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Luke Beeman

@lukebee.bsky.social

120 followers 540 following 420 posts

Software engineer, ace/aro, any/all pronouns. I'm into all kinds of media (especially indie games and anime), media criticism/analysis, and politics.

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Luke Beeman @lukebee.bsky.social · Jan 13

I finally finished my GOTY 2024 writeup! If you enjoyed it, please let me know or share it, it would mean the world to me.

medium.com/@LukeBeeman/...

My Favorite Video Games of 2024

Over the past couple months, much digital ink has been spilled on whether 2024 was a good or bad year for video games, although as far as I…

medium.com

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Luke Beeman @lukebee.bsky.social · 5h

Apologies if this is backseating, but between this and one of your other Mt. Fay clips I think you have a bad habit of hitting double jump or glide too soon after using the clawline and cutting off the height gain from springing off of enemies.

Luke Beeman @lukebee.bsky.social · 1d

was able to read the footnotes on mobile but the buttons were a little finicky and sometimes took multiple taps

Reposted by Luke Beeman

melos han-tani @hantani.bsky.social · 3d

Finished this great cave story review / historical context of it amongst shareware, doujin, and modern indie: syslbnth.neocities.org/htxt/cave-st...

Which led to a 2013 post by @ellaguro.bsky.social on the game corrypt & the discourse around its "bad" graphics
ellaguro.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-...

From the corrypt post, quote:

It's hard not to see the magic in the game as some sort of allegory on human beings' never-ending thirst for more resources, and the irreparable damage it enacts on the environment. It suggests, especially taken with his other works like Vesper.5, that environments are delicate spaces that need to be accepted on their own terms in order to really be understood at a deeper level.

These greater themes seem to be absent in the little critical writing that does exist about his games they're not mentioned anywhere in the Wired article, nor in this detailed critical reading, which focuses solely on the mechanical aspects of his games. The strangeness and beauty of the environments become a marginalized backdrop to a game seen as only remarkable from a design perspective-something the game even seems to mock with its flat looking aesthetics and its big, square block pushing and its few mock-JRPG miniquests in the beginning.

From the cave story post, quote:

"What's more, as indie games improved dramatically in quality over the course of the ensuing decade, the technical skill floor lowered by the first wave of hits would get raised back up in the end. You could get away with pixel art and chiptune now, but it had to be the pixel art and chiptune of a professional. Tools would be released to help control the ballooning scope of new indie games-Unity, Unreal, GameMaker Studio, and the, like. [15] But somehow this would just move the goalposts further. When these were released, we didn't make Iji faster and more comfortably-we made Hollow Knight."

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Luke Beeman @lukebee.bsky.social · 4d

Finished one of the big Fallen London grinds I’ve been working on and got myself knighted. Only the 215th player so far to ever do it!

You have a new Accomplishment... A Knight of the Order of the Golden Carapace!
You are the two-hundred-and-fifteenth Knight of the Golden Carapace. Burgundy sings your name.
You've lost 1,000,000 x Stuiver (new total 288).

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Luke Beeman @lukebee.bsky.social · 8d

it’s basically a more extreme case of roguelikes like Balatro or Vampire Survivors where the moment-to-moment action/strategic gameplay is very stripped down and the focus is instead on putting together a winning build/engine so that you can more or less let the game play itself

Luke Beeman @lukebee.bsky.social · 8d

from what I played of the demo, there’s those button-activated abilities to give you a little influence over spins but the main thrust of the gameplay is the shopping.

Luke Beeman @lukebee.bsky.social · 9d

lol

what’s your playtime looking like so far? if I recall I finished Act 2 around 35 hours in and finished the game with 100% completion at just shy of 52 hours, but at least one person I follow took well over twice as long (due to getting stuck on bosses for hours at a time)

Luke Beeman @lukebee.bsky.social · 9d

Glad that that particular racial dynamic was not my experience in a gifted class: my twin brother and I were 2 of the only 3 white boys there, and the class was majority Asian-American

Luke Beeman @lukebee.bsky.social · 10d

I mean, I genuinely don’t think that meaning was intended. I’d feel differently if it was just the Earth-X Nazi characters doing that move, but in addition to Chris a bunch of the other main universe characters do it too, and it doesn’t make sense to me that they’d all be doing a Nazi dogwhistle

