schneefink: River walking among trees, from "Safe" (Default)
After my February exam I decided to prepare better for my next one. It helped a lot that this time all the classes were a few weeks ago and not months. But then various things happened that were great but had unfortunate timing, and on top of that I got sick last week. Ugh.
Fortunately despite that I think the exam today went well :) I won't find out for about 1.5 months but I'm optimistic.
Now I don't have another exam until October and no classes until July, very nice.

I did finish Astalon: Tears of the Earth last week. Astalon standard mode 100% )
schneefink: River walking among trees, from "Safe" (Default)
Catching up on reviews:

The Monday after it came out I went to watch A Minecraft Movie with six friends. I really wanted to watch it relatively early because I know I am bad at avoiding spoilers, and the plan mostly worked. I had a fun time! Was it a fantastic movie, eh, but was it entertaining, definitely, and it was a lot of fun to see so many Minecraft things as live action.

Spoilers )

I also enjoyed Mumbo's video about his consulting work on the movie, with all of the unused ideas. And Scar and Grian interviewing the director during the Hermitcraft charity event (timestamp) and the director being so enthusiastic about Mumbo's work. Tall drink of water indeed.


Back in February I played Iron Diamond, a game that I saw recommended on r/metroidvania as "not very long, very good exploration, colorful, and cheap (especially on sale)," and all of that was true. The map and upgrades were great. The boss fights ranged from fun to too easy (to be fair I was playing on casual) to dumb (stupid yeti), the story was okay, the controls took me a while to get used to and I still didn't love them by the end, but overall I had a good time. The graphics weren't the best but that didn't really bother me.
I got to the end credits at 85% completion in 11.5 hours.


More Astalon: Tears of the Earth: Spoilers )
schneefink: Dracula's castle (Castlevania castle)
After a long day of classes (on a bank holiday, too) I treated myself to some grapefruit + nougat ice cream and then planned to spend some time reading, do some housekeeping in preparation for hosting a guest (very exciting), and then write some overdue review posts, maybe prepare some recs if I'm feeling ambitious.

Instead I spent most of the evening continuing to play Astalon: Tears of the Earth. I'd seen it recommended quite a few times on r/metroidvania and I was very curious, so when I saw it was on sale I bought it even though it's not entirely smart to start a new game 2.5 weeks before an exam. Ah well.

You play as a group of three adventurers in a post-apocalyptic wasteland that investigate (read: fight their way through) a tower from which comes a substance poisoning their village. One of them sold his soul to the titan of death, and in exchange every time you die you are transported back to the entrance of the tower.

I also saw it described as a "metroidvania with roguelite elements," which made me a bit skeptical because the other game that claims that is Dead Cells and that didn't convince me when I briefly tried it. But that description isn't really accurate because it doesn't have the procedural generation of a roguelike, it has the exploration of a metroidvania, and that's my favorite part of the genre. It just doesn't have checkpoints and very little healing. But there's plenty of shortcuts to unlock so landing back at the beginning is much less frustrating than I'd feared. And unlocking shortcuts is very satisfying; the exploration is satisfying in general, with plenty of secrets to discover. Plus, there are not that many but enough character interactions that I care about the characters as well.

After about eight hours I've beaten three bosses (one of them I'm pretty sure is optional) and discovered around 35% of the map. Spoilers )
schneefink: River walking among trees, from "Safe" (Default)
The Spear Cuts Through Water, by Simon Jimenez
I enjoyed this a lot, it was fascinating and intense. I loved what it did with the narrative, the different lines and stories, and the voices of the dead adding their comments and snippets of additional perspectives. I also liked the take on myths and godhood, and on mistakes and atonement. And it did horror really well. The
spoiler confrontation with the second Terror
was one of the tensest scenes I've read in a while (that sounds too tame but I don't have the right words rn), and the fate of
spoilerthe turtle god
was horrific and tragic. There were parts near the end that seemed a bit too, hm, sudden, but it still worked overall.

The Art of Prophecy and The Art of Destiny, War Arts trilogy #1 & #2, by Wesley Chu
I got these two very cheaply at Worldcon. (LB, who hadn't thought to bring reading material, actually read them before me.) I really enjoyed the first one! A ~wuxia fantasy with a Chosen One of a prophecy that is broken and the legendary war artist who accidentally finds herself his mentor, I loved Taishi especially and also her relationship with poor Jian, and it was exciting and fun. I liked the other two PoV characters less but had hopes that they would get more character development in future books.
Unfortunately the sequel was very boring. I was a few hundred pages in when finally something happened and by that point I just wanted the book to be over, and even then the plot was predictable, there was very little character or relationship development, and overall I unfortunately lost all interest in the series.

Crypt Custodian (video game)
You play as the ghost of a cat that is sentenced to clean up the afterlife. I saw this recommended as a cozy metroidvania that's not outstanding but does everything well, and that's pretty much what it was. I enjoyed it a lot.
I switched to playing on easy difficulty pretty early and still had trouble with one boss, but every other one only took me a few tries and several only one and that suited me fine, it fit the atmosphere. Some bosses I stopped at to go elsewhere, only to defeat them on my first or second try the next day. Some of them might be fun to try in harder difficulties if I'm ever in the mood for that, conveniently there's a boss rush mode for that.
In the mid- to late-game I had my favorite metroidvania experience: there's so much to discover and so many places I can go. The map is huge! And fun to explore. The movement upgrades are fun, and combat isn't too varied but it's fine. The story is cute, I just wish I could connect better to Pluto as a character. Idk why their voice just didn't really work for me. Sadly that also means I'm not really interested in fanworks.
I got to the credits at 72% completion in a little under 11 hours over three days. I'm not sure yet if I'll do the postgame and/or come back to it eventually, I might, I'll see.
schneefink: Gail from Phoenotopia: Awakening sleeping in bed, above her a speech bubble saying "wake up" (PHOA Gail sleeping "wake up")
Catching up on reviews, games (other than Minecraft) edition:

I played almost twenty hours of Vampire Survivors in a little over a week in January. It was good flashy fun requiring very little brain power, cut into convenient time periods of up to half an hour or even shorter, and pretty soon I discovered and/or unlocked a new upgrade/weapon/character/stage/etc. almost every run which made me want to keep playing. I had 50% of achievements when I suddenly lost interest for no particular reason. No regrets though. I've thought about giving it another try once or twice but I think I would rather play Hades again.

I wrote that and then thought "you know what," and played my first round of Hades since June 2022 (I was surprised it had been that long!) On zero heat because it's been so long, and it was very noticeable that I was out of practice, but I still did fine. I met Than and Patroclus, I used Zag shield with a nice Flood Shot-centered build, and I even got a fishing spot on the surface but did not manage a perfect catch. One day I will complete the codex.
That was fun, but I don't think I'll go back to playing Hades a lot, I'm still happy with Minecraft as my current distraction game. Very much looking forward to Hades II though!

Speaking of games I haven't played in a while, I played Afterimage in spring of last year. I posted about it in June, played for a few more days and then stopped. Notes from back then. ) I still planned to go back to it for a while because I heard that there is another section to play with Renee and that you only get the full plot if you complete NG+, but I haven't yet and I'm not sure if I will. In the meantime a new game-mode, a boss rush, and a new playable character have also been released, those could be fun to check out maybe but it's not high on my list of things to play.

I've been vaguely considering playing Phoenotopia: Awakening again because I'm only missing a single achievement, "Speed Runner," and it would be very nice to get to 100%. And it's a very good game that I'd enjoy playing again, except I'd definitely have to play it twice because I'm not going to get the speed runner badge when playing for the first time after such a long break. (Also, annoyingly, I didn't find a good guide for the speed runner achievement only, just for doing speed runner + zero trial (no upgrades) at the same time, and I already did the zero trial so I can make speed runner easier for myself.) One day.
schneefink: River walking among trees, from "Safe" (Default)
I didn't think I was doing too badly at semi-regularly posting on DW, but looking at my notes document there's so much I wanted to post but didn't; for example I'm so behind on reviews. These are from months ago, so for the books I partially just copied my Goodreads reviews that I always try to write soon after finishing.

