Gaming Goodness

A Digital Decade: Top 10 Games of the Past 10 Years

Alicia 'EightBitBlonde' Alexandra

2010 didn’t seem that far away until I started looking at how many games have been released since then. Hundreds of games from teams across the world, spanning a myriad of platforms and genres. Some of which I devoured, others I merely scratched the surface of and many that had never even made it on my radar.

While I haven’t even put a dent in all the games that have come out since 2010, narrowing down 10 years of games to one favorite game per year still wasn’t an easy task (especially when there are so many left unplayed in my backlog), but here are my picks and their runner-ups.

Fallout: New Vegas (2010)

Runner-ups of 2010: Alan Wake, Fable III and Halo: Reach.

Continue reading “A Digital Decade: Top 10 Games of the Past 10 Years” →

Neopet's Illusen, the Earth Faerie of Meridell, poses.
General Geekery

Growing up in Neopia – Celebrating 20 Years of Neopets

Alicia 'EightBitBlonde' Alexandra

Neopets has been a part of my life for a very long time, as strange as it may sound to say something so sentimental about a website. Some of my earliest memories of using my family’s first desktop computer are of navigating the Neopets homepage at the age of eight or nine and creating the first of my digital pets.

Now, as Neopets celebrates its 20th anniversary and I get closer to celebrating my 30th birthday, I realize just how much of a constant Neopets has been throughout my life. I have grown up alongside the site and while Neopets has changed throughout the years and I have gotten older, and while it may not be with the same account I started with, I still log on.

It was through Neopets that I got my first taste of internet culture. Neopets was my introduction to interacting with other people online, how I was first introduced to fan-culture and how I was first encouraged to explore basic coding, among so many other things. In a myriad of ways, it was Neopets that made me a little more prepared to go forth into the rest of the internet as a prepared online citizen.

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Bounty of Books, General Geekery, Raves and Reviews

Of Swords & Sisters – Review of A Sparrow’s Roar

Alicia 'EightBitBlonde' Alexandra

Growing up on a strict diet of helmeted heroines and woman warriors, I have long had an affinity for female-lead fantasy. So when BOOM! Studios revealed the striking cover and excerpt of A Sparrow’s Roar, an original graphic novel from cartoonist C.R. Chua (Adventure Time Comics) and co-writer Paolo Chikiamco (High Society, Mythspace: Humanity), I knew I had to give it a read.

Per and her older sister Elena are both knights in the land of Esterpike. But while Per is a mere knight-in-training, Elena is a war hero and the revered commander of the most famous soldiers in all the land, the legendary Lions of Esterpike.

When disaster strikes, Per must do the unthinkable and pretend to be her sister in order to travel to the capital and rally the troops against an enemy that only she knows about. It’ll take all her strength, cunning, and a bit of help from her sister’s second-in-command, Amelia, to pull it off, but with the fate of the people in her hands, Per has no choice but to step into Elena’s boots in order to save the kingdom.

A Sparrow’s Roar is all about sisterhood and the bonds associated, whether they are formed by blood or battle. It tackles the concepts of personal identity, feelings of inadequacy and stepping into shoes much larger than one’s own only to learn how to run before you can walk. 

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Gaming Goodness, Out and About

My 10 Favorite Games @ PAX West 2019

Alicia 'EightBitBlonde' Alexandra

After 4 busy days, PAX West 2019 has drawn to a close and after a full weekend of picking up controllers, demoing builds, chatting with passionate developers and actively avoiding the PAX pox: I’m ready to round up my favorite video game finds from the weekend.

Here are 10 different projects that stood out to me on the show floor, ranging from dog-themed dating simulators to creative takes on dungeon-crawling adventures.

Project Witchstone (Spearhead Games)

Isometric RPGs have been having a renaissance over the past few years, and while many strive to capture the best parts of tabletop gaming, they sometimes fall short in terms of achieving the player freedom found in tabletop games. That’s the gap that Project Witchstone is trying to bridge, with their robust AI “game master” approach to NPCs, skill checks and investment in player agency. With no overarching questline to embark on, players are free to integrate themselves into factions, frame the local blacksmith for murder or forge onward of their own volition.

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Gaming Goodness, General Geekery, Waypoint Washington

Visiting the Indie Game Revolution @ MoPOP Seattle

Alicia 'EightBitBlonde' Alexandra

Games made by small teams of dedicated creators and born of non-traditional production ventures have won hearts and minds all over the place in the gaming community, but it’s safe to say that not everyone that passes time with play is aware of the second thriving ecosystem growing alongside the wonderful AAA games currently at the forefront of popular culture.

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(via Alicia Alexandra)

As someone who works in the industry, I know first hand the blood, sweat, and tears that go into bringing such a personal thing to life. As someone who works directly with independent studios, I know how much more blood, sweat, and tears can be spilled when you’re doing it all indie-style.

That’s why I was so excited to check out the Indie Game Revolution exhibit at Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture. An exhibit dedicated to the beautiful gems that are independent games, the players that appreciate them and the talented folks that make them.

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