This was the first real week of work after my vacation, and it already feels so far away, I don’t know now it kind of feels like it already is months away, even though it’s just a couple of weeks ago, that’s kind of weird isn’t it. Well I went through the week in kind of a weird mood, and I kind of have the same feeling again, maybe it’s just post vacation blues, I don’t know, but I hope I will get back to a more normal feeling again soon, it will be nice to get back to my normal plucky self.

Books

I’ve been continuing on with A Desolution Called Peace, only 2 chapters left now, I’ve been enjoying the book, but it still kind of feels like it wasn’t as good as the first one, the characters don’t feel as good as they did in the first book, and I have a lot more drive to read on, the first book got up to compulsive levels. It’s still a good book though, I just had expected it to grab me more as I usually really enjoy first contact books.

I’m kind of in a bind of what to read next, I think I’m through most of the stuff that I was really excited about that I had in my queue now, but I do have a lot of stuff still lying around, so hopefully I will find something that feels like it will be fun.

Games

It’s been another week of going back and forth, not really finding something that sparks a lot of joy, I’ve been keeping on trying some things, and hopefully I get that spark that tells me what will be fun again.

I’ve had some more runs of Dead Cells it’s still pretty fun, and the fighting is still fluid and great, but I’m kind of getting stuck in a rut here without really feeling that I’m making much progress, I get to the same places, and it usually ends the run, I may need to rethink how I do some things, or just bash my head at it again for a while until I get through. It still feels great, and I still do a couple of runs each week.

I did some more nonograms in Piczle cross: Rune Factory and I’m now a bit over half way through, It has gotten to a point where they aren’t as relaxing as they were, due to the size and counting, so it’s no longer as easy to sit down with when I’m just feeling tired, but it’s still quite nice, and I do like doing picross puzzles, I guess I just have to get more proficient and used to the harder difficulty ones that it’s still fun.

Another one that I started this week again was Monster Sanctuary and it’s a kind of metroidvania creature collector mashup, it’s kind of hard to say why I don’t really fit too well with it, it’s a fun game, and I enjoy playing it, it’s just kind of a weird stop in the action going from metroidvaniaing around and then going into creature battles, I will for sure come back to it, but it did all feel a bit overwhelming this time since there are so many stats, for each creature, then equipment, and food, and I kind of just am thinking that I might not be doing things right, so I think this is just not the time.

Towards the end of the week I continued on with Megaman Battle Network the first one, and it’s a fun game, the battling is fun, though it’s pretty constant due to the really huge encounter rate in this one, and the maps are really confusing with their isometric nature, it makes it unneccessarily hard to figure out how to get around, in addition the game is not that great at telling you what you are supposed to do at each point, I’m currently trying to fix some water issues in the city, and have gotten through a weird panel puzzle that was not especially fun to do since 70% of it was obscured by layers laying over it, but I think I will be keeping on with it, I’m looking foreward to going on with the next games which from what I heard are doing better, and fixing some of the shortcomings of the first one.

Vampire survivors is still quite fun in a brain off mode, and I played a couple of runs, my biggest issue with it is that 30 minute runs are quite long, I have done 270 or so of the 360 unlocks, so at least I’m nearing something, but it will take some time before I get all the unlocks done.

And at last I have been playing BallXPit It’s a fun mashup of a vampire survivors game and something like holedown. It’s really fun, and it’s kind of an issue, because it’s one of those that suck me in, and has that tight loop that makes it so easy to get caught in it and play more than I originally wanted. It’s satisfying bouncing balls around, seeing them getting better, and getting new characters and mechanics, but it’s one that I have to take care when playing, and at best set a timer to make sure that I don’t overplay it, it’s addictive, but not in a way I’m sure is good for me, it kind of feels more like one of those mobile games that wants to get you stuck in playing, thankfully it doesn’t have the mobile monetisation, but the kind of compulsion thing that it does is making me feel a bit less good about a game that is really fun.

Media

My podcast app showed me that I have already listened to more podcasts this year so far than I did the whole of last year, so I seemed to have done a lot of listening as it wasn’t a small amount last year either. Some of it might be from listening to the backlog of videogame podtimism but I am pretty happy with it. I like having my own little customised radio channel that plays things that I enjoy, and I can listen to whenever I feel like.

I was also watching some old series by people that I enjoy, and emptying out my to view queue in newpipe, so I have to get some new stuff to watch, and see if I find something else fun to watch.