Reviews August 2020
Aug. 4th, 2020 09:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrAll things I liked this time!
Very Happy, A Dead Djinn in Cairo, My Next Life as a Villainess, Pump up the Jam, buncha games from the racial justice bundle
Book:
Very Happy: Fluffy Chinese m/m romance about a woobie cinnamon roll actor who befriends a cold, lonely CEO. No dubcon, as I recall! I enjoyed the humour and sweetness, but while there's touches of good-natured cynicism and sympathetic treatment of moral ambiguity it's mostly unsubtle tropey melodrama.
Short Story:
A Dead Djinn in Cairo: a good short story about a queer female detective solving a mystery in an alternate version of Cairo with supernatural creatures.
Podcast:
Pump up the Jam: The hosts humorously discuss and pull apart popular songs, then make their own 'improved' version. Just the right mix for me of taking things seriously and being silly. I'm listening from the start, with hosts Miel Bredouw and Demi Adejuyigbe, both comedians who got started on Vine (Demi is the 21st of September guy!) At some point Demi left to be replaced with a series of guests, I guess I'll see what that's like when I get there.
Anime:
My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!: A teen girl gets reincarnated into the villain of the dating sim she was playing. Her hilarious attempts to avoid dying the way the villain originally did inadvertently cause multiple male and female characters to fall in love with her. There's no endgame romance but it treats the male and female love interests similarly. The first season finished and it was all fun!
Games from the racial justice bundle:
Not Puzzles:
Plant Daddy Cute, simple, low-poly plant raising sim.
Arigatou Ningen-san Cute, silly little browser game where you wander around squishily cuddling animals.
Puzzles:
RYB I ADORED this game and I'm not sure any of you will like it haha. Lots of logical deductions along the lines of "Ok this circle has to touch two red shapes, and this adjacent triangle touches one red and one yellow..."
Reky Well made, elegant path-finding puzzles.
Spring Falls Gentle, pretty puzzles about moving water to plants. Didn't entirely click with me but I had fun for a while and other people love it.
Word Forward adequate word-finding game. A bit janky.
Adjacency Create shapes with colours. Hurt my brain in a good way :)
Cardinal Chains Create paths that follow numbers in order. I didn't love it but had fun for a while.
Very Happy, A Dead Djinn in Cairo, My Next Life as a Villainess, Pump up the Jam, buncha games from the racial justice bundle
Book:
Very Happy: Fluffy Chinese m/m romance about a woobie cinnamon roll actor who befriends a cold, lonely CEO. No dubcon, as I recall! I enjoyed the humour and sweetness, but while there's touches of good-natured cynicism and sympathetic treatment of moral ambiguity it's mostly unsubtle tropey melodrama.
Short Story:
A Dead Djinn in Cairo: a good short story about a queer female detective solving a mystery in an alternate version of Cairo with supernatural creatures.
Podcast:
Pump up the Jam: The hosts humorously discuss and pull apart popular songs, then make their own 'improved' version. Just the right mix for me of taking things seriously and being silly. I'm listening from the start, with hosts Miel Bredouw and Demi Adejuyigbe, both comedians who got started on Vine (Demi is the 21st of September guy!) At some point Demi left to be replaced with a series of guests, I guess I'll see what that's like when I get there.
Anime:
My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!: A teen girl gets reincarnated into the villain of the dating sim she was playing. Her hilarious attempts to avoid dying the way the villain originally did inadvertently cause multiple male and female characters to fall in love with her. There's no endgame romance but it treats the male and female love interests similarly. The first season finished and it was all fun!
Games from the racial justice bundle:
Not Puzzles:
Plant Daddy Cute, simple, low-poly plant raising sim.
Arigatou Ningen-san Cute, silly little browser game where you wander around squishily cuddling animals.
Puzzles:
RYB I ADORED this game and I'm not sure any of you will like it haha. Lots of logical deductions along the lines of "Ok this circle has to touch two red shapes, and this adjacent triangle touches one red and one yellow..."
Reky Well made, elegant path-finding puzzles.
Spring Falls Gentle, pretty puzzles about moving water to plants. Didn't entirely click with me but I had fun for a while and other people love it.
Word Forward adequate word-finding game. A bit janky.
Adjacency Create shapes with colours. Hurt my brain in a good way :)
Cardinal Chains Create paths that follow numbers in order. I didn't love it but had fun for a while.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-04 04:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-05 05:03 am (UTC)It is a Lot. You can also sort through my recs here: https://sqbr.github.io./index.html
no subject
Date: 2020-08-10 02:08 am (UTC)I'm going through the VNs first but the puzzle games will be next up on the docket. I'd played Cardinal Chains before on Kongregate and enjoyed it ok. There were a couple of points where it was satisfying to be stuck thinking one way and then see the solution suddenly after some pondering.
Very Happy sounds very cute. I haven't looked into BL in translation but someday I'm going to have to give them a go. The plots are always appealing.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-26 01:55 pm (UTC)Yes, it's enjoyably chill! And yeah, some of the Chinese BL plots are fantastic fun.