Souls Like Strings

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood.

Everyone(?) is terrible

A fictional retelling of Grace Marks' real story which brings the characters to life without drawing its own conclusions.

It's rare to enjoy a mystery which goes unsolved, but Atwood's Grace and the various side characters are so compelling and colorful I don't really mind knowing if she's guilty or not. Mary Whitney and Jeremiah the peddler are highlights in support of Grace and Dr. Simon Jordan's delusional confidence, as is the sheer unfairness of the historical setting. Despite seemingly constant backsliding in the quality of life people can...

What Went Well

Projects

From time to time I make forays into old Slack threads and Confluence pages looking for stuff I can use in my talk, but that's about it at the moment. The Cloudflare spending tracker seems doomed to forever be about a day of sustained effort away from done.

Games

Roadwarden taught me that maybe I wouldn't like DnD as much as I've always assumed; despite the obvious care with which it was made and quality as a game of its genre it just wasn't for me.

Kena: Bridge of Spirits lived up to its...

Why ask forgiveness when you can just murder god?

Why

• Side-scrolling, religion-inspired Dark Souls
• Nails the strong points of both souls/metroidvania genres
• Boss/core character designs are crazy
• Challenging without being punishing

Why Not

• Platforming is frustratingly clunky at times
• Getting all endings requires a second playthrough

Impressions

I cannot overemphasize the degree to which this feels like a Souls game but side-scrolling. The Game Kitchen nailed everything FromSoft's games do from the looping paths & shortcuts to the atmosphere and difficulty. Managing this while also making the game a great Metroidvania is even more...

Always read the Terms and Conditions

Why

• Genuinely funny, surprisingly good story
• Makes 'turn based' combat interactive & interesting
• Endless cool little details to discover
• Should be way more popular than it seems to be

Why Not

• You hate fun

Impressions

With over 19 000 games released on Steam each year it's inevitable some will get lost in the shuffle. It's an absolute crime Deathbulge was one of them though; its cant-miss humour may be subjective but the music-themed, far more active twist on traditional turn-based combat alone would make it worth playing. But...

• Making tickets is important, otherwise you might forget to implement the whole reason a feature exists
• If you're gonna dump a whole bunch of nested JSON into a column, at least separate it out so the validation logic doesn't clutter a mostly unrelated model
  • Probably just don't dump a bunch of nested JSON into a column if you can avoid it though

Links

• An in-depth guide to customising lists with CSS - Richard Rutter

It's crazy how many options there are for something I have literally never done (apart from using counter...