What I had fun with in 2024

Including: the final Purge, girly games, and farewells.

It’s that time of year, which is to say the end of it! It’s also the end of this version of Supernormal, the one that I started in 2023 when I took the blog from “sorta monthly” to “sorta weekly.”

I don’t wanna clog up the fun stuff with shop talk, so let me just say that Substack has never been a great fit for my stuff and I’m excited to leave it behind. If you were ever planning on subscribing (and you’re able, obvs), it’s not too late to drop me a farewell/Christmas gift on Ko-fi!

Now on with the show.

This list certainly doesn’t encompass everything I enjoyed about the last year, but it does encompass a lot of things I might have overlooked if I wasn’t open to having fun. This is the provenance of Supernormal: it’s a good reason to pay attention.

And I know the perfect place to start…

The Forever Purge

I started watching the Purge movies in April with The Purge (2013). And while I wasn’t expecting it to take me until December to finish, I’m glad it could be a throughline across my entire year.

Plus, I’m glad I made it a group activity with my household. These movies reward communal viewing. From the on-fire buses of Anarchy and Election Year to the illusory depth of The First Purge, the Purge series is fractal: no matter how close you look, there is something, if not good, then at least interesting to talk about.

Which makes my review of The Forever Purge (2021) a little bit secondary. It’s basically a final exam for how well you know the Purge formula, which is a group of people from different socioeconomic backgrounds wandering from weird event to weird event and then eventually shooting lots of people.

On the surface, The Forever Purge subverts the series in some actually cool ways. The night of the Purge comes and goes without incident. But the next day, violence continues as an organized “Forever Purge” movement begins killing indiscriminately with the express goal of ethnic cleansing.

The Forever Purge also switches its focus to immigration. In the same way that DeMonaco brought on Gerard McMurray to view the Purge from the perspective of Black Americans, he seems to have tapped Everardo Valerio Gout to tell the story of the Purge from the perspective of Mexican migrants in Texas.

But you shouldn’t let yourself be fooled by the superficial differences between The Forever Purge and its predecessors. It follows the formula exactly, both in its plot structure—the party winds up in an on-fire city at night with a clock ticking to sunrise—and in how it approaches its themes.

The antagonists of Purge movies are, to put it poetically, astroturf-stuffed strawmen. Purge villains are irredeemably evil and murderous and Other, which acts to cushion the conflict by portraying class warfare as the act of a handful of blackhearted people rather than systemic aggression. Even the heroes are mostly propped-up stereotypes.

The Forever Purge invents some of the series’s strangest guys yet: “guy who definitely doesn’t like immigrants, but not for any racist reasons, he just thinks that everyone should stay in their own country” and “extremely class conscious Texan landowner who nevertheless dismisses any systemic pressures against the poor.” It invents opinions that no one has ever actually held instead of admitting that lots of regular people are just racist.

The worldbuilding is also completely out of touch with reality. In El Paso, the protagonist Juan indicates a mural, saying, “We Mexicans leave signs around the city to help each other out.” Implying, I guess, a kind of Mexican American code language that leads people to safehouses in the back rooms of bars? Also the “hidden sign” is a big red arrow, but I digress.

In the end, the two strawman factions war while the heroes race to reach the Mexican border. And if American citizens being forced to illegally immigrate into Mexico seems like profound commentary to you, I’d only ask that you dwell a little bit on what, if anything, that plot beat is actually saying.

Worst of all, barring an incredible sequence involving a caged goat and an elaborate Rube Goldberg trap, the wackiness of this film is very low. The horse wearing a skull that appears on the poster, the one that started me on this quest, isn’t even in the movie.

So I don’t necessarily recommend that you watch all of the Purge movies. But I do recommend that you pick some series to watch with your friends throughout the next year, because even if it lacks substance, it’s always fun to dive deeper into something than to glance across it.

Honorable mentions: The Menu, Challengers, Monkey Man, and Tombstone. Also we bought a big thing of Utz Pub Mix in April, which we called Purge Mix, and I finally got to throw it away yesterday. But I did eat a little. That I don’t recommend.

A crate of 24 glass bottles of Coca-Cola

Easily the best purchase I made in 2024. I felt like the kid from Blank Check.

Get it twisted, money’s only value is what it does. Get it twisted, a crate of 24 glass bottles of Coke is actually a steal and you’re basically throwing money away if you don’t buy it.

Honorable mention: Gas stations. They’re like really cheap restaurants where the only items on the menu are snacks and Topo Chico.

Crow Country

(SFB Games/Steam)

I’ve smothered myself in “game of the year” lists and I think that, for the most part, the games that deserve flowers are getting their flowers. Except for one.

Crow Country is a survival horror game in the style of PS1 classics like Resident Evil. It’s part of one of my favorite trends this year, which is homages to previous eras of gaming history that don’t rely on nostalgia, but are whole, thoughtful games in their own right.

Set in an abandoned amusement park, Crow Country’s well of puzzle concepts and spooky scenery never runs dry. The enemies, too, are varied and engaging, but because of the game’s low-poly art style, they induce a pleasant level of dread without leaning on shock and awe. (I love shock and awe! But I know it turns some people off.)

