This Week’s Topics:
- Rundown Preamble Ramble: Natalie Watched Goodwin’s Circus Show
- The Steam Machine Lives! (Starting At $1,050!)
- Tencent Ditches Investment in Marvelous (Marvy is FREE!)
- Grand Theft Auto VI Will Be A $80 Digital Only Game (Analysts in SHAMBLES!)
- Xbox Gets Another Price Hike (The RAMpocalypse is only Getting Worse!)
Rundown Preamble Ramble:
Natalie Watched Goodwin’s Circus Show
This past week, I decided to bite the bullet and watch The Amazing Digital Circus by Gooseworx and Glitch. For those living under a rock, TADC is a highly popular independent 3D animated series that exploded in popularity over the past two years, as demonstrated by how the series finale was aired in thousands of theaters. On YouTube, every episode has over 60 million views, it’s on Netflix, and has gradually established itself as a key thing to be into among Zoomies and Alphers.
Now, this is the sort of thing I would steer clear of, simply because it is popular, it is mainstream, and has almost certainly endeared an annoying fandom of overzealous minors. However, I felt obligated to watch the show because I felt left out seeing all the fellow trans folks I follow talk about how much they cried over this show, comparing the ending to I Saw The TV Glow.
(Sidebar, but I did watch and briefly talk about I Saw The TV Glow two years ago. I enjoyed it, but did not engage with it in the right mindset, as I expected something TSF flavored and for the movie to end on a more fantastical note. It never did, and I was left going huh, that’s it? Personally, I blame Missy Scrumptious.)
…But also because I was familiar with the lead creator’s earlier work. This probably isn’t well known, but Gooseworx had an earlier life as a DeivantArt-based artist by the name of Ugovaria. As Ugovaria, she was a notable member of the TG community back during my halcyon days of 2008 to 2013, also known as when I was 13 to 18. I should probably do some long elaborate retrospective on what this community was like, how various creators functioned as anchors for people who were fascinated of the prospect of guys becoming girls for various reasons. But to keep it brief and risk using an overused term, it was a rather wholesome place. Sexuality was not overt, silliness reigned supreme, stereotypes were frequent, yet in good fun, the community of skewed pretty young, and there was a focus on being fantastical above fetishistic.
If you wanted saucier stuff, you could go to TG Comics. And if you wanted porn… Paheal Rule 63 was open until sometime in 2011. RIP. I will never forget you, because of the horse.
In her prime, Ugovaria was very active. From 2010 to 2012, she produced over 700 artworks, inventing up new characters, creating comics for them, and experimenting with styles. Though, she routinely fell on the sillier end of things, bringing to life whatever jokes or gags she had in her head. Following her, I really had no idea what she would put out next, just that she would probably come up with something every other day, if not every day. She was also way too open about herself for a darn 15-year-old, using her real name, and surname, while referencing things like her grades, religion, and other more personal details. Because of this, I’ve never called her Gooseworx and always preferred calling her by her surname, Goodwin. …Mostly because I have no idea if she changed her given name and I don’t want to be rude.
TG, that is turning guys into a girl through a magic gun, boot, or other apparatus, was a common element across Goodwin’s art. However, she used TG sparingly enough that it represented a clear minority of her output. She clearly thought it was funny and compelling on some level, but she was more of a loosie goosie artist, a genuine art kid, and more invested in bringing her silly ideas to life. This can be reflected in how many simple gag comics or illustrations exist between her menagerie of characters, led by her literal self-insert and her recurring companion/sidekick, Reapy. Who, despite the name, was not a Grim Reaper character. He was just some bald purple guy in a dark robe.
Going through her work, which I still find a lot of it quite charming, the part that strikes me the most is how deeply ingrained she was in the larger TG community. She routinely did little crossovers with her friends, other prominent members of the community, and seemed to form a pretty close friendship with quite a few. Namely ComX-1, aka Chess-Man, LordEbonFuze, aka Da Fuze, s0s2, and Blake Benton. Hell, she even made music for some of them, as in addition to being a super active artist at age 15, she was doubling as a composer. Sadly though, the MediaFire links for these songs have gone kaput, but this one’s still on her YouTube.
As 2010 gave way to 2011, TG became a less common part of her work, often preferring to just draw herself as her female persona, or sharksona, and let people fill in the rest. Her artwork was also rapidly evolving at this point, moving past the sketchier style she used for early comics and into something more polished and refined. It was a lovely artistic evolution to see, but one that came with a stark decline in making TG stuff. Her last real TG comic was back in 2013 with a wackadoo Valentine’s Day special, not counting the unfinished Party Girls 2. She was moving on as a creator at this point, making music, setting up Goosewrox as her brand going forward, and left Ugovaria behind with a couple sketches, some final parting illustrations of her and some friends, before telling her watchers to follow her as she pursued new ventures.
I was happy to see her succeed, happy to see her transition— lowkey publicizing it a year before I had the guts to start HRT— but didn’t really follow her after that. Why? Because I felt like she was leaving the TG community behind, moving onto higher pastures, and becoming her own person. …Also, there are only so many people I have the energy to follow.
Still, going through the show, I couldn’t help but make nebulous connections with things she did back during the Ugovaria days. Certain comedic sensibilities, design principles, and overall personality were all familiar to me. The characters moved, talked, and acted like how she drew and wrote her characters, just with about 15 years of maturity, learning, skill building, and experience behind everything. It gave me a slight sense of nostalgia, like I was seeing the evolution of someone I knew…
Now, I do not know Goodwin. I never interacted with her even during these DeviantArt years, and she absolutely has no clue who I am. However, because she was so willing to share during this era, across both her art and her journal, because we’re the same age, it’s easy for me to feel as if I have a level of familiarity with the sassy teen she used to be. You could say that I almost feel like I went to high school with her, in a school with a thousand people. Someone I never interacted with, but saw around, hearing about on occasion, occasionally seeing her art in the art hall.
…Would that even count as a parasocial relationship? Not sure!
Anyway, that was my background going in, so I should probably talk about The Amazing Digital Circus as a show. For those who have not watched the show, the premise is fairly simple: A group of people find themselves trapped in a digital world where they are subjected to the whims of the unstable ringleader, Caine, who can manipulate this digital reality as he sees fit. With Caine’s aims unclear and everyone trapped in cartoonish vaguely humanoid forms, the main cast are shot from adventure to adventure as new people periodically arrive… and others go insane.
A story like this from a lesser writer could easily mull around on a surface level or veer into how fucked up it would be to be trapped in a digital world of nonsense. I know from experience. Fortunately, and this sounds weird when talking about a series that starts off as an absurdist dark comedy staring a bunch of toy people, it’s a lot more mature than that.
TADC is dark without being edgy, sincere without morbid, and heartfelt without being schmaltzy, while focusing primarily on the case of characters, their relationships, and their clashes. Across the main six, everybody’s damaged, complicated, and varying levels of uncomfortable. All are stuck with bodies, names, and companions they didn’t get to choose. They’re forced to go through daily nonsense at the behest of a cheery loon when they just want to be, to exist, to go back to their lives in progress, while being unable to remember specifics, not even their true names. With freedoms inhibited, escape seemingly impossible, and everything rendered unreal with the sugary saturated shape of these worlds, tensions naturally run high. However, they try to make the best of it, find the joys within their life, and often rejoice in with the connections before them.
Well, except for Jax, a pseudo protagonist who is afraid of feeling emotions, forming connections, and fancies being a jackass, because that’s easier than being honest with yourself. If that one example is not clue enough, every key character is tied to a firmly grounded genre of person, and learning their struggles only makes them all the more compelling. Starting out, they’re just a batch of quirky weirdos who get into endearing mischief, bouncing off each other well, but they really come into their own until the halfway point. This is when the episodic adventures with a character showcase is put aside and more emphasis is placed on background and serialization as the cast try to break away from this cycle and embrace something new. It’s when the show really gets going, and when I became truly hooked by it.
Overall, I have little bad to say about the show. It’s consistently funny, grabbed me far more than I expect, and neatly weaves between extremes while retaining a consistent identity. The voice actors all do a great job. They add a distinctly human layer to every character as they bounce from sounding like the chipper, zany cartoon critters they appear to be and the weariness of an adult beat down by bullshit. I found the show surprisingly relatable due to the many ways the experiences of the characters can be transposed on the viewer and people they know. And I was left wishing that we had a bit more time with these characters but, alas, the era of 4 season series with 13 episodes a year is long gone.
All of this is before getting into the stellar presentation of the show. The storyboarding, world design, general animation, the way 3D models are molded and manipulated to ludicrous extreme— it’s all beyond anything I would expect from an independent animation like this. The show is consistently imaginative, evocative, at times aggressively beautiful in its construction, and eager to do something different out of what feels like a pure adoration for the art of creation.
The fact that this show was made in Unreal Engine 5 both amazingly demonstrates what that engine can do in the right hands. …And it makes me hate Epic all the more, because they just can’t help but break whatever they have.
As a whole, I think the show is pretty great. It’s a massive achievement for Goodwin, who acted as the writer/director/creator/composer despite only being 31. And I think everybody involved has plenty reason to be proud of what they accomplished here.
…That is, as I said, as a whole, because I didn’t like the ending. Or, rather, I should say that I’m more… confused why it didn’t explain certain things and why it did other things.
I’ll try to make this as spoiler-free as possible, not detailing any specifics, for those who haven’t watched the series. But if you’re super spoiler shy, just skip to the last paragraph.
Let’s start off with what I liked. I was happy to see what lied beyond the circus and get a glimpse into the broader world, getting further insights into these characters, and confirm/deconfirm whatever theories one could have about the broader setting. I like that these abused bunch of weirdos managed to get a happy ending after so much abuse. And I was not at all surprised to see how this story struck a chord with so many trans, or otherwise queer, people. Because Goodwin, like most trans creators, just couldn’t help herself to add a tran in at the last minute. Everything about that reveal was done well, painted the relevant characters in a new light, and ultimately imparts a lesson that I think young people, in general, need to see reflected in media to help them work through their feelings.
This was not a bad ending… I just felt like it was missing ten minutes of explaining crap.
From the first episode, it was clear that the Digital Circus was a sort of virtual reality program. This is a key part of the overall story, of facts discussed throughout the series, yet we never get a comprehensive answer as to what it is. Is this some experiment? Why is everybody some weird rubbery VR Chat model critter? Is this meant to be a commercial game? Why is there no character customization or ability for them to change how they look, beyond their clothes? Hell, how did any of the human characters get access to this world, and why would they get access to it? They don’t know the circumstances, and never seem to ask of why here. This is not an essential question that a virtual world story needs to answer… but it kind of is when you put this much weight into it.
Also dating back to the first episode, the series has a curious relationship with death. Characters in the Digital Circus cannot die. They are functionally immortal, don’t breathe, don’t need to eat— all established very early on. However, as we see in the first episode, they can abstract and become corrupted monsters if their minds break, they give into despair, or become insane. The in-universe explanation for this transformation is not really important— they go mad and become an insane zombie critter, nuff said. That could have been enough, but then the last episode raises many questions about what an abstracted person actually is, and if they are just… stuck like that.
A reason they are stuck might be because being abstracted is, clearly, analogous to death. Death is a part of life, most people have friends, families, and people close to them die, so if characters could just be unstuck, if they could be revived, wouldn’t that take away from a theme or message? Quite possibly… but that message is pretty much thrown away by the end of the final episode. Death no longer has the same impact, death is no longer as real as we might think, and revival is possible. Except instead of using this newfound knowledge to save everyone else, that’s not what happens. Because of this, the happy ending does not have the same impact, as not everybody gets to join in on the fun.
I don’t have a problem with characters dying. That’s a key element of some of my favorite stories of all time. But I do have a problem with characters staying dead when death isn’t death.
To prevent someone from chewing me out in the comments, but I went through the fan wiki after writing this to try and piece it together. The ultimate explanation for what the circus is, which IS indirectly stated, makes sense. There is a believable explanation of how every major character got sent here. it also explains why abstractions are the way they are and why there may not be backups. However, this is all a surprisingly mundane and boring explanation that raises MANY questions about how all of this is possible. Let’s just say that computers don’t last forever, and buildings don’t either.
…Wait, no, I figured out what the twist actually is, and… I don’t know if it’s brilliant or really freaking stupid. I’ll leave my SPOILER-RICH realization below, in white, so you need to highlight it to read it:
This was all a multi-user dungeon wasn’t it? One where there is one AI character, and a few other characters made up of condensed human data files, living out adventures in a delayed span of time, on a goldarn Windows 95 PC, in the 2010s! And because this was an experimental program, there were no backups enabled, the probably 1 GB hard drive does not have enough space, and if the character data gets corrupted, it’s just bad data! DAMN do you need to do a walk in order to make sense of that, and BOY does it make all of this seem less impressive.
Or in other words, the ending didn’t stick the landing on either a logical or emotional front for me, lacking the explanations someone as anal as me wants and stopping a character’s journey short. Still, I’m glad I watched it, would happily recommend it with this qualifier, and am just… kind of amazed that Goodwin, as a creator, has come so far and delivered something as resonant and meaningful as this.
The Steam Machine Lives!
(Starting At $1,050!)
After months of waiting, and likely a lot of supply chain management, Valve has finally announced the starting price for their much heralded Steam Machines. For those with bad memories, the Steam Machine is a small compact cube-shaped computer running the Linux-based SteamOS with decent enough specs to run most games hitting the market at the moment and, hopefully, for the next few years. Because who has 32 GB of RAM and 12 GB of VRAM in THIS economy?
Akumako: “You?”
Shaddup! My 3060 is not as sweet as it sounds, and I’m still on 3200 MHz DDR4 RAM! It might be 48 GB, but it’s not very efficient.
While the Steam Machine specs have always been more modest, relatively speaking, the big question on everybody’s mind has been the price. I remember projecting something like $800 when it first launched, before the RAMpocalypse became a widely recognized event, and you could still get 4 TB NVMe drives for a reasonable price. (I would know, I snagged two that I’m not doing anything with.) However, component demands have slapped the base 512 GB SSD model’s price up to $1,050, a slightly awkward price and above the coveted $999.99, but considering the market… I get it.
As for the more robust 2 TB SSD model, that will cost an additional $300, or $1,350. Yes, just for an additional TB and a half of storage.
Akumako: “How much did those 4 TB NVMe drives you bought in November 2024 cost?”
$205 a piece, with 10.5% sales tax.
Akumako: “…Who do you hate more? Fascist wannabe dictators who lack a community college student’s understanding of economics, or AI tech technofeudalists?”
Give me a gun, and I’ll kill the former a second before killing the latter.
The fact that a device like this, that should have cost $700 back in 2024, is now 50% more expensive is deeply disheartening. I could easily go on a scree about how the tariffs, the avarice of AI companies, and the needless consolidation of tech manufacturers is deeply screwing over every one except for those who invested in Micron. But, in the end, Valve’s not really at fault for the price, and the software should only get better over time.
At this point, all I can do is hope that things do turn around eventually and that people CAN afford to buy new computers for a reasonable price. Sadly, I think our only real chance is that China, saving the world one step at a time, bring enough cheap RAM and GPU production in-house to address the demand. Also, I want AI companies to go up in flames as people assess their valuations, and they fail high profile audits.
Akumako: “Shit sucks, you want to see it all burn. Yada-yada whatsittoya.”
I suppose that Valve is cutting people a break with the Steam Controller with the new Steam Machine, only charging $78, down from $100, when they are purchased as a bundle, but that’s a miniscule savings when the final price tag is $1,428.00. That’s almost a mortgage payment.
Akumako: “…Hold up, you got an extra 32 GB of RAM for $51 back then? That shit’s literally five times more expensive!”
Damn, now that’s what I call a good investment…
Akumako: “…So, you gonna buy a Steam Machine?”
Why bother? My long-term computer plans are to switch to Linux so that I don’t have to feel dirty about everything and get a corporate Windows mini PC for my accounting work, alongside my new job once the practice is sold. Hopefully I’ll be able to get my employer to pay for the Windows machine, but the Linux one would come out of my pocket.
Tencent Ditches Investment in Marvelous
(Marvy is FREE!)
I hate the fact that Tencent, a giant Chinese tech company analogous to the myriad evil tech companies we have in America, has sunk their tendrils deep into the global gaming industry over the past few years. They came up all the time during the acquisition segments I did a few years ago, and it always made me upset. I do not want a company like Tencent to have the ability to exert control over what games get made, what studios can do, and what technology they use. It’s similar to how I loathe the way Saudi Arabia has been moneyhatting their way into gaming, owning SNK, EVO, and placing 5% to 10% investments in oodles of companies.
Fortunately, Tencent is in talks to lower their global gaming investments, specifically with developer/publisher Marvelous Inc. Why would they bail on a 20% investment they made six years ago? Well, because as a broader tech company, Tencent wants to focus more on the AI arms race and will take whatever capital they can get. Plus, I can’t imagine that Marvelous has done all too marvelously these past few years.
