iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 26/09/2026

Huge thank you for this article and for providing this accidentally brilliant reaction image.

Four photos of court attendees:

1. Someone in wide eyed shock.
2. A cop who looks terminally over it.
3. Someone trying not to laugh.
4. Someone else trying not to laugh.

Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 25/09/2026

I was talking with @mandyqueersolid.bsky.social about Silent Hill: Townfall, and while talking about a puzzle she said the words "fetchquest for bloodbags". I thought that sounded like an AMAZING band name, so I opened Google Keep to note it down. Then I looked at what I had actually typed.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 24/09/2026

365. Worms (Amiga) It all starts here. Worms (and Monkey Island) taught me that games didn't have to be just fun - they could be funny. More than that, though, Worms changed the trajectory of my life. It is the root of so many friendships and experiences. I am not who I am without it.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 23/09/2026

364. Worms Armageddon (PC) So many other versions of this game have been on this list, but the PC version not only reigns supreme but is also the only online multiplayer game that has never left my sphere. It's the only game I keep installed on every PC I have, and I play it multiple times a week.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 23/09/2026

Our randomly generated cat arrived in 2023 and declared his arrival by coming to our front door every day at 5am and screaming.

Look, I'm going to level with you: this is clearly a snake. A fuzzy black snake with pointy ears.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 23/09/2026

363. Monday Night Combat / Super Monday Night Combat This was so much fun. Everyone I knew was playing it. Then, just as suddenly, nobody was. I don't even remember uninstalling it. It just vanished from my circle.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 21/09/2026

362. Injustice: Gods Among Us The story is awful, but this was the last big studio fighting game I remember enjoying. After this it all became about perks and stat management. Call me crazy, but that's just not what I want from the genre.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 20/09/2026

361. Cadence of Hyrule I won't lie, the first time I played this I hated it. It felt like it compromised too much of what I loved about Crypt of the NecroDancer to fit into the world of Zelda, and ended up serving neither Started replaying it on a whim this week, and I've fallen in love with it.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 19/09/2026

360. Brutal Legend This game knows exactly what it is, even if you - the player - do not. Every choice is deliberate, every decision intentional. It's better than you think.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 19/09/2026

359. Borderlands I bought it about a year after release. Didn't want to play it solo, but all of my friends had played it and they all wanted to show me around. I didn't want to be led around! I wanted to explore it with friends! So I just haven't played it.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 17/09/2026

358. Amnesia: The Dark Descent Love these games. Big supporter of them. But I can't play them at all. I played the first one for about 5-10 minutes then had to check out. Far, far too scary for me.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 17/09/2026

357. Mario Kart World When this came out last year, there was debate as to whether it added enough to the Mario Kart formula. Having spent the last year with it, I continue to be baffled by those takes. Might be my favorite game in the whole series.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 15/09/2026

Frankly, it's outrageous that Google's Emoji Kitchen omits the 😵‍💫 emoji. What if I need to combine... ...wait. my phone wants to… hang on. No. No!

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 15/09/2026

356. Unreal Maybe I came to the game a couple of years too late, but it always felt like a very impressive (for the time) tech demo with very little substance behind it. Pretty, but boring.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 14/09/2026

355. Tetris (Game Boy) This is, as is well-documented, not the first version of Tetris I ever played, but it is the one I spent the most time with. For a very long time, this set the standard for me of what Tetris should feel like. The only OG Game Boy game I ever got to play with a link cable!

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 14/09/2026

354. Rocket League One of a handful of online multiplayer games that I really, really enjoyed right up until Epic bought the developer and rolled (ha!) the game into their F2P offerings. But boy, did I enjoy the hell out of this one for quite a while before that happened.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 14/09/2026

353. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009) The first and, to date, only time I've ever been excited about a CoD game coming out. Ended up getting it for PC and 360 - as is often the case with CoD, I was terminally bored by the campaign, but put in plenty of hours in multiplayer.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 11/09/2026

352. X2 Of all the games called X2, this is the one I've played. A fiendishly and at times unfairly difficult PS1 shoot-em-up. It was so hard that when it got released in Japan they actually toned down the difficulty. Snagged a UK copy shortly before I moved to the US.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 10/09/2026

351. Prince of Persia (2008) The story sucked and the dialog was embarrassing, but the game itself was surprisingly fun. At least until the bad writing finally became too much to endure.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 09/09/2026

350. Pizza Tower Challenging, fun, and beautifully animated. What a blast! Between this, AntonBlast, and the original game being added to the NSO GBA app, WarioLand 4 fans are at the goddamn Ambassador's Reception right now. Just spoilt.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 09/09/2026

349. Mashed When I found it for the PC, Mashed was a) basically a PS2-era take on Micro Machines' vs mode, and b) dirt cheap (I think I paid £2 for it new at PC World?). I definitely got my money's worth.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 09/09/2026

348. The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria I am not a Lord of the Rings person. Not even a little bit. I've tried to watch the movies, but I slide off them like Teflon. I retain none of it. I loved The Hobbit as a kid, but that's about it. Fun game, though! S'got dwarfs in it.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 09/09/2026

347. Daikatana (GBC) Ah, my PortsCenter white whale. The game I always intended to do an episode about, but never quite managed to make happen. I still have my copy of Daikatana GBC somewhere - the manual has been floating around the apartment for ages - and I hope to come back to it eventually...

