February
February Features: Crosscode, Mewgenics and Cardcaptor Sakura!
28/02 - Manga of the Month: Cardcaptor Sakura!# 15
Tags
Series - Cardcaptor Sakura.
Cardcaptor Sakura
Made by CLAMP
Recommendation from Scrimblo Bimbo!
Here’s the synopsis made by Dark Horse for this one:
Fourth grader Sakura Kinomoto finds a strange book in her father's library -- a book made by the wizard Clow to store dangerous spirits sealed within a set of magical cards. But when Sakura opens it up, there is nothing left inside but Kero-chan, the book's cute little guardian beast . . . who informs Sakura that since the Clow cards seem to have escaped while he was asleep, it's now her job to capture them!
A long time ago, I wanted to look more into the Shoujo side of manga since that’s a big blind spot in my manga-reading-ness. So I asked for some expert opinions on recommendations after a brief conversation… that checking right now, those recommendations Scrimblo gave me where almost 11 months ago…
Ah, it’s okay! This is not a record for me, there’s some manga Miya recommended to me 3+ years ago that only recently I read! This is the “Pudding Time” in effect. It might take a long time to get there, but I will get it!
Anyway, Cardcaptor Sakura!
As explained in the synopsis, this is a slice of life manga with some magical elements in between, and it’s cute & fun!
The story is the titular Sakura figuring out the whole mystery of who Clow was, mastering the card’s incredible magical power and learning her own feelings. While also learning the many facets of love and how that can mean so many things as she gets stronger with magic.
It's much prettier in paper! (My phone has cardboard for a camera...)
The action itself isn’t very intense, conflicts usually resolve themselves in a couple of pages.
Actually, that's one of the bigger differences that Seinen manga have over Shonen. Down periods between action are much larger and they are the focus of the manga, while the action takes a bit of a backseat.
Not saying this is a bad thing though, the low periods here were a lot of fun.
Oh, and the art in this manga in general is gorgeous! Just look at the image above! (When you get past the comical Yaoi faces and hands… that got me a couple of laughs sometimes…)
The characters here are quite fun, with a good cast of main and side characters that Sakura interacts with often. The thing that surprised me was that Sakura’s brother got a lot of development, he played a very important role that I didn’t expect at all! Cerberus, Sakura's companion, was very funny as well.
And on that note, something else I didn’t expect was how LGBT+ this manga was. Seeing something like this from the 90s was quite a surprise to me at least.
I’m out of drawing juice so have Cerberus eating a strawberry. (This would be the drawing I would make if I had the juice.)
The story itself, beyond the slice of life moments, was interesting to follow along. The mystery of the cards and who Clow was and his influence was pretty cool.
The eventual love story of Sakura was also engaging to watch, despite the many fakeouts that happen. A lot of “character about to say something important, but they get interrupted” type of thing.
The only thing I didn’t like was the whole teacher part of this story. I thought that part was very weird, which I chalked up to being a different era and all. Luckily it wasn’t anything the manga put a lot of focus on.
So yeah, seeing Sakura grow stronger as she claims powerful magical cards, while she also discovers the meaning of love is very entraining and cute!
And that’s the reason for you to read!
4/5! Aside from some tumbles, this manga was very fun to read!
21/02 - Crosscode Is A Hidden Gem!# 14
Tags
Games - Crosscode.
Finally Committed!
Crosscode… oh Crosscode…
For two years, I tried to commit to a playthrough of this game, but something else would always catch my attention and I would forget to pick it back up for the next 12 months… But this time was different! I actually continued playing the game after 30 minutes!
The Steam Deck certainly made things a lot easier to commit as well~
Well, after tinkering with some options, the game had this weird problem with saturation at first:
I played like this for like an hour, thinking it was fine, until I was blinded.
Gaming In This MMORPG Game Game!
Crosscode is an action-RPG that takes place in a MMORPG world, you play as this girl named Lea that has amnesia and issues communicating through the game due to a bug.
The basic gist of the combat is, you have melee attack combo, ranged ball attacks, a block and a dodge. You attack enemies with your melee, use your ranged attack, that you can charge to stun enemies, and block/ dodge when the situation needs to.
You also have charge specials that use your SP that you build through fighting. All 4 of those moves have a charged special! They all look very cool and do a lot in combat!
This is already a solid base for combat, but this gameplay is further enhanced by the element system! You can toggle through 4 elements which all have unique charged specials and are sometimes required to effectively deal with an enemy. Don’t use an element too much though, you will overload and get locked out of the elements if you spend too much time using them.
Me getting owned fighting a crab.
The combat in this game never stopped being fun, from the start to finish.
While the raw amount of combos you can do is very limited, the charged specials and the variety of them do a lot to keep you fighting. The elemental system adds an element of puzzle to the fights as well, because you sometimes need to switch elements to counter a specific enemy or to stagger them.
Oh, special mention to the sound design! Everything feels so good to hear, especially the electric attacks!
Though, I rarely found myself using the dodge and block specials… that might just be a problem with me, but the damage ones always felt more impactful.
Oh yeah, the controls for this game takes some time to get used to as well, I struggled a lot with them early on… and they never really clicked in to be honest. But it didn’t actively detract from my experience.
Let's test that risk.
Puzzling In a Game Inside a Game!
The game does not have just combat, all those moves can be used to tackle puzzles and explore the terrain.
Your most useful tool is the ranged attacks that you can aim a full 360°, you will be shooting lots of balls to solve puzzles.
The elemental also takes these puzzles to the next level! And not in a boring way where you just have to hit a target with X element!
Moment before the big puzzles.
Each element has a gimmick puzzle that you use them for, example: The wave element can be used to teleport you or objects, the fire element can be used to melt ice blocks but also send a bomb further before it explodes and so on
The puzzles can get very elaborate, requiring you to do a lot of quick actions with good precision and the correct elements. Actually, they can get too elaborate sometimes. There were a couple of times I had to stop playing because my mind was melting after solving so many complex puzzles in a row.
This game has a lot of puzzles, which might be a turn off by some people… but to be honest, I get it. They are usually long and the game throws a lot of them at you in a row… But I really enjoyed that aspect! The puzzles were clever, requiring a lot of thought while not being too annoying in the execution.
Boggled minding puzzle.
Getting into a new room and trying to discover what kind of puzzle was presented to you and then executing it was a very rewarding experience!
…fuck the wave puzzles, the teleporting and wall clipping was mind boggling, I NEVER WANNA SEE THE WAVE TEMPLE AGAIN!!!!
Where’s The RPG Part?
As described earlier, this game is a long RPG.
The main goal Lea has is to recover her memories by playing this game that feels somewhat familiar to her. You eventually meet some friends and the plot continues to thicken from there. A lot of turns & twists to the story that I won’t spoil here, but it’s very interesting how Lea’s situation changes by the latter half of the game.
I do have some disagreements with the premise after the twist was revealed, because of recent times, but nothing that I wasn't able to suspend my disbelief.
The side cast is quite fun as well, you have the dumb french girl who’s brawl over brains who HATES bugs, the nerdy guy that points out the inconsistencies in the game’s environment and even the grasshead guy!
The cast is solid, though their personality traits do feel overplayed sometimes… The French girl REALLY hates bugs and she makes sure you hear that…
Lea not very heavy.
I think the highlight of the story is not the side cast, but our protagonist herself! She’s not a vessel for us to insert ourselves!
