CULTIST SIMULATOR AND OTHER STORIES

THE LADY AFTERWARDS OUT NOW!

….but it SOLD OUT IN 60s! So we’re opening pre-orders for 500 future boxes. Pre-order through our own site here! (We’d love to sell pre-orders through our merch site, but it’s forbiden by Etsy. 😢 ) The Lady Afterwards is a non-linear, combat-light, story-centric tabletop RPG for 2 – 8 players set in the Secret Histories – the world of Cultist Simulator – where hidden gods watch over a…

WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE?

I wrote the article below for Wireframe, a British game dev magazine which ‘lifts the lid on video games’. And, inexplicably, lets me have a monthly column. The Financial Times comes with a magazine helping rich people solve a difficult problem. It’s called: It’s a good audience match for the FT, but it made me wonder: what would games’ equivalent be? If Wireframe were to start printing Gold…

Tokyo’s Tama Art University Library mixes ancient (classical arches) and modern (concrete; Bauhaus) design. Its high ceilings and simple lines aim to create a calming atmosphere… …though its seats apparently want to make you AS STRESSED AS THEY POSSIBLY CAN. ANYWAY. This sprint, AK uploaded a new, semi-Neville-borked build of Cultist Simulator, and wrote a horrible update about “a sort of…

CULTIST SIMULATOR: HOLOMETABOLOUS INCIPIENCE

Remember this? As you know, holometabolous metamorphosis is one of the most ghastly things in nature.  The larva is driven by chemical imperatives to entomb itself alive in its own final skin. Then the absence of a protective juvenile hormone permits the activation of the imaginal discs embedded in its infant flesh. These spew forth a torrent of enzymes which tear apart most of its cells in a…

Why the Unterzee eats ships

Originally posted 01/01/2015 on the Failbetter Games blog, the previous studio I co-founded. The sea frightens me. I know I’m not alone in this. It frightens me for numerous reasons. One is just that the sea is bigger than anything else on the planet, and it contains any number of hungry, poisonous or simply revolting creatures. Another is that I saw Jaws at an impressionable age. A third is…

Happy secret library sprint! Anyone notice anything different about the website? Ha ha me neither because staging site issues mean our designers haven’t been able to push it live this week after all. Which is a bummer, but not enough of a bummer that we’re going to push a new site live on a Friday and spend all weekend going OH GOD and HOW DID SOMEONE DO THAT and THE SITE IS SENDING EVERYONE TO A…

Lots of announcements this sprint, everyone! Which is good, ’cause I just finished We by Yevgeny Zamyatin and it turns out dystopian Russian novels are very depressing. The Lady Afterwards release date You can get your hands on The Lady Afterwards‘ limited edition physical box on Thursday 21st October 2021 and we’re releasing the digital PDF bundle a few weeks later on Thursday 18th November…

THE CHURCH OF MERCH

I wrote the article below for Wireframe, a British game dev magazine which ‘lifts the lid on video games’. And, inexplicably, lets me have a monthly column. Imagine a dystopian future where big corporations sue other big corporations over mobile games, where everyone and their mum is making a PC game, and where eSports makes more money than any of us despite nobody really knowing what it’s for.…

Happy Friday, everyone! First things first: our #Lovecraftday giveaway winners! The week-long celebration of everything non-Euclidean is now over, so we can announce the lucky few. They are: ★ GRAND PRIZE: polarmoon ★ RUNNERS-UP: sun.skunk + Charlotte Hylton ★ WILDCARDS: vicarlaw, _humanyuan, Vittorio Filippo Dinca, Cody Duvall, ivan_the_second, Adi Nugroho TJ, schelemeus, brawkward, Andrej…

It’s H. P. Lovecraft’s birthday today – the father of weird fiction, the long-faced gentleman responsible for overprevalence of squid in cosmic horror – so we’re running a GIVEAWAY! Lovecraft’s work and the genre he spawned was a major influence on Cultist Simulator (though we took less from his ‘non-Euclidean monster-gods’ and more from his ‘oh gawd I read the wrong book and now I’m haunted by…

Pergamum was a great library in Anatolia, and a great rival of Alexandria: both were flourishing early cities, both had world-famous libraries, and both wanted the oldest and most accurate works of Homer they could get their hands on. If you replace ‘Homer’ with ‘Alexis’, this is not entirely unlike the current rivalry between BOOK OF HOURS and The Lady Afterwards. BOOK OF HOURS is AK’s main…

THE FORBIDDEN CITY (AUGUST 2020)

I wrote the article below for Wireframe, a British game dev magazine which ‘lifts the lid on video games’. And, inexplicably, lets me have a monthly column. While under communist dictatorship in the 1970s and 80s, dissenting Czechoslovaks arrived at demonstrations, stood in front of the police and beat each other up with vegetables. This was to save police the trouble of doing it with batons,…

A day late ’cause last week was stressful, but HERE’S A NEW UPDATE ON FUN GAMES THINGS ANYWAY BOOK OF HOURS [ in the voice of AK ] A long time ago, I decided that everything I ever said about the Secret Histories would be inside quote marks. Or to put it another way, a long time ago I decided that everything I ever said about the Secret Histories would be ‘inside quote marks’. No, put the…

‘THE RARER ACTION’

PREVIOUSLY, ON CANCEL CLUB… I’m Alexis Kennedy. I run a tiny video game studio, Weather Factory, with my partner, Lottie Bevan. In August 2019, Lottie and I were cancelled on Twitter. Our networks were destroyed, our business was devastated, our mental health was shredded… you know this story. Everyone who’s heard of us knows this story. But very few people have seen what’s been going on behind…

HORSE FACE / PLATE FACE

I wrote the article below for Wireframe, a British game dev magazine which ‘lifts the lid on video games’. And, inexplicably, lets me have a monthly column. Here is a game that will ruin your life. It’s called ‘Horse Face, Plate Face’. It hinges on the eternal truth that every human who has ever been either had a long face like a horse or a round face like a plate. Occasionally there have been…

The Confusion of Tongues

‘A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.’ Linguistics quiz! Everyone loves a linguistics quiz. Name three Semitic languages. Take a minute to think about it. Now tag urself – If you got as far as (4), feel good. I only got to (6), and I have a linguistics degree, though not a very good or recent one. Likely wrong answers include Yiddish (it’s written in Hebrew but it’s mostly…

Happy Friday! I left off updates after our big shebang on Cultist‘s anniversary, where we announced The Lady Afterwards, Against Worldbuilding and the Lucid Tarot. So that means we have quite a bit to talk about today. First things first: we’re 33% off in GOG’s Summer Sale, and today is Stop Cyberbullying Day. Cyberbullying is a cause close to our hearts, having been on the wrong side of it…