Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Austin Auclair

@patientrock.bsky.social

Sometimes you play a game with no theme or coherent narrative and it's not a surprise when nothing in the game matters. (It was also verrrrrrry buggy.)

I played a new location-based game called Monster Walk: blog.patientrock.com/a-stumbling-...

A screenshot of the location-based game Monster Walk. The blog post explains further but it's a tile-based game where the player explores a map.

December 4, 2025 at 3:54 PM

Austin Auclair

@patientrock.bsky.social

Trying a hand-drawn approach with my next game. I'm incapable of drawing anything the same way twice so it's a whole process of scanning my doodle, rigging the body, printing out each frame of the animation to hand-color, and then scanning it all again.

We'll see if this idea survives development.

November 25, 2025 at 4:26 PM

Austin Auclair

@patientrock.bsky.social

It's this shit why I don't pop into Fortnite more often. Weekly huge updates. 25 minute download? Nah, that's my whole lunch break.

A screenshot of the Epic Game Store as it downloads an update for the video game, Fortnite. The download is 11.72 gigs and going to take about 24 minutes.

November 14, 2025 at 7:16 PM

Austin Auclair

@patientrock.bsky.social

Our weekend with no internet meant some board games like Hot Streak were finally played. It’s a game where you bet on a mascot race and it’s lovely because everyone ends up yelling at the silly pieces. Highly recommend as it’s a quick play that also can accommodate a lot of players.

Hot Streak features four big, chunky plastic mascots. The box has a unique feature where you pull the vinyl racetrack out from the box, and then turn a crank to retract it later.

The four mascots up on the podium. There’s a Bear, a Hot Dog, and Queen, and a Fish.

November 10, 2025 at 3:00 PM

Austin Auclair

@patientrock.bsky.social

Diving back into Crab Crawl to fix a few bugs and reacclimate to Unity for my next project. I'm still charmed by my squid friend I added late game. It just follows you around harmlessly for a while, and if you get too close... ✒️⬛

October 21, 2025 at 9:27 PM

Austin Auclair

@patientrock.bsky.social

Murderworld is now available!

A text adventure where you play as the 1989 lineup of the X-Men as they fight to win back their weekend. It's got several playable characters over the course of multiple hours-worth of grand adventure and superhero drama.

patientrock.itch.io/murderworld 🦹🏼‍♀️

October 18, 2025 at 8:51 PM

Austin Auclair

@patientrock.bsky.social

We don’t get a lot of new location based games these days so I gotta play them when one comes up, but this one has dialogue like this and I’m not happy.

The image is a screenshot from the game which features one of the cartoon monsters you capture. Its name is Peeplisk and its dialogue bubble reads, “*splash splash* Hewp! I keep fawwing into the watew! I *glub* can’t swim!”. Sigh.

October 10, 2025 at 3:47 PM

Austin Auclair

@patientrock.bsky.social

Forbidden soda.

We get this olive oil mail-order subscription of Graza olive oil and it’s pretty good! They try and be sustainable but sending refills in aluminum pop-top cans. The cans look strikingly like the apple cider I like to drink so whenever I see this olive oil can in my periphery my brain wants to drink it.

September 28, 2025 at 2:38 PM

Austin Auclair

@patientrock.bsky.social

Holy shit this targeted IG ad got me.

An ad for a doormat featuring a bat drawn by artist Ed Emberley. Emberley released multiple “how to draw” books for kids where he showed how to draw in a doodle style. As someone who could never draw very steadily, but is an excellent doodler, I was instantly smitten. My favorite was his “orange” book which largely featured Halloween themed drawings, including this bat.

September 25, 2025 at 8:49 PM

Austin Auclair

@patientrock.bsky.social

Excellent camo for an urban geocache.

September 19, 2025 at 9:51 PM

Austin Auclair

@patientrock.bsky.social

(Not the skink in question but an artistic representation for identification purposes.)

A Blue Lined Skink. It’s a little lizard with black and white stripes running the length of its body until its tail which is a bright blue. I hope the little dude that ran under our fridge is ok and evades our cats.

September 14, 2025 at 1:57 AM

Austin Auclair

@patientrock.bsky.social

LaAbobo

I hackily put the Double Dragon antagonist, Abobo's face onto an Labubu doll. Is this anything?

September 5, 2025 at 12:14 AM

Austin Auclair

@patientrock.bsky.social

I've entered a game into IFComp for the first time! It's a text adventure called Murderworld and it's about the X-Men. (Though, you don't need to know anything about the characters to play.)

