iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Fast iteration loops are fun; slow ones are awful. Brutal platformers like Celeste work because the retry loop is virtually instantaneous. It is not fun to miss a jump, run back for 2 minutes, miss it again, repeat.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

* 3rd person platforming challenges. I loved discovering there were secrets, but many of them require precise platforming which is extremely difficult with a 3rd person camera. And most of them are aerial, so if you miss a jump you fall, die, and have to spend minutes schlepping back to try again.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

But other forms don't use recipes, and require you to transfer items to the production building directly from inventory, which is a pain. If I've made something before, there should just be a recipe that pulls the ingredients from storage.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

This means I have to manage inventory manually, or remember to transfer those essential items back. Blech. * Manufacturing. Some forms of crafting work on a recipe system, where you choose a recipe and components are pulled automatically from neighboring storage containers, which is great!

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

* No favorites/locking. If I use the "fill stacks" button when managing container inventory, ALL items in my inventory that match an existing container stack go into the container. I can't keep food, water, mana essence, or other stacks that I want to hold in my inventory from transferring.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

* Weight. Having limited inventory slots is enough of a constraint on adventuring; giving items different weights, and having an overall weight limitation, seems completely unnecessary. Sure, it's more realistic, but this is a case where realism increases cognitive load but not fun.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

But Dragonwilds adds insult to injury by only letting me sleep when it's nighttime. In the day, you nap. Sleeping takes about 5 seconds, while napping takes 1 second for every percentage of fatigue you need to recover. Designers: waiting idly for a timer to expire is NEVER fun.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

* Daytime naps. I could just say "fatigue" as a mechanic is unfun, which it is. There's nothing compelling about managing fatigue-- it doesn't introduce meaningful decisions, it just forces me to go back to camp to rest periodically, which then forces me to schlep back to where I want to be.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Losing my position in the world (and increasing hunger/thirst/exhaustion) is usually a sufficient penalty for death-- giving me a chore that can take 2-5 minutes depending on how far I am from a fast-travel location is completely unnecessary.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Dragonwilds doesn't do this. Thankfully that's more of an annoyance than a huge issue-- monsters usually reset and move away once you die, so you don't need to fight your way through a horde to get your stuff. But the whole concept of corpse recovery is just busywork and fundamentally unfun.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Design decisions that make Runescape: Dragonwilds less fun (for me): * Gravestones. Reclaiming your corpse is a common mechanic in survival games. Abiotic Factor does this well-- you drop your inventory, but not your equipped items. Critically, this means you have weapons for your corpse run.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

You turned me on to the Checquy books, so I’ll put these into my queue. Have you read Erin Morgenstern’s books? The Night Circus and The Starless Sea? Unrelated standalone novels, beautiful writing, highly recommended.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

The cast is a third-order problem at best. Before that are the writing and pacing. It's PAINFULLY slow and mind-numbing for 90% of the game, and then in chapter 10 they hit you with a massive exposition drop that could have been slowly drip-fed during that previous 90% instead.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

And— cardinal sin— you can’t skip boss battle (or any other) cutscenes, forcing you to rewatch 30 seconds of flower growth every time you get to the second phase. I’m a completist so I took my time in each region, but now there’s no loot I care about anymore so I’m just racing to the end.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Every conversation with Kagura made me wish I could just delete her from the game. Emma has no emotions, perhaps to cover up for their lack of facial animation tech. The pacing of the cutscenes is glacial, and NOTHING HAPPENS!

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

I’m nearing the end, and the narrative team did not do their best work in this game. Why was Kunai randomly calling Emma for vacuous conversations all game? We never find out what Brad’s backstory is in more than extremely vague terms.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

It should be illegal for any company to request someone’s social security number unless they have a secure, encrypted, hashed and salted storage solution. Penalties to the company for a security breach should be existential threats.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

To all my friends and former colleagues at Bungie as Marathon launches: Godspeed. 🤞🤞

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

Submitted without comment: In the trailer for TCG Card Shop Simulator, the player sprays a stinky game player with deodorant.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 07/02/2026

The Minecraft Movie has entered the chat.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 07/02/2026

Huge +1 to #4. All those with screen captures of every page of A New Clue (among other books), raise your hand. 🙋‍♂️

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 07/02/2026

OMG yes, huge quality of life upgrade.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

Totally fair. But some notes, like shrine costs and effects, could be automated, and others like nation name/color/pattern combos, could be manual.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

I also dispute the thesis that for “a lot” of people taking notes was part of the magic. I’ll bet they’d have been even more delighted if that was rendered unnecessary. Once I prove I know what color/symbol/pattern goes with a nation, don’t make me remember it forever.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

I didn’t know at the time that I was setting the game aside for a while, so I didn’t write down what I needed to do. Having a manual in-game note system wouldn’t have changed that. But seriously, how many times should I need to enter the damn security system password? C’mon.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

Built-in note systems (which could literally be as basic as a custom implementation of Notepad) have the advantage that the notes stay with the game. But I’ll admit that wouldn’t solve all problems. I set Blue Prince aside just after figuring out what I need to do to reclaim the throne

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

I played Lingo ages ago but set it aside. Now I want to return to it, but I don't remember what the various colors mean, I really don't want to start over and relearn everything, and I don't want to look things up because I'll spoil myself on what I hadn't already figured out. So it languishes.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

One can often use the internet as a resource, but that comes with the risk of inadvertently spoiling yourself on something you *didn't* know. RPGs have had map annotation for decades now. A note system isn't hard. It just has to be prioritized.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

Many games are great about doing this with mechanics. Upgrade trees tell you the moves you've unlocked and the controller mapping for them. But once you've discovered that red guards always lie or triangles mean "do not turn on this space", you'd better remember that FOREVER.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

Sure, I can take physical notes. But if I'm playing on console there's no way I'm doing that, and if I put the game aside and return to it months later, the last thing I want to do is hunt around for notes or relearn everything.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

Hot take: Any game that requires the player to discover an idea in order to succeed should have a built-in note system. Blue Prince, for example, should give you the means to track the various Shrine costs/effects manually or provide you with a summary of what it knows you've already discovered.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

In Slay the Spire, I might decide to lean heavily into shivs, or card draw, or some other easily-understood mechanic. I don't have to track multiple terrains and resources and cards that interact differently with each of them. I wish the card design of Drop Duchy had gone a different way.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

Everything else about the game is very polished, but the stress of those choices made me shut down the game. I wish there was a screen that summarized my holdings and helped me make good decisions, or that the cards were a little simpler and easier to track.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

A single card can require terrain A, transform into terrains B and C, and recruit troop type D and/or resource E. Now imagine you have 4 or 5 card like that, all overlapping in some but not all aspects. Now you're asked to choose one of 3 new cards. I need a spreadsheet to make good choices.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

I was excited for the roguelike Tetris of Drop Duchy, but after the tutorial and a couple of runs, I've bounced off. The problem for me is I find it too hard to make smart choices. Keeping track of all my cards, what they do, and how they synergize is too difficult, and the game UI offers no help.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

The linear level design is the original sin. Make the level less linear and give the player agency to explore. This doesn’t have to mean a full open world. Just give the player many viable paths to progress, and exploration becomes an organic part of gameplay.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

Evil West is fun, but also frustrating. When your level design is essentially linear, with one golden path, it is BAD DESIGN to put collectibles in dead end spurs. Nothing breaks immersion like finding the correct path, then turning around to go the wrong way first so I can get collectibles.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

I am SO done with dystopian games. Read the room, gamedevs. There's a wide blue ocean out there for utopian games. Find some new verbs.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

It all hangs together nicely and was fun to play, all the more impressive because the art, design, and code were all done by one person. Available on Game Pass.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

6. Smart level design that usually introduces you to a new combatant in isolation so you can learn how they work, then follows up with a bigger combat that tests you against a bunch of them. The result is that the game feels fair. So many games get this wrong.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

5. Upgrade currency is plentiful, and if you can't find upgrade points in the wild, you can just use that currency to buy them, so you feel like your time/effort is always being respected.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

3. "Take no damage" challenges INSTANTLY restart in-place when you fail, making them no-cost mini-mastery challenges rather than grueling "now I have to remember where that was and get back there to try again" slogs. 4. Simple mechanics. No blocking-- dash and jump both evade attacks. Clean.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

2. Ability to mark unfound objects on the map means the giant world doesn't become a series of needle-in-a-haystack problems in the endgame if you want to Get All the Things. Huge win!

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

Got 100% on Crypt Custodian, a fairly straightforward and satisfying Metroidvania that made some very player-friendly design choices. 1. Frequent save/fast travel points take the pain out of revisiting locations, which you do frequently as you unlock abilities.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

I played all the way to the end(s), though, so I'm giving it a thumbs up. Just be aware that while you get a few powers along the way, there aren't any transformative system unlocks or hidden reveals. While there's plenty lurking under the sea in Dredge, what you see on the surface is what you get.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

The inventory management game of Tetris isn't nearly as interesting as in, say, Backpack Hero, where what you keep and where you keep it actually matters. In Dredge, it's just a limiting factor and chore.

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Peter Sarrett @psarrett.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

I was also disappointed that the entire game essentially boils down to a series of fetch quests, in the sense that you're catching fish or dredging up trinkets which you bring back to dock to sell, then use that cash to buy upgrades and/or make repairs to set out and do it all again.

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