David L. Craddock

Hi, everyone,

Today, I curated and launched the Exclusive Retro Game Bundle, a collection of DRM-free eBooks on StoryBundle. For $15, you can get 11 books about game development and industry culture. I wrote two of them, but I want to tell you about other books in the bundle first.

My favorite of the pack is John Harris's The Black Book of Animal Crossing New Horizons, a thorough guide to the hit game on Nintendo Switch. John approached me about this idea several months ago, and I loved it. Not only is ACNH my first Animal Crossing game--I've played for at least 20 minutes every day since late March--but many free guides contain false or misleading information about its mechanics. John conducted exhaustive research to write his little black book, and you can get it as part of this bundle.

Matt Barton, professor, game historian, and host of the excellent Matt Channel series of interviews with game designers on YouTube, contributed two of his books. Dungeons & Desktops reflects on the history of RPGs, while Honoring the Code features over a dozen of his interviews.

All that, plus books on game trivia, the account of infamous PC shooter Postal's development published by Boss Fight Books, and more.

I wrote two books for this bundle. The first, Bottomless Pit: Volume 1, is quite different from my usual nonfiction books about video games. Rather than delve into the making of games like Donkey Kong and Mario Bros., I wrote diary-style entries on platform games, my favorite genre, as I played them in chronological order. I played many of these games for the first time over the last several months, so I hope you'll check out Bottomless Pit Volume 1 to read my thoughts.

The second, GameDev Stories: Volume 6, is my fifth collection of interviews I conducted for various books and articles over the last 16 years of my career. Yes, fifth. Volume 6 is fifth. So, funny story. I thought I'd put together a fifth volume. No. I made that up. Oops. However, there will be a fifth volume in the next StoryBundle--a prequel! So, you see, this was my plan all along. Yeah.

You can find the latest game-themed StoryBundle here. Fifteen bucks for 11 eBooks isn't bad, right? Hopefully you can curl up and enjoy them, especially if you need to take your mind off all the ugliness in the world.

Happy reading,
David