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 09/09/2026

346. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe I've often lamented that Mario Kart should have experimented more after DoubleDash!!, and it always bummed me out that they stuck pretty rigidly to the established formula. But my word if MK8 didn't perfect it.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 09/09/2026

345. LEGO Star Wars The LEGO games have gotten more involved and refined the formula considerably over the last 21 years, but we shouldn't forget just how much of that formula had already been refined with the first game. So good we willingly played through the prequel trilogy , start to finish!

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 09/09/2026

344. Hitman: World of Assassination Hitman falls into the same category of games as The Escapists - games with amazing tutorials that teach you the ins and outs, but then just kind of drop you into it and leave you floundering. I would like a little more handholding in the early game please!

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 09/09/2026

343. Alien Breed: Impact It's kind of a shame that this game (and it's two sequels) kind of fizzled away into the forgotten annals of videogame wossnamery, because as 21st-century updates of beloved 90s games go it was pretty ruddy marvelous. Not perfect, but fun.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 09/09/2026

342. Fez Sometimes you just want to go on a walk, and Fez was a wonderful, beautiful game for that. Truly underrated bit of videogamery.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 08/09/2026

341. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time The more Ubisoft continues to fuck up their legacy, the more I wonder how games like this got made in the first place. A near perfect game.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 08/09/2026

340. The Chaos Engine What a game. What would probably now be considered a twin-stick shooter, despite the fact it only used one stick. One of those rare games where the muddy colors of the OCS/ECS Amiga version lent more to the atmosphere than the high-color AGA version.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 08/09/2026

339. The Stanley Parable + The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe A brilliant breakdown of videogames, narratives, videogame narratives, ludonarrative dissonance, post-dissonant ludonarrative, post-ludo disso-narrative, and AAA games.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 04/09/2026

Turns out an English-Welsh British person who's spent nearly half their livlfe living in LA sounds like… a New Yorker?

You talk most like someone from New York — about 42% of your answers match a typical resident.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 29/08/2026

I need to buy this. So, yeah. Hire me to write your audio drama, website copy, video game dialog, or other.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 28/08/2026

338. South Park: The Stick of Truth This was a great RPG, and the first time a South Park game felt like South Park (they kind of took a step backward with Snow Day, which was another fully 3D title). I was really enjoying it until I got very, very stuck and couldn't figure out how to progress.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 28/08/2026

337. Wizball Used to watch my mum play this game as a kid, it was one of her favorites. I would play it, not fully understanding what to do or what the goal was. Went back to it about 15 years ago and it all clicked. What a game.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 28/08/2026

336. Super Win the Game This game (and its predecessor, You Have to Win the Game) is such a beautiful throwback title. Just a perfect game. And that CRT simulation is damn near unmatched.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 25/08/2026

335. XCOM: Enemy Unknown I really enjoyed this at the time. Ended up buying the expansion and the sequels, though I never quite got into those in the same way. Keep installing it with the intention of getting back into it, but then something else happens and I end up uninstalling it again.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 25/08/2026

334. Super Mario Land The first Mario game I owned. The first Mario game I completed. As a portable Mario game, it gets so much right and so much wrong at the same time. What a weird entry.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 25/08/2026

333. Final Fantasy VIII I have never been so bored by the first hour of an RPG in my life. The weakest of the PS1 era Final Fantasy games.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 25/08/2026

332. Litil Divil I read about this voraciously in every Amiga magazine that previewed it. I read the reviews over and over again. Finally got to play it on the CD32 when I was… I want to say 9? I was baffled by it. Never finished it. I own it on Steam, though. I should actually play it properly.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 23/08/2026

Lord continue to save me from old Star Trek fans.

A Facebook post:
No, I'm boycotting the puppet episode. It's as dumb an idea as Subspace Rhapsody was, and I don't need to have another crap gimmick episode fouling up my love for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. I'll catch next week's episode when I hope they've got this idiotic crap out of their system.

My reply:
Shore Leave. QPid. Take Me Out to the Holosuite. Bride of Chaotica!. The Practical Joker. Rascals. Kayshon, His Eyes Open. One Little Ship. Carbon Creek. The Voyage Home.

The original poster responds:
Not the same at all.

My response:
I think the only thing that renders this one "not the same" is you don't like it. Which, I will be honest, sounds like a skill issue.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 21/08/2026

330. Eversion It's really hard to talk about this game without ruining it, but I had a great time with it. It's cheap on Steam, and worth a couple of hours of your time.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 21/08/2026

329. Invisible Inc I don't recall whether @cwtycho.penny-arcade.com pointed me at this one, or if I found it independently. Wonderfully charming spy-themed tactical RPG, filled with gadgets and tough strategic choices. A real treat to play.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 20/08/2026

I was playing Worms WMD with @doonpook.bsky.social last night and he pulled off this genuinely impressive but unfortunate bit of grenadery that cost him the game.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 19/08/2026

Want to see the single most passive-aggressive emoji you've ever seen in your life?

The Google Emoji Kitchen combines the thumbs up emoji with the green tick box emoji. It's a green thumbs up with white ticks on the knuckles.

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