Despite having a strong background and concept, Loop8: Summer of Gods (2023) was a disaster of a production— Punchy has a good video on that game’s failings. The middling farming and monster raising action game Farmagia (2024) landed with a wet thud. Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion (2025) was a solid exosuit exploration game that suffered from the fact that it was a sequel to a mech game, and… you just don’t change genres like that! While the Story of Seasons remakes really aren’t too exciting, clearly just a placeholder as the dev team figures out how to make an actual original game. Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma (2025) was pretty good though.
Marvelous’s stock has notably declined since the start of the pandemic, never moving that much. Though, looking at their report for the year ended March 31, 2026, they seem to be in a fairly healthy place. They made $17 million in operating profit last year, so they’re not bleeding money like they were in the year prior. However, I can easily see why Tencent would think that an investment like this should be snubbed from a portfolio. Gaming is looking like it might undergo a truly serious decline as hardware prices keep shooting to the moon, and any reasonable investor would be sheepish of the industry. Well, most of the industry.
Sidebar, but bearish is a stupid term and people should have used sheepish. Bears prowl, hunt, and kill. Sheep just dawdle around and run from danger. Finance people have dumb names for most things.
Per the Bloomberg article linked above, Tencent is looking to offload other smaller investments like this, but not developers like PlatinumGames, where they own an undisclosed amount, or the highly coveted FromSoftware. So look forward to hearing more stories like this, assuming Marvelous’s management wants to own more stock.
Grand Theft Auto VI Will Be A $80 Digital Only Game
(Analysts in SHAMBLES!)
Akumako: “Ay, you funky Homo sapiens! You know what time it is! Time for the periodical GTA VI report!”
Huh? Are we really doing this? There’s enough air being consumed by Grand Theft Auto VI, and it’s not even because of its status as a work of art, just as a product. It is a thing that investors clamor over and what regular people are told to be obsessed over.
Akumako: “Yeah, I getchu!”
Of course you do. We’re the same person! I forget who’s the original at this point, as we keep switching roles all the ding-dong time.
Akumako: “Can I just get on with my schtick? Because it’s funnier if the household skinsuit demon’s the one who talks about the inevitable biggest entertainment product of all time.”
That’s a bold claim, but sure, go for it.
Akumako: “After over a year of analysts slobbering themselves over the sheer prospect of Grand Theft Auto VI saving gaming by introducing the final MSRP. Just like the anal cysts they were named after, analysts were floored to see— dicks rammed straight into the dirt— like a lizard— that the greatest gaming product of all time shall only cost a mere $79.99 United States Dollars! For less than the day wage at Spumpkin’s Wafer Mill— thanks Obama— you can indulge yourself in buying one copy of Grand Theft Auto VI. Fuck my ass and call me purple! At them Narc-ass Friend Prices, you owe it to yourself to spruce your chonies with The Grand Theft Auto VI: Ultimate Edition for the primo economical $99.99. With inflation, that’s a fourth of a Dreamcast, homie!”
Akumako: “But wait, that’s not the preposterously ill beat! Rather than let these lecherous leakers ruin everything by doing some straight hood shit, murkin’ like it’s they’s nine-ta-five, the based C-dawg Strauss Zelnick ain’t bumpin’ no discs!”
That’s right! Instead of—
Akumako: “Shut yo hole, ho! This is my world, and youse just a squirrel lookin’ for an egg!”
Was that a Gitaroo Man reference?
Akumako then pulled a gun from her bum and shot Natalie in the face. Her head a-sploded in three places, for real.
Akumako: “To keep them deplorable leakers ‘n’ sneaks ‘n’ rats outta the goods, Take-Two ain’t bumpin’ no discs of GTA VI. Nah, bitch! You’ll see boxes at stores, but they just got codes in ’em. The biggest game of the year is gonna be digital only, so take note, suckers! Pre-loads be dropping a week before on November 12, 2026, so the servers don’t get SLAMMED come November 19, 2026. And whaddya get? A single-player experience, no online yet.”
Akumako: “Izzat even surprising? Hell-fucking-no! GTA V didn’t launch its online until after it became a critical darling based on its single-player. Red Dead Redemption 2 may as well have not had an online mode given how much Red Dead Online fell off like a suicide. And if Rockstar waits, they can do a second launch for GTA Online. ‘Sides, they ain’t shown ya SHIT about the online mode. Damn, we don’t even have a scrap of real gameplay, we just got some obvious bullshots, and this shit’s out in less than five months.”
