July Round-Up '24
It's been a full year of these little monthly Round-Ups!! I don't know if anyone actually reads them, but for those who might, I hope that what I talk about here can help you find comfort if you're also going through a hard time. It's been another wacky month for me with lots of incredible stress, but at the same time I'm working super hard to put good things into the world. Please know that even when things seem bad, there are those out there who care about you and want good for you - myself included. I'll start off with a bit of unfortunate news, but then get into the good stuff.
More Dental Shenanigans
It's ALSO been a full year of monthly dentist visits!! I'm very sick of it!!! The work I got earlier this month was to replace a crown done by the bad dentist, which is the last of the big work done by him, and maybe for actually-actual real the last thing I'll have to worry about. I haven't quite recovered the sudden $1k I had to drop to fix it, but hopefully this upcoming month I'll be able to create some things that'll help me stay afloat. Speaking of creating things...
Projects
I've wanted to make a visual novel for the longest time, and after years of brainstorming characters and stories to share, I finally had the opportunity to share one of them thanks to the O2A2 game jam!! I learned Ren'Py and put together a very short (less than 5 minutes) game featuring my character Gil. You can enjoy the game here! If you're interested, I also wrote a GameDev Log about the experience too - it's best to check out after playing the game!
After the first iteration corrupted RIGHT as I finished it earlier in the month, I've finally released my biggest art project yet - my Streaming Sketchbook!! It spans a couple of years, going back to when I first started streaming in 2021. This has 25 pages filled to the brim with art from sketches to full-color art pieces! It's "pay what you want" (including free), and whatever is sent goes straight toward covering some medical bills.
Freedom Planet's 10 year anniversary was this month!! To celebrate, my friend Jewel Maiden put out an awesome remix of Dragon Valley and I was honored to do the art for it! Neera is Jewel's absolute favorite character, so she commissioned me to draw her playing the guzheng, which is an instrument at the heart of Jewel's cultural background AND used in the remix! The song is lovely, I highly recommend everyone check it out!!
Games
My partner played his very first SNES JRPG, Final Fantasy 4, and enjoyed it!! I'd played this game a few times myself (on PSP & DS) but had never fully finished the game, so it was fun watching him play it to completion! Chris played the original Japanese version with a fan-made translation, which was pretty good overall; the spritework goes WILD in this game and a lot of the enemy designs are super cool! One of my favorite things about FF4 is that many of the bosses were like puzzles, especially in the final dungeon. If you're wanting a good old-school game to play this is a great recommendation.
I'm playing Final Fantasy 7 Remake yet again... this time, on Twitch! I've been VERY eager to share the story with my audience so they can understand why I'm so absolutely crazy about it... I hope everyone enjoys my playthrough!! I'll be keeping my VODs up once I finish (if you weren't able to make my stream, you can check out the first part here!)
Speaking of Square Enix games... I started it on a Twitch stream, but I'm going to be finishing my Kingdom Hearts playthrough offline! I've been enjoying revisiting the first game quite a bit thanks to just recently picking up the 1.5 + 2.5 collection on PS4, but the pain the buttons cause me make it pretty hard to play too much at a time. I'll have to mess with the inputs a little to see if I can save my wrists a bit!
Splatoon 3 held a special Summer Nights Splatfest which went SUPER hard on the decorations and theming - it really felt like a huge party!! The big question this time was "Which would you reserve for a day? A palace, a theme park, or a beach?" - I chose theme park, but the winner was beach!! I hope everyone who participated had a really fun time (I know I did)!
One of my favorite events of the year is catching Summer Games Done Quick!! There were tons of incredible performances to be seen, and some quick standout favorites of mine are the hilarious Dirge of Cerberus run by DynamiteDanTNT, the impressive Wacca Reverse run by NB1RS, and Peanut Butter - an actual dog - playing MLB on SNES.
Anime
The Summer Season is in full swing! I've watched more than I list here, I won't be talking about the ones I've dropped.
The second season of Nier Automata Ver 1.1a picks up right where we left off in part one, but this time without the huge amounts of wait time between episodes! They're doing a great job of adapting the C/D+ endings so far and I'm looking forward to seeing what else is added in! Watching this really makes me wanna jump back into the world of Nier... perhaps in the "Nier" future hehe!
