Nuclear Nightmare could be fun, eventually.

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Nuclear Nightmare is a game that asks: What would happen if you and your friends were dropped off in Antarctica and asked you to collect some classified materials? There may also be an impending nuclear strike heading to your location, best to clear out before that happens. Oh and did we mention the snow monsters? No, well there’s snow monsters! They don’t like you, there might be a gun around here somewhere, check one of the living pods or maybe an office building. Anyways, have fun!

The next line should read “hilarity ensues” but, sadly, it’s more like “frustration ensues”.

I may have been spoiled by good early access party games as of late. Games that come to mind: Lethal Company, Phasmophobia, Murky Divers, and Devour. Ok, those last two aren’t in early access anymore but they were when I last played them. So maybe my expectations were a bit high going in to Nuclear Nightmare, especially with the Very Positivie rating. I’d forgotten that early access sometimes comes with a lot of bugginess and jank.

Brother, Toast, and I put just shy of two hours into the game. That time could be summed up by the following phrase: “This would be fun if it wasn’t for the _” Where the “_” ranges from technical issues like random disconnects to annoying game mechanics such as snowmobiles that use a half tank of gas to go 100 meters. Or my personal favorite, the master audio slider doesn’t do anything. This game tries to blow your eardrums out with constant howling wind and the only way to turn it down is from the Windows audio mixer.

But I can see the bones of a fun, unique, game buried in the snow here somewhere. You and your friends are dropped off at one of a handful of sites scattered around the map, it’s a different drop point every round but the locations stay the same. You’re team is tasked with completing a set of objectives at each site. A minimum different site objectives need to be completed before extracting and you have 75 minutes to do it. Each objective is 300+ meters away so it takes little while to travel by foot. There are usually snowmobiles at each site but they don’t go very far unless you can find a gas can to refuel them. It seems to be random whether gas will spawn or not, and, in my experience, it’s more likely that they won’t which makes travel risky. You’re in Antarctica, if you stay outside too long your body temperature starts dropping. Get too cold and you die, just like real life! We seemed to be able to walk pretty fast thoug, so traveling by foot wasn’t too bad until one of us inevitably got separated and was either picked off by a creature or froze to death wandering around in circles.

The gameplay loop is go to a site, complete the objectives, scavenge all the items that have spawned, hope you find a gun and some ammo before night, then try to survive the monsters that spawn before moving on to the next site. It should be a fun loop but if you don’t find a gun or enough ammo, there isn’t anything you can do against the monsters. Night lasts a long time and other than bullets, there doesn’t seem to be a way to deal with the enemies. You can’t outrun them and you can’t hide from them. We tried a few times and they seem to home in on your location, kick down the door to the building you’re holed up in, and kill you.

I know, I know, emergent gameplay or something. Except, without other options for dealing with these things, the best option is often to get yourself killed and start over. Not exactly riveting.

We also ran into a bug where one of our character models just disappeared. It was funny when I was running around firing a gun near an unsuspecting Blades.. It was less funny when I then go killed by an enemy that then took over my body which then killed an unsuspecting Brother and Toast…

This isn’t to say there were no entertaining moments with Nuclear Nightmare. At one point, there was a computer behind a locked door that we needed to upload files from to complete Base Camp #2s objective. I stood outside the door while Blades went to find a generator so we could unlock the door. As soon as the power was back on, I flung open the door and rushed in to complete the objective, only to activate a trip mine by the doorwhich blew me through the wall of the building! I also accidentally, beheaded Toast as he walked in front of me as I was trying to open a glass door with a pick axe….oops!

I’m slightly baffled by the Very Positive rating Nuclear Nightmare currently retains. It is rough around the edges and clearly very early access right now. I would have expected a Mixed rating based off what I played. But gameplay can be improved and bugs can be fixed. The game released in October 2024 so maybe it just needs more time to cook. I can see a good game in here somewhere that offers a novel way for you to get your friends killed. Maybe it will be worth revisiting in a few months after some more updates.

Just a Few this Time

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Even though I wasn’t playing all that much last year, I was still buying games. Which in retrospect, seems a bit silly as they’re still sitting, unplayed, staring back at mean mournfully from my library. But those games are old now, and the Winter Sale had new games to buy, so I set out to only buy a handful of that either looked interesting in the moment or had been on my wishlist for a while. I know Steam sales aren’t what they used to be and that better deals are often found on other sites during them but the seasonal sales are still when I do most of my shopping. I did show some restraint this time around.

My “strategy” for these sales is to go to my wishlist, sort it by discount, and start adding games to my cart that appeal to me in the moment. Then I wait a few days, review the cart, remove some games, review the wishlist again, maybe add some more things, repeat until right at the end of the sale when I finalize my purchase. I find it helps cut down on impulse purchases which I’m prone to. This is the period when I trim games from my wishlist as well. My “now or never” price point for a game is under $5. If it hits that, and I’m still passing it over, off it goes back into the ethereal mists of the Steam store.

My budget for this year’s Winter Sale was lower than usual on account of trying to buy games that I wanted to play over the next month rather than hoarding them until an unspecified date in the future. After 10 years on the platform and a backlog hundreds deep, it’s safe to say I’ve got plenty of options for when that unspecified date finally comes. But buying new games is fun and relatively cheap so what’s a little retail therapy right?

So, what did I actually buy? I know you’re just dying to know! I settled on four games by the end of the sale. One of which i ultimately ended up refunding because I could not get it to run.

Wytchwood: I added this to my wishlist earlier this year when I was looking for cozy games with quests. In my searches, Wytchwood kept coming up, though it’s debatable on how “cozy” it really is. The main objective is tricking people into situations so you can capture their souls for an angry demon-goat…but there’s no combat so lots of materials to collect, recipes to unlock, and a whole lot of quests. I also thought it would be a nice game for the Steam Deck which it’s turned out to be. I’ve already sunk some very enjoyable hours into it.

ATLYSS: This one’s a singleplayer/online action rpg that has the aesthetic of a 2000s era free to play MMO and some of the gameplay loops to boot. I tend to avoid early access, but it looked right up my alley and has an Overwhelmingly Positive score so I took the chance. I’ve played maybe 30 minutes, much of it spent grinding monsters for items to complete quests…it’s definitely my kind of game. All it’s missing to fit that F2P vibe is some fake micro transactions.

The Forest: Right before the Winter Sale started, I was in the market for a survival crafting game. The Forest, is one of those games I’ve seen around the Steam store for years but was always one I scrolled past when I saw it on the front page. I’m not typically one for survival crafting, but I wanted one that wasn’t in early access and The Forest was only $2! It was on the right sale at the right time.

Ghost of a Tale: This is one of those games that’s been on my wish list for years. It always caught my eye with it’s mouse characters and pretty screenshots on the store page. This year, it was $3 and I was determined to finally play it. Unfortunately, I could not get the game to start. It would go through the initial cut scenes but once it got to a point where I would could move the character the whole screen froze up. I went through all the basic troubleshooting: uninstall/reinstall, comparability mode, messing with resolutions and windowed mode, but I could not get it running. In the end, I refunded this one.

I was happy with these, and they came out to a grand total of $15 (after the refund). I was under budget!

Then the Squad got together and decided to go on a shopping spree…it’s hard to get four people to agree on games to play. So sometimes we go through a Steam Sale together and see if there’s anything that appeals to all of us. There’s a lot of lobbying back and forth as each of us try to convince the others why we think we should all get this or that. We typically settle on a few after much debate and it’s enough for us to play until the next big sale.

These are the four additional games we picked up for the group:

Nuclear Nightmare: To be perfectly honest, I have no idea what this game is. None of us had heard of it before but it was $2, has guns, and looks spooky so I’m sure we’ll enjoy it.

Ranch Simulator: A bit suprised by this one. The Squad tends to play action games and this one is definately not an action game. I think it will be a nice change of pace though for our group gaming sessions.

Warhammer: Vermintide 2: We played through the first Vermintide years ago and enjoyed it. We weren’t particularly good at it. We’ve been eyeing the sequel for a while but, up until this year, it hadn’t been cheap enough for us all to buy it.

Forever Skies: Another survival crafting game. This one looks like a mix between Raft (but in space!) and Subnautica.

I’m definitely set on games for a while. I’m not planning on buying anything new until Monster Hunter Wilds comes out at the end of February. Can’t wait for that one!

Kluwes’ January 2025 Goals

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Happy New Year! Now begins the one to two month period where I constantly write the wrong year. It’s also, what I feel like, the beginning of winter here. No more holidays to look forward to, only grey skies, cold weather, and snow until May. We’ll have to find some fun, indoor activities, to do with little Kluwes now that the weather has actually turned colder. She hates being cooped up in the house on the weekends and, to be fair, so does my wife. I on the other hand, could never step foot outside our house while it’s cold and be perfectly content until Spring! We’ve got a membership to our local Children’s Museum which I foresee getting a lot of use out of in the near future.

