August 2026 Summary

August was a very interesting month, given the arrival of Blaugust, the summer vacation and a lot of my gaming progression done during all of it. I have recently realized how little I have to say about the month itself here when I keep saying a bunch of stuff for my weeknotes. For a while I’ve seen some people saying I should stick to either monthly or weekly stuff, and perhaps they have a point.

At the same time, I like this format quite a bit, so let’s get to the media I enjoyed during the last 31 days of my life, shall we?

Podcasts

This has been the worst month of the whole year, in fact, it has been the worst month in all of my podcast statistics. I barely listened to 14 hours of audio, and I think it has a lot to do with the fact I had visits and couldn’t sleep to podcasts as I usually do. I would probably use my earphones, except that I somehow lost them for a whole week too! Because people were invading my living space, I couldn’t search for them as comfortably and by the time I found them it was too late.

• Into the Aether - 6.6 hours. Brendon and Stephen are also on hiatus for a couple weeks, so I had even less episodes to listen to than usual.

• The Rest is History - 3.5 hours. I’ve been listening to one of their series on the Great War, so that’s been interesting.

• Land of Eem: Actual Play - 1.5 hours. Since I want to get better at GMing, listening to how others run the game is helpful!

• The Ten Minute Bible Hours - 1.4 hours. Back to this one after a long while, still on Matthew of course.

Gaming

I’d say this was the main hobby that completely took over this month, especially combined with the tabletop session we had!

• Outer Wilds - A game I started on January, abandoned for months and only returned to in the middle of August. This title immediately gripped me all over again, and it didn’t let me go until I finally rolled creadits. This adventure was so good, I simply had to keep going. It was a rather profound experience and it will linger inside my head for quite a while. Remember, don’t look anything up, simply go and play it, as long as you are okay with some zero gravity maneuvres in a 3D space, you should be okay. I don’t want to say anything else!

• Hollow Knight Silksong - After finishing OW, it was about time I returned to Pharloom once again. I made a bunch of progress this time around, finally unlocking Act 3 after defeating the final boss one more time. I have also accessed a whole new area and gone through a couple of gauntlets and new bosses. I have a feeling this will take me another twenty hours or so which I am really looking forward to playthrough.

• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D - I returned to this game later in the month and completed the Jabu Jabu’s Belly dungeon. It took me a while to figure out how to beat the miniboss for some reason, but everything else was pretty nice! I am finally ready for the next adventure in the game, which will be going to the Temple of Time, and using the Ocarina to access the chambers within, and fight for Hyrule’s future!

• Fire Emblem Awakening - This month was mostly dedicated to the leveling up characters and doing side quests. For some reason I have been unable to follow up on the main story—okay, the reason is Outer Wilds and other games—but I am still really looking forward to putting more time into this tactics game.

• Donkey Kong ‘94 - This has proven to be absolute platforming perfection. Donkey Kong has so many interesting mechanics for its time, it is kind of ridiculous how well it holds up today. I have completed half of the stages now and I will definitely continue for September, it shouldn’t take much longer to beat.

• Minecraft - Only played this one for a day, with some friends on a LAN party on our private server! I started to finally build a house and make it pretty. I was messing around with block textures and stuff to make it a bit livelier, but there is a lot of work left to do, and I don’t even have a rooftop yet.

• Super Mario 3D World - We are so close to the finale of this game, my friends and I have been doing steady progress. and we continue to collect all the stars and stamps in the game! It’s incredibly fun to just get everything there is.

• Risk of Rain Returns - Played this with a friend of mine, just the two of us versus the world. We barely managed to get to the second portal in the game, it really is kinda difficult!

• Faster Than Light - Before our Minecraft session I quickly booted this up on my Laptop and had a fun time on a run. I didn’t last long though and my ship was destroyed in the end.

• Land of Eem - After so many months we finally returned to this TTRPG, and it was absolutely glorious. I’m really happy that we managed to go back even if it was a bit improvised. Most of my players forgot a lot of their abilities and features of the game such as how XP works and the like. We still had a lot of fun though and I’ve read some parts of the core rulebook again to improve for our next play.

Books

• The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson - I read this while listenint to the soundtrack of Resident Evil. I’m only at 40% of the book and I’ve already been taken to some dreadful cosmic horror trips. Not bad at all, I can see how Lovecraft was inspired by this one, I have to say. I will definitely finish it soon.

• Clarkesworld Magazine #211 by Neil Clarke - The first issue I’ve ever read and it was a very nice surprise! I already shared a review so, give it a read!

• Leviathan Falls by James S.A. Corey - The finale of an epic saga. I should also write my overall thoughts on the whole thing. For now the review is already available though.

Manga

• Centuria - Chapters 39-47. This shonen manga featuring some dark fantasy and eldritch horror elements has been rather interesting! I started it late in July so I’ve read a bunch more of it this month.

• Spy x Family - Chapters 138-139. Because of all the gaming I forgot to keep up with this one until last week. It continues to be as fun as every though!

• Hunter x Hunter - Chapters 397-401. This epic adventure finally returns from hiatus, and its ongoing arc is rather convoluted after a little while. There are a lot of pages and a lot of texts to go through so my progress has been slow. I do like the build-up though.

• Blue Lock - Chapters 355-356. Another one that I fell behind on because of priorities.

• Fly Me to the Moon - Chapter 289. Same thing as the rest!

Movies

• Spider-Man: Brand New Day - This really is the best Spider-Man film since Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 and I really, really enjoyed it. I loved the cinematography, the story, the new characters and how the rest of the Marvel world is interconnected with Peter Parker. Really enjoyable adventure so far!

• Edge of Tomorrow - This is one of those sci-fi films that has gotten better over time. Groundhog’s Day with an alien war in the middle. It’s still a pretty refreshing concept and very well done, a blockbuster that delivers, what else can I say?

• Sunshine - The sun is dying and a crew of movie stars is sent to the send a bomb to revive it all over again. This was a really interesting watch, with some great visuals and a bit of an Alien feeling to it, given the conflicts between the people in the ship and the series of events that happen. Loved that final sequence quite a lot.

Music

I would also like to point out listening to a bunch of Resident Evil’s soundtrack while reading The House on the Borderland as well, extremely immersive.

• FTL by Ben Prunty
• Outer Wilds by Andrew Prahlow
• Hades by Darren Korb
• Minecraft - Volume Beta by C418
• Hyper Light Drifter by Disasterpiece

Finishing thoughts

And just like that, August is done! The month is over and there are a lot of things still to say. I have to admit I am not really feeling too accomplished with the goals I’ve been sharing so I’ll stop with that for now.

Anyway, this is already enough, until next time!

This is day 26 of #100DaysToOffload