Game EXP: Pigeon's Mission (VSD)

Pigeon's Mission
Systems: Windows, macOS, Steam OS, Linux
Release Date: December 18, 2025
Publisher: Glowing Cheetah Studios
Developer: Glowing Cheetah Studios
Time Spent: 4 Hours 30 Minutes
Videos on YouTube

I'm not one to complain about skill walls (much).  I feel that there is something inherently wrong with two of the last four boss fights in Pigeon's Mission effectively being on the level of Dark Souls if Dark Souls were unfair, but also potentially bugged to the point that they create the illusion of a skill wall existing.  Unfortunately, this isn't a traditional Game EXP article because, as of January 26th, I have been unable to make it past the world four boss, I believe, because the game is either broken or contains a skill wall so absurd that Pigeon's Mission has missed the point of being a fun game co-designed by six-year-old Logan.

Pigeon's Mission is a 2D pixel art platformer at its core.  You play as Archie, a young pigeon who goes in search of his parents after they're taken in the middle of the night.  Throughout the levels, Archie gains new abilities to help him on his quest, such as converting all of your saved up energy (by collecting gold 'gems/coins') into one HP (you have a total of 4), using a bit of energy to perform a slower but more powerful attack, or using a vaccuum-like device to clear the screen of enemies.  The game is linear like New Super Mario Bros., where levels take only a couple of minutes to complete, and you can go back and replay levels to try and beat your previous time with all of the power-ups you've acquired in later levels.  Each world is made up of three traversing/platforming stages and a platforming stage that leads right into a boss fight.

The boss fights.  Sigh.

The game consists of, I believe, six worlds, although I have only made it to the boss fight of World 4.  The first two boss fights were great, both in terms of how they played out, how you needed to use some level of skill based on abilities learned during the stages of that world, and figuring out how best to use the seeds in the arena to your advantage instead of collecting them all in one go.  In each of the first two boss fights for World 1 and World 2, I never died once, realizing how best to attack the boss, and then beat them, figuring out what the developers wanted me to do.  They were a decent blend of fun without being a complete pushover.  

The third boss fight, against one Rocky Ronstar, was absolutely horrendous, although looking back, I still don't know why the fight gave me so much trouble.  Except I do. You had a special attack that used seed power that could stun Rocky for a few seconds, and then you could quickly switch to your regular attack to hit him 5-6 times.  Halfway through the fight, after Rocky started flashing (because bosses didn't have health meters, but used the old-school flashing indicator when they were at/about half their starting HP; this is, of course, speculation, as you will find out with the next boss) and would ocassionally jump up on a platform, pushing a button that made lava rise over the floor of the stage, requiring you to punch a button that would make platforms appear for Archie to safely jump on, with one platform disappears right after another one appeared.  Rocky's attacks also came a lot faster and were more varied, including a Cyclops-type blast that would take up 7/8ths of the screen and lasted just long enough that you couldn't jump/dash over it unharmed, and just low enough that you couldn't duck under it.  In one instance, Rocky glitched and jumped off his platform after starting the lava flow, and began attacking me while I tried to avoid him while jumping platforms.  In another instance, Rocky again glitched and just stopped moving, and I was able to defeat him.  Except when the screen went black, like it did after beating a boss, I had to start the level over again as it registered that Archie died, not Rocky.

World 4 consisted of a lot of underwater areas, and those were, for the most part, fine.  There wasn't anything that felt cheap or that the developers thought they could make the stages purposefully hard because "WatER STaGe!!"  The boss, however, Whirlpool Wave, I genuinely believe to be somehow broken.  But it wasn't always this way.  I watched a playthrough video, partly to build up my confidence that I could, in fact, defeat Whirlpool Wave, but also to see what I was doing wrong.  As it turned out, there was an update on December 28, 2025, that added some quality of life improvements, but also appears to have broken the Whirlpool Wave fight.  I think.  I have nearly an hour of gameplay video on YouTube, fighting Whirlpool Wave, and never beating him.  In the one YouTube video I could find, RoboRobVT beats Whirlpool Wave before the December 28th update, after hitting the boss around 30 times.  After the December 28th update, I have managed to hit Whirlpool Wave about 30 times before it starts flashing, and as many as 36 times after it starts flashing.  I also experienced a bug where Whirlpool Wave will sometimes continue its attack animations after you pause the game.  

