1482: Lego, not LEGO

Andie and I went to see The Lego Movie today (or, if you work in PR, The LEGO Movie™) — it’s the first time we’ve been to the cinema for ages since neither of us really like going all that much, but given Andie’s admirable obsession with Lego (we have three awesome display cabinets with City stuff in at our place, and I’m sure our new home will have considerably more) there was never a time where we weren’t going to see it.

I shall refrain from spoiling the movie too much, save to say that it’s an excellent kids’ movie of the type designed to appeal in numerous ways to grown-ups as well. The concept of Lego being an all-ages toy (whatever it might say about upper age limits on the boxes) is specifically lampshaded, and there are numerous cameos from characters who have been immortalised through various Lego sets over the years — ranging from Star Wars to Lord of the Rings via the DC universe.

What I did want to talk about is how Lego has done a great job of positioning itself to a ridiculously broad market in 2014, and how that’s changed significantly over the years I’ve been alive. Or, at least, the way I’ve come to look at Lego has changed significantly over the years, anyhow.

I never really got hugely into Lego as a kid. I’m not sure why, really, since you’d think it would appeal to my inherent creative sensibilities. But no; my brother was the big Lego person in our family, though I certainly delved into the big brown plastic box full of it that was a fixture in the playroom when I was growing up. I liked the idea of Lego — something which you could use to build anything you wanted — but always felt a little intimidated by it, too.

Part of the reason for this was that in the big brown plastic box was an extremely well put-together house, complete with doors, windows and a slopey roof. I liked looking at this house because I was impressed with the craftsmanship — I assume it was originally the work of my brother, though I don’t know if it was assembled from instructions or not — but I also didn’t want to take it apart, because it was “complete”, and taking something apart that is “complete” didn’t quite feel right to me. Unfortunately, it consisted of all the “best” pieces, which made building other coherent structures a little more difficult, so ultimately I never really became much of a builder.

That was how I thought of Lego; it was something you built things with. I didn’t really think of it as having much of a “personality” as such, despite the presence of minifigs. (Incidentally, I was very happy to see that the “spaceman” minifigs, which appeared to be all we had in the big brown box, were specifically brought up in the movie.) It was just sort of… there, and given that I didn’t end up building all that much stuff with it, it drifted out of my consciousness for many years, never to return until I met Andie, really.

Today, however, Lego very much has a personality, demonstrated aptly by the movie. But I think the slightly irreverent attitude that Lego is infused with today started somewhat earlier. I can’t say for certain exactly when it began, but I have a feeling the computer games made by Traveller’s Tales have a lot to do with it. Again, I haven’t played all that many of these, but they have developed somewhat over time, too — they began with “silent movie” recreations of Star Wars that ended up being hilarious because of their lack of dialogue, and gradually moved into movie adaptations that used actual lines and sounds from the movie, and subsequently on to original titles such as Lego City Undercover.

The personality of the latter in particular was very evident in the movie, and it’s one of the things that made it so enjoyable — it was silly, highly quotable nonsense for children, but at the same time the references and sly winks throughout were clearly aimed at those of us who are old enough to have kids of our own (whether or not we actually do).

In short, it was a lot of fun that I highly recommend you go and see. I’m glad to see something as cool as Lego endures so well in the modern world, and solid adaptations like The Lego Movie will undoubtedly help it continue to do so.

1481: Faceoffs are Magic

Picked up a copy of the My Little Pony Collectible Card Game the other day, and Andie and I gave it a shot tonight. After some initial confusion over some of the rules and how it all worked, I think I’ve grasped how the flow of play goes now, and I’m interested to try it again.

I haven’t played a CCG since the name Portal was primarily associated with Magic: The Gathering rather than Valve. I never really got hugely into Magic (or the game I half-heartedly started collecting but never once played before, the Star Trek: The Next Generation Collectible Card Game) but recently, with some attempts at Netrunner (not technically a CCG, but it was originally) and now this, I’m interested to play more.

Being based on My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, the My Little Pony CCG isn’t based around direct conflict. Rather, it’s based on the rather family-friendly premise of solving problems and giving “troublemakers” the boot before they cock up your plans to solve the aforementioned problems.

The mechanics are relatively straightforward, though not introduced massively clearly in the rulebook. Essentially, each turn you have a certain number of action points to spend, which is determined by the player with the highest score. Consequently, a trailing player has the potential to catch up somewhat by the fact that they’ll still have the opportunity to play more cards.

During your turn, you can play “Friends” either directly to one of the two Problems in play, or into your Home, from which they can later be moved at a cost of two action points per card. Cards often have prerequisites and costs in order to play — for example, in order to play one card, you might need to spend two action points and already have two yellow Power points on the board.

Once you’ve spent all your action points, you check to see whether you’ve amassed enough Power of the appropriate colours to “confront” a Problem and score a point for it. If two players both have enough power to confront a Problem, after you score a point, you have a Faceoff over it, where you compare your respective Power levels, replace the Problem and score bonus points. On the off-chance you’ve scored from both Problems in play at once, you have a Faceoff, even if your opponent doesn’t meet the requirements for either. Again, this replaces the problems, sends all the Friends home and discards any other cards, meaning both sides then have to start building up Power again to confront the next Problems.

What’s difficult to judge from just one play of the game is how the different colour decks play. It seems apparent that the Fluttershy starter deck is concerned with amassing strong amounts of Power very quickly — the Caretaker ability that pops up quite often allows certain cards to boost the power of other (“Critter”) cards, for example, which means you can quite easily muster an unassailable force of Friends to hoover up Points nearly every turn — while the Pinkie Pie starter deck is more concerned with fucking over your opponent by reducing their power or removing certain cards from the board.

There’s a couple of aspects of the game that appear to be fairly key to strategy — firstly, how you “flip” your main character card, and secondly, how you use Troublemakers.

To the first point, “flipping” your character card involves meeting a specific condition, after which you can turn the card over and use its more powerful “Boosted” side for the rest of the game, which generally has a higher base Power level, a special ability and fewer restrictions on the cards you can keep in your Home area. Fluttershy seemed quite easy to flip, since she simply needed to confront a Problem with another Critter in tow, whereas Pinkie Pie seemed significantly harder to flip — she has to confront a problem unopposed by any of her opponent’s cards, which means she probably has to make a bee-line for her own starting Problem before things get too hectic.

To the second point, Troublemakers are cards you play and flip over on your next turn, which then block your opponent from being able to confront a problem, since they first need to beat the Troublemaker at a Faceoff. The flip side of this inconvenience you give them is that if they do beat the Troublemaker in a Faceoff, they score points for doing so, then can potentially pick up some points for the Problem too. With some Troublemakers worth 3 points, that’s potentially a gain of 4 or more points in a single turn, which has the potential to completely swing a game from one way to another — you play to 15.

Anyway. To cut a long story short, I won, 15-3, though I’m not sure it really counts since it was a training game. I’m intrigued to try it again, and potentially to try out some of the other character decks and see how they work. Looking at discussion of the game online, its apparently simplicity appears to be somewhat deceptive — there’s a fair amount of deep strategy possible to incorporate, as with any good CCG, though naturally there’s always the question of who has the “better” cards if you’ve started delving into the world of booster packs.

There will be more ponycards in the near future!

1480: Before the End of After Story

Looking back over these entries, I can see that I started watching the Clannad anime quite some time ago, and still haven’t quite finished it. I’m closing in on the end, though, but it’s tough going. Really tough going.

In short, its reputation as “the crying anime” is pretty well-deserved, given that the last three episodes have all, well, you know. Let’s just say that watching them first thing in the morning while trying to get fired up to do some work perhaps wasn’t the best idea.

