Quick Look – The Serpent Rogue (Humble Choice – January 2023)

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Most months, Humble Choice includes at least one quirky indie title that I’ve never heard of. This month, that title was The Serpent Rogue. The developers describe it as a botanical action-adventure, with a heavy focus on gathering and crafting. The Serpent Rogue has a regular price of $19.99, and according to HowLongToBeat, a playtime of about three hours for the main story line, although there’s quite a lot of extras stuff to do if one wanted to.

At a glance, The Serpent Rogue looks like it would be exactly the type of game I’d enjoy. It’s stunningly beautiful, the introduction is almost lyrical, and I was absolutely ready to dive into the grimdark world and start looking for all the plants I was going to need to save the world.

After a brief introduction where you learn how to sprint and not much else, you’re unceremoniously dumped into a world with very little guidance. Now, I realize that there are multiple schools of thought on how tutorials should be handled, but I’m a strong proponent of not having the challenge of the game play be about how to play the game. The first few minutes are fine, but after that, you’ve got a not-very-open world to explore, a bunch of stuff you can break open, and a journal full of quests you may not even realize you’re receiving.

I picked some berries, and used my portable research table to study them. I poked around some more, grabbed a couple of pumpkins that were just lying around. I figured out what it means to go fishing in this game. However, I was also frustrated by areas that told me I needed an axe or a shovel, but with no indication of where to obtain these starter tools. I muddled around for a bit, but by the third area of the game, I knew it just wasn’t going to click for me.

I did manage to die once, and I learned a few things from the experience. First, that you drop all your stuff, and if you die again before retrieving it, it’s gone for good. Second, if you see a little bag hanging from a tree branch, it probably has stuff in it that you want. In fact, on my first pass I had missed one such bag, and I’m guessing that was the thing preventing me from moving to the next area, but I can’t say 100% for sure.

You will need to worry about survival mechanics, like hunger and rest, and the game gives you very little guidance on how these systems work. You’ll run into the occasional NPC, who will speak in riddles. If you’re diligent in your explorations, you’ll find some books, that give you a little bit of additional information about the world (and ostensibly, clues to solving the puzzles within it), but I’d mentally checked out already. I didn’t think I’d signed up for a game where everything was the puzzle – I just wanted to pick flowers, make some potions, and make friends with the animals.

I feel like this game isn’t doing itself any favors with its marketing – someone expecting a somewhat chill gameplay loop will likely be frustrated, while someone who really loves being dropped, mostly unguided, into a weird world and left on their own to survive may be turned off by the game’s description. I hope that being featured in this month’s Humble Choice will help A Serpent Rogue find it’s intended audience, but I learned pretty quickly that I am not a part of it.

Game Over – Strange Horticulture (#PuzzleGameMonth)

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I picked up Strange Horticulture almost a year ago, on the strength of the demo I played back in October of 2021 during one of many Steam NextFests. Originally, I had planned for it to be one of the last games I covered for the #JustOnePercent project, before I decided to stick to only games that actually released in 2021. So, in reality, I could have played this anytime over the last year! Thankfully, I decided to get back onto the Community Game Along train, and January is #PuzzleGameMonth, so it was a good excuse to stop putting it off and actually play the damn game.

You have inherited a botanist’s shop from your uncle, and the game dumps you right in the middle of a story in progress. Your customers will come to you asking for plants, sure, but they will also be dropping tons of news and gossip over you counter as well. However, none of the specimens in the shop are labeled, so you’ll need to closely examine the plants and compare them to the notations in your herbalism book to figure out how to fill customer requests. You’ll also have ample opportunities to explore the wider world to acquire even more plants for your shop. Some hints will come directly from your clients, but you’ll also get your share of instructions by mail to help you find every strange plant that can be found.

Although the plant-identifying puzzle makes up the meat of the gameplay, it’s not the only kind of puzzle Strange Horticulture has to offer. Make too many mistakes, and you’ll be tasked with a reassembly puzzle or a key matching puzzle. Sometimes, your directions for exploration are straightforward, but many of them require figuring out what that scrap of paper someone pressed into your hand could possibly mean.

Making too many errors will force you into a different type of puzzle. I got two different ones during my playthrough, but it’s entirely possible there are more types I didn’t see.

In the early days, your book is fairly small. Completing orders or talking to people out in the world will often reward you with new pages. It is possible to – sort of – soft lock your progress if you get stuck on one of the map puzzles; more than once I had a customer come in and ask for a plant I didn’t yet have. Since there’s no way to refuse a customer order that I could find, you may need to either break your mind (which seems to restart the day, and open up the possibility of a different customer order) or water the plants you do have until you get enough Will to Explore to go out and try again. The hint button can be useful if you’re not sure if you already have a plant in your possession, but it certainly isn’t going to figure it out for you.

It took me just over four hours to play through and reach one of the possible endings. A not insignificant portion of that time was spent rearranging my plants in hopes of having a more logical order to things, which would quickly be undone by the discovery of new plants. When you pick up new plants, they’re tossed somewhere on your shelf, and with 77 plants to find, it doesn’t take long for any organizational system to fail. Thankfully, you are given the tools to label each plant as you figure out what it is, or if you prefer, there’s a setting to auto-label any plants you successfully identify. It’s an opt-in system though, which I am happy to report I discovered before I’d manually labeled more than half a dozen plants.

Once you reach an ending and get credits, the game isn’t quite over, however. No, one of your regulars comes in for a post-game opportunity to obtain any remaining plants and identify them all. It gives a nice bit of completion to the game, and I appreciated the opportunity to “officially” identify everything.

The only part of the game that – at least to me – felt a little half baked was the making of elixirs. The ability doesn’t unlock until about halfway through the game, and even once it does, you only have occasion (and the recipes) to do so a few times. It wasn’t that it felt out of place, so much, as sort of unfinished. However, it also really took nothing away from the game play experience to only have it matter a few times, so it’s a small gripe in an otherwise really solid game.

I’ve focused mostly on the game play, because it’s nearly impossible to talk about the story without spoilers. It’s dark, it’s gritty, and at times, it’s delightfully cryptic. Even the dialogue with the less important customers is interesting, and also? You can pet the cat pretty much whenever you like. There are a handful of times where you’re given a choice to make, and those choices do affect the endings you’re eligible to receive on that playthrough. Although there are several different ways for the game to end, I don’t see myself replaying this one anytime soon, but there’s definitely lots more to do if you’re a completionist.

Overall, I enjoyed Strange Horticulture a lot, and played the entire game over a single sitting. This was partially because I was so captivated, but also in part because I was worried that if I didn’t get back to it right away, I would be completely lost. Your mileage may vary on that one, but it was definitely a concern for me. Still, a four hour playtime isn’t unreasonable for a single sitting game, and what a fascinating sitting it turned out to be.

Quick Look – Hokko Life (Humble Choice – January 2023)

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If you’ve ever wanted to play an Animal Crossing game, but without the restrictions that come from being tied to the real world clock, you might have given Hokko Life a long look. This cutsey life sim has a heavy focus on gathering, crafting, decorating and cute anthropomorphic animal neighbors. It retails for $19.99, but is available now as part of the January 2023 Humble Choice.

Much like I wanted to like Animal Crossing: New Horizons on the Nintendo Switch, I really thought I’d enjoy having Hokko Life to play on the Steam Deck. Sure, the fiddly decoration parts of the game are kind of lost on me, but I can zone out and chop wood for hours with the best of them. However, for several reasons, this one – at least for me – just wasn’t a good fit.

If you’re here for the story, you’re best off just stopping right here and finding a different cozy game. Basically, you fall asleep on a train, and end up disembarking in the town of Hokko. Since approximately four people live here, I’m not entirely sure how it got its own train station, but this is far from the last time Hokko Life will beg you to suspend your disbelief. You wander into the local inn, run by pink elephant Oma, who offers you her spare room for the night.

And then she offers you a free house.

There’s a catch, of course. The house is in a pretty serious state of disrepair, and you’ll need to gather up the materials to make it habitable. Okay, sure. So you chop some wood, throw it into a box, and bam, you’ve got a barebones place to live. It was about here, I started to think that just maybe, I’d bumbled my way into some sort of cult.

Now that you’ve fixed up on dilapitated house, well, maybe you might not mind fixing up another? I mean, since you’re here and all, besides wouldn’t it be just lovely to have some more neighbors? So I go through the process a second time, chopping wood, handing it over, and now Benny (the bunny, naturally) has moved in right next door in the house I fixed up … and got no compensation for, I might add.

It’s about this time that everyone starts asking you to do them small favors. You know, because these things would be nice to have but not nice enough for anyone else to want to do them. You build a bridge and plant some trees, and before you know it, a real estate agent has rolled up on Hokko to set up shop, and move people into the houses I am supposed to build.

Now, I don’t mind gathering wood. I don’t even – really – mind giving it away afterwards. But Rosa the real estate agent has other plans. Not only does she expect me to round up all the materials that go into the building of a new home, but she expects me to pay for the privilege of putting up new houses that I neither plan to live in nor to profit from? I don’t know about this, Rosa, but it’s an interesting business plan.

Almost 90 minutes into the game, and my prospects for making money look pretty dire. I’ve given in and built one house, rendering me flat broke. Now, my choices are to sell my gathered wood, or run around catching butterflies all day, which are worth about 1/100th of a cheap house in Hokko’s economy. My backpack is small (which necessitates running to and from the shop – complete with mandatory load screen) frequently, or sleeping in my sad little sleeping bag for about 20 hours a day, waiting and hoping someone in town is going to think of something else that would be so cool to have around, and hope they pay me well for doing it for them.

Hokko Life is incredibly slow, even among it’s contemporaries. It’s also a little creepy, if we’re being completely honest. Maybe if I were more patient, and more into the decoration mechanics, I would have enjoyed it more, but everything feels like crawling through quicksand, and yet, time also seems to pass so very very slowly in game. It’s a little disappointing, because this was one of the main reasons I picked up this month’s bundle, and at the end of the (very very long) day, it was a big ol’ bust.

