Well, dose #2 knocked me down =hard=, not only did I feel generally sick like I wanted to die, but also had pretty severe nausea and vomited multiple times the night of.  Thankfully that's all over with.

I've been continuing to try and plug along at working on my indie game, Rhythm Quest.  I actually wasn't doing so great last week as I was feeling a bit stressed about the project, as well as some other work on my plate, though I had a very productive work session on Monday which left me feeling better about things.  I took some time on Monday to do some exercise/moving around as well, which I think made a big difference; sometimes it can really help to engage physically in something I guess.

I ended up finishing a feature which I had been thinking about off and on in the interim of the two years since I last seriously worked on the game, so that's definitely nice, and it was also nice to kindle the familiar feeling of actually working on the core game in an exciting way -- something I admittedly haven't been as in touch with over the past few weeks of ramp up, automation work, and setup (though that has been largely by choice to some extent).  Anyways, I guess I'm taking today/tomorrow more or less off from work as a reward as well as to ensure that I'm taking good care of my mental health.  I didn't do much of anything today besides finish another mission in Pharaoh and chat with a good friend for a while, but that didn't really necessarily feel like a bad thing.  I think I was feeling pretty poorly and was also feeling a bit more stress than I would have liked, so I think it stands to reason that I should try and ease off a bit.  It's sort of a unique challenge I guess, to be working for myself, but at the same time it's really not.  Just feels like I'm going through all of the normal difficulties with any new job, in terms of finding the right structure and rhythm, setting expectations for myself, and all that stuff.

I'm getting quite proficient at doing things well in the Pharaoh missions, and have been feeling more confident about my cities.  I have a very defined yet flexible regular housing block that I use all over the place now, and in this last mission I didn't run into a ton of problems with lacking goods/etc.  I guess it certainly doesn't help that in this mission money is incredibly abundant.  The only issue I really had was with distributing multiple types of food to my houses, though that was partially due to the hunting lodges bugging out and starting to be really inconsistent at some point.  I think it was a mistake this mission to try and rely on distributing multiple types of food to a majority of housing, as that isn't really sustainable for large populations if you're relying on food imports.  I should just settle for slightly downgraded housing and just build one or two more blocks.

I did all of the in-game prophecies for Hades, =including= learning to play the damn lyre (finally), so I guess I've put that game to rest now, unless for some reason I want to see every single piece of dialogue or I want to farm for meaningless ranks or whatever (no thanks).  Twas quite an enjoyable experience, which I guess is not really a surprise at all.  Though I do find myself wondering whether I should have played on hard mode, as I really breezed through a lot of it without a ton of trouble.  Not that that is really a bad thing -- added difficulty is only fun up to a certain point, at which point it just becomes a tedious grind like Dead Cells 5BC, ugh.

Finished the main missions on Rhythm Doctor and I was right, it actually ended fairly quickly.  Makes me more hopeful about Rhythm Quest in a way, knowing that it's only got 16 main levels split across 4 worlds, and people eat that up.  Of course, it's not really a fair comparison, since the Rhythm Dr levels are way more involved than my levels are going to be, but it's a nice sort of confidence booster seeing a successful game and then knowing that I'm already planning on having more worlds and levels than that.  But of course, that's also still not really a fair comparison because I haven't played most of the night-side levels of Rhythm Dr, so really it's more like 32 levels total, sooooo maybe I'm not too far off.

I watched all of the new Higurashi Gou series, to some mixed reactions.  It was I guess nice ("nice" is a strange word to apply to a show with this much violence) to have something to just watch when I was still feeling groggy and not really at all like working on anything, but not all of it was particularly pleasant and it does feel like some sort of artistic sensibility was lost somewhere along the road.  But regardless of its potential flaws it was certainly interesting, and put forth some very cool questions, especially around the middle of it all.  I guess this'll be on hold for me until later when they air the next season in July or whatever, as I have no plans to go and read the manga/vn side of things or whatever.  Reminds me that my TLOU2 playthrough is also still on hold.  Yet another gruesome work that the jury is still out on, ha ha ha...

I jotted down GMTK jam (Game Maker's Toolkit game Jam) a while ago on my calendar as it looked like a game jam that's grown quite a lot in popularity and shares the same "at home, over a weekend" vibe of Ludum Dare, perhaps with better management and an actual functional game jam site (sigh...), and even with more of a chance of getting an actual feature or shoutout if you do well.  But sadly the cards are just not in it for me, as it just doesn't make sense at all for me to partake in it.  Too soon after LD (we're still trying to work on the last game?), and I feel a need to really focus on Rhythm Quest at the moment, etc etc.  Feels like sort of a shame, but at the same time, it doesn't really either.  Maybe next year, I guess, who knows.

Pop'n Music has been great and I have been slowly working my way through more charts.  My at-first-rapid improvement has slowed down by now so I'm not just going through a ton of level 33 charts and will probably move up to level 34 at some point.

Mm, I guess that's probably it for now.