Aaaand we're back.  Well, really we were "back" a lot earlier than this, but I just hadn't gotten around to posting another update yet.

Last we left off, I was really grumpy and having a hard time due to two separate things that were going on in my life, but we're all in the clear now, so that's good.

Since then, let's see...

These days I've been watching Nagi no Asukara, which a good friend recommended to me.  I'm currently around episode...18 I believe?  It's been quite enjoyable so far and I'm interested in seeing what comes out of it.  More on that later, perhaps.

Been continuing to play games on our SNES classic too!  I made my way through Super Castlevania IV, which was...actually not terribly difficult, aside from a few places that gave me trouble.  Ultimately more impressive was the fact that I also made my way through Super Ghouls and Ghosts, which was quite difficult, especially in a few key places (like beating level 7 on the second loop with the bracelet, argh!!!).  Thank goodness for essentially unlimited continues.  But now I can check that one off my bucket list.  The remaining "hard" (to some extent) games that I still need to go through include Contra 3 -- which I'm sure will also be brutal --, F-Zero, Super Punch-Out, and the two Star Fox games.  Haven't decided what to do with Super Metroid yet, but I'm sure I'll have fun running that in some way as well (RBO run?).  In the meantime I've been going through Secret of Mana with my housemate which has been fun as well.

Oh, and, I finished both Cuphead and VA-11 HALL-A!  Both were quite enjoyable -- I ended up getting 100% on Cuphead...don't think I'll go for >100% with all the expert-level stuff, but I will go through and at least play through the bonus content included with VA-11 HALL-A.  Cuphead was great fun, very whimsical and beautiful, very old-school, as expected.  The difficulty was pretty good I think; there was enough challenge there, without anything seeming tedious or frustrating (except for trying to beat Mr. Dice before I realized that you have control over the dice roll, lol!).  VA-11 HALL-A's gameplay was...interesting, I guess, but actually was pretty fun, and the characters were actually quite adorable in their portrayal in some regards.  So that was cool.

Rhythm Quest has been rolling along slowly -- I finished up level 1-4, and also reconstructed the project file for level 1-1's music, which I lost due to what I can only assume was a really random freak FL studio accident of some sort.  I also went through all of the music I made so far and got rid of any phase randomness effects that I had on because they sound terrible on phone speakers (where the L and R speakers are basically right next to each other).  Whoops.  I improved the design of the doublehit enemies a little bit as well, though I may still need to come up with a different visual concept for those that is a little more intuitive.

Music work has been slow recently, as it has been for a while, but my Patreon is at least pushing me to keep on trying to make things at a steady rate.  Besides the level 1-4 music for Rhythm Quest, I started another collab with A-zu-ra, which should be fun to work through.

Ludum Dare is next weekend!  Theme voting has already started and this week is the week for us to prepare ourselves and make sure we are stocked up on groceries as well as ready in terms of our planning and ideas.  We will have a writer with us this time!  So we'll be working our game design around that...exciting!  This week is supposed to be a little busy at work unfortunately but I'm planning to take a half day or WFH on friday so we can be all set to go on Friday.

I kind of took a break from Xmas stuff but I'm starting to pick it up again -- I only have 2 (?) more letters to do and I managed to do an inventory of my gift stash; it turns out that I actually don't have much more shopping to do at all, which is great.  I have some handmade stuff that I need to work on though, so I will be trying to get around to that.  In other news, I bought myself some stuff off of my own wishlist -- put in a big order for a bunch of pen stuff that I wanted, and ordered myself a new microphone too, yay!

Anyhow, despite a stumble here and there Thanksgiving has actually been very relaxing and nice for me and I'm hoping that that energy will continue from here on out too....though that is probably a futile wish as best because we all know that Ludum Dare will basically be a tornado.  Ah well, but it should be a great experience again, as it always is.