2026 February Retro

What Went Well

Projects

From time to time I make forays into old Slack threads and Confluence pages looking for stuff I can use in my talk, but that's about it at the moment. The Cloudflare spending tracker seems doomed to forever be about a day of sustained effort away from done.

Games

Roadwarden taught me that maybe I wouldn't like DnD as much as I've always assumed; despite the obvious care with which it was made and quality as a game of its genre it just wasn't for me.

Kena: Bridge of Spirits lived up to its promise as a lighter (in visuals if not tone) souls-like and serendipitously had a sequel announced the day I finished it. Blasphemous lived up to expectations in very much the opposite direction; despite being a 2D metroidvania it's such a classic souls-like you'd think FromSoft made it. Neva: Prologue also lived up to the high standard set by the main game, telling the story of the deuteragonist's meeting while adding meaningfully to the gameplay.

I picked up Deathbulge: Battle of the Bands and was blown away by how good it was; definitely deserves more players than it seems to have. The JRPG-ish combat is noticably more active than what's typical for the genre; and filled with the same level of entertaining animation which pervades the game. Character designs and writing are whacky in the best way and the story has a surprising amount of heart given all the ridiculousness going on.

Speaking of ridiculousness; Yakuza 0. My first foray into the non-Ichiban Yakuza games started off rough as I adjusted to the combat, but left me chomping at the bit to immediately start the rest of Kiryu's saga. All the stuff which made Like a Dragon great was there even back then, with both Majima and Kiryu living up to the legends they're presented as in LaD. The worst part is that now I've played as Majima it'll be tough not having that option in later games.

Books

My Husband was intensely creepy and disturbing but in an entertaining way, This is How You Lose the Time War was light enemies-to-lovers romp through time and space and Alias Grace reminded me that no matter how shit things seem in modern times; at least I'm not a servant in the 19th century.

General Life Stuff

I wrote this almost two weeks late and neither The Wife or I could remember much of note from February haha, so this one is lost to the sands of time.

Work

Shipped OTP login 99% solo which felt like a nice accomplishment, and plenty of work in the pipeline.

What Went Badly

I struggle enough to think of stuff for this section when I write it straight away; no chance after two weeks.

Action Items

Review

Get some feature work started

Big success here even if it wasn't necessarily because of anything I did, both the other engineer on the team and I each have separate work streams now that're enough to keep us busy, and I'm also on loan helping with a time-sensitive change for another team. Lots coming down the pipeline and we have an actual PM now plus our manager might just be our manager before too long, so things are looking up on the 'having stuff to do' front.

Next Month