My second illustration for Februdoodle is a chicken sitting on a giant egg, which I'm not sure belongs to the chicken.
This was created in Procreate with an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, using the Procreate Pencil brush for sketching, the Syrup brush for linework, the Hartz brush for background texture, and the Airbrush for blending.
If you'd like to see how I drew this one, you can watch the time-lapse below:
Welp, I think I'm gonna do a drawing challenge for February - which I've dubbed Februdoodle!
My first illustration is a cone trying its best to keep things orderly. I drew this one because my son is currently obsessed with cones, and I knew he'd get a kick out of it.
Created in Procreate with an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, using the Procreate Pencil brush for sketching, the Syrup brush for linework, and the Hartz brush for background texture.
If you'd like to see how I drew this one, you can watch the time-lapse below:
I've been continuing to dig through my old Blender projects lately, and like the Piranha Plant I did a month ago, this Blaster Master tank looked primed for a re-work.
So I spent some time yesterday adding new details, re-working materials, and fixing some things that looked very unfinished in the original work. This is the end result!
The scene uses a mix of images and procedural textures, and I had a great time roughing things up. You can see it from all angles over at Sketchfab.
This is part 2 of my favorite games of 2022. This one is all about games to chill out to - and I played a lot of those, because I like to have something relaxing to do at the end of the day. You can read part 1 here.
I started playing Opus: Echo of Starsong in 2022, but didn't complete the story until 2023. But I enjoyed my time with it enough that I felt like it deserved to be on my 2022 list.
OEoS is a game where you explore an embattled star system, in an attempt to restore the honor of the protagonist and make some new friends along the way. The graphics are sort of a low-poly evolution of older games like Another World, in service to the story, which is deep with a lot of interesting lore.
The user reviews that I read for it compared it to Mass Effect, but that's not quite right; there's no combat, and only a handful of places where things can go so wrong that you have to backtrack a bit - but the game does a good job of keeping the story moving along without too many bumps. Although it was developed by a smaller team, a lot of care went into this game, so I'd recommend it if you need something to wind down with at the end of the day (and you don't mind a little bit of reading, since the voicework is Japanese-only).
There's been a mini-renaissance of FMV games in the last few years, and I've been low-key enjoying it. Immortality continues that trend.
In this game, you sort through the "lost" footage of four different movies which all star Marissa Marcel, an actor who mysteriously disappeared. Your goal is to figure out what happened to her, along with a handful of other recurring characters. I won't spoil the game, but as you do so, you uncover the truth in a very interesting way that, I felt, really pushes the boundaries of the FMV genre.
When As Dusk Falls was showcased at one of the Xbox events leading up to its release, I didn't give it much thought. The still images that make up the majority of the game were great to look at, but nothing else really grabbed my attention. When it released on Game Pass, I tried it in earnest, and was immediately hooked.
It's very much like playing through a Life is Strange game, just with a different graphic style. The voicework is excellent, and before long you forget that you're just looking at (basically) comic-strip panels. The story is also surprisingly dynamic, and when you finish a chapter, the game shows you a tree of all the branching choices you could make along with what outcome(s) they lead to.
It's all really well done, and the story drew me back in all the way to the end.
A Short Hike was released in 2019, came to Xbox in 2021, and I didn't play it until 2022!
The premise of the game is simple: you play as Claire, an anthropomorphic bird, who has set out to hike up Hawk Peak, a small local mountain surrounded by hiking trails. Along the way, you encounter a number of animals that you can talk to and help, and you can collect items and use simple tools.
A Short Hike is probably the most Nintendo game that wasn't made by Nintendo. It's cheerful, funny, and charming. The cartoony graphics are bright and colorful and are easy to read - the characters wouldn't feel out of place in Animal Crossing. The music is excellent and contains accordion riffs a la Mario. And the whole thing is just plain fun.
Citizen Sleeper was another Game Pass game that I tried after reading positive reviews - and spent a week or so playing through at night, exploring all parts of the adventure.
The gameplay all takes place in a view over the Eye, a space station on the edge of the galaxy that you have traveled to as a "Sleeper", a digital copy of your real brain housed in a deteriorating synthetic body. Your goal is to figure out how to keep your body alive, and eventually escape, as you explore the station and meet its inhabitants.
Like a good sci-fi book, the lore of Citizen Sleeper is revealed slowly as you play, and it all gels together nicely with the low-poly graphics and great soundtrack. Decisions you make have long-term consequences, and a few play-throughs will result in wildly different endings.
This game was probably made for a younger person than me, but I still enjoyed my time with it, and like the other games on part 2 of my list, it was a relaxing, stress-free experience.
In Alba: A Wildlife Adventure, you play as Alba, a young girl who has come to a small island to visit her grandparents for a week. While there, Alba discovers that a developer has made a clandestine deal with the mayor to tear down the local nature preserve and build a luxury hotel/resort. She decides to spend her vacation helping to restore the island by cleaning up garbage, making repairs, and cataloging the wildlife.
