we only win together

I made a game this month. It's intended to be played as a 4-player local multiplayer game, but you can just as easily play it single player and just control each player character in turn.

It's designed to be played on a gamepad, using the d-pad and face buttons. You can play it on keyboard, but the random letters will probably make things a bit confusing.

It's essentially a random/procedural puzzle game. The goal is to get all the players to the exit in the centre, with the catch that the actions available to you are randomised every level. On one level, up on the d-pad might move you right by one space, on another it might swap your position with the furthest away player. So a big part of the game is figuring out what actions are available to you, and how you might chain them to get everyone to the exit.

After each level one of the actions will be locked (up to 4 actions), so as you progress you will start each level with more information. Also though, after the first level a turn timer is added, and more obstacles are added to the level.

This ended up being quite complicated to implement, so I didn't get as much done as I was hoping (I was going to have a spikes obstacle that would kill players on collision), but I'm reasonably happy; it seems to work as I had imagined it would.

One thing to note though: I only have 1 working controller, so at the time of writing I have not tested it as it's meant to be played with 4 controllers. If you try it and there are bugs you can always play it with 1 controller and pass that controller around.

Download awe only win together

Controls: escape: quit;wasd↑←→↓: perform action; controller d-pad + face buttons: perform action

The Rules:

• The file at this link will be deleted 1 month from now (6/12/25).
• All downloads are zipfiles containing a Windows executable.
• All source code and assets are included, licensed under the Anti-Capitalist Software License.
• As long as you abide by the license, you can do whatever you want with the download.

Further Reading

This month I learned about the Forgotten Languages site, and I have no hope of ever deciphering what's going on there, but it was a fascinating rabbit hole to fall down. There's a good explanation from youtuber smoothjazz, and this MetaFilter post has more info.

Peter Thiel's Antichrist obsession

Look at these cool pictures of the Lodz waterworks!

In more news from our dystopian present, a company called Reflect Orbital is planning on launching enormous mirrors into the atmosphere. I have no words.

Look at these cool tape instruments!

Darius Kazemi with a very cool cover of a Toby Fox track from Delta Rune, all done in strudel.

I liked this point Andi McClure made on mastodon about breakcore being more punk than punk these days. The track she links to is pretty good too.

Write-up of Devine Lu Linvega's talk on Permacomputing for Critical Signals 2025.

I'm writing this on Halloween, and when the sun shines the colours round here are incredible. Especially with how low the sun hangs in the sky this time of year, bathing everything in this furious golden light. I hope wherever you are you're bathed in light, surrounded by colour, and keeping your head up despite everything happening around us.