I was in a funk yesterday so it would have been a great day to discover a fun new game. Unfortunately, Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods (Enhanced Edition) was up next on the Steam Backlog Bonanza. I got it as part of a “Gothic Complete Pack” for $7.50. Now I didn’t realize this until afterward, but Forsaken Gods is actually an expansion or addon to the base game of Gothic 3. Steam tells me I’ve played the base game of Gothic 3 for 12 minutes, so technically I can’t say that I haven’t played it. (441 words.)

For the 23rd day of the Steam Backlog Bonanza, I played an indie game called The Age of Decadence, which I got in the 2016 Winter sale for $7.50. I think I mentioned this before, but the Winter sale of 2016 was the last time that I splurged on Steam games just because they were on sale. The outdoor isometric view, which is actually not seen very much. I don’t remember why I bought this game. (628 words.)

I found myself wandering a wasteland of wrecked tanker ships when a radiation storm blocked out the sun. In other words, I played S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat yesterday for the 22nd day of the Steam Backlog Bonanza. It’s one of those Eastern European shooters from 2010. I couldn’t find any record of when or how much I paid for it, which suggests I probably bought it soon after 2010 and it’s been sitting in my Steam backlog unplayed for nearly nine years. (660 words.)

I was minding my own business when aliens descended from the sky, firing lasers from their circular flying saucers. Everything around me exploded. Otherworldly creatures crept out of the smoke and fire, approaching me like simians on all fours. Anyway the next game on the Steam Backlog Bonanza is The Bureau: XCOM Declassified. I bought it in a 2013 Steam sale for $4. Just an average green glowing energy field in a federal building. (596 words.)

I’m writing this on the morning of August 9th, so it’s the ninth day of Blaugust. I’ve streamed and posted a first impressions piece about a game from my Steam backlog every day for 12 days in a row now. It’s been grueling work, but I’ve whittled it down to a fairly streamlined process, so it “only” takes about 2 cumulative hours out of every day, or merely half the time of a part-time job. (1080 words.)

Death knocked at the door yesterday, and I answered with a game called Darksiders II. Get it? Because Death is the protagonist in Darksiders II? Anyway, it was the 20th day in a row of the Steam Backlog Bonanza, and one of the most expensive games in the list so far. I got Darksiders II for $10 in 2013, and it’s taken six years to install and play the game. (614 words.)

Most of the blogging and Twittering MMO world is talking about World of Warcraft Classic, with all the recent hubbub about name reservations. My advanced Googling skills tell me that it launches on August 27th. Not WoW Classic, but probably a quest that will be in WoW Classic. I personally have never been interested in WoW Classic, have never yearned for the “good old days” of World of Warcraft, and have no idea why anyone would want such a thing. (979 words.)

The big wheel of life turned and landed on a game from my Steam backlog called A Story About My Uncle*. I got it in a 2016 sale for $2 and tried it for the first time yesterday. (It turns out that 2016 was the final year that I indiscriminately bought games on Steam.) It’s getting really hard to think of a different opening sentence and paragraph for each one of these things. (933 words.)

This is a list of Blogging/CMS solutions I’ve looked into so far, which I gleaned from this site. These are just some of the different ways that people (by which I mean programmers) have desperately tried to break free of the WordPress Industrial Complex. Automad. I didn’t care for the documentation, or lack thereof. Baun. Installed, see below. Very promising directory structure of content similar to what I had envisioned. Baun is apparently a newer iteration of Pico. (967 words.)

For the halfway point of Blaugust, more-or-less, I played Alan Wake’s American Nightmare from my Steam backlog. I got it, along with Alan Wake, for $4 right before it was removed from Steam. Is it live or is it Memorex? The first game, Alan Wake, did not qualify for my Steam Backlog Bonanza because, according to Steam, I’ve played it for precisely one minute. I do not remember that minute. I’ve read numerous reports that Alan Wake was a great game, a must-buy game, particularly when it was about to be removed, but I haven’t played it, and apparently something about it made me recoil away from it. (822 words.)

Last time I looked at Pico and Grav. I was going to look at Kirby CMS this time, but I encountered two things that stopped me before I even downloaded it. Kirby No-Go First, upon perusing the cookbooks, you have to setup the same kind of one-directory-per-blog-post structure in Kirby that I didn’t like in Grav. Just for the record, contrary to Kirby’s tagline, that is not “adapting to your content,” it is, in fact, “forcing a strict ruleset upon your content. (1368 words.)

Yesterday’s new game for the Steam Backlog Bonanza was Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions Evolved. I think it’s an extended edition of the “Dimensions” release. It’s a pure arcade action game, of the kind you might find in an old-fashioned upright arcade cabinet. It's very difficult to get any sense of what the game is like from a still image. I don’t know why I bought this game, but it was only $1. (545 words.)

Last time, I brainstormed about content archives without accomplishing much. This time, however, I am diving straight into the deep end and trying to create content in Pico and Grav. Okay, that’s overselling it a little bit. But I have now tinkered a little bit with Pico and Grav to see what it can do straight out of the box. I imagine my writing workflow is going to look something like this (as it has, more-or-less, for the past month): Write a blog post in a plain text editor on some other computer, possibly my iPad with an Apple wireless keyboard, which is my favorite keyboard to write on. (1896 words.)

The Steam Backlog Bonanza marches on with a look at Penumbra: Requiem (and Black Plague). Penumbra came out in 2009 but I couldn’t find any records of when I bought it, so it must have been a long time ago. I had played Black Plague for about a half hour before, but yesterday was the first time I looked at Requiem. An obelisk puzzle in Penumbra: Requiem. Penumbra: Requiem is actually an “expansion” for Black Plague. (480 words.)

Last time, I setup Pico and Grav on a Linux server. Now that I have a working installation of both Pico and Grav, it occurs to me: Now what? I haven’t tested their capabilities extensively, but of the two platforms, I would say that Grav probably has more features and more support. It’s closer to what a WordPress user might expect to see in a blog. It has plugins and themes and an administration panel. (847 words.)