exp.

Author: Mathew Kumar

Pipistrello And The Cursed Yoyo (Pocket Trap, 2025)

Developed/Published by: Pocket Trap / PM Studios
Released: 28/05/2025
Completed: 25/09/2025
Completion: Finished it, though with a caveat that will be explained more or less immediately.

Before we get into the article: you can pre-order a copy of exp. 2602, my brand new zine, right now. If you haven’t picked up any issues yet, there’s a discounted bundle of all three zines! Patreon members get an even bigger discount: subscriptions start at just $1!

Don’t really have a good reason why I chose to play this above nearly everything in my to-play list recently other than, in a weird sort of bloody-minded way, I just wanted to play something that wasn’t Silksong, but you could conceivably pick up because you wanted something like that… without being like that. And hey, it says “cursed” in the title. That’s sort of spooky-adjacent, right? Fits the pre-halloween mood? Maybe?

Pipistrello And The Cursed Yoyo was actually the perfect antidote for someone who was burned out on Silksong discourse without ever having touched it. Because feast your eyes on this:

Pipistrello And The Cursed Yoyo has the greatest difficulty settings I’ve ever seen. It’s genuinely amazing that it’s this granular. The game has a default difficulty and then you can just decide what parts are too much of a ballache for you. I know there’s been so much discourse over this–even before Silksong, John Walker has loved wading into it, god bless him–but here at exp. Towers we side with the idea that you should be allowed to play a game however you bloody well like. As much as I love thinking about and dissecting authorial intent in video games, as soon as the fucking thing is out the door you can treat it however you like.

If there’s one thing I’d possibly have wanted, it’s for the developers to include their own easy/medium/hard presets, but I actually think it works well enough that you can start the game, play for a bit and then realise what’s causing you unnecessary pain–and it doesn’t mean you’re breaking the game. It think it can be quite interesting to discuss, for example, when, where and how “runbacks” or other punishment mechanics can be a design choice that enhances, rather than detracts from a game, but I like that here they accepted that possibly you can just decide if it’s something you want to bother with or not, without fiddling with other levers if you don’t want to. I think you’re going to know pretty early if a mechanic like losing money on death feels fun or even legitimate to you or not–for me, I quickly turned it off because I was dying enough it was just going to lead to having to grind for cash, pointlessly bloating the playtime, and I’m, honestly, too old for that shit.

(About half-way through the game I would also turn off fall damage, because the platforming challenges get extremely finicky, and the extra reload time was enough to annoy me. The game’s upgrade mechanics include upgrades specifically to reduce fall damage and cash loss, so this felt perfectly within the spirit of the design. Just a little extra edge.)

Anyway, Pipistrello And The Cursed Yoyo is described by Pocket Trap as a “Yoyovania” but that’s not really what it is–it’s more clearly inspired by The Legend of Zelda in the Link To The Past milieu. You play Pippit (weirdly not Pipistrello, that’s their auntie?) the yoyo obsessed failchild of a family that holds a monopoly over all the energy in the city where the game takes place. Due to the monopoly squeezing every last penny from the city’s companies, the leaders of the four biggest companies decided to kill the matriarch, Madame Pipistrello, by sucking her soul into four big batteries which will provide limitless energy for their capitalist dreams (this makes sense, for reasons.) But Pippit intervenes, a fifth of Madame Pipistrello’s soul ends up in their yoyo! So off you go on a pretty clear quest: head to each company, beat up the owner, steal the battery, then once you have all four, put your auntie back together.

This is all done via a charming, chunky top-down Zelda-a-like; designed almost exactly look like it’s being played on a Game Boy Advance (the game even opens with a 3D model of a GBA-look-a-like, and you can play the entire game on it if you want, with an LCD filter and everything.) When I started to play Pipistrello And The Cursed Yoyo, I was loving it. It’s bright, the controls are responsive, battles are fun, and there’s a great sense of progression as you explore the map collecting coins and finding new areas. But unfortunately, as the game loads on more mechanics, it starts to get… unwieldy. The bright and colourful graphics don’t have a lot of good clean “tells” on what you can do where, and while that might be because they want you to puzzle it out and experiment, it’s not so great when you’re in the middle of chaining traversal abilities to then have to work out what the next one you need to use is. And then actually executing traversal… well, it has the double whammy of the individual moves often being awkward to execute with the design expecting a high degree of competency. Every move has you pressing at least two buttons together, and moves only chain in certain ways, so when you reach the point–as you will–where you’re having to do something like six actions in one go or start again, it can get absolutely frustrating. (Again here, that the difficulty settings allow you to actually half the speed of the game is a life-saver. I won’t lie: I did it two or three times.)

The ultimate problem is that often you find yourself finishing a challenge and wondering–was that the way I was supposed to do that? Did I cheese it somehow? They can be so hard, or difficult to parse, that you never actually get to the point where you feel mastery, and that’s a problem. It’s even more of a problem in a game that feels like it should be open like its inspirations. Areas are obviously gated by traversal abilities, and it seems to limit you to two “dungeons” available at a time as a result, but each time it felt I went to the “wrong” one of two first and had to double back to the other one to actually progress. I really can’t tell if that is as designed, or if I just never understood traversal as well as I should have.

Battles are mostly fine–a good range of enemies, and intentionally designed encounters–but I think it’s here that the designers make arguably the strangest decision of all. The upgrade system is fairly normal–badges that give abilities or passives that you can equip, and permanent upgrades that you unlock–but the permanent upgrades require you to engage with a “debt” mechanic where you “pay off” the upgrade while suffering a hindrance. So, for example, you might have less life, or enemies won’t drop health.

