The Raven's Roost

I was recently asked about two-player RPGs and today came across a great publisher out of the UK - Critical Kit! One of their games is "Be Like A Crow" so I may be slightly biased in my enthusiasm. I've downloaded the sample booklet for the "Wires in the Woods" game they've launched on Backerkit and I'm reading through it now. It looks interesting and I'm considering actually backing it.

I've been pretty good about not spending a ton of money this summer since dropping all that cash on a bike. It's actually nice enough outside to go ride again so I'm thinking of either taking it to Orlando in a few weeks or perhaps trying to ride my road, since it seems pretty firmly packed now. Anyway.

I know there's a ton of dice lurking around here somewhere. I don't have my own anymore but I think Fox would let me use one of his sets. That'll keep me in business until I can buy the Florida Mann set. I also need this because I will never NOT find rickrolling funny.

I've also got my copy of Inscrutable Cities that I haven't done anything with yet, except spill coffee on it. I keep collecting these solo games and then not actually playing them. Why? Ugh - Little Me would have been ecstatic! Especially as I was forbidden to play RPGs - mom was convinced D&D was satanic, and I was banned from even watching the cartoons. So guess what I started doing as soon as I moved into the dorm at college. (No not smoking weed. Well. That, too.)

On a more mundane note, I had a fairly productive day. I got out early and picked up the remaining branches and sticks from the storms so that I could mow. One of the pines lost a branch from high up - a big one larger around than my forearm - and it drove itself at least a foot into the ground when it fell. Which is why we don't go outside during the storm. I've still got some trimming and push mowing to do, and I can finish that up tomorrow. I've got my errands mostly run for the week, though I have to be out Wednesday for a doctor appointment. For now I still need to fold some laundry and make dinner - pork and tofu yakisoba.

I noticed that I've worried and worn the left thumbstick on my controller to the point where it has no little bumps or texture remaining, AND it's starting to tear. Unfortunately I love soft silicone and rubbery textures, and will rub and poke them endlessly when I have them in my hands. Shopping for replacements is a bit overwhelming as everyone and their grandmother makes replacement pads, but I think a pair from Kontrol Freek might do the trick. When did I start using the thumbstick instead of the d-pad, anyway? Hm.

This came up while playing Okami, which is an amazing game and one I really wanted to play when it came out, but I didn't own a console. I eventually bought a used PS2 on eBay at some point, and a copy of Katamari Damacy, but I kind of forgot about Okami until it went on sale last year on Steam and Fox bought it for me. He had it and played through it several times and wanted to share that. So far I'm enjoying the hell out of it, but I got to Kaguya's digging mini-game and I am just filled with white-hot rage. When I do manage to get a Waterspout to shoot her up to a block, SHE JUST SITS ON IT. WHY ARE YOU JUST SITTING THERE GET UP AND WALK OMG KAGUYA. If you want me to help you dig up your whatever-it-is down here you've got to work with me and stop being ... YOU. So I'm off farming belief and demon fangs to upgrade my number of ink pots and to get a golden ink pot, which is supposed to replenish ink at a much faster rate. Because I get the feeling I'm going to be using a lot more brush techniques on this one than any of the previous mini-games.

I think when she is just sitting on the waterspout, I might be able to use Galestorm to blow her off onto a solid block, as long as she doesn't just turn around and walk back into the pool, which would likely have me putting my head through the wall out of sheer frustration. This one goes right to the top of my "Most Annoying Mini-Games Designed By Satan Himself," along with Hyper Light Drifter's soccer game.

In my IRL-farming-simulation, AKA my garden, I've got some food worked into the pumpkin and pepper beds, and the tomatoes that gave up the proverbial ghost in the heat are ready to be hoed under. The cherry tomatoes are still going strong, and I have another pattypan squash ready to be harvested. At this point I have enough of those little squashes that my next round of lunch prep may be curried squash and basmati rice. I should also save some seeds from that squash - it was a volunteer and it's turned out to be a vigorous, productive little plant.

We're finally having nice weather, so Saturday Fox and I headed to Florahome for our long workouts. Well, Fox is cycling so his ride wasn't super long, but I needed a long run, and my last two hadn't been exactly stellar. I headed up a side road and passed by FPL's solar farm before deciding on more or less a whim to go into Etoniah Creek State Forest and run a section of the Florida Trail. I knew from the map it would connect with a road on the other side of the forest, then back down towards 100 and the rail trail, which would lead me right back to my truck. Easy.

Oh boy did I not even once think about that trail until I was too far in to really turn around.

Not to dump on the trail maintainers - they're all volunteers and they do a great job, but we also just had a major hurricane, and there's only so much people can do each weekend. There were a lot of downed trees to contend with, including a big pine that fell almost ON the trail, necessitating several yards of climbing through its branches. On stretches where I could run, I kept up a decent trail pace, but I was frequently forced to walk. But it was a nice day, no other people out, and I just stopped worrying about my pace and distance and stuff, and just enjoyed the run.

Except for about a half mile of open area that was just thick with sand spurs. Fuck those things. There was a convenient bench on the other side of that patch where I sat down to pick them all off my socks and shoes. Yeah, these things.

I was surprised at how good I felt, both mentally and physically, when I was done. Tired, yes. I was out of it to the point where when I made pizza that night, I forgot the sauce on one of them. And the next day I found I was stiff and sore that morning, but by breakfast, I felt better and was moving normally. So, I didn't quite get as much distance as I wanted, but I maintained a good pace for the kinds of places I was running and wasn't wiped out after. Plus, I saw some Hawks doing a territorial display. Not too much other wildlife, but they probably all heard me crashing around and stayed away. Which is good because one of the sandy patches looked to have some small bear tracks. That, or some little kid really needs to cut his toenails.

I gotta add yoga back into my routine. Between weight lifting and running, I feel kind of stiff and very mildly achey. Like a 1 on a 1 to 10 scale, but I'd prefer a zero.

I've stopped playing anything requiring fast inputs and stuff on my Steam Deck. Yes, it's a little slow, but so is my brain. So normal gamers with good reaction times might not have a problem with it, but I'm better off doing any fighting or tight platforming on my desktop PC. But this is also not exactly why I got the Deck. I have plenty of things like turn based, resource management, and other lower-key games I'd like to play, and they're perfect for laying on the couch or hanging out in the camper. I loaded up Kingdom Classic, Abzu, and Death & Taxes. Kingdom is interesting, and I'm already on day 16 or 17, but I think I fucked up and don't have enough builders.

But I do want to finish up Blasphemous 2, and I'm on the next to last boss fight. As with the first game, the next to last boss is turning out to be a really tough fight. This guy even has Crisanta's sword so you know he's a bastard. Overall I'm really pleased with the second game and looking forward to any DLC they decide to put out. I like most of the modifications and changes, and the ones I don't like, I understand.

I got sidetracked while I was sick and went from milk bread recipes to moon cakes, and wound up reading more about snow skin cakes than I ever intended. As much as I'd like to try making them, they look like they require several specialized purchases - not just the molds, but certain kinds of rice flour, filling ingredients, etc. So I think I will just plan a trip into Jacksonville at some point and buy a box, rather than investing a bunch of money in equipment I may only use once a year. I don't want to end up like people my mom's age who have plates and stuff that they only use at Christmas or something, and otherwise it sits around taking up space.

Obviously there's nothing to stop me making moon cakes whenever I want, but Fox may not like them, and if he doesn't, I'm certainly not going through all that effort just to make a treat for myself.

Another day of waiting on FedEx, also. Steam started offering refurbished Steam Decks, and I'd been saving up for one for a while, so I went ahead and grabbed a refurb. It was supposed to be delivered Thursday, but every day, it just goes back to the depot. Yesterday it even said "delivery not attempted." I thought about trying to redirect it, but the page for selecting a location has none. Like there are no FedEx locations anywhere in the world - it's a blank map. I'm not sure what to do at this point aside from contacting Valve, which I'll do if it doesn't arrive today. I'm not holding my breath, either. They're up front enough to actually put on the tracking info that they didn't try to come here, and didn't even contact me using my contact info which is listed on my FedEx account ... even Amazon will at least shoot me a quick text if they think they can't get their trucks down our road. And UPS is the king of DGAF and the brown trucks will show up in all kinds of conditions. Dunno what's making "the world on time" have cold feet.

Maybe UPS is so fearless out here because Fox went and pulled out a stuck delivery truck once using the tractor, LOL.

Anyway. I'm going to try to catch up on more household stuff today and then look at starting running again tomorrow. I'll be a week behind on training, but not a big deal. The "long run" I missed was an hour forty-five, so it looks like it was a scale-back week anyway. And the weather coming up looks more like our normal summer heat rather than the murderous climate-change fueled suffer-fest we were dealing with.

