iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

one more day! bsky.app/profile/phoe...

Joel @phoenixup.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

haha i was made aware of the conversation exploit, it wasn’t intentional, just wanted people to be able to take their time reading dialogue w/o worrying about losing energy

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Joel @phoenixup.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

plz someone speedrun time bandit, i’ve been waiting bsky.app/profile/auth...

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Joel @phoenixup.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

i’ve been waiting forever for someone to try a speedrun, i would love to see it!

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Extra Haunted Doll, Dana Lexa @authorx.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I just finished a replay of Time Bandit, my first one since 2023, over the course of a few weeks with short regular check-ins, and I kept blabbing to my friends about it bc it's so charming and fascinating even on a second run. I also keep thinking about what a "speedrun" would look like...

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Joel @phoenixup.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

it’s sort of flower, sun, and rain but inverted. instead of ppl putting you in a kafkaesque nightmare of distracting you endlessly with their problems you’re creating a kafkaesque nightmare for everyone else

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Cat Manning @catacalypto.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

this game is a) interestingly frustrating, b) very funny, c) absolutely worth your time (and I mean that very specifically)

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Cursed Jeblike Dollthing @namelesswrench.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Three dollars for one of the best

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Joel @phoenixup.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

flower, sun, and rain is the perfect august game, incidentally, but you’ll have to wait a year for that. i’m committed to seasonal gaming

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Joel @phoenixup.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

adding to the list this year: rondo of blood, castlevania iii bsky.app/profile/phoe...

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Joel @phoenixup.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

other great games for october for people who don’t really like survival horror but want the spooky atmosphere: system shock remake (i’m playing this now for the first time), outer wilds: echoes of the eye, metroid fusion, shin megami tensei iii

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Joel @phoenixup.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

anyway im off to the experimental game fest tn

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Joel @phoenixup.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

cissexuals showing basic kindness and respect and treating you like a fellow human being challenge level: somehow even harder the closer you are to them?

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Joel @phoenixup.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

lost my 2 cis best friends this year for what i can only describe as them being uncomfortable with a trans woman having feelings. it’s crazy how you hear these kinds of stories on the internet and yet somehow they’re true

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sylvie @sylviefluff.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Grapplehook Midpoint Teleport Killer is out! Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow! sylvie.itch.io/gmtk

sylvie.itch.io

Grapplehook Midpoint Teleport Killer by sylvie

Get Me That Kitten!

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Joel @phoenixup.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

i can only dream of where we’d be now if love-de-likes had become paradigmatic retro classics whose timed game loops influenced generations of videogames bsky.app/profile/head...

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headfallsoff @headfallsoff.com · 03/09/2026

the most common gaming take that bums me out the most is that timers are basically the most universally depsised mechanic by 95% of the audience. been a true believer since dead rising and the fire has only grown playing shenmue and lightning returns etc

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Joel @phoenixup.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

final day to get Time Bandit for $3! bsky.app/profile/phoe...

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Joel @phoenixup.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

final day to get Time Bandit for $3! bsky.app/profile/phoe...

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Joel @phoenixup.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

my real-time adventure game Time Bandit is on sale for like $3 on Steam! please enjoy the rest of august in the sun. however if you like the idea of sneaking around at ur box-pushing job and stealing from work, you can do it in Time Bandit 5 minutes at a time store.steampowered.com/app/1481910/...

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Joel @phoenixup.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

a few days left! bsky.app/profile/phoe...

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Joel @phoenixup.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

a few days left! bsky.app/profile/phoe...

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Joel @phoenixup.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

this is for the one person on here who reads thomas mann and plays suda51 - or whoever dares to become that person

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Joel @phoenixup.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

i’ve been reading the magic mountain, whose test of the reader’s patience with its monotonous repetitions reminded me of walking the long highways of flower, sun, and rain, whose newly english-patched ps2 version i’ve been playing. there is odd joy and meditative melancholy in dreamlike emptiness

We are talking about a stroll by the shore—a state of being for which Hans Castorp always felt a great partiality; and, as we know, he gratefully enjoyed thinking of life in the snow as reminiscent of the rolling dunes of his homeland. We assume that our reader’s experiences and memories will join us as we expand on this marvelous state of lostness. You walk and walk, and you never get back home on time, because you are lost to time and it to you. O sea—we sit here telling our story far from you, but our eyes and heart turn toward you now, and we explicitly invoke you, speak your name aloud, making you as present as you constantly have been, are, always will be, in our silent thoughts…Blustering wasteland, spanned by pale, bright gray, drenched with a dry, salty tang that clings to our lips. We walk and walk along the light springy beach strewn with seaweed and tiny shells, our ears swathed by the wind, by the great, ample, mild wind that passes freely through space, unencumbered and without malice, filling our heads with a gentle numbness—we wander, wander and watch the roiling sea send tongues of onrushing foam to lick our feet and fall back again. The surf seethes, wave upon silken wave crashes with a bright thud against the level beach—here, there, on sandbars farther out. And the universal turmoil, the tenderly booming din closes our ears against every other voice in the world. Profound contentment, knowing forgetfulness. Sheltered in eternity, let us close our eyes. No, look, there in the foamy gray-green expanse as it loses itself, diminish

ing vastly against the horizon, there is a sail. There? What sort of there? How far? How near? You do not know. It dizzyingly evades all certainty. To say how far the boat is from the shore you would have to know its size. Small and near, or large and distant? And in your ignorance, your gaze falters, for no organ, no internal sense, can tell you for sure. We walk and walk—how long has it been now? How far? It does not matter. And at every step, nothing changes—“there” is “here,” “before” is both “now” and “then.” Time drowns in the unmeasured monotony of space. Where uniformity reigns, movement from point to point is no longer movement; and where movement is no longer movement, there is no time.