My last complaint about this specific boss fight is that it's not interesting.  The boss looks great, its attack animations are, for the most part, fair, and all look good, but there's only one way for Archie to attack Whirlpool Wave: by performing a dash attack.  Each dash uses up a bar of Archie's special move meter (different from the seed power meter), something that didn't exist before the December 28th update.  You also need the dash to safely pass through the whirlpool attacks and to defeat the swordfish that Whirlpool Wave summons.  And you occasionally need to use the dash when Whirlpool Wave summons the spikes that shoot up out of the ground, and the only two safe places are halfway across the screen, which you have literally one second to figure out where that safe place is and get there.  Everything you do in this battle is centered around the dash attack and the management of your special move meter (which I've also noticed has an inconsistent refresh rate).

I have reached out to the developers through multiple channels, each time with zero response.  The first was on the Steam forums, but they appear not to have posted or responded to anything there since the game was released on December 18th.  I sent a message through Glowing Cheetah's contact page and never heard anything back.  I lastly reached out on Glowing Cheetah's Discord, and there's been very little activity since launch; although two weeks ago, there was an acknowledgement of my message, but no follow-up.  So now I find myself in a self-imposed limbo of wondering if the game spiked into the realm of Dark Souls difficulty, and I'm just not good enough to beat Whirlpool Wave, or if there is some kind of infinite health bug.  But I haven't played the game since January 29th, and I don't really want to go back to what feels like a no-win boss fight.

So this is sadly where I am with Pigeon's Mission.  What started out as an adorable and amazing project started by a loving Dad, bringing to life the ideas and drawings of his kid in a game that started out fun to play, turned sour from a lack of communication on any front (others have noticed it too), and what appears/feels like a game-breaking bug.  That is what sucks so much about having negative experiences with the boss fights against Rocky Ronstar and Whirlpool Wave.  The pixel art is great, the animations are fluid, the ability selection is a little clunky at first, but you get used to it, and by World 3, switching attack abilities becomes almost second nature.  The music, while not original to the game, is fun and suits the world and gameplay.  But something needs to be done after the December 28th update, because now it just feels softlocked and joyless.  Hopefully, I can come back to this if there's ever another patch/update.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Don't Forsake My Troubled Times

MIDI Week Singles: "Rainbow Road" - Mario Kart World (NS2)

 

"Rainbow Road" from Mario Kart World on the Nintendo Switch 2
Composer(s): Atsuko Asahi, Maasa Miyoshi, Takuhiro Honda, Yutaro Takakuwa
Album: No Official Release
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo EPD

I honestly don't know how I'm going to write anything after 8-bit Music Theory already did a 20-minute video on this very song about six months ago.  But we're going to take a slightly different approach because the last music theory class I took was 24 years ago.

Discussion of the song needs to be prefaced with a little bit about the entirety of the Rainbow Road track in Mario Kart World.  Unlike a lot of Rainbow Road tracks in Mario Kart games, this iteration of the track is linear without any traditional loops, although the track is broken up into four or five distinct areas, depending on how you approach the track.  If you race on the track as part of a circuit, there is a bit of a prologue that happens in the song from the start up to about 1:36.  During this time, the best way I can describe it is "anticipatoryly ambient."  The piano and guitar just kind of vamp/vibe out with no clear direction as to where the melody could be.  There is a chime tone that, when taken into context, sounds to me like the main hint that this is a track for Rainbow Road.  At 0:36, strings (and horns?) come in to break up the monotony a bit, and it's only at 0:56 that the synth tones bring the first real introduction of this Rainbow Road main melody.

