Indoor Fiction

A new, unhurried playthrough of The Witcher 3’s opening hours turned out to be as absorbing as ever; the new camera seems to make everything more intimate and grounded, and Kaer Morhen’s music moved me in ways I didn’t expect.

Ten years ago, I feverishly played it first on my dad’s PC, during a long stay at his house; about a year later, I got to play it again on Vic’s PS4, as I took refuge in his apartment in the days leading up to Blood and Wine. Back then, I wouldn’t have dared to touch Death March, so I'm now discovering how well it suits the experience.

As I write this, a sweet mix of anticipation lingers. It sits between the ever-closer Crimson Desert exploration… and this third run through a beloved trail that leads to Novigrad, Kaer Trolde, and Beauclair.

My indecisiveness over where to set my own fiction began at sixteen years old, with a terribly naïve first attempt at writing a series of nine fantasy novels. It has followed me ever since, in a never-ending parade of half-baked secondary worlds, most of them pseudo-medieval, but sometimes drifting toward Renaissance or Victorian aesthetics. And even though my heart was never drawn to making science fiction, I did once try my hand at a fantasy with some “urban modernity” in it.

I had totally forgotten about that modern-fantasy world. A collection of good names for public squares, train stations, and cafés remained buried in the ghostly outskirts of my head… until the tail end of last year, when I started to write and program a small slice-of-life game in clear need of a city.

Since then, the streets of Buresca have been spreading out, growing slowly into something more convincing than any of its feudal city-state predecessors. As the need for neighboring towns and cities came up (Onieva, Velamar, and others), I even found myself going into a bit of map-making. Of sorts.

Not that a small slice-of-life game would need a map… but still.

I went from rainy Revachol to rainy Vizima, half-hoping for some of Kim’s and Geralt’s work ethic to rub off on my often-scattered head. I’m going to need that kind of resolve this year... for Buresca to become something more than an idea.

Few better ways to end the year than by waking up in the Whirling-in-Rags; I'm only a bit ashamed that it took me this long to be back.

I thought An English Haunting was surely about to end when the scene in this image happened, and the whole story segment that followed became one of my favorite things in a video game recently. And it is a beautifully written game throughout, set in a period of British history I was obsessed with as a teenager. I love the use of dialogue, and I’m glad to have found a similar pace and humor in the writing of Billy Masters Was Right and Urban Witch Story, two of José María Meléndez’s earlier adventures. As for the latter, I have to admit that it spooked me as much as An English Haunting did…

Really looking forward to The Dark Rites of Arkham now, and anything from Postmodern Adventures.

There it was, still: my first (and only) bit of writing in a video game!

I couldn’t back the Kickstarter back then, so I remember being over the moon when another chance to contribute came up. I wrote my two pages for the short stories section in the library and… well, let’s just say 2016 me desperately needed Val’s proofreading.

As I keep building what I hope will become my first game, the fact that Ron Gilbert is dev-blogging again on Grumpy Gamer feels like a great source of encouragement. Even the comments section is back, which makes me super nostalgic for Thimbleweed Park’s blog and podcast from 2015–2018.

A second playthrough is due, on this Halloween night. I’ll report back once I find a certain book-a-reno in the mansion’s library…

My never-ending search for a certain pixelated font led me to finally play If On a Winter’s Night, Four Travelers. That vanishing story is going to live in my head for a long while, I'm sure.

It’s been almost eighteen months since I got RPG Maker MZ and Aseprite as a birthday gift to myself. That's crazy.

Since then, I’ve been on-and-off experimenting with an idea for a small narrative game, learning a lot about spriting, scripting, and suffering. For gameplay and UI, I think I got very close to everything I wanted with the engine’s event system and some JavaScript plugins. On the other hand, the asset-making part of the work has got me going in circles of indecision for days and days. It started with just a character generator and some tilesets I bought, but my attempts at expanding and adapting them to my story… well, at least they got me spriting again. Not my strongest suit.

After months of not touching the project at all… a few days ago I got an idea. I should write more about it in the future, but for now it means officially shelving that RPG Maker prototype, and taking everything it taught me to a place I’m much more familiar with…

I’m feeling hopeful.

This year I'm refusing to let go: Luka stays.

I can't believe Hades II is here in my hands now; the first few hours already gone in a familiar whirlwind of greatness.