At best this is just annoying. While I get the idea, the implementation just means that you spend the entire game weaker than you actually are (and you can enter certain situations completely screwed–nothing like facing a boss with one health and not being able to do anything about it unless you want to return the upgrade and get less money back than you’ve paid in.) If the permanent upgrades had designed hindrances, like “you must use this loadout” or “yoyo can’t be separated from string in battle” (just off the top of my head–not specific recommendations) it could be interesting, forcing you to play in different ways than you have, but it’s usually just “the game is harder” which should make you want to just go to the difficulty menu and make the game… not harder. Again, it’s just holding you back from any rewarding feeling of mastery.

These aspects–that the traversal is tuned towards extreme competence, and that the upgrade system means you never feel powerful–mean that Pipistrello And the Cursed Yoyo starts to outstay its welcome before you’re done with it. You can be done with the main path in something like 12 hours, and I really didn’t want to give it any more–which is sad, because when I started it I really had it in mind that I’d be searching out all the badges and unlocks, but the main path is so seemingly linear you don’t have much reason to go back on yourself with new abilities, and I just ended up wanting to push through to get it all done. It’s really only thanks to those difficulty settings that I could, honestly (if I had been stuck grinding for cash for the upgrades, I’d probably still be playing it.)

Was it worth getting to the end? For me, yes, because I had to see where the narrative went. Not because I was loving it, particularly, but because it’s so… odd. The game has you as heir to what is basically a capitalist crime family that’s led by an awful person bleeding people dry, and then the other companies are even worse? I mean it’s not exactly Bioshock Infinite’s “If a cow ever got the chance, he’d eat you and everyone you care about” but let me just say they hardly plant any seeds for the face turn that you’re expecting will show up. I’m not sure quite what they were going for–I suppose it’s supposed to be some sort of commentary on capitalism, but it’s muddled.

Anyway, here we have one of those classic examples of a game where finishing it kind of just put me off it, because the flaws just became more and more apparent. If it was half as long, or if I was the kind of person who was fine only playing half of something, I’d probably be raving about this. Oops!

Will I ever play it again? There’s a new game+, which probably gives you a reason to go through the early areas again with all the abilities, but… to what end?

Final Thought: I feel like I’ve been harsh on this one, so one thing I do want to say is that even if I did think it outstayed its welcome, it’s not for want of the designers trying. They go to extreme effort to make sure every area you visit has a new concept for you to deal with. Fans, lasers, switches, moving platforms, dark areas… each time they take an idea they leave no stone unturned, and so you’re always engaged. If you gel with this game–particularly when it comes to traversal–you really get your money’s worth here, and it’s even possible that if you’re just a little more aggressive with easing the difficulty settings than I was, you’ll hit a sweet spot either way. And for what it’s worth: I can see the counter argument that the team should have worked harder to tune the game to “avoid” having to include all these difficulty options, but the game’s issues are not ones that could be fixed by that.

If you like the look of this, I’d still consider giving it a shot. Just… don’t try to be a hero and stick to the defaults. I don’t think it’s worth the pain.

September 30, 2025
Castlevania (Konami, 1986)

Developed/Published by: Konami
Released: 26/09/1986
Completed: 09/09/2025
Completion: Finished it. I did do a save state before Dracula though, to avoid repeating an exploit.

Before we get into the article: you can pre-order a copy of exp. 2602, my brand new zine, right now. If you haven’t picked up any issues yet, there’s a discounted bundle of all three zines! Patreon members get an even bigger discount: subscriptions start at just $1!

I’ve been in the trenches of 1986 for such a long time by this point that I feel like, sometimes, I lose a bit of perspective, so as I reach Castlevania, released within two months of Metroid (and also on the Famicom Disk System) it’s good to take a minute to reflect again on the strength of the release calendar for the Famicom. It’s not just Nintendo’s groundbreaking output, for example, it’s also incredible arcade hits such as Gradius and Ghosts n’ Goblins coming home in solid ports.

And with the influence of The Legend of Zelda and especially Metroid going to take more time to disseminate, I think it’s important to consider Castlevania within the post-Super Mario Bros. milieu where the arcade still reigns supreme as the state of the art. You went to the arcade and wanted to play games that good at home, and developers wanted to sell people on their “arcade quality” experiences, even if there was no arcade title attached.

I’m assuming you can see where I’m going with this, but the interesting thing about Castlevania is as much as it is tied to the Metroidvania genre–and would begin dipping its toes into that within a month–the first game is no more attempting to create an expansive, “home” experience than Konami’s earlier port of Gradius is. If you’re being generous, you could claim that Castlevania is Konami’s attempt to make the style that’s already worked so well for them in the scrolling shooter for the arcade–short, hard games with impactful, unique levels and standout bosses–translate to the side-scrolling action game/platformer for the home. If you’re not being so generous, you could say this is Konami’s rip-off of Ghosts n’ Goblins.

That one probably works better.

I don’t think it’s unfair, really! Ghosts n’ Goblins is a good port, but it looks weedy. It’s hard not to imagine Konami, given the extra power of the Famicom Disk System, thinking that they could simply do something better, and the hallmarks are all there. A spooky setting. A stiff, inflexible hero who struggles with platforming. Limited power increases and different weapons to collect, which all have important situational uses. When you look at the original Japanese titles it looks even more sus. Ghosts n’ Goblins is “Demon World Village” Castlevania is “Demon Castle Dracula” (to not get too into the weeds on this, Demon isn’t spelled exactly the same, but they do both use the kanji 魔.) And if you don’t consider that case closed? Well, there’s also the difficulty.

The bloody difficulty.

Unlike Ghosts n’ Goblins, Castlevania absolutely lulled me into a false sense of security at the start. There’s no Red Arremer here as a harsh wakeup call, and the first boss, a bat (which does have a bit of the Red Arremer about them) is easily dealt with if you have the axe subweapon, which is literally in a candle right before them.

Once you’re in the second level, however, all bets are off, as you’re suddenly facing the dreaded medusa heads paired with the fact that you lose a life if you fall into a pit (easy to do as you get stunned and knocked back on getting hit) and it only gets worse from there. There are some absolutely hair pulling moments.

