Blue Prince is everybody’s favorite new game
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 79, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, RIP your free time, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
This week, I’ve been reading about dire wolves and Neuralink and the history of the Xbox, watching The Last of Us and Your Friends and Neighbors, underlining a lot of things in Graydon Carter’s book about magazines, setting up a Brick to see if it’ll help me manage screen time, refining macrodata in Rift, and writing down a million tips from this Reddit thread about internet life hacks.
I also have for you the game that will both improve and take over your life, a new season of a favorite show, an AirTag competitor worth checking out, a fun new organizer for your desk, and much more. We were off last week, and I missed you all terribly. Let’s get back into it.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you into right now? What should everyone else be playing / watching / baking / eating / listening to / downloading this week? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, forward it to them and tell them to subscribe here.)
- Blue Prince. Technically this came out last week, when we were off, but so many of you told me how much you love it that I feel obligated to include it here. It’s a deep, complicated puzzle game that you have to play carefully, and I love that. Any game that has this many of my friends taking copious notes as they play — and loving every second of it — has to be something special.
- The Polaroid Flip. True instant camera purists might hate this thing, but I think it’s so clever — it’ll warn you before you take the picture if something is out of focus or incorrectly exposed. Yeah, whatever, bad pictures are part of the fun, but instant film is so expensive! Just make all my pictures good!
- The Rehearsal season 2. Nathan Fielder is definitely some kind of genius. And this show, in which Fielder helps people practice for big moments in life, makes me constantly (like, constantly) wonder what’s real and what’s a bit. Oh, and it’s also very, very funny.
- Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch 8. This is the last major Baldur’s Gate 3 patch, and it’s a doozy: crossplay, photo mode, new subclasses, modding upgrades, and lots more. I don’t think you’ll run out of stuff to do in this game… ever.
- “The Art Of Poison-Pilling Music Files.” Benn Jordan made an algorithm that could check whether music was made by AI. Now he’s figured out how to prevent AI music-making tools from scraping and training on his songs. The whole process is fascinating.
- Sinners. Ryan Coogler, plus Michael B. Jordan, usually equals kickass movie. And lo and behold! A horror movie about vampires that is also a meditation on life for Black Americans in the South. And Michael B. Jordan plays two roles! What else do you need to know!
- Indiana Jones and the Great Circle for PS5. I was skeptical of this game when it came out, because good Indy games are hard to come by. But this is a good one, and now this previously Xbox and PC-only game is available to millions of other gamers. There’s no in-game weapon quite like a whip, my friends.
- The Chipolo Pop. Every time I turn around, someone is doing clever stuff with AirTags — but AirTags are so expensive! These are colorful, cheaper, and also work on both Google’s and Apple’s device-finding network. These are going in my luggage, on my keys, and maybe in my toddler’s shoes. He runs fast.
- “I Tested Every YouTuber Tech Product.” This Mrwhosetheboss video is such a good idea it makes me furious with jealousy. He tested and reviewed everything from JerryRigEverything’s utility knife to MKBHD’s Panels app to Hank Green’s 2D glasses, and he is pretty unsparing. And pretty correct.
- Nanoleaf Pegboard Desk Dock. I am such a sucker for a cool desk toy, and this one is all the way up my alley: a combination gadget holder, charging dock, and light that can be synced to your computer. The last thing I need is more stuff on my desk! I already bought a two-pack.
I want to do something slightly different here in this space this week: I want to talk about wallpapers. For years, I’ve cared a lot about my wallpaper. Sometimes it’s a photo of a place I love, sometimes it’s a shot of my family, sometimes that all just looks kind of aesthetically busy and I go for something minimalist. I find a lot of wallpapers just by Googling words, but in case you’re curious, here are a few sources of stuff I’ve liked over the years:
- Aestheticsguyy. I don’t know anything about this person, their account, or where these wallpapers come from, but they post a ton and I find myself scrolling their page at least every couple of weeks. I’ve been really enjoying their Formula series.
- The Papers app. The mobile app, like most wallpaper apps, is pretty ad-riddled, but there’s a lot of good stuff in there. But honestly, I’ve found most of the stuff I like by following Paper’s X feed, which is just a giant stream of wallpaper options.
- Basic Apple Guy. As you’d expect, there’s a lot of Apple-related stuff, but some of his more abstract stuff really works for me. I really love the Liminal set.
- The Backdrops app. This is one of the nicest selection of wallpapers – and one of the most usable wallpaper apps — I’ve found anywhere. (In the email version of this newsletter I said this was Android only, but I was wrong! It’s just harder to find on iOS.)
- On Lock Screen. I don’t tend to find all that much truly unique stuff here, but it’s a fun website to poke around every now and again. (A lot of good stuff on the X feed here, too.)
- The Verge Shop. This is not just a plug! I mean, it is, but I mean it sincerely: I got our Cellular Wallpaper pack for free because I work here and it’s still my favorite wallpaper. And if you don’t want to pay, we have a whole archive of free ones to poke through.
I should say two things about all this. One, the wallpaper world has long been a mess when it comes to ownership and copyright — people just share these things willy-nilly. And two, there is a lot of generative AI at work in the wallpaper game right now. I always try to track down wallpapers I find (a reverse image search on Google often does the trick), but it’s messy.
Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because I had a conversation with Casey Johnston from She’s a Beast the other day (coming soon to The Vergecast!), and she made a surprisingly compelling case that actually, wallpapers are bad. She argued that you don’t want your lockscreen and homescreen to be peaceful or exciting or enticing — they should be ignored as much as possible, because you should either get to what you’re doing or get off your phone. This strikes me as a very good argument! I’ve had an all-black wallpaper going ever since we chatted, and, well, I don’t know how I feel about it. I certainly don’t like looking at it as much as I used to.
So here’s what I’m wondering: what’s your wallpaper strategy? Have you had the same one forever? Do you rotate daily? Hourly? Where do you find stuff? I want to hear all about it — and also, I want to start sharing more of your homescreens in this space, too. So if you have a good one, send it my way. And we’ll be back to our regular programming next week.
Here’s what the Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you’re into right now as well! Email installer@theverge.com or message me on Signal — @davidpierce.11 — with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here every week. For more great recommendations, check out the replies to this post on Threads and this post on Bluesky.
“I found a couple of tools that may or may not have been called out already that help with managing tabs. One is a free Chrome extension called Session Buddy. This one is great because it also lets you export tabs in Markdown. Perfect for moving things to Obsidian or other Markdown editors. The other is Collections in Microsoft Edge. It’s like Bookmarks but better. I can add notes to each collection and really just dump links in there as I move along, gathering literature and other stuff for research. I just hope they keep this feature around and keep updating it.” — John
“The BBC show Ludwig. It’s a great murder of the week show with an intriguing overarching mystery, and I believe its series one finale is being released in the US on Britbox today.” — Jack
“I recently rediscovered this site called OC Remix. It’s a site dedicated entirely to fan-made remixes of video game music, including individual songs and entire community created albums.” — Nick
“I’ve been rooting my Kindles and putting KOReader on all of them. Also trying out Wallabag as a read-later solution since it can be self hosted and also works on my rooted Kindle.” — Christoph
“Andor season two is coming next week and I have been rewatching season one, it’s so well made. Easily one of the best shows of the last couple of years. I recommend it to everyone, even if they are not Star Wars fans.” — Tirth
“SuprOrdinary. Just came across this small new YouTube channel from an ex-Apple, Google, Nike graphics designer. His ‘first’ video, about doing free graphics design work for a local sandwich shop, really hits the spot with its unique combination of editing, camera work and the life lesson theme about change that’s present throughout the video.” — Teo
“Came across yet another note taking app, Antinote. But this one is different: it’s Mac only, which means no syncing, but it’s a great place to jot down quick notes from meetings. It has simple swipe gestures to go from note to note, built in math, a timer — a bunch of things for ideas and text that is just temporary. Love it.” — Eddy
“Watching MobLand on Paramount Plus, and for an Irish man Pierce Brosnan’s Irish accent is every bit as bad as Tom Cruise’s Irish accent in Far and Away (I’m an Irish man).” — Kenny
“I’ve been playing Ouros, a relaxing and colorful puzzle game about Bézier curves. Well worth the purchase price.” — Daniel
Runna is one of those apps that just keeps appearing in my inbox. I know a lot of folks like using it over other running apps, because its training plans and interface are so good. Runna was acquired by Strava this week, and while I know there are also a lot of Strava fans out there in the Installerverse, I’ve been wondering: is this good news? Sometimes these acquisitions are like, oh cool, new features and better reliability! Other times they’re like, oh no, my app is dead, RIP my app. So I’m curious, Runna users: how’re you feeling about this? And if you’re jumping ship, where are you headed?
Personally, I’m still over here staring at Fantasy Hike all day. My progress is slow, but gosh the app is nice.
