I’ve been having a pretty nice week this week, even though it was a kind of annoying on-call week, and I didn’t get that much sleep or full evenings for myself, but all in all I can’t complain too much, and there is a while for the next one, so that’s at least something. The monday was a national holiday here in Austria, so there was an extra long weekend, which was nice, I got some more time to just relax and not having to deal with people, which is always a good little bonus. Short week at work this week as well, since I’m still having fridays half off to get rid of some more saved up vacation time it’s basically 3 and a half days of work.

Books

I finally finished Mathiras by Ruby Dixon this week, it’s been taking a while, the book was good, it was just difficult to sit down with it. I think I need a break from the series, and will find something else to read next, not quite sure what it will be yet as I finished it yesterday, but we’ll see, I’m not quite sure what I want to read, but I might be up for something a bit heavier now, I think my brain has had its fill of cotton candy and might need something a bit more to bite on, or I will start a reread of Jessie Mihalik’s consortion rebellion, it’s a long time since I read it, and it’s more plot focused than the more or less pure sugar of Dixon’s books. We’ll have to see.

Games

There was a sale going again on something I have had on my wish list since it came out, Mina the Hollower. I have bought most of the other stuff by yatchclub, and really enjoyed most of it, so I decided to pull the trigger, even though Zelda type games are not really my favourite. I have played it for ~5 hours or something now, and fixed up one of the towers. I’m having a lot of fun with it, it feels kind of like a metroidvania disguised as a zelda game, it’s more about fighting and getting through the screens rather than puzzles, and I like it. It’s very hard for someone who’s not really good at the zelda kind of games, a lot of the time I keep swinging my whip-mace in the wrong direction, and get a comical death because of that. I’m slowly getting better though. Just up to fixing up the first tower I already have 94 deaths, so I guess that says something about how much I don’t really find this easy. The graphics are extremely charming, and feel so good, like a gameboy color + kind of style, they have managed to really make it feel right for that style, it feels like real sprites and the pixel art, the color use and everything has just the right feel. The music is also awesome, like the shovel knight games, they are composed by Jake Kaufman, and it feels like the gb colour kind of sound, which is one of my favorites, the sound chip in the gameboy is what I grew up with, and it has this kind of crunchy sound that I really enjoy. There are a lot of pretty well signposted secrets to find, and gathering stuff is just fun, so so far at least this has been an excellent game for me, hard, but decently fair, and I can feel that I’m getting less shit at it as well, which is nice.

The other game that I spent some time with again is Rift of the Necrodancer and I still love this game, it’s so much fun. I’ve managed over half of the hard tracks now, and have been having some fun with the remix mode, which is surprisingly good, changing up the rhythm and enemies good enough that it still feels fresh, and still really does a good job of keeping to the rhythm of the track in surprisingly good ways. I just really can’t get enough of this game, it’s wonderful. I got the Va-11-halla DLC as well, as it was on sale, and it has some really good tracks in there. I have most of the ones that I’m really interested in, meatboy, celeste, pizza tower, shovel knight and va-11-halla, I still want the monstercat one, but I’ll get that one at some point I think.

Misc

It’s weird how this week I just stopped watching youtube videos, had no real want to, just didn’t feel like there is anything I would enjoy, I’m sure I will get back to it, butIt was just a complete stop which is weird, normally I just want to watch something else, this time there wasn’t even that. So I’ve been not watching any for a week now. Probably will again, but for now at least that’s how it is.

I’ve also been getting back into Drum and Bass, break core, and glitch-hop again. Especially the 2016 ish era where it tended to be more up my alley, overly happy hooky anthemic melodies, and just punching me in the face with happy melodies, it’s nice, and something I needed, I’ve been in a good mood, and feel like I want to keep it up, so I needed some more happiness pumped in. It has been nice to relisten to some old music as well.