Dufniall

I got my email asking for my address, so I guess we're getting close to shipping. The website still says april, but I thought I saw a may date for the EU/UK cover. We'll see!

Introducing the Super Mario Pass, 15€ a month to play all* Mario games on Switch! *Well, most. Some of them. Just the main games basically. Still only 15€ a month!

Had a great island day yesterday. The Town Hall opened so a bunch of new stuff came available. Set a place for the campsite and started collection for a bridge. I'm loving the random stuff you can now buy from Nook, like Godzilla. Decided to spend some Bells on island decoration so now snacks are available near the town hall, and there is a lighthouse dramatically on a sea cliff. A lot of fruit was ready as well, so made quite some Bells in selling that. This morning the campsite was ready and I spend some time planting flowers here and there. I think my next step is to clean up the place, at least that's what Tom Nook is telling me. I'll try to pay off my bridge today first, before going for a house upgrade.

Random island moods: Also, visiting @Glen-i meant getting greeted properly:

95 on mine, and I'm about to open my island.

If we're going down that road...

What time are you going online? I may have time until half 8 tonight, so for the next 1,5 hours.

May 28!

I'm looking for an island to sell my cherries, anyone online and available?

Dear god, March is almost over already. Time for a monthly Diary update. I've been playing a lot of games for a little bit so it's quite the list: Animal Crossing (Switch) I wasn't planning on getting this game, but I had a bit of a rough week (my grandmother passed away last week) so I could use a feel-good game. The latest trailers looked so charming and reading the day one experiences from people here made me bite the bullet and get it. Oh my what a charming game. I put a lot of time in Wild World, almost no time in LGTTC, some time in New Leaf so I was a bit doubtful if I would catch the Animal Crossing virus again. I have and it is the perfect game to pick up and play for a bit each day. Online is a great addition and this is in fact the first time I really spend time visiting other islands. Can't wait to see everyone's place in a while when we have access to terraforming and pavements. More impressions in the AC thread. Trials Rising (Switch) I found this quite cheap physical so I thought why not. It is actually a pretty enjoyable game and easy to pick up for just a couple of quick rounds (except for the long loading time at startup). I never played a game from the Trials series so the gameplay feels fresh. The physical version contained some extra DLC so contentwise it seems pretty meaty. The biggest doubt I had about this was that people were missing the analogue triggers on Switch. So far I haven't really missed them and I didn't feel like I had no control over my bike. I'm done with the easy missions and now starting with the medium ones, and I do notice the increase in difficulty though. As said I never played a game from the series before, and I'm impressed by the variety of the levels. You go all around the globe and the different stages (from Siberia to Machu Picchu to the Chinese Wall) all look cool. All in all a really fun game for in-between. Pokémon Sword (Switch) I keep coming back to this game once in a while. Either for doing some Max Raids with @Glen-i and @markderoos, or just to fill up my Pokédex. I finally started the post-game story and well it's just silly. I'll probably keep playing this and I hope to have my Pokédex completed before the DLC hits. I did some trading through Pokémon Home as well, but got bored with it after a week. I prefer to just catch my Pokémon in-game. Okami HD (Switch) Still going strong in Okami. I finished the first main story arc, I'll continue this soon, but this feels like a good moment to give the game a little bit of pause. Still charming. Super Ghouls & Ghosts and Joe & Mac 2 (SNES Online app) I also finished two games on the SNES app. The first one is Super Ghouls & Ghosts, and you can read my impressions in the TBT article. Had a bit of a chuckle during the credits: The other one is Joe & Mac 2. I had Joe & Mac on the Gameboy, but I never owned Joe & Mac 2. In fact I thought I never played it, but playing it now on the SNES app I had all these deja-vu moments so I really had to dig when I played this. Was it on an emulator? Did I rent it back in the day? But no, a friend of mine in primary school had it and I played it there. It's an okay game and you can breeze through it quite fast, especially when rewinding every now and then. The only cheap bit is in the end, when you have to do all bosses of the game in a row before the final boss, without hardly any healing. It's just making things difficult for the hell of it. Shadow of the Tomb Raider (PC) Nope, I still haven't finished this although I did make some good progress. Had a few impressive moments. I have a feeling that I'm quite close to the end now, so I'm hoping to end this coming weekend. So I at least can scratch one big game from the list this month haha. Finally I bought Enter The Gungeon on Switch. I played it a bit on PC but never got past floor 3. Now I have it on Switch and I never make it past floor 3... If someone has some solid advice on this hook me up! Otherwise I guess it's just a matter of git gud... And the biggest loser for this month is Wargroove, who didn't get played much this month due all the other games. Will come back to it though, I just need to sit down and take my time for it.

About a week in now, so it's time for a little bit of evaluation. First of all what a charming game it is. It could use a bit more QoL/menu-friendly features but aside from that everything is just great. Graphically it looks so smooth, and with stuff like fur effects on Tom Nook and bokeh where stuff in the front looks unsharp when talking to somebody is great. Being able to put stuff outside is amazing, you can really fill your island to your own taste. Great that they made an effort of also dressing up the gardens of new inhabitants. All the extra missions really give the game a goal that was lacking in the past. I'm actually loving the slow start. It's a game I don't want to rush out so doing a couple of things a day and seeing your options grow is perfect. Playing this each day for an hour or maybe two is more than enough. Currently 2 of the 3 new inhabitants have made it to the island, so I'm guessing tomorrow #3 will arrive and that will open up the new possibilities. My exotic fruit trees are starting to produce now, so picking up foreign fruit means easy cash each day. Got some pears from @drahkonso that's my last orchard planted soon. I prefer this a lot over fishing and bug hunting. Multiplayer is great as well, and I can't wait for the next N-E party. I hope they will add some multiplayer games though, otherwise it's all a matter of creativity. Oh, and for people who are not great at drawing but want custom designs: I've been using this site where you can upload an image, create a pattern and generate a QR code for the app: https://acpatterns.com/editor Loving this game, but I'm definitely going the easy route.

It is, Switch name is Dufniall, island is Izumo Isle.

Allright, I'm opening up but apparently there was an update for the game that needed to install first.

If you drop me a couple of pears you can sell the rest! And also pilfer some cherries while you're here.

It is such a lovely series, I can imagine that you don't want to play another one right away, but due time you should check out other games from the series. The one gripe I had with The Curious Village was that most of the puzzles are thrown at you without a context. In the later ones however the puzzles are much more themed to the character or the story, making the flow even better. I think I played about 3 or 4 games from the series, and especially that first game is magical. When you play more from the series you will see a pattern and of course certain types of puzzles are making a return, but the storytelling does get a lot better as well.

I may be up for that. By the way I want to level up a bunch of my 'mon fast to have some variation for G-Max hunting. I have this abundance of XP candies, but using them only makes them level up and not get EV, right? What would be the best way to get them on a higher level without losing too much EV points? Part wild battles, part candies? Or cram them with vitamins?

I'll vote for SteamWorld Dig.

It's the main game without the DLC, so if you want that you'll need to buy the DLC. But the core game is enough to get you started, the DLC is mostly outfits and some extra tombs.

I could join tonight as well! I'm probably on from around 6-7PM UK time. Oh and I have a Gigantamax Gengar for trade if we don't find one.

I'm setting up some orchards on my island, so I'm looking for people with pears and peaches to spare. I can trade cherries! Anyone has an island open with some low hanging fruit?

Both Tomb Raider and Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris are currently free on Steam. If you haven't played Tomb Raider, grab this chance. Great reboot.

Ah yeah forgot to mention but indeed my town isn't open yet. I guess that's tomorrow when the airport opens.

Come visit Izumo Isle, we have cherries!