Pokemon GO: The Journey for an Audino

Now, if you’ve been here before or follow any of my content, you’ll know Audino is one of my favorite Pokemon– #4, in fact! And you may be thinking “wait, what do you mean #4??” and that’s because specifically Audino’s Mega Evolution is my #1 favorite. Second is a tie between Slurpuff and Alcremie and third is Dragonair.

Regardless, I knew Megas would eventually make their way to Pokemon GO so as soon as Audino was announced to FINALLY be showing up, I was ready. Or well, as ready as I could be considering.

It was appropriately around for Valentine’s Day as Audino is lovely, a Pokemon Center Pokemon, and genuinely cares about your wellbeing which is why it’ll heal you even as some of you mercilessly harm it for experience. Alas, to reference it’s “rare” Shaking Grass only appearance in Gen 5 (which let’s ignore that it wasn’t THAT rare and also was common enough in future gens), Audino was made relatively rare and hard to find.

If I had to figure out my biggest problem with Pokemon GO, it’s that it’s incredibly inaccessible to a lot of people especially for a series with so many fans. There are absolutely people who feel it’s done right as Pokemon GO is supposed to get you “out and moving and exploring” but I think it’s a lot more complicated than that and it’s not something that is super easy for everyone.

I suffer from extreme environmental allergies and asthma. Trees, Grass, certain bugs, and dust are just some of the things that trigger my allergies. Add in breathing issues and the tendency to get Sun Stroke at the first sign of Summer and I can’t always go out as much as I want to. Not to mention us currently being in a pandemic where someone with multiple breathing issues would be at risk so!

I also happen to live in a place that just does not get many Pokemon spawning. We had a decent amount during the original footprint days, but it’s only gotten more barren and with no PokeStop or Gym in reach, Pokemon GO has always been kind of a struggle with me usually only hitting goals and completing research during shopping trips or vacation.

Because of that, unsurprisingly, I never saw a single Audino near where I live. And while we did end up going into a more populated area once for some errands, I only saw two, was only able to interact with one, and it ran away after one throw. Needless to say, I didn’t catch an Audino during the Valentine’s Day event.

At this point, my general hope was that, well, it should show up regardless right? It’s been introduced? But I still never saw one. And while a friend was kind enough to hold onto one for me, between the lack of an online trade system and the pandemic hitting, we weren’t going to see each other anytime soon.

In June though, a new Special Research was available– Throwback Challenge 2020 Champion. It cost money to buy, but knowing Audino was part of it and would be guaranteed, I immediately bought it.

Unfortunately, despite my high hopes, I then immediately got stuck on the second Research task requiring me to do 15 Raids and Hatch 15 Eggs. We are well into a pandemic, I already mentioned I can’t even go out that much normally, and the only gym near here nobody participates in.

And while Remote Raids are helpful, there were still a few issues:

  • Schedules and Time Zones – I wasn’t always available when others were to invite me.
  • Bad luck – Sometimes even if I did get invited or caught a raid here, we still didn’t succeed (thus the issue of requiring a win…)
  • Remote Raid Passes in general – You could only get so many “free” ones at a time and they weren’t exactly cheap. As mentioned, I don’t have a super close by gym so I can rarely get coins besides buying them which is something I still think is a huge oversight in the game.

I tried not to get too upset about it– after all, at the time, Pokemon GO still hadn’t announced Mega Evolution was coming so despite my general anxiety, I did my best to stay calm and do the best I could at the moment.

Of course, that changed when over a month ago, we not only got a trailer confirming that yes, Megas are being added, but Mega Audino also got a front and center moment at the start after Mega Charizard and Mega Gengar and before Mega Lucario— all very popular Megas even before it’s fairly prominent part at the ending group shot.

Mega Audino does not get much love. It is one of the few Megas that didn’t even receive a plushie (only getting a Poncho Pikachu one because clearly we needed more Pikachu merch I guess) and even its creation was generally to fit in a place where they needed it, supposedly. It’s honestly a little disappointing as Audino actually had a decent amount of popularity that I thought it would’ve gotten more love with its Mega Evolution, but the fairy love was taken up mainly by Sylveon and Gardevoir while the “cute Mega” slot went to Altaria which had the Contest plot. Mega Evolutions in general have always been a mixed bag for me as I wish they were permanent form changes if anything and heck, some of them could easily be evolutions. Audino is a one stage Pokemon. I would’ve loved to always have a Mega Audino.

Regardless, it was here and even if it still wasn’t permanent (though, I can at least appreciate it out of battle so that’s an improvement. Considering the fact that Mega Evolution is supposed to be triggered partially due to that strong bond, the fact that it can only be activated when in battle is super silly to me), I really wanted to have an Audino to Mega Evolve and thus, I needed to get to work on these tasks.

For eggs, I ended up getting help from friends to help hatch them as I couldn’t personally go out. With that done, it left me with raids.

Thanks to Friends though and way too many Remote Passes, I finally managed to complete Step 2 after over 3 months.

There were still other annoying ones like catching a Dragon Pokemon and Battling another Trainer 15 times, but I did my best to push through the objectives to finally get my Audino.

I named her after the Audino I generally have with me in the main games, essentially thinking of them as the same Audino in my mind. She’s apparently very tiny, but still the best.

And unsurprisingly, I then immediately went and made her my buddy.

Now, it’s just a matter of waiting and doing my best to get her friendship up. So far, I’ve gotten her to Ultra Buddy and gotten three souvenirs from her so far.

I really hope I get her to Best Buddy before Mega Evolution hits. I’d love to also max out her CP, but I’m out of Audino Candy and Rare Candies so I likely will have a better shot at doing that once Audino shows up in raids Mega evolved anyway… And that’s when I hope to use a lot of Remote Passes, assuming I can even get the amount I need.

Part of me really wants to try and get more Poffins, but considering I likely will need to buy a lot of Remote Passes, especially considering the recent changes despite the pandemic still ongoing, I’m just doing my best with what I can. It’s impossible for me to get Audino to Full Excitement each day when I can’t really do everything so I end up getting 4-7 hearts a day depending on things. It’s not the best, but I feel like I’m at least making progress.

I’m not necessarily going to use her super hardcore in battle. Heck, I tend to avoid most of the PVP stuff and I just don’t have strong enough Pokemon for raids, but I’m just happy to have her.

I do hope Niantic changes up limits with Remote Raid Passes though. I never would’ve managed to win 15 Raids without them and this just isn’t really the place where I can find raids. They keep adding higher requirements for things– eggs that take longer to hatch, higher field research tasks, lowering how many gifts your buddy can find, increasing candy amounts and adding new evolution stones for new walls so people won’t be able to get things done right away… And as someone who can’t go out and play every day, it stinks.

A lot of people look at buying coins and getting items as paying to be lazy, but for people who have medical issues that may make it hard for them to play often and do everything, it often feels more like pay to win or more specifically, pay to progress.

My husband stopped playing a long time ago due to inventory and storage issues. We can’t get coins easily so he can’t upgrade his inventory or Pokemon Storage (which… the lack of free upgrade as they keep adding special variants too is an issue in itself… Not to mention more and more types of items) without paying for them. His inventory is full, his storage is full, and most of his inventory is just hoarded Pokeballs because, again, no Pokestop in range so we really can only stock up when we’re out.

I rarely have been able to send gifts to all my friends which has always made me sad. The changes for the pandemic actually let me do so and them lowering it back to 2 has set me right back into feeling guilty accepting gifts when I know I can’t send out anymore right now. I have to play a lot more methodically as well due to worrying about running out of Pokeballs with no easy way to restock even though I have tons right now because I’m used to having that issue. So I only focus on catching Pokemon I don’t have primarily with Pokemon I need more candy of secondly. It makes me complete field research slower as well as so many require catching certain Pokemon and with all the space and item issues, I don’t want to risk using up things I have for stuff I don’t need.

I really like the idea of just being able to hang out with these Pokemon and seeing them in a real life environment, but I know Pokemon GO isn’t necessarily a game “for me” as someone who can’t go out particularly often.

But I’m going to keep trying. And I will make this Audino a Mega Audino one day. But Hopefully much sooner than it took me to catch one.

Edit: We did it! As of Halloween 2020, my Audino and I are now best friends in GO too :D

Animal Crossing: New Horizons – Days 197-200 (The 1.5 Update is here!)

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So, it’s been kind of a whirlwind the past few days with me very focused on cataloging my heart out. It was really important to me to try and get as close to done as possible before the update. That might seem silly, but I find it a lot less stressful if I can just focus on new things and not feeling like I have to catch up on everything else.

So, I went pretty extreme. Besides getting help from friends, I also stopped by many other islands for cataloging.


And even a visit to a poster island. While I have all the Amiibo cards and AC Amiibo, I still have no idea when we’ll manage to unpack them and I just wanted to have it done.

I was too enamored with the horse stable to take a picture actually cataloging. It’s one of the things I actually hoped to do (similar to an area in one of the houses I had in New Leaf), but couldn’t due to lack of room.

I ordered Celeste’s right away and then put hers and Phineas’ posters up:

After the giant feat of cataloging, that left me with just New Year’s Hats and New Year’s Silk Hats left and I was okay with that. I knew those would likely be able to be gotten New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day and I didn’t mind waiting.

Finally, the 29th arrived. I had Labelle so I had to put on another Theatrical outfit.

