Author Archives: thebonusworld

blog: In the Dust – 12/19/22

Not too long ago Chivalry 2 was released on Game Pass, quickly making it a staple in my gaming group’s rotation thanks to its satisfying and somewhat mindless gameplay. It’s not the kind of game that requires a lot from you in terms of progression or even paying attention which is the perfect platform for us to just talk about life only to be interrupted by someone screaming about how that last kill was “total bullshit.” It’s a good time for sure but it’s kind of the only game I can really join them on solely because of how little its progression actually matters, although I’m sure they’d beg to differ.

The amount of time that I have to play games feels like it’s going to be a pretty consistent theme that runs through most of my written pieces and it’s showing up here too. The other folks in my group have way more time than I do to play games, which becomes more and more of an issue with every game we try to play together. I don’t begrudge them or anything for having more free time, it just leads to a lot of instances where they’ll get to play so much more of a game and out level me before I can even grasp the basic mechanics of it.

That’s just with something lightweight like Chivalry 2, a game where I don’t think your level actually impacts anything on the matchmaking end. In something with level-based matchmaking or even worse, with shared story progression, we’ll maybe get one session to play together on equal footing before they power-level past me. Then if I do happen to join them it’ll end up feeling like we’re playing two completely different games as they dump their deep knowledge of future mechanics, lore and optimal strategies upon me. It all leads to me feeling like I’m holding them back from playing a game how they want to play it and have been in my absence, so I opt to play most things alone.

Once again, this isn’t the fault of anyone involved, it’s just the nature of our lives right now. Maybe one day we’ll all reach an equilibrium where we’ll all have to parse out our gaming time, but we’re not there just yet and that’s okay. Sure I don’t get to interact with my friends as much as I used to, and sure I don’t get to play as many multiplayer games unless I want to be a lunatic and just matchmake into things alone, but that’s alright. I don’t mind playing games by myself because that way the only person I’ll be letting down with my poor performance will be me.

TMoD: Reroll – Derelict Worlds

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I’m about two years into running my Eberron-themed D&D5e campaign which is finally nearing its conclusion, signifying not only the first long-term campaign I’ve ever run actually ending naturally as opposed to flaming out, but also represents the opportunity to start crafting our next adventure, or in my case the next several adventures.

I like crafting new worlds for every campaign that I run, preferably something that compliments and plays more of an active role in the storytelling rather than just operating as a backdrop. With Eberron, I was able to use the existing setting fairly well by having the players cross through into and explore the untamed arcane landscape known colloquially as The Mournlands. This area of the map is nebulous and not very well defined by design, allowing game masters to plug in whatever they like into that area, which I most definitely have.

I’d like to think I’ve been successful in cramming a somewhat compelling story to into the blanks that the book provides, but I’m still playing in someone else’s world and clashing with the rules therein. So I opt to build worlds of my own with histories and rules that I know because I’m making them up as I go along. If I don’t have an explicit answer for something that might come up while playing, I can confidently make something up without worrying too much if I’m contradicting some preestablished lore.

The problem is that I never seem to get too far in the construction of a world before getting distracted and moving onto something else. It’s resulted in at least a half-dozen derelict and malformed worlds that lack any real definition outside of one or two cities and some historical events. Sometimes there’s a map involved and sometimes there are even quests and characters, but that’s about as far as I’ve gotten before I try to develop something in a completely different setting.

Most of the time I’m leaping from design to design based on some theme I’d like to play around in or some new mechanics I’ve found. Like when I finally received my copies of Orbital Blues and Death in Space, I was eager to craft a universe filled with planet-hopping adventures and rampant capitalism based oppression but flamed out on that when I realized that making an explorable universe is hard.

There was also the time where I replayed Red Dead Redemption 2 and was deeply inspired to create a wild west themed game, but I couldn’t find a set of mechanics I liked to match it, so that concept died on the vine and gave way to something else that I never finished. I think I also just wanted a game that allowed me to do a bunch of cowboy accents, which was a bigger part of my motivation than you’d think.

Cyber punk, solar punk, Victorian, high and low fantasy, modern day and so on and so forth, I’ve made and abandoned so many worlds and settings in favor of starting fresh with something else, all thanks to my ever wandering eye. I fully intend to finish at least one of these concepts if for no other reason than that I’ll eventually have to when it comes time to start something new, but until then these worlds can stay stagnant in the many, many Google Docs they’re spread across.

blog: Finding the Fit – 12/12/22

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Have you ever heard the phrase, “throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks?” Aside from being an incredibly weird idiom that people use, myself included, it’s also been the technique I’ve been using to find a game I can really stick with, except the spaghetti in this metaphor is my money and so far the wall is a garbage can that’s on fire.

For those of you who aren’t aware, I have a problem with sticking to one video game for long stretches of time. Not since the days of Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds and Overwatch can I really remember spending significant time with a game that didn’t involve me playing virtual basketball. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy playing the NBA 2K games as kind of a mindless time waster, but it’s been a good long while since I’ve really dug into anything else.

That isn’t to say that I haven’t tried though. I’ve given so many different games a shot, ranging from the underwhelming but somewhat enjoyable Gotham Knights to the eternal grind-fest that is Disney Dreamlight Valley. I took advantage of Black Friday sales and picked up the bland and lifeless reboot of Saints Row, the slick and stylish OlliOlli World, and even four different Crash Bandicoot games, all of which reminded that I never enjoyed those games when I was a kid and I have less patience for their bullshit now. Those games are fine enough but none of them held my attention for any longer than a few hours which is a shame considering that while I do have disposable income, it isn’t that disposable.

I don’t have a problem with running through countless decades of NBA history in NBA 2K23‘s MyEras mode, but eventually I’d like to do something else that doesn’t reimagine what life would be like if LeBron James was drafted by the Knicks or whatever. I have some other games on the docket that I’m eager to try, but I worry that I’m just beyond the point where a single game is going to satisfy me for that long. I’ll openly admit that I’m a very picky gamer who constantly feels like they don’t have enough time to commit to something new, but I know there’s got to be something out there that’ll appeal to my weirdly specific tastes.

But therein lies the problem: I don’t know what I’m looking for. The closest thing I can think of that might even be in the neighborhood of what I’m interested in would be something like Destiny 2, but even that is a tough putt because of how much of that game there is and how much of it I’ve missed that trying to start now seems overly daunting. Maybe I’d enjoy it, but the odds are that I’ll be overwhelmed by the lore, mechanics, and my desire to play the game “correctly” by looking up optimal builds or whatever the hell you do in Destiny 2, that I won’t actually play the game how I would have if it just came out.

I think this all boils down to my anxiety about wasting time. I don’t have as much gaming time as I used to which leads to me being overly precious about how I spend said time ultimately leading me to do nothing with it because I fear that I’ll use it on something that wasn’t worth it. So I use my time doing something I know will mildly entertain me instead of taking a chance on something new that might genuinely captivate me or leave me profoundly disappointed.

I don’t have a curative salve to apply to these particular neurosis that’ll make me suddenly understand that I actually do have plenty of time to engage in my hobbies and I don’t need to be so scared about potentially wasting time, but I’ll keep looking for one. In the meantime I just need to stop wasting all this dang spaghetti.

Somerville is Bewildering, Buggy and Beautiful

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Somerville‘s hauntingly gorgeous atmosphere and visually impressive set-pieces aren’t enough to make up for its nebulous storytelling, uninteresting gameplay and painfully prominent technical issues. It only took me about five hours or so to roll credits on Somerville and see all of its multiple endings, but even after doing so I could not tell you a damn thing about what actually happened in the story, leaving me with more questions than answers.

Somerville is the first game from developer, Jumpship, helmed by some of the former leadership that was responsible for the cult-classics Limbo and Inside. It wouldn’t be completely unfair to compare Somerville to either of those games, but doing so would only serve to highlight how good those previous titles were and how underwhelming Somerville actually is. Just like those games, it’s a strikingly beautiful, dialogue free, puzzle-platformer, but it severely lacks the polish and direction of those titles.

Somerville starts out by upending the lives of a family and I suppose if you want to split hairs, the entire world, by having an alien invasion(?) take place and really muck up everything. The family itself gets separated after the protagonist comes into contact with what I think was an alien that crashed through the roof of his home, but in doing so you’re granted the first of two powers that you’ll use throughout the game. When unlocked, the two powers allow you to interact with alien technology in two different ways: liquifying or solidifying it. In order to actually do either of those things however, you need to interact with a source of light that can project your magic-alien-aura out over a manipulatable surface. On paper this sounds way cooler than it actually is, because in practice you’re mostly just making stairs or making tunnels for you to walk over and through. There were only a few instances towards the end of the game that really did anything cool with the mechanics and even those were short lived.

