Type til you die

week 44, 2025 | two recent games that take place entirely in front of a keyboard (or typewriter)

Today’s newsletter: how to tell if you have The Juice, an indie team takes a stab (and succeeds) at battle royale, even Netflix can’t predict their own hits.

Let’s get into it…

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• Why do some games flop?

  Chris Plante
  had a great conversation with
  Simon Carless
  about what it takes to break through in today’s game market.

• Can you predict a hit? Ben Thompson points out that the massive success of K-Pop Demon Hunters was a surprise even for Netflix execs themselves. Netflix’s co-CEO explains that “[…] we had a film that people fell in love with, that’s first and foremost. But not in a huge way on the first day or even the first weekend. In fact, it was the super fans who watched the movie and repeat watched the movie that drove the recommendation engine that got it in front of more super fans who also fell in love with the movie. So that ease and value that allowed folks to repeat view it.”

• Notes on horror.

  Ken Baumann
  provides a compelling breakdown on the art of horror including a note on video games: “When we consider the physical and intellectual facts of fear, we can quickly deduce the medium that best accommodates the horror artist: video games. By requiring one’s physical participation (one must move the joystick forward) and intellectual focus (one must look, listen, and solve problems), video games create the most important condition in which fear can develop: vulnerability.”

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Screenshot from S.P.L.I.T.

Now for the typing games I played this week. First up, S.P.L.I.T:

• There’s a growing subcategory of indie games that are set within a single claustrophobic room. Among these are the escape room deckbuilding roguelike Inscryption (est. $43.3M gross), the creepy psychological horror idler Clickolding (est. $94K gross), and recent hit slot machine roguelike CloverPit (est. $9.9M gross). The originator of the mascot horror microgenre, Five Nights at Freddy’s (est. $8.6M gross), could be said to fit into this category as well—while the game technically takes place within a large Chuck E. Cheese-style arcade, the player is confined to a small office where they monitor