What Video Game Did I Play Yesterday?
Balatro (Switch)
September 9th, 2024
I'm trying to get the week off to a good start this morning, but do not feel like I'm approaching the task well. Yesterday, though, I did have a successful productivity aid in Wixoss Multiverse, which I left running for hours as I ran through my daily tasks. It was too play-intensive to use during a work day, since I'd finish a set amount of tasks every hour before letting myself play, but it helped me get through 31 tasks on my weekly to-do list, which is a new record! Plus, my tiny card girls have all sorts of fancy weapons and it makes me feel powerful.
I'm trying to get back to fitness games more regularly, too, since I'm somewhat getting out of whatever dreadful "curl up in a ball and nap" funk I'd been in. Last night, that meant I did a 12 minute exercise in Fitness Boxing 2 while I waited to go pick up Indian food, but it wasn't nothing.
I played another run of Balatro after my internet went out, too. It was bad again.
September 8th, 2024
I'm still spacy today, but having a decently productive morning regardless. It required a lot of work last night, since I'd managed my time badly during the week, but I did finish another round of cat-crafts and girl-crafts for last week! The cat was a surprisingly tricky (for me at least!) origami model, from instructions at this link on Instructables. I kept having to bounce between the written instructions and the video, but I'm pleased that I finally got it!
The cross stitch is of Miwa from Jujutsu Kaisen, which I remain too zoomed in on. The pattern is by DiscoveringArdna on Etsy, and after loading up last week, I still have a lot of her little anime patterns to make!
As for games, I scored a Wii balance board yesterday, which is good in that it allows me to exercise in increasingly outdated and dumb ways! It actually worked a lot better than I thought, though. Walk It Out! is the only game I have for it so far, and once I figured out that the balance board prefers the tile part of my floor to the carpeted part, it worked extremely well. I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes with more traditional fitness games.
I kept flailing at the event that's running in Magical Circle Guru-Guru: Stardust Adventure, too. I do not believe for a second that I am going to get the event-exclusive character, but I am getting a better grip on the game's systems and how they match up to pieces of the G123 games that make more sense to me. Leveling up just seems so much slower than this one in the others, and I can't figure out if it's just nastier about its pay to win bits or just scaled differently.
I also played two extremely bad runs of Balatro. It wasn't bad luck. I was just tired.
August 30th, 2024
Despite my reader-facing pep on here, I wasn't feeling good yesterday. I picked up another G123 clicker game, WIXOSS Multiverse, and got really zoomed in on it. It does seem suspiciously similar to their other clickers, but the menu design is decently intuitive here.
I kept playing Prison Noctis, too, and am still pretty amused by it. So many employees of this prison seem to be in dire need of sponges and brushes from me, a prisoner that is clearly misbehaving, that I'm starting to think of it as a story of institutional collapse.
As for more standard gaming, I did another run in Balatro. It was pretty unremarkable, and I lost at ante 5, not even to a boss blind.
August 28th, 2024
Yesterday was an unpleasant work day, and I came home to quickly lose my internet. I did clear my first run in Balatro, though, and that was a nice boost! I did it by getting extremely lucky on what boss blinds I got and when, and also by stubbornly and repeatedly levelling up two pair as a hand, until I became nigh unstoppable. I mean, I was ultimately stoppable shortly after clearing Ante 8 and entering endless mode, but that doesn't sound as good.
August 5th, 2024
Today is a quick before-work post, both because I overslept and because I honestly didn't do so much gaming yesterday. I played a lot of Balatro while chatting with one of my friends, but did badly because I wasn't really paying attention. Even though I wasn't really engaging with the game so well, it's nice to have something like this to play.
I stuck with King of Prism Sparkling yesterday, too, even though I spent most of the day thinking that the game was down. Instead, a new event had popped in and trying to click on it busted the rest of the game, making it seem like the whole thing was broken when it was really just that event. I figured that out and made some progress right before bed, but didn't feel like it bode particularly well for the game as a whole.
July 26th, 2024
I'm here and posting, but don't have a lot to say. I do not have the right vibes to play something for multiple sessions lately, so I just did a round of Balatro last night. I got about halfway through, as always, and went to sleep.
I did a workout in Fitness Boxing: Fist of the North Star earlier in the night, too, but had gotten sleepy again by then and had more missed punches than usual. It wasn't bad, but I was frustrated with myself.
The weekend is so close, yet so far away!
June 27th, 2024
I'm having a challenging time being awake today, so this won't be a very long post. I picked up a very cheap fitness game on Switch last night, though, called Martial Knight, thinking it would be bad enough to be funny. The character models look very strange, and there's a weird suddenness to their movements that makes the exercises feel mysterious. Once I figured out how it wanted me to calibrate the joycons before each round, though, the exercising itself wasn't too bad. I feel like motion detection in it is still hit and miss enough that it would be a folly to chase S ranks on every level, but if I can get B ranks over the next few days, I'll be happy.
I played another really bad run of Balatro, too. The Wall is the most cursed boss blind, and I think part of a successful run might involve having the good luck to avoid that score spike.
June 22nd, 2024
I have a long and somewhat busy weekend ahead, so am doing a quick, early post before I get things started. Last night, I went to bed early to try to rest up, which I totally whiffed by then waking up once an hour every hour. Before that, though, I played a round of Balatro, briefly feeling confident that I had a winning strategy at hand. I left myself very weak to a boss blind that took my ability to score off of hearts away, though, and lost really badly. It was so my own fault that I'm actually still somewhat frustrated with myself.
