If you want to filter out certain posts, search for '-flair:FLAIRNAME' (eg: '-flair:Tierlists&Trends') in the search bar and then sort by new.
Looking for friends on the EN Server? Check out this Friend Code thread!

Current Information

• Current JP Event: Let's Stream Together ♡ WEDDING LIVE - Limited, Mixed, Mysterious (purple)
• Current EN Event: To You, My Caring Companion - Limited, Mixed, Pure (green)
• Current Monthly Gacha Roll Thread: The Farewell Signal Resounds
• Broadcast Station: #8 Feat. Yoshioka Mayu (Haruka) and Imai Fumiya (Akito), with guests Machico (Nene) and Tanabe Rui (Mafuyu)
• Current Colorful Corner: Episode 28

JP resources

• Official website
• Youtube
• Twitter
• Project Sekai ENG (Unofficial) Twitter

EN resources

• Official website
• Youtube
• Twitter
• Facebook

General Resources

• Official FAQ [JP translation]
• Official Beginner's Guide [JP translation]
• u/wintershore's Beginner Guide
• Subreddit Post Flair Guide
• SEKAI Viewer [features cards, gacha simulator, and more - beware spoilers]
• Project SEKAI wiki [Fandom]
• Project SEKAI wiki [Miraheze]

Story Compilations by u/GladiolusLD (JP translations by various translators)

By Year:
2020/2021 Story Playlist (Stella After the Rain - The Tomorrow We Hope For)
2022 Story Playlist (POP IN MY HEART! - A Brand New Year! Lion Dance Robot's New Year's Show!)
2023 Story Playlist (Amidst a Dream, Towards the Shining Stars - Next to The Unchanging Warmth)
2024 Story Playlist (BREAK DOWN THE WALL - Present)
By unit:
Leo/need
MORE MORE JUMP
Vivid BAD SQUAD
Wonderlands x Showtime
25-ji, Nightcord de.
​
Didn't find what you need? Feel free to ask below and maybe another player can help. Alternatively, if you see a question you can answer, comment and help out your fellow players.
Also, please comment below if you find any other useful links to add to or replace on the list.

Want to include a screenshot as proof and can't use the comment image feature? Follow these steps:

Step 1: Take a screenshot of your screen.
Step 2: Upload your screenshots to an image-hosting website like Imgur or Google Drive.
Step 3: Share the link along with your comment.
​
Of course, there are some rules to follow when posting in this megathread.

Rules

• Assume good faith - Rhythm games should be easily accessible to all. Assume that the player really doesn't know and try to help them out. In the event of trolls, either downvote, ignore, or report them to the moderators.
• Have patience before asking again. It might take some time for someone with an answer to find your comment. You should wait at least 24 hours before making a separate post for your question.
• Keep jokes in moderation - This is meant to be an educational space. Try not to clog it up with too much unnecessary fluff.

If you see people asking questions that could be answered here, try and direct them over to this post. This way, we can make sure the feed doesn't get filled with the same questions repeatedly. However, this won't work unless everyone cooperates. Hopefully, a new megathread will be posted every Saturday. Thanks to grandorder for inspiring this megathread.

N.B.: I'm mainly looking for the games listed in the title and at the bottom of the thread. Feel free to post other offers, but if I haven't responded to your comment(s) by my next posting, I likely wasn't able to find a trade that interested me.
​
For sale (for Steam Gift Cards or gifted Steam Wallet balance):
​

• Dark Souls™: Prepare To Die™ Edition (removed from Steam Store; $350 $400 or best offer)
• Fall Guys (removed from Steam Store)
• Fall Guys - Dragon Hugger Pack (removed from Steam Store)
• Fall Guys - Icy Adventure Pack (removed from Steam Store)
• Marvel's Avengers - The Definitive Edition (removed from Steam Store)
• Spec Ops: The Line (removed from Steam Store)

​

• Humble Hunie Sakura Bundle (can also trade for a full "charity" bundle (Australia Fire Relief Bundle or similar))
• Humble Sekai Project Bundle (can also trade for a full "charity" bundle (Stand with Ukraine Bundle or similar))

​
For trade:
*signifies that a game is tentatively up for trade, assuming I buy the bundle
​

• Nioh 2 – The Complete Edition
• Soulstice
• Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin – Ultimate Edition

​

• A Little to the Left
• Black Book

​

• Superliminal
• Taiji
• The Witness

​

• Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobed
• Life is Strange: True Colors
• Scorn
• There Is No Light: Enhanced Edition

​

• Hellpoint
• Remnant: From the Ashes
• Tails of Iron

​

• Hell Pie
• OTXO
• The Red Lantern
• Twin Mirror

​

• Arkham Horror: Mother's Embrace
• Blood Rage: Digital Edition
• Gloomhaven - Solo Scenarios: Mercenary Challenges
• Small World
• Small World - A Spider's Web
• Small World - Be not Afraid...
• Small World - Cursed!
• Small World - Grand Dames
• Small World - Royal Bonus
• Splendor
• Splendor - The Cities
• Splendor - The Strongholds
• Splendor - The Trading Posts
• Terraforming Mars

​

• A Short Hike(?)
• A Story Beside(?)
• Aces & Adventures(?)
• Arcade Spirits(?)
• Battlestar Galactica Deadlock(?)
• Beyond Blue(?)
• Cat Quest(?)
• Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?!(?)
• EARTHLOCK(?)
• Harmony's Odyssey(?)
• Homeworld Remastered Collection(?)
• Lacuna – A Sci-Fi Noir Adventure(?)
• Minecraft: Java Edition - MCC Island Jingle Jam Rewards Pack(?)
• Monster Prom(?)
• Sifu Deluxe Cosmetic Pack(?)
• Spirit of the Island(?)
• SUPERHOT(?)
• Tinytopia(?)
• Toodee and Topdee(?)
• Train Valley 2(?)
• Turbo Golf Racing(?)
• Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story(?)
• Xenonauts(?)

​

• Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs

​

• Dark Deity
• Edge Of Eternity
• Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising

​

• CRYPTARK
• Dead Estate
• Paint the Town Red

​

• Lost Castle
• My Time At Portia

​

• Toodee and Topdee

​

• WWE 2K23

​

• Chivalry 2
• Disco Elysium - The Final Cut
• The Forgotten City
• GRIME
• Spiritfarer®: Farewell Edition

​

• Back 4 Blood
• Batman: Arkham Asylum Game of the Year Edition
• Batman: Arkham City - Game of the Year Edition
• Batman: Arkham Knight Premium Edition
• Batman™: Arkham Origins
• Injustice 2 Legendary Edition
• Mad Max
• Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor Game of the Year Edition
• Middle-earth: Shadow of War Definitive Edition
• Mortal Kombat 11
• Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate Add-On Bundle
• Mortal Kombat XL

​

• Alan Wake Collector's Edition
• Bendy and the Dark Revival
• Pathologic 2

​

• CODE VEIN
• .hack//G.U. Last Recode
• Katamari Damacy REROLL
• TEKKEN 7

​

• A Juggler's Tale
• Spirit of the Island

​

• Boomerang Fu
• PlateUp!
• ROUNDS
• Stick Fight: The Game
• Ultimate Chicken Horse

​

• Fae Tactics
• Flynn: Son of Crimson
• Ikenfell
• Ring of Pain
• Void Bastards

​

• After the Fall® - Deluxe Edition
• Zero Caliber VR

​

• Patch Quest

​

• Five Dates
• Late Shift

​

• Demon Turf
• Pumpkin Jack

​

• Trover Saves the Universe

​

• Coromon
• The Dungeon Of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet Of Chaos
• Jack Move

​

• Road 96
• SuchArt: Genius Artist Simulator

​

• A Short Hike

​

• Cloudpunk
• Ghostrunner
• Severed Steel

​

• Eternal Threads
• Turbo Golf Racing

​

• Lethal League Blaze
• OlliOlli World
• WWE 2K BATTLEGROUNDS

​

• Dragon Fist: VR Kung Fu
• The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners

​

• Celeste

​

• Blasphemous
• Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
• Hollow Knight

​

• Behind the Frame: The Finest Scenery

​

• Bionic Commando: Rearmed
• Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen
• Lost Planet 3 - Complete
• Mega Man Legacy Collection
• STRIDER™ / ストライダー飛竜®

​

• Aground
• Calico
• Evan's Remains
• StarCrossed
• Teacup

​

• Into the Radius VR

​

• Aliens: Fireteam Elite
• Founders' Fortune
• Monster Prom 2: Monster Camp

​

• Nomad Survival
• Scarlet Tower

​

• The Citadel
• Viscerafest
• WRATH: Aeon of Ruin

​

• The Blackout Club

​

• BIOMUTANT
• Edge Of Eternity
• Golden Light

​

• Call of the Sea
• Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice

​

• 112 Operator
• 911 Operator
• The Amazing American Circus
• Armello
• Backbone
• Calico
• Euro Truck Simulator 2
• Farming Simulator 17
• Ghostrunner
• Guilty Gear X2 #Reload
• Lust from Beyond: M Edition
• Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine
• Orbital Racer
• Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition
• PAYDAY 2
• Pilgrims
• Soulblight
• Space Crew: Legendary Edition
• Starfinder Core Rulebook (Paizo key) and Starfinder Adventure: Junker's Delight (Paizo key)
• Strange Brigade
• Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones
• System Shock 2
• System Shock: Enhanced Edition
• Ticket to Ride
• XCOM® 2
• X-Morph: Defense Complete Pack

​

• Fallout: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game
• Fobia - St. Dinfna Hotel
• Othercide
• Shady Part of Me

​

• The Last Campfire

​

• Sakura Swim Club

​

• Summer in Mara
• Townscaper

​

• The Long Dark: Survival Edition

​

• Stranded Sails - Explorers of the Cursed Islands

​

• Conan Chop Chop
• Grow: Song of the Evertree

​

• Styx: Shards of Darkness

​

• Hard West
• John Wick Hex
• Phantom Doctrine
• Red Solstice 2: Survivors

​

• Arizona Sunshine

​

• Backbone
• Blade Assault
• First Class Trouble
• Super Magbot

​

• Golf Gang
• Maid of Sker

​

• Vampire: The Masquerade - Coteries of New York
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Shadows of New York
• Werewolf: The Apocalypse — Heart of the Forest

​

• Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl

​

• Crown Trick

​

• Guts and Glory
• Hello Neighbor

​

• Day of the Tentacle Remastered
• Grim Fandango Remastered
• STAR WARS®: Knights of the Old Republic™ II

​

• Duke Nukem Forever
• PGA TOUR 2K21
• WWE 2K Battlegrounds

​

• In Sound Mind

​

• Little Big Workshop
• Not Tonight

​

• Brigador Deluxe Edition
• Verdun

​

• Resident Evil 0
• Resident Evil 6
• Resident Evil

​

• EVERSPACE™

​

• Cultist Simulator
• GWENT: The Witcher Card Game - Ultimate Starter Pack (GOG key)

​

• The LEGO® NINJAGO® Movie Video Game

​

• Legend of Keepers: Career of a Dungeon Manager
• Legion TD 2 - Multiplayer Tower Defense

​

• STAR WARS™: Squadrons (Origin key)(?)