This is another low-poly game, but it's still great to look at. The island is colorful and full of creatures to photograph, and even though getting around is a little slow, I always enjoyed watching Alba change to a skip as she ran. There are sequences where you have to answer yes or no to a question, and you can waggle the joystick to move Alba's head to answer (frantically, if you want) - my son thought that was hilarious.
I really like the idea of a game like A:AWA to help teach people about nature conservation and to give them a safe place to explore the concept. This is another one of those games that makes pleasantness a core part of the experience, and I am here for it.
That's all I have for part 2 of my favorite games of 2022. The list is getting smaller, but I still have more favorites, so I guess I'll be back for part 3 soon. Thanks for reading!
Since you’re here at my website you probably already know this: I play lots of games. As with previous years, I spent my time playing a mix of games, old and new. This is part one of my favorite games that I played in 2022!
Tinykin is a game where you play as a tiny human who controls even tinier creatures (the titular “Tinykin”), each with their own unique ability. The more you collect, the greater those abilities become. As you play, you explore giant-sized rooms of an abandoned house, and uncover the mystery of the home’s owner – a figure revered by the local insects as a god. It sounds insane, but it’s good fun.
The art and music are really neat, and I loved that the little noises the Tinykin made synced up with the music in each level. The game controls well, and though it’s not as challenging as older 3D platform greats like Banko-Kazooie (there’s no combat in Tinykin), it scratches the same collect-a-thon itch.
I squeaked this one in late in December, after it’d been on my list for a while – and I’m so glad I finally got around to playing it. It was a really enjoyable time.
I started A Memoir Blue in April, and didn’t finish it until December. Not because it’s a long game, or that it wasn’t good; I just forgot to finish it as work and other things took my attention. When I finally got back to it, I discovered that I had left just one scene away from finishing the story!
I played it through once more to complete all the achievements, and ended up really appreciating the story, which is about the loss of connection between a mother and daughter. The game is mostly a visual novel, but each chapter has a puzzle or two that aren’t super challenging, but still fun to complete.
The story is told in a cool way, with cartoon versions of the past mother and child appearing occasionally, and the art and music are captivating. It’s just the kind of emotional experience I’ve come to expect from publisher Annapurna Interactive.
Maybe a controversial take, but I’ve actually been enjoying Overwatch 2. Even in its questionable launch state, the changes to the game made it feel fresh again.
The additions of the battle pass and store are a bit of a downer, because Overwatch's original rewards system was so generous. Online games have changed a lot since the first game though, and it's easy enough to just ignore that stuff.
I just wish I were better at the game.
The Secret of Monkey Island was one of the first computer games I ever played, and it holds a special place in my heart. I've played every game in the series and loved most of them - so I was super excited when Return to Monkey Island was revealed.
The game's art style, though good in its own right, is polarizing of course. It took a second for me to get used to it, and I sort of longed for the hand-drawn look of The Curse of Monkey Island. But having all the characters voiced by the actors who have had their roles since Curse makes it easy to look past if you don't like it.
The game's puzzles were intuitive and fun to solve, and I thought the overall length was just right. The theme of the game, explained by the game's designers at the end, really hit home as well.
Two Point Hospital looked like it was going to be a cheap budget title with no depth, but it was nothing but fun. It took a rather serious proposition - managing a series of hospitals - into something that you wanted to do.
So when two Point Campus rolled onto Game Pass, I knew I was going to spend some time with it. And it's just as fun, silly, and entertaining as Hospital - without all the illness/death!
And that's all for part one. I've got a long list ahead of me, so I'll have part two - and probably three or four - written up soon. Thanks for reading!
On a whim, I was reading about the Beanie Babies craze (and subsequent bust) of the 90's - and this quote from the Wikipedia entry struck me:
Following are key factors that contributed to the collectible nature of Beanie Babies:
- Unique creative elements
- Supply/demand
- Availability
- New releases / retirements
Basic stuff, for sure. But it's kind of incredible that they haven't yet tried selling Beanie Baby NFT's, for ultimate irony.
6 years ago, I posted a render of a piranha plant I modeled and textured to practice Blender. It isn't a bad render, but the procedural materials look a little rough and I wanted to revisit it and see how I could improve it.
This is the result - an updated render with a blend of procedural and texture-based materials and employing all the stuff I've learned since creating the original.
There's probably a little more that I could do to clean it up, but overall, I'm pretty happy with how this one turned out. I might have to revisit some of my other older projects soon to see what I can do!
If you're interested in inspecting this one from other angles, you can see it on Sketchfab.
After a very rough start, and now over 150 hours of play, I’ve finally finished Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. The base game, anyway. I have some thoughts about it of course – why would I be writing this otherwise? – but mostly, I just feel sort of numb.
