So this was announced today…
…and to say I’m happy would be an understatement. It’s my favourite game series of all time and it’s been thirteen long years since the last entry. In general I’ve been a little too busy making games to do much playing recently, but this will be an absolute ‘drop everything’ event when it comes out.
One of those good days.
I’ve had a very enjoyable weekend working on my new game. I also just checked my marathon training plan for the week ahead and Monday and Tuesday will be a little lighter than expected (presumably to save legs for Thursday’s 12-miler), so hopefully I’ll be able to squeeze in some game stuff during the upcoming week as well.
It’s been nice, over the last week, to have some downtime playing games in the evening as well. I’m currently working my way through Counterfeit Monkey, a text-based game I’ve meant to play for years but haven’t got round to until now.
No big plans for the week ahead other than running and creative stuff, which is fine by me.
I was able to have a proper day off today and get into some game creation. There are a few competitions and jams this spring into which I am interested in putting my text adventures 🙂 It’s nice to be back doing something creative again.
Looking forward to playing some videogames as well this weekend. I feel like I’ve been saying that for ages!
I’ve had a nice quiet weekend experimenting with Python stuff for fun hobby projects (mainly text adventure games, as that’s my chief interest usually). Lots to play with over the next few months, but I’ll be taking a brain break for a week or two after the TechUP presentation is done.
I do also want to get back to some videogaming, so I might do that during my break.
It’s looking like I’ll be fully done with TechUP by the middle of next week (we just about have a project presentation date!) and so I’m finally letting myself think about non-course stuff. I’m going for a long walk with Geth on the day of the presentation so that I’m not worrying about it all day (and so that I can show him part of my marathon training route from last year), and I’m excited about doing some hobby stuff that isn’t running or mindless web browsing (the only two things I’ve had the spare brainpower for recently!).
Keen as I am to dive into a few hobby projects using my new skills from the course, I know I do need to give myself a proper break, so I’ll probably be playing videogames for a week or two if I can find the energy…
Geth and I did do a New Year’s Day parkrun this morning but I’ll save my regularly scheduled parkrunday post for tomorrow. Lots of 2022 stuff to discuss today!
This year’s non-binding New Year Resolutions:
It’ll be interesting, as ever, to come back to this post in a year’s time! I didn’t make any resolutions last year except the house-sorting one, which was kind of a fail… let’s hope there’ll be more hits than misses in 2022.
P.S. Happy birthday blog! Four years today since I started my daily rambles.
I always intend to post lots of blogs at the end of the year with lots of big lists of all the things I did and the media I consumed and my highlights… but December is always so insanely busy I never get round to it. Maybe in 2022 I will write them as I go along haha! It’ll just have to be one megapost this year…
This year’s big resolution was to sort the house out. I did not do that and now it is one of 2022’s big resolutions. Other things have just taken more priority.
Business exploded in a good way this year, which means that I’m now working a lot more hours. It’s taking a while to adjust my life to this, and I’m beginning to realise that I can no longer just plan a trip away midweek on the assumption that I won’t have much work to squeeze in. 2022 will be a lot stricter in this regard.
I continued writing and coding text adventures and being involved in the wider interactive fiction community, and managed to release four games for various competitions. My highlights were winning the Scott’s Choice Award from legendary text adventure game creator Scott Adams for Barry Basic and the Quick Escape, and winning PunyJam #2 with Morris, my first ever PunyInform release. I also enjoyed making a short game for ParserComp based on photos of the beautiful area around Causey Arch after visiting it with Mum and Dad, and my first ever attempt at speed IF for EctoComp!
Since October I’ve also been very busy with studying for the TechUP Software Development course. I have learnt a lot of Python and other very interesting things that I will be taking forward as my career gradually transitions more towards tech. (The Python knowledge will also enable me to do some very fun stuff with my game development!)
Running has continued on a more positive trajectory this year, with races and parkruns returning. I am nowhere near as fit as I was in March 2020 when everything shut down, but I have still managed two important PBs in 2021 – I took nearly five minutes off my 10k PB at the Sunderland 10k, and more than 45 minutes off my marathon PB at the London Marathon. I have also completed the second year of my daily run streak today and am hugely proud of that, as it’s been very difficult at times. Finally, parkrun-wise I have visited two new-to-me parkruns (Girvan Prom and Southwark) and earned my V25 t-shirt with my 25th volunteer stint!
As usual, I didn’t listen to much new music, but I absolutely loved the long-awaited new Duran Duran album Future Past, and I was over the moon at finally being able to see them live in Birmingham in September. Geth and I then saw Andy Taylor the very next night back home in Newcastle, and we had a great time seeing Soft Cell in Leeds in November. Lots more COVID-postponed gigs to come in 2022 (and some reviews of the ones I’ve recently attended!).
I watched pretty much zero new TV shows and films this year, though there were a few I added to my ‘buy the BluRay at some point’ list. I did record a lot of stuff on my digibox though! Geth has watched thousands of hours of YouTube channels about gaming and running, and I’ve enjoyed those by virtue of being in the same room. I did enjoy the Strictly series in the autumn, as ever.
I didn’t manage to find nearly as much time for videogaming this year as I would have liked, but there have still been a good few games to enjoy. In addition to playing all the other text adventure games in the jams and competitions I entered (see above – and also finishing off the Adventuron Christmas jam games from last year in January!), I finished Bravely Second in time for the much-anticipated Bravely Default II coming out, played Bravely Default II on and off from February but have still not made much headway ten months later, played the interesting demo of Project Triangle Strategy (set for full release on Switch in 2022 as just Triangle Strategy), finished Final Fantasy I (finally! I will be moving onto FFII for 2022), got very freaked out by Return of the Obra Dinn, got most of the way through The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, played about ten minutes of Pikmin Bloom before deciding it wasn’t for me, enjoyed a couple of old ’90s platformers for Christmas that I’ve loved since childhood, started Braid again (will actually finish it this time!), continued enjoying the lovely meditative filler game Link-A-Pix Colour, and COMPLETED EVERY SINGLE DEMO ON THE NINTENDO 3DS ESHOP (a project I’ve been working on for years). Watch out for next year, when I will be putting some serious effort into finding a lot more time for games!
I have lots of plans and resolutions for 2022, but I’ll talk about those tomorrow…
I’ll do a separate earworm playlist post soon…. maybe (I’m considering starting to log that separately from the blog and doing a yearly chart instead). So far it’s three weeks’ worth of Christmas music and Disney/Pixar soundtracks. I must admit I am looking forward to listening to something else in January in order to clear it all from my brain.
The strange thing I’ve found about this Christmas holiday is that, after a year of nonstop rushing and deadlines, having time to myself is making me slightly anxious because I’m being a perfectionist about enjoying it efficiently! I’m trying to relax a bit more and just go with the flow of what I want to do. Yesterday evening I went back to my Python coding practice, even though that’s technically ‘work’ as it’s part of my TechUp course, because that was what I felt like doing. I’m also planning to make a bit more time for myself in January and February, as I’ll be very busy with finishing the course and I’ll need some relaxing downtime to balance it out.
It’s going to be another lovely day spent doing some gaming! I got back into Braid on Steam yesterday (a game I’ve been meaning to finish for a long time) and am also charging my Switch Lite, as it’s seemingly run out of battery since the last time I used it. I may also be doing some coding later, as Geth got me lots of interesting coding books for Christmas.
