errantsignal

Startin' off Spooky Season Light

No video to share just yet, but I did the thing I constantly threaten to do every year - talk about Halloween Horror Nights at length. I know this is of, uh... extremely limited appeal to only a very select audience, but some of you may appreciate it so I thought I'd share here!

Corpus Edax: Bar Brawls as Physical Comedy

As the video making engines start to roar back to life (and as I prep for Halloween funtimes) let's take a look at another cool game! A game not made by possibly questionable developers this time around! Also, here's the Medium post if you're prefer to read instead of watch!

Ikarus Parkour

You know what's a neat idea we haven't done in a while? Let's take a look at an indie game and talk about it!

Arctic Eggs & Tryin' Something A Little New

So I made mention of this on Cohost post I made a little while back, but I've been playing a lot of really rad indie games lately and yet you wouldn't know it by looking at the channel. I was wringing my hands at trying to find a format that would allow me to be fast but still produce content that I felt justified itself without being PR fluff for games.

And so I've tried a bit of ...

Children of Doom 1999

Finally! The full Children of Doom 1999 draft is here. I still need to do a proper editing pass - make sure audio levels are okay, look for spelling errors, do some extremely minor edits, and make sure things are all copacetic - so this is probably not the final final video. But it's more or less "complete" in the sense that it's got all the content I intended to cover.

Looking forward to tackling some smaller projects again after this!

System Shock 2 Draft

Hey all,

Still in the editing mines putting together the also-rans for the next Children of Doom (some really fun, weird stuff in 1999!) but I have managed to finish the System Shock 2 part to a level where I'm comfortable sharing it and since it's been so long since and update I figured one was due. Let me know what you think! I should be back with the rest of the video soon!

The Lethal Comedy of Zeekerss' Lethal Company

Here's a rough pass of the video on Lethal Company (and, really, Zeekerss' partial gameography.... you'll see why in the video).

Killer Frequency

Happy All Hallows' Eve! It's been kind of an intense time of year for a lot of reasons, so I've decided this year we'll maybe do a bit of a lower stakes game.  It's still spooky, and there's still the occasional jump scare, but Mortuary Assistant or The Space Between or Faith this is not.  It's cute, it's funny, but it's still delightfully seasonally appropriate.

It's also an attempt to intentionally do something a little smaller scale. It's really hard for me to do videos lik...

System Shock Reboot Part 2

Sorry for the spam - turns out it helps to link the actual video in the post!

Rebooting System Shock

Hey! Before we get into Halloween shenanigans in October, here’s a video about System Shock (1994), System Shock (2023), and how adapting and modernizing games both changes them fundamentally but also gives new players access to games they’d otherwise never play.

Final Final Almost Final Draft

This had been intended as a "if you see any problems let me know otherwise it's the final upload!" but then I noticed I neglected to put audio over the intro so...

This is the final final draft! If you notice anything, let me know, because there's exactly one (1) more cut coming before this goes public.  But it has the Half-Life bits as well as the also-rans. It is entirely too long. I want desperately to move on to new projects. I yearn to talk about weird indie stuff. Let it be f...

Proof of Life Part 2

I'm just working on finishing up the Half-Life portion of this video this weekend. It's a long weekend, and I have footage for the entire playthrough of Half-Life, and I have the script set out in front of me! I just need to match words with pictures and bam, the video is done!

In the mean time here's the final-ish cut for the also-rans. Yes, I know, I'm missing Descent: Freespace. I just ran out of time (and also if this series starts looking at flight sims we'll never finish an episod...

Proof of Life

Hi! I'm still here, and I'm still workin' on the Half-Life/1998 Children of Doom video!  And as proof here's ~27 minutes of the also-rans.

I'm still finishing up the Half-Life segment itself, as well as a handful of other games that came out in 1998.  I'd reckon this is probably a third of what the ultimate runtime of the video will be. I've got about as much written about SiN as I did about Trespasser or Unreal.  Thief will probably be a bit shorter just because I did a ...

February's Video is up!

This was supposed to go up last weekend. I got sick. You can still kinda hear it in my voice. It sucked.  I remain committed to one video a month this year, so I'm gearing up to speed something out for March so I can get back to focusing 100% on the next Children of Doom. It might be shorter than this, but it'll be something!

I actually kind of liked the way this video turned out - it doesn't say anything particularly deep, but it came together smoothly and was pretty well structur...

A Rambly, Weird Video

So I noticed that a lot of companies are doing this thing now where they just slap a bunch of characters in a logo as their corporate branding.  It's weird. Or is it? I spend 25 minutes thinking about it in a piece that is at once an unstructured ramble and also an over-edited, over-produced mess.  It is, in essence, a very Me video - I even get to use footage from 80s Commercial Vault and some theme park vloggers, so hey, it's on brand.

Next on the docket (aside from the smal...

A Little Video About A Little to the Left

Hey! I've been working on something the past few weeks that's still not quite ready (and is probably a bad idea; see this tweet: https://twitter.com/Campster/status/1614820776997425153 )

In the mean time I've uploaded a very short Blips episode about a game I played recently called A Little to the Left! I'm kind of interested in seeing if I could put out these short videos more regularly, sin...

A Spooky Halloween Horror Double Feature!

It's a double feature of horror this month! 

