blog on new danboland

What's next for Scrandle?

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Don’t worry it’s all good stuff

Structure and Interpretation of Scrandle

Sat, 16 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

On the nature of scran

I'm no Friend of Jimbo

Tue, 25 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Who the hell is this for?

Japan travel log

Mon, 16 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Note: I’m updating this every few days. (It seems that this was a lie.)

2024-12-10

Set out from GLA, long layover in AMS. I love going to the Dutch McDonalds’ here. They always have the Big Tasty and a bunch of frites sauce. I figure you don’t really get great food in an airport anyway, so just get the fun slop. The 13 hour flight into NRT was pretty unremarkable. Kind of hard to play my Steam Deck for long… the RGB30 would have been better for economy class, I think.

The next move

Thu, 21 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

BRDA launch isn’t quite the clean break I had envisioned in my head. Got some more hotfixing and patching to do. But I am starting to think about what’s next.

There’s a long-term project I want to reach towards. There’s a story I have in my head – though a lot of it is connective tissue between what I think are cool setpieces, themes or moments, it’s also… something, and I would really quite like this thing in my head to exist.

Old versions

Sat, 09 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Steam’s new beta-switching API is probably good for shmups?

The parable of the dining room

Thu, 31 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

You awaken, refreshed and alert, in a sealed dining room. There is a blank 3-course menu – starter, main, dessert. Once you fill in the menu with appropriate items, it will be reviewed and prepared for free by a top-quality chef – who must agree to the menu, but he’s like a chill Jon Favreau chef, don’t worry – and delivered to the room. If your menu is rejected three times, you lose and you are shot by a bazooka.

8 years of BLUE REVOLVER

Fri, 11 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Celebrating a 8x multiplier

Going to Tokyo

Sat, 28 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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I’m going to Tokyo for about a month this winter, starting early December. Haven’t been in a long time. Counting every day until then.

I want to go to game centers, eat gyukatsu and go up Mt. Tsukuba at night.

I’m travelling solo, so if any mutuals or acquaintances want to meet up for a meal, a drink or a game center trip or something, feel free to get in touch. You can email me at danbo@fastmail.fm

My hiatus is over

Wed, 25 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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I want to write some long spiel. I want to talk about the state I was in when BR initially released – my health, my weight. The hoarder flat I lived in with barely a trampled forest path between my desk and the adjacent couch where I slept because my bed was no good. The things I’d lose after the release, and the things I’d lose after I lost those things. The things nobody tells you to pay until you’re about to see a bailiff for not paying them. The constant, humiliating costs of being born into poverty. The narrow thread of support offered by local resources, decisively cut when the pandemic hit. The teeth lost and repaired. The addiction relapsed and beaten.

RIP Cohost

Sat, 14 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

cohost.org was a web site. It was an attempt to engineer a social media website that wasn’t actively hateful to be involved in – no visible engagement numbers, no algorithms, longer and better presented text. the ability to format posts directly using CSS, which led to a lot of funny and creative stuff. userbase skewed “alternative”, geeky and lefty, but wasn’t quite as… young-feeling as most comparable spaces, which was important to me. “tumblr for people who get achewood references”…?

There Are Not Too Many Video Games

Thu, 03 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

https://bottomfeeder.substack.com/p/there-are-too-many-video-games

Congratulations to Jeff Vogel for writing the Worst Post of The Year 2022 (thus far). Once again, there are too many bloody indie games on Steam, the absolute bastards I thought I told them to cut it out – but don’t worry, this isn’t your usual ladder-pulling nonsense, this is apparently some advanced cultural critique.

The post in question is so passive-aggressive that you’d think a bunch of indie devs next door were blasting procedurally-generated drum and bass every night for a year, but here’s a steelman:

Are Quake's weapons weak?

Sat, 21 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Comparing Ranger’s arsenal to Doomguy’s

Quake trepidations

Fri, 20 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

What runs the risk of being displaced by a big re-release?

The gremlin in the brain

Sun, 25 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

A common gamer pathology – what to do?

Black Heart

Tue, 20 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Black Heart is a good boss

Resident Evil Village's flawed combat

Fri, 16 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Why does Village compare badly to RE4?

Bomb sense

Thu, 15 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Bomb sense in shoot-em-ups, and accessibility

Steam exclusives

Wed, 07 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Steam takes too much of my money. Every month, I see that big fat 30% revenue split go into the pockets of the company that ruined Team Fortress 2 and made the most overrated game of all time (Half-Life 2, fight me) and I can barely hold the tears back - tears that shall, truly, never hit them leather Bugatti seats at this rate.

For small teams, that 30% could well be what keeps them going. For Valve, it is pure ivory backscratcher money. The news that they write off part of that split for games that make $10m or more is a damned slap in the face, too - if they can give the games that surely cost their infrastructure the most some nice mates’ rates, that split is obviously completely illusory at this point, and has no relationship with Steam’s infrastructure costs or the value it provides.

No "skip" button please

Tue, 03 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I keep seeing John Walker talk about a “skip” button on Rock Paper Shotgun. It seems the only counter-argument he’s been exposed to is something about cheapening the game for others, which is a bit flimsy (though not entirely invalid, I think). I think implementing an unconditional “skip boss fight” / “skip gameplay” button isn’t really a great idea, here’s why. Most of this doesn’t apply to STGs / arcade games, expectations wrt clearing, teaching etc are far different there.

Why'd replays take so long?

Tue, 27 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

We launched Blue Revolver on the 11th of October, 2016. At the time, I had promised full Steam leaderboards, replay support and achievements. Now, about 8 and a half months later, the update is now live and everything seems to be working fine. But that’s a long time.

I’m not trying to write excuses here, the delay for players is inexcusable and the fault lies entirely with myself. But I’m writing this down to explain what happened and to share with other developers who might fall down the same hole.