While lacking in the mechanics department, Somerville is very visually captivating. I may not know much about the lore of Somerville or the circumstances surrounding the events that took place, but the game does a great job of communicating a truly dreary and hopeless world. I remember the desperate beauty of a moment when I crossed a lifeless highway, traversing over, around and through the scores of abandoned cars that littered the pavement, and made my way into what looked to be a refugee camp of some sort where the survivors of this invasion were holed up in tents that filled the landscape. As I made my way through I saw the shadows of survivors moving inside of the tents, desperately trying to avoid being seen by either myself or the giant, human-abducting monolith that hovered in the sky.

Unfortunately that beauty is wasted on the gameplay of Somerville. Most of what you do in the game involves slowly trudging from one screen to another, sometimes solving simplistic light-based puzzles, and sometimes running away from the insta-killing alien robot dogs or giant sky monolith that serve as your only sources of conflict. The lack of polish becomes really apparent when you’re trying to navigate the levels during these escape sequences because you’ll often get hitched on something in the environment that breaks your momentum, sucking the tension out of these moments by having you run through them over and over until you find the correct path forward.

Somerville isn’t outstandingly bad or anything, the gameplay is perfectly serviceable but it suffers from numerous little pain points that pop up every so often. I was intrigued the entire way through Somerville just hoping that at some point the story would make sense and give me that “aha!” moment that I was waiting for, but it never did. Instead Somerville just gets weirder and weirder, leaving me with so many moments where I wondered why I was moving forward or what my character’s motivation even was. The whole game eventually culminates in a final sequence that can result in several different endings, none of which do a great job of explaining anything about what just happened or what state the world is left in.

Somerville feels like one of those games where someone eventually will come up with a really poignant interpretation of the game that will clarify the story, or someone is going to find some obscure detail in it that will recontextualize the whole world. It’s hauntingly beautiful at times, invoking genuine feelings of dread and hopelessness as you trudge from one dystopian landscape to another. But as it stands, Somerville is little more than a visually interesting game that’s underdeveloped both in terms of mechanics and polish.

blog: Discomfort Zone – 12/08/22

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It feels weird to be doing this again.

It’s been so long since I’ve done this whole ‘website’ thing although it’s only been about a year since my last post. But this really shouldn’t feel strange considering I used to do this every single week for a few years straight. This isn’t a new hobby I’m taking on but for some reason it feels foreign enough to feel unfamiliar, but that’s been the case with just about everything I’ve done this year.

At the beginning of 2022 my partner and I moved hundreds of miles away from our respective comfort zones and left the people and places that were familiar to us thanks to new employment opportunities, specifically new employment opportunities for my partner. While they were working and being productive, I stayed home and found time between cleaning, grocery shopping and being severely depressed and homesick to play a lot of video games. And while I played those video games I got to experience a deeper feeling of self-loathing than I’d ever felt before because it felt like I was wasting valuable working/applying to jobs time.

It was this endless cycle of feeling miserable and responding to it by doing something that was supposed to make me happy, but ultimately making me feel worse cause it felt like I didn’t deserve happiness while I was in this unemployed and isolated state. It got so bad that I was afraid to leave the house and was completely overwhelmed by doing even the smallest of things that didn’t involve me sitting in front of my monitor-crowded desk to play video games.

That was my comfort zone, my 4 monitor cocoon where nothing could hurt me. It was where I spent most of my time, relying on my hobbies in an attempt to stave off the encroaching darkness, but eventually I began to feel listless and apathetic towards everything that was supposed to bring me happiness. I’m pretty sure that’s the textbook definition of depression, actually.

I was in a rut. My comfort zone suddenly turned into this monument to failure. Having fun and enjoying myself felt unearned and unwarranted, and it left me feeling like a complete mess. It took a lot of patience and support from my partner along with me finally finding a job and having to spend time away from my sadness shrine to really claw myself out of that hole.

These days I feel like I’ve struck a pretty good balance between working, being a good partner and engaging in my hobbies. I’ve even started to romanticize the days when I had hours upon hours of free gaming time, which I think means I have a healthier relationship with gaming now. It also means that I’m an idiot who is knowingly looking through rose-colored glasses at one of the worst periods in my life and thinking, “wow, I kind of miss that.”

