It feels kind of weird starting this one with 2026 already, but I guess it’s technically correct since the year is beginning in the middle of this week. I’ve have a very quiet yuletide, and not really having to deal with people for some days have been great. Now it hasn’t been the best one in years, it was kind of cold, and I was annoyed with all the extra sundays when everything has been closed, but that was just a me thing, it’s just easier to get out on long walks when I know there is an open grocery store on the way where I can stop by and get something to eat, on friday I forgot to take in caffeine and I had some epic headaches in the night waking me up, but again, that’s just my own stupidity coming to bite me.

Somehow I did manage to resist the urge to get some new games last week, even though it was hard, there are so many good sales now this time a year, I’m not quite sure how I will fare this week, but we will see, I spent enough in the beginning of the month on different things like gifts, sending packages and so on that I’m having to watch it a bit, but it might be that I’ll be looking a bit anyway and see.

Books

I’ve been kind of not reading much over this week, it turns out that being out of my pattern, and maybe not being that into my book either this week has been kind of caught me stuck, and I didn’t read much leaving me only half way through Night Shade by Pippa DaCosta. I’m hoping to get through it this week, but we’ll have to see what time brings, I know that it will probably go on to speed again when I go on to the next one, as I’ve been quite enjoying the colony series that I have lined up for my next read.

My usual reading time is before going to bed and in my lunch break, and since I’ve been weird with going to bed when I don’t have to get up, and not having work, and in addition it’s cold enough outside that it’s not really enjoyable to read there either it’s been rather a bad week when it comes to reading, I hope I can rectify that a bit at least this week.

Games

I’ve been doing a bit better when it comes to game, and I think that’s been what have taken up quite a bit of my reading time.

First I did roll credits on Hades, and it was quite fun. I quite enjoy the change that happens a bit after the end when everything kind of goes into a new normal. The story is still a lot of fun, and I don’t really feel that it’s over yet, there are ton’s of stuff left to do, so I’ll still be plugging away at it, but I’ve started to even enjoy the battling, which was my biggest gripe of the game, it isn’t really my favourite type of game, but everything around it is so great that it kept me going anyway. They did a great job with insentivising the runs though, which makes it always feel worth it to go out on a new run, to the point that when I was trying to play some other games it was kind of feeling that it was kind of not quite there, and that I could get more of the fun story stuff of hades if I just played that instead.

After my 40+ runs of Hades I needed something else, and I landed on playing some Moonstone Island and it’s quite a mix of different things, it’s a Alchemy driven farming game with creature collection and card based battling. It’s one that has been sitting in my backlog for a while, I got it around when it was new in 2023, played it for 10 or so hours, and then moved over to something else, it’s a nice and slow game, which is a good break from after hades, and it has some progression stuff, where there is almost always at least a couple of goals you’re working towards. I do enjoy it, but it’s kind of starting to feel like the creature battling are getting a bit old on me, and after I realised that I could feed my creatures hay instead of having to use crops that kind of made things a lot easier. I enjoy fishing minigames a lot, I don’t quite know why, it never really grabs me when I’m playing a fishing game, but when it’s in another game I just really keep on enjoying it a lot, I think I will keep on with this one for a while, but I’m not quite sure where my whims and moods will lead me, so we’ll see.

I did also play a bit on my phone, I kind of found a big flaw with Halls of Torment it doesn’t save a run in progress, so I can’t even switch over to another application in the middle of it without completely abandonding the run, and with the runs lasting up to 30 minutes that’s kind of an issue to me, I will have to see, but it’s likely that I will just uninstalling it for that, it’s a quite fun game, but with such a big problem with it I don’t think it’s something I will keep on playing.

I had some fun with Dawncaster as well, it’s fun exploring new gimmicks with different decks, and it’s nice to have a drafting deckbuilder game that I can have on the go, and it starts and plays quick enough that it feels like I can have a satisfying play session in 15 minutes or so, and it’s easy enough to pick up again. The normal difficulty is also easy enough that I’m not struggling too much with getting a win in, and it’s nice to be able to win one in every ten or so runs, instead of every 1 of 20-50 which is normally how it is with games like it, there are higher difficulties as well for people who likes the pain, but it’s nice to just enjoy playing with some cards and not having to minmax everything.

And last I did bring in a run of slice and dice after having played on Normal for a while I’ve been going down to easy again here as well, it’s just fun playing with the dice, and I’m close enough to dying every round even in easy, so I think I’ll hang around here for a while, having fun with it until it may get too easy, and I’m ready to move up, I did win a normal run, so I have proven to myself that I can do it, so now I’ll just keep on with the one that is the most fun to me instead.

Media

I’ve been working on my podcast backlog over this week, and I’m down to a normal-ish 20 in my queue, it’s a bit of a difference in that there is an 8 hour episode in there, which I’m looking foreward to, a german let’s play of an old cyberpunk text adventure / rpg.

Videogame Podtimism had their games of the year episode, which was a lot of fun, it’s really a nice podcast that I really enjoy, still looking foreward to the into the aether one, just not quite sure if it comes out on New year’s or a bit later, but I’ll have to wait and see, usually it’s more than worth the wait, and it really is one of my favourite kinds of episodes that they do, quite selfishly I wish for a monster long one.