I have all of her stuff cataloged now in every color so I hoped maybe she would say something different or give something else, but it was just as if I hadn’t cataloged a single thing which was kind of disappointing.

The update hit that evening and I got my Ring-Con… and pretty much nothing else.

To be blunt, there wasn’t anything to do. Nothing new to spend Nook Miles on. Nothing in Nook Shopping. No Pumpkins. No anything. Even those who had Leif had no pumpkins yet despite Leif selling them “all year”. Essentially, the patch was in, but everything was frozen until October 1st which was a bit disheartening.

I didn’t expect much to be around. At most, maybe I could trade in the Nook Miles, get some Pumpkins from Leif, and start checking for new Halloween DIYs as it is close to Halloween… but no.

Thankfully, someone did let me visit their town to get some Pumpkins from Leif.



While I wasn’t surprised that the colors would be random, that didn’t make it less frustrating.

Regardless, I relocated my flowers to near my beach cafe and got all my pumpkins planted.

The 30th at least also brought in some nice new stationery.

And, at the very least, I got some DIYs while visiting friends. And even got to catalog the Halloween clothing. The glory of timezones.

I had a lot of fun especially in Zed’s town. It was really nice visiting.


Unfortunately, doing the math, I need 88 Orange Pumpkins to make everything… And who knows how many of each color pumpkin after to refurbish everything in each color for cataloging purposes.

It’s especially frustrating as all I have is this tiny plot and honestly, I might want to keep one of each color which then takes my 16 to 12 at a time. I don’t know how long they’ll take to grow.

Then we have the whole Candy situation where you can only get one a day [per person per island] when who knows how many you may need at the end. We can’t guarantee that we’ll automatically get what we still need so we could need more than the minimum amount and it’s just kind of stressful. I don’t always have as much time to play as it is.

I think right now my main focus will be trying to get the Villager DIYs ASAP and hoard tons of candy and pumpkins. I don’t mind waiting until Halloween to get the final DIYs, but I wish I had a better idea of just what those are (as I’ve heard conflicting things) and how much candy I’ll need.

I hope to at least get plenty of pumpkins too…

I’ll likely buy each item that shows up in the Nooklings’ Store too even though I still will need to craft it for the completion checkmark just to at least have them cataloged sooner. I just hope everything will go smoothly.

Leo let me have this Pumpkin Tower though and I did my best to find a nice place for it… It’s one of the few items I like and I think it looks kind of interesting here. Not sure if I like it facing forward or not though.

Finally, it’s October 1st which is coincidentally my 200th day of playing! And thus, things finally started happening.

For one, we had a letter from Jack with a portrait of himself.

And then we also had a letter from Nook Inc. about the new items available for Nook Miles.

Meanwhile, I had made a poll on Twitter about wearing a costume in New Horizons and wearing one all October won with 3x more votes so my character’s Halloween costume:

My pumpkins also started growing! But still no idea what colors I managed to get just yet…

I then headed into town and it was really neat seeing how Nook’s Cranny switched from general pumpkins to full on Jack-o-Lanterns and just becoming more Halloween-y as a whole.

I quickly went to buy some Candy and also went through their Pumpkin spiel even though I won’t be buying any right now.

I then stopped by the Resident Services Building to get the new face paint and eye colors.

I don’t actually have any plans to use them, but I just wanted more things to spend my Nook Miles on (MERMAID FENCE WHERE ARE YOU…). If I did use it, it’d probably be for something like this:

A bit too spooky for me though.

Meanwhile, Marina was making a Spooky Scarecrow. My first Halloween DIY from my own town!

And with that, it was time for extreme DIY Stops. I’ve mentioned before that part of the reason I focus down on DIYs first is because they tend to strike a huge hit with the whole “fear of missing out” thing and even though I know a recipe will show up again, I will absolutely get in a cycle of “oh no I missed this and I will never see it pop up again” so I tend to go pretty hardcore and in order to keep some sense of sanity, it’s just best to get it done ASAP. Thank you to everyone who let me stop by!



Now the only DIY recipes I have left are the ones I won’t be able to get until Halloween. Based off calculations, I’ll need at least 12 Candies and 4 Lollipops, but it really depends how it all goes… So the more candy, the better.

And with some lovely pumpkin contributions from Leo, I was able to make all the recipes I can so far. I even ended up placing some around.

I did end up switching the Orange Pumpkin on the Lantern Set to a Yellow one though:

I moved the Orange Pumpkin and also placed a white one.

And my favorite of the new items, the Sweet set which I moved some things around for to place.

I also worked hard to find a nice place for the Pumpkin Lantern as well.

I still need about 40 more Orange Pumpkins to make the Halloween DIYs though. And around just as much for all the recoloring for catalog purposes… But at least I can just focus on the Pumpkin growing and saving Candy for Halloween. It definitely helps make things a bit less stressful for now.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons – Day 195 (and some days before)

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I mentioned before that I wouldn’t really update until I felt I had something substantial to write. Lucky for us, today had quite a bit of it. Before we get to that though, I want to talk about some things up to this point!

To get it out of the way, the Halloween/Fall/October update video finally came out and if you’ve read my twitter at all, you’d know I’m one of the very few people who isn’t particularly hyped up yet.

I think in general I come off as really negative about the games sometimes, and I will admit that I feel like I’ve found more cons than pros, but the game is really special to me and I know I’m not alone with a lot of my feelings with all this.

As for my general issues with the Halloween Trailer… For starters, it’s hard to be excited for new items when my storage is crying. I have maybe 120 item space left tops and while I don’t expect to fill it up here, I’m still feeling a bit nervous every new event.

But Halloween has always been my least favorite Animal Crossing event and not getting any real information on what the event entails is terrifying to me. I’m not a Halloween person. I get scared incredibly easily and the closest I can get to horror is suspense/mystery types and even then, jump scares (or stealth segments in games) are just too much for me. I’m not only super jumpy, but the fear will retain with me for a long time and it just doesn’t end well. This is also why I have a zombie phobia (which does not help my feelings on the new reactions v-v; I guess they’ll get me closer to the Reaction Nook Miles goal of 42, but I need 5 more total so I’d still need 3 more after this…).

As for how I feel about AC’s events, I do not enjoy being chased under any circumstances, even virtual. Being chased in a game always gives me an unsettled feeling like someone is right behind me. It’s not fun and it kills really any enjoyment I can have. I have absolutely had friends help me out with Halloween events because I just can’t handle them.

And this time, I don’t even know what to expect. We know nothing. I get some people prefer no spoilers, but I need to be able to prepare, especially in this type of game where I already have used up all my island’s space and am at a total loss of what to do anytime something new happens and not knowing what kind of tricks could happen this time (especially after how they were in New Leaf) and just, ugh, I think the only thing I had after watching the trailer was an anxiety attack due to the amount of questions I suddenly had and no answers.

It doesn’t help that everything added isn’t even in the video and there’s a chance there could be something new they’re not even mentioning and just… with a real time game, the last thing I want is tons of secrets.

As thanks for updating though, we’ll be getting a Ring-con, the controller for the Ring Fit Adventure Game, which I guess is cool? But again, not something I really have any room for.

And that issue expands even to my favorite new item from the trailer:

Until we have all side rooms 8×8 at least, I don’t have the slightest clue where I will put that. Maybe I’ll find somewhere eventually, but right now, I don’t have the slightest clue.

And of course, the biggest issue and the thing I really hoped was scrapped entirely: Farming. I’ve gone into my issues with farming in games before and the general crops and watering and harvesting being my least favorite parts of Harvest Moon games (the irony isn’t lost on me), but just like crafting, it feels way too convoluted to me to be part of this game. They’re just trying to pack too much into it and at the same time, the game itself feels almost empty– it just doesn’t have as much heart to me this time around.

I do have one small area I can probably repurpose for the Pumpkins– the little soil plot right near my crafting-patio after in front of my house, but whether that’ll be enough to really manage to grow a bunch of recipes or not… Even though they grow year around, I feel like it’ll be a slow process.

Regardless, the update comes out in about 66 hours time so I just need to hope for the best.

Moving on, another as close to full as I can get K.K. Slider concert.

I haven’t seen there ever be more than four villagers at one outside the mandatory “yay we made our town popular enough” concert.

Flurry and Mira had a fight so Mira gave me a gift to give to Flurry. I managed to catch her before she went to sleep.

Flurry gave me her pajamas in return… but I couldn’t let her go to sleep in a Figure Skating dress so I gave them back to her. Please sleep comfortably, Flurry.

For the most part, I’ve had conflicted feelings with plants on the beach (and really only ended up with some as so many people held pink flowers for me and not only would I feel bad not keeping them, it was also good to have extras incase of any problems and sadly, it wasn’t possible to store any this time around), but something about how these looked I felt was kind of cute and Ocean-y so I put them near Seashell Rock.

Meanwhile, Merengue and Maple had also gotten into a fight. Merengue ended up getting Maple a Bottled Ship which was nice.

I don’t have anything in particular to say about this next picture… I just kind of liked it.

But finally, the main event of this post and to also tie in the days before, we had two special events today… Teddy’s Birthday and the final Bug-off of the year.

Villagers were definitely more nostalgic about the Bug-off than I expected.

I then made it over to Teddy’s for his birthday! I was actually really surprised to see Peanut celebrating with him. I didn’t realize they became such good friends already.


The big focus otherwise lately though has just been Cataloging. I’m officially down to only clothing left and thanks to Leo, Sami, and Madison, I have less than 1,000 clothing items left to go.

