I am really glad I started June strong, because we have had contractors at the house almost every day since the ninth, and that has wreaked havoc on both my energy and my ability to focus on, well, just about anything. Stardew Valley still managed to be most played game this month, and that’s due almost entirely to my weekly game night with a friend, but I also managed to bang out a goal I’ve been working on for awhile:
I don’t know that I could have pulled all that off without the Stardew Valley Wiki and MouseyPounds Stardew Checkup tool. I abused the heck out of both of these tools during this entire playthrough. So while I’m not exactly done with the game for now, I think I’m going to take a break from solo play for awhile.
Community Game-Along
I did manage to play two games to completion for #FashionGameJune, but I ended up abandoning the Sims 3 project I wanted to do because I couldn’t get the game to start consistently with only the expansions I had selected. I put just over two hours into it, but everything felt janky and well … outdated, which I suppose it is, but I decided long ago I wasn’t putting any more money into the Sims franchise.
Steam Next Fest (Summer 2021 Edition)
I did manage to carve out a few blocks of time to try out some of the demos from the summer 2021 edition of the Steam Next Fest, but I’ll be honest – I really jumped headfirst into all the virtual cons when they first became a thing, but each time there’s a new one, it’s harder for me to get excited about it. I still managed to go through most of the demos I wanted to try, and I’m still really glad that playable demos are making a comeback.
My top five game demos were Let’s Build a Zoo, Bear & Breakfast, To The Rescue, Kainga: Seeds of Civilization, and Atrio: The Dark Wild. I’m noticing as time goes on, I’m getting more and more stuck in my ways as far as what games I gravitate towards, and I’ve gone so far as starting to remove games off my wishlist that have mechanics that make them difficult for me to enjoy, no matter how cool they might be in concept or art style. I have plenty of games in a wide variety of genres in my library already for when I need to mix it up more. These days, I’m mostly interested in simulation, puzzle and strategy games, with a smattering of shorter, story-focused titles, casual games, and simple rogue-likes. If I can’t finish a title in a few play sessions, I want it to be something that’s easy to pick up and put down.
Although I didn’t get as far along as I had hoped in my backlog project, I did play four titles from my list for at least 40 minutes or so, and managed to gets posts up about all four. I’m planning to keep fooling around with this, with a goal to try at least this many every month, and to keep adding to my custom category on Steam each time the choice starts to thin out.
I’ve still been picking up the free Living Stories chapters from Guild Wars 2, but I haven’t actually been playing it at all, even though I keep saying I’ll get back to it at some point. However, just yesterday, Patch 9.1 dropped for World of Warcraft, so I’ve re-upped my sub and am looking forward to diving back into that later today.
The only other game I spent any significant time with in June was Sun Haven, which released into early access this past Friday. I only messed around for a few hours, but it was enough to tell me that – at least for me – it’s not quite in a state just yet that motivates me to keep playing – major story quests are still incomplete, and some basic QoL features (like a map!) are still absent. I did drop in to the game’s Discord, and I can tell the developers are working pretty much around the clock to squash bugs and make small improvements, so it’s definitely something I plan to revisit once it’s a bit further on in it’s development.
Nerd Girl Thoughts 
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