Self-Reflection Sunday: The Whys of Goal-Setting

Posted in Nerd Girl Goals, Self Reflection Sunday8 Comments

Every month, when I sit down to write my goal post for the upcoming month, I think about how there are probably a lot of people out there who think I’ve completely lost my marbles. I’ll admit it felt weird at first, making a to-do list for my leisure activities & hobbies. In fact, most of the time, I don’t even have anything written down to keep me on-track in any other aspect of my life, but I’ve kept up with Nerd Girl Goals since September of 2019, so more than three years now.

Obviously, it’s a thing that I feel is working for me on some level, even though, most months I don’t come anywhere close to checking off everything on my list. In fact, I pretty regularly refer back to the bulleted list several times throughout the month. Why do I do it? What do I get out of it? Well, the answer is … complicated, as I find it serves multiple purposes for me.

Outsmarting Decision Paralysis & The Punishment Loop

Magi does a pretty good job of explaining decision paralysis in his recent blog post on the topic, but to put it very simply, decision paralysis occurs when someone has too many choices of how to spend their time, money, or energy. And we live in a world that seems almost designed to cause this condition – no matter what it is you might need, want, or think you need or want, there’s likely to be more than a handful of options.

Several years ago, I determined that my number one problem with time management wasn’t a time management problem at all – it was decision paralysis! Since leaving my last job in late 2014, I’ve had more free time than the average adult, and yet I always felt like I got less done, and that what I did manage to get done, whether it be for productivity or leisure, never really felt satisfying. Either I would flit aimlessly from one task to the next, never making much progress in anything, or I would fixate on something that if – for whatever reason – I could not do, would prevent me from doing anything else meaningful.

It was immensely frustrating fairly regularly, and often led to something I like even less than decision paralysis – the dreaded punishment loop. See, if couldn’t focus, or I couldn’t focus on what I perceived to be the right thing, then I would not allow myself to do much of anything else. Nothing productive, nothing relaxing or enjoyable. I basically put myself in a weird mental time out, where only the least satisfying of time-waster tasks were allowed. It was awful.

It took me longer than I care to admit to to realize what I was doing, and even longer still to break that pattern. I still find myself slipping once in a while, but once I recognize the pattern starting to happen, I will often refer to my monthly project list, and find something on there that feels like I can handle it. I tell myself I’ll try the new game I wanted to write about for half an hour, or that I’ll do around 50 stitches on a cross-stitch pattern I’m working on. Usually, it’s enough to break me out of that cycle, even if whatever task I initially choose doesn’t stick.

Having a quick reference of things I want to do – or at the very least, want to get done – often gets me back on track. Where I maybe couldn’t choose from all the various options available to me, I find it far easier to choose one of eight to ten line items.

The Satisfaction of Faux Productivity

So. What do I mean by faux productivity? Well, it’s a crutch I rely on when for whatever reason either my brain or my body won’t allow me to do what it considers to be real work. It’s work that doesn’t actually matter. There’s no consequences for missing a deadline, or ignoring a task, but it does allow for a spark of happy chemicals in the brain for making progress towards a goal.

As someone who struggles with both mental and physical health issues, and is still fighting the programming that tells me that my worth as a person is inherently tied to my productivity, training myself to be satisfied by checking things off on a list that don’t actually need doing has pulled me out of a rut more times than I can count. No one is going to be upset with me if I don’t play that game, write that blog post, or watch that movie I said I was going to. More importantly, I’m not going to be upset with myself. It’s all carrot, no stick; it feels good to do it, but it doesn’t feel bad when I don’t.

Having goals centered around reading books and watching television give me something that feels meaningful on days I can barely get out of bed. Working on this blog and on craft projects give me something concrete I can look at and remind myself that I am doing things, even if they’re not the things society tells me I should be focusing on. It’s okay that these aren’t the things that are valued by the world; they’re things that I find valuable, and most of the time, that’s enough for me.

Sure, I realize that this is just a form of psychological chicanery, but I’m also not about to sabotage something that works when so very many things don’t.

Keeping a Tangible Record of Progress

This is, in a lot of ways, another little mental health trick. Usually, to do lists are destined for the nearest trash can whenever they’re either all checked off or given up on. Instead, I keep mine – digitally, and on the internet, sure, but I can always go back and see what I’ve done.

Time has felt very weird for the past few years, and having a record of how (at least in part) I spent the months that all seem to blend together has kept me grounded. It gives me a small semblance of structure, something that marks the passage of time, and a reference when I get down on myself. In fact, I’ve found it valuable enough that I think if I were to stop blogging for whatever reason, I’d keep something very similar in a journal.

As a bonus, it reminds me to make space and time in my life for things that bring me joy. That it’s okay to have goals that don’t lead to more money, or a cleaner house, or whatever else it is I’m supposed to be striving for. That it is perfectly acceptable to want things just for myself sometimes.

If you are a person who sets goals for yourself around your leisure-time activities, why do you do it? Does anything I talked about here resonate with you, or do you have completely different reasons?