Superhero drama, action, and above all: teamwork!

The game art for my text adventure, Murderworld. It features the title and my name. It's styled like the X-Men uniform with the team's badge serving as the "O" in the Murderworld name.

September 1, 2025 at 3:46 PM

Austin Auclair

@patientrock.bsky.social

The 2025 Interactive Fiction Competition is live!

Anyone can be a judge. All you need to do is play five games by October 15.

ifcomp.org/ballot/ 📝

September 1, 2025 at 3:32 PM

Austin Auclair

@patientrock.bsky.social

Totally get why there’s a whole successful video game about this shit.

Spent the morning power washing my concrete patio which hasn’t been washed like that in the 12 years that I’ve lived here. It was very satisfying.

August 2, 2025 at 7:10 PM

Austin Auclair

@patientrock.bsky.social

It’s that time! I have to get up in the middle of the night, or they’ll be gone by morning, but my six-foot-tall cactus bloomed gigantic flowers!

A photo of a tall cactus in a large pot outside. It sits against the brick of my house which I think is what makes it especially happy. The brick absorbs the heat of the day and radiates throughout the night. The cactus has three large, white flowers about the size of an adult’s spread hand.

The large white flowers of the cactus up close. It’s got multiple layers of pedals that radiant outward in an explosion. It’s just so wild that the flower only exists for one night and then it’s gone.

July 31, 2025 at 10:14 AM

Austin Auclair

@patientrock.bsky.social

We were loping a logging road and the horse in front skidded to a halt. We thought it was afraid of a mud puddle (because horses are stupid assholes), but this time we were the stupid assholes. The horse spotted mama brown bear wandering casually while (ADORABLE) baby climbed a nearby aspen.

July 30, 2025 at 1:31 PM

Austin Auclair

@patientrock.bsky.social

This crow wanted us to know that they are in charge of Chimney Rock.

July 30, 2025 at 1:23 PM

Austin Auclair

@patientrock.bsky.social

Spent the last week riding a horse through the mountains of Colorado with little to no internet, but today I must return to reality: I do not care for it.

A photo of a small meadow among the aspen and ponderosa pine woods of southern Colorado, up in the mountains and away from the arid desert around it. In the background is a tall ridge of some of those mountains. In the pasture are some saddled horses and among them is my dappled gray, Steel, who I’ve been riding this week. Steel has been a great horse despite the random peculiarities that all horses have. He doesn’t like stepping in mud puddles which has been an issue in a week of heavy afternoon rains. Otherwise, he’s a good boy.

July 26, 2025 at 12:13 PM

Austin Auclair

@patientrock.bsky.social

I typically hate dice games because of legendarily bad luck, however, I’ve fallen in love with Slice & Dice. Hard to explain on social media post, but every turn in S&D makes for an interesting puzzle as you assign attacks and abilities or push your luck to get the result you want. More in alt text.

A photo of the mobile version of the game, Slice and Dice. It’s also on Steam. You have a squad of characters each with their own die. On each side of each die is an ability of some sort often with a “pip” value. Some can be a straight attack (1 pip causes 1 damage) or others have effects on allies or enemies (stun an enemy for 1 turn, or shield an ally from 2 points of damage, etc). Enemies also have their own dice and you can see what possible actions they might take, can see what results they roll, and have a chance to react before the enemies actually enact those rolls. There are many other variations to the game with different character classes, character statuses and effects, magic items, “boss” monsters, different game modes, and so forth.

June 27, 2025 at 11:48 AM

Austin Auclair

@patientrock.bsky.social

I don’t know anything about Drexel and maybe it’s a bad school with bad policies but their mascot is a dragon and their campus has lots of dragons and I think that’s neat.

A photo of a statue of their dragon mascot. It’s more of a “sea dragon” with a long winding body and short spikes along its top.

June 22, 2025 at 10:59 AM

Austin Auclair

@patientrock.bsky.social

I have Indie Game Fested. My feet. They are hurt. But, so many people playing my game and having fun with it refilled my game dev spirit.

A photo of my table at Indie Game Fest, an event hosted by the Enoch Pratt Library in Baltimore. I’m showing my game Crab Crawl.

June 8, 2025 at 11:45 AM

Austin Auclair

@patientrock.bsky.social

Excellent World Pride event at the Library of Congress by @xplainthexmen.bsky.social about the X-Men and queerness! I’m was so glad to be amongst such fine people who also enjoy my favorite superhero soap opera.