Hugin & Munin Journal

Like many Paradox titles, Stellaris lives and evolves through an extensive DLC model. Paid expansions arrive alongside free updates, old systems are redesigned, and mechanics that once seemed fundamental may later be replaced or incorporated into the base game. This is hardly unique within Paradox’s catalogue, but the effect is unusually visible in Stellaris . Its DLC does not merely add more material to a stable game. It repeatedly changes what kinds of civilisation can exist, which stories the galaxy can generate and what the game expects the player to manage. That makes Stellaris richer. It also makes it increasingly difficult to answer a simple question: what, exactly, is the base game? Official artwork for Stellaris , developed by Paradox Development Studio and published by Paradox Interactive. Used for purposes of review and commentary. Two Different Paradox DLC Problems Europa Universalis IV also accumulated an intimidating catalogue of expansi...

When Torment: Tides of Numenera was first announced, I was immediately drawn in. It was presented as a thematic successor to Planescape: Torment , promising philosophical storytelling, difficult choices and companions with lives and motives of their own. I backed the record-breaking Kickstarter campaign , joining 74,405 people who pledged more than $4.1 million. The scale of that enthusiasm also became part of the game’s burden. Expectations expanded with every stretch goal, while the project itself took almost four years to reach its full release in February 2017. The finished game did not contain everything imagined during that campaign. Some promised systems and companions were reduced or removed. Yet in the areas that matter most to me—story, dialogue, worldbuilding and moral consequence—it remains a remarkable role-playing game. Its most interesting achievement is not simply that choices matter. It is that every choice is made from inside someone else’s attempt to escape co...

On January 28, 2026, Apple TV acquired adaptation rights to two of Brandon Sanderson’s major Cosmere series: Mistborn and The Stormlight Archive . Early coverage described the agreement as encompassing the Cosmere as a whole, but Reactor later corrected its initial report after Sanderson’s agent clarified the scope. The intended division makes immediate sense. Mistborn is being developed for feature films, while The Stormlight Archive is intended for television. More unusually, Sanderson is reportedly positioned to write, produce and consult while retaining broad creative approval. That level of involvement is genuinely encouraging. It is not, by itself, a guarantee. Cover image: The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson, published by Tor Books. Used here for purposes of commentary. Creative Control Is a Safeguard, Not a Solution Hollywood adaptations of popular fantasy and science fiction have a long and uneven history. Production value is never enough...

When Darkest Dungeon reached full release in January 2016, it did more than add another entry to the long tradition of dungeon-crawling RPGs. It placed psychological pressure beside health, equipment and positioning as something the player had to manage. The important innovation was not simply the addition of a stress meter. Games had represented morale, fear and sanity before. What made Darkest Dungeon distinctive was the way stress altered a hero’s behaviour, reduced the player’s control and continued to shape the campaign after the expedition ended. The heroes are not merely combat units with a second health bar. They are people who can become unreliable, infect one another with despair and eventually cost more to repair than the player is prepared to spend. The game’s real horror lies partly in how quickly that becomes an administrative calculation. Official artwork for Darkest Dungeon , developed and published by Red Hook Studios. Used for purposes of re...

At first glance, Ryan North’s How to Invent Everything looks like a prepper’s dream—or perhaps a post-apocalyptic one. It is not really a guide to surviving disaster, however, so much as a handbook for reconstructing civilisation after its accumulated knowledge has become inaccessible. That distinction matters. The book is less concerned with stockpiling food or building a bunker than with a more interesting question: how much of the modern world could be rebuilt by someone who knew the right principles but had none of the necessary infrastructure? And no, reading it did not turn me into a prepper. Cover image: How to Invent Everything by Ryan North, published by Riverhead Books. Used here for purposes of review and commentary. A Manual from Another Timeline The book presents itself as an emergency manual supplied with the FC3000 time machine. If the machine fails and strands its user in the past, the manual is supposed to help them survive, accelerate...

Across the Obelisk entered Steam Early Access in 2021 before receiving its full release in August 2022. Developed by Dreamsite Games and published through Paradox Arc, it has quietly become one of my favourite examples of the roguelite deck-building RPG. At first glance, it resembles another descendant of Slay the Spire : branching paths, turn-based card combat, repeated runs and gradually increasing difficulty. The important difference is not that Across the Obelisk eliminates randomness. It gives the player far more control over what happens before and around it. A four-character party, persistent perks, town upgrades and deliberate card crafting allow a strategy to be constructed rather than merely discovered among whatever rewards happen to appear. Luck still matters, but planning determines how exposed you are to it. Official artwork for Across the Obelisk , developed by Dreamsite Games and published by Paradox Interactive. Used for purposes of review an...

Harm None is the first novel in M. R. Sellars’s Rowan Gant Investigations, and my impressions are based solely on this opening book. I had encountered the series often enough among discussions of paranormal crime and urban fantasy that I eventually decided to try it. Published in 2000, the novel sits at an interesting intersection. It contains many elements now associated with urban fantasy—a contemporary setting, real magic and a protagonist who helps investigate supernatural crimes—but its structure is closer to an occult police procedural. That distinction matters because the investigation remains central even when the book pauses to explain Wiccan belief and practice. Those explanations give Harm None its clearest identity. They also create many of its weaknesses. Cover image: Harm None: A Rowan Gant Investigation by M. R. Sellars, published by WillowTree Press. Used here for purposes of review and commentary. An Occult Consultant, Not a Supernatura...

I do not remember exactly when I first read Neuromancer . It must have been in Swedish translation sometime in the early to mid-1990s, before I began reading almost exclusively in English. I reread it in English perhaps ten or fifteen years later, and returned to it again in early 2025 after finally reading the rest of the Sprawl trilogy. Despite the book’s enormous influence on me, I was surprised by how little of the actual plot I remembered. In many ways, it felt like reading it again for the first time. What remained were fragments: black ice, mirrored lenses, the Dixie Flatline and the strange sensation of cyberspace as somewhere the mind could physically enter. The narrative had faded, but its vocabulary had not. That may be the clearest measure of Neuromancer ’s influence—not that it predicted the technological world precisely, but that it helped determine how later generations would imagine it. Cover image: Neuromancer by William Gibson, pictured in a ...