Video Games of May 2022

"I want to play lots of different games this year," he said.

"Oh look, the some Dragon Quest games I haven't played are on sale," he said.

"Hmm, people have said Dragon Quest Builders 2 is pretty good," he said.

"What happened to May?" he said.

My top five games (by play time) for May were:

1. Dragon Quest Builders 2 - So I had figured this would be the kind of game I might dip into here and there. I may yet do that, but I hadn't realized that the game is actually (or at least to start) a 60 hour Action-RPG. It's a game with a lot of flaws, in terms of controls, gameplay and story, but as you can see, I struggled to put it down. If you'd like to spend some time building things in a Dragon Quest world, this is the game.
   
   
   


2. Eastward - I stalled out a bit on Eastward, mostly due to Dragon Quest Builders 2, but also Eastward is a bit weird about progress in the story in the same way Earthbound is. When we were suddenly making movies with monkeys, I felt a little less compeled to pick this up.
   
   
   


3. Mario Kart 8: Deluxe - The theme for everything else this month is, I decided to play Dragon Quest Builders 2 instead.
   
   
   


4. Triangle Strategy - Dragon Quest Builders 2.
   
   
   


5. Mario Golf: Super Rush - Dragon Quest Builders 2.
   
   
   

Here's my total play time chart for May:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:

Video Games of April 2022

April was a pretty quiet month. I don't have too much new or interesting to talk about. I am finding I miss my PC so it's probably about time to go and get that fixed.

The only even remotly interesting thing to talk about is that I've decided that I want to try to play at least 50 unique games this year. Currently I'm at 22. It's a very unimportant goal, but I feel like seeing more things sounds like fun.

My top five games (by play time) for April were:

1. Triangle Strategy - I finished my first play through. As I've said the last few months, the game play is outstanding. I think the construction of the story and the implementation of choices and the voting system are a little unweildly and not quite as fun as the might be. It's still worth playing if you like that kind of grid-based tactics game.
   
   
   
   
   I looked ahead to a second playthrough and decided that trying to get all four endings wasn't going to be worth the work. It looks like the "golden ending" is the only ending that's worth the time, so I've decided to do a second playthough with a guide.
   
   In new game plus, they introduced several new and interesting levels outside of the story and those have been excellent. Most of my playtime this month has been on those levels.
   


2. Mario Kart 8: Deluxe - This has been a great game, especially when my brain isn't up to something more story heavy. Beyond playing for it's own sake, I got interested in which courses are the most popular in the online multi-player so I've been doodling a new program to calculate power rankings. (I haven't written about it yet, but may do a little later). So in addition to the intrensic joy of playing, I've enjoyed the extrensic happiness that comes from "I got more data."
   
   
   


3. Eastward - As far as I've played, Eastward is an artistic tour-de-force. The game feels very intentionally and carefully built, and the world feels very intricate and lived in. The story leaves me feeling slightly uncomfortable, in the way that is very remenisent of Earthbound and Mother 3, but more grown up .
   
   
   


4. Mario Golf: Super Rush - Lunch golf is good. Maybe not the best use of lunch every day, but 20 minutes of Mario Golf still makes me happy.
   
   
   


5. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - This was a month where the top five has some pretty low numbers on it, so I played less than an hour of Breath of the Wild. Still, as always, I apprecate how after all these years, there are things I've never seen and that are great.
   
   
   

Here's my total play time chart for April:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:

2021 in Games

I've now spend 5 years keeping track of the video games I've played and I've found it lets me play more and play more intentionally. Plus it's nice to be able to write a post like this where I can look back over what I played, what I enjoyed and how the year went.

Yes, it was mostly Battle Brothers

Time Spent

I played 49 games for 600 hours in 2021. That's much less time than I've spent on games for the last few years. I guess that makes sense working full time and (slowly) starting to build up my creative career. My PC also broke a little and I think that cut down on some of what I played, and it also forced me to be more intentional with what I play. I also dedicated a lot of my playing time this year to trying out games from the cellar that I hadn't played for one reason or another.