If you aren’t a person who sets these kinds of goals, have you ever considered it? Do you think you might get something from it?

Feel free to respond in the comments, or if you prefer, to talk about this topic in your own space.

Game Over – Palindrome Syndrome (#PuzzleGameMonth)

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For someone who has literally thousands of unplayed games in her library, I find I still am concerned about the longevity and/or the replay value of games when I’m shopping. So although I enjoy escape-room style puzzle games, I rarely buy them outside of bundles because I feel like more than most genres, these are one-and-done kind of games, and they’re usually fairly short as well. When a triple pack of escape room games from mc2games showed up in Fantatical’s Holiday Diamond pick-your-own bundle alongside a couple of other titles I’d been meaning to pick up, I figured getting three of these games for roughly $5 seemed like a good deal.

I’ve now played one of the three – Palindrome Syndrome – to completion, and although I enjoyed the game for what it was, I would have felt 100% ripped off if I’d bought it at its retail price of $10. I played on the Steam Deck over two sessions, and it took me just under two hours to complete the game. Calling the story of the game mediocre is probably a bit generous, but if you’re playing an escape room style puzzle game, you’re probably not in it for the story.

Full disclosure: I needed to look up hints twice during the game. Once to figure out what the puzzle was asking me to do, and the other because I was totally flummoxed. Both of these were in the last of the six game areas. Up until that point, I made steady, non-frustrating progress through the variety of puzzle types (although most are recycled a time or two throughout the game). The game does give you all the information you need to solve every puzzle it puts in front of you, however, sometimes, doing things out of order will leave you feeling like something was left out – just keep looking. It’s all there.

Instead, any frustration the game might have earned comes from design and user interface decisions. This was maybe made a little worse by playing on the Steam Deck, but it felt like the interactable areas were very small, and oddly placed. More than once, I only discovered something was interactable on my third or fourth lap around the room. I wouldn’t quite call it pixel-hunting, but the experience definitely could have been improved by increasing the size of the interactable areas. There are also a couple places where color is integral to solving a puzzle, and the color choices definitely could have been handled better – in one memorable place, there’s a purple and blue that look very similar, and in another, the clue is yellow, but the choice in the solution is much nearer to a green.

The other gripe I had was with the way notes were handled. Several times, you’ll pick up bits of written information that go into a notebook you can open to refer to them. However, you cannot open the notebook while actively attempting to solve a puzzle, so if you need to refer back to the information that the game has given you, you have to close out of the puzzle, open the notebook, find the correct document, and hope you remember everything when you get back to the solving part.

While I wouldn’t call Palindrome Syndrome a good adventure game, as a pure puzzler with some set decoration, it’s worth a playthrough, but certainly not at full price.

Building My Watchlist

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Sometimes I feel like I cannot do anything at all without first making some sort of list.

Making lists, for me, has a dual purpose. First, just the whole process of sitting down and thinking about a thing, looking at what’s available and pruning it down into something manageable gets me more excited about whatever it is I’m planning to do. However, the main reason I do it is to avoid decision paralysis. When confronted with the entirety of a thing, I sometimes get stuck for anywhere from hours to weeks. When instead, I have a tidy list to refer to with half a dozen choices on it, it’s a lot easier to just pick from a much smaller pool.

Since I know I want to do more new-to-me watching, I figured a good place to start would be to make a list of a half dozen or so options in each category (television and movies). Hopefully, having done the legwork ahead of time will keep me from doing the too-many-streaming-services version of channel surfing when I actually have the time and inclination to watch something.

Will I go off script? Absolutely I will! I am not restricting myself to only the things I pre-select, but I’m hoping having an easy reference will keep me from procrastination from indecision.

Television (Season, Series, or Mini-Series)

These are all new-to-me shows available to stream on services I currently am subscribed to.

Pitch Perfect: Bumper in Berlin: Quite honestly, this is going to be ridiculous and maybe even terrible. But ever since I saw the previews for this on Peacock, I knew I had to at least try it out. The Pitch Perfect series are some of my most-watched comfort movies, and although I feel like they chose the least interesting character to make a show out of, I’m still in. [Available to stream via Peacock.]

Wayward Pines: This is one of those shows that I keep forgetting exists. I read the books this is based on quite a few years ago now, but I remember liking them quite a bit. I think, at one point, I watched a single episode, but I’d like to give it a fair shake and at least watch the first season. [Available to stream via Hulu.]

The Alienist: I absolutely loved the book, and have read it a few times. When the series was announced, I was excited, but didn’t have any way to watch it. I recently noticed that it’s now available on HBO, so that made this one an easy choice. [Available to stream via HBOMax.]

Nine Perfect Strangers: I was interested in this one when I first heard about it, but decided to wait and read the book first. I have accepted that I’m probably not going to read the book anytime soon, so I might as well watch the show anyway. [Available to stream via Hulu.]

Tell Me Your Secrets: This Amazon original has gotten some … less than favorable … reviews. I’d like to watch it anyway, because I’m a huge fan of Lily Rabe, and I haven’t seen her in much outside of American Horror Story. [Available to stream via Amazon Prime Video.]