Death to Chronos.

In spite of all the changes and stress that this second half of the year has brought, I'm happy to have found (out the blue) a great source of joy in finally being able to play The Beatles: Rock Band whenever I want; madly hammering the keys of an old Magic Keyboard like in the old days of Frets on Fire.

I love this game so much. The studio chatter on loading screens alone can probably cheer up the hardest days and nights.

Thank you, Dolphin people!

If Wishfield was irresistible before, my foolish brain had no chance of ignoring Persona 5: The Phantom X now.

I want to believe my childhood box of floppy disks is somewhere out there, waiting for someone who will discover inside the adventure games I pirated in my early days with a computer: the point-and-clicks I managed to understand and love back then, like Loom and The Secret of Monkey Island, and the enigmatic text parser ones, like Police Quest or The Colonel’s Bequest, that went completely over my young non-English-speaking head.

This week, luckily, I got to spend the evenings after work playing The Crimson Diamond by Julia Minamata, and now that whole mystery is what I would consider my first real experience with a text parser game. Nancy Maple rules from the start, and the ending I got left me feeling very inspired, with a desire to go back and finally play through those Laura Bow adventures I missed as a kid. Especially The Colonel’s Bequest, which I also remember finding a bit scary… but surely it’s going to be fine now!

I was young and in love with SCUMM games when I discovered Tómate un Descanso, a graphic adventure by Ciro Durán. To my surprise (and probably because we've been reminiscing a lot about our old blogging days lately), Vic stumbled upon a fairly recent retrospective of the game, including a very kind nod to the blog where I reviewed it back in 2008.

Tómate un Descanso was the first game made in my home country that I ever played. For that, and for Ciro's cool art and point-and-click humor, I tried launching it again on my PC… and it worked!

A win for game preservation and avoiding work.

I couldn’t jump straight into the Iki Island expansion; the whole of Ghost of Tsushima is worth revisiting again and again.

The broom-wielding kid in me, who could spend hours pretending to be Himura Kenshin, El Zorro, or a vagrant Jedi Knight on some stormy planet, couldn’t be more pleased with Jin Sakai's gameplay.

For now I’m just missing that flute song to summon rain at will.

Not the best season… but still, it was a year with Modrić. For as long as he played for us, that was more than enough for me.

I've been dreading this day for a while, but now the goodbye is real, and I'm just… incredibly sad; a bit existential, even. I'm sure Saturday is going to be special for him, Lucas Vázquez, and Ancelotti, but if somehow the match enters a time vortex and loops forever and ever… well, I wouldn't complain.

I missed crossing rivers in Death Stranding.

Clair Obscur is going to be something special. You can feel it right away, and Val's already humming the themes.

I was looking for a fan translation of Morrowind on a Spanish forum back in 2005 when I first encountered the early screenshots of The Elder Scrolls IV… and I couldn't believe my eyes. Even more than Morrowind itself, and in a way that Skyrim never matched for me later, Oblivion has an importance in my life that’s hard to overstate.

Today's reveal had my eyes widening again.

Looking back on three generations of elfroot gathered over the past few months, I wonder if someday I’ll make it back to Orzammar.

Unsurprisingly, this was the beginning of a new-yet-familiar obsession with the Pokémon HOME Pokédex.

The exploration in Infinity Nikki is the closest any of these never-ending games has come to stealing my heart. If only we could wish all the FOMO-inducing stuff out of existence…

Co-op with Val has come a long way, I'd say. From sliding down snowy mountains as a wolf cub and deer in Blanc, to endure-and-surviving the waves of buffed-up spiders, goblins, ghosts, and skeletons in the dungeons of Children of Morta.

We're tough as nails now.

I really wish they’d called it Dragon Age: Exodus. Both for consistency, and as a foreigner.

Between the Astro Bot cameos and Ueda's new teaser giving me the shivers… the new year found me dusting off a PS3 and revisiting the castle in the mist, once again.

After a month-long vacation in the US… we're finally back home! Val put up our Christmas tree in record time, and this Cloud amiibo she got for me on the trip is the perfect symbol for this year, apparently coming to an end soon.

Our new recruits from New York!

What can I say?World in a Memory hits like a truck, and the beautiful XP-era mapping, once again… does too ✧˚ ༘ ⋆｡˚.

