2025 December Retro

What Went Well

Projects

Plenty of game & books reviews here, not so much progress on any coding projects because of that. Not so much being none, zip, zilch.

Games

SILKSONG IS DONE! What an incredible game, but man it took me a long time to beat. When it came out I wasn't expecting to sink anywhere near as much time into it as Elden Ring, but apparently Team Cherry made a(nother? Didn't finish to original back in the day) 100+ hour metroidvania. Or I'm just terrible at Silksong's combat, which is definitely possible. Either way it's definitely my game of the year, and I'm glad I finally finished it so I can play other stuff haha. Plus, in typical Team Cherry fashion there's a free major DLC to look forward to next year; Sea of Sorrows.

Speaking of GOTY candidates, it still blows my mind that Hades 2 and Silksong released within weeks of each other. That's a crazy over-concentration of quality indies, and I imagine I'm not the only one who had a hard time deciding which to play every day. They each got their time in the spotlight in the end; I've put a lot more time into Silksong right now but even after finishing Hades 2 at ~50 hours there's still plenty to do, and I can definitely see myself dropping in for a run from time to time, at least until I finish revealing Dora's identity and find the Fates.

Neva proved to be a stellar follow-up to Gris, adding fluid-feeling combat and traversal to Nomada Studio's trademark watercolor art and emotional dialogue-less storytelling.

This was also a month of Visual Novel/not action heavy games, as I remembered laptops are also capable of playing games and do not attract The Fiance's ire for excessive clickiness.

And of course Dispatch's cast of lovable/dangerous goofballs captured my heart with a Telltale style game from the team behind that former studio. The dispatching gameplay was also surprisingly addictive, to the point that I'm not sure if my second playthrough is to see the outcome of different choices or atone for constantly ranking in the bottom 30% of players in the end of episode stats.

Books

I finished Celehar's journey with Grief of Stones and The Tomb of Dragons, both solid if unspectacular additions to the series. I was satisfied by the ending, but at the end of the day nothing in the series ever reached the heights of Goblin Emperor.

The Fiance also sent me on a trip to 1840s Missouri by randomly selecting The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which lead to me reading its predecessor The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and reviewing the pair together since they have pretty similar 'boyhood adventure' vibes; though the stories and tone can be quite different.

General Life Stuff

The Fiance is now officially a learner driver!! Passed her practical test on the second try, and the written on her first. Who knew taking a month long break from any driving practise was the key to success? Though I suspect the lower expectations from that expectation of failure had a lot to do with it.

Since it's Christmas time we made two separate trips to see illuminations (that's what they call Christmas lights in Japan). First in a loop to Meguro, Shinagawa and Ueno, than to Ebisu on the second trip. Shinagawa was as disappointing as Ebisu was impressive, with just a light up staircase compared to a giantcrystal chandelier, huge imposing stone buildings, a glass domed roof covering the gap between them and gaggles of TikTokers for the 'cool with the kids' seal of approval. Meguro river was nice as ever thanks to their pink sakura-themed lights, and Ueno's cavalcade of Santas took a back seat to The Fiance buying me the comfiest warm pyjamas I've ever seen.

Keeping with the celebratory theme I finally convinced The Fiance 'Love Actually' is compulsory Christmas viewing, and was surprised to find both my parents were also watching it on free-to-air in Aus. The Fiance also treated me to a delicously cheesy (belated) birthday dinner at the oddly named 'Sakura Dining' in Chitose-Karasuyama.

We're also now in full married-life-preparation mode, finally reveiving The Fiance's documents from Russia. booking a ring-making class, deciding our 'wedding' date and booking flights to Italy for our honeymoon in March. Pretty crazy to think we'll be officially married in month, and trying to pew pew out some babies not long after that. I do at least feel like an adult these days (hard not to when you're 30, practically dead to teenage me), but feeling ready to raise (and pay for!) children is a whole different thing. I'm sure we'll manage together though)

Work

Wrapped (mostly) the OTP login stuff, which I still think shouldn't exist but hey clients have incredibly specific requirements sometimes. Including deadlines which weren't properly communicated to our team or they would have been met.

Looking forward to a lot more feature work than tech debt next year, after we finally merge my -7000 line Vite migration PR of course. Keeping that thing alive over the last month while working on other stuff continues to be a hassle, will need to do a thorough check before merging to make sure nothing slipped through.

What Went Badly

The Fiance bought a duck for New Year's Eve dinner, then upon realising it still had a head freaked out and refused to do anything with it. So now I know removing the head from a duck is not easy or pleasant, which is fun.

Action Items

Review

Moral Support

The Fiance says 10/10 as always, so go me!

Finish Silksong

Nicely done, with a day or two to spare. Until the DLC drops at least :P

Next Month