iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

kieran cutting @kierancutting.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

After writing about the audience that heckled James Acaster so bad he couldn’t finish, I’ve found myself thinking about audiences a lot more. In the past week, I've seen both Lily Allen and Hayley Williams, and I found myself watching their audiences. kierancutting.substack.com/p/vaping-lik...

kierancutting.substack.com

Vaping like volcanoes

Staring at strangers at Lily Allen and Hayley Williams gigs

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kieran cutting @kierancutting.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

I’m over on Substack writing slow burn found footage dark academia horror, if you’re interested: <The audio file goes on much longer than the transcription, but it appears to mostly be the sounds of audio recording in a pocket. The alarm gets quieter, muffled. Then, a woman’s voice.>

open.substack.com

[Ellison] /ANDREW-3-SM-I

Excerpt from the Ellison files

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kieran cutting @kierancutting.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

I tried to go see James Acaster's new stand-up show last night. It was a hilarious interrogation of what it means to be James Acaster, nostalgia, performance—incredible stuff. I was excited to see how it ended. The audience had other ideas. kierancutting.substack.com/p/hecklers-u...

On top, text saying Hecklers unwelcome: On James Acaster, mainstream audiences, and the Reform party. On bottom, a 3 panel meme of Acaster on Bake Off: started making it, had a breakdown, bon appetit.

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kieran cutting @kierancutting.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

I am trying to post more because I think it's good to actually SPEAK THINGS INTO THE WORLD and like, connect with my peers about interesting shit but god re-activating social media part of your brain is so hard

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kieran cutting @kierancutting.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

I cut my thumb open pretty badly this weekend, whilst cutting up old magazines for collage materials. I bled onto this cut up magazine, which I figure is as good a reason as any to treat that as a writing prompt. kierancutting.substack.com/p/a-prompt-a...

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kieran cutting @kierancutting.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

When I checked in the doctor was ‘on time’. Last time it said he was running fifteen minutes late and it ended up being thirty minutes late. He was lovely to talk to, though. Exactly the doctor you’d want to squeeze your balls to see what’s going on. kierancutting.substack.com/p/every-time...

kierancutting.substack.com

Every time I'm in the waiting room, someone's been hit by a car

On medical avoidance and intergenerational trauma

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kieran cutting @kierancutting.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

I have been absolutely VACANT from bluesky so OOPS hi again, I'm kieran, I'm a writer and designer, and over the past three years or so I've finally built a writing habit that is LASTING! I'd love if you'd take a read of how I taught myself to just fucking write...

kierancutting.substack.com

How I learned to just fucking write

It involves a lot more eavesdropping than I'd like

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kieran cutting @kierancutting.bsky.social · 02/01/2026

I hate when recipes tell me to enjoy as an instruction. Like, I love the written fluff before the recipe, but if we're in the recipe itself I need no-fluff all-instruction. Enjoy is not an instruction!

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kieran cutting @kierancutting.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

oh no I'm feeling the urge to make an anthology zine again someone stop me

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kieran cutting @kierancutting.bsky.social · 21/09/2025

I was super excited to see that this year's @goldencobra.bsky.social theme is "Connection and Community". I feel like I mostly make social technology games, so this is my jam. Here's a game I made a few years ago to help end the year with purpose. kierancutting.co.uk/blog/a-game-...

kierancutting.co.uk

A game or ritual to end the year

Welcome to THE DYING LIGHT

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kieran cutting @kierancutting.bsky.social · 14/09/2025

The cold dark months can be hard. Your friends with seasonal depression are about to really struggle, and you're going to find it a lot harder to leave the house. That's why you need to start playing The Roasties. Because there's nothing roast potatoes won't solve. xenolight.itch.io/the-roasties

The cover of an 8 page zine called "The Roasties, or surviving the cold dark months with your friends". There is a picture of a pile of roast potatoes on the front.

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kieran cutting @kierancutting.bsky.social · 12/09/2025

Right now, the ?game? described as "holy shit","absolutely incredible work", and also "I don't understand this" is part of a FREE bundle with 146 other zines. That's crazy! You could have so many zines! (go ?play? Chaos Magic omg) xenolight.itch.io/chaos-magic

A comment from user frymynoodles on itch.io saying "Holy shit. Absolutely incredible work."

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✨Beth Jackson @beth-and-angel-make-games.itch.io · 05/09/2025

We have a FREE bundle of 147 zines from 63 creators (including us 🧡), and you can get it all through September 14th! itch.io/b/3247/free-...

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Rowan Pierce (they/them) @rowanpierce.uk · 11/08/2025

Completely fascinated by this piece. I love the way it invites you to do deep exploration – both within the text and outside the text – without actually *demanding* anything of you.

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oliver @oliverbates.co.uk · 12/07/2025

Me, Caleb, and @kierancutting.bsky.social have been working to evolve Meal Deal from research through design artefact to a something we might sell. Find Caleb and enjoy the latest(ish) version! Sadly kieran and I can’t be there this year. Og version is here: oliverbates.itch.io/meal-deal

oliverbates.itch.io

Meal Deal by oliver bates

A Gig Economy Courier Card Game

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Peregrine Coast Press @shop.peregrinecoast.press · 22/06/2025

We’re at the Corn Exchange in Leeds today - come pick up some books we recently brought back from the land of the paper-freaks and the book perverts

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kieran cutting @kierancutting.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

We're thinking about developing a playtesting recruitment service, bringing together our expertise as researchers and games designers. Designers: would you use it? What are your current struggles with recruiting play testers or getting playtest feedback? #games #ttrpg #gamesdesign

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Paul Wake @pfwgames.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

Speculative praxis

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Paul Wake @pfwgames.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

@kierancutting.bsky.social giving the last talk of the day, ‘Rituals for building futures’

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kieran cutting @kierancutting.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

Today I’m speaking at Multiplatform on our work using games as part of “speculative praxis” - using creativity to experimentally act towards creating more possibilities (for a better future). Then, later today, I’ll be hosting an exclusive pop up of A NEW VERSION OF THE MUSEUM OF LOST FUTURES?!

$A photograph of a conference programme describing the Museum of Lost Futures. The text is available at https://links.fractals.coop/Multiplatform$

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kieran cutting @kierancutting.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

Another launch from me today, just before Easter! Originally written at the height of LOST FUTURES but never released, Dreaming Spires is a psyschogeographic sort-of-true story about healing by revisiting the parts of ourselves that we cut off. xenolight.itch.io/dreaming-spi...

xenolight.itch.io

Dreaming Spires - a LOST FUTURES zine by xenolight

I’m not stupid. I know this is going to be some kind of alternate universe shit.

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oliver @oliverbates.co.uk · 24/01/2025

Free print at home copies of Meal Deal can be found on @itch.io here oliverbates.itch.io/meal-deal

oliverbates.itch.io

Meal Deal by oliver bates

A Gig Economy Courier Card Game

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kieran cutting @kierancutting.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

There’s something coming soon for those of you who were fans of LOST FUTURES…

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kieran cutting @kierancutting.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

Fun fact about Chaos Magic, is that whilst it's a 'game', there actually IS a game that I wrote a while back that shares an opening segment with it. So please enjoy this incredibly beautiful character sheet. I'll definitely finish this sometime soon. xenolight.itch.io/chaos-magic

It is the hot, wet summer after your final year of school. Your group of friends is turning in on itself. Moments of celebration quickly turn to tears on the beach; new couples form and old ones disintegrate in the face of the biggest change you’ve ever known. It is a time of getting round to what you never had, of not being able to put things off any longer.

There's chaos magic in the air: the tiniest hints of revolution, the seeds of people reinventing themselves for the year to come. Everyone is thirsty for the idea of change, but their lips are chapped and their hearts beat nervously. Around you, your country is enraptured. People are baring their teeth at each other’s throats, hungry for the blood of Another. Everything is teetering on the brink.

Almost as if from nowhere, They die. The person who held your group together, the social glue. The person who made you feel certain that you all would come back together after you came back from uni, or that you’d meet up after you started your new jobs. The person that made you think you weren’t just friends for now.

A character sheet for The Last Day, asking descriptive questions like "Why is our relationship complicated?" and "Why do you keep risking yourself for me?"

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kieran cutting @kierancutting.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

Right now, every issue of LOST FUTURES - worlds that could have been, should have been, or weren't - is available for $2, in a bundle with my new zine/game Chaos Magic. itch.io/s/150744/eve...

itch.io

Everything’s a dollar by xenolight

A bundle by xenolight, $2.00 for LOST FUTURES volumes 1–4, Chaos Magic

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kieran cutting @kierancutting.bsky.social · 05/04/2025

Finally getting round to editing a zine from four years ago...

