vivdunstan

Fellow cat lovers may want to check out "Marbles, D, and the Sinister Spotlight", an entry in this year's Spring Thing festival of interactive fiction games. This one is a traditional parser text adventure, where you play a cat, who has to help your person explore a mysterious theatre. You get extra points for doing cat like things. It's delightful. And very newbie friendly.

Revising the interactive fiction section of my website, postponing my next IFComp game to 2026, not later this year. On plus I have a really good design worked out and it's well in progress. But it's bigger than I'd initially planned, and I want to give it enough time to develop sufficiently richly. Postponing the game entry to 2026 gives me lots of time to develop all of its chapters much more fully. And also to allow for at least a couple of rounds of thorough playtesting. I'm really excited by this new game design, and want to do it justice. Allowing more development time should really help!

Finally finished playing Jonathan Green's gamebook Alice's Nightmare in Wonderland. Much fingers stuck in the pages, 80s style, this morning! Enjoyed reading to end, but scuppered by I think one unfair puzzle near the end. But extremely happy solved puzzle before! Very imaginative writing.

Finished loads more books, and just wrapped up my 50th book of the year. I'd set a very modest Goodreads reading goal of 25 books this year. I knew I was intending to read a lot of lengthy books. But I've more than doubled it.

Among the new books, Steeple Chasing was a fun glimpse into church architecture, history and people. Though probably overlong. It did feel like a slog after a while.

Of course I reread Roger Zelazny's Halloween delight! And enjoyed it as much as every year.

Clanlands, by two Outlander actors (one also a hobbit) was fun, and often really insightful into Scottish history. But overly blokey for me.

Mario's Butt was an entertaining perspective on video game characters and design. Though an easier read for those games I was familiar with, having played myself, or watched Martin play.

The Insomniacs After School manga series continues to be enchanting. I already have the next two volumes in hand, ready to continue reading.

Travis Baldree's followup (well more a prequel) to Legends & Lattes was fun, but didn't quite hit the high spots of his earlier book. But a charming fantasy setting, with added bookshop content.

( earlier books... )
1. Steeple Chasing: Around Britain by Church by Peter Ross
2. A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny
3. Clanlands: Whisky, Warfare, and a Scottish Adventure Like No Other by Sam Heughan and Graham McTavish
4. Things I Learned from Mario's Butt by Laura Kate Dale
5. Insomniacs After School (manga) volume 4 by Makoto Ojiro
6. Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree

Current main reading as of mid February 2022. Continuing the Wheel of Time book 2, Steve McNeil’s video games history and a marvellous Louis Wain cats book. New reads for me are a history of the Hermitage in St Petersburg, short novel Strange Weather in Tokyo, and Rachel Clarke’s junior Doctor story.

I generally like to have a couple of novels on the go at once, one usually gargantuan, so that’s why I’ve got the Japanese book newly started alongside the (admittedly nearly finished) fantasy novel. I also like a lot of non fiction books.

Normally I read in a gargantuan font on my Kindle, but two of the above books are coffee table sized printed ones i.e. the cats and Hermitage books. But both are very heavy on pictures and very light on text, so they’re just about manageable for me. Both gorgeous books anyway.

I have nearly finished the Wheel of Time book but don’t expect to go straight on to book 3. But I am likely to read another whopper of a novel next.