This year I plan to extend Modric's contract for as long as I can in Career Mode, and that would be enough.

It’s funny, but in my head there’s this very nostalgic association between FIFA 2005 and RPG Maker XP that’s kind of being mirrored today with FC 25 and RPG Maker MZ. And if I could speak to that adolescent self of mine, suffering through the post-Makélélé era in front of the TV, I would definitely tease Lisboa 2014… and I would tell him not to give up on spriting just yet.

Long before the Underground, the Depths, and the Underdark… I first had to stumble around in the Deep Roads. Revisiting Dragon Age: Origins has brought back everything: the multiple days of struggle in caves and tunnels, the non-stop combat encounters, and how my 2009 computer was barely holding together during the whole dwarven plot.

But it also reminded me of the lore, and why Orzammar stayed on my mind for so long. This time, with Shale!

P.S. I need to play a dwarf noble someday.

There’s so much joy in Astro Bot. There’s a McDohl-bot, too…

The whole thing felt like Christmas, a birthday present, and some sort of climax to many years of playing.

I briefly went back to the great Astro’s Playroom today, and the original PSP was the last thing I found, which felt right.

Nothing left now, but a small wait…

Loboto’s Labyrinth hits a little different when recovering from wisdom teeth extraction; and from that point on… Psychonauts 2 still touches my heart like no other 3D platformer can.

I get super excited every time there’s rain in a game. Like a few days ago, with a brief storm during the Battle of Ostagar in Dragon Age: Origins, or a few hours ago, with this New Donk City tempest. Incidentally, it's also raining outside today, and it seems that we’re going to get an all-around cloudy week here.

Perfect for coffee, and dreaming up New York plans…

Good ol’ Dragon Age: Origins.

Looking at this map after Lothering, I wonder… why on earth did I go to Orzammar first on my first playthrough, fourteen years ago?

I’ve never experienced anything quite like the jump from a first-time playthrough of Final Fantasy VII into the cinematic marvel that is Final Fantasy VII Remake. The Midgar segment stole my heart.

I was waiting for Shadow of the Erdtree to unlock last night when I decided to give eFootball another chance. It’s still upsetting to see Konami’s gameplay stuck in a pack-opening nightmare, but it seems there are now ways to actually renew players’ contracts…

It was pretty cool to assemble this team back together.

Plus, an honorable member.

Alright, alright… Let’s see what this is all about.

Elden Ring.

Two years after barely finishing the main quest with a longsword, a makeshift excuse of a build, and the mimic… here I am, standing in front of a combat trial to decide whether I should get Shadow of the Erdtree or not. To help conjure up whatever muscle memory remains, I should probably start refreshing my memory with this video of my sister fighting all the bosses with a poleblade.

My Saturday plans in Kamurocho got destroyed.

Y nada más, y nada más… ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬

I was so worried about Modric that I didn’t even consider the possibility of this being Kroos’ last season.

Time is so, so cruel. Dammit.

It feels like yesterday that I was crying like a baby in front of a CRT after Zizou’s farewell game… but that was 2006, and in the 18 years that have passed since then, I haven’t seen another Real Madrid legend retire at the club. For some reason or another, everyone always leaves and ends up saying goodbye elsewhere.

Well, not everyone! And it might sound silly, but today FC 24 got way more important to me; in the same way that PES 6 is.

Gracias, Toni.

It occurred to me that this year could be last time that the old Bernabéu shows up in a new video game… so I went to sleep last night unhingedly imagining some sort of tribute to the Real Madrid players I loved playing with in my career saves, ever since becoming addicted to manager modes with PES 4 and FIFA 2004.

A list with this bunch, more or less:

• Arjen Robben
• Asier Illarramendi
• Brahim Díaz
• Casemiro ★
• Cicinho
• Cristiano Ronaldo ★
• Dani Carvajal ★
• David Beckham
• Eduardo Camavinga
• Eden Hazard
• Esteban Granero
• Federico Valverde
• Ferland Mendy
• Fernando Gago
• Gareth Bale ★
• Gonzalo Higuaín
• Guti
• Isco ★
• José Antonio Reyes
• Jude Bellingham
• Kaká ★
• Karim Benzema ★
• Klaas-Jan Huntelaar
• Lassana Diarra
• Luka Modrić ★
• Luís Figo
• Mahamadou Diarra
• Marcelo ★
• Marco Asensio
• Mesut Özil
• Michael Essien
• Rafael van der Vaart
• Raphaël Varane ★
• Raúl ★
• Ricardo Carvalho
• Roberto Carlos ★
• Ronaldo ★
• Rubén de la Red
• Ruud van Nistelrooy
• Santiago Solari
• Sergio Ramos ★
• Toni Kroos ★
• Vinícius Júnior
• Wesley Sneijder
• Xabi Alonso
• Zinedine Zidane ★★★

I would love to add Hierro ★, Makélélé ★ and Redondo ★; alas, I only have them during my sleepless Championship Manager days.

