I don’t know what I’m doing, what’s going on, or what my goals are but man this game looks neat and is atmospheric as heck.
20 minutes of flailing and hoping I’m correctly citing the right killer.
Month: February 2021
Nubia: Real One
Nubia: Real One, written by L.L. McKinney, art by Robyn Smith.
I saw this advertised on twitter with some character design art and a ‘It’s Wonder Woman’s twin sister Nubia in high school!’ and I bought it and read it immediately.
Well! I think that about sums it up, really. Saw it, wanted it, read it, loved it. The character designs were great, the story drew me in, and it hit a lot of intense emotional beats. I was supposed to be saving money, but no regrets.
Flight Rising: How do I always end up here?
Feeling fidgety and you know what THAT means.
Grim Tales: The Stone Queen Session 3
Finished the game + Bonus chapter.
In the last bit capitalism has led to mystical elemental creatures you must defeat in various ways to get at their precious precious power cores. Petals. They were petals. I really liked the design of the ice wolf and I totally did not snap a screenshot of that, sorry. But a wolf made of crystal ice is pretty.
I DID get a screen capture of the last one but first let’s talk about how this game was mostly an adventure game and not a horror game like the others I’ve played in the series at all (and the one that followed it, Bloody Mary, which as I’ve said I played out of order by accident).
So you know. Adventure! Magic! Love!
AND THEN THERE WAS THIS THING.
I had to wind it up to make… to make that jaw open and the teeth were QUITE THE SURPRISE and the eyes sure as hell weren’t looking at me before. The thing in its mouth is a motorcycle amulet which opened a locker that had been closed since the start of the game. I assume the doll ate the previous owner holy crap.
Okay so the final elemental beast was fire! Specifically a phoenix! And the phoenix had a DELICIOUS surprise inside! The horrifically calcified body of the villain!
Oh also with great delight I got to say the words ‘I have upgraded my goblin’.
So the bonus chapter wasn’t as easy to infer the use of tools as the main game and it turned out a lot of my frustration joke guesses were… what I was supposed to use! Huh. The hammer was VERY useful. And in a surprise twist, ice turned out to be the answer, not fire.
So the plot for the bonus chapter is as Brandon Gray (my nephew, son of John Gray off in a dungeon somewhere and Luisa my sister probably horrifically cursed somehow right now) embraced his true love, her EVIL BROTHER came and kidnapped her and Brandon was all ‘we have to save her! I guess you can help!’ and then I never see him again.
Not even at the end of the game after I’ve saved everyone.
RIP Brandon Gray, your bloodline was fucking cursed.
Grim Tales: The Stone Queen Session 2
‘Well I guess I’ll just log on for a bit and do a few things while I screw around’ I said before hyperfocusing for fifty minutes and neglecting all the people I had previously been speaking to. Augh.
It’s sort of disappointing how this one hits the sweet spot of not exactly easy but engaging puzzles that keep me going from moment to moment that’s pretty much not there in Bloody Mary which I played out of order by accident. I felt like I didn’t know wtf I was meant to do for most of Bloody Mary, even though I loved the visuals.
Anyway, this is a fantasy love story too!
I may have had a little too much ‘what will WORK’ on this little molerat goblin who wanted to be warmed up that at some point after trying fire failed, I pulled a scalpel on him.
‘That won’t do anything’
YES IT WILL. Just not what you want it to do.
Anyway the true monster isn’t the woman turning a town to stone, it’s capitalism. As always.
Still not done. But probably soon.
I’m intrigued by the (human) servant who lives in the water tower with an evil clown claw machine and I’m hoping that gets elaborated on before the end of the game. I forgot to take a screencap before the cave in.
Hetty Wainthropp Investigates: Widdershins
In which Hetty learns a very valuable lesson about paying attention to what’s going on.
Otherwise, I was denied someone being burnt in a wickerman. The end mystery turned out to make a lot of sense but as I’ve noticed with this series so far, the end result is rarely any sort of clear ‘punishment’.
Also elder abuse is bad. And Robert’s grief was pretty darn well written/acted which was a nice bit to this episode.
Short story: We, The Girls Who Did Not Make It
We, The Girls Who Did Not Make It by E.A. Petricone is a short story in Nightmare Magazine that I finished reading a bit ago but I feel like I got hit by a hammer.
It’s about the ghosts of girls killed by a serial killer. And I do like ghosts!
I read the ending first, to make sure I’d be okay after, but I didn’t expect how intense the overall story would be. Apparently I was just sitting there with huge wide eyes after.
It was very good but also I’m not sure I’m happy I read it.
Beyonce: Lemonade
So when this album came out all my friends were super excited about it and talked about how great it was but this was during my period of having no real access to music except what I paid for on itunes or heard on the radio, so it only occurred to me today that I could finally listen to it!
Unfortunately, as I suspected it would, it ran into the same problem I’ve had enjoying her music in the past which is I like music that if it was a line would go up and down in jagged lines and her music tended to be more of a straight line. Not as bad as Taylor Swift’s is for that, but enough that while I liked a lot of the songs, I was like ‘ah, well, so it goes’
I loved the song where she was basically describing dismantling a man for spare parts though.
Bardcore, Flight Rising
Amazon Music likes to play God with me from time to time and it started throwing medieval covers of songs at me. The one I chose to listen to was a band called Bardcore with the album ‘Ye Olde Pop Gone Bardcore’ which was fun to pretend was being played by bards to my dragon warriors while I repeated the same three button pushes over and over on Flight Rising.
Other than that, it did not exactly speak to me. I really liked their cover of Bad Guy, but I did not enjoy their cover of WAP which was disappointing because I got all excited when that came up but it was just the same chord over and over. I guess the appeal of WAP is the singing, not the music.
Anyway, good for thematic fighting music which is a noble position in life.
Livestream: Night Vale The Investigators
I forgot about this! I think because I was up forty hours when I saw it and I might have been clinically dead?
So Night Vale did a zoom version of their 2015 live show The Investigators about a murder mystery in Night Vale. I don’t know if there’s still a moratorium on spoilers? I haven’t listened/interacted with it in literal years but I remember them asking nicely not to talk about what was inside at all at the time? So I guess I’ll obey that still just in case because even though I’m pretty sure this blog will never have readers, it’s a reasonable enough request.
Anyway, I watched with my mother (it was a pay what you want thing so we paid enough for two people) who I’d gone to previous live shows (including this one!) with.
There were some differences from the first time I’d seen it. All previous live shows I’d seen where in Minneapolis or Winnipeg and Mara Wilson never performed in them for whatever reason that’s her own business, so this was my first time seeing her as the Faceless Old Woman. I actually haven’t even heard the episodes where she plays that role either, so it was a nice surprise to finally hear what she was meant to sound like.
I’d also heard Eliza Rickman at all but one performance I’ve ever attended so that was surprisingly familiar. I like her music. She’s good as the Weather.
This was the first time I was able to actually see Cecil’s face clearly (I have what’s known as mole vision) and oh boy, does he have expressive eyes. It was a delight. I’m glad I watched just to see how he could make them just light up with demented glee.
Anyway, despite the fact I wanted to lay down and die for the entire performance, I really enjoyed it and I’m glad to finally get to add the category ‘live theatre’ to this blog.