first week of january
I finally played Disco Elysium last weekend, Epic games was giving the Final Cut away as a promotion over the holiday so I claimed it. Funny, that happened last year with a certain Hotwheels game, and the year before with Death Stranding.
I played the game so much on Friday that by the time I had closed it, I found myself in another country. Trump had invaded Venezuela and kidnapped the president and his wife. On Saturday I finished the game because it was consuming all of my time, and then went to a Lan party at midnight to play Command and Conquer Red Alert until 3 in the morning.
Something incredible happened. I got back from lunch to a package from game developer Daniel, who I met at the GDC and is to my knowledge the only person on earth to finish Crystal Slaves. He had made a physical copy of my last game - Escape The Pit. Complete with a working GB cart, a full manual, and a complete box. It's probably one of the best gifts I've ever gotten just in terms of the amount of work that must have had to go into it. Like, the box needed to be specially die cut in order to fold together correctly, and it included an inner box insert to keep the cartridge in place. I am simply just going to have to return the favor by making ANOTHER gb studio game and creating a boxed version to send back.
It is surreal to play a game I made on a GBA I got in middle school (I only had my GBA, my GB Pocket needs....work). GB Studio is an incredibly expressive game engine, in that it's so limited I can't exactly build any game I want to, so I have to get really creative.
Then the rest of the week happened. ICE in Minniapolis murdered someone while a bunch of cell phones were recording. I felt the same way I did after Sandy Hook happened and Jan 6th - and I feel like it's fucked up I have to watch this happen and then compartmentalize it so I can go back to work. Like just being upset and letting it affect your productivity is gouche and unprofessional. Then more people got shot by ICE in Portland. I kept thinking about the guy who wrote about living in a country as it falls apart, life mainly remains the same except for the random violence which may or may not affect you.
I have been trying CBD Gummies to help me sleep, and while I have to seemingly take a lot in order to smother my limbic system into submission the initial high feels like a cage I have been wearing on my head has been taken off. I don't like taking it on a regular basis but I know several people who do, and rely on CBD to help them sleep nearly every night. There's worse things to get dependant on I guess, but I'm hoping some kind of sleep schedule returns.