Luke Beeman @lukebee.bsky.social · 11d

Really interesting seeing what different people struggle with; I found Karmelita and Lost Lace to be on the tougher end but Coral Tower was definitely nowhere near top 3 for me, I beat it first try

Luke Beeman @lukebee.bsky.social · 11d

counterpoint: it’s really funny

Luke Beeman @lukebee.bsky.social · 11d

Slave of God was the one game on here I couldn’t quite place, so I looked it up and I have absolutely played it, just haven’t thought about it in years, so thanks for the reminder. Space Funeral I have not played yet but it’s been on my backlog since playing Anthology of the Killer

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Reposted by Luke Beeman

milk+ visual @milkplus.moe · 12d

soundless - A MODERN SALEM IN REMOTE AREA -, our #yuri denpa visual novel, is now available on Steam!

A young girl made pariah in a cult finds solace in an unexpected person: one of the revered Holy Maidens.

✝️ Download here and pick up the artbook, too!
store.steampowered.com/app/3978150/...

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Luke Beeman @lukebee.bsky.social · 14d

Mostly I just found the pain points people have been talking about (runbacks, etc.) kind of a nonissue because nothing ever killed me more than a few times. I go back and forth on whether to fault the game that lots of people feel otherwise or if it’s Fine, Actually

Luke Beeman @lukebee.bsky.social · 16d

also wow is this a useless metric if I qualify as having “a big following”

Audience: Luke Beeman has a big following, bigger than 92% of people on Bluesky.

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Luke Beeman @lukebee.bsky.social · 16d

didn’t really get any fun results from metacritic that far down, but I do share a backloggd rating with Surgeon Simulator, Depression Quest, and the High School Musical 2 DS game

My “CloudRank” score on bluefacts.app: 2.6

grid of games with a 2.6 rating on backloggd

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Luke Beeman @lukebee.bsky.social · 16d

love that I immediately knew from the YouTube thumbnail that you were responsible lol

Luke Beeman @lukebee.bsky.social · 16d

LET’S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

The previous act was incredible so I’m beyond excited to see what 7th Beat’s been cooking for this final one

Hafiz Azman @fizzd.bsky.social · 16d

It's announced! See you again on 6th December for the final act of Rhythm Doctor @rd.7thbe.at !!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=q98t...

Rhythm Doctor - Official Release Date Trailer

YouTube video by 7th Beat Games

www.youtube.com

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Luke Beeman @lukebee.bsky.social · 18d

I’m never running out of shards, but I kind of have the opposite problem where I keep skipping straight from “no point in using tools, I’m still learning this boss” to “oh nice, I won” without hitting the middle stage of “okay now I should start using tools”.

Luke Beeman @lukebee.bsky.social · 19d

Really hard to think of examples at all, most things coming to mind either used original songs or were nondiegetic. Closest I’ve come up with is Kentucky Route Zero’s use of (original renditions of) old folk/gospel songs.

Luke Beeman @lukebee.bsky.social · 19d

Such a fantastic episode, I teared up a little watching it

Reposted by Luke Beeman

Dana Terrace @danaterrace.bsky.social · 22d

Knights of Guinevere PILOT

youtu.be/MCAdbUaMlAE

KNIGHTS OF GUINEVERE: PILOT

YouTube video by GLITCH

youtu.be

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Luke Beeman @lukebee.bsky.social · 22d

All That Jazz (Bob Fosse’s thinly veiled depiction of his own self-destruction; equal parts unflinchingly brutal and utterly electric) and Michael Clayton (George Clooney as a legal firm’s fixer forced to reckon with his own moral compromise; between this and Andor I’m ride or die for Tony Gilroy)

Reposted by Luke Beeman

https://kolektiva.social/@noescape_vg 🏴🏳️‍⚧️🇵🇸 @noescapevg.com · 23d

No Escape’s got a patreon and we use that patreon support to a) live, b) keep the site running and c) pay contributors*. Consider throwing a penny in the hat for continued good games criticism

*not ordered by importance

patreon.com/noescapevg

Get more from No Escape on Patreon

A blog about digital culture and its discontents

patreon.com

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Luke Beeman @lukebee.bsky.social · 23d

hell yeah, first sinner is hands down my favorite fight so far (I’ve just barely started act 3)