Only once the song hits 1:36, does Lap 1 really begin (which is where the race starts if you're racing in Versus Mode and select Rainbow Road as the track you're racing on), and we get a fuller version of the main theme.  This theme is then played in full from 1:48 through 2:14, and I feel a little guilty saying this, but these 16 seconds, for me, are all of the song that I would consider hummable.  I've talked a bit before about how a lot of older video game themes are now considered classic because of how melody-heavy they were, mainly/partly because the themes were hummable.  And those 16 seconds are no exception.  The next 30 seconds sound like they're vibing on this theme without actually restating it, and that's okay, but the remaining 45 seconds of the song are kind of lost on me.  Granted, I don't really do "jazz" as a genre.  I can appreciate it, but I have a hard time following what I'm supposed to hold on to melody-wise, or if it's just supposed to be "listen to me jazz!"

The next section is a mellow, jazzy piano take on the main theme (that I'm able to follow), which happens during Lap 2, when the race moves away from the traditional Rainbow Road and into a dreamy, flowing blue river.  The piano and high-hat drum fit the setting really well and are taken over (a bit) by the return of the synth tone, which restates the piano variation of the main theme.  AND THEN we get this whispy choral-ahh singing the same melody variation.

There's a brief saxophone interlude-thing that happens and leads right into Lap 3, which starts off landing on a rotating space station.  It's here that we get a synth return to the main theme of Rainbow Road, followed by a transition back into the Mario Kart World theme, which vamps during a guitar solo for the remainder of the track.  I don't know if the Mario Kart World theme is supposed to happen about the same time that you start driving through the right-angle tunnel, and a return to a LED Rainbow Road track, since this track can only be so dynamic.

The one big change between this specific track and how it plays in the game is that here, there is no "Final Lap" fanfare that plays as you enter the final lap.  In the music, this happens at 6:26, and it's a full orchestra return to the Rainbow Road theme, and it gives me chills every time the theme concludes with the brass section coming in.  I'm not going to go into all of the musical self-references this song includes in the last 90 seconds, since 8-bit Music Theory does an amazing job already that I can't really add to.  But these last 90 seconds of "Rainbow Road" are an amazing way to finish out an otherwise long and windy rainbow-themed track that feels more fun and triumphant than the potentially punishing no-rails track that it could have easily become (again).

~JWfW/JDub/The  Faceplantman/Jaconian

Walk With Me, You'll Never Leave

New Site, Who Dis?

 

If you're reading this, you're likely already on our new site, StageSelectStart.com.

Yesterday, while listening to My Brother, My Brother, and Me, during the ad break, Justin McElroy was lamenting the inability to quickly register a new domain name, and that got me thinking about our own Blogger site.  Last November, I had looked into designing a webpage using Squarespace, a favorite ad for a lot of podcasts I apparently listen to, and while I found that StageSelectStart.com was available, I wasn't able to find out how easy/hard it would be to have the website function the same as Blogger, since that's pretty much what we do here.  I kept coming back to the thought that, "If Blogger's working the way we want it to, why should I pay a monthly fee to do the exact same thing?"  Frictional Games was still using Blogger as their primary website through, at least, the release of A Machine for Pigs, so it must not be that bad. But during this ad break, I thought about StageSelectStart.com again and decided to look it up, slightly afraid that the site had been snatched up by some algorithm that scours the Internet for Squarespace pages that people have let lapse and buy them up in hopes of a windfall on the resale market.

Well, that didn't happen.  In multiple ways.