Children of Memory – Adrian Tchaikovsky (Children of Time #3): The first of my summer vacation books – it was so great to have plenty of time to read books while relaxing on the beach!
Every new book in this series is looking at a new kind of different intelligence/sentience/sapience and it's fascinating. barely any spoilers )A book I enjoyed more with my head than my gut if that makes sense.

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi - Shannon Chakraborty: This was the kind of book that I enjoyed a lot while I was reading it and looked forward to finding out what would happen next, but (until the last 10% or so) when I put it down I felt no immediate need to pick it up again, so it took me a while to finish. I liked the characters, and I enjoyed the plot: I especially liked that it kept surprising me, not with major plot twists but with more frequent developments that I did not expect (I also didn't try to guess but still) and that kept things interesting.

Witch King – Martha Wells: I really loved the beginning of this, I was especially impressed with just how quickly the book drew me in. I really liked the characters and the worldbuilding, and I also enjoyed the main plot. other things worked less well for me ) Overall I still enjoyed the book a lot though.

A Day of Fallen Night – Samantha Shannon (The Roots of Chaos #0): I enjoyed this, but I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I had read or reread "The Priory of the Orange Tree" more recently. Multiple times things were set up or mentioned that I'm fairly certain got their pay-off in the previous book, but since I didn't remember that very well it just felt like the pay-off was missing, or at least not completely satisfying probably because the author didn't want to retread the same ground. (And I didn't like the book enough to go reread "Priory of the Orange Tree" right after.) I liked the characters and I enjoyed the queer relationships in particular.

Lords of Uncreation – Adrian Tchaikovsky (The Final Architecture #3): I enjoyed the first two books of the trilogy but I loved this one, pretty much the whole way through. From early on there were many interesting turns I was not expecting and yet that made perfect sense, and that also goes for the epic ending. My favorite was maybe a vague spoiler idk ) I was so excited when I figured out what was happening.
I really appreciated how the "superpower" of so many characters was basically stubbornness paired with "that's my secret, assholes, I'm always scared."
I enjoyed this book so much I requested it for Yuletide and got a great gift for it.
(That said, as often happens with books I remember loving a lot, a few months later I become suspicious if it was really that good or if I was just in the perfect mood for it. If I reread it at one point if usually turns out to be a mix of both.)

Encanto (2021): I was hesitant to watch this because of the "high expectations" problem. And We Don't Talk About Bruno indeed did not meet these expectations, but I liked the colors and I really liked Surface Pressure (I have listened to that many times by now and really want to try singing it at karaoke even though I think it's really hard to do well but I think it'd be fun) and I enjoyed the story – at least as long as I didn't think about it very much. Spoilers are talking about Bruno )

Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime: Flying a space ship and rescuing bunnies! I don't even remember why we started playing this – I think we were doing a board game evening but one person was late and we were at A&D's place who happen to have a large screen and four controllers. I've never played a four player in-person co-op before, it was so much fun. In hindsight this game might be best to play with three players, I heard it's very stressful with two but it was much easier than expected with four of us.
I really want to play co-op like that again, maybe even try out some classics like Mario Party? Maybe!

One Piece (live-action): I had heard good things and saw promising screenshots but I was still not quite sure what to expect. I was surprised how much I enjoyed it! The casting was great. some spoilers )
schneefink: River walking among trees, from "Safe" (Default)
I'm still low on batteries, despite the recent vacation days though that helped, and therefore haven't been posting or commenting much, but here are some of the things I've done in the past few weeks:

- I went to see the D&D movie for the second time, this time with my TTRPG group, and I enjoyed it just as much the second time. We watched it in German because on that day it wasn't available in English anymore but fortunately German synchronizations are generally excellent, there were only a few instances where the translation seemed slightly awkward.

- It has been a while (too long) since we managed to find a date for a cat TTRPG session and then last time I had to cancel because I had no voice, but the time before that when two people were on vacation we instead played the boardgame "Flamecraft" (in the fancy deluxe edition with shiny metal coins etc.) where you play in a town full of both humans and dragons and it is possibly the cutest game I have ever played. I enjoyed the game and afterwards I looked at all the cards we hadn't used to admire the art. (And the puns.)