​

• Bionic Commando
• Street Fighter V

​

• As Far As The Eye
• Impulsion

​

• Orcs Must Die! 2 - Complete Pack

​

• Bartlow's Dread Machine

​

• Blaston

​

• White Day: A Labyrinth Named School

​

• The Walking Dead

​

• Total Tank Simulator

​

• Archangel: Hellfire - Fully Loaded

​

• XCOM® 2

​

• Black The Fall
• Goetia

​

• Among the Sleep - Enhanced Edition

​

• Dear Esther: Landmark Edition
• This War of Mine

​

• Tom Clancy's The Division™ (Uplay key)
• Tom Clancy's The Division™ - Survival (Uplay key)

​

• Highway Blossoms
• HunieCam Studio
• KARAKARA
• Sunrider Academy
• Sunrider: Liberation Day - Captain's Edition

​

• A Kiss For the Petals - Remembering How We Met

​

• Hacknet
• Satellite Reign

​

• The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing: Final Cut

​

• The Elder Scrolls: Legends: 2 Card Packs (Skyrim) 1 Event Ticket 100 Gold 100 Souls
• ESO Vanity Pet: Bristlegut Piglet and 15 Days of ESO Plus

​

• Ame no Marginal -Rain Marginal-
• KARAKARA
• Memory's Dogma CODE:01
• Narcissu 10th Anniversary Anthology Project
• Narcissu 10th Anniversary Anthology Project - Season Pass

​

• A Kiss For the Petals - Remembering How We Met
• Sakura Angels
• Beach Bounce
• Beach Bounce - Soundtrack
• Blue Rose

​

• Lionessy Story
• My Personal Angel
• Natural - Beyond Nature -
• Postmen Of Horizon (removed from Steam Store)

​

• The Reject Demon: Toko Chapter 0 — Prelude

​

• Koi-Koi Japan [Hanafuda playing cards]
• Mahjong Pretty Girls Battle
• Mahjong Pretty Girls Battle : School Girls Edition
• Poker Pretty Girls Battle: Texas Hold'em
• Pretty Girls Mahjong Solitaire

​

• Guns of Icarus Alliance
• Guns of Icarus Online
• Impossible Creatures Steam Edition
• Lethal League
• Tempest: Pirate Action RPG
• Tempest - Treasure Lands
• Tempest - Original Soundtrack
• Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolf
• Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide

​

• Tenta Shooter
• Gun Gun Pixies
• DUSK
• For The King
• Book of Demons
• PlateUp!
• Kingdom Two Crowns
• White Day: A Labyrinth Named School
• Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War
• Chivalry: Medieval Warfare
• Steel Rats™
• Hue
• Sifu Deluxe Edition Upgrade Bundle (Epic key)
• Gal*Gun: Double Peace
• The Invisible Hours
• Synergia
• ROCKETRON
• Project Nimbus: Complete Edition
• Dead Age
• Spirit Hunter: NG
• Slain: Back from Hell(?)
• Cook, Serve, Delicious!
• Tower of Time
• Danger Scavenger
• Survive the Nights
• Valfaris
• Nongunz: Doppelganger Edition
• This War of Mine

​

• Knights of Pen and Paper +1 Edition
• Knights of Pen and Paper 2 - Here Be Dragons

​

• 112 Operator
• 911 Operator
• Book of Demons
• Broken Age
• Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons
• Crying Suns
• Crying Suns
• Dear Esther: Landmark Edition
• Driftland: The Magic Revival
• Liberated (GOG key)
• Moon Hunters
• Out of Reach: Treasure Royale
• Wanderlust: Travel Stories (GOG key)
• WARSAW
• X-Morph: Defense + European Assault, Survival of the Fittest, and Last Bastion DLC (I believe this redeems as the linked Complete Pack, minus the soundtrack)
• ΔV: Rings of Saturn(?)

​

• Arcade Paradise
• Calico
• Say No! More
• Fallout: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game
• Fobia - St. Dinfna Hotel
• Phoenix Point: Year One Edition
• Deliver Us The Moon
• Morkredd
• Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos
• Spirit Hunter: NG
• Survivalist: Invisible Strain
• Warhammer: Vermintide 2
• ENDLESS™ Space 2
• Surviving the Aftermath
• The Long Dark

​

• Duck Game
• SCP: Secret Files
• WWE 2K23
• The Jackbox Party Pack
• Outward (redeems as the base game only, not the linked Definitive Edition)
• Outward - The Soroboreans
• Outward Soundtrack
• Blade Assault
• Founders' Fortune
• Hokko Life
• Monster Crown
• Othercide
• Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - Enhanced Edition
• ScourgeBringer
• Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey
• HOT WHEELS UNLEASHED™
• Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor Game of the Year Edition
• Sonic CD (removed from Steam Store)
• LEGO® Harry Potter: Years 1-4
• LEGO® Harry Potter: Years 5-7
• STRIDER™ / ストライダー飛竜®
• Bionic Commando
• Full Metal Furies
• Ultra Street Fighter® IV
• Starbound
• Mafia III: Sign of the Times
• BioShock 2
• Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor Game of the Year Edition
• Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter
• The Mean Greens - Plastic Warfare
• Crusaders of the Lost Idols Legendary Starter Pack
• Project CARS (removed from Steam Store)

​
WANT:
​

• 5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel
• art of rally
• Astebreed: Definitive Edition
• Avernum: Escape from the Pit
• BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger
• Cornucopia
• CrossCode
• Dead Rising 4
• Dungreed
• Mega Man X Legacy Collection 2
• Mega Man Zero/ZX Legacy Collection
• Mortal Kombat Komplete Edition
• Myst (2021)
• NBA 2K23
• NECROPOLIS: BRUTAL EDITION
• Omensight: Definitive Edition
• OPUS: Echo of Starsong - Full Bloom Edition
• OPUS: Rocket of Whispers
• OPUS: The Day We Found Earth
• Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid
• RAGE
• Resident Evil Village
• The Jackbox Party Pack 5
• The Jackbox Party Pack 6
• The Jackbox Party Pack 7
• Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap
• Zombie Army 4: Dead War

​

• any extra copies of WWE 2K23

​
IGS Rep Page: https://www.reddit.com/IGSRep/comments/ti26nz/mizznos_igs_rep_page/