The Devil’s Hour: This show was 100% not even on my radar. I only noticed it when browsing around for things that might spark my interest, and bam. I’m a sucker for any kind of creepy, possibly supernatural mystery. [Available to stream via Amazon Prime Video.]

Movies

I’m the worst at actually watching movies. These are all movies I said I was going to watch, and haven’t gotten around to yet.

The Menu: Okay, this one is pretty much brand new, and it just recently dropped on HBOMax, so I likely would have carved out the time for this one even if I wasn’t making a concerted effort to watch more new-to-me stuff. I’m not 100% sure why this film in particular has captured my interest so completely, as I know very little about what it’s about, but it is definitely at the top of my movie watchlist. [Available to stream via HBOMax.]

Hotel Artemis: I feel like this movie just came out, so I was surprised to see it actually released in 2018. I told you I’m behind on my movies. This one is a weird, semi-post-apocalyptic movie about criminals, so obviously, that’s right up my alley.

The Innocents: This one was on my Halloween movie watch list, but I never got around to it. It looks like it might be a little more cerebral and artsy than I typically gravitate towards when it comes to horror, but I’ve heard nothing but really good things about it. Unfortunately, this is the only one that I don’t currently have access to via one of my subscription services, but I’m willing to pony up a rental for it. [Available to stream via AMC+ or for rental on Amazon Video.]

The Greatest Showman: I have zero excuse for not having seen this. Zero. It’s time to remedy that. [Available to stream via Disney+.]

Moana: There was a time when I watched pretty much every Disney animated movie, but that time was quite a few years ago now. I would like to start filling in those gaps, and this seems like as good of a choice as any. [Available to stream via Disney+.]

Escape Room: I love any movie where they trap people in a room and maybe (probably) most of them end up dead. I can’t explain it. I’ve wanted to see this one for awhile, but it keeps being only on streaming services I don’t have. When I saw that it’s available on Starz, I figured it was probably time. [Available to stream via Starz.]

Self-Reflection Sunday – Begin at the Beginning

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It seems to me that I’ve read more than once that blog posts made on Sundays tend to get far less interaction than ones that are posted any other day of the week. I think that might actual be part of the reason I decided to schedule this maybe-semi-regular series for Sunday. You see, I’m not entirely sure it belongs here. I’m not entirely sure it belongs anywhere.

I’ve always said that I don’t do New Year’s Resolutions, and I don’t, at least not in the strictest sense. I will admit, however, that there’s merit in the concept; there’s something about the surreal nature of the winter holiday season that leaves me craving a major life-tidy just about as soon as they’ve passed. I usually end up channeling a non-insignificant amount of energy into changing something about my behavior or environment that’s been bugging me during the first few months of a new year.

However, 2022 was a particularly difficult year for me personally, and I’m finding the dissatisfaction I’m feeling with the … well, with pretty much everything, actually … is quite strong. It’s left me feeling a more than a little scattered. As someone who best organizes her thoughts through list-making and note-taking, I think maybe this is a reasonable natural progression. Sure, it’s a bit out of my general scope, but I suspect it’ll connect up in some ways as I write my way through.

This isn’t going to be weekly, but every now and then, I will use this space to talk a little bit about something I’m working on in my life. Whether that be about struggles with health issues (both mental and physical), problems with organizational tasks, or figuring out where to cultivate more joy, whatever is on my mind I’m going to try to put down on the page – um, screen.

Outside of Blaugust, I rarely post anything on Sundays, so if you’re here solely for the general nerdery, you won’t be missing anything but some random ramblings by skipping out on these. I’m not 100% sure where I want to go with this series just yet, but I do know that the only way to find out is to begin and the beginning.

And so here we are.

In Review – December 2022

Posted in Nerd Girl Goals3 Comments
  • Make at least 10 blog posts in December.
  • Do at least one Quick Look of a game purchased during November.
  • Participate in the group review of the December Humble Choice.
  • Get at least three characters to level 70 in World of Warcraft.
  • Reach 100 points in at least one primary profession in World of Warcraft.
  • Progress in My Time At Portia at least as far as Somber Marsh in the main story.
  • Complete the fourth main dungeon in Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos during co-op nights.
  • Complete my 2022 GoodReads challenge of reading 48 books for the year.
  • Progress to at least 66% completion in my current cross-stitch project.
  • Research and consider buying a table top scroll frame for cross-stitch.
  • Run the December 2022 Game Giveaway event.

This may not have been my best month for crossing off line items, but most of it felt pretty good, and that’s way more important. I tend to get myself all knotted up in task completion and scheduling and I forget to just go where my joy takes me sometimes. This month, I knew I had overscheduled myself, and it’s a lot easier looking at missed goals when you know you made far too many to start with.

GAMING

December contained far fewer games than most months in 2022, but significantly more than my average hours. While most of that can be traced to the new Dragonflight expansion in World of Warcraft, I also managed to get way too caught up in Against the Storm, which was one of my impulse purchases during the Winter Sale season.