- I watched "Across the Spider-Verse" and I enjoyed it. Haven't finished writing up my notes, maybe later. (Looking at my many post drafts: yeah that is a definite maybe.)

- I went to see a theater play for the first time in years: "Noises Off," a comedy about plays, at the Burgtheater. I wouldn't have gone if I hadn't gotten gift tickets for my birthday months ago but I'm glad I did. I'd already seen it once but that was about fifteen years ago so I remembered little except that it was very funny, and it was. I went with two friends and, after the third friend cancelled, with my mom, which was nice, and she was especially happy because she is always very excited to meet my friends. My mom and I are going to see another play this week and I look forward to it.

- It is finally warm enough to swim in the river near my parents' place again, that was nice.

- For the first time in several years (because I usually forget) I went to the Pride parade, it was great. My friend F had great body paint on and she offered that next year she'll paint me too, that'll be fun.

- We had a company outing to Bratislava via boat, that was nice, even though it was very hot. I last visited Bratislava about a dozen years ago, even though it's so close. My favorite find was this statue of Hans Christian Andersen with a snail.

- I finally have a summer hair cut! Definitely not too soon.

- the GM of my cat TTRPG group had his 30th birthday party and some others of our group organized an actual quest for him, that was so much fun. He got to pick two guests as his party members (one of them was me) and then a mysterious figure in a bar told him he had to go on a quest to save ice dragon babies. Along the way a "mage" as well as three "gnomes" in a blanket trench coat demanded that he solve logic puzzles (we failed at two out of three) and at the end he had to destroy a piñata of a dragon raised by an evil necromancer, while wearing a dragon onesie for stealth reasons.

- D and I recently talked about computer games and he invited me over to try out playing on his PS5 since I haven't played anything on a console since… ever, I think? At least a very long time. It's definitely a different feeling than playing on my laptop. I played a few hours of "Horizon Forbidden West," the first main quest, and had a great time. It's a gorgeous game, definitely requires a big screen. The monsters look very cool too, and there were enough of them that I very much appreciated the red grass and the sneak attack ability. It took me a while to get used to the controls, I usually only play 2D games so I had to get used to using one stick for movement and the other for perspective, but eventually I improved.

Afterimage

Jun. 4th, 2023 11:01 am
schneefink: picture of Relena looking at the viewer (GW Relena)
I have been playing more Afterimage and I enjoy it a lot. After the start the pacing slowed down quite a bit for a while, but thankfully it picked up again.

Spoilers )
schneefink: River walking among trees, from "Safe" (Default)
No brain, only sometimes game.

Even though I got a Steam gift card for my birthday a while ago I haven't actually bought any games in months, both because I've been playing Minecraft almost exclusively and because I already have a huge backlog of unplayed games. But Afterimage, a game I backed on Kickstarter many months ago, finally released two weeks ago and so I checked out.

Spoilers for the first 20 hours, so about a quarter/third of the game by my rough estimate )

To sum up, I'm enjoying it a lot so far; it's so large that the size is a bit intimidating and the pacing suffers a bit but it's pretty and movement and combat feel good, I look forward to getting back to it.


Before I started playing Afterimage and also sometimes in-between I have also been playing Minecraft.

schneefink plays Minecraft in Aurantia )

I also played the April Fool's Voting update, that was such a cool concept. I got unlucky with the first votes: I turned many biomes different colors that I couldn't see, and other not very spectacular effects. Unfortunately I didn't have much time on that day and so I didn't try it out further, and I never even made it to the moon (made out of cheese! With cows! And moon bases!), I only admired it in other people's videos.

DD also persuaded me that I should get my own Minecraft skin instead of using the Alex default, but choices are hard and I have very little idea of what I even want. One day.

