kinkyMaL, where maloki and Loa occasionally talk about games

My very first experience with Minecraft, day 1

I don’t know how many parts of this I’ll be writing, but I started playing Minecraft, for the very first time, yesterday. And I got feelings.

We could talk about why I never tried it until now, but let’s just summarize it as “I was stubborn”, and it’s a familiar trait with me for people who know me.

What made me want to try it all of a sudden? I think it was a combination of things.

I got the time to ease into the idea of playing it, by outside influences. For the most part in the past when I’d seen Minecraft videos it would be from already established players (with the 5yr old exceptions), and I never got to see that early player experience. And that put me off. It often felt like you needed to know how to play the game in order to play it.

The influences around me that eased me into it were mainly two. Mr Samuel Streamer on YouTube playing the Better Minecraft modpack on his secondary channel. And ExcessiveProfanity talking about playing it with his young son. I had heard them talked about it in the past, but I think combined with Mr Streamer playing it and me enjoying watching that series, it just started to click for me.

Loa has been playing Minecraft since long before we met, and he had invited me to play with him a few times, it just never felt right though. I tried to not be too dismissive about it, but each time I basically landed on “I don’t feel it”. But the past few days it started to bubble up inside of me. So while Loa was asleep, I walked up to him and whispered “Do you want to play Minecraft with me?”, he was too asleep to hear me though, and maybe that was my thought too, that I didn’t want him to hear me because I was scared of the reality.

First screenshot in Minecraft — “How do I screenshot?” -F2. “Okay, thank you.”

Through the day I installed curseforge, the modpack (Better Minecraft), and the Minecraft Free Demo (as you can see in the above screenshot). There were a lot of cute moments which I wish I could’ve captured in a better way, but I also didn’t want to put a lot of my currently limited spoons to set it up. So I decided to just take screenshots instead, and tell you some small stories.

Yes, this was what I wanted to screenshot as my first screenshot. They are so cute, and it’s such a nice experience to meet them for the first time. I was basically just running around picking flowers, cutting down trees, freaking out about it being night time, and stayed in the safety of the field with the animals.

I met a very suspicious looking pig though. Turns out it was a sheep in pigs clothing. Adorable. Apparently rare?

Baby pig! I immediately ran out to get my other pig

Then, when I ran into the baby pig. And I immediately sprung out of my chair, as I’d recently been unpacking some boxes in the house, and ran into my room to fetch something. Loa was sitting next to me at the time and he was like “Do you have one?” and I was like “omg omg omg omg”, because yes, I have one, a small plushy that I actually got for him some years ago. I guess it’s both of ours now.

Classic Minecraft death: Player was blown up by Creeper

And then, a while later I had my first death, these are always important. Especially in a game like Minecraft where dying is just part of the game. And everyone’s been blown-up by a creeper once or twice. I saw it before it blew up, but I couldn’t move away fast enough and was already low on health. I’m honored that my first death was given to me by a creeper, and I’m sure there’ll be many more.

A very dark image, in a cave in Minecraft, and a lurker hiding behind a bush — Always lurking.

After this very well played trial I did buy the game. The reasons I played the trial first was that I wanted to be sure that I’d enjoy and continue to play it. And yeah I’m very happy with my first session.

The evening continued with me playing it, and not taking as many screenshots, but I’ll give you a house tour tomorrow.

The biggest jumpscare I experienced yesterday was not from any creepers or mobs. But rather, a friendly visiting caravan.

I was head down digging something and I heard their very loud sound as they showed up out of no where.

See you tomorrow for more adventures.

Allowing myself time when editing for the first time

You may have caught my sneak peek preview of me recording RimWorld, and right now I’m in the process of editing it.
The goal is to create some decent bite-size episodes of about 30min, and then share it with you all over time. I spent a whole week with every night recording, and it was kind of intense. That said, recording makes RimWorld run a lot slower, so I didn’t necessarily get very far each night.

I could see that there was an eagerness within myself to rush to get something out, but then I realize that in order for me to continue enjoying and getting back into editing I need to let myself take the time it needs.
For a few reasons:
1. I’m learning a new editing software, kdenlive. The last one I’ve been familiar with, before CapCut on the phone in recent months, was Avid about 17 years ago when I was at school studying film and editing. It’s been a while.
2. I’m getting used to the different tools available within that editing software, and have big chunks of video to log.
3. I want to just enjoy the process.

I realize that this means it’ll take y’all a bit longer to actually get something, but hopefully I can provide some sneak-peaks and some insightful texts like this in the meanwhile.

If it’s any consolation I will most likely be editing one episode at the time, and then schedule them or publish them as they are done. If I finish a lot in a short time span, I will of course try to space them out at some decent interval.

