Can a metaphor be a single word?

A rhetorical question, really; the answer is yes, but it’s generally harder to accomplish. Today’s word feels like an apt descriptor of…well, a lot of what’s going on lately, if you stretch it a little.

purulent, adj. – filled with, or oozing pus

Learned from: Cronos: The New Dawn (PC, Mac, Nintendo Switch 2, Playstation 5, XBox Series X/S)

Developed by Bloober Team

Published by Bloober Team (2025)

People sometimes ask me why I like horror games. “What do you find so appealing about being scared?” “Do you like watching terrible things happen to people?” Etc. and so on. Being scared can be thrilling, but I’d argue it’s the perseverance over terrible situations that’s more of a draw than witnessing them on their own. But the real answer is, in horror games (the good ones at least, that give you some agency aside from running and hiding), you can face the awful things in the world and beat them to death with a two-by-four. It’s a nice contrast to real life, where it feels like all we can do is watch powerlessly as everything just gets progressively worse. And if you have any doubts about the world ending, just look at the fact that Silksong finally came out, and we got a Silent Hill sequel that isn’t absolute dog water. We just need Valve to shadow drop Half-Life 3, and the final seal will be broken.

But today, I’m not here to talk about any of those games. Cronos: The New Dawn is a really weird, and surprisingly excellent psychological/body horror game from a studio I’d nearly given up on after the clunky and disappointing Layers of Fear, and the pretty-but-shallow The Medium. You play as a Traveler from some point in the future, diving backwards through time to…acquire certain individuals present during the outbreak of a horrible mutagenic plague that destroyed the world for…uh…reasons. I don’t want to spoil anything, because experiencing this bizarre, unsettling mindfuck of a story firsthand is actually a big part of the fun. It shouldn’t come as any surprise though, that this plague is of the icky, goopy, body-deforming variety, with early medical reports tactfully describing the horrors unfolding with terms like “purulent lesions.”

I know that Silksong stole pretty much all the thunder in the gaming scene as of the time of this writing, but there are other games that have come out recently which also deserve attention if the reviews are any indication. Looking forward to trying out Hell is Us and Silent Hill f after I finish Cronos. I’ll get to Silksong eventually, so long as the “highly unusual” meeting of hundreds of generals in Virginia next week doesn’t in fact usher in World War III….

I’d almost prefer an anomalous, reality-warping plague, personally.

My favorite time of year

Earlier today, my wife and I headed out to her folks’ place to spend part of the afternoon helping her father harvest grapes, which we will later also help him crush to turn into wine. Somewhere, there’s a photo of me grinning like a maniac, with my arms stained red damn near up to my elbows, like I just murdered somebody. Good times.

Anyway, for me, this is the official start of autumn: being out there with a cool breeze blowing over us, and a beautiful view of the changing colors of the trees on the far bank of the river, foraging through dense vines and leaves, looking for clusters of grapes hidden just out of sight. Again, good times. And that brings us to today’s word.

foliage, noun – plant leaves

Learned from: Space Quest II: Vohaul’s Revenge (Apple IIGS, Amiga, Apple II, Mac, PC)

Developed by Sierra On-Line

Published by Sierra On-Line (1987)

I have very fond memories of the Space Quest games, despite having only played the first two of them (3 and onward never came to the Apple IIGS). Comedies seemed a lot more popular when I was a kid, growing up watching movies like Naked Gun, and Police Academy. And some games got in on the action, too, particularly adventure games like The Secret of Monkey Island, which was a spoof of pirate stories, and Space Quest, which was a spoof primarily of Star Wars, but sci-fi in general. Sort of like a Temu version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: not bad necessarily, but certainly not as polished as the name brand. I used to play these a lot with my father, laughing at the ridiculous situations Roger Wilco, janitor turned reluctant hero, would get into, and puzzling over how to get out of them.