I started playing Rain World when the DLC was released - I don't own Downpour yet, but I'd had the game gathering dust in my Steam library and decided it was time to try it out. I'm still on my first play through, which I started as the Monk, since that is the "easy mode."

( Cut for spoilers ... )

I conked out early last night. I'm enjoying getting some extra sleep, and the time change is messing with me, because it's so dark out early, it feels like bedtime. I ended up not running yesterday, but today I plan on wrapping my toes and heading out for a three-miler. I ordered some silicone toe caps, but they won't be here until Saturday or Sunday, because apparently there's a holiday this week or something.

I finished playing Axiom Verge 2 - well, I finished the main story. You can re-open your saved game and start from the shrine right before the final boss, and then go back to clean up collectibles and such. I apparently managed to finish with less than half the weapons and upgrades, LOL. I enjoyed the first game Thomas Happ made, and was really looking forward to this one, too, and it didn't disappoint me. My only complaint is that while I enjoy exploring and poking around, some of the exploration mechanics can make it difficult for me to figure out where I am. This game features the ability to leave the Breach at any point, and in some places you have to enter, leave, and re-enter the Breach to get to places in the Overworld, and I'm just left sitting there wondering where the hell I am. Yes, I can see the map, and no, it's not helping. XD

I picked up Little Nightmares 2, and a DLC bundle for the first game, which I plan to go back and finish next. I got a little stuck because I was achievement hunting, and replayed "The Kitchen" so I could get "Kitchen Hand." With the extra DLC areas available to me, I'm looking forward to playing again. I also need to finish up Bendy and the Ink Machine, but I'm very stuck on the last boss. Like, seriously stuck. I've watched numerous videos of people beating this thing, but I can't seem to get more than two hits in. It's one where I'm going to just have to embrace the grind and play every night until I get it.

I'm also in the middle of Okami and Transistor, both of which are really good, but they're so involved, I can't really split playing them with other games. I can go play Hades for an hour, and then come back to it a week later and just pick it up again. Okami requires more sustained focus, for me anyway.

My neighbors are having Jamie's mom over this week, and I got to meet her yesterday. I also got to watch the littlest child have a meltdown because he wanted to hold a brown beetle one of his sisters found. I also had to suppress the urge to be "that person" and tell them how they could make a little terrarium for the beetle and so keep it indoors as a pet. This is coming from someone who routinely kept roly-polies as pets, along with crickets and caterpillars.

Finally - and this is very important - there is a Red-Bellied Woodpecker at my feeder.

Just last month, Death's Door released and I picked it up in pre-order. This is one I think you'd call a metroidvania - you can revisit previous map areas as you gain new abilities and there are new bits you can access. I've enjoyed this one a lot, and not simply because I get to play as a cute little Crow with a bigass sword. The pacing is good, there's enough stuff scattered around that backtracking isn't so much of a grind, and the soundtrack is terrific. I should have got that when it was on sale.

The only two major points of frustration were a seriously hard platforming challenge late-game to get to a Vitality Shrine. This wasn't helped by my brain deciding it was going to confuse "roll" with "fire" so I'd go to fire my hook across a canyon and instead, roll off the cliff. I'm not a particularly good gamer, as you might imagine. Otherwise that one might have been a lot less annoying, though it does still rely on speed and timing to get through. The other was an early game mini boss, I guess it's called a Black Knight, but a lot of people on Reddit have started referring to it as "thicc knight" due to the way it looks. I think it's supposed to be some sort of clockwork, but I honestly don't know. It's incredibly hard to defeat early on when you have few upgrades and one melee weapon, but eventually it just clicked and I got it. I'm at probably the end of the game now, so I need to decide if I want to go back for collectibles, or do that on a new save file. There's an achievement for completing the game using on the discarded umbrella as your melee weapon, and I'm going to try it. It'll make some of the fights drag out, but once you learn the patterns it's just a matter of not getting hit, and not confusing roll with fire. I love this one, it was absolutely worth getting and worth playing.