DD has been much more adventurous than me in general: she tried out One Block Skyblock for a bit and then started another new world. And recently she subbed in for someone else in the first session of a Last Life SMP: it was stressful and then she was also assigned boogeyman on top of that, but she started out with 5 lives and ended up with 4 lives, some alliances, several iron tools and armor pieces, and a secret base with sugarcane and two cows, so she did great.
schneefink: River walking among trees, from "Safe" (Default)
Many of my colleagues know that I play computer games, so I've already been asked twice this week if I'm playing Hogwarts: Legacy. The first time a colleague I'm less close to tried to recommend it to me and I couldn't be bothered to go into more detail than that I'm absolutely not planning to play it, nope; the second time a colleague I work with a lot asked me why and I was too short on brain to come up with anything more detailed than "Rowling is a bitch, and from all I've heard the game is bad and the antisemitism is badly hidden," which thankfully she didn't ask me to elaborate on (though in hindsight I do regret a little just going with that insult, meh.)
In general I'm torn between wanting to pretend that the game doesn't exist, and wanting to know more about it so I can make fun of it more accurately. There's been a lot of disbelieving "wait what??" at our kitchen table. DD was very annoyed that they didn't manage to make a better game even though Rowling wasn't even directly involved herself.

I want a game for Animorphs instead. I found out that there was an Animorphs computer game for the Game Boy in 2000, but I'm thinking of a big, basically-open-world one. Imagine: you can turn into animals, but you have to figure out how to acquire them first, and only for a limited time; and each shape is hard to control at first and it gets easier over time, but the risk of being spotted and then this type of animal being deliberately targeted gets higher. You have to choose who to trust, you have to weigh how important it is to you to keep your identity secret… I think it could make a cool game.
schneefink: River walking among trees, from "Safe" (Default)
There were a couple of quotes I saw often together with art in memory of Technoblade, so I looked them up and found out they were from the poem one sees after killing the dragon in Minecraft. I started reading the poem but it's so beautiful that I stopped because just in case I ever played Minecraft I wanted to have the experience of reading it in full for the first time then.

…less than a week later I started playing Minecraft. What a surprise. I named my world Aurantia, after the hidden area of harpies and trolls in Phoenotopia: Awakening, and I left all the normal difficulty settings, which I'm worried I'll regret but it's okay so far. I've been making regular notes and it just randomly occurred to me that I might as well post them, idk.

Adventures in Aurantia )
schneefink: River walking among trees, from "Safe" (Default)
I just saw that I have not posted in a week, which feels weird because I've been writing so much, including things for DW: my "things I want to post" word doc is 42 pages by now - though, realistically I could probably delete about thirty of those because I'm never going to post them.
My current WIP, which started as a oneshot, is at 12k and already the third longest fic I've written (excluding the self-insert Mary Sue fic I wrote as a teenager that I never intended to show anyone) and might end up my longest when it's done, which might not even take that long at my current writing speed. (I wrote several hundred words at the office today, I'm not proud.) Probably depends on how much additional canon review I want to do for accuracy's sake. At least I already have a title I like.

I spent the last weekend at my grandparents', my first visit in almost two years, because a cousin of mine got married. I was originally worried that it was just a courtesy invite because we were never that close and even before COVID I barely saw him more than twice a year because they live on the other side of the country, but he and his lovely now-wife seemed sincerely happy that LB and I managed to come. (My mom couldn't because she finally caught COVID a few days before. Thankfully she seems fully recovered by now.) They had an ice cream wagon at the reception, which was a brilliant idea especially in that heat, and I also ate a lot of leftover ice cream the next two days.

This week I started watching "Severance" with DD, who watched it recently and loved it. Three episodes in and I appreciate it and find it interesting but I don't really enjoy watching it because it does such a great job with the uncomfortable atmosphere. DD reassured me that it doesn't have a tragic ending so I'll keep watching for now.

I'm also still watching many videos of people playing Minecraft, and I also, uh, started playing Minecraft. I know, I know, what a surprise, nobody could have expected that. Current task: get more iron to make a bucket to get milk to lift the ~curse so I can go back to the village.
ETA: I finally got a milk bucket! Only to realize I don't need it anymore because I died at one point ^^ (thankfully recovered my items though.)
schneefink: Gail from Phoenotopia: Awakening next to flowers in a cave (PHOA Gail in Mul cave)
As a reward after my exams were over, only a little over a month after getting to 100% in Phoenotopia: Awakening, I started my attempt to get the Zero Trial achievement: finishing the game without any health or stamina upgrades or combat accessibility options. Quite a big change, since the first time I played with all the combat perks. But I did it!