The curve on how long I played games is pretty sharp. I played 150 hours of Battle Brothers and would have played more if the PC hadn't started to fall apart. I feel like I spend a lot of time here writing about I like tactics games but I'm not good at them. Battle Brother's hasn't really changed that for me, but it has been really fun to play.

Everything else topped out at around 50 hours, so overall my top 10 games by time played where:

1. Battle Brothers - 150 hours
2. Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn - 59 hours
3. Chrono Cross - 47 hours
4. Trials of Mana (Remake) - 41 hours
5. Mario Golf: Super Rush - 40 hours
6. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity - 37 hours
7. Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance - 36 hours
8. Trials of Mana (Collection of Mana) - 32 hours
9. Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - 24 hours
10. Secret of Mana (Collection of Mana) - 22 hours

After that everything flattens out into pretty small chunks.

I really wanted to *finish* a lot of games this year, and I did, but I think I really want to *experience* a lot of games for 2022 and also focus on having as much fun when I'm playing video games as possible.

I love a good end screen.

Finished Games

I haven't kept track of the games I've finished before, but having spent more time in and around ProtonJon's community I thought it would be interesting to see what I've finished. As I said, I already thing my goal of 2022 isn't to finish as much as it is to play, but it's still interesting to see what I played to the end.

I'm counting finished as reaching the credits at the end of the story, although for practically all of these games there's a lot more to play at that point. More or less in the order I finished them, I played:

• Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity
• Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury
• Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
• Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn
• Trials of Mana (Remake)
• Trials of Mana (Collection of Mana)
• Celeste
• Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
• Super Mario Odyssey
• Secret of Mana (Collection of Mana)
• Chrono Cross

The only game I really completed was Bowser's Fury. It was really well designed to make it easy to pick up and play for a few minutes and get a few stars. For the others it was mostly nice to see the end of the story.

If you want a game full of cat's Cat World certainly is. Still not sure why they write it Bowser's Fury.

Favourite Games

Every game

I think the games I liked the most were (listed alphabetically):

• Battle Brothers
• Hades
• Super Mario Odyssey
• XCOM: Chimera Squad

When you do a thing right, Battle Brothers feels pretty good.

Things About Games in 2021

As I said in my Games of 2021 post, everything I played was good, but I don't think 2021 really hit the heights of 2020. I spent a lot of time trying to get really deep with a lot of the games I played and I'm not sure it was really worth while. I'm glad I played the games I did this year, but looking back on what where my favourites out of what I played, the list is weird. I only played a few minutes of Hades and Chimera Squad and not that many hours of Odyssey.

Battle Brothers is great and if I can manage the multi-headed hydra of fixing my PC (or more accurately, figuring out *how* I want to fix my PC) I'll be back to it. I think it's a great game where commitment, to characters and attempts, is really well balanced with interesting outcomes. I *like* Dwarf Fortress, but it always feels like it takes too much commitment for the "things went really sideways" fun to kick in. With Battle Brothers I've screwed something up in an interesting way after a few hours, or if things get boring, it's easy to jump out and start again.

I also like that I get a little better every time I play. I keep an eye on the Battle Brothers Reddit and sometimes I feel like I'm not getting enough from the game, or playing it right, but I'm having fun and that's really all that matters.

I'm trying to "Do" more in 2022 and I think that's going to apply to games as well. I've said it a few times, but I'd like to play more games and play more types of games. 2021 was a little bit stayed and I think I forgot to have as much fun as I can.

I recently read a tweet about how you shouldn't consider games you want to play but haven't a "pile of shame" so much as the video game equivalent of a wine cellar, where you're waiting to find the right moment and mood to open something up and I like the reframing. I think I can add that games don't go off after your start them, so there's no worry about putting stuff down and picking them up again later and you may as well have as many open games in your cellar so you can find everything you enjoy.

Blog: Games of June 2021

June was quite a busy month and a little unsettled, so I didn't play all that much. Honestly, there's just not that much to say about the month in terms of games. Still I did have some thoughts about the games themselves.

