Hello 2024. I'm absolutely shocked every year when I discover that this blog still exists. So let's resurrect it for one more year and see if it still works, shall we?
2024 almost felt like a normal year. Maria completed some post-cancer surgery procedures which met our entire 2023 medical deductible in the first week of January! Unfortunately we did not have enough money put aside for that since it was the beginning of the year and our contributions hadn't had a chance to build up yet after paying out for the surgeries at the end of 2022. Maria's online friend community stepped up and put together a GoFundMe for her which was more than enough to help offset the costs. As far as we can tell, everything is fine with her and hopefully will continue to be.
My year was much the same as it has been for the last few years. I continue to work primarily at home despite most people returning to the office at this point. I actually had to surrender my cubicle because they needed it for people who actually work in the office! I went to Utah a couple times for work and a couple quick trips to Virginia in April and San Diego in November for some training.
Maria and I celebrated our 25th year anniversary with an extended weekend trip into Texas Hill Country during wild flower season where we enjoyed the beautiful colorful country scenery.
One of our more memorable outings this year was to the friends & family opening event of "Meow Wolf" in Grapevine Texas where Colin got hired as well as Spencer's girlfriend, Max. So we were among the first to go through this fun and trippy museum/art installation/experience/tour-thing. It's hard to describe but it's worth the visit if you come to town or can find one of the few other installations out there in the US.
As usual, I kept a log of everything I watched, played, listened to, read, and did this year. Here are my favorite and notable items from various categories:
MUSIC
Over the past few years I've learned to rely on Spotify to tell me what I liked this year, but since it quits keeping track at the end of the year, my wrap-up did not accurately reflect what I personally liked best this year. So I have cross-referenced my own notes to figure out what I should mention here.
First, as usual, I made a new song for Christmas. In my quest to fill in the gaps that are missing from the vast Mannheim Steamroller Christmas Music Collection, I chose this year to do my own rendition of "Ding Dong Merrily on High." This one doesn't appear to be as well known in the US, but I hear it regularly on British shows. I believe one of the original places I heard it was during an episode of "Monty Python's Flying Circus."
Greg Whitehead - "Ding Dong Merrily On High"
Music I listened to in 2023:
- Jacob Collier - "WELLLL"
My favorite song of the year was #37 on my Spotify playlist. I'm shocked. It's possible because I watched the video on YouTube quite a bit and it originally showed up under a different artist's name (possibly the same artist, but in Japanese writing) one week on my Spotify recommends playlist. The artist is Jacob Collier whom I'd never heard of before this year. From what I can tell the man is a musical genius. I watched quite a few videos of his--especially live performances--that just blew me away. Oddly, though, this one track is the only song of his that I found that I like. I have yet to find anything else this good. So though I think he's an amazing musician, I only like one song, but it's an amazing song! - Trevor Rabin - Rio
My favorite album of the year was released near the end so Spotify probably didn't get all my listens to this either. Trevor Rabin was the key ingredient to one of my favorite albums of all time, Yes - "90125." Now 40 years later this solo album easily stands right next to "Big Generator" and "Talk" (the two other Rabin-lead Yes albums.) Packed full of singalong choruses, stacked harmonies, amazing guitar work, and a plethora of musical styles and genres, this album is a fun ride that only disappoints because it's been so long since Trevor has put out this album. We should have had more of this! - Gum - Saturnia
This is the album that Spotify insists is my favorite of the year. 5 songs from it made the top 5 songs in a row on my wrap-up playlist. I was not familiar with Gum prior to this year and I forget how I discovered him, but there was something hauntingly beautiful about this album that held my attention. It's a great mix of psychedelic rock and dreamy indie-folk with some Jazz, funk, prog, and spacey synthpop mixed in. - Temples - Exotico
Temples had one of my favorite albums a few years back in 2019 and was one of my most anticipated releases of the year. This new one was good but disappointing because I merely really liked it rather than loved it. Still, I listened to it a lot and I highly recommend it as a great addition to their discography. It's really good modern psychedelic rock. - Hoosiers - Confidence
This post Britpop band showed up this year with a new album that felt like a return to their 2007 debut "The Trick To Life." As a whole I actually enjoyed the album better than most of their other albums. They always had great songs, but there were often a bunch of weaker ones mixed in. This album is packed with nearly all great songs and a few short interludes. Highly recommended. - Peter Gabriel - i/o
I almost missed this album entirely. I had no idea Peter Gabriel was making new music. He hasn't put out a new original album since 2002 so I wasn't paying attention. Spotify kept telling me he had new songs, but they all had "Light Side Mix" and "Dark Side Mix" tagged on the end so I just dismissed them as old songs being released as new remixes as often happens on Spotify. I had no idea he was actually releasing new music with two different mix styles on each song. The final album is essentially two discs, a "Light Side" and "Dark Side" but the same exact songs on each. My first reaction upon listening was "Wow, Phil Collins must be rolling in his grave!* This is so good!" (*Note: As of Jan 2024 Phil Collins is alive, but he has retired from music.) There are songs on here that are as good as anything from "So" which has my favorite Peter Gabriel songs. In fact, I'd say that there are multiple songs on this album that are better than anything I've heard from Peter Gabriel since 1986. The album came out in December, so Spotify had no idea I even listened to this album in my year-end wrap-up! - Duran Duran - Danse Macabre
Speaking of old artists putting out great new music, Duran Duran put out a Halloween-themed album this year. There were only 3 original songs, and the rest were covers of other artists and, interestingly, several covers of their own songs. However, I enjoyed this album quite a bit--especially two of the new songs, "Danse Macabre" and "Black Moonlight" -- the latter of which is probably their best song since the 80s. Definitely one that I'll pull out regularly in October for future listens. - Young The Giant - American Bollywood
This is technically a 2022 album, but it came out at the end of the year and I discovered it in the spring. I was only vaguely aware of this band before, but stumbled upon this album and it really grew on me. It's a concept album that incorporates a lot of indie-rock, folk, and traditional Indian music. The second track "Wake Up" was so catchy that it instantly inserted into my head and I found myself trying to sing it to Maria a day later because it was stuck in my head and I was so sure it was an old song that I was remembering instead of a new one I'd just listened to the day before. - Hatchie - "Lights On"
Hatchie is a female artist that seems to specialize in a specific genre: late 90s female alterna-/techno-/trip-hop/dream pop. Her 2022 album "Giving the World Away" on which this song appears has a sound that emulates everything from Cocteau Twins, Kylie Minogue, the Sundays, Cranberries, and Robyn to Garbage and Republica and just about every other female-led pop band in between 1996-1999. It would feel right at home on the Gwyneth Paltrow "Great Expectations" soundtrack or maybe "Romeo + Juliet". The rest of the album is really good, but this song instantly stands out. - The Beatles - "Now And Then"
I certainly didn't expect to hear a new song from the Beatles this year. First listen, I thought it was okay, but after a few more it really grew on me. It's one of the most fascinating songs of the year especially watching the featurette on how it was made and the technology used to put it together. But even more interesting than this song, was many of the videos to pop up around it using AI and other techniques to recreate the song in different styles. I highly recommend this version of the song as though it were recorded in 1964: - Circe Link & Christian Nesmith - Cosmologica
In 2015 or so I found an album called "Groovy Lemon Pie" with Christian Nesmith (son of the Monkee) and Michael Sherwood. I was sad to learn that Michael Sherwood passed away a few years ago because Maria and I both loved that album and had hoped for more. So I was thrilled to discover this new album with Christian and his wife Circe Link. The genre is Melodic Prog Rock, think Abba singing 70s Yes or artsy Styx songs. A lot of great analog synths and fun harmonies made this a nice find this year. - Eight Seconds - Almacantar / Big Houses
This is an 80s band that I recently discovered. I'd heard their only minor hit "Kiss You When It's Dangerous" before, but I'd never paid any attention to them until now. They have two albums, one from 1986 and the other 1990 (though it was recorded in the 80s and was delayed a few years before coming out in the 90s). They were produced by Rupert Hines who was a huge influence on a lot of bands that I liked in the 80s such as The Fixx and Howard Jones and my favorite albums from Rush. This sounds like The Fixx's twin brother. You could almost believe these are two lost albums from that band. So if you ever feel like you wish there was more authentic good music from the 80s out there, here are two albums you probably missed.
Last year I had no projections for what I thought I'd like this year, however, for 2024 I'm looking forward to a new album from I Don't Know How But They Found Me.
