew what any monster or chest was going to drop at any given time, any more than you knew what the layout of the dungeon was going to be. That skeleton could drop just another potion, or a Diamond Battleax of the Whale could come flying out of its pile of bones. The basic-tier magic items in Diablo had stats determined by (often ridiculous) combinations of prefixes and suffixes. In the example above, that battleax would have pretty good magic resistance from the “diamond” prefix, and would give you a ton of health from the “whale” suffix.

Vim was a lesser vitality-increasing suffix. Really nothing special after about the midpoint of the game, but certainly better than a garbage item with no traits at all–or worse, something like a Rusted Breatplate of Frailty that would actually lower your defense and strength. The first Diablo was a far less forgiving game than its successors, and I will always have a soft spot for it because of that. It was nowhere near as polished or feature-rich as Diablo II, or even the recently-released Last Epoch (which is really quite good, and a much better game than Diablo IV), but it had a lot of elements the later games did away with: outright harmful items, a random rotation of quests on each playthrough, shrines whose effects were unknown until you tried them, etc. I’d say it’s still worth revisiting today, if you can put up with a bit of clunkiness.

“I am here to destroy the world! And your free time!”

Enough to make you sick

The weather here has been…weird, lately. It’s the middle of June, and temperatures have been in the 50s (Fahrenheit)…except when they’re in the 80s or 90s. Sometimes back and forth within the span of a few days. Those kinds of swings are a shock to the system, and prime conditions for people to fall ill…which makes today’s word fitting on a variety of levels.

emesis, noun – the act of vomiting

Learned from: System Shock (PC, Mac, Playstation 5, XBox Series X/S)

Developed by LookingGlass Technologies (original), Nightdive Studios (remake)

Published by Origin Systems (original, 1994), Prime Matter (remake, 2023)

The original System Shock is a game I never got the chance to play, growing up, but over the years I’d heard nothing but acclaim for it. Being the inspiration for everything from the Bioshock games, to Prey, to Dead Space (or so I’ve heard), it sounded like a hugely influential piece of gaming history that I’d missed out on. So when I heard there was a remake in the works, I was very intrigued, to say the least.

I’m not very far into it yet, but I’m already enjoying the heck out of this cyberpunk nightmare scenario, odd visual style aside. You’re cast in the role of a hacker who gets busted for stealing the schematics for a military-grade implant. A representative of the company you burgled recognizes your skill, and offers to cut you a deal: he’ll give you the implant, your freedom, and scrub your record clean. And all you have to do is head up to a company space station, and disable the ethical safeguards on SHODAN, the AI that’s running the place. What could go wrong?*

To his credit, the company rep does keep his end of the bargain. But you wake up from your surgery sometime later, to find the station…well, let’s just say in a very, very bad state. And initially, after scrounging around the various stethoscopes and emesis basins scattered around the medbay, you find a lead pipe to defend yourself with, as you venture into the bowels of the station to try and figure out how to fix the horrible thing you’ve done–or at least, survive.

As I said, I’m only near the beginning so far, but the setup is fantastic, and the gameplay, while more complex than your average shooter, is fun. I can see why it’s regarded as a classic.

*You could end up creating GLaDOS’s meaner, crazier ancestor, that’s what.

You should know this; you’ve been to court

The meetings we have at work are almost universally useless. This wouldn’t be so bad, if they didn’t occur first thing in the morning, before we even open for business. But every so often, something catches my ear, such as today, when one of my bosses didn’t know what the word “litigious” meant.

I work for very stable geniuses. But it does bring us to today’s word.

litigation, noun – the process of bringing legal action against an entity

Learned from: Descent II (PC, Mac, Playstation)

Developed by Parallax Software

Published by Interplay Productions (1996)

I played a bit of Doom and Quake, back in the day, but I was primarily a Descent guy. Sure, it pretty much required a joystick, and multiplayer was a pain and a half to set up, but not being bound by gravity was such a novel experience. And when you did get a multiplayer match going, it allowed for a ton of strategic gameplay, especially when you factored in the impressive variety of weapons at your disposal.

Descent II was the best entry in the series, by far, even if it had the weakest story. Not that “there are berserk robots in this mining colony; go destroy them” was Pulitzer material in the first game, mind you. But the sequel starts with your employer saying essentially, “Hey, you’re still under contract. Go kill these other murderous robots, or we’ll sue you.” At the time, I had no idea what litigation was, but when I looked it up, I realized that these games are really set in a pretty dystopian future–yeah, you just saved company property, but get your nose back to the grindstone and keep risking your life if you don’t want to be penniless and/or in jail. I didn’t dwell on it too much, because the gameplay was so fun, but a part of my 13-year-old brain still realized this was a pretty crappy situation for your character to be in.

My copy didn’t come bundled with 100 free hours of AOL. That would’ve saved my parents like, $50, probably. The early Internet was a a nightmare, kids.

Put some spring in your step

It’s April, which means for most places in the northern hemisphere, it’s springtime. And while that’s technically true where I live as well, you’d never know it. The snow is starting to melt, but it’s still easily a foot deep in a lot of places, and it’ll be some time before we start seeing flowers come up. Which brings us to today’s word.

hippeastrum, noun – a genus of evergreen plants with large, red flowers, native to tropical and subtropical regions

Learned from: The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow (PC, Mac)

Developed by Cloak and Dagger Games

Published by Wadjet Eye Games (2022)

The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow is a slow-burn horror adventure game, where you play archaeologist, Thomasina Bateman as she arrives in the remote English town of Bewlay, hoping to excavate the titular barrow. Things quickly go wrong, but in ways that are only subtly insidious at first: the person you’re supposed to meet is nowhere to be found, your partner never arrives with your supplies…or the money you need to even pay for lodging, and everyone in town seems just a little…off. But maybe they’re just not used to strangers; yeah, that’s probably it.

What develops is a rather impressive bit of folk horror that’s heavy on atmosphere and light on any straight-up scares for most of it. Instead, you quickly find yourself wondering just who you can trust, what’s going on behind the scenes, and how far you’re willing to go to achieve your goals. And of course, there are some convoluted puzzles to solve as you go–if you’ve played The Secret of Monkey Island, or King’s Quest, you’ve got an idea of what you’re in store for.

For instance, you need to get your hands on some hippeastrum flowers, so you can convince an old lady to bake puddings for a stuck-up aristocrat. But before you can do that, you need to track down a missing milk man, so that the maid who’s in love with him might look the other way when you go to procure them, and…you know, standard adventure game stuff.

Still, despite how absurd some of the puzzles can get, there’s a solid Gothic mystery to enjoy here, with elements of isolation and creeping dread that seep in from the get-go, and never really leave. Plus, it’s all voice acted (and competently at that), so if you like old-school adventure games with an aesthetic to match, there’s a lot to enjoy here.