Hugin & Munin Journal

Official promotional image for The Henry Stickmin Collection , developed by PuffballsUnited and published by Innersloth. Source: Steam. Used for review and commentary. The Henry Stickmin Collection looks like a joke that should have expired with Flash: stick figures, abrupt choices, simple animation, and a criminal hero whose plans fail far more often than they work. The surprise is not merely that the game remains funny. Its apparent crudity is part of the timing. This is a comedy machine built around choosing the wrong answer. It has none of the usual signals through which games announce ambition: lavish graphics, deep controls, an enormous world, or a story demanding solemn attention. Instead, it offers a succession of interactive cartoons about a rubber-limbed opportunist making increasingly indefensible decisions. It understands something many larger games forget: players do not always need to feel skilled, powerful, or correct. Sometimes the most inviting butt...

Official promotional artwork for Brotato , developed and published by Blobfish. Source: official game press kit. Used for review and commentary. Brotato looks like a joke and plays like a design argument. It is a top-down arena-shooter roguelite about a potato wielding as many as six weapons while trying to survive waves of aliens. The characters are potatoes, the arena is small, the graphics are plain, and the story barely exists. It resembles the sort of premise that should exhaust itself shortly after the first laugh. Instead, it reveals how little surface complexity a game needs when its decisions remain tightly connected. Weapons, statistics, characters, items, rerolls, money, enemy pressure, and wave timing all operate inside the same compact system. A purchase does not matter only because of what it adds. It matters because it changes the value of what the player already owns and what may become useful later. That distinction keeps the game from being merel...

I have been playing 4X games since first or second grade, when a friend introduced me to the original Civilization . Not long afterwards, I had my own copy, and between Civilization and Civilization II I must have spent hundreds of hours conquering, optimising and reshaping the world. One of my favourite parts was always the science victory: constructing a spaceship and launching it towards Alpha Centauri. But there was a lingering disappointment. The game ended just as it felt as though the most interesting part should begin. When Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri was released in 1999, it finally scratched that itch. It did not merely move the familiar Civilization formula into space. It asked what might happen after the colonists arrived—and allowed ideology, technology and the planet itself to shape the answer. Box art: Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri , developed by Firaxis Games and published by Electronic Arts. Used for purposes of review and commentary. More...