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In case you assume novelty, a comment [1] from ArsTechnica reader Jensen404 explains otherwise by linking to [2] a post on Bluesky. [1] https://arstechnica.com

by sxzygz 10mo ago

In case you assume novelty, a comment [1] from ArsTechnica reader Jensen404 explains otherwise by linking to [2] a post on Bluesky. [1] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/12/jonathan-blow-has-spent-the-past-decade-designing-1400-puzzles-for-you/?comments=1&post=44134565 https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/12/jonathan-blow-has-spe... [2] https://bsky.app/profile/draknek.bsky.social/post/3m7qybidq7k2s https://bsky.app/profile/draknek.bsky.social/post/3m7qybidq7...

tormeh 10mo ago
Seems like the original puzzles were licensed for this game, in which case why not?
- deleted 10mo ago
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- serial_dev 10mo ago
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  - embedding-shape 10mo ago
    Does that change how good/bad the game someone releases is? Don't get me wrong, being obviously anti-scientist isn't that great if I absolutely have to judge them, but I'm not sure if that has any impact on how fun a game is. If I'd stop consuming stuff from people/organizations I disagree with politically, I literally would have to move into a cave and start my own hunter-collector society from scratch. Is this really how others make decisions in their daily lives?
    - zaneyard 10mo ago
      I enjoyed Braid and this revelation doesn't change that, but there's a lot of entertainment and it's easy to not support someone who has views (or at least doesn't express them publicly) that conflict with my own personal values.
    - rkomorn 10mo ago
      I don't particularly go hunting for information about artists, studios, etc, to find out if I agree with them. I just happen to no longer like their stuff when I find out things I don't like. It's not "how I make decisions" but more just something that affects my taste for things.
    - speedgoose 10mo ago
      Separating the art from the artist is a long and old debate. I personally can’t watch Roman Polanski’s art, the classic and easy example. You can be a great movie producer, pedophilia and rapes are big no-no to me. But not to everyone apparently. For the non vocal people believing in pseudoscience and fascist propaganda, I can close my eyes more easily. I don’t want to know. I can guess sometimes but I won’t check. As soon as they become vocal, it kills the art for me. I can’t enjoy art from people against my values, me, and my friends and family.
      - tialaramex 10mo ago
        Death of the Author. One of the important elements here is the extent to which materially it matters. If I buy a book Lovecraft wrote a hundred years ago the money isn't going to end up diverted to support the "patriots" who want to intimidate my neighbours, whereas when I buy a Harry Potter box set for a relative you can bet that Rowling's share will help fund "Gender Critical" movements trying to make life worse for some of my friends and colleagues... For books particularly I can totally buy Death of the Author, what I think I read might be entirely different from what the author says they intended, which further nobody can prove is what they actually intended. For that last for example I do not for one moment believe Vernor Vinge that he "Didn't know" what Rabbit is in "Rainbow's End". It's an AI. Maybe Vinge doesn't intend the book as a Singularitarian Catastrophe (you can argue the book thinks it's about avoiding such a catastrophe) but I don't see any way to interpret it where Rabbit isn't a super-human AI.
        debugnik 10mo ago
        You're conflating whether one should feel guilty for supporting an author, and whether the author's speech outside a work matters to understand its intended meaning. The latter is the actual Death of the author, the former is usually called Death of the author by people who want to separate themselves from the authors they know they can be judged for supporting.
        tialaramex 10mo ago
        I think my point was distinct from naming this idea (Death of the Author). It wasn't about guilt it was about consequences and those are distinct things. Also, AIUI Death of the Author is not about whether their beliefs mattered to understand the intended meaning, but instead whether "intended meaning" is even a thing anyway. No need to understand it if it doesn't exist. I prefer in other contexts not to try to guess intentions when I can instead look at the effects and it seems to me our law and practice agree. Notice for example that while proving attempted murder requires that you wanted the victim to die, murder does not. The fact that they are dead satisfies this aspect of the crime, you aren't innocent of murder just because you didn't intend that the victim would die.
    - bialpio 10mo ago
      Yes, this is how I make decisions, but it also depends on the category of decision. E.g. in entertainment, there's too much content available to care about one specific author / creator / etc (this also applies to "console exclusive" games and platform-exclusive TV shows). In this particular case, I vaguely recall Blow making some comments (pre-COVID era IIRC) that sounded too asshole-y / high-horse-y that I no longer seek his opinions on things and try to stay away from his content. I still have bazillion technical articles available to read and plenty of video games to play.
    - breppp 10mo ago
      It doesn't, but historically a lot of the reasons people consume art is due to fashion, and art is a way to put you in in and out groups. So naturally if someone has different political beliefs, or has went too "commercial" people suddenly have to change course. Being a good game/book/song won't have anything to do with it
    - creata 10mo ago
      > I'm not sure if that has any impact on how fun a game is. It might if the game has a more-than-perfunctory story, because authors often incorporate their political or religious beliefs into their stories. (This is usually a good thing: most of the novels that people love would be nothing if stripped of those themes.)
      - DonHopkins 10mo ago
        It's unfortunate that The Good Scott Adams occasionally gets mixed up with The Evil Scott Adams. It's so ironic that they share a name. Many people know who the The Evil Scott Adams is, because he's such an unrepentant attention starved troll who is notorious not only for making a sock puppet to praise and flatter himself as a genius on internet forums, but for his obsessive unvarnished hateful bigotry, racism ("blacks are a hate group"), misogyny, conspiracy theories, anti-health-care-for-poor-people ideology, and Trump boot licking, and he obsessively infuses his MAGA religion into everything he says and does. Enough said. At the opposite end of the spectrum is the Good Scott Adams, a pioneer of the Adventure game genre, who is devotedly Christian, but in the kind, uplifting, well meaning, Jimmy Carter kind of way. He's a really nice guy, who did lots of quality groundbreaking work! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Adams_(game_designer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Adams_(game_designer) He didn't infuse his original games in the 70's and 80's with ham fisted Christian themes or any kind of bigotry. And he did a Bible based game in 2013, but it was clearly labeled as such, not trying to sneak religion in through the back door. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Scott_Adams_Adventure_video_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Scott_Adams_Adventure_... https://web.archive.org/web/20130408091921/http://www.msadams.com/inorder.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20130408091921/http://www.msadam... He showed up to do an AMA on Hacker News: https://madned.substack.com/p/the-further-text-adventures-of-scott https://madned.substack.com/p/the-further-text-adventures-of... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29330015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29330015 Somebody asked him about his faith, and he sincerely talked about his religion, but didn't evangelize or anything like that, he just talked about himself when asked. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29330732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29330732 cenazoic on Nov 24, 2021 | prev | next [–] To piggyback on MPSimmons’ question, have you played any of the interactive fiction from the 1995 revival on? I read in your interview that you consider your company Clopas as a ‘company of Christians’, rather than a ‘Christian company’, and that you make games “[which] God can use in His glory to uplift people..” Can you discuss more about what ‘uplift’ means to you, and how it’s reflected in your games? What’s an example of a non-uplifting game/mechanic? I’m not a Christian, but I find this idea a fascinating one. My mind first goes to something like RDR2, which while perhaps not uplifting in the traditional sense, reminded me of the awe of natural beauty (or God’s creation, if you prefer). Or do you mean more like - the game somehow inspires the player to be a better person, for various definitions of ‘better’? Thanks for taking the time today! ScottAdams on Nov 24, 2021 | parent | next [–] You raise execellent questions. Thanks for asking! To me uplift means to leave the player in a better state than when they started. To bring them closer to God's Glory and plan for their life. To see the Universe and as an incredible