This Month:

• I completed Wytchwood.
• Laid out my goals for 2025.
• Took a look at The Pegasus Expedition for January’s Blaugust Reviews Humble Choice.
• Pursued climbing kick with the Cairn demo and Jusant.
• Chopped til I dropped in Conan Chop Chop.
• Had a lackluster time with the squad in Nuclear Nightmare.

Top 5 Games of January 2025

Game	Playtime
Conan Chop Chop	13.5 hours
Wytchwood	12 hours
Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap	11.5 hours
Jusant	7.5 hours
Forever Skies	7 hours

Conan Chop Chop takes the top spot this month, in no small part because it is easy to play on the Steam Deck. While I’ve fallen off my daily runs, I think I still might revisit this one and unlock a few more items before shelving it completely. Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap just came out last week and my playtime thus far is a testament to how much I’m enjoying it (a lot!).

December 2024 Goals in Review:

Explore the Road to the Black Sea DLC in ETS2: Missing from my most played games in January is Eurotruck Simulator 2 so this one was a bust. I was playing this almost exclusively in December but hardly touched it in January. Mostly because I got tired of moving the whole setup around when I wanted to drive virtual trucks and then moving it again when I wanted to use my computer for anything else. It’s not exactly hard, it involves moving the wheelstand and chair around and moving my monitor mount. But it’s inconvenient enough that it started to be a barrier to playing. I did drive around Romania for a few hours this month, ticking off cities as I went. Romania is full of windy roads up mountains and through dense forests. It’s a pretty area for sure. Maybe I’ll be a little less lazy in February and clock some more time behind the wheel.

Play games I bought during the Winter Sale: I played almost everything I bought from the Winter sale at least once this month. The only title I didn’t play was Vermintide 2 and that’s because I missed the night the squad was playing it. Otherwise, I’ve tried them all, which may be a first for any sort of Steam Sale I’ve participated in!

Post 8 times this month: Hey I did that! I got exactly 8 posts out in January and it felt like a very good cadence for me. Think I’ll try it again in February.

Books Read this Month:

Lost Man’s Lane by Scott Carson was my favorite book I read this month. Part supernatural mystery, part slice of life story about a kid in highschool in 1999. I couldn’t put it down and there’s just something about the writing style that I found compelling.

I listened to Darth Plagues by James Luceno on audio. I read Drew Karpyshyn’s Darth Bane trilogy last year and this was recommended as a good follow up to that series. The audiobook is fantasctic, with sound effects, music, and the narrator does an awesome job with all the voices. It’s more of a collection of stories about Darth Plagueis and Palpatine that spans decades. It ties right in to the Phantom Menance so if you ever wanted to learn more abut the Trade Federation here’s the book for you…It’s slow, doesn’t have a lot of action, and is mostly Star Wars politics but it held my interest enough to see it to the end.

Hammers on Bone was a short detective noir story except the dectective is an eldritch horror who eats other eldritch horrors. I’m not super in the Lovecraftian mythos but I’ve liked everything I’ve ready by Cassandra Khaw and this one is no exception. I’m definitely going to read it’s sequel, A Song for Quiet in February.