After taking a lot of time off gaming last year I feel ready to jump back in and lay out some goals. Not for the 2025 quite yet, I still need to take some time to think about those. But I’ve got a couple ready to go for January:

Explore the Road to the Black Sea DLC in ETS2: After completing the Greece event last month, I was ready to leave the country and explore some more of the map. I liked the rules of the rules of the event: Deliver to or from every city in Greece with a distance of 200km or more. It made me think a little more about what job to take next and I felt like I got to explore more than I would have otherwise. With that in mind, I thought I would do the same thing with each DLC. My last job from Greece landed me in Istanbul, Turkey which is part for the Road to the Black Sea DLC. This includes the countries of Romania, Bulgaria, and the European part of Turkey. The Steam page says there are 20 major populated cities which is only 5 more than Greece so I think this is do-able this month.

Play games I bought during the Winter Sale: I had some restraint this time around with the Winter Sale. Even if I wasn’t playing all that much last year, I was still buying games, which in retrospect, seems a bit silly. So I set out to only buy a handful of games that looked interesting in the moment or had been on my wishlist for a while and were at a good price. I picked up three games for $15, which I was happy with.

Post 8 times this month: This went well last month so I’m doing it again! It was the right amount of post to target to keep me feeling engaged with the blog but not overwhelmed by it.

Wrapping Up December 2024

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This month, I…

December Goals

Meet my Storygraph “Pages Goal” for the year: I read more this year than I ever have since I started tracking books. My goal was 14,000 pages this year and I not only met that, but exceeded it by 800 pages. A lot of that had to do with spending more of my free time reading than gaming this year and joining a book club with my wife. Oh, an audio books. Lots and lots of audio books!

Post 8 time in December: This post will be number 8 for the month. I totally looked at my post count this morning and thought, well, I could write one more. Viola! Here it is. The point of this goal was to see how writing 2 posts a week felt. While I don’t think I quite made it to 2 actual posts per week, it got me writing more than I have been. So I’d consider that a success!

As this is the last post of 2024 and I spent much of the year reading, I’ll leave it with my favorite books this year in no particular order:

Incidents around the House by Josh Malerman
The Book of Love by Kelly Link
Chain-Gang All-Starts by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Shadow of a Dead God by Patrick Samphire
Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay
The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty
The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler
How to Build a Car by Adrian Newey

Crime Bossin’ in Rockay City

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What drew me to pick Crime Boss: Rockay City – First Month Edition for this month’s Blaugust Reviews Humble Choice was the silly name. At first glance, it sounds like the name of a poorly translated JRPG. Even taking off First Month Edition, which refers to the extra DLCs included, it’s generic sounding enough to be anything from a browser game that wants you to annoy your friends with invites, to a mobile game, or a low budget indie game – probably made by one guy. So you can imagine my surprise when I actually clicked on the game and saw (from the trailers at least) what looked like a well polished Rouge-like FPS. And who’s that in the back of the splash screen…is that, Chuck Norris? It Is! In fact, the game features the voice talent and likeness of a whole slew of people you may recognize: Danny Trejo, Chuck Norris, Danny Glover, Vanilla Ice…

Now also imagine my surprise when I went to install it and saw a 90 GB download in my future. If something’s going to take up that much space it better be good or it’s not sticking around long!

I installed Crime Boss at the beginning of the month and played through the tutorial. My initial impressions were: it’s a heist game mixed a hero shooter and a dash of rouge-like. The tutorial was kind of fun, there was a good mix of stealth and gun fights but I had this nagging feeling that it would be better with friends. I started the first mission after the tutorial, spent 15 minutes wandering around looking for the objective, while my AI companions alerted all of the guards and got us all killed…I shelved the game with the thought I’d come back to it after a few days.

But days turned in to weeks and I was staring at the end of the month. Nothing quite motivates like a deadline right?

Jumping back in, I powered through the first mission and figure out how to control my companions so they didn’t wander into the sight line of the guards. I also found the objective, repelling gear to scale the building, fairly quickly. I’m not sure if I ran into a bug my first go round, I thought I thoroughly searched everywhere all while my handler was shouting “Find the bag!” and “They’re sending in reinforcements!” every few seconds over the comms.