place to be and to see Life as an incredible gift from our most awesome and loving Creator. I am looking forward to an eternity of exploration, discovery and insprired creation due to the agency of my savior and friend Jesus. ScottAdams on Nov 24, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–] I did miss your first part of your questions and appologize. In most cases I have not played most IF that is out there. Though Myst stands out as an incredible exception to that. But it of course was mostly non-verbal and delight to eyes. Part of the reason of not playing many is a reticence to accidentally steal a puzzle idea (via absortion as it were) and the other is simply I have way more fun writing, coding and designing :)
  - adito 10mo ago
    I don't know why you just handpicked the covid trutherism without quoting the full thing, here the full quote from the link above: > Additionally, in recent years it has become increasingly clear that Jon’s beliefs/priorities and mine are not aligned. He’s adversarial to people talking about privilege and representation, is dismissive of diversity efforts, has dabbled in covid trutherism, and is pro-MAGA. Here the post after just for a full picture > I believe Trump is a self serving authoritarian who's dismantling democracy, trying to make trans people illegal, and wanting to set up concentration camps for immigrants - whereas Jon in February called him "the best President we have had in my entire life".
    - serial_dev 10mo ago
      I left a link to the exact post I'm referring to with the whole thread available for context. And I didn't include the whole thing, because it doesn't change my point which is that IMO BSky people are insufferable. A game is released (which in part includes their work if I understand it right) and they can't help themselves and make this about Trump. I'm sure I'd have the same opinion if I saw what's happening in Truth Social. These echo chambers are not good.
      - VoidWarranty 10mo ago
        I think you're projecting your own biases here. They "can't help" make the conversation about Trump because they have a public image to maintain. If your image and following are on BSky, then it's not an echo chamber to address the crowd in kind with its nature. That's just good branding.
      - johnnyanmac 10mo ago
        >because it doesn't change my point which is that IMO BSky people are insufferable. Yes, but we're here to talk about Jonathan Blow and his new game. You can argue his politics are relevant. Your opinion on Bluesky, not so much.
      - kennyloginz 10mo ago
        I think when politics are normal, this is a fine position…. Don’t really care if the author is no new taxes vs expanding safety net. But, politics have become much more extreme. Imagine your wife or friends parents being deported. It’s absolutely sensical to not support people that are loud about hurting your loved ones.
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- embedding-shape 10mo ago
  > These games are the starting point, but the bulk of the game is new puzzles combining mechanics from different games together. > I made two free games which were later licensed to be used and remixed in this project. Seems indeed to be the case. Blow designed (I guess) the mashup and "composition" if you will, but the puzzles themselves have all been designed and licensed by others, so seems the title of the HN submission and article is wrong. Blow didn't design these puzzles at all.
  - shwaj 10mo ago
    We don’t know that, AFAICT (after reading the Ars article and the Bluesky post). Some of the puzzles are probably reused, and other new ones using the same mechanics may have been written. I’m not sure why you’d so confidently state “Blow didn’t design these puzzles at all”… do you have something against him personally?
  - frde_me 10mo ago
    He quite literally has designed puzzles live on stream, yet you conclude he hasn't.
  - eudamoniac 10mo ago
    The license was for the puzzle mechanics. Probably a few of the tutorial puzzles are the same, but Blow would not copy paste puzzles themselves. That would be both financially and artistically silly.
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jstimpfle 10mo ago
I haven't played any of these games, but "explains otherwise" seems to be a misrepresentation given that the commenter you linked is saying himself that Blow's game combines ideas and rulesets from several other previous games. Elsewhere in the arstechnica comments you linked > But, uh... this isn't a "Linus Torvalds is a jerk" sort of situation. "Controversial" undersells just how outlandish and inappropriate Blow's views are. Blow is a full-bore fascist sympathizer who also doesn't seem to think that women have any role to play in his profession. What's going on on these platforms? Is there any serious evidence to the strong claims?
