What Video Game Did I Play Yesterday?

Idling Idol (PC)

August 17th, 2022

Yesterday, I was super unproductive, in terms of crafts, games, cooking, and any other measurable metric. I felt really bad about it when it was time for bed, but since it's a day off, it's ok not to do anything. Still, I hope I accomplish a little more today.

I went back to the Intellivision Flashback last night, this time electing to play Brickout. I didn't expect anything from it, in large part because Brickout is a miserably lazy name for a Breakout clone, but it was actually super fun. Getting 20 balls at the start is great, since it softens the blow of a single bounce death, the progressive mode it's locked to allows for a lot of super satisfying chances for the ball to get stuck bouncing between two rows of bricks, and moving the paddle was really good with the dial on the controller. I don't know if it beats Cavity mode in Super Breakout for me, but it's really fun. I'll come back to Brickout for sure.

I also put another round in on Idling Idol while eating dinner, and got an ending rank of E for my idol unit! It's not great, but I'm moving up in the game! I'd totally neglected the item store before this round, and wouldn't you know it, using all of the tools a game offers does, in fact, improve your chances of success. Wild how that happens!

August 15th, 2022

I got off my last train safely last night and, almost totally K.O.'d, played another round of Idling Idol before bed. I am completely mystified by how to get a good score in this game. Last night, I got all my idols up to level D, but due to a low number of fans and poor earnings, my unit rank was still F. The final score made me wondering if actually levelling the stats is useless, but it'll only take me a few minutes to play a round and test this theory.

August 11th, 2022

Last night was spent in pursuit of my checked bag of clothes, which I still don't have. I waited a few hours at the train station for them to show up, and they just didn't, which was frustrating and disappointing. I did, between that and some nice walks in the morning and afternoon, though, play the hell out of Pikmin Bloom. I cleared both weekly missions and got over 15k steps through the day, and saved all my little trophy screenshots to share here. Even on a somewhat rubbish day, fluffy mobile games sustain me.

At about 1 am, I was messing around on Steam because I wasn't tired enough to go to bed, but was too tired to be remotely useful, and found a cheap game, Idling Idol. I bought it because I like games about j-pop idols and, crucially to this decision making process, it was after 1am. It's an interesting game, but definitely not an idle game! An in game day passes in seconds, so stopping to yawn before delegating tasks to the girls can tip things over entirely. I did and failed at one playthrough last night, but it was kind of fun. I might run the achievements as I try to figure out what works and what doesn't with this game. Levelling the girls' stats seems like it might be deceptively tricky.