Some days you pop the hatch of your bathysphere and realise you’re about to head off on your 30th dive! Thank you so much to everyone who’s come along.

Today, Chris is pondering cities made up of pieces, while Florence waits for the leaves to change, and Keith reads up on sociolinguistics.

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The Bathysphere crew
Christian Donlan
Florence Smith Nicholls
Keith Stuart

Contact us at bathyspherecrew@gmail.com

Delightful games

All the Time in the World is described as a “short environmental metroidvania” in which the core game mechanic is…waiting. Waiting for the lake to freeze in winter, for the buds to unfurl in spring. You wait for seasons to pass so that the landscape changes and you can traverse different areas. It’s a welcome change of pace. Even better, it’s free and playable in browser on itch. FSN

Not a game per se, but Fellow makes extremely expensive coffee equipment that often has video games built into it. I want this stuff very much, but not at that price. CD

Interesting things

I’m reading Surfing Samurai Robots at the moment. It’s a quirky-crime novel from the 1980s. I remember this book from when I was a kid, because the English editions had wonderful covers. The book - and the series - is a pastiche of Philip Marlowe, with a sci-fi twist. It’s extremely out of print, but for all its weirdness it’s a gateway to 1980s LA and being a kid and getting interested in outer space and all that stuff. It’s written by Mel Gilden, and it’s very easy to track down second hand. If you get a copy with a UK cover, ping me.

(Philip Marlowe was my introduction to literary style, BTW. My dad once read us kids a section from one of the books where Marlowe is driving along the coast and watching boats whip past, just because he loved the way the descriptions felt to read aloud. A five star memory.)CD

May I recommend Wheels & Heels, apparently the world’s largest collection of dolls and toy cars, located in Kraków. The walls are lined with every conceivable miniature car and Barbie doll; it’s a surreal experience. My favourite was “Alfred Hitchcock The Birds Barbie.” FSN

Recently, someone on Tiktok shared the suggested summer reading lists for incoming English Literature students at Oxford University. On the list was the book Sociolinguistics: An introduction to Language and Society by Peter Trudgill, which I immediately bought on eBay because it’s something I know nothing about, but which impacts on video games in a number of ways, including localisation of game dialogue, and the widespread use of jargon and slang in game development and fandom communities. It’s also a surprisingly easy and fascinating read. KS

Essay: A city, in pieces

This morning a friend sent me a link to a website called You are Listening to LAX, where... well, go and check it out for yourself. I love this kind of thing, taking elements of a city to spin them out into something new and unexpected and transporting.