MOVIES
I watched 206 movies in total this year. That's up from last year, but I'm actually a bit surprised because a little game called "Tears of the Kingdom" got a lot of my attention this year. More on that later. It also should have been higher if an extended writer/actor strike didn't push several major films off the calendar release this past year into 2024 or beyond.
I watched 40 movies in theaters (way up from last year's 27); another 34 new releases at home; another 53 new-to-me older movies; and finally 79 rewatches of films I'd already seen before.
Here are some of my favorites of the year:
- Barbie - The initial trailer for this film with its homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey sold my ticket to this movie before the whole "Barbenheimer" event began. And the film kept the crazy left-field comedy coming throughout. I genuinely laughed multiple times throughout the film and the film kept going places I didn't expect. While I wasn't completely satisfied with the final result (Like why does the "real world" feature just as much cartoon-like bizarre stuff in the Mattel office building as Barbie's imaginary world?) overall this took me completely by surprise and was one of the few films I watched more than once this year. "Oppenheimer" on the other hand was an interesting watch but the time-hopping was confusing and the structure around the two hearings didn't add up to anything satisfying for me.
- Evil Dead Rise - I was not looking forward to this. I loved the Evil Dead trilogy in the 80s with Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness being among my favorite films in general. I despised the Evil Dead remake from 2013. It was too serious and seemed mostly interested in torture and mutilation and then had a huge cheat near the end that completely ruined it for me. (I rewatched this year and I hate it a little less, but I still don't like it.) This new film maintained the dread from the previous movie as opposed to the silliness that the original trilogy turned into, but was just crazy enough and creative enough that it won me over. It was one of the few horror movies I watched that I was truly scared in, but then it went places that harkened back to the original Evil Dead trilogy that had me cheering by the end.
- Wonka - My son Jaden participated this year in his high school's production of "Willy Wonka -- The Musical." So we watched the original 1971 film, the Johnny Depp remake, and then this. I've never been a huge fan of the prior films, but loved the book and many Roald Dahl stories in general. This movie was quite a surprise. I knew going in that it was a musical (despite the trailer's attempts to hide it) and that it was made by the same people who made the Paddington movies. This fits right alongside Paddington and other great Roald Dahl movies with its whimsical fun, nasty villains, and genuinely funny moments. It is currently my favorite Wonka movie.
- Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves - Didn't they already try a D&D movie? And it was one of the worst movies ever made. This movie had very little it had to do to at least improve on the previous film (though technically not the same franchise) and somehow ended up being a really fun comedy adventure fantasy movie that we haven't seen regularly since the 80s (except maybe 2007s Stardust.)
- The Creator - I feel like I was the only one who watched and/or liked this film. I went in knowing nothing just a recommend from an online movie critic and found myself immersed in a brand new world that fascinated me. To me it was a weird mix of Blade Runner, Aliens, Elysium, and Alita: Battle Angel. And while the final story wasn't as great as it promised to be at the start, I still went on an amazing journey with the characters.
- Spider-man: Across the Spider-Verse/Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022)/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem - I'm grouping all three of these animated movies because all three broke from the traditional animated Pixar/Dreamworks-esque smooth CG style and instead followed the trend started by "Spider-man: Into the Spider-Verse" by adopting this nouveau comic graphic-art style that stood out over all the other animated movies this year. I liked all three better than Disney's "Wish," Pixar's "Elemental," or Illumination's "The Super Mario Bros. Movie."
- Birdemic 3 - The first "Birdemic" was awful and one of the best worst movies ever made. The second was the same movie but everyone was in on the joke and so it wasn't fun. The third is the first movie all over again. Somehow just as bad. At times worse. I kept thinking, surely the director has learned something to make this better than his previous films. Nope. And though the initial novelty is gone, this film definitely stands right next to the original as a shining example of just how bad a movie people can make.
Last year I was most looking forward to Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1,John Wick 4, Ant-Man, Guardians 3, and Barbie. For one of the few times, a film I was looking forward to actually delivered (see Barbie.) I really did enjoy Mission Impossible, but that "Part 1" made it feel incomplete. John Wick 4 I may have to rewatch, but I really did not like it compared to 1 & 3. I rewatched 2 last week and I still don't care for that one but the refresh actually helped 4 make more sense. Still, I found myself bored during these amazing action scenes because I had no idea what was actually happening or what the stakes were or why people were fighting. As a result, John Wick 4 was just a frustrating experience--and a really, really long one! I enjoyed all the Marvel movies (including The Marvels) more than some out there, but they do really feel like diminishing returns at this point.