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- pendenthistory 10mo ago
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  - mariusor 10mo ago
    When you support political leaders that push fascist discourse where regular people that happen to have more empathy for their fellow man are presented as the enemy - in Hegseth's book the call to arms against them is literally in the first paragraph - I think it stops being about not far enough left, but about being way too far right.
    - pendenthistory 10mo ago
      Yeah, when you call half the US fascist and nazi there is not much we can talk about.
      - mariusor 10mo ago
        I said nothing about "half the US", and nazi is just your projection I think. But I'd like to know, are you disagreeing with me that the "us vs. them", where them is minorities, women, liberals is *not* in fact one of the upmost fascist tenets?
ImprobableTruth 10mo ago
> These games are the starting point, but the bulk of the game is new puzzles combining mechanics from different games together Seems like the puzzles are novel, but the mechanics are not?
- lucraft 10mo ago
  The basic mechanics look like very standard type of puzzle mechanics (e.g. Sokoban) that have been in many games over decades.
  - christophilus 10mo ago
    He hired a level designer who also wrote a Sokoban game. (Can’t remember the name, but it was free and web-based, IIRC.) That game had some really great, unique ideas in it, and I’d be shocked if the new Blow game was bog standard.
    - nilstycho 10mo ago
      It was Jack Lance, who wrote Enigmash. Tragically, he died in 2023 at the age of 25. Jack Lance superlatively creative. I cannot find the words to express how much the world lost. I do not know of a finer puzzle designer. https://jacklance.github.io/games.html https://jacklance.github.io/games.html
      - christophilus 10mo ago
        Oh, man. Yes, that’s the one. I had no idea he’d died. :/
- dgb23 10mo ago
  With Blow the devil is simultaneously in the details and at the meta level. For example in the Witness, which I consider one of the best puzzle games ever made, you get a fairly simple core mechanic, but the game builds upon it in very interesting ways. It feels like a journey of learning and always challenges you in some novel way at each step. There are also several revelations along the way, where you discover new layers on top of the core puzzles. I would expect that this new game will feature similarly careful design.
koolala 10mo ago
The core idea of the witness wasn't novel either. The novelty was how far they went with it.
sunrunner 10mo ago
I’m a fan of Alan Hazelden and Draknek’s work but stating upfront that he a) wasn’t involved with the work directly but b) agreed for it to be used years ago, while then going on to write what seems to read as a light hit-piece for Blow himself, and then using that to launch into a point about how his politics and Blow’s don’t align (not relevant for puzzle game progeny) feels like more like him using the trailer for Blow’s game as a trampoline for his own personal beliefs and politics. He also used the same thread to mention his own grant fund while not acknowledging that Thekla (Blow’s company) also has (or had at some point) a similar scheme [1] Meanwhile the various accusations about Blow’s politics beliefs are mysteriously missing, or at least seem to be large extrapolations from other Twitter comments also not cited. Is there something in the thread I missed? [1] https://www.gamesindustry.biz/thekla-raises-grant-money-for-underrepresented-devs-to-usd100k https://www.gamesindustry.biz/thekla-raises-grant-money-for-...
- johnnyanmac 10mo ago
  >Meanwhile the various accusations about Blow’s politics beliefs are mysteriously missing He sort of went mask off during COVID, so I believe it. I also believe Blow is a smart dude and would try to erase that history right before a PR rally for his game. I'm not even on Twitter but I hear about such events in the gamedev scene for years.
  - sunrunner 10mo ago
    Also not on Twitter and try hard to avoid the easy source-less Internet drama, though I recall some comments about the vaccines being rushed out and not going through the standard trial processes and periods. It doesn’t seem untrue, though given the environment at the time justified, but that comment was extrapolated to “He’s a hard-right anti vaxxer”. No citations of my own though, so this is just memory. Either way, this is why I try to stay off Twitter.
    - wahnfrieden 10mo ago
      You are picking a small comment among a mountain of them and giving the most charitable possible interpretation of it. Strange for you to join conversation to defend the guy as you admit you have no sources to cite.

