Yep, I’ve Resorted to Listicles. (3 things that made my September better)
yep, it’s officially joever.
Table of Contents:
Part 1: Prelude
Alright, so September was a weird month for me. It had sublime peaks and revolting valleys, but mostly the latter. In the beginning, (of the month, not the universe) I received a Steam gift card from my friend in exchange for paying him back later. Anyways, yes, that means after 6 years of due diligence on Steam as a free user, I finally sold out. The features were too alluring to resist. That 4.95 is still sitting in my Steam wallet, btw.
Anyways, much more importantly, this month brought a nasty friend breakup that really hit me in the gonads. This person helped me with a lot of stuff, and vice versa, forming a symbiosis I thought we would never break. It also meant that I was REALLY burnt out on writing this whole month.
I don’t wanna dwell on that further so without further ado, here are my top 3 things that helped me get through September!! RAHHHH!!!
Part 2: Pantaloon
Pantaloon is a newsletter that sends keys of “bold and bizarre” games straight to your (e)mailbox. But it is SO, SO, SO much more than that. It’s a loving community, it’s an overall sense of mystery, it’s a concept, an idea, it’s a state of mind, IT IS LOVE, IT IS LIFE.
They just have such an awesome approach to their key-giving. To get a key, you can either get one on a first-come-first-serve basis by checking your email and swiftly snatching the key when that fateful mail comes, (it’s nowhere near that hard, though, lol, I’ve gotten one every time so far) OR you can guarantee a key by solving the monthly “Pantaloon Puzzle” included in every “Bold and Bizarre Bulletin”, which is also a monthly mail which includes the creator’s(?) 5 favorite games of that month. And these Pantaloon Puzzles, man, are true treasure hunts. They fit into the bold and bizarre theme while providing an excellent puzzle in return for your key. It is always worth it.
Pantaloon’s Discord server is by far one of the most friendliest of all time. None of my interactions so far have EVER been negative, and this is a community of like 1000 people, keep in mind. ALSO, YOU CAN GET FREE GAMES BY SOLVING PUZZLES IN A SPECIFIC CHANNEL! AND MOST OF THE TIME THEY’RE ACTUALLY GOOD PUZZLES?? LAWD HAVE MERCY-
September was a bold AND bizarre month for them, as they rolled out a giveaway for a Steam Deck and introduced their new game, Puzzletrunk. It’s basically a desktop app to access the monthly puzzle, though they’re also making a Puzzle Archive as I speak. (THAT’S SO HYPE THAT’S SO FREAKIN’ HYPE) They also opened a publishing hub for indies that need a bit of help making their games. This is all in service of more bold and bizarre games which we all need more of nowadays.
What they’re doing is awesome, PLEASE check them out.
Part 3: GOG Galaxy
First of all, GOG as a concept instantly rejuvenates my hope in humanity every time I think about them. They basically take old games and strip any DRM that could be in them, or otherwise copy-protection. Keep in mind that some of these games are so obscure they require a LOT of searching to even find a copy that’s the specific version they need. Anyways, this headache is compounded by the fact that the rights for some of these games is completely up for debate, either because no one knows, or two parties contend that they are the owner of the property at the same time.
This work is all in service of keeping Good Ol’ Games alive and kicking in the modern age. Their work is phenomenal and I’ve honestly already run out of words to explain my gratitude, SO, why don’t we move on to GOG Galaxy?
GOG Galaxy is a game launcher developed by the GOG team. A lot of people, including myself, didn’t use GOG at all because it didn’t have a launcher and the games were spread around in a folder on your PC. That’s not even a huge issue, I just wanted my games to all be in one, aesthetically pleasing place, because I’m petty. This launcher is an answer to that pettiness. It’s not a “fine, here’s a mediocre launcher to keep you sated for now”, it’s a “fine, I’ll just make, like, the greatest game launcher of all time.”
Galaxy, or at least its 2.0 version, (I’m late to the party, I know) is absolutely phenomenal. The main feature that is touted nearly everywhere is the integrations feature. You can put all of the games from your other launcher’s libraries right into it, along with your GOG games. One launcher, one library. (sidenote: one thing I find really funny is that the steam integration is community-made because they’re competitors. Like, even Epic is officially able to be integrated into Galaxy, but not Steam lmaooo)
Get GOG Galaxy NOW! (even if you don’t have GOG games, you can import all your games from other launchers)
Part 4: Krazydad
I got introduced to Krazydad when I was doing a giveaway in the Pantaloon discord server. (god it’s so hard to stop myself from gushing about Pantaloon again) It was to solve a slitherlink to get a GOG key of your choice from a list of 10. The person doing the giveaway also included a practice slitherlink, to solve on a website called Krazydad.
Then all hell broke loose.
Krazydad is a really cool puzzle website with some of the classics you’d see in a (good) newspaper or puzzle book, like Sudoku. But where the site really shines is the more weird puzzles. The ones I have never heard of in my life. Like 50 different versions of Sudoku, a bunch of other Japanese puzzles, and of course the most bizarre ones like Area 51 and Cow & Cactus.
But there’s one that absolutely broke me. It’s called Galaxies, and was also recommended by the person doing the giveaway as a fun puzzle. I-I’m not even gonna lie… I’m doing a Galaxies puzzle RIGHT NOW instead of writing.
Solve a puzzle of your choosing, NOW! (by the way, if you want to solve stuff in your browser, click the green “Play” button)
Part 5: What Now?
This month was really turbulent. Not sure if I liked it, to be honest. But these 3 things did help me throughout it all, and I hope they’ll help y’all too.
What’s next for me? Well, I’ve recently more been coding stuff over on my github profile rather than writing. I’ve also felt burnt out on games as well due to that friend breakup I mentioned at the beginning. I might review something from my backlog next, OR finally start answering prompts over on r/WritingPrompts. I feel like it’d be a nice learning experience.
Thanks for reading. I hope anyone is, anyway.
/SvrBrnDmg