Random Keys I have:
observer_ 11-11 Memories Retold 60 Parsecs! 911 Operator 911 Operator - Special Resources DLC A Good Snowman is Hard to Build A Mortician's Tale Aaero Acceleration of SUGURI 2 AER Memories of Old Agents of Mayhem Alien Spidy Almost There: The Platformer Always Sometimes Monsters AMID EVIL Anachronox Armello Assassin's Creed® Origins Avernum 3: Ruined World Awesomenauts Awesomenauts Cluck Costume Banner Saga 2 Battle Chef Brigade BATTLETECH BATTLETECH - Flashpoint BATTLETECH - Shadow Hawk Pack Bear With Me - Collector's Edition Beatbuddy: Tale of the Guardians Bejeweled™ 3 Bionic Commando Bionic Commando: Rearmed BIT.TRIP Presents... Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien Wii U Black the Fall Blackguards Blaston BlazBlue: Chronophantasma Extend Bleed 2 Boundless Brigador: Up-Armored Edition Broken Age Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons Brutal Legend Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box Origin Key Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 Additional Content Capsized Chasm Cities in Motion 2 Coin Crypt Company of Heroes™ 2 - The Western Front Armies: Oberkommando West Cook-Out Cook, Serve, Delicious! Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!! Crazy Machines 3 Cthulhu Saves the World Cursed Castilla (Maldita Castilla EX) Daikatana Dandara Darkside Detective Darksiders II - Wii U Darksiders II Deathinitive Edition Darksiders II: Deathinitive Edition Darksiders Warmastered Edition Deadlight Dear Esther Destiny 2 Planet of Peace Exclusive Emblem Detached DiRT Rally 2.0 - H2 RWD Double Pack DiRT Rally 2.0 - Opel Manta 400 Dirt Rally 2.0 - Porsche 911 RGT Rally Spec Distance DmC: Devil May Cry Do Not Feed the Monkeys DUCATI - 90th Anniversary Dungeons 3 Duskers Dustforce EARTH DEFENSE FORCE 4.1: Blood Storm EARTH DEFENSE FORCE 4.1: BM03 Vegalta Gold EARTH DEFENSE FORCE 4.1: Depth Crawler Gold Coat EARTH DEFENSE FORCE 4.1: Gigantus DCC-Gogo. Marking EARTH DEFENSE FORCE 4.1: Gigantus DCC-Zero Marking EARTH DEFENSE FORCE 4.1: Gigantus Tank, Bullet Girls Marking EARTH DEFENSE FORCE 4.1: Gigantus Tank, EDF IFPS Markings EARTH DEFENSE FORCE 4.1: Gigantus Tank, Natsuiro HS Markings EARTH DEFENSE FORCE 4.1: Gleipnir EARTH DEFENSE FORCE 4.1: Ifrit EARTH DEFENSE FORCE 4.1: Mission Pack 1: Time of the Mutants EARTH DEFENSE FORCE 4.1: Mission Pack 2: Extreme Battle EARTH DEFENSE FORCE 4.1: Pure Decoy Launcher 5 Pack A EARTH DEFENSE FORCE 4.1: Pure Decoy Launcher 5 Pack B EARTH DEFENSE FORCE 4.1: Reflectron Laser EARTH DEFENSE FORCE 4.1: Spark Lancer EARTH DEFENSE FORCE 4.1: Sting Shot EARTH DEFENSE FORCE 4.1: Volatile Napalm Eidolon Element4l Emily is Away Too Endless Space Emperor Edition ENSLAVED™: Odyssey to the West™ Premium Edition Espire VR Eterium Evergarden Evil Genius 2: World Domination Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remastered Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes FarSky Fight'N Rage Figment Finding Teddy Fluffy Horde Forged Battalion Forgive Me Father Frostpunk: The Rifts DLC Frozenheim Full Metal Furies Furi Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams GNOG God's Trigger Golf With Your Friends - OST GRID 2 Guacamelee! Gold Edition H1Z1 H1Z1 Trickster Crate Hacknet HackyZack Half Minute Hero: Super Mega Neo Climax Ultimate Boy Hard Reset Redux Hedon Bloodrite Hellbound Hello Neighbor Hide and Seek Hidden Folks Hitman 2: Silent Assassin Hitman: Codename 47 HIVESWAP: Act 1 HIVESWAP: Act 1 Holy Potatoes! We're in Space?! House Flipper VR I'm not a Monster Immortal Redneck Interplanetary: Enhanced Edition Jalopy Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth KickBeat Steam Edition Killing Floor 2 Killing Floor 2 Kona Lara Croft GO Laser League Last Day of June Late Shift LEGO Batman LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7 LEGO® Batman 2 DC Super Heroes™ Little Nightmares Lone Survivor: The Director's Cut Lost Castle Lostwinds Love is Dead Lovely Planet Magicka Magicka + 2 DLC Maize METAL GEAR SOLID V: GROUND ZEROES MIND: Path to Thalamus Mini Ninjas Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine Monster Prom Monster Train: The Last Divinity DLC Moon Hunters Moonlighter MOTHERGUNSHIP Mr. Shifty Music Maker EDM Edition Mutant Mudds Deluxe NAIRI: Tower of Shirin NBA Playgrounds NeuroVoider Nex Machina Nongünz Old Man's Journey Orcs Must Die! GOTY Orwell: Keeping an Eye On You Out of the Park Baseball 14 Outland - Special Edition Overgrowth Overgrowth Secret Preorder Forum (SPF) access Override: Mech City Brawl Owlboy Pac-Man 256 PAC-MAN™ CHAMPIONSHIP EDITION 2 Panoptic Paper Beast Paradigm Paratopic Party Hard Pathologic Classic HD Pikuniku Planet Alpha Planet Coaster - World's Fair Pack Pool Panic Populous Origin Key Prehistoric Kingdom Project Warlock Psychonauts Puss! Puzzle Bots Q.U.B.E. 2 Quake Champions Early Access plus 50 Shards, 100 Platinum, 2000 Favor RAD Rapture Rejects Rapture Rejects - Humble Exclusive "Safari Outfit" DLC Rebuild 3: Gangs of Deadsville Red Faction Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered Red Matter Regions of Ruin Regular Human Basketball Resident Evil Revelations Resident Evil Revelations Resident Evil Revelations 2 - Episode 1: Penal Colony Reus Rising Storm 2: Vietnam + 2 DLCs Road Redemption RUINER Sairento VR Sanctum 2 Sanctum: Collection Scanner Sombre Seasons After Fall Serial Cleaner Seven: The Days Long Gone Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom Shoppe Keep Silence Slipstream Sniper Elite Speed Brawl Splasher Sportsball Wii U Star Wars™ Jedi Knight Dark Forces II Star Wars™ Jedi Knight™ II: Jedi Outcast™ Star Wars™ Jedi Knight™: Jedi Academy™ Star Wars™ Starfighter™ Star Wars™: Dark Forces Starfinder: Pact Worlds Campaign Setting Starseed Pilgrim State of Mind Stealth 2: A Game of Clones Steel Rats Stick Fight: The Game Stories Untold STRAFE: Millennium Edition Strider STRIDER™ Subterrain Sudden Strike 4 Sundered Super Daryl Deluxe Super Hexagon SUPERHOT Surgeon Simulator: Experience Reality Surviving Mars Sword Legacy Omen Swords & Soldiers II - Wii U Swords and Soldiers 2 Shawarmageddon Swords of Gurrah Tannenberg Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure The Adventure Pals The Blue Flamingo The Bureau: XCOM Declassified The Darkness II The Dwarves The Elder Scrolls: Legends: 2 Card Packs (Skyrim) 1 Event Ticket 100 Gold 100 Souls The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing - Complete Pack The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing II The Journey Down: Chapter Three The LEGO® Movie - Videogame The Norwood Suite The Sexy Brutale The Shrouded Isle The Spiral Scouts The Surge The Swapper The Tenants This is the Police Thomas Was Alone Thomas Was Alone Tiny Echo Tom Clancy's EndWar™ Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell® Blacklist™ Tom Clancy's The Division™ Tom Clancy's The Division™ - Survival Tomb Raider Total War: ROME II - Caesar in Gaul (DLC) Tower Tag Train Valley 2 Tropico 4 Type:Rider Ultra Street Fighter® IV Until You Fall Viking: Battle for Asgard Vikings - Wolves of Midgard VVVVVV VVVVVV Wandersong Wands World of Goo World to the West Worms Revolution Wurm Unlimited X-COM: Apocalypse X-COM: Enforcer X-COM: Interceptor X-COM: Terror from the Deep X-COM: UFO Defense Year Walk Zombie Night Terror Zombotron
MAY 2024 HUMBLE CHOICE Yakuza: Like a Dragon Steelrising Loddlenaut King of the Castle Amanda the Adventurer Mediterranea Inferno
APRIL 2024 HUMBLE CHOICE Victoria 3 The Callisto Protocol Humankind Definitive Edition Fashion Police Squad Terraformers Symphony of War Coromon The Excavation of Hob's Barrow
MARCH 2024 HUMBLE CHOICE Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin Nioh 2 Saints Row Citizen Sleeper Black Skylands Soulstice Afterimage Destroyer: The U-boat Hunter
FEBRUARY 2024 HUMBLE CHOICE Life is Strange: True Colors Scorn Beacon Pines There Is no Light Children of Silentown Oaken
JANUARY 2024 HUMBLE CHOICE Marvel's Midnight Suns + Dr Strange Defender Skin Two Point CAmpus Aragami 2 OTXO Roguebook The Red Lantern Twin Mirror
NOVEMBER 2023 HUMBLE CHOICE Hardspace: Shipbreaker WWE 2K23 Friends vs Friends The Legend of Tianding SCP: Secret Files Souldiers
OCTOBER 2023 HUMBLE CHOICE The Quarry Deluxe Edition Metal Hellsinger Dark Pictures House of Ashes Rebel Inc: Escalation Spirit of the Island Lords and Villeins A Juggler's Tale Mr. Prepper
SEPTEMBER 2023 HUMBLE CHOICE Tiny Tina's Wonderland Chaotic Great Edition Deceive Inc. The Forgotten City Aces & Adventures Patch Quest Foretales Who Pressed Mute on Uncle Marcus? Astronauts Vs Piratebots
AUGUST 2023 HUMBLE CHOICE SuchArt: Genius Artist Simulator Hot Brass Trek to Yomi Road 96 Tin Can
JULY 2023 HUMBLE CHOICE Shotgun King: The Final Checkmate Ozymandias: Bronze Age Empire Sim Merchant of the Skies Roadwarden Yakuza 4 Remastered Kraken Academy!! JUNE 2023 HUMBLE CHOICE Turbo Golf Racing Honey I Joined a Cult Eternal Threads Meeple Station GRIME Curse of the Dead Gods MAY 2023 HUMBLE CHOICE Spiritfarer: Farewell Edition Operation: Tango Bendy and the Dark Revival Windjammers 2 Behind the Frame: The Finest Scenery Builder Simulator The Invisible Hand APRIL 2023 HUMBLE CHOICE Monster Prom 2: Monster Camp The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante Revita Rollerdrome Life is Strange 2: Complete Season Founders' Fortune
DECEMBER 2022 HUMBLE CHOICE Where the Water Tastes Like Wine Blade Assault Backbone First Class Trouble Super Magbot NOVEMBER 2022 HUMBLE CHOICE Roboquest UnMetal Morbid: The Seven Acolytes Raji: An Ancient Epic Eldest Souls
JUNE 2022 HUMBLE CHOICE Gamedec Pumpkin Jack SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE Siege Survival: Gloria Victis Call of the Sea I am Fish Star Wars Squadrons Phoenix Point: Year One Edition MAY 2022 HUMBLE CHOICE If Found... Surviving the Aftermath Genesis Noir Command & Conquer Remastered Collection Embr Spellcaster University APRIL 2022 HUMBLE CHOICE Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos Suzerain Killsquad NARUTO TO BORUTO: SHINOBI STRIKER
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Thankbox is a successful B2C bootstrapped website created by Valentin Hinov which is now doing $30-35k a month. Val saw an opportunity to create an e-card tool after witnessing the British culture of awkwardly passing cards around the office. Read on for Val's tips on building a B2C business, marketing and making a product people actually want.
Can you introduce yourself and Thankbox?
My name is Valentin Hinov and I’m originally from Bulgaria but now live in Edinburgh, Scotland. I started Thankbox in 2020 with my partner, Tsvetelina. Thankbox is an online appreciation platform. At its core is a group card combined with a gift collection. It’s used mostly within businesses as a way to appreciate staff occasions - events like birthdays, farewells and retirements.
It makes it super easy to set up a card for someone and let the whole team add messages and contribute funds for a gift - people can add GIFs, videos & photos. Combined with our huge library of customisation options you end up with a really awesome looking card for any occasion.
Can you tell us what you’ve achieved with Thankbox?
Thankbox has been running for just over 4 years - we’ve just had our birthday last month in May. In that period it went from a side project to a full time business supporting a small team. It’s currently making about $30-35k a month - there’s a lot of seasonality when it comes to card sending so some months are stronger than others. There’s also no MRR to track since none of our revenue is subscription-based. The business model is still very much B2C (business to consumer) with individual sales.
With that in mind, the metric I like to keep my eye on is the number of active users we’ve had over the last year. That’s a user who has made a purchase in the last 12 months. It’s currently sitting at around 32,000 and getting higher each month. Thankbox relies on repeat purchases to get the most lifetime value per customer. The least amount of money someone can spend with us is $5.99 for a single card - ideally we want them to make several like that, eventually buying a pack of prepaid cards which can go for up to $299 for a pack of 100.
The last metric I’m really proud of is our gift card processing value - Thankbox currently processes nearly $500,000 of gifts every month on behalf of our customers.
What are some B2C advantages and disadvantages?
Funnily enough, before we started Thankbox with my partner I told myself to definitely avoid B2C startups but I guess I was bad at following my own advice! B2C has a bad reputation amongst founders - both bootstrapped and venture-backed and with good reason.
You need a lot of sales volume to achieve results. Customers can often be price-sensitive, even with a low-cost product. This makes it harder to raise prices - we’ve not raised ours once since we started! Also, if your UX isn’t super optimised then customer support can be outsized compared to the revenue you’re making.
It’s not all doom and gloom, though. Yes, you do rely on sales volume but it also means that you aren’t beholden to individual customers. If someone doesn’t like what Thankbox does, there’s millions more people that can be my customers instead.
When you have lots of customers plus a good product you get networking effects working for you. At least 30% of my new customers every month come recommended by someone else! It’s a very good flywheel I can rely on to keep bringing new people through the door every month. B2C can also serve as a good entry point for a B2B model.
For example, Thankbox is mainly used within business environments, where people send birthday, farewell or retirement cards to their staff. With that in mind, we are now trying to shift our positioning from being just an online card to instead thinking about Thankbox as an employee appreciation platform. That is a whole different offering where we can start talking and approaching business as customers. But those lessons only came after we ran exclusively as a B2C model for our first years.
Why did you decide to work on Thankbox?
Before working on Thankbox I spent 2 years building a social media app with no clear goal or direction - it never made any money or attracted investment. I knew nothing about startups and was just fumbling in the dark without a clear sense of what to do to get this thing off the ground.
Once that folded I told myself that whatever I end up doing next should only take a couple months to put together and it will be a paid product from the start. I immersed myself in bootstrapper culture and started learning more about how startups work. And, honestly, I just wanted to make some money online to prove I can do it - even if it was just $10.
I live in Britain where everyone in the office gives cards to each other for things like birthdays, someone working 10 years at the company or someone moving job. Everyone passes around the card and signs it but it was always a bit awkward, especially in small offices where it’s hard to keep it a surprise! Also, teammates working remotely can’t take part.
In late 2019 I decided there must be an easier way. I had a look and there were no solutions covering both cash collection for gifts as well as the message to the recipient. That’s when I realise, this is something I can make! My last startup had failed so I shared the idea with my wife (who is also my business partner).
She loved the idea of an online service so we started to look into the idea more. It wasn’t until Covid hit in March 2020, though, that we really decided to go for it. Everyone was going to work from home and it was a now-or-never moment. The first version of Thankbox went live two months later in May.
How did you first get people to check out the site?
I started tweeting about Thankbox and my partner and I started posting on LinkedIn as soon as the development kicked off in March 2020. We didn’t have huge followings but some people noticed it and became interested. A lot of them were office workers now stuck at home so they immediately related to the idea. A lot of the early traction was just from our personal network around Scotland. We actually had our very first sale just an hour after launching! It’s a moment I’ll never forget - making my first £4.99 online!
For the first 6 months I knew where every single Thankbox customer came from because they were either people me or my partner knew or people that our contacts had recommended us to. It wasn’t making much money but the initial feedback was invaluable to help build out the core features the product needed.
Then, in late 2020 after giving our landing page a much-needed makeover we started running search ads and immediately saw an uptick. We went from selling 100 cards a month to 500 the next, to 1500 the one after that. Cheap PPC carried us through to about 2022 with fantastic growth almost every month. We still use it as a channel now, but aren’t as reliant on it since the costs have risen astronomically and there’s much more competition. But it got the wheels of the business spinning and allowed us to find our feet with other channels - like SEO, which haven been a lot more reliable.
How long did it take to make the first version of Thankbox?
Only about two months! I actually had no website experience when I started it and was still doing contact dev work for clients at the time. My skills were mainly in mobile app development. So I turned to a good friend of mine who had helped me with some web dev work before. He's a really solid full-stack developer who's done tons of freelance web work. We chatted about Thankbox and he offered to set up a profit sharing agreement in exchange for getting the first version off the ground.
We agreed that once Thankbox hits certain revenue milestones he'd get a share of the monthly profits for a year. This was great as it de-risked the whole project significantly for me - requiring a lot less upfront investment. I also knew that he would do an amazing job in setting up the initial stack. We kept scope very very small - cutting features constantly until we were able to reach an MVP we felt comfortable launching with. It had lots of issues, yes, but the core of it was there - you could create a card, invite others to sign it and contribute money and send it to your recipient. That’s still the core of our product today, even though it does plenty more than that.
What tips do you have for making money with one-time purchases?
If you’re going to be playing the volume game then make your product as self-serve as possible. Most customers should never have to contact you to figure stuff out. We’ve spent countless hours optimising the full flow - from creating a Thankbox, to sharing it with others, to sending it to be as straightforward as possible. We must be doing something right because half of our 500+ Trustpilot reviews mention the word “easy” in them.
Also - automate, automate, automate. We process thousands of transactions each day - people buying Thankboxes, people adding money to Thankboxes and recipients claiming their gift cards. All of that needs to be tracked and records kept for bookkeeping, funds security & fraud prevention. We’ve invested a lot of time in automating as much of this as possible - down to generating automated Excel reports and auto-populating Xero. Honestly, the business model wouldn’t even be viable if we hadn’t. Thank goodness Stripe has great APIs!
When you’re dealing with many small individual transactions, payment processing fees can take a huge cut of your revenue. To illustrate the point - we charge contributors to a Thankbox gift card pot a small fee to leave money (for example, to leave $10 we charge $0.48) and that helps us offset part of our processing fees. If we didn’t do that then we couldn’t offer gift collections as a service as the Stripe fees would end up costing us more than we’d make from the Thankbox sale.
What is a mistake you see a lot of first-time founders making?
Not talking to their customers. Not even knowing who their customers are. I was actually talking to a friend of mine recently who shared his new startup idea with me. He spent 20 minutes talking about how great his product will work, how technically advanced it’ll be. But not once did he mention where he’ll find his first customers. It’s easy to get excited about building but you should always start with your customer first.
Even though we have hundreds of new customers per day we still send a welcome email to every one of them. We ask them for feedback on Thankbox after they send their first one. And I still personally reply to every single response we get - which can be 10+ a day! This keeps me in touch with what customers need, why they picked us and what we can improve. It’s also a great way to build rapport with customers in an experience which is otherwise very self-serve.
I also send LinkedIn invites every month to some of our top customers - those who buy cards regularly or buy our bigger team-focused packs. I do my best to stay connected with who our customers actually are - not who I think they are.
Can you talk about what tech you use for Thankbox?
Thankbox is built on Laravel - the most widely used PHP web framework. I love Laravel because it has a ton of first and third-party packages - both free and paid. This has saved me a ton of time rather than building stuff myself. The support is great and the community is huge and most importantly Github Copilot understands it very well!
The frontend is mostly Vue.js with Typescript and Tailwind - also a pretty standard, non-complicated combo and that’s the way I like it. It allows me to move fast and it’s easy to hire for - which I’ve found to be very valuable now that we have 3 developers working on the codebase.
p.s. If you want to keep up to date with SaaS news and read more interviews like this, check out my newsletter: https://www.highsignal.io/newslette

