Lith's Diary - December (Patreon)

Dear Diary,
The year is drawing to a close, and I guess that means it's time to look back and figure out how we did! For me personally, this was a pretty big year of throwing myself out there, taking risks, and trying to get into a better place in several ways. It's mostly worked pretty well! For a while there I had a sense that I was trapped kinda stagnating in a place I didn't want to be, but I think that in a way, it's more like I was getting ready for this moment, gathering my strength. Now I've made the jump, and I kinda feel like I was only barely ready. I'm still nervous about how things will go from here, but I think I'm glad I prepared as long as I did. So... in the end, I guess it wasn't a waste or anything! I can take some comfort in that.

Let's see... on the smaller scale, I've been pushing myself a lot. Last month I mentioned my work/fun cycle being kinda off balance, and I think I'm still having some trouble with that, but maybe getting better. The top was teetering but it's working back to a smooth spin, or whatever. Knock on wood!

Been feeling really sleepy lately. More than usual, which is saying something. Been yawning a few times just writing this. I think I need to do a better job getting to bed at a decent hour, I just keep letting the time I actually get into bed and relax creep back a tiny bit later into the night... And anytime I try to take a nap to catch up, it ends up going way too long. Lots of work, some stress, and a sleepy daze have been kinda the theme this month.

That said, I've still worked in some time to have fun and play games and stuff! I was actually just starting a game around the time I wrote you before, but I wanted to wait to talk about it. Not Into the Breach, I kinda dropped that when I decided it was making me spend a lot of my time just frowning at a screen trying to find the perfect move over and over. I actually got a lot more fun out of Attack of the Earthlings. I think this one is kind of a special, nostalgic gem in a way.

First off, the basic game concept is that you're an alien queen (basically a ripoff of the one from the Aliens movies) minding your own business on your alien planet when a giant drill drops in from space to drain the whole planet of its resource. Also, the drill is a huge corporate office building. So your job is to climb in there, eat people, birth horrible monsters to eat more people, and clear out the whole operation. It has kind of a 50s sound to it with a 90s corporate bureacracy attitude, and it's goofy but in a kinda understated way, with stuff like people complaining about petty office politics even while struggling to escape the killer monster trying to eat them all, and the robot servants watching and quietly cheering you on because they sullenly hate their masters. In a way, it almost feels like you're just doing everyone a favor putting them out of their misery.

But besides the whole story aspect, it's actually a pretty nice gameplay experience. It's set up in the kinda turn-based tactical grid movement system XCOM made popular again, but with a much stronger emphasis on stealth, with vision cones and back attacks and hiding in things to spring out and eat people. And the actual progression, the way the game presents itself, is so... alarmingly 90s! Like, it's basically a linear story with clearly defined levels that you can play through to earn upgrade points, and you can easily replay them at any time to try and get a better score or get weird achievements for doing something special or strange in the level. A lot of the levels have silly or challenging gimmicks to them to change things up, turning it suddenly into a wave defense or needing to sneak around and push a series of buttons to unlock the objective at the beginning, they even had the thing where after a huge fight to try and kill the big bad guy, they fake you out, you get captured, and you have to find a way out of a prison cell. So much of the game's feel, the way it actually played, made me think of really old school games from 15 or 20 years ago, but without all the bad stuff we've half-forgotten about from back then. It was a really nice nostalgic hit, kinda paying homage to old games with something besides pixel graphics!

What else... I've been playing Railroad Empire, which has actually turned out better than I expected, but I still haven't finished the first level, and I think I've put maybe ten hours into it? Might be partly just me getting the hang of things, but I should probably pause less, I guess. If I keep playing it I'll tell you more about it next time.

Right now, I think it'd make more sense to talk about the new spider-man movie! I heard a lot of good things about it and finally got the chance to see it myself, and I have to say, I had a lot of fun with it. Looking back, I don't feel like it left me with a whole lot of substance to really mull over after the fact, but it was definitely enjoyable to watch. Very high-energy, smooth execution, you can tell a lot of passion and love went into making it. There were a few things I wished they'd pushed just a little harder or worked a tiny bit more on, but overall I was just really pulled in and having a blast with it just about start to finish. Great character design, the comic-hybrid style was very cool, the whole thing had a sort of chaos to it that some movies try to do but this was the first time it actually felt really justified being like that, and they took full advantage. Just so frantic, but in a way that felt alive and like reality itself was freestyling it for a while or something.

Anyway, I hate it when somebody oversells a movie to me, so if you haven't seen it, then forget everything I just said! If you go in expecting to be amazed then it doesn't matter how good the movie is, it won't feel as good as it could have, right? Just know that I recommend it as a fun flick that's worth catching in theatres, and I definitely intend to grab a copy when it's up for sale, cause a lot of that stuff I'm pretty sure you'd have to be able to pause and slo-mo through to really catch everything that's happening.

Hmmm. So I said that I've been off-balance and working too much this month, but apparently I had the time to play "office munchers" through to completion (it was actually done fairly quickly, which was a surprise at first, but on reflection, it just didn't have any padding like games tend to these days), play a good chunk of "railroad layer" and watch "spider-people," and that's not mentioning I just recently got into that jurassic park management game! Which has been pretty fun so far, and maybe I'll talk about that next time. Point being, I guess I've still gotten some fun in! Maybe this is why I've been so low on sleep...

Balancing life is hard! I've also been on and off with some silly mobile games that like to suck up your time with busy work that gives you a sense of progression. Kinda the same psychological trick as MMOs. No actual fun or meaningful content, or very little of it spred over a lot of game focused on making you want to come back and do more just to make the numbers grow, to eke out arbitrary progression, to "not miss out" on your daily login or whatever. I'm trying to shrug those off, though. Better to make real life progression! Just that those games prey on that need to feel like you're really making progress, I guess? Kinda... scary.

Lots of subtle traps and tricks you can fall for trying to keep things going day to day. I hope you're not falling for too many of them, Diary. It can be really easy to let all your time slide away from you doing things that, looking back, really didn't need doing. Time lost that you could've been doing something productive, or actually fun, or somehow actually worthwhile! We can't get our lost hours back, but we can try and spend those we've still got ahead of us better. A new year is coming, and we only have so many to spend on doing cool stuff and being awesome! And before you know it we're gonna be gross and old and mostly grumping about how young people do things. So go be awesome now!

I mean, you've already got a head start on me with how awesome you're being, helping me and Lithier out. So thank you for that! But we can always be even better, right? Let's go... punch that new year in the face! Grab it by the balls! Apologize to it for being really aggressive and weird and ask to start over, and end up developing a strangely close relationship! Okay, I'm gonna stop writing fanfic about you and the year 2019. But you get what I'm saying!

Happy new year! Let's go make it an awesome one!
-Lith