Not really sure what to write about this evening. My brain appears to have just sort of shut down. I tend to find out that the best thing to do under these circumstances is just start writing and see what comes out. If it's coherent, great. If it's not, well, I hope you all have a good laugh at it or something.

Been a good day at work today. Wrote about Pac-Man 99 (which I love) and Delicious! Pretty Girls Mahjong Solitaire (which I also love) and finished off another Super Secret project which I've been working on. I've had a few of these Super Secret projects recently and they're a ton of fun; I'm looking forward to being able to talk about them a bit more!

Had a session of Deep Rock Galactic with friends this evening. That game is always a good time; nice and varied, and multiplayer with friends really makes it shine. Pleasingly, though, it's actually enjoyable in single-player, too; the "drone" the game equips you with is capable of defending you while you take on objectives, and can be upgraded in a similar fashion to your various weapons.

It sounds like we're going to try and play some multiplayer Grim Dawn at some point. I haven't really spent any time with this game previously, but as an action RPG from the folks behind Titan Quest I know it should be a good time. We've all been meaning to try it for a while and have just never gotten around to it for one reason or another; we're likely going to give it a shot on the weeks when one of our Deep Rock Galactic brigade isn't able to join us.

Well, that's something all about today. Nothing particularly exciting or out of the ordinary has happened, that's the trouble. Some games I ordered a while back arrived — the beautiful Strictly Limited edition of Coffee Talk finally showed up, as well as copies of Collar x Malice Unlimited and whatever the first fandisc of Code: Realize is called. I figured I'm enjoying the main game, so might as well check out the rest of it too.

Now I'm off to bed. Think I fancy a sandwich. I just need to try and make one without my cats noticing that I've opened the fridge.

I'll have more to share on this when the game is actually out on the 14th, but I just wanted to give a shout-out to Tasomachi: Behind the Twilight, a lovely exploration-centric, combat-free platformer that I became aware of during the last Steam Game Festival.

I've been playing a review copy recently and I'm thoroughly enamoured with it. There are a couple of things about it that PC snobs will probably whinge about in terms of options, but in terms of artistry and game design, this is a very lovely game.

In Tasomachi, you play Yukumo, a young girl whose airship breaks down in a mysterious misty valley. Having to ditch in a tree by a small riverside settlement, she discovers that the area has been overrun by a strange "twilight fog", and only the influence of the nearby Sacred Trees can dispel it. Moreover, all the human inhabitants of the area seem to have vanished completely, leaving behind only the cat-like Nezu tribe.

Tasomachi is a collectathon platformer in which your primary goal is to acquire items called "Source of the Earth". These are scattered all over the place in the various "open world" town areas, of which there are three in total (plus a sort of "base" area). Some need special abilities to acquire, others are simply hidden in plain sight, requiring you to do some deft platforming to reach them.

In order to acquire Yukumo's three special abilities, you'll have to complete the Sacred Tree Shrines, which are self-contained areas in which you need to complete platforming puzzles. Later in the game, you can optionally return to these in order to take on some tougher challenges, or you can simply focus on exploring the town areas.

It's a beautifully presented game and plays really nicely, with responsive controls and plenty to explore. It also appears to be pleasantly brief; you can probably blast through the whole thing in an afternoon or two, and that feels like a good length. Open-world, exploration-centric games don't have to take you the rest of your life to beat; "player retention" be damned.

Anyway, there'll be more on this over on Rice Digital next week when the game actually releases. In the meantime, if it sounds interesting, be sure to give it a look and add it to your wishlist — and keep your fingers crossed for a console port; I'd love to see a physical Switch version.

I often think about leaving social media (specifically Twitter) behind completely, but end up not doing so on the grounds that I "need" it to promote my work. However, as the days go on, I find myself increasingly questioning that side of things. How much does it really help?

I say this because I make a point of highlighting and sharing all the interesting stuff I've been up to each and every day, and yet despite having a few thousand followers, I get maybe a few likes and retweets at most — and a very occasional reply.

Then you look at some vapid bullshit someone has shared and see it has thousands of likes and retweets, or see people arguing in endless quote-tweet back-and-forths, and it just doesn't really seem worth the effort.

People, it seems, are much more willing to share negative things than positive things. And I make a point of not writing or publishing things about how much something sucks or why everyone who likes a thing is a bad person because [slacktivism cause of the week].

On top of that, you're much more likely to get "engagement" (ugh) from people who are reacting negatively to something. Remember the piece I wrote a little while ago about the end of the PlayStation 3, Vita and PSP eras? I got an angry quote tweet in response to that article from someone demanding to know why he should buy a PS5. (I said absolutely nothing whatsoever about the PS5 in the article, aptly demonstrating that he most certainly had not read even the headline, let alone the actual text itself.)

It just doesn't feel worth it sometimes. And I find myself increasingly wondering if what little benefit there is from keeping Twitter around is worth the stress it causes. Unfortunately, that seems to be something that is a little hard to quantify.

Oh well!

In the meantime, you (yes, you) can help. Give me a hand by giving the stuff I write and share a like and a retweet; I post 'em on the hour throughout most of the day and evening, UK time. Quote tweet with your own thoughts. Share of your own volition. It would be massively helpful.

Another suggestion that I've found quite effective for myself: next time you feel yourself getting tempted to quote tweet some 12 year old whining about some bullshit in a gacha game that doesn't matter, force yourself to find a writer, video producer, artist, musician or some other creative type that you actually like, then make a point of sharing one of their things instead of the negative thing.

If everyone did that, social media would be a much nicer place. I can dream.

Our local Tesco has just incorporated one of the most significant technological advancements (or perhaps you might look on it as a deliberate regression) that I've ever seen — self-checkouts that don't have a scale on the bagging platform, so they never come out with an "unexpected item in bagging area" or "please bag your item" error. You still need someone to approve you for a Red Bull, but it's progress if nothing else.

I'm surprised it's taken this long for somewhere to cotton on to the fact that this was probably a good idea. "Unexpected item in bagging area" has been a (not particularly funny) joke for many years at this point, and I can only imagine how irritating it must have been for the Tesco employees continually having to clear such errors day in, day out. I mean, it was certainly irritating for the customers, so imagine having to deal with that annoyance all day. Retail workers have my eternal respect.

The other thing that I thoroughly approve of is that while there's still an annoying voiceover (which I understand is necessary both for people who are hard of vision and for informing the shop staff that they need to intervene for instances such as the aforementioned Red Bull approval) it's not quite as annoying as it used to be. The old self-checkouts used to smugly note "All of your Tesco points add up!" whenever you scanned your Clubcard, which I found inexplicably irritating any time I heard it. Now they just say "Clubcard accepted", which is much better.

My irritation at "all of your Tesco points add up" is purely irrational, but it stems from the fact it's a completely redundant statement. Of course they all add up, that's what a cumulative count of points does. And the fact it says this after you've scanned your Clubcard means that it's not even effective as a means of incentivising you to use your Clubcard — you know, like someone going "if you remember to scan that, all of your Tesco points will add up before you know it" — because you've already scanned your Clubcard and thus are extremely familiar with the fact that all of your Tesco points do, indeed, add up.

Sorry. I get mad just thinking about it. But now it doesn't do it any more. So even with all the chaos and insanity of the world in 2021, I can at least take comfort in the fact that my experience every time I go to "little Tesco" to pick up milk and/or a Meal Deal is now marginally less annoying than it used to be. Every cloud and all that.

After a long time away, I fired up Duolingo for a look the other day and was rather dismayed to discover that its free version has become an absolutely ad-riddled nightmare — and its subscription fee to remove said ads (as well as the ridiculous "you can only make five mistakes before you have to wait several hours" system) is rather expensive.

This is disappointing, because I would previously have recommended Duolingo as a great way to get started in developing confidence with a language. The actual course content is still very good, and the way the app works is solid and slick — it's just the relentless bombardment of ads after literally every question is kind of offensive, particularly when they all autoplay with their sound turned on.

Duolingo's mission is a solid one and I want to recommend them, but at £12 a month it's much pricier than Memrise — who I haven't looked at recently, but who I previously actually liked slightly more than Duolingo — and it doesn't feel great to feel forced into paying that because of obnoxious advertising.

I get the need for subscription fees, but I despise the manipulative behaviour that typically surrounds them. Duolingo's "annoy people so much they'll pay up" approach is one that is seen quite often, but by far the most widespread one is the practice of a service offering a subscription for "[reasonable price] per month", only to reveal when you've gone through all the steps of signing up that it was not, in fact, a monthly fee and is, instead, a large annual subscription.

Memrise is doing this right now, as it happens. "50% off subscriptions!" they say. "Just £2.92 a month!" Right next to this is the actual monthly price, which is £8.99; the "£2.92 a month" figure comes from the annual subscription, which is £34.99 right now. (That's actually not a terrible price, as it happens… hmm. No! Don't fall for it.)

Anyway. I get the need for these services to make money — I'm a little surprised Duolingo held on as long as it did with its formerly generous free offering — but I just wish they wouldn't be such arses about asking for it!

I'll have a proper writeup/review over on Rice Digital later this week (embargoes and all that) but I don't mind mentioning here in private that I've been playing eastasiasoft's upcoming release of Delicious! Pretty Girls Mahjong Solitaire for Switch a whole bunch recently and really enjoying it.

For the unfamiliar, this is a mahjong solitaire with anime boobies, and that's about it, but the whole thing just hangs together really nicely and I've always liked it a lot, right from its original PC release. The Switch version is something I'd actually been hoping to see for quite some time, and it seems eastasiasoft has developed quite a cosy relationship with Zoo Corporation so we can expect more stuff like this in the future, too.

Zoo Corporation is a company that I find oddly fascinating. Their first video game release was BreakThru! for Super NES, which is a version of the SameGame formula that is misattributed to Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov on its packaging. Over the years, they've put out a lot of erotic visual novels under their Norn, Miel, Cybele and Yumesta labels, along with… medical prescription software. Now there's a portfolio for ya.

The various casual games which we've had in the last few years over here in the west are mostly loosely based on the erotic visual novels in one way or another — Delicious! Pretty Girls Mahjong Solitaire, for example, makes use of the characters from a selection of games from Zoo's various nukige imprints. Up until recently, that original source material hadn't been localised, but it seems an outfit called Cherry Kiss Games got the license to localise pretty much all of them a while back, so we're starting to see a few more of them now.

I haven't looked into them yet and I'm not in a particular rush — I tend to prefer eroge over nukige — but it's nice to be able to check out where these characters originated if you so desire. Or if you just enjoy playing mahjong solitaire while they change into a variety of increasingly saucy outfits, you can just do that too.

Anyway, it's been a nice quiet day here today; I hope you've all had a pleasantly restful weekend so far. Think we're going to have a nice roast dinner to celebrate Easter tomorrow, so that's something to look forward to. For now, I'm heading back to bed to play some more Atelier and/or Code:Realize!

It's a public holiday here in the UK today, so I've had the day off work and the wife has had some friends over. Social anxiety permitting, I spent a little time with them, a little napping anxiously and a lot of time playing Atelier Shallie, which I'll publish the first article about over on MoeGamer tomorrow!

I've been impressed with Atelier Shallie so far. It's recognisably Atelier, but there's also a fair amount that feels significantly different to what has come before, even in the Dusk series. Probably most notable is Hayato Asano taking a lead role on the soundtrack, as he has a very distinctive sound to his work — anyone who has spent any time with Blue Reflection or Nights of Azure will attest to this.

Rather delightfully, since I absolutely adore both of those soundtracks, Atelier Shallie's score sounds like a mix of both Blue Reflection and Nights of Azure at various times — or perhaps it's more accurate to say that Blue Reflection and Nights of Azure sound like Atelier Shallie, given their respective release dates.