Most of the remaining titles I played this month were played with friends (mostly on co-op game night), leaving only TOEM and Viscera Cleanup Detail for solo play. This was definitely less variety than I would have in a normal month, even going back to before the #JustOnePercent project, but sometimes you’ve got to go for quality over quantity.

World of Warcraft

I did manage to hit my goal of getting three characters leveled, and each of them has a different primary gathering profession that I’ve also maxed out. However, I’m finding that the profession rework has necessitated a change in the way I view my crafting professions. Typically, in a new expansion, one of the first things I do after reaching max level is to grind out my professions so that they too are capped.

Dragonflight seems like it actively discourages this, and if you take a good look at what’s offered by profession trainers, you can see that the writing is on the wall right from the start. Most profession trainers have nothing new to teach you after you reach the halfway point. Everything after that is either random drops, purchasable from the different factions at higher reputation levels, or unlocked via the profession skill tree. However, unlocking these recipes is only half the battle – most of them require end-game, soulbound materials, so you won’t be crafting anything in bulk. Initially, I wasn’t a big fan of this part of the re-work, but I’m slowly coming around.

The initial gearing-up period also hasn’t been too awful for me; I’ve been well past my guild’s minimum raid requirements for quite awhile now, and we have a few more days before our first foray into the Vault of the Incarnates. I’m still a little grumpy about the reduced number of available world quests each week, but I’m starting to fall into a reasonable rhythm of working on my main in a few short bursts throughout the week, and devoting the rest of my World of Warcraft time to my army of alts.

Gaming Related Spending

I know a lot of folks tend to curb their spending right before the winter holidays, and I can tell you right now I had the complete and utter opposite experience. I’ve been banking some extra fun money almost every month all year long, and I went spend-happy this month. In fact, I’m not even going to attempt the collage of what I bought this month – it’s beyond unwieldy. I managed to rack up an absolutely outrageous $232 in gaming-related spending this month.

I can’t even blame that on a single huge purchase, but quite a bit of it is accounted for by three things. First, I bought myself a fancy new mouse; there wasn’t anything wrong with my old one, I just wanted a few more side buttons without giving in and getting a full 12-panel of thumb buttons. Secondly, I picked up the Jingle Jam bundle again this year, which seems to keep getting just a little more expensive every year, but hasn’t even come close yet to not being worth the money.

Lastly, I spent just about every penny of my $100 winter sale budget, although a few of the titles I grabbed from other storefronts as they were slightly cheaper there than on Steam. All in all, I managed to grab 12 titles (including one gift), and one of those I’ve already played for over 50 hours. Even if I never touch anything else I bought, I’ve already more than gotten my money’s worth!

OTHER NERDSTUFF

Reading

This year’s reading goal was perfectly and precisely met, although I didn’t do a whole lot of reading in December. I did, however, decided to finish the year out with a perfectly spooky winter re-read (Ghost Story) that I’ve wanted to dive into for awhile. It’d been quite a few years at this point, and I was surprised at how much of the story I didn’t remember.

Watching

December wasn’t all that great for me on the watching front; in fact, outside of Monday night movies on Discord, I hardly watched anything this month. I did get a bit into season 2 of Gotham and then I just never got back to it. Despite deciding to set a goal going forward of watching more things that are new to me, I noticed a couple nights ago that the Roku channel has all four seasons of Sanctuary, so of course, I had to start that even though I know it’s highly unlikely I’ll make it to the end.

Stitchcraft

Most of the month, I didn’t even go near my craft desk. I did, however, do my research and found a scroll frame on Etsy that was everything I wanted, including on sale.

Bear Creek Ltd is an Etsy shop based in Austin, TX, and is the only place I found that made non-floor scroll frames that could accommodate projects more than 24″ wide. Unsurprisingly, the thing is huge, but it’s well made, and I can see myself getting years of use out of it.

However, it only arrived a few days ago, and I’m still deep in the adjustment period. I had to rearrange quite a bit of my crafting space to make room, but so far, I like it a whole lot.

It is, however, A Project to set up initially, so when I do smaller projects, I’m unlikely to use it. This is probably more of a pro than a con, though, as it should help prevent me from project hopping so that I’ll actually, maybe, get something finished.

Overall, I’m pretty ok with where December took me. I had no real expectations of being overly focused, but I think I’ve got a better handle on what I want the shape of my leisure to look like going forward, and I’ve made some good first steps in getting there.

Nerd Girl Goals – January 2023

Posted in Community Game-Along 2023, Nerd Girl GoalsLeave a comment

Finally, not just a new month, but an entire new year! As someone who doesn’t really do New Year’s Resolutions, it probably means even less than it might, but I’m still glad to be putting 2022 behind me. While it’d be more than a bit of hyperbole to say that it was – for me personally – the worst year ever, there was still a lot of things I’ll be glad to be able to say were so last year.

