GameArcane

Not just games, but magic too

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Arcane before the Game

September 26, 2022 by XTO Leave a Comment

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to formulate my thoughts on how to move to the next steps. If we are going to synthesize Game and Arcane equally of their parts, we should look at each individually. Maybe a bit contrary to a traditional path, I’ve thought about trying this a bit backwards. Let’s dive into the occult.

There are many people in the world that identify themselves as “gamers” or at least acquainted with games. On the other hand, those who study things like the occult, non-traditional spiritualities, the paranormal, or mysticism are more rare. Assuming that you know what a game is, we can skip that for now. The more difficult or intangible thing to grapple is the topic of Magick.

I’ll try to outline this all for a true neophyte, or uninitiated aspirant. Any secrets I could reveal would be meaningless without enough explanation.

Occult Square the Circle
Squaring the Circle

Further Reading on the Occult

There’s a lot of misconception and misunderstanding about what the occult and magick is/entails. Part of that mystery is the very definition of the subject itself. Another problem facing us is that of trying to teach/be a “master” of a subject that I myself am still trying to learn. I can share my learning and process but I am by no means an expert. The aspirant is driven to understanding, knowledge, wisdom, attempting to reforge the self, and trying to share and teach the hidden to others.

For instance, on the topic of Egyptian or Greek deities there is interest in increasing the grasp of the subject. Together we try to understand the intricacies of their impact on humanity. However, even to call myself a teacher in this is dubious so together we shall climb. Perhaps this is one of the true hearts in the path of the occult.

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Developments Mid-2022

August 15, 2022 by XTO Leave a Comment

Sometimes progress is slow, other times all at once. Obviously a significant amount of effort is usually needed to meet the activation energy required for a change of states. Besides the normal content like videos, text posts, multimedia like images and music, I’m working on the backend and just living life. Let’s get a bit of a progress report on some of the things over the past year…

Video Content

OK! I’ve really been meaning on finishing the 2 and 3 parts of the video series on “What Is GameArcane“, so that’s big on the goal posts for this year. Make sure to stop by the Twitch stream where I stream games about twice a week, 2 hours at a time. Currently we are aiming to finish Disco Elysium sometime soon and I cannot recommend this game enough. Superb art, story, design, characters, its the whole package. Before that we played through Inscryption, another A++ game, and ripe with esoteric content. Alternatively you can stop by the YouTube account page for over a hundred gameplay videos and more content.

Creative Work

This year I’ve really been focusing on game design and development! Out of the many aspects of occult gaming, ‘game creation’ is some of the most time consuming, difficult, and essential of goals. And MY how there is so much to be done. Starting with the game engine itself, there is a lot to consider and I’ve been working in Godot, Unity and Unreal recently. I’ve done work on this in the past, using RPGMaker, XNA Framework for the Xbox360, and long ago my friends and I worked on making a side scrolling game engine for a college class.

I have a game that I and designing and developing called “Tower of Mirrored Depths” currently using Unity3D. I’ll try to make some posts in the future outlining the plans and development process soon. To elucidate any shadow of a doubt, the game will be a virtual tour of the Sephirot of the Qabalah. To set some reasonable goal, I’m focusing on the tutorial which takes place on the ground level of the game. A single player adventure game- story, setting, characters and experience are the focus.

Next up is Blender, which has been my recent love. Where would a game be without its assets. To create the actors and set pieces I wanted to really dig into creating 2d and 3d objects. Shaders, procedural generated geometry nodes, this is a real aspect of technomancy for the future. I have many things I want to make for the game as well as to build my portfolio of virtual artistic works, so working in Blender was a natural choice. I’ve been grinding through tutorials and this has been eating up a lot of my time recently. A long way to go but being able to see the progress has been invigorating!

My Life

I’ve been working on my resume trying to find a new job, looking at housing trying to find a new place to live, friends, family, and personal life- just like everyone. Playing music at live events and making music for game projects. If you ever want to chat stop by the stream, or better yet, join the Discord community where we are active daily. No one is an island, and I knew fully well that I could not do this project alone. Somewhere between the thousand, millions of games that require an equal amount of time if not more- and the vast ancient knowledges… paths of esoteric knowledge, I am truly humbled by those other people who help and contribute whether by choice or accidental. I can only hope to assist those who chose to learn and create for those who are yet to come.

The creative spark.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: development, game design, game development, occult

Ranking up some Ratings

August 15, 2022 by XTO Leave a Comment

On stream, I play through a wide variety of games. So far after doing a single, standard completion of a game on stream I do my best to give it a rating to have some categorical understanding of the game and how it relates to the Esoteric Game perspective. I have come up with a somewhat meaningless and insignificant scale that I judge each game based on and I will share it with you here. As well as two recent games that have gone up against the grade.

A. R. S. E.

One small note on the system is that each attribute can be between +5 and -5.
My Arbitrary Rating System Equivalencies are as follows:

Mysteries ov Esoterica

Secrets, secret knowledge… understanding. Symbology, themes, archetypes and subtler esoteric wisdom.

Level ov Violence

The requirement and ability to inflict violence. Inversely- different types and degrees of compassion and love.

Phloe and Trance

Both the constant movement and stillness. Getting into the flow based on action or immersion.

Skill and Technique

Dexterity, general and specific knowledge. Acuity and accumulated experience put to use.


Superliminal

When we say a game is similar to Portal, its often both in its spatial relativity as well as its thoughtful puzzles(with a good supply of humor.) Superliminal is definitely an achievement to create and to play. Puzzles feel difficult enough and there are plenty of secrets and tricks strewn throughout. The rub is that perhaps it was all a dream, or that the dream world is the place where the game takes place and that in dreams we can explore these strange and diverse world experiences.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/954326110?t=02h12m16s


Manifold Garden

Next up on the block is Manifold Garden, which at first was a very standard physics puzzle game with M.C. Escher styled world. However as the game opens up you realize that each subsequent map is training you to understand each different gravitational direction from the sides of a cube. The end goal is to use a hypercube God Cube on each plane to grow a tree as part of the Manifold Garden. With an absolutely stellar ending sequence, and an alternate 0% completion ending this was definitely one of my favorite games that I have played through recently.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/963036632?t=01h17m13s


What do you think of this rating system?

Filed Under: Uncategorized

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