I really hope this doesn’t read as me trying to dole out advice because it 100% should not be interpreted as such. I didn’t actively do anything while I was struggling to alleviate the stress and just let it envelope me. I do not recommend that. I should have gone out and explored my new surroundings or at the very least I should have spent time in a different room in my house, but I didn’t and ultimately suffered the consequences. I just hope I remember all of this for the next time I’m unemployed for a significant amount of time.

The Master of Disaster – Reroll

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It’s been quite a while since last we gathered here, so I suppose introductions are in order. For those of you who are new and don’t remember what this was, The Master of Disaster is kind of the tabletop roleplaying game zone of The Bonus World where one could find various stories, recommendations and tips mostly surrounding Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, which is probably going to continue to be the case going forward in what I’m affectionately calling, The Master of Disaster: Reroll, or just Reroll for short.

Since we last spoke I’ve gone a little buck-wild in terms of buying new modules, supplements and games, all of which I have yet to read yet. When it comes to supplemental material, I started reading the new Spelljammer book in the hopes that it would provide for a more transformative D&D campaign, but the more I got into it the more I realized how little outside of a few new races and enemies was actually present. I was hoping for a more official version of SW5e, but Spelljammer turned out to be more flavor than substance, not actually adding any real mechanical differences to the world. It seemed like all the supplement did was add a new mode of transport that barely differentiates itself from sailing a boat.

Additionally, I started reading through Root: The Roleplaying Game and found a world and story that seemed wonderfully fleshed out with some adorable and charming artwork, but didn’t excite me from a mechanics standpoint. Root: The Roleplaying Game places a big emphasis on managing faction reputation which seems like it could be fun for certain gameplay groups, but I don’t think mine would be onboard with that, nor would I want to really have to keep track of it. I wish that I could just get a Root: The Roleplaying Game supplement for 5e so I could enjoy that world using mechanics I was more comfortable with.

I also backed Orbital Blues, a game that describes itself as a ‘lo-fi space western RPG’ which sounds exciting, but is mechanically underwhelming. The book itself boasts gorgeous design and artwork, making it more likely to be a centerpiece on a coffee table than a game worth playing, which is a damn shame because there aren’t a lot of options for space western themed TTRPGS. I also backed Death in Space which also boasts awesome artwork, but I haven’t gotten around to reading it just yet so I don’t have much to say about it yet except it seems dope as hell.

I feel like good art has really motivated a lot of my purchasing decisions lately, but that hasn’t translated into me actually reading the book and running the game. A perfect example of that is MÖRK BORG, a game whose name is confusing, but has some of the sickest art I’ve ever seen. I’ve heard nothing but praise for the actual game itself, but once again it’s one of those things where I just haven’t had the time to dedicate to learning a new game system, let alone internalizing it well enough to teach other people how to play it.

The biggest slap in the face about this whole situation has been that the TTRPGs that I have taken the time to learn have all been one-page RPGs, mostly about animals doing non-animal things, such as Crash Pandas, a game about street racing racoons that are all operating a vehicle together simultaneously. Or like Honey Heist, a game about actual bears infiltrating ‘Honey-Con’ in an effort to steal a butt-load of honey while maintaining your cover as some people dressed as bears. These games are simple and easy to understand, but heavily rely on a good player dynamics and roleplaying, so they might not be for everyone.

There’s definitely stuff I’ve missed, but these are the bigger and more notable additions to my ever expanding library. Maybe one day I’ll actually use any of this stuff, but that would require me overcoming my intense and borderline crippling fear of actually having to run a game in-person instead of over the internet. So that’ll probably never happen.

Disney Dreamlight Valley has Taken Over my Home

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I showed a real lack of willpower recently when I casually Googled and shortly after ordered an Xbox Series X despite having a Series S in my possession. I could give all manner of excuses for why I actually bought the dang thing, but the real answer is that I wanted one and it was available. With a massive new console in my possession I had to figure out what to do with the Series S that served as my primary console for the past two years, so I went ahead and plopped it in our living room, set up an account for my partner, installed some titles off of Game Pass I thought they’d enjoy and went on my merry way. Little did I know that I had just taken the first steps towards allowing a Disney-themed game monopolize all of their free time.