Lea can’t speak freely due to some in universe limitations with the MMO game, she can only say a few selected words such as: Hi, Bye, Why, What and so on.
She can’t formulate sentences, which causes a lot of friction with the narrative when she has to explain something to another character. She can’t say what she’s thinking, so she has to use those words, body movements and expressions to get her message across.
And I thought that was wonderfully creative!
Having this speech limitation made the cutscenes very fun to watch and they never got annoying because Lea eventually managed to get her thoughts across through one way or another.
Somewhat off topic, here's art of Lolo being one of the classes from the game!
Other Thoughts!
The music is surprisingly great, I really enjoyed a lot of the tracks in the overworld.
Basin Keep is one of the places you visit in this game, it’s basically a big city with tons of shady activity around the place, and this city is located inside of a constantly raining jungle. I don’t know how to describe songs, but it has this very jazzy feel with some notes that indicate a lot of movement beyond the veil.
I really loved that track!
(But I decided to pick the french sounding song for the blog because… funny french girl.)
(Also, the OST album art is sick, look at this:
Crazy cool art!)
Oh, the sprite work in this game is phenomenal as well. All the places in this game feel distinct and the art was very well made!
There’s some enemies who were reused for later areas, but they were all fine because they often got radical new designs and new moves! Resprites done right!
Bosses also look phenomenal, they are these colossal enemies with very cool attacks and all.
Look at this big bad!
I did have a lot of problems getting through the environment sometimes due to the perspective of the game, being this 2d game trying to emulate a 3d environment. Sometimes it is very difficult to tell if a piece of terrain is above or below you, because 2d makes everything look flat.
There were close to no bugs too, an impressively polished game! I can only recall one time that my game actually bugged and that was with a miniboss where I accidentally broke his AI by using a special charge at a very specific moment… which was very funny to witness.
Unfortunately, he had a lot of defense when not staggered. So I spent a solid 4 minutes doing close to no damage until he died.
Final Thoughts!
Crosscode is a very good game! A not very well known gem as well!
If you want a tough action-RPG experience with an interesting story of a girl trying to find the truth of her memories in a virtual world full of other eccentric characters, some awesome music and fun puzzles to solve, this game is what you are looking for!
My only gripes with the game is that it was somewhat awkward to control and perspective was weird at times… but those are minor nitpicks for the most part.
I recommend it! Kept me engaged from start to finish and it was worth the time!
Epic double boss!
Now, For An Epilogue!
The game has Epilogue DLC as well, which I bought and played through as well.
It takes place after the events of the story are over and ties up some of the minor, loose plot threads of the story while giving you a new area to explore and a new dungeon to go through with a new gimmick for puzzles. This weird looking ball that interacts differently depending on the element you use on it.
Screenshot I took by accident in the new dungeon.
I did enjoy what this DLC provided, it wasn’t anything mind shattering but it was more Crosscode! And that’s a good thing in my book!
So if you finish the game and feel like you wanted to see a little more of it, get this DLC!
Otherwise, you won’t miss too much by skipping it if you are checked out.
18/02 - Jojolion’s "Equivalent Exchange"!# 13
Tags
Series - Jojo's Bizzare Adventure.
Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 8:
Made by Hirohiko Araki
Very Unusual Story!
Jojolion is… weird… dare I say… Bizarre… in an odd way.
Unlike all other parts of Jojo where we have a strong lead Jojo with a goal already set in mind and all this structure for plot points plus other stuff. Jojolion’s plot and whole arching mystery is: “Who is Higashikata Josuke?”
Basically, who is our protagonist?
The story starts with a girl named Yasuho finding Josuke half buried in the ground, naked and with no memories. From there, they go on this long journey to uncover who Josuke is and why he was buried like that.
To be honest, I liked this mystery a lot. Josuke facing a lot of trials and tribulations just to get the answer of who he is was a very compelling reason to keep the plot going forward and kept me invested throughout the first half of Jojolion
The characters were fun, the abilities were cool (for the most part) and the body horror, which is more prominent in this part, was very twisted!
But It’s Only One Half of The Story…
When we do learn who the protagonist is, the story gets VERY messy.
The driver that pushes the story forward changes, a new group of villains gets introduced while being retroactively inserted in the characters backstories and there’s a lot of confusion on “wait, why is this character doing this again?”
All the problems came because of the lack of proper explanations/ poor pieces of the puzzle… I think?
You see, I have been trying to write my thoughts right now and I had to go through like, 4 drafts for this whole section and I STILL DON’T KNOW WHAT I THINK OF IT!
I watched a lot of videos and read posts about what others thought of this part and even them feel as mixed as I am.
I love the Wonder of U and I was terrified of the possibilities of the stand and user… but a lot of their motivation and them being shoehorned into the story as our “main villain behind everything” was not explained properly.
Everytime I think of something good about this part, I remember another bad thing surrounding it. Which is kind of funny because the story revolves around this concept called "Equivalent Exchange”, which is the process of getting a positive result at the cost of another thing.
I guess you could say the story performed an Equivalent Exchange to get a more interesting story… with the downside of getting a bunch of plot holes…?
Here's a random volume cover I really enjoyed!
Overall, Not Bad!
Jojolion is by no means bad in ANY way. I’m not implying that, I’m just sad that a manga this long still had so many holes and unanswered questions. I wish we could cut some of the battles by a chapter 1 or 2 and use those chapters to develop other characters like the Higashikata family or explore more of these mysteries that were so interesting.
The art was amazing, a lot of the characters, even if they had some holes, were fun and it’s filled with that bizzareness that JJBA is known for.
I cannot imagine how strange of an experience this must have been to follow as chapters released monthly…
OH YEAH!
Here’s a bit of trivia, Jojolion started publication in 2011 and finished in 2021, 10 years of monthly chapters. To put that into perspective, the anime aired parts 1 - 5 WHILE it was being published!
I find that INSANE!
Seeing the “New Jojo Anime Coming Soon” in the scans was really wild.
And one little thing before closing out this blog, this part has probably my favorite stand designs in the series. Top 3: Pasley Park, Wonder of U and Soft And Wet.
Here's a drawing a made of my favorite stand + Roa's Stand!
I burst out laughing seeing this gif, with the context I have.
15/02 - Mewgenics Early Thoughts!# 12
Tags
Games - Mewgenics.
Meow The Genics!
As you may already know from the dedicated essay page for it and the countless times I’ve been seen playing it, I’m kind of a big fan of The Binding of Isaac.
Don’t believe me? Just looks my insane play count:
Some people have DOUBLE this amount btw!
So it was pretty much a given that I was going to check out the creators newest game: Mewgenics!
Meow The Genics!
Back when Repentance was close to release, I remember the creator talking about this game and how after that DLC, the main goal was to develop Mewgenics and other smaller projects for fun, since Repentance was such a massive project at the time.
That was the first time when I learned about this game, and pretty much the last time since I never bothered to look for more information. Why? Well, the TBOI newest DLC was out! I was too occupied being consumed by that!
Only in the past month have I become aware of this game again, because of the big market campaign the creator did for the game’s launch.
From the descriptions and screenshots I saw, I wasn’t tooo interested in trying out because I’m not huge on the Turn-based Tactics genre, but was going to give it a try regardless…
Early Feline Addiction!
The game is incredibly addicting and funny!
