Save point: December 2019
Welcome to December’s editorial post, a monthly progress report which rounds up all the happenings here at Later Levels in case you missed anything. With the past month almost behind us and a new shiny year ahead, let’s have a quick recap of recent events.
Blog life
| Followers:
|
Posts:
|
| Traffic:
|
Other posts worth checking out:
|
Another year of blogging is almost done and Later Levels is now three years old. During that time I’ve never really considered goals for the site before, but a recent post about how blogging has changed the way I look at video games – and the fact that everybody is starting to talk about New Year resolutions – got me thinking. There’ll be an end-of-year review tomorrow sharing how Later Levels performed throughout 2019, followed by a post about new goals on Wednesday.
I won’t give too much away right now but I will say that I’ve had some ideas for new things I’d like to try. First up will be #BloggerTalk, a new weekly event which will aim to get us all talking about our writing challenges and hopefully meeting some new blogger friends. More about that on Thursday! I’m also pleased to announce that the blog parties will continue during 2020 and you can find the dates for next year here. A big thank you to everyone who attended the winter party earlier this month: 27 posts were shared and a lot of fun was had.
Gaming life
| Games played:
|
Backed on Kickstarter:
|
Things are getting frantic in the Later Levels’ household because our 50-day challenge for GameBlast20 will begin on Sunday, 05 January 2020! Before we start though, I must give my thanks to a few people. My other-half Pete has put a lot of work into our set-up for the event; and the awesome Gao Li from Gao Li Occasionally Reviews has created to this with some excellent GIFs that I can’t wait to use. And much love to Ellen from Livid Lightning: we have our first donation and are already at 5% of our fundraising total for SpecialEffect!
There’ll be a post early in January explaining how you can vote for the games you’d like to see us play during our 24-hour marathon on 22-22 February 2020, so keep your eyes peeled. Testing for the streams has given me an excuse to play video games despite all the Christmas madness. For some reason a love a bit of full-motion video at this time of year and the gritty She Sees Red scratched that FMV itch; Toonstruck envoked a lovely sense of point-and-click nostalgia; and I finally managed to complete Shadowhand. No more solitaire for a while please!
Real life
Why is it that at least one person in the family always gets ill over Christmas? My stepson Ethan has been suffering from a chest infection recently, Pete has had a bad cold and I spent most of Christmas morning huddled in the bathroom with a stomach bug. Perhaps we should have paid more attention to these self-care ideas and made sure we had some of these video game medicines handy. Thankfully all of us are on the mend and it didn’t stop us from getting into the festive spirit!
Being a split-parent-family means we don’t get to have Christmas with the kid on the normal date so our celebrations start this evening. One of Ethan’s gifts is an ‘escape room in a box’ and no doubt we’ll end up playing that together tomorrow, so look out for a possible review next month; and even though virtual reality isn’t for me, it’s become tradition to rope everyone into playing on the PlayStation VR so we’ll be taking it with us when we visit family on Saturday and Sunday. If you’re free tonight at 20:00 GMT, why not join us over on Twitch for a few rounds of Quiplash?
Coming up
| Events:
|
Posts planned:
|
And now over to you guys: what have you been up to lately, and what have you got planned for the coming month? Is there anything the community can help with or get involved in? Let everybody know in the comments below so we can show our support. Thanks for reading!
Kim View All
Video game lover, Later Levels blogger and SpecialEffect volunteer. Big fan of wannabe pirates and fine leather jackets.
I like these monthly reports. First one I have read, though it seems you have been doing them for awhile! It’s a great way to see what you are doing with real numbers. It makes blogging seem more real than fiction. Thanks for writing this 🙂
LikeLike
I’d really recommend doing them to anyone who isn’t already! They’re a great positivity boost. When you get those months or even years where you feel as though you haven’t achieved anything, looking back over a monthly recap reminds you just how much you did – and how much fun you had doing it, or how far you’ve come.
Hope you had a lovely Christmas! 😊
LikeLiked by 1 person
Reblogged this on DDOCentral.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sorry you were ill on Christmas morning! Hope you managed to have a nice one afterwards. Re the escape room in a box, it’s not one of the Ravensburger jigsaw puzzle ones is it? I got one this year (after asking for it) and can’t wait to try it!
LikeLike
Here’s what we got. The trailer doesn’t give much away but we read some good reviews…
I’ve just shown the website for the Ravensburger escape puzzles to my other-half and we want one now! Which did you get?
LikeLike
Ooh that looks good. I got The Witches Kitchen!
LikeLike
I’ve just ordered the Space Observatory puzzle, and this too: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thames-Kosmos-695132-695132-Adventure-Cooperative/dp/B07PBXLJZS/. Looking forward to comparing notes! 😉
LikeLike
Haha cool! Those board games look really good, and there are loads of them… and they’re on Prime same-day delivery… and we’re staying in tonight… Oooooh so tempting!
LikeLike
Bought it! 😀 Hopefully playing it tonight with hubby (we know how to rock NYE). Thanks for putting it on my radar!
LikeLike
Work took up most of my night yesterday so I didn’t get a chance to play our copy. 😦
Sounds like you had fun though! 😀
LikeLike
That’s a shame. We really enjoyed it and I can’t wait to finish it at the weekend. It’s just like playing an adventure game but it’s fun being able to work together to solve puzzles. I recommend using the app instead of the booklets (for the instructions and gameplay). Hope you get to try it out soon 🙂
LikeLike
Thanks for the tip. We’ve got a free day on Sunday so fingers crossed…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Damn, illness sucks! Especially on Christmas.
I got lucky this year and wasn’t sick and didn’t have anything else to do (last year was a 36-hour round-trip, about 4000 miles in total, to go to my dad’s funeral). Sorry to hear that illness is hitting you and your family.
I really do like these blog statistics type posts, but it makes me wonder about my blog compared to yours.
For December, I had more visitors and views than you, but you have way more followers, way more likes and way more comments than I do.
Since I gauge “success” more on engagement than I do on traffic, I’m not sure what to make of that. I feel like I really need to improve on it.
But it’s always interesting to get a peek behind the curtain!
Happy New Year to you (since it’s now New Year’s Eve in your neck of the woods, even though it’s still Dec 30 here) and I wish you all the best in the upcoming year!
LikeLike
New Year’s Eve already! I can’t believe how quickly 2019 has flown by. Happy New Year to you too, I hope 2020 brings you much happiness. 😄
I’ve not really paid much attention to views and visitors in the past, but looking at the stats properly for the first time this month made me realise that my reduced interaction with the blogging community this year has had an effect. I’m going to try and pay a little more attention to them next year but don’t want to get too hung up on the figures – as long as I’m enjoying blogging, I’ll keep doing it regardless. Collaborations have definitely helped with getting to know more people in the community and chatting to them regularly, so maybe that’s something to try for 2020!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I hope it brings you lots of happiness too!
I am getting more likes and comments than in the past, so it’s definitely growing. But I’m always impressed by the comment section on your posts. 🙂
LikeLike
That’s very kind of you to say, thank you. And thank you for adding to those comments! 😊
LikeLiked by 1 person