Really, Castlevania feels like a game that shouldn’t work, because hero Simon Belmont is so slow and it’s such a challenge to react to anything. But the game has a weird sort of pleasure in its heavy, exacting feel. Simon slowly moves forward and really feels like he’s absolutely thumping the enemies in front of him, and a bit like a shooter it’s all about finding your racing line through the game, collecting the right subweapon at the right time and learning where the meat Dracula has stuffed in his walls are for safety (good poll if they ever add polls to Bluesky: would you eat Dracula’s wall meat? Yes / No / If I was really hungry, I guess).

There’s also an intriguingly vestigial sort of hidden, sort of experience system–if you use subweapons a lot enemies eventually drop upgrades that let you have up to three on screen–but it’s foiled by the fact you want to switch subweapons a lot and you lose the upgrades when you do (why!!!) but if you can master it you can absolutely cheese some of the bosses–I mean, it’s how I saw the end of this…

I even like that Dracula’s Castle sort of makes sense as a layout. I mean, it doesn’t really, but I like that they made the drop that happens after you fight the mummies sort of the correct length, and then you might be surprised that the “clock tower” section of this game is so short, but it’s tall and thin… like a clock tower!

The brutal difficulty of Castlevania makes some sense on the Famicom Disk System because you could save at any stage(!) and when the game was re-released on cartridge in Japan it got an easy mode–although it removes knockback on hit, which just seems weird (if you’re interested, it’s included in the Rumbleminz SNES port, the method by which I played this.)

Ultimately, if Konami set out to best Ghosts n’ Goblins… well… they did!

Will I ever play it again? I will play its many, many remakes and… side-makes?

Final Thought: Yeah, so, the weird thing about Castlevania is that it came out on Famicom Disk System just a month before it came out on MSX2 (a version generally known as Vampire Killer, as it was titled that in Europe.) Although Vampire Killer shares graphics, enemies, and is still a trudge through Dracula’s castle, individual level design differs completely, as levels are non-linear and you’re expected to search them for a wider range of items, upgrades and keys to unlock doors to the next level!

Annoyingly, I can’t find good information on why the games are so different, outside of pretty generic speculation (“now, PC games drive like this [mimes driving like a huge nerd] and Famicom games drive like this…”) so it’s really hard to say what concept “came first.” if the MSX version was the original idea, then my Ghosts n’ Goblins hypothesis–my Ghosts n’ Goblothesis–is incorrect.

I do feel like it would be a bit unusual if both games weren’t directed by the same man, elusive series creator Hitoshi Akamatsu, and Castlevania II would go on to be much more of an adventure, which would be a mark against my goblothesis, but weirdly according to an amazing shmuplations translation, Akamatsu was inspired by The Maze of Galious, which is itself a post-Vampire Killer design, so who knows. I guess I can get closer to finding out if I play it, so let’s see how long I can avoid that for.

Update 2025/10/01: Actual game historian Kate Willaert got in touch over on Bluesky with some critical context:

“My understanding, from delving into this era of Konami, is that the two versions of Castlevania were developed in parallel, with the teams possibly sharing ideas with each other, and so neither game is “first” nor the “real” one. See also MSX vs. FC Goonies, which laid the groundwork for this game … While it’s possible that Ghosts N Goblins inspired some surface elements, my personal theory is that the foundation of Castlevania can be found in the computer game Aztec, which was fairly popular among a particular generation of Japanese game devs.”

September 23, 2025
The exp. Dispatch #10

Well, very funny to say in the last dispatch that I’d go to biweekly and then not actually send out another one for three weeks. Well, I’ve got a good excuse.

Hey, do you hate in-line advertising? We do too! We’re only ever going to do it here at the start of our newsletter posts because we want you to get these missives in your inbox a day early. Sorry!

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Recently On exp.

Announcing exp. 2602 For Pre-order Today!

Said excuse! I suppose I did send this out to all subscribers at the start of the week. exp. 2602 has been in the works for a while, but it was put on hold when I rebuilt expzine.com, and then actually launching it got delayed even longer because I was so dissatisfied with ecommerce options like bigcartel and ko-fi (ko-fi in particular badly screwed me recently) that I decided to self-host—after all, I already have the website. I somewhat understand why people just pay to have someone else handle it all by now… but at least so far it seems to be working. Also—please consider pre-ordering! This is the last weekend before I absolutely have to get it to the printers, and your orders make sure I know how many to print!

Subscriber Post: Elechead (Namatakahashi, 2021)

This week’s subscriber post showed up a little late because of the announcement, so I hope people don’t overlook it. Namatakahashi is doing something really special in indie games right now.

Unlocked Posts: Gravity Bone (Blendo Games, 2008) / Metroid (Nintendo, 1986) / Many Nights A Whisper (Deconstructeam/Selkie Harbour, 2025)

Man, when you see the games listed out like this I really grasp how some people find it hard to hook into what I’m doing here. But my tastes are too catholic for me to limit myself to being, like, only an RPG or retro blogger or something. If you only want to read one of these, please read about Many Nights A Whisper—there’s only a few short months to find out if it stays at the top of my games of 2025 list. But uh… obviously read them all.

