What Video Game Did I Play Yesterday?

Magical Circle Guru-Guru: Stardust Adventure (Android)

September 12th, 2024

I'm still feeling draggy, but am also still plugging away at everything. I started yesterday with a round of Walk It Out!, to see how much of a hassle it would be to use the Wii balance board for before work fitness gaming. It wasn't a problem at all, so I'll probably get another Wii game in my rotation for next week.

Past that, I didn't have a ton of energy for games after work. I did, shockingly, get the special character for the event I'd been grinding out in Magical Circle Guru-Guru. It was a pleasant surprise, and I'll probably take her out for some meaningless slaughter with the rest of my party soon.

I played some more of the story in Prison Noctis, too, and found a drug addict's dead body and some food for a cute lil kitty in the same room. This tonal whiplash did nothing to dissuade me from playing mobile games.

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As for games, I scored a Wii balance board yesterday, which is good in that it allows me to exercise in increasingly outdated and dumb ways!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.

September 7th, 2024

I slept well last night, but feel kind of wiped out and disoriented this morning. I don't have much I have to get done today, so I guess that's fine. It would be nice to have a more functional brain, though.

Games-wise, I played a lot of Fitness Boxing feat. Hatsune Miku last night, which was a lot of fun. The rhythm game mode is integrated into the daily workouts, which is a nice way to mix things up. I ended up popping back in to play more and more of the rhythm game after my daily workout, though. It was fun!

Other than that, I just had a mobile game day. I did work on the current event in Magical Circle Guru-Guru: Stardust Adventure, but my progress is a little plodding so far. I might switch up my party some and see if that helps at all. My guess, though, is that refusing to pay in an event that seems very pay to win isn't going to work out for me in the end.

I did my weekly run at progress in Merge Pixel, too, and my numbers do seem to be going up at quite an impressive rate.

Today, I have no ambition, but do want to do crafts and play mobile games. I think I'll easily manage to live this extravagant dream.

September 6th, 2024

It's finally Friday, and even though it's been a short work week, I'm looking forward to having it over and done with tonight!

Yesterday, Fitness Boxing feat. Hatsune Miku came out in the US, so I was really excited to try it. There's a "Miku Exercise" mode that does a lot to bridge the gap between this as a fitness game series and a proper music game that seems very fun so far! Mostly, though, having more music and trainer options makes it easier to stick with these games and get exercise. It's a bit of a boring conclusion, maybe, but I'm happy for it.

Over in mobile game fluff land, I turned on Magical Circle Guru-Guru: Stardust Adventure last night to see that it's having a proper event. I only scratched the surface of the tasks for it last night, but I'm going to try to tackle it over the next week. It's going to involve copious amounts of level grinding.

I also left King of Prism Sparkling running for a lot of the day, speaking of level grinding. It's taking longer than expected to burn through the resources I've gathered, which is fine by me.

I messed around with Prison Noctis for a decent amount of time, too, meandering through a tile match puzzle before deciding that I'll have an easier time of it if I go grind for gems in the merge mode for a couple of days. This, too, feels like a boring conclusion.

September 3rd, 2024

I'm trying to cap the amount of new games I start this month at five, so last night, digging through my Switch library, I settled on going back to Catlord, a Switch freebie that seems quite "inspired by" Vampire Survivors. It turns out that last time I played, I was minutes away from becoming powerful enough to clear it, so last night, I unexpectedly polished it off. Once I got the right upgrades, my cat was powerful enough to stand in the middle of stage one and vacuum up cash while I got ready for bed and played mobile games, so I did that, got every upgrade, and beat every boss in all three stages. There was no ending other than my acceptance that it's time to delete this off of my switch.

Other than that, I didn't do much out of the ordinary. I played a few battle stages in Fitness Boxing: Fist of the North Star, bringing me two stages away from the end on the easiest mode.

I also fussed with my mobile games, spending the most time in Magical Circle Guru-Guru: Stardust Adventure. It was mostly party management stuff, so it wasn't exciting, but I am steadily doing better at some of the levelled trial battle modes.

I played more than my usual in King of Prism Sparkling, too, because that was what I turned on while farming for cash in Catlord, and that whole deal took longer than I imagined it would.

August 29th, 2024

Today my company gave all of its local employees lunch at a high-end brewery, so I ate some junk food and slammed back a non-alcoholic IPA on their patio before wandering away to come home and play with my website. I'm set up for September now, and also got a new layout and index going for G123, the money grubbing browser game developer I'm currently fixated on It's nice to get stuff done!

All my gaming yesterday was those aforementioned browser games, though. I tried one called Prison Noctis, or Merge Prison, according to the title screen. It is notably different from the two G123 anime clickers I've been playing in that it uses the trappings of an escape room to guide players through basic item merge screens and some mahjong solitaire-esque tile matching screens. There's cats, too. Energy runs out fast in it, and it tosses up the "buy this item!" screens just as often as the anime games I've tried, but it's a little more interesting than I'd expected it would be.

I did keep up with the anime clickers, too. In King of Prism: Sparkling, I rushed my dailies before work, to make up for the previous night's internet loss, and then before bed, too. Mostly, though, I'm stocking currency and EXP for another in-game grinding session right now.

I remained confused by Magical Circle Guru-Guru: Stardust Adventure, too, getting caught in a loop of auto-battling I couldn't escape. I feel like this game is saddled with some unintuitive menu designs, but am sure I'll find my way around if I keep playing.

August 27th, 2024

I actually managed a daily workout in Fitness Boxing: Fist of the North Star yesterday, which I haven't been good at lately. I got so bored during the stretches that I thought I'd end up bailing five minutes in, but I did make it to the end! This isn't really an accomplishment, but I was still pleased.

My bigger gaming deal yesterday was that, as I played King of Prism Sparkling, I became convinced that every game the company behind it, G123, made was likely the same game. I did spend quite a bit of time on my jpegs of ice skaters yesterday, even saving up my free tickets for a lovely gacha draw where I got three SSRs.

From there, though, I tried Magical Circle Guru-Guru: Stardust Adventure, which was, as I suspected, an idle/clicker game with way too many systems for its own good. It was kind of pleasantly confusing to play a game based on a property I know next to nothing about, and the art is super cute. Since I like to leave games like this running while I'm doing stuff I actually need to get done, I was more delighted than offended by the whole ordeal. If I have time, I might try another one tonight.