This is one of those times where I’m glad my full name is not online anywhere because all I did at work today was have my phone open at the side and play Slice & Dice, pretty much.
Morning, woke up, got a change of clothes and got ready for work, walked through the mud to the bus stop while listening to the last 20 minutes of Into The Aether’s latest episode, and then started an episode of Avatar: Braving the Elements.
When I got to the bus, I whipped out my PSP and unwired my earphones, plugged the jack in, and started a course of Ridge Racer 2, quite literally the most cathartic solo racing experience I’ve had in years. I have been playing it on and off throughout the year, starting with the original, but the sequel is literally the same with more levels. The earphones are a must because the music enhances the experience to the max.
The bus arrives, I walk towards the office, stop for a bit. I always get half an hour early to work, so I think about what to do. I consider reading, but not yet.
I take out my phone, and start a classic match of 20 floors of Slice & Dice, I play the whole time until 8 o’clock gets going. I turn on my laptop, check any emails and have my phone by my side again. I play a turn, I reroll here and there. and then real work shows up.
Slice & Dice is way too dangerous. It’s a roguelite where you control a party of characters, all of them represented by dice, each side does something like attack, heal, or shield. There are also status effects, like poison, losing 1 hp per turn, stone, which makes one side of the dice unusable, or pain, where you get damage back when you hit an enemy.
Each turn you roll the dice, and you can lock the ones with values you want, and roll the rest again twice more. The enemies are also dice, and will have their own turns and do a variety of attacks as well.
It extremely easy to pick-up and play. The decisions made are quick and you don’t need to do precise inputs or anything like that. Just roll some dice, choose which ones to pick, roll again and again, and then execute the chosen actions in the order you want to.
I start playing again for a little bit, and I die by some wrong decision I made 10 turns ago maybe. Okay then, time to actually get to work for a while, and then suddenly it’s time for brunch!
I’ve been making an effort to not use my phone much when I’m with my coworkers, and it actually goes relatively well. I picked it up after we were done eating and played a bit more.
Eventually, more actual works shows up, but I can always sneak a turn here or there.
All of this going on while I somehow got into this little idle game called Idle Slayer which I saw on a post from Wavelengths and I randomly decided to give it a go.
I unlock some stuff there and upgrade things and watch some ads to make things go faster and leave it again to do some other stuff.
Work shows up, I go to a couple of meetings, I sneak in another turn on Slice & Dice.
Somehow, it’s now time for lunch. And my coworker is leaving early today, which I knew since yesterday, thankfully, but he told me he didn’t have any extra unfinished tasks.
At this point, I’ve managed to achieve a victory in Classic Normal and Classic Easy, and I start another run in Normal.
After this, I share some screenshots of my winning runs to some friends who got into the game much earlier than me. They are all celebrating like crazy and sharing stickers.
I wanted to write my Top 25 Games of All Time today and ended up too distracted. However, I wrote the list itself, now I just got to write the thoughts and explain the why of it all.
On the way home, I finally read another chapter of Nemesis Games.
Also, I remembered Silksong is coming out soon, so I have to finally beat Hollow Knight after not having played any of it since July 3rd.
I beat The Hollow Knight on my second attempt, thanks to the Sharp Shadow charm and Unbreakable Heart. Life is good, I share some screenshots online.
I completed Hollow Knight after 46 hours and 18 minutes. I played Slice & Dice for like 7 hours on and off, I did a full tour on Ridge Racer 2, and I read 2 chapters of Nemesis Games.
Now I’m going to sleep.