There was a weird trend of half-movies this year. Many of which did not tell you until the end of the movie. Spider-Man, Fast X, Mission: Impossible, and Zak Snyder's Rebel Moon all were Part Ones. Dune (which got pushed into 2024) did that a few years ago as another secret Part One and supposedly may continue past Part Two. I'm not a fan of half movies. Especially if they aren't ready for the second movie soon afterwards.
I think the movie I was most disappointed in this year was "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny." I quite liked the younger Indiana opening but I felt like the overall story was too ridiculous and the resolution was unsatisfying. Plus no bad guys got melted or exploded which I need in my Indiana Jones movies. There were good elements in the film, but overall they should have just left it alone or rebooted with a new actor.
Looking into 2024 there aren't any movies I'm super excited about so I'll just list a couple that I'm mildly curious about: Furiosa and The Fall Guy. With the big strikes of 2023 I have no idea what, if any, big summer blockbusters there will be this year. Marvel and Superhero movies seemed to have fallen big this year and I'm unaware of any other major franchises ready to go, so it may be a slow year. We'll see.
TV
I continue to watch fewer and fewer network TV shows and almost no cable-based shows any more. So that pretty much left streaming channels and YouTube channels posting UK shows.
Here are some of the shows I watched this year:
- Taskmaster - For the 4th year in a row, this is still my favorite series. I discovered it during COVID and binged 9 series and have watched another 6 since plus international versions from New Zealand, Australia, and a bit of Canada. This is one of the few series where I find myself refreshing video sites looking for the post of a new episode as soon as it is uploaded!
- Muppets Mayhem - A show about the Electric Mayhem from the Muppets? Yes please! This show tickled me like no other show did this year. I found myself belly-laughing multiple times over the series and otherwise just smiling through most of each episode. Any show that can do that gets my love. It wasn't a perfect show. The human characters, like most Muppet shows, were worthless and got in the way of the story I wanted to see, but otherwise it's an easy recommend to any Muppet fan or anyone who enjoys a good rock band documentary or musical bio-pic. The episode that is a nod to Peter Jackson's "Let it Be" Beatles documentary is a must see.
- Picard Season 3 - I watched the first season of the Star Trek The Next Generation Revival with hope that was quickly dashed as the show ignored all the elements of Star Trek that make it Star Trek (where humanity has evolved and settled their pettiness and greed, literally the entire point of the TNG pilot episodes) and made Picard himself a shell of what he was in the original series. There was an intriguing mystery, but overall it was bad. I hate-watched Season 2 which was even worse than the first and vowed to ignore any further seasons. But then people online began mumbling about how S3 was good--really good. I started watching and realized we finally got the Star Trek The Next Generation follow up show that we always wanted that the post show feature films never gave us. It's definitely worth watching and probably okay to just skip the first two seasons entirely.
- What We Do In the Shadows - I quite enjoy this Vampire mockumentary comedy series though it is starting to feel like it has run its course. Still, every season of this show has something new that amuses me and keeps me watching.
- Poker Face - This was a fun retro-style show that felt like a nod to 70s/80s "hero on the run" series (A Team, Hulk, Kung Fu) mixed with Detective shows like Columbo. Plus the conceit of showing the murder/crime in the first act and then rewinding time to show the events leading up was an interesting gimmick.
- The Last of Us - I was hesitantly pulled into this series about a fungus-based zombie-like apocalypse survival series that is starting strong but has too many weird parallels to the Walking Dead that makes me very reserved in my opinion of the show. Yes, I am enjoying it, but the pain of Walking Dead is still too recent to give in to another similar show.
- Mandalorian Series 3 / Secret Invasion / Ahsoka / Loki Series 2 / Marvel's What If S2 - I'm lumping all these Disney Star Wars and Marvel series together. I mostly enjoyed S3 of Mandalorian and still really like the character, and there were some fun parts of Loki S2, but Secret Invasion was boring and awful and Ahsoka and a lot of Mandalorian was tied way too deeply into deep Star Wars animated TV show stuff that I've never watched and the live-action shows don't give enough detail to be able to follow them sufficiently. I have to do homework on almost all of these shows to be able to understand them, which isn't very fun. Of all the above, the animated "What If" series was probably my favorite.
