Writing
Essays, deconstructions, and previews/reviews — some adapted from longer academic research, others written for their own sake. Filter by kind below, or scroll through everything.
Hades II — A User Journey
Four stages with one player — discovery decided years before release, three separate onboardings, and a mastery stage that turns out to be a research problem wearing an action game's clothes.
What is a "Game", Really?
Comparing how cultures define "game," reading culture straight out of design in The Witcher, Chernobylite, and Civilization, and asking what a player's in-game moral choices actually say about them.
The Ontological Dimensions of MMORPGs
A metaphysical deconstruction of World of Warcraft — ontology, identity, and the Kantian sublime in raid design.
Dead Cells — A Post-Mortem
How a hated tower-defense prototype called Hordes Zero became one of the best roguelites ever made.
A Discussion About Transistor
Reading Supergiant Games' Transistor through four lenses — culture, identity, role-playing design, and posthuman theory — to see how a quiet, melancholic action-RPG builds a genuinely progressive world.
A Discussion About Civilization VI
How Sid Meier's Civilization VI turns culture into the core mechanic — through the 4X loop, real-world civilizations, and its own quiet track record as a classroom tool.
Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus — A Preview
A hand-drawn metroidvania borrowing from Okami, Ori, and Hollow Knight — is the remix worth it?
Comic Books: A Century of Culture and the Posthuman
How comic book culture developed across four ages and built its own subcultures, and what Captain America and The Boys — read side by side — reveal about posthumanism in superhero comics.
Dragon's Dogma II — A Review
Sixty hours in Capcom's realistic, punishing open world — and everywhere its ambition costs it.
Homeworld 3 — A Preview
3D ballistic fleet combat, talking pilots, and a new rogue-lite co-op mode — previewed from trailers and an available Steam demo.
Writing a Character You Never Met
Attila İlhan built a love poem out of a woman he saw once on a ferry and never spoke to — and titled it for his own narrator's position outside the story. A close reading of “Üçüncü Şahsın Şiiri”.
Veil of Madness — A Preview
A Lovecraftian dungeon-crawler card game, judged at its early, unbalanced demo stage.
Prison Architect 2 — A Preview
A preview, not a review — built from developer commentary on the move to 3D, multifloor prisons, and what the studio is keeping from the original.
Inventory System Deconstruction
A low-level design breakdown of The Last Case of Benedict Fox's inventory — its filters, 3D inspection, obtaining and using items, and the JSON structure underneath it — with screenshots throughout.
Deconstruction of Transistor
A technical deconstruction, not an essay — Transistor's Turn() combat system, enemy AI, art direction, animation pipeline, and sound design, taken apart piece by piece.
Stadia and the Stages of Technology
An archival 2019 editorial on Google Stadia and cloud gaming — and why Apple, Netflix, and Google all come down to the same idea: simplification. The AFLNAME Magazine piece referenced in my CV.
More posts incoming
There's more in the works — essays, deconstructions, and previews alike. No fixed schedule yet.