by sxzygz 10mo ago

tormeh 10mo ago

Seems like the original puzzles were licensed for this game, in which case why not?

deleted 10mo ago
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serial_dev 10mo ago
[flagged]
- embedding-shape 10mo ago
  Does that change how good/bad the game someone releases is? Don't get me wrong, being obviously anti-scientist isn't that great if I absolutely have to judge them, but I'm not sure if that has any impact on how fun a game is. If I'd stop consuming stuff from people/organizations I disagree with politically, I literally would have to move into a cave and start my own hunter-collector society from scratch. Is this really how others make decisions in their daily lives?
  - zaneyard 10mo ago
    I enjoyed Braid and this revelation doesn't change that, but there's a lot of entertainment and it's easy to not support someone who has views (or at least doesn't express them publicly) that conflict with my own personal values.
  - rkomorn 10mo ago
    I don't particularly go hunting for information about artists, studios, etc, to find out if I agree with them. I just happen to no longer like their stuff when I find out things I don't like. It's not "how I make decisions" but more just something that affects my taste for things.
  - speedgoose 10mo ago
    Separating the art from the artist is a long and old debate. I personally can’t watch Roman Polanski’s art, the classic and easy example. You can be a great movie producer, pedophilia and rapes are big no-no to me. But not to everyone apparently. For the non vocal people believing in pseudoscience and fascist propaganda, I can close my eyes more easily. I don’t want to know. I can guess sometimes but I won’t check. As soon as they become vocal, it kills the art for me. I can’t enjoy art from people against my values, me, and my friends and family.
    - tialaramex 10mo ago
      Death of the Author. One of the important elements here is the extent to which materially it matters. If I buy a book Lovecraft wrote a hundred years ago the money isn't going to end up diverted to support the "patriots" who want to intimidate my neighbours, whereas when I buy a Harry Potter box set for a relative you can bet that Rowling's share will help fund "Gender Critical" movements trying to make life worse for some of my friends and colleagues... For books particularly I can totally buy Death of the Author, what I think I read might be entirely different from what the author says they intended, which further nobody can prove is what they actually intended. For that last for example I do not for one moment believe Vernor Vinge that he "Didn't know" what Rabbit is in "Rainbow's End". It's an AI. Maybe Vinge doesn't intend the book as a Singularitarian Catastrophe (you can argue the book thinks it's about avoiding such a catastrophe) but I don't see any way to interpret it where Rabbit isn't a super-human AI.
      - debugnik 10mo ago
        You're conflating whether one should feel guilty for supporting an author, and whether the author's speech outside a work matters to understand its intended meaning. The latter is the actual Death of the author, the former is usually called Death of the author by people who want to separate themselves from the authors they know they can be judged for supporting.
        tialaramex 10mo ago
        I think my point was distinct from naming this idea (Death of the Author). It wasn't about guilt it was about consequences and those are distinct things. Also, AIUI Death of the Author is not about whether their beliefs mattered to understand the intended meaning, but instead whether "intended meaning" is even a thing anyway. No need to understand it if it doesn't exist. I prefer in other contexts not to try to guess intentions when I can instead look at the effects and it seems to me our law and practice agree. Notice for example that while proving attempted murder requires that you wanted the victim to die, murder does not. The fact that they are dead satisfies this aspect of the crime, you aren't innocent of murder just because you didn't intend that the victim would die.
  - bialpio 10mo ago
    Yes, this is how I make decisions, but it also depends on the category of decision. E.g. in entertainment, there's too much content available to care about one specific author / creator / etc (this also applies to "console exclusive" games and platform-exclusive TV shows). In this particular case, I vaguely recall Blow making some comments (pre-COVID era IIRC) that sounded too asshole-y / high-horse-y that I no longer seek his opinions on things and try to stay away from his content. I still have bazillion technical articles available to read and plenty of video games to play.
  - breppp 10mo ago
    It doesn't, but historically a lot of the reasons people consume art is due to fashion, and art is a way to put you in in and out groups. So naturally if someone has different political beliefs, or has went too "commercial" people suddenly have to change course. Being a good game/book/song won't have anything to do with it
  - creata 10mo ago
    > I'm not sure if that has any impact on how fun a game is. It might if the game has a more-than-perfunctory story, because authors often incorporate their political or religious beliefs into their stories. (This is usually a good thing: most of the novels that people love would be nothing if stripped of those themes.)
    - DonHopkins 10mo ago
      It's unfortunate that The Good Scott Adams occasionally gets mixed up with The Evil Scott Adams. It's so ironic that they share a name. Many people know who the The Evil Scott Adams is, because he's such an unrepentant attention starved troll who is notorious not only for making a sock puppet to praise and flatter himself as a genius on internet forums, but for his obsessive unvarnished hateful bigotry, racism ("blacks are a hate group"), misogyny, conspiracy theories, anti-health-care-for-poor-people ideology, and Trump boot licking, and he obsessively infuses his MAGA religion into everything he says and does. Enough said. At the opposite end of the spectrum is the Good Scott Adams, a pioneer of the Adventure game genre, who is devotedly Christian, but in the kind, uplifting, well meaning, Jimmy Carter kind of way. He's a really nice guy, who did lots of quality groundbreaking work! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Adams_(game_designer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Adams_(game_designer) He didn't infuse his original games in the 70's and 80's with ham fisted Christian themes or any kind of bigotry. And he did a Bible based game in 2013, but it was clearly labeled as such, not trying to sneak religion in through the back door. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Scott_Adams_Adventure_video_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Scott_Adams_Adventure_... https://web.archive.org/web/20130408091921/http://www.msadams.com/inorder.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20130408091921/http://www.msadam... He showed up to do an AMA on Hacker News: https://madned.substack.com/p/the-further-text-adventures-of-scott https://madned.substack.com/p/the-further-text-adventures-of... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29330015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29330015 Somebody asked him about his faith, and he sincerely talked about his religion, but didn't evangelize or anything like that, he just talked about himself when asked. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29330732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29330732 cenazoic on Nov 24, 2021 | prev | next [–] To piggyback on MPSimmons’ question, have you played any of the interactive fiction from the 1995 revival on? I read in your interview that you consider your company Clopas as a ‘company of Christians’, rather than a ‘Christian company’, and that you make games “[which] God can use in His glory to uplift people..” Can you discuss more about what ‘uplift’ means to you, and how it’s reflected in your games? What’s an example of a non-uplifting game/mechanic? I’m not a Christian, but I find this idea a fascinating one. My mind first goes to something like RDR2, which while perhaps not uplifting in the traditional sense, reminded me of the awe of natural beauty (or God’s creation, if you prefer). Or do you mean more like - the game somehow inspires the player to be a better person, for various definitions of ‘better’? Thanks for taking the time today! ScottAdams on Nov 24, 2021 | parent | next [–] You raise execellent questions. Thanks for asking! To me uplift means to leave the player in a better state than when they started. To bring them closer to God's Glory and plan for their life. To see the Universe and as an incredible place to be and to see Life as an incredible gift from our most awesome and loving Creator. I am looking forward to an eternity of exploration, discovery and insprired creation due to the agency of my savior and friend Jesus. ScottAdams on Nov 24, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–] I did miss your first part of your questions and appologize. In most cases I have not played most IF that is out there. Though Myst stands out as an incredible exception to that. But it of course was mostly non-verbal and delight to eyes. Part of the reason of not playing many is a reticence to accidentally steal a puzzle idea (via absortion as it were) and the other is simply I have way more fun writing, coding and designing :)
- adito 10mo ago
  I don't know why you just handpicked the covid trutherism without quoting the full thing, here the full quote from the link above: > Additionally, in recent years it has become increasingly clear that Jon’s beliefs/priorities and mine are not aligned. He’s adversarial to people talking about privilege and representation, is dismissive of diversity efforts, has dabbled in covid trutherism, and is pro-MAGA. Here the post after just for a full picture > I believe Trump is a self serving authoritarian who's dismantling democracy, trying to make trans people illegal, and wanting to set up concentration camps for immigrants - whereas Jon in February called him "the best President we have had in my entire life".
  - serial_dev 10mo ago
    I left a link to the exact post I'm referring to with the whole thread available for context. And I didn't include the whole thing, because it doesn't change my point which is that IMO BSky people are insufferable. A game is released (which in part includes their work if I understand it right) and they can't help themselves and make this about Trump. I'm sure I'd have the same opinion if I saw what's happening in Truth Social. These echo chambers are not good.
    - VoidWarranty 10mo ago
      I think you're projecting your own biases here. They "can't help" make the conversation about Trump because they have a public image to maintain. If your image and following are on BSky, then it's not an echo chamber to address the crowd in kind with its nature. That's just good branding.
    - johnnyanmac 10mo ago
      >because it doesn't change my point which is that IMO BSky people are insufferable. Yes, but we're here to talk about Jonathan Blow and his new game. You can argue his politics are relevant. Your opinion on Bluesky, not so much.
    - kennyloginz 10mo ago
      I think when politics are normal, this is a fine position…. Don’t really care if the author is no new taxes vs expanding safety net. But, politics have become much more extreme. Imagine your wife or friends parents being deported. It’s absolutely sensical to not support people that are loud about hurting your loved ones.
- deleted 10mo ago
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embedding-shape 10mo ago
> These games are the starting point, but the bulk of the game is new puzzles combining mechanics from different games together. > I made two free games which were later licensed to be used and remixed in this project. Seems indeed to be the case. Blow designed (I guess) the mashup and "composition" if you will, but the puzzles themselves have all been designed and licensed by others, so seems the title of the HN submission and article is wrong. Blow didn't design these puzzles at all.
- shwaj 10mo ago
  We don’t know that, AFAICT (after reading the Ars article and the Bluesky post). Some of the puzzles are probably reused, and other new ones using the same mechanics may have been written. I’m not sure why you’d so confidently state “Blow didn’t design these puzzles at all”… do you have something against him personally?
- frde_me 10mo ago
  He quite literally has designed puzzles live on stream, yet you conclude he hasn't.
- eudamoniac 10mo ago
  The license was for the puzzle mechanics. Probably a few of the tutorial puzzles are the same, but Blow would not copy paste puzzles themselves. That would be both financially and artistically silly.
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jstimpfle 10mo ago