I picked up Valhalla along with Watchdogs Legion when they first launched on Xbox Series X, because I was anxious to see what the console was capable of. At the time, I hadn’t yet finished Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, but I started Valhalla anyway just to see how things looked. The opening of the game was impressive, but shortly into the introduction I encountered a tutorial boss that was inexplicably difficult for me to get past, so I shelved the game and focused on Odyssey and Watchdogs.
I completed both games, but they took a long time to finish, and Odyssey really burned me out on Assassin’s Creed games for a while. I’ve always been a fan of the series and I didn’t exactly hate all the content, but getting through the DLC was a slog and I needed a break. I didn’t pick up Valhalla again until mid-2022.
The Viking setting is interesting for Assassin’s Creed, and makes for a lot of cool set pieces and scenarios that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. It doesn’t really fit with the stealth-ish style of previous games, but they have been moving away from that for a long time now, so it’s easy to look past it once things take off.
Playing as Eivor, a Viking raider, lends you combat prowess that makes even the toughest fights pretty easy. And fighting is fun, but being a powerful warrior makes the assassin/stealth aspect of the game way less important than it should be – there is virtually no scenario in which being stealthy is truly rewarded. It’s nice that when you’re discovered, the resulting chaos doesn’t mean you have to completely start over, but creeping around enemy territories making bad guys disappear without a fuss oftentimes felt like it simply wasn’t worth the extra time it would take. Which is sort of a problem for a game about assassinating people, in my opinion.
Gone are most of the crafting mechanics of the previous game(s), and good riddance. In their place is a leveling system for gear, which requires you to collect resources as you play and explore. There is also an extensive skill tree that you fill out as you earn experience/gain levels, but if you play through to the end, you’ll eventually collect every skill anyway, so it’s effectively the same skill progression system as most of the Assassin’s Creed games have had.
The story of the game is interesting, and I liked the general idea of uniting the various regions of England by forging alliances. The side missions are hit-and-miss and often feel like padding – especially when they bear no connection to the player or the setting.
I appreciate that we can have such a large world with no loading screens but traveling the stretches of England between objectives gets boring pretty fast. Portions of the game’s stories often feel like they’re separated geographically just for the sake of making you play longer (though I suspect this is, in part, to pre-load content in the background). The space the game takes place in could have been a quarter the size and the game would've been better for it.
The game is beautiful, no doubt about that. Weirdly, ray-tracing doesn’t seem to make much of a difference in how the game looks, so after testing it out initially, I played the entire game with it turned off, enjoying the (mostly) smooth 60 fps instead. My television doesn’t support variable frame rate, so I did see some screen tearing now and then. Having played through Immortals Fenyx Rising, I expected this, but it was still quite disappointing, as so many other games seem to be able to run at a stable 60 fps with no issues on the Xbox Series X.
And that leads me to something that I’ve been thinking about a lot while playing Valhalla: these games, the modern Assassin’s Creed collection, could be truly great. They ought to be. They get so close! But they all have this universal level of jankiness that always holds them back.
That’s not to say that a ton of work hasn’t gone into this game to make it a good experience. The cinematic portions of the game – which are a pretty good chunk of the game, when you get down to it – are all done well. The voice work is mostly really good. The music and sound are immersive.
But as I play, I notice little details that stand out more and more. Pieces of Eivor’s armor that look like solid metal bend/distort a little as they move around. Some of the animations used during conversations are used a little too often, or don’t seem particularly suited to what’s being said. The camera work, while good, still occasionally has that “video game” feel to it, rather than a more cinematic feel.
These are small things that add up to a level of jank that is subtle, but is always present. It’s the difference between a game like Assassin’s Creed and Uncharted or God of War. It’s that extra 1% of polish that takes 20% of the time to get right. I don’t blame Ubisoft for not getting there; maybe it’s not worth it for projects this expansive. But I hope that with Assassin’s Creed: Mirage, which they have promised to be a tighter game/experience, they can find the time to get closer to getting it right.
Even though I seem to be regularly burned out by these games, I still enjoy them on the whole. Now I need to recharge… so I can (eventually) get through the Valhalla DLC before the next game! 😅
For my thirty-first - and last! - illustration for Inktober 2022, I drew a sleepy moon!
This was made in Procreate with an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, using the Procreate Pencil brush for sketching, the Syrup brush for lines/shading, and the Tarraleah and Hartz brushes for texture.
If you'd like to see how I drew this one, you can watch the time-lapse below:
Thanks to everyone out there who might've been enjoying my daily work this month. Hope to see you soon with another project!
This is my thirtieth illustration for Inktober 2022 - the "ideal" landscape!
This was made in Procreate with an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, using the Procreate Pencil brush for sketching, the Mercury brush for lines/colors, and the Larapuna and D'Entrecasteaux brushes for shapes and shading.
If you'd like to see how I drew this one, you can watch the time-lapse here: