Author Archives: Luke Maciak

This will likely be the last post of the series, so before I begin I wanted to wrap up some lose ends and respond to the constructive criticism I have gotten so far. Firstly, here is a size comparison chart … Continue reading →

Time is weird. When you are two years old, then the summer vacation seems to be an eternity because that two month time period represents nearly a tenth of your entire life. As you get older, the ratio between the … Continue reading →

We haven’t done this in a while, and lately I have been writing these draining five thousand word posts, so let’s do a reader participation thread once more. Plus I just finished updating my about page so I’m still kinda … Continue reading →

Guys, it is time to start wrapping up the Ravenflight series. Here are the three final races: Centaurs, Gnomes and the Celestials. They are all markedly different. Centaurs are mostly good guys and kinda awesome. Gnomes are neutral but strange, … Continue reading →

In the past month or so, I have written quite a few posts about video games being a storytelling medium. I adore games that have compelling characters and carefully constructed narratives that avoid common tropes. Not everyone shares this opinion. … Continue reading →

My relationship with video games has changed over the years. When I was younger, every game was a wondrous journey into the land of entertainment and fun to me. But as I got older and experienced more games, both good … Continue reading →

The three green skinned races of Raven Islands are not directly related, and unlike various human ethnic groups they cannot interbreed. However they are frequently lumped together because of their skin color, and because they have all arrived on the … Continue reading →

Few weeks ago I wrote about a billion and seven words about Papers Please, which was a indie game that touched me in a rather personal way. Not only did it posses a wickedly dark humor and an absolutely soul-crushing … Continue reading →

Hey Ash Whatcha Playin’? commonly abbreviated as HAWP is a web based comedy series that I’ve been on and off following since about 2008. Every once in a while someone will post a link to a recent episode, or I … Continue reading →

If you feel lost, I highly recommend starting with Part 1 of this series which provides some background information with respect to goals and scope of this project. And now, formalities aside, lets talk about humans. To be frank, humans … Continue reading →

Back in April, I started writing what was supposed to be a gushing, three part Bioshock Infinite review. I never wrote the third part because, while I thought I had a lot to say about the story I actually didn’t. … Continue reading →

For a while now I have been running my Reinventing Fantasy Races series of posts in which I try to come up with unusual and unconventional approaches to common fantasy tropes. Over the last few months several people mentioned that … Continue reading →

Two weeks ago I reviewed Far Cry 3 which was a mix in terms of quality: really good in some places, really bad in others, offensive at times but really fun throughout. In my eyes, it stood out a bit … Continue reading →

Spoiler Warning: this review contains massive spoilers. You have been warned. I picked up Far Cry 3 during the Winter Steam Sale and played it throughout the holiday break. I must admit it was a lot of fun. This was … Continue reading →

Bla, bla, bla, introductory paragraph. This is usually the place where I tell you a story, or make some generalizing statements about the nature of the universe, but for some reason I can’t be bothered to do any of that … Continue reading →

So apparently I am obligated by law to make this post every December 24 or thereabouts. So as per tradition, here is that picture, of that one character from that one animated series that was once awesome, but then got … Continue reading →

I have a very strange relationship with the Fantasy genre. On one hand, I absolutely love the classic Tolkienesque “dwarves, elves and goblins” style settings in my movies, video games and pen and paper RPG’s. On the other hand, I … Continue reading →

I’m a guy who has strong opinions about calculators. Most people don’t actually pay much attention to calculators or calculator apps they use. I do, because I spent most of my formative years (high school, college, grad school) calculating things … Continue reading →

It’s time to play that game in which you stare at a tiny picture with a mosaic of pixelated screenshots and try to make out what game they are from. Yes, it is the Name That Game… um… game. Last … Continue reading →

The big movie release this month is of course going to be The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. Everyone is excited for it, and so am I, albeit cautiously knowing full well that these new films can never be what … Continue reading →

I have a Medium now, I guess. I’m told that’s what the cool kids do. Actually, I got it because I like to try new things. It’s kinda like with Pintrest. When I signed up for it, everyone was like … Continue reading →

Shadowrun Returns is a really interesting product because it lets us examine whether or not Kickstarter works well as a platform for releasing niche titles. When teams of indie developers first jumped onto the crowd funding bandwagon, there was a … Continue reading →

If you have been reading my blog for any length of time, you know I am not a fan of Microsoft Word. Truthfully, I’m not even sure if fans of that abomination even exist, but I am surely not one … Continue reading →

You may have noticed that the site went down around noon today, and stayed dead for a few solid hours. This was perhaps my longest downtime since the good-old Dreamhost days. Or at least the longest period between the time … Continue reading →

This will be an exercise in brevity. Originally I wanted to post this thought on Twitter, but I could not figure out how to compress it into 140 characters. I could have posted it on Google+ but I figured I … Continue reading →