Notorious GRD

*(because I just checked and one of them came out six years ago, bloody 'ell)

I promised I'd make a post about cool games I've played, so here's some smaller, indie games I have absolutely loved.

UNTITLED GOOSE GAME

You are a goose. You have a todo list, things like steal the gardener's hat, set up a picnic, all sorts of stuff. You are free to mess about and get these things done in any way you want to try, generally causing mischief and chaos wherever your webbed feet take you.

BALATRO

Balatro is a roguelike (a game where you do runs upgrading as you go along, but they all reset when you win/lose a run so you start all over, except you will have inlocked some permanent additions to help make future runs easier) card game based on poker, where you have to get a certain amount of point to beat the blind. There's all sorts of special cards and most importantly Jokers, each of which has a different ability to help (or hinder) you getting that score.

DICEY DUNGEONS

Dicey Dungeons is a gameshow where hapless victi...er, brave contestants fight through dungeons by rolling dice and using this dice to activate all sorts of attacks and abilities, Each character class has some gimmick that makes each play very differently and it's a huge amount of fun figuring the best ways to get rhough the dungeons. Has a lovely art style and a fantastic chiptune soundtrack by Chipzel.

THANK GOODNESS YOU'RE HERE!

is a madcap, very British game, like a point and click adventure except you directly control your character and have jumjp and slap buttons to interact with everything. It's like playing one of the more anarchic British kids' comics of the 70s/80s. YOu're sent to a small town to sell them stuff, but while waiting on your metting with the mayor get involved in helping out various people with their daft, loony and insane requests, it's short, maybe 3-4 hours long, but oh so much fun.

DREDGE

Dredge is a fishing game. You have a boat, you go out into the ocean, you catch fish, you bring them back, sell them, and repeat. Except...weird things are happening at nights, the entire atmpsphere is a bit off-kilter and Lovecraftian and you get involved in...stuff. Despite the eerieness, it's a nice, mostly chill game that lets oyu take your time and mess about and explore, getting boat upgrades, meeting verious characters and all in all is just a lovely time.

VAMPIRE SURVIVORS

So you are a character, who has weapons or abilities which trigger automatically at set times. There are dozens, or hundreds of enemies around you. You kill them, they drop gems, which gives you experience, which levels you up and when you get a level up you get a choice of three or four weapons/items, each of which you can level up by choosing them again, sometimes two things when levelled up will evolve into a more powerful weapon, chests sometimes drop with stuff. A simple loop, but oh, oh so addictie and eventually you are basically handing thousands of enemies their arses on a decorative plate.

I have put 145 hours into this game over the last couple of years.

It's another roguelike, you eanr money to unlock permanent upgrades, there are various methods of unlocking more and more levels and characters, then other stuff unlocks and things get even more over the top.

But best of all, because all you have to worry about is moving and making choices, I can happily play this while my fatigue is bad.

It get supdates regularly, is only a few quid and had had several expansions and crossovers, each of which has been excellent and again, only a couple of quid each, they've had Among Us, Castlevania and Contra all with characters and weapons form the series and some awesome remixes of the soundtracks.

There have been many, many clones of this, a few really good ones, like Halls Of Torment, Army Of Ruin, Shapeshifter Formations and ") Minutes To Dawn, but the best of these is not only a fangame, but is entirely free, so if you want' to see if you like this sort of game, you should try...

HOLOCURE:SAVE THE FANS

Basically, Vampire Survivors, but all the characters are vTUbers from the Hololive agency and all the weapons, abilities and enemies are drawn from their characters, lore, or just random stuff that's happened in their streams. It's great fun and has had several updates, including a home/farm mode and a casino.

IT's available free on steam and here at Itch.io

(I always just kept my birthday quiet, not making a fuss, even before mum's passing.)

Got money in my card from dad, which went towards Grim Prairie Tales, and I got another fantastic art book from Simon, with the movie work of Syd Mead one of my all time facourite concept and esign artists. Nicely times as I just saw Blade Runner in 4K a couple weeks ago. WIthin a few minutes I was discovering stuff I loved that I didn't realise he had a hand in designing (V'Ger from Star Trek:The Motion Picture and Johnny 5 from Short Circuit)

I popped out to pick a precription up and get some odds and ends so I don't need to go out all weekend, then my friend Stephen popped round with something for me...

So I now own the Australian blu ray release of one of my all-time favourite movies, The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across The Eighth Dimension, replacing my ancient US DVD copy which I bought back then because it took ages for it to releas ein the UK.

(I know I'm safe to get German, Australian and many other EU contries releases and they'll play nae bother)

A lot of my bluray and 4K buying is getting my favourite movies that I only have on twenty year old plus DVDs or in a few cases, only had taped off the telly.

Then a couple of my favourite Vincent Price movies.

A lovely box set of six of Roger Corman's Edgar Allen Poe adaptations, most of them also with Vincent Price, with some Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff thrown in too. (I already have Masque Of The Red Death, so got the lot now)

Then to finish off, tracked down a used copy of John Carpenter's Halloween in 4K, as trying to get all his classics in 4K when available. This is the version that played at the local cinema last Halloween, so I got to do half my traditional Oct 31st movie watch with friends.

DOgwalk is a free game, available on Steam and itch.io, I saw a wee lcip of it a couple months back and immediately knew to keep an eye out for it, small, short, fun, which is what I kind of want from games right now.

Also, with Nicholas Hoult we finally have a fantastic modern big screen version of Lex Luthor, he is truly despicable.

I have kept going day to day on Bluesky, at this link https://bsky.app/profile/gordonrd.bsky.social and that's where almost all my online interaction happens these days, but going to try and make an effort to make regular longer posts here.

So, the quick summary - still suffering from chronic fatigue, hasn't gotten any better, but also hasn't gotten any worse. I'm still able to mostly cope on my own as long as I pace myself, still get some really bad days at random, but after a decade, used to that.

Mental health is okay, I'm still kind of secluding myself and not interacting with people much, but I am entirely ok and comfortable with that, although I do feel bad about kind of wandering off and away from many online friends and real life ones.

The pandemic really did just mess a lot of us up socially and for some of us it's taken a long time to even start making steps to rectify that.

My diabetes while decently controlled in recent years, is even better now as I've moved to arm sensors for checking my blood glucose levels, they're so convenient, I can just scan with my phone and often it maintains a connection so I don't need to scna every time I want to check, It's made going out and about a bit easier as I get a real time update on my levels.

Mum passed away last July, she'd had severe fatigue issues much like myself and my brother (me and him both had a bad infection which seemed to trigger it and we've just never gotten much better) but they got worse and worse and repeated infections were just too much in the end.

April the cat passed away a couple of years ago, she was found just lying down near someone's front door, no bad weather or anything, just lay down and never woke up.

A couple of months later, the folks took in Lula, a four year old cat who is the most talkative cat we've ever had. She'll almost always respond with chirps or meows if you interact with her in any way.

A few months ago, the folks' upstairs neighbour and a family friend passed away, she had two cats her daughter took the older one and my Dad and SImon took in the younger one, Glen, who was kind of our part-time cat anyways as he'd often wander in looking for attention or someone to curl up on. I spent part of last Christmas watching Guns Of Navarone on the TV with him curled up on my lap. He's settled in perfectly and now I get two cats to pet whenever I visit.

About a month after my last proper post, a new cinema opened in town, our first since the previous one closed down in 1976. It has been an absolute game changer for my movie viewing, a combination of it being within walking distance on my better days (or get a bus on the bad ones) and a monthly pass which means if I book and miss a screening due to my fatigue hitting, I don't lose any money. I'm pobably at over 150 movies seen there since October 2021. Just in the last couple of months there's been Tornado, Sinners, Ghostbusters 1 & 2, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, The Odd Couple, Heat, 28 Years Later, The Phoenician Scheme, Spirited Away , The Quatermass XPeriment and others.

It's been a joy seeing not only the new movies as soon as they come out, but losts of older movies on the big screen for the first time, there's always some classic horror at Halloween, various anniversaries and dementia friendly screening, which are all old movies, mainly comedies, westers and musicals, but with others inbetween. I've seen Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, the whole Dollars trilogy, Star Trek II:The Wrath Of Khan, 2001:A Space Odyssey, The WIcker Man, Halloween and so many others on the big screen for the first time.

I'm still living in the same flat, upgraded my television, computer and media players over the last couple of years, and I am now making up for not buying many blu rays over the last decade by upgrading to 4K discs and building a lovely collection of favourites, classics and awesome TV shows. To the extent I'll have to buy a new bookcase next month to store them all. (I cancelled all my streaming services as wasn't using them enough and would rather just buy the stuff I'm really interested in)

I still play games, but not as much, I am disillusioned by many big games right now so have gone to playing the lovely, odd smaller games a lot.

I am not entirely vibing with current Doctor Who, but I am still watching but am fed up of certain things, some of which is modern TV in general and not just Doctor Who.

The four Daleks from my last proper post are now twelve Daleks and a Davros.

I also finally built a USS Enterprise I got eleven months before but just never got round to, but they were working on my electrics one day last month, so power was out a few hours and I needed something to keep me busy.

Also, I just need a Leela and I have my two favourite periods of Doctor Who in toy form.

One thing I finally got done, a few months back, when our third lockdown finally eased a bit before we went into one again and kind of forced on me because zi fell at home and the fall was broken by the forty year old plus table, splintering the legs and rendering it unusable, but preventing me from posso ly hitting my head on something, was getting my entire audio visual set up organised.

Whole bunch of old consoles, an Atari Jaguar, Nintendo 64, PlayStation 2.Playstation 2 Slim, XBox and Wii, in adittion to the PC, PlayStation 4, XBox 360 and Switch. My TV unit's shelf broke over a year ago but because of the lockdown and everything, getting it replaced took a while.

Er, hello. I kind of drifted away due to a combo of the Tumblr app constantly freezing on my phone, a bout of depression, kind of embracing my hermit status a bit too much and general malaise due to well, the world.

Every few weeks I'd maybe remember try the app again, but it's only tonight it's actually gotten past the blank screen it would stick on.

My health remains pretty much the same, still managing most things on my own with a bit of organising and cj angles to make things easier to cope with.

I didn't see my folks for three months back at the I itial Covid lockdown and I kind of disconnected from people a lot and it turned out I was actually okay with that and not actually finding it a problem, so even as things have gotten better, I've not reconnected with things or people. My attention span is more broken than ever, hence o ly really keeping twitter up to date as posting longer things here and elsewhere just wasn't happening.

Also, kind of just had to isolate/disconnect myself from a bunch of real world stuff otherwise my mental health was goigg to massively suffer.

Me and the family have avoided any Covid related illness, all been vaccinated, brother's been ill for a couple of months, worry was it was ME/CFS like me, but seems to have been a combo of two things, one of which was gone before it was diagnosed, so he's hopefully getting back to normal soonish.

Scotland is only just beginning to ease the Covid19 lockdown, but I can't see a thing changing much here until at least end of the month.

My foot has healed, last week was last nurse's appointment. Just need to keep an eye on it and be careful, so just the usual really.

Streaming on Twitch for almost two months now has been helping a lot, I'm doing at least two streams a week, two hours or more. Schedule is currently Assassin's Creed:Syndicate (sneaky adventures in Victorian London) on Mondays and Diablo III on Fridays (dungeons and demons) but with random extra streams at weekends if I feel like it. It's helping to both distract me and focus me and honestly, I might have flipped out by now if not for it. Its chill and comfy, even if the games I'm playing aren't necessarily chill and comfy.

The streams can be replayed for a fortnight after, but I'm also archiving everything on YouTube and they're all up there to watch.

It's just me playing games, with one or a few people in the chat room.

I was heartbroken by the news that Japanese wrestler Hana Kimura had died. She was just 22. She was the victim of online harassment and cyber bullying and after worrying pictures of self harm were posted, took her own life later that day. I thought she was awesome and her team', s shout of "Everyome is different, everyone is good!" was lovely and hopeful.

It's been near impossible to find the words to describe the situation in the US right now, just try and stay safe and hope things change and we do get a better world and society. I've honestly been despairing at humanity the last few weeks, as it really does feel like evil is winning.