Last night I finished The Messenger. I try to play games as blind as I can. So in this case, I had no idea how long this one actually was, and kept getting frustrated when new stuff would come up. Surely THIS has to be the last area. Nope. I think dying a lot is supposed to be a part of it, because I did die an awful lot, even for me. I think I got through some areas just with lucky button mashing. I have no desire to go back for collectibles, since after the game's midpoint, some areas become a whole lot more difficult and it doesn't feel worth the rage to do it. I've unlocked NG+ but have not started a new game yet, nor have I started the "Picnic Panic" DLC. Honestly, I've never been so relieved to roll credits on a game. I was damn tired of this thing, and completely fed up before I even got to the last area. Again, I did go in blind, so I didn't know what to expect, and I think a second playthrough might go better now that I do know.

Honestly, it was a lot of fun, and the art is spectacular, but for low-skill gamers, some of the sections are nightmares. Most of it is the fun sort of difficult, where you're motivated to keep trying and happy when you do succeed. Towards the end, it seems as if there are screens that are difficult simply to be difficult. They're not fun or motivating, and when I'd get across some section I'd been stuck on and die before making it to the next checkpoint, I'd have to just shut the game down for a while because I was so pissed off at it, and at myself. I'd give it four stars out of five - I think the main problems I have with it are "end user" problems and not as much the game itself.

A rather quieter game experience is Never Alone (Kisima Inŋitchuŋa) which seems to be a much shorter one set in the far north and based on a traditional story from the Inupiaq. The control feels a bit soft, but it's not bothersome to me. In fact, if you start struggling with a section, the game guides you through it, showing you where to go and stand at each point - which came in handy early on, with a balance puzzle that was driving me nuts because I wasn't quite grasping the physics of it. Anyway, you also get to play as an Acrtic Fox and it makes adorable fox noises.

I'm at about halfway through this one, and will go back to it this evening. Along the way you collect "cultural insights," which are short documentary clips about the Inupiaq, and are scattered along the route as owls. So I get to collect owls with my fox. (insert happy bird noises) I'm saving those up to watch at the end. So far Id' highly recommend it for a shorter, somewhat easier game with good art and a very engaging story. And honestly, I play these games for the stories.

I normally take Garmin's sleep reports with a grain or two of salt, but the last few nights I have gotten less than an hour of deep sleep, and I feel like someone who is not getting a lot of deep sleep. I was a zombie yesterday and went to bed early - early even for me - and this morning I saw I'd gotten over nine hours of sleep ... with about 40 minutes of the deep kind. So, great. I don't know what's changed this week that I'm suddenly doing this but if it continues I'm going to look at starting a magnesium supplement and see if that helps.

The dealer who sold us our tractor has offered a pretty good deal on a winter maintenance job, so we took that in today. They'll replace the filters, change the oil, and do a once-over to check for any problems, make sure nothing is likely to fall off or explode. And they're going to wash it, LOL. We typically hose it off and clean it after using it extensively but that will be nice. I mean, if Fox just drags the road one afternoon we don't bother, but for things like our recent drainage ditch project it needs to have the stinky swamp mud cleaned off.

Feisal is going to be a sad kitty. I'm getting a wireless gaming mouse today. If you plug it in, it will charge, but unplugged it will run for about 60 hours. This has become an issue lately because he's decided the Most Fun Thing Ever is to jump on the desk and try to chew on my mouse cord. The fabric cover is torn and pulled in places because of this. The most recent version of this game is grabbing the cord and trying to take the entire mouse. Now, happily he only does this when I'm gaming or attempting to work, so it's not like he gets up there and chews on it when I'm gone. But it's still annoying as hell and he killed me a few times in Hollow Knight with his shenanigans.

Do any of you crochet or sew or something, or know someone who does? I kind of want a coffee cup sleeve but my sewing skills mainly apply to repairing things and sewing on buttons. In this, Year Two of the Pandemic, our Wawa is still asking that we not bring reusable cups, and I used to always bring my own cups. It's a small thing, but if I could at least not have to get a sleeve for the cup it would make me feel slightly better. I'll probably just find something on Etsy.

I didn't get a ton of reading done this month. I'm currently reading The Shining by Stephen King - as someone who has been a fan of King since middle school, I'm surprised at myself for not having read this one. I read a lot of his early and middle-years work, up through maybe Green Mile. And I'll probably go back and start catching up at some point. I'm also reading the Discourses & Selected Writings of Epictetus because I'm a huge nerd.

I finished The Magus by John Fowles (highly recommended but with some reservations,) and Cross Creek by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, which reminds me, I need to go find that grape ice cream recipe. So far as I'm able I'm trying to read what I already have. I've been able to weed out a few novels so far, starting them and then quitting when they failed to hold my attention, rather than forcing myself to finish them. I did need to buy a book, which came today.