I’ve mentioned before that cataloging this time around is really exhausting, especially Able Sisters, but it’s been really nice being so close (even if it’ll go back up once the update has hit) and I’ve been doing my best to do my part too.

My next entry will likely either be the evening of the 29th or October 1st depending on how much is available as soon as the update goes out. Maybe even both if there’s enough, but I don’t expect another update until maybe mid-October at the earliest and/or Halloween at the latest. For now, I’m just going to hope I get Leif on Tuesday so that I’ll be able to get Pumpkins as soon as the update goes up @-@

Animal Crossing: New Horizons – Days 154-182 and Pin-pointing the Problem

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A quick summary (as not all will be listed below)

  • Day 154 – Labelle was back with a new fashion challenge– Vacation theme again. I got a pair of shorts from her this time.
  • Day 156 – Regular Gulliver was here again! I only need to help him (or Pirate Gullivarrr) one more time for the Nook Miles thing, but regular Gulliver so many more for some of his clothing…
  • Day 157 – Did a lot of cataloging.
  • Day 158 – The Bug-off happened. Just one stamp left to go…
  • Day 160 – Due to Saturday and Sunday being busy, K.K. ended up performing today. I also finally got Flurry’s photo! Just Maple and Peanut to go…
  • Day 162 – Buzz is camping here today.
  • Day 167 – Labelle is back again. She wants a Party theme this time.
  • Day 170 – It’s officially September 1st, but… I already finished things I needed to catch thanks to Southern Hemisphere friends. There are nice new decorations though for the Nookling shop.
  • Day 171 – Our newest camper: Alli. Celeste was also here plus Gulliver which let me finally finish the Nook Miles achievement…. I’ll still have to bother with normal Gulliver until I catalog all his clothing, but at least I can put my diving suit away now.
  • Day 172 – I got Peanut’s Photo! I’m surprised I somehow got it before Maple’s though.
  • Day 174 – I got Maple’s Photo! Now I finally have everyone’s :D Still can’t decide what to do with the photos of villagers who moved out though… Unfortunately, I ended up missing K.K.’s Concert*
  • Day 176 – The Moon Rug is out!! And thus, my rugs are completed once more.
  • Day 177 – I got to catalog at Leo’s. Mira also tried to do the treasure hunt last week and again this week, but I still have no where for them to bury anything and I keep forgetting to remove something before talking to them…
  • Day 178 – I catalogged at Sami’s today. Thanks to her and Leo, I’m at under 1,500 Clothing items left @-@ Every small step really helps.
  • Day 181 – I managed to see K.K. Slider today at least. It’s nice when there’s a good amount of villagers there.

I had wanted to wait until something particularly big happened, but now I barely have reasons to check each day and I’m unfortunately finding myself even more conflicted with the game. Before we get into that, some screenshots from the last few weeks:

My outfits for Labelle:

I did some small adjustments to the bathroom.

The real highlight over these last couple of weeks is I managed to get the rest of my Villager photos.

I am kind of confused how I got Peanut’s before Maple’s though.

I had some really nice mail from villagers too.

I do wish I had an off-shore storage for mail :/ I actually need to try and go through my saved mail as I somehow hit the max in storage, but I like to try and keep one of each stationery plus special mail (like from Mom) and I don’t know what I’m going to do now.

As mentioned above, I had nothing to really do for September, but I loved some of the Fall changes and the weeds are nice.

And our K.K. Slider groups…

And thanks to Leo, I got the Winter outfit I’ve wanted for so long.

Finally, I just wanted to share this nice picture with Flurry.

While Cherryblossom season is my favorite in the game, I do wish I could also have these clouds.

Regardless, this has unfortunately been how I feel playing ACNH lately:

It took me a long time to even put this entry together, despite not much happening, and a lot of that is a combination of when I missed K.K.’s concert and getting the last villager photo I needed. I don’t really have much of a reason to check in beyond hoping for specific villagers for certain Nook Miles things… And that’s when it kind of super dawned on me: The lack of control.

It’s so weird that a game that tried to give us so much freedom in terraforming has felt the most restrictive for me. I think it’s partially due to missing so many pre-existing items and never knowing when it’ll come but like… even the game’s achievement system. Cataloging is so much more convoluted now, for example.

But also just… everything with Nook Miles. While some are the same as they were for the medals in New Leaf, many become much more complicated with tool durability. I struggled a lot with the catching lots of bugs and fish. What got me through were days where I felt especially motivated and just kind of zoned out into doing them.

But I can’t do that in this game because eventually, my tool will break and I’ll have to either buy another or make another and maybe gather things for more… And like, even if I buy a whole round of tools, they still may break before I wanted to be done. It’s an exhausting cycle and completely ruins any kind of relaxing feeling I would have.

And like with K.K., normally I could just… go to concerts all night and visit friends after or vice versa and we could have enough concerts within like… a few weeks… but here, I would need to see every concert in about 2 years. I can barely find much of a reason to play daily right now, let alone for more than a year.

This even carries over a bit to other NPCs where you need to see several of them 20 times at least (you still need Gulliver 30 times for the golden shovel) to finish their Nook Miles thing. Gracie and Katrina were the only ones you still really needed to randomly wait for in order to finish something in the game, but Gracie only needed to be seen four times if you succeeded each time and Katrina needed 20 fortunes which is a lot, but counted your friends and other villagers and again, just… let you do more than just wait and hope. Not to mention actually knowing where to find them and villagers telling you much sooner if they’re around. Wisp is honestly my lowest because I don’t play often after 7PM and I can’t always manage to find him anyway. There’s also no guarantee he’s even showing up that day or any way to figure it out.

It’s like everything I want to do is forced into the mold of what they expect and slowly cranked out in the speed they want… A game that I felt relaxed playing and working towards goals suddenly feels heavy and overwhelming. I think this time completing my catalog will truly be my last goal for the game and that genuinely breaks my heart.

I don’t want to say this will be the last ACNH entry, but I do think it may be a long while before I really have anything more to say sadly.

Today on Jen tries/plays random mobile games

For the most part, I don’t really have a lot of time to put into a mobile games and there’s a huge list of games I really want to play and work on. Unfortunately, I’ve been pretty sick lately with the constant weather shifts and other issues and so that’s meant a lot of time laying down which makes it pretty hard to play games on a computer (and also makes it hard for streams as that requires even more energy than just being well enough to get things done). I don’t really enjoy playing the Switch portably either and there’s nothing I’m playing right now that I don’t want to record or grab screenshots from.

So every so often, when I’m feeling particularly bad, I like to have a game I can just play and not think too much about. Unfortunately, a lot of those types of games aren’t really my thing (see: literally any Match-3), but new games are always being made and as tempted as it would be to try making my own game, I have no skills for that, so I still try to check in from time to time or by random suggestion.

My latest “game attempts” have been “Tiny Room Stories”, “Starry Garden”, and “Dress up! Time Princess” in that order. I am going back and forth between them at the moment and all three are pretty different, but I just wanted to kind of talk about what I think so far and my general pros and cons.

Tiny Room Stories: Town Mystery is essentially just made up of Escape rooms to help solve an overarching story. You get a certain amount of chapters for free or you can buy a Season Pass to own everything which I appreciate.

It’s honestly really interesting with various different puzzles and I think my only real disappointment is no customization for the main character. I don’t think it would’ve affected the story too much, but I haven’t quite finished it yet so maybe my feelings will change on that. I’ve just had to play more than enough male characters for a lifetime honestly.

I think my only “complaint” is a very personal one– later levels have had much more intricate maps and my terrible sense of direction combined with how much you can explore before necessarily finding what you need ends up leaving me beyond lost and sometimes wandering quite a while before really figuring out where to go or what ties with where.

I would say the only other issue I’ve had is some clues are a lot more vague than you’d expect such as something outside being a hint to unlocking something further inside a building, only really clued in due to a poster on the wall. And as each level gets bigger with more and more rooms, it can get a bit overwhelming keeping track of all the information and clues as there’s very few things you actually pick up and use.

Starry Garden is essentially one of those… currency gaining games– almost like a clicker except there is no actual clicking element beyond a few occasional things with fairly long cooldowns and upgrading the characters and areas (and unlocking new ones). The game advertises itself as “stress-free” and “relaxing” which I suppose it is in a way, if only because a lot of the time spent playing it will be you doing absolutely nothing.

That sounds a lot harsher than I kind of mean it as the game IS relaxing and actually has some nice music for when I actually feel like having the volume up on my phone. It’s also quite pretty and I like seeing how things upgrade, but it’s very slow and at a certain point, like most of these types of games, you’re either going to constantly be watching ads or just… not making progress for several days at a time. And when I’m sitting there stuck on the couch, I want to be able to DO things, even if it’s simple, and not just sit there and watch. Upgrades generally consist of just one small addition, though occasionally a bigger change can happen, while adding new buildings costs… a lot.

There’s also several extra tasks besides building up the garden between various clothing you can collect and give your animal characters, animals you can collect to roam around and level up (which then it will endlessly ping you about how you do not have more of said animal out despite there being limited slots so I don’t want more than one of each out), constellations to level up, planets to visit for things, and various quests to complete.