As the title of the second game suggests, Sludge Vohaul, the series’ villain, is out for revenge against Roger for foiling his plans in the first game. He has goons kidnap you in the opening of the game, and instead of killing you, he has them take you to a remote location so you can be forced to watch the downfall of galactic society at the hands of the genetically-modified insurance salesmen he’s developed. Or something along those lines; it’s been decades since I played it.

Anyway, something goes wrong with the hovercraft the goons were transporting you on, and it crashes into the dense forest of an alien world. As you look around, the narrator comments on the lush foliage–foliage you need to hide within at least once to keep from being found by Vohaul’s reinforcements, as you try to find a way off-planet to foil his latest insane scheme.

It’s an incredibly goofy game, filled with the sort of absolute moon logic that was common to adventure games of the era (e.g., I think you have to discover and mail in an order form for some kind of space-Tazmanian devil thing at one point, to solve a certain puzzle, while making sure the creature doesn’t catch and kill you in the process). But that was part of the fun. And the days of sitting around that 8-inch screen with my dad, tossing ideas back and forth about “well, what if we tried this?” are memories I will forever cherish.

I forgot the sheer *Mystery Science Theater 3000* vibes, in this box art.

Standalone

Recently, Merriam Webster shared a post about words you almost always seem used in pairs. Hem and haw; hither and yon (or hither and thither); pomp and circumstance, etc. Granted, it often only applies to one of the pairing, like “thither,” or “pomp,” since it’s pretty easy to find standalone usages of “hither” and “circumstance.” One of the other pairings brings us to today’s word.

beck, noun – a stream or creek

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

Developed by Cloak and Dagger Games

Published by Wadjet Eye Games (2022)

Granted, the “beck” in “beck and call” has a different meaning, derived I would guess from “beckon,” but MW’s post reminded me of this other definition all the same.

The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow is an extraordinarily slow burn horror adventure game, with a retro pixel art aesthetic, akin to something like The Last Door. You play as Thomasina Bateman, an archaeologist who receives a letter from an old man living in the remote English village of Bewlay, detailing a forgotten burial mound that she might be interested in…well, excavating. Exactly who he is, or how he learned Thomasina’s mailing address are only the first of the mysterious goings-on. Followed swiftly by his unexplained absence when Thomasina arrives, the fact that her luggage seems to have never made the trip, and the fact that everyone in Bewlay seems a little bit…off.

For being just a pixelated point & click adventure game, Hob’s Barrow does an incredible job of building atmosphere. There’s the little village, the nearby woods (complete with beck running through them), and the endless moors surrounding it all. That’s it. The game wastes no time in establishing a feeling of complete isolation and vulnerability, considering you barely have enough money on you when you arrive to pay for a room for a night at the local inn–the rest of your funds are with your luggage…wherever that is. There’s this feeling that everyone knows everyone else, and you’re constantly under scrutiny that culminates in a real sense of not knowing who to trust, what to say, when the villagers’ grudging goodwill is going to run out, or if you’re ever truly safe. Especially when I found myself stumbling across something valuable, lying to a villager and saying it’s mine so he’ll buy it so I can have enough money to keep staying at the inn until my supplies finally (hopefully) arrive–and then running into the item’s owner the next day, and the entire time worrying that these backwoods folks are going to discover what I’ve done and descend on me, Wicker Man style or something.

This is folk horror at its finest. Thomasina is very much an outsider, and throughout most of the play time, it’s an open question whether the weird things she catches glimpses of, and the deepening paranoia are all in her head, or if something truly nefarious really is going on. It’s not a very difficult game, as adventure games go, but damn does it tell a good story.

Have remote villages with hidden pasts *ever* been safe places to visit in fiction?

Hindsight

We’re currently undergoing a remodel where I work, and it’s…not really going as planned. They just got all of the offices usable again, a week and a half behind schedule, the new desks they put in take up like 75% of the floor space, and one–and only one–of the offices has carpet that looks like dirty, bare concrete. It’s not mine, but I really have to wonder if the CEO just doesn’t like that particular person or something. But beyond being behind schedule, this whole project is seeming like a worse and worse idea as time goes on: We’re losing workspace on the teller line (I work in a financial institution) that we really kinda need during shift changes. No one seems to know where we’re putting the printers, since we’re losing counter space. Actually, no one seems to know what the final product is going to look like–but somehow we’re putting in a waiting area for our members…that’s going to be in the same general vicinity as the entrance to the vault. Is there going to be any sort of wall or dividing barrier between the general public and the vault door (not to mention our bathroom)?

It’s almost like nobody stopped to think this through. But hindsight is 20/20 as they say. Which brings us to today’s word.

vigesimal, adj. – base-20, as in a numeric system

Learned from: Subject 13 (Playstation 4, Mac, PC, XBox One)

Developed by Microids

Published by Microids (2015)

Subject 13 is an adventure game that came out during a time when that particular genre seemed to largely be dead, or at least forgotten. Thankfully, the genre is experiencing something of a renaissance these days, but there was a span of a good 20 years when any adventure game that actually got released was worth checking out, just for the novelty of it.

At a glance, Subject 13 paints a decent picture of itself: attractive, pre-rendered environments; a mysterious sci-fi setting; varied and creative puzzles. Seeing it in motion is…less impressive, as the animations leave something to be desired. Hearing it also doesn’t do it any favors; the sound effects feel almost public domain, and the voice acting is flat-out bad (though, I understand the developer is French, so English dubbing might’ve been lower on their budget list than the rest of it. Not every small French game studio can have the production values of the folks at Sandfall). But again, pickings were slim in those days, so any port in a storm. Speaking of…

The real issues I had with the game though, are with the console port. I played this on PS4, and in converting it for that console (and presumably the XBone), Microids made some of the most baffling decisions I’ve ever seen. Some of it’s understandable: There’s no mouse interface (and nobody programmed for that touchpad thing on the PS4 controllers). So rather than just clicking where you want your character to go, you have to stumble around the not-as-big-as-they-look pre-rendered backdrops like a drunken orangutan, trying to get your guy to go up a flight of stairs or whatever. That’s…acceptable. The baffling part is pretty much everything else.

See, a lot of the puzzles require you to manipulate objects in ways that, again, would’ve been intuitive with a mouse. But for the console release, virtually everything requires you to hold down a trigger, and then rotate a thumbstick, regardless of whether it makes any sense or not. Turning a dial? Rotate the thumbstick. Sliding a panel? Rotate the thumbstick. Trying to enter a number into a device? Rotate the damn thumbstick! And it’s even worse, because the sensitivity on this interface is all over the damn map. You could be trying to move some device one notch to the left, but have to rotate the thumbstick in the opposite direction you’d expect, only to have it whip past half a dozen notches before you can stop. It is legitimately one of the worst control schemes I’ve ever come across, and when you combine it with the awful navigation to get your guy from point A to point B, it made some of the otherwise inventive puzzles almost unplayable.

I realize I haven’t talked about the story yet, and while it’s also a bit of a mess, I should at least do broad strokes. You play as Franklin Fargo, a professor who’s tried to end his own life by driving his car off a bridge, for reasons that become clearer as the game goes on. But your plan is foiled when you find yourself waking up in a futuristic pod, with no idea of where you are, how you got there, or if you can trust the disembodied voice that starts talking to you. But the voice eventually leads you, GLADoS-style, through an abandoned research facility and into a bizarre plot involving the nature of consciousness, multiverse theory, and Mayan prophecies (heavily leaning into puzzles based on their vigesimal number system). It’s…weird. Nowhere near as unhinged as, say, Indigo Prophecy, but it really does try to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. And in an adventure this short, that’s a pretty tall order.

All in all, Subject 13 isn’t a bad game, per se, but it’s certainly rough around the edges–even without the limitations of the console versions. If you’re curious, I can only in good conscience tell you to pick it up on Steam, and avoid the awful PS4/XBox ports.

