Hello, hello! Sorry for the week’s delay here. I wanted to fix some things with the album ratings I’ve done. Despite only releasing this website just a month ago I feel the need to change some things already. Most notably the way I’m gonna handle reviews on albums here. I’m sure it doesn’t matter much to anybody who actually reads these (which I’m sure there aren’t that many of you to begin with), but its been something I’ve been wanting to kick since my previous music reviews on Wall of Sound got mildly popular. The numerical grading system I’ve used to review things for the past uhhh… six-something years? Garbage. I always hated doing it for music I reviewed on WoS and I don’t even know why I reintroduced it doing this website.

So I’m swapping it out for recommendations to different kinds of people. I’ve already retrofitted this system to the three reviews I’ve posted. Not much of a problem but figured it’s worth a mention in case people wonder why they changed. It might seem like a dumbed-down version of my previous system but it’s a lot easier for me to write and tying numbers to art just seems disingenuous. I’m not really sure why I immediately returned to the numerical grading system! My low intelligence rolls came back to haunt me I guess.

Anyways as for other things I’ve been doing lately…

Valentine, NY! Some of my friends reading may know of this project. And they’re tired of hearing about it! It’s one of the on-again-off-again projects I have for a 2D walking sim. This time it’s a ripoff of the plot of the hit television series from 2000, Dark Angel!

I joke about that but the plot is only tangentially related. This game is similarly set in a post-economic collapse United States, but instead of being in Seattle, Valentine takes place in fuck-off nowhere, New York State. I won’t explain a whole lot more about it because it’s probably really boring to read me rant about my game ideas, but here’s some content I’m making for it!

Left: My in-progress retrace of a USGS topographic map.
Right: The base layer of the map, a 2024 onDemand scan of the Constableville, NY area.
You might need to open these images in a new tab to see them in any detail.

You can also see some of the art I’ve made for it already in the gallery. For my own sake I might write more about this game soon just to have an excuse to workshop my ideas more. I like Valentine especially because it’s an actually achievable idea for me, unlike Exurbians. So that may be my next post if I don’t push an album review out this week!

As for Iggy! It’s been doing well, save for another light on the dash coming on last Friday, informing me that one of the doors of the car is open despite them all being closed. It doesn’t do the door chime noise but it still irks me a bit that this happens seemingly at random throughout the year. It also might mean something else entirely that I’m just not picking up on.

Until then, I’ll be mashing buttons to make maps. I’ll see y’all soon!