It’s a Roguelike, Turn-based Tactics RPG where you take care of cats, breed them, assign classes to them and send them on adventures to fight scary monsters, collect food to maintain more cats and loot to better prepare them for fights!
Complete chaos cat fight
What made me addicted to this game is, of course, the billions of unlocks, but the many abilities and synergies cats can have. Like Isaac, what makes you win a run is not having the most powerful equipment or spells, it’s how you synergize them with everything else you have.
For example, I had a run recently where a ranger cat (class focused on long distance attacks) had the passive that made all his attacks also affect other enemies up to three tiles away from the original target. Powerful ability, but what made it more fun was that, later on, that cat leveled up to get a new passive that made him automatically attack enemies that get inside his range for 1 damage. A fine passive on its own, but combined with the previous one, made for some fun AOE power!
Seeing this turned on the switch in my brain that, yes, I’m going to get addicted to it…
Addicted Cat!
A lot of the game is still a mystery and that’s very fun! I can't continue playing it and spending countless hours breeding cats and sending them to fight wars…
Oh, oh yeah! The music and graphics of this game are fantastic as well!
I really love the art style and the fact that songs get lyrics when you fight the bosses of the regions. So catchy and fun to look at.
My early cat house.
My only minor complaint is that this game doesn’t play that well on the Steam Deck, it’s a bit clunky… actually, that’s a good thing. I would be procrastinating EVEN more if it was.
So yeah, I have no complaints!
Go play Mewgenics NOW!
Also god help me… the game is expanding…
Also, Also have a cat:
Cat Lolo!
12/02 - Sleeping Upgrades In A Big City!# 11
Tags
Misc - Random Topics.
Big Troubles!
Sleeping can be sometimes difficult in a big city, all the constant noises outside, bright lights sometimes flashing into your room and the many other problems.
I’m not someone who finds much trouble in falling asleep, I can usually focus and just fall asleep easily… well, kind of. I have some problems when I’m not on my bed or sitting. I can’t ever fall asleep or maintain sleep if I’m not on my bed, but this is already off topic.
This blog is some of the, probably VERY common, upgrades I bought to solve some of those problems during my day to day life!
Lights Barrage Protection!
Trouble with some lights getting inside your room or trying to sleep during day time?
Get a sleep mask!
My experiences with these has been poor since I was a child, because I always found them discomforting, but after buying one so I could sleep during unusual hours of the day (and after many days adjusting it to just the perfect length of comfort), I realized that my child self is stupid and WRONG! These things are great!
Just seeing complete darkness when you are falling asleep is just a nice aid. There’s nothing bothering my eye or some bright light flashing, it’s just a dark void where my thoughts can run wild until I enter the dream world.
Great for falling asleep and maintaining sleep!
Begone Blues!
I spent most of my time staring at screens, and that can be a real problem sometimes when you need to sleep.
I don’t exactly know how it works, not a science guy, but screen bad when going to sleep.
So I decided to give a setting on my PC a try, the one that after a specific time, removes a lot of the blues and strong brightness off your screen and makes it more orange.
I always doubted this feature, thinking it was just a placebo thing but… you know, I have it set on all my devices and… It might actually be working!
I can’t say for sure because it’s something I can’t exactly touch and notice, It was weird at first, seeing a lot more orange felt very odd, but after I got used to it as well… but I didn’t have any problems with just falling asleep just after using my phone/ PC when that setting was active.
So maybe it’s not Placibo!
Orange jumpscare
Noises At Night!
This one is a W.I.P. solution to a problem I have. In the place where I live at, there’s a thriving night market that starts being active at midnight and goes up to 5 A.M, which is a real problem for me who has to sleep through those hours. They don’t make A LOT of noise, but it’s just enough to bother and make me unable to fall asleep.
I know the solution to this would be something I wear on my ears to cancel all the noise outside but… I don’t know what exactly to get…
I saw people use earplugs which sound scary to me, because I might just not hear my alarm. Headbands that act like headphones seem cool and there’s even devices that make white noise to drown out the outside noises…
So many options that I still have to decide on what to pick… I’m leaning towards a headband headphone, but if that doesn’t prove effective, I’ll have to face my fears and get earplugs. White noise machines are not on the table, that kind of thing doesn’t work for me.
Invincible Sleep!
After I get my whatever I’m going to get to cancel out the noises from outside, I’ll be pretty much invincible during my sleep!
Invincible Pudd!
It’s a bit upsetting that I need to get all these things to guarantee sleep sometimes, but oh well, that’s the life someone has when living in a big city I guess.
That’s all for this silly blog about more common knowledge that Pudding didn’t know was common knowledge!
06/02 - Terraria 1.4.5 Update!# 10
Tags
Games - Terraria.
The Final, Final, Final, Final, FINAL Update!
Here we go again, productivity is now down across the whole world with the newest update of Terraria!
I haven’t been keeping up with a lot of the 1.4.X updates for this game. After the 1.4 update, I have just been living in the TmodLoader world, enjoying mods and all that stuff. Occasionally I would see something cool and lightly look into it (like the Don’t Starve crossover), but never really do a vanilla playthrough of the game again for them.
Things have changed now however!
Vanilla Building!
1.4.5 released recently and brought a lot of new things and changes!
To experience all the updates so far past 1.4, I decided to create a new journey mode world to have fun!
I have been enjoying a lot of the changes done to many aspects of the game. I particularly love a lot of the new small features that make things feel a little better, like how the kind of things you can fish up actually appear in the water you are fishing.
My favorite feature though has to be the new UI and mechanics tied to crafting. Now you can use items from chests without needing to open them! and this works from a good distance and with all the chests around you!!
One of the things that really annoyed me about vanilla Terraria was the terrible problems with the crafting system!
Even if you were super organized with your world, the act of taking ingredients for a crafting recipe from each chest individually and/ or sorting chests was super annoying. + having to get super close to a specific crafting station to do crafting just added on to the annoyances.
The Magic Storage mod has been my go to mod for anything Terraria for that reason, it solved all those issues by making one central storage where you just dump all your resources into and an organized and effective UI in that system to craft things.
The new UI and functionally added to it really solved a lot of the problems I had. It’s not perfect like the mod, it still consumes a lot of space, but this is good enough for me!
Still a work in progress!
For other things, I’m testing the new things added to summoner by making this a summoner playthrough. The new music is cool, I like that the bosses have unique themes now. The new crossover content is cool. The many new building materials and blocks made me actually engage with building in my world… Well, I have been trying to make cool things at least!
Oh, I’m glad whip stacking is gone. That’s one of the controversial changes I’m glad they changed. It was incredibly OP and super annoying to do, having to switch whips constantly mid combat. Not fun, even if it was high skill tech IMO.
1.4.5 is awesome in my opinion, I have lost so much productivity after I saw that there’s an achievement to research 50% of all the things possible to research in the journey mode!
03/02 - 15 Days In Virtual Reality!# 9
Tags
Games - Five Nights At Freddy’s (Series) And Half-Life (Series).
Virtual Reality??
Lolo VS Virtual Reality
So, my siblings went on a trip for a few days last month, leaving their VR headset here. Completely alone and unsupervised for 15 days… so I just took it and played on it!
Owning a VR headset is like a distant dream of mine, I think VR is a very novel and fun way to play games. Having the player actually there in the world, where you can grab stuff and look around opens the door for so much player expression that you just can't get with normal controls.
