hey folks! recently spent 30+ hours playing through the latest version of B3313, the recent infamous surreal Mario 64 romhack/creepypasta meme repository/stealth art game/whatever you wanna call it. it was a really unique, memorable, and maddening experience so i threw together some thoughts over on my backloggd page here:

a choice quote:

"with B3313, oftentimes there really is nothing on the other side. but that emptiness starts to feel really intentional after a certain point. as a player, what's interesting in the feeling that you want the design to follow some kind of logic that you can eventually glean so that you can understand what the designers were getting at is that it feels almost like an intentional choice to have it consistently not do that. occasionally it does hint at a deeper language/design sensibility, but mostly it doesn’t. there are times when the “story” or the progression of stages seems to be developing into something more coherent, but then the rug is pulled out from under you. and that happens over and over. because it’s all rug pulls at the end of the day. the message of the design is: whatever happens, whatever journey you go through… it’s all inevitably a way to throw you back into the maze. you’ll always be endlessly wandering the maze."