At first they just wanted to continue playing our cooperative game of the month, Battleblock Theater, but eventually curiosity got the better of them when I booted up Disney Dreamlight Valley, a game I promptly decided was not gonna be the next ‘big thing’ for me. But their affinity for Disney characters mixed with the slightly more mechanically rich Animal Crossing-esque gameplay loop must have resonated with them because all they wanna do now is hang out with Goofy, Elsa and a horrifying dead-eyed version of Mickey who never seems to close his mouth.

What first started as a vague curiosity has turned into something that resembles an addiction, but in a good way. When I first asked them about their feelings on the game I was met with a lot of, “it’s okay,” and “I just wanna see where it goes.” Recently however they’ve approached me with a gleeful sense of pride while asking, “do you wanna see what I’ve done with my town in that game?” I’ve even checked the Xbox app while I was on my lunchbreak and caught a certain someone tending to their village while ‘working’ from home.

I tease them about their newfound addiction but it genuinely makes me happy to see that they’re having fun with this console that I basically replaced with a bigger, stronger version. They’re a fairly casual gamer and to see them get hooked on a game the way I can sometimes get sucked into games makes me weirdly happy. I don’t know how to exactly explain it but it’s kind of vindicating in a weird way. It isn’t as if they judge me for spending time playing games or anything, if anything they’re incredibly supportive of my gaming hobby and the time and energy I spend on it.

Knowing how bored of the game I would get within a few hours, I’ve already prepped them for the burnout by just installing a bunch of other games I thought they might enjoy on the console, just hoping curiosity will take hold and lead them into something newer and more visually exciting to watch. As of writing this however, that has not been the case as we’re both ‘hotly anticipating’ the Toy Story update for the game, which I think we can all agree is really gonna shake things up.

How I feel about Disney Dreamlight Valley is irrelevant though, because all that matters is that they’re having a good time with it and getting that feeling of satisfaction that a good game can provide. While I wouldn’t mind seeing something different on our TV, or more specifically, hear something other than the same 3 bars of the Mickey Mouse Club theme song, I’m just happy that my partner is happy. What more can you really ask for?

blog: New Beginnings – 12/05/22

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At the end of 2021 I uploaded what I thought would be the last post I’d ever make on The Bonus World. It was a tough decision but it was the only one to make at the time considering that I was experiencing some monumental life changes and found genuine difficulty in balancing all of it alongside running a website. I don’t want to make it sound like I have everything completely under control now, cause that absolutely is not the case, but I do have a better handle on things now more so than I did over a year ago.

So I’ve decided to bring The Bonus World back – kind of.

Like the about page says, I want to take The Bonus World in a slightly different direction but fully understand that whatever form the site does take will still have a lot of general pieces on games that aren’t particularly groundbreaking and will look very similar to the posts of old. However, I don’t want to only want to just spin up the ‘content machine’ once more and do nothing different with the site, but I understand how lofty and unrealistic it sounds to strive to produce exclusively transformative work.

It would also make me sound like a complete jackass if I genuinely proposed that.

I don’t know what the elevator pitch for The Bonus World is these days, but I know that it isn’t going to be a carbon copy of what it used to be. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate what this place used to be, but I want to be able to talk more earnestly about balancing responsibilities and maintaining relationships while trying to not fall back into my old anti-social and reclusive gaming habits. I want to be able to speak from the heart a little more and not feel like this isn’t the right venue for that kind of thing. This isn’t me saying that The Bonus World is no longer a place for fun, but it’s growing up alongside of me and I want to reflect that in the things I write.

I can’t say I necessarily have some grand plan nor do I have any wild ambitions for the site, but it is important to me that The Bonus World continues to exist and that there’s stuff for people to read and engage with. There’s no schedule, there’s no plan, it’s all jazz, baby, and I hope that you’ll join me in figuring out exactly what The Bonus World is and where it goes from here.

The Last One

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It’s been several months since we last connected, but I feel like it’s time to end the silence and touch base with you all once more. In short, The Bonus World as it stands is on an indefinite hiatus. I’ve given this a lot of thought and while I would love nothing more than to be able to continue this site, life has happened and continues to do so.

I know I promised a return for the Game of the Year season, but that’s not happening. If you’re curious, I really enjoyed Psychonauts 2 and Halo Infinite, and I also thought Bowser’s Fury was pretty neat for what it was. So like, those three things are probably on the list that doesn’t exist.

