My March in Media
Save for the handful of times I have met with friends, March consisted of me staying home, reading, trying to write, and playing games both old and new. To save ourselves from half-baked slop, I won’t be going over what I’ve read — this month had consisted of me picking up a new book, just to start another before I even get halfway through. Instead, this light-hearted blog post will be a debrief of what I really decided to commit to this March.
Moves of the Diamond Hand
The first game by Cosmo D I had played, back in 2021, was Off-Peak. It was off kilter and weird but not obnoxiously so, funky with a soundtrack to match, had pretty humourous dialogue, and most of all — it kept me intrigued with the world that was built. I distinctly remember clicking onto his Steam page after I was done with the game, and to my absolute delight, I came across Tales from Off-Peak City Vol1. While I could go into a separate tangent about that game, I’d rather dedicate an entire blog to it. So to keep things short, was only this February that I properly sat down and played it — after a long four years, my brand new laptop could finally run it lag-free — which led me once more into another obsessive phase into the world this developer had created. Soon after, I downloaded and played the gem of a demo: Moves of the Diamond Hand.
I started my March with this new game and finished it within a day. It stays true to the rest of the games set in this universe, with its wacky characters and musical influences. but in comparison to some of his other games, this one was better fleshed out in terms of its mechanics. There are stealth segments and consequences to your actions, to name a few. However at its core, gameplay consisted of dice rolls and a skill sheet, so the game played out much like a tabletop RPG. That bit deeply scratched my itch — the last time my friends ran any sort of campaign was September of last year. Anyway, this demo made enough of a mark on me to make a playlist inspired by it, albeit loosely. The songs in it aren’t too reminiscent of Move of the Diamond Hands’ soundtrack, but they are close to what I felt while playing the game. Cosmo D has yet to miss, or at least it is that way in my books. It is safe to say that I am getting my hands on the full game once it releases.
The Binding of Isaac
Goddammit I love this game. A stupid amount. If I were to write a blog like this every month, Isaac will be in it. I found myself obsessed with the game once more, with the online co-op update. This time, including singleplayer runs, I am a little more bent on fully completing the game — in other words, achieving Dead God. This entails playing characters I usually avoid like the plague, like the Tainted characters of Jacob and Cain. That being said, I haven’t been touching the challenges. They’re much too tedious. And while sometimes lag-filled, the online lobbies are pretty enjoyable — you get to see synergies you may not experience otherwise, and some players have… character to them.
But this month in particular saw the arrival of The Binding of Isaac: Four Souls , to my doorsteps. Fun game! Its gameplay is reminiscent of Magic the Gathering, and Yu-Gi-Oh!, or so I’ve heard. I haven’t played either — and admittedly, I have barely played Four Souls. It looks like my March will end without the completion of a whole game with a group bigger than my little brother than I. Dammit. We’ll get there soon Oysterhead.
‘?’, A Short Story
It’s a working title. Or more accurately, a placeholder of a name in Google Docs. For identification sakes.
Do not get me wrong. I have not been stuck on a singular short story for an ENTIRE month. But do not get things twisted. Getting stuck on a story is VERY plausible for the likes of me. Question Mark is simply one that seems the most promising, in terms of completion. Late February, seeping into early March, I was working on another surrounding the Zhong Shan building. It was not an accurate representation of the actual building, rather the way I had felt when I initially checked out the place. I was barely a page in when I moved onto writing the next story. I may revisit it, I may not. But the next one I begun to work on was not the elusive question mark. No this one did not even make it past my notes app — I had made the mistake, once again, of not leaving my future self enough context to my past thoughts.
I hold myself accountable to finishing Question Mark by cementing the notion via this blog. If you hear no word about the story, whatever it may be called then, feel free to throw tomatoes at me. The short story — maybe I shouldn’t definitively say that it will be short — has clear influences from Gibson’s seminal works and Sting Entertainment’s Baroque. How the latter comes into play, is simply because in early April of 2024, I had watched a video on the Sega Saturn version of the game. I have never loved towers more since, and until I get over this obsession, some sort of edifice will be centric to my plots. Question Mark is no exception to this— and that is all I can say, as these few qualities are ones I am certain will remain unchanged by the time the final draft is posted onto my blog.
