Sorry for skipping the previous week! It was kinda stressful and so much smoke and didn’t make much progress anyway so yeah. The smoke is still (unfortunately) here but at least it’s somewhat less awful? I did have a few big stressful things to deal with this week though (biggest was dentist ughh) so I didn’t really make much progress this week either.

Despite it being kind of a yuck week, I did play a few games (not any on my list, but I wanted to try them before they left Game Pass) and I read a tiny bit, so let’s get onto the updates! Oh and on the week I missed, I did finish a book. I still want to talk about it, so I’ll just talk about that here even though I didn’t actually finish it this week.

Book Stuff

Again, no progress with Art Before Breakfast, so nothing to update there.

The Tea Enthusiast’s Handbook (Mary Lou Heiss and Robert J. Heiss) - 98/181 pgs

I read a whole 4 pages! I basically just crammed in a few pages at the very last minute, just to say that I read something this week lol.

In those pages, it talked about different styles of oolong which was neat, especially since I love oolong! Speaking of which, I really need to go through my horde of tea and drink some more of it…

Stars Above (Marissa Meyer) - Done!

A short story collection in the Lunar Chronicles series.

Short story collections and anthologies can be a bit troublesome for me, as I’m never going to enjoy all of the stories and other collections I’ve tried in the past have mostly been big disappointments. Most of the time, there are way more stories that I disliked than liked. While the first few stories here were not particularly interesting, thankfully most of the others were a lot more enjoyable and added something to the Lunar Chronicles series.

In total, there were nine different stories. I guess I’ll go from least to most interesting.

One (“The Mechanic”) was the first meeting between two characters, but told from the opposite person’s PoV. This was really unnecessary as the thoughts from this person weren’t exactly new or interesting, even if they weren’t explicitly shown in the main series. Thankfully it was probably the shortest story of the bunch.

Six of the stories were backstories on the various characters in the series. Four of them (“The Keeper”, “Glitches”, “The Queen’s Army”, and “After Sunshine Passes By”) had a few tidbits here and there, but they didn’t have that much that wasn’t in the books. The other two (“Carswell’s Guide to Being Lucky” and “The Princess and the Guard”) were a lot more interesting and enjoyable since the character’s there were a lot more secretive about their pasts. In particular, “The Princess and the Guard” answered quite a few big questions I still had bouncing around from the series. I guess it’s weird saying that one is “enjoyable” though as it’s not exactly a fun, happy one.

Another story (“The Little Android”) doesn’t star the main cast, but is instead a somewhat tragic story about a robot who gains sentience and tries to tell her feelings to a guy she likes. While it technically doesn’t really add much to the series, it was new and engaging so I enjoyed reading it.

The final and best story was “Something Old, Something New”, which acts as an epilogue to the series. It was everything I wanted for an epilogue and really sweet. I wish this was at the end of Winter instead, but whatever. At least it exists, I’ve read it, and I enjoyed it lol.

So if you look at it numbers-wise, I wasn’t a big fan of five out of the nine stories. While that seems a little yikes considering that’s more than half of the stories, it’s probably not as bad as it seems since those five were easily the shortest of the bunch. The other four stories were considerably longer, so I spent much more time with the ones I liked than with the ones I didn’t like. The stories I liked the least weren’t THAT bad anyway. The worst one was really just only ok, which is a lot better than I can say for other collections I’ve read (or tried to read).

Overall, I’m glad I read it, and now I’m finished with all of the novels in the Lunar Chronicles series! I’m not completely done reading Lunar Chronicles stuff though! The very last thing I want to check out is the graphic novel series called Wires & Nerve. I think it takes place in between the end of Winter and the beginning of the “Something Old, Something New” story, so I’m interested to check it out! It’s not particularly long, so it shouldn’t take me too long to read it. I don’t own it though, so I’m going to have to wait before I get a chance to read it. I put both of the volumes on hold at my library, so how long I’ll have to wait will entirely depend on when I can finally check them out lol. Hopefully it won’t be too long of a wait.

Now that I’ve gotten that series essentially all finished, I need to move onto something else! I have a big stack of books that I really want to read soon (and an even bigger backlog lol), so depending on how I feel, I might start a few books and rotate between them. What I mean is that I’d read a little bit of book 1, then a little of book 2, a little of book 3, etc until I’ve read a little bit of every book I’ve chosen for that rotation. Then I go back to the first book and go through them all again! Sometimes it works really well for me, and other times it doesn’t, so we’ll see how it goes lol.