As for the site, I just don’t have the time nor the ability to keep it going. The nine-to-five grind has really been tough for me to adjust to and hasn’t afforded much in the way of free time, whether it be for the site or for my own personal hobbies. Like, I don’t even get to play that many video games anymore, and my group and I haven’t come together for D&D in weeks. It’s gotten really hard to juggle everything in my life, and I’ve had to prioritize certain things over others.

It also didn’t help that my computer finally kicked the bucket once and for all. Hence why there’s no lightly Photoshopped image accompanying this post. That was a big momentum killer for sure.

I guess the biggest thing to mention is that I’m finally leaving New York. At the beginning of next year, I’ll be making the biggest change I’ve ever made in my life, and preparing for that has dominated most of my free time. Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited for this change, but I’m also absolutely petrified of the myriad of uncertainties that come with it.

Maybe one day The Bonus World will return in some form, but it’s just not in the cards right now. So I want to thank everyone who has ever helped me work on this site in whatever aspect they did. I’m so grateful to have people in my life who were willing to go along with this weird hobby of mine. I also want to thank you, the reader, for indulging me for so long and being supportive. From every comment to every view, words cannot truly express just how thankful I am to you. You mean more to me than I could ever properly convey.

So from the bottom of my heart, thank you. Maybe 2022 will be better, but I’m remaining skeptical for now. Regardless, good luck out there, be kind to one-another, and stay safe.

– Ari

Blog: Changes – 08/25/21

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I’ve been trying to put off this blog post for as long as I could, but there’s no more delaying the inevitable. This blog post will be the last one in this format. For as much as I’ve enjoyed putting up weekly content, there’s no denying that it’s gotten harder for me to maintain the pace, let alone the enthusiasm required to produce something worth reading with this regularity. But it doesn’t mean that The Bonus World is over, far from it actually. But this is going to be an adjustment.

Going forward, there won’t be anymore weekly blogs. While disappointing at first blush, it’s actually probably the best call for both the website and myself. If you’ve followed the site with any regularity (thanks for that by the way), you’ve probably noticed a tremendous dip in both the variety of content and the quality of it. While external factors are certainly at play here, the blog has become this bare minimum of content that doesn’t feel interesting or necessary anymore. It also cannibalizes a ton of other articles I could write, because it’s such a nebulous and wide bucket that just about anything could fall into.

It’s led to me getting complacent and bored with my own output here, which isn’t fair to my readers and isn’t fair to me. I find myself scrambling every Tuesday to think of anything I could write about in the hopes that by the next week I’ll have some actual inspiration to review something or whatever, but that never happens. I’m trapped in this vicious cycle with the blog where as long as I put something up on Wednesday, I can basically forget about the site. That’s a shitty way of operating the site, but it’s how things fell into place for me.

I also want to write other stuff on this site without having to hit this weekly deadline I’ve arbitrarily imposed on myself. The way I see it, if I can free up that energy from having to just put something up on the site and channel that into writing a thing that’s actually interesting, well that’s a win for me. I just hate seeing what I’ve allowed the blog to devolve into, which is just this weekly rambling that people continue to read for some reason. Thanks for that by the way.

But here’s the thing, the blog isn’t dying, it’s just not going to be weekly anymore. It’s going to arrive when it feels right and there’s something worth writing about that probably won’t be about video games. But with this scheduling and content change comes the other bit of news that’s probably a bit harder to deal with, and that’s the fact that it’s gonna be pretty quiet around here for a while.

On top of the content not interesting me, I’ve just been incredibly burnt out. I need to step away from writing about video games for a bit so I can recenter myself and regain that enthusiasm I once had. I plan on popping back in here from time to time to drop a review or something, but there won’t be much regularity to it for a while.

This is hard for me because I really love writing for this site, but it deserves so much better than what I’m giving it. So in my eyes the best decision is to essentially take a hiatus and let the inspiration come back to me. So that’s kind of it then for a while. If you wanna know when the site posts more stuff, you can punch in your email on the left side of the homepage to sign up for the “newsletter,” which is basically just an alert system for when this site posts something, or you can follow the very silent The Bonus World Twitter account which will also keep you posted about what’s going on.

The one thing I will say is that I do intend on doing Game of the Year stuff, so worst case scenario is that’s the first time you hear from me in a while, but I don’t think it’ll be that long before I return.

But yeah, that’s it for me gang. Thanks for rolling with me for so long. It’s time for a change, and unfortunately that change is going to take time. Stay safe out there everyone. I’ll see you soon.

-Ari