This isn’t a bad thing, of course, and one of the things I’ve come to particularly like about Clannad is that, despite its reputation, it’s not overtly emotionally manipulative. There’s a lot of filling in the blanks yourself, a lot of figuring things out — and that moment when you come to a realisation yourself is what hits the hardest. Certain things aren’t made at all explicit, leaving you to come to your own conclusions about what happened. Said conclusions may not be particularly difficult to come to — I’m trying to remain spoiler-free here for the sake of those who haven’t seen it — but still, somehow, you’re left with a few questions as to whether or not you’re really right. After one episode I watched, I simply couldn’t go back to it for a couple of days because the possibility of something awful having happened that I wasn’t sure I’d reached the correct conclusion about was something I couldn’t quite deal with at the time. Eventually I found the courage, though; like any tragedy, you have to face up to things sooner or later.

Part of this vaguely ambiguous feeling about it stems from the faintly otherworldly, dream-like atmosphere it has. I commented back when I was watching the first series that there was something of an air of melancholy flowing through the backdrop of even the most joyful scenes, and this continues during the After Story second arc. After Story also contains more in the way of outright tragedy, but the obviously bad things happening aren’t necessarily the most affecting moments — it’s the consequences that sometimes come two or three episodes later that hit the hardest.

Similarly, After Story continues the seemingly unrelated parallel storyline that appears to have nothing to do with the main narrative, but which occasionally kind-of-sort-of-possibly-maybe? reflects what’s been happening in terms of tone and overall feeling. Having not yet watched until the very end of the whole series, I can’t yet tell if this is wrapped into the overall narrative in a specific way, or whether it remains as it was left at the end of the first series — as a story one of the characters ends up telling — but it’s certainly something that regularly gives you food for thought throughout the entire run.

I’m appreciating it because I find the protagonist Okazaki quite relatable, too. He’s a young man (I know I’m not quite so young as I used to be, but humour me) who appears to have a certain degree of difficulty showing outward signs of emotion, but who occasionally explodes with pent-up feelings that simply can’t be held in any longer. To those not familiar with him, he might seem cold or morose, but the complete run of Clannad reveals him to be a sympathetic character who quietly deals with his own turmoil as best as he can while trying not to bother other people with the things that are on his mind. Despite this, he’s a passionate, caring person who tries to do the right thing and gets frustrated when the injustices of the world conspire to prevent him from doing just that. He’s humble and realistic; he doesn’t get ideas above his station, but he wants to try and do what he can for the people who love him.

I’m intrigued to see how it all ends. I have about five or six more episodes left, I think, and things are starting to tie themselves up towards a conclusion. I have literally no idea how it will actually finish right now, though I’m sure there will be more tears before the final credits roll.

1479: Moneybags

Andie and I have bought a house. (Or possibly, “Andie and I are buying a house” — I’m not entirely sure which tense is appropriate at this stage.) Thus far the process has been significantly less stressful than I have been led to believe, but I’m sure there’s still scope for something to go horribly wrong along the way. Until that time, however, I’m going to enjoy what has, so far, been a fairly painless process.

One thing that has struck me during this process, however, is how much your perception of money can change in such a short space of time. Or, indeed, how much the quantities of money you deal with on a regular basis can change in a short period.

When you’re young, getting a couple of quid pocket money is a lot. Getting an expensive present — something that costs £20 or more — is pretty awesome, and getting a really expensive present — a games console, say — is really awesome. At the same time, if you’re not dealing with a lot of money at once, it can be easy to disregard it completely. I recall when I was very young — like, early primary school young — thinking that cashpoint machines simply gave you money if you put in the right number. It didn’t even occur to me that you had to have that money to your name in order to be able to receive it in physical form.

Then you move into your teenage years, and start having a bit more money of your own. It’s still not in huge quantities, though that said there’s plenty of teenagers wandering around sporting the latest iPhones, so modern teens are certainly getting money from somewhere. Some even save up and get their own car, although admittedly said car tends to be a rustbucket monstrosity that will fall apart the second you look at it.

Then on to university, where, in many cases, you’ll have early encounters with both crippling debt and seemingly more money than you know what to do with. You’ll start paying rent, which costs hundreds of pounds a month, and you’ll have expenses to consider. You’ll get thousands of pounds through a student loan, then blow it on booze and whatever else students spend money.

Despite university being a whole bunch of years ago now, I must confess that I still find myself in that mindset sometimes. I feel like I don’t have much money coming in — even though I’m drawing a respectable wage and can live comfortably — and even a hundred pounds feels like a lot of money.

Until now. We’re buying a house, which costs six figures. This involves being saddled with a six-figure debt, and spending five figures up front. The most I’ve ever spent on something in one go up until now was four figures on a computer, so the prospect of spending five figures at once is… well, it’s a little mind-boggling, if I’m honest. I’m not sure the idea has sunk in yet.

Still, at least once all the house stuff is sorted we can hopefully both go back to thinking about much smaller numbers on a regular basis. At least until we decide we want to move and buy another one somewhere else…

1478: Virtue’s Numerous Penultimate Rewards

I’m still plugging away at the sequel to 999, Virtue’s Last Reward. This is an interesting game in many ways, but one of the most fascinating things I’ve found about it so far is how it’s far more willing to withhold an ending from you than 999 was. In 999, there was only one ending that had a “prerequisite” — i.e. you had to finish one path before you could finish the “true” path — but in Virtue’s Last Reward, there are numerous plot branches that end prematurely with a “To Be Continued” message that may only be unlocked using knowledge obtained in one of the other narrative paths. Consequently, a big part of the game’s challenge looks set to revolve around determining precisely which order you should do things in.

To speak too much about this aspect of the game and why it’s structured in this way would be to get somewhat spoileriffic, and I know that at least one person who might be reading this is currently playing through the game at the same time as me, a number of hours behind where I am. As such, I’ll refrain from discussing this aspect of it too publicly for the moment and satisfy myself simply by saying that I find this approach really interesting.

It’s one of the things I like best about the visual novel medium, as it happens. It’s also one of the main means through which the visual novel medium distinguishes itself from conventional novels and other linear forms of storytelling. The branching nature of visual novels means the medium inherently lends itself to a form of storytelling whereby you only get the complete picture of what is going on by seeing things from multiple perspectives. And I’m not necessarily talking about switching narration perspectives to different characters — in most cases I’m simply talking about the protagonist making different choices, proceeding down a different path and consequently demonstrating a different side to themselves.

In some cases, these different paths are manifested as the protagonist changing in different ways. In Katawa Shoujo, for example, each narrative path sees the protagonist learning something from his chosen partner, and growing into a markedly different person as a result. He’s still Hisao at heart, but each of the girls bring a different aspect of him to the forefront — Rin brings out his artistic side, for example, while Emi encourages him to never give up and to always keep on with whatever he’s put his mind to.

In other cases, these different paths simply allow us to see how the protagonist responds to different life situations. In Kira Kira, for example, each of the main narrative paths corresponds to each of the very different female members of the cast, each of whom have their own story to tell. By seeing all of these stories through to their conclusion, you get a complete picture of who they are — and perhaps the reasons they do the things they do.

One of the best examples I can think of in recent memory is School Days HQ, too. I’m still yet to see 100% of the scenes in this, but I’ve seen enough of the endings to know that knowledge gained in some narrative paths can completely change the way you look at others. What may superficially seem to be a romantic scene can be tinged with sadness or tragedy when approached from a different angle with different knowledge already in your mind. And if you’re unfortunate enough to catch that game’s most notorious bad ending on your first run through… well, I pity you trying to see the rest of the game in the same way afterwards.

Rather than separating narrative paths into their own discrete threads that neatly tie themselves up, then leaving the player to do all the mental fingerwork to weave them all together into a complete picture, it seems that Virtue’s Last Reward is deliberately structured in such a way as to encourage you to explore all the different options — including the “bad” endings. In the path I played tonight, making a “bad” choice ultimately proved to be something I actually needed to do in order to progress the story further down another route. That’s something I’ve never seen before, and it’s proving to be a real highlight of the experience for me.