There’s also a lot of things to purchase with both a premium currency or real money depending on the item. I will say you do get a good amount of the premium currency even without paying, but some of the real money costs are just kind of awful such as one costume package that is partially priced up due to the gems and chests it comes with. There’s also two different VIP subscriptions– one weekly and one monthly (and considering the price difference and what you get, the weekly one feels kind of a waste). each which increase just how much you earn which will lessen the wall for a bit longer. Finally, you can even buy Ad Removal Tickets which you can use in replace of actually watching an ad not to mention there’s also a premium mission pass… And just… I really wish I could just buy the game.

It’s really pretty! The music is peaceful! But I just wish there was more I could actually do. Even the crafting mechanic is so random with what materials are needed and how you get them that I rarely even remember to bother with it.

Regardless, that brings us over to Dress up! Time Princess which wants to be a lot of things at once and I’m not entirely sure it pulls it off. The game was suggested to me by harajukucandygirl on one of my Star Stable Online videos and well, I do enjoy dress up games and Princess dresses so of course I checked it out. I will say the part I enjoy most are the actual stories as the game as a visual novel portion with the very first book being about Marie Antoinette. I’ve always kind of liked Marie Antoinette so it was an exciting book to play… if it wasn’t for all the other mechanics.

The books are generally pretty cheap to play costing just 5 Stamina per chapter and an extra 5 stamina to change a choice of a question that strongly effects the story. Normally, I wouldn’t replay a story, but there are items and achievements locked to doing certain chapters and getting certain endings only possible on doing these alternate paths so you don’t really have a choice sometimes.

And you may think, “Well, I don’t care about achievements or anything, so I’m good!” but that is not the case because they also contain outfits/recipes for one, but you can also get Reader Tickets which are used to unlock new books. And while outfits can be nice and good in general for a dress-up game, normally you could at least ignore outfits you may not care for… except this game takes a tab out of games like Love Nikki where there are outfit ratings and your favorite outfit may just not cut it.

Of course, that would be annoying enough in itself and is a large part of why I stopped playing Love Nikki, but you don’t just… get the outfits, nor do you get everything you need from the books themselves (and of course, some chapters require certain outfits). There’s crafting. And if you’ve been here before, you are well aware that I hate crafting. To get materials, you generally either need to buy them from the store with the in-game currency or through encounters on the story maps which also use up stamina (5, 10, or 15 depending on what you choose). It’s not only random, but incredibly small amounts. You can generally only get 1-2 per material in an encounter and you can only buy up to 5 from the shop… The shop also rotates every few hours so you may not have enough time to save up money either which while it can last a while, will run out fast once you start crafting– not just clothing, but also gifts.

As for what gifts are for, it’s for raising your friendship with characters you meet in the different books. Some chapters require you to be at a certain friendship in order to unlock the chapter. To make matters worse, the characters aren’t always available so depending on when you can play, you may not even see a character for a while. The game feels so incredibly convoluted which is a pity as the stories are interesting, the outfits are lovely, and the models are honestly quite expressive.

The events also just add on an issue I tend to have with a lot of mobile games where it just takes way too much time. One pro I can give, like Starry Garden, is that you are given a lot of the Premium Currency. As for a con, the game also features a mission pass with not just one premium option, but two. One with premium currency and the other with real money. And $15 is a lot to try for an outfit that you may not even make it through all the missions for.

Another pro though is that while there is, unfortunately, a Gachapon system, it’s not limited time. Each is set to a book and you can save up tickets to even pull from them for free besides the premium currency (as most of the recipes you can buy require the premium currency). It helps lessen the rush, but I wish we couldn’t get some items multiple times in the meantime :(

I think if the game lessened the amount of steps to progress, I’d enjoy it a lot more, but more often than not, I end up more stressed out trying to get so many things done and not run out of in-game currency and materials while trying to be able to continue and it’s a shame. I would say my last big issue with the game is that wigs are a set color. I can understand the powdered wigs for obvious reasons, but I wish the other wigs would adapt to the hair color you selected. I also wish there was a nice long “regular/default” hairstyle– I’m still trying to unlock a nice longer dark curly/wavy hairstyle :(

Regardless, I am enjoying the stories so far and I think that’ll get me to stick around a bit longer… At least until I get too anxious about how much I need to do every time that it sowers my enjoyment.

Finally, I also ended up trying Abyssrium World, Lovelink, and Mystery Manor briefly.

Abyssrium World was an easy one for me to consider as I did play both of the previous Abyssrium games… Unfortunately, it somehow managed to keep around everything I disliked about those while also adding things I disliked from other games like crafting and having to repeatedly make the same thing over and over in hopes of a rare chance of getting something different.

Lovelink is a silly visual novel game that is simulated like a dating app. I’ve never actually used a dating app so I can’t say if it’s a good imitation or not, but I can say it’s not really a game for me. I tried it due to some friends talking about it and some stories are interesting (My favorite being about a video game player and hacker looking for his best friend), but the game is incredibly one note. You occasionally have some choices, but they usually end up going the same way no matter what and even if you may pick something relatively dismissive or platonic, it’ll turn into super flirty and innuendos regardless of what you wanted. There also isn’t really a way to cancel out of a conversation if you missclicked or misunderstood where a certain description would go.

You also aren’t guaranteed to “match” with anyone and may need to try to do so multiple times. Similarly, some stories are repeated, just with a different avatar, so if you did it once with a character, you will never be able to match with the other. Not all stories are completed either such as the one I mentioned earlier.

I think if you just want to see the ridiculousness of how far some stories can go, or you like the heavy flirting, maybe you’ll have more fun than I did. There’s a lot of different options (including vampires and a cat??), but it’s definitely not a game for someone like me.

I would say my other big complaint with it though is partially with its premium currency. I understand using it to rush getting more match options, but you earn way too little for free for how much they want you to use. You get 15 every 6 hours along with 15-20 as you get closer to a match (partially encouraging you to do more). The problem is choices are generally 120-150 gems while viewing a photo sent (which while they can sometimes be the character shirtless because for some reason games think we constantly want to see that but I sure don’t, there are also sometimes cute pictures like Puppies or a picture of something important to the story plot you may be currently reading) is 150-300. That is a lot and whether you personally see the picture or not, the character you play as will act like it and especially for some stories, it can be really confusing if you can’t see a picture.

You also have the dreaded choices between “be a decent human being for 120 gems” or “be a jerkface for free”! It’s not fun and it’s super grubby. While you can back out and keep a story on hold until you feel like progressing, it may be a while and puts the entire story on hold until you continue. A big pro is that there is no penalty for not responding fast enough like certain other games. You can take your time and reply back whenever you saved up enough if you want.

And to end this entry, we have Mystery Manor… A game with an overall mystery focus, but is done through “I Spy” games. I don’t necessarily hate the aspect, but I’ve always found it kind of lackluster as the items you are finding have little to do with the mystery itself. This game sadly is no exception to that. You essentially find a bonus item while finding the items in the list which leads the story, but it’s a bit lackluster to just being able to find things with good detective work or fun puzzles.

A nice thing is you get to decorate the manor with furniture as well, but you earn so little, it’ll be quite a while before you even manage to earn enough for what you may want.

I think the worst things for me though are the Forced Match-3 game (god, I hate Match-3’s so much) that is occasionally needing to be played and the timer. I rarely run out of time, but the countdown isn’t fun and sometimes I have an unexpected emergency and have to rush away leaving my phone to tick away with my stamina wasted. People will still use the power-ups if they need to without you rushing them, game. Rushing people just makes them uninstall faster if anything.

Anyway, in the end, I still am trying to find a game I can really just buckle down to during these days, but it really seems that game just might never exist :(

Ooblets – An actual relaxing game

Ooblets is a game I had been looking forward to for years and even though it’s only in Early Access, it already is tons of fun and any issues I would’ve had with similar games are done well enough that it’s rarely an issue or have been adjusted already through various patches.

I was honored to receive a key for the game and it’s rare I’m not spending at least part of a day playing, even over a month after its Early Access release, regardless of if I “need” to. I have a very weird relationship when it comes to “farming sims”. I’ve played Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons since the 90s with my very first being Harvest Moon 64. The thing is, as much as I love the series, I actually kind of hate the actual farming part.

In a similar sense, Pokemon is a game I adore in most avenues… except for the actual battling and Animal Crossing, while generally not having a goal on its own, is a game where a lot of my enjoyment falls to set lists versus numbers… such as how I struggle catching any bugs and fish once my museum is complete.

And to kind of add the cherry on top to those who are wondering “why does she even play these games” sundae, I’m kind of a completionist with them. Despite my general casual approach, I feel this intense desire to do all the things which makes these supposed “relaxing games” suddenly feel a lot more stressful. I need to try and figure out my schedule to optimize being able to do as much as possible as quick as possible to lessen any slip-ups and make sure I get everything done by a certain point.

And somehow, despite being a combination of these three games, Ooblets actually found a way for me to just… enjoy playing. I don’t feel rushed. I don’t feel stressed. Even with my giant list of “things I want to get done”, for the first time I’m actually taking my time and am okay with it.

Despite taking elements from all those types of games, Ooblets manages to actually circumvent most of the reasons of WHY I have those problems in the first place.