That led to breaking in to a bank to steal some very large, very expensive statues, while having a shoot out with the police who kept crawling out of the vents. At one point, I needed to open some bank vaults with a drill and defend the area as it drilled through. Again, I feel like the whole thing would be a lot of fun with friends. To their credit though, the AI companions aim well and stay behind cover more than I do…

I did have one of them die on me. I was close to the extraction point when they went down. I thought it would be too much of a hassle to back track and get them up so I extracted without them. Only then was I informed that if they die, they don’t come back….this is a rouge-like after all!

With the first heist done, there’s actually a bit more of the tutorial to go. This one focusing on the obligatory 2D map that seems to be in every rouge-like – Turf War! See, you’re a Crime Boss and there are other Crime Bosses out there andeveryone wants to be the biggest, baddest, Crime Boss in Rockay City. To do that, you hire soldiers to either attack an opponents territory or defend your own territories. You pick how many soldiers to take with you and then enter a team death match style game mode and see who loses all their soldiers first. I found that sneaking around and flanking the enemy forces was a pretty good tactic and lead to some one man army situations. Once you take a territory, it generates income every day.

The Turf War map also has randomly placed missions for your team to go on. Your team is made up of four bosses (Wait, I thought I was the crime boss here. Maybe they’re lesser bosses.) which have their own unique set of weapons, perks, and equipment. Like I said, if they die during the missions they’re gone for good, so you can hire more. Each team member can go on one mission a day before needing to rest so I ended up with two teams. The more missions you do, the more Heat you generate which makes the police peruse you more aggressively.

The missions seem to range from busting up boxes in warehouses to steal loot, which takes a few minutes, to multi-step heist missions that take considerably longer. There are also some missions that move the story along. I’ve liked every mission type I’ve encountered so far except the pure stealth missions. I’m all for sneaking around, but I don’t like having one random bank employee look at me the wrong way and needing to start over.

At the end of each day, you gain your income from your territories, your Heat decreases, and Sheriff Norris gets a little closer to completing his investigation. There doesn’t seem to be a way to decrease the investigation level or I missed that information some where. When it reaches 100% there’s a final clash with the law as you try to escape the city. I did not escape, and ended up getting killed fairly quickly. So I’m not sure if the story goes on from here or not if you manage to flee.

My entire run lasted 10 in game days, just over 3 hours of play time. At the end of the run you get some stats showing how well you did and some permanent passive buffs. There seems to be enough variety in the missions that another run wouldn’t be too repetitive.

I’ve enjoyed my time with Crime Boss enough to complete a run. Even if that run ended in my death. It’s not a game I would have picked up outside of Humble Choice but it’s different enough from other games I’ve played to make the experience novel. It’s completely over the top, serious to the point of absurdaty, and reminds me of the types of games that I played on the PSP. It’s verified for the Steam Deck so I might just give it a whirl sometime to reminisce.

As a final note, according to the Steam reviews, if you like PayDay 2 you’ll like Crime Boss.

Returning to Winterland

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The Return to Winterland event in Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator kicked off last week. Like the Cruising Greece event, Return to Winterland has both a personal goal and a community goal to work towards. The personal goal is to deliver to each of the five depots in Winterland: The Christmas Market in town square, Marigold’s chocolate factory, The Northstar Post Office, Rudolph’ Crafts, and the Snowy Peaks mountain resort. In addition, you need to make 15 deliveries to or from Winterland. Completing the personal goal earns you a Winterland themed paint job, 6 festive exterior lights compatible with the top tier trucks, and a World of Trucks Achievement.

The community event challenges players to deliver Winterland goods to and from every city on both games maps to earn snowflakes. Each city earns a snowflake after 1000 deliveries between it and Winterland with each city able to earn up to 5 snowflakes. Every 200 snowflakes unlocks a new tier and a new Winterland themed cabin accessory. You have to complete personal goal to be eligible for the community goal rewards.

I like that you can participate in this event from either ETS2 or ATS and your contributions to either goal carrier over to both games. I have been participating from ETS2 mostly because I was already playing there to complete the Greece event. Also, SuperToast has been completing deliveries from ETS2 so sticking to one game makes it easier to meet up when we play together.

