#REVIEW: Well Dweller (2026, PS5)

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reviews, video gamesLeave a comment

So, remember Crypt Custodian? The guy (guy! one single developer!) who created that just released his next game, Well Dweller. In Crypt Custodian you played a ghost cat who literally cleaned up the afterlife. In Well Dweller you play one of the very last birds alive, who is trying to rescue his family from a wicked queen who killed all the rest of the birds to make a pretty dress. He fights with a matchstick.

The games share a lot of DNA; they’re both Metroidvanias with mild platforming elements; Crypt Custodian is top-down and Well Dweller is a side-scroller, but both feature huge, complicated maps, lots of power-ups that allow for a decent amount of build variability (or you can grind up to be able to equip basically everything if you want) and cute stories that occasionally punch you in the gut. I liked this game a lot; it’s short (I got 100% and the Platinum in about twelve hours) and easier than maybe it needed to be but those are the only real weaknesses. Well Dweller also offers occasional moments of incredible creepiness; witness the boss above, and the one below:

Your bird does indeed live at the bottom of a well at the beginning of the game, with the rest of his family, but what the title of the game does not mention is that they live inside of a skull, so these are either very small birds or a very large skull, I’m not sure which. You will also sometimes do things like have a little picnic outside of a rotting corpse:

The corpse will not be commented on by either of the characters, and it will not come to life and attack you. The whole game is like this. It’s nuts.

You already know I love games with heavy exploration elements, and I love Metroidvanias in general, and this really scratched an itch for me. I was especially pleased with the platforming; I generally think of platforming as something I have to get through in a game rather than something I enjoy, and this game doles out its platforming moments in little bite-sized chunks, and in general is not trying to hurt you. There was really only one bit where the platforming got on my nerves, and I’m comfortable calling it a skill issue, and one way or another it was over in a few minutes. There’s definitely nothing in this game that you might have to beat your head against for hours like certain other games. The graphics are pretty, the controls are tight, and the combat is maybe a little limited but still fun. You’re going to pick up some movement skills that will help you out but you’re not really going to pick up any combat techniques beyond swinging your match around and a little firebomb that you can either toss at your enemies or throw into the air and then smack at them, baseball-style, with your matchstick.

At $20, there’s no reason not to pick this one up. Go for it.

I can’t do it tonight

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

I have, at the very least, a lot to say about A Court of Splintered Harmony, which I finished last night before going to bed, but that was before spending a heavy teaching day in my 84-degree classroom (it’s late October, so the heat has to be on, to hell with the fact that it’s still in the mid-seventies outside!) and then having my adorable little gay kids club and then going to Parent-Teacher conferences for my son and oh also Patrick fucking Stewart died.

I cannot. I am exhausted and I am completely emotionally spent and somehow I saw this coming, because I found myself weirdly worried about Stewart earlier this week, and I am going to take a shower to wash the sweat off and go to bed now that tomorrow’s lessons are ready.

Ok let’s gooooooooo

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, TeachingLeave a comment

This furry little asshole sits in my lap while I read all the time, and this is the first time she’s decided to take a bite out of one of my books. There are literally teeth marks in the dust jacket now. Brat.

Anyway, I survived the field trip and the reward party, and now I have two days of ILEARN practice tests and a Goddamned data-collecting exercise that no one is going to actually look at but we sure had better have done by Friday or there will be UNSPECIFIED CONSEQUENCES.

Bah.

Gonna go finish the book now.

OH you BASTARDS

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, idiocyLeave a comment

I’m overreacting juuuuuuust a little bit, maybe, as normal grown men with reasonable temperaments and decent mental health recognize that waiting one extra day for a book is not that big of a deal, and also because slightly unhinged book goblins with perhaps more money than they really ought to have can just order the ebook for another fifteen dollars that goes to the same company that is shipping your preordered book late and start reading it today anyway.

This is how I know that trying to shame me out of shopping at Amazon is never going to work: it is specifically their fault that I don’t have this book right now, and I gave them more money so that I didn’t have to wait 24 extra hours.

I have a sickness.

Today was madness from start to finish, my room was way hotter than it had any reason to be, and I am very nearly dead. I meant to stop at the post office (this Amazon thing here is not the only problem I’m having with getting my shit shipped to me; I’ve had a package tied up in Evansville, of all fuckin’ places, for over a week) and at some point after pulling off the highway I slipped into a fugue state and the car starting driving me home instead of to the post office without my permission. Once I realized where I was actually going, I lacked the strength to alter my direction and just went the hell home. Tomorrow we have a field trip, then half a class, then lunch, then two shortened classes and a reward party. I already told the kids in the two and a half classes I’ll actually see that we aren’t doing a damn thing. There is no universe where education can take place under those circumstances. There is only keeping them alive and me out of jail.

Also, after talking to my boss, I’m taking the day off instead of going to this.

Blink and it’ll be over

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

I’ve got 300 pages left in A Court of Silver Flames, which means that I ought to be ready to start A Court of Splintered Harmony by bedtime tomorrow at the latest, so hopefully the damned thing shows up on time, as my luck with packages lately has been absolutely atrocious. This is going to be a really weird week; tomorrow is a relatively normal day but it’s a Tuesday after a long weekend. Wednesday the 8th graders have a field trip all morning and then the afternoon is going to feature a reward party for kids who got through the first quarter without being idiots or assholes. Thursday and Friday will be practice tests for the ILEARN, and then the first actual checkpoint is next week, after an election-related e-learning day. Maybe I’ll go to the training on Tuesday and get arrested! Maybe there will be civil unrest too! Who knows.

