Welcome to my entirely new Diary Series that don’t exactly revolve around a specific topic and is more about random things throughout the month that caught my interest.
I will preface this by just saying that January was jam packed with stuff and barely was able to create any art at all.
A bunch of Games that stole my art time sad emoji
Sooo shortly after the release of last months post the new animal crossing update came out trapping me in a complete chokehold for the entire later half of the month. Basically rendering me virtually unable to use my free time for literally anything but this rotten game. Was fun though.
Another game released during this month, HYTALE sadly didn’t catch my passion quite as much as I thought it would. In my opinion it released into Early Access as quite a standard modern Survival Game. It doesn’t feel much different than like a Valheim. But in all fairness maybe I didn’t give it the time it deserved and also I haven’t fully written it off or anything. I’ll for sure check in with the development from time to time. At least the creative tools seem already extremely solid. It’s also absurdly easy to add new stuff. For them and for the community.
A few days after Cult of the Lambs dlc :Woolhaven: finally came out and I ate some fries. To keep this as short as possible, I think across the board it’s a quite solid dlc and does a good job at expanding the world further. BUT I really don’t know how I feel about the game going even more away from the Rogue-Lite Elements. I mean the game has always been as Lite of a Rogue-Lite as you could possibly be, but with this dlc it’s like barely a thing anymore. And while I know that sounds quite negative, at the end of the day it still ended up being quite enjoyable (except one of the bosses that sometimes locked you into a little cutscene and then was able to attack you before you could react, but I hope they already fixed it tho cuz that was beyond horrid).
Also there was a Terraria Update.
Cool.
A Paragraph were I just puke out of my brain
In non gaming related news, the end of the month MARKed a historical moment in my life as 2 things I have been waiting for forever somehow ended up both happening on the same day.
So basically around a year ago at this point I bought tickets to a Stardew Valley Orchestra performance that in a wink of faith ended up being quite close to me. The tickets ended up being for the 30th of Jan at 08:00 p.m.
Well, the issue was just that IRON LUNG also had it’s only showings in the entire country on that day, around that time. I felt quite devastated for a few days, scrambling to find literally any way to experience both things. And in some sort of fairytale ass miracle my humble childhood cinema opened a showing for it at 10:45 p.m. that day. I live in a small country in Europe so that is genuinely unprecedented. But also the Stardew Orchestra would end up taking 02:15h which meant I had around 30 mins to rush to the other side of town just to catch this movie. And in the end I actually just barely made it to the Cinema, the movie literally started the moment I sat down.
Stardew Valley Symphony of Seasons Orchestra
But before I want to share my teeny tiny thoughts about this movie, I also want to loose some words about the Stardew Orchestra. Okey so Stardew to this date is like one- if not my all time favourite game, so catching a live performance of full orchestra playing some of the games best songs was unnatural. From the high energy sounds of Summer, their brilliant performance of the games volcano themes and even the surprising, but absolute incredible performance of the :Journey of the Prairie King: Minigame soundtrack; To the calmness of the winter themes and especially the night market theme that genuinely made me tear up a bit. I don’t know what to add, but to say this was an amazing experience that made me relieve some of my memories with a game that used up most of my brain capacity while growing up. And while it’s of course impossible for me to ever fully replay the game as if I have never experienced it before, this orchestra made me feel at least a bit like playing the game for the first time again, but at the same time also reminding me of those countless hours I spent just playing or even thinking about it.
Okey so imagine you went through this and then watched a horror movie at 11 p.m. right after.
I am gonna try my best to express my feelings about Iron Lung as vague as possible, but while still adding some thoughts that no one has asked for, to paint you at least some picture of how I felt about it. If you’re like me and you enjoy experiencing media without literally any slight spoilers or opinion pieces, well too bad there is literally NO WAY you could just close this page (or skip to the next section).
The Section about Iron Lung
Okey so this movie starts off as being a quite standard movie, in my opinion still better than most blockbusters, but the dialogue between characters feels too practised and they instantly know what to answer to each other questions. Act 1 also starts of with a crash out that to me kinda feels a bit forced and like a pure plot device. Act 2 feels chaotic and like the middle of a typical hero journey, the main character starts to understand their environment etc. etc. But then Act 3 hits u crashing in the head :like the desperation of reaching for air in the middle of a pool, you can feel your lung clench together and then you remember how it felt to be alive: and shows you that this movie is this pure unhinged piece of art. And intentionally or not I think that act works so well just because it breaks what the other acts have set it up to be. I genuinely believe the third act to be some of the greatest cinema I have watched in a good bit. Also the way it morphs the entire environment that you spent the entire movie with into something new and rotten, just cinematic beyond believe lowkey.
I do need to add a twinge more negativity to this review though. So I do think the movie has brilliant camera shots, but in some cases they also worked against the claustrophobic feeling that the environment is trying to instil. Also Act 2 kinda just left me feeling lost mostly because the blood ocean felt too nebulous as to be a real place in a way, but honestly I kinda don’t know how to describe it any better than that. So I will end this Review by saying this was the longest 2h movie I ever watched, but in a way that was so so fun and unique. I wish I could have mentioned some more of the movies positives, but that would mean to talk about it in more detail and I know this movie is worth to be experienced by everyone individually.
Also this also MARKs my first time writing down a review for anything really, so I just hope all of these are at least fairly passable.
A little Note about Art
To End this one on artsy note tho, February 11th does mark the 3rd year of my art journey. In 2023 I finally did my first little art piece, a little donut that I made alongside watching an Aseprite tutorial video. So since then I have been redrawing that one every year.
Also been starting some big projects, while also trying to post 3 times per week!
: POLT DO NOT EAT <ME :
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