Akumako: “That’s what shows you the dominant alpha energy of GTA VI, tho! We ain’t got shit, yet all-a-y’all are gonna go lappin’ this up like it’s desert water. The people already decided they’s Christ from momo zero, and no matter what they ship, even if it’s wet dogwater, it’s still gonna sell a hundo million like lickety. So if you care about that CULTURE, you can get N or get out!”
…That sounds very racist when out of context, especially when you’re bustin’ out your colonized AAVE.
Akumako: “I speaks how I wanna, ‘cos it sounds cool ‘n’ smooth.”
Uh-huh, yeah. Just because you look Persian doesn’t mean I know there’s some cracker behind there.
Akumako: “…It was for a bit! Fuck a duck, dude!”
Anyway, this is just cope and a way to make fun with this cultural event I’m not going to be part of.
Akumako: “Me and Nat, we ain’t never even PLAYED a GTA before! We just like half the Vice City soundtrack!”
Yep. I got GTA V from that Epic Games giveaway, never played it, and I don’t even bother redeeming free games there anymore. I truly don’t “get” the succulent gushing people are doing over this, so… I guess you could say this is just my version of Skyrim Watch from the old Destructoid Show.
Akumako: “Wow, that’s a 15-year-old pull…”
15 years ago was yesterday, bae.
With that, Imma ghost! But before I leave, I gotta remind you, be yourself, ‘cos you might find yourself, by yourself, and any fool can learn from their mistakes, but it takes a wise guy like you to learn from others. Persistence always overcomes resistance! Peace!
Akumako: “What. A. Dork.”
Xbox Gets Another Price Hike
(The RAMpocalypse is only Getting Worse!)
…Do I seriously need to talk about how AI companies, the wealthy elite, nationalistic fuckwits with a million times more power than brains, twice in one Rundown? I guess I do!
As part of a month of terror that will result in layoffs that are still being determined, Microsoft has announced that, effective August 1, 2026, the price of all Xbox consoles will be increased by $100 or $150.
- The Xbox Series S with a 512 GB SSD originally cost $300, currently costs $400, and will cost $500.
- The Xbox Series X with a 1 TB SSD originally cost $500, currently costs $650, and will cost $800.
- The Xbox Series X Digital with a 1 TB SSD originally cost $450, currently costs $600, and will cost $750.
Furthermore, the 2 TB Xbox Series X will be discontinued, as that much storage is now prohibitively expensive and, per the math, would need to be at least $1,000.
Recognizing that these are patently unaffordable for most people who just want to play GTA and like six other games, Microsoft is also introducing alternatives to buying a console, pushing refurbished consoles and buy now, pay later programs.
But you know what the worst part is? It’s only going to get worse. Microsoft says that they expect prices to double, again, come fall 2027, and I’m inclined to believe them. The prospects here are terrible, and even if things stop and simmer down in 2028…they’re not going to go back to normal just like that. You don’t go from something costing 10x the previous price and go back to the original price after a few months. Hell no! We are in this for the long haul, and I’m just kicking myself for not building a new PC back in 2024.
And who do we have to blame for all of this? Well, the RAM cartels who are soaking in insane profits from these price hikes. Donald Trump for his stupid tariffs and vanity war with Iran, disrupting the global supply chain like DAMN. But most of all, the fucking AI companies trying to build out data centers, hungry for an infinite amount of RAM, driving up the costs of every tech product as a result! And you know who’s one of these companies? Microsoft.
Valve is a nobody in the world of computer manufacturing, they can take what they can get, or they’ll get lost. Nintendo, while a good contract to have, is not able to push or shake much of anything in the world of RAM cartels. Sony has more ties with their other tech ventures, but are peanuts compared to other companies. Microsoft though? Microsoft is one of the biggest companies in the world, has spent untold billions on their own AI development, and has committed to buying oodles of RAM, GPUs, and NVMe storage for their data centers.
Microsoft is directly responsible for this surge in RAM prices, having been a huge proponent of the AI boon, shoving it into everything they could. I loathe them, loathe the fact that I am stuck using their shitty, inefficient, and deteriorating operating system, and making it too fucking expensive for me to consider jumping ship. Which is before getting to how they have actively enabled the US-Israeli military as war drew global trade to a halt by aiding the military
I hate them.
I hope this surge, that these godawful margins, are enough to kill off the Xbox initiative, destroy Project Helix before it can ship, and pave a glorious future where I don’t need to see their company crop up in the news, every fucking week, for a new terrible reason.
Restless Dreams
(In my Restless Dreams, I See Her Face)
Coming in as a last minute addition, we have another gift request from Natalie.TF regular commentor, Ouran Nakagawa. After sending me An Alt Girl for Skoof and Hello Girl last year, she returned again with a copy of Restless Dreams. No, not Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams (2001), an updated version of the original Silent Hill 2 with Mary action. Instead, Restless Dreams is a small retro-flavored first-person horror game about a young hikikomori woman trapped in her apartment, mulling over how her life came to this point. Not the sort of thing I usually cover, but it’s 60 minutes to 80 minutes, so I gave it a whirl and thought it was pretty neat.
If the shared namesake wasn’t much of a clue, Restless Dreams takes a lot of cues from Team Silent’s run on the Silent Hill series in capturing a mundane and grounded horror. Themes, mood, and even the item sound effect, are all showing a clear influence, but instead of combat, it has surreal dream sequences meant to convey the protagonist’s trauma. It’s a trauma whose source and nature easy to guess from the first look at a family photo and notes of Moonlight Sonata, and the fact that the protagonist is both young and living alone. Considering the length of the game, I would say it executes its story well, at the risk of being cliché, but nothing about the execution left me wanting.
It does what it needs to, gives you a steady series of narrative crumbs to follow, and manages to create a concise yet sufficiently detailed environment that feels grounded. The gameplay is mostly just mulling around the apartment or some other dreamscape area, looking over notes, picking up objects, combining them on occasion and engaging in small puzzles. It’s all pretty simple, only giving me pause when you had to intuit a safe combination from the shape of an object, rather than the name. There’s enough interaction for it to feel sufficiently gamey and involved… up to a point.
The final stage of the game, as it were, is a ingle solitary stealth section where you have to run from 3+ pursuer enemies as they prowl a maze-like hallway. …It took me at least ten tries to clear this section. It’s doable, but a lot of it comes down to luck, timing, and being able to react in time when you turn a corner to find a pursuer. Eventually, I figured out that you had to avoid certain problem corners and run far, far away from the pursuer so they would lose track of you can give up. Not ideal if they are blocking the only path forward, but through trial and effort, I got through. Curious if this was just a me problem, I asked Ouran, and she seemingly had no issues, so maybe I’m just bad at keyboard and mouse stealth. Wouldn’t surprise me!
Following that roadblock, which may prevent some players from getting through, the ending is about what you would expect. More ethereal dream walking before concluding on a thematically concise, arguably simple, choice.
Moving onto the visuals, this isn’t really my preferred style. While I love the look of retro games, I’ve never been a fan of the deliberately low resolution look picked up by so many horror games as of late. They rarely get the look exactly right, and Restless Dreams is no exception. It’s clearly going for a PlayStation 1 look, but the model of the protagonist, namely her hair and fingers, scream Dreamcast to me. Environments, meanwhile get by on simple geometry to make up mundane, or surreal objects while using blurry textures to both lower the workload and give everything a more vague, almost ethereal feeling. I would not pin them to any specific bit of hardware, in part because I honestly struggled to see them.
Part of this is due to the simulated lower resolution of this game, giving the image an “evocative” fuzziness, while also making it harder to parse visual details. This was always a problem with CRT displays, and the reason why games older often had such gaudy or abstract elements. So you could clearly see them on a crummy $80 tube. However, a game like this would have been especially hard to see, as it’s so DARK.
There’s no brightness setting in the menu, the textures are deliberately dark, and the lack of distinct color makes the environments, as a rule, far less exiting to sift through. You sometimes need to rely on the shifting recital to determine you’re looking at something. I get that this is part of the genre, to an extent, but this was almost bad enough where I had to blow out my monitor’s brightness. It is harder to really care about the environment, or horror elements, because I couldn’t see some of them.
I suppose my biggest criticism of Restless Dreams is that it’s very straightforward. It doesn’t have too many unique ideas, and a lot of the ground it covers is well trodden. Visually, it commits to a look at the risk of being hard to parse, and mechanically, it goes a bit too far in replicating a hugely popular subgenre. It’s far from perfect, but… for an hour long $3 indie game from a solo developer, I can’t really give it too much flak. It sets out some reasonable goals and achieves them reasonably well. I’d give it a B out of 10, and if you like short horror romps, it’s currently on sale for a mere $2.39 right now during the Steam summer sale.
