May Sway 2025
Writing
Indiegames
At some point this month I’ll be playing through a tough game called Wednesdays which is a hope-filled narrative game that attempts to cover issues surrounding child sexual abuse. Considering the subject matter I figured that it would be very challenging to cover in real-time on stream in a safe way, so I’ll be sharing my thoughts on Ko-fi soon.
Boardgames
A reprint of an older board game showed up on my doorstep recently and honestly I can’t get enough of the two-player tension in it! If you tend to only play board games with one other person, I highly recommend Caesar & Cleopatra. My formal review will be out on Board Game Quest soon(ish).
Video
Streaming
I’ve been having a wonderful time on Mondays playing VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action , especially as a way to stretch my voice acting muscles. As for Persona 5 Royal, I was shocked to find out exactly how long it would take to beat it so this will be more of a pop-up Saturday stream game where I can dedicate more hours than I have on Mondays. I’m aiming for the first playthrough to start on Saturday, May 24. That being said, my next Monday game after Valhalla is done will be OMORI, which has a much shorter time investment.
This month is also full of PR coverage games, and I’m looking forward to getting through them all! Saturday, May 3 at 1pm PDT I’ll be playing Promise Mascot Agency; Saturday, May 10 at 1pm PDT will be a showcase of Nintendo Switch games published by Afil Games; and Saturday, May 17 at 1pm PDT I’ll be playing Urban Jungle. I’m hoping that we’ll be able to play some demos for LudoNarraCon on Sunday, May 4th at 9am PDT as well.
We’ll be fundraising for St. Jude this year, after our break from the Play Live event last year. I’m working on adding games to the game raffle as we speak, in addition to some of our favorite charity incentives like googly eyes, temporary tattoos, and Warheads. On Wednesday, May 28 I’ll be playing through Volcano Princess while we fundraise all day, and on Saturday May 31 I’m hoping that To a T will be available to play while we fundraise as well!
Short Form
Still have no idea what is happening with TikTok banning in the U.S., I’ll be waiting until mid-June this year to see if it ends up being a place I return to or not. These delays are just so frustrating.
Personal
Currently Playing
For solo play I’ve been continuing my playthrough of Critter Café, and I’ve discovered a third map in the game with lots of snow and winter activities! Still no sign of Frillescent though…
IRL
I celebrated my anniversary with my partner last month and during a wine tasting outing we discovered Spanish anchovy-filled olives. We went out of our way to go to a Spanish import store recently to go and get more of them, and while we only committed to buying one can, I have a feeling that this is going to be a bulk purchase for us soon…
Music is a big part of my offline life, and my partner and I were able to go to a couple classical guitar concerts last month, one for David Russell and another for Ana Vidovic. If you’re unfamiliar with the music genre, give it a whirl on whatever music service you use and let me know what you think!
Japanese lessons for Level 1 are coming to an end, and I’m able to ask permission to do things, politely decline requests, or even forbid actions now! Thanks to everyone who has been supporting me through ko-fi or Twitch subscriptions/bits to make this happen. I discovered that my current instructor teaches all levels of Japanese and that Level 2 will get into kanji so instead of moving into a new language at the end of the year I’m just going to continue my journey with Japanese.
Picture of the Month
The roses in our neighborhood are so gorgeous right now, and although many other plants have started to finish up their massive Spring activities, these lovelies are still going strong.
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 warm thoughts for the month and I look forward to writing to you in June!