But as I say, in discussing this we’re getting dangerously close to spoiler territory, and I’m keen to avoid that. So I’ll leave that there… and now I’m off to go and see if I can’t actually make it to one of the endings before I go to sleep this evening.

1477: Nondescript

It’s been one of those days that just sort of… happened today. I wrote about EA’s horrendous molestation of the Dungeon Keeper series, gave Flappy Bird a well-deserved drubbing in a review and a few other things, then played an interesting horror game called Serena which I’m going to write a review of tomorrow, then capped the evening off with some Final Fantasy XIV. That was my day. That was it.

Much as we might like to always have interesting things to talk about and tall tales to tell, the fact is that most days we go through our existence are pretty humdrum, boring and nondescript, with almost nothing of note happening whatsoever.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, of course, because having humdrum, boring and nondescript days suggests that things are going all right — it’s better than having days that are crushing disappointments, or that make you want to punch walls, or that make you want to sit in the shower and cry, for example, but it’s also not quite as good as days that make you want to explode in happiness or play a pair of tea tongs like castanets. (Actually, I must confess to doing the latter earlier while waiting for a cup of tea to brew, but it was more through boredom than happiness. Tea tongs actually make a surprisingly convincing castanets substitute, FYI.)

Perhaps this is why social media has risen to such prominence in recent years. Everything from the humble status update to a “selfie” has the potential to make the mundane seem so much more fascinating than it really is — at least it does to the people posting these things. Yes! they’ll think. Here’s my dinner! It’s amazing! Maybe people will be jealous of what I’m having! I have beans with sausages! Joke’s on you, losers! Oh God I’m so lonely.

It’s sort of baffling if you take a step back from it all, really. Take photography in particular — the rise of digital photography and phone cameras have devalued the humble photograph from cultural artifact to disposable, throwaway thing. Photos used to be a precious commodity — you’d go on holiday with a couple of 36-exposure rolls of film in your bag, and you’d try to make every shot count. Now, you can afford to take pictures of every course of every meal you have and share them to the world as if they give a shit. And Silicon Valley types who enjoy making new social media apps for no other reason than to say they attracted several million in seed funding, whatever that is, can take advantage of people like this by offering them apps that allow them to “turn your photographs into beautiful memories” and the like. Ugh.

Of course, the Internet belongs to everyone so it is your choice how you choose to go about using it. Just remember that the things you’re posting might not be as interesting to other people as they might be to you. Heaven knows I know that after writing 1,477 days of nonsense on these very pages.

There you go. I even have something to say on a humdrum, boring and nondescript day such as today. And now I’m going to bed. Good night.

1476: Go There, Do That

One thing I’ve discovered that I quite enjoy doing with regard to writing about games is writing walkthroughs, guides and that sort of thing.

Admitting this is the sort of thing that gets me some funny looks, since writing guides and walkthroughs is often regarded as one of the lowliest jobs in the business. But I still like it — and in order to do it effectively, it does require a distinct combination of skills: the ability to write and explain things clearly being the main one.

I’m currently assembling a bunch of guides for Final Fantasy XIV with a mind to publishing them around the time of the PlayStation 4 version’s release, which is when the game is likely to see a bunch of new players trying it for the first time. I’m finding it enjoyable to write the guides for several reasons: firstly, it’s another means of writing about a game I like a whole lot, and secondly, it’s an opportunity to demonstrate my knowledge and pass on the things I’ve learned to other people. (Thirdly, it’s an opportunity for me to remind myself — or learn for the first time, in some cases — the exact details of how everything in the game works.)