Regardless of which books go into that rotation, one that I definitely want to start ASAP is The Light of All That Falls by James Islington. It’s the third and final book in the Licanius trilogy, which is a series I’ve really been enjoying and one that I really want to just finish the series already! Get those started but unfinished series (which I have way too many of) crossed off and finished! I’ve heard from my husband (who has already finish the series and who recommended it to me), that it really wraps up well so I’m excited to check it out!

Some other books in my stack of ones to consider for my rotation (or at least, to read sooner rather than later):

• The Fires of Heaven by Robert Jordan - Fifth book in The Wheel of Time, so it’s another series I want to finish lol. I’ve been very slow at making progress in the series though, so I want to try to keep plugging away at it more frequently.

• Hammered by Keven Hearne - Third book in The Iron Druid Chronicles, so yes, it’s yet another series I want to make some progress in and finish. I was a little bit unmotivated to read the books since we have the full series in mass market paperback format (it’s another series my husband finished and mostly liked so he bought those copies lol), but mass market and I really don’t mix. Something about the font size and spacing just make it way more difficult for me to read! However, I recently got the entire series in these nice new paperback editions, so I’m much more excited to continue reading the series. It’s an urban fantasy with lots of humour, so should make for some good contrast between the other books on my pile too.

• Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky - I think this is a sci-fi mixed with fantasy? Not sure but it’s very short (under 200 pages and has big font and spacing) and by an author that I really want to check out. Might be good for a quick win.

• The Book of Minds by Philip Ball - A non-fiction about how minds work I think. One of my in-laws gave it to me recently and I’d like to check it out before it goes into the deep recesses of my book backlog. Not sure if I’ll like it or not, but I won’t push myself too hard if I’m really not enjoying it.

• The Book of Accidents by Chuck Wendig - It’s a spooky book. I honestly don’t know much about it since I mostly picked it up on a whim lol. Haven’t read anything by the author before either so we’ll see how I fair with this one! I just kinda want to read something spooky for October, even if I don’t exactly have much experience with those sorts of books.

And that’s the current pile! We’ll see how motivated I get I guess, but hopefully I’ll get to these soon!

Game Stuff

Added (Purchases/Gifts):
Chaos;Head NoaH (Switch)
Chaos;Child (Switch)*
Shantae and the Seven Sirens (PS5)

*Already beat on Vita, but want to replay on Switch cause apparently some things were fixed. (and I just want to replay it anyway lol)

Subscription Addition Highlights:
None!

While there were some new games added to Game Pass, I won’t be adding any of them into the backlog. Just some brief notes I guess:

Dyson Sphere Program & Coral Island (Game Previews) - I just don’t really like playing beta versions of games. Coral Island looks like something I’d enjoy though, so I’ll most likely check it out at some point (especially if the full version goes to Game Pass). Not sure what to think about Dyson Sphere Program though.

Eville - A multiplayer social-deduction game with betrayal? NO. THANKS. Just really not my thing.

Scorn - I considered adding this to my backlog… It looks really creepy, but hey I still could enjoy it right? Well I found some trigger warnings for the game on Steam and I instantly went NOPE. Not playing that! Surprised that they weren’t at all mentioned on the Xbox page.

Removed:
Bloodroots (Game Pass)
Sable (Game Pass)
Into the Pit (Game Pass)
Echo Generation (Game Pass)

Started:
None!

Finished:
Also nothing…

Current Games:
Astro Bot Rescue Mission (PS VR) - 0:45 (No change)
Everybody’s Golf (PS4) - 35:09 (No change)
Horizon Zero Dawn (PS4) - 45:46 (No change)
Trails in the Sky FC (Steam) - 3:42 (No change)
Soul Hackers (3DS) - 1:41 (No change)
Stray (PS Plus) - 0:45 (No change)

Played But No Time Recorded:
Genshin Impact (PS5) - I think I finished some smaller, side story stuff? I don’t remember but I didn’t play much regardless.

Tried Out a Bit & I Don’t Know Where Else to Put Them:
Sable (Game Pass) - 0:34
Into the Pit (Game Pass) - 0:25

Both games were Game Pass games that just very recently left the service, and I managed to try them out the day before they left lol.

Progress Updates

Into the Pit

The first game I tried out was Into the Pit. It’s a rouge-like with rooms to clear, people to save, and various magic abilities to use. Feels very DOOM inspired, but with magic and the usual procedurally generated levels that rouge-likes generally have. It reminded me of a game I really like called Ziggurat, so I was really interested in trying it out.

