Yesterday for the 15th day of the Steam Backlog Bonanza I played a game called Apotheon, which I got in 2016 for $3.74. Hard to believe I’m into a third week of this. Anyway, I had been looking forward to this one because I knew it was a visually unusual game. I don’t normally like side-scrollers. The last one I remember enjoying was Pitfall on an Atari 2600. Actually I can’t think of any other side-scrollers I’ve played on any platform since then. (388 words.)

Previously, I mentioned that I planned to investigate the Pico and Grav blogging platforms first, since they are both PHP-based, database-less platforms that operate on Markdown flat files, which sounds like the perfect place to start for my mission goals. Incidentally this is exactly the kind of post I wouldn't normally put on this blog. First I’d like to mention that it’s really hard to find alternate blogging platforms. Any sort of Googling will get you information on: WordPress, Blogger, possibly SquareSpace, and maybe a mention about Medium. (1569 words.)

Game Of Thrones, the game from 2012, not to be confused with all of the other Game Of Thrones games, was next on my Steam Backlog Bonanza. I bought it in 2013 in a $10 bundle with … I don’t even know what else. I played it for the first time yesterday. This is not a Nazgul, but in fact the character that you play at the beginning. It’s actually surprising that this game has been sitting here for almost six years. (458 words.)

Blaugust has inspired me to write a lot more, and to think about my blog, so I thought I would start writing an open-ended series of posts about a very long-term, often-neglected project of mine: Migrating to a new blogging platform. The generic "this is a post about blogging" image. Over the years, I’ve made a bunch of web sites. I’ve been with a bunch of different web hosts. I currently have four different web sites that I “maintain” (with varying degrees of updates, from none to frequent): A real-name site, a writing site, a music site, and a gaming site. (1491 words.)

Back in 2013 I bought Shadow Warrior for $10, and it came with a free “mini-game” called Viscera Cleanup Detail: Shadow Warrior. That’s what came up on the schedule for yesterday’s stream, so I finally tried it out. I had heard about Viscera Cleanup Detail before but I don’t own it. It’s a physics game where you take on the role of a janitor who “cleans up” after the heroic gamer has gone through and slaughtered all the bad guys, exploding them into gibs or whatever. (554 words.)

Yesterday I played a game called Kholat for the 12th day of the Steam Backlog Bonanza, which I got in 2016 for about $9. For some reason, most of the literature puts it in all caps so it’s KHOLAT! Not just Kholat. KHOLAT!!! One of the main attractions is Sean Bean voicing some of the narration. It’s a really interesting game, in a certain kind of way. It’s basically a walking simulator at its heart, but it’s a very intense walking simulator. (839 words.)

Yesterday on the Steam Backlog Bonanza, I tried out a survival game from 2016 called Vortex: The Gateway which I got for $9 in a sale. (I think it’s probably a universal constant that all of the games in everyone’s backlog are games from a sale.) Surviving on an alien planet that looks like a nice camping trip. I only played for about 40 minutes because of a looming thunderstorm, but I tried the two different game modes. (709 words.)

Lurking over in the Blaugust Discord today, I noticed a conversation about the details of precise formatting in blog posts. Someone was having some trouble trying to get the WordPress editor to format their post exactly the way they wanted it to be seen. It inspired me to throw out a bit of unsolicited blogging advice related to this topic. First of all, I think we can all agree that the newest WordPress editor is terrible. (811 words.)

Yesterday I played NEO Scavenger for the 10th day of the Steam Backlog Death March I mean Bonanza. It was released in 2014, and I bought it in 2016 for $5. (Coincidentally it’s actually on sale today for less than that.) Waking up from cryosleep. I goofed with this one. I have, in fact, played it before. But for some reason, Steam didn’t think I had. I know I played it because I found a video I recorded of it in 2016. (750 words.)

I bought 2010’s Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit for $8 in a Winter sale in 2014, and yesterday I installed and played it for the first time. I believe this was the ninth game in the Backlog Bonanza so far, with a depressingly huge list of games left to get through. Every frame of every race looks exactly like this. I’ve always liked racing games. They’re simpler games from a simpler time. (848 words.)

For undoubtedly many of the same reasons as the rest of the United States, I wasn’t in a very good mood yesterday, so I called an audible and substituted Brütal Legend instead of the game I *planned* to play. I remember enjoying a demo of Brütal Legend on the PS3 years ago, so when I saw a PC version in a Steam sale for $5 in 2013 I had to get it. (399 words.)

Inside-Baseball Note Of Possible Worth To New Bloggers during Blaugust: I forgot you’re supposed to put the more important and unique search keywords at the beginning of a blog post’s title, and thus have I changed the format for my titles and introduced an inconsistency into my Blaugust posts. (At least, that was the last SEO advice I remember reading. It changes at least once a year.) Yesterday, Hitman: Absolution came up on the Big Board for the last day of the first week of my Blaugust Steam Backlog Bonanza. (887 words.)

I bought both Dead Space 1 and 2 in a Steam winter sale in 2011 for $5 each (that was back in the halcyon days when Steam sales were always 85%-off sales, not the trolly 10%-off sales they are today). I played seven hours of Dead Space 1 according to Steam. I didn’t hate it, but I obviously never finished it. Yesterday on the Backlog Bonanza, it was finally time to take a look at the sequel, Dead Space 2. (937 words.)

I was looking forward to seeing this real-time strategy game from 2008 for the first time, and now that I have, I’m not even sure what to say about it. This might be the exact point in time when the games industry stopped and said, “Wait, I think we might have gone a little too far here.” Or should have said that, at least. First, let’s talk about the game part of the game. (655 words.)

Ran out of steam on Bloodborne and Demon’s Souls and went back to PC games in July. PC Games Elder Scrolls Online, 7 hours. Wow, whodathunkkit. I found myself intrigued by the Zone Story in Rivenspire enough to keep logging in to go through it. Still haven’t finished it yet though. Now I’m distracted by the Steam backlog. Lords of the Fallen, 2 hours. This was my alternate game when my hands hurt from using the controller too much. (169 words.)