My top five games (by play time) for June were:

1. Battle Brothers - The game is great, but it's also very quick to pick up which is how it managed to get as much play as it did this month. I've probably spent too much time looking at how the very 'expert' players play, which sometimes feels like it's too much optimization. Still haven't had a 'successful' run, but it's been fun to play around in the world.
   
   
   
   


2. Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn - I'm feeling frustrated with how hard it is to keep everyone alive in the later missions and that's driving down how much time I play. I'm certainly glad they made later games easier to play, even if I think this one has my preferred story.
   
   
   
   


3. Mario Golf: Super Rush - Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour is my favourite golf game. Super Rush hasn't managed to replace it, although it certainly is pretty and has a well designed video game golf mechanic. Weirdly the big thing I'm missing is the chance to play in tournaments. I'd love a mode where you can just play on tour after you finish the story mode (I haven't finished the story mode, so maybe this will have it, but I'm not optimistic). I do like the speed golf mode, I haven't tried the battle golf yet.
   
   
   
   


4. Peggle Deluxe - I was recently reminded of Peggle and threw it and Zuma on my Steam Wishlist. They went on sale for $1 each so I picked them up. (Not that I don't have other versions ... somewhere, but who knows). I've played a lot of Peggle over my life, and I'm pretty happy to have picked it up again. I'm still working through the "tutorial" which limits it a little, but hopefully it'll pick up speed before too long.
   
   
   
   


5. Zuma's Revenge - I've played quite a bit of the Facebook version of Zuma back when that was a thing. The full version is quite good and I've really enjoyed it. It's a nice counterpoint to Battle Brothers. I do really miss the old Popcap games though.
   
   
   
   

Here's my total play time chart for June:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:

Blog: Games of April 2021

April was a pretty good month. I did better at striking the balance between enjoying playing games and getting other stuff done too. I didn't play as few games as I did last month, but I was pretty focused and enjoyed what I played.

My top five games (by play time) for April were:

1. Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn - The Wii sequel to Path of Radiance. It feels like the developers got to take all of the things that worked well in Path of Radiance and build on them. Unlike pretty much any other Fire Emblem game I can think of, it's divided into several parts where you run totally different armies with a lot of different characters. That's been interesting from a story perspective and it does let you make better use of all of the characters. I'm pretty sure I played this all the way through when it came out, but I really don't remember any of it any more.
   
   


2. Battle Brothers - It's still a ton of fun, but the game does seem to require some good decisions (and luck) early in the game to succeed later on. I think the heavy world randomness is also making the game a little bit harder than it needs to be. I find that interesting because in the battles, the game does a very good job of allowing you to manage and mitigate bad randomness (certainly compared to the Fire Emblem games, for example) but it feels like some worlds are just less winnable than others. Still, overall, I'm really enjoying the moment-to-moment gameplay and learning about the ways to do better later in the game.
   
   


3. Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance - Compared to Radiant Dawn, I do remember this one pretty well. I think some of my enjoyment stems from nostalgia, but it seems like a very balanced Fire Emblem game both in terms of difficulty and in terms of gameplay and story. I think every aspect of the game gets improved on in later sequels, but it feels like this has a lot of seeds for what went well in the later games.
   
   


4. Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - I am bad at this game and I would like to be not quite so bad. I picked it up thanks to watching Play Frame's Let's Play of the Link to the Past / Super Metroid randomizer. I've enjoyed it and I want to keep playing to some extent just to get to the point where I can play through mostly knowing what I'm doing and not getting myself into stupid situations. Playing this also left me really wanting to replay Ocarina of Time, particularly thinking about how OoT built out so many things that are hinted at in A Link to the Past, but aren't really included.
   
   


5. New Pokemon Snap - I suppose I played the original game, but I don't really remember doing it. I feel a bit like I was mostly interested in New Pokemon Snap because it's a new game that I could pick up day one, during a pandemic where I'm feeling a little cabinfevery. It's bright and sparkly and pretty fun. I think it also has quite a bit of depth and replay, although I'm not sure I'm interested in mastering it.
   
