#jackitk text rambles

Do you think the series was better off ending off on Lost Age? Or do you think it was worth the terrible cliffhanger that never gets resolved in Dark Dawn, if it meant we got another game's worth of puzzles to solve, Djinn to collect, and battles to master?

I really dislike the cliffhanger in Dark Dawn, especially since that's essentially been the end to the series for the past 10+ years. But I still find myself leaning towards it being worth it to get to play more Golden Sun. Helped by the hype of "Golden Sun coming back" essentially being a nostalgic memory at this point.

I actually was going to do Dark Dawn as my next playthrough series. But I just couldn't get past the first couple hours of the game. Not out of hating the game, but because it just felt impossible to make videos of decent quaility with how dialouge heavy that portion of the game was. There was so much to explain but no proper place to explain it without completly dismissing the plot and/or just making that portion of the game drag on even longer.

So who knows what I'm gonna do about that? I feel bad that it's the only game in the series I never coveted. But I rarely have time to make videos anymore with shifting my hobbies more towards game development. So I can only attempt to make a video so many times before feeling its not even worth the effort. I've considered streaming it, but I am far from a consistent streamer. So I rather have my streams be more of the one off variety these days. That way you don't have to wait literal years for me to finish streaming a single game.

Point being, I'd love to cover Dark Dawn in some shape or form, but I was having a hard time committing to it long enough to really make anything for it. Being an RPG, it is a large time commitment and I can't just use some "magic Gamecube magic" to breeze through the parts of the game I don't care as much about these days, like I can with the GBA games.

Game design, making videos, and art, each on their own would be pretty time consuming. Yet I've decided to split my hobbies between all three. Lol.

I'd ramble on, but I slept in and got plently to do today as is. I guess I'll throw this out there while I'm here.

Would anyone be interested in me rambling my thoughts on Deltarune? Overall feelings? Theories? Deltarune videos actually make up a lot of my background noise playlists, so I'm not sure how well I'd be able to filter my orginal thoughts from just echoing what I've heard elsewhere. But I have been thinking about it anyways. I'd use tags like #Deltarune and/or #Deltarunespoilers, along with page splits to try and assure that people waiting for the game to fully come out before playing get spoiled, but I'd figured I'd throw the thought out there before I get too deep into writing about things.

Might still take a bit because there's probably other writing things I should prioritize. October is coming up so fast and yet I've done barely anything to prepare for Overseer October. I keep pondering if I should flat out skip it this year with how time consuming game design as been.

I just realized that we're almost halfway through the year and yet the only new game I've played on my Switch so far is Pokemon Champions. The fact that so far I don't see anything coming out that has me a little concern that I'll go the whole year without picking up a Switch 2 title.

To be fair, Kirby Air Riders and Legends Arecus are still getting active use and I guess I got my money's worth out of ZA so it's not like my Switch 2 is totally collecting dust. It's just that it feels weird that I kind of consider myself a Nintendo fan and yet I'm not really buying any games. By which I specifically mean buying Nintendo games.

My PC/steam deck have been getting a lot of milage the past couple months. A couple games I supported on Kickstarter came out around the same time and I've picked up a couple indie games on top of that. So there's been plenty to distract me from my game development roles. lol

Not to say I haven't been developing. I've done a lot of game dev work after my day job. It's just hard to make progress at the rate I'd like because I'm also dividing that free time between working on videos, drawing, and etc. as well. Also I do have plenty of progress I could share. But it's hard to put the time aside to document and share that progress when I could just use that time to work more on the game instead.

Tangent aside. If it wasn't announced recently that the Switch 2 was getting a price increase, I might have said that I jumped on getting a Switch 2 too early. And that was even with waiting until Kirby Air Riders game out to even pick one up.

But with the games I've been playing elsewhere it's not like I can say "gaming is dying" or anything. The most doom and gloom I can get is that it makes ponder the state of the triple A scene a bit. But meh, it is what it is. It probably more about me being stingy than it is about the games this year being bad.

Speaking of gaming though. I got to remember to talk about Sculplings more frequently on socials. In a nutshell it's a creature collector that's framed as a rouge-like.

Despite what it sounds like, the gameplay loop is real fun. But what really sets it apart is the art style and it's sense of humor. I love how derpy everything in the game has looked and the writing does not take itself seriously in the best way. It's hard to put into words but it's got just the right blend between ironic, self-aware, and willing to take jabs at itself, to appeal to my dumb brain.

Oh did I mention how practically everything in the game is made from hand-sculpted clay? Like this game is worth picking up just to support the dedication that went into making everything from the characters, items, scenery, etc. out of clay.

Check out this trailer and go pick up the game. It's $11 (at least in USD) and you'll probably get just as much value out of it compared to a bunch of the games out there going for double that price.

Otherwise so far, Champions has been fun. I'd say I spent my whole evening on it, but it would be more accurate to say I spent half my evening on it and the other half preparing team members to send over, only for Home/Champions to stop functioning properly.

But yeah, so far not bad, despite the fuss the hardcore compettive fans are making over it. I don't even blame them. If you set your expectations of this being the next Pokemon Stadium, you will be disappointed. If you go into it like its a mobile game though, you'll have fun. (Because it pretty much is a mobile game wearing a console release as a disguise.)