Perhaps the reason I think so fondly on writing guides is the fact that it’s how I got my real start in writing for publications. (Okay, that’s not quite true — I had a couple of reviews published in an Atari enthusiast magazine when I was quite a bit younger, but that didn’t have nearly the same reach of the games press I’ve written for since.) After doing some work experience on the magazine my brother was in charge of at the time — the now sadly defunct PC Zone — I published a number of guides and walkthroughs for sprawling games such as Lands of Lore II, Final Fantasy VII and Discworld II. They were hard work to assemble and the remuneration I received for each piece probably wasn’t what it could have been, but I have fond memories of putting them together.

It also led to one of the things I’m most strangely proud of in my career: the fact I wrote a tips book for the notorious crash-and-smash game Carmageddon, which was cover-mounted on PC Zone one month and was subsequently included as a pack-in extra with Virgin Megastores’ special edition bundle pack of the game one Christmas. After that, some years after I thought I’d ever see a copy of it ever again, popular digital distribution storefront GOG.com saw fit to include a PDF version of my tips book in with their newly modernized version of this classic game. Digital immortality — and not a royalty cheque in sight, but I’m not really bitter about that.

I wonder if my enjoyment of writing tips and walkthroughs stems from the fact that when it didn’t make me want to kill myself, I actually enjoyed teaching? It’s a similar sort of skill, after all — taking a potentially complex concept and introducing it to people who may not be familiar with it at all — and thus I feel that’s a plausible explanation. If that’s the case, though, it’s perhaps a shame it’s a form of writing that’s not taken particularly seriously — although I feel the enthusiasts doing it for free over on GameFAQs are something to do with that.

Anyway. That’s my revelation for the day. I like writing walkthroughs. So there. And here’s my walkthrough for EA’s Dungeon Keeper on iPhone: 1. Press and hold the icon on your home screen. 2. Tap the “X” that appears in the corner. 3. Tap the “Delete” button.

Sorry, couldn’t resist.

1475: Thundercards

We’ve finally got our Internet back after it being down for most of today as well as last night — not to mention BT’s site noting that the problem was reported at 4:30 am and would be fixed by 12 am (errr…) — but yes. Internets we have. Woo!

While it was down, Andie and I went out for a bit, initially to have a scary grown-up talk with a mortgage advisor. We’re well on the way to owning our own house, though I’m hesitant to talk too much about it right now in case it all falls through. Exciting, though.

Anyway, Andie buggered off after lunch to go and see a friend in Portsmouth, so I thought I’d have a wander into town and see what was what. Actually, I had a vague idea in mind that I wanted to pick up a copy of the board game Mage Knight that I could play solo while the Internet was down — while our regular gaming group is hesitant to return to the game again since our last 5-player game took literally all day, I do like the idea of the solo game, which is much shorter owing to the lack of downtime.

Long story short, I went to Forbidden Planet (which appeared to be playing host to a Magic: The Gathering tournament of some description — interesting to know) and had a browse of their board games. There was no Mage Knight — they haven’t had that in for a while, I don’t think — but they did have a game called Thunderstone which I recalled seeing positive comments about in the past.

I didn’t know much about Thunderstone, but a quick browse of its BoardGameGeek page revealed that it was very positively received by the community as a whole (an average rating of 8.1 is very high for that notoriously picky community) and was something that may indeed be worth picking up, particularly since it was £10 off as part of Forbidden Planet’s sale. So I grabbed it, took it home and gave its solo version a go — yes, the fact it supports solo play is one reason I was willing to give it a shot.

Many board games take a significant amount of time to “unpack”, what with all the counters and tokens you need to pop out, but Thunderstone takes the cake in that there are about a bajillion cards, all of which need to be sorted into their own little compartments — though thankfully the game does include special “divider” cards to make organising the box pretty straightforward.

The game itself is a deckbuilding game with elements that are similar to both Ascension and Dominion, but with enough unique flavour and mechanics to make it clearly its own beast. The gist is that you’re a faceless hero attempting to save the realm of Numenera — a setting I’m not familiar with, but which I understand is relatively popular in fantasy enthusiast circles — from “Doom,” some sort of amorphous unpleasantness that has been hopping through dimensions from the original incarnation of Thunderstone to the version I bought today.