   

Here's my total play time chart for April:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:

Blog: 2020 in Games

It's time to take a quick look at my yearly gaming wrap up for 2020, wrapping up what I played the most (and least) and what I enjoyed the most. 

Top Games by Time Played

I don't think it's too much of a surprise that my most played game of 2020 was Animal Crossing: New Horizons at 205 hours. Animal Crossing was exactly the right fit for a year where we avoided contact with other people and mostly stayed home. In a lot of my recent monthly tracking posts, I've mentioned that this particular Animal Crossing feels a little hollow compared to some of the ones that come before (I'm a relatively recent convert, but Tama Hero has a video on what changed). I'm not sure as things stand AC:NH will be that high on my 2021 list, but it was certainly a pleasant way to spend the year.

Following up AC:NH, we have Europa Universalis 4 at 84 hours and Dragon Quest XI S at 83 hours. EU4 filled a lot of my time in the first half of the year. It's enjoyable and has the right amount of challenge that I'm engaged without being too frustrated. I'm not exactly good at it, but it's also not a game you really need to be good at, it's just interesting to see slightly different ahistorical version of Europe turn out.

Dragon Quest XI was also a lot of fun. It is Dragon Quest, so if you're not interested in straight ahead JRPGs you're apt to not enjoy it too much, but it's a nice addition to the series. I found it a little bit longer than I'd really have enjoyed but the late game had the right level of challenge and fun.

My two least played games of the year were Bloons and Space Hulk Tactics at roughly 6 minutes each. Bloons is (was) a free flash game so that's no great loss. Space Hulk Tactics was pretty wildly disappointing and I wish it had the Warhammer 40K name on it because I probably wouldn't have tried it.

For the record the "middlest" game I played was Risk II. This was a version of Risk (the board game) produced in the early 2000s published by Hasbro/Mircroprose. It's abandonware and my PC did not enjoy trying to play it (even with windows XP compatibility turned on). It's an ok version of classic risk, but it has a fun construction of "Same Time Risk" where you put in your orders and then the game reveals everyone's orders at once, so you can have armies clashing over boarders if two players decide to attack each other. It's unbalanced and honestly has some problems, but it's a game that has really stuck with me. It also has the mechanic that bigger armies get bigger dice so if you do it right you can role a d20 against your enemies d4 (that's not quite how it's implemented but that's the idea). Kinda odd for a thing I didn't download until after Christmas (and can't switch away from once it's started).

In total I played 799 hours of games in 2020. This is a bit up from previous years, but given the nature of 2020 I don't think that's a surprise.

For fun, I also keep track of how often games appeared in the games of the month. So in case you were curious here's how often each game appeared in the lists:

Top Games by My Rating

My favourite games that I played this year are (in alphabetical order):

• Chrono Trigger
• Hades
• Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
• Super Mario Odyssey
• XCOM: Chimera Squad

I never look back at previous rankings, so this is my subjective list from late 2020. I think it's a solid list of games. Chrono Trigger is a classic and Breath of the Wild will be too. Hades is seriously one of the best games I've ever played. After feeling ambivalent about most of the XCOM reboot, Chimera Squad is a breath of fresh air and a total blast to play. Odyssey is maybe the game that's most on the bubble in this list, but it's an absolute tour de force in how to put fun movement mechanics into a game that easy to pick up an play for a minute or an hour.

Thoughts on Games in 2020

I'm pretty happy with a lot of what I played in 2020. Ending the year with Hades was a delight and it topped off a year with a lot of other things that I was pretty glad to play. I was pretty intentional with what I played (especially considering there was a pandemic on) and generally I didn't feel like I was supposed to be doing something else for a lot of my play time.

Beyond Hades, I also really enjoyed starting the year with Chrono Trigger and then Dragon Quest XI. I also really enjoyed XCOM Chimera Squad, Golf Story, Mario 35 and ending the year off replaying Illusion of Gaia. 