StageSelectStart.com had not been snatched up by someone else, and I ended up not using Squarespace to set up this Forbes-quality website.  Earlier last week, I had listened to an episode of The Daily, where host Natalie Kitroeff interviewed Kevin Roose, and during the interview, she created a website for her using Claude Code, essentially an AI chatbot.  Having some success using Google's AI Gemini, I decided to use it as a form of tech support.  I first confirmed that I could purchase the stageselectstart.com URL and have our stageselectstart.blogspot.com essentially be loaded at the new URL, rather than trying to recreate a webpage from scratch (since I wasn't using Squarespace).  After making this confirmation, I purchased the URL and began the process of linking the two accounts.

 There were several times I regretted not going the easier route with Squarespace, or some other website development/hosting platform, as I ran into issue after issue trying to connect Blogger to our new webhost.  Using Gemini, I read through some descriptions about managing DNS information, updating NS and CNAME information in the hosting's account page with data from Blogger to verify that I was in fact the owner of stageselectstart.com.  After going through the process, I found a button/link on the account page that actually would do that step and additional steps for me after entering the verifying information from Blogger, but then I had conflicting and duplicate entries.  This is where Gemini came in and was helpful because I was able to upload a screenshot of my account settings, and the chatbot told me specifically what I needed to keep and what I needed to delete.  I know there was a lot of jargon that went over my head.

After anxiously deleting a couple of duplicate NS and CNAME entries, confirming with Gemini that that was what I was supposed to do, and after another screen shot analyzed, I was told that everything looked good and that the webpage should be live after anywhere between 15 minutes and 48 hours.  An hour later, the webpage couldn't load, so I was prompted to check on my phone while not connected to WiFi, and only then was I able to pull up stageselectstart.com by going to stageselectstart.blogspot.com.  That feeling of relief that I hadn't accidentally deleted something with A records, MX records, additional CNAMEs, or other things that I had no knowledge of before this morning.  And that the CAA was functioning.  Can't forget that one.

So the whole point of this is to reassure you that you are supposed to be here, at stageselectstart.com, even though you likely entered stageselectstart.blogspot.com, and that nothing will change here in the way we do things.  Thanks for visiting and/or thanks for staying.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

What Do You See In Me

Why I Stopped Playing an Isometric RPG from 1998 & Started Playing One from 2002 Instead

 

A video game sale can be a helluva drug.  My Steam, GOG, Epic, Amazon Games, and Switch backlogs can attest to that.  So it's probably no surprise that when Larian Studios (Divinity: Original Sin, Baldur's Gate 3) had (as of February 9th, it was still on sale on GOG, but no longer on Steam) put their entire catalog of games from the Divinity series on sale, I couldn't help but purchase the first three games in the franchise for fewer than $4.00 total.  And then I went over to GOG and bought them again after finding out (which I should've realized in the first place) that the GOG versions also give access to the soundtracks, prequel comics, manuals, novellas, and making of documentaries; you know, all the stuff we love about physical DVD/Bluray releases that aren't included on streaming services.

I wasn't planning on jumping right into the games as I was already attempting another run of Fallout 2, but I was tempted to see if the first game in the series, Divine Divinity, being a 23-year-old game, would work on modern systems and how it would feel in 2026.  Well, apart from stuttering issues that I've yet to figure out, and frequently learning what keys do what and how dragging objects is about 25% of the game, I've managed to put in just over 12 hours.

The play styles are very different, too.  Fallout 2 is a more methodical and slower-paced game than the action-RPG setting of Divine Divinity, which is closer to Diablo than say, Baldur's Gate (the first one, not the third one that Larian would later go on to help revive the Dungeons & Dragons video game brand).  Missing six times in a row in Fallout 2 takes nearly a minute and is exceedingly frustrating, whereas missing four times in a row in the early levels of Divine Divinity is over in a few seconds.

So why did I put down Fallout 2 after investing another 16 hours after my last save file was corrupted?  I think part of it was that I had played for about 60 hours, recently gotten to San Francisco, and was exploring a difficult area of a ship that was full of aggressive aliens.  I had been using a guide to look up recommended skills based on how I wanted to build out my new character, Rose, and was genuinely enjoying the game again.  What really pulled me towards Divine Divinity was the newness of a franchise and series that I'd heard great things about, that I had never played.  Christmas Present Syndrome all over again, I guess.

