Tag / Announcement

by MagiWasTaken

Indiecator is part of the Digital Gaming Communities Web Archive now

The day before yesterday, I decided to write about content scraping and web crawlers as well as the addition of a small sentence that will appear on newer posts. I decided to not go through the hassle of updating all of my 260-something posts as… really… it’s going to take a while. I will update my reviews probably but there really is not much of a point, I guess, especially with a site of my scale.

Anyways, after a restless night and after thinking about it more, I wasn’t too sure if my reply was justified and if I understood it too well. Naithin‘s reply to my post helped a lot, as well, in giving me some context to why they’re doing that… and frankly, it’s understandable. Bloggers come and go. I see plenty of people turn up as Newbies or Mentors to the Blaugust event and it’s lovely… but some of them just don’t post as regularly anymore, which is not quite lovely.

Sometimes people burn out from it or real life happens and honestly, blogging consistently can be a bit of a hassle. For the last eighteen days, I’ve tried myself at posting daily just to see how long I can keep this up and I’m already noticing that it’s becoming harder and harder to schedule posts or to make it within a day’s time. Reviews are also hard to write up under time pressure – a process I’ll document eventually as well as a prompt.

So, the site in question that I didn’t out in the initial post was the “Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation [that is currently selecting] different websites for inclusion in its Digital Gaming Communities Web Archive. The Archive is an initiative developed by librarians at Dartmouth College, the University of Chicago, and Duke, Michigan State, and Wilfried Laurier Universities under the auspices of the Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation. [They] preserve content, across varying web formats, generated by and related to digital games, in order to foster research within the discipline. Themes of the collection include critical gaming, game ethics, accessibility in gaming and game design, and user reviews and playthroughs.”

So, if I were to look at the themes, I could check off quite a few of those:

  • critical gaming? Check.
  • game ethics? Check.
  • accessibility in gaming and game design? Check.
  • user reviews? Check.
  • playthroughs? Check.

I kinda talk about those topics here and there and I guess my site can be a resource for them. It will also allow future generations to view my reviews and whatnot when I’m no longer able to write up posts. On top of that, it’s going to enable them to research my thoughts, views, posts, etc. even when WordPress is no longer doing what WordPress is doing. I mean, everything has an end eventually and if I die, I doubt I’ll be able to post any longer. I hope that I’ll be able to write up a “RIP” post just in case I die… In fact, maybe I should write up one like that now and schedule it… and just always re-schedule it while I’m alive until I no longer am alive. That’s kinda grim, now that I think about it… so Nah.

Essentially, the Archive-It page can be found over here. Searching through the video games page will reveal that TAGN, Endgame Viable, BioBreak, Aeternus Gaming and Aywren are already part of it, which is nice to see. Looking forward to being a part of it, too, and to see other people’s websites be put on there as well.

My point still stands: Their overly flowery language bothered me initially and it still bothers me that the initial e-mail basically said something along the lines of “we’re gonna do this and if you don’t respond, we will just assume that you’re okay with this”. If the e-mail had arrived in the spam-folder, I probably would have missed it and they probably would have done it without my approval, from what I can see… At least that’s how I understand it. With English being my third language, it was kind of hard to see that.

Still, I apologized to Samantha Abrams and explained what lead to my decision and why I’m now changing my mind. She understood being sceptical of the initial e-mail. On top of that, she appreciated the feedback on the language and said that she can actually be more straightforward in their outreach, so I hope that this maybe even changes the way other people will think about it. 

Kind of proud of how this Blogging-thing is turning out. We got featured on a different site, feedspot, before, and I’ve been happy that we got a lot of referrals from there. Through Twitter and multiple other blogs, we also received a bunch of referrals and maybe the archive will result in something like that as well. 

Hence, that would result in more people finding my reviews on some of those Indie gems I’ve been talking about in previous posts… and people will check those games out and have a fun time. My thoughts on political standpoints or on gaming etiquette and Twitch etiquette will prevail quite a bunch. At the same time, my more embarrassing posts ridden with typos will prevail for eternity… “Yikes forever.”

So, just a little update on the situation and me changing my mind.

Cheers!

This post originated on Indiecator and was first published on there by Dan Indiecator aka MagiWasTaken.

by MagiWasTaken

Humble Choice – January, 2021

Another year means another month means another Humble Choice. It’s 2021 and alas, it’s time to turn a new leaf. Since Humble Choice has been the most consistent series of posts, I was thinking of making it its own category and basically leaving them like that. Initially, I was thinking of adding a sub-category under the Gaming Journal but I’m honestly not happy with how that’s named and organised and I’ll have to change everything somehow anyways eventually… For now: New Category called something along the lines of “Humble Lich” (Name to be changed) and that should make it more organised in general. 

Alas, what’s up with this month’s Choice? Well, it returns to its roots by giving us a lot of value with just twelve games instead of fourteen like last month. Apart from that, I’ll have to link Naithin’s post and other bloggers’ posts later as well… but they’re not out yet, so there’s that.

Here’s my ranking of them:

RankGameDeveloperGenre
1Pathologic 2Ice-Pick LodgeRPG, Survival, Thriller
2Ancestors: The Humankind OdysseyPanache Digital GamesRPG, Open-World, Survival
3Tales of the Neon SeaPalm PioneerAdventure
4MinoriaBombserviceRPG, Adventure
5Song of HorrorProtocol GamesAdventure, Horror
6Warhammer: ChaosbaneEko SoftwareHack n Slash
7DeleveledToasterfuelPuzzle
8The Ambassador: Fractured TimelinesTinydino GamesAdventure
9Vampire: The Masquerade
Shadows of New York		Draw DistanceVisual Novel
10Total Tank SimulatorNoobz from PolandStrategy, Action, Simulation
11Not TonightPanicbarnSimulation
12PC Building SimulatorThe Irregular CorporationSimulation

Now, as you can see I placed Pathologic 2 right up there on the first spot because I love the setting and the idea behind it. Its tutorial is played on a stage, the story is dark and disturbing, and the game seems to be rather challenging. UltrViolet wrote about this game the other day and it seemed more than interesting, so this was the most certain title on this list. As for the other games, it was hard to rank them in any way…

Take the second space for instance, where I’d make room for Tales of the Neon Sea, a rather interesting neon-styled adventure with pixel art and a cyberpunk setting and… you can play as a cat apparently… Uh, so this title looks very interesting and I’m looking forward to *eventually* playing it but Ancestors has been on my wishlist for ages now and looks like something that I’d really enjoy. In Ancestors, you basically take control of the ancestors of humankind and try to survive, explore, expand, and evolve to become the humans we know today. 

Next up we have Minoria and Song of Horror. I don’t know the Minoria games that came before this one as I’m uneducated in the genre, but the graphics looked cute and the game’s combat looked cool and it kind of reminded me of Hollow Knight, so I placed it up there. Song of Horror, on the other hand, is a title that I’ve seen a bit of now and then while watching KingArgaroth (go follow him!) play it on Stream. It’s a bit of a Horror-Adventure with puzzles in it and I honestly can’t remember the story, which is a good thing because I’d like to experience it myself eventually. I’m not the biggest Horror fan, which is why I ranked Minoria higher than Song of Horror but from what I’ve heard SoH is great!

