About Me

Hi, I go by pang. I’ve been writing video game critique since about 2020; first just for myself, then on Backloggd, and then on Cohost. I jump between review styles pretty frequently, but most of my work focuses on mechanical analysis. You’ll often find me playing or writing about the following:

• Late ’90s / Early ’00s titles
• Action / Puzzle hybrids
• Survival Horror games
• Arcade Rhythm games
• Obscure Japanese games

Day-to-day I work as a Ph.D. student at an east coast research university. When I research I work on dependable systems (primarily civil air safety), and when I teach I cover software engineering and system architecture. These topics come up in my writing occasionally; I try to take a systematic approach to game critique (a fancy way of saying that I look at how different components function together to create particular gameplay experiences).

My reviews on here are primarily rewritten versions of selected Backloggd posts; I’ll be uploading these consistently, but my looser first impressions will go up on Backloggd first. I also write more general articles on my philosophy of critique and common gaming structures / mechanics. If you’d like to contact me, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter or Bluesky.