If you’re interested in games, even a little bit, you’re probably quite familiar with the concept of the backlog. Sometimes, when you’re trying to have the best of every world, you end up creating something of a backlog in your real life. I’ve been pretty inactive both on this blog and my YouTube channel for probably the last two years, but that doesn’t mean I’ve disappeared from the gaming space completely, or that I’m completely finished with either.
A lot has happened over the last two years, mostly good, but all time-consuming. I’ve been hard at work with my team over at Feather Fellow Games at finishing up our card game, Flock Together. While it’s taken longer than any of us had planned, taking this go-with-the-flow approach has allowed us to work on this game that we’re super excited about, without having to compromise our full-time jobs and ability to take care of our families.
Outside of the game development space, I took a step back to limit my online presence because I didn’t like the way a lot of my favorite social platforms were going. Twitter, for example, was a platform I used mostly to keep track of the goings on in the game dev world. Nowadays, it’s almost impossible to curate your social experience to prioritize those things. Between algorithms that try to feed you ragebait, and an owner committed to empowering and emboldening the worst among us, it’s just not the platform for me anymore. This has caused the unfortunate side effect of me feeling pretty disconnected from the world of games lately, at least on the dev side.
That said, I’ve been able to enjoy a great many games in the time since my last posts, and I’m committed to telling some relevant stories as soon as the opportunity presents itself. I actually did a little bit of list writing for TheGamer a few years ago. I had a fun experience, though it was a short lived one. Between my day job and my dev work, as well as my contributions to the Indie Game Movement podcast, I was pretty busy. Besides, it’s always more fun to write for yourself, at least in my opinion.
My choices for games have really fascinating this past year. My wife and I have been doing a fair amount of playing the same game side-by-side, which has allowed me to step outside of my comfort zone. I’ve always been big into story-driven games. This isn’t just because I like a strong narrative (though my creative writing background dictates that I enjoy a good story). I love objective-based gaming. Defeat the enemy, climb the mountain, traverse the continent, and what have you. Even party games can be tough for me. I love a good game of Mario Party, but something like Smash Bros is really hard for me to enjoy. I always like feeling like my actions are contributing to a greater whole.
Because of this aforementioned hankering of mine, I’ve often struggled to get into life sim games and roguelikes. There have been exception to these, of course. Persona and Hades are unique, narrative-focused boons to those respective genres. But while I’ve watched so many be swept up in the charming little worlds of Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing, I cannot get invested in quite the same way.
That said, I’ve found myself exploring some middleground in the genres lately, choosing to focus on unique and satisfying combinations of disparate pieces that I might not jump to by default. So I’ll have some reviews coming, hopefully soon, of a few gaming experiences I’ve had in the last year or so that have really set my world on fire. Expect me to talk about my card game experiences, from revisiting my old love in Hearthstone last year, to a brand new experience for me in playing Inscryption and Slay the Spire back-to-back.
I think I’ve done enough rambling for the time being, so I’ll thank you all for reading, and encourage you to come back soon for more from the GAME ROOM!!!