Trying out Bleak Sword DX, a little action combat focused game with an incredible retro-diorama aesthetic. Not very far yet but enamored with its presentation.

Today packed up a lot of my retro games and stuff from closets. Def getting too old for moving. It'll be fun to set up the retro games room (NES, SNES, N64, Genesis, Saturn, etc. with my old CRT) once we get moved though!

Break almost over… got one more daytime weekday brewery trip in with bonus Commander. Meanwhile has some great beers.

filed under "songs I love but cannot listen to in public because I don't want to straight up ugly cry in the office/HEB/etc.": Plea from a Cat Named Virtute by the Weakerthans www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmkN...

Belated birthday dinner; went to a favorite Japanese place. Couple of nigiri/rolls not pictured because I was too excited!

We have a bunch of themed tabtletop game playlists with music from all sorts of games, but when a track from Octopath Traveler comes on I always notice. What a killer soundtrack.

Cleaning the garage out today and finding a LOT of nostalgic stuff (personal and games related).

We made a really good beef noodle soup. Even better the second day! Mood improved.

We see this fella on our walks all the time (and sometimes hear him). Good blue chicken.

Mine would be to build a MUD (fully text and all) from the ground up, all the systems and world-building and everything.

Been working on and off for a while cutting Commander pre-cons down into “Brawl” versions. A few of the decks are too politics-focused to work well, but it’s a fun exercise (and I can play with more decks without a pod).

Woke up with this one in my head, but been a minute since I listened to any Baroness. Banger tho. www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6sG...

Accidentally broke keys unlocking doors while refactoring things in my text game. Now I actually have things working right again (please be true). The thrills of game development? Sometimes progress really doesn't feel like it!

Want to make a first person dungeon crawler set in a mall in the 80s that's slowly sinking into hell (but somehow make it not TOO Stranger Things).

Two absolute powerhouses. Both demand a lot but give back exponentially (and tbh Qud even has difficulty modes now that let you see more of the game if you're not into permadeath).

100% sign me up, relevant to my interests, etc.!

More holiday break arcade action! I’m glad we still have a handful of them around.

Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss (1992) is a first-person RPG for MS-DOS by Blue Sky Productions. Blamed for the kidnapping of a baron's daughter, as the Avatar you must prove your innocence and rescue her from the depths of the Stygian Abyss... (a wrongfully imprisoned thread)

Spent a few hours updating input for my hobby game (now fully "press buttons" instead of "parse an actual string the player entered"). Started organizing rooms into areas and re-worked initializing rooms with their npcs etc. Slow going! Next maybe character create?

ok I feel like 2023 must not have gotten off to the right start, so I'm going to make sure 2024 does

get fucked, 2023!

We played Flamecraft today; it's fun, easy to learn, quick, and (most importantly) is chock full of adorable little dragons doing jobs. Great game if you're looking for something light and have a love for cute little guys. boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/33...

Snacks and mulled cider for board games!

There are so many games but here I am replaying Disco Elysium, the perfect game. “Mother, help me, there’s a head attached to my neck and I’m *in* it.” Truest encapsulation of despair.

Nightmare grocery experience: got sent by employee to 15 or fewer lane when I had more because lines were getting long. Felt need to anxiously explain myself to everyone in earshot. Horrible!

achievement unlocked: every possible ooze spawned.

Time for margaritas and dungeon crawling - steady Gloomhaven progress!

I really like Cultic's presentation and it feels pretty good, but I think it might be a little too scary for me, a giant baby.

Making carnitas today. Prepared for torment while the house smells amazing for 8 hours and I can’t eat them yet.

Tonight’s “awake at 4AM” brought to you by “what is that campfire smell?” and “is it stronger outside? where is it coming from?”

Finally getting around to playing Wargroove, but damn I don’t remember being this bad at Advance Wars. I have a really hard time moving on without 3-starring a map though…

I love flipping through old issues of Dragon and Dungeon; what a trove of cool art and a window into TTRPG and game design history. The Internet Archive has them if you're curious (or nostalgic!): archive.org/details/Drag... archive.org/details/dung...

Excited because my latest guitar lesson is teaching me how to play part of Wish You Were Here. Making progress against something recognizable (that I like) is really motivating, even if learning is slow going.

Turns out I have a lot in common with worm from Mobile Suit Baba...

Every time I have a real life challenge ahead (you know, serious stuff like having to call someone on the phone or clean up the kitchen), the O+S music still immediately starts playing in my head. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nsps...

Got some really cool stuff this year. Gonna have to practice a lot before I can paint that tyranid guy, but nice to have an aspirational project! I love the alligator capo.

My mom got us these claws that are supposedly for tearing up meat like carnitas, but now I’m just running around the house with them pretending to be a bear.

The illustrations and example materials in 50 Years of Text Games are great. There are early ads, code snippets, maps, and “screenshots” that add so much detail and context to the articles.

Finished The Case of the Golden Idol; recommend it if you like deduction puzzles like Obra Dinn. Some of the DLC puzzles had almost too much going on, but the game was fun to solve.

It's not much, but I changed how exits function in my tiny text game! I have been slowly extending a Godot parser-based text adventure tutorial I followed; current challenge is making it button-based. Especially proud of my NPCs' periodic text barks, like a MUD might have!

Kind of hate how getting reasonable sleep, getting up in the morning, and doing even a little exercise actually does make me feel better. I want to be a little goblin and stay up all night but also feel great >:|

Reading about the early dungeon crawlers on PLATO terminals in 50 Years of Text Games. Wild to me that relatively complex, visual, multiplayer games existed as early as ‘75-‘76, all the way down to high level players camping lowbies.

Rounded out the day at the arcade, where we found no fewer than ten machines with credits already paid for. Felt like magic…

Great day so far; had French dips at Hopfields and some beers at Lazarus. Hoping to visit a lot of breweries I don’t usually get to on break.

I can kind of play Heart of Gold now and I'm feeling pretty psyched about it, but I have no idea how anyone in the entire universe can play AND sing AND then also play the harmonica, wtf actually www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7eB...

One of the in-game lorebooks I contributed to ESO was about the Sload. As a longtime Elder Scrolls fan, it was a huge bucketlist thing, tbh. I love writing those kinds of little glimpses into a game world.

Break means I finally have time for board games. One day we’ll finish a Gloomhaven campaign. Beem Suncrunch and Hilty Rumblyrocks assault the necromancer’s stronghold!

I like the Feeds feature here, but I don't know if there's a way to mash all the ones I watch into one giant chaos feed, which I'd like to do. Some of my favorites are Birds! 🦉, Moss 🟢, 🎧, and the Quiet Posters feed.

Listening to some favorite music this morning to combat my brain being horrible. Spires Burn is probably my #1 favorite Elder track. Crush dumb brain under loud sound! beholdtheelder.bandcamp.com/album/spires...

Checking out Against the Storm; only in the tutorial so far but seems very cool. Been itching for a city building game recently and this one even has lizard guys! Big fan of lizard guys.