Once again I have missed out a month, but nothing really big happened that month despite my efforts. But let's run through what happened.
Suddenly I have gained a lot of inspiration to play some video games. After not doing so for several months I downloaded a few games in genres I've never really touched to play.
The first one of these is [Holocure]. A fan game in the Virtual YouTuber ("liver") scene, specifically that of the specific agency Hololive. It is an entry in the apparently wildly-popular Vampire Survivors clone, but it's (presumably) a little bit more forgiving and with an upgrade in the aesthetics. It's very nice and I like it enough that I got a new-old-stock Xbox controller (220 HKD) just to take advantage of the joysticks on the controller. This game seems to have taken up most of my August, even though objectively I have only played it for eight hours and my diary also did not record much time playing the game.
The other game that instead has occupied some of September is called [Balatro], and it's another entry in the well-trodden path of rogue-likes. This is a game where you play poker hands to score as high as you can, and sometimes things get very wonky. It is currently still in development so only the demo is available. A game of that vein also in development is the somewhat unfortunately-named [Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers], which is Very Much My Jam because it combines several of my special interests:- numbers appearing in places where they have no right to, wonky names and undisguised knockoffs, and a simple concept taken to extremes. I have however been unable to play this game as it currently does not cooperate with Proton.
There's something to be said about both games and how I had my preferences. In both games the actual game cycle is not very long, about 20 to 30 minutes for a round. It's easy to pick up and easy to put down, but there is a lot of things to discover all the time and every run is slightly different. I think games should always be this way: the game can be endlessly replayed, and each play through shouldn't last months and months and months. Certainly, Minecraft, which is a game that I also very much like, is that way, but it's really not so much a game as a toy where you figure out what to do, so I don't see it as "game" in that sense. Rather, I think of "games" in the old sense of Chess and Mahjong, where this exact model is in force: there is the game, which you spend an hour or two playing all in one go, and there is the Game, which hopefully you will play all your life, or at least for several years where you become bored of it..
It is only a shame that Steam takes up so much time and resources to boot up. I failed my RAM upgrade a while back, not realising I need two identical sticks, but maybe later on I'll get it again and try again. If it was easier to just boot up Steam and get things going, that'd be a huge value add.
Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers
In other news, I have finally filled in all 154 content pages of book 39. This has taken 694 days, which is by far the longest interval between books. I have taken a "vacation" of sorts by consciously deciding not to do any conlanging or conworlding from the day I complete (26 September) until October comes around, which it has already as of time of writing. Honestly though, it has not actually given me much time.
Otherwise, I haven't really programmed anything of note, even really not getting back into the animation thing. I have been thinking about trying to prototype my games again, and this time try using available tools rather than making my own. I think Love2D is something I'll tinker with over the next few weeks.
Japanese exam has been established. I should expect to get my ticket next month.
As for applications, haha no. Though, I should get going soon anyway, as I say every month.