Save point: November 2020
Welcome to November’s editorial post, a monthly progress report which rounds up all the happenings here at Later Levels in case you missed anything. With Christmas now on the horizon, let’s have a quick recap of recent events.
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After receiving a blogging award that required nominees to share their origin story and guidance, I was stumped: I was all out of new advice and I’d already explained how the blog came to life in previous posts. Sure, some awards do make for great writing prompts (like this one about explaining horror game storylines to children in a way that doesn’t scare them). But a lot of them seem to be nothing more than an SEO exercise – so is it time to finally break the chain?
I know this sounds incredibly cynical. 2020 has been a rollercoaster, sucking much of the motivation and enthusiasm out of many of us. A post for World Kindness Day didn’t garner as many responses as I’d hoped for and I wonder if this is a sign that blogging isn’t such a community-orientated hobby any longer. Perhaps events such as the new monthly EXP Share hosted by DanamesX from Tales of the Backlog and the Five Game Challenge from Naithin over at Time to Loot are just the sort of thing we need to draw us back together.
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October’s trend continued as Kickstarter once again featured in posts this month. At the start of November, I backed Made from Strings’ campaign for Murder on Space Station 52 after its mysterious storyline appealed to me and its promotional video made me laugh. I then found myself making a pledge towards Fractalcatz’s project for Related a couple of weeks later, after playing the first episode and agreeing with the Steam reviews which praised it for its incredibly creepy atmosphere.
Staying with the point-and-clicks, I revisited some classics. Playing Shivers again for the first time since its release reminded me of just how much it scared me as a teenager, even though it’s actually pretty tame. Trying Harvester wasn’t so successful though and I came away cringing and feeling confused. The star of the month however has been new adventure General Horse and the Package of Doom by Spektar Studio and Porcupine Parkour – as crazy as it was, it’s a contender for my game of the year.
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While everyone was excited about getting their hands on the next-generation consoles this month, I left the hype behind and focused on charity. Get-Well Gamers UK deserved a mention because donations of unwanted PlayStation 4s and Xbox Ones will mean they can provide more equipment to hospitals; and SpecialEffect finally opened registration for GameBlast21. We’re now officially signed up for the event and have revealed our plans, Zelda made a brief appearance in the promotional video, and we even got a lovely mention in a SpecialEffect stream!
In other news, I decided to splurge on a treadmill after wanting one for ages and doing a lot of saving up. I may ache all over now after signing up to several interactive running and hiking series but I’m completely addicted to this thing. I’d love to be able to train up and gain enough endurance to be able to complete an extended distance one day so who knows: maybe I’ll find myself completing a different type of marathon as part of our fundraising targets for GameBlast21.
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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!
We’re taking part in GameBlast21 to support SpecialEffect, the gamers’ charity.
Making a donation will bring you great loot, increase your XP by +100 and make you immune to fire.*
(*Not guaranteed.)
Kim View All
Video game lover, Later Levels blogger and SpecialEffect volunteer. Big fan of wannabe pirates and fine leather jackets.
I’m curious what your London in gaming piece looks like. I’ve got something similar to the articles I did on Syndicate planned in the new year using Legion but need to get into town first to do some photography and bits. Curious where you go with yours 🙂
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I roped in a friend for screenshots from Watch Dogs: Legion for this one. Unfortunately he couldn’t get images for some of the locations I wanted to use because the game didn’t stretch to them, but it was fun to write. 😄
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Ohhh, intrigued. I played around with it looking for the barriers last time, some of the manipulation around the canal points and how it stops you going west towards Regent’s Park for example was cleverly done. Only bit i hasn’t tried was how far it lets you go down the Thames as had wanted to play around in Greenwich but a bit to far outside the ‘bubble’
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Funnily enough, it was a few areas around Regent’s Park which got me too. But there were enough other locations to fill a post and it’s kind of amazing how accurate some of the more ‘obscure’ ones are. The developers really put a lot of effort into making it as real as possible.
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Currently watching you guys play through Dishonored 2 🙂
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Play Dishonored 2 badly, you mean. 😆
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It was a good watch, Sneaky Pete is lethal 😄
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He managed to complete it last night… with high chaos, obviously…
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Of course 😄 really enjoyed watching it so far
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You’re far too kind! 😄
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I’m looking forward to your post on London in games. Sounds like it will be an interesting one! I am still shocked by the General Horse experience and how it has ended up being so good haha but sometimes you just need silly fun.
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Who knows, maybe General Horse will make a reappearance for GameBlast21… !
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Negativity in gaming? As someone pretty familiar with both of those terms, I’m looking forward to reading that. 👍🏻
December plans are mostly the usual blogging, streaming stuff when I have the opportunity. I’m attempting to venture from my little comfort zone and participate in a few more community collab projects during the holidays. I also have been toying with the lame idea of a birthday stream later this week/weekend and play some old favorites from when I was just a kid.
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Did someone say birthday stream? You do realise that there may now be a rendition of Happy Birthday from #KaraokePete, right?
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