What Did We Play Yesterday?

Graveyard Keeper has been on my list forever, but I never got around to it until the game was made free to advertise the upcoming sequel. I assumed it was Stardew Valley with Dead People, but it's really only superficially similar in terms of the overall game loop. This game is more crafting-focused, with a surprising amount of detail regarding corpse preparations, embalming, etc. This is a portal fantasy, sort of, and darkness is afoot, as there are witches being burned at the stake and the game allows selling cadaver flesh as meat or making candles out of body fat. There is farming, but it's simplified (you don't have to water crops and they don't wither as far as I can tell) and it's mostly intended to create ingredients for the wide-ranging crafting system.

Early game is a little stressful, as you're constantly running out of energy. New corpses arrive on a regular basis and it can be a struggle to inter them timely between the other chores, and if you don't, the body quality decays, which impacts your cemetery rating. Once you settle into the game, you have to trade carrots to get body deliveries, which helps a lot and lets the player control the pacing, and you can also grow and cook carrots for an easy energy boost so you don't have to constantly forage for berries and mushrooms. It also took me a while to finally generate blue points for upgrades, so I was still in limbo for a while needing to progress but being unable to do so until I unlocked the church and the ability to give sermons, and in turn, study items for blue points.

There is A LOT of walking around, and very often, walking to place, realizing you need certain items to repair a bridge or whatever, and having to walk all the way back. I found myself needing to consult a wiki a lot, because a lot of aspects of the game aren't explained or easily discoverable. There is a lot of crafting, and a lot of ingredient creation or foraging are required. Some areas are deliberately tedious, like the swamp, which is difficult to traverse, and if you get to the end and don't have the equipment to build a bridge you have to walk aaaaall the way back.

That being said, I've been sucked into this game over the past few days. I like upgrading and maintaining the cemetery, and I kinda like how sprawling the main area is. The forest and surrounding areas FEEL big, remote, and unexplored. A significant gameplay strategy is finding ways to make ingredient gathering more convenient, so you can cut logs or stone slabs and carry them back to your house, but you can only carry one log or slab at at time. Hopefully there's some kind of cart later.

The amount of work required for crafting ingredients, considering how much stuff needs to be crafting, can be pretty time-consuming. I've reached a point now where I just carry around a big stack of nails, planks, hinges, etc., and I still manage to find myself in situations where I don't have what I need. The sequel appears to emphasize automation which, at least at this stage in the original game, would help. The only automation I've found so far is the furnace, which I can use to create iron bars from ore.

I'm definitely enjoying this one for what it is, there is always something to do and I really like the cemetery maintenance aspect, but I'm already at the point where the more advanced crafting is getting a bit tedious. I find myself taking notes to keep up with what ingredients are needed for what project and help remember where things are on the map, which just emphasizes the lack of useful in-game information. But I think this will definitely be a one-and-done for me, and not a game I revisit. The game is a bit too stingy in terms of time management, and while it definitely fits the pseudo-medieval vibe, the devs have made very intentional choices to create player inconvenience and those limitations become more annoying as time goes on.

Inspiration struck, and I now have an easter zone situated near my rabbits. As soon as I finished, I realized I hadn't unlocked the bridge yet, so it's gonna be a work in progress.

I think I'm gonna have to uproot all my daisies and move all my rabbits there. So IDK where the hell I'm gonna put the daisies. I could put hydrangeas there as well since they're a rose resource and all the other roses are in the area, but I don't have roooom. So I guess I gotta rework the whole flower garden. When I originally built it, I was trying to avoid terraforming and work with what the RNG gods gave me, but at this point I just gotta make space where I can.

I would be remiss not to mention my recent obsession with Cookie Clicker. Both myself and kiddo are currently playing, and the bonding has been lovely. This is a very good game to play with a stat-obsessed child.