Winterland cargo jobs are picked up from the external market. Most are short distance trips so they don’t pay very well or give much experience but you can chain them together pretty quickly. One the cargo is picked up, it’s time to head to a Winterland portal which seem to be located at rest stops not too far from each city. Once you’re stopped at a portal, you can travel to Winterland. This also seems to reset the fatigue meter so I don’t have to stop to sleep while completing these deliveries. Must be some of that holiday magic at work.

Winterland looks great! It’s a bigger map than I was initially expecting and it’s charming. All the roads are covered in a blanket of snow which makes driving slightly more challenging. I don’t really notice too much of a difference unless I’m flooring it through turns. I tend to do this frequently since there isn’t any traffic on the roads. I haven’t flipped a truck yet but I’ve had plenty of close calls…The sound effect of tires on snow is so crunchy and satisfying!

Ok, so I did flip one truck…but that was on a switchback in Greece and not in Winterland!

Winterland also sports some cozy holiday vibes complete with ice rinks, Christmas music, and decorated trees galore. Each depot has a place to stop to watch a short cut scene that shows off the surroundings. My favorite depot, Northstar, has a giant frozen lake that you can drive around on. Snowy Peaks also offers some great views of Winterland from above.

Town Square in Winterland

I have four more deliveries to complete before the event ends on January 12th so I have plenty of time. Now that it’s after Christmas though, I’m not sure if I’ll be using any of the rewards from the event. Plus, I don’t have a top tier truck yet anyways.

I have enjoyed both of the ETS2 events I’ve participated in thus far. The structure reminds me of Elite: Dangerous‘s Community Goals where everyone pitches in to accomplish something big. I have been trying to take jobs to and from cities that don’t yet have their first snowflakes. There are still plenty left, but it is fun to see a city with very few deliveries hit 1000 and get their first snowflake seemingly overnight.

My 2024 Steam Replay

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I had forgotten that Steam does a year end summary until I saw some other bloggers posting theirs. I must have missed the giant splash page on the home page of Steam when it was up right before the Winter Sale kicked off. Luckily, I was still able to find the link from this Steam news post.

I am a sucker for end of the year wrap ups and stats. There’s just something about seeing an activity laid out in a nice graph that makes my brain happy. Usually I’m pretty good at guessing what the stats will show but sometimes they can reveal a surprise or two.

As a side note, my Replay from 2023 was missing from the bottom of the 2024 Replay page and I only had a button for 2022. I fixed this by changing the end of the URL from https://store.steampowered.com/replay/yoursteamIDnumber/2024 to 2023 to get to last years Replay. Once I did that, the button for 2023 appeared at the bottom of this year’s Replay page.

If you asked me to sum up my gaming in 2024 before I looked at my Steam Replay I would have said I played less games than last year and spent less time gaming over all. Unfortunately, Steam Replay only breaks down game play time in percentages rather than hours so there isn’t a good way to determine if I spent more or less time gaming this year. However, it does track games played and, as it turns out, I played more games than last year. A grand total of 69, which is 11 games more than 2023. Now whether this means I actually played 11 more games than last year is debatable. Since there is a stat for number of sessions on played games, I am assuming that Steam counts a game as played if it was booted up during the year. So maybe I opened up more games this year than last year in a few fits of indecision when deciding what to play.

My most played game this year was Trove, making up 15% of my playtime over 34 sessions. The Gear Update released in March of this year which added a new tier of Crystal gear to chase after and a crafting system which makes gearing up way easier. I popped back in after learning about the update in April and spent most of May in Trove. This tracks with how I typically engage with the game these days, activating a Patron pass, playing for a month, and then falling off when the Patron pass ends. I’m sure I’ll be back in Trove sometime in 2025, I always come back….

The spider graph…well it’s there. Some of it makes sense, NGU Idle was my second most played game this year so the strong trend towards Idler makes sense. Racing and Driving makes sense too.I got into sim racing at the beginning of the year, playing a lot of Asseto Corsa and Automobilista 2. I finished up the year playing mostly Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator in December. I’m still trying to puzzle out why Tower Defense, Collectathon, and Action Rouglike are on there.

Below are my top played games, which is what I’m guessing these categories are taken from:

The only game here that I screams Action Rougelike to me is Lethal Company which made up 3% of my playtime this year.

Esports Godfather ( a terrible name I know, but a fun game) is a MOBA Esport team manager game/ deckbuilder. MOBAs do have towers that need defending so maybe that’s how this category go in there? With the addition of Game Dev Tycoon I would change this category to Management.