Oh, and we have parent-teacher conferences for the boy on Thursday and a meeting with a lawyer on either Wednesday or Friday. (Adulting stuff. Nothing to worry about, but one more thing in the context of the rest of the week.)

One way or another I’m hoping the next fourteen days soar by, and this week is going to be fast no matter what, I think. We shall see.

In which this was good and I’m mad

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, ReviewsLeave a comment

I read the first He Who Fights With Monsters book back in May, and I didn’t like it very much. It was far from the worst thing I’d ever read– hell, it wasn’t even the worst thing I read in May— but the main character was more or less unbearable and the writing wasn’t very good. Travis Deverell had the affliction so annoyingly common to the recent burst of indie writers who have gotten their big series trad-pubbed: he had a terrible habit of using words that were close, but not quite, the word he wanted. Mark Twain would have had a field day. I three-starred it, my usual signal for “I finished this book, and that’s really all I have to say about it,” and then …

… ordered the sequel? Because I’m a fucking moron, apparently.

Well, I just finished the God damned thing, and it’s better than the first book to such an extent that I almost want to go back and read the hardcover of the first book– I’m wondering if there was another editing pass between the original epub versions (which is what I read, since it was free) and the new hardcover rereleases. The improvement in the writing is that stark. There’s still the occasional clunky sentence, but I got sent into editor mode within the first couple of pages of the first book and never got out of it, and it never happened in this one– and I also never got the “that’s not the word you wanted” feeling after it was nearly omnipresent in the first book.

(An example of the “that’s not the word you wanted” phenomenon would be if I had used “omniscient” in that last sentence, if you’re wondering what I’m talking about.)

Shit, Jason is even bearable in this one, showing … actual growth as a person, I think? I normally like snarky MCs, but there was something about this guy that just got under my skin, and if you read negative reviews of this series the most common criticism is that the person doing the review couldn’t stand Jason. He’s got a self-awareness about him in this book that simply wasn’t there in the first one, and while I can still see someone being annoyed by him it feels a little less reasonable.

There are thirteen of these fucking things, people. I’m two books away from the end of Wheel of Time and I have the Goddamn Realm of the Underlings to read next year. I want to reread Throne of Glass. I don’t need another maxi-series! No! Bad authors!

Fuuuuuuuuuck.

I found another Metroidvania

On By Luther M. SilerIn video gamesLeave a comment

I haven’t finished it yet, but unless it completely falls apart on me you can expect a positive review of Well Dweller in a few days. Today marks the midpoint of my fall break; I have done precisely two things: 1) read books, and 2) played this game. I did manage to finish the book I was talking about yesterday, and don’t really have much to say about it, but at least I got through it.

Played anything fun lately? I’m about to dive back into this one.

It’s okay when I do it

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, ReadingLeave a comment

I’ve been reading a lot of Sarah J. Maas lately– ACOTAR 6 comes out in a few days, and in the last month or so I’ve reread the first four books; I’ll finish A Court of Silver Flames next week sometime, then go into the new book, then in between ACOTAR 6 and 7 I’ll reread the Crescent City books. The Throne of Glass series is actually my favorite of her work, but it’s not as tied into the rest of them, so rereading that will have to wait until next year.

I don’t argue with people about books very often– it just doesn’t come up, to be honest– but I especially don’t argue with people about SJM. She has a couple of little quirks about her writing that drive some people up a wall, and while I don’t share them, I get it, more or less. The biggest one is her insistence on using “male” and “female” to refer to her fae and angelic characters and never, ever “man” or “woman.” Men and women are human. It’s a hard line. I noticed a moment in ACOWAF a couple of days ago where a character actually uses the wrong word, and she immediately corrects herself.

The other one is her use of “mate.” The mating bond in ACOTAR isn’t entirely voluntary and tends to make its own decisions, for lack of a better word– simply making eye contact with the person who is supposed to be your mate can trigger it, and once it snaps into place, it can be ignored, at some cost, but it can’t be reversed. The fun bit, also explored in ACOWAF, is that sometimes the mating bond makes shitty decisions? The main male (sigh) character’s parents were mated and weren’t good for each other at all.

You’re gonna see the word “mate” a lot in ACOTAR. A lot a lot. And if it gets on your nerves, you’re not gonna have a good time with the series.

Anyway, I read ACOWAF and ACOFAS back to back, and I picked up another book off my Unread Shelf as a sort of palate cleanser before going into the next book. This book has lizard people in it. Lizard people are nearly deaf and psychic, so they communicate via telepathy. Only the book never uses the word “telepathy.” The word the author has chosen– or, at least, the translator, as the book was originally written in Korean and it’s not entirely clear how one translates neologisms from one language to another– is nearm. Nearm is both a verb and a noun; one nearms a nearm. I’m not sure how to pronounce it, as I’m reading the book and not listening to it; the one TikTok video I found discussing the book pronounced it “neerm,” and I can’t shake “knee-arm” out of my head even though “neerm” is probably closer.

Nearm is a dumb word. It might sound less dumb in Korean, maybe; I don’t know a damn thing about Korean. It sounds really dumb in American English. I’m pretty sure it sounds equally dumb in all the other Englishes as well. And any time one of the lizard-people shows up on the page you’re gonna see the word as many times as you might see “said” for any other character. God help you if there are more than one of them and they’re talking– sorry, nearming— at each other.

It’s got me ready to put the book down, and I was really looking forward to this book, and damn, Maas-haters, if I didn’t get it before, I get it now.