My flatmate/co-host Jake bangs on my door shortly after I wake up.

“Coffee?” “Please mate.”

This isn’t really going to be a game review. Taken purely as a game, and ignoring its wider impact, Pokémon Go is not very good. It crashed frequently before a recent update, there’s nothing to do outside populated areas, the drain on battery and mobile data is high, and it’s incredibly hard for new players coming in to the game a few weeks late to catch up.

I’ve been reading a lot about PICO-8 recently, and found it really interesting. For the uninitiated, PICO-8 is a ‘fantasy console’ - a games console which exists purely as a program and set of development tools, rather than a real piece of hardware. Developers can create games for PICO-8 which are small enough to be embedded directly into a .png image, which is really cool.

I’d got a little bit bored with the design on this website, and that boredom gave me no desire to write on it. Boo.

It’s been a little while since I was really excited for the release of a game. The last time was probably Halo 4’s release this time three years ago (for the record, it was disappointing), and the last time I pre-ordered a game was, I think, Mass Effect 3, six months earlier.

I had great fun last month writing a Reddit bot that pretended to be DJ Khaled. It’s been running ever since, but I thought it was about time to extend Khaled’s internet empire into another social media service. The obvious candidate: Tinder.

I’d wanted to make a Reddit bot for a little while, really just as a toy project, and finding the excellent PRAW library for Python (as well as finally having some time off) gave me the kick I needed to get it done. It’s also April Fool’s Day, so I thought I’d make something a bit stupid.

The game development landscape has changed significantly over the last few years (understatement of the century, but whatever). One of the most significant of these changes , especially for game developers - though it’s one that often goes unnoticed - is the rise of screen resolution and aspect ratio fragmentation.

Anyone who knows me will know that I’m not really a huge fan of the beautiful game. I am, however, quite into gaming, and so thought that it was only fair this latest upgrade get a review. I’ll look at a few different sections. Without further ado…

“Put your hands in the air. Now put them down if you’ve never done anything you regret.”