That leaves Collectathon, which I tend to relate to 3D platformers in the vein of Mario 64, which I certainly didn’t play any of this year. But if I apply the term with a more literal interpretation, I could see Disney Dreamlight Valley or Secrets of Grindea filling this category pretty well.

I like this graph, as it summarizes up the entire year nicely. The solid colors are a single game where the grey is everything else. tend to play one game intensly and then ditch it for something new which appears to be at a rate of once per month this year. It also confirms my suspicion that I spend a lot of time playing games in the winter until the weather starts to get nice. Then even less gaming time as the holidays roll around. This graph doesn’t show the time I spent playing Guild Wars 2 this summer. If it did, you’d see a sizable color bar on July and August.

Hope you had a good year!

Cruising Greece in ETS2

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At the beginning of the moth, the Greece DLC released for Euro Truck Simulator 2. Along with it comes the “Cruising Greece” event which challenges players to collectively drive 200,000,000km while delivering cargo to any city in the country. There’s also a personal goal to deliver goods to or from all 15 cities on the map. For the jobs to count, they must be distance of 200km or more. and it has to be from the external market which requires your own truck.

This event just so happened to coincide with me starting a new profile in ETS2. I had a bunch of profiles built up over the years of sporadically playing together with the Squad. They all mostly have huge bank loans or unlimited money and I wanted to play the game right and start fresh this time around. I know very little about the game other than drive the truck to the destination which, come to find out, is like 90% of the game anyways.

Since I wanted to participate in the event, I had to choose a starting city in Greece. I went with Kalamata, not because its the name of a delicious olive (well maybe a little..) but because it was the southernmost starting city. My thought being that starting further south would mean more cities would be 200km or more from me.

The next thing I needed was my own truck. Trucks are expensive and I didn’t want to spend time using other people’s trucks via Quick Jobs. So I did what any sensabile person would do, I took out a €100,000 loan from the bank to finance a used truck! Even 100k doesn’t get you much truck but I took what I could get, a Volvo FH3 Sleeper with 420hp and 9,000km already on it. It gets the jobs done, though sometimes when I take a heavy cargo mission I get a message that my truck isn’t optimized for it. I haven’t run into anything I couldn’t haul yet.

The tricky parts of completing the event are the six cities located on the islands of Greece. Argostoli, Chania, Chios, Heraklion, Mitilini, and Rhodes can only be accessed by taking a ferry from one of the ports. However, The minimum 200km distance only counts for land travel. It took traveling to two or three cities before I figured out why they weren’t being counted. I was traveling 300km+ but only 30km or so of that distance was over land. The rest was spent lounging on a ferry.

The island cities are fun but challenging to drive a truck through. There are some very narrow streets and some very tight corners that I was not ready for. I learned pretty quickly how close I could get to objects on either side of the truck and how to not get the trailer stuck on turns.

The Greece map has some stunning views for a game that’s 12 years old. I find myself constantly going to photo mode to look around and take pictures. I have more pictures of a “truck in front of things” in my screenshot folder than I ever thought I would.

I currently have 3 cities left to visit to complete the event: Athens, Mitilini, and Patras. All three cities, are fairly close to each other so I’ll most likely be taking a job from each city to somewhere else that meets the minimum distance requirements and then driving to the next city before taking another job. I’m kind of surprised it’s taken me this long to deliver or take a job from Athens. I’ve through Athens plenty of times and I’ve been in and out of the port there actually stopped in the city itself.

My plan is to finish the Greece event this week so I can start working on the winter event that started earlier this week. I really need some Christmas lights for my truck!

End of the Year Book Tag 2024

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I was tagged for this by fellow Blaugustan JD Weber at Alligators and Anerysms. I’ve been mulling over writing about books here in some form for a while. This seemed like a great way to dip my toes into that. I’ve never participated in a blog tag before but it sure is nice to have a post already laid out for me!

The tag was originally created by booktuber Ariel Bissett.

Are there any books you started this year that you need to finish?

I’ve been meaning to finish reading Gorel and the Pot-Bellied God by Lavie Tidhar for a while now. It’s not very long, only 88 pages, but it’s only available from my library through Hoopla. That means I can only read it on my phone or my computer. It’s a toss up between which device I dislike reading a book on more.

Do you have an autumnal book to transition into the end of the year?

It’s still technically autumn right? At least for a few more days even if it doesn’t feel like it. I usually don’t intentionally pick out books to read that correspond with the seasons/holidays but I came across Secret Santa by Andrew Shaffer while looking for a book to submit for my book clubs Christmas book theme. Everyone else was submitting Halmark-esque Chirstmans rom coms, which I will always gladly read but I thought I’d add something else to the mix It’s a christmas horror book which is not something I’ve read before but I like the idea of spooky christmas. I’m only a few chapters in, but it seems like it’s going to be a quick read and a fun one too!

For anyone curious, my book club ended up reading Christmas Eve Love Story by Ginny Baird which was a Halmakr-esque rom com but with a time loop!

Is there a new release you’re still waiting for?

Nope, not this year at least. I don’t typically keep up on new book releases unless I’m in the middle of a series, which I’m not this year. Next year though, I’m eagerly awaiting the release of King Sorrow by Joe Hill. He’s one of my favorite authors, so I always look forward to anything new from him.

I’m also looking forward to The Ashfire King by Chelsea Abdullah. I listened to the first book in the series, The Stardust Thief almost two years ago at this point. I’m definately going to need a refresher on the story so far when the second book comes out.

What are three books you want to read before the end of the year?

I’m kind of in the middle of a whole bunch of books at the moment that I would like to finish up before this year’s end.

  • The Deepest Map: The High-Stakes Race to Chart the World’s Oceans by Laura Trethewey
  • Death of a Timeline by Courteney Levet
  • Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

I’m about halfway through The Deepest Map and Death of a Timeline so I’m fairly confident I can finish both of those before the end of the year. I’ve been meaning to read Annihilation for years but it was just recently recommended to me again by my sister. We’ll see if the library hold comes in by the end of the year, it’s currently 2 weeks out…

Have you already started making reading plans for 2025?

This year, I made an effort to read books off of my TBR pile, especially those that have been sitting there for years. It’s interesting to see how my tastes and interests have changed or haven’t changed since I started adding books ten or so years ago. I’m planning on doing the same next year, specifically tackling some of the longer books on the list. I set a reading goal every year but next year I think I’ll focus more on Pages Read goal over a number of books goal to accommodate that.

I Guess I’m Playing Euro Truck Simulator 2 Now?

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Now if you would have told me, even a month ago, that I would be writing about Euro Truck Simulator 2 I wouldn’t have believed you. ETS2 was one of the first games I bought on Steam almost exactly 10 years ago, according to my purchase history. I picked it up because it was on sale (of course) and because it was one of those “must own” games with Overwhelmingly Positive reviews. The year prior I had been in a bad car accident and had a lot of anxiety related to driving. In a way, playing ETS2, even with a controller on a laptop, was a cathartic experience. I don’t think I played it all that long, probably pulled away by all the other shiny things on Steam. I bought Hero Siege the same week, and that’s still one of my most played games.

After meeting the Squad 3 years later, I dipped back into ETS2 once or twice a year. It’s SuperToast’s main game and he’s been streaming it on our twitch channel almost every Thursday since 2017. Every once and a while we’ll join him for some shenanigans. Usually involving a lot of crashes.

Last Christmas, I was home for the holidays and visited Blades. We took out his old racing wheel setup, hooked it up to a PS3, and played a bunch of Gran Turismo 3. It was the first time I had ever played a racing game with a racing wheel and I was hooked! When we got back home, I immediately ordered a wheel and a wheel stand and got very into Assetto Corsa and Automobilista for the next few months. As usual, my interest fell off and my wheel has been sitting next to my desk ever since.

Last month, I started contributing to OpenStreetMap after realizing my neighborhood was missing from the map while playing MissionChief. I wrote a little about OpenStreetMap before but you can think of it like Wikipedia for maps. Anyone can contribute to or edit the map with the goal of providing open spatial data to whoever wants to use it. It got me interested in learning more about maps, map making, and geography.

ETS2 sits in the middle of both of these things. It’s way more fun and immersive to play with a wheel over a controller. Though, when I bought my wheel, I didn’t buy a gear shifter, so I’ve been driving my trucks around using paddle shifters like a race car…

I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised that I’m so into this game right now. The last few Decembers have been the time I typically get back into Elite: Dangerous. You don’t have to look hard to find Elite described as Space trucking. I Flying spaceships is cool, driving a truck doesn’t seem like it would be quite as exciting. But! It’s super relaxing and it’s the perfect podcast game!