There's another fun video game adaptation happening this season... Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin! It's doing well adapting the visual design and story into an anime so far! I feel like not many people really gave the game a look when it released a few years ago, so maybe this'll give some renewed interest in it.
When I found out one of my favorite musical artists - Eve - was doing the opening for Shoushimin: How to Become Ordinary, and that the story was from the creator behind Hyouka, I knew I had to watch it! It's a super easy-going show: like Hyouka, it deals in small, almost mundane mysteries, and puts the protagonist in the detective corner to deduce what happened. The funny thing about this is that the protagonist actually doesn't want to become the detective, instead wishing to become an "ordinary citizen" to achieve a peaceful life... doesn't seem like it'll be that easy!
I'm not personally one for historical fiction or samurai stories, but when I saw snippets of The Elusive Samurai's opening I knew I just HAD to give it a look... and I was instantly hooked by its impressive use of color and animation!! CloverWorks has been seriously knocking it out of the park with incredible animation recently, and I'm enjoying how ridiculously detailed it gets in this show. I'm really looking forward to more!!
Similarly, I found Makeine: Too Many Losing Heroines by stumbling across its opening animation and was seriously impressed with it, however... I've never liked the comedy+romance genre because it typically includes some stuff I'm not a fan of, and this show has had snippets of that. Bleh. Overall the show's been entertaining enough and very pretty to look at! Not sure how much I'll watch beyond the current 3 episodes though.
Not a show, but I FINALLY had the opportunity to see The Boy and the Heron - what a ride!!! We watched the English dub because I'd heard that Robert Pattinson gave an absolutely unhinged performance, and sure enough, he delivered (as did the other actors)! I'd like to rewatch it sometime because I feel like I wasn't able to make out all of the dialogue... we had a loud fan to cool us off from the Summer heat as we watched, and the mixing of the movie's audio emphasized its background instead of speech, so I probably missed a few things. Very nice to look at, as always with Studio Ghibli's films, and I was very excited about all the BIRDS!!
Some Assorted Nice Things
Something that's been making me extremely happy lately is joining in my dear friend Spacey's Chrono Gear team calls on her Friday GameDev Twitch Streams. I don't really get to talk to friends very often - my own streams are typically the extent of interacting with others - so being able to laugh with others in a casual setting while we all work on various projects has been incredibly uplifting to my spirits recently. I know she won't be showing too much work on her game since it's entering its end stages art-wise, but I hope I'm able to talk to the team even more in that kind of setting in the future!! Thank you all for including me!!!!
Getting to see Spacey's beautiful art come to life so quickly is always so impressive and inspiring to me!!!
To celebrate putting out my visual novel, Chris and I checked out a restaurant that's new to us - Kitchen Mouse - and ohhh my gosh it was one of the BEST experiences EVER!! Everyone was super nice, the food was utterly delicious, and best of all... none of the food hurts my tummy!! We actually ended up going back the next week to escape the heat with some of their nice drinks + some cookies at the Bakery portion of the eatery -- all of which was amazingly tasty! It's definitely a place we'll be taking visiting friends and family from now on.
The inside of the Cafe was very charming - I love the mint colors!
For food, we got Tikka Mushroom Tacos and a HUGE soft seasalt choco-chip cookie... it was bliss!!!
Another nice eatery that we discovered was Belle's Bagels - an unassuming & utterly delightful walk-up bagel place with some of the softest bagels I've ever eaten. My sandwich was absolutely gigantic - and even better, didn't hurt my tummy thanks to their diet-friendly options! I wanna go back again sometime!
I had a GF bagel with vegan cream cheese, pickled radishes and red onions, folded egg, sprouts, and smashed avocado... SO GOOD!!!!
August is coming up fast!
Tomorrow's Odaiba Memorial Day, AKA Digimon Day!! I'll be celebrating!! Aside from that, this upcoming month will have a lot of big things happening in my personal life. I'm hoping for some peace of mind among all the projects I want to do. I hope everyone continues to stay well, and I'd love to know if you read this round-up - thanks!!
Here's a mental health poster Chris and I saw while driving around... featuring FF7 characters???!!!