It’s all woven together with a story and characters that are mysterious, moving and sharply written. Even if you don’t play a lot of games, I think you should try this one if you have any interest in the history of horror!

Honorable mentions: I could have written about a lot of detective games here, but I already did that for Thinky Games! But special shoutout The Crimson Diamond, Rise of the Golden Idol, and non-detective game Slay the Princess.

Game demos

Twice this year, I wrote about Next Fest demos. And holy cow, I love that demos have made such a big comeback! Games are a unique medium because you actually have to do something with them in order to know what they’re like. So a demo will always be more rewarding than a trailer or written review.

More than that, I just love having a chance to dump so many varied game designs over my head and pick out what’s good, what’s bad, and what’s weird enough to be interesting.

Honorable mentions: Game jams and zines. Sometimes a demo can be your whole game—games don’t have to be gigantic mass market things, they can be tiny! They should be tiny! Indiepocalypse,

Weird Fucking Games

and

Interactive Noise

are good places for those.

“Why Doesn’t the Industry Make Good Girls’ Games?”

Video essay of the year goes to this incredible piece of games history from Moon Channel! I love it for two reasons.

One, because girly games constitute an important genre and tradition of gaming that gets sidelined, as Moon points out, because of the erroneous belief that games are not a medium that expresses gender at all and we should just keep doing what we’re doing. (Note: “What we’re doing” has been decided almost entirely by men since the origin of video games.)

Two, because it’s a perfect example of advocacy without condescension. Moon speaks well and warmly of girly games, even as someone who isn’t necessarily in that target audience, and in doing so shows how more perspectives in games are a boon for all gamers, not just those they represent. Good girly games are good for everyone.

It’s the video I’ve thought the most about this year, and it’s definitely worth a watch!

Honorable mentions: “Lightning in a Bottle - Why Until Dawn Worked” by Ratat and “The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel” by Jenny Nicholson

The Appeal by Janice Hallet

I got super into whodunnits this year, and this book is most of why! It’s an epistolary mystery told entirely through emails, texts, fliers and social media posts. Despite that, it’s a straight down the middle fair play murder story with incredible twists and a cast that nails that Phoenix Wright level of crazy-but-grounded.

Honorable mentions: The Decagon House Murders and The Mill House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji; Crow Planet by Lyanda Lynn Haupt; A History of the World in Six Glasses by Tom Standage; The Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb

The Longest Johns concert

Will you be as excited as I am when Seán Dagher steps onto the stage as a surprise opener and immediately plays “Rio Grande,” your favorite sea shanty? Probably not.

Seeing The Longest Johns in Chicago for me was a testament to niches. And even if the guy who sang the sea shanties in Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag isn’t a celebrity to you, I wish for everyone to get deep enough into a niche that you get inordinately excited about something that no one else seems to notice.

All my love to Emma, who set the whole vacation up and rolled out the red carpet, basement bars and okonomiyaki and all, and made me feel like we were going to a sold out stadium show instead of (admittedly) the dorkiest place in the city.

Dandadan

If you are inclined to like this sort of thing at all, you either have already watched Dandadan or know that you should. So all I’ll say is that Yukinobu Tatsu’s editor apparently made him read 100 romance mangas before starting Dandadan, despite all appearances it is a romance manga, and it is a good one. Watch the OP if you haven’t.

Tournament brackets

At the very start of this year, my friends and I each put 16 songs into a playlist. We listened to the whole thing, then did a tournament-style (read: Hivemind-style) bracket to pick… well, not the best song, obviously, but the song that we collectively liked the most.

I love brackets because they randomize the process of comparative analysis and force you to see works in a new light. Anyone can compare Friday the 13th and Halloween, but what conversation would you have if you had to compare Friday the 13th with Austin Powers?

In any case, we ended up with a curated playlist of great songs and learned a lot about each other’s tastes. Unless you’re way too competitive for this sort of thing, I recommend you try it! I think we’re doing movies in the new year :D

Bonus: Getting laid off

OK so, well, it wasn’t fun. And honestly, things have been really hard since July! I’ve had to manage money very differently (don’t read the “crate of glass coke bottles” thing), and making ends meet as a new freelancer is more or less impossible. I’ve cried a lot. I’ve questioned why I even call myself a writer.

But for whatever reason, I’ve yet to feel… wrong? Or at least, every wrong move I’ve made in the last six months feels like it’s all part of the same journey. I am striving towards something, and even if I hit a wall (or a hundred), there’s no part of me that believes striving is bad.

I don’t know what I’ll do next. Probably get a real job. Then when the stress of this season subsides I’ll get the bright idea to quit again (or get laid off again :D) and keep doing what I’m doing now.

For better or worse, every time I’ve tried to quit in the past, it hasn’t worked. I have too poor a memory for failure.

But my memories of writing Supernormal have been bright and clear, and that has everything to do with the folks I’m writing to. Thank you to everyone who’s commented, either on the blog or privately to my DMs. I always wanted this place to be a conversation starter, and I’ve had so many good conversations.

I’ll let you know what’s next. Meanwhile, have fun. And from the bottom of my heart,

Thanks for reading.

DR