Update 29 December
Holiday gaming
I’m back home now from my holiday trip. Needless to say, I did no Steam gaming at all this week.
The only game I did play was an offline escape room table top game with my family, and we had a blast doing it: all of us sat around my mom’s kitchen table working together to solve the puzzles, wine glasses and mugs of cafe canela in hand after an awesome dinner of fresh tamales and tres leches.
Legitly chill Christmas eve, my friends, even if no pixels were involved.
I got a couple things from the Steam sale for myself, along with a handful of gifted games from good friends to add to my backlog. I’m not daunted; I’m a Backlog Assassin.
And on that note, I returned to see that my group membership acceptance came in while I was away too. I’m official! Thanks for having me.
New Years
The new year is on the horizon, and I know everyone is thinking about resolutions and goals for the new year. I’m not particularly a fan of new years resolutions, as I feel that right now is always the perfect time to implement changes and goals if you want to do such things.
And so I don’t have any new gaming goals in mind as we head into 2019, as I think I’m already on a good track:
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Finish Conan Exiles 100%. This will take a couple more months at least, at my rate of play. Once that is done, my partner for that game has already heavily hinted that she wants to 100% Stardew Valley together next. I own and have tried SDV, and it just did not click for me - I guess I’m just not really sold on planting and farming. I don’t even like to do yardwork around my own house let alone on a game lol. So we will see how that goes.
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Continue with weekly updates here, even if I don’t have a whole lot to report. Posting keeps my mind from wandering, and thinking more about what I should play next.
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Continue with the Monthly themes here. So far I’ve only selected one game per month and since that’s working out well for me, I’ll keep doing that.
Now if anyone knows of a BLAEO for books, please hook me up with that info… ;) (EDIT: Just signed up with a challenge group on LibraryThing)
That’s it for now.
Have a safe and excellent New Years Eve, fellow Assassins! Keep slayin it!
Your lil Christmas Eve story made me smile, playing board games with families is the best. :)
My family and I played The Game of THINGS…, where everyone writes down answers to a prompt and then you have to guess who said what, always leads to us howling with laughter. I’ll definitely have to check out your game, love Cluedo/escape room style games.
Good luck with your 2019 goals! With Stardew you might find you enjoy mining/combat more or fishing (which is hard at first but I quickly got the hang of). Also talking with all of the people and giving them gifts was the most engaging and fun part for me, I actually maxed nearly all of the characters within the first 2 seasons because I was focused so much on that haha. Personally I find that game to be very zen though and just for when I wanna chill esp at night, I feel like I’d get bored quicker if mp because it’s more focused on “gameplay”? But if you’re just chillin’ with your partner and chatting could be a nice time-passer.
As for books, I’ve used Goodreads which has a yearly reading challenge you can set yourself. Just mark the date of each book you’ve read and they’ll show up in a grid, can also make statuses/reviews. They have loads of groups you can join also which have monthly/seasonal “Challenge me” or other fun lists of challenges to complete such as “around the world in a year”, or thousands of others.
Oh man, Game of Things sounds like it’d be hysterical with the right mix of people! I’ll have to check that out sometime.
I’m glad you commented on SDV. I’m still not sure about it but my friend said the same thing as you, that I could take up fishing or something and she’d handle the crops. Glad I have an option to do more. I’ll probably give it a try again and hopefully this next experience will turn out better. I’m sure it’s an amazing game.
Goodreads is a great site! Thanks for reminding me of them. Kicking around the idea to combine both gaming and book backlogs for a few months. I know I have an old Conan book laying around and now’s a good time to finally read it. There’s some others too, like my Destiny Grimoire and I have a Tolkien book that I could read with any number of Middle Earth games later on. What do you normally read?
Yeah I don’t see Stardew being a big game changer for people who don’t like the genre, but it is charming and I hope you manage to find some aspect to enjoy. :)
It’s been cool seeing more people have been talking about what they’re reading. Is fun discovering new ones and has given me that itch/excitement again to pick up a book. And it seems like in your case the books are related to gaming which is particularly awesome. I’ve never gotten into Destiny, but that anthology looks gorgeously made. Is your Conan an rpg book or from the barbarian series? Have recently been in the mood to give the Witcher books a go after a friend’s recommendation.
For me the past year and a half was an odd one and read so much less than usual, but definitely miss it and wanna make it more a priority for 2019. I read a pretty wide range of genres, but especially love fantasy/horror. Ordered George R.R. Martin’s newest Fire & Blood from the library, super stoked for it! Hope your 2019 starts off on a good foot and enjoy your books. :D
the Traveler
Re: Conan, it turns out that after digging in my attic I have 3(!!) Conan novel paperbacks. I must have bought them at different times from library sales or charity shops, some of them look old and rough lol.
Man GRRM intimidates me so I have not read his yet, but someone close to me is an enormous fan of his books so I know they’re amazing. I hope when you get a chance to read the new one you’ll love it just as much as the others. :)
Haha sweet find!
If you’ve watched Game of Thrones the first ASoIaF book is very similar to the show and as the series goes on it varies more. Massive fantasy books can definitely be intimidating, but usually surprised how quickly I get into it. Maybe by the time you get around to reading it he’ll have completed writing the series and waiting was the best decision you’ve ever made :P
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Thanks, I wish you the same as well :)
That’s a very healthy sentiment. I still think it helps to have some long term goals – and the end of the year is a good place to think about such things, at least for me. However, I’m still struggling with formulating my new long-term gaming goals, my last ones are already done.
Good luck with Conan Exiles and maybe you’ll find a game you and your gaming partner both enjoy in the meantime :)
Thanks for the wishes!
At another point in my life I probably would have committed to being more structured with my game backlog. Always do what’s best for you of course. :)
I went and checked out your 2018 goals - wow, you finished last August?! How awesome is that. You slayed it and most definitely look like you need a bigger challenge for 2019. What else are you wanting to play near term? I see you’ve got quite a few ‘life sucker’ games like Civ VI on your plate ;)
Last years goals were reached very early. I really expected that they would keep me busy a whole year when I set them though. It’s hard to predict how much progress is realistic over the course of a year. Maybe shorter (e.g. quarterly) challenges would be easier to balance.
Yeah, I have a lot of ‘life sucker’ games in my backlog :D At the moment I’m playing a lot of Dungeon Siege II and it looks like it’ll take me another few weeks to finish it. I usually like longer games, but I don’t want to start another really long game immediately after DS II. I think I’ll have a look at the January Monthly theme for some inspiration. Do you already have your next assassinations in mind?
Quarterly goals seem perfect for you, that way you can adapt to your pace.
For January I’m really considering playing Orwell for the monthly theme because I’m also in a reading challenge group and I can read 1984 for that month too. I might try to make that a thing for 2019 - play a game and read a book that coincide each month.
Happy New Years, my friend! :)