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Reposted by Jordan Cassidy

AndresPlays🎮🦇 @andresplays.bsky.social · 15h

Little Nightmares 3 is like a Greatest Hits album. Whether that's good or bad is in the eyes of the beholder. For fans of the series, it just means more Little Nightmares.

Here's my review for Seasoned Gaming:

Review : Little Nightmares 3 : The Horrors Persist

After Tarsier Studios was acquired by Embracer Group in 2021, they were no longer able to work on their baby, Little Nightmares. Their eerie, grotesque,

seasonedgaming.com

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Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 15h

Fantastic essay about two of my favorite films.

Here is a strange thing about prayer: you do it with your eyes closed. An act of reverence, and also self-preservation […] The tension at the heart of both The Exorcist and First Reformed is what happens when you start to pray with your eyes open.

Joshua Rivera @jmrivera.bsky.social · 16h

excited to share this one. For the good people at @tesseractcinema.bsky.social , I wrote about The Exorcist, First Reformed, and forms of prayer

tesseractcinema.com/2025/10/08/e...

ENTER THE HYPERCUBE: FIRST REFORMED + THE EXORCIST - TESSERACT CINEMA

Joshua Rivera ties together the religious terror of The Exorcist and First Reformed.

tesseractcinema.com

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Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 15h

Jesus, this is so good.

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Reposted by Jordan Cassidy

Joshua Rivera @jmrivera.bsky.social · 16h

excited to share this one. For the good people at @tesseractcinema.bsky.social , I wrote about The Exorcist, First Reformed, and forms of prayer

tesseractcinema.com/2025/10/08/e...

ENTER THE HYPERCUBE: FIRST REFORMED + THE EXORCIST - TESSERACT CINEMA

Joshua Rivera ties together the religious terror of The Exorcist and First Reformed.

tesseractcinema.com

3 6 25

Reposted by Jordan Cassidy

Seasoned Gaming @seasonedgaming.bsky.social · 17h

Little Nightmares 3, now developed by Supermassive Games, is here just in time for spooky season.

As a fan of the first two @andresplays.bsky.social dove in to see if it lived up to that legacy.

Our spoiler-free review:

seasonedgaming.com/2025/10/08/r...

Review : Little Nightmares 3 : The Horrors Persist

After Tarsier Studios was acquired by Embracer Group in 2021, they were no longer able to work on their baby, Little Nightmares. Their eerie, grotesque,

seasonedgaming.com

1 3 15

Reposted by Jordan Cassidy

Emma Kidwell | Looking for work ✨ @emmakidwell.bsky.social · 1d

Boosting again, please share! Still looking for writing work-- full time or contract, i'm incredibly adaptable and eager to learn and grow ✍️

Emma Kidwell | Looking for work ✨ @emmakidwell.bsky.social · Sep 4

Hi! I was laid off from Firaxis this morning. I wrote leaders and civs for Civilization VII (NDA for now) and Deadpool and Storm for Marvel's Midnight Suns. I also wrote the award-nominated Hindsight.

I'm available for full time, remote work starting ASAP. DMs are open:

emmkid.info

Portfolio

emmkid.info

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Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 1d

Always pumped to see more publications and writers hop onto blue sky.

Hayes Madsen @solfleet.bsky.social · 1d

Hey ya’ll. Pleased to say Inverse now has a Bluesky account, and I will (largely) be running it. So if you’d give @inverse.com a follow on here, I’d tremendously appreciate it.

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Reposted by Jordan Cassidy

Hayes Madsen @solfleet.bsky.social · 1d

Hey ya’ll. Pleased to say Inverse now has a Bluesky account, and I will (largely) be running it. So if you’d give @inverse.com a follow on here, I’d tremendously appreciate it.

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Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 1d

It’s unreal how much shit I simply do not say.

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Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 1d

Developing a very potent crush on both Moros and Nemesis which feels like a real referendum on my future as a bisexual.

Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 1d

Still thinking about Expedition 33 almost every day.

Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 2d

Thanks for providing such a good jumping off point! Maybe I'll just keep myself on track with writing by yes-and-ing something *you* write every week.

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Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 2d

And that embodiment is at odds with genres where the friction is arguably more cerebral in nature - like with menu-driven JRPGs.

For some, Expedition 33 is the affective equivalent of finding crunch berries in your cheerios. Those parries just aren't supposed to be there.

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Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 2d

I'll also add to all of this that I believe friction, and what it is meant to do within specific genres, is why there has been so much debate about parrying in 2025. Parrying is an intense concentration of friction that produces strong embodiment.

Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 2d

Been an interesting year for thinking about friction in video games. @bignerdgaming.bsky.social shared some interesting thoughts about friction as part of his Hot Takes piece last week (bignerdgaming.com/2025/10/03/m...), and it's planted a bug in my brain that hasn't stopped buzzing.

A thread. 🧵

My Hottest Gaming Takes of 2025 So Far

This may surprise you, given the title of this article, but I don’t like a lot of “hot takes” in the gaming space. I feel like a lot of these takes are given in bad faith, and mos…

bignerdgaming.com

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Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 2d

Place that alongside all the other themes of pilgrimage and monasticism in Silksong, and all that friction suddenly becomes incredibly productive for understanding what Silksong is *doing*.

I'm still working on the full argument here, but I needed to get all that out of my brain to move forward lol

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Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 2d

It's telling that Silksong places all this friction *in front of* the bosses. It's saying, "if you cannot calm yourself through the run, you cannot face the enemy."

This might annoy you as a player - and again, fair enough - but it *is* fascinating for a game in which you play a warrior monk.

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Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 2d

I would argue that it's one way that playing Silksong is an exercise in monastic embodiment. It simulates patience and skill through repetition. Frequently I'd find myself steeling for a run at the boss by literally emptying my mind, breathing into my chest, and calmly reapproaching the sequence.

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Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 2d

But friction is also useful in terms of thinking about how games make meaning. Why might Silksong be forcing us through these sections over and over? Sections which frequently are *extremely* non-trivial, requiring high level platforming and combat to navigate over and over.

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Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 2d

Here's what I mean. In his piece, Westen describes the friction of Silksong's long runbacks to boss battles:

"Long runbacks to bosses did not make it feel any better when I finally won," he says.

Totally fair if you're investment in a game's friction is primarily about fun or completion.

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Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 2d

Westen over at Big Nerd is tapping into this idea of friction and effort as a way of reframing the more well-trodden (and at times tired) conversation about games and difficulty. I like this reframe because it more precisely connects us to conversations about pleasure, meaning, and accessibility.

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Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 2d

Not everything from Aarseth's work has aged well - I think his work put game studies on a weirdly isolated growth trajectory that often put it at odds with other disciplines, rather than integrating with them - but his work was right to put nontrivial effort at the heart of understanding games.

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Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 2d

In 1997, Espen Aarseth coined the term "ergodic literature" to describe texts that require "nontrivial effort" to traverse. It was his way of distinguishing between traditional literature and the emerging category of interactive texts - cybertexts.

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Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 2d

Been an interesting year for thinking about friction in video games. @bignerdgaming.bsky.social shared some interesting thoughts about friction as part of his Hot Takes piece last week (bignerdgaming.com/2025/10/03/m...), and it's planted a bug in my brain that hasn't stopped buzzing.

A thread. 🧵

My Hottest Gaming Takes of 2025 So Far

This may surprise you, given the title of this article, but I don’t like a lot of “hot takes” in the gaming space. I feel like a lot of these takes are given in bad faith, and mos…

bignerdgaming.com

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Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 2d

“The South will not rise again
Until it’s paid for every sin
Strange fruit, hard bargain
Till the roots, Southern Gotham.”

She knows what the fuck she is about.

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Jordan Cassidy @thecrossoverappeal.bsky.social · 3d

Huh. I thought 8/10 was pretty consensus on Tsushima - that’s about where I’d put it too. Excited to try out Yotei though, it definitely looks more my speed.

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