I’ve started pre-planning for another year of teaching seventh grade. Most of my gaming this week has been at school, playing both Cabo and Flip 7 in the afternoons after work is done for the day.

I got my regular couple of weekend hours of Octopath Traveller in this morning. Tomorrow will be my 1000th daily check-in on the game, and the game’s narrator announced that they will on’t send any daily letters after that, so I’m a little bummed. It’s been a rewarding, play at my own pace game for nearly three years! I can’t wait for Octopath Traveler 0 (although I’m still mad about it being on a game-key card)!

When I see a YouTube link, I’m swipe on by almost every time. When I see text, I give it a read. It’s just how I roll.

It’s almost like I have to be interested in the video before I’ll try it. The whole point of the video is to get people interested in it, so I feel backwards about this.

(And today is my last day before teacher pre-planning begins, so I’m posting a lot to feel productive)

Pasted from the YouTube description: Goodnight Universe is the next game from the critically acclaimed independent game studio behind Before Your Eyes. Goodnight Universe is a game in which you are a 6-month-old baby, developing mysterious psychic powers. What you want most is to be loved and accepted by your family, but a secretive tech corporation wants you for their own.

Pasted from the YouTube description: Noctuary is out now on Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5!✨ Embark on a narrative-driven action RPG through Inlixaland, a fairy-tale realm teeming with magical creatures, mysterious secrets, and dangerous foes known as the Darkritters ⚔️

Pasted from the YouTube description: Make your mark in history – stand in the frontline of the second World War. Are you drawn to tactical games with dark, gripping narratives? War Mongrels is exactly what you’re looking for! The game blends intense adventure, stealth mechanics, and strategic depth, all set in the gritty backdrop of World War II.

That’s the order I do, too! Page of regular, all clip cross, another page, etc. Then I alternate between the 30x30s and color Picross until I get too bored/frustrated to spend an hour plus on a puzzle. I then clear out the color Picross and move on to another game.

Rewind allows you to still get the no assist clears. It would have been great if they introduced it earlier.

I’m at the point in the Picross that puzzles are taking me over ten minutes, so I’m slowing down for now. My secret is a big podcast backlog and a willingness to quit and try again later the second I hit a roadblock.

Although…. Picross S 9 has a new feature called Rewind that step-by-step, mark by mark reviews the last 100 actions you’ve done on the puzzle. I’ve used it successfully a few times (and it makes speculating when I’m stuck more rewarding since I don’t have to restart if I mess it all up).

This is my only anger about the announcement. I bought Bravely Default and returned it when I saw it was a game-key; I just feel like I should buy it digitally if want it, but you can’t wrap digital games, so my family won’t be surprising me with this title.

I’m looking forward to a weekend of board games and Picross S 9. I tore through Picross S 8 last month and I’m more than “half-way done” with 9. There are some modes I just skip.

I’ve downloaded the demo for Elliot and I’m looking forward to trying it out. I had been spoiled on the content of the Nintendo Direct for Octopath Traveler Zero, so when I saw Elliot, I thought we were going to get an OT action RPG.

I’ll be continuing Octopath Traveler II this weekend if I have time, but next week starts me back at work, so stressful times ahead. Most likely, I’ll be keeping it light until September. Octopath Traveler Champions of the Continent continues to be my daily light game of choice. I’ll hit 1000 days played soon!

My naming problem is going to be if they try to release Octopath Traveler II 0. From the mobile game, they should have enough for story pack DLCs to cover the second game (and from the $50 price of the game I’ve seen, they might be leaning in that direction).

The three villains from the mobile game are interacting in the zero trailer. On the phone, each villain was its own story path (labeled power, wealth, and fame). Generally, I would complete one chapter of each before moving to chapter two, then three, etc.

After defeating the three villains’ stories, there was another larger story that tied it all together. After that, there were three OTHER stories that served as villain origin stories (sort of). Finally, those origin stories had a coming together (that I still have not completed after three years of play!).

The reason I like Champions of the Continent is because the stories tie you to the world in a way that the original game didn’t. As a prequel, it shows the OT OGs wandering the world in a satisfying way equal to or greater than its console counterpart. Currently, it’s doing that for the second game, too. Meeting Agnea (from OT2) on the phone was much more satisfying than stepping into her shoes on Switch. Sometimes characters have motivations that are acceptable for an NPC but not for me, you know?

As an avid Octopath Traveler Champions of the Continent player, I am thrilled with this news about OT0. In a separate video from the producer, they said there will be thirty-ish characters and the line up of characters at the end shows mobile game favorites like Bargello. His party in the mobile game’s story is my favorite.

More notes from the video: that huge lineup of characters also had battle UI on the right side. That’s exciting!

The battles were eight characters like the mobile game, but the characters seem to still use multiple weapons like in the console games.

The town-building in Zero feels very different compared to the town-building in the mobile game. Zero seems to indicate it is a co-equal part of the game where on the phone it’s just a side story.

