2025

Uhh, 2025, the same as before? Just a short recap at the very end.

Trangia camp stove became a new hobby. This started with the alcohol stove gift of last Christmas. I hoped the spirit burning would become a thing, however, as many before me I had to accept gas is simply cleaner and faster.

I didn't give up entirely on the alcohol stove, but the practice would need more time than I really have. Gear acquisition threatened to escalate, but as I used them less than expected during the summer, I also refrained from buying too much.

And what's that again?

On the retro front, The Spectrum entertained me at the beginning of the year, but as usual, that's about it. There is a bunch of new gear, which I've not yet discussed much. Partly games devices, but also a Raspberry 5 which needs to be put through its paces.

The new "official" Commodore 64 sounds attractive but as the C64C model was not available, I chose not to buy it as of now. Sure, the board can be bought separately and I actually have an extra case I think. But it would be nice to have the whole shebang without having to hunt new parts, or combine new boards with old plastics.

Time will tell what the "new" Commodores will bring. Now it looks like many new users are having the feels of keeping up with the Commodore, but as happened with the Spectrum Next I suspect a healthy percentage of these new users may end up being quite passive.

Raspberry Pi 5

I was able to find time to play some bigger games. For instance, I replayed Control and it was worth it. Then I continued with Everspace 2 and Carrier Command: Gaea Mission. The last game I completed was Invincible. I did start with The Last of Us, but looks like it'll have to wait. Nowadays Linux has far too many games to choose from!

The last weeks of the year saw me coding a new game for Commodore 64. I even relived the geeky teenager experience of using most of the new year's eve for it.

Not to jinx it, I won't show anything. Ok there's the memory usage.

I'm usually not one to promote anything before it's fully complete, but it's safe to say this one will become finished. The game is basically there, it has the winning and losing conditions and it can be played through. The rest is more about adding visuals, sound and music. We'll see when it comes out.

Not much at TV and film front, apart from the weird project of watching A Different World in its entirety. Well, ok Star Wars: Andor season 2 delivered. As it leads to Rogue One, I can't shake the feeling it's still a story that really didn't need to be told. Anyone who felt the scene in the original Star Wars with the imperials bickering around a table needed expanded to a full series, must have been satisfied. It was entertaining.

One of the number of tools I could talk about.

The end of Stranger Things is upon us. The fifth season had to carry the burden of having to reignite the interest of those viewers who will not rewatch the previous seasons=most people probably. The three-year gap did not do good here. It looks like the stakes have been reinvented and basically the same story is told again: Kids are in danger. The 1980s leanings have been practically forgotten, unless we're talking 1980s style action.

I did get to see both Jarre and Kraftwerk at the same year.

The Invincible

This game is based on Stanislaw Lem's The Invincible, although it uses different characters and a different scenario.

Proton again offers this experience for Linux players. Surprise of surprises, it becomes choppy and slow at times, evident when I first time entered a camp. There have been claims that switching to Proton Experimental could improve things, but I saw no real difference. I downgraded a few graphics settings, which I shouldn't really need to do, but the effect mostly persisted and I just persisted with it.

What about the game? The Unreal engine visuals are nice, replete with retrofuturistic old-timey equipment, trackers, telescopes, scanners. As a member of an impromptu expedition to the planet Regis III, the player has to reconnect with the other crew and begin unraveling the mystery of what has happened.

It's immediately clear you are not a free explorer of a planetary environment. Often items tend to work only for the "event" at hand. For example, the beginning where the backpack condition and contents are meticulously inspected, suggests the backpack could be an integral part of the gameplay, but it isn't. Finding your bearings is a contained task, not something you figure through the geometry and the maps on your own.

Using the tracker

Although the tracker, scanner and telescope can be used nearly all the time, the points where they can meaningfully forward the plot, are automatically activated or otherwise made very clear.

It's of course possible there are many secret locations and easter eggs that require more creative uses of the tools, but I'll reserve this for some later time.

The Invincible is best seen as a walking simulator, a game genre which generally conflates a rigid narrative with travel. One could almost say the player character is the playhead of a narrative, but these games tend to obfuscate and produce enough choice so the player feels there's perhaps more agency than there really is.

Exploration continues...

As in Firewatch, much of the play is about moving from one place to another, while communicating with one person through radio. Similarly, you can choose what to say on occasions, but it is always uncertain whether this affects the overall narrative much.

Typical to this genre, there really aren't any complicated puzzles, so it's not like a point'n'click adventure in first person. Occasionally things and locations need to be figured out, and some tools and interfaces might prove to be tricky, but that's it. Anyway, difficult puzzles might break the story flow and trivialize the more important themes.

A vehicle is on offer too

Having read the book a few times, the secret of Regis III wasn't much of a mystery to me, but the story could still throw a few surprises. It is also interesting to see the way the game meshes with the book. Some of the story elements are almost inevitably the same as in the book, and although I didn't explore every nook and cranny, I feel some topics were also left untouched so it won't "spoil" the book.