Alas, we get to the hard part. I’m not entirely sure what to say about the other games as I don’t really care about them. I mean, I already own a few Warhammer games, which is why I’m looking forward to giving Chaosbane a go eventually… but Deleveled seems like just another gravity-based puzzle game… or rather a game with a different world that is on the other side of your world… and I’ve seen that formula in a lot of other games as well, so I’m sceptical about this game. 

The Ambassador seems interesting to a degree but I’m not a fan of the art style and I also think that I know at least three other games that are older than this title with a similar premise, which is worrying. As far as Vampire goes, I’m not a fan of the franchise, so I placed it rather low as well. It’s gonna be another title to give away to people that actually like it a lot and can’t understand why I’d not like it.

Total Tank Simulator could be fun but it also be just not my cup of tea. Judging from the description and the art style alone, I don’t really have an opinion on it, just yet.

And well, as far as Not Tonight goes, I don’t really think I have to say too much else. I had to google the studio to make sure that they didn’t work on Papers, Please… but it’s a separate studio. It’s a game that utilizes the Papers, Please formula… five years after Papers, Please came out… but it’s not as “Soviet” as the original game but plays in a dystopian British setting where Brexit failed and where you’re a… Bouncer? I mean, according to reviews, the game doesn’t really add a lot to the formula apart from being a bouncer and being able to sell drugs to people in line… and the Brexit of course, but I guess I’ll have to see for myself if it’s just a rip-off or if it feels like a different game. I mean, a lot of games share similarities or are based on the same idea. *winks at Rogue and the whole roguelike-genre until my eyelashes start bleeding* But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing, inspiration is important… It turns into a problem when people make money off an idea without adding anything to it or without even trying. So, I don’t know if that’s the case here or if it’s going to feel like a different game or like a rip-off. I’ll have to see for myself.

At last, PC Building Simulator seems like it’s just not up my alley. I mean, I have built one PC… and it was interesting… but I don’t want to do it again unless, of course, it’s IRL. I just don’t usually enjoy simulation type games where you do mundane tasks without any form of expressing creativity. I mean, House Flipper at least leaves you the option of having fun and wrecking the house or doing a little bit extra for the job… Euro Truck Simulator is weirdly relaxing and rather enjoyable… PC Building Simulator could also be quite relaxing but I’m just not enough of a technical person to play it, I think. 

Alas, there are a lot of games that I have strong and positive opinions of while there are also a lot of games in this month’s Humble Choice that I have negative opinions of… and there are titles that are just not my cup of tea. It’s a weird mixture but I think it’s still a Choice that is worth grabbing, especially due to the first six games in my ranking up there. I feel like there is a lot of value to grab there.

If you’ve enjoyed this post, let me know what your ranking would be like. Do you think you’ll go for this month’s Humble Choice? Do you pass? What’s your opinion on “Not Tonight”? 

Cheers!

This post originated on Indiecator and was first published on there by Dan Indiecator aka MagiWasTaken.

by MagiWasTaken

One Year of Blogging!

On July 15th, 2019, I introduced myself as a new blogger who just started and who was planning on reviewing games on here and write about gaming and non-gaming related stuff alike. This post here is to celebrate one year of blogging… just a bit late. Uh, I’ve been meaning to rewrite this draft a couple of times and then other stuff happened. On July 14th, I published my third post on the To The Moon Play Along that Naithin organised and while this post was due on the day after that, I ended up not publishing it yet because I had big plans for it and wanted to make it as great as possible. The next post that I published was the post I did on Hyper Scape and uh… yeah, then I procrastinated a lot… and now it’s nearly 2021. 

Alas, don’t mind me as I post this post a few months late and as I “celebrate” one year of blogging… just a bit later. 

So, what happened in one year of blogging? 

Well, for the most part… Improvements! I changed my theme two times and played around with the colours and different options until I got to the blog and blog-layout that you can see today. I also started using Grammarly and started editing posts to reduce the reading time and enhance the quality a lot.

My longest post to date was my review on Moonlighter, featuring 21,897 characters and a total of 3,912 words spread across 52 paragraphs. The reason for the switch from long reviews (2k to 3k words) to short-ish reviews (~1k words, up to a maximum of 1.4k words) was mainly that I wouldn’t have lasted long if I spent more time on writing posts than on studying. I am still able to write up reviews as much as I want to but I don’t explain every mechanic, the control scheme, every detail or gimmick in the game. I end up talking more about what I like and dislike about a game instead of explaining what you, as a potential player, will inevitably see for yourself. This was a change for the better. 

Over a bit more than a year, I published 64 reviews as well as 31 posts on The Lookout Post. I also ended up going for 50 posts in the Gaming Journal, the category where I talk about other games and where I do first-impressions, and stuff. I’ve amassed a total of 87 Stray Sheep in this time as well and managed to finish nine MonHunLogs and six posts on Twitch-related stuff. I’m actually quite happy with how the reviews turned out and how much I’ve managed to write in this time.

Alas, I’ve published a total of 234 posts with 42 drafts sitting here, ready to be edited and worked on,… eventually. 

My most successful posts were the following (excluding the home page):

  1. Indietail – Fall Guys
  2. Raid: Shadow Legends and why I don’t like mobile games
  3. Unlocking Lillia’s Haiku – a quick guide
  4. Destiny 2 – Getting back into the grind!
  5. Late to the Party #2 – Asheron’s Call
  6. How to not-promote your channel on Twitch
  7. The “How are you?” controversy and Fleeksie
  8. Valorant – My First Impressions
  9. Indietail – RogueJack
  10. Indietail – Drake Hollow

There have been a whopping 347 comments on my blog that were not by spam-bots. If you include pings and answers, we get a total of 461 comments. On top of that, we hit 107 followers on WordPress with the very first follower being Naithin who followed on July 17th, 2019.

It was a pleasure to see my posts on Drake Hollow do so well, especially as I was really excited about this title!

Through Twitch and WordPress, I was able to hit 183 followers on Twitter, although most views probably come through referrals and discord anyways. I’ve been more than happy with the amount of traffic has come to Indiecator, especially as I’m only at the beginning of my journey on here. 

As time went on, I’d often start a new series or something like that and would then see how long I’d stay interested in it. My Viridi-post with different bloggers as plants and that kinda stuff ended up being well-received but I ended up not getting another post done in the series as I, honestly, didn’t find any more time to read posts. I still read posts every now and then whenever they pop up in my Twitter or WordPress timeline but lately, it’s been a bad habit of mine to not comment or like as much anymore. University’s still keeping me quite busy but I’ve managed to at least stay relevant for Google and other sites, to the point where I even got featured in some “top 40 Indie bloggers” on feedspot (spot 11!)… I need to socialize more on WordPress and get to know more people but that post ended up getting trashed.

An old relic of the blog: The ever-changing Dr Pepper header image!

As for other posts that ended up getting trashed, I never got back to my review on Ori and the Blind Forest or the series of posts that I wanted to do on Destiny 2 Raids… at this point in time, it’s probably time to delete some of the drafts as the raids in question got vaulted. 

Seeing that my post on Destiny 2 is still doing fairly good, I may post more on that topic. I have four more posts in line that have nothing to do with vaulted raids but I haven’t gotten around to editing them just yet and uh… they may not be the most relevant right now. 

My post on Self-Promotion on Twitch is also still getting traffic, so I gotta post more in the Bleeding Purple category that I set up! 

My post on Raid Shadow Legends is also doing really well, still, so maybe it’s time that I finish editing my post on AFK Arena and that I hit “publish” for once… 

My Witcher-Post was the most popular post for the very first few months but eventually… Fall Guys came. And everything else.

Either way, as for reviews (the main piece of my blog), I’d like to mention that there are still plenty of titles to go through. My Steam library alone, features 451 Indie games that I haven’t played at all yet, as well as a hundred or so that I have played already but haven’t reviewed yet. On top of that, there are some Kickstarter and EA games that I’ve backed and supported, that I need to write about in the near future before they get finished. 

My Steam library has been growing lately as well but I did manage to play through some titles in the Late to the Party category as well as on Stream and through my reviews. There are still about 942 unplayed games, though, so, I hope that I’ll have plenty of time to review games in the future as well. 

Alas, Indiecator went from “the guide through the Indie jungle” to a “weird but charming” blog where I don’t fangirl too much about Dr Pepper anymore and instead, talk about Indie games and Streaming and games in general really… It’s been a ton of fun to write about the things I love so far and I’m looking forward to getting better at it in the future as well. 

Stuff that I want to do in the next few years of blogging:

  • Review more games!
  • More franchise-playthroughs and write about those (Late to the Party)
  • Write more posts on Twitch growth and that kind of stuff
  • Meddle with video content (reviews, podcasts, etc. -> YouTube)
  • I’d love to host guest posts in the future or to finish up the guest posts I had prepared for other blogs.

I feel like that’s quite a list to go for. Maybe I’ll manage to get some of that done in 2021 already. Will have to see about that!

Cheers to one year of blogging and cheers to many more! 

by MagiWasTaken

One year of streaming on Twitch

Today’s the 19th of November and this day is special to me as it marked the day that one of my favourite hobbies, streaming, started. In the beginning, I just wanted to do it for the sake of trying it out and honestly, I had low hopes as to whether or not I’m going to continue doing it for a long time and after many technical issues and changes, I’m more than happy, after a whole year of streaming, to announce that I love it and that I’m happy with what I’m doing on this platform called Twitch and that I’m looking forward to the future and to what I’ll be doing on this platform. 

Now, to celebrate occasions like these, I used to do 24-hour-streams and stuff like that but I know that I’m not able to do that anymore due to the bitrate issues that I have in the afternoon and the evening. Also, it’s not the healthiest thing to do and while I was thinking of doing two twelve-hour-streams, I thought to myself that I should maybe borrow some inspirations from other great streamers that have inspired me to do this in the first place. Alas, in a similar fashion to other streamers, I’ll keep the celebration simple. 

We’ll be live on Saturday, the 21st of November, at 9 AM GMT, for a total of 12 hours! During those twelve hours of fun and necromancy, we’re going to perform a vast amount of rituals to summon the dead and raise hell, by giving away games, playing Jackbox and other titles, and doing some Twitch Sings. We’re also going to talk about a lot of things, like the games we played and vote on a lot of things using the poll-feature. Apart from that, we’ll review one year worth of clips and chat and maybe do some more Art as the time goes on. 

If you haven’t already, join the Discord server to stay up-to-date and bond with other undead and living, alike! 

Either way, I hope you’re having a fantastical day and that you’re doing alright. I have yet to finish editing the one-year-of-blogging-post that I have in my drafts, so look out for that one.

Cheers!

by MagiWasTaken

TSS#66 – Blaugust, Cats, and Drafts

Welcome to another Stray Sheep. Today I’ll talk about the upcoming Blaugust event, my participation in that, and other things. I hope you enjoy this post! 

Let’s get right into it: It’s nearly August and therefore it’s time for Blaugust. But since we already participated in Blapril just a few months ago, Bel thought of something else to switch things up and combat a few issues. 

Edit: Since this might be important to a lot of people, I added the “when and where” part here at the beginning so that people can easily find out about it.

The list of blogs currently participating, and the dates of their posts are:

As you can see, I’m right up there relatively late, on the 23rd of August with a post but, honestly, I’ll probably try to post about all prompts regardless as it’s more fun that way – and I’ll link to the “host” for the prompt as well as the next “host” in line. 🙂 Looking forward to it!

The main concern about Blaugust – as far as I understood it – that some people had was that the “competition”-style might actually not help people revitalize their or other blogs. Posting 31 daily posts can be quite stressful depending on your schedule and alas it can get quite annoying to fulfil the quota, prepare blog posts, edit them in time, find screenshots, and do all of that within one month to get some badge for your blog in the end. The badge may be the cause for this “stress” that people put themselves through… and obviously, it was debatable. I personally love the 31 posts on 31 days idea for the Challenge-part and obviously, I love showing off that badge-png on my blog… but I also was never in this “I need to post more than others!” mindset but rather was thinking in that “how far can I push certain limits?” pattern. 

During Blaugust19, I posted 31 posts in 31 days and saw that I could actually reduce the time to write reviews considerably while also having more success with it by writing shorter reviews (about 1k words instead of 3-4k) where I don’t explain the game (and possibly spoil it) to my readers but instead talk about what I like and don’t like and removing everything that doesn’t add value. During Blapril20, I ended up posting 45 posts. I sadly got busier at the end of it, so I couldn’t go for the originally planned 69 posts (that exact number because I’m still a child in my head).

And if the original Blaugust idea would have happened this month, I probably would have aimed for 31+ posts again… but something has changed. Bel is trying out something new which might be more fun and we’ll just see how it’s perceived and if it works out in the end in the way that it was intended to be. Mostly, since Blapril already happened this year, though, because of the concerns above and since some people might not be willing to do “another Blaugust-type event”. Alas, we’re trying out this.

Alas, I’m announcing my participation in the Blaugust Promtapalooza – a blog “tour” of sorts where someone posts a blog post, followed by a prompt for the next day, linking to the next blog in line. That blog then writes about the prompt that the previous blog announced and then announces the prompt for the next day, along with the link to the next blog, resulting in essentially a “blog crawl” where you can make your way through 31 blogs that wanted to participate this year. Of course, you don’t have to follow these blog prompts and of course, you don’t have to read them all or write daily… but regardless of that, I’m looking forward to it, again challenging certain limitations I have and hopefully making it through the end. 

On top of that, I was hoping to keep up with most of the blogs participating this year and reading through a bunch of them every day while shouting some of them out in a blog post at the end of the week. “This is what I’ve read this week, this is why I liked these so much. Check them out!” or something like that… I’ll still have to work on the draft-idea that I had in mind but I think that might be quite cool as some extra posts… 

And then there’s also going to be the normal posts that I would have posted anyways, regardless of Blaugust or whatever. For instance, I’ve been working on one huge post about my blog’s one-year-anniversary… for three or four days now, my blog has existed for a year… so that’s really cool… and I wanted to celebrate that with some stats and my favourite posts and that kind of stuff. I feel like that might be really cool but I also am still working on it and will hopefully get it out soon. 

There will be posts about games that have come out and that are still coming out. I have three or four interviews planned but didn’t get to write the questions just yet. It’s been a bit iffy time-wise over here, especially as my sleep schedule is quite messy at the moment (again), although I’ve managed to sleep this night for the second night in a row!

Jin and Tammy are cute as always! (Btw, my palico in MHW is named after Tammy over here!)

Apart from that, I’m taking care of cats right now. My best friend and her boyfriend are not in town right now so I need to take care of them from Tuesday until Saturday (Today is Thursday! Hello, future!), which mostly means feeding them and playing/cuddling with them since they’re very social – and I also need to watch over them so that they don’t do stupid things. It’s been quite cool so far and I really am enjoying my time with them… but as far as working on blog posts go, it’s a bit tough to do that when they want to get your attention by walking over your laptop and stuff… alas, I stopped that for the entirety of yesterday… and I’ve got to stop it today, too, I think, as they are way too cute to be ignored… maybe I’ll get productive again when they are napping later on… 

But once I get some more time to write as well as some new pictures of them, I’ll post some cute ones (got the permission from my best friend!) including some interesting ideas regarding stupid thoughts I came up with while playing with the cats. I think you might like that. 

And well, apart from that not much else has happened. I’m done with some of my exams. Ms Magi and I have been together for 13 months already. I’ve been really lucky to have met her. It’s a bit insane that my blog is only a month older than my current relationship. I just kind of feel like I’ve been blogging for ages now and that I’ve learned a bunch and got to know a lot of people. I guess all these thoughts could go into a separate blog post as well.

At last, there’s also the To The Moon Minisodes that I played actually… but I didn’t get to write a post about them just yet… and since I’ve been late already, I thought “why not wait a bit more and play games that I actually enjoy?”, so I did and alas, I’ll have to write a post about my recent Monster Hunter World endeavours, I’ve got some reviews and interviews in the drafts, I’ve been meaning to talk about Dark Souls 3 since I’ve been playing that on Stream, I’ve just finished Outer Wilds and wanted to review that… and then there is the Mystery Blogger Award that Megan tagged me in… and a ton more drafts sitting around!

As you can see there are a whole bunch of ideas in the work and I’ll try to get through those within the next few weeks! 

I hope you enjoyed this post. I’ve been up to a lot. Lately, I’ve been posting less but it’s mostly due to exams. Hopefully, that will change now!

Cheers!

This post is part of the Blaugust 2020 event. Wanna know more about it? Then check out my post on it or Bel’s post where he also linked everyone who’s participating! Be sure to check out the others as well!

by MagiWasTaken

The Steam Game Festival!

As a blogger who’s kind of focused around indie games and new releases as well as reviews, I always am on the search for new titles that are coming up and worth checking out or writing about. Alas, the Steam Game Festival, Summer Edition, has been a great opportunity for me to do just that: Play games that are coming out and write about things that are worth checking out.

Sadly, due to real-life obligations, I didn’t quite get the chance to do that just yet, although I did download plenty of demos. In the next few days to weeks, I’ll post about my experiences with these demos and will recommend stuff based on my first impressions in this category… The Lookout Post!

Overall, I’ve got to say that there are a lot of titles that I already played in the past from Ovid Studio’s “Metamorphosis” to TwiceDifferent’s “Ring of Pain”… But I also got my eye on a lot of new titles that I’ve been eyeing for the last couple of months, which is rather exciting. I’m really looking forward to the experience and the first impressions that I’ll be able to collect. I still haven’t really figured out how I’ll tackle these posts but it’s going to be exciting regardless of the posts’ form.

Apart from that I also have three posts on Drake Hollow planned, which should come out sometime soon. There will be an interview with the devs, once I’ve figured out what questions to throw out and which ones to keep. There will be a general informational post on the game… as well as an Indietail-Review once it’s out! So, stay tuned for that!

Cheers!

by MagiWasTaken

TSS #62 – On the Lookout!

The last Stray Sheep has been half a month ago already so I thought I’d post something in that section already. This time around, we’re talking about categories!

Currently, I’m doing mostly reviews (Indietail) since I originally wanted to do exactly that, review titles in my library and work through my backlog. The Gaming Journey also helps with that as I get to stream games and post about it (MHW, D2, etc.) that aren’t exactly “Indie” Games. So, overall, I really am enjoying that. And “everything else” is the Stray Sheep, I guess?

Well, I was planning for a while now to start up a category with informational pieces about upcoming games, new releases and promotions as well as new games that I’m excited about or that I’ve newly discovered or added into my pile of games to play. I really am looking forward to that as I’d also add the past interviews with Devs into that section and as I’d also talk about stuff like Witchmarsh, which I’ve been backing for a while now on Kickstarter!

Informational pieces would be mostly about “hype” or things that look interesting without the evaluation of potential repetitiveness or design flaws or whatever else I’d say about it. Of course, I may talk about those, too, but generally, I’d love to keep it less review-ish and actually only talk about why I personally am excited about those games and why it looks so interesting to me. I also could post my Revisited-series in there and move some of those posts to that category since they’d go hand-in-hand with the reviews, I guess?

Updates, press releases, new information, new discoveries, interviews – “On the Lookout” or “The Watch Tower” or whatever I can come up with will be the category for it! I personally am quite fond of “On the Lookout” but I’m a bit worried that it may be too obvious or too concrete in a way… it’s not like “Indietail”.

Currently thinking about using something like this as a “Logo” of sorts. Maybe with a tagline?

I even have a few games in mind to post about in that sense. I’m looking forward to it!

Before I set everything up, though, and before any of those drafts can be finished and posted, I’d have to come up with a fitting name for it and hence, I gotta find something that “sticks” or that is “easy to remember” or “fitting for my ‘brand'”. I personally am not really too coherent with it just yet, although I may redesign my blog soon…

Edit: The newly created category is called “The Lookout Post” with some puns and all of that in there…

I hope you enjoyed this quick little post on categories and upcoming WIPs!

Stay safe!

Cheers!

by MagiWasTaken

Just another post about Hollow Knight

I love Hollow Knight. It’s a great game. And essentially I’ve been referencing it for a while now in my posts while playing it for fifteen hours already on stream.

So, I tried to re-create my Avatar as a Hollow Knight character but didn’t quite manage to do it and now I got this.

Tadaa!

I don’t really know what I could have done better… I’ve tried to go for an ant of sorts or a moth character but it didn’t just happen… and then I kind of went with the jester hat and the cultist robes that I kind of liked.

I’d love to create more variants like this in the future. One of my viewers on Twitch recreated my mage-avatar as a crow for the playthrough that we did on Aviary Attorney and I really liked the idea of creating characters like that.

Belghast from the Blaugust Community also has a thing like that going on with his character and everything as may want to see hin his channel banner over there. So, generally, since I’ll stick around to MHW and Catherine and Hollow Knight right now, I might as well create more mages like that. Maybe a Mage Sheep in Catherine’s case or a Witch-er armour for my MHW character… idk.
I’m rather satisfied with this one but would’ve liked it more if I had been able to “bug”-ify the character a bit more… but for now, this should work and if anyone is interested in trying your best at making a better version of this mage-character of mine, feel free to send it to me and I’ll feature all of those drawings on my twitch channel if you want to! 😀

Oh, I also opened up an Instagram account for the blog but I don’t really know how to post on IG from my PC or what content would be nice on there… I guess that’d be a good place to start for that sort of stuff :c
If any of you are interested right now in seeing me play Hollow Knight on Twitch, you may enjoy joining the discord and getting notified whenever I post something on my blog or whenever I go live. Maybe we’ll have a great time there!

I guess that’s it for today’s post. I like creating derpy drawings like that. Hopefully I’ll be able to get better at it in the future. We’ll see.

Cheers!

This post is part of a challenge called BLAPRIL. The goal is to post as much as possible during the 30 days of April. There are different themes during some of the weeks and a lot of mentors, newbies and participants participating. Feel free to check this hub-post out and check out the other participants!

by MagiWasTaken

The Stray Sheep #54 – Ugh where do I even start

Lately, I’ve been feeling sluggish and restless. I’m getting enough sleep and waking up at “normal times” but I still end up not getting much done. Therefore, I thought I’d take this opportunity and write a post about it. 

As already mentioned in previous posts, I’m not able to write up the two posts per day, which is quite bothersome. Currently, I’m on cold turkey and the need for a smoke isn’t as strong anymore but I still am missing some sort of ritual or routine that I’ve had before. During the day I quite often get a bit bored with what I do, as I’m missing a pastime, and when I’m done with certain chores, I usually end up hopping into bed again and spending time reading something or watching videos. Today I ended up napping a bunch, which isn’t necessarily good when you’ve still got two more posts to create for tonight after you’ve only created one post for the Sunday where you didn’t get the post done in time as you’ve had to create two extra posts, etc, etc. 

It’s a bit annoying. I’m procrastinating and then end up needing more time to get done with the posts that I needed for the previous days… when this post is out, I’ll need a second post for today which will probably have to wait until tomorrow as I’m done for today. 

I guess it’s a bit of a motivation issue and while I thought that blogging would be great during these times, it really is not.. after all it’s something pleasant that I now am doing all day long. And I don’t know yet how I’ll handle all this stuff when University starts next week (presumably online but still…. quite weird). Luckily, I should have enough posts for the rainbow award by the 16th, but I really want to keep going with two daily posts, even though it’s a bit stressful when you can’t really think of what to write about.

Roger from containsmoderateperil recently told me that he doesn’t believe in writer’s block when it comes to blogging – and I guess I’d agree as there’s always something to talk about, be it politics or shows that you’ve watched or other mundane activities. It can be your daily lives or what you’ve eaten recently or what you’ve been wearing, reading, watching, listening, drawing, sewing, playing, seeing, noticing and hearing lately. It can be about all kinds of things and usually, I’d come up with some stupid idea on the spot but right now it’s mostly bland stuff after 200 words. 

I was struggling with my “I hate contact damage” post as I didn’t really know how to fill the blog post with more than two hundred words… and I had about eight more posts like that, yelling at clouds for not stopping game devs from doing stupid game mechanics like that… but since clouds don’t really do much apart from floating and getting counted, I couldn’t really type too much in that post but I also didn’t want to just rant at everything in one post and as my internet connection isn’t working today, I can’t really get any screenshots for/from another MonHunLog post as I’m currently typing this out on my phone using my flatmate’s wifi connection… and therefore, a lot of post-drafts can’t be finished today either.

Lastly, I guess I’d mention that it’s the “Getting To Know You” week in Blaugust/Blapril right now, which is why I’ll probably do some of the tags that I’ve been tagged in over the past couple of days/months and I’ll also do some more personal Stray Sheep, I guess? I’ve got so many good ideas for posts but when it comes to writing them up, they take so much time and editing, so I didn’t get to post any of those yet…. but there’s still time until the end of Blapril2020, so maybe I’ll be able to finish those by then. We’ll see.

For now, though, I’ll have to end this post here. Thanks for reading. Hopefully, my internet connection works by tomorrow… we’ll see. If so, then I’ll finally be able to talk about MHW Iceborne and I’ll also be able to stream again or finish up my RimWorld post that has been in the works for a bit now…

Btw, The title’s referring to a great blog btw! Check them out over there! The blog author of that one makes music, writes songs and poems and she’s a lovely human being from my old school that I kind of had a crush on ages ago… although I’ve been stupid and a teen back then, so nobody cares about that anymore, I guess?

Either way. I hope that y’all stay safe and healthy!

Until the next time,

Cheers!

This post is part of a challenge called BLAPRIL. The goal is to post as much as possible during the 30 days of April. There are different themes during some of the weeks and a lot of mentors, newbies and participants participating. Feel free to check this hub-post out and check out the other participants!

by MagiWasTaken

TSS#46 – Your daily dose of internet togetherness – BLApril 2020mg!

Times are rough over here, which is why I prescribe you your daily dose of internet togetherness. It’s a drug of sorts with 2020mg of BLApril and it seems to be potent as a lot of bloggers are joining in to take part in this year’s pre-poned Blaugust-Event.

When I just started blogging last year in July, I joined a community of bloggers called the Blaugustans and it was wholesome and many people had great advice for the Newbie I was back then… and nearly a year later I’m still up and blogging the heck out of this blog. Kinda.
I’m not too active but the blog’s not dead yet and with the current state of the world I was excited to prepare a ton of posts for this year’s Blaugust – but then Bel and some other mentors ended up pre-poning Blaugust to April. Hence, the new design and the new name but the same old spirit. Lovely!

I’m eager to take part in here this month and while my initial goal was to overachieve with 62 to 69 posts, I’m not that well prepared and have not nearly enough finish posts to go with double posts for the entire month. Instead, I’ll do my best to keep up with two daily posts and I’ll try to create new posts without dropping quality on the fly during the next few days to weeks. I’ll try to hit at least the 31-post-mark and if make it to 42 or even 62 posts in April! It will be a challenge but I’m hyped up and excited to try out a few new formats and review some manga and shows, books and other kinds of media – so a whole new world will open up for me this month and I hope you’ll enjoy the ride.

As far as preparation goes compared to last year’s Blaugust… it’s not as well-planned. I remember setting up “Stray Sheep” to fill the gaps and talk about other topics in between game reviews and… I’ll still do that. There will also be some tags and other posts that involve tagging other people this year… and I’m planning on also doing recaps of my streams and continue the MonHunLog, especially as I’ve just recently bought IceBorne!
Compared to last year, the overall-schedule may be a mess, but I’ll try to organise it as much as possible.