Online Media & Podcasts
These are the YouTube and non-network-based streaming sites and podcasts shows that I listened to and watched last year.
- Dropout (formerly College Humor) - I found these guys through the "Um, Actually" show and have watched many other panel-based comedy shows from "Game Changer" to "Make Some Noise" and "Breaking News."
- Ryan George/Pitch Meeting/Honest Trailers - I look forward to each week's Pitch Meeting and Honest Trailers that occasionally feature the same film. Ryan George's other sketches are often very funny and even his adbreaks are must watches.
- Movie podcasts: How Did This Get Made / We Hate Movies / With Gourley and Rust / Filmcast / RedLetterMedia / Dan Murrell - These continue to be my standard weekly podcasts/YouTube shows about movies which also dictate many of the films that I watch throughout the year (may of them often bad movies) to be able to enjoy the discussion.
- Taskmaster Podcast - Because why not listen to a podcast dissect every episode of my favorite show. It only makes sense.
- Professor of Rock - Still enjoy his daily features that regularly educate me on many favorite bands and even bands that I know nothing about or despise completely. There's usually some new interesting trivia to learn every day.
- Board Game YouTube channels: One Stop Co-op Shop / CeePhour / The Dragon's Tomb / No Rolls Barred and others - If I can't play a board game, I'm often watching one. Either to learn about how to play a game I have or am getting, or just to see how others play certain games, or get introduced to games I am not familiar with. I watched a lot of people playing "Final Girl" this year especially since the game plays so differently for everyone and it is inherently an emergent story-based game so each game plays like a new story.
- Corridor Crew - This movie effects channel always has something interesting that they are playing with from creating really satisfying CG shorts to adding their own effects to existing films to this year creating two entire animated short films using AI generation. Even their simple reviews where they look at stunts or effects or animated films are always interesting.
Video Games
I played a lot of different games this year, but it was far and away completed dominated by one game, "Tears of the Kingdom." I continued to also play a lot of games on my Steam Deck, phone, laptop, and Meta Quest (VR system). Here's some of the games that I played:
- The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (Switch) - I got this near my birthday at the end of April. I played it for months! It wasn't until October that I finally decided to wrap things up and go to the final battle to fight Gannon. I played it for hundreds of hours and I still have lots of things I haven't done, quests incomplete, and even a few more shrines to find. I was hoping they'd announce some DLC and so I left some things in the game to do when that happens. I didn't fully enjoy the DLC of "Breath of the Wild" as much because I didn't have much left to do at the point they released it. Either way, six months of gaming for one game is amazing and I was surprised how much more I liked this game over Breath of the Wild despite it being built over the same world and essential gameplay of that game. I figured this would be one of those sequels that repeats the previous move/game but ends up lesser as a result. Instead it somehow surpassed it's predecessor into a better game. "Ocarina of Time" is still my favorite Zelda, but this is very closely next.
- Supernatural (VR) - This is a subscription-based workout program that Maria discovered and that we purchased. I use it 2-3 times a week to do an aerobic workout put to different music sets that are released daily so there's always something new to exercise to. They offer a boxing style and a "flow" or Beat Saber-esque workout in different intensities and lengths all with human coaching to help encourage and instruct you as you play. I usually alternate this with running every other day.
- Tabletop Simulator (PC) - If I can't play on a table, I play on a computer instead with this board game-based physics simulator. This year I started to create some of my own mods for TTS (as it is abbreviated) to fill in gaps of some of the games that I own already but were missing elements from what exists on TTS, or that were missing and no one else had made a mod for it. I haven't got into the deep scripting aspect, but I'm happy with what I've been able to do. I hit an "achievement" of over 1000 hours on TTS this year.
- Survivor.io / Triple Match (iOS) - I usually have one or two simple games that I play incessantly on my phone when I need to pass some time for a few minutes. I started playing Survivor.io early in the year but eventually they added too much to the game to be able to keep up with everything I "had" to do every day. Later I found "Triple Match" which is one of those casual games where you simply tap the screen on matching objects. Somehow it is just the right amount of addicting to me. There's no deep game play. It's just find similar items, tap on them, repeat. But like any good solitaire game, it's the joy of the little puzzles and organizing the chaos.