I deleted my game file 400 days ago, started a new one, then forgot about it until last month. But knowledge of past lives has made this playthrough a lot more efficient. I was gonna ascend at x777 but I keep missing it because I get a dragon flight or some other thing, so I'm not sure when I'll do my next ascension but as of this morning I'm at 6662 prestige so it's gonna be a good one.

I am once again trapped in a seasonal event. Easter has a lot of neat loot and frankly I'm not fucking around anymore. I'm gonna hit the megafarm circuit and knock it out in a few days.

I've been exploring megafarms and finding interesting features. In this one, the owner has fenced off part of their farm with farmhands and orchards to keep normies from interfering. With what, I couldn't say, since they're orchards! But it demonstrates different ways you can have a farm that caters to visitors and still have private areas without having to set up a million permission booths.

I finally started work on melon avenue. It contains all the melon there ever has been or ever will be. Nothing but melon.

Decided to play around on some of the extra modes on Spirits Abyss. I'm terrible, but I still enjoyed it!

In a desperate bid not to play Farm Together 2, I fired up Emulation Station because if you don't check in regularly it logs you out of Retroachivements. I have no idea why I had Adventure Island for Gameboy in my stash but I accidentally selected it and here we are.

It's an extremely kind platformer that is honestly kinda boring. At times, I had no idea what was happening, but be assured if you simply keep moving you'll find your way to the end. I never did figure out how the egg leveling up thing works or what it does, and that's ok. Adventure Island is doing its best.

I'm experimenting with terrain patterns in Farm Together 2. Made an actual checkerboard and filled it with bushes. They're supposed to be in sort-of seasonal order, with spring-blooming facing my cherries which are also spring-blooming, and summer facing the summer tropical section. It's a little tricky because for example only black mulberries bloom in spring, but winter had I think 4/6 varieties that bloom. It's a work in progress. I like it so far.

I was thinking about how I've glommed onto this game lately. I don't consider myself stressed per se, the State of Living has changed for most of us and I've adapted to that, but I think a big part of what draws me into this game right now is order. I can construct extremely orderly, logical environments that still have a lot of creative elements and--design wise--surprises. Looking over my color-coded lettuce resource crops gives me a sense of satisfaction and calm. And a lot of the changes I'm making right now are actually making my farm MORE orderly and a little less chaotic. I guess I'm just working out some stuff here.

So on the one hand, I'm like... I'm nearing 200 hours in this silly farm game and I'm neglecting some of my creative projects, should I be concerned about that? And on the other hand, I'm like you know what, I'm blowing off a lot of steam playing a creative game that has $5 DLC packs and I have not hit the bottle once this is OBJECTIVELY FINE, THANK YOU.

Relocated most of the tropical trees to their new hopefully forever home, and ended up building pineapple palace. Pleased with that!

I got the idea to organize my berry bushes in a pattern so the fruiting times go from season to season. It's kind of dumb but whatever. I had to map it out on paper first.

I realized I misjudged tickets because I didn't actually understand how they work. When they first debuted, I glanced at the resources offered, was unimpressed, and never bothered redeeming any tickets and didn't worry too much about collecting them. Well, recently I decided to spend a few and that's when I realized 1) the resources improve considerably after you level up the stall and 2) the resources rotate, so when you buy, a new set of offers is loaded up. So if you wanted to upgrade a stall and you were short a resource, you could pop over to the ticket booth and try to trade for what you need. So. The more you know. 🫱🌈 🫲

If you heard delighted shrieking at any point yesterday that was me. They released decorative trees, so I got my beloved willow trees back, and promptly put them EVERYWHERE. Then I unlocked dragonfruit trees. It was truly a bounty.

I psychologically and emotionally prepared myself to move my banana and mango farms, and did so yesterday. Not only was it crazy cluttered over there, but I figured out having my coconut trees, avocado trees, and prickly pears all in that general area worked better. I need to build a different area for the other tropical fruit.

I recently discovered I like building certain fences with gates only so I can pop in and out at any point without triggering the climb animation. It is VERY fun to run in circles around these. Whee!