From the exp. Archive: Cart Life (Hofmeier, 2010) / Soulcalibur: Broken Destiny (Project Soul, 2009) / Star Wars Pinball (Zen Studios, 2013)

A couple of really throw-away articles here but I still think what I wrote about Cart Life hits. A “compelling and thoughtful critique” according to Eggplant‘s Rob Dubbin, so that’s nice. Surprisingly on Twitter, the website where linked articles go to die, I got some feedback on Soulcalibur: Broken Destiny too. @Yoshicookie, apparently a Kilik main, let me know it’s “actually the better version of [Soulcalibur IV], if it had proper multiplayer.” Good to know.

exp. Capsule Review

Blobun Mini (Cyansorcery, 2025)

Didn’t really pay attention when downloading this because it looked so cute when it showed up in my feed–I guess I assumed it was a Crush Roller-a-like, or something. However, it turned out, concerningly, to be more of a “hard” puzzler, where you’re trying to fill in every square in a map with your cute little slimy bunny and you lose if you need to backtrack to do it. It’s not Sokoban, exactly, but it (maybe unfairly) raised memories of every game I’ve ever played where you do a complex chain of things but have fucked it up at one point in the last 100 moves and have to try and make sense of it.

As a result I was initially considering putting this down completely, but I decided to stick with it for a bit as it’s a free PICO-8 game, so I was able to pick it up on my Trimui Brick whenever I had a spare moment (don’t leave me with my thoughts! I need to be doing something, please don’t leave me with my thoughts!) and Blobun Mini won me over for several very good reasons.

Firstly: every part of it glows with polish, from the charming UI through the responsive movement. Secondly, the game has an unbelievably smooth difficulty curve. It introduces new concepts carefully–and it has many for a game with just sixty levels–and every map is short enough that you never have too much to fix if you screw up. And thirdly, the game is unbelievably forgiving, with a complete rewind and even hints to start you off on each level.

Much like Dino Sort, if you’re looking for a charming puzzler that you can pick up and put down and eventually finish you can’t really go wrong with this (I mean, it’s bloody free) and if you like it so much you can go ahead and play the “full” version of Blobun, which does look like it’s too much for me, but that’s fine.

The only problem I have with this, actually, is that I finished every level but the last level didn’t “tick off” so it looks like I haven’t. A bug, maybe? But it’s a minor quibble.

exp. Du Cinéma

Superman (2025) / Evil Puddle (2025)

Something something, catholic tastes. This is the second time a Motern Media production has shown up in this newsletter, so I assume you’re all complete converts already.

Also reviewed: Eddington (2025), The Devil At Your Heels (1981) and Mountainhead (2025).

Zine News

Middle-Aged Teenage Angst Issue 1

“Middle-Aged Teenage Angst: The Zine is now available to buy in print or as a PDF. 52 pages of new writing by me on forgotten TV, old mags, radio, wrestling, growing up, badges and, of course, music.”

Retro Game SuperHyper Fanzine Issue #5

“YES!! Over three years late, but I kept my promise, and the fifth issue of RGSH fanzine is finally finished and ready for you!!”

This came out a fair few months ago now, but only came to my attention (as zines often do) thanks to Forgotten Worlds.

ASTRO Gaming Lifestyle Magazine

“This is a magazine that explores gaming as a lifestyle (think Nintendo Power meets curated fashion and lifestyle magazine). The book features 60 pages of my artwork alongside photography and featured community projects.”

This is absolutely beautiful but I’m sad to note that it’s also fifty-nine dollars. I think it’s neat that there are higher-end zines and journals out there—think the amusingly similarly titled ON and [lock-on]—but I have to admit that I don’t have the funds to keep up. Maybe they’ll be up for a zine trade?

zeenster.com

Moheeb Zara’s free zine making app now works on mobile! Make your own zine and then charge sixty dollars for it. That’ll show ’em.

And Finally…

This is a fun one. I’d put off watching this until I finished Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, as I’d heard the book this talk (from two years ago!) was about heavily inspired it. When you watch this you’ll be absolutely shocked as to how much of a, well, complete rip-off Clair Obscur is, and of a book that was apparently a huge success in France! I’d be fascinated to read what French fans thought of the game—if they were just completely nonplussed by the things international audiences found fresh and exciting. Maybe that’s why the game makes such, er, big swings at the end? To differentiate it?

Anyway, I’m absolutely gasping to read La Horde du Contrevent now. Considering I moved to Canada anyway, I should have really bothered to give a shit about French in high school. I guess if I can sell more copies of exp. 2602 I can be taken seriously as a publisher and try and get the rights? There’s an English translation sitting there waiting!

Next week on exp.: Well, I did the Metroid, so…

September 21, 2025
Elechead (Namatakahashi, 2021)

Developed/Published by: Namatakahashi, Tsuyomi / Namatakahashi
Released: 14/10/2021
Completed: 31/08/2025
Completion: Hard to say if the game has a “good” and a “bad” ending, so let’s just say I saw one of the endings.

Before we get into the article: you can pre-order a copy of exp. 2602, my brand new zine, right now. If you haven’t picked up any issues yet, there’s a discounted bundle of all three zines! Patreon members get an even bigger discount: subscriptions start at just $1!

Saw people talking about Öoo, the latest Namatakahashi game, so of course I had to look up what they’ve made before that, saw that they’d made a game called Elechead, and played that instead.

And I’m glad I did!

I talked a lot about process in my recent essay on Many Nights A Whisper, and I think Elechead represents a more expected way of centering a low number of game mechanics (or especially, single game mechanic) in a video game: not focused on the player’s process toward a singular mastery, but on playing with the player’s believed mastery, taking the mechanics and bending them, requiring lateral thinking and moments of inspiration to progress.

In Elechead, it’s something so simple and clever that I’m surprised I haven’t seen it before. It’s actually described wordlessly in game and even on the Steam page (perhaps, originally, to avoid localisation issues–even the settings menu relies on pictograms). You’re a wee robot with an electric charge. Anything you stand on is powered. So, for example, if you stand on a platform that moves, it moves. If you stand on a platform with some bulbs attached, those bulbs light (in game, creating a dangerous barrier.) As soon as you jump, everything turns off; when you land again, everything turns back on. Instantly.

The game plays like that for a bit longer than I expected it would, before it introduces its main twist: your head is what holds the charge, and you can fling it off and run around as a headless body for ten seconds. So where previously you might face a barrier and just have to jump to break the connection to get through it, now you might have to throw your head across to make a connection somewhere else–and then get there in time.

