about me

hello! nice to meet you. I'm the titular faea, and this is my scrappy little corner of the internet where I catalogue and share all of my creative pursuits.

I am fervently interested in video games, and the main thing you'll find here is my writing on those: I discuss things I like about them or otherwise find interesting, from a partly-analytical and partly-personal lens. I tend to talk about the feelings of playing games – the way their design elicits interesting thought process or emotional responses – with a general lean towards mechanics and systems.

more directly, my two main outputs tend to be:
~ articles on specific games: these focus more directly on one specific game, or broach into other relevant topics surrounding them. they're tight, concise, and always about something I feel very passionately about.
~ faea gaming, my monthly games journal. basically the main thing I do; here I talk much more casually, discuss just about everything I play within a given month, and tend to get just a little bit personal on occasion. it's fun.

beyond that, my other main interests are drawing and, to a lesser extent, hobby game development; the former I've been doing since about 2018, the latter I've been casually pursuing through modding for longer, but only started taking a little more seriously a couple years ago. I also like to bake, and I'm dabbling in learning cake decoration.

thanks for being here. ~♡

miscellanea

I consider myself generally very curious and open to a lot of things, but my interests and preferences in games tend to lean towards:
~ games with a heavy lean on resource management (especially RPGs and dungeon-crawlers)
~ games that express their stories / narrative ideas through play
~ arcade and arcade-style games
~ anything with strong idiosyncrasies, really!

I think my tastes are still a little too in flux for me to have a strong list of favourites, but this 5x5 is a good blend of my absolute favourites and my range across different genres: I've started to compile a list of the 1CCs and other major challenges I've completed, both for fun and as a nice thing to look back on (the games here definitely aren't much to brag about :p ); you can see these below if interested:

click this awesome button

Game	Clear	Date	Notes
Wild Guns: Reloaded	2P 2P	01/06/26 11/05/26	Doris + Annie, as Annie; team score: 2916010 (video). PB Annie + Annie
TwinBee Yahho!: Fushigi no Kuni de Ōabare!!	Practice Mode	21/05/26	Score: 2159110 (video)
Wild Guns	Normal	15/05/26	2p, total score: 2690180 (video)
Panel de Pon	Normal	07/04/26
ZeroRanger	White Vanilla	30/03/26	Type-B II/IV/VI. A rank, no TLB
Streets of Rage 2	Normal Normal	25/03/26 17/03/26	2p, as Max (video) Axel
Super Aleste	Short Game '?? Tricky' Short Game '3!! Hyper Mode'	15/03/26 14/03/26
Scramble	1-ALL	10/03/26
Pocky & Rocky	Hard Hard Normal Normal	23/02/26 22/02/26 15/02/26 13/02/26	Rocky, deathless (video) Rocky 2p, as Pocky (video) Pocky
Pocky & Rocky: Reshrined	Hard Normal	21/02/26 20/02/26	Free Mode (Ame-no-Uzumi) Free Mode (Ame-no-Uzumi), Story Mode
Contra: Hard Corps (JP)		17/02/26	Browny, D-route (space station ending). JP version is much easier as it has a 3-hit health bar
Touhou Kaikidan ~ Mystic Square	Normal	10/01/26	Mima
Touhou Rei'iden ~ the Highly Responsive to Prayers	Normal	07/01/26	Hell (Jigoku) route
Baroque Shooting		22/11/25
Touhou Fuujinroku ~ Mountain of Faith	Normal	20/06/25	Reimu A. Video
Touhou Eiyashou ~ Imperishable Night	Normal	07/06/25	Scarlet Devil Team (Sakuya/Remilia), Final B. Video. Have 1cced all shot types on Normal on at least Final A; this is the most recent
Touhou Youyoumu ~ Perfect Cherry Blossom	Normal	04/06/25	Marisa A. Video. Have 1cced Reimu A and Sakuya A on Normal; this is the most recent
Touhou Koumakyou ~ the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil	Normal	31/05/25	Reimu A cause I didn't wanna learn Stage 4. Video
Touhou Kishinjou ~ Double Dealing Character	Normal	15/04/25	Sakuya A. Video
Touhou Gensoukyou ~ Lotus Land Story	Normal	14/03/25	Marisa A. First ever 1CC :)

elsewhere

if you'd like to contact me directly, you can do so at faearie@proton.me. say hi, or something. I don't check my inbox very often, but it's the best way to reach out to me.
you can also find me posting silly over on bluesky.
my dev-related creative projects can be found over on itch.io.
and, I post replays and stuff on youtube on occasion. try not to be too impressed with what you see :p

friends & others

I'm a part of the Warp Point video game site-focused directory / webring. you can explore other, similar sites to mine via the link, or the webring widget (which fetches a small, random selections of sites on the webring) below:

additionally, below are some of the web-spaces of my friends and other people whose work I like. it's mostly still within the realm of casual games crit, but there's some other stuff, too. if you like what I do here, go visit them, tell them I said hi.

~ https://lakespirit.love/
~ https://birthbydrip.neocities.org/
~ https://scenicsystems.neocities.org/
~ https://deemoncove.neocities.org/
~ https://library-past-present.neocities.org/
~ https://steelonbone.neocities.org/
~ https://www.shy.center/

if you'd like to link back to my own site on yours: firstly, I appreciate it, and secondly, you can use my button below: