clar fon @clarfonthey@toot.cat

I officially now have a GitHub Sponsors page for folks who wanna help offer support in the form of cold, hard cash. There aren't any perks at the moment because I honestly am not expecting much, but it's there so I can have one and potentially start doing something with it.

For the moment, I'm employed full-time and all of the money I get will be forwarded to my partner @LottieVixen, who is currently unemployed in the UK.

Since we're currently doing financially okay at the moment, if you have literally anything better to do with your money, you should do that instead.

https://github.com/sponsors/clarfonthey

decided that, because I know and trust the folks who run toot.cat, I'm going to try and start moving my alt account here too. however, before I make an actual alt account, I decided to move some of the light-hearted stuff that I used to post there into an unlocked account, @ltht.

most of the stuff there will be out-of-context quotes from stuff I've been watching or reading, and it will be boostable for folks who are as amused as I usually am.

wow, that was a ridiculous feeling

I normally have noise-cancelling headphones on, and when I took them off, I started hearing my mouse clicks which got filtered out by the headphones

and my brain immediately jumped to "oh no, I can hear someone else nearby, watching me, clicking their mouse for some reason"

despite that person being… me. I'm the one with the mouse, clicking

yikes, totally flunked today's Lingule, not even close to the actual answer after 6 guesses

decided to actually time the amount I steep tea/coffee for instead of just eyeballing it and steeping it for a half hour and it makes a good difference

the US health care system is actually as comically bad and inefficient as trying to pay a doctor a dollar bill but having to pull out several hundreds from your wallet because every time you're about to hand it over some obnoxious man with a vacuum-cleaner backpack is sucking up the dollar bills before the doctor can hold on any of them

I feel even more attacked by the weather now

I really dislike how Steam forces you to give a thumbs up or a thumbs down for reviews, since I usually despise giving a negative review to an indie dev who's just trying to get by

but this game is over 5 years old, and it's charging 15$ for something that really isn't worth it unless you have the money to throw around. like, it's clear that a lot of time and effort went into it, but it feels like the time and effort went into elements that were less worth it tbqh

hue is an aesthetically nice puzzle-platformer which interleaves calm and challenging block-pushing puzzles with fast-paced platforming challenges, separating out sections with uneventful lore monologues.

the puzzles and platforming are fun, but the overall game leaves a lot to be desired. despite its focus on colour, it does offer a symbol-based colourbind mode that is okay, but doesn't adequately outline coloured elements to make them stand out for people with actual colourblindness. the choice of colours, while aesthetically nice, also leaves a bit to be desired for contrast, since the blues especially don't contrast very well with the black backgrounds.

the story is rather uneventful, and it seems to be mostly interspersed with the kinds of colour facts that you'd get from a quick search on wikipedia, rather than anything particularly interesting or insightful. instead of puzzles or platforming segments, some of the lore-dump sections take the form of mazes, which can turn a part that's supposed to be a restful break from the rest of the game into something moderately frustrating.

the game also has a genuine blank-slate protagonist who is canonically gendered male, which isn't a deal-breaker, but just another negative imho.

overall, the game was a very good choice for an afternoon away from stressful coursework when I first played it a few years ago, and it hasn't really aged very well. secret-collecting was grindy then and still is now, since instead of rewarding players for searching more or beating extra challenges, the game just locks flasks (the main collectible) in sections behind colours you haven't unlocked yet, forcing the player to beat the game twice for 100% completion. additionally, since you can only listen to the lore monologues once, those restful sections become extra exaggerated as long hallways with no substance.

in general: if you like puzzle games with a moderate dififculty and are looking for a time sink on an afternoon, this might be worth the buy if it's on sale. however, I can't really recommend this to anyone, since it just feels like it's trying to appeal to multiple, mutually exclusive sets of people.

I feel very attacked by the weather right now