The thing that stands out about Elechead is that it sucks the bones of its concept, and that it does so with a thoughtful difficulty curve (well, to an extent). There’s always a new way at looking at your abilities or how they interact with the world, and what you will be able to do can be surprising. It’s generally deeply satisfying when you work out what you need to do, but if there’s an issue, it’s that the game relies on a couple of (in my opinion) bad mannered “tricks” to stymie you: hidden paths with no “tell” (in walls, or off screen) and a final upgrade that’s completely hidden behind one of them (my understanding is that you can beat the game without it, but I struggled even with it…)

It’s a bit of a shame, because the game leads to a climax that I really loved. If you’ll allow mild spoilers, the game is a linear trip through a series of puzzles (outside of some side paths to collectibles) and when you reach the end, you simply get a few hints to where you were actually supposed to go. But heading backwards requires you revisit puzzles you’ve already seen and solve them in entirely different ways as you reach what appear to be the game’s tutorialising “one way” valves!

So I don’t love that this game stretches the player slightly beyond what’s fair, but that does mean it fits into the milieu of Japanese video games inspired by Xevious and Tower of Druaga.

What, you thought I was going to get through an article without mentioning them?

Will I ever play it again? Probably not, but I enjoyed this so much I’m having to pace myself to not just start Öoo immediately.

Final Thought: Weirdly, after I beat this, I looked up some playthroughs on YouTube, and everyone skips showing the trip backwards, my favourite bit! They do the collectibles ending and take an unrewarding shortcut to the other ending. You’ll only have yourself to blame if you do this. Just remember that things can be hidden in walls and off screen and you’ll be fine.

September 18, 2025
Announcing exp. 2602 For Pre-order Today!

Following the successful relaunch of the exp. website, http://expzine.com, I’m proud to announce that the latest issue of exp. Magazine is now available for pre-order, in advance of debuting at Just Zine Things, to be held at Interesting Things (173 Baldwin St, Toronto) Saturday 27th September, 2025.

exp. 2602 continues my exploration of the 1970s releases for the Atari 2600, with context provided by essays on 1979 and that year’s arcade hit Asteroids.

As with the previous issues, exp. 2602 is being published in a signed, limited numbered edition, and will also be available in PDF and epub. However! I have also made the decision to republish, in unnumbered second editions, the first two issues of this series, exp. 2600 and exp. 2601, in order to align the design language, fix some errors and allow anyone who missed out a chance to buy one, two or all three issues. And if you buy all three, you’ll automatically get a $4 discount!

Damn, that looks so clean! Is it annoying that Atari didn’t keep their box art in the same scale/frame? Yes. Yes is is.

Pre-orders open today, and issues, physical and digital can be pre-ordered at our new online store at expzine.com/shop. Digital copies will still also be available on Ko‑fi or Patreon for Ko‑fi or Patreon subscribers. Patreon subscribers can find their shop discount code here. Ko‑fi supporters will receive theirs via DM.

As a pre-order, issues (digital included) will not be dispatched until the week of Just Zine Things.

As all three issues are in stock, I am open to orders from shops and distributors who would like to purchase for resale, with a discount for bulk orders. I am also open to donating copies to zine libraries! Get in touch with me here.

September 16, 2025
Gravity Bone (Blendo Games, 2008)

Developed/Published by: Blendo Games
Released: 28/08/08
Completed: 05/07/25
Completion: Completed it.

Before we get into the article: you can pre-order a copy of exp. 2602, my brand new zine, right now. If you haven’t picked up any issues yet, there’s a discounted bundle of all three zines! Patreon members get an even bigger discount: subscriptions start at just $1!

Blendo Games’ Skin Deep was released this year, and as is often the case, a new game makes me go “oh yeah, I haven’t really played much or anything by that developer” and I therefore feel like I have to start from the beginning. In this case, I’d previously played this and Blendo Games’ Flotilla (which I believe I still have on Xbox Live Indie Games?) but Gravity Bone only takes twenty minutes so I thought I’d run through it again (I don’t think I’m going to get the Xbox out for Flotilla, though it’s also still on Steam.)

Anyway, Gravity Bone is still well worth running through in 2025 (you can too if you like, and then come back.) It worked fairly well for something made in 2008 even if it did crash consistently if I went into the menu and I was never able to get the graphics looking right in full screen (I wouldn’t even bother trying to get it working on a Steam Deck. But, again, it’s twenty minutes long.)

What strikes me about Gravity Bone now is actually similar to what Kieron Gillen said about it way back in 2009–the confidence it has. A tiny spy thriller with blocky characters, designed with intentionality. The janky nature of playing it now could be detrimental, but the work shines through–like pulling up a scratchy digital transfer of an old short movie that was never matched.

To get into spoiler territory (again, for a game that’s twenty minutes long) I love that the game breaks the “rule of three”. You complete your first easy mission. Your second mission is a little more complex, featuring tools to use and in a very “2000s FPS” way, some tricky jumping. And then, before you can move on… you get shot.

Suddenly everything you expect from a game is broken. You can’t just follow what you’re being told to do. You’ve got to get up and chase your assailant, surely you’ll catch them. But then… you die.

But as you die, you “remember” everything that brought you there. Suddenly you are no longer just in control of an avatar doing as you were told–you understand you were playing a person, as you see their life flash before their eyes. It’s… surprising. And then? Truly? It’s actually quite moving.

You are taken from a pure video game experience to an emotional one, something that few games have managed in experiences that number in the tens of hours. I don’t want to oversell it too much, but while they say brevity is the soul of wit, Gravity Bone has wit and soul in its brief run time.

Will I ever play it again? If you haven’t heard, it’s only twenty minutes. But even at that…

Final Thought: Spoilers: in the time between starting to write this article and finishing it I did in fact decide I just had to play Flotilla after all. What am I like.

