iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

If you'd like to throw some deckbuilding in as well, "Tower Tactics: Liberation" is the best Roguelike + TD I've played thus far (but haven't gotten to Emberward yet). [Caveat: I hate meta-progression, but it's easy enough to skip for this game: www.darktwinge.com/skip-metapro... ]

darktwinge.com

Tower Tactics: Liberation

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Rose's Scabbard, Steven Universe

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I also recall bugs in this realm: there was one where getting off a boat would put you a certain number of spaces in from the edge of the map, and if a house was positioned just right you could disembark right into someone's home...

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

You may be interested in a recent obscure indie game "Dragon Dragon Fire Fire Deluxe". Heavily inspired by Bubble Bobble while doing just enough of its own thing (tho definitely easier).

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Since Home Movies started in 1999 it isn't a valid pick for this specific list I believe, but we can still complain about the other 100 great animated series that were left out.

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Neglecting animated series is pretty common on any mainstream list like this, alas. It uh, stands out given my own preferences:

Personal Top 10 Shows of the 2000's: Steven Universe, The Owl House, Baccano, A Place Further Than the Universe, Angel Beats, Russian Doll, Haikyum Taskmaster, The Good Place, Gravity Falls

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Dang, I don't even like the Genesis/Mega Drive soundfont but this still slaps. Batman for the NES also has some jams: www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bj4...

youtube.com

Batman (NES) - Laboratory Ruins (stage 4)

YouTube video by Kanabei

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The Price of Reason @priceofreason.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

OKAY FINE YOU CAN HAVE A CHURU

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Paul F. Tompkins @pftompkins.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I assume anyone who points out how small the trans population is doesn’t know any trans people & I guess that’s what it takes to care? Because if you know even ONE trans person, like a person in your life, how can you think about that person and conclude it’s okay if they get thrown under the bus?

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Alas, I had a mere 300 characters; I couldn't talk about both my love of fishbots AND my love of ICQ! I had such a good number too: 7777579. Still have a copy of like, a Simpsons Quiz I created and made all my ICQ friends take...

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I actively use Winamp today in fact! ~8 years ago I was looking for a music player that 1) stopped music gently with a fade when pausing, and 2) could easily interface with my Twitch Bot which is made in mIRC Script — and Winamp managed to legitimately be the best option!

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Relatable! I think the only reason I ever found and loved the obscure NES game "100 World Story" was because it was alphabetically early in the rom list. Only one modern game I know of (Heartwood Heroes, also obscure) has tried to recreate its unique 'competitive RPG boardgame' concept.

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I am nostalgic for one *very specific sub-niche* of AIM: There were bot accounts (with fish names like 'RadioactiveSalmon', or earlier unrelated ones like 'TheGreatHatsby') that would connect you to another random person, and amusing conversations would result =)

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

As someone that mostly played ~25 years ago, it's amusing to see the nonsense of "Enchantment Creature Saga" sitting next to a Revised Kormus Bell

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Closest thing this reminds me of (it is not very close): a bingo board race where players try to be the first to complete the most specific tasks across *all* games they have. Randomized set of simple goals such as "find an egg" or "open a chest".

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

It may be possible to disable this in this settings somewhere; I have managed to removed a lot of the "fancy" optional stuff like this over the years. (Tho I'll caveat I use it on PC, so I'm not sure if it's more limited/forceful on mobile.)

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Anecdotally I'd say I both see and use "#+" this way 'occasionally', and see/use "#-" virtually never. Becoming more commonplace is the way it'd gradually make more sense to people so it could be cute to champion its use, but for current-day clarity I'd opt for other options.

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

"Using the full scale" has been a guiding principle for me since I started ratings things in earnest ~20 years ago. Even rating harsher than most, I currently average a 6.00 — tho it's kinda natural to play more things that are "for you" which bumps that average some. Currently 1832 ratings:

Videogame ratings graph with a bell curve shape, a median of 6.5, and a small number of ratings for over an 8.0 or lower than a 3.5.

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Imagine all the shelves she could've had not get put up!

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

I'm the kind of sicko that has a spreadsheet tracking ratings & comments for the 1800+ games I've played, and I still only made it 1/3rd of the way through

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Which is all to say: Yes, absolutely the clowns themselves *are* most of the problem, but this is one of many ways we can help improve the potential quality of our clowns.

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

IRV/Instant Run-off (full ranking; eliminate lowest & transfer votes) is the most commonly pushed alternative (often "ranked choice", despite other better ranking systems) & has relevant flaws (can have weird results rarely; often leans toward status quo), but is still a clear improvement on FPTP.

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Condorcet (full candidate ranking -> round robin: each candidate is compared directly against every other one) is my dark horse pick; voting is still simple but understanding the minutiae is more complex. Pushes results towards someone the most people can agree on, which is both a pro and a con.

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

STAR (score candidates 0-5, total all scores; top 2 compare most votes in their favor) is my pick for best expressiveness + still being relatively simple to use and understand. This is what I think is best to push for, and has nearly been implemented in some Oregon cities.

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

While no voting system is perfect, all reasonable alternatives are improvements on FPTP. Approval (vote for all you like instead of exactly one) is almost strictly better & cheapest to implement, tho least likely to change the status quo. (Also a good default for e.g. friends picking restaurants.)

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

They've also apparently been suing small businesses left and right, basically anyone they can find with a vaguely beaver-like logo they can pretend is too similar to their own.

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

That sounds true to my original N64 experience tbh: Beating the Facility in under 2 minutes on 00 Agent difficulty took many many hours to pull off (even when kid-me had the wherewithal to use the better 'Solitaire' control scheme instead of the default 'Honey').

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Look — I've only got like 3 alt-codes memorized and I'm gonna use them!

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

This probably happens for less than 2% of games for me, but it can be nice when it does. The example that usually comes to mind for me is beating Spelunky without picking up any gold. I didn't care about the achievement itself, but its existence led to me trying it and finding it a fun challenge.

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

This was kinda the one use-case I had hoped crypto-currency could've filled: "hey I liked that article/blog/video, here's 50 cents". ...But then they got championed by all the worst people, and their processing fees ended up being relevantly *worse* than Paypal...

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Another area with Achievement Derangement is DLCs. Saw people negatively review a game because it released an expansion which added new achievements and "ruined" their perfect 100%. ...And then later, different people complained when they added too few achievements with free updates. You can't win.

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Kayin @kayin.moe · 08/08/2026

Speedrunning is cool because it's obviously a Pervert Way to play a videogame. Weird challenges are also for perverts. Perverts are cool. Achievements have normie-fied perversion!!!

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

While I dislike achievements, that is a reasonable angle I can get behind; one of the reasons I log a rating (and sometimes a comment) for every game I play is similar: it's a reminder of what I played and a fragment of what I thought of it, and I do value having that history on-hand and shareable.

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Heck, Star Guard is probably her least 'against the flow' game (being a fairly straightforward action platformer), but it still ended up being beloved by the blind speedrace community, where people race games they've never played before. Even the ordinary always has one's own unique fingerprints!

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

I did only read Homestuck right as it was finishing and still thoroughly enjoyed it — but hooo-boy, when you're just binging it en masse instead of getting a couple pages a day, the pacing gets *real bad* in some spots. *Six-hundred pages* of pure dialog dump, all in friggin' leetspeak!

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

I'd argue this is just pretty common with genre names in general, tho. Certainly I wouldn't guess correctly what "house music" is if I didn't know the term.

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Unfortunately because 'friendslop' is a term, 'ventslop' just makes me think "AmongUs-like"

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

This might actually be possible with a search Engine that lets you prioritize & deprioritize specific websites; if you favored Bulbapedia I bet Kagi would probably show it in the top 5 at least?

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

This is the origin story of Jaylen Hotdogfingers.

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

I've been moderately impressed by Kagi. I wouldn't call it earth-shattering, but it has given me consistently better results than DDG or Google whenever I've directly compared them.

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

Indeed; high-level play in these games is usually a matter of "I got really unlucky *and* I made a mistake, so I lost" or "I got really unlucky three times in a row, then barely lost" rather than "I didn't find the items I wanted, stupid shop RNG" or whatever.

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Similarly, Magic The Gathering: Shandalar from 1997 still feels relevant because of how few games there are like this.

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DarkTwinge @darktwinge.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

How the game ends up can even be pretty unintended, too: FTL is a game that can *feel* very lucky-heavy and out of your control, and it was even designed to be won only ~10% of the time — but the best players can win on Hard about 99.5% of the time, racking up huge winstreaks.

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