What's that? 3.30am? Oh. Whoops.

I've been enjoying myself making and editing more videos today, getting ahead of schedule on Warriors Wednesday this time. For the remainder of this week I hope to do similar for my other various series so I can always have something ready to go even if I find myself a bit short on time of an evening for whatever reason!

Anyway, I didn't quite realise it had got so late as I really enjoy fiddling around with video. So I better go to bed! But not before I share an exclusive sneak peek at the upcoming second part of the Death end re;Quest video feature, this time taking a look at how the game delivers its narrative.

I'll try and write something a bit more substantial a bit earlier tomorrow, haha. Good night!

Today I have prepped 19 videos for publishing! Specifically, I've prepared all of the Atari 8-bit Atari A to Z videos up until the next time around for Z. It feels really good to get ahead of schedule and have something so "concrete" and productive done. There's still a whole bunch of stuff I want to achieve before the end of my holiday, but this is a big milestone down that will take some of the pressure off for the next 19 Tuesdays.

After all that, as you might imagine, I'm pretty knackered so apologies if I don't have a lot else to say right now… I need my bed!

I did, however, want to keep my promise and provide you with an exclusive early look at an upcoming video. I've had a few requests to make video versions of MoeGamer's Cover Game features, and I've wanted to get back into doing that for some time now, too. So I thought my most recent feature on Death end re;Quest would be an ideal time to give that a shot. So here's the first part. This will be going up to the public next Monday.

Not only will this type of video provide followers of MoeGamer with a new way to enjoy the features, it'll also open them up to people who only follow my work on YouTube. Neat!

Moving forward, I'd like to keep up with my ongoing "Let's Play" series, perhaps with a few refinements and tweaks here and there, and aim to have one "scripted" or "reading" video like this per week. We'll see how things go!

Now I'm off to bed for a looooong sleep before another long day of Being Creative tomorrow!

I'm going to publish this video tomorrow, but I thought I'd give you a Patreon-exclusive sneak peek.

I've been planning to get back to do some "readings" of my articles for ages but have never quite found the time or inclination to do so. But I have always enjoyed doing them; complementing my written/spoken words with game footage is a good way to reinforce the things I'm talking about and perhaps demonstrate a few things non-verbally, too.

I figured this week would be as good a time as any to have another fiddle, so here we go. There are a few more of these to follow over the course of the next few days; they'll be published on Mondays on YouTube over the next few weeks so in some cases you'll be seeing stuff a month early!

We kick off with a reading of my article on Laughing Jackal's unusual puzzle shooter OMG Zombies, which I liked a lot more than I expected to. Hope you enjoy!

It's the weekend of my first week of holiday… and to be perfectly honest, I haven't quite managed to achieve as much as I hoped I would in this free time.

Except, thinking about it, I have achieved a fair bit already. Today I recorded a massive amount of content for Atari A to Z as well as two Sunday Shooting videos, and throughout the week I've been well ahead of schedule on all my various video series as well as keeping up with articles, finishing Death end re;Quest and getting the writeups for that all done too.

I think the reason I'm feeling a little dissatisfied is that I hoped I'd be more ahead of schedule by now… but the fact is, there was a lot I needed to get done before I could do that.

Now, however, I have the freedom to record a bunch of stuff well in advance as well as contemplate what's next on MoeGamer. This is what I've been excited about. I'm excited to see just how much stuff I can get done given "limitless" (kinda) free time. I still have a full week off work, so I'm sure there's plenty I can do.

Tomorrow's goal is to finish off the Atari A to Z stuff I was recording today (I've been preparing from H right up to Z) as well as get cracking on getting ahead of schedule on my series like Warriors Wednesday, New Game Plus and Sunday Shooting. Plus Atari ST A to Z and Atari A to Z Flashback too, of course.

I sometimes ponder whether I've given myself too much "work" to do… but the fact is, I really enjoy it. This is my hobby; this is what I've chosen to do with my free time. And I love it. If only I could spend all day every day doing it. Then I'd really be in heaven.

I finished Death end re;Quest this evening, and in the process of doing my final writeup on it I realised that this had been a great example of a game that really engages the brain on multiple levels.

There's the mechanical aspect, which starts off pretty straightforward but demands a bit more care and attention as you progress. I was particularly pleased that you can't just "overpower" the game, even in a New Game Plus run; although you can keep levelling beyond 99, you only get 5HP per level after that, and all the stats have a hard cap of 999 anyway, so there's an inherent limit to potential power. It's all about how you use it.

Then there's the narrative aspect, which I wrote more about today. The more I think about this, the more I like it. There are layers upon layers there, with a lot of musing on the nature of existence and the feelings we can attach to fictional characters and the experiences we have in fictional worlds.

It's definitely one of Compile Heart's most solid games to date in all its aspects, so if you're after an unusual, thoughtful and very enjoyable RPG with a strong touch of horror and mystery about it, I can highly recommend taking that journey.

$5+ Patrons, I'll get you some Death end re;Quest themed wallpaper tomorrow! 🙂

I watched an interesting panel earlier from a MAGfest of a few years back, where several YouTubers I enjoy discussed and shared some of the worst comments they'd received, both on and off YouTube. It was both extremely entertaining and rather sad.