First up it's a spooky look at the not-so-spooky (but still occasionally kind of spooky) game about dreams, Hypnagogia: Boundless Dreams.  It's an absolutely rockin' exploration game that lets you enter a variety of different dreams, each with their own lo-fi characters, mood, and vibes. I liked this game a ton - I mostly focus on the spooky stuff here because it's Halloween, but really that game has something for pretty much everyo...

The TikTok Video

It is done! Or “done,” I guess. As done as it’s going to get because I desperately need to both deliver content and move on to something new. But it’s out and it’s almost an hour long and is cringier than anything I’ve ever done before! Go watch!

TikTok Work In Progress

Hey all! I know I didn't get anything out last month, and I don't want leave you with nothin' two months in a row, so I'm releasing what I have so far of the TikTok video for your watchin' pleasure.  It's... probably a little basic if you're really into TikTok. But really, I made it to help explain to people who don't use it what it is and why it be what it do.

It's still very much a rough cut - it ends abruptly because the outro isn't in this yet, and there's two big segments that...

Letters to a Friend: Farewell

Hey all,

Here's a quick video I made about a game called Letters to a Friend: Farewell.  It's Christoph Frey's newest game!  It's also a bit spooky, so be warned if you're not in the mood for that sort of thing outside of October.

I do think I have to clean some of this up before it goes public - there's a few noise and/or flubbbed lines still in there, and I'm debating whether I want to fluff up some of the examples of other German Expressionist films with Metropolis or...

Hyperbolica (A Blips Short)

Hey all!

As I've made known on Twitter I'm toying with a script about TikTok, mostly because it's been a bit of a fascination of mine over the past two years and every time I try to discuss the ups and downs of the platform I am met by blank stares by.... well, pretty much everyone.  We'll see if a full video comes together from that research, but I'm also collecting footage for the next Children of DOOM, so things are moving.

In the mean time, though, I've realized that thes...

Children of DOOM: Goldeneye 007

As indicated in the description of the video on YouTube, this is probably a draft version of the final Goldeneye video - I want to take another editing pass and do some cleanup, maybe add a few minor additional lines, add some music from the game as a backing track to me droning on, maybe put a proper credits sequence in after the half-life tease, etc.

But I think you've all waited long enough to see something from me and so here's proof that it is real!  As always thanks for your ...

Elsewhere in 1997...

Progress on the Goldeneye video is good - I've got a script with about 2/3 of the audio pieced together, I've got a full playthrough of the game recorded (plus or minus some hitching videos that will need to be re-shot) and I've got this... the entire back half of the episode.

For 1998, I'm probably not going to do another big long look at a bunch of stuff like this - I feel like I'd rather do a full page for 3 really important titles than a paragraph or two for just about every thing I...

Closing out 2021

What a year, huh?

And by that I mean... "Oof, what a year, huh?"

It's no secret that production on Errant Signal kind of fell off a cliff in the second half of 2021 (the last video up was the Halloween video, which... yikes).  The causes are mostly personal and eminently boring stuff, so I won't get into them other than to say that I think they're mostly behind me and production is ramping up again. 

This current Blips (which believe it or not was scheduled for Nov...

Happy Halloween!

Getting in just under the wire, here's an episode about SpookWare!

Next up is gonna be either a much-neglected Blips episode or the long-long delayed Goldeneye Children of Doom.  Which do you think I should start work on first? Let me know!

Umurangi Generation

Hey all,

This'll probably go live tomorrow at some point, but barring anyone noticing any terrible errors on my part, here's the final cut of the Umurangi Generation video.  Can't stay to talk much; gotta get moving to the next stuff - Halloween starts soon, and that means spooky time videos!  Also maybe a very short Blips, if I can swing it - I have the footage, I just need to piece it together.

Umurangi Work Print

Hey all!

I'm hard at work in the video mines trying to finish this piece on Umurangi Generation.  It's coming along, and attached is the first 2/3 or so of the video! There's still a bunch of stuff to do - talkin' about the DLC and tying up a lot of the threads that I introduce here - but I wanted to release a work print of what I had so you know I'm not just disappeared, especially since it's been a while since I've released stuff.

I've got a bunch of cool games to cover for...

🎵 I Made You Some Content 🎶

So the good news is that as the month draws to a close I have not one but three pieces of content for you!

The bad news is that none of them are traditional Errant Signal episodes.  First up, and linked in the post above, is a draft of the 10th anniversary video.  I wanted to get this out earlier in the month, but c'est la vie.  It's kind of a ramble on how I've been feeling about the show hitting ten years - it's a little bit draft-y; I want to spend some more time maybe...

Children of Doom Episode 6

Hey hey, it's (finally) here!

I'm still torn on whether I want to add a bit more - I feel like the sexist frat-bro-y-ness of Duke (both the character and, more importantly, the game) is kind of glossed over here, and there's a part of me that feels like it needs to be properly reconciled with for this to be a fully/honest look back. But also the video's already 37 minutes long and has been so late that I really wanted to get it out the door, soooo... we'll see if I squeeze in a few more...

A Bunch of Games From 1996

Hey all,

Just a quick update - the next Children of DOOM will be arriving in the next few days, it's just gonna miss the end of month deadline (I know, I know). Still, I haven't been resting on  my laurels: I've mostly been trying to figure out how to wrap up the main part of the script in a way that does both Quake and Duke Nukem 3D justice, and I think I've got it cracked - I just need to put video on top of it. So it'll be a few more days, but it's definitely in the pipe.

...