Hey Reader
Congrats to everyone who redeemed the free paid month of the Patreon sub from last week’s email! You’ve still got time to fill out the Hashtag input form before I pull two more names for a free month. (📝 Link to form!)
Before we get into the three things worth noting from last week—a quick heads-up that there were new posts and updates to the Curator, Reddit, and the website.
Speaking of Reddit, I’m toying with the idea of posting those recaps a little more often. Might even start curating from r/IndieDev and r/IndieGames if it’s worth the dig.
Anyway! Hashtag links are already down at the bottom of the email if you want to catch up.
💬 Wild Thiiing (Side. Wild Side)
Dipping my toes back into YouTube because I really enjoy working in DaVinci Resolve—and let’s be real, I’m never going to get better if I don’t do it more often.
I think tossing “DO MORE YOUTUBE VIDEOS” onto a vague to-do list is exactly the kind of thing that makes me... not do that. And honestly? I feel like my live streaming days might be behind me.
So I wrote an article about Wild Side, a game that looked hella sexy and never made it out of the dreaming stage. And I made a short, sub-five-minute video to go with it. Frankly, doing these little investigative pieces is a lot of fun—and I’m starting to wonder if there’s a “Whatever Happened To” series quietly brewing in the back of my head.
Check out the article and the video, and lemme know what you think.
🔥 SCUM-ertime Sadness
SCUM is pushing to 1.0 on June 17. That’s great. Wee. I’m very dead inside about it, and the two stupid trailers they released aren’t helping my mood. There’s still so much broken, dumb shit in that game—and instead of fixing it, they’re leaning hard into this weird EDGY and HARDCORE and TITTY-LATING (yes, intentional) branding. It just falls flat.
DayZ's whole thing is “this is your story,” and you actually get to experience that when you run into other players. Rust... I honestly have no idea what Rust believes. I’ve always thought it was mechanically worse than both SCUM and DayZ, so I never really bothered with it.
SCUM feels like it could’ve been something really great, but instead it’s all balls and bad mechanic choices. (HELLO, FIX HUNTING.) Maybe all that crap gets cleaned up in the 1.0 patch—but I’m not holding my breath.
🔎 Curation takes time. Sarcasm takes snacks.
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🍖 Fine Young Cannibals
In a 2014 Facebook poll, 43% of Backpacker readers said they’d chow down on a (deceased, we think) hiking buddy if it was the only way to survive.
For me? To quote Genie: there are a few, uh, provisos, a couple of quid pro quos. Namely—what the hell did you die of? If you’re weirdly poisonous or in really bad shape, I’m gonna pass, thanks.
Also—where are we? I’m way less likely to eat you if we’re in some humid, crappy jungle (hello, blow flies??) than if we’re somewhere frozen. Things smell less when they’re frozen, they keep longer, and honestly? Some glacier-style freezer burn might dull the taste a bit.
Anyway! Check out this Backpacker video, where former Editor-in-Chief Jon Dorn walks you through where to find the tenderest cuts… and what to avoid.
That’s it for this round. Hopefully, you found something in the Forage or the Reddit recap that was worth your time—or at least worth skimming. Catch you next time!
—Jordan