GAMING

World of Warcraft

Now that the new expansion thrill is mostly over, and I’m settling into a more reasonable cadence, I’m not entirely sure what’s next for me in World of Warcraft. My guild will be stepping into normal Vault of the Incarnates in a few days, but with only five hours of scheduled raiding in January, I’m hesitant to set much in the way of goals in relation to raiding. I still have professions – I mean, characters, of course – to level, but we’re probably still about 6 weeks out from any significant new content. On the other hand, I still have enough to poke at that I’m not quite ready to dive back into old content either.

To keep me at least a little on task, I think I’ll set my goals for two more characters to level 70 and Loremaster of the Dragon Isles on a second character.

Community Game-Along 2023

With no big gaming or blogging projects on the horizon, I’ve decided to jump back into the Community Game-Along for 2023, in no small part because there are only a handful of themes all year that take me outside of my comfort zone. The theme for January is #PuzzleGameMonth, and I thought I’d pick out a couple of puzzle games from my library to play around with.

The three games I was most drawn to on a first pass were Gorogoa, Palindrome Syndrome: Escape Room, and Strange Horticulture. Although I’m not 100% committed to these particular titles, I’d like to play at least two puzzle games during January as part of the Community Game-Along.

Other Gaming

I think January will probably be a little bit about figuring out how much I want to pre-plan, and how much space I need to leave myself to spend time doing whatever catches my fancy. Goal-setting helps me to keep from getting overwhelmed by decision paralysis, but setting too many goals just turns me into a rebellious teenager who will do just about anything to avoid working on the list I made for myself. It’s a balancing act, and I’ve found that treating my line items as suggestions rather than must-dos helps quite a bit.

That said, I prefer to have something on my content planning calendar, but without tying myself to a single game or group of games that I feel like I must play. So, to keep it sort of flexible without being too flexible (I swear, I’m impossible to please!), I think I’ll try out some repeatable categories.

For example, I’d like to continue participating in UnwiseOwl’s group review of the Humble Choice, as well as sitting down to play and write about something I purchased during the prior month. I have a terrible habit of getting spendy and then forgetting I own something right up until the point I try to to buy it again. I also would really like to start making a point to write about what I’m playing on co-op game night, although we don’t always change games frequently enough for this to be an every month sort of thing.

Otherwise, I’m sticking to a play-what-I-want, write-what-I-want policy for the time being.

OTHER NERDSTUFF

Reading

I’m fairly sure I want to repeat my goal from 2022 and go for 48 books again this year, in some combination of print & audio. That averages out to four books a month, which feels doable even when I’m not reading a whole lot, and then I get on a kick and I either get way ahead, or totally caught up in a week or two. It’s not enough to stress me out, but it’s highly unlikely I’ll be done by March. It just feels right. Which makes my shorter-term goal four books during January.

In the shortest term, I want to get back into the reading before bed habit, because I have gotten outrageously sloppy with my sleep hygiene over the past couple weeks.

Watching

This past year, I was super inconsistent with my media consumption when it comes to television and movies. Either the TV doesn’t even go on for weeks at a time, or I slip into the familiar comfort of perpetual re-watching. Doing Discord movies nights has helped somewhat, but I still find myself gravitating to old favorites and not trying anything new.

Although it’s not really my focus here, my goals are mostly for me anyway. So I’d like to get into the habit of one new-to-me movie and one new-to-me season, series or mini-series each month. I won’t force myself to sit through something I’m not enjoying, but like you do with small children and food, I at least have to try a couple bites.

Stitchcraft

I am 100% absolutely not ready to start the giant project I’ve been looking forward to for what feels like forever now, and it wouldn’t be terribly satisfying on a “couple hundred stitches every other week” schedule that I’ve been doing for awhile now. I’m in the middle of reworking my crafting desk, and once I’ve finished that, I want to figure out a schedule and / or a goal around number of stitches or completion percentage or something that will motivate me. I have no idea yet what that’s going to look like, but the unfinished projects are just making me feel awful, especially since they were all intended to be gifts for dates that have long since passed.

In fact, I think it’s not a problem so much with the hobby itself, but with larger struggles I’m having around time management in general lately. Unfortunately, I’m never sure which of my polar opposite approaches to this problem is going to be more effective. Sometimes it’s more rigid scheduling and goal-setting. Sometimes, it’s going completely hands off for a few weeks, doing whatever strikes my fancy until I get annoyed with that level of freedom. All I do know is that this tends to happen almost every year around the holidays, and I should have most of the kinks worked out of it all by the middle of the month. I hope.

IN SUMMARY

  • Make at least 10 blog posts during January.
  • Play and write about two games for #PuzzleGameMonth.
  • Get at least two more characters to level 70 in World of Warcraft.
  • Get the Loremaster of the Dragon Isles on at least one of my alts in World of Warcraft.
  • Participate in the group Humble Choice review.
  • Play and write about at least one game I bought during December.
  • Make a post about co-op game night.
  • Read at least four books.
  • Watch at least one new-to-me movie.
  • Watch at least one new-to-me season, series or mini-series.
  • Finish reorganizing my crafting area.
  • Do at least 2500 stitches on any current project or combination of current projects.