I haven't played any of these games, but "explains otherwise" seems to be a misrepresentation given that the commenter you linked is saying himself that Blow's game combines ideas and rulesets from several other previous games. Elsewhere in the arstechnica comments you linked > But, uh... this isn't a "Linus Torvalds is a jerk" sort of situation. "Controversial" undersells just how outlandish and inappropriate Blow's views are. Blow is a full-bore fascist sympathizer who also doesn't seem to think that women have any role to play in his profession. What's going on on these platforms? Is there any serious evidence to the strong claims?

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pendenthistory 10mo ago
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- mariusor 10mo ago
  When you support political leaders that push fascist discourse where regular people that happen to have more empathy for their fellow man are presented as the enemy - in Hegseth's book the call to arms against them is literally in the first paragraph - I think it stops being about not far enough left, but about being way too far right.
  - pendenthistory 10mo ago
    Yeah, when you call half the US fascist and nazi there is not much we can talk about.
    - mariusor 10mo ago
      I said nothing about "half the US", and nazi is just your projection I think. But I'd like to know, are you disagreeing with me that the "us vs. them", where them is minorities, women, liberals is *not* in fact one of the upmost fascist tenets?

ImprobableTruth 10mo ago

> These games are the starting point, but the bulk of the game is new puzzles combining mechanics from different games together Seems like the puzzles are novel, but the mechanics are not?

lucraft 10mo ago
The basic mechanics look like very standard type of puzzle mechanics (e.g. Sokoban) that have been in many games over decades.
- christophilus 10mo ago
  He hired a level designer who also wrote a Sokoban game. (Can’t remember the name, but it was free and web-based, IIRC.) That game had some really great, unique ideas in it, and I’d be shocked if the new Blow game was bog standard.
  - nilstycho 10mo ago
    It was Jack Lance, who wrote Enigmash. Tragically, he died in 2023 at the age of 25. Jack Lance superlatively creative. I cannot find the words to express how much the world lost. I do not know of a finer puzzle designer. https://jacklance.github.io/games.html https://jacklance.github.io/games.html
    - christophilus 10mo ago
      Oh, man. Yes, that’s the one. I had no idea he’d died. :/
dgb23 10mo ago
With Blow the devil is simultaneously in the details and at the meta level. For example in the Witness, which I consider one of the best puzzle games ever made, you get a fairly simple core mechanic, but the game builds upon it in very interesting ways. It feels like a journey of learning and always challenges you in some novel way at each step. There are also several revelations along the way, where you discover new layers on top of the core puzzles. I would expect that this new game will feature similarly careful design.

koolala 10mo ago

The core idea of the witness wasn't novel either. The novelty was how far they went with it.

sunrunner 10mo ago

I’m a fan of Alan Hazelden and Draknek’s work but stating upfront that he a) wasn’t involved with the work directly but b) agreed for it to be used years ago, while then going on to write what seems to read as a light hit-piece for Blow himself, and then using that to launch into a point about how his politics and Blow’s don’t align (not relevant for puzzle game progeny) feels like more like him using the trailer for Blow’s game as a trampoline for his own personal beliefs and politics. He also used the same thread to mention his own grant fund while not acknowledging that Thekla (Blow’s company) also has (or had at some point) a similar scheme [1] Meanwhile the various accusations about Blow’s politics beliefs are mysteriously missing, or at least seem to be large extrapolations from other Twitter comments also not cited. Is there something in the thread I missed? [1] https://www.gamesindustry.biz/thekla-raises-grant-money-for-underrepresented-devs-to-usd100k https://www.gamesindustry.biz/thekla-raises-grant-money-for-...

johnnyanmac 10mo ago
>Meanwhile the various accusations about Blow’s politics beliefs are mysteriously missing He sort of went mask off during COVID, so I believe it. I also believe Blow is a smart dude and would try to erase that history right before a PR rally for his game. I'm not even on Twitter but I hear about such events in the gamedev scene for years.
- sunrunner 10mo ago
  Also not on Twitter and try hard to avoid the easy source-less Internet drama, though I recall some comments about the vaccines being rushed out and not going through the standard trial processes and periods. It doesn’t seem untrue, though given the environment at the time justified, but that comment was extrapolated to “He’s a hard-right anti vaxxer”. No citations of my own though, so this is just memory. Either way, this is why I try to stay off Twitter.
  - wahnfrieden 10mo ago
    You are picking a small comment among a mountain of them and giving the most charitable possible interpretation of it. Strange for you to join conversation to defend the guy as you admit you have no sources to cite.