I’m still a Newbie and I still have a ton to learn but I’m trying myself at experimenting with Spacers, Galeries and other sorts of ways to structure my posts and I’d be glad to receive some feedback on that.

Overall, this will be delightful and while I’m feeling under the weather I’ll do my best to blog as much as possible so that we all experience some great internet togetherness!

To that….
Cheers!

This post is part of a challenge called BLAPRIL. The goal is to post as much as possible during the 30 days of April. There are different themes during some of the weeks and a lot of mentors, newbies and participants participating. Feel free to check this hub-post out and check out the other participants!

by MagiWasTaken

TSS#41 – We did a 24 hour stream

Happy new year everyone!

It’s been a while since I posted something on this small little piece of work that I’m calling my blog. 

So far, it’s been quite busy university-wise but I still kind of managed to squeeze in a little bit of gaming-time in my free time and I streamed all of it. Whenever I played games, I ended up streaming it on Twitch and that, after a while, lead to me reaching 50 followers on Twitch. And that’s awesome!

But that also meant that I had to do something, that I was once upon a time joking about. I once said that I’d do a 24-hour stream when I reach 50 followers on Twitch, but that was more of a joke, to be honest. But I guess people got caught up or wanted to support me or wanted to see me suffer, so they pushed me a lot whatever their reason was! 

I received a couple of retweets, raids, hosts and people eventually stopped by and followed for real even without knowing anyone, so I reached that number last Monday and ended up setting up the stream for last Wednesday. 

Now, Wednesday isn’t optimal, since I usually have University from 10 am until 6 pm but on that day I decided to skip a few classes, get a little bit of rest and just start up the stream at 9 pm CET. Thursdays don’t have any University-activities for me, so I’d be able to make it through the stream (hopefully), not miss out on any classes and at the same time not mess up my sleep-schedule as I’d go to sleep only an hour after 9 pm CET on Thursday, like a (more or less) normal human being. 

It kind of worked out as planned if it hadn’t come to a few things:

  1. I stayed up until 5 am to finish up my math assignments and then ended up oversleeping and hurrying up quite a lot to get those assignments delivered. 
  2. I didn’t nap after University because of me stressing over countdown-timers, scene layouts and other things that I haven’t set up yet, on top of me trying to support smaller streamers on Twitch by lurking in there chat, while also working on these blog-post drafts of Monster Hunter World that I have been trying to finish up! In the end, I ended up lurking in chat, tidy up the room a bit, and create a a “BRB”-Screen and a 24-hour countdown timer. 

So, I went into the stream at around 9:20 pm while a bit sleep-deprived, manned with a whole lot of coffee, no plan of what to play, an audience of a few people that’d support me for the first few hours of the stream and two pizzas. I was rather prepared for it all, even if the starting-condition sleep-wise weren’t met.

My plan for the stream was to play games for as long as possible and to not go too much into niche-territory of games so that people wouldn’t get too bored with it. After all, Twitch is still a platform for entertainment, right?

Hence, my first game of the stream was Dungreed (review on that coming out soon) where I cleared a couple of runs before switching over to Destiny 2 where I’ve completed a few gambit & gambit prime matches as well as a quest, a few bounties and two strikes; that is if I remember correctly. It was rather fun until someone noticed that it was buffering. My PC has been downloading games all-day-long and therefore has been running all-day-long, too. I should’ve restarted it. 

So, after a quick little restart (about 5 minutes) that I decided to add to the stream-time later (so we’d stream until 9:25 pm on the next day, I ended up playing more Destiny 2 before I got the BEETLE error (I’ll have to fix that eventually) and had to switch games again. That was the time where I swapped over to other games like Risk of Rain 2, Omensight, Stardew Valley, Monster Hunter World, The Red Strings Club, NieR: Automata, Catherine Classic, Overwatch, League of Legends, and Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles (not in that order btw). 

The stream was a blast, although it was rather stressful as well. I got blessed with multiple raids, host and lurks as well as people actually chatting with me, trying to cheer me up and keep me awake. I enjoyed that a lot. I was about to do a section with a detailed report and shoutouts to everyone, but I’m not so sure if that’s what people would like to read and I also don’t remember everything properly right now.

I’d like to thank Queen_Gummybear, SeptumChild, PNGcat, Jail_07, Ruxa_TV, Lobsterpants98, Tessa (other link), MsNoxi, DreuCheese, ArrogantLife, FaustDaimos, ChyloRen, itzzRaveline, Butterscotch_27, Nickodimas, and MarsaOvO for the time they spent in the chat and for the support they gave me throughout the stream! 

I’d like to thank itzzRaveline, Pagan The Wanderer, and signup25 for the hosts!

I’d like to welcome in all the new people that followed and came in to the stream, was nice getting to know ya!

I’d like to thank Butterscotch27 and Nickodimas (again) for making a few hours of the stream even greater than the other ones. They sticked quite a lot of time through with me and were possibly one of the reasons why I didn’t give up during the whole duration even with my migraine coming back up and with me being so tired at some points.

In the future, I’ll be streaming more, I guess, but I’ll also try to post more on my blog, although I’ll probably limit to bi-weekly or monthly posts. As for reviews, I’ll soon post a review on Dungreed and one on Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles. 

If you’d like to see some of my first impressions of these two games, you should check out the vods on my channel. 

Either way, I hope you enjoyed this post. If not, that’s too bad, I guess. Uhm… anyways, have a nice day. I thought I’d summarize everything into one thing and well.. 

Cheers!

by MagiWasTaken

TSS#38 – It has been a while

It’s truly been a while. My last post “LoL 10th Anniversary – 2012, Nami” has been almost three weeks ago and, well, I haven’t had time to post anything for the last few weeks, and to be honest I also was lacking in motivation. Hence, I thought it’d be time to make a quick update post and talk about stuff.

Indiecator! Now with some of my drawings! UwU!

So, uni’s been keeping me super busy lately and because of real-life stuff usually jumping in at the worst times possible, I didn’t really manage to post lately. I’m really behind on my math studies with me just barely making it through the math assignments right now and with the end of the semester (and hence, exams) approaching slowly. Over the last few weeks, I had also all kinds of other meetings to attend to, as well as doctor’s appointments – and I kind of ended up neglecting my blog quite a lot.

I also ended up streaming whenever I had the free time to do so and it’s been quite a lot of fun. I’d like to post at least once per week if possible with a few short posts here and there if my time schedule, as well as my sleep schedule, allows me to but we’ll see in the future. My blog’s not dead and I don’t plan on abandoning it at all.

So that’s it for the update. I thought I’d also talk about the LoL-Anniversary-series and.. well… I don’t really play any champs that came out after 2012, so I stopped posting about the Lore and builds and stuff as noted in my last post. I mean, there used to be a time where I played tons of Tahm Kench, Braum and Bard but Riot Games hasn’t really shown any love to these champions in quite some time. Next patch, Braum should receive a bit of a buff but I’m not so sure if I’ll play him again, especially as the meta’s currently a state with Support not being as fun as it used to be, for me personally (but that’s something I’d talk about in another post).