Thank you for your patience with me as I struggle with my health, and mental health levels over the past few years. I’m glad you’re here, and that we’re embarking on a new journey and chapter together!

If you’re enjoying reading these little articles or stories, consider throwing some support my way: via ko-fi or alternatives. I’m currently trying to cover my student loan debt payments for this past summer and that will be my goal going forward too.

Mini-review: Beholder

When Beholder became available to me on Twitch, a game I’ve been eyeing for a while, I didn’t have any excuses left. I had no idea what the game was about because I rarely look too deep into any game.

So I sat down with it yesterday, and quickly I started to get uneasy about it. We’re supposed to spy on the people in our building, and we’re a landlord. Just being put in the shoes of being a landlord is bad enough, adding to that with having to spy on the people, and write reports. I get it it’s dystopian, but I wasn’t sold on the narrative when I started playing.

I was very close to giving up, and calling it quits, when I realized there’s more to the narrative. And I continued playing. I’ve done 3 different runs, and the 3rd one I decided to stop. I was getting stressed by it, partially from the mechanics, and the time management. We’re able to be awake 24/7, conversations stop time, but writing your reports don’t. So occasionally you have to really stress in order to get the profile or report done at the right time.

Minor spoilers ahead.

Discovering that you can complete each “mission” in different ways is interesting though, and does allow for some replay-ability. And just realizing that we’re not only a bad person we’re just living under the circumstances that were handed to us and trying our best.

I’m still curious about some other characters, and figuring them out etc, but for now I’m going to put this game down and say I’m done with it, and I’m fine with what I experienced.

It’s possible that my current state of mindfog makes it harder to play the game, so maybe coming back to it some other time would be better. We’ll see. Maybe I’ll make a review in review series down the line.

Partnered link where you can buy this game: Beholder is currently available on Humble Bundle on sale the next 4 days and 20hrs for only €2.99!

Day 12, the Sculpture (Finale)

11th of Septober, Spring, 5510. Psychic Rain

Luxemburg’s Journal

We found Von’s Jade sculpture! That means they were here! I asked the trader about it, if he knew anything else. And he told me about how some of the people who pass through here had visited Cannon’s colony. They apparently had had a horrendous time, and weren’t going back anytime soon. Guess that means their hospitality isn’t the best.

Von’s sculpture is such a gorgeous piece called 3FS, it bears an illustration of an ellipse surrounded by rectangles. The whole image is depicted by the careful arrangement of thousands of priests. If I had enough money I would’ve bought it back, and brought as a peace offering.

Now it’s time to get to their camp, it’s not very far from here, we should reach it before the end of the day.

Cannon’s journal

Ralph has fully healed, and we’re all doing fairly well here. The animals are becoming so abundant, I’ve decided to abandon the idea of taming the warg as well, but I needed meat to tame the polar bear we saved. It didn’t seem interested in staying with us after it healed, so I let it outside, but it’s such a gorgeous animal I want to see if I can change it’s mind.

Some of the other animals are staying though, the emu, and the elephant named Samson. This is overall good.

[…]

Something I didn’t expect happened today. Luxenburg, Croiro and Speedy showed up at the camp. They weren’t hostile against us, and I was surprised that they had found us at all. Since me and Von had decided to keep communications with the old colony, it was actually quite nice to see them again. And I handed over a few doses of luciferium (as many as they wanted to carry), and they gave us some Hospital beds, and began helping around the colony and finish building a new break room.

I think this is a great start of a new colony together, if they want to stay here, I don’t know. Maybe they can help us settle in at least, and then we can decide.

This is a RimWorld character journal, mainly following a pawn by the name of Cannon and their journey as they keep a diary on the rim. This is using a modded game as a source, so some things may differentiate from the core game.

Day 11, It’s raining animals

10th of Septober, Spring, 5510. Psychic Rain

Luxemburg’s Journal

Today was the first time we got attacked by anything during our 7 day caravan. It was a measly three Scaria infected squirrels. I’m glad I didn’t try to go on this quest alone, because while three squirrels may not sound like a lot, if you’re caught alone it can be quite harmful, especially if one of your wounds get infected. We ended up with a small break after the ambush, patched Speedy up, collected some extra berries and herbal medicine.

…

At the next village we still didn’t find any luci. But we got some solid info, it was recommended that we cross through the forest along the path instead of going around the ancient asphalt road, unless we really want to visit the other villages in our hunt for luci.

As we’re running out of days I think it’s best to get to Orange Rock by following the suggested path, and hopefully it’ll bring us closer to figuring out where Cannon set up camp. I am hoping that Cannon didn’t sell all the luci immediately, but saved some of it for emergencies or got a change of heart when they realized that they’d done.

…

We made it through the forest by 20h, and the village is just north of the Rhino Chestnut Swamp, so I’m beginning to get my bearings on this side.