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Joel @phoenixup.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

still time to get Time Bandit for like $3! bsky.app/profile/phoe...

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Joel @phoenixup.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

still time to get Time Bandit for like $3! bsky.app/profile/phoe...

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Joel @phoenixup.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

also if you've already played it - leaving a quick review on Steam is super appreciated! bsky.app/profile/phoe...

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Cursed Jeblike Dollthing @namelesswrench.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

You give three dollars and you receive one of the smartest games on the market

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izzy curse-trel @iznaut.com · 21/08/2026

i wish i still had a IT desk job so i could play this on the clock

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Joel @phoenixup.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

i hope you figured out and got the best gas prices

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Thom Cote ☎️ "COLD CALLING" 50% on Steam! @thomcote.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Time Bandit is like no other game, you really just have to play it

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Joel @phoenixup.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

i plan to be there on thurs at least cus a friend is playing but i will likely be hanging around there in the evening all week

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Joel @phoenixup.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

hang out w me! if you'll be here next week there's mutek all week (electronic music festival w/ free outdoor shows)

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Joel @phoenixup.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

i love hearing about spacing out Time Bandit over longer periods of time there was a great year-long longplay with inefficient puzzle solving and plenty of time dedicated to invented daily rituals like dancing to the music in the forest - sadly i can't find the videos bsky.app/profile/faew...

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Joel @phoenixup.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

also if you've already played it - leaving a quick review on Steam is super appreciated! bsky.app/profile/phoe...

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Joel @phoenixup.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

that's so cool, i love hearing about pacing out the experience of playing it over an even longer period of time!

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Mona 🐀 it could happen today @monacht.gay · 19/08/2026

The Time Bandit loop is launching for a few minutes every so often to move a block and then spending the next 30 minutes of your life worried if it was the right one, 10/10 highly recommend

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Aura/Moom @moomanibe.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

incredible, massively underrated game combining realtime animal-crossing type features with puzzle game design in a way that means your choices have realtime impacts in a way no other game does. Your shift is over today- do you sneak in and risk getting shot? Do you take ease now for agony later?

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Joel @phoenixup.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

i think this is the part you're referring to

Time Bandit is designed to create interesting temporal experiences and to allow you to choose how you integrate the game into your life: by saving the game and coming back later, you are invited to make as much or as little progress as you like, to make playing it a kind of habit or meaningful ritual, to welcome addictive gameplay loops or instead explore how to break them while watching the real-time sunsets.

The time mechanics were originally inspired by an experience I had playing Animal Crossing in which checking in on my town every day for 10-15 minutes just to talk to my villagers, listen to the music, and walk along the beach became a significant part of my life. As I began designing what I wanted to be an anti-capitalist dark comedy adventure game that would explore temporal experience using a wide variety of time-based game mechanics, it also became an experiment in playing with the pacing of a narrative extended greatly in time. I wanted to try to inspire continuous reflection -- both while you are playing the game and while you are not -- on the game's themes, in particular how social and historical conditions shape our subjective experience of time, how our time is stolen from us and how we can take it back. It's unlikely that you'll be able to see how the real-time narrative unfolds, precisely due to the time it takes, but the way it works is the radio conversations that advance the story are like real-life phone calls, in the sense that characters will only pay you these calls over the span of actual days and weeks of playtime.

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Joel @phoenixup.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

i have, in the meantime, put together a theatrical industrial dance music set that i'll be performing more in the future. you know while the opera's still in progress bsky.app/profile/phoe...

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Joel @phoenixup.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

2. an industrial music opera performance based on the book Doktor Faustus, about art and the tragic fate of gay desire under the rise of fascism ...i expect these 2 projects to be some of the most interesting i've worked on

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Joel @phoenixup.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

1. a challenging mountain climbing/hiking game telling a story with audio i captured with my ex partner on a trip, in which we failed to climb a mountain and inadvertently captured our breakup taking place in real time...an intimate rage game in which you can fall down and fail right along with us

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Joel @phoenixup.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

some life/project updates: after a long period of dealing with chronic illness from long covid, i've finally found a medley of drugs that seem to have dramatically improved things (fingers crossed) i have high hopes now of being able to work on 2 projects, in addition to time bandit pt 2:

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Joel @phoenixup.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

i think i still have it and could send it to you if you want!

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