I’ll probably do posts like that in the future again here and there but I may separate the Lore & opinion parts into one post while doing the Showcase & Guide parts in a different post since those parts don’t really mix well together, I think… Not so sure, we’ll see about that in the future.

Other than that, there’s been some changes over here. My new PC is nearly ready to be built but I’m still missing the case which was supposed to arrive today but apparently will arrive next week instead as Amazon told me just now. Although that kind of sucks, it’s not that problematic as I’ve already waited two weeks for it and as I may as well wait another week, right? Patience is a virtue after all!

RIP Solaire – I found out the other day 😦

Once I’ve got that PC, I’ll probably be able to cover more games on here since there’s Indie Games out there that my current hp-laptop can’t handle! Also, I wanted to revive the “Late to the Party”-posts but my laptop can’t handle Dark Souls or The Witcher 2 or the Bioshock-games, so I can’t post about those… and I’m really looking forward to playing Monster Hunter World! That’s gonna be awesome!

Uhm, that’s it for the update, I guess. To sum it all up, I’ll try to post about stuff at least weekly and maybe more often, depending on how much time I’ll have.

And to anyone who read this far through my post, I wish y’all a merry Christmas and a happy new year! Enjoy your time and don’t stress yourself too much over presents and stuff. 🙂
(and to anyone who hasn’t read this far, I wish y’all happy holidays, too, lol)

Cheers!

Edit: Also Crywank’s breaking up soon and now I’m sad (boo hoo)!

Another Edit: I kinda got the idea of putting out drawings from Frostilyte’s blog, so check his blog out if you’d like to and if you’ve got the time!

by MagiWasTaken

LoL Anniversary – 2009, Janna

League of Legends turned ten years old, this year, which is one of many reasons to celebrate!

Hence, I thought I’d make a few posts (though a bit late) about my favourite champions in my favourite role, kind of like a introduction to those champions or a guide without the strategies and all of that but with more lore and reasons for why I enjoy playing the featured champion. I’m a Support Main and mostly play hard-engage and enchanter/babysitter supports but I’ve been trying to get better at poke-supports as well, lately with Xerath as my latest addition! 

For the sake of not making one super long posts (with probably around 10k words), I’ve decided to instead feature one post per champion per year, with ten featured champions/seasons in total! I may continue this sort of posts afterwards as well or feature two champions in one post if there’s a bit less to say about them, but I’ll decide that in the future, probably.

Before we head into the first post, I’d like to talk about two things:

1 – I decided to rename the “Late to the Party” “column” into “The Gaming Journal” where I’ll post anything that isn’t a review while also keeping it gaming-related. For instance, my goal is to make multiple posts regarding my first steps in MHW once I’ve started playing that, similar to what DerLoarp did (back in the day) at petebackwelcome, a blog that no longer exists. 

2 – Currently, you are still able to receive a ton of extra rewards in League of Legends for just playing the game, if you’ve created an account before Oktober 16th (I believe?). There’s not only the Anniversary-exclusive “Annie-versary”-Skin but also a lot of extra rewards like bonus capsules, tokens, gemstones, chests & keys, skin shards, TFT-eggs, a random Legendary Skin Permanent (!) and other rewards that are awarded by playing ten games. You’re eligible to receive these rewards until the end of this week, so you better hurry if you’d like to get those freebies!

Back when I started, Zyra has just come out, I believe, which was somewhere around 2012 (I was 13 back then). Hence, I don’t know what League of Legends was like up to that day but I certainly enjoyed playing champions that came out before that. In fact, my first support champion was Taric, The Shield Of Valoran! But while I’d love to feature him in these posts here, I can’t do it at all, mainly for the reason that he’s been updated to a more fabulous version of his former self that I’m not really playing right now. 

After he got changed a couple of times, though, I switched over to some other support champions and amongst them were Morgana, Soraka, Fiddlesticks and – the champion that today’s post is about – Janna, the Storm’s Fury! 

Note: I’ve only named these five champions, as they are champions that I actually play and as these came out in 2009, don’t flame me.

Janna, The Storm’s Fury can be called a protective spirit or even a goddess of the poor people in Zhaun and the sailors on Runeterra’s seas. She’s been known for ages and stories about her helping those in dire need have been told in many countries. Janna, which is the Shuriman word for “Protector”, often shows herself in the form of a blue bird that helps those that pray for her or as a breeze that warns the sailors of approaching storms. 

There’s a ton of cool and cute short stories that you can read in League of Legends’ “Universe”-page that show you all of her different sides: The Protector and the Storm’s Fury! 

In-game her abilities reflect her windy character quite well. 

Her passive ability, Tailwind, grants her and all allies that move towards her increased movement speed while also granting her bonus damage based on her movement speed on her auto-attacks and her W-active. 

Her Q-ability, Howling Gale, summons a whirlwind at her current location which gets bigger and travels wider the longer she charges it, damaging and knocking up enemies that it hits.

Her W-ability, Zephyr, not only has a passive part that increases her movement-speed when it’s off cooldown but also has a damaging active part. When you skill your W, the blue bird known from her Lore flies around her.

Her E-ability, Eye of the Storm, shields an ally champion or turret, granting them protection and attack damage. This shield is rather big but decreases over time, though the cooldown gets reduced for every champion knocked away/up or slowed by her abilities.

Her ultimate, Monsoon, first knocks away all enemies and stuns them for a brief moment before slowly healing all allies in the area around her.

These abilities make her an excellent enchanter who’s able to protect her allies with a lot of disengage-abilities, overall utility, a shield and an AoE-heal. Because of that, she doesn’t usually pack all that much of a punch, making her quite an easy target to kill when caught out of position. In the laning phase, I usually poke enemies with my Zephyr and Auto-Attacks, so that we eventually can engage on them and take a kill or blow their summoner spells. When they try to engage, I try to disrupt them from doing so by placing a Howling Gale nearby and knocking them up before they try anything funny. 

Champions like Nautilus, Thresh, Blitzcrank and Pyke are usually your worst enemy when you’re playing Janna, as they all have a hook or grab of sorts on top of other sorts of follow-up-damage or crowd-control.

However, I usually perform rather well when I’m playing against poke-matchups, other enchanters or champions like Alistar or Rakan who try to engage with their abilities and set up a kill or two with their abilities, as their W-abilities can be cancelled with Janna’s Howling Gale or Monsoon ability. 

My rune-setup for Janna usually looks like this. 

Summon Aery allows you to poke a lot more while also adding a bit more shield value to allied champions. Mana Flowband lets you regenerate a lot more mana. Celerity increases Janna’s movement speed by 1% but also makes all movement speed bonuses 7% more efficient, which is great to have on her thanks to her passive and Zephyr. Scorch is great for games where you’re able to poke a lot, as it adds a lot of extra damage over time to your W-damage. You’ll want to poke a lot, as you most likely will take Frostfang over Coin and as you’ll want to stack up your Mana Flowband relatively fast, using Zephyr. Alternatively, you may want to take Water Walking instead of Scorch – if you want to roam more – or take Gathering Storm for longer games. In the second tree, I usually go for Inspiration with Magical Footwear and Cosmic Insight. Magical Footwear saves you 300 Gold on shoes but also grants you a bonus of 10 movement speed while Cosmic Insight grants you 5% of cooldown reduction (CDR), max CDR, Item CDR, and Summoner Spell CDR.

