Souls Like Strings

Interesting ideas don't stop it becoming a victim of 'Not Slay the Spire' syndrome

Why

• You want a bit of story in your roguelite, but not too much
• You like the idea of being able to fight or negotiate, and have different decks for each
• Or cards levelling up with use

Why Not

• For a game focused more on story the characters are pretty one-note
• I feel like sticking to a single deck might've allowed for more intersting/creative archetypes

Impressions

I got this for negative money in a bundle with Shogun Showdown so...

I'm on holiday next week, so no TWIL since the only thing I'll be learning is boss patterns in Silksong.

• JS devs will really pull in an NPM package for one thing in one component
  • Admittedly it was a mildly difficult date format
  • But, if they just passed the formatted date to the string they could've used Intl
• Don't assume a valid timestamp to your backend is a valid timestamp to your frontend
  • Especially when the backend timestamp is nullable
• Honeycomb's frontend observability is pretty cool since you can link front/backend traces
  ...

• It's very easy to take a long detour doing cleanup work which has no business value whatsoever
  • Even for senior devs
• Designing something to the point where it can work for all future use cases, or even a moderate number of them, is an exercise in futility
• Staging environments exist for a reason.
  • Even if it's a small, surely harmless change there's no harm doing a rollout just to staging first if there are potentially huge consequences
• I really do not enjoy writing ADRs/RFCs
  • I recognise they have a lot of value,...

What went well

Projects

• Kept writing this blog
• Nothing else this month haha

Games

Well I was right about Silksong being the main focus in last month's retro; didn't anticipate Hades 2 though. Absolutely crazy those two came out in the same month; both live up to their hype which is incredible given Silksong's 7 year development time and all the memes. Hades was a safer bet since it somehow spent its whole early access at Overwhelmingly Positive, but even given that it's an amazing example of how to make a 'more, but better' sequel. Really...

Killing god(s) with the power of teenage angst

Why

• Everything about it is slick, stylish and choreographed
• You will get deeply attached to at least a few of the characters, probably most
• It never feels stale over a 100+ hour runtime
• Has a low complexity floor, but Excel spreadsheets worth of ceiling
• Finishing it made me genuinely sad to say goodbye to a bunch of pixels

Why Not

• You despise anime, JRPGs or long stretches of dialogue

Impressions

There are so many great things about P5R, but its flair is likely the one that'll...