| Book | - |
| Audiobook | I am a Strange Loop |
| Game | - |
| Pen | TWSBI Eco (B) w/ Wearingeul Don Quixote |
| Project | Tic80 Game, SSG, Learn Music |
A couple days ago I finished the audiobook version of Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson.
I didn't know what to expect going in (having never read anything Stephenson) but I honestly wasn't super into the package as a whole, despite all the good stuff packed into it.
About a month ago I booted up Final Fantasy Tactics A2 on a whim, and quickly became helplessly addicted to the game. I look now at my completed save file which claims I sank 111 hours of my life into this game -- this is untrue as I played the majority of the game on 2x speed, but I'm still shocked at how quickly those hours passed.
I often go into games seeking story or novelty. I like a game with world-building, or something that tells me a story. Character development, surprises, mystery.
This has none of that. In FFTA2 The characters are flat, the driving storyline amounts to "go explore and have fun, maybe that will get you home", and outside of some interesting or funny quest lines there's not much of note going on in Ivalice.
Everything else, however, hit all the right buttons so hard.
I beat Klonoa: Empire of Dreams today on my day off.
I got my hands on an Analogue Pocket about a month ago and really wanted to play something I hadn't before, so I took it upon myself to visit the local retro game store and drop too much money on old games I could easily emulate. Everything I actually wanted was out of my random-purchase range, so I ended up buying Klonoa -- a series I know by name only.
It was a great little puzzle platformer, and I must say the Analogue Pocket really makes GBA titles look good.
I think there was something like 5 worlds x 7 levels plus 6 bosses. The bosses and snowboarding levels were hot garbage, but the normal levels had some really decent puzzling throughout and the auto-scroll levels actually posed a challenge.
I'll need to play a different game to test out the Analogue's sound system, because the SFX and music in Klonoa were pretty terrible, but I'm excited to finally tackle some of the physical GBA and GBC titles I've collected over the years.
I finished the audiobook version of Babel by R.F. Kuang, and while I had a great time with the majority of the book, I feel like it really got lost in its own message at the end, which really killed an otherwise enjoyable story taking place in a slightly magic-ified alternative late 1800's Britain.
Honestly all aspects of the story were interesting, and I found that the anti-colonialist theme, while laid on fairly thick, was channelled very well through the characters and plot. At around the 3/4 mark, however, the author just kinda threw it all away to beat the reader over the head with the message, and as a result flattened the characters, truncated the story, and just kinda poisoned the experience.
Maybe that was the plan all along, but it honestly felt rushed and poorly thought out at the end, which is a shame because the rest was great.
I figured it may as good a time as any to pen down a list of my current projects. Work intensity has been high lately, so I don't have a terrible amount of juice to pour into after-work creative stuff, but here's what we've got cooking:
I've had this very simple idea for a game for a long while: platformer that's all wall-jumps and no platforms. Not sure if it will end up being particularly novel, but I spent most of January building the first 10 screens and releasing a demo.
So far it's been a real joy working with Lua and TIC-80. I've fallen out of it for a month or so, but I'm looking forward to picking it back up for round 2.
You can play the demo on Itch.io or the TIC-80 website.
I maintain this website with a single .js script and a bunch of hand-written HTML files and honestly I kinda like it that way. I've got a friend, however, who's interested in maintaining a bespoke low-spec static site, but is much less enamoured by the idea of raw HTML or learning markdown.
There's a million SSG apps out there, but a good chunk of them seem to be targeting nerds like me, and I want to make something that can work without an install script, but still provide own-your-own-files autonomy, and discovered the Filesystem API in JavaScript.
If I pull this off right, I'll have a static site hosted on github pages or something that will act as a SSG for a local folder on your computer. A fun idea, I think!
Finally, I've recently uploaded some old rules from a card game I made a while back (made is strong here, is a riff on an existing obscure game) called Duel of Nobles.
I started tweaking the rules based on some feedback from friends I got 3 years ago, and am going to work on assembling some graphics or animations or something to make the instructions a bit easier to understand.
It's a bit like playing Pokemon or YuGiOh cards, but it just uses a standard deck. You can check out the rules I posted (no pictures yet).
I've got some other big projects looming in the back of my head that I'm slowly working up the courage to start on. I don't think I have the technical or philosophical skills to pull any of them off, but working on the Tower of Einar has reminded me that just making stuff can be fun, even if it's not stellar.
I tore straight into Children of Memory after the previous book, but only now got around to making my pixel art cover for it.
The final instalment is definitely the strangest by a long shot, positioning itself more as a mystery novel set in a SciFi setting. To that end, it was wonderfully weird. I loved the Corvids, the Witch, and the strangeness of it all. It picks at questions about sentience and identity and it does some interesting things with established races.
Like book 2, this novel can't hold a candle to Children of Time, but I'd happily read a hundred more weird scifi adventures in this universe.
...I mean that, Adrian. Please give us a full Star Trek experience but with your uplifted races; I'm here for it.
I also just completed the Skyward Inn audiobook, and I honestly didn't like it very much.
While the alien strangeness and occurrences in the novel were interesting, the presentation was just so weepy.
I think a lot of that is on the narrator, who made most of the characters sound like they were on the very edge of bursting into tears at all times. Perhaps they were, perhaps it was the right call, but holy hell it put a damper on the experience.
I'm no stranger to a little ennui in my scifi but this was just way too much.
By the time the ending was happening and things got explained I just wanted it to be over.
If you like your scifi with a lot of family drama and a side of mope, give it a go.
I recently finished a playthrough of Paradise Killer and I'm seriously floored at how good it was.
The game is presented as a single explorable island with a handful of 2D characters to interrogate and a bunch of clues laying around to find. Gameplay-wise it's honestly pretty barebones -- just walk, chat, collect, repeat. The story and music do some seriously heavy lifting, though.
You play as Lady Love Dies, an investigator who has been exiled for the last million years for being tricked by a god from outer space. You need to return to the sequence of failing islands housing immortals to solve a crime involving demons and gods and magical cars.
The way the world has been constructed in Paradise Killer is fascinating in that the creators ensured that everything to do with the core mystery was easy to understand and logical. A lot of matching up timelines, cross-checking alibis, determining motives. Everything -else- is borderline nonsense. Everyone is named ridiculously, there's a person who makes islands out of psychic powers, talking skeletons, demonic possessions, and backstory that makes little to no actual sense but is really fun to read.
I thoroughly enjoyed the very basic gameplay loop, wandering the empty vaporwave-aesthetics island, jumping awkwardly up cliffs to pick up collectables that tell you about the completely irrelevant and wild pantheon and crazy backstories, all while slowly puzzling together the intricate pieces of the investigation.
The mystery was presented wonderfully! There were many times I thought I had everything cracked only to find one more clue that threw everything out the window. I was seeing plans everywhere, and suspecting everyone.
The final jury sequence was also very fun and had me questioning myself at times as I reviewed and presented all the evidence I had collected.
It took me 2 or 3 attempts to get into the game, but I'm glad I took another shot at it. It was a super memorable experience and reminded me how much can be done with so little, and filled my head with ideas.
After reading Children of Time (which was seriously a masterpiece) I ran headlong into Children of Ruin hungry for more.
While the sequel isn't the science fiction masterpiece Children of Time was, I'm entirely satisfied with where Adrian Tchaikovsky is taking the series.
What Children of Ruin lacks in gripping evolutionary story (There's still some of that, it's just not as good), it makes up for in narrative and exploration of interesting concepts. The technology, biology, and psychology in the book are really fascinating, and the story does a good job continuing where the first book left off.
I absolutely loved the human characters of Baltiel and Senkovi. I feel the author perfectly captured the sometimes childlike nature of the scientist-adventurer. I also enjoyed the moral/philosophical messages the author continues to explore: different is good. I found this idea somewhat fumbled in the conclusion of the first novel, but wonderfully expanded on and demonstrated in this story.
I'm excited for the third book in the series. What started as a biological scifi has evolved into a sort of space opera -- and while we may have arrived at an almost trope-ish assembly of alien races and AIs, it hits different when you watched them all grow up.
I've just finished the audiobook version of Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky and it blew my silk socks off.
I'm going straight into massive spoilers on this one, so I'll hide it behind a jump.