One of my favourite things about Asano's work is what I've come to think of as "Phantasy Star piano"; I believe I make this association because it sounds a bit like the plinkyplonky ethereal piano in Phantasy Star Online's forest zone. Listen to this… then listen to this and you'll maybe see what I mean. (Listen to this for good measure while you're on.) It certainly gives Atelier Shallie a very distinctive feel to it that I like a great deal, so I'm looking forward to the eventual "Music of Atelier" article on this one.

Anyway, 'tis late so I should get some sleep. Got some recording to do this weekend, and plenty more alchemy to get done as well! Hope you have a great Easter weekend, regardless of whether or not you'll be stuffing yourself with chocolate, and take good care of yourselves!

I started an otome game last night. After not being sure which one to go for, I put it to the vote on Twitter, and Code:Realize won out, so Code:Realize is what I've started. (The other options were Collar x Malice and Piofiore: Fated Memories).

I don't really know much about any of these games because I've kept myself deliberately in the dark in terms of plot — I knew I wanted to play them someday, just had never gotten around to it. Now I've started… well, I think I might be about to develop a real otome game problem if this is the sort of delightfully ridiculous nonsense I can expect from other games.

In Code:Realize you play Cardia, a beautiful young woman who may or may not be dead, and who has a precious stone called a Horologium embedded in her chest. For some reason, Cardia's skin and blood are severely toxic, meaning that any time anything vaguely biological touches her bare skin, it burns and eventually melts; she demonstrates this rather memorably in the game's opening scene, where Queen Victoria's Royal Guards are attempting to capture her, and a dog gets its face melted right off when it attempts to bite her.

Not to worry, though, because before long Cardia is rescued by the one and only Arsène Lupin, legendary gentleman thief, and his friend Impey Barbicane (star of Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon). Upon escaping to London, Cardia comes into contact with Victor Frankenstein, who has been falsely accused of an act of terrorism, and I believe at various other points in the story you meet up with Herlock Sholmes (not a typo, he's from Maurice Leblanc's stories about Lupin), the count of St. Germain and Abraham Van Helsing.

Effectively what we're looking at here is a frigging literature fanservice visual novel, and I am 100% all about this. I know this is a not at all uncommon approach in other otome titles, either; I'm aware of several that unfold in a similar quasi-Victorian steampunk setting with characters drawn from both literature and history, and I applaud that. Absolutely wonderful.

Anyway, I haven't played that far as yet so there's not much else I can speak about for now. It's definitely going to make for some interesting bedtime reading, though!

I started Fitness Boxing 2 yesterday. I previously spent a bit of time with the previous one but I'd heard some good things about the new one, so thought I may as well be up to date.

I've decided to focus on this for exercise for the moment, because as much as I like Ring Fit Adventure — and it really is good — a significant number of the exercises in that game are actively painful or impossible to perform with a hernia, so I'm not really capable of using it to its full potential. Hopefully there will come a day where I will be able to enjoy it properly, but there's still way too much work to do before that happens.

For the unfamiliar, Fitness Boxing 2, like its predecessor, is developed by Imagineer and published by Nintendo. It's primarily an exercise game, but it's dressed up in the trappings of a rhythm game — it just so happens that the movements you do in order to hit notes in the rhythm game are different types of punch. That and the versions of "real" songs in the game (which include such delights as the Village People's YMCA and Katy Perry's Hot and Cold) are all hilariously dodgy MIDI cover versions; the original songs created specifically for the game are much better, however.

Later, the game also introduces steps and dodges, but since it relies entirely on two handheld Joy-Cons to detect all your movements, the accuracy of these can be a little iffy. Thankfully, one of the things they changed for Fitness Boxing 2 over the original is introducing the option to either completely skip all those moves altogether, or simply automatically rate you as "Perfect" when they show up and trust you to be honest enough to actually do the moves. These features, to be honest, were a huge selling point, as although the "point" of Fitness Boxing is to exercise rather than score lots of points, it's still frustrating to do things and not get the "credit" you feel you deserve for doing them.

The game is structured around daily workouts, which incorporate an optional warmup stretch section followed by a low-intensity, relatively short workout, one or more high-intensity, long workouts, another low-intensity short workout and finally some cooldown stretches. On top of these, you can also pick any of the routines you've unlocked in the game and perform them at your leisure if you want to get a bit of extra time in — or just practice some of the routines that you've found a bit more challenging.

There's a good structure to each routine. They all start very simple, gradually introducing new additions to the final combo one or two at a time, then challenge you to perform the full combo multiple times in succession. In the shorter routines you'll typically do one set of combos in orthodox stance then another in southpaw, while in the longer routines you'll tend to do two of each. The ebb and flow of the pace means that it never feels overwhelming, even for those of us whose muscles have all but wilted away during lockdown, and it all feels like it provides a nice balance of challenge and accessibility.

Also if you're a weeb you can now turn the voices in Fitness Boxing 2 to Japanese while keeping the text in English, which is nice. And you can still dress up all the trainers as you see fit.

This is good; this is what I wanted from it. All I need to do now is try to keep this up a few times a week — maybe even daily. We'll see how things go. I was certainly satisfied with how today's session went; I've got that combination of satisfying and painful post-workout ache in my arms right now, and I'm always quite pleased to feel that. It's like some tangible proof that you did something — though I'm wondering if I will regret it in the morning!

I'm feeling mentally exhausted right now, and I really wish I could shake it off because it's making daily life rather tiresome. On the one hand, the fact that it's making me specifically want to avoid things that cause me anxiety — most notably social media — is probably a good thing. On the other, though, it's making me fidgety, restless and at times outright panicky.

One of the reasons I'm so nostalgic for ages gone by when it comes to things like gaming and magazines and the like is because it reminds me of simpler, happier times. I think back to, say, my time in sixth form, and all I had to think about was what was happening in the here and now. The Internet existed, but it was an activity in its own right that you did at a particular time during the day (always after 6pm, lest you incur the wrath of the parents paying the phone bill) and as such it didn't interfere with your thoughts throughout the day. It was just another thing you did.

I've often pondered what the happiest time in my life was, and I'm pretty sure it was that specific period of time when I was at sixth form. I was studying the things I wanted to study and that I was passionate about, I had good friends who I got to spend a lot of time with, and anyone who had once caused me grief at school was long gone, because inevitably they were the ones who had gone into vocational qualifications or directly into jobs after compulsory education rather than spending another two years in a school they hated.

Sixth form was a carefree time. We'd go to lessons (except General Studies; I didn't attend a single class for that in two years and got an A in the final exam), we'd hang out in the art room, we'd buy bacon and cheese baguettes from the recreation centre bar on the other side of the school car park.

If we had two or more free periods in a row, we'd walk into town (or bundle into someone's car, once we all started passing our driving tests) and pay a visit to "Richie" at the local computer shop, and my friends would inevitably peer pressure me into buying a game for PlayStation or N64 that I was probably going to buy anyway. Then we'd have a bacon and cheese puff and a Belgian bun from The Baker's Oven, head back to school and wait for the day to be over, at which point we'd go home, play computer games, listen to music, read magazines and perhaps even do some homework.

At no point during that process did the prospect of being anxious about the behaviour of people on the other side of the planet ever enter any of our minds. At no point were we in a situation where our mind would quasi-paralyse us, making us wonder what we "should" be doing at any given moment, inevitably settling on something and vapid and wasteful as reading the idle thoughts of complete strangers. And at no point did I ever find myself thinking "I wish things were different". (Well, that's not quite true. But wishing I'd confessed my feelings to any of the umpteen girls I fancied during that period is an altogether different matter, and we all have regrets in that regard, I'm sure.)

I don't really know how to cope with "modern life" right now. It's not something you can easily just switch off from; you can't just "go back" to how things used to be. Or maybe you can; maybe it is just a matter of self-discipline and redirecting unhelpful thoughts in another direction and prompting yourself to do something productive rather than wasting brainpower and mental energy on things that ultimately don't really matter.

And anyway, I can't completely ignore the few good things that modern life has brought me. It's brought me new friends who I wouldn't have otherwise been able to meet. It's been responsible for a significant part of my somewhat chequered career history. It's helped me express myself and explore my passions. So it's not all bad.

I just wish you could get rid of the bad bits a bit more easily.