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VOOZH | about |
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VOOZH | about |
Coffee Talk started out as a slice-of-life visual novel casting you as a night-shift barista serving Seattle’s uniquely magical residents, from elves to vampires to succubi, hearing out and advising their whims and woes over steaming cups. Its strength was not just in the individual lines of dialogue spouting from these monsters (affectionate), but also in how those were placed within the context of Magical Seattle: a thread of societal distaste towards interspecies relationships, for example, is held taut through several characters’ arcs, not just in the two characters whose parents explicitly disapprove of them for it. Opinions and arguments towards the ills facing this world are treated with the weight they deserve, acknowledging the fluidity of both public opinion and the problems themselves.
Sundays are for hopping over stepping stones across a river. There's a stone missing in the middle. Immediately, a quest decision prompt flashes up before my eyes, offering three choices: turn back in humiliation; attempt the leap and risk perishing in the writhing waters, leaving this week's Sunday Papers unfinished; or pile up smaller stones into a rudimentary foothold – an alteration of the river's flow that will surely lead to calamity miles downstream in the Humber Estuary. Urgency is added by the arrival of swarms of flies.
I chickened out and turned back in the end, but not before taking a lovely photo. Anyway, here are some things to read.
That RAM crisis, huh? Surely it'll end sometime soon. Undoubtedly. We'll all be able to afford technology again, games consoles and computers won't be only for the 1%, and we can laugh about this silly point in history. Sorry, I've just had a note handed to me and, oh, oh no, Lenovo are saying they think that these new astronomically high prices will be the new normal as we enter 2030. Excuse me while I scream into the void for a moment.
Earlier this week, French video game union STJV called for a national industry strike, starting with a picket line held at Detroit: Become Human developer Quantic Dream's physical studio. The union claimed that 115 jobs were at risk of layoffs as part of an "internal reorganisation." Now, based on a report that speaks with some devs that work at Quantic Dream, it sounds like the studio's upcoming Star Wars Eclipse is at risk of cancellation.
Hmm. On the one hand, a Turbulent Thursday. On the other, a Big Mum. We’ve all had Thursdays we could describe as turbulent, so the owner of the 2014 Nissan Fairlady Z who drives with the Neo Limited crew scores a point for relatability. That said, the large mother of the Family Business gang, who as fate would have it also drives a Fairlady Z, scores points for being straightforwardly funky. Both racers’ names are hilarious to me, but in the list of top ten opponent monikers from Tokyo Xtreme Racer, there simply isn’t room for both of them.
I would like to say this missive is brought to you from a dark, ventilated room where I lay upon a bed of ice packs. However, if all goes according to masochistic plan, I will already have been cycling for a few hours when this goes live. I need to get out of the house and onto the road before the sun's too high in the sky and the tarmac becomes an oven baking me from below.
The payoff at the other end? The first BBQ of the summer and, I sincerely hope, a tall glass of chilled water.
Stardew Valley creator Eric 'ConcernedApe' Barone has released his latest reminder that yes, he's still working on Haunted Chocolatier, the action-RPG and life sim in which you run a sweetshop in a realm of ghosts. This particular blogpost is notable for a mildly agonised aside about the game's recipe book interface, which needs to be "seamless, clear, intuitive, satisfying, aesthetic", in a word, perfect.