  • A Quick and Easy Farming System – My main issue with farming in games is that I find it too monotonous. It’s the same thing each day and it’s incredibly boring. Not to mention that things can just… die super quickly as well or the season switches and oops, bye to your crops if they didn’t grow fast enough… Not to mention the rating system…. Ooblets, however, has it a lot more simplified and while there are sprinklers, what really is such a huge help are the Oobcoobs which, when fully upgraded, your Ooblets can just… water, plant, weed, and harvest for you. I literally just have to give them the seeds and they’ll take care of everything else. And not on a schedule like Harvest Sprites.
  • Tools aren’t overwhelming – You have a watering can (Dribbly can) and a hoe (Dirt Scraper) and that’s it. Rocks, logs, tree branches, and weeds? All taken care of with your bare hands and pure determination. There’s no waiting for upgrades, there’s no grinding for minerals to even do an upgrade, there’s no needing to use things a certain amount of times… You can just take care of it. The only thing that DOES have an upgrade is the Dribbly can and you just… buy it with the in-game currency, gummies. That’s it.
  • There’s no rush – Nobody is going to leave if I don’t befriend them quick enough. A Task isn’t going to fail if I don’t complete it in ‘x’ amount of days. If I forget to water a plant, I can water it again to get it back. If I don’t make it back in bed in time, I don’t pass out– I just have less energy the next day. If I run out of energy, I just walk a bit slower. If I don’t have something for an Ooblet, I can just focus on getting it until I choose to go to sleep. And I know the Ooblet will be back if worse comes to worse. One thing I kind of have regretted doing is upgrading to get more Ooblets immediately as soon as I had enough wishies. I wish I took more time so the pool was smaller while I tried to get them all. And just, this is another thing, you really have no reason to rush headfirst. You can progress how you feel most comfortable.
  • I can focus how I want – If I feel kind of anti-social some days, I don’t slowly lose friendship with everyone. Nobody wonders where I’ve disappeared to or if I suddenly hate them. I can nap away to get energy back until I go to sleep. I can just work on my farm. I can just run around checking Ooblets. There’s no punishment for how I choose to play.
  • The battle system isn’t too complicated – There aren’t tons of types to memorize and work with or tons of different effects you need to keep track of. You can play offensively, defensively, or more slow-building and effects are summed up in stuns, hype, and and fluster. Even though there’s a clear strategy involved and some cards may better fit your playstyle, I never feel forced to play a way I don’t personally enjoy.
  • What you see is what you get – Anyone who knows me could tell you how much I hate shiny hunting, specifically as it’s a lot of grinding with no idea when to expect or prepare for it in 99% of cases. You have to be in an encounter to find out in most games and can’t tell otherwise. But here, not only can I see right from the moment I wake up for the main town, it takes me only a few minutes to check Mamoonia (and I would guess similar for some of the other towns) and see what may be there as well. It’s quick and easy and even if I’m not 100% sure color-wise, the sparkles and stardust trail make it obvious.
  • Everything you need to remember is onhand – Forgot what to give a friend that day? Can’t remember what an Ooblet likes or what colors you have? Have you scanned an Ooblet yet? The Grumboire has all of that information and helps keep track of your progress. Even when cooking, you can see everything you need and even have it grab items right from the crate. You don’t have to constantly have everything on you.

It’s both nice, and also kind of weird, to be able to play a game full of things I love and just… play it. Sure, I made a list to keep track of Gleamies I still need, but… it’s one tiny list. It’s not gigantic. It’s not a huge enormous spreadsheet. It feels so simple and honestly, all the information is easily in-game in the Almanac. I don’t have to think too hard. The closest you can even get to a “monotonous day to day” is so quick and easy it doesn’t bother me. And for at least a little bit, I can just turn my brain off a bit and enjoy it.

And this is just Early Access. Sure, some things aren’t perfect (cute pastel pink dress with white tights and fancy pastel pink house when *bricked*), but even stuff I found a little frustrating got adjusted quickly like how quickly rocks, weeds, and tree branches/logs kept spawning, I literally could not keep up with it. But they changed the rates and now I can actually keep my farm manageable. Similarly, while it’s fun and goofy and that works, not every term will immediately register to what it is and it can take some time to really get in the groove of what is and does what. Regardless, even with some dialogue repeating, I even still enjoy talking to the characters every so often. It probably helps that I don’t feel I have to constantly talk to them.

Ooblets manages to find it’s own special niche in just finding a way to take so many elements and make them more freeing and in a sense, better, and I can’t wait to see what comes next.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons – Day 153 and some days before

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Days up to this point where anything in particular happened…

  • Day 139 – Teddy and Peanut got in a fight. He gave her a Desert Princess Dress to make it up to her. I was also able to catalog all the Morning Glory Yukatas thanks to Mika. Gulliver was our special visitor for the day. It took way longer than it should’ve to find all the parts… But we’re up to 16/20 for the Nook Miles achievement now. While I need to catalog more than four more pieces of clothing, I don’t think I’m going to bother after the last four as it’s just so annoying to find everything.
  • Day 140 – Saharah was here today.
  • Day 142 – Labelle was here today. She wanted a Work Outfit. Both Diana and Marina asked for unique greetings and Marina tried to give me a new nickname. I tried to give gifts with my inventory full in hopes of photos. I miss being able to just do favors for them. Especially as I already accidentally ruined Judy’s house with gifts :(
  • Day 143 – K.K. Slider was here today, of course. I still have so many concerts to do which is kind of tiring when I already have all the songs now… I sadly didn’t get any photo, though the letters were sweet.
  • Day 146 – I managed to get two photos today thanks to Leo’s Peach contribution!! I now have Cookie’s and Diana’s =D Halfway there to having all 10… Still not sure what I want to do with the photos of Villagers I don’t have though. I also had Joey as a camper today.
  • Day 147 – Marina’s and Merengue’s photos gotten! Gullivarrr was also here. I don’t need any pirate stuff, but at least that puts me at 17/20. Mira asked for a Horse Mackerel and she gave me a new Terry Night-cap color as thanks.
  • Day 151 – Thanks to a lot of friends, I’ve made great cataloging progress and now have catalogged all the Nook Miles items, Birthday Hats/Shades, and all of Kicks stuff.

And some screenshots to go with the above, plus a few things I didn’t note.

My work outfit for Labelle:

It might have different shoes this time, but that’s really it.

I got to visit Katie’s town which was fun. Her town is really nice.

I wish we could send gifts even if we haven’t visited each other yet though. It’s so frustrating.

I always have a hard time thinking of greetings, but I do my best.

And the really nice letters I received.


While none of them resulted in photos, the gifting batches of 10 fruit seemed to work really well.



I just have Flurry, Maple, and Peanut left. I guess I’ve been the least close with Flurry (out of my long term villagers– I’m sure Maple and Peanut are less, but they’re also my two newest) which I didn’t realize :( At the very least, I’m boosting up her friendship…

I also made some small adjustments to the overlook area.

As a side note, the fireworks actually look really nice near my house.

—

Day 153

With a lot of my cataloging goals done and knowing I mainly have clothing left, I’ve been doing my best to try and section off what I can to make it a bit less overwhelming (unfortunately, even dealing with Able Sister’s is overwhelming in itself, but…). At this point, the only furniture-esque items I’m missing are the bug/fish models which aren’t really fun to get and the Moon Rug which won’t be available until next month. That’s only 38 items (37 of which are the models) out of 2,113 items total… Less than 2%. The rest are all clothing.

Breaking the clothing down further, we essentially have:

  • 7 Nook Shopping exclusives (8 if we include the Moon Rug)
  • 30 Gulliver clothing items
  • 32 Labelle items

And then it’s all just… Able Sisters stuff. I do still technically need most posters soon, but as I have all the Amiibo Cards, I just want to scan them all myself.

I ended up getting a letter from DAL with the final DAL item– the Plane model!

I kind of wish the letters were different each time or at least the one with the final item said something different. Regardless, I’m just excited to have that done. (As a note, I already accounted for the Plane Model in the above

I ended up updating my dream suite too for it.

But the main goal for today was getting a chance to do something for Charity!

Hellmann’s started a campaign where every spoiled turnip given would be one meal donated to Second Harvest. So, I emptied out my inventory and filled my pockets with some spoiled turnips.

I was thankfully fast enough to get into the queue and thus, got a tour along with two others and was able to drop off all my spoiled turnips.




While we had to get a bit of an abridged tour due to things getting delayed, I still had a nice time and it was a really nice island. Maybe one day they’ll put up the Dream Address. At the very least, they did put up their design code (MA-7806-9624-2330), so I got some late souvenirs.

If you’re interested in also contributing some Spoiled Turnips for charity, Hellmann’s is accepting 100 visitors a day this business week (so until Saturday– Friday is the last day). They open up their Twitter DMs at 2:30PM EST each day for people to try and queue. Or, you can donate directly to Second Harvest here!

I hope we may see more things like this from brands in the future. It’s a really sweet gesture and a great thing to do. And as a nice bonus, it definitely helps make the game a bit more fun too.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons – Days 133-138

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Day 133

With Dream Suite on the horizon and likely to be available to download sometime tonight, I buckled down to finally start work on my house. I think the biggest hang-up for me is I wish I could use two different wallpapers/carpets for some of the longer rooms to use simple panels to kind of break-off sections, but unfortunately that isn’t possible which makes certain rooms in particular problematic with me trying to figure out the best theme for it.

Booting up though, I was told there was a Visitor in the Campsite so I decided to stop there before I started on the house craziness. Limberg was visiting.

Meanwhile, Leif was in the Plaza today.

As for the update, I’m expecting the Dream Suite to have at least two Nook Miles achievements– possibly three: One for visiting Dreams, One for uploading dreams (whether just once or multiple times*), and the third possible one is if they count how many visits your Dream Island gets.

