Blockhead.cc

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Blockhead is an outlet for gaming reviews, previews, features, and the occasional interview. It shares the editorial standards and practices of gaming outlets I have worked with in the past: more information is available under Links. Blockhead is back-ended by Substack as a platform that provides content outside of search engines and social media algorithms. Substack is not SEO-driven and does not rely on traffic from social media or search engine clicks. This content model from the past decades is designed to keep users hooked on a social media app in order to sell the ad space; to keep them clicking and scrolling, not providing them value outside social media. This ad-based model has always rewarded clickbait, publicity stunts, and scams over quality, relevance, and consistency, whether in gaming or otherwise. Blockhead relies exclusively on quality content. The subscription model is designed to prioritize the quality of content rather than views and clicks. If the content suffers, so will my relationship with subscribers. This encourages me to continuously improve as a writer through feedback and interaction with readers and subscribers. It also allows me to cover only the games that I care about, even if it is not profitable. Blockhead is not about explosive growth at the mercy of social media algorithms and search engines, but about finding a small, decentralized community of readers and writers who value my work and wish to support it.

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Language English
Country Canada
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Subnautica 2 — Hello Darkness

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By Richard Costa
| Blockhead.cc
I never played the original Subnautica when it was in Early Access on Steam. It just flew under my radar for some reason. By the time I got a free copy from the Epic Games Store in 2019, the game had already been released for a year. I spent too many hours on survival games such as The Long Dark and The Forest in the early 2010s, and so I might have been burned out on the genre at the time. Man, was I wrong.
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How Characters Change and Die

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By Richard Costa
| Blockhead.cc
Chris Avellone’s characters have been around for decades. They have come alive; they have lived, changed, and died, even if they are still in circulation. You can play Planescape: Torment, Fallout 2 and Fallout: New Vegas, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, Prey, and several others. You can interact with his characters and bond with them. They will come alive when you play and engage with them, but the circumstances that kept them alive in popular culture are always changing.
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How Characters Come Alive

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By Richard Costa
| Blockhead.cc
Chris Avellone thinks in character. Almost everything he writes is rooted in this thinking of how characters come to inhabit people’s minds. There are many great RPG writers, but few writers have embodied this character-driven ethos in their game design as much as Avellone did since his first 1990s credits as a designer and writer at Black Isle Studios.
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Demos and Freebies

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By Richard Costa
| Blockhead.cc
Demos are now the bread and butter for this newsletter, which means that whenever I can’t drum up a full game review or preview, I’ll cover a bunch of demos, even if they’re not that great. Some are just barely playable. There are only a few rare ones that feel like almost full games in their own right. But that’s the beauty of the demo. It can be complete crap or a self-contained wonder that is still far from a finish product. Let’s dig in and see what’s out there.
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Kingdom Come: Deliverance II - The Hour of Our Death

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By Richard Costa
| Blockhead.cc
The worst thing about Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is that it could be even better; it could have more to explore; other POIs to find and NPCs to converse with; and even other challenges and quests to pursue by the endgame. Warhorse gave players so much, only to keep us wanting more. This was a deliberate setup for the expansions and DLC content released in the past few months. I took over two months to complete the main storyline and optional content for the first time.
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Next Fest Demos

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By Richard Costa
| Blockhead.cc
Life’s been too busy. I’ve been working very hard teaching and finishing my dissertation, so I had to neglect this newsletter for a few months. Thank you to the subscribers who did not unsubscribe through this short hiatus. I am definitely still here, and I’ll do my best to write at least one post every month, even if it’s just an opinion piece or another short roundup of cool demos, like this post. The Steam Next Fest is over by now, but I managed to try out some demos.
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The Alters - Therapy Bros

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By Richard Costa
| Blockhead.cc
In my preview last year, The Alters felt handcrafted for a cinematic experience exploring the relationships between you and the alters. The cinematic elements are not that prominent, but I was not ready for how much work these relationships would be to maintain while the planet’s sun was about to fry us all alive. Sure, we’re always on the verge of collapse from radiation storms and just hoping to make it through the day alive, but have you considered that you hurt this alter’s fee-fees today?
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The Platinum Age of Demos

| Blockhead.cc
I love the fact that demos are back in gaming culture big time. The late 90s were a glorious time for demos, then they vanished for a few decades, with few exceptions. Now indie devs put out excellent demos well in advance of the final release as they continue to develop the game. This gives players more time to build expectations, and better expectations in general: a more grounded sense of what they will buy and play.
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This War of Mine: Forget Celebrations - War Never Ends

| Blockhead.cc
This War of Mine was one of the earliest indie games in the 2010s to break into the mainstream with a more elevated idea of what games could do, alongside a few other classics such as Papers, Please and Journey. Over the last decade, there were several DLC expansions, some of which were made for charity. This War of Mine: Forget Celebrations is both a 10th anniversary and a charity DLC. This is a game that keeps on giving and giving, never to be relegated to the dustbin of gaming history.
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Lucky Tower Ultimate - Slashy Slashy

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By Richard Costa
| Blockhead.cc
I tried the demo of Lucky Tower Ultimate a few months ago and got hooked for a week. Yes, hooked on a demo. Now the Early Access version is here, and I got the chance to preview it properly, leading to an even longer obsession. I didn’t know until a few days ago that this used to be a Flash browser game a long time ago. I tried the browser version, but it’s just too clunky. This PC reboot is insanely good.
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Costa, Richard

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