Mike Feldman
@yoshimcf
Lead programmer at Disbelief. Saxophonist with the Saxyderms. Opinions are my own. He/him.
9. 1000xResist Walking simulator about generational trauma in a sci-fi world. I'm not sure if I can say I enjoyed it, but that wasn't really the point of it. It told an interesting story in ways that I don't think other mediums could pull off. I'm glad I played it.
8. DuneCrawl Goofy, chill, indie, action/adventure game about piloting a giant crab from island to island and shooting cannons at bad guys. Great co-op.
7 . Disco Elysium A friend convinced me to play Esoteric Ebb, but I thought I should play this first. Holy crap, what a game. Amazing writing style, worldbuilding, characters and story.
6. Mechwarrior 5: Clans: Wolves of Tukkayid I've been a huge fan of the Mechwarrior series since I picked up the MW2 trilogy in 1998. All three MW5: Clans campaigns have been a lot of fun. They're deliberate, thoughtful, co-op shooters with interesting and varied missions.
5. Exo One Picked it up cheap after seeing a recommendation. I was hoping for Outer Wilds vibes - that's what the trailer showed. Instead, I got a game that was theme and variations on Tribes movement. Interesting, but not what I was hoping for. It was pretty, it was confusing, and it was short.
After 12+ years, I have finally updated my personal website's theme. I am happy to report that I can no longer make jokes about it being IE6 compatible. mike-feldman.com
4. Star Trek: Voyager - Across the Unknown I've been on a Star Trek kick lately and I was off from work last week, so I absolutely binged this game in a way I usually reserve for Zeldas.
3. WH40K: Rogue Trader It's Baldur's Gate 3 in space. Just as janky, but differently so - for example, the damage estimates have no relation to how much damage you'll actually deal, but at least it'll top you from misclicking and meleeing your allies to death like BG3.
2. Sword of the Sea I absolutely loved Journey and was hoping for more of that plus fun movement. This wasn't quite that. It was certainly beautiful and relaxing, but the emotional notes didn't hit as hard. It also made me seasick.
Games I've completed in 2026 🧵 1. Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles Story had great themes, even if it was a little hard to follow which duke aka black/white lion aka northern/southern sky was betraying who. Grindier than I remembered from half of a playthrough of the original version.
This email was the kick in the pants I needed to switch from Firefox to @waterfox.net . It took less than 15m to set everything up again. All of my Firefox plugins just worked.
"Show me the four GAMES that influenced YOUR current game project." If I ever get back to my side project.
Weekend project: I put together a laser-cut wooden crossbow that shoots nerf darts.
Inspired by a thread on Mastodon, I added a happy little landmine for gen ai scrapers to my website's DNS records. I doubt it'll actually do anything, but it does give me joy.
It's totally cool if you want to celebrate Christmas. I don't want to harsh anyone's vibe. I'd appreciate it if those of you who do celebrate could do me the same favor. In particular, please don't talk about "the holidays" as some kind of secular thing.