* I will probably only upload twice guaranteed until April… Once when Dream Suite goes up and once between 6PM and 7PM tomorrow as it’s the time my island looks best. Otherwise I’ll just do so for any particularly big changes unless it does count it more than just once– if so, then I’ll be doing it daily until I hit that count and then follow with this plan with the big final update being in April as my town is set up for Cherry Blossom season.

I’m a bit nervous about visiting Dream Suites this time. With New Leaf, things were a bit less freeform so it was nice seeing how people used things differently, but I feel like so much more can be done this time with New Horizons that I think it may just make me feel even more underwhelmed with my own town.

I’m still looking forward to it, of course, and I even set up a form for people to submit dream addresses for me to visit it, but I can’t help and be nervous about it too.

But I feel like it may be a bit bittersweet. Especially when all my patterns are full already too :(

Regardless, it was time to get to work. I hoped to do before and after photos for each area, but didn’t get to it. I believe I have photos of each area already on here though so… Anyway, after like 12 hours, I finally finished my rooms… Despite all the preparations, I actually still had to juggle my storage a lot and even had to order a few items.


I wish it was better. Nothing really feels right even though I also feel kind of happy with it at the same time. I at least like it better than what I had.

Despite not feeling too great, I made sure to pop on as soon as the update finished installing shortly after 9PM EST. There was a letter from Nintendo with a gift as a thank you for updating (some really nice Fireworks wallpaper) as expected, but also a letter from Luna that included the bed you used in the Dream Suite in New Leaf.

I quickly headed to my room to sleep. I really love how the Dream Suite looks this time around and how it kind of fits the whole Tapir-Dream-Eater thing. I also love that it pulls your bed in as well.

Unfortunately, I may have been a bit too quick as the dream servers weren’t up yet/online maintenance was still ongoing… And thus, I had to wait until tomorrow to really experience the Dream Suite.

I did see a notice for the upcoming Fireworks though so that was exciting.

That said, it seems like there’s no Nook Miles achievements after all. Thinking about it, I guess since Dream Suite requires an online connection which now costs money, they couldn’t really have anything for it… But it could’ve still just been something like “Meet Luna” and I am surprised there’s nothing for the fireworks.

——-

Day 134

Rather than wait until later, I just wanted to get my dream up immediately. I felt bad not getting it up last night. First things first though– I had to clean up the random tree branches that are always around. Along the way though, I ended up finding a lost item and after investigating it, was pretty sure it was Mira’s.

Unfortunately, she wouldn’t be up for over three hours. Outside of being able to investigate the item to get a hint of who it belongs to (which only goes so far if you have more than one of the same personality at the same friendship level and unless you decide to only have 8 villagers, there is no way to only have one of each personality), nearly everything else about it is frustrating. You can’t get friendship points for it if someone tells you who it belongs to and if you find a lost item, you literally can not talk to anyone until you either give it to who it belongs to or are told… and I want those friendship points and already was pretty sure who it belonged to. It’s just really dumb and finding something shouldn’t remove the general chatting dialogue.

Regardless, since Mira was still asleep and thus, I could not return the bag yet, I continued on with my previous task. Once I made it to the plaza, I noticed Kicks was there.

Unfortunately, despite still having about 40 items left from him, he didn’t have a single thing I needed today.

With the “chores” done, it was time to go back to sleep.

And thus, I received my Dream Address: DA-2045-8323-2479.

I then decided to visit a dream… Unfortunately, it seems there was no way to go to a Random Dream this time and as far as I could tell, Nintendo didn’t put our a Dream Address of their own so I went on Twitter to see the first one that popped up on my feed which ended up being Nook_lings’ town, Nowhere: DA-1790-5385-6731

Which honestly without any place in mind, that was kind of the perfect name for the first town I popped into.

The first things I noticed was that there was no way to get tools– while I knew my inventory would be empty, you could at least talk to Lloid and get some tools which was actually useful for some Dreams in New Leaf. This was a huge issue as I have two areas in my town that aren’t accessible without a Pole (this is intentional– I just wanted them to be like little off the path areas…).

The other is that the Kiosk shows all your designs uploaded to it versus designs you may actually be having about your town (and obviously, designs being in a kiosk in general over through Wendell).

Despite my concerns about the no-tool-thing, I continued my dream into Nowhere.






One thing I found really interesting was you could actually walk into some buildings. While Blathers had nothing unique to say, Wilbur sure did…

I wonder how Wilbur felt when he woke up on his desk, but the whole thing made it a bit spooky.

Another thing I found interesting was upon heading to go back, you go straight to your room versus still being in the Dream Suite.

I have mixed feelings on this because sometimes I may just want to go through multiple dreams at once and this is akin to waking up and having to walk out of Dream Suite and then immediately go back in… It seems odd to not ask if they want to take up now or have another dream. In general, Dream Suite is missing some features (or they are somehow less QoL this time) such as the lack of “Random dream” option, no counter when updating (you have to check the phone app for that– it’s not something I ever cared about but I know a lot of people did), no search functions in general besides needing a specific dream address, or even receiving the 5K outright for an update… You get a ticket in the mail now. I get that technically we’re in a dream world, but at the same time, if K.K. can magically give us a CD in our pockets after a concert, I don’t see how receiving bells in a Dream World is somehow off the table.

Despite that, I have to say, the “I just woke up from a nice dream” pose is adorable. I wonder if there are different ones.

They also apparently made the “remove the overlay” thing for the Camera a permanent feature so now I can screencap cute photos like this directly from the Elgato.

With my newfound dream knowledge, I went to work trying making sure all areas are accessible (at least that I want to be). I hope it still looks nice. I have mixed feelings on the “stepping stone” platforms.

Unfortunately, I can’t update it again today so these updates will be put in tomorrow evening.

Mira was also finally up after everything so I was able to return the bag and was right that it belonged to her.

I also ended up delivering a package from Judy to Maple, but didn’t get to screenshot it.

I stopped by someone’s town as they had the Fireworks going and I couldn’t help but be curious and maybe I also just really really really want a pink balloon… It crashed shortly after I got there, but it was still really pretty to see.

I know there’s people who time traveled and already got all the new items (or hacked them in) so I’m trying my best to be patient at least, but I just can’t get rid of that “feeling behind” feeling with this game. Especially when I know you have to do all four Firework Shows to get all the Boppers from Isabelle… I don’t play as much at night (which has also made it hard to catch Wisp) so it’s a bit discouraging.

Finally, having heard there was a new DIY, I had one last mission today– to hit a gold nugget out of a rock and pick it up. The few rocks I could do that with failed to give me a gold nugget so I took my mission to Nook Miles Islands and surprisingly, managed to do so on my second one.

This allowed me to learn how to make the King Tut mask which I sold to the Nooklings immediately after making. I know it’s cursed, I’m good. And I had no interest putting it on to trip all over the place.

Speaking of tripping though, I’m so disappointed they still let you trip with balloons and lose them. It felt so punishing and I don’t know why that was considered a good thing, especially when balloons aren’t all-time to get (In New Leaf– just from Street Pass… here, just four days in a single month of the year through a raffle). Though, they did give us a game where tools break so who knows…

I was talking to a friend about how despite some of the freedom with mechanics, something about New Horizons still feels so barebones. It feels overwhelming and empty and a lot of the charm from the previous games just doesn’t feel like it’s still here. It’s almost like they went a soft reboot route versus considering something like… New Leaf+ with aspects of the best things from all previous games (and the spin-off series– not having some of the amazing things Happy Home Designer brought still baffles me beyond words not to mention smaller side rooms and missing exterior customization options…) and I just… I don’t understand why.

The game is supposed to be relaxing, yet they force a specific pace to play at and clearly have certain ways they want/expect people to play and if you don’t play that way, it feels like an uphill battle instead of a game to let yourself unwind. Terraforming especially feels so overwhelming and as much as I enjoyed the idea in theory, in practice I don’t think I really liked it that much. I don’t regret the terraforming I did (likely because I purposely tried not to do very much– I feel if I knocked it all down like others had, I’d feel a lot differently), but I definitely didn’t have a strong vision for it and most of the ideas I did have were knocked down quickly due to various requirements and restrictions.

I also want to just bring up Azurillkirby’s twitter thread on his own feelings as I agree with a lot of it.

I especially want to highlight this part a bit:

Kind of like how I feel games like Smash Brothers and Pokemon have been slowly alienating more casual players for those who player more competitively, I feel AC has done similar in the creative department. I’d like to say I’m a creative person, but I’m creative in a specific realm and not free for all.

If you give all the art supplies in the world and some paper, I’m just gong to sit there. And if you give me a specific prompt, I may just make it too literal or not get beyond that specific idea.

I think for some people, that may be surprising to hear from me– I’ve often heard people say how creative I am looking at Pink Sea or the rooms I did for Happy Home Designer… But using Happy Home Designer as an example, that creativity slowly just became doing the same thing over and over and while part of that was absolutely the repetitive prompts, it was also because I wasn’t getting anything to work with.

I got a photo and a theme and maybe if I was lucky some new item, but that was it. I unlocked everything so they didn’t show me what I’d get and without seeing what I would get normally, I had no vision for what I’d want it to look like. For me, that one word prompt gave me nothing. I had nothing to go off of. It was just like “Bathroom” or “Kitchen” but what kind? What colors? What type of things would you want? What kind of baths do you like? What kind of food do you prefer to eat? For a lot of people, this isn’t an issue, but for me, I was paralyzed with indecision and no clear path on where to go.