Here’s a perfect example of why VR has so much potential:
I was playing the Breaker Room minigame from Help Wanted 2, in which you have to restart a system by pulling levers, but you are not alone in this! Funtime Freddy will slowly approach the desk with time, so you have to use the megaphone you have to keep him away. Tackling the levers while keeping your attention at him is the challenge of this minigame!
At one point I was in big trouble, I had completely lost track of where he was and didn’t know what to do. At that moment, the lights in the room went out, which gave me a bit of time to do some levering while I thought of what to do. But when the lights came back… I decided to look forward to assess the situation, while having both of my hands occupied with the levers and I just saw this MASSIVE imposing figure right in front of me, so close to my face. This made me jolt back, completely stopping everything I was doing and I scrambled to get the megaphone on the desk. Right when he was reaching out to me, I managed to use the megaphone, which made him tilt his head and, after a light flicker, return to his starting position.
VR’s greatest strength is that complete immersion in the game. You wouldn’t get this intense of a reaction from me if I was playing with a keyboard and mouse, there’s a disconnect between me and the game… okay, maybe you can, but in VR, that line is completely blurred. Everything is right in front of your face, literally and figuratively!
VR Gaming!
With the preamble over, let’s get into the VR titles I played after spending an hour in VR Chat to get my bearings in this new reality;
Five Nights At Freddy’s VR: Help Wanted
This game aims to adapt the first 3 games of FNAF into the VR experience, while adding a bunch of mini games related to other games in the series and man… What a genius idea.
In the first few FNAF games, you are stuck in an office and have to defend yourself from the animatronics. This concept fits perfectly in VR, being inside that office and looking around is so cool! Multitasking all the things the game throws at you while having to pay attention to the cameras right in front of you is a completely different feeling than just playing the games normally.
The normal game adaptations are chef’s kiss, I had a lot of playing through them, especially FNAF 2! I loved how chaotic it was to face all the animatronics at the same time while trying to keep the music box up. FNAF 1 was fun and FNAF 3 was a bit of a joke, but still cool! I like how Springtrap actually moves like a human unlike all other animatronics… even if it looks kind of goofy…
Wonder what's gonna be there
The side mini games on the other hand… they are a bit of a mixed bag for me, so let’s get into them!
Dark Rooms
Basically, the idea of these minigames is that you are in complete darkness and you have very limited lighting resources.
The minigames here are fun until PlushBabys. PlushBabys SUCK!!!!!
I HATE trying to find these STUPID Plush(Babys) in the DARK!
I didn’t complete this one because of it.
Parts And Service
This set makes you get very close to the original 4 animatronics and perform repairs on them.
These are probably the highlight of these extra minigames, seeing them so close to you and just how massive they are is such a cool experience.
Vent Repair
Pretty much as the title says, you repair vents while something comes from said vents to kill you.
They were fun, but I think the last one is a little too long.
(Unrelated) IT'S HIM!
Night Terrors
These are the loose adaptions of FNAF 4 into VR.
You go door to door, closing if you hear breathing and deal with something in the room if necessary.
They were a bit jank, but also fun.
The game also has a hard mode for the minigames by activating a lever on the main hub, it changes the lighting of all minigames and it's pretty cool! Lighting does hurt the eyes though, too many neon colors…
On the topic of things I didn’t like, this game has a couple of annoying bugs. I had one big problem that, any time I outabed from the game, one of my hands would just die. I would need to restart the game to return to normal.
(Somewhat unrelated) Evil Freddy's! (This screenshot SUCKS, I'M SO SORRY!)
But anyway, Help Wanted was still fun! I enjoyed my time, even if I didn’t complete the game because of PlushBabys. I did a bit of the DLC, but by the time I got there, I was ready to clock out from this game, I only have 15 days after all!
Five Nights At Freddy’s: Help Wanted 2
I was looking forward to playing this one!
Unlike its predecessor, this game doesn’t aim to adapt the games from Sister Location and onward, instead we got a bunch of really fun mini games based on those games!!
(I’m so glad for this decision too, imagine how much more of a slog FNAF: Sister Location would be in VR…)
Instead of going through each category, I’ll just tier list the minigames here and talk about the notable mentions!
Tier lists for fun!
There aren’t any mini games in this collection that I thought were bad! My favorite ones were definitely the ones where you have to multitask to survive, like the Food Prep category. I think those really show the strengths of VR, being able to do separate things with your two hands makes for some frenetic and fun gameplay!
Revenge Against The Sun(Fish)!
Special mentions go to the First Aid minigames where you have to perform… First aid to Helpy. The things they ask you to do and the dialogue from the unimpressed announcer voice made for some hilarious moments.
Breaker room gets a special place in this list because of that story I said earlier.
Fazerblast was also super fun to do, the duo wielding the guns and aiming at the targets/ balloons were hella fun. Throwing the balls at targets was less so, those were quite the exercise and something was off with them, I swear I couldn’t throw them correctly.
Something I was also happy to see is the many Security Breach minigames! That game was such a disaster, but had so much potential if it was just directed better… so it’s nice to see the many cool things we could’ve done in the Pizzaplex if the game’s vision was fully realized.
Disassemble Freddy.
Oh yeah, taking off the mask to reveal the second half of minigames is still such a cool moment, even if I already knew about it. Princess Quest 4 was also equally as cool, but playing it with the arcade controls in the game was rough… I’m glad they added controls with the actual controller in your hands and not forced you to use the ones in the game world.
In the end, I enjoyed my time way more than the previous game. There were a lot more fun games and everything felt super polished.
Half-Life Alyx
What a fantastic game this is.
You want the best pitch for what VR games are capable of doing? Play Half-Life Alyx.
You can literally interact with pretty much anything in the game, the environments are full of things for you to grab and just chuck at walls and whatever. Hyper detailed and feels so real, it’s hard not to get lost in it! (I streamed me playing this game for the first time on Discord for my friends, and I was described as a “baby who just learned the sense of ‘touch’”, because I was grabbing and throwing everything I was seeing…)
Of course, this is not just an environment simulator, there is a proper game here!
You play as Alyx, going through City 17 to save her dad and eventually figure out the mystery of a vault built by the combine.
Careful aim.
After you get your bearings in VR, the game gives you a gun and sends you off in a linear journey.
Aiming in this game I found it to be surprisingly hard, but not annoying. IDK much about guns, I never held one in my hand before (nor I intend to do so), but I found myself really focusing on aiming to shoot. Like, I would put the gun closer to my eye level and close my right to get a perfect aim in the iron sight… I have no idea if any of that makes sense… POINT IS: It was really novel and felt cool!
You get 3 guns throughout the game, which all serve a different purpose, and you can upgrade them by using resin, which you collect by exploring the environment! I think this system is pretty clever, because it forces you to interact with the things the developers designed while also rewarding the play for that exploration.
You will need those upgrades too, these enemies are no joke here. They will take cover, shoot you on sight and be surprisingly smart with their grenade throws… of course, they are stupíd sometimes, it’s a video game after all!
Get out of here Headcrab.
The game introduces a lot of mechanics that are really enhanced by VR. The best example of this is my favorite chapter of the game simply named: Jeff!
Jeff is a horrific monster that can melt you alive if he catches you… but the catch is that he is blind, so you have to lure him out of the way by using sound.
There’s one particular moment where Jeff was around me and I was looking through a few drawers, making as little noise as possible. That was until I opened one of the drawers and saw a glass bottle slowly roll off the edge. Like a deer in headlights, I just looked at the bottle doing nothing, until my brain suddenly locked in and I managed to grab that bottle before it smashed into pieces on the ground, making a loud noise.