- Cracking the Cryptic Sudoku (iOS) - Speaking of good solitaire games, the Cracking the Cryptic series of Sudoku games on iOS aren't super cheap, but they all feature a good amount of hand-crafted puzzles featuring many different variations on Sudoku that all change the game significantly. My favorite is Magic Sudoku where it's possible to solve an entire puzzle without a single clue on the board!
- Walkabout Mini Golf (VR) - This little mini golf simulator takes mini golf into all sorts of fantastical worlds as well as courses based off of familiar locations such as Jim Henson's Labyrinth, the game Myst, and even one for Meow Wolf (the art installation-experience thing where Colin and Max work--see my intro for the year for more.) On top of a fun golf experience, each course comes in two varieties and has a hidden golf ball hunt in one and a follow-the-clues treasure hunt for a new putter in the other. I just wish you could do multiplayer in the same room though you can with friends online.
- Pistol Whip / Synth Riders / Racket Nx (VR) - These were three other active VR games that I played as alternative aerobic exercise. The first is a rhythm-based shooting game on rails that also requires a lot of dodging. The second is another rhythm game like Beat Saber with a great retro synth-wave soundtrack. And the last is a solo-tennis racket/breakout style game that gets pretty tricky.
For 2024 I'm looking forward to playing "Mario Wonder" that we got for Christmas but I've only played a small bit of; a new Prince of Persia game that looks like a Metroidvania-style platformer; "Star Wars: Dark Forces" remaster -- one of my favorite early first person shooters but is nearly unplayable now; and possibly the "Hollow Knight" sequel and if we're really lucky, "Metroid Prime 4." Oh, and of course, the "Taskmaster VR" game!
Board Games
I have a lot more stats for my board games since I keep track of those in a specific app (called BG Stats). In 2023 I played 441 games (assuming I recorded everything. I forget on occasion.) Almost exactly what I played last year. I played in 16 different locations and with around 90 different people. Of those 441, they were spread across 144 games. 96 of which were new games I hadn't played before. Also, the numbers above may be a little high because the app counts expansions as 2 plays: 1 for the base game and 1 for the expansion. So some games I played can count as many as 4-5 plays at once for mix-and-match games like Legendary or Final Girl.
I played a ton of solo games this year. Most of my new game acquisitions were made depending on whether they could play single-player.
The games that I played the most and/or enjoyed the most were:
- Legendary Deck Building Game: James Bond (38 plays) / Marvel (42 plays) / Matrix (23 plays) / Buffy (10 plays) / Alien (12 plays) / Predator (6 plays) / X-Files (2 plays) - Still one of my favorite games and is usually my default for when I want something to play and have nothing else new or exciting to try out. I was hoping there would be a new expansion this year for James Bond which was announced but hasn't come out yet, but all the other boxes, which dominate my game collection, got played quite a bit. I especially enjoyed the new Marvel "What If?" set that came out late this year as well as the new "Legendary Encounters: The Matrix."
- Final Girl - (30 plays) This is an amazing Horror-themed solo game. I got Season 1 near the end of 2022 and Season 2 early in 2023. Then there was a special feature Christmas addition that arrived just before Christmas. I spent a TON of time painting all the figures before playing. I'm not sure why the board game hobby also requires miniature painting, but I got a lot of practice in this year.
- Warp's Edge - (15 plays) Another great solo game that I added to this year with an expansion and some game upgrades. I have a lot of fun with this space battle-themed bag-building game.
- Frosthaven - (13 plays) I joined a random campaign group this year and play this card-based tactical dungeon crawler every few weeks. I'm not sure what I got myself into when signing up because based on the game materials that I've seen (and there are a lot!) we have maybe 100+ games to get to the end of the campaign--and that still has you skipping various possible levels as you take branching paths from your game decisions. This is a beast of a game. The levels are fun, but the in-between city building and up-keep gets a bit tedious.
- Mini Rogue - (11 plays) This is a very quick dungeon exploring game where you pretty much flip over cards decide what direction you want to go and then roll some dice. Very simple, but has a fun progression and leveling up element along with a variety of characters that makes it a lot of fun for a quick, simple game. There is supposedly a new Kickstarter for this game this year to add some more to it.
