Souls Like Strings

The Roots of Chaos by Samantha Shannon.

As broad as Game of Thrones but not nearly as deep

Shannon created a pretty interesting world with this series, but unfortunately neglected to fill it with interesting characters. As with most fantasy settings dragons exist and are key to the story, but here they're divided into Wyrms (nasty, evil dragons born of fire) and ... dragons (wise, kind dragons born of starlight).

Wyrms are reviled in Western countries since their religious hegemony (Virturdom, a little on the nose with the naming) is based on the continued existence of their...

• If tests are failing in CI but not locally, maybe check if the remote version is rebased on trunk and local isn't
• When picking work back up after a break, make sure you've refamiliarized yourself with what it's meant to do before testing
• Also be sure to remember which environment you need to run checks against before you spend time getting a staging check working when it should be checking prod
• OIDC is basically OAuth but you get an Identity Token with/in addition to your Access Token
  • Google's recommended implementation doesn't work in anything but Chrome
  • LINE has...

• OAuth redirects only require rendering HTML if the user isn't already authenticated
  • Most people only interact with our user service through OAuth/SAML
• We just kinda leave SSO References around after deleting the relevant IdP, seems strange
• Confirming things is a good idea; I was right that locale controls the language for unauthenticated pages but not for authenticated (all that matters)
• Checkly seems cool so far as a way to automatically run uptime/e2e-ish checks against prod
  • You want to write tests a little different compared to e2e though, since resiliency is more important than faithful user...

She's multi-track drifting!

Why

• Never stops adding new mechanics, but somehow never overwhelming
• Easy to complete but tough to master
• Instant revives a-la Celeste are a great fit given the pace of gameplay
• Top-notch style and soundtrack
• Extremely tropey shonen storyline is a great fit

Why Not

• You can beat stages with slow reactions, but it'll feel pretty bad until you learn them
• Hard to read dialogue during the action (100% my fault for using Japanese audio)

Impressions

Denshattack is Unbeatable crossed with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, but you're a train. The story...

A game about grief; intent on giving you firsthand experience

Why

• JRPG combat for a souls-like fan
• Incredible, emotional story
• Voice actors live up to their reputations and the composer earned one
• I've never taken more screenshots in a game
• Somehow walks the tightrope of funny/traumatic

Why Not

• You hate games?
• You only have a Steam Deck :/

Impressions

Some games are so hyped it seems impossible for them to ever meet those expectations. Most don't, especially in the AAA space. I'm pleased to report Expedition 33 is not one of those, instead joining...