I cracked this open after my recent reading of Yoon Suin. First off, we've got another giant velvet worm and this one is bad because it emerges from a log which is presumably used by a flood survivor to escape drowning. This book is full of nasty creatures and I'll be damned it Patrick Stuart doesn't manage to make cephalopods frightening again. In 2020 Lovecraft-saturation has gotten so bad that tentacled monstrosities don't even get a blip of excitement out of me, but Stuart's squid and cuttlefish are convincingly malignant, particular his grave-robbing cuttlefish, which dart in and out of flooded tombs like "alien ghosts." Cuttlefish are the creepiest cephalopods in my opinion, there's just something greedy and foul about them. I am reminded of a nightmare I had years ago where I was stuck in a spaceship that was equipped with an aquarium that contained a large, sentient cuttlefish, which communicated to me via digital speaker connected by wires to it's cuttlefish head. It told me evil things in it's fuzzy robot voice...
Patrick Stuart's blog can be found here. His books are OSR classics.
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Outer Wilds
Outer Wilds is a video game that gives me big time Relenless: Twinsen's Adventure (Little Big Adventure to my European friends) vibes: it's a light-hearted adventure in charming, toy-like universe. I try not to get to deep in things with these daily takes, so just know that the central conceit of the game is you explore a miniature solar system in a rickety space-lander. The sun explodes after 22 min. of gameplay and you start the whole thing over again like Groundhog Day, except now, due to your previous explorations, you now know solutions to puzzles and shortcuts that make your exploration all quicker this time around. It's an satisfying game play loop that facilitates constant exploration. There are some genius set pieces built around this 22 min. countdown, including a hollow planet that slowly crumbles into a black hole at it's center, making only certain sections accessible at only certain times. There is a lot of Myst in this game, though the humor and art style of OW prevent it from achieving that sort of profound, mature gaming experience...but it comes close.
Outer Wilds just recently came to Steam.
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