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February 2026

Created: 2026-02-28 (12:00:00) — Modified: 2026-03-01 (17:04:00)
Status: completed

February’s over already? Oh no! I made literally nothing and have nothing to talk about. Wait come back!!! Do you like… videogames?

This is going to be a really, really short one. Whatever projects occupied all my time this month, have not translated into anything new for this site. And now we are approaching autumn, I may put things on hiatus to go jumping in fallen leaves for the next few months.

Axolotl sitting on a rock and thinking

I finally got around to playing the Anthology of the Killer by TheCatamites, and immediately regretted taking so long to play it. Anthology of the Killer is made up of seven episodes, increasingly ambitious in scope, which all involve being chased down strange corridors by some very endearing serial killers. It costs six dollars. It could be the game of the decade.

Playing any game by TheCatamites tends to send me hurtling into his back catalogue. For some impossible-to-articulate reason, I went back to Glimby this time, which is listed alternately as a virtual pet, an interactive animal, or as belonging to the genre of glimbylikes. Glimby, we learn, has four paws and can grow or shrink at will. I can’t tell if she lives in a normal-sized room, or in a shoebox.

Cryptic Solstice’s My Cafe Cutie hides a really clever narrative under its sugary interface. It is hard to write about this game without ruining the unexpected and wonderful directions it travels. It’s a thoughtful, but affectionate critique of the genre. Also I do actually really just love the art style!

Not content to just give us something as wonderful as Bitsy, Adam le Doux has now also released WINDING DOWN a text adventure for programmable Casio calculators! The game itself is adorable, but it is also accompanied by a blog post on how to make your own calculator fiction. Which, everyone should!

Finally, one thing that has nothing to do with games, which is “These Lacustrine Cities” by John Ashbery, which starts out:

These lacustrine cities grew out of loathing

Into something forgetful, although angry with history.

They are the product of an idea: that man is horrible, for instance,

Though this is only one example.

I love this stark opening, given it ultimately ends up in the kind of quiet, disenchanted place more typical of his poetry. Ashbery, in an interview, reads this first stanza straightforwardly as being about cities that are angry at history. But you can also read that “with” as being about cities that are themselves conduits for the violence and anger of history. I want to write a long essay about John Ashbery. One day. Maybe in autumn.

Okay that is literally everything! See you either next month–or in winter!

Lizard napping in a meadow

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