Blue Prince (again)
(contains only minor trophy name spoilers and minor spoilers for the strategy of beating the game in one day)
Well, if last month was the month of Blue Prince, then this month was the month of... Blue Prince again? Yep. I'm honestly surprised it didn't happen with a different game first, but Blue Prince is the only video game this year to successfully dominate my video gaming time in not just one month but two. To be fair, it only dominated the 2nd half of November and the first half of December, so it really was just a timing thing to be counted for two months, but yeah.
My enjoyment of the game has gone downhill, unfortunately. The game slowly shifts away from what I originally fell in love with. Instead of a rouge-like puzzle game, it just becomes more and more exclusively a puzzle game. You become so overpowered that the rouge-like elements become an after-thought, even a hinderance/annoyance, to testing things/solving the puzzles.
That being said, I still adore the game and would recommend it highly. And when I spend a while away from the game, I become excited to dive into trying to solve the puzzles yet again. But, yeah. Enjoyment has definitely dropped.
We've stayed true to not looking anything up* and only have two trophies left (one trophy being 'get all the trophies', so effectively only one trophy, which is the 'solve all 8 inner sanctum room puzzles' (we're only missing one sanctum key and already know the answer to the puzzle in the room)). What's kind of unfortunate is I think my enjoyment/satisfaction would have been much higher if I had just given up at some point and looked up how to do everything else.
We've poured hours and hours into staring at/talking about random things that we don't even know if they mean anything. These hours have not been enjoyable. However, these hours did lead to a couple of really tough puzzles being solved which I am quite proud of.
My current gameplan is to get the last trophy without looking anything up and then spoil myself on everything else.
I could write and talk a lot more about Blue Prince.
*I just remembered: During our many attempts to complete the game in one day, I got discouraged and watched the video of the world record speedrun to see if there was any big secret we were missing. Nope, they did it just the same as one of the paths we had plotted. We did take a couple small strategy pieces from the video, though. Before we were drafting the closet to the right of the entrance hall at the very start, but instead copied them and started doing it from the top -- a small difference that probably doesn't change a crazy amount in the grand scheme of things (but is probably better considering the fact that the world record did it). We also started focusing more on saving a reroll for the outer room.
Christmas
Christmas was a blast. Most of the Jamieson crew got to stick around for a while longer than they did last year, which was awesome.
Played some Moving Out 2 and some Overcooked 2. Overcooked 2 is a ton of fun. Moving Out 2 is, uh, not.
Hadn't gotten to play Smash Bros for the past few months with Ben up at college and all, so I got my fill of that, which was great.
Got Sky Team for Christmas and played through all the base game scenarios. Expansion is currently coming in the mail. Great game.
Had the last session of the Mistborn 2025 Campaign in person -- just like how we did the last session of the 2024 Campaign last year in person. Great session. Epic moments. Really good epilogue stuff for our characters. I have loved both the 2025 and 2024 Campaigns.
Filmed two videos for PerazzoBrothersGaming, first one out already, second one out hopefully later today.
Played a lot of Dominion this year, which was wonderful; I love that game so much.
Played various other board/card games -- Finca, Raccoon Tycoon, Brass: Birmingham, Liar's Dice, Flip 7, Burst, DroPolter, Things in Rings. My favorites being: Brass: Birmingham, DroPolter, Sky Team, and Dominion
DroPolter but Mouth
Okay, this deserves it's own header thing, haha.
So. DroPolter is one of the board games I referenced above. It's a wonderful simple game in a small box. In this game you have five differently shaped objects in your hand. You flip over the top card of a deck which shows you the items you need to drop. Everyone races trying to get those objects out of their hand first (using only the hand that has the items in it -- your other hand can't help).
If you win the round, you get a bell and if you get to five bells, you win. The trick is you put the bell into your hand with the rest of your objects. And if you ever drop the bell from your hand, you lose that bell. It's a beautiful catch-up mechanic -- the more bells you have in your hand, the more difficult it becomes to safely drop the correct items.
From that information you might be able to deduce what DroPolter but Mouth is, hahaha. Now, important note: NO, we did not use the small little choking hazard items that you use in the normal game (which would also be very gross to put into your mouth). Instead you put five differently flavored lifesavers into your mouth (which all have a hole in the middle, so, uh, theoretically not a choking hazard). Each game piece displayed on the cards is associated with the different lifesavers. Through taste, you had to spit out the correct lifesavers in order to win the round.
It was TOO funny. We were cackling so hard while discussing it beforehand and when we actually played it. We got me, Joseph, Ben, and Eric to play. Ben won and I got second. We got our first couple rounds on video and it's mostly us trying to control our laughter so we could actually try to win the round. After the first couple rounds, we managed to focus up and have some semi-competitive rounds that felt half luck based but half getting surprising decent at identifying individual flavors.
Joseph said DroPolter but Mouth was probably the hardest he laughed in 2025.
Failed to Finish Twenty One Pilots Tier List
Was having a really tough time with the early stages of it, so finishing just kind of didn't happen. And then Christmas happened and stuff.
Job Starts Up Feb 2nd, Oh Boy Oh Boy
Will be spending my first couple months in Colorado and then somewhere else that I don't know yet after that.