It is time once more to refresh Aphoenix.ca. I spent a bit of time recently taking part in a project called TiMaSoMo. Tildes Makes Something Month. I elected to once again remake this website. This time around, I decided to use a static website generated called Zola. I've been retroactively adding things that I've written over the last 8 years since my last official entry, and I'll probably continue doing so.
Preface This essay came about as the result of someone asking, "Scribblenauts: can someone explain what makes it so great? I heard you can basically work around every puzzle with a jetpack." I enjoy Scribblenauts and it got me to thinking about how and why different people enjoy different games.
The Problem with Gaming: There are fundamentally different reasons that people want to play games…
Most of what I am writing these days are things that are prompted by questions asked by others, often on Tildes. This is no different. The question was "What are the things that make you happy?"
To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of ...
Oh wait, I've misinterpreted the question. I actually try to find joy in many areas of my life. Here are things that I did this weekend that brought happiness into my life.
I didn't have any particular plans for this week, as I had met my goal by week 3. I didn't play as much and I revisited one of the games that I had played in Week 3 - Truberbrook - to make some more progress. Guild of Dungeoneering and Q.U.B.E. Director's Cut both get mini-reviews.
I've thought more on the games since my edits to last week's threads. This last week was a bit rough, and I spent more time in the evening playing video games than I should have. As a result, I have made it through my April goal, which was to play one game from each of the last 12 months of Humble Monthly Bundles. This was one of the best weeks - Evergarden, Soul Calibur VI, Truberbrook, and a couple of others.
A week into backlog burner and chill and I have made a lot of progress towards the goal of trying out a bunch of games that were not on my radar at all before now. This is shaping up to be a fun event, and I will be trying to do more of these community created events. Surviving Mars, God's Trigger, Sonic Mania, Bad North are all up!
At Tildes there's an event going on called the Game Backlog Burner and I have decided to take part in it. Here's the idea in brief:
I know that many of us will be stuck at home for this month, I know that many of us could likely use something to pull our attention away from the news, and I know that many of us have accumulated quite the to-play list of games. As such, I'm thinking it could be fun for us to tackle those lists together and collectively clean up our clutter! Let's all burn through our backlogs!
We may be faced with a couple of months of not going out much, so I thought I'd prepare a list of possible activities! These are all things that are relatively socially distant that you can do without too much in the way of preparation.
I've separated things into two groups: "staying in" and "staying distant". Staying in may require a yard, so if it doesn't work for you, my apologies. Staying distant typically requi…
I'm from Canada, eh. The most popular music of my homeland is probably music you've heard hundreds of times - Neil Young, Rush, Joni Mitchell, Bryan Adams, The Band (the weight!), The Guess Who, Alanis, Avril, Jann Arden, the Barenaked Ladies... I could go on, but it seems like one of our main exports is talented people with mass appeal. It's probably indistinguishable from mainstream American music. There are a few bands or artists …
The other day, there was a post on Reddit that asked Are there any songs which you are embarrassed to like? There are some great answers; I took the top 80 plus the original poster's and compiled a list. Here are my mini-reviews of the songs.