#332
Feb 9, 2025
Books
This week I read:
Volume 1 of the Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou Deluxe Edition by Hitoshi Ashinano, which contains the first 24 chapters
24 chapters is a weird amount, because that’s all of volumes 1 to 3, plus the first chapter of volume 4. Normally these combined editions are just a number of volumes put into one book. But that doesn’t matter so much for YKK, because unlike most other things there isn’t really a plot.
Set in a post-apocalyptic Japan which feels more like the ’90s than the far future, the world is sinking beneath a rising sea. Alpha, an android, runs an out-of-the-way cafe that her owner left to her. There isn’t really a plot, it’s just about Alpha’s slow life and finding happiness in the little things.
I’ve actually read this before—it’s a classic—but I find I remember barely any of it. So each chapter is a new little joy.
Roleplaying Games
The Halls of Arden Vul
We hit another major factional milestone this week: the players found the remains of Druva, second thegn, put his unquiet spirit to rest (through extreme violence), and returned his bones and sword to the Troll Thegn. Returning either of those two would have won best-friends-forever status with the trolls, so to do both, after already delivering to the trolls the means to end their racial degradation (in the person of Triv-Lok), and opening two routes to the trolls ancestral home (opening the Obsidian Gates and also finding the secret exodus route) is… well… there isn’t a way to portray how much the trolls love these guys.
The only thing left for the players to do is to actually bring Triv-Lok to the troll pits and let her grow some trolls in a vat.
But now I have to figure out what exactly a troll crusade to reclaim their ancestral halls looks like. Oh boy.
Miscellaneous
I guess 2025 is the year I get really into video games, as I spent almost all my spare time this week playing Ostranauts, which is a very fun (but definitely early access quality) game about being a self-employed space salvager. You’ve got a ship with a hefty mortgage, a bunch of medical problems due to growing up in low-G, and a dream. A dream to get rich.
It is a bit clunky—sometimes it just gets into a weird state and you have to reload, character AI is pretty dumb, and the UI lags occasionally—but it’s a lot of fun. One thing I think the game really needs in a future version, though, is some sort of shipyard / ship building system. Making large structural modifications to an existing ship is pretty tedious and involves a lot of micro-management. It would be ideal if you could pay to commission a new ship which then gets you an interface to, at least, draw out the hull. It’s ok if there’s limited component availability and a huge markup: the effort saving would make it worth it.
I’ve also picked up Exogate Initiative, a game about managing Stargate Command (but they’re exogates for licensing reasons), and Return to Moria which is by any objective measure a bad game, but it’s Lord of the Rings themed so that gets it a pass.