Your “goal,” such as it is, is to defeat an evil horrible Thunderstone Bearer, a powerful monster who shows up later in the game, and one who brings about the end of the game if you allow him to advance far enough. In order to do this, you’ll need to recruit heroes, purchase equipment and then tonk a whole load of monsters on the head with various blunt and sharp implements until Big Bad comes out, you tonk him on the head and save the day. (Or until Big Bad comes out, you fail to tonk him on the head and the world is swallowed by eternal darkness, or something.) Victory is determined not by whether or not you beat the Thunderstone Bearer, but by the number of Victory Points you’ve earned at the end of the game — this is a competitive game at heart, though in solo play you are playing against the game itself rather than simply attempting to amass as many points as possible.

Each turn, you can either visit the village or delve into the dungeon. Going to the village allows you to spend money up to the value of the cards in your hand to purchase various items or the services of local heroes. You can also use XP tokens gathered through previous successful combats to level up your existing heroes — so long as they’re in your hand on that turn.

Yes, this being a deckbuilder, you’re somewhat at the mercy of the cards you draw, though through careful use of various abilities that let you “discard” (remove temporarily) or “destroy” cards and manage your hand more effectively. Although there’s a random element that can, at times, be frustrating when you don’t quite get what you want, as with most deckbuilders it’s about considering what you might need a little way down the road, and planning accordingly. It’s all very well recruiting a deck full of “Strong” heroes (massive Physical damage, may only level up after combat instead of in the village) but as soon as a monster that requires you to twat it with Magical damage at least once shows up, you’re buggered if you haven’t allowed for that eventuality.

The monsters all have interesting abilities. Some force you to destroy cards in your hand before you can confront them, some provide benefits after you’ve killed them — you add them to your deck as trophies rather than keeping them separately as in Ascension — and one particular category, known as Ultraterrestrials, all have an infuriating special ability where if your total damage exceeds — or, in some cases, is not exactly — a particular value, then you simply can’t kill them, even if you would have otherwise obliterated them off the face of the planet. This makes for more interesting strategies than simply acquiring as much power as you possibly can — it’s worth your time to gather some abilities that will let you reduce the amount of damage you inflict, too.

Anyway, I played a solo game and lost to the game. It was reasonably close, though — I think it was 54-46 in favour of the game, if I remember rightly — which isn’t bad for a first attempt. I’d be interested to see how the dynamic changes with more than one player, so hopefully I’ll have a chance to get it to the table at some point in the near future.

1474: Disconnected

Our Internet is down. Apparently broadband services in our whole area are affected, so thankfully it’s nothing to do with our hardware.

This does mean that I have to compose this post on my phone, though, which is always a faff, but at least the option’s always there, so I should be grateful for that at least. And I should also be grateful for the fact that the phone networks haven’t been knocked out by a zombie apocalypse or whatever, though frankly if there were a zombie apocalypse daily blogging would probably be the last thing on my mind.

I’m currently sitting in bed watching the rats go about their business. Newcomers Socks and Clover are still both very timid, but they are getting bolder — both of them have been emerging from the parts of the cage they’ve decided are their “safe places” a lot more often, and they seem to be getting along well with one another even if they don’t quite seem sure what to make of Andie and I yet. We have to be very quiet if they’re doing anything other than hiding, since the slightest sound — even breathing too heavily — can cause them to go scampering off.

The best part about the new little ones is how much happier Lucy seems to be. Lara’s passing was sad, and this was driven home even more by how depressed it made Lucy. She had lost all her usual pep, energy and cheekiness and simply wasn’t herself; a couple of days after getting some new friends, though, and she’s thoroughly back to her old self.

I could watch these little buggers for hours. When I do, it reminds me once again how long I’d been missing out on animal companionship — I have a feeling that some furry friends of some description may have helped me out through some dark times in my past, but, well, hindsight is… You know.

Hopefully our Internet will be back to normal tomorrow. In the meantime, mata ashita.