Souls Like Strings

Doesn't just jump the shark; plays hopscotch with it

Why

• Absurdly over the top, but can still get you invested in characters
• You never know what you're gonna get when you start a side quest
• Entertaining JRPG combat with depth and real-time elements
• Ichiban is strong candidate for my number one protagonist

Why Not

• Gets a bit grindier toward the end after mostly avoiding it well
• Some late game bosses are absolute tanks even if you're levelled appropriately

Impressions

Trying to predict where Like a Dragon will go next is an exercise in futility....

• Upgrading webpacker (Rails webpack integration) is hell
  • So is migrating from it to Vite
  • So is upgrading it to the actually-maintained React on Rails
  • In general, stuff that integrates React & Rails seems to not be super fun
  • Our internal icons package is not compatible with Vite's interpretation of ESM, and at least one way of fixing that breaks it for everything else

The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison.

I came here to drink tea and solve murders

The more I read of this the more convinced I became it was partway through a series, but I never really felt compelled to put it down and check. Celehar's very matter-of-fact approach to decidedly not matter-of-fact situations is a perspective which seems like it should make him a boring character, but never manages to. Instead he's just a competent guy trying to get his job done in the midst of murder, undead and office politics.

We begin with the...

The most beautiful thing to make me want to throw my Steam Deck across the room

Why

• Distinctive art-style
• Nice music
• Some interesting puzzles/really beautiful areas

Why Not

• Platforming can be painful at times

Impressions

A beautiful little puzzle game aiming for a cozy, relaxing experience that lets itself down a bit with rage-inducing platforming.

You're a little girl minding her own business when a scary looking bug dude called the Oscuro comes along and steals the light that seems to make everything in this universe function. Since you and the bug are the...

• Another thing I should have pushed harder for earlier: passkeys over OTP login
  • Seems like people are coming around but I wasted a lot of work investigating/other people's time reviewing the RFC for OTP login
  • Doing proper passkey research makes it blatantly obvious they're the better option, which I could have realised sooner & used to push for them
• It's possible for the hero section of a header to contain no fewer than 10 elements, just to display a hero logo
• Check how many times a component is used across your codebase before changing its styles,...