That simple moment entered my top 3 best VR experiences of all time, just by how stupid and hilarious it was!
Perfect to store lunch!
The ending of the game too… I’m not gonna spoil it here in case some new Half-Life fans are here, but witnessing the post-credits still gets my pumped and teary… We need the third one, man…
Now What?
Unfortunately, 15 days wasn’t enough to do a lot of things. Time was up and I had put everything back to where it was before I started using it.
But these experiences have fully confirmed my need for a VR headset! I still have so much stuff I want to do in VR, such as: Playing VR mods for games, trying out Beat Saber or other games in general, exploring worlds in VR chat by myself and so much more!
So I’m really hoping to score myself a Steam Frame. From what I heard, it’s a lot like the one I was using but a lot more comfortable and free of Meta’s nonsense!!!
I really hope I can get one…
But anyway, that’s enough for this extensive blog!
Thank you for reading this silly adventure I went through!
January
January Features: Deadlock Newest Update, Phoenix Club Chapters and Steel Ball Run!
31/01 - Phoenix Club Chapters 13 - 15!# 8
Tags
Website - Phoenix Club.
Phoenix Club: Chie Arc is Done!
After 6 or so months, all the chapters related to this arc were released!
Probably the longest single production cycle I experienced so far… anyway, let’s get into some thoughts of mine!
Chapter 13 was a lot like chapter 12 in terms of how prepared I was to write it… that is, not at all. I had to come up with a lot of things from scratch, since I didn’t have a solid enough idea on what to do for Chie’s training. But after 2 iterations, I think I got everything I wanted down on this release version. A lot of the very cool ideas took a bit to come to me, I was writing chapter 14 when I got the idea of tying Chie’s mother onto her resolve!
Chapter 14 is a whole nother story, this one was 100% the easiest to write. Everything in this chapter was pretty vivid in my mind!
The scene with that blue hat character and the gag scene with the council president was something that was already through a lot of iteration in my mind.
The only things that changed from first to final draft is that there was too much narration from Seiko, so things were broken up with more dialogue and a few extra scenes… there’s still a lot of narration though.
Chapter 15… man… I think we went through 3 iterations before finalizing it, but at least the idea still remained the same. Chie was going to fail the interview and Seiko would confront Yuki in the hallway, revealing parts of her character. The biggest changes I made through the iterations were: adding the scene with the teacher from chapter 1, making the stand-off between Seiko and Yuki a bit more… “stand-offish~” and cutting a scene from the next day section for being too much of a clash of tone. (I’ll still find a way to implement that scene in a future chapter.)
Many Chie situations!
The overall idea for this arc remained the same even with all the changes done chapter by chapter. Chie’s arc was meant to be:
Chie desires to be social -> signs up to be a council member on impulse -> trains for the interview -> fails the interview -> given a second chance to do better in the future.
My goal with this arc was to show that change sometimes is not as easy as putting a day’s worth of effort into and expecting to pull it off tomorrow. Sometimes, problems are deeply rooted inside us, and working hard for a day doesn't solve the problem, it requires continuous effort to actually do it. Other people pass through the same problems you have right now, so you can do it too.
Chie’s story is not over yet, of course. When her next arc comes around, we are going to hear more about the second part of her arc. She failed once, but she’s not going to take that as the end of the world!
Overall, the biggest criticism I received from my editor when I first showed off the first drafts is that… There was too much narration. Too much Seiko telling you something that happened and very little actually showing what's happening, a.k.a. dialogue and interactions.
It’s the most important lesson I took from this work cycle “have more character dialogue in your character based story.”
…which sound obvious saying it outloud, but we do get lost in the sauce while making our stories. I’m going to try my best to avoid this mistake when the next story comes!
I think that concludes everything I had to say about this arc of the story.
I would like to thank Miya, Mirai Arushio, Kiwimeowo and DoujinMelon for the wonderful work on the social media art for the chapters release! They all did a wonderful job making them and were very pleasant to work with!! Click each name there and check out their other stuff!!!
As for the future, I’m going to be collecting ideas for the next arc during a few months. I have a nice base for what kind of story I want to tell, I just need to trim the edges of this brainstorming phase. IDK how much time is going to take for me to start putting these into paper, but one thing is for sure, it’s gonna be way smaller than 6 chapters.
As for more near future things, I’m gonna work on chapter 15.5 and a really cool addition to the Phoenix Club page! I plan to implement those during the anniversary in March!
This is for now, thank you for reading what we put out during December and January! Can’t wait to see you again when things pick back up again!
29/01 - Manga of the Month: Steel Ball Run!# 7
Tags
Series - Jojo's Bizzare Adventure.
Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 7: Steel Ball Run
Made by Hirohiko Araki
Here’s the synopsis by VIZ Media (I couldn’t make anything better without spoilers…):
Riders from around the world gather in the Wild West for the race of the century! Johnny Joestar, a former jockey paralyzed from the waist down, comes to spectate, and momentarily regains the ability to walk while watching a duel fought by Gyro Zeppeli. Desperate to learn more about this power, Johnny joins the race alongside Gyro and embarks on the most epic and bizarre race to ever cross the American frontier!
It took me a looooong time to properly read this from start to finish. I began reading it in December of 2024, but then forgot to pick it back up until this month! Not because it was anything bad or boring, it's just if life gets in the way, I sometimes forget to continue things I started.
Regardless, in anticipation of the upcoming anime, there is never a better time than now to start reading it!
Part 7 is something completely new for Jojo, instead of following the bloodline of the Jojo family, we start an entirely new story in an alternative universe!
Which makes for the perfect starting place for new Jojo fans, but more on that later.
As stated on the synopsis, this part 7 takes place in an American Race called the “Steel Ball Run”, where people from around the world gather to participate and watch… but there’s something far more sinister going on beneath this facade, something the president of the United States is very interested in.
The story has this cool back and forth between the main cast and the antagonist, both one upping each other constantly until the end of the race, which keeps things very exciting. I had many moments of “WE ARE SO BACK” and “IT’S OVER”!
Sorry for the poor quality, took a picture with my phone.
The story doesn’t just follow Johnny and Gyro, we see scenes from a lot of other racers as well, which makes them more fleshed out for when they do get involved with the greater story.
It does take a bit for the really cool stuff to happen, kind of a slow start, but when the gears start moving, it’s hard to put the manga down!
The characters and stands introduced in this part are some of the best in the whole series. Due to the unique position of being an alternative universe, the author was able to do callbacks and remix ideas from the past in a whole new way. Stands themselves feel more modular than before as well, which makes battles more interesting and exciting. You never know exactly what the protagonists are fighting against!
The art is just phenomenal. The author is famous for this art style super realism as many of you are probably aware. But the art got even better from part 6 to part 7, because the manga is now published monthly, which gives time to make each page just eye candy to look at.
Wait, instead of describing, I’ll just show you using the same volume I bought from last year!
"Sorry for the poor quality, took a picture with my phone." The Second
The only thing I thought was a bit bad was following the action throughout a page. IDK, it’s probably my old, 20+ year old eyes, but sometimes I would look at an action page and struggle to follow along.
Okay, but why is this a great start for a Jojo fan who wants to see the best of the series and then go back to read other parts?