- Deep Rock Galactic - (7 plays) This is technically Jaden's game. He was familiar with the video game and asked if we could get the board game. Once again, I painted the boring gray mini figures to spruce them up, but we opted for the less expensive standees for the enemies which saved a lot of work! This is another dungeon explorer with a mining theme and it's fun carving out paths to different locations while running away from monsters.
- Ticket To Ride Legacy: Legends of the West - ( 5 plays) This is one of the few games I've been able to consistently play with the family. Jaden, Maria, Colin and I have been playing through this campaign since November whenever we are all available for an evening. It's been a lot of fun seeing how the game continues to change and evolve and expand after every session. We'll be playing this into 2024 for a while.
- Unlock! / Exit / Mystery House / Indiana Jones Cryptic / 50 Clues / Cantaloop / Deckscape / Decktective / Escape Room in a Box / Doctor Esker's Notebook / Unfold / Lost in the Shuffle - I'm lumping all these games together as my favorite genre: Mystery/Escape Room games. These are all one-off puzzle games that are usually a one-time play with lots of puzzles to solve. Some have you go through cards, some have you build dioramas, and some have you physically manipulating the game itself to solve the puzzles to win. Most of these encourage playing with other people, but more often than not I play on my own since I'm the only one really interested in these. Of the group above, my favorites that I played were "Cantaloop: Book 2" and "Cantaloop: Book 3" which are essentially book renditions of the popular point & click adventure games from the 90s (like King's Quest or The Secret of Monkey Island). They've found a real interesting way to incorporate a card-based inventory system and codes for combining things that represents the endless frustration of typing "give bone to dog" or "tie rope to bedpost" with a spiral-bound book. The other was called "Lost in the Shuffle" which is a puzzle game that looks like someone just doodled over a standard pack of playing cards, but as you study them more you realize each one has a puzzle on it and many of them combine for even more puzzles. It was probably the most fun I've had with any of these type of games moving from "I have no idea what is going on here." to "I must solve every last puzzle!"--which I did! If you can find it, I highly recommend getting it--or ask to borrow my copy! Also, over Christmas I built my own Escape Room Book Nook that was a lot of fun:
My hope in 2024 is there aren't as many games that I'm excited for so I can stop buying so many! I need to play more of the ones I already have!
BOOK
I read one book last year: "Tales from the Gas Station, Vol. 1" - a very strange horror, comedy, surreal adventure that takes a bunch of silly creepypasta ideas that I guess started from a blog (like a weed garden with human-like hand-shaped plants or novelty garden gnomes that keep showing up in unexpected places and multiplying) mixed with some type of elder-god end-of-the-world scenario in a small-town gas station that's out in the middle of nowhere. I enjoyed most of it, and it was very funny, but I never felt like I understood it.
Wrap up and 2024
So that's it for 2023. Most of what I was hoping for in my post in 2023 didn't happen. My weight plateaued (which is good) until the end of the year when I overdid it a bit for Christmas! My back continued to hurt and I attempted quite a few months of physical therapy that had some results but didn't fix the issue. At the end of the year I had a surgical procedure to get an epidural shot in the spine to hopefully help. It's still too recent to tell how well it will work, but the pain has seemed to de-intensify. It's possible I will have another procedure at the end of January to bolster it. I did get out to play a few more games with people, but not consistently. I joined the random group for Frosthaven, and have played a new campaign game with some friends covering the Harry Potter Hogwarts battle game and we hope to continue after that regularly.
So what do I hope for in 2024? I hope the Presidential election doesn't destroy our country with the inevitable rematch of 2020. I hope to continue to be physically active as I have this past year, running regularly and other exercise. And I'd be happy just to maintain things as they are for the moment. It's a nice feeling when things are "good enough." Can things improve? Sure. They can also decline real fast. So maintaining is still quite an effort!
So what do I hope for in 2024? I hope the Presidential election doesn't destroy our country with the inevitable rematch of 2020. I hope to continue to be physically active as I have this past year, running regularly and other exercise. And I'd be happy just to maintain things as they are for the moment. It's a nice feeling when things are "good enough." Can things improve? Sure. They can also decline real fast. So maintaining is still quite an effort!
I hope you all have a great year. See you in 2025 if we're all still around!
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