Thankbox is a successful B2C bootstrapped website created by Valentin Hinov which is now doing $30-35k a month. Val saw an opportunity to create an e-card tool after witnessing the British culture of awkwardly passing cards around the office. I interviewed Val so that people can learn from this successful SaaS founder.

Can you introduce yourself and Thankbox?

My name is Valentin Hinov and I’m originally from Bulgaria but now live in Edinburgh, Scotland. I started Thankbox in 2020 with my partner, Tsvetelina.
Thankbox is an online appreciation platform. At its core is a group card combined with a gift collection. It’s used mostly within businesses as a way to appreciate staff occasions - events like birthdays, farewells and retirements.
It makes it super easy to set up a card for someone and let the whole team add messages and contribute funds for a gift - people can add GIFs, videos & photos. Combined with our huge library of customisation options you end up with a really awesome looking card for any occasion.

Can you tell us what you’ve achieved with Thankbox?

Thankbox has been running for just over 4 years - we’ve just had our birthday last month in May. In that period it went from a side project to a full time business supporting a small team.
It’s currently making about $30-35k a month - there’s a lot of seasonality when it comes to card sending so some months are stronger than others. There’s also no MRR to track since none of our revenue is subscription-based. The business model is still very much B2C (business to consumer) with individual sales.
With that in mind, the metric I like to keep my eye on is the number of active users we’ve had over the last year. That’s a user who has made a purchase in the last 12 months.
It’s currently sitting at around 32,000 and getting higher each month. Thankbox relies on repeat purchases to get the most lifetime value per customer. The least amount of money someone can spend with us is $5.99 for a single card - ideally we want them to make several like that, eventually buying a pack of prepaid cards which can go for up to $299 for a pack of 100.
The last metric I’m really proud of is our gift card processing value - Thankbox currently processes nearly $500,000 of gifts every month on behalf of our customers.

What are some B2C advantages and disadvantages?

Funnily enough, before we started Thankbox with my partner I told myself to definitely avoid B2C startups but I guess I was bad at following my own advice!
B2C has a bad reputation amongst founders - both bootstrapped and venture-backed and with good reason. You need a lot of sales volume to achieve results. Customers can often be price-sensitive, even with a low-cost product. This makes it harder to raise prices - we’ve not raised ours once since we started! Also, if your UX isn’t super optimised then customer support can be outsized compared to the revenue you’re making.
It’s not all doom and gloom, though. Yes, you do rely on sales volume but it also means that you aren’t beholden to individual customers. If someone doesn’t like what Thankbox does, there’s millions more people that can be my customers instead.
When you have lots of customers plus a good product you get networking effects working for you. At least 30% of my new customers every month come recommended by someone else! It’s a very good flywheel I can rely on to keep bringing new people through the door every month.
B2C can also serve as a good entry point for a B2B model. For example, Thankbox is mainly used within business environments, where people send birthday, farewell or retirement cards to their staff. With that in mind, we are now trying to shift our positioning from being just an online card to instead thinking about Thankbox as an employee appreciation platform. That is a whole different offering where we can start talking and approaching business as customers. But those lessons only came after we ran exclusively as a B2C model for our first years.

Why did you decide to work on Thankbox?

Before working on Thankbox I spent 2 years building a social media app with no clear goal or direction - it never made any money or attracted investment. I knew nothing about startups and was just fumbling in the dark without a clear sense of what to do to get this thing off the ground.
Once that folded I told myself that whatever I end up doing next should only take a couple months to put together and it will be a paid product from the start. I immersed myself in bootstrapper culture and started learning more about how startups work. And, honestly, I just wanted to make some money online to prove I can do it - even if it was just $10.
I live in Britain where everyone in the office gives cards to each other for things like birthdays, someone working 10 years at the company or someone moving job. Everyone passes around the card and signs it but it was always a bit awkward, especially in small offices where it’s hard to keep it a surprise! Also, teammates working remotely can’t take part.
In late 2019 I decided there must be an easier way. I had a look and there were no solutions covering both cash collection for gifts as well as the message to the recipient. That’s when I realise, this is something I can make! My last startup had failed so I shared the idea with my wife (who is also my business partner). She loved the idea of an online service so we started to look into the idea more.
It wasn’t until Covid hit in March 2020, though, that we really decided to go for it. Everyone was going to work from home and it was a now-or-never moment. The first version of Thankbox went live two months later in May.

How did you first get people to check out the site?

I started tweeting about Thankbox and my partner and I started posting on LinkedIn as soon as the development kicked off in March 2020. We didn’t have huge followings but some people noticed it and became interested. A lot of them were office workers now stuck at home so they immediately related to the idea. A lot of the early traction was just from our personal network around Scotland.
We actually had our very first sale just an hour after launching! It’s a moment I’ll never forget - making my first £4.99 online!
For the first 6 months I knew where every single Thankbox customer came from because they were either people me or my partner knew or people that our contacts had recommended us to. It wasn’t making much money but the initial feedback was invaluable to help build out the core features the product needed.
Then, in late 2020 after giving our landing page a much-needed makeover we started running search ads and immediately saw an uptick. We went from selling 100 cards a month to 500 the next, to 1500 the one after that. Cheap PPC carried us through to about 2022 with fantastic growth almost every month.
We still use it as a channel now, but aren’t as reliant on it since the costs have risen astronomically and there’s much more competition. But it got the wheels of the business spinning and allowed us to find our feet with other channels - like SEO, which haven been a lot more reliable.

How long did it take to make the first version of Thankbox?

Only about two months! I actually had no website experience when I started it and was still doing contact dev work for clients at the time. My skills were mainly in mobile app development.
So I turned to a good friend of mine who had helped me with some web dev work before. He's a really solid full-stack developer who's done tons of freelance web work. We chatted about Thankbox and he offered to set up a profit sharing agreement in exchange for getting the first version off the ground.
We agreed that once Thankbox hits certain revenue milestones he'd get a share of the monthly profits for a year. This was great as it de-risked the whole project significantly for me - requiring a lot less upfront investment. I also knew that he would do an amazing job in setting up the initial stack.
We kept scope very very small - cutting features constantly until we were able to reach an MVP we felt comfortable launching with. It had lots of issues, yes, but the core of it was there - you could create a card, invite others to sign it and contribute money and send it to your recipient. That’s still the core of our product today, even though it does plenty more than that.

What tips do you have for making money with one-time purchases?

If you’re going to be playing the volume game then make your product as self-serve as possible. Most customers should never have to contact you to figure stuff out. We’ve spent countless hours optimising the full flow - from creating a Thankbox, to sharing it with others, to sending it to be as straightforward as possible. We must be doing something right because half of our 500+ Trustpilot reviews mention the word “easy” in them.
Also - automate, automate, automate. We process thousands of transactions each day - people buying Thankboxes, people adding money to Thankboxes and recipients claiming their gift cards. All of that needs to be tracked and records kept for bookkeeping, funds security & fraud prevention. We’ve invested a lot of time in automating as much of this as possible - down to generating automated Excel reports and auto-populating Xero. Honestly, the business model wouldn’t even be viable if we hadn’t. Thank goodness Stripe has great APIs!
When you’re dealing with many small individual transactions, payment processing fees can take a huge cut of your revenue. To illustrate the point - we charge contributors to a Thankbox gift card pot a small fee to leave money (for example, to leave $10 we charge $0.48) and that helps us offset part of our processing fees. If we didn’t do that then we couldn’t offer gift collections as a service as the Stripe fees would end up costing us more than we’d make from the Thankbox sale.

What is a mistake you see a lot of first-time founders making?

Not talking to their customers. Not even knowing who their customers are. I was actually talking to a friend of mine recently who shared his new startup idea with me. He spent 20 minutes talking about how great his product will work, how technically advanced it’ll be. But not once did he mention where he’ll find his first customers. It’s easy to get excited about building but you should always start with your customer first.
Even though we have hundreds of new customers per day we still send a welcome email to every one of them. We ask them for feedback on Thankbox after they send their first one. And I still personally reply to every single response we get - which can be 10+ a day! This keeps me in touch with what customers need, why they picked us and what we can improve. It’s also a great way to build rapport with customers in an experience which is otherwise very self-serve.
I also send LinkedIn invites every month to some of our top customers - those who buy cards regularly or buy our bigger team-focused packs. I do my best to stay connected with who our customers actually are - not who I think they are.

Can you talk about what tech you use for Thankbox?

Thankbox is built on Laravel - the most widely used PHP web framework. I love Laravel because it has a ton of first and third-party packages - both free and paid. This has saved me a ton of time rather than building stuff myself. The support is great and the community is huge and most importantly Github Copilot understands it very well!
The frontend is mostly Vue.js with Typescript and Tailwind - also a pretty standard, non-complicated combo and that’s the way I like it. It allows me to move fast and it’s easy to hire for - which I’ve found to be very valuable now that we have 3 developers working on the codebase.
p.s. If you want to keep up to date with SaaS news, check out my newsletter: https://www.highsignal.io/newslette