Well, it’s an alternative universe! You are not punished for not knowing events from previous parts, because we are starting fresh here! But you are not left in the dust if you did read/ watch them, there’s very cool callbacks everywhere here, many names and abilities you can point at the paper with images and say “I know that reference!”
Okay, since I can’t contain myself, here’s a SPOILER SECTION!
DO NOT CLICK THIS IF YOU PLAN TO READ IT!
Gushing time!
That whole section of all the racers against Valentine was horrific! Really showed how cunning he is and how powerful D4C. Even then, he almost lost against Diego, which was even cooler to see! The only reason Diego lost was because his own selfishness made him blind to everything else around him… and oh man, what a brutal way to go out!
The 5th lesson…
Seeing Tusk Act 4 break through the President’s seemingly impossible to penetrate barrier was hype as hell and also horrifying!
The return of The World stand was EVEN CRAZIER!
The way it was taken out too… chef’s kiss to this entire manga ending!
The race setting keeps the story moving forward, the art is absolutely amazing, the characters and abilities are a lot more weirdly interesting and the constant back-and-forth with the villain keeps things engaging.
That’s why you should read it!
I absolutely recommend it! Part 7 is worth a read, for Jojo fans and non-Jojo fans alike!
Here's a drawing I made of Roa traveling!
I also started reading part 8, which I started reading a long time ago, but stopped.
This part is even more weird than part 7, but I like it! Very interesting!
Also also, one last thing before I go, NETFLIX PLEASE DON’T FUCK THIS UP MAN-
PART 7 IS AMAZING, MAKE IT WEEKLY, EVERYONE IS ASKING IT!!
I HATE YOU BUT IF YOU DO THIS, YOU WILL BE (1% of the way to be) REDEEMED!!!
I DON’T WATCH STUFF WEEKLY, BUT I WILL DO SO IF THIS IS RELEASING WEEKLY-
27/01 - Cosmic Princess Kaguya!# 6
Tags
Series - 1-Off Films.
A movie review for a change, ay?
Cosmic Princess Kaguya
Cosmic Princess Kaguya is a film about this girl called Iroha that works herself thin with her part-time job and studies, the only reprieve is through the streams and the virtual world game that V-tuber called Yachiyo Runami created.
But one day, this hectic life is shattered by the sudden appearance of a… lost baby??
That’s the most basic sinopsys of the film. I’m not much of a fan of watching movies (or anything in general recently, I really haven’t watched a proper show in a long time), so when I’m presented with a movie that is two and half hours long, it must be something amazing that will keep me engaged… which had no way of knowing for this one! I was (peer-pressured) recommended this movie by Miya and Co, being spammed that it was peak and that I couldn’t look it up.
Most normal recommendation.
(Don't mind the nicknames.)
I went against my own judgement and decided to watch it on the spot…
and the movie was pretty good!
The animation and art is fantastic, not a single moment of this movie feels dull or stiff, there’s always a movement or change of expression coming from the characters that always feels like they are actually reacting to the things happening. Many pretty backgrounds and general looks and all that. Though I did find it a little hard to follow the action scenes, IDK if this is my old, 20+ year old eyes issue or something else, but I kind of got lost in what characters were where. Small nitpick though, everything is well done here.
The voice acting and music were very well done! Each character's voice acted really well and properly portrayed their characters, really bringing them to life. There’s a couple of original songs in this movie, but also some famous Vocaloid song covers done by the cast, which was a pleasant surprise for me! You love to see Vocaloid being recognized in newer media~
I won’t spoil the story here, but it was definitely something that kept me engaged through the huge run time of this film. It's a comedy with parts of romance, action, the pacing is a little fast, it’s full of twists and turns, but it takes the time needed to develop the characters as they mature through the narrative. The VR game reality is also a fun thing that made for a lot of cool moments.
It’s very good, I recommend it!
As I said previously, I don’t watch movies very often, only at special occasions, so to keep me engaged for two and a half hours while adoring the whole experience is something noteworthy!
Oh and don’t worry, I watched this movie through… other methods that didn’t give the big N money!
I want the age of just buying a movie and owning it was something common, I hate Netflix…
Here's small art of Iroha. Pudd is there to fill space, don't mind her.
25/01 - Old Gods, New Blood!# 5
Tags
Games - Deadlock.
Newest Deadlock Update
The newest and biggest update for Deadlock is finally here!
I played quite a bit off it and I’m here to talk about it!
For the people who want to see everything new with this update, go to this page that the developers created to showcase all the features: Old Gods, New Blood
It’s vital context for what I’m gonna say!
Let’s go over the four major features of this update.
First, and my favorite one, the game mode called Street Brawl!
Street Brawl is a 4v4, one lane, round-based, roguelite game mode where your focus is to fight your opponents and take down their tower to win the round. The first team to take down the enemy tower 3 times wins the match!
Every round starts, you get the choice to pick between 3 randomly chosen items, which can include rare higher tier items, items that come with a bundled low tier item or even enhanced versions of regular items that are much more powerful than their normal counterparts. If you are exceptionally lucky, you may even get a game breaking legendary item!
You get 1 reroll per round, so choose the items wisely to best make your builds. After choosing 3 items, the fighting starts!
Now here’s why this game mode is the best thing ever:
Pudd explains why this game is the best thing ever.
Pudd explains why this game is the best thing ever.
This is the fabled casual mode I always wanted from this game.
It solves a lot of the issues I had with the game as merely an average player, learning the complexities and micro of the game.
There were a lot of moments when I wanted to try a new character/ different item than I usually build for characters, play new things for the sake of variety and learn more about the game. But every single time I would be met by a “Defeat” screen of my own making because I was underperforming trying something I never did before, while everyone else is using all the meta builds to guarantee a win.
It never felt good to be the one dragging down the entire team and wasting 30+ minutes because you dared to try something new.
And you can’t even blame the players here, there was no casual mode to try these things with other players…
Complete chaos in NYC! (looks even more chaotic from the ground floor)
But now everything changed, Street Brawl allows you to try new things and explore more of the complexities of the game with none of the risks and MASSIVE time investment that is a regular match. You can pick that one hero you never played before, pick up the basics and just have fun!
Rounds rarely go beyond 6 minutes, the plain field is leveled because everyone is getting random items and no one can force a meta build to win the game!
It’s incredibly chaotic and hectic, but it’s a good place to learn new heroes and items for new players, while also having fun with the deathmatch nature of the game mode!
Street Brawl is great, I absolutely love this mode and I’ll probably live there for quite a while.
The only issue I can foresee is a “metafication” of the game where players only pick the best heroes for the mode and everyone has no fun.
I saw a pretty good suggestion to fix this however, instead of allowing us to choose the characters, the game would give you the option to pick between 6 characters at the start of the match. Leaning more into the chaos, forcing the player to learn & test new things while also avoiding players hyper focus on meta stuff!
Rare Pocket game! (never played this character beforehand)
Map Updates and Base Reworks is the second major feature in this update.
With each major update, we get a more and more stylized map.
Just, look at these new bases for each team:
This looks gorgeous!
The game’s art direction is fantastic! Both sides are getting even more distinct from each other and I particularly LOVE the design of the patrons now. They are no longer big balls, they are actual threatening creatures that were a summoning!
Old Gods!
It’s not just the bases that got art passes, many areas of the map were updated and feel far more lively!
Look at these sewers!
Or even this cozy building!