September 9, 2025
Evil Puddle (2025)

When introducing Evil Puddle as the first film in his pre-TIFF Midnight Dankness screening (which raised over $4000 for PCRF and Islamic Relief Canada!) Peter Kuplowsky compared it to Eddington as a work of post-COVID cinema, and it is, I think, an excellent lens to view it from.

Eddington is a cynical film that, if it argues anything at all, argues that we are all deeply alone–enveloped by our solipsism so completely that there is no such thing as community, and catastrophe only exposes our urge to self-preservation above all. That we are, ultimately, trapped in our own minds. Unable to see that we’re prey for higher powers and forces that we don’t–and couldn’t–understand.

To me, this is the worst kind of satire–the kind that allows you to be smug because you’re clever enough to know how bad things are and clever enough to know there’s nothing to be done about it. A self-fulfilling inaction.

Evil Puddle argues, instead that community is very, very real, in both narrative and form. From Matt Farley, Charlie Roxburgh and the cast of locals and fans that pitch in to play roles in their movies, Evil Puddle is a 1970s folk-horror disaster movie by way of community theatre in which some unlikely events lead to a small town’s water supply becoming, er, evil.

Heavily featuring a magic rock, I’m unclear if after Magic Spot Farley and Roxburgh are creating a new thematic series of “magic rock” movies to follow their earlier, triumphant series of Druid movies, but the water which kills you instantly but otherwise looks completely normal and benign (you know, like, say, air with a virus in it) is the key factor here. Like classic disaster movies, the film flits between disparate characters who all face peril in different ways due to their predispositions. So, for example, you see some kids who have been using a hose to clean off rocks for a new tranquillity garden. You see a group of ne’er-do-well’s who seem to do little other than hang around a pizza parlour complaining about the free tap water. You see, er, a dance instructor and his student who happen to be learning close to a sprinkler (I think you get where this is going.)

The movie doesn’t linger on punishing characters for their hubris–refusing to trust experts, or attempting to exploit others in their time of weakness–instead choosing to celebrate the characters who work together in even the smallest ways. Evil Puddle is unique in making one of its most rousing sequences about how sometimes the best thing you can do is accept some mild inconvenience rather than put yourself or others at risk.

That this movie has been made by a community is what makes it all so dense with meaning. If you’ve followed the Motern Media universe for any length of time, it’s genuinely moving to see how the actors you know have aged and changed but that they’re still showing up, because that’s what people do.

It’s easy to be cynical. It’s unarguable that the tools that we use every day are being warped by big tech to isolate us ever more. But AI ain’t going to show up when you need help and it ain’t going to make a movie a tenth as good as this one, made with friends and family when they’ve got spare time, where it’s obvious when they’ve shot several scenes in single afternoons. Because you can’t replace community, you can only participate. Rather than inviting the audience to wallow in their smug inaction, it inspires. You could do this too. You can do anything you want. Someone probably wants to help!

And the beautiful thing about Evil Puddle is that just by watching it, even if you have no idea where to start, you already get to join a community: the community of Motern Media fans. Hell, you can call Matt Farley right now if you want (his phone number is 603-644-0048. Give him a call, tell him this review sent you.) Why be smugly alone? Join us, it’s much nicer here.

Follow Mathew on Letterboxd.

Update (31/10/2025): Evil Puddle is available for purchase on Vimeo now!

September 7, 2025
Superman (2025)

This has been out for a while, so pretty much every position on it that can be taken has, and I don’t think mine is going to be that revelatory. But still.

To start with the de rigeur “me and Superman” background, as a British person who didn’t get into American comics until they were a teenager and holds all the usual boring opinions about him (“he’s too powerful! Where’s the peril! Get me a loser like Peter Parker, etc.”) my entire experience of the lad is (obviously) almost completely All-Star Superman, but probably less obviously that one issue of Hitman and then that Superboy arc where he’s an apartment super (get it?) because that was drawn by Hitman artist John McCrea.

Interestingly (maybe) if you’re really into comics you’ll already have clocked why Superman (2025) has really worked for me, because “that one issue of Hitman” where Superman shows up dwells on Superman failing (badly) and then being picked up by having it spelled out pretty directly that he’s an immigrant trying to make the best of it, and there’s really nothing more you can do than your best.

I mean… James Gunn has to have read that one, right? Because he gets it. Superman is made as real and as vulnerable as possible here, understanding that just because you’re invincible doesn’t mean you can’t be beaten, and that Superman has no more emotional armour than anyone else. While I’ve read some criticism over just how badly Superman gets his ass kicked in this, that it comes from both directions and that Superman reacts so genuinely–so humanly–to it all is what makes it work. There are stakes: you feel your fist tightening because they stole his dog. You are right there with him all the way.

Some of Gunn’s predilections are a bit unbalancing to the movie as a whole though. Some of the gags fall flat. He can push peril a little too far when it comes to the defenceless, and his penchant for eye trauma rivals Lucio Fulci’s. But the real issue with the film is that the big action climax doesn’t work. It’s obvious that the thematic arc of the movie is always going to end in a (largely) non-violent confrontation between Superman and Lex Luthor (played with a genuinely incredible seething hatred from Nicholas Hoult) but the other villains (well, bar one) fall completely flat, and the big “why can this guy beat Superman?” mystery is concluded in the most boring way possible. For a movie that digs up so much stuff from the DC Universe (look, I’ve got no idea who Mr. Terrific is) it’s weird that they resorted to the kind of thing we’d expect at this point from the completely shagged-out MCU. But it doesn’t put too much of a pallor on things, because in every other respect, this movie’s heart is in the right place.

Speaking of, the movie’s much talked-about Israel/Palestine allegory is… astounding. It’s absolutely not the center of the movie, but it goes so much harder than you could ever expect when it appears. Look, we’ve all learned by this point that satire doesn’t do much. But Superman said free Palestine, and in this miserable fuckin’ world, that means something.

