April Spill 2024
Writing
Indiegames
In case you missed it, my free post detailing demos for March's Women's Day event can be found on ko-fi! I also had the sponsored opportunity to provide some recorded gameplay for Blueberry's Steam page during the event, which was super encouraging to me and the work that I do. For those who are supporters, I do have an exclusive quick review of Goodbye Volcano High here as well. It was such a wonderful game to experience off stream and I hope you all find a way to play it yourself. Sometime this month I'll be playing Kentucky Route Zero in hopes to do a quick review or soft thoughts for supporters, so look out for that in the near future.
Board Games
I just submitted my review of the jigsaw puzzle mystery game for editing, so I anticipate that landing on Board Game Quest sometime this month. My review for the Wingspan Oceania DLC is finally published on Board Game Quest here, and I found that it's worth the buy if you already have Wingspan digital. Coming down the pipeline next is Color Field and Quilts and Cats of Calico, both of which I'm excited to write about. We played a bit of the latter on stream, all that is left to do is finish the story on my own time and grab some screenshots!
Fiction
I sadly got some rejection replies to the query letters I sent out for the novel I wrote, and a rejection for the short story submission. I'm going to keep at it though! I heard that you should anticipate 50 rejections before considering a revision in your approach to writing... I'm certainly not at that many thus far so I'm going to keep believing in my writing for now.
Video
Streaming
We finally finished Roadwarden and Pikuniku, both of which were worth the time. Roadwarden left me with so many unanswered questions and intrigue about the lore, while Pikuniku fulfilled my gremlin dreams in ways I never could have imagined. Next up on the streaming menu will be A Date with Death, followed by OneShot and Lil' Guardsman. All my alerts and other overlay things are officially switched for the spring season, too!
Long Form
With the early access games done, I'll be working on a Youtube series for The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, which I've heard so many good things about. It's not quite my desired speed for a livestream but I think it would be worth doing 1-hour long recordings. It'll be fun to do more voice acting as well.
Short Form
I loved getting all the silly clips from Pikuniku, so those will be prepped for Tiktok in the coming weeks. Things will get slightly more silly and lighthearted on stream in April so I'm looking forward to getting more short form out there.
Personal
Currently Playing
After finishing Roadwarden I knew I had to try it again on my own time as I read very quickly and it's much easier to do another run off stream. In this second run I switched to a more casual mode so I can dig into the lore and the story more, in hopes I get more answers than I did on my first run. Other than that I haven't really had the energy to play any games for fun but I hope to change that once life settles down a little more.
IRL
The voice acting class for narration was incredible and I learned so much about myself in the process. The craft is not just reading out loud but creating textures and emotes on words, taking someone through a journey along the way. If you have helped me with funds in any way recently, know that you are helping me enrich my life in ways I couldn't otherwise. So thank you!
Therapy is going well and I'm learning a lot of self-compassion and undoing some codependent behavior with family. My fatigue is improving as I've changed what I'm having for breakfast and I've added in a B-12 supplement twice a week. I've also been putting in extra work and energy to honoring my body with strength training and more heart-healthy food choices. Overall I'm seeing a ton of good changes both mentally and physically. What a relief!
Later on in March I also got to spend some time with Josh from Intelligame. He was in town for GDC so we grabbed some lunch and chatted for a while. I hadn't seen him since PAX 2022 so it was such a nice time to catch up. I'm just not interested in putting myself at risk for conventions with everything going on in the world but willing to spend some time in outdoors settings with individual people when they're around.
Picture of the Month
The family got together for a memorial and shared some dinner afterwards. Part of the appetizers was this gorgeous charcuterie board prepared by one of the immediate family members. Easily my favorite thing was the grilled olives (near the bottom right)... yum!
Feel free to reply directly to this email to let me know your thoughts, or perhaps any content that you'd like to see or questions you might have. Otherwise, sending you all my flowery thoughts for the month and I look forward to writing to you in May!