A Few Final Thoughts On #JustOnePercent (By Way of Steam’s Year In Review)

Posted in Blogging Challenge, Just One Percent, Lessons Learned, Nerd Girl Goals4 Comments

This was a very atypical year for me, as far as how I played games. So, of course, this is also the first year that Steam dropped their end of the year replay wrap up! While it’s not 100% representative of how I spent my gaming time, at least quantity-wise, I do play most game via Steam. This year, because of the Just One Percent Project, I might have branched out a bit more, playing a handful of titles on Itch.io*, through XBox Game Pass for PC, and even a handful on the Epic launcher and on Utomik. So while the numbers don’t quite reflect everything, it looks kind of like how I felt to play – which is to say, a bit chaotic.

*I really would like to play more of the stuff that I have picked up on Itch.io, but those games tend to be a casualty of the size of my Steam library and the fact that when I don’t know what to play, Steam is always my first stop.

If you’re curious about all the details of my Steam Replay for 2022, clicking on the image above will take you there.

Just on Steam, I played 198 different games this year, when you include the 48 demos I tried out. Even taking those out of the equation, that’s still 149 different titles. Now, I am a dabbler, true, but I’m not normally that much of a dabbler. But between February and November of this year, I made 105 posts for the #JustOnePercent project. Assuming a 10% fail rate (where I at least launched the game, but didn’t write about it for one reason or another), and – just a guesstimate – assuming that 25% of what I played for the project was on another platform, when we fudge the numbers just smidgen, we can guess that about 87 of those titles I played specifically as part of the project.

That leaves me with what feels like a far more manageable number of 62 games that I played this year just because they struck my fancy, which is a little more than 5 a month. That feels about right to me. The ranking by playtime seems to reflect that as well – it’s not until you reach the third dozen that games I chose for the project start regularly appearing, with Cozy Grove being the only title to make an appearance in my top two dozen, by playtime.

(Although I suspect a couple of the titles I played outside of Steam – notably The Wild At Heart and The Forgotten City would have showed up in my top 25, easily.)

What isn’t particular surprising is the very low number of games (which is to say, one?) in the top third of my list of titles played for the year that were not indie titles. When I say I mostly play indie games, I guess I really mean it, and now I have the stats to back it up.

I’ve been putting off writing about the project a bit, partially because – oh dear lord – I needed a break from it after 10 long months, but also because I hadn’t yet figured out the answer to a key question.

Was it successful?

I mean, I know it was in that I did what I set out to do. I played more than 100 games that came out on Steam in full release during 2021. For the majority of those titles, that means I spent at least an hour with each game, and there were a handful I really enjoyed that I would maybe never have gotten around to trying out. While I didn’t go spelunking too far outside of my comfort zone, I feel like I stretched a little, and that’s always a good thing.

But I don’t think the project necessarily made the statement I thought it would when I started out.

I’ll admit it – a few of the titles that I played probably never should have seen the light of day, never mind an active store front. But for the most part, I could see the merit in each of the titles, even when I was very clearly not the target audience. Some of the games I picked – in large part because they were at least in the same orbit as my taste – were immensely popular and successful indie titles. Some of the games I thought were great, however, only managed a handful of sales.

It’s not easy to pull a top twelve from a big old mess of over 100 titles, but the games that I feel were probably the best of the bunch – at least for my taste – were Cozy Grove, The Forgotten City, The Wild at Heart, Wildermyth, Gamedec, Lacuna, At Eve’s Wake, Wytchwood, Before We Leave, Overboard, To The Rescue, and The List. Order of preference is – at best – approximate.

I really don’t envy the people who need to come up with the titles to put on the “Best of…” lists we always see at this time of year, and I really struggled picking my “Top Twelve” from the 105 games I played for the project. Even in doing so, I kind of felt like it was a bit unfair – a full two-thirds of the titles I felt like I got the most out of were already on my wish list (or were games I had Kickstarted) before the idea for the project even existed.

Putting those aside for a moment, the four biggest happy surprises for me were the following titles: The Forgotten City, The Wild at Heart, At Eve’s Wake, and The List. None of these were on my radar at all, and I would probably not have played any of them outside the boundaries of this project, and I loved every one of them.

Which is not to say I didn’t enjoy any of the other games I played – in fact, I enjoyed most of them. They just weren’t necessarily the exact game I would have picked to play when I did if I had not been so tightly focused on 2021 releases from indie game developers.

Which I guess just leaves one final question: Would I do it again?

Sorry for anyone who was a big fan of the project, but I don’t think that I would. It’s not that I don’t think I play a hundred or so different games in the course of an average year – I have no doubt that I do – but I definitely skipped out on more than a few things I would have really preferred to be playing at any given time.

I’ve built a big library precisely so I can go where my whims take me. I like my whims. I’m pretty damn attached to my whims.

This is well reflected by my Steam Replay, as well as by those silly charts I post in my In Review posts – I tend to spend the most time playing the games that I want to play at any given time. Revolutionary, right? It’s also why this is my hobby, and not my job.

I had toyed around with some different project ideas for 2023, but I think – just now – I’ve realized that what I would really like to do is play whatever strikes my fancy, at least for awhile.