Follow Mathew on Letterboxd.

September 5, 2025
Metroid (Nintendo, 1986)

Developed/Published by: Nintendo R&D1, Intelligent Systems / Nintendo
Released: 06/08/1986
Completed: 28/08/2025
Completion: Killed Mother Brain in less than three hours.

I hope it was obvious from the conclusion of my article on The Legend of Zelda that the game I was referring to was this, Metroid, but I suppose the real heads might have been like “well, The Mysterious Murasame Castle is pretty good, I guess…”

Metroid is a game I was absolutely certain I was never going to beat. After all, I’ve beaten Metroid: Zero Mission, isn’t that good enough?

But the original is a game I’ve picked up and put down a few times out of my urge to really understand the Metroidvania genre’s beginnings, and the reason I’ve put it down is probably the reason most people do: the obvious lack of any sort of map (never mind an automap.) That would be bad though, but when you combine that with the game’s reliance on completely hidden paths for progression, and an early difficulty that is, I think, worse than The Legend of Zelda… Metroid just isn’t very enjoyable. It doesn’t seem worth the effort.

Sadly, unlike The Legend of Zelda, there isn’t a wee hack in pulling up the manual, because it doesn’t offer the kind of help you actually need. While it does offer lots of useful hints on what Samus and enemies can do, the included map is very vague. With the graphics in each area quite samey (look, you tell one corridor or shaft apart from the other) you really need to therefore either have a map already to hand or be mapping the game out as you go, and I think my resistance to the original Metroid has always been that while in a game like Wizardry or The Bard’s Tale you can take your time to draw out maps, here you’re stopping during an action game, which apart from just being sort of annoying, is an active flow breaker.

Thankfully, it’s 2025, and I again have to thank two people–romhacker Infidelity and Hand Drawn Game Guides artist Phil Summers–for making Metroid manageable. Infidelity has ported Metroid to SNES creating what is easily the ultimate version of the game, with the Famicom Disk System saving, the addition of a mini-map(!) and even the ability to combine the wave beam and ice beam like later games. And Phil Summers’ Hand Drawn Game Guide for Metroid might be the perfect thing to hand for a player who doesn’t want to just follow a walkthrough beat-by-beat: it offers a route through the game, but the maps and tips leave a lot of the exploration and discovery up to the player.

It’s a shame, to be honest, that even with all of that, I still just don’t like Metroid all that much. In fact, I’d argue that the Metroidvania “vision” here is still so far off that this is very much a fish with limbs flopping about gasping for air compared to an actual amphibian. Er… Metroidphibian.

When you start playing Metroid, there is some familiarity outside of the franchise signifiers–the opening area gives you some rope, but works to funnel you towards the necessary early pickups before the game opens up. But quickly you realise Metroid is far less interested in the now de rigueur “I can’t go there / unlock ability / now I can go there” loop than just killing you as much as possible and getting you lost. The upgrades which are required for progression act generally as just “keys” to new areas and don’t provide you the means to solve puzzles or allow you to interact with them in interesting ways (even the morph ball goes strangely underused) so you mostly find yourself shooting/bombing walls or hoping lava pits have a false bottom when stuck after you’ve got them all. And like other games of the era, Metroid makes sure to often punish you for doing that, giving you plenty of pointless dead ends that just sap you of health as you try to survive.

In fact, I’m struck by how the game poorly rewards exploration beyond getting the necessary upgrades, and then how short the game actually is once you have them outside of forced backtracking–kill two minibosses and then head to the final section to kill Mother Brain, a section which is completely linear.

As a result of all of this, you realise familiarity with modern Metroidvanias is really a hindrance when playing Metroid. For example, beam upgrades (ice or wave) don’t seem to actually increase your power much if at all, so unlike later games, Metroid seems tuned around using your missiles on regular enemies. You’d think therefore that missile upgrades would make exploration worth it, but you end up getting bogged down just to have five more missiles in your quota, where if you beeline to the bosses, each one gives you an almost absurd 75!

And you’ll want to do this because the drop rate on health and missiles is so miserable that every trip down a dead end (or worse, a corridor you’ve forgotten you’ve seen already) requires what feels like never-ending grinding of the game’s infinite spawners. When you first see them, you think “that’ll save me sometime” but after your first ten, twenty minutes waiting for enough health to fill one tank, you realise you’re far better just running through the levels trying to rely on screw attack jumps to avoid combat (which does, generally, work.)

That even goes for the last section of the game which should be tense and exciting as you finally face off against the Metroids, but no, you’re better off… freezing them and running past. To add insult to injury, Mother Brain is just a complete pain in the arse. It’s an endurance test–have enough health that you can survive being shot the whole time while you pound her with missiles.

I suppose that the escape is a fairly-exacting platforming challenge is kind of funny, though.

Much like The Legend of Zelda, though, Metroid feels like a product that makes more sense in its original context of players with bags of time and nothing much else to play. Bar one very annoying thing–that you have no way of shooting things shorter than Samus, which really makes the opening of the game frustrating and much harder than it should be–Metroid controls well, and I assume the players willing to map got a lot out of it, and those who didn’t probably just eventually got Samus powered up and to the end by sheer effort (the zone between “I have the morph ball and missiles” and “I have enough energy tanks and the screw attack to survive to explore” is so miserable, however, I do find it hard to imagine.)

Even if I find that hard to imagine, I don’t find it hard to see how Metroid captured people’s imaginations. I’m not sure it has quite the same completeness of vision as The Legend of Zelda (or The Mysterious Muramase Castle, for that matter) but the visuals and especially the sound really give the game a uniquely lonely feel; a solo decent into a deadly and foreign cave system (I do love that the name of this game is a portmanteau of “metro” and “android”–I can almost imagine one of the designers, lost in one of Tokyo’s many confusing train stations, thinking “there’s probably a game in this.”)

And maybe it’s just the fact that it’s a side-on 2D platformer, but even more so than with The Legend of Zelda/Sabre Wulf, Rare has a case that Metroid is heavily inspired by Underwurlde, if not an outright rip off. Not just the shafts with platforming challenge (which would be enough) but that areas of the map are locked off without using a particular weapon.

Separated at birth??? Alright, this one doesn’t look as damning as the Sabre Wulf one but trust me.

If I was being really harsh, I’d point out there were plenty of platfomers of the era with big maps to explore, things to collect and keys to use, from the obscure to the very well known. Impossible Mission. Saboteur. Citadel. Journey To The Centre Of The Earth. And many of these games play well, too!

So I after playing it all the way through, I do feel like I still have some questions if Metroid really does deserve the crown as originator, but then I also suppose we also live in a world where we don’t play Beneath Apple Manor-likes.

Will I ever play it again? Well, there’s no Satellaview version of this, so I really have played the “best” version of it I could. I’ll play Zero Mission again, though, which I remember as being the peak of the franchise, and I can’t remember if that’s controversial or not.

Final Thought: Of course, there’s also the other side of the Metroidvania… the vania. And the first game in that franchise doesn’t even attempt to be a Metroidvania. It’s even got a new SNES port too…

September 2, 2025
The exp. Dispatch #9

I think I’m going to settle on the dispatch being biweekly–doing it every week has felt like overkill. I think I imagined this newsletter as just links to the articles of the week, but each time I’ve thought of doing that it’s felt like such poor value for your no-money that I’ve ended up doing more, so this is, probably, better for all involved. Let me know if you feel any different. Onwards!

Hey, do you hate in-line advertising? We do too! We’re only ever going to do it here at the start of our newsletter posts because we want you to get these missives in your inbox a day early. Sorry!

Cheeky ad-blocker? Sign up here!

This Fortnight On exp.

Subscriber Post: Many Nights A Whisper (Deconstructeam/Selkie Harbour, 2025)

Listen to Together by Nine Inch Nails while reading this. If you know, you know.

Unlocked Post: The Legend of Zelda (Nintendo, 1986)

Nice to get to call out Wes Fenlon’s excellent Read Only Memo and Phil Summers’ Hand Drawn Game Guides here. Not the last time Phil’s work will be mentioned at the very least.

Unlocked Post: VILE: Exhumed (Cadaver, 2025)

You know, I really thought this game would create a bit more discussion online considering the context in which it was released, but I guess not!

From the exp. Archive: Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon (Intelligent Systems, 2008)

Digging this old article up made me realise I never managed to cop that fancy re-release Nintendo did of the Super Famicom original, despite really trying, and then I completely forgot to download it digitally anyway. It’s really bizarre that Nintendo took to these limited releases for Fire Emblem and that Super Mario collection. Why? I guess they did limited Mario and Kirby releases in the days of the Wii, but it just seems so weird to go “you can’t buy that now” in the digital shop of infinite shelf space.

What’s that? I’ve got a digital zine collection that I’ve only ever released temporarily? Uh… shut up.

From the exp. Archive: Hollow Knight (Team Cherry, 2017)

The Silksong hype is real, man. This article, despite being from 2020, was just about the most read thing on the site in the wake of it being announced. And I don’t even like Hollow Knight!

exp. Capsule Review

Merge Maestro (Stingless, 2025)

Had heard rumours this was the new roguelike-like obsession of the moment, so thought I’d give it a shot–it’s not like I feel like I’m wasting my life as it is. But I bounced off this basically immediately. Of the roguelike-likes it’s most similar to Luck Be A Landlord in that it’s very simple, entirely focused on a core loop–here, playing a symbol-based Threes-like to fight a succession of waves of enemies until you either lose or win the run by beating a final boss enemy. After each wave you get to upgrade one of your symbols, each of which has a special ability, and you’re basically trying to make your deck work synergistically so that as you merge symbols you’re doing massive damage and making your board better.

If that sounds… fine, it… is. I mean it’s really quite generic feeling, probably not helped by the fact that is uses emojis for the symbols, and maybe if you really love Threes this will light your fire, but it’s got the same kind of problem that Luck Be A Landlord does, where there’s a billion symbols (here 300!) that all do different things and you can find yourself heading in the wrong direction based on your rolls or just not being able to pull anything together. You can get Balatro-esque insane numbers going, but I certainly couldn’t be bothered to try.

I don’t mean to beat up on this one too much, because it’s from a small developer, completely competent, reasonably priced and I assume for the right kind of player absolute catnip. If anything I’m surprised at how much this failed to get its hooks into me. Am I burned out on the genre, or will another game draw me back into it? You know what, I’m not in a mood to find out any time soon.

exp. Du Cinéma

War 2 (2025) / Coolie (2025)

Thank goodness I’m here to keep you up to date with the latest Indian cinema releases. Absolutely why you subscribe to a video game newsletter. But for real though, War 2 is a banger.

Zine News

ZINEDUMP

“ZINEDUMP is a new Toronto zine fair that aims to provide a venue for the open expression for independent publications, radical art and ideas. The inaugural fest will be held on Nov. 9th between 12-5pm at the Cecil Community Centre.”

Still time to get submissions in if you’re quick–the deadline is August 31st.

Amiga Addict 39

“The new issue of AA is out, in which we look at Fast Food 2 and the history behind the Oliver Twins original!”

Incredible to think that there’s an modern Amiga magazine that’s run for 39 issues. I haven’t been able to keep up.

How To Report ICE

These single page, easy to print and distribute zines give information on how to report ICE for specific cities/areas in the US.

And Finally…

What’s this???

Next week on exp.: The Stampers get ripped off for the second time. Allegedly.

August 31, 2025