Steam Next Fest: October 2021

Welcome to another Steam Next Fest rundown with myself, Skylar-Mei, and my good friend, WesleyWhale! We’re here once again to share our thoughts on a bunch of demos featured in October’s line up. If you’re unfamiliar with this event, Next Fest is a gaming festival hosted by Steam to promote a vast amount of upcoming games from indie developers by offering free demos to download and play over the course of the week (1st -7th Oct). October’s Next Fest showcased over 700 games, which is obviously far too many for even a team of people to get through, so we virtually picked a selection another 21 demos – some of which we already knew about, and others that caught our attention whilst browsing the store. We tried to choose a selection of games from different genres since we both enjoy games of many types, with hopes that there will be at least something for everyone. We wrote a similar post on the previous Next Fest back in June, so go check that out by following the link if you haven’t already!

Monthly Summary: September 2021

It seems like it’s already time for another monthly summary! September has been a strange month really – I had some holiday time off work and celebrated my birthday, but I also had some upsetting news which I’ll talk about at the end of the post. Overall, this month has been a little quiet on the completions front, but I do seem to have started a lot of new games instead… which isn’t ideal since I have a lot planned for October. Before I get too excited about sharing my plans for next month though, let’s take a look at my gaming progress during September!

AniMei: My 6-Monthly Anime Round Up #1

It’s time for a new anime series! At the beginning of the year, my interest in anime completely sky-rocketed and I’ve been watching more than double the amount than I used to. This post was originally going to be a part of my #AniMay series which I posted during May, but that didn’t go to plan this year. Now I’m making my blogging comeback, I’ve decided to rebrand my anime series from AniMay (since it’s now September) to AniMei – a play on my name, Skylar-Mei, instead! Each post will feature a synopsis and my personal thoughts on 11 different anime which I plan to post every 6 months rather that just once a year. Since this post was originally scheduled for May, I have not altered the line up with any anime I’ve watched since then and I’ll be saving the more recent watches for my next instalment which will probably be sometime in January, with the following hopefully being on schedule for May!

So, welcome to AniMei #1!

Let’s take a look at my favourite 11 anime from the past year!

Monthly Summary: August 2021

August seems to have flown by and I can’t believe it’s almost September. This past month has been filled with gaming activity across a vast array of genres and I seem to have quite a bit to talk about. Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to blog as much as I intended and I’ve been considering sticking to writing about a specific type/genre of game, but when I take a look back on the strange concoction of titles I’ve played this month, I’m going to ignore that idea. I have plans to work on my blog backlog next month as well as finish up games I have on the go before getting stuck into some horror games for Hallowe’en! I know I’m getting ahead of myself, but this is my favourite time of the year and I can’t help but get excited! Before we welcome September, let’s take a look back at my gaming log from August:

Otome Announcements 2021

It’s been a couple of weeks since the English localisation of Bustafellows was released by PQube which has completely overrun the otome community right now. I haven’t got very far into the game myself yet, but I’m loving what I’ve seen so far and this release is the first in a pretty long list of upcoming otome titles to get excited about! With both Idea Factory International and Aksys Games both revealing their upcoming localisations during this past few weeks, the excitement has only intensified and the future of otome gaming is looking rather promising! In this post, I will list each upcoming otome title from both IFI and Aksys with a game synopsis, trailer and my thoughts about each game so far (I’ll even leave a list my personal favourites based on first impressions at the end)!

Smite: Odyssey 2022 T5 Skin

The annual Odyssey event is slightly different this year than it has been in the previous years. Typically, around March, a community vote is held for Gods and Goddesses go head to head in a tier system which runs over a few weeks until the final bracket decides on the winner (if you’d like to see how it worked last year, refer to my Odyssey 2021 post here). This event usually generates a lot of interest and hype amongst the Smite community, but this year has seen no such event.

Monthly Summary: July 2021

July has practically been a non-event compared to last month on terms of gaming progress, but it has been absolutely phenomenal for releases and announcements!

It’s been an exciting month with the release of Bustafellows, the announcement of Cupid Parasite and of course Soraru’s online live too! As for gaming, I’ve not done a great lot as I’ve been focusing on my Japanese studies and when I have had time to game, it’s been finishing things off in the run up to Bustafellows.

Japanese Study Journal: Week 3

I’ve made it to the end of week 3 and I’m still studying daily! After the events of this week, I feel so much more motivated than last week and I can I already see a small improvement. I’m quite happy with my study methods thus far and I’m enjoying finding new ways to learn each week.

Japanese Study Journal: Week 2

I’ve reached the end of my second week of studying! I feel like I’ve achieved so much more than I did last week and I’ve made some pretty decent steps at creating study materials that will help me in the upcoming weeks. I’m also finding myself enjoying my study time which is something I never thought would happen – or at least not to this extent anyway!

Japanese Study Journal: Week 1

It’s the beginning of my 30 Day Study Journal where I’ll be focusing on my Japanese studies throughout July. Considering this was a spur of the moment thing for the beginning of a new month, I was not prepared at all! Instead of getting stuck right in, I will need to do a little preplanning first which will probably take up the first few days.

I’m hoping to share some tips and resources that have helped me learn along the way. If you’re reading this because you want to learn yourself, then I hope you may find something even a little bit helpful!