What Video Game Did I Play Yesterday?

Pinball (Nintendo Switch Online)

July 29th, 2022

I'm doing a quick post during a work break today before absolute apathy sets in again. At work last night, due to bad luck, I got a late call that made me miss my last break and forced some overtime, so I didn't get to move around as much as I wanted during the day. I was pretty set on getting my 20k steps goal in Pikmin Bloom, though, so I went to the Planet Fitness across the street and spent half an hour on a treadmill. I had thought maybe it would cheer me up, but instead, I was still frustrated and more tired than I would have been otherwise. The goal was met, though.

After that, I just played NES Pinball before bed again. I tried Game B, which is different from Game A in that it is faster, more difficult, and vastly more enjoyable. I think I ended up going 5 (very bad) rounds before falling asleep, but it was a good time!

July 26th, 2022

I played more games than I should have yesterday, which involved getting unreasonably frustrated at Ensemble Stars. I failed to get three stars on one of the 30 sections of the event and, trying to math out if it was better to use 12 (out of 10 offered every few hours) energy points right then and there to get that third star, or carry on and see if I could loop back later, I realized it was too much. The game was trying to stress me out to get me to spend money and win that way, even then playing so many hours a day that giving up would become a sunk cost, and I don't need that. I already unlocked a lot of cards and the full event story, so I'm just going to collect login bonuses for the next few days. I don't need clearing a game event to be as stressful as my job is right now.

In mobile games that are actively anti-stress, I picked up a couple of new weekly challenges in Pikmin Bloom- the usual 20k step challenge, and a "plant 5,000 flowers" challenge. This led to two realizations. First, I went on a walk yesterday morning without entering the weekly challenge first, which led to around 3,000 steps not counting. I went on a longer walk that night, so it was no big deal, but it's something to keep in mind for the future. The second thing is that, even though I thought the 5,000 flower challenge would be undoable, I planted over 1,000 of them on my second walk of the day. I think I'll probably clear that pretty easily, too.

Aside from mobile games, I got inexplicably excited about playing some video pinball last night, but do not currently have access to Devil's Crush or Pokemon Pinball, either of which would have been perfect. Sonic Spinball has a little more going on than I wanted to deal with, so I ended up playing plain NES Pinball on Switch online. It's fine, and I got an ok score by my standards. Switch Online is useful for fulfilling gaming whims that are hard to explain.