If you want to, you may as well go for the Resolve Tree (2nd) with Boneplate Armor and Revitalize for increased shielding and healing on top of a bit more survivability. 

Note: This is just my set-up, you may play it in every other way if you want to as well. 

As this post has now ended up being a lot longer than usual, I’ll abbreviate the item-section by just saying that I usually go for 

Ardent Censer -> Athene’s Unholy Grail -> Redemption and then go for some tankier items like Shurelya’s, Solari, or Zeke’s Convergence. As for boots, I usually take the boots of mobility as they make you go fast. Depending on the enemy team, though, you may want to opt-in for Ninja Tabis, Mercury Treads, or the Boots of Swiftness. 

Anyways, I hope that you enjoyed this type of post. Tomorrow, I’ll be featuring another enchanter support but from 2010! 

Feel free to comment on anything you liked or disliked. Have a nice day 🙂

I’m taking part in this year’s #IntPiPoMo. If you’d like to participate or get to know the other participants, feel free to check this post out!

by MagiWasTaken

The Stray Sheep #35 – en passant

So, I thought I’d talk about the new headers I made for my blog (which I’m rather proud of!), how uni has been (as it just started), and what the current situation/final decision on the Heartbeat review is & something else.

Regarding the “en passant”, I thought it’d be cool to talk about how my week’s been now and then, like a diary – but public. And I like chess, so “en passant” felt like the right choice to make here!
Also “en passant” is a lot better than “Headerache!”, right? 🙂

The original pic

First things first, I love Dr Pepper and I thought the blog should resemble that.

But I needed more cans for that, so I had to buy three more cans which I enjoyed a lot (of course) and then I just shot the photo of this Dr Pepper Wall, made it look better (saturation and stuff?), then I’ve also added different “effects” to it. I really love the Pixel and Spiral one! Though the mosaic-esque (mosaesque? :D) is quite neat as well… Oh well, they’ll cycle through at random, so whenever you reload the page, you’ll see one of eight different header pictures! I may add more to the future and do special ones for Christmas and stuff but for now, these should be good enough.

The reason for me changing it at all was the fact that I actually wanted to do that quite early on when I created my blog back then in July, but then I kind of forgot and when I got annoyed by my headers being so different every time and also not cropped in the right way, I thought I should make a change.

That change was to crop them all in the recommended way, resulting in some games not being recognizable (as a friend mentioned, while someone else said that it sucks).
Also it didn’t make sense to see a header of “Cat Quest 2” when you’re reading a review on any other game.
Now, it looks better, in my opinion, and I’m kind of proud of it. Also, I can get rid of around 78 Dr Pepper cans. I’ll show you some in this post, I guess!

On to the other topic: University!

Uni has just started and I kicked it off with a fever, which was why I missed six hours worth of philosophy classes about Nietzsche, Freud, something about “objectivity, rationality and relativism” – and my Geometry course, which sucked. But apparently, those classes (apart from Geometry) were too full anyway, so that a friend of mine couldn’t listen to the Prof at all. I may have to change my Tuesday-lectures, which will be difficult and annoying to deal with.

Wednesday is my new Monday!

On Wednesdays, I’ve got Uni from 10 am to 6 pm and from 6 pm to 9 pm I’ve got literature club meetups. The courses themselves are quite full as well but really cool. I’m learning about thought experiments in one lecture while I’m trying to understand Machiavelli’s “Discorsi” in another. It’s quite cool actually. The other three hours are filled with math classes, so that’s that, I guess. On Thursday and Friday, I ended up having a huge migraine again, so I decided not to go to uni and instead ask a friend to send me pics of it.

So, I’ll be rather busy in the upcoming semester but I’ll also learn a lot for sure!

And the nearly-last topic is about Heartbeat, again.

I had a huge headache for quite some time now – and it may have been caused by me thinking too hard about whether or not I should review it. Recommending it means supporting a transphobic dev, while not recommending it would means giving some devs at Chumsoft shit for one dev’s views. Not writing a review about it, would be like denying that game’s existence solely based on someone else’s political views… in the end, I’ve decided not to post at all, which I’ve declared in a post-posting-edit, in “Large”. Thought I should say it here as well.

Last but not least: Drama with a person twitter

I don’t like it when people argue and I myself don’t like arguing at all, either. If possible I’d like to resolve things nicely. A while ago I got that rude message (which I’ve made a post about that was meant to be a bit uplifting as in “Don’t change yourself for others” or something like that).
Long story short, that person was rather rude to me in the private messages, called me a stalker in several tweets as I’ve answered to her message once and she kept blocking me, then unblocking me to write a rude and toxic message before ultimately blocking me again.

In the end, I decided to block her myself, too. Blocking someone doesn’t seem like something an adult should do as you should try to just avoid people on your own when you can’t get along with them. Blocking people is like running away while ignoring someone is a bit less childish, in my opinion, but I guess sometimes it’s necessary.

So, all in all:

Ever since I decided not to post about Heartbeat and ever since I’ve blocked that toxic person, my head’s been better, so I guess it’s all fine now. I’m quite sure that the Heartbeat-matter messed with me more but removing all kinds of saltiness and toxicity can’t be bad. Next step would be to stop playing League of Legends, I guess! (that’s a joke btw)

Tomorrow I’ll have to get some duties done and finish this other review here up, but I may as well post it on Monday or Tuesday, as I don’t want to stress myself too much, still being sickly and all of that.

Either way, I hope you all enjoyed this post and I hope that you all are well/not sick at all. Stay hydrated!

Cheers!

by MagiWasTaken

The Stray Sheep #29 – lazy

To be honest, I’d like to blog daily, but today I’ve been lazy. I didn’t really have many ideas today, so I think from now on I’ll try to stay with a few posts a week instead of daily posts since I don’t want to post for the posting’s sake. Also, I really need to work on some “Indietail”-s.

Next week’s going to be quite busy. I actually got some uni-stuff to do as well as work and other stuff. Posting daily for a while has been quite fun but it really isn’t my cup of tea, I guess.

So, today I’ve been lazy. I didn’t get much done and I still need to do some chores, actually. Tomorrow I need to get up early to get the dishes and all the other chores done before work. After work, I’ll have to clean up my room and then I’ll have to finish these last few drafts (still need some more screenshots from these games here, on top of some more playtime). I’d like to take the blog into more of a review-direction instead of just posting about all kinds of stuff, aka Stray Sheep.
So, yeah, the next posts won’t be daily, instead, there’s at least a weekly post, maybe even more. We’ll see.

Anyways, have a lovely evening or day! 🙂 See ya!