How it went )

It took me almost 21 hours (according to Steam; about 16 hours in-game) to get the Zero Trial achievement. I have all badges except Speed Runner now, and I will definitely attempt that soon, but I think I will watch a few speedruns first to plan my route. Maybe I will even try and practice the Ouroboros Skip first, not sure yet, but probably not because it's not necessary.
And maybe in-between I will play a few more rounds of Hades, idk. For many reasons I currently need plenty of escapism.

Rabi-Ribi

May. 26th, 2022 10:24 pm
schneefink: River walking among trees, from "Safe" (Default)
I finished Rabi-Ribi, including the postgame (~21 hours, map 93%, items 78%.) Exploration-wise this is one of my favorite metroidvanias: it is very non-linear, and it always felt like there could be a secret or even an entire new area right around the corner. (My one complaint is that I often wished there were map markers.) Movement was good and the upgrades were fun. I also liked the music a lot, and how colorful it is. I understand why some people dislike the very anime character art during cutscenes but I liked it.
Most of the combat was fine, fun even, but it turns out bullet hell is not really my thing and especially in the second half the long boss fights and boss rushes became something of a chore. Fortunately the game not only lets you adjust the difficulty mid-game, but also automatically offers a "halo" buff if you die to a boss a few times in a row. The story was a bit disjointed in the second half, but it had some interesting ideas. There are so many characters that not all of them get a lot of time and they get in the way of each other sometimes, there are many cutscenes, but I liked most of them.
Overall I enjoyed it a lot and I'm glad I played it. Still, I'm not interested in going for 100% or doing any of the post-postgame content.

Some notes while playing )
schneefink: River walking among trees, from "Safe" (Default)
Having in-person classes again is so much better for actually following the material. It would be even better if I was properly prepared every time instead of just somewhat, but whatever. There are only about 20-25 students in each class, which is very nice. I am also relieved that the windows are always open because I'm the only person still wearing a mask.

I really do get the feeling people forget the pandemic isn't just over and done with? My grandparents just caught it two months ago and my grandfather is just now getting better at going up stairs again, and he did get vaccinated three times. I would rather wear a mask indoors most times even if I "only" got flu-like symptoms and had to stay in bed for a week if I get it, I don't want that either. (Though I do understand why people dislike wearing a mask on public transport. It's already very hot here.)

My brain is being very annoying at the moment again, but that was to be expected. I just need to make it past the exams in June, then things will be easier for a while.

I thought about not starting a new game until the exams were over so I played a few rounds of Hades again, but that only reminded me how much I love Hades (fishing is slightly easier with the controller so I'm optimistic that one day I will get that stupid last fish!), so that wasn't really working out. I started Rabi-Ribi and am enjoying it a lot so far, I love how non-linear it is and how there are so many places I can go. (And the shallow part of me also enjoys all the beautiful young women in swimsuits or bikinis.)
schneefink: a tiny person on a huge bird before a dawn sky (Skyjacks griffin)
Yesterday, now that my exam is done, I finished Wandersong, which I got in one of the charity bundles for Ukraine. I enjoyed it a lot. I almost stopped playing early in act 3 because neither gameplay – you use music to interact with things – nor story were that interesting yet and I'm sick of the romanticized view of pirates (they sell coffee beans! Gotta call them pirates because that's cool, I guess?) But then the end of act 3 immediately made me much more interested in the story and the characters, and it only got better from there. The gameplay fortunately also got a little more varied. The colors were very nice, the artstyle is not my favorite but it fit well, and I enjoyed the music too, and the themes of what it means to be a hero and how to go on in the face of overwhelming odds etc.
I tried to get as much dialogue as I could, and it took me a little under 12 hours to finish the game. There are several blind playthroughs on Youtube of about the same length.

