It’s been a decent week, I’ve been slowly feeling a bit better again, just quite a lot of stress at work the last couple of weeks, changing over systems are great as long as you don’t make errors, when you do, or don’t catch ones that are there, suddenly there is a lot of pressure to fix things quickly, which to be honest is not something that I’m a big fan off, a bit of pressure is good to get things done, when it gets up to a lot, and you have to come up with things and fix things quickly to satisfy people who do, and know nothing about it it’s not as fun. But well, I think I’ve managed to get most of the stuff brought over into shape now, hopefully at least, and then it’s on to the next ones.

Books

I finished off Smuggler’s concience By J.S. Morin, and it was pretty fun, I did enjoy it quite a bit, although there was a bit less of a togetherness that I missed from the first book, it was still pretty fun though, and I will continue on the series. Fun little romp with some action, and some fun character moments.

Second for this week was Apparent Brightness by Nicola Claire, it was another fun book, and I really enjoy the writing and the characters, there are some really good parts of this one. The plot was a bit too similar to the first one though, and I hope it will be a bit more different in the next one in the series, I’m definitively going on with this series, it’s a lot of fun, and I’m just enjoying myself reading these books.

And I got started and about 40% through Ava Greasemonkey by Alissa Lace, I kind of wanted to break up the two series that I’m currently in with something else as well, and this is different, and fun so far, I’m hoping that it’s going some good places, and so far it seems promising at least, I will have to see what it does now, I’m just at a breaking point in the story where it can go multiple ways, and we’ll see where it ends up.

Games

The beginning of this week I was not really in a good place when it came to games, most of my playtime through the week was different nonogram/picross games, but as always it’s quite a nice way to bring myself down, there is something really calming about solving the puzzles, they engage the brain without really being too difficult, which is nice.

For the first time in a while I went on a little haul of buying some games I got 3 this time.

First one is the one that I spent the most time on, and really enjoyed playing over the weekend Under the Island it’s an action adventure puzzle game, quite similar to the best (top down) zelda games, which focus more on solving puzzles than the fighting, and so far I’ve been enjoying it a lot. The puzzles seem a bit more logical than the older zelda games, and I think something about it being scrolling rather than screen based makes the larger puzzles which in a Zelda game would span multiple screens make more sense to my brain. I’ve been really enjoying this one, and it’s very cozy, with a vibrant art style. For some reason I also really love the starting screen with “Find a nice place and a cup of tea or coffe to enjoy your game the most” or similar ones that comes up, it really matches the feel that I want from a game. Hopefully it will keep up being like this, the first 6 or so hours of it has been great at least.

The second one that I got is one that is very different Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate most of the games have extremely long titles, this one is pretty much a traditional (classic) roguelike with some nice graphics, and I’ve been kind of wanting a good console roguelike to play, I have a lot of things to say about what everything is called roguelikes now a days, but I guess that’s a lost cause already, the game is cheery and colourful, and I had fun on my first run in which of course ended catastrophically, but it was fun, and I think if I give it enough time to learn the systems better it will be one that will bring me quite a lot of fun in the future, I like that it does seem like the game is pretty light on the mood front, and it’s just a fun adventure with shiren, I also appreciate that it has quite a lot of tutorial content that I can go through, it’s kind of good for someone who is probably not as good at figuring out the small things quickly as one usually are getting good things for in games.

And the third one is Aeturna Noctis it looks beautiful, but there is one glaring thing about this game, that probably would have made sure that I would not have bought the game if I had known it before buying the game, it’s a precision platform game, and it does not let me rebind movement to the d-pad. I do not enjoy playing a precision platforming and fighting game with a joystick, added to that the flakeyness of my switch joystick it makes the game so much less fun to play, so this one will probably be a dud to me, I’m really disappointed about this one, it’s one choice that makes me probably just unable to play the game, or at least stop me from getting especially far in it. It’s a shame, because the game looks great, but well, that’s how it is.

Media

For podcasts and stuff it’s been mostly the same stuff as always for me in the week, I’ve been enjoying listening to them, and the same ones are the ones I’ve been enjoying the most. I’m having fun with the relistening to the Into the Aether episodes from the start, although as always they are discussing some games at length that I just am not that into, I enjoy the banter though, but some times I wish they were a bit shorter about things that I don’t enjoy. But that’s just how things are, it’s still just enjoyable listening to positive talk about videogames.

I also enjoyed some documentaries in Norwegian this week, and the new episode of videogame podtimism that podcast is just fun, and always bringing me joy, their humour gets very stupid some times, but in an enjoyable way, I’m not quite sure how they manage to deliver the jokes that they do without getting grating on me, but they are.