Terraforming especially feels like that. I struggle a lot with making decisions and often ask someone else to choose, always worrying somehow what I say will be wrong. I ask my husband to look over every single thing I do because I don’t have the confidence it looks okay. It just feels like too much. I’m honestly glad I stuck to just small changes as I don’t think I would’ve ever been even somewhat satisfied with my island otherwise.

And yet I still constantly am asking myself if it’s enough. When I see how much people do with it, it makes me feel like everything I did was a waste. And it always extended a bit to designs too, but it was kind of easier to ignore that. It’s why I generally tried to not do much with custom designs, but as they add more ways to use them and have it really look like part of the game itself, it feels more out of place to not do so and that extends to terraforming too.

And in a sense, just because I get so overwhelmed and can’t really work from nothing, I don’t think I’ll ever be happy with anything I’ve done in this game.

In New Leaf, I kept the patterns to a minimum and just could focus on all my favorite items and using as many as I could to make something nice.

In New Horizons, a lot of my favorite things are gone and I don’t feel as familiar with a lot of the new stuff. I don’t know what I like or how I want to plan things because we don’t even really have everything yet.

While I think the game came out at the best time to get as many people as possible due to everything going on in the world and I’ve made some great new friends and became closer to others, I also truly feel it needed more time. So many old features shouldn’t be gone, especially ones that have been around since the very beginning. It just makes it feel weird and rushed.

I love Animal Crossing and I have an attachment to these villagers for so many years, but I’d be lying if I said I was having a lot of fun and if it wasn’t for my love of the series, I don’t think I’d still be playing. I barely play now and it’s going to make some Nook Miles a huge pain.

I keep trying, but between the pacing and where some of the focus is, it doesn’t feel like the game is still for me. I can’t make great designs myself. I can’t work from nothing. I can’t stand crafting. I can’t stand things being walled off just to make people forced to check back later (7 days before you can really do things, the Nooklings’ store not being there from the start, lowering your sell hours when built, and requiring 30 days to update no matte much), and I can’t stand how random it all feels. The prices of items also still just kill me.

I just, I wish I could understand the changes. It just doesn’t feel like a game you can play how you want anymore and customize to your own desire.

I wish it didn’t get to me so much. I’m not sure what about New Horizons is making it so much worse for me this time. I think I just wish if they wanted to go the crafting-terraforming-sandbox route, they should’ve made it another spin-off with nothing but the characters and an empty land for people to build on and share. Heck, maybe I could’ve done something with that if it was that open, but as it is now with this weird hybrid between something like Minecraft and a simulation game, I just find myself lost.

When I play AC, I want to relax a bit, but instead I’m just constantly thinking. Don’t run, don’t accidentally hit Y if you’re not hovered over an item, don’t screw up half your terraforming, don’t remove a pattern you like… Or even with bugs and fish, I have little motivation for catching things beyond the museum, but that motivation is dead when any catch could be the end of my net or fishing rod– especially when it’s my cute star net or ducky rod. Sure, I can just refurbish it each day after some use, but it’s another thing I need to constantly keep in mind in a game where when I’m fishing and catching things I’d want to zone out if anything. I can’t even save and continue easily or work on terraforming in short bursts and reset the work if I’m not happy with it. I just feel like I need to constantly be moving and that’s… the exact opposite to how AC should feel.

——-

Day 135

I decided to boot up the game late today as I wanted to update Dream Suite in the evening. Unfortunately, it was raining which kind of put a damper on things so I guess I’ll have to upload an update again tomorrow… On the bright side, I love this flag.

I received my voucher in the mail from Luna which I still have mixed feelings about.

As for today’s special guest, I was surprised to see Redd back here already…

The Scary Painting and Ancient Statue were fake while the Basic Painting and Beautiful Statue were real. I didn’t need any of them, but kind of wanted to get the Ancient Statue.

With my tree branch gathering finished, I headed back to my house to update my Dream Address. It sucks to have to do it again tomorrow, but I’d rather have the more accessible version available even if it’s raining. At least the rain makes all the lights go on earlier.

I’m sure I’ll update again once a balloon.

——-

Day 136

It’s officially August! I already caught everything new in friend’s towns, but I always enjoy the Mom letters each month. All the Mom items are super cute too.

Mika also sent me the new Rodeo Horse from the catalog so I wouldn’t have to wait until tomorrow for it. I managed to fit it into the Playground area.

Good thing I’m updating Dream Suite tonight anyway I guess. I really love all the new seasonal items. I’m a bit bummed we won’t be able to get the Grape-Harvest Basket or Moon Rug for another month though. They look really nice and I have an idea with the Grape-harvest basket that I want to see if it’s possible or not to look okay.

Since it’s Saturday, K.K. Slider is here today. Cookie and Flurry are already enjoying the concert. I wonder if he’ll still be there in the dream. Can I visit my own dream? Probably not.

If there’s a Bug-off or Fishing Tourney this month though, I wonder what will happen with K.K. Slider. Will he perform on Sunday with the fireworks? Or will he just not play that weekend? Or go back to Friday?

I loaded the game up a bit later than I planned, but quickly ran to the bed to update the Dream. And then I had a K.K. Slider concert to finish things off.

——-

Day 137

It’s officially Sunday which means the first day of Fireworks!! I made sure to get all dressed up.

Thinking about it, maybe I should’ve considered giving all my villagers one too…

I then went to check my mail and had forgotten entirely about the HHA ranking. To be honest, I was a bit nervous about the score as I changed my house up, but it’s actually about 40,000 Points higher.

After, I hurried over to the plaza where Isabelle eand Redd were. Sadly, I couldn’t do anything until 7PM, but it was still nice to see them.

While my island wasn’t ready yet. Meg’s Southern Hemisphere island sure was.

Isabelle even gave me a Flower Bopper.

And with a lot of raffle tickets, we managed to get everything from Redd and I even got my first Pink Balloon thanks to Meg.

Of course, I did want extras of some things too so I still did more pulls as well.

I always love these types of little trinket-y items too.

I love how you can wave around the Sparklers too.

It was definitely a lot of fun.

After heading back, I decorated the little “vendor” area with balloons.

I also placed some stuff in my house.

Seeing how the Windmill moved, I figured I’d try placing the Flag somewhere as well. Considering this stool can’t actually be seated n due to how it’s placed, I thought this would look cute and fitting.

Mika invited us over for a bit to see the Fireworks over in SomSom as well :) I ended up getting the Bulb Bopper while there!

Finally, the time was approaching on my own Island…

I was a little surprised that all my villagers weren’t crowded together on the plaza. Maybe that only happens if your gate is open.

I was also surprised when Marina called over to give me some Sparklers. It was really nice.

I then went to Isabelle to see what bopper I’d get… I was expecting the Star Bopper since that was what both Meg and Mika ended up getting first, but to my surprise, I got the one I wanted most!


I spoke to all my villagers too and Judy’s and Diana’s comment especially was really sweet.

I was worried the patterns I picked too wouldn’t look really nice, but they actually came out pretty well.

I had some more fun with my villagers too, but it definitely felt a bit more alive when with friends.

After a few more longing looks out into the sea as the fireworks lit up the sky, that was enough for today.

——-

Day 138

Today’s entry will probably be the last one for a while. Mainly as I’m just… barely playing right now. I’m only really poking on to work on catalog stuff with friends and to talk to my villagers as I slowly try to befriend them for photos. The way I usually befriend my villagers just doesn’t seem to work as well– partially as you can’t actually ask if you can do anything for them.

It seems silly to just be making entries just to document each day so while I’ll still record that down, I think I’ll hold on posting any of it until something big actually happens.

Going into the actual day itself, Mika sent me the Star Bopper so now I have all four :D I may still pop in for each fireworks day, but at least now it’s not the end of the world if I don’t manage to.

To my surprise though, I somehow got Redd again already…

Only the Serene Painting ended up being fake so my husband was excited to get a lot of new art. With Meg’s help, we got all three of the real ones.

On my way back to the plaza, I noticed a weed up on the cliffs…

I swear, these random weeds I somehow miss T__T I quickly removed it, but apparently can’t place a flower here even though weeds could be?? So I just put a transparent pattern down.

Meanwhile, Cookie and Judy ended up having a fight. I did my best to help, but Cookie’s gift for Judy… the colors… T__T

I didn’t want to hurt her feelings though so… I really wish we could play with their wardrobes. XP

I also gave Peanut a new outfit.

Finally, there was a nice double rainbow today. Marina is happily singing which is nice after she asked to move right before I noticed the rainbow (obviously I told her not to).

Animal Crossing: New Horizons – Days 123-132

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Day 123

I received K.K. Birthday in the mail from K.K. Slider which finished off my music list.

And there was an announcement about the Bug-off being this weekend.

Besides that, I ended up finding a lost item. Based off the description, I knew it belonged to a Snooty Villager.

I ran into Judy first so I asked her, but it ended up belonging to Diana.

I think right now we’re really hitting the situation of just… nothing really happening. Anything I could really do is incredibly monotonous and grindy due to ridiculously large numbers (and I’d rather save them for when I literally have nothing else left to do), something that makes me really anxious due to it not being fully thought out, or waiting on something from the game itself and whatever pace it wants me to follow.

