Tom Francis is good at making good games that feel good uh oh why is this post so long? It gets existential, doesn't it?
I don't think he has any aspirations of making "the best game ever", but he has a real talent for finding a tight conceptual space and exploring it fully and concisely.
So many of the figures from my early indiegame culture days have gone on to massive corporate positions, become programming purists, or given up the job. I started following Tom's work and writing during a very formative time in the development of my taste in games, and was on the beta-testing list of Gunpoint over a decade ago. He is, entirely without his knowledge, a link I have to my younger self. Browsing pentadact.com again for the first time in years feels like revisiting the internet we all yearn for in the 3-websites-but-theyre-actually-apps era. Then I went to check out my first indie-game central repository in tigsource.com, and now I'm sad again.
I don't think he'd take it as negative when I say his games still have that same feel as a decade ago. His voice is still present in all his projects, as is his love of lobbing cunts out windows - a love I share. They've increased in scale over the years but never in a way that felt like stepping outside of the space Gunpoint occupied. I've played 6 hours of Tactical Breach Wizards since yesterday, in 5 sessions, and I'm loving it. I keep sending my partner screenshots - I'm sure she loves that! It's funny and sharp, the tactics are crunchy but forgiving, the difficulty is interesting and optional. A slam-dunk really.
I've struggled to connect with smaller games lately. Something about the extremely finite quality of time I have outside of work means I confusingly want BIG games with BIG narratives that MATTER. I don't want to "waste" an evening or weekend playing a game that isn't going to "do" something. This is a flawed perspective on many levels, but we're not talking about rational thoughts here, just the ennui that means I end up rewatching an old youtube series rather than doing something I actually enjoy.
TBW feels like a salve to that.
So that's nice. Cheers Tom.