Reconnect Recap - w/e 5th of July

Reviewing the week that's been over on Reconnect

Hey team, welcome to a new week!

Unfortunately we’re going to be starting this issue off on a not so positive note. Due to the rising costs of Avocado and the difficulties in acquiring RAM, as of March 27th 2019, the Reconnect Recap will no longer be available physically. We understand this may be an inconvenience to about 3 of you, and we make no efforts to apologise.

(Sorry I had to 🤣)

Jokes aside, welcome to another issue of the Reconnect Recap, the companion newsletter to my website, Reconnect, the games writing discovery platform. Reconnect houses tens of thousands of articles from hundred of writers, meaning it’s never been easier to find something interesting to read. The website updates multiple times a day, allows you to subscribe to it via RSS and if thats too much like hard work this newsletter will recap the weeks thats been and will bring you the highlights.

Talking of my website, those who follow me on the stack will have heard it’s undergoing a rebuild. Don’t have a release date yet but will keep you all informed of how its going, it’s being rewritten from the ground up so it’s going to have a bunch of new and exciting features for both my viewers and for the guy that runs it. It’s also getting a full top to bottom redesign because my boyfriend is my designer, so massive changes coming and I can’t wait to bring those to you.

Another point I will reiterate, I’ve mentioned this in the past, but I’ll be exploring avenues to monetise Reconnect. My goal will be to do it elegantly, there won’t be annoying pop up ads or crap like that, but with the website attracting 100k visits a month and this newsletter going out to nearly 1500 of you, I would be a fool not to, so don’t say I didn’t warn you.

This week on the recap, we’re covering Game Design, Narrative Design, Bot Design, Screen Save Design, Cozy Design, you get the picture!

Let’s dig in!

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• ⌛️ Check out the archive to see older issues.

• 🧠 Read my occasional thoughts on the industry, here.

• 🦋 Follow Reconnect on Bluesky

• 🔗 Hit up my Linktree to see my other work

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Great Write Ups

• Maps on Maps on Maps: Quake is now 30, and as Jank.cool, explains the anniversary is being celebrated with a plethora of game jams to provide new community maps to the game. The downside? That’s a lot of fucking maps.

• Not just Pizza and Pasta: George E. Osborn gives us a peak behind the curtain to show us how Italian Indie devs are shaking things up and making a name for themselves.

• Having fun in Queensland: The latest guest post on Infinite Lives is all about the local indie scene in Queensland Australia, and wants to remind you that it’s catching up to it’s more successful sibling states.

• Queensland Game Festival: Double Feature! Whilst Infinite Lives focused more on the growing development scene in the state, Laura B shared her thoughts from the showroom floor and the games that caught her attention.

• Bring back the Bots!: There was an era where it didn’t matter if you had no friends to play your multiplayer games because bots existed. degonyte takes us back to those glorious days and asks, why in this era of AI do we not still have this option?

• How to lose a guy in 60s: Recognizing Patterns breaks down early user engagement and the windows you have to focus on in order to keep your player happy.

• Is it cozy tho?: I love a cozy game right up until it starts to feel like a second full time job, then I lose all interest. I’m not the only one who feels that some cozy games aren’t cozy, Nimthiriel explains….

• Where to take your narrative career: Rose Behar chats to two seasoned narrative designers to understand where the advanced stages of the career can lead.

• Saving the Screen: Games have been art forever, regardless of what era they came from and the technical abilities of the time. Chris (90s and 00s nostalgia) reminisces about the early era game screenshots and pre-rendered cut scenes that made them go; wow.

• Juicing: The latest Devlog from Erebus games is all about ‘juicing it’, where they go around and add a little bit extra to those features.

• Doing it in public: Why don’t some newer games have features that games had twenty years ago? Maurice Klimek answers that question with a suggestion.

• Feeling Authentic: Game Dev Assembly Editors explains how to give your game that authentic feel, like it’s actually set in the setting you envisioned.

• Lets get physical: Something new I’m trialling, is when there is a big topic of the week, I want to highlight everyone's efforts, so rather than picking one, i’ll curate a handful:

  • The End of Physical Media: PlayStation Goes All-Digital by 2028

  • Welcome to the Endgame

  • The Slow, Deliberate Death of Game Ownership

  • Are Physical Video Games Dead?

  • If Physical Games Are Going Away, What Does It Actually Mean to Own a Game?

  • I Bought the PS5 with a Disc Drive on Purpose

  • ESSAY – Why I Don’t Care About the Loss of Physical Media

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Fun Tidbits

• Deduce which villagers are good or evil in this upcoming roguelite game of demonic bluffing

• Sega’s Rent-A-Hero Series Just Made A Comeback, And Somewhere, A Monkey Paw Curls

• An Inside Look at the GameTank

• 50 Ways to Ruin Your Indie Game (and How to Avoid Them)

• Seven things you probably didn’t know about Naughty Dog co-founder Jason Rubin

• June 2026’s top new PC & console games, revealed..

• “The Magazine About Atari, Made On An Atari” - Atari Legacy Launches This Month

• The Impact of Mobile Games in Europe in 2025

• "It Was A Full-On Assault" - How Sega's "Disruptive" Marketing Led To A Starring Role In A Cult 2000s Comedy

• 2026’s top games by copies sold (so far)

• The Creator Of Fantasy Zone’s Opa Opa Has Been Posthumously Revealed

• Game Informer Magazine Archive

• Raiden (Amiga/Falcon) and Space Junk (Atari Falcon) Source Code

• GDStudio – A Better Godot Editor?

• A PS2 disc-shaped rabbit hole post