I've been fairly fortunate over the years in that I haven't had that many obnoxious commenters. There have been a couple, to be sure, but when I say "a couple" I literally mean that — I can think of just two specific examples, neither of whom have bothered me for a while now.

And it's not a matter of not getting commenters either — I'm fortunate enough to see a few people in my Likes and comment sections on a fairly regular basis, some of whom I've come to think of as actual friends. This is certainly a far cry from what was shown off on this panel — and given said panel was a good few years back now, I suspect it's only gotten worse since then.

I feel extremely grateful that I don't have to deal with this, because I know I'd find it extremely upsetting. Whether the reason I don't have to put up with this is because I'm a relatively small scale creator or because I set appropriate expectations with the tone and style of my content, I'm not entirely sure. I just know that so far as avoiding comment hate goes… I seem to be doing something right for the moment!

Long may it continue, eh.

An exclusive behind-the-scenes video for you today, as I share with you the trials and tribulations I went through while attempting to prepare tomorrow's Atari ST A to Z video.

I haven't had "the giggles" like that for a long time, and while it was mildly annoying to not be able to get through the things I wanted to say, it was a uniquely joyful experience that I haven't had for quite some time. It was actually rather nostalgic.

There are two real reasons for this, both relating to my time at secondary school. The first was simply that my friends and I used to enjoy quietly and non-disruptively messing around in classes that we found quite easy or weren't particularly engaged with. To that end, we tended to have a "Rough Book" on hand, in which we'd doodle and draw cartoon strips, many of which got extremely offensive in nature. On more than one occasion, the stuff we'd been drawing (usually involving giant cocks) got to be so hilarious that we'd uncontrollably get the giggles, usually attracting the attention of the teacher in the process. Thankfully she never found out exactly what it was we were laughing at.

The second involves the Klik and Play game my friends and I made while we were in sixth form. This involved a fair amount of voice acting, and every recording session was an absolute delight, because no-one was able to get through more than one line at a time without pissing themselves laughing or deliberately doing something to throw the others off. It made these recording sessions take about ten times longer than they needed to, but we knew that going in; it was an opportunity to spend some time together laughing and enjoying ourselves.

Today's fit of the giggles was entirely by myself, which I guess could be seen as a bit sad, but hey, at least I was entertaining myself, and I hope you enjoyed sharing in that moment with me!

I've owned a copy of board game Pandemic Legacy for some time now, but have only just recently started actually playing it with my semi-regular board gaming friends. And we've been having a great time so far.

For the unfamiliar, a "Legacy" board game is one that you are intended to play multiple times over a long period, making permanent changes to the game as you go. And when I say "permanent", I mean permanent — you apply stickers to the board and cards, you tear up cards that are no longer relevant, you scratch off things to reveal secret things, you open sealed boxes and all manner of other exciting stuff. Over time, the game experience gradually changes so that it is still recognisable as the thing that it is based on, but now has a variety of other interesting elements that are at least partially the result of the way you and your friends have played.

Pandemic, meanwhile, is a game themed around the outbreak of disease around the globe. Working as a team, players must make use of their characters' special abilities to collect sets of cards, discover cures for the four diseases, treat outbreaks and ensure the world doesn't get overrun or fall into anarchic panic. I'm sure you can imagine how the "Legacy" elements build on this: disease mutations, cities falling into chaos after epidemics, the military getting involved… it's all very exciting.

So far my friends and I have played as far as March in the in-game year, and already a number of interesting elements have entered the mix. I'm loathe to spoil to many of these lest you want to play the game for yourself — the surprise really is part of the fun — but suffice to say, there's a really cool feeling of an ongoing "story" of your efforts to fight back against these deadly diseases, as well as a gradual escalation of both overall complexity and difficulty.

I shudder to think how chaotic December's games are going to get… things have been going reasonably well so far, but a lot can change in a month…!

I generally don't run into a lot of issues with YouTube, probably because I'm a small hobbyist creator doing things for fun. However, one consistently irritating issue I run into when it comes to putting The MoeGamer Podcast together is the dreaded Content ID.

For those unfamiliar with YouTube parlance, Content ID is the automated system whereby certain companies are able to automatically determine when you have used their material in a video, be it audio or video material. It's actually a rather clever system, because it is able to identify copyrighted content the moment the video becomes available.

The trouble with Content ID is that it doesn't bear Fair Use in mind — such as, say, the use of content in a podcast to discuss. You can appeal a Content ID issue, but this is a lengthy process, and when you're trying to get something released today, it's really not helpful.

Actually, a lot of the time, Content ID isn't even a major issue when it does come up. More often than not if I do get a hit, it means the owner of the original footage just has the option to monetise my content — in other words, having the option to put an ad on it and getting revenue instead of me. Since my YouTube vids aren't monetised anyway, I'm fine if companies want to do this.

However, where problems arise is when the companies in question decide to respond to Content ID issues by simply blocking your video from being played anywhere in the world, effectively making the time you spent rendering and uploading it time completely wasted. So far I've had that issue twice: once a while back with a Pokemon advert, and today with some footage from Apple's recent event where they announced Apple Arcade.

When this happens it's incredibly annoying, because there's no way to know it's going to happen until after you've rendered and uploaded your video, a process which takes a very long time when we're talking about a 2.5 hour podcast!

All this is a longwinded way of saying sorry, the video version of the new podcast will be up in a few hours! Blame Apple!