We’ve again been recommended to go to the next village, another of the Black Horse Maca faction’s, because according to where they saw the drop pod land its highly likely they passed by there if they were looking to sell anything.

Cannon’s Journal

While I was out deconstructing ruins for more materials, I found a polar bear. What? Similar to the other animals I’ve come across the past few days it was hurt, and these animals all seem to have crashed in cargo pods, and that often means they were domesticated by someone, so I guess they may want to start around. I hope the arctic wolf and polar bear will get along with Ralph.

Even with all the new animals I was just having a horrible day today, and began aimlessly wandering in the rain. Von calmed me down before nightfall, but I was so dazed I tried to use the telescope even though.

I apparently Von found an elephant? I hope we can feed all these animals…

Day 10, Progress

9th of Septober, Spring, 5510. Psychic Rain

Cannon’s Journal

We finished the first guest lodgings! Von helped me move some furniture, I put up some wall and roof, and it looks okay. Still need some extra floor, but at least now they can sleep in some beds.

There was a caravan visiting, and they had an arctic wolf available, and I decided to buy it instead of trying to tame a warg all on my own. I also found a hurt emu that I brought home and patched up. I guess I’m an animal collector now.

It’s still raining, and we bought a telescope, will have to wait with using it until it stops raining.

Luxenburg’s Journal

We reached the Village Rego, of the Union of Verea. They greeted us and said they’d heard about us from our neighbouring villages. They are the same faction as our second closest neighbour. They also didn’t have any luci to sell, and we added a small amount to our food rations, just in case.

According to them the drop pod from 10 days ago did not go north of them, but seemed to have landed somewhere south west of where we were right now. And if we continue following the ancient asphalt road we may be able to get more info from the next village over. Maybe the people are looking for had visited there.

The drop pod going south of them, doesn’t mean that Cannon and Von set up a settlement south of here. They could have gone anywhere from where they landed, but let’s hope they set up somewhere close to where they landed.

Day 9, All the Rain

8th of Septober, Spring, 5510. Psychic Rain

Cannon’s journal

Both me and Von were awake in the early hours of the morning, around 3-5h we found ourselves cleaning up the barracks, and Von did some cooking after slaughtering those rats I killed yesterday. The rats didn’t have Scaria fortunately, but something must’ve driven them to become manhunters nonetheless. This meant more meat for us.

The rain is still pouring down, and I’m almost convinced I’m aging faster. And being wet all the time isn’t fun. It’s definitely sapping my mood.

I’m going to spend the rest of the day today cleaning up a little bit more, and then I want to set up some guest beds for the next time we get visitors. Maybe plan out how to lay out the rest of our housing situation here.

I also want to build a little crafting room, but that will have to wait until I’m done building some of the essentials. Not like I’ll have time crafting until then anyways. So that would mean I have to build the crafting room after the comms console.

[…]

Remember the cat I saved? Jackson? He seems to have settled in and want to stay with us. At least I think so, he came back inside after having left for a few days and is now sleeping with the other animals.

I was also tempted to tame a warg today, unfortunately no luck but at the same time I’m glad I didn’t get attacked by it. Maybe I shouldn’t try again…

Luxemburg’s journal

We reached the river about 7h this morning. It looked like we could either follow it until we hit the path, or cut across a valley to further down the path, so we decided to cut across the valley. And we hit the path around 13h. Should be maybe a day or so to the next village now. Then we can begin triangulation for Cannon and Von. If we’re really lucky maybe they sold off the Jade statue, and if we can find it we’d be able to know for sure they were there.

Kingdom Classic – as a shared experience + New Lands

I picked up Kingdom Classic from Humble Bundle when it was free. Both me and Loa picked up the game, and he started playing it the night before me. We had a shared enjoyed experience of it. Which is something I’ve missed. If we weren’t playing multiplayer together, we’d occasionally find a single player game and play it at the same time. And it’s such a fabulous way to experience a game with someone.

Over the weekend we kept sending messages to each other asking if we’d experience x, or maybe y, yet, and it was such a fabulous thing to have that between us again. We’ve been apart for most of the pandemic, and he’s working so much that we haven’t really played games together.

So what about the game, I’ve always been an avid fan of strategy games, of tower defense, and just banging my head against the wall as I learn how the mechanics of a game works. This game truly had it all! It was also incredibly pretty, and relaxing in it’s own way.

While I spend two days “off” this weekend letting myself zone out from everything, especially the election news, I luckily had this game on hand. I had already been eyeing Kingdom Two Crowns for quite a while, but I’d been waiting with buying it because at the moment I’m not buying games unless I know I’m playing it pretty much immediately. My library has become unruly.

I’m going to publish some pieces behind spoilers, after this, but first I’m going to say: If you enjoy strategy and tower defense-esque games, along with some minor resource management I highly recommend this game.