There is still technically a minor exception with redoing my house’s interior even though it does technically hit that second part, but I just feel so stressed out about it. There’s several reasons for why:

  1. The forced auto-save (While I never actually reset, the idea of knowing it was possible to do so I guess felt like some safety net if I hated everything I did)
  2. The lack of familiar sets– after playing for so many years, I had an idea of what I liked to use and how and now I just feel like I’m thrown into chaos.
  3. No good way to plan. With “surprise” monthly updates for who knows what we’re getting back and what’s actually new, I can’t fully frame of reference WHAT I want to do. I don’t like scrapping things out and it just ends up stressing me out more than any kind of inspiration. Some things do work as a perfect update or replacement, but other things just leave me baffled on how to make it all work.
  4. Smaller spaces for side rooms. Even with brief plans in advance, I was expecting, at minimum, the same room sizes as New Leaf. Most of my ideas just don’t work as well in a 6×6 space and I still can’t figure out how to adjust them.
  5. A lot of what we do have just doesn’t inspire me. I lost so many of my favorite sets and items and it’s hard to really come up with anything I feel could be unique or my own.

And in that same sense, in general, it doesn’t feel like anything about my island is unique or special. There’s nothing “wow-ing” about it. There’s nothing impressive. It’s just another island with no set theme or ideas.

As for other goals in general, my full goal list is essentially:

  • Complete all Nook Miles – This is just a grind the same way some of the medals were in New Leaf, but with even higher numbers. I feel like those are the numbers they expected people to catch while working on completing their museum and/or getting all the models, but like… I’m even less motivated to do that when my tools keep breaking. And there’s not much you can do to speed up special visitor encounters unless you time travel.
  • Finish my Catalog – I’ve finished with all wallpaper, flooring, rugs, music, and orderable furniture, but still need non-orderable furniture and soooo many clothing. And Able Sisters just… needs a cart system and an option to not send to storage. Also in general, I wish they would say if you have an item already or that color… And you could see what color an item is when on the ground :/
  • Get all my Dream Villagers – One of the few things on this list I managed to do.
  • Finish the Museum – Just need to wait for the Dung Beetle in December unless they add another wing to the museum…
  • All Reactions – Dead out the gate due to requiring each personality type because they learned nothing I guess :(

I’m actually fine being “done” and having nothing to do. My issue is there’s stuff I could technically do, but the grind is just so bad or I’m stuck constantly waiting to be able to pass certain walls due to the pacing they keep forcing on players that you can only really circumvent if you time travel or hack and it’s not something that ever felt so heavy-handed in past games.

Part of why I’ve really enjoyed Ooblets (I’ll talk more about it soon) is that I feel like I can play at my own pace entirely with nothing really shaming me for not putting my full time into it always to get as much done as possible.

————

Day 124

Thanks to allergies, I had a really late start and didn’t play until evening.

I crafted some stuff for someone.

And then while diving to try and find a scallop to summon Pascal, I noticed Gulliver was here.

I’m still really tired of digging up clams… But at least the phone parts are easier to find than Wisp’s spirits :/

It took me over two hours to finally find a single scallop. Thankfully Pascal showed up immediately, but wow did that burn me out on him.

I only need to see him two more times now to be “done”, but I might need a break.

————

Day 125

Chip was here.

I went to Meg’s island and got the Spider Crab which let me finish my Sea Creature collection.

I quickly donated it to the museum.


And I managed to get a second one to finish up the Pirate Cove area.

Finally, I gave Cookie the Desert Princess Dress in Pink and I wish we could wear outfits with pants like they do because it looks so cute as a dress…

————

Day 126

Labelle was here. I will admit I feel a bit less motivated knowing she just gives recolors… but I suppose I do still need to catalog those considering Able Sisters still just leaves me an anxious mess.

There was also a Camper– Kabuki.

And I found Pascal again… Just need to find him one more time now.

————

Day 127

Today I honestly just went around my island getting some photos of my town for Instagram— I don’t really plan to use it (I’m just not a fan of Instagram in the slightest as I already have a general one), but I wanted to set it up incase of another situation like what happened with New Leaf, especially as I’m sure Dream Suite will be out eventually.





















Nothing about my island is particularly interesting or impressive though, so I probably have nothing to worry about.

Meanwhile, the plaza benches continue to baffle me.

And essentially, for the final time unless he gets new stuff (like that Mermaid fence in the data T__T) as this finishes off the Nook Miles stamps, I found Pascal.

————

Day 128

Redd was here today. I grabbed the Perfect Painting for my husband, but the other three were fake.

I also visited Leo for cataloging.

I have under 2,300 items left to go— mostly recolors too.

————

Day 129

It was the Bug-off. I just played once for the stamp.

————

Day 130

K.K. Slider was here. I always find moments with Mira and Teddy nice as it’s like the original three again. I would’ve felt terrible letting them move.

————

Day 131

Flurry tried to move away. I told her no, obviously.

While it’s nice knowing that villagers can’t move without your approval (which means I wouldn’t need to keep my game the same date like I did with New Leaf), I still feel super anxious about it– like somehow they’ll move if I don’t talk to them, but I also always worry I’ll somehow hit the wrong dialogue option especially when Joy-con drift is such an issue.

I gave Peanut a bow too. I’m trying to flush out some of the clothes she got on her old island– some are nice, but others I just don’t think look that great. And sadly, Isabelle’s option to talk about what they are wearing only effects custom designs. It’d be really nice if we could play around with our villager’s wardrobes.

Finally, Mira asked about her catch-phrase which I told her to keep.

Honestly, the only ones I’ll actually be changing are Teddy’s (done), Diana’s (done), and Peanut’s.

————

Day 132

We’re in a heat wave right now so I can’t spend a lot of time where the game systems are at the moment nor my computer. I finally got to play that evening and was surprised to see Gullivarrr here again.

I also gave Diana a Jumpsuit– I really love how it turns to dresses on the Villagers and I wish we could have this option too somehow. I like my dresses.

Besides that, the Update 2 trailer went out and well, it’s nice that Dream Suite is officially confirmed to be back along with the Fireworks Festival, but I still don’t really like the whole “oh hey thing that was already a feature is now returning in a later update” thing.

I would guess maybe some of the items you can get from Redd’s Raffle will be new (and I guess it’s a raffle instead of fortune cookies this time), but I suppose we’ll see.

I kind of hoped maybe the Mermaid Fence could be part of the second update, but it doesn’t look like it unfortunately… I’m guessing we’ll get the next update video mid to late September in time for October.

It’s my Birthday! – Pokemon Shield, Day 122 of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and other gifts.

So, it’s officially my birthday today! I always look forward to seeing what birthday celebrations are in games. I decided to start with Pokemon which I figured would be quicker and a fun way to start my birthday off.

I’m a little sad there wasn’t a special slower Pokemon Center theme, but it was still cute.

I also couldn’t resist making some of the curry…

Even though I only show a few above, I did go through and make all of them :P

—————

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Then it was Animal Crossing time! Right from the start it was kicked off with Isabelle wishing me a Happy Birthday.

As I exited my house, Mira was waiting for me and took me to a surprise party with her, Teddy, and Judy.

I wasn’t surprised about Mira and Teddy as they were my original two villagers, but I didn’t realize Julie was my third highest… I guess she is the only other one I got a photo of though…

After blowing out the candles and receiving a gift….

…It was time to break the pinata!

I then headed off as there was a K.K. Concert to have and cupcakes to give out!

I promised friends I wouldn’t do the K.K. Concert without inviting them over first so…




The messages were so sweet T~T ♥

Unfortunately, my computer crashed and I lost a bunch of screenshots I had taken. I did my best to get some from my recording, but could only do so much so some of the stuff below won’t have screenshots or will be incomplete.

I got really nice letters [and gifts] too (and I’m including the special stationery versions of above as well) and lovely messages on the bulletin board.




I also did my best to go around to all my villagers to give them cupcakes. I sadly wasn’t close enough friends with Peanut yet which I wasn’t surprised about or anything, but was still kind of disappointing. Regardless, all the messages were really sweet.


And especially with the way this year has gone, we can really use those hopes T~T ♥

After, I went to Meg’s Southern Hemisphere town for a big Model cataloging party. I now have just 55 Models left to catalog (not counting the DAL Plane model)– 44 Fish and 11 Bugs!

Then I went to her Northern Hemisphere town to say Hello to all the sheep :3 I gave Dom, Stella, and Vesta cupcakes as they are my favorites (I also really like Etoile, but she isn’t in yet…).

I managed to get all the Birthday furniture (and recolored them all) so I just need to catalog two of the Birthday Hat and 3 of the Birthday Shades colors and I’m all set there. I really wish we could recolor clothing!

The final thing I ended up doing after finding a scallop was checking in with Tom Nook and Isabelle. While Tom Nook had nothing to say, Isabelle surprised me with a sweet birthday wish too.

—————-

Finally, separated from the above game experiences, I received so many lovely gifts from friends too. Besides all the kind messages, I also got so many Steam games I can’t wait to play (Thank you to Rec, Greylace, Filia, and Cheesey) along with some physical gifts from family and friends (Thank you Theo for the plushie!)

Kymera also made this for me featuring my MCL OC and my favorite route and it was just… really sweet:

Really, just thank you so much to anyone who wished me a Happy Birthday today at the least. I really haven’t been doing super great lately and you all helped make this birthday one of the best I’ve had in a long time.