As I've mentioned a few times of late, I've been enjoying several different "Simulator" games recently, with my favourites at the moment being ol' reliable Euro Truck Simulator 2 (which is 75% off on Steam right now, if you've ever been curious) and Bus Simulator 18 (which, despite being a bit buggy and crashy, is genuinely fun).

I attribute my interest in these games to a longstanding fascination with transportation. I don't mean I'm a particular car/truck/train nerd or anything like that — rather, I'm more fascinated with the concept and experience of transportation, rather than the specifics. I enjoy riding trains. I like getting the bus. I find riding in a van enjoyable (though I hate driving a van) and I suspect I'd have an absolute blast riding in a truck cab.

There's something… multisensory that appeals to me about transportation, I think. It's a combination of factors, and they doubtless sound pretty strange in isolation.

I like the smell of the London Underground, for example. Not the smell of vomit, piss, dead rats or whatever — I mean that curious "smoky" smell that seems to permeate the whole system. I don't know what the smell is, but I believe it comes from the trains — possibly the friction of the wheels on the rails? Whatever it is, I like it. If I smell it somewhere that isn't the London Underground, I immediately think of the London Underground.

Similarly, I like riding the bus not because it's especially comfortable, but because I like the satisfying rattling noise a bus makes when it goes over a slightly uneven patch of road. I was delighted to discover that Bus Simulator 18 actually features this sound — although I'd prefer it to be a little louder — and as such it's very much scratching an itch that I've only been idly aware of up until now.

And weirdly, I think one of my favourite multisensory "things" is the sound of vehicle indicators at night time. You're in a vehicle, it's quiet all around, no-one is talking because they're all tired, and you hear that gentle little "tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick" that indicates you're making a meaningful change to the direction you're going. Or changing lane.

Both Bus Simulator 18 and Euro Truck Simulator 2 feature both a good indicator sound and the opportunity to hear it at night time, so I like them both very much indeed.

Anyway, this evening I've been playing a bunch of Euro Truck Simulator 2 and have managed to get myself out of an endless cycle of sending deliveries back and forth between the UK and the Netherlands. I'm presently in the depths of France, just taking jobs as they come and prioritising destinations that I haven't been to yet. It's proving to be a fun experience so far — particularly as I nabbed a bunch of the map DLC on sale today, so there's even more road to explore!

Anyway. As much as I could spend all evening truckin', I think I should probably get some sleep if I want to get some meaningful work done tommorrow. Lots of interesting things to write about this week, so as always, stay tuned to Rice Digital for my daily writing, YouTube for my weekly videos — and the Atelier MegaFeature will return next weekend! With The Davison Cup happening this weekend, I needed today purely to unwind — I'm sure you understand!

On that note, I bid you good night. Have a pleasant evening!

After not being able to do it last year or earlier this year, today finally played host to The Davison Cup 2021 (Postponed from 2020).

For the unfamiliar, the Davison Cup is a day where, usually in celebration of my birthday, my local friends and I get together and play a bunch of video games. I set up a big playlist of stuff, organise some rules and scoring, and for the last couple of occasions, provide a prize to the winner. This year I supplied an Evercade and a couple of cartridges I had duplicates of.

Things went very well, and it was a highly enjoyable day — sadly one of our number didn't quite make it through to the end of the day due to a stomach upset, but the remaining three of us duked it out to the bitter end, only for one to end up victorious and take home his prize.

The day included a wide variety of games, beginning with a selection of Atari arcade and 2600 classics from Atari Flashback Classics, then some selected highlights from 51 Worldwide Games, TimeSplitters 2, Super Bomberman R, Mario Golf: Super Rush, Burnout 2, BeamNG.drive and plenty more. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and I didn't even have to pay for dinner because it was technically my birthday celebration — even though my birthday was back in April.

The most popular games of the day included Canyon Bomber and Skydiver from the Atari arcade games in Atari Flashback Classics, Mancala and Billiards from 51 Worldwide Games, Burnout 2 (always a big hit in Crash mode), and Mario Golf's Speed Golf and Battle Golf modes. I had a feeling the latter would go down well — they're simple enough to be highly accessible, but provide enough in the way of interest to clearly be games of skill rather than just silly minigames.

I'd love to do this more often, as I enjoy the organisation and creativity of setting up the challenges for the day — I think it would work particularly well as something for a group of people to do together and either record for a YouTube video or a stream. My local friends aren't up for appearing online, sadly, otherwise I would have recorded today's challenges for a special video!

A good day had by all, then. I was certainly pleased to have hosted a successful event, and now I have lots of leftover snacks to enjoy!

As time goes on, I'm increasingly conscious of the "addiction" that the Internet and social media has over so many people's lives. And it really is an addiction — one that's starting to frustrate and annoy me in terms of my own behaviour.

I was editing some videos earlier, and I found myself painfully aware that any time I had to wait for more than two or three seconds for something to process or load, I found myself reaching for my phone or opening Chrome to do the old doomscroll cycle around the only three websites that exist on the Internet any more.

And it irritates the hell out of me, because I'm sure I'm someone who used to have focus. Indeed, when engaged in the right activity, I am someone who has focus. But it just drives me nuts when I have moments like this, when I effectively can't "sit still".

I don't need information overload. I don't need to see if anyone has said anything vaguely interesting in the last minute. I don't need to do anything while my audio and video tracks are syncing up, because it takes less than a minute for them to do so and if I just concentrated on one thing at a time I would probably get a whole lot more done a lot more quickly.

Still, you know what they say — the first step is admitting you have a problem. Then the difficult part is training yourself out of that mindset.

Perhaps we'd all be best off back in the days of 16-bit computers that didn't do multitasking!

Spent a bit of time playing Euro Truck Simulator 2 this evening — it's a nice game to chill out with and yes, it will be making an appearance on Simmin' and Chillin' at some point, because obviously.

I haven't played this game a lot over the years I've owned it, but I always have a good time when I do. You don't have to think too hard, you don't have to remember lots of complicated button presses… you just pick up your cargo and drive.

In some respects, I feel like it's probably the closest we're likely to get with a game concept I've had in my head for years — "what if Elite, but with lorries?" — but it doesn't really have the strategic depth of complexity of Elite. At least not in its early hours, anyway; I suspect it might get more interesting in that regard once you expand your trucking operation, hire more drivers and start making more money.

I'm also intrigued by the "World of Trucks" setup they have going on, though I haven't looked into it yet. The idea of a persistent online "world" of virtual trucking businesses is an interesting one — particularly with the "Convoy" multiplayer update the team is experimenting with right now. I wonder how much "fun" Euro Truck Simulator 2 multiplayer would be — it's not exactly either cooperative or competitive, but I suspect it might actually be rather enjoyable to go for a drive with a friend, chatting along the way.

Anyway, that's where my evening's gone — that and a nap that lasted a little longer than originally intended, but such is the way of life. I'm off to bed now. Sweet dreams of big trucks and forest fairies.

Had a chance to get together with local friends this evening for some tabletop gaming. We played two things: Flamme Rouge and Kingdomino, both of which I liked very much.

Flamme Rouge is a race game based around cycling. Each player has two cycling team members — one with an emphasis on sprinting, another with an emphasis on being something of an all-rounder — and has to reach the end first.

You achieve this by drawing cards for both your team members each turn. Draw four, pick one, put the rest back on the bottom of your deck face-up — when you reach the face-up cards, shuffle 'em up and continue.

The cards simply have movement values on them. Play a "5" and you move 5 spaces — so long as there's space for you in the destination space. Uphill and downhill segments of the course vary the movement rules slightly — you can never go further than 5 on an uphill, and you'll always go at least 5 on a downhill — and "slipstreaming" rules keep things dynamic and interesting between turns.

It's a very interesting game with pleasantly simple mechanics but an enjoyable amount of depth to it. Because the cards you use are permanently removed from the game, there's a certain amount of hand management involved — particularly because ending up at the front of the pack leaves you with "exhaustion" cards to add to your deck, which see you moving just two spaces.

It actually works quite well thematically, too; I almost won by my all-rounder being out front for most of the race and chewing up all the exhaustion cards, then overtaking him with my sprinter towards the end. Unfortunately, I didn't quite have the good cards I needed to take final victory, but I came a comfortable second. I peaked too early, I guess.

Kingdomino, meanwhile, is another simple game, but one that plays a lot more quickly than the 45-60 minute Flamme Rouge. As the name suggests, it's loosely based on Dominoes, but also has a slight whiff of Carcassonne about it.

In Kingdomino, four available "dominos" are laid out on the table in order of "value", and players take it in turns to pick one they want to take. Take the most valuable and you'll be last to pick next turn; take the least valuable and you'll go first next time.

The eventual aim is to produce a 5×5 map containing several different types of land depicted on the dominos: green livestock fields, dark green forests, yellow grain fields, brown swamps, black caves and blue lakes. At the end of the game you score points according to contiguous areas you managed to arrange in your kingdom — though in order to score any points for a land type at all there needs to be at least one "crown" tile in there. You get (number of crowns) x (number of tiles) points for each contiguous region you create — harder than it sounds!

It's a simple game and the puzzly element is fun — each new "domino" you take can only be laid so it touches either your starting tile or a matching terrain type. I really like games where you build a "map" like this, and this is an enjoyable small-scale take on the formula that is a nice quick filler game.

Definitely a good time had by all, even if I failed to win anything. But it's the taking part that counts, right?

I ended up putting together a "Simmin' and Chillin'" video earlier than I initially expected, but I'm glad I did; I'm pleased with how it came out and several people have commented on how much they liked the sort of structureless, "comfy" formula — so I'll definitely do more of these in the future.

There will doubtless be some more BeamNG drive because I'm absolutely in love with that game, but over the long term expect some varied fare including PowerWash Simulator, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Euro Truck Simulator 2 and more. Actually, I think those are all the "current" sims that I own — though of course there's nothing to say I can't delve back into the mists of time and play some older stuff. That might be more a Retro Select sort of thing though.

When I first started making videos, I was concerned I wouldn't be able to "fill the gaps" with talking, and you can probably see that in some of my earlier stuff. A lot of this stems from my own social anxiety and the difficulty I have in holding down a conversation that involves "small talk" in the real world. But I've been pleased that over time I've developed the ability to keep things rolling and flowing on a video — and I think the recent BeamNG drive video is a good example of how far I've come.

By not constraining myself to just talking about the game and instead just using it as a backdrop for conversation and anecdotes, I feel quite free to ramble on about whatever I want to. Sometimes the things I talk about might be interesting, other times they might not be — but either way, this format feels like it empowers me to talk about things that I might not otherwise have a chance to chat about in a reasonably informal manner.

I still think it would work well in a stream format, so I'll give some serious consideration to timings. A couple of you have already indicated what might work well for you, and since I suspect if you're reading this you're one of the most likely people to show up to any livestreams I might do, keep your suggestions and preferences rolling in, as of course you lovely people will have "priority"!

Anyway. As tempting as it is to drive a crap car around the streets of BeamNG drive for a few hours… hmm. I think I might actually drive a crap car around for at least a little bit before going to bed, but probably not hours. But then bed, definitely totally positively absolutely…!

One whole day without comment section jackass causing any trouble — it seems the evil has truly been defeated! I won't say for sure until we're into next week, though; it may just be he needed to have a good cry and a watch or two of Joker before he is able to gather himself enough to hammer away at the keyboard again. Plus all the tears he spilled on his Usborne Big Book of Logical Fallacies smudged the ink, so now he has to buy another one.

As for me, I've had a nice quiet day. Slept until noon (I didn't intend to, but I apparently needed to), did prep work for video recording I'll be doing tomorrow, had a bath, had an ice cream, pet the cats, played some BeamNG.drive, played some Final Fantasy XIV, wrote an Atelier MegaFeature article… not a bad day all round, really.

I'm having idle creative ideas again, too, that I don't know quite what I'll do with yet. Playing BeamNG.drive and PowerWash Simulator recently has made me quite like the idea of something themed around "Simming and Chilling", where I play a pointless game like either of those two and just ramble away about whatever — not necessarily the game. It could be a good opportunity to talk about some recent happenings for those who don't follow this blog, or just a chance to explore some ideas.

I feel like the idea would probably work better as a stream as I'd be able to talk to people watching rather than just rambling on to myself, but I hit my usual hesitance with this: exactly when should I do a stream if I wanted to do it live? Perhaps if and when I find the time to fiddle with this I'll do it in video form first and raise the possibility of streaming as one of the things I talk about, then people can directly indicate what they'd be up for.