With everything going on right now I felt like reading something superficial. I wanted the book equivalent of a box of meringue cookies. Edward Gorey was a big fan of EF Benson's Mapp & Lucia novels, which I gather are on TV now in Britain, but that sounded like a good diversion. Unfortunately, and the reason I'd not read them before, I only had the last three books in the series. At the time I was buying them they were apparently out of print in the States and I was having to gather them from used book shops. An excellent excuse to spend weekends scouring the French Quarter. Anyway, I broke my "no book buying" pledge and purchased a collected edition of the first three novels (bonus short story!) through Amazon Marketplace. So right after The Overlook Hotel burns down, I'm headed to 1920s England.

On the gaming front, there's a Steam Sale and I picked up We Happy Few, Gathering Sky, and Shovel Knight. SN is a collected edition with all the games, including the co-op Shovel of Hope. My controller is terrible and I'm looking to acquire a sturdier, nicer X-Box style one soon. I cracked the d-pad, and I'm also looking to get a faceted d-pad replacement. For whatever reason the joystick controller doesn't feel right and doesn't seem to work well for me. I also had a brainstorm and tried Cuphead with it, and hey, I got past the tutorial. Go me. *sarcastic thumbs up goes here*

I started We Happy Few (which really works much better with keyboard controls anyway) and I'm working through Arthur's story. On Hollow Knight, I have destroyed Herrah the Beast and opened the final Stag Station, so I got to go to the Stag Nest. I'm back in Queen's Gardens, probably going to try to take on the Traitor Mantis next. I got another nail upgrade, so I'm on Channeled Nail now, and there's only one more upgrade. And I lost all my money in Deepnest, so now I have no qualms about trying some of the trickier platforming segments.

Today's Fox's birthday (yay!) and we're not really doing much. I'll be making a pizza later, and we have some key lime cake. Tomorrow I'm probably going to do my last yard cutting of the year, but today I'm just cooling it. I pulled my calf muscle again, but it feels almost normal today so I might try a short run tomorrow. And I mean it really feels almost normal, not "almost normal except a little tight." I hopefully have given the thing enough time to heal up properly. It feels weird not running all this time.

And I upgraded my phone, but as usual, it's surprising what things don't automatically work. And I lost my house in Neko Atsume so I have to start that over. But I like the new phone, it's a lot lighter weight than the old one, so it won't be as much of a nuisance to run with. My Garmin actually will play music and run GPS at the same time but it will drain the battery fast. So for long runs, I'll carry my phone for music. If it's a shorter run, then I don't mind killing my battery quicker.

It's a gorgeous afternoon here so I'm thinking of getting my bike out of storage and pedaling around the yard some. Depending on how solid the sand feels on the road I might ride down to the turn. I'm just tired of being cooped up inside with the miserable hot weather, and I've played video games so much today my thumb is sore. But I got to take the Last Stag back to where he was hatched, so that was great.

The official first day of autumn actually feels like fall. Yesterday was pleasant and today it was actually nice and cool when I got up. The humidity is still high or we'd have the house open for a while, but by next week it should be comfortable enough for some of that.

So, while I knew it was extremely likely that Disney Marathon Weekend was going to be cancelled, yesterday they finally made it official. But they seem to have learned from the Wine & Dine cancellation and actually took steps to entice people to not request full refunds. For half our Dopey Challenge fee, we still get all six medals and the "opportunity" to run virtually. You also get the Dopey tech shirt, and you can get the other five if you want to pay extra. We're awash in tech shirts so we're going to pass on that one.

I think with Wine & Dine, if they'd allowed people a similar option maybe more would not have cancelled. I was just not thrilled with the medal designs, and for me the big draw of doing that race was actually being there for the Food & Wine Festival. But for this, it will allow me to do my fourth Dopey Challenge, and while there isn't the "Disney Experience," there also isn't a required minimum pace, no bathroom lines, no corral waits, no getting up at three a.m. unless you just really want to, and no mental pressure to try to PR.

Today I'm trying to clear some chores and routine things early so around noon, I can start downloading Untitled Goose Game on Steam. I can pretend to be a bird and terrorize people! Wait, I already do that ...

Speaking of, I purchased the instructions for making a paper raven mask from one of those papercrafting sites. Next time I'm out I'll need to pick up some sheets of colored card stock.