It’s been a while since I last posted some of the features I’ve written in my Mechanic column on Rock Paper Shotgun. In The Mechanic, I talk to the developers behind a specific feature of a game in an effort to help players understand the hard problems and thinking that lies behind apparently simple things.

Lately, I’ve been building a Genestealer Cults army for Warhammer 40K and a band of gribbly desperadoes for Kill Team. And, well, one thing led to another and now here I am having written a bunch of lore and stuff that explains my army’s roots. What has happened to me. I even designed a bloody cult symbol.

It’s finally out. Japansoft: An Oral History is a new book I’ve edited that’s based on interviews by John Szczepaniak with Japanese game developers of the 1980s and early 1990s for his series, The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers.

I’ve not been doing much feature-writing lately because of a couple of big book projects, but I’ve done this and that. Here’s a quick round-up of work from the past few months that I’m pleased with.

Yesterday my boy came out of his room in the cottage we’ve rented for our holiday in west Scotland. “Dad,” he said. “I finished Spelunky.”

14 years old, GCSEs ahead of him, standing at the very brink between child and adulthood. Voice breaking, sometimes sullen. He still breaks into open affection with a hug, or, more frequently, a joke, but now we feel we’ve earned it. We still tell him what to do, but maybe he needs it less than we think.

“I killed King Yama!” he said, eyes bright. “I shotgunned his hands away so he couldn’t throw skeletons at me, and then threw four bombs at his head.”