Chapter One
On February 25, 2018, Feng Ji returned to Shenzhen from Shanghai by plane. It was late when he arrived, and as he took a taxi back to his company, he sensed that it was time to make a decision. He called his fellow partners to convene at the office to discuss the path forward. At 2 a.m., Feng Ji wrote three options on the whiteboard in the meeting room: "First, everyone dedicates themselves to creating a standalone action game; second, to develop a popular RPG+SLG mobile game of the time; third, to split into two teams, one for mobile games, with five or six people allocated to prepare for a standalone action game."
They all opted for the third option.
Before leaving for the meeting upon Feng Ji's call, Yang Qi posted on Weibo. Anticipating what Feng Ji would propose, he had been waiting for this call. His post read, "Starting the new year with a grand gamble, ten years in the industry feels like it has all been leading up to this day. Heading out for a midnight meeting, the trees in my entire neighborhood whisper my name..."
On August 16, 2020, sitting in Feng Ji's office, he recounted this story to me. Reflecting for a moment, Feng Ji shared that the meeting at 2 a.m. wasn't really a "turning point."
"It wasn't that dramatic," Feng Ji told me. "We had discussed this for a long time before. And I recently revisited our business plan from 2016 when we were fundraising—you know, you have to write these things for funding. I found that one-third of it was about our intention to create a standalone game—I had even forgotten about it until I checked our chat records...it was indeed the case."
Feng Ji is the founder of Game Science Studio. In 2014, Feng Ji and several colleagues who had collaborated on 'Fighter of the Destiny' left Tencent to establish Game Science.
Game Science's initial projects were trendy at the time. Yang Qi's artistic style was intense and prominent, and Feng Ji knew how to elevate the sophistication of games. Their strategy involved identifying the most popular game genres in the market and combining them with top-tier art, world-building, and storytelling. 'Hundred Generals March' was a card game, 'Art of War: Red Tides' a real-time competitive game, and 'Red Tide Auto Chess'...an auto-chess game. When launched, auto-chess was trending, and the game saw decent online numbers, but then, seemingly overnight, interest in auto-chess waned, and so did their player statistics.
In November 2017, two months after the public beta of 'Art of War: Red Tides', the company partners believed an RPG+SLG project could generate revenue quicker. Thus, they embarked on developing a game of this type, set in the same universe as 'Red Tides', with Feng Ji as lead planner and co-founder Yang Qi as lead artist.
By early 2018, Yang Qi had sketched numerous concept designs for the new game, and Feng Ji had done some preliminary planning. However, Feng Ji felt that the game lacked excitement. "I couldn't take it anymore—you understand what I mean?" Feng Ji explained. "By 'couldn't take it,' I mean that the game we were making wasn't something I particularly wanted to play."
"Although we all believed we'd eventually make a standalone game, we always felt the timing wasn't right, waiting for conditions like having a large sum of money or...just waiting for the right moment," Feng Ji elaborated.
But Yang Qi was not willing to wait any longer. "During a meal, Yang Qi firmly insisted we must proceed," Feng Ji recalled. "He said you can always find a reason not to start, whether it's insufficient funds, manpower, or other inadequacies...If we kept waiting, we might never begin. But he felt if we didn't start soon, the company might lose its appeal to him...So we began seriously discussing it."
That afternoon, in Feng Ji's office, I met Yang Qi. Compared to Feng Ji, he appeared calm and detached, as if accustomed to observing himself and the situation from a third-person perspective. With his mask pulled down to his chin, he smoked cigarettes with fruity flavor capsules. We chatted while smoking.
When I asked Yang Qi why he was so resolute about this, he casually replied, "We've waited for a while, made some other games, because we need to live, after all, survive first."
I posed the question again.
After a moment of thought, he earnestly told me, "Because I don't think I can keep making games like this for many more years...my health won't hold up. Before, I could work around the clock for days without issue, but now, one late night and I need rest. Moreover, a person's creative lifespan is limited; one's golden period of creativity might only span a few years, where you have experience, energy, and a sharp mind...This is your most precious time, and if you don't create something great during this period, you may never get another chance in life..."
After deciding to develop a standalone game, Yang Qi's spirits visibly lifted. At the time, Game Science didn't have a Hangzhou studio; all development staff worked on the second floor of their Shenzhen office. Post-meeting, they cleared a small corner on the first floor for the project, and Yang Qi moved there the next day. Feng Ji, as the founder of Game Science, felt responsible for the "people who came out with him." He also wanted to see his friends engaged in something enthusiastically—even just being enthusiastic was enough.
Chapter Two
Game Science's Hangzhou studio is nestled within a startup industrial park on the outskirts of the city. The park, newly built, boasts a scattering of Hui-style buildings with their characteristic white walls and black tiles. I arrived on a scorching summer afternoon, discovering that due to the lingering pandemic, nearly all the buildings stood empty. A few workers were seen maintaining the roads.
"Initially, we were told there would be things like Starbucks, but because of the pandemic, none of that has opened yet," Feng Ji pointed out to me, gesturing towards vacancies.
Game Science occupies a four-story building here. When I visited around 2 PM, their workday was just beginning. The rooms were dimly lit, with almost everyone slumped lazily in chairs, seemingly on the verge of dozing off. Screens displayed animations or game videos, or interfaces that looked intricate and impressive. All windows lacked curtains; some had cardboard pieces taped up with transparent tape to shield against direct sunlight.
"We haven't had the chance to install curtains yet," Feng Ji mentioned as we climbed upstairs. The second floor served as a common area, housing a few treadmills and exercise bikes in a corner and tables and chairs in the center. The third floor was vacant, save for a 70-inch display on one wall and several wooden swords and shields in another corner. Feng Ji explained they conducted initial inertial motion capture here, which served as a reference for more intricate optical motion capture later. The fourth floor housed Feng Ji's office, though he admitted he seldom stayed upstairs.
The single-player project team moved to Hangzhou in December 2018. Feng Ji appreciated Hangzhou's ambiance, its pace less hectic than Shenzhen's and with more affordable housing, fostering an environment where "everyone can patiently persevere." As a mature company with ample development experience, Game Science sidestepped many pitfalls common in game development. Their core team had collaborated for years, intimately aware of each other's strengths. Familiar with game development processes and backed by successful titles, they maintained a small but highly experienced and cohesive team, deliberately controlling project scope.
Initially, there was consensus on creating a game: a weakly online, strongly combat-focused, melee-centric action title. Debates arose over specific style, but the overarching direction remained. Conversations about the game's style, character traits, and details organically evolved over daily chats during meals and at workstations. Inspired by Feng Ji's fascination with Dark Souls and Yang Qi's preference for Monster Hunter, they agreed on a game featuring "intensely pressuring enemies," "intricately designed levels," and "a mysterious narrative conveyed through fragmented storytelling."
Up until then, Game Science primarily used Cocos and Unity engines, known for their simplicity and low learning curve. For the new project, Unreal Engine emerged as the optimal choice, prompting the entire team to start from scratch learning Unreal. Feng Ji learned camera manipulation, Yang Qi experimented with scene setup and lighting adjustment, and planner "Village Chief" began constructing whiteboxes, determining obstacle placement and setting up barriers.
In May 2018, the preliminary research group assembled their first basic scene to experiment with fundamental combat feel, AI behavior, and combo mechanics. Upon success, they ventured into crafting a demonstrative level showcasing the "final visual effect." They chose Flower Fruit Mountain. A scene in the video depicts the protagonist advancing amidst clouds, accompanied by a dragon, against a backdrop of lush peaks – this is Flower Fruit Mountain.
By late 2018, the Flower Fruit Mountain level was largely formed, implementing basic gameplay functions. The protagonist emerges from a cave to find heavenly soldiers besieging Flower Fruit Mountain, engages in battles, fights a celestial general, and eventually ascends to the clouds to confront armies under the watchful eyes of the Four Heavenly Kings. "Waves of 100,000 heavenly soldiers would come, with the staff transforming into an exaggerated state..." This level was showcased at the year-end meeting. Portions appear in the video's conclusion, with Feng Ji noting plans to revamp the less natural-looking aspects of the heavenly soldiers.
In 2019, the team grew to around 20 members, focusing on delivering "a complete level experience." Deciding it should mirror the final quality players would experience, they named the level Black Wind Mountain. In 'Journey to the West', Black Wind Mountain appears in the chapter "Monk of the Jade Spring Temple Plots for Treasure; Monster of Black Wind Mountain Steals the Robe." It marks the first demon encounter for Sun Wukong on his pilgrimage, which is prominently featured in the video's gameplay demonstration.
Chapter Three
The challenge of creating the Blackwind Mountain level surpassed the expectations of most people, despite prior preparations.
"When you actually start working on it, you realize how difficult it is to create a level that's narrative-driven and emotionally immersive for players," Feng Ji shared with me. "There are so many things you want to include – should monsters engage in dialogue with you? What are they doing when you're not around? Why do you have to fight them? Shouldn't there be some buildup before encountering them?"
All these "desired elements" are intertwined with technology and industrial workflow. In today's era, for a high-investment commercial game, creativity is no longer the sole determinant; realization matters more. In reality, "realization" entails multiple concurrent workflows, each needing to maintain controllable efficiency and quality.
To produce a short in-engine cutscene, the process typically unfolds like this: the narrative designer first scripts the scene, followed by the creation of 2D storyboards. Then, a simple level model is constructed using polygon models without textures (everything appearing white, hence developers call this a 'white box'). Once the white box is ready, dynamic storyboarding takes place within it. If character close-ups are required, motion capture comes into play, starting with a preliminary performance using inertial motion capture devices, tested in-game. If the mood isn't right, it's back to the drawing board. If satisfactory, optical motion capture is used to generate the final product.
Throughout game development, countless production pipelines run concurrently. The larger the game scale and the more advanced the technology, the greater the unpredictability. Any loss of control—be it in quality or efficiency—can spell disaster.
They treated Blackwind Mountain as a minimum viable product. The development team dared not embark on large-scale production until everything was proven feasible. Feng Ji meticulously explained, "Optical motion capture, for instance, involves a studio with 60 cameras and a team of dozens serving you. The daily cost is around 200,000 to 300,000 yuan. If you say, 'Sorry, we weren't prepared today, let's not proceed,' the bill still stands."
Feng Ji demonstrated a playable version of the Blackwind Mountain level, which I also tried out—it wasn't entirely stable, occasionally crashing. He seemed a bit anxious, constantly reminding me that "the handling is far from optimal," "some skills aren't finalized yet," "the stats need adjusting," and "it's not the final quality; many details are missing."
I was already sufficiently astonished. The demo video matched the actual gameplay visuals. I heard a streamer who saw this game's demonstration was thrilled, telling friends, "Triple-A gaming from China has arrived!"
But Feng Ji avoided mentioning the term "triple-A." On one hand, he feared it might invite criticism; on the other, he found the definition imprecise—"What do you mean by triple-A? We know what each 'A' stands for, but this specific definition... is very vague."
"At least one aspect is about spending a lot of money," I said. "Can you disclose the development cost of the game?"
"You can estimate it this way: for every hour of gameplay the player experiences—not including constant stuck points or deaths, but relatively smooth gameplay...," Feng Ji told me, "the development cost is 15 to 20 million yuan per hour."
Chapter Four
Navigating through Zhihu, China's equivalent of Quora, one would periodically encounter a string of questions intertwined with the terms "China," "3A," such as "Why doesn't China have any triple-A games?" or "When will China have its own triple-A titles?" and even "Does China necessarily need triple-A games?" These inquiries are steeped in both hopeful aspirations and a sense of frustration—given our country boasts the world's largest gaming company and a highly lucrative gaming industry, why haven't we produced a triple-A game yet?
For many, myself included, the term "3A" symbolizes an Olympic gold medal, embodying a myriad of aspirations and accomplishments. Anyone with over a year's experience in the gaming industry can easily enumerate the gaps between us and triple-A standards. However, sometimes, one cannot pinpoint precisely what's missing until the endeavor begins.
Watching the 13-minute promotional video attentively reveals that the protagonist, the monkey, remains largely silent, devoid of dialogue or facial expressions, just like all other characters. This led to a perceived lack of character development in the video, issues that Feng Ji attributes to classic "technical problems."
"There's an unconfirmed rumor that Naughty Dog's ratio of artists to technical artists is 1:1," Feng Ji shared. Technical artists can be thought of as individuals who are adept at both technology and artistry, a simplified yet not entirely inaccurate depiction. In essence, technical artists ensure that artistic visions are realized to their fullest potential by providing technical support and enhancing the quality and efficiency of art production. Where tasks require a seamless collaboration between technology and art, a technical artist becomes indispensable.
"One reason we seek technical artists is our determination to excel in storytelling," Feng Ji emphasized. "Motion capture introduces numerous challenges in connection, environmental interactions, and positioning. Remember the final battle with Ling Xuizi, the wolf, in the video?"
"I do."
"Initially, we designed a sequence where the protagonist transforms into a giant ape, leading to a spectacular execution. The wolf would leap down from a roof, only to be caught mid-air by the ape, who would then grip its teeth, pin it to the ground, and pounce. Sounds impressive, right? The problem was, the moment the hand gripped the teeth, clipping occurred. We couldn't stabilize the protagonist's position, causing the teeth to protrude through the fingers."