I liked seeing the Timely Comics store, but as I told my wife about it in the car, I couldn’t remember why it was important. Can y’all help? Was that the first imprint that printed Captain America comics or something along those lines?

Seeing the Latveria chair empty early on made me think we’d see him later I the film. As we watched the mid-credits scene, my wife mentioned Robert Downey, Jr., as Doom. I told her I was reminded of the recent Ultimates comic where Doom was introduced as a repentant Reed Richards. She said that’d explain why the baby wasn’t freaking out. Four years is a long time to create stories.

I really appreciate your descriptions on visual novels. Your posts have become like a to-do list for me (in a good way).

I’m back to Xenoblade Chronicles X, Chapter 13, Act 3. My desire to 100% stuff is working hard against my desire to get this game out of my Switch 2.

I’ve been playing more Golden Lap. I have the two best drivers now, so the races are less frantic and more anti-climactic. I’m looking forward to a restart, but also worried that restarting will kill my interest in the game.

I’ve been “playing” CivIdle now that it is out on MacOS. It helps scratch the itch of civilization since I can’t run Civ VII on my computer and won’t buy it for Switch 2.

And I have leveled up Cecil of FFIV fame to maximum in Octopath Traveler Champions of the Continent. He’s so cool it almost makes we want to clear more story content (but I doubt I will).

With my school year starting up in August, I’m trying to avoid buying anything new, but I am aware that I have a lot of podcasts to catch up on and I’ve nearly completed Picross S8. So maybe next weekend I’ll be telling y’all about another picross purchase.

Regarding Golden Lap, the death of drivers is something in the game’s sales pitch: this is F1 in the 1970’s, a dangerous time without a lot of safety precautions. It was still surprising, but I’ve moved on. I stopped popping the champagne corks when I make top 3, though.

I’ll be the positive on this one. It’s a daily brain training type game that mentioned its DLC once in game and then moved on. My ten year old and I played day one and two side by side and enjoyed both days. I don’t think it is worth the extra money for unlimited play, but if my child hadn’t discovered Minecraft already, I could see him playing with these puzzles for an hour at a time while we grocery shop or wait at a doctor’s office.

The plush making is gatcha, though. Luckily, I don’t care which Pokemon I make (unless there’s a Rockruff and I don’t get it. I’ll change my opinion about the game on a fine if I don’t get my Rockruff).

Edit: I tried it on iOS. I’d imagine the Switch version is unlimited daily puzzles. The “extra money for unlimited play” I mentioned is the same as the Switch cost.

I had an incident just like this with my grandmother/not my grandmother around the time I read this strip in the newspaper. It’s really terrifying to lose your responsible adult under ten.

My love of card games comes from long form games like Rummy and Euchre (sp?), so Phase10 is a game I enjoy. However, the game itself never finished. I think my record is getting to phase seven before we quit. But then again, I’ve only ever played it two-player.

Golden Lap is fun! I played it last night and ended with my main driver for the last two seasons crashing when I didn’t even push him to race faster and my second driver running out of fuel on the last lap. Then after the race, the game announced that my driver had died. Yikes.

Now I’m out of the running for the championship this year, out a top five driver, and out of enthusiasm to play for today. The things Golden Lap needs most in my opinion:

Randomized drivers, engineers, and crew chiefs (when I start a new game, I know that Levi March and Moretti will be on the podium every race. At a certain point, the only hope is to do well enough to hire one of those two)

Multi-player (I have not been taking races seriously since I hired the aforementioned Moretti and still finding top three every time. I want my friends playing so that there’s bragging rights of some kinds involved)

Overall, it’s definitely worth its full price of $15 USD for me. Maybe I need to make a randomization mod for the game to fix the first of my problems.

This weekend is a board game meetup with fellow teachers. I’m bringing 7 Wonders, Flip 7, Make It Happen, and The Crew. There are more in my pile to bring, but if I can’t remember them now, they might not be good enough to bring!

I saw postings for Unciv and Fheroes2 elsewhere on Lemmy, so I tried both out. Unciv is a free, open-source software take on Civilization VI. I got bored of it quickly with the nostalgia of the other game calling me. Fheroes2 uses the original game files of Heroes of Might and Magic 2 to make the thirty year old game playable on Linux and MacOS. I have the difficulty all the way down and I still can’t manage it! But I’ve spent a lot of time on it.

I beat Dicey Dungeons! I think I’d beaten it before on my Mac, but I’d been playing it on Apple Arcade and saw how near to the end I was. What a great experience that game is! I love luck-based games that are built around manipulating your choices.

I now have Final Fantasy IV’s Cecil as a character in Octopath Traveler Champions of the Continent. The side story that introduces him fills me with such joy with its sprite work and music!

And finally, Golden Lap. I’m enjoying the F1 management game, but I haven’t had much chance to play it with all this other gaming going on. Maybe Sunday.