Many more spoilery thoughts under the cut (it got a lot longer than I expected), especially about The Hero. I wrote most of this after I finished the game and then I looked up a few details, and that's when I found out that a) according to Word of God the bard has a semi-canonical name (when asked, the developer suggested "Bard" or "Kiwi") but I don't like that and will be ignoring it, and b) the bard is not canonically gendered and according to the developer is non-binary, any pronoun. For some reason I was convinced that the bard was male, I thought I remembered that someone had referred to the bard as "he" early in the game, and now I'm annoyed at myself because generally I dislike it when people default to male for non-gendered characters like Hollow Knight's knight. But since any pronoun is okay I won't rewrite my notes.

Spoilers, ft. many thoughts about The Hero )
schneefink: River walking among trees, from "Safe" (Default)
I was starting to get interested in the NHL playoffs again, and then the next game Sid had to leave the game because of a hit to the head and I remembered why I stopped watching. Better for my nerves.

I'm currently playing Wandersong because I thought that it made more sense to start a shorter game that I'm less likely to become very invested in before an upcoming exam. Which mostly worked. It took me a while to get into the game but by now I love the story and I can't wait to see how it ends (well I have a good idea of how it will end but there's a large blank space until then with plenty of time for many more interesting twists and turns.) My favorite recent scene was Spoiler for the middle of act 5 )

Also, the fact that all the Steam achievements are Spoiler ) I haven't seen Steam achievements used like that before and it's brilliant.
schneefink: River walking among trees, from "Safe" (Default)
I think my phone might have just died >.< It doesn't react to anything I do anymore. Last time that happened (a day before my vacation!) it only lasted about half an hour, it's been much longer by now. …I really should have bought a new phone weeks ago. It's only a few years old but wifi doesn't work anymore and it has no space for anything. But then I have to figure out which one and how to transfer everything that's on my old phone and all those annoying things *whine*
Still better than a phone that randomly dies, however. Uuugh. Fingers crossed it'll somehow restore itself miraculously overnight, I guess. I'm just glad I keep a paper calendar.
ETA: It worked. I should still get a new phone though...

In more fun news, I finally completed Phoenotopia: Awakening at 100%.

More PHOA, with some Bloodstained in-between )

I thought about replaying it immediately and trying for the Zero Trial achievement, but I think I will wait a few months so I have time to forget a few of the puzzles/secrets. Next… Originally I wanted to play Outer Wilds next, but after playing PHOA and Aria of Sorrow and Hollow Knight and Bloodstained and the Ori games and Yoku's Island I'm still in the mood for more metroidvanias. Hmm.
(Although it just occurs to me that I can't even buy a new game as long as my phone doesn't work *sighs*)
schneefink: Gail from Phoenotopia: Awakening next to flowers in a cave (PHOA Gail in Mul cave)
Phoenotopia: Awakening is a fantastic game that I absolutely loved. It's a beautiful exploration adventure game with puzzles, action, and platforming elements. Or, quoting one review:

"Adventure, exploration, side-quests upon side-quests, upgradable tools and weapons, flute-playing, platforming, collectibles, hair-dying, puzzle-solving, fishing, upgradable songs (not joking), bat-swinging, boss fights, countless varieties of food, cooking, teleporting, attack-charging, dashing, leaping, swimming (eventually), and so so much more wrapped up in absolutely gorgeous pixel art both background and foreground and music that can haunt, relax, tense up, and enlighten the mood whenever required." (emkaylucky on Steam)

Missing from that list: there's a sidequest where you collect chickens - I'm sorry, perro – from all over the map, and you can pet cats. There's even an achievement for it!

Check out the trailer:



More details on why exactly it's so great etc. )

If this sounds in any way up your alley, there's a demo of the first "chapter" of the story on Steam that you can check out. D, who likes to explore everything she can, played the demo for over four hours, but it could also be finished in less than half the time.
schneefink: River walking among trees, from "Safe" (Default)
I had a very low energy week. Work was okay but studying/anything else is not going that well. Hopefully I will settle into a rhythm soon. I really need to force myself to go to bed earlier.

More Phoenotopia: Awakening )

Sidenote, this is now finally my second-most played game, overtaking Hollow Knight.

Profile

schneefink: River walking among trees, from "Safe" (Default)
schneefink

May 2025

S M T W T F S
    123
456 7 8910
11121314151617
181920 21222324
25262728293031

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated May. 28th, 2025 08:49 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios