It’s the 28th week of Bathysphere! This week, Chris is getting a little too excited about levers in videogames. Elsewhere, Floss attends the Queer Games Festival and Keith runs over some gremlins.

We’re sorry for the late delivery of the newsletter this week – we were trapped under an arctic ice shelf and couldn’t transmit the data until we surfaced.

The Bathysphere crew
Christian Donlan
Florence Smith Nicholls
Keith Stuart

Contact us at bathyspherecrew@gmail.com

Delightful games

Last weekend, I was extremely lucky to be able to attend the Queer Games Conference in Montreal. I saw a lot of very interesting things and delightful games, but one particular highlight was the Indiepocalypse stall. Indiepocalypse is a monthly anthology of games, which can be bought online but also in physical form as USB sticks in custom cassette cases. As you can see from the picture above, the cover art is a feast for the eyes. Indiepocalypse curates games by emerging artists doing experimental work; each cassette is like a tiny terrarium filled with unexpected treasures.

I also got to play Teddy Pozo’s Chest Simulator at QGCon. It’s an arcade game rendered not out of 80s nostalgia, but a ceramic figural cabinet with a hollow cavity and conductive elements. You have to squeeze the figure’s hands in order to advance. Absolutely gorgeous. FSN

Interesting things

Not really game-related, but the best restaurant in the world, St John, has joined up with the LRB to open a little cafe. It opens today and I can’t wait to go. If they do their Eccles cakes there, I’m probably never leaving. CD

Also not really game-related, but at least game-adjacent. There’s a skate ramp on the side of this skyscraper in Brazil. As someone who’s spent a lot of time playing the new Skate game, this made total sense. CD

Essay: Lever’s ball

I had an uncle, growing up, who worked for the railways. I have a strong early memory of visiting him at work on a very hot summer day, the sun almost blinding. He worked at the time in one of those signal boxes, which often look like a little house - fiercely domestic - sat on top of stilts. I remember sitting in the steps of the stilts as he had a cup of tea. And I remember that inside the little house there were these huge, rust-coloured levers with squeeze handles. They seemed huge and immobile, amongst the most adult things I had ever laid eyes on.