Two pages of a zine in an editor view in InDesign. On each side of the paper, there are two buildings. between them is text that isn't really intended to be read right now, but is about privilege and Oxford and being scared.

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kieran cutting @kierancutting.bsky.social · 05/04/2025

Finally getting round to editing a zine from four years ago...

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kieran cutting @kierancutting.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

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Dr Zara Bain @zaranosaur.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

My small disabled-led social justice transcription biz branding is still very much geared towards supporting researchers as we do that spectacularly HOWEVER! I am so keen to support more authors who dictate manuscripts (especially disabled ones) Email us for a quote? #Romancelandia #BookSky

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Eryk @peregrinecoast.press · 04/04/2025

Inside me there are two wolves: dirty commie organiser who does not believe in proletarian shifts towards business ownership, and the other is a small business owner and massive fucking nerd about commerce

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Max Haiven @maxhaiven.bsky.social · 31/03/2025

An opportunity for game players-, makers-, thinkers- and organizers to come together on 11 July to ask: ** What is the Antifascist Game? ** Organized by RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab in conjunction with this year's Games Transformed Festival Please join us! reimaginingvalue.ca/antifagame/

reimaginingvalue.ca

What is the Antifascist Game? - RiVAL

Join us on July 11 in London for a one-day symposium, in conjunction with the 2025 Games Transformed festival

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kieran cutting @kierancutting.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

Right now, every issue of LOST FUTURES - worlds that could have been, should have been, or weren't - is available for $2, in a bundle with my new zine/game Chaos Magic. itch.io/s/150744/eve...

itch.io

Everything’s a dollar by xenolight

A bundle by xenolight, $2.00 for LOST FUTURES volumes 1–4, Chaos Magic

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kieran cutting @kierancutting.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

"I can’t answer all your questions, I barely know what’s happening here. It's probably interesting if you like The Beginner's Guide, Melancholy Island, A Collection of Improving Exercises, or lyric games." xenolight.itch.io/chaos-magic

xenolight.itch.io

Chaos Magic by xenolight

A lyric game about losing yourself in your best friend or lover

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kieran cutting @kierancutting.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

xenolight.itch.io

Chaos Magic by xenolight

A lyric game about losing yourself in your best friend or lover

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kieran cutting @kierancutting.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

There's just one hour left in the Chaos Magic launch sale. Right now, you can get my new lyric game for absolutely free. That means when you hate it, you don't have to feel bad about yourself! xenolight.itch.io/chaos-magic

A page of text.

A block of text in a serif font says:
I struggle to find my voice every other day despite being a loud fucker. I struggle with the idea that this body and this mind are the same but embodied cognition says they’re best pals so I guess we’re stuck for now. The brain cannot capture its essence in essence but essentialism is reductionism and I don’t do simplicity I am fucking complex I contain
multitudes so take the plane to the sky and hear the breathing and the song is ending and fuck what do I-

Consonance ending symphony harmony life.

---
A block in a sans serif font says:
Ed: Fucking hell these kids were pretentious. I told him I’d take this on as a favour but this is a s t r u g g l e

A final block in all caps, overlaid over the stair puzzle from The Beginner's Guide, says
AND THAT’S IT! OKAY THE MEANING OF THIS GAME WON’T BE CLEAR JUST YET, PLEASE BE PATIENT WITH ME FOR A FEW MORE GAMES AND I PROMISE YOU’LL SEE WHAT MAKES IT INTERESTING.

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Evan Greer @evangreer.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

"Age verification" laws are actually "upload your ID or get your face scanned to access every website, ending anonymity and associating your identity with everything you do online" laws and if more people understood that they would not be down for this authoritarian nonsense

3573811315042

kieran cutting @kierancutting.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

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kieran cutting @kierancutting.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

And also Ferris Bueller's Day Off. xenolight.itch.io/chaos-magic #lyricgame #sologame #marginalia

A series of scenes from Ferris Bueller's Day Off where Ferris' friend, Cameron, looks at a Seurat painting and becomes lost in the detail of the painting whilst The Smiths Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want plays in the background.

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kieran cutting @kierancutting.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Chaos Magic continues the trend of being a not-game, and is a love letter to The Beginner's Guide, exploring queer desire, coming of age, and the cost of centring yourself in someone else's story. There's also quite a lot of games theory. xenolight.itch.io/chaos-magic #zine #ttrpg #queer

Messages between friends.