The only nitpick I have with the current art in the game is that the new troops are a bit hard to see at glance. They blend into the scenery far too easily with their mutated colors.
The UI Improvements and Extras really tie things together nicely!
I don’t have much to say here other than the post game screens look really cool and the UI really is taking a life of its own! Nothing about the UI is boring or not stylized! Heck, characters even got new portraits for when they are on a killstreak or badly hurt!
But I do have a small nitpick, I think a lot of the hurt portraits need more work. They feel clearly photoshopped and a lot of them can have so much more than just “I’m sad and hurt”.
I would love to see, for example, a Drifter portrait where he gets more maniac and desperate at low hp, or a Doorman one where he lets a bit of the “devil” inside him out. There’s a lot of potential here!
Image From Dead Air, they are a really good resource for Deadlock news! Super High Quality
Just look at the difference between these two, the KS one is so much more expressive!
And lastly but not least, Six New Characters!
…which sadly I don’t have anything to say, because none of them are out… and we are only getting 2 per week…
Imma be honest, kind of slap in the face to wait for so long and having the vote thing be extended for longer. I wish we got all of them at once this time around, or maybe more info about their kits! We got no balance changes as well… But oh well, they at least look very cool and I’m definitely voting for Rem and Graves!
New Blood!
And those are my early thoughts on this new mega update.
This game has involved so much since that first public close beta, and it keeps on giving. I can’t wait to see how this game is going to evolve further! The sky is no limit for this game!
Valve has problems maintaining their current live services, but at least we can see that they go all out when they care!
Now if you excuse me, I'll queueing for another match of Street Brawl and pray the random character doesn’t give me Holiday, Vindicta or Sinclair!
16/01 - Funvirval Guide For A Power Outage!# 4
Tags
Misc - Random Topics.
Funvirval Guide For A Power Outage!
As we all know, power outages drastically decrease the quality of life of everyone affected. Basic necessities become a lot more troublesome, candles and flashlights are a must when things get dark and showers are the equivalent of being exposed to Antarctic levels of cold while wearing nothing.
We all know the struggles of a power outage while living in a city.
This blog, is not about any of those problems.
Instead, I’m here to discuss some things I found that slightly improve my quality of life and allow for some fun!
Being Prepared Is Key.
Here where I live, a lot of the times, power outages occur during times of strong rain/ wind.
So, preemptively, everytime I see that the sky is turning dark, I try my best to charge any system with a battery system that I can. Trying to keep everything above 80% battery minimum, since there’s no telling when the power is going to go back up after the storm.
I also got a power bank for my cellphone and other devices that is going to help a lot when I don’t have enough time to charge things/ or when I’m caught unprepared. Having some kind of thing to charge your devices, disconnected from energy is a must! Just don’t forget to charge the power bank itself before…
Having cold water stored in a big thermic bottle is also something simple that you can easily do when you notice your warning signs of a power outage. Sure, everything might be going bad, but at least you have some nice, cold and refreshing water any time you need it!
Something like this would probably suffice:
I don’t have this, just a regular thermic bottle… but in theory this is good!
Different From The Rest!
Biscuits and other foods that don’t need to be cooked or prepared but that can also be easily stored is something that takes a lot of the stress away from me. Trying to make food during outages SUCKS!
These are my favorite ones!
How To Deal With The Tougher Problems!
Being prepared is good, but you also need to face said problems somehow.
Here’s some ways I deal with the tougher problems of a power outage:
Number 1 - The Marrow Fu-
Ahem, Number 1 - Sleep During Hot Day -
It SUUUUUUUUUCKS so bad to sleep during these days with no air conditioning or a fan. You can’t even have your door or windows open either, otherwise you will be attracting billions of mosquitos to consume all your blood…
While my solution is not perfect, I managed to find some way to alleviate this problem by like, 20%ish.
I call this tech: Temperature Jail!
Leave the door and windows open for an extended period of time before I go to sleep, to let all the fresh air enter and fill the room. Then, when I’m heading to bed, I close all of them, deal with any pesky insects that got in during that period (an electric racket to kill them is very effective!) and then quickly head to sleep while the room is fresh.
If you have flexible windows, you can open them with the smallest gap to the outside so that a low amount of air can come in, but not enough for a mosquito to easily get in.
Then just go to sleep without a blanket!
From there… well… good luck! Because the room will eventually get hot and be annoying, that’s something you can’t avoid.
BUT, you at least get some hours of mild comfort! Enough to have at least SOME undisturbed sleep.
Number 2 - Free Hands In The Dark -
Going around holding your phone as a flashlight/ candle or having to place them down to do stuff or use the bathroom while everything is dark is BAD!
To solve this, I decided to utilize a tool that, if you go to the gym regularly might have this already, Cellphone Armband!
Something like that.
Simply, strap it to your lower arm, turn on your flashlight and put the phone in reverse on the band and- BAMN, ARM LIGHT!
You don’t need to worry about placing light sources in awkward spots anymore, whenever you need it, just point at it with your arm! Is it very practical? …kind of not, but you can’t deny it helps and looks cool!
Number 3 - Freezing Showers -
I don’t know man, that’s the one problem I can’t ever find the solution to.
You either face your fears and get in the shower, or don’t shower until the power is back on. There’s things you can do if you choose the latter option, but they never feel good to me… so I have to choose pain…
N-Number 4 - Endless Boredom -
Without energy, I can’t do a lot of the fun stuff I usually do on my PC. I love playing video games, they are my favorite pastimes! But I don’t have many games on my phone, they are all gatekept by the energy requirement of my PC…
The solution I noticed recently for this problem was… to own a portable console… that costs a lot of money…
Honestly, this one is gonna depend from person to person, but if you like video games… yeah, we are kind of out of luck. Something portable/ with a battery is your best bet. (I use the Steam Deck! Not just for this of course, for daily use as well!)
And that’s some ways that I keep myself prepared for a power outage/ deal with it afterwards.
Are they the best advice ever?
100% not, some people might think they are kind of inconvenient (I promise the arm flashlight is cool and practical!!!), but they are some of the ways I try to better my quality of life in dire times such as power outages.
That said, I haven’t experienced a power outage that lasted more than 10+ hours that would need the usage of any of these things, so all that I said is just hypothetical and I haven’t done real life testing… Alright, I think it’s time to stop for today!
This is all for today, have a nice day, Traveler!
And be careful with power outages!
Stay safe against the creatures of the night!
09/01 - Games I Play During 2025!# 3
Tags
Misc - Random Topics.
Games I Play During 2025!
As you all know, gaming is a big hobby of mine, I love everything about it!
Every year since 2021, I have been diligently keeping track of most of the games I played during the year (You can see all of them in the Game Shelf page in the Misc page), only excluding games that I either played once or for so little time that it didn’t end up living an impression on me.
And, at the end of the year, I would put all these games in a tier list and rank them from worst to best in terms of enjoyment!
Ranking for fun of course, ultimately, these ranks mean nothing.
2025 was no different, I played a bunch of games during that year. I think it’s 2nd in terms of how many games I played during one year, 2024 being number one. The difference there is of 2 games I believe, 2025 narrowly lost!
Anyway, with the information compiled in the Game Shelf page, I was able to not only make the tier list without any issues, but also add a new feature to this new page!
Nice and compact text!
Different From The Rest!
All the entries have a small paragraph with some of my thoughts about the game! Yup, I wrote a short paragraph for all 53 games! (I’m crazy, I know!)
