Jack Blair's games newsletter - Issue #5

What's up with all the corpses? Is it just me?

I don't know what it is, but this Halloween has been full of corpses for me. Not literal ones, thankfully, but there's been a real influx of corpse focused media in my sphere. I think I've done it to myself somehow, but it's been kind of interesting. I guess it started with my CSI rewatch (which I haven't actually been working on this week - I'm much more enthralled by Katbamkapow and Jack De Quidt's Hallowstream of Control for my watching pleasure). But today I've finished reading Nona the Ninth, and I keep playing Graveyard Keeper and Sunless Seas, and with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas? It's bodies all the way down.

Normally, if I have a fixation like this I write about it. I write a game focused on it, or I start a novel, or a short story. But honestly? I don't have the experience to write the macabre in this way. Something about the biggest dead thing I've seen before it was made into meat being a sheep makes me wary of the subject as an artist. I'm lucky to not have extensive experience with death. I think I'll thank my lucky stars and keep this corpse overload in my media consumption for now.

Sorry for the weird topic. But I noticed it, and once I noticed it I couldn't stop noticing it. You know how these things are.

I've tried to focus my creative ideas back towards living bodies. I have one of those, at least. Here's hoping it sticks!

Speaking of creative energy, I released a game this week!

Communion by Candlelight by Jack Blair — toyourstations.itch.io A two player game about a worshiper meeting with their god

Communion by Candlelight is an unofficial spiritual companion to my earlier game Fuck Your God, and was written for the game jam "Viditya's Birthday Goblin Jam", and also for Promptober. I went a little overboard, maybe. But it was a lot of fun, and I think you'll like it! It's a game about a god and their worshiper meeting for as long as they can before their ritual ends and their candles burn out.

Check it out!

It was a big week in streamtown too

If you want to watch me get the shit scared out of me by Oxenfree, I recommend the video above. That stream was a whole pile of fun, the story was interesting, and I swear a LOT.

This week was also the Sims Summit, and the week that the Sims 4 went free to play, so I did a stream with my friend Ty (@authentici_ty pretty much everywhere) to teach them how to play the Sims, as well as my normal three Sims streams. As always, VODs are up on Youtube, or on twitch until 7 days after the stream ended.

Last thing. If you're reading this before 11am on Monday NZT, please go vote in my poll: