Yeah okay, I'm overdue for another posting.

I've been relaxing a bit more these days, which I'm told is a good thing.  At the same time, the need for completing tasks is ever-present, so I've taken care of most of my tax forms earlier this week, and did a bunch of cleaning earlier today.  Next up on my radar is music work, I think -- there's a couple projects that I should really take to completion if I can -- another chiptune megamix, finishing up a WIP from last year, and that kinda thing.  I've got more letters to write as well, though I already took care of one yesterday, which was good.

Dead Cells progress is stalled a bit as I finally got through 4BC and am now on the =last= difficulty level, 5BC, which has you going through an entire nother biome and the final secret boss at the end.  Ugh.  I dunno if I'll end up doing it, perhaps I'll give it another few tries though.  But things feel quite grindy at this point, for sure.  I sort of just want to get it over with, more than anything.  But we'll see.

I did end up playing through Coffee Talk and it was...not magnificent/super special or anything, but it was enjoyable enough.  IMHO the writing seemed a shallow or little on-the-nose at times but at other times I really enjoyed some of the interactions.  There were some great moments for example for Lua/Baileys and their interactions with the other characters in the game as they tried to figure out their situation.  That was pretty nice to see.  But I felt that the storyline with Rachel and her father fell pretty flat on me as it lacked the same sort of nuance and depth I felt?

Like, there was a clear conflict between Rachel and her father -- the very familiar conflict of a young one trying to be independent vs an overprotective parental figure.  Where on one side Rachel just wants to be left alone, but also perhaps is a little naive and doesn't know exactly what she's getting herself into.  And on the other side her father perhaps doesn't give Rachel enough space, but also has his intentions in the right place despite being a bit too nosy.  And it's clear that they need to work this out somehow.

Well, how this ends up working out is that Rachel's father basically ends up being "right" in that Rachel didn't really know what she was getting herself into, and Rachel's father ends up getting into (physical) danger because of it.  The surface level moral of the story is, oh, you should listen to your elders because they really are trying to look out for you.  And see, something terrible happened, that just proves it!  But that's really missing the point of the conflict I think, because in these sorts of situations there isn't just one party that is right or wrong and I think it's a disservice to have external factors come in and conveniently resolve everything.  Sure, Rachel's dad ended up being right in this case.  But does that mean Rachel just says "oh okay I guess I really was being naive and I should just listen to dad from now on"?  Like yeah, that works as a story, but it's a little disappointing for me because I was hoping for something with a little more nuance.

It's worth noting that Brave has essentially the same conflict, but Brave works as a story because it spends enough time exploring the interaction between Merida and her mother and having their relationship develop and heal over their time together.  The interesting part about Brave is not the fact that Merida reconciles with her mother.  As a viewer, you already =know= that's going to be what the end of the story is about (it is a Disney movie after all).  The journey there is the important part.  How do these two characters who have such conflicting views end up developing sympathy for each other?  In being thrust into the wilderness, Merida and her mother end up going through a role reversal of sorts and this really helps them see things in a different way rather than being stuck in their old unyielding patterns.

Anyways, enough about that plot point.  Otherwise, Coffee Talk was....okay.  The drink-making "mechanic", if you want to call it that, was not really as interesting or well-explored as VA-11 Hall-A (and it's impossible not to draw that comparison).  In a sense, this sort of matches the environment -- as a coffee shop barista you probably don't really get a lot of "surprise me" or "give me something sweet and spicy", instead you probably get people saying "hazelnut latte please" or whatever.  And I do want to acknowledge that the game mechanic doesn't =have= to have intricacy or whatever in order to serve its point well.  Like maybe mixing these drinks is something that is pretty simple by design and is supposed to just be something calming to do.  The latte art is a perfect example of this, it's obvious that if you use the latte art function in coffee talk it doesn't really affect any outcomes of the game, you don't get any extra points or anything like that, etc.  But that's okay because sometimes it can just =feel pleasant= to just spend time doodling latte art and that is really supposed to be at the heart of the game, I feel like.  Not everything in games has to be mechanically interesting, sometimes you can have things that feel good just for their own sake.  So I wouldn't say that the mechanics in the game are pointless or useless (and there is a little bit more to it even than I'm talking about here).  But it's hard not to draw that comparison here.

But really, it was still a perfectly enjoyable experience.  It's not really that there was anything wrong with it, more that it was missing anything to make it really special for me.  But it's got a nice vibe and I can respect that.  Anyways, with all that said, I highly recommend going to play What Comes After, also by fahmi, since I really enjoyed that game.

In other news, I've been playing a LOT of Hades recently -- finally got the game, and have been going through and doing runs.  I'm on a whopping 16-run clear streak at the moment, out of some 30+ or so attempts I think?  At some point I just sort of understood enough about the game that clears became....pretty easy.  Of course I'm still on lower heat levels so I'm sure I'll meet my match, but for now I'm happy to just cruise through and explore different builds and such.  The progression is slowing down a bit, but this game is =loads= easier on the replayability front than Dead Cells, in many ways, which is nice.

I think I've recovered a bit emotionally, since the rough beginnings of the year.  Being able to reintegrate has helped a lot, I think, and it's also nice having Hades and such as things to just relax and have fun with.  Work is "interesting" as there are some reorgs and stuff happening, but we'll see what I have to say about that later.  My work/relax balance has shifted significantly and I'm still never sure how I feel about that, but for the time being it seems like things are ok.  We all know I always manage to get back to trying to get things done, anyways.  I've been itching to pick up Pharaoh/Cleopatra, or perhaps Terranigma, but we'll see when that ends up happening.

OH!  One more thing, Rhythm Doctor is out on Steam early access now!  This game has been a labor of love for yeeearrrrsssss now so it's pretty cool to hear that it is finally becoming "real".  I'm not one of those to start playing a game early on "day one" or anything like that, so it'll probably be a bit before I get around to playing it proper, but I wish the Rhythm Doctor team the best of luck in the coming weeks/months!