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"
- Read the rest -
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
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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.
- Read the rest -
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
- Read the rest -
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 MiƩville, 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.