Animal Crossing and the crushing weight of mortgages

I really dig Citizen Sleeper. Agreed the later stages get a bit easy but it’s still great. (The endings can come out of nowhere but I’m still chuffed with the one I got.)

100% feel you on Apex. I played a bunch on console, decent decent, and could ride through the pissed-off-ness. Moved to PC and the struggle is real. Still love it but ooof.

Diablo 4. Mate of mine talked me and another friend to play it and, yeah, he was right: love it. Not the kind of game I’d play alone but it’s brilliant as a laid-back social game (even if I’m getting a bit obsessed, build wise).

Definitely going to check those two out, OP. :)

I’m a fan of Maybe Baby, Desk Notes, ¡Hola Papi!, ZINE, and a bunch more.

My personal fave is definitely my own, though – it’s very much about self-exploration and relationships, drawing from buddhism and psychology. https://unzen.co/

Love RSS. Best way to read stuff online.

I use Feedbin, which also provides a bespoke email you can use for newsletters so they’re also pulled into your feed. Very handy.

If anyone wants a nice RSS reader for iOS, Reeder is great.

Makes sense, given your goals for Beehaw. Thanks for articulating your POV so clearly.

Started thinking about it and turns out I have a few:

• Thomas Was Alone for the overall vibe, music and writing
• Celeste for the the story and gameplay
• Hollow Knight for the world, music and mechanics
• Metroid Prime for being generally incredible
• Overwatch for being my intro to online games and the friends I made playing it
• Halo 3 because a mate of mine and I played it so damn much

It looks incredible but, damn, they’ve really put every single game genre in there. Non-zero chance it’s all very shallow but the customisation options look dope. Chances are modders will do some stuff that’s so cool I’ll really want to play this thing.

Also looks like it’ll destroy my 1060 and I probably don’t use my PC enough to justify an upgrade. So we’ll see.

I dig it so far. The vibes are good and the people are cool. My one question, though, is how active things are once people here lose interest in talking about Reddit.

New platforms are always at their hottest when people are talking about what they’ve left or what the new platform could be. Will be interesting to see how Lemmy is once that dies down a bit.

This looks very cool and like it’ll hit a lot of things I like in games. But, woof, the “will I buy it?” decision tree will be nuts: Will it run well on my 1060? Do I want to play it enough to upgrade? How much will I need to spend? Will I use my PC enough to justify spending?

It does look cool, though.

I haven’t heard of Veil of Maya so I’ll give them a bash today.

The metal I’ve listened to has narrowed over the years but I love Gojira and a bunch of instrumental metal bands (rediscovered Deathmole recently and the track “No thanks” goes hard. Also a massive fan of Genghis Tron – every track on their album Board up the house is incredible.

I started using Kagi recently and it’s fantastic. The results have been great, it’s pretty customisable and it uses all the same ! bangs as DuckDuckGo. Don’t feel like I have to use Google at all anymore (which wasn’t the case when I used DDG as my go-to). Plus, since it’s a paid service, there are no ads and no guff.

Oh snap, I hadn’t heard of Against the Storm but a roguelite city builder sounds so good

Depends on the day, really, but I usually do some combination of the following. (I mostly write non-fiction.)

• Read a bunch of different books
• Take notes as I’m writing, writing down any thoughts I have or anything that captures my interest (I do this for both fiction and non-fiction)
• Look back over my notes every now and then, looking for recurring themes or interesting links
• Schedule some time for writing and, when I sit down, copy a random note into a doc
• Add any relevant notes and move things around until I have the basic skeleton of something

Basically, I do a bunch of little things too, (a), stoke my curiosity and, (b), do as much as possible before I need to write anything.

I’m also a copywriter by trade and I do similar things when I’m stuck on a project. They mostly boil down to “If I can’t think of one idea, think of 20.” It’s much easier to aim for volume instead of quality (and edit for quality later).

Loop earplugs, mostly. They’re a game changer.

Energy, presence and the performers just being totally locked in. My favourite gigs, off the top of my head, have been Cash Savage & the Last Drinks, Explosions in the Sky, and Too Many Zooz. Each act went on stage knowing exactly what kind of mood they wanted to create and the crowd was totally there for it too. It all coalesced into something intoxicating.

Combination of my local second-hand bookstore (which has a wildly good selection given that I live in a small country town), my two favourite “regular” bookstores, Libby, and the Kobo ebook store.

If I can’t find something particularly niche or out of print, I’ll use Abe Books but I try to avoid that since it’s owned by Amazon.

Edit: I’ve started to favour print books most of the time, at least for poetry and non-fiction. I’ve started to write more again and I find physical books much easier to refer back to.

Don’t really watch any gaming YouTubers anymore (mostly just click through Seagull’s Twitch streams whenever I want to watch something gaming related) but I still check out Game Makers Toolkit occasionally. That and Cool Ghosts were the only gaming things I stuck with on YT.

Real Civil Engineer started popping up in my recs out of nowhere – he’s fun! Made me want to download Mini Metro again (and do super not great at it again).