"This is where technical artists come in," Feng Ji continued. "They ensure proper alignment and can even determine the material properties of each model. Ideally, the wolf's tooth material could simulate piercing flesh... But we couldn't execute it well. After two months, we abandoned the idea and revised the ending. We lost several months due to this design issue, and ultimately, we couldn't resolve it."
Thus, this scene never made it to the final cut. Feng Ji assured me, however, that they're not giving up and will eventually create this climactic moment.
Feng Ji recounted a legend at Naughty Dog, where each artist's desk had a dedicated button. Pressing it summoned a technical artist to address any issues the artist encountered. "Is it a particle emitter problem? An issue with fluid dynamics? Scene interaction? I'm here to fix it on the spot."
Game Science understands the significance of technical artists but lacks a sufficient number. Not just Game Science, but domestically, there's a scarcity of seasoned technical artists, with most "working in giants like Tencent and NetEase."
Nonetheless, they've overcome some obstacles. In the trailer, when the monkey picks up a blade called "Chì Cháo," Feng Ji revealed that it wasn't pre-animated. The monkey could walk up to the blade anywhere, grasp it, and tuck it into his ear. The key was the natural movement of approaching and extracting the sword, a process that took the development team roughly two to three months to refine.
Feng Ji stood up to demonstrate, "You've played 'The Last of Us Part II,' right? After playing that, I felt quite despondent... Did you notice the characters' movements? Say I'm sitting here, and the game prompts me to pick something up—I could be facing it head-on or sideways, yet the action feels incredibly natural?"
I struggled to recall this seemingly insignificant detail in the game. Feng Ji went on, "Initially, we thought it involved capturing more actions, but we discovered the subtlety in character orientation, particularly the feet. If we only captured frontal actions, what about when the object is on the side? Do we rotate? Smooth turning wasn't in our assets, and programming it looked odd. To avoid awkwardness, we could brute force it, creating 32 actions just for picking up this knife, covering every angle. But in the game, you don't just pick up knives; you open doors, wield hammers. Multiplying all actions by 32 would be unfeasible in terms of production costs and resource consumption."
Feng Ji continued, "We researched solutions and studied presentations by major studios at GDC. That's when we discovered Ubisoft's proposed solution, Motion Matching. Its power lies in requiring only a set of base motion capture animations, which Motion Matching then uses, without manual tweaking by animators, to generate a complete, fluid character movement system."
I inquired, "Is this library open-source?"
"There are some open-source versions online, but they're very immature. We refined it to a product level... We reverse-engineered Ubisoft's methods, filling in the blanks where they didn't disclose specifics, like designing the entire action set, accommodating unconventional locomotion animations...," Feng Ji explained, "Yet, comparing to 'Odyssey,' or even more impressively, 'God of War' or 'The Last of Us,' you realize you're still not on par. Their foundational animation libraries and corresponding mathematical algorithms remain a black box to us. It's their moat, their defense."
I asked, "If you manage to develop all these, would it become your moat too?"
"Absolutely," he affirmed, then added, "But they have generations of product iterations under their belt; this isn't something that can be achieved overnight."
Chapter Five
They were constantly faced with choices. For instance, should the game emulate the style of 'Monster Hunter', or that of 'God of War', or adopt the 'Soulsborne' genre? They realized each style entailed different focuses and nuances. Emulating 'God of War' would necessitate a focus on cinematics and execution moves, while 'Monster Hunter' would require tackling the intricacies of large enemy animations. A 'Soulsborne'-style game would demand attention to character progression and dueling combat mechanics—each direction posed its own challenges. The team's primary concern was defining the overall feel they wanted players to associate with their game. They sought to pinpoint how players would describe it.
This quandary persisted until Feng Ji reached a realization: "When we aim to replicate a very specific product... we inherently risk becoming a second-rate game. Even if we pay homage well, it naturally positions us as a lesser alternative in players' minds."
They made a conscious effort to differentiate from the best in the industry. "I acknowledge they may represent the optimal solution for action games today," Feng Ji told me, "but we must distance ourselves from these titles." They avoided direct references, opting instead for innovations like "Bronze Head Iron Arm" and using "Golden Cicada" for stealth.
Level design posed another challenge. Feng Ji was once enamored with the 'box garden' design philosophy of Soulsborne games, characterized by meticulously designed pseudo-sandbox levels prevalent in Japanese games. However, by the end of 2019, the team recognized that 'Wukong' wasn't suited for this approach. They decided that to convey the grand epic feel of 'Journey to the West', multiple levels interconnected by teleportation would better represent a vast, authentic world, allowing for more creative freedom in map design.
Feng Ji still aimed for a "box garden feel" within individual maps, respecting the art team's pursuit of realism. He explained, "In 'Dark Souls', many scenes take place in cathedrals, which lend themselves to looping designs with verticality, but you can't force stairs or elevators into a forest setting. So, it's context-dependent; Black Wind Mountain is flatter, while Leiyin Temple can be more intricate... Yet, I insist on maintaining some openness for exploration within the maps."
Feng Ji was eager to share the game's lore and aesthetic, but I've chosen not to reveal much here. Prior to seeing the final product, any assessment would be premature. This game isn't a replication of 'Journey to the West', nor do they intend to perpetuate the radical, rebellious spirit of 'Asura'.
At times, they're hesitant to mention 'Asura', seemingly wary of player associations. Nonetheless, they do link the two, as evident in the promotional video's closing caption, "After the White Bones, Revisit the Journey."
"Why do you think we said that?" Feng Ji asked me. "'Asura' players have a joke: 'After White Bones, there is no more Journey.' We planned five chapters; Chapter Three, Farewell Lady, referred to Lady White Bones. Our story stopped abruptly there, with later parts reduced to text quests. Thus, players joked, 'After White Bones, no more Journey.'"
On August 20th, when the video was released, Yang Qi posted on Weibo: "This theme has been a burden for over a decade. Many colleagues don't speak of it, but we all know this heartache can't be ignored. It's an honor to Stage display our progress today, and we'll give it our all going forward, hoping not to disappoint again."
I messaged Feng Ji on WeChat, asking, "Can you ask Yang Qi why he used the word 'again'?"
Feng Ji replied, "He probably feels 'Asura' had regrets." He added, "So do I, but without resentment."
"When you say 'resentment', towards whom?" I queried.
"Mainly towards myself," Feng Ji said. "Back then, I wasn't brave enough."
Chapter Six
I shared a portion of my written article with a friend. I told them, "I don't want people to think this endeavor is arduous... as if it's some '80s reportage literature."
"It's alright," they said. "It still feels a bit tough, but not overly so."
"I'll revise it then," I replied. "I'm just afraid people might think they're struggling when, in truth, they're ecstatic."
In conversations with Feng Ji and Yang Qi, I asked what concerned them most after the video went public. Feng Ji worried that the video wouldn't gain the attention it deserved, fading into obscurity. Yang Qi, on the other hand, feared that their team would be poached by numerous companies post-release. As an observer, my greatest concern was the skepticism and attacks from public opinion –doubting the video as CG, animation, or a deception; accusing them of exploiting emotions, making empty promises, and playing up their hardships.
It's not the fault of gamers. Each query can be traced back to several actual cases where they were misled by inexplicable promotions, leading to anger and then cynicism, believing that trust and enthusiasm come with danger. Meanwhile, "sentimentality" has turned into a pejorative due to overuse. There seems to be a pattern: when we talk about people pursuing their ideals, we must emphasize their choices and sacrifices, including some lofty and melancholic keywords, typical moments—like a lone figure walking towards the sunset.
But Feng Ji and Yang Qi didn't exhibit gloom, resentment, conflict, or sacrifice. Feng Ji was radiant when discussing the game. He would start from one point and branch out like a Wikipedia entry, constantly associating and digressing further. This made me repeatedly examine whether my article truly captured their immersive joy. You see, when people engage in what they love, nearly everything appears joyful.
Towards the end of our conversation that day, for some reason—maybe a comment or a particular moment—we veered into an odd direction.
"Yang Qi once told me, if we crawl now, we could reach a mountain of gold and silver—a huge fortune. If crawling guarantees success, I'd kneel right away without needing persuasion. I desperately want to make money. The problem is, which path guarantees such success through this method?"
"I couldn't answer him," Feng Ji told me. "Many people point at a successful product and ask if emulating its strengths will guarantee success. But as you know, many have better execution and resources than us. What sets us apart? In the end, you rely on your intuition—you must first move yourself. Only when your intuition is strong can you more easily touch users. If you're insensitive to something yourself, leaving aside ego, if you're not sensitive, your pace of improvement will lag behind those who are passionate about it. How can you succeed then?"
Yet, even so, success is not guaranteed for them. Game development is a prolonged process, especially for a project of this scale. The promotional video still had issues; they quietly developed for two years, with the team growing from seven to thirty. They anticipate another two years of development, more work, more team members, and countless unknowns ahead.
After the video's release, Feng Ji started feeling anxious. He messaged me on WeChat, worried about being overpraised. "There's no real sense of security yet..." he said. "I'm the type who struggles to feel happy until things actually happen."
I told him he'd get used to it—not just as a hollow wish. In my view, perhaps unknowingly to him, it's already happening. All this praise and astonishment are part of it, the team's deserved reward.
I still choose to believe that good things come when one decides to pursue what they truly love.
Chapter Seven
In the days leading up to the trailer's release, Game Science consistently posted trailer posters on their official Weibo account. One poster each day was accompanied by a few lines of text or a short poem. On August 19th, the day before the trailer dropped, the caption Game Science provided for the poster read: "Once I was so old, now I am in my prime."
These words are derived from "My Back Pages," a song by American folk legend Bob Dylan. In this song, Dylan unhesitantly criticizes and ridicules his past actions and stances – poignantly, he was only 23 at the time. The song is composed of six verses, each beginning with reflections on the past and ending with the line mentioned. The final two verses go like this:
With the stance of a warrior,
I aimed my spear at those full of empty talk,
Uttered my manifestos,
Caring not if I contradicted myself.
My life was guided by a tumultuous vessel,
Where rebellion brewed aboard at every turn.
Once I was so old,
Now I am in my prime.
Indeed, the imaginary threats fueled my fighting spirit,
The sense of moral superiority made me reckless,
I deceived myself constantly,
Fantasizing about what I must protect.
For some reason, back then, I drew a clear line
Between good and evil.
Once I was so old,
Now I am in my prime.
Epilogue
At 7 PM on the 20th, I arrived at a cinema in Hangzhou. Feng Ji had previously informed me that all Game Science employees were to watch a movie together that evening, a team-building exercise and a celebration of a milestone achieved. He had invited me along and also mentioned a surprise he had prepared for his colleagues – before the film began, the cinema would screen the trailer for 'Black Myth: Wukong.'
As the hour drew near, developers from Game Science trickled into the cinema in twos and threes. They appeared no different from ordinary college students or overworked white-collar workers numbed by their jobs. One wouldn't guess they were the creators of this game. Glasses perched on their noses, clad in T-shirts and sandals, their faces devoid of overt emotion, they seized every opportunity to glance at their phones.
I approached one of them, asking, "Are you with Game Science?" He turned to me and confirmed, "Yeah."
Casually, I inquired, "The video you guys put out today did pretty well, right? How are you feeling about it?"
He eyed me suspiciously, pausing for a second before replying stiffly, "Ah... this... I have nothing to say on that..." Then, he walked away slowly but resolutely.
Feng Ji couldn't make it; he was tied up with other matters. After the video's release, his WeChat exploded with messages—congratulatory notes, inquiries, collaboration proposals. The admin staff at Game Science told me that several groups had visited their office that afternoon, including two groups of players. "They said they were nearby, got excited after watching the video, and decided to drop by—we gave them a tour of the office," the admin shared.
Game Science had reserved a small theater. About thirty people sat inside—the very team behind the game. In the morning, they had been stars in the eyes of gamers nationwide, yet now, their faces betrayed little.
But their excitement was palpable. Seated, they fiddled with their phones, surfing the web. Some discussed the video's view count on Bilibili, one voice wondering, "It's already hit 5 million views, do you think it'll reach 8 million tonight?" Another responded, "Are you kidding? Views don’t grow linearly."
Close by, I guessed a pair of planners, chatting while scrolling through their phones. One said to the other, "Some comments suggested making the death screen look better since players will die a lot." They chuckled, and after, the other commented, "We should definitely make it spectacular!" More laughter followed, then one suggested, "Why don't we write, 'Victory and defeat are common in war, hero, please try again!'" The other clapped, exclaiming, "Great! Retro!" They put down their phones, grinning at each other.
The lights dimmed abruptly, and Game Science's logo flashed on screen, causing a brief stir among the audience—only for silence to swiftly descend. The trailer they crafted, which had electrified the entire internet that morning, played out, yet everyone sat upright, the theater utterly quiet.
When the trailer ended, as expected, the cinema remained hushed. A smattering of applause started but quickly died when few joined in. An atmosphere of silence enveloped the room, devoid of cheers, applause, or whistles, none of the excitement one might expect at a movie screening. I guessed it wasn't due to being stunned or numbness, but shyness—the developers weren't accustomed to expressing their emotions. They just sat there until the lights came back on.
The admin entered the theater, informing everyone that the main feature would start in eight minutes.
The developers sighed collectively, and tranquility returned. After a moment, a voice asked, "Can we watch it again?"

Just something I thought of while continuing to work on some of my Halo cards set. Felt like the art fit on the farewell card.

Haven't seen this posted anywhere in its entirety yet, so here's the link:
https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/modern-horizons-3-commander-decklists
First up was Creative Energy.
First glance, there's some pretty big reprint news here:
[[Aetherworks Marvel]]
[[Goldspan Dragon]]
[[Akroma's Will]]
[[Gonti's Aether Heart]]
Probably best to unload what you have of these before the new supply hits the market. Some others like Farewell and some lands too. On the other hand just those cards alone pay for the deck pretty much so that's nice I guess.
ETA: Full Eldrazi deck now up on MTG Goldfish, so here's a link to the MH3 Commander Precon decklist page too:
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/modern-horizons-3-commander-decklists
ETA: Eldrazi now on the official MtG site above as well as MTGGoldfish.

I am not the designer, I have copy and pasted this text from his post on BGG and the Radlands Facebook group. It is a great read, enjoy!
Greetings, punks!
I’m Daniel, the original punk, and designer of Radlands.
I’m very excited to tell you about Cult of Chrome, the expansion for Radlands. I’m going to do a fairly deep dive into this, for those who are interested. This will be somewhat long.
Before I do, everyone should know that I’ll be doing 23 previews of camps from the expansion, in the lead-up to the release. Make sure to check back here.
Let’s start right at the DAWN OF TIME, with Radlands itself.
I never intended for Radlands to have an expansion. If there was something that could go in an expansion, it could just go in the base game instead. I wanted to make a game with amazing gameplay and replayability, in a small package. Many players really appreciate that this is a product they don’t need to keep spending money on, to keep enjoying it.
Today, Radlands is still selling well, with around 150,000 copies sold already.
When Roxley asked me to do an expansion, I agreed that one (and only one) expansion would be reasonable. It just needed to be done properly.
I saw posts on the forums, where players talked about an expansion. Many of them said that Radlands didn’t need an expansion, and others said they didn’t want the game ruined by one. It was an elegant game, that was great as it was. I agreed. As a board gamer myself, I’ve been let down too many times, by expansions that bloated or warped a great game, for no real reason.
However, I also knew that people would love to have cool new stuff. Could these things be reconciled? I felt like they could.
Roxley gave me complete free rein to make the expansion as I saw fit, with the only real proviso being that it had to fit into the box for all versions. That was very reasonable, and allowed for 32 more cards.
I decided on the following approach, and put it in my explanatory document for Roxley:
“This expansion should contain content that is new, exciting, and has great gameplay. As much as is possible, this content should be built within existing systems, rather than via the alteration/addition of systems.”
To be clear, this expansion is full of cool new stuff, with NO new rules. This is MORE RADLANDS.
I obviously can’t guarantee that everyone will love this expansion, but virtually no one will dislike it.
First, what kinds of cards would actually be in the expansion? I decided that camps added the most longevity and value to the game, and the space would be best spent on those, while leaving the deck unchanged. There’s no great value in disturbing the deck, by adding a few people or events, and making the fundamental play of the game slightly different. Better to just use all the space for a massive new chunk of 32 new camps!
There will now be 66 deck cards (unchanged), and 66 camps.
Radlands already has so many novel camp combos. Adding 32 new camps makes that number multiply many-fold, not just double. The new camps, when used on their own (which you can do), have as many internal combos as the base game. Now, consider how many new combinations there with new and old camps!
There was a bit of a problem with having 32 new camps, though. Radlands has 34 camps. Why? That was all I could come up with. Was it actually possible to make so many more camps, without adding new rules and concepts, or having the new camps just be really complicated or second-rate?
I had to reach this target of 32 camps, which I knew wouldn’t be easy. However, I knew there must’ve been some camp ideas that I missed the first time around.
• I went through every game rule, zone, concept, and object, thinking about cards that could reference it. • I mapped the existing camps into a four-page long taxonomy of concepts, so I could explore the space more methodically. • I created a spreadsheet that randomly generated new camps. It created mostly nonsense, but occasionally sparked an idea. • I drew hands of camps, and thought about what non-existent camp they’d combo with. • And, I just endlessly pored over the card file. Thinking about one camp often yielded ideas for new ones.
I did this for weeks, and reached the magical number of 32. In fact, I created over 100 plausible camps. The next step was to cull them down to the best 32. This expansion wasn’t going to be just any camps, like the base game. This was going to be the best of the best!
Roxley and I then recruited fans of the game, to playtest this mass of unrefined camps. About 40 people volunteered to help. This was actually a very big job we were asking of people, and the work was really done by about 6 diehards. They’ll get 5% off their 10th copy. My thanks go out to everyone who expressed an interest in helping.
The playtesters played the camps endlessly, on Tabletop Simulator. I created a spreadsheet, and each playtester had their own column, where they could rate each camp out of 10, and give feedback. It took a lot of ratings before I could start culling. But, over a few months, I used the ratings, my judgement, and (later) a whole lot of discussion, to eventually narrow it down to the final set. This final set was loaded with camps that real fans played with and loved. What they liked and didn’t like was sometimes surprising to me. Don’t feel sad for the camps that didn’t make it. I extracted the full value out of those original 100 designs. During the previews, I’ll talk more about this.
Later on in the process, I asked the playtesters to submit their own camps. They were added anonymously to the game, and rated by the other playtesters, as well as being evaluated by me. They were given equal treatment to the other camps. There was a process, but later on, I would just say “spam me with any cards or card ideas at any time. I’m mainly looking for X.” Like most game designers, their early ideas were complex and wacky. However, they eventually got good at designing cards that were elegant and interesting but not totally off-the-wall. Designing complex things is easy. Designing simple things is hard. Five of the final camps were designed by the playtesters to some extent (some are unchanged, while others just have some distant relationship to a playtester’s original idea.)
Also, during this time, Gavan, boss of Roxley, asked me if I also wanted to redo some of the base game camps in Radlands. I jumped at this opportunity. I could get rid of 10 unloved camps from the base game, and give the players 10 juicy new ones from the expansion file. This wouldn’t just be an opportunity to give the players better camps, this window of 10 camps would let me stuff a whole lot of much-needed things into the base game, that would make it play better. I was also asked to keep the original camp art, which wasn’t too hard.
My apologies if you liked any of these 10 camps, but they were the least liked ones. Please pay your respects, and bid them farewell. They are: Cache, Cannon, Construction Yard, Obelisk, Resonator, Scavenger Camp, Training Camp (you’ll see why later), and Warehouse. Mercenary Camp is also being replaced, because it’s often oppressive. Command Post is just having one starting card knocked off, as there are now far more punks in the game. So, you’re really getting 9 new camps.
The 32 expansion camps are significantly better than the original game’s camps, both individually, and for the gameplay overall. The 9 base game replacement camps are huge improvements on their previous incarnations, even if you liked the old ones. This means 41 great new camps.
There are some things that were underutilised in the game, and I wanted to use them more, like punks, the 3T slot, movement of people, and traits. I also wanted to push the game in certain big-picture directions, like reducing stalls and repetition. I also wanted to create camps that would allow for more different play styles. I’m happy to say that this was all achieved.
This is the only expansion Radlands will ever have, and I’m very happy with how it rounds out the game. An unnecessary amount of thought and work went into it. I hope you like it.
Keep an eye out for the previews.
Daniel

I asked AI to make sidemen disstracks.

KSI

Yo, JJ, think you’re the king, but you’re really just a pawn, Claim you’re undefeated, but your talent’s overdrawn. Got a million subs, but your music’s outta tune, Fighting Logan Paul? That’s your peak, you’re a goon.
Acting all tough, like you’re the alpha of the pack, But Deji’s got more heart, that’s a certified fact. Your raps are weak, man, your bars don’t impress, Even Ricegum’s better, gotta confess.
You’re loud and obnoxious, always seeking attention, Without the Sidemen, you'd fade to dimension. Stop acting like a big shot, you’re just a joke, KSI, more like KSI-wannabe-bloke.

Simon (Miniminter)

Simon, the tall one, but there’s no substance there, In the shadow of your friends, dude, life’s unfair. Always second fiddle, just a background filler, Got no game, no fame, you’re a YouTube killer.
Think you’re funny with your dry, deadpan jokes, But your humor’s so stale, it’s provoking folks. Can’t keep a girl, always in the friendzone, Miniminter? More like Miniminter-Alone.
Football skills lacking, couldn’t score if you tried, Living off the Sidemen’s fame, yeah, you ride. Got a long way to go, to be even mid-tier, Simon, you’re a punchline, that’s crystal clear.

Josh (Zerkaa)

Old man Josh, yeah, you’re ancient in the game, Trying to stay relevant, but it’s all in vain. Zerkaa the invisible, the one no one remembers, Living off past glory, burning out like embers.
You’re the grandpa of the group, always lagging behind, While the others make waves, you’re just losing your mind. Your vlogs are boring, no one’s tuning in, Even your gaming’s weak, can’t get a win.
Got a podcast no one listens to, who you tryna fool? Zerkaa, your time’s up, you’re out of fuel. Keep dreaming, Josh, that you’re still in the race, But you’re a has-been, man, just face the disgrace.

Ethan (Behzinga)

Behzinga, Ethan, always chasing clout, Lost weight, but still, can’t figure it out. Fitness transformation? Yeah, that’s all you got, But personality-wise, man, you’re left to rot.
Your laugh’s annoying, like a hyena on crack, Always loud, always extra, bro, take it back. Trying to flex muscles, but your content’s weak, Even with gains, you’re still looking bleak.
Got a gym membership, but not a single brain cell, Behzinga, your channel’s a ghost town, farewell. Keep lifting, Ethan, it’s all you’ll ever do, Your relevance is fading, that much is true.

Vik (Vikkstar123)

Vikkstar, the nerd, think you’re smart, think you’re slick, But your gameplay’s basic, yeah, it’s pretty sick. Minecraft and COD, that's all you ever play, Same old content, every single day.
Always out of sync, can’t keep up with the crew, They’re making big moves, while you’re stuck like glue. You’re the weak link, the nerdy outcast, Living in their shadow, your time’s long past.
Think you’re a genius, but you’re just a geek, Even in your prime, you’re past your peak. Vikkstar123, more like Vikkstar nobody, Just a tag-along, in this Sidemen comedy.

Tobi (TBJZL)

Tobi, the nice guy, but you’re way too soft, In the Sidemen circle, you’re always tossed. Got no edge, no bite, just playing it safe, But in this savage game, you’re way outta place.
Your positivity’s boring, it’s not gonna last, Always the background, fading real fast. Can’t stand out, no matter how hard you try, TBJZL, more like TBJ-Zzz, goodbye.
Think you’re inspirational, but you’re just bland, In this sea of sharks, you’re just quicksand. Nice guys finish last, and that’s your role, Tobi, in this rap game, you’ve got no soul.

Harry (W2S)

Harry, the wild card, always causing a scene, But your reckless antics are just plain obscene. Think you’re hilarious with your over-the-top pranks, But deep down, you’re just filling in the blanks.
Always raging, always screaming, bro, calm down, In this game of kings, you’re just a clown. Your FIFA skills declining, can’t keep up the pace, W2S? More like W2-Face.
Throwing shade at everyone, but you’re the biggest mess, Always in drama, but can’t handle the stress. Harry, take a step back, you’re falling apart, In the Sidemen’s lineup, you’re the weakest part.

My partner has just left me after our 8-year relationship and our IVF journey of 5 years with 8 failed transfers came to an end. He said he was tired, scared, and had lost confidence in our future. He wants to have a normal life like others, having a child around. He said he can't fix everything. He is happily living with me at the moment, but he doesn't know if he will regret it in the future. The child is the big stone in his jar. I can give him lots of little pebbles, but I won't be able to fill his jar with that big stone. I have offered every option I can think of, including adoption and surrogacy, but he said both options have a lot of uncertainties and don't guarantee an outcome. He can't take any more failures and doesn't think he will be able to overcome them.
If we had known at the beginning that IVF wouldn't succeed, he probably would have considered a better option for us without going through all this pain. It's just so many things are going wrong at the same time—his work and IVF. He couldn't take any more stress in his life. If his work were okay, he might be open to adoption or surrogacy. But he has no energy or faith to deal with everything at once. His life has so many disappointments, and he couldn't face any more. I used to think that our IVF journey would make us a stronger couple, but unfortunately, it didn't. I know he is depressed and needs his own time and space, and I have to let him go because he is a good man and deserves a family. But damn, I just can't stop crying. He is with his family now, and I am moving out in 2 days. I don't know how to pack and don't want to pack. It's so surreal. It just feels like he is away on a normal business trip, but when he's back, I won't be here anymore.
I know people say he wasn't good to me and left me for this, but why can't I hold myself together and move on? Why do I still love him? Life was never easy for me before I met him. My mum passed away when I was 9. I had a 10-year marriage, and my ex was a completely bad guy. Until I met my partner, he helped me build hope and confidence in my life again. I can't fault anything he did during our 8 years together. He was always there, looking after me and taking care of me. No matter what happened, he always held my hand and said, 'Don't worry, you have me, and we will fight together and find a way.' The 5-year IVF journey was hard, but he helped me through the whole process. So, I didn't see this coming.
Today is day 2. I've been thinking about him all day, hoping he would message me, but he didn't. When I saw him online on WhatsApp, I really wanted to send him a message to tell him I loved him and missed him. I know I am being foolish. It's 1 in the morning, but I still can't sleep. I've been talking to ChatGPT all day, just hoping it will take my pain away. ChatGPT told me to keep a journal. I called Samaritans because I felt I lost all my strength. I live alone in this country, with no family and close friends around me. I just don't know if I can make it through this time.
Day 3 is getting worse and worse. I couldn't control myself. I messaged and called him. He is at his family party. We've been invited as a couple, but now I can't join them anymore. He told me to go out and relax and that it will get better. He said we've both been in this situation before from our previous relationships, so it will be alright this time. I can tell he is on his way to moving on, which makes me even sadder. I keep asking God, why me? Why does our relationship have to end like this? Day 3 didn't go well, but at least it's nearly over. I called him and he called me. I cried and cried and asked if there was a slim chance for us. The reality is brutal; the answer is NO.
Day 4, I still can't sleep. I can't stop thinking about his face when we talked yesterday. I can tell he is more relaxed. I did ask him what if a new relationship doesn't work out as he expects. He said it's okay. At least it will give him a chance or the possibility to have a family, which is already enough and a relief for him. I am trying to understand his decision because I am stuck. I've been thinking about how and when things went wrong. The IVF journey has made him tired, and all the disappointments have made him stressed and sad. But I am the same. The only difference is I have no choices left; the only options are either adoption or surrogacy. He still has a few cards left to play. He said life with me will be a tough journey, and he doesn't think he can help me go through it because he needs to help himself. He's been fighting all his life for everything, but it hasn't gone well. He hasn't accomplished anything. And having a child is an accomplishment he wants in his life. I am 46 and he is 42. I know he needs to hurry up so I should let him go, seeing that he has lost a lot of weight and is suffering from deep depression. I want to see him happy again, but at the same time, I don't know how to be happy again without him.
It's so hard not to contact him. We always texted and videoed each other when one of us was away during the past 8 years. I told myself to stop texting or calling him anymore. It sounds pathetic, but I am still missing him so much.
I haven't contacted him today. I called my dad and told him everything. I thought I was on the right track until, in the middle of my lunch, a sad feeling suddenly hit me. Then I started crying again. For 4 days, I’ve woken up alone, eaten alone, and slept alone. I know it's unhealthy, I haven't gone out for 4 days, but I just can't. My friend told me that no matter how much I miss him or how desperate I am to call him, I need to hold myself back; otherwise, I will never get over it. But I am still thinking about where he is, what he is doing now, and how he is.
I am packing now, so many memories together. Nearly called him, messaged my friend to stop me calling him. I didn't call him at the end.
Day 4 is nearly gone. He called earlier, but I didn't answer the phone. I know he just want to check if I am ok, but I don’t want to cry in the front of him anymore. Even I am desperate want to talk to him, but I know it’s not good for me to move on.
Day 5, another sleepless night. Today I am moving out, leaving the city I came to because of him. Looking at this house filled with memories, everything was put together by us. Tears burst out suddenly. I miss him so much, I want to call him, I want to ask if we really can't go back. There are so many people in this world, but there is no longer an "us."
Suddenly I am so calm to the point where it scares me, I clean the room, vacuum, mop the floor, do laundry, fold clothes, take the bin out, tidy up the fridge, clean the kitchen, and water the plants. It feels like a farewell ceremony for myself. In two hours, I will be saying goodbye to all the memories in this house. I tride not to call him. I once swallowed my pride to save this relationship. Now, I want to keep my pride because he knows exactly how I feel, yet he still left. But I am still sad.
Day 5 is nearly over, back to my house. I didn't call him, but still checking if he is online. I even went to see his LinkedIn. I know I shouldn't, just just can't resist.
Day 6, managed to get a few hours of sleep last night, but then the anxiety attack hit me. Last night, my friend said something didn't add up. He must be seeing someone or at least have someone in mind. I tried to deny it, but deep inside, I know it might be true. Knowing he is seeing someone makes me anxious. I know I need face and accept the brutal reality, but I can't, I don't know how. I wish I have the strength. But I just want to text him, say morning to him, say I missed him. but I need to hold myself together. Life is hard, but I didn't expect this hard.
He texted me, asking how I am and if I want him to call me back. I know he probably just wants to check if I am okay or to make himself feel better, less guilty. But I don't know how to reply. If I say I don't want him to call me, it's a lie. If I say I want him to call me, it will make me more sad. I know I will cry when I hear his voice and see his face. And what are we going to talk about? How much he's been moving on, or me? In the end, I didn't reply.
He just called me. I answered, and I tried very hard to hold back my tears and not show my emotions. He said it's awkward to talk to me like this. I don't think I can hold a conversation like we used to. Yes, it's awkward. But what can I do? Carry on talking like a friend, knowing he has already moved on? He said he just wants to help me. I told him I appreciate that he still cares about me, but the only person who can help me is myself. It's better not to call me anymore. I don't want to see him talking to me like a caring friend. After the phone call, I felt like I run out of all my energy and cried again.
Day 7, I dreamed of him last night. In my dream, we were like the couple we used to be, living a normal life together. I lost my mind when I woke up; I just wanted to go back to my dream and didn't want to wake up. Then I regretted telling him to stop calling me, but it's so hard to see his face knowing he is not with me anymore. Yesterday, I could tell from his face that he was only calling to check if I was okay; there was no love anymore. But I still love him, still miss him.
Day 7 is nearly over, and I am missing him. He didn't contact me. There were a few moments when I nearly called him. I don't know how I feel now. Sometimes I'm okay, sometimes I want to cry. I know I shouldn't think about him. I just can't understand why he suddenly decided to give up our 8-year relationship. People say everything has a reason. But what's the reason? Is it that I don't deserve a family？
Day 8 I dreamed last night. I can't feel pain in my dreams; I wish I could live in my dream. Now I understand alcoholics, they don't feel the pain when they're drunk. I don't want to wake up.
I went to the office today. I tried to keep my head down to avoid any conversations with my colleagues. I don't think I can control myself from crying if they talk to me. But hearing the normal chat makes me sad. They talked about holiday plans or their daughters' school prom dresses. It feels like my life has lost purpose. Back home alone, I can't stop checking my phone, just wanting to see if he is online or not. I don't know what I expect. Sometimes I want to delete his WhatsApp, but I can't.
Day 8 is finishing in 5 minutes, I nearly called him, my finger nearly touched the video. It's hard. I am afraid I can't hold on any more called him then regret.
Day 9. I still can't sleep. Only sleeping can take my pain away. I dreamed about him last night. In my dream, I asked him why. I was more sensible and normal in my dream, but when I woke up, I felt sad again.
Day 9 didn't go well. God didn't give me enough strength to hold myself together. I called him tonight to ask for closure, to know what he really wants to do. He couldn't give me an answer, just saying he doesn't know what his decision is. But at the same time, he said he doesn't have the same feelings as before. I said I just want an explanation—a breakup, him wanting to move on, or any explanation. But he didn't.
Day 10 didn't sleep last night. I send this final message to him. It's my closure.
I hope you managed some sleep last night. I’ve been thinking about our conversation whole night. We had many highs and lows, happiness and sadness, but I had a great 8 years with you. The last 6 months have been a big challenge for both of us, but I want to thank you for supporting and helping me with the IVF journey. I don't think I could have survived without you by my side. You said the IVF journey was shit, but I don't regret it. If life could go back, I would do the same. I just feel sad and regretful that we didn’t see a positive result at the end. I wished I could hold your hand and tell you not to worry, we could get through it like we used to, but I know I can’t say it because I have lost my place in your heart.
Don’t be afraid of making decisions; you didn’t make any wrong decisions. Every decision you made at the time was with the hope that there would be some good for us. And you’ve achieved a lot in your life. Maybe you are at a bottom of your heard right now, and you can’t see it, but you will get over it because you are such a good man and you will find happiness again.
Yesterday, when I asked you to give me closure or an explanation for our eight-year relationship, you said you couldn’t. I admit I was heartbroken when you said you don’t miss me that much and that the feeling is gone. Because I still miss you every single minute, I am still loving you. And you stop calling my amore and giving me bacio. So I know what your closure or explanation is, you probably just couldn’t put it into words.
Rather than say this message is for you, it’s actually for myself. This is my closure. I won’t disturb your life anymore. I don’t want to wish you a happy life because I know you don’t need my bless and will find it. All I want to say is thank you for looking after me and giving me a happy time that I never had. Take care of yourself, eat three meals a day, and go to bed early. Addio

After looking at [[Azlask, The Swelling Scourge]], and thinking, I've come up with the following as cards that I expect will go up due to him. Mostly focusing on an aristocrats theme:

• [[Hangarback Walker]]: Pretty simple, it's a colorless creature, you can dump mana into when you cast it, and it makes a whole arseload of other colorless creatures when it dies. Sac a bunch of spawns to cast it (or just use artifact ramp), then throw it into a sac outlet, and do the same with the thopters it makes. Bunch of experience counter triggers. It has 2 real printings (CMM, and ORI, plus J22 a promo, and the Masterpiece)
  
• [[Kuldotha Forgemaster]]: a sac outlet for artifact creatures (like the above thopters), that tutors another artifact out of your deck into play. This is obviously for a more artifact-creature oriented deck than an Eldrazi oriented one. 2 printings ever, 2XM and SOM.
  
• [[Spawning Pit]]: a sac outlet that makes you spawn tokens, which will get buffed by the activated ability on Azlask. Sac is free, and can load it with counters in response to wipes, targeting, even farewell if for some reason they don't decide to exile graveyards. Only ever printed in DST back in mirrodin block, and J22.
  

This is on top of the more obvious ones (which are also more likely to be in the precon): [[Pawn of Ulamog]], [[Awakening Zone]], [[Sifter of Skulls]], [[From Beyond]].
I'm ignoring the more general aristocrats things like the Altars, and tribal cards like changelings as they likely won't see the same spike in overall demand as things more narrowly tailored to the new Eldrazi will (as they have a much higher existing demand).