This was only possible because of the filter system on the Blog and the notes in the Game Shelf page. They were a big help in reminding myself of what I said when I played X and why it should be placed above/ below Y game.
You can check out the tier list page by Clicking Here or by going to the Misc page and scrolling to the tier list section.
I also did some small improvements to those pages as well. Every year I end up improving and iterating on this poorly coded set of pages… if only I had the same knowledge back then as I did now… so many rewrites could be avoided…
But yeah, that’s all from me today!
Don’t forget the Phoenix Club chapter tomorrow!
(Did you notice the color scheme change? It’s all done with very few lines of code!
I’m so proud of this coding that could’ve been done by a five year old~)
07/01 - New Blog Format!# 2
Tags
Website - Website Changes.
Welcome to the brand new blog refresh!
My goals were to make blogs easier for me to write and upload to the website, make the filter system be something more visible to the user and have some actual organization instead of just dumping everything into one page and calling it a day.
Maybe also have ways to make blogs look more unique from time to time. While also making everything as easy as possible to change and iterate, which means better coding LMAO!
So I brainstormed for a couple days, looking at blogs that I like and from some friends and I came up with this 2.0 refresh using a lot of the details tag!
My main inspiration for this blog refresh was Kiwimeowo's blog, go check out their website, it is very well made and cute!
Pros And Cons!
Here's some pro and cons from this change:
Pros
- Easier to just write and directly port to the blog update, cutting down on days of setting up for a blog.
- I don't need to pack a bunch of topics into one day, instead I can have everything organized or save topics for relevant blogs!
- Fun custom theming for specific topics if I want to.
- Better readability on pages outside of this one.
Cons
Had to sacrifice some features of the previous one, such as the auto height adjustment on the blog page, now you have to scroll… (If you know a way to dynamically adjust the height of an iframe after a details tag is opened inside it, please reach out!)This is no longer con because of Kuurp! Please check out their website!!!!Past blogs might be a little broken.(?)Not an issue thanks to Kuurp's magic above!- No set dates for blogs, they are essentially random now.
- Might have some other cons that I might not know yet.
Overall, It’s a Big Improvement!
Blogs were starting to get stale for me and sometimes a burden depending on the day.
This refresh allows me to tackle things at my own pace, without a lot of the stresses I had previously.
Don't get me wrong, I still had a lot of fun making them, but this one allows me to have MORE fun.
Big Stinky vs Fabolous Good
And also, this honestly feels more blog-ish than the previous version… I'm only sad about the Song of the Day segment, it feels far less noticeable at the top. I'm still thinking of what to do to make it more flashy.
I'll still recommend a book/ manga at the end of the month, and sneak in the usual 3 drawings I do.
As for notifications, the news section on the side of the main pages of the will notify of all blogs I post! I'll do a social media & RSS post at the end of the month, picking the biggest topics of the month.
So yeah, I think that’s about all I wanted to talk about for this topic, look forward to the new blogs!
Lovely Gif Made By Miya
05/01 - Brand New Year!# 1
Tags
Website - Phoenix Club, Website Changes.
Games - 1-Offs, The Binding of Isaac.
Helo!
Welcome to the very first blog update of the year!
There’s a lot I wanna talk about this year, so let’s just skip the fluff and head into it!
WEBSITE UPDATES
Moving Forward to 2026!
Last year, the website changed a lot, the whole 2.0 update that overhauled everything was quite the toll order. 2026 won’t see that enormous of a change to it, instead, I’m gonna spend time patching up some holes 2.0 still has such as better art page, changes to the blog pages and an eventual rewrite of the main page’s texts. (those are 2 years old already…)
My goals are much smaller than last year (and far more achievable too) for sure… I mean, I still have to properly release all Phoenix Club chapters, get through 2 big RPGs and I’m only half-way done with my Sonic Journey.
Things are moving along though, kind of.
Oh yeah, talking about changes, this blog right here will receive some big format changes!
I’m going to switch to more blogs with smaller and more focused topics instead of setting a date for a bunch of topics lumped into one. I have been doing these set dates for 3+ years now and I feel like the fun of them was lost a bit, it felt less blogish.
This does mean I'm going to be dropping the set dates for blog updates, instead they will be at random dates that I can't really predict. I'll still keep 3~ish drawings per month and the book/manga review though!
But yeah, 2026 is going to be an interesting year for sure.
Phoenix Club Chapter 12
It was released last month!
You can go read by Clicking Here!
Chapter 12 received a lot of changes from the first to final draft, most of it was cutting out unnecessary background character monologue from Seiko. They never really interacted with the scene, so a lot of it just went nowhere.
And also did some small touches for the side characters of this chapter, giving them a bit more personality in their dialogue.
This and chapter 13 were probably the hardest ones to write, since after Yumeka’s introduction, I didn’t know exactly how I would convey Chie’s trial, I just knew what came after that trial. So I had to figure out as I was writing, and the end result, after a lot of iteration, ended up being good… hopefully…
Chapter 13, 14 and 15 will be released on their dates still, nothing has changed on that front.
Chapter 15 is in a little bit of trouble, I still have to get the final draft done, I couldn’t do it in December. Trying my best here.
LIFE UPDATES
Roboquest!
I found this game randomly looking on Steam!
It’s a roguelite, looter shooter that is surprisingly very fun to play.
You go through a set stage, get guns to shoot bad robots, level up to get cool perks or enhance your characters abilities and try to do it fast for cool ranks!
Stages have multiple secrets, permanent upgrades and multiple exits that lead to other different levels. It has that “pick your path” kind of thing going on, which is pretty cool for a roguelite. You will be visiting these levels a lot, so it’s always nice to have tons of these collectibles to get.
Here's some gameplay of the summoner focused character!
What I also enjoy is that you can further specialize with the upgrades from level ups, since every main upgrade has 2 side upgrades that further expand on the former’s idea.
The game is very good to look at as well, just look at the stylization here:
Just a boss intro btw!
Very good game, absolutely recommend it for anyone looking for a fun shooter and roguelite!
Fiend Folio!
I have been playing this mod on my PC while trying some challenges on Vanilla Isaac with my Steam Deck.
Despite my many hours in this game, I never gave content mods a fair shot and I don’t really have a reason why.
But I decided to change that recently by playing one of the bigger mods out there: Fiend Folio.
Footage of a fiend
This mods a lot to the game, from new items & trinkets to even new bosses and mechanics!
The thing I was most interested in checking out was the new enemies and rooms they added, so I started with a fresh save file… and man, what a hard experience.
The many new enemies add a lot more difficulty to the game, especially early on when you have very little unlocks. Dare I say, sometimes unfair…?
It's thought, after a period of slump where I was losing run after run, I got things back on track.
Footage of a golem.
One of my favorite additions of this mod is actually the room names being displayed at the bottom of the hud. There’s hundreds of new rooms and they have some funny names sometimes.
I also installed the OST mod they suggested for the mod, though I don’t like a lot of the songs as I do the Antibirth ones… actually, that OST is kind of an impossible standard to meet…
Anyway, if you want a more difficult but sillier experience, look for this mod!
Footage of a game.
If you are looking for the Song Of The Day, just look at the top of this post!
Oh and also, check out the playlist for Last Year's blogs! Very cool songs in there too!
That's all for today, expect a more in-depth blog about all the blog changes in the near future!
