When the editor's closed, I'm still chasing the same thing, a reality worth getting lost in.
Two of them, mostly: games that make me think, and films that make me doubt. Not a resume of everything I've touched, just the short list of the ones that stuck, and why.
Getting off the hook to do something playful is, I'm convinced, always the right call.
Games are where I go to think sideways, the same problem-solving that pays the bills, minus the stakes. You can tell a lot about how someone's mind works from what they choose to lose hours to. Mine gravitates toward worlds that respect the player enough to stay quiet: systems you have to read, stories you have to earn, mechanics that trust you to figure them out. Half of what I know about pacing, feedback and 'feel' leaked straight into the interfaces I build.
Alan Wake 2
2023A horror game that is also a story about writing itself out of a nightmare. I have never seen a game braid two realities this confidently.
Cyberpunk 2077
2020It launched broken and I still loved the city. Years of patches later, Night City is the most alive place I have wandered.
Red Dead Redemption 2
2018I spent more time watching sunsets than shooting anyone. The slowest game I have ever loved.
Resident Evil Requiem
2026The newest nightmare Capcom handed me. Requiem proves the series still knows exactly how to make a single hallway terrifying.
The Last of Us
2013The ending that taught me a game could make a choice I hated and still be right to make it. Years later it still sits with me.
Silent Hill
2001 - 2025One town, many descents: the original, the guilt-soaked remake of 2, and the new nightmare of f. No series turns fog and silence into dread this well.
Ghost of Tsushima
2020The most beautiful game I have played, and the only combat that ever made a single duel feel like it truly mattered.
Dying Light
2015 - 2022Parkour by day, panic by night. The first taught me to run the rooftops; the second let me decide who the city becomes. Few games make the dark this personal.
Who are we, as individuals in this universe, to not appreciate a good fake reality?
The stories that stuck with me all poke at the same nerve: what's real, what's constructed, and whether the difference matters if it feels true. I don't watch to escape so much as to sit with one question for two hours and leave slightly rearranged. The best ones do to your head what a good refactor does to a codebase: nothing looks different, and yet everything is.
The Godfather
1972The film everyone quotes and few actually study. A masterclass in how power quietly corrupts a good man, one favor at a time.
Interstellar
2014Love and gravity written as the same equation. I forgive the exposition every single time.
Oppenheimer
2023Three hours of men in rooms talking, and it never once loosened its grip. Sound and dread doing the work of any explosion.
Hannibal
2013The most beautiful show ever made about the ugliest subject. It turns murder into opera and dares you to keep watching.
Project Hail Mary
2026Andy Weir's lonely astronaut, problem-solved into a movie. Pure competence for anyone who loves fixing an impossible thing with what is on hand.
Dark
2017The most demanding thing I have watched and the most rewarding. A time-travel puzzle that actually respects your ability to keep up.
Arrival
2016Language rewiring time. A rare film that respects your patience and rewards it.
Blade Runner 2049
2017The most beautiful film ever made about not knowing whether you are real.
“Different medium, same addiction: a system worth getting lost in, whether I'm holding the controller or just watching someone else's.”