Dunno if I'll get started on that this weekend as I already have a bunch of stuff pencilled in to sort out tomorrow, but we'll see. Oh, and S-Rank Patrons, I'll make time to put a wallpaper together tomorrow or in the next couple of days (depending on timings) too. For now, though, if I want to try and get up before noon tomorrow, I should probably head to bed now.

Hope you're all having a pleasant weekend!

In celebration of successfully resolving our community management situation — eventually through use of the banhammer after it became extremely apparent the arrogant little sod in question wasn't listening to anything we were saying and was too busy whining about "censorship" — I bought myself a copy of PowerWash Simulator on Steam this evening.

Andie and I have been enjoying watching Nyanners play this for the last couple of evenings, but I looked a little further into it today and discovered that it's actually the work of FuturLab, the guys who brought the world the excellent Velocity games — some fine-ass puzzle shoot 'em up/platformers if you've never come across them before.

The folks at FuturLab are lovely people so I was more than happy to fling them fifteen quid for their latest project, which is their first to release through Steam's Early Access programme — an ideal way of a title like this being figured out and refined over time.

I already had a good feel for it from watching Nyanners play, but I can confirm, after spending the last hour and a half glued to it, it is indeed an exceedingly relaxing and satisfying game to play. I suspect it's a game that will particularly appeal to people with a certain type of brain — I feel like it tickles the satisfaction centres of my Aspie brain, for example, while Nyanners says it's good relief from ADHD — but there's definitely something just simply, primally satisfying about it.

You know when you see videos and memes that are "strangely satisfying"? PowerWash Simulator is basically that turned into game form. And I suspect it's going to be a nice thing to have on hand for stress relief from hereon!

I've had a frustrating day getting Rice Digital's comment section back in order. It obviously hasn't had a lot done with it for some time, so some drastic measures were necessary — effectively we had to nuke the existing comment section and replace it with a new one, but this also provided the opportunity to put some much-needed moderation and rules in place.

Naturally, putting those rules in place has upset a few people, who seem to think that the comments section belongs to them and not the site. Thankfully, I think we've made it pretty clear that we don't have any patience for their bullshit, and with any luck they will turn tail and leave before long. I don't care if they get angry at being "censored", I want Rice Digital to be a pleasant place for people to hang out, and while people like that are shitting up the comments, no-one else is going to want to participate.

I really don't understand this attitude; it absolutely reeks of entitlement. A website's comment section is not a free-for-all ground for people to post whatever they want; it is part of the website itself. That means if the comment section runs the risk of undoing the good work that the actual website's content does, steps need to be taken. And we were getting to that stage; I was getting numerous direct complaints about the behaviour of several prolific commenters, so they need shutting down decisively before they do any real damage.

So I think we've done that. I suspect our poor social media manager will have some fun messages to deal with tomorrow, but she's used to it, bless her, and she takes it all in her stride. Hopefully from here we can move on in a positive direction. I'm super proud of how Rice Digital is going and of the team of writers working with me, so I absolutely will not have random jerks who think they own the place stanking up every page with their hateful garbage.

I suspect these silly little boys haven't had people tell them "no" often enough in their lives. Well, they better get used to it!

Have had three completely separate frustrating "community management" situations in various places around the Internet today, and it's just exhausting to deal with. And frustrating! I'm someone who still remembers the Internet being this great new hope for communicating with other people, and everyone feeling excited about being able to talk to people from all over the world.

But today? We have people whining and complaining about every little thing, being rude to people who are interested in things that they don't like and becoming outright abusive towards people who write things that they don't agree with.

It really freakin' sucks, it does, so I'm grateful for the few places where things remain quietly respectful and friendly — like around here, or among my smaller groups of online friends in more "private" (for want of a better word, since nothing is really "private" online) situations. Doing anything in "public", though, seems to attract the very worst sort of people — even if the thing you were doing in public wasn't the slightest bit provocative or controversial.

I do want to say I'm especially grateful for those of you (and others) who show up in my YouTube comments; across a couple of years of doing things on YouTube at this point, things have never gotten out of hand in any way in my comments section — and in fact, there have been some wonderful discussions there.

Of course, the fact my YouTube videos attract double-digit views and are fairly niche-interest most of the time is probably something to do with this, but I guess that just sort of backs up what I said above — keeping things on a small scale and surrounding yourself with friends and acquaintances who love what you love is always the best way.

Anyway. Time for bed and to not think about the Internet. Have a pleasant evening!