Welcome back! Do close the hatch behind you! Today Chris is thinking about learning, and enjoying the work of the Lubells. Elsewhere, we get great recommendations from Failbetter’s Séamus Ó Buadhacháin, Keith shuns Silksong in favour of Ghosts ‘n Goblins and Florence looks forward to competitive map-making.

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The Bathysphere crew
Christian Donlan
Florence Smith Nicholls
Keith Stuart

Contact us at bathyspherecrew@gmail.com

Delightful games

This week I’m in York for a conference. As the last dregs of summer spilled over the city I popped into Travelling Man and found a hard copy of Beak, Feather & Bone, a competitive map-labelling RPG. I love maps, and the game’s implications of competitive worldbuilding certainly are intriguing. I’m hoping to give it a try with a pen, paper and a warm drink once Autumn finally unfurls. FSN

Interesting things

Tiktok introduced me to the work of Winifred and Cecil Lubell, a couple who created beautiful children’s books in the mid-twentieth century. Nothing profound to say here, other than I want a game in this style, preferably from Simogo. CD

We are big fans of zines in the Bathysphere (they take up less space than books), and have thoroughly enjoyed the Forgotten Worlds series dedicated to retro game magazines and their place in gaming history. Issue six is out now and it’s a homage to Sega’s ‘blue skies’ era of the late-80s and early 1990s, a time when every arcade or Mega Drive game featured gorgeous cobalt vistas, unblemished save by the odd fluffy white cloud. The zine contains images of magazine covers of the era as well as interviews with editors. There’s even a chat with Al Nilsen, Sega of America’s legendary marketing chief. Lovely stuff. KS

Once again, I’m recommending an academic paper (this one you can read for free through JSTOR, I promise!) Chris’ piece on difficulty and learning this week reminded me of Patrick Jagoda’s On Difficulty in Video Games, in which he distinguishes between three different types of difficulty: mechanical, interpretive and affective. I really like this reframing of difficulty beyond game mechanics, after all, Elden Ring’s lore is probably more difficult to unpick than the attack patterns of its most deadly bosses. FSN

A developer recommends: Séamus Ó Buadhacháin, Failbetter

Occasionally we ask a game creator for five of their own recommendations for books, places, events or films that may be interesting to video game folk. This week is the turn of Séamus Ó Buadhacháin, senior programmer at Failbetter Games, currently working on the hugely promising folkloric adventure, Mandrake.

A non-fiction book: The Flavour Thesaurus (Nikki Segnit, 2010)
The one book I'll rescue when I finally set the kitchen on fire; less a conventional collection of recipes, more a third-eye-opening guide to how to (or not to) combine flavours themselves. A kind of cross between a medieval pharmacopoeia and Nixon's enemies list, it contains the most savagely accurate assessment of chicken cacciatore ever put to paper.

A novel: Cold Comfort Farm (Stella Gibbons, 1932)
Plucky orphan Flora Poste discovers an extended family stuck in the wrong sort of lusty rural melodrama, and sets out to fix matters using the powers of common sense and good tailoring. Being sorely in need of both, I find this deeply inspiring.

A film: Best in Show (dir. Christopher Guest, 2000)
My favourite of the Christopher Guest mockumentaries follows a bunch of classically Guestian weirdos (complimentary) and their animals on their way to compete at the Mayflower Dog Show. Impossible to pick a best bit, but Parker Posey's excellently toxic Weimaraner-owner gets quoted a lot round mine, for some reason.

A TV series: Soupy Norman (RTÉ, 2007)
A troupe of Irish comedians, by overdubbing episodes of the Polish soap opera First Love, weave an increasingly fractured and loopy tale of the Irish urban-rural divide (well, sort of). Imagine a Beckett play with just the good bits left in: that is, very dark, very funny, and under eighty minutes long.

A contemporary video game: Untitled Goose Game (House House, 2019)
A stealth game and power fantasy for those among us who see a plump and comfortable country village and dream of violence. If you've ever had to get off the road to dodge an oncoming Range Rover, this is the game for you. Rise up, comrades! For it is a lovely morning in the village, and we are horrible geese.

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Essay: Finding the words

It’s since having a kid, I guess, that I’ve become fascinated with the act of learning things. This is probably because, for children, it seems like the act of learning things is entirely automatic. They just vacuum up ideas and turn them into abilities. They can reframe their entire universe in a few seconds. I was not expecting this, but it’s completely thrilling to watch in action.