Etchings

Finally! Hollow Knight: Silksong is out. These are my thoughts after 4 hours.

Overall: I'm a few hours in, so far so good. I love being back in the Hollow Knight universe! The game looks, sounds, and plays great.

Movement: Hornet is quite a bit more agile than the Knight, and being able to kick-up/pull-up on ledges with a flip demonstrates that well. Sprinting being an ability rather than a charm is definitely different, and I like it. Floating is fun, but looks a little silly. She definitely flips around more.

Combat: Quite a few enemies do 2 "points" of health with a hit, while Hornet's healing requires a full silk (soul) meter and heals 3 quickly, rather than the Knight requiring less but taking longer and only healing 1 point per heal. Combat seems faster. Hornet's down-air being diagonal is trippy; I expected being able to pogo like in the first game. Makes traversing some sections harder than if we could just pogo, but I don't mind.

Environment: The vibe is definitely less lonely than the first game, with more NPCs that you can see and talk to. The opening "get to the village" part is very reminiscent of the first game.

New game vs DLC: It is definitely closely tied to the first game in terms of many design elements. So far, I don't mind.

Story: I'm interested. Has a little more, mmmm, drive? than the first game, because Hornet actually talks and the Knight didn't. She actually wants something, but the Knight, on purpose, didn't want anything.

Connecting to Libera with Halloy via Soju.

Thoughts on Enshrouded, both on its initial Early Access release and revisiting it now.

And how it compares to the previous sites I've written in other languages.

Here's a quick image guide to using the Prism Minecraft launcher to set up a Fabric Minecraft instance with Iris for shaders.

FFXIV's latest expansion is out. This is what I think of it.

Another survival / exploration / crafting game - any good? Yes!

Note: this is about the "hacker" role in TTRPGs, not "hacking" the game itself.

The idea of playing a hacker in a cyberpunk dystopia has captured my interest ever since I was introduced to TTRPGs that weren't just Dungeons and Dragons. Specifically, I've played hacker-types in Shadowrun 4 and 5 and Interface Zero 1.0, and read over the rules for hacking in Shadowrun 6, Shadowrun: Anarchy, and Cities Without Number.

I've written an interactive website with Astro; here are my thoughts.

I've been working with Astro lately, and it took me a while to figure out how to implement an OAuth 2 client. Hopefully I can make it faster for you.