Gaming
I have been doing a moderate amount of gaming since the last entry. Maybe I am just biased because of how sick the last few months of 2024 were for me in terms of playing so many sick games back to back, with Psychonauts 2, Cereza and the Lost Demon, and Mario and Luigi Brothership being a few standouts, but it feels like I have not been hitting much thrilling gaming recently. Kind of just treading water until the next important game. I am always on the lookout for classics I have somehow missed so feel free to let me know of any hidden gems you love. A game I started recently is Graffiti Kingdom, the follow-up to Garakuta Studios' Magic Pengel and the Quest for Color on the PS2. Those games have an amazing system where you draw your on creatures and they come to life, fully 3d modeled. It is frankly unfathombaly good and I have never seen anything like it in a game since. Magic Pengel being the better of the games in my opinion, Graffiti Kingdom is still interesting and worth taking a look at. I also started a Tomodachi Life playthrough and have been having a good time with that, despite it not being the type of game I would normally play. I am not really a fan of Simulation games of basically any kind, but this one has a ton of charm, so it has been pleasant so far and frequently humorous. I finished Advance Wars, the next game being featured on the Podcast I am a cohost of, so I won't talk about it here, as to save my thoughts for the podcast. The episode should be coming out relatively soon (compared to the production cycle of the last episode lol) so if you are interested, there should be enough time still to play advance wars before the episode drops. I have also started Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity and that game is literally exactly as good as you'd think it is, which is to say fine for a mindless experience to burn time. I am a fan of Breath of the Wild, but not really fnd of the story, writing, or characters, so their inclusion here does not appeal to me, so I skip the cutscenes and just play the repetitive missions LOL, so yeah not much left here for me to sink my teeth into, but that is precisely why I decided to play it. I like having at least one game I am playing that is relatively low effort compared to something I have to pay more attention to. In other gaming related affairs, i recently did an archipelago randomizer with my friend O-Range again, and this time I chose Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga. It took WAY too long. My final playtime on the save file was about 8.5 hours, which is truly excessive for a randomizer. Maybe it is just that I mainly used to just play ALttP randos, but 8.5 hours was way too much for me.
Here is a screenshot I took while playing that I think is funny.
Neocities
I am finding it harder and harder to make meaningful additions to this website. I have almost entirely run out of ideas and truly don't know where to go from here. I do not make content at a fast enough pace to warrant having a site where I could update it frequently. I do not draw regularly, I do not make music regularly, and I don't really do anything irl either, so I have next to nothing to say, even in a blogpost like this. It is like the opposite of burnout where I really want to keep working on this but have no idea what to do. I could redesign the visual aspects of some of my more bland pages, but I am no graphic designer and really do not have any idea how to go about a visual overhaul. Sometime soon though, I do plan on updating the Peggle page with more information my custom level pack, Peggle Junior and putting out a call for anyone interested to playtest the levels early and provide feedback before an actual release. I have made 55 levels for it and am pretty sure that is all I want to make, so once those levels are tested, I will release the pack publicly, so if you are reading this, feel free to ask me to reach out if you like Peggle and want to try it. The only requirements are that you have access to a copy of Peggle Nights for PC and ideally have played the story mode to unlock whatever character you wish to use for the custom levels. Also every time I write one of these, the white text of the neocities text ediotr burns into my retinas and hurts my eyes. Does anyone have any suggestions for a good alternative?
I think that's all I have for you for today.
-Jake Spondulio
Site of the day: Strawberry Bunny