Speaking of awful, just *look* at this, and tell me you see anything but the concrete floor of a steel mill that’s been abandoned for years. The other carpeting jobs are nowhere near this bad.

Here comes the new boss

It’s always a little surreal for me, when a piece of news takes the world by storm, and I personally end up finding it hard to care less. Nothing against those who do, but when all everyone’s talking about is some British monarch getting married, or some celebrity having a baby, and I’m sitting here with my life not having changed one bit, it’s just…weird. It’s the same thing with the new pope. But since it’s functionally the only piece of news for the day, I figure I may as well use it as a lead in for another word.

zealot, noun – a religious fanatic

Learned from: Diablo II (PC, Mac)

Developed by Blizzard North

Published by Blizzard Entertainment (2000)

Okay, okay, put down the pitchforks and stop building the pyre, because–plot twist–this word is not in any way a direct commentary on the new or previous pope. Francis seemed like a genuinely kind, compassionate person from what little I read about him in the news, and while Leo, the new guy, might get less glowing reviews from the LGBTQ community, he doesn’t sound too bad overall. If nothing else, any prominent figure who pushes back against the policies of the current US government has to have something good going for them. Because honestly, the red hats seem to embody zealotry far more than Pope Leo–his followers might actually hold him to certain standards of conduct.

But enough about real-world cultists; let’s talk Diablo II. Act 3 of the game takes you to a sprawling jungle, filled with ruined temples, sodden caves, and enough dead-ends and switchbacks to make it my least-favorite section simply due to all the backtracking. But amidst all the tribes of poison dart-spitting pygmies and swarms of giant spiders, you’d find bands of crazed followers of…I think he was a fallen paladin, or something? It’s been a pretty long time, but I remember having to cut my way through swathes of zealots at various points, to press forward. That, and the fact that they were about the only things in the entire bloody jungle that weren’t poisonous in some way, shape, or form.

The fact that I have so few solid memories of Act 3 is a testament to how little impact it left on me, despite being one of the bigger parts of the game. But even the bad parts of Diablo II can still be pretty fun…sometimes.

Dimly lit, full of dead-end paths, broken up by rivers that make progress take even longer…I can’t defend this. I’m not in a cult.

Everything old is new again

Pixel graphics! ’80s references across all of popular media! The stock market crashing! Retro is in, baby, and it’s only a matter of time before 3D glasses make a comeback in movie theaters again…assuming theaters survive the streaming wars. But hey, paying way too much to go see a movie in dirty room full of loud people is totally retro too, so maybe there’s hope! Anyway, this all does lead us to today’s word.

anaglyph, noun – an image printed in two different colors overlayed across each other, to give the illusion of being in three dimensions when viewed through special glasses

Learned from: Balatro (PC, Mac, mobile, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Nintendo Switch, XBox One, XBox Series X/S)

Developed by LocalThunk

Published by Playstack (2024)

Balatro, if you’ve been living under a rock for the past year, or you’re reading this in the future, is a deconstruction of the roguelike deckbuilding genre, where there are no monsters, no dungeons, no trips across the stars–just poker. Your cards are literal playing cards that can be modified in various ways to give more points, generate more money, trigger multiple times, generate other cards, etc. It’s a game that you really have to play to understand its appeal, but it’s simple, addictive, and worth every penny.

As you play and learn winning combos, Balatro offers you ways to up the challenge, from decks that are missing cards, to higher stakes runs that impose restrictions on what you can do. But the further you go, the more you unlock, and beating the game on the “black chip” difficulty unlocks the Anaglyph Deck, which gives you a free double tag whenever you beat the boss blind at the end of an ante. That probably doesn’t mean much if you haven’t played it, but it can be a useful bonus. If you’re lucky.

Once upon a time, these were *the* coolest thing. I swear.

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.