Game mechanic spoilers that I think are enjoyable to experience for yourself the first time. But also me and Loa’s interactions while playing the game.

First day of playing it myself, I shot a message to Loa fairly soon asking: Have you lost your crown yet?

His response was “lololol, yeah”

It was the first thing that happened to me because I wanted to explore the map, and just didn’t know what the mechanics were like

A followup, I also acquired Kingdom: New Lands at some point via Twitch. And I set out to play it recently. Since I had managed to beat the Classic version, I was excited to try out a different way to experience this game. And oh boy did I enjoy it! Exploring in a new way, and discovering “blueprints”, which I honestly thought were map segments in order to help you travel to another region. and then having a more wider variety for how you can experience the game.

I did end up looking up some details, because I wasn’t sure how they worked, and I am kind of at the point in my life that, if I can’t figure something out and it’s just driving me up the walls I’ll look it up, it doesn’t necessarily detract from my experience. And I believe that if you feel like it would detract, you could just NOT look it up. But I do appreciate that it can be difficult to know what is “safe” to look up. Will it spoil something.

I noticed something, that you may appreciate knowing, and that’s that most of the wiki for the game, has all 3 games in the same articles, because they built on the same architecture, and do certain things differently.

End game spoiler for Kingdom: New Lands

I unlocked everything and ended up on Skull Island, which is a lot closer to how Kingdom Classic is, but bigger (I think it’s with 3 portals on each side). And you can’t access some of the really cool features of the other maps, if you want something special you have to bring it.
This for me builds up replayability. And I’ll probably keep this game installed for a long while so I can experience it over and over again.

One nitpick I have is that there doesn’t seem to be a straightforward way to reset your progress entirely, like if several people use the same computer for gaming, and sharing the library. But I’m sure there’s ways around that if I really wanted to.

Day 8, Rats

7th of Septober, Spring, 5510. Psychic Rain

Cannon’s journal

Last night I was feeling like I was ready to smash things, but luckily Von managed to calm me down before I did any real damage to our barracks.

Today however, Von is down with the food poisoning, that I mentioned yesterday. They blame themselves, but I blame me for not finishing the kitchen before they cooked in it. My food poisoning passed fairly quickly, just a good night’s sleep and I’m feeling better today.

While I was taking care of our sick guests, yes they all got food poisoning too, I heard some weird sounds outside, and scratching at the door. As I took my gun out all my animals immediately knew to join me. I opened the door to meet four manhunting rats trying to attack me, but luckily Ralph and one of the puppies, who we haven’t named yet, managed to block the door and hurt them enough so I could just finish them off. I guess we’re eating rat once Von is over their sickness!

It has occurred to me that we don’t have anyone who knows how to plant food, or which berries are safe to eat. So simple meat meals it is. Good thing I brought my sniper rifle.

Luxemburg’s journal

We’ve been walking all day, and we’ve crossed two of the rivers, I can sense that the next one is close by, but we decided to stop for the night, around 22h, when we found a nice clearing to set up a fire for the night and lay out our bedrolls, eat, and just relax.

We figured we have about 10 days of food, but we’ve all taken our last luciferium, which gives us about 6-7 days before our brains start to break down. I hope we can find some soon, or we’re all dead.

Day 7, Staying connected

6th of Septober, Spring, 5510. Psychic Rain

Cannon’s journal

I woke up from the strangest dream this morning. In it me and Von decided to cut all contact with the main colony, but keep in radio contact with the caravans that are out and about right now (I don’t know why…). When it happened, there was this mix of joy and sorrow just overwhelming me. I’m already mourning my relationship ending, but the loss of friends just made it so much worse. Even if I was happy about not being in touch with some of them anymore, I was still overwhelmingly sad.

This dream made me realize that I can’t entirely break from the other colony, and as soon as we get a comms console up and running I’ll reach out to them again, give them our coordinates, figure out our relationship a bit further. Considering all the things I need to do around here, this may take a while.

[…]

Before all that I was patching up our guests most of the night, 3 of them are now on sleeping spots on the floor, but resting, and I don’t think they are going home with the rest of their group.

I think we all may have been food poisoned, it has to be because my kitchen isn’t well enough built yet, it was still sharing a room with the butcher’s table. I have finished of the separation to the actual kitchen area today, and am hoping that I can get hold of some materials so I can build some sterile floors, currently there’s no floor at all in there.

Von Napier is up and running again. Fetching some old broken furniture from the nearby ruins, maybe we can use some of it. It also looks like they cleaned up the floor before they went out, which I’m grateful for. There was such a bloody mess everywhere in our barracks when I went to bed last night.

Luxemburg’s Journal

We’re heading into the forest looking for the first river, hopefully just continuing in a straight line until we hit that 3rd river, which won’t be today.