All this to say that I’m very nervous about today.

. . .

P.S. ¡VAMOS!

The Blackwell Epiphany is ten years old today…

Oddly, the five Blackwell games have been in my head a lot for the past few years days, as I think over the idea of a game I would like to make. I’ve been thinking of maybe replaying them all for a third time, not only because time with Rosa and Joey is always an awesome idea, but because this time I’ll be particularly interested in Dave Gilbert's developer commentaries.

The backer code for Eiyuden Chronicle arrived last night. Not even an hour in, the music in the first town was so pretty it made me tear up a little; in part thinking of Murayama, but also remembering how happy and excited the Kickstarter announcement made me in the middle of a now-distant 2020.

They did it.

The weekend was cold, rainy, and awesome. It was cool to see Val participate in a localization jam for the first time ever, working with an adventure game called Not Enough Time.

Jude’s celebration is in the game!

We may not have seen it in real life for a while, but I’m sure another streak will come soon. Bellinghamania will resume…

…hopefully on Wednesday?

Memories keep unlocking.

This time it was something about those balloon reactions above the characters’ heads in Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising. They reminded me of my teenage tinkering with RPG Maker 2003, and of being wide-eyed and dreaming big when I found a free (and in Spanish) version of RPG Maker XP. I remembered making ugly sprites in a program called GraphicsGale, and falling in love with Suikoden II’s sprite sheets long before playing the game itself.

I think I’ll give RPG Maker MZ a closer look.

Watching the first Persona 3 movie somehow unlocked memories of the beautifully animated Diablo 2 adaptation I used to dream about as a kid, starring a moody paladin as the hero.

I kinda wish they’d kept that dim lighting in Reload's dorm…

What on earth…

Yoshitaka Murayama has passed away.

I can’t believe it’s been three years since that super funny video pitch for the Eiyuden Chronicle campaign; three years of reading his Development Report emails. For this to happen so close to the game’s release feels cruel, and unfair.

Rest in peace, Murayama-sensei.

The first date on Persona 3 Reload’s calendar turned out to be my birthday! I missed the releases of Persona 3, Persona 3 FES and Persona 3 Portable, so this one truly feels like a gift to unwrap.

Having completed our search for a new apartment in the last days of a packed January, we decided to kick off February with a celebratory weekend getaway to the mountains.

Huge weight off our shoulders.

It should not be surprising that Coffee Talk ended up being Val's first game purchase ever, nor that its soundtrack is on loop now.

It took me 23 years to get past its once-scary first scene, but now I get why the original Max Payne was such a favorite of Vic during our childhood; why he got so into noir stories afterward, and the reason his first email was victorinoxpayne.

This Christmas gift from Val is the perfect totem to crown Baldur’s Gate 3 as my favourite game of the year.

This promo image for an amusement park in Japan feels like a teaser for my life in February. Fingers crossed.

Bellinghamania is fully underway, and not since Zizou coming in 2016 have I been this excited about Madrid's future. I needed something from video games to carry me on this wave, but I was quickly reminded of a landscape that couldn’t be more horrifying:

1. PES is dead.
2. eFootball plays well, but the online mode it promotes is awful. Master League is still missing in action.
3. Football Manager is too dangerous of a drug. I should stay away.
4. FIFA FC 24 is… uh… well… not super terrible, I guess. At least when combined with this Christmas miracle.

. . .

P.S. We got our first Christmas tree today.

Video games spend enough time in my head for the creation of this blog to feel inevitable. Or maybe it has to do with the year ending?

In any case, here it is! I’m not entirely sure what the point of making these entries will be, but for now, I hope that someday it will be fun to look back at this post and remember… how great my first playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3 felt.