Oh man
I may be in for writing the most tangential blog post ever

Yessss
Please do

but a massive THIS IS MY THOUGHT post

That's my favourite thing

I think i'm using it as a way l've always wanted to with a diary
also it may make like 0 sense k
I'm going to loosely structure it but it will be like 90% stream of consciousness

This sounds tood
Content?/
What is it???
Or do I need to wait for The end result?

I'mma say wait
But it starts off with pre existing ideas on Beginners Guide
and goes alla round the place haha

I honestly feel like this blog post could be amazing for me to release pent up shit below the surface
no idea what it will be like to someone out of context tho

Ah that almost doesjr matter
Creative nonfiction is the one

oh god its turning sexual
do i repress this orrr
like not fully sexual but teenage angst

LET IT HAPPEN
WRITE FULL DISCLOSURE

So many things happened that summer. It was a year when everything felt important. The UK voted to leave the European Union. Both you and Daniel were Politics students at university, and had been pretty sure it wouldn't go that way. It did.

The morning the referendum result was announced, the world seemed quiet. In your local cafe, normally full of noise, it was silent for forty minutes or so, just an odd mutter here and there, until until someone said "I just don't get - why, or how.", and it brought life to the room, everyone beginning to share stories from the past few months of campaigning, of friends who had previously shown little interest in politics becoming diehard campaigners.

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kieran cutting @kierancutting.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

The Beginner's Guide is a 2015 game by Davey Wreden, developer of The Stanley Parable. The Beginner's Guide is not a game. The Beginner's Guide is a not-game where you walk through a series of games created by a friend of the narrator called Coda. xenolight.itch.io/chaos-magic

A page of text, saying:

CODA
noun. a concluding event, remark, or section.

It is the hot, wet summer before your final year of university.
There's chaos magic in the air, sparks of revolution and self-revelation every other week.We are all thirsty for change but our lips stay dry through the season. The country 'throws off its shackles'.

You burn brighter and more intensely than you ever have before, back to seeing in colour after years of grey. Your mind is full of disquieting ideas, like leaving your girlfriend for the boy who made your heart sing, or ending everything and taking another spin of the wheel.

You finally got round to starting Twin Peaks this summer, after years of putting it off, because you heard the third season would be coming out next year. It is a time of getting round to what you never had. Of not being able to put things off any longer.

This, however, is all context. This is not even your story. It is the hot, wet summer before your final year of university, which means it is also the hot, wet summer before your best friend's final year of university.

The Beginner's Guide is a 2015 game by Davey Wreden, developer of The Stanley Parable.

The Beginner's Guide is not a game.

The Beginner's Guide is a not-game where you walk through a series of games created by a friend of the narrator called Coda.

In the opening to the game, Davey explains that in releasing a game about the abandoned games of his friend Coda, he wants to try to encourage Coda to make games again. That maybe playing through the games can help Davey to understand why Coda stopped making games.

Davey relentlessly asserts his own reading onto everything that Coda makes, and by the end of the game, becomes convinced that Coda has become isolated depressed, and is creatively stuck.

Obviously, Davey does something profoundly unethical insaring Coda's games. Or he would have done, if Coda were real.

"Kieran do I replay beginners guide now" in a text bubble. 20/08/16.

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kieran cutting @kierancutting.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Do you like lyric games and meta games? Did you think the problem with The Beginner's Guide / The Stanley Parable was that they didn't have enough layers? Do you like late-night Wikipedia binges that only make sense to you? My new 'game' is free for one day only: xenolight.itch.io/chaos-magic

xenolight.itch.io

Chaos Magic by xenolight

A lyric game about losing yourself in your best friend or lover

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Eurogamer @eurogamer.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

The creator of Severance was directly influenced by The Stanley Parable when writing the show, and to me, the blueprint of The Stanley Parable is plain in Severance to see. bit.ly/4jbPxNZ

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Dr Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Really like the point being made here about how it's exciting to see (relatively) smaller games being cited as a creative influence in other mediums, and it not just being an example of a straight adaptation

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kieran cutting @kierancutting.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

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kieran cutting @kierancutting.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

xenolight.itch.io

Chaos Magic by xenolight

A lyric game about losing yourself in your best friend or lover

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Helen Simmons (She/Her) @littlehen.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

📢 Calling all residents of #Shieldfield Newcastle! 📢 Dwellbeing Shieldfield seek your thoughts and opinions on how to improve #PublicSpaces in Shieldfield. 🧵 1/3

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