Progress Report 2026-06-28
To be real, I genuinely do not see how so many people are drawing a line in the sand against paying $80 for the “greatest entertainment product yet” and insist that the $20 price increase, compared to paying $60 20 years ago, is disgusting. Which, uh, sure, I can see that, but literally everything has gotten more expensive, and you are paying to be a relevant member of society.
…Said the person who made an extra $7,000 extra mortgage payment this past week.
Also, obligatory movie night talk: Watched Blade Runner again, this time able to better understand it than when I was 14. Good movie, but definitely the sort of thing that gets legs on a re-watch and detailed examination, and I think its influence and vibes are far better than the film itself. Like… why did we need to have that apartment full of wack-ass puppets? I know there is some symbolic reason, but moments like that just come off as off rather than deliberate.
We also watched Evolution (2001) That movie was a staple of Cassie’s childhood, but I thought it was pretty dumb. They had a premise for a pretty good sci-fi invasion story about a rapidly evolving and mutating species. But they did not explore that enough, as they had to engage in mildly grating American comedy minutiae. A lot of scenes, jokes, and situations really feel like they were turned from the Hollywood script machine, with mild minstrelsy, kind of grating sexual undercurrents, and gross out fart joke comedy. It’s not endearingly silly enough to be for kids, yet is too juvenile to work as an adult comedy either, giving it this adolescent feeling that is punctuated by a climax centered around killing a flesh monster with a shampoo enema. The movie’s not bad, but I’d slap it with the mediocre stick, easy.
2026-06-21: Wrote about 4,000 words for the Re-Whatever Ramble, getting a pretty decent draft ready to be edited. Also, I definitely made some math mistakes with counting the Re-Whatever Ramble! Nonlinear writing is WAY harder to count than linear writing!
2026-06-22: Wrote the 600 word Steam Machine bit. Edited the first part of the Re-Whatever Ramble, wrote a list of header images I need to assemble. I need to make like 35 images for this DUMB project.
2026-06-23: Wrote 1,200 words for the preamble, browsed through old Ugovaria stuff, and finished editing the second half of the Re-Whatever Ramble. I was too disinterested to start on the visual component tonight.
2026-06-24: Wrote 1,300 words for the Marvelous and GTA bits. Made the headers for the first half of the Re-Whatever Ramble.
2026-06-25: Wrote 600 word Xbox bit. Finished the preamble with another 1,600 words, edited this, made the needed headers.
2026-06-26: Made the final few headers, got everything ret-2-go for the Re-Whatever Rambles, wrote 1,500 words for next week’s Rundown, wrote a 1,000 word review for Restless Dreams, played Restless Dreams.
2026-06-27: Did some proofing of things for next week’s Rundown, got the Restless Dreams segment good-2-go, milled around, did chores, then decided to bite the bullet and get started on my Help! I’m Turning Into A Mermaid review, meaning I started playing the game. I think it might be Lachlan Snell’s best game yet, but I’m only about done with chapter two and will probably need a week to clear this game.
Natalie.TF 2026 Progress Report
2026-07-01: Verde’s Doohickey 2.0: Sensational Summer Romp Act 3: Worldly Wonders– DONE2026-07-01: Natalie Rambles About the History of Remasters, Remakes, and Re-Whatevers– DONE2026-07-08: Natalie Rambles About the Modern Reality of Remasters, Remakes, and Re-Whatevers– DONE- 2026-07-15: Help! I’m Turning into a Mermaid! Review
- 2026-07-22: Pokémon Legends: Z-A – Mega Dimension Review
- 2026-07-29: Class of ’09 – Puzzle Challenge Review
- 2026-08-04: Natsumi Legacy Route – Student Transfer Scenario Review
- 2026-08-06: Maria Mania Legacy Route – Student Transfer Scenario Review
- 2026-08-12: Natalie Rambles About Monkey Man
- 2026-08-??: Beast of Reincarnation Review
- 2026-09-??: TSF Series #019: A Change of Flesh
- 2026-??-??: re:Dreamer Review #6
- 2026-??-??: Coffee Buns Review (TSF Game)
- 2026-??-??: Fate Stay Night Remastered Review (Shiba & Rain Request)
- 2026-??-??: A Mirror’s Curse Review (TSF Game)
- 2026-??-??: Thread – A Tale of Identity, Monsters, and College Review (TSF Game)
- 2026-??-??: TSF Showcase 2026-01: Chronicstuss (Ouran Request)
- 2026-11-18: TSF Series #020: Chateau del Bitz
- 2026-12-29: Natalie Rambles About 2026