I played my daily fitness game, too, going with plain Fitness Boxing 2 just for the brighter, poppier atmosphere. It was a pretty easy daily workout yesterday, which was great since I was playing during a work break.
As far as things go for this blog this weekend, things will probably be pretty brief tomorrow. Monday, though, I may have a pretty long post. Either way, I'm looking forward to the four day weekend ahead!
June 9th, 2024
Yesterday wasn't a big games day for me! It was a really nice day. I did tons of crafts, read a ridiculous amount of manga, finished off a solo RPG I'd been chipping away at for the last few weeks, and went to a movie. It was good stuff, and I'm hoping today will be as good again!
I did keep going with Fitness Boxing 2, though, keeping my exercise streak going, but not clearing any in-game goals. It was totally fine.
I did a couple of disaster runs in Balatro before bed, too, not getting any further than ante 3. It was a nasty combo of bad luck and extreme sleepiness.
June 7th, 2024
Work is wearing me out way more than it should this week, so I had another unexciting game night last night. I did do great at Fitness Boxing, clearing about 3 achievements, chipping away at clearing all of the songs on fast mode, and getting pretty in-the-zone on one of the 12 minute exercises. I'll switch trainers to work on knocking out another achievement in my next play session, which will keep things interesting.
From there, I couldn't get myself interested in turning New Pokemon Snap back on, so I played a couple of pretty dreadful runs in Balatro. Even doing badly, though, it was still fun.
April 8th, 2024
My weekend was busy, so by the time I got to the end of it, I wasn't good for much. After some reading, I played a run of Balatro while dozing off. Considering the circumstances, it was not so bad, but I got The Wall as my boss blind in round five, requiring me to get 44,000 points to pass, and I absolutely was not doing that well.
March 25th, 2024
I'm way under the weather today, but scheduled a five day weekend for myself at the end of this week. I'm trying to use my excitement about a little break to power through the week.
My biggest chunk of game time yesterday went to The Quarry, where I feel like I'm continually taking the wrong path and missing out on secrets. I'm so short on the tarot cards I'm supposed to be finding that it's ridiculous! I'm still enjoying it, but I do not feel like a smart cookie. All of my poor camp counselors are likely doomed.
I had a distracting stomachache before bed, so I played a not-bad round of Balatro to get myself to sleep, too. Early on, I was trying to stack my deck with hearts, but once Standard Card Packs dried up in the shop, I had to abandon that strategy.
March 19th, 2024
I finished Gris last night, and it's probably one of the most beautiful games I've ever played. The ending was very lovely, and I was glad I went back to it. I didn't feel like I got the feel of the platforming down until right at the end, though, so the excellent gravity puzzles made me feel like, on the gameplay front, it ended just as it was getting good. Story and atmosphere seemed more important here, though, so that's fine.
From there, I played a couple of unbelievably bad rounds of Balatro to get myself relaxed enough to sleep.
March 13th, 2024
Last night, I was so tired that I felt disoriented and a little sick, so I played a very bad round of Balatro before trying to sleep. I don't even remember what ante I was in when I lost, but I think it was only the third one. That was okay, though.
Tonight, a new event is starting up in Fashion Dreamer, but I'm still somewhat under the weather. More than worrying about games, I want to get through the work day and figure out the fun stuff after.
March 12th, 2024
Today, I have allergy itching so bad I don't feel like I can think straight, so this won't be a very long post. I played another four stages of Evangelion: Shin Gekijoban 3nd Impact, though. I didn't hit any new gameplay types last night, so better appreciated what the game was doing in terms of using different playstyles to reflect characters' interior states and the tension of battles. This is better than I expected it to be.
I played a run of Balatro, too, tragically losing in ante five when I played a hand I'd meant to discard. I was trying to play a deck optimized for hands three cards and lower, but didn't feel like I was having a ton of luck with it. Even if I hadn't blown things by hitting the wrong button, I think I would have lost soon after.
March 3rd, 2024
It's Sunday and I'm awake, which I suppose is fine. I want to get back on my Pokemon-all-regions-attack, but when I went to play Pokemon: Let's Go Eevee last night, my save file was gone! It's my own fault for not getting the file before clearing off my old Switch for a friend's kid when I got my OLED. Still, it necessitates a different approach. Cute as Let's Go is, I am not redoing my first 25 hours of that.
As far as games I actually did play go, though, I had a really good run in Balatro, but lost in the 7th ante, or set of levels. It felt way more like luck than skill, so I'm not sure how to replicate this. Spending a lot of my earned cash to level up my played hands with the "planet cards" seemed to help, though, so I'll see how that approach goes again.
I also tried Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, but losing my EXP when I got hit made me so mad that I quit. It seems like a game with a lot of interesting ideas, but that mechanic felt custom-designed to infuriate me, and I'm ok with dropping things.
March 2nd, 2024
Today, I'm feeling kind of overwhelmed, but I don't really have a lot to do. My toughest quests for the day are buying groceries and making a pot of soup to meet up with family, both of which are super easy. I guess some days are just like this.
On Thursday, someone was a little rude to me on the phone, so I decided I needed a new game as a reward and picked up Balatro. I can't believe it took so long for "poker solitaire, but the numbers get really big" to become a game. Last night, having just started this, I played it until my eyes could no longer focus on the Switch's screen. It's simple, but I enjoyed it a lot.
I don't really know how video games will go this weekend, but I'll have enough to post here regardless.
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