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Book Thoughts: Amber 6+ (incomplete)

I picked up the second half of the Amber series immediately after finishing the first 5 books, and I'll not be finishing the second half.

The series continues with the first protagonist's son, and while it feels like it did a slightly better job at fleshing out the female characters this time, the new protagonist is insufferable. All the cock and confidence of the first narrator with half the sense and 1/10th the speed. Where the first half of the series would occasionally result in whiplash for going so fast, the second half continuously slows to a crawl.

I found myself zoning out entirely every time I picked it up, and by book 7 just didn't care what happened next.

And so I shall never find out.

Game Thoughts: Incomplete 12-2024

I'm really having trouble finding something that sticks this year in terms of games. I've been grapling with my inability to play any legacy JRPGs lately (a genre I dearly love, and of which I have MANY remakes on my to-play list) and looking for other shorter-term solutions to scratch my gaming itch, but nothing seems to do it.

The first shot I took was something on my to-play list for ages: Solatorobo for the DS: a 3rd person action game featuring anthropomorphic animal charatures and mechs with lots of dialogue.

This game shows up on basically every "DS Hidden Gems" list available, and for good reason. It's terribly unique and tries a lot of things -- it feels like a game from the N64 era where everyone was trying new things that may or may not have been a great idea. The combat is definitely one-of-a-kind, and consists mainly of grabbing and throwing your enemies into one another.

There's a lot of charm here -- the characters are distinct and have personality, the story's there, and technically it's quite impressive for the DS.

I got to a spot about 1/4 of the way through, I think, where there was a mario-kart style race, and called it quits after that. While there's plenty to love about the game I figured I'd call it quits while the aftertaste was still pleasant, as the combat was getting annoyingly janky and the sidequests repetative.

The second game I recently put down was Caves of Qud. Suprisingly this one's been in development for 9 years, and despite being an avid Dwarf Fortess and Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup fan in the early-to-mid 2010's I'd never heard of it.

Version 1.0 just dropped so I picked it up to have a go, and wow! It's a great roguelike with way more going on than I expected. It mixes the random world gen with some stable points around which it builds a storyline, and it's got tonnes of options for character builds. I don't think I even got to try all the menus available by the time I hit the 10 hour mark.

The game also ships with RPG and Wanderer modes if perma-death aren't your cup of tea, and it works great (with a few bugs still) on the SteamDeck. I played through a couple characters before giving RPG mode a try before realizing I prefer classic mode, but don't have the time in my life anymore to truly enjoy a roguelike. In the same way that grinding in JRPGs has been grating lately, the idea of wasting my time on a randomly generated dungeon is a little upsetting, and I find myself regretting having lost the weekend to the game.

So I'll put this one down for now, and maybe pick at it in the wee hours of the night if sleep eludes me.

Book Thoughts: Amber 1-5

I wanted to switch it up for my next audiobook and tried to delve into some older fantasy. I remembered really enjoying "The Lord of Light" at some point in the last 2 decades, and pivoting off those vague positive memories grabbed the entire Amber series by the same author (Rodger Zelazny).

So far I've gotten through the first 5 books which covers the complete story of one protagonist. I figured I'd write my thoughts this far before continuing as it's a good breaking point.

Books 1-5 were penned in the 70s, and boy do they show it. The main character (Corwin) is written in that stupid hard-boiled-smartass archetype that permeates a lot of detective novels and old-school fantasy/sci-fi. A personality constructed primarily of wise-cracks, cigarettes, and blatant disregard for one's own safety. The kind who attract trouble like they attract fantasy women. Perhaps this was a new innovation in the 70's, but you could see every stupid remark coming from a mile away.

The blatant and frequent misogyny was another great 70's throwback that marred the titles for me. It's just not something you expect nowadays -- least of all from your protagonist. One scene sees him literally slapping his girlfriend for telling him about a dream she had. Then she cries and he goes along his business. This isn't some flaw to overcome or some kind of message from the author; just machismo.

"But these fabled Amber books inspired so many modern fantasy authors; surely there's some treasure to be had here, right?"

Well for one the premise is a bit neat. Here is a fantasy world in which our earth is merely a shadow cast by the "real" city of Amber. A city housing a royal family of cunning, plotting narcissists that can travel through said shadows to find any alternate universe they want -- yet they battle for control of the throne in the one and only true Amber.

Honestly the family politics and "magic" in the series was pretty good. Each of the brothers felt distinct (the sisters had next to zero distinguishing features or depth), and while the author played it pretty fast and loose with magic nothing felt too out of place. Zelazney set up some great reveals and the books move at a breakneck pace. Why write exposition when we can just go from zero-to-faithful-army in three pages?

It's refreshing and light, but can most definitely be disorienting at times. The fast-and-looseness definitely also leads to levels of deus ex machina that should make a modern author blush (by the way I have a magical sword I didn't mention till now). As long as the entire ordeal isn't being taken too seriously it was mostly good fun. Again, blatant 70's sexism aside.

What makes the mess decently good is that it doesn't take itself too seriously. It lets itself be handwavy or silly very frequently, the pacing is all over the place, half the characters are less than one-dimensional, there's plot/world-building holes you could drive a car through -- but much like a slightly drunk one-off D&D session with a very generous GM it's fun and has enough intrigue and random unexpected deep / introspective moments to get into it.

It wasn't great, and I don't know what parts of it were inspiring to the next generation of fantasy authors, but it wasn't terrible. We'll see where things go in the second half.

Tutorial: PSX-Style Pre-Rendered Backgrounds in Blender & Godot

I recently had a game idea. I have a lot of these, some of which I've been letting fester in my head for years and years, but this one was both a novel idea and realistically achievable with a single person. So of course I had to go and scope-creep the hell out of the idea.

Without making it sound too exciting the premise was a classical RPG that the player had already almost beaten, then left at the final save for many years. The game loads up at level 99 with maxed stats and all the items with a single battle left to go -- however the game has many incomprehensible systems in-and-out of battle that the player "no longer remembers" how any of them work.

The player then traverses through the game world where the story has already played out -- there's no more enemies left, the towns all have people thanking the player, all the chests are empty -- but the player needs to go and find NPCs that drop the classic game hints. "Hold select and mash square to boost" type of stuff. The last battle effectively becomes a puzzle rather than an RPG battle.

Anyways, all I needed to make this game, in theory, was some pixel art asset packs and a few weeks in Godot, but actually making games isn't my jam, I'd rather spend all my time over-complicating things. In this case, I had an itch in my brain telling me "No, you cannot make this a pixel-art game"

"It MUST be PSX-style pre-rendered 3d backgrounds"

Thoughts: Learning Music

So, lately I've been getting into learning music.

This is a big deal for me, as it's kind of the final stat in my attempt at a hobbyist-game-dev build, and I've never point any points into it.

Game dev has kinda been a meta-hobby for me for as long as I can remember. I've never actually developed any games (except this demo), but the drive to make games has been a guiding light that has fostered hobbies and interests intended to build up the skills I would need to accomplish the task; despite never having made games, these interests have very much shaped my whole life:

• Visual Art has led me to dabble in pixel art, photo editing, a touch of blender, and character design
• Programming led to my current profession (though it's web dev, not game dev, that I do for my day job)
• Math, which I knew I would need for physics / shaders / logic ultimately led me into getting an undergrad physics degree
• Writing led to a hobby in world building and story crafting
• UX/Interaction Design has led me to a hobby in exploring game design in board/video games and an interest in human interfaces (a lot of UX in web design too!)

Aside: I do want to point out that with such a varied set of interests and hobbies, I've never become particularly good at any of these things. Passable, but not good. Such is the curse of the generalist.

Music, however, never saw any progress. Every attempt at beginning an exploration into music failed -- I tried to learn guitar, piano multiple times, cello once, and LSDJ more times than I can count. None of it ever got off the ground.

Game Thoughts: Lorelei and the Laser Eyes

A few months back I was hearing a lot of praise for Lorelei and the Laser Eyes; I finally grabbed it and finished it in a couple sittings.

The game's basically a long, artsy, self-aware escape room with some psychological/horror elements. It was pretty damn good!

In fact, it may be the best "virtual escape room"-type game I've ever played. While a few puzzles fell into the "way-too-obvious" or "I would have never figured this out without a guide" categories, the vast majority were in the sweet spot (for me). Even the optional book of puzzles to open shortcuts in the game (which amounts to 20ish pages of pure number / pattern puzzles) was super fun. The few horror elements were tense, but never over the top.

The overarching mystery of "what the fuck is going on" was also satisfying to slowly piece together -- while it felt a little too avantgarde at the beginning (which is on purpose and part of the theme) everything clicked together by the end of the game.

Unfortunately the game really sucks at UI. For some reason someone decided to make this a game where you just have directional input, the menu button, and a single action button. No back button. This seems fine on paper until you're manipulating hundreds of documents and interactive puzzles with no "back" button, quick-restart, or "jump to next page" controls. You will need to manually navigate to the close icon literally hundreds of times throughout a playthrough, which adds nothing to the experience but frustration.

That's the only stain on an otherwise great experience, however, and you do kind of get used to it after a few hours.

It's definitely a must play for escape room and puzzle game fans!

Game Thoughts: Animal Well

As a hobbyist game developer (theoretically, anyways) I have been warned many times "don't idolize one-person indie developers". Most one-person indie titles never make it, and realistically any indie title that does make it ultimately has a production team, a QA team, and all kinds of other people that make "one-person" less true.

I can't help myself, however. There's something about games crafted painstakingly by a single mind that just makes the ones that float to the top special. Early Minecraft, Stardew Valley, Undertale, Cave Story, Iconoclasts -- these are games that execute a vision and they do it so well I can't help but idolize. If not the creators themselves, then the process and the drive.

Animal Well is one such game, created by Billy Basso. Eventually picked up by Bigmode Games which brought it into the spotlight, the game presents an eerie metroidvania world full of puzzles, charming graphics, and horror vibes.

I absolutely loved my time with this game. The bosses were wild, exploration was a blast, and every puzzle was fun. The game elicits a kind of joy I've only experienced playing one-person games. It's full of weirdness that would have been voted out in a team-built game. Everything's connected and lovingly thought out, everything feels coherent. It's like getting to know somebody without ever meeting them.

The game has several "layers" to it, and despite loving the title I tapped out after layer 1 -- beating the final boss and rolling credits. You can continue on to find all the collectibles in the game to unlock more, which usually isn't my cup of tea. I did shoot for getting all the eggs but decided to tap out at 50-something, as I was starting to rely on guides and having less fun.

Does this title belong on the shelf with Undertale and Stardew Valley? I don't think it has the same impact as its peers, each of which generated massive fanbases and countless clones -- yet I'd happily categorize this as another one-person masterpiece and proudly shelf it with the others.

Book Thoughts: Piranessi

Looking for something a little more fantastical to read after Slaughterhouse-Five, I reached for Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. I read "Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norell 1000 years ago, and while I couldn't tell you a single thing that happens in that book I remember it fondly.

Spoilers after the jump

Book Thoughts: Slaughterhouse-Five

Occasionally I actually get around to reading some literature (I mean to do this more, but I can't stay away from my darling scifi/fantasy). After my last read I got my hands on a copy of the Ethan Hawke-narrated version of Slaughterhouse-Five.

This is a novel you can't really criticize; not only because it's globally recognized as a fantastic piece of literature, not only because anything there is to say about it has probably already been said, but because it's weird, and due to it's level of unorthodoxy it carves for itself a special untouchable place wherein any flaw could easily be intentional.

It was a thoughtful and thought-provoking slow burn and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I am glad that I didn't read it earlier, as I only recently binge-listened to a couple of WWII history podcasts. Knowing more about the gritty details of the war helped color in the edges of this loose collection of time fragments, and definitely resulted in a more fulfilling experience.

Book Thoughts: Embassytown

Some authors you just can't vibe with, no matter how on-brand their subjects are. For me one of these authors appears to be China Miéville, the writer of such famous works as Perdido Street Station and The City & The City.

I've previously tried to read Perdido Street Station and fell off halfway, the strangeness of the setting never quite settling in my head. Perhaps it's due to my weak mind's eye, or perhaps it's just their writing style, but of the two books I've attempted, both felt as if I was only skimming the loose details of a much deeper world.

Embassytown is the second of their works that I've attempted, and I nearly gave up a few hours into the audiobook version. Everything felt slow and dreamy (in a boring way) despite the complete alien-ness and wonderful creativity of the scifi setting. I ultimately finished the book, and really did love all the ideas on display in the story -- but the writing or the pacing or something kept me from getting in deep, and I found myself avoiding the audiobook more than reaching for it.

This is a scifi book about language, and it takes a very interesting approach, giving us aliens that are incapable of understanding human speech and communciation. The ways humanity works around this, and the sheer curiosity around the ways these aliens comminicate and interact with humans was fascinating in ways the story sadly only ever hints at.

I was left wanting to know more -- more about the strange alien lifeforms, more about their language, more about the strange dreamed-up form of space travel. More than anything I wanted to see more of the other alien lifeforms hinted at that communicate in bizarre and creative ways. I almost would have preferred a documentary format than the story and characters that were presented, which were ultimately vapid and boring on such a vibrant and curious backdrop.