This month's piece is a (relatively) straightforward music sequencer. There are 6 circular looping sequencers, each moving slower than the last, and you can place events on them. You have 4 options for events:

• Sine: Place a sine tone note; the ring determines the pitch.

• Pad: Place a pad note; the ring determines the pitch.

• Delay Time: Set the delay effect's delay time; the ring determines the delay time.

• Granulator: Set the level of the granulator effect; the ring determines the level.

You can also set the key and the scale you're working with, and you can record the output to a 32-bit .wav file.

I was thinking of complicating matters by making it so you can only do 1 action each real-world day, but I decided it's an unusual enough system for making music that I'd rather people were free to explore it without those kind of restrictions.

Download the name is the thing

Controls: escape: quit; caps-lock: toggle quantisation; F5: reset; mouse: everything else

The Rules:

• The file at this link will be deleted 1 month from now (02/01/21).

• All downloads are zipfiles containing a Windows executable.

• All source code and assets are included, licensed under the GPL (code) and CC-BYSA (assets).

• As long as you abide by those licenses, you can do whatever you want with the download.

Further Reading

I haven't really connected with many games this year. Taylor Swietanski's That Night, Steeped by Blood River is a different matter altogether though. It's such a startling, evocative thing, poetic and utterly unique. Plus, you can sit at a tv and watch a documentary on Georgia O'Keeffe.

And staying with games that caught me in my tracks this month, my friend Mona, alongside a host of collaborators, recently released a game about growing up in 90's Romania. It has this incredible collage aesthetic, and a wonderful use of mechanics in service to the narrative. My favourite part is the sequence where you first get lost in a strange town, and then find your way back to the train station, trying to retrace your steps from an entirely different perspective.

The Defence of the Less Good Idea. Someone linked this on twitter (I didn't keep track of who it was, sorry!). I just love how it seems to start as one thing and adds more and more voices until it ends up as something else entirely.

Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People Are Dying

It's not exactly easy listening, but Tricky did an incredible performance and interview for KEXP recently. CW: discussions of depression, death, racism.

At the start of the month, we announced the Biome Collective Grant for Digital Creatives. I think all of us have been keenly aware of just how inaccessible the vast majority of arts and games funding is for the people who most need access to it. This is our small attempt to push against that.

We'll be giving £500 to an artist from a marginalised background, with a minimal application process and no requirement to justify what they do with the money. I think we all feel that the most useful act of solidarity we can take at this point in time is to just give people money and trust them to use it how they see fit.

We're obviously building on wider conversations, including initiatives like The White Pube's Writers Grant, as well as things like Emilie Reed's Videogames and Arts Funding post, the Not Going Back to Normal manifesto (see also this Art Review article), and Aislinn Evans' Chump Change zine, to mention just a few.

Well, we're coming up to the holidays, and I imagine they're going to be distinctly strange for most of us. I hope you can spend them with at least some of the people you care about. I hope the long nights and dark mornings don't take too much of a toll. I hope you are warm and safe. I'll write again in the new year.