magicmirror

[Image description: my character seen from the back in a giant bird's nest perched on a ruined stone building. She is wearing a pointed crimson hat and a greyish-brown shawl over her shoulders, and holding a halberd in one hand. An option on the screen says "A: Curl up like a ball."]

(The reason you curl up like a ball is to pretend to be an egg so that a giant crow will transport you to another location. Obviously.)

Available on Steam and Itch.io for the low low price of free:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2240530/BABBDI/
https://lemaitre-bros.itch.io/babbdi

The description says it's a short game but I've spent over 10 hours happily wandering around in it and there's definitely more to do.

Immensely satisfying traversal and exploration of a brutalist concrete cityscape full of weird nooks and hidden places to discover, using a series of different movement tools (as well as your own ability to jump) -- including a baseball bat (hit a surface to propel yourself in the opposite direction, including hitting the ground to go UP), leaf blower, motorcycle, pickaxe (climb any vertical walls by jumping and stabbing the pickaxe in, then repeating) and propeller, all of which are enormous fun to use.

(You can only carry one tool at a time, but there are multiple iterations of them scattered around the map, and if you lose something, after a while -- possibly requiring quitting and reloading, not sure -- it'll tend to respawn where you originally found it.)

None of the platforming has required more co-ordination than I have; there are things I could undoubtedly do more easily if I was a better platformer, but finding the right tool can get me there anyway.

And if you can see somewhere, it's real and you can get there, and sometimes you'll discover things to see or collect. Maybe you'll crawl through a sewer and discover a secret underground dance party. Maybe you'll randomly run across a hidden room that looks at first glance like it's monitoring surveillance cameras but turns out on closer inspection to be running Windows on multiple microwaves. Even the invisible wall round what appears to be the edge of the map has a gap in it, and you can sneak through it to get to the ship you can see in the distance; it's not a skybox.

No fall damage, no ticking clock, no combat, no jumpscares. The vibe is ambient vaguely-dystopian melancholic creepiness, but within that people are going about their lives (the woman lying in the garden pond is not dead; she's breathing and appears to be just chilling). I'm reminded of the origins of parkour in the neglected brutalist concrete environments of social housing in France.

Weird, relaxing, delightful.

(For anyone wondering, yes I am still very much playing Dark Souls, but I can only do so in moderate amounts per day, when I have mental energy, so I mix it up with other things too.)

https://actionnetwork.org/letters/scrap-the-bathroom-ban

From TransActual and Trans+ Solidarity Alliance. Produces a template letter to your MP which you can customize as much as you can or want to.

Article by Jane Fae of TransActual (who have been absolutely kicking ass):

https://www.scenemag.co.uk/jane-fae-a-director-of-transactual-writes-on-the-eve-of-launching-a-new-campaign-to-get-mps-to-reject-the-ehrcs-bathroom-ban/

There are now a bunch of Labour MPs who are worried and making noises at the government, even if it's only about the impact on businesses of rules which are possibly illegal and impossible to follow without getting sued:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/oct/23/dozens-of-labour-mps-warn-of-chaos-for-firms-over-gender-recognition-advice

It's alleged that Bridget Phillipson was sitting on the guidance because she was worried it'd scupper her bid for the deputy leadership, whereas Powell is actively trans-friendly and has called for MPs to have a chance to debate and vote on the guidance.

The below may be an overly optimistic view but it seems clear there's tension and conflict between the EHRC and government:

https://iandunt.substack.com/p/frightened-and-desperate-ehrc-anti (warning for Substack, in case you are boycotting it)

So this is a moment when leverage is possible, and letters to your MP may actually do something.