Tag: recap

As you can tell from the publishing date, I’m still working on the “being on time” part of monthly recaps. February was mostly a good month except for the final few days, which were dysfunctional enough that I’m not going to talk about them on the internet. Let’s get on to the fun aspects instead!

Fun

Games

4th Feb – I’m still playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons. I now have the tailor’s shop and the expanded version of Nook’s Cranny, and I’m working on the quest for getting K.K Slider to visit the island. I’m starting to lose enthusiasm for the game though, especially after my experience of testing out the “dream” mechanic and getting surprisingly creeped out by being in a simulacrum-within-a-simulacrum full of appliances and objects that were purely for the impression of community and couldn’t actually be interacted with.

10th Feb – I’m trying out Inscryption on the strong recommendation of my friend Josh, who rated it as one of his favourite games of all time within a few hours of play. I’m less into both deckbuilders and horror than he is, so I wasn’t expecting to have a similar experience, but so far I am finding Inscryption compelling and intriguing. Given that my main card game is Yu-Gi-Oh!, the mechanics of the actual card game are obviously much simpler, and this really works in its favour. The constraints of the card game make it make sense in the game’s universe. Also, the count of times I have stopped to say “what the hell“? out loud as a result of something in the game is already 3, and I imagine many more times are on the way! The only thing I dislike about the game so far is the way the character moves in jumps and 90-degree camera snaps rather than freely – it’s kind of like how some VR games handle movement, and I find it quite disorienting.

18th Feb – I’ve hit the really interesting part of Inscryption, and the “what the hell” count has been upgraded to a “what the fuck” count. I want to write a full review of it, but don’t know how to do that without spoiling what makes it so interesting and effective.

I’m not organised enough for New Year’s Resolutions, but I do have the vague goals of both writing more often and writing more casually this year. I keep re-learning, and forgetting, how much I rely on writing things out to make sense of them, and how easy it is for chunks of time to vanish unremembered when they aren’t documented.

The specificity of Weeknotes didn’t work out for me consistently when I tried it before, so this time I’m going to try a monthly recap instead.

Fun

I’ve returned to Merge and Blade – an autobattler where you build your army using match-3 mechanics – after leaving it for a few weeks when I became repeatedly stuck on the last chapter of the campaign. After finally finishing the campaign, I’m now trying out the roguelike and roguelite modes, though I do keep mixing the two up.

I started playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons on New Year’s Eve, and I’ve now reached the quest to raise the island rating high enough for K.K Slider to visit. This is tricky for me as I have very little spacial-planning ability, so I can’t map out what the parts of my island contain relative to each other. I would really appreciate a zoomed-out top-down view here! So far I’ve been having a pretty good time, though I was expecting the villagers to be a little more independent and for my character to have a bit less power over their lives. I wanted to be part of the community, not its god!

I also bought these albums in January:

Totorro – Home Alone
Totorro are probably the happiest math-rock band in existence. Something about their sound is incredibly friendly and cheerful; the audio equivalent of a sunny day.

Unwritten Law – The Hum
I love their earlier albums Elva (2002) and Here’s To The Mourning (2005) but I haven’t listened to any more recent ones. I wasn’t sure if the nearly 20-year gap since HTTM would mean hearing a very different band. Luckily for me, this wasn’t the case – The Hum shows off an evolved version of the band rather than an entirely different version.

Elephant Gym – world
This album is more jazz-influenced than my usual taste, and than the previous Elephant Gym albums I’ve heard, but I have enjoyed listening to it. Its a generally calm and intricate album, which makes the moments of high-energy like the chorus of “Happy Prince” stand out even more sharply.