Save point: October 2020
Welcome to October’s editorial post, a monthly progress report which rounds up all the happenings here at Later Levels in case you missed anything. With the spooky season upon us and Halloween tomorrow, let’s have a quick recap of recent events.
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A Blogger Recognition Award nomination from Pete from MoeGamer gave me the chance to look back over the past seven years of blogging this month. It’s amazing how much has changed in the community in that time: there seem to be fewer collaborations and less conversations nowadays but more branching out into other types of content and topics. It makes me wonder how things will be different in the next seven years and whether I’ll still have something to say by then.
The thing I’m worried about most right is finding subjects to write about. My list of potential posts is starting to look a bit empty and having the annual gaming events cancelled due to COVID-19 has left a massive hole in my schedule. There’s still stuff to keep me going for the moment though. I’m grateful to the bloggers joining in with game-swaps, like Nathan from Gaming Omnivore who saw us complete Banjo-Kazooie recently; and to those who joined me in celebrating 30 years of The Secret of Monkey Island this month.
Before we move on to talking about gaming, there are a couple of shout-outs I’d like to give. First up is one for Jett from In Third Person, who’ll be doing a 24-hour stream on Twitch to raise funds for Extra Life on Saturday, 07 November 2020. And next is Pete, who decided to start his own blog this month: blogz0rz is the place to go if you’re looking for minimal-word-reviews that will take less than 30 seconds to read.
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Kickstarter featured in a few posts this month. It started with a preview of KAPIA, a point-and-click that I wasn’t sure about first but then won me over with its charm after playing the demo. After backing its campaign, I realised that I’d now made pledges to 40 projects so it felt fitting to celebrate them all with a round-up post. Although crowdfunding has been in decline for a while now and its harder to find the gems, I’ll still keep searching for them – I much prefer showing my support for developers in this way over buying an early-access game.
My love for detective games continues and I think I’m going to need to add another entry to the post about those I’ve played and the upcoming releases I’m looking forward to. After receiving a couple of recommendations, I picked up Lucifer Within Us as part of the demos I tried during the Steam Game Festival this month and I really enjoyed it. Buddy Simulator 1984 has also been added to my wishlist thanks to its interesting yet creepy premise, along with INCANTAMENTUM because I just can’t resist a pixelated adventure.
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The lockdown continues here in the UK so most of our time is being spent indoors playing video games, a great excuse to dig out some horror titles during the spooky season – with mixed success. I expected Project Zero to scare the hell out of me but its evil spirits didn’t inspire much more than a jump-scare; and the best thing about Rhiannon: Curse of the Four Branches was just how bad its cutscenes were. Shivers fared much better though and managed to scare me simply by making me remember how much it frightened me as a teenager.
I can’t keep sitting on my butt with a controller in hand though. I’ve always wanted a treadmill and after finally managing to save enough to make a purchase, one is due to be delivered in a couple of weeks. Perhaps there’s a way to combine exercise with video games though: Pete has suggested doing a running marathon for the GameBlast21 marathon, to go along with our other plans announced for the event. I guess I’d better get training as soon as possible.
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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.
A marathon during a marathon, eh? Meta marathon! 😆
Congratulations on another successful month living in the coronapocalypse era! Hope you enjoy tready when it arrives ♥️
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I’m really looking forward to it! I’m not sure I’ll still be saying that after my first run, when I realise how unfit I am now… 😆
The Murray pin got its first outing yesterday. It’s awesome. ❤
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Glad you liked my post about easy difficulties.
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It’s an important message and nobody should be made to be unwelcome because of the difficulty they choose. More and more often nowadays, I find myself playing on easy – I just want to enjoy myself and not spend an evening getting frustrated. 🙂
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