I did end up feeling uncomfortable towards the end of the year. I wasn't as good as I should have been about being intentional and additionally I found myself very tired, so I was doing less and playing more. I'd like in 2021 to be a little better about getting things done outside of playing games. In particular I'd like to actually *make* some games, so that's a thing I'm going to try to focus on.

The other thing I found towards the end of the year is that it was hard to really get engrossed in a game. That's a thing that's hard to control, but I think it's worth it to try to push myself through a couple of games that I haven't stuck with so that I can see them and feel done about them.

I also want to find some quick-fun games that I can play in 5-15 minute chunks when I need a break from getting stuff done.

Project 12: Chrono Trigger Sprites - Lucca

Not even a year later ... I finished the next sprite in my Chrono Trigger Perler Sprites. Everybody, let me introduce Lucca.

I managed to work on Lucca much more quickly than I did on Marle so I actually managed to build a bit of a process. I'm hoping I'll be able to quickly move through the rest of the cast. I also got to get a little better at using The GIMP and Omnigraffle, so this feels like a productive project.

The Lucca Sprite

I started by determining all of the colours in the sprite and which sprite colour of Perler bead I would use to match them. I did this by taking the original sprite from The Spriter's Resource and then making a new layer for each colour in the sprite and removing all other colours. I also compiled those colours into the grid below. (I gave them names, but they weren't great names, so I think I'd just use the hex codes next time).

There's a few cases where I don't have a bead that's a perfect match. Particularly, the Dark Green should probably be Olive and the Bright Green, Fern. Apparently it's about time I put in a new order of beads. I also beaded a test block in the same pattern so you can see what does or doesn't match.

I've broken out all the details below so you can see which colours are which parts of the sprite and how I matched them.

Sprite Part	Hex Colour	Perler Colour	Notes
	---	---	The Original
	#302838	Purple	Again I'm using purple for the "deep shadow" parts of the outline.
	#281820	Black	The main outline of the sprite.
	#B86817	Butterscotch	The (single pixel) highlight on the blaster barrel.
	#482830	Dark Grey	Most of the shading.
	#F8F867	Yellow	The (again single pixel) bright spot on the blaster barrel.
	#F8800F	Orange	Highlights in Lucca's outfit.
	#F8E0A8	Rust	The leather bits of Lucca's outfit.
	#F89868	Peach	Main skin colour
	#801800	Creme	Skin highlights
	#586029	Dark Green	Hat and sleeve shadows
	#F8C028	Bright Green	Hat and sleeve high lights
	#f8f848	Gold	Leather High lights.
	#ffffff	White	Highlights and her glasses.

You can also download the my .xcf file.

Process

As with the Crono and Marle sprites I decided to do a little addition to make sure that the fused sprite would be sturdy. I also levelled the bottom so that the sprite would stand up right. The only big change that was needed was filling in a couple of sprites on the right side of her face. I wonder if those were a glitch somewhere in my process or even in the sprite.

 

The sprite was pretty easy to build. I did make a good choice in laying out all the necessary beads in the same pattern as the blocks above in a project box.

I found the easiest way was to work from the top down doing a few beads of each colour at a time. 

Success of the Sprite

I'm exceptionally happy with how this sprite came out. Part of that is the improved process I've used, so I managed to go from sprite to fused within a week. That definitely kept my the whole project in brain which made it much, much easier. 

I definitely need to put in an order to get the beads I'm missing. I generally think Lucca looks good, but a little bit off from how she'd normally look. Olive and Fern beads might have helped with that. Overall I don't think she looks completely off from the other two though.

The one thing I'm not sure about is using purple as that "deep shadow" colour. Given that I *have* dark grey beads now, it seems like it might make more sense to use those in the future. I started with the purple for Crono, which I think worked because there were fewer deep shadow pixels. I'm going to keep on with the purple / black arrangement for the rest of this batch and then I'll come back for a second and see what overall changes I made.

The next sprite is Robo and I'd like to wrap it up by July 15, 2020. (I was thinking Frog, but I'm going to wait until I buy a few more green beads.)