I did have a few issues with it, but overall I enjoyed it! I like blasting the baddies with the spells, and it seems like a gameplay loop that I’d enjoy. There were some reviews complaining that it stays about the same the whole way through, but I don’t think that will bother me. It sounds like it’s on the shorter side to beat, and I tend to be fine with the same sort of loop you might get in rougelikes. Sounds like it’s more of a game that you play a quick run or two at a time, rather than marathoning your way through.

I do have some complaints though, although most of them aren’t really the game’s fault and are more things that just hampered my experience. The stuff that is the game’s fault:

1) It’s really dang dark. I mean in the sense of “I can’t see things” rather than “Ooo dark themes and stuff”.

2) The camera controls were way too sensitive. I would slightly touch the stick, and WOOSH. Camera goes flying.

There’s a high possibility that both of those things could be adjusted in the settings, but I didn’t get around to messing with the settings.

What wasn’t the game’s fault though was with my dang controller! I played this (and the next game, Sable) on my laptop with a Xbox controller via blutooth. One thing with the controller is that I feel like I have to really press down hard on the triggers to use them. Since you use both the triggers to shoot things in Into the Pit, that really tired out my fingers quite quickly. The other (and more annoying thing) is that my controller didn’t seem to want to connect to my laptop properly. It didn’t ever fully disconnect, but there were a decent number of times where I would press a button, but the controller would decide “nah“. Pretty annoying, but again, that’s not the game’s fault (or at least I don’t think so!).

Would I get the full game? Yeah, I think I might! It’s not something that I’m leaping at the chance to get, but maybe I could get it on sale or something? Also it’s on Steam, so it might play better on my Steam Deck too (and I don’t have to worry about the controller disconnecting lol).

Sable

This one will be a bit harder for me to talk about, since it’s a much slower paced game and with as far as I got, I don’t think I got the full gist on what this game is like. I can say that it’s a fairly chill, open exploring type game with some puzzles. It has a very minimally told story, and you need to pick up things from talking to NPCs and the thoughts the main character has through those conversations. The art style for the game also looks really cool and is very unique. I got to try out a bit of driving around on a hover bike too. I think there’s some customization involved with the bike, but I didn’t get that far.

I think I mostly enjoyed the game based on what I’ve played so far. I actually liked the conversations with the NPCs (something that’s super rare for me to like), and exploring around was interesting. There were a few things that bothered me though, which make me a bit hesitant on whether I would like to play more of it or not.

First thing is that I’m a little bit unsure about how cryptic this game gets later on. It gives me some feelings of the old school way of being vague about stuff and you need to figure out things yourself, which often means I get completely confused on what to do next or how to solve a thing. Cue me getting frustrated and potentially getting a headache, depending on how long I try to figure it out myself or on how confusing the guides are when I inevitability go to look one up. I know it’s more of a potential problem rather than a problem that it has for sure though. It’s very possible that the game just doesn’t do that at all (it does have quest markers so that’s nice), but obviously I don’t know until I play more or do some diving into some more reviews.

The other things I have problem with are much more minor. The hoverbike, for example, was a bit wonky to control. Probably doesn’t help that the accelerate button was the right trigger though, so it was kind of uncomfortable to just get moving. The other thing is that the way that the main character is animated really bothers me. It’s done in a kind of jittery way, but it’s intentional? It’s hard to describe but it kind of hurts my eyes a bit to look at honestly. I know it’s supposed to fit in with the style of the game, but I didn’t like it much. There might be a way to change that in the options, but I didn’t dig around into the settings to find out.

Oh and also my controller kept fully disconnecting for some reason! Obviously that’s not the game’s fault, but it was pretty frustrating.

So, would I get the full game? Maybe. Playing on my Steam Deck would fix the controller issues, but I think I’ll need to do some research to see if the other things will bother me too much or not. It’s also apparently supposed to come out on PS5 later this year (with a few new additions), so at the very least I’ll wait until then before I fully decide if I want to pick it up or not.

Backlog Update

Backlog: 2290 (-1)
Time to Beat: 46,746 hrs (+51 hrs)

Since I didn’t have any new subscription games this week, and I personally got fewer games than what left Game Pass, I’m down by one whole game :D Yay!

The time to beat did increase a bit though, but I’m honestly not too surprised lol. None of the games that left Game Pass were particularly long, but I did add Chaos;Head NoaH and Chaos;Child, which are both decently sized visual novels. I’ve certainly seen much longer ones though!

And that’s it! I did a lot of typing despite not much to update on lol. Hopefully next week will be better and that I can play some games on my list and do some more reading!