And I think the promise of something new, but still old, felt more enticing than retreading the same ground for a fourth time after three previous failures, even if one of those failures was due to a software issue.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

'Til We Found a Sea of Green

P.S.  I do promise to come back to Fallout 2 before I get a new laptop, because I don't know if I want to potentially deal with another corrupted save file just to start over from the Temple of Trials and gecko hunting all over again.

MIDI Week Singles: "Divine Divinity" - Divine Divinity (PC)

 

"Divine Divinity" from Divine Divinity on Windows & OS X (2002)
Composer: Kirill Pokrovsky
Album: Divine Divinity
Label: GOG
Publisher: cdv Software Entertainment
Developer: Larian Studios

I picked up Divine Divinity a couple of weeks back because it was on sale, but I'll go more into my reasoning on Friday (or Monday, or the following Friday, or Monday, or a week from Tuesday).  All I knew about the game was that it took place in the same universe/world as the Divinity Original Sin series, which I also haven't played (yet), and that it was an isometric CRPG.  So when I started the game, this song started playing over the opening menu, and the vocals kicked in four seconds later. I felt that this was as good an omen as any that I was going to be playing a good game.

It's just one of those feelings you get when you know very little about a game or a story and hear the first (or nearly first) piece of music the game throws at you, like "Nerevar Rising" from The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, or "Opening" from ActRaiser, and you're immediately transported to the world and adventure the developers want to send you on.  It's just a good feeling that I look forward to and am fortunate enough to experience.  

I love music y'all.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Defending Old and Weak

Game EXP: The Children of Clay (VSD)

The Children of Clay
Systems: Windows, Steam OS, Linux
Release Date: March 7, 2025
Publisher: Balazs Ronyai
Developer: Balazs Ronyai
Time Spent: 22 Minutes
Playthrough Video on YouTube

The Children of Clay is a first-person stop-motion horror and archeology game where you're primarily sitting at a desk, looking over a recovered artifact as strange things begin to happen.  At your desk, you have a candle, matches, a magnifying glass, a compass, a note pad, and several research books (that I believe function as a single entity).  Part of what makes this game so terrifying is that for two-thirds of the game, you're stationary in your chair, unable to move.  If anything were to happen, you would be forced to watch.  It's like that long shot in The Exorcist after the priests leave Regan's room, but the camera lingers in that room, just waiting.

Progress in the game happens as you uncover information, either by examining the clay figure or by reading the books; there are possibly other hidden mechanics that I didn't recognize, which I am very much in support of.  Because the game is filmed in stop-motion with a VCR aesthetic filter, changes can occur in the game during a single missing frame that the player likely won't notice.  For instance there might be some faint writing on the back of the clay figure and only after you pull the magnifying glass to get a better look, a crack will appear on the face of the figure when you rotate it back.  The spoken words of the player character are all through text, which doesn't take away from the game, and likely helps to enhance the horror rather than be potentially ruined by an off-reading by a voice actor or the player thinking, "That's not how I would've reacted.  That was a little over the top."

I first played this on the Steam Deck before I got my new laptop, and while it played fine, the only thing I didn't really enjoy was having to pull up the virtual keyboard to type in the search bar for the books.  I was also playing in bed at night with the lights turned off, so I couldn't make my own notes to then look up in-game, which is why my typing was as slow as it was in the video.  Had I played on a PC, I would likely have tried searching the books a lot more than I did.

The Children of Clay was a short game, only 22 minutes from start to finish, although if I had spent more time searching the books, I likely could have found out more background information, possibly some more flavor text, and maybe expanded on the game a bit more than what I have in my video.  I really (really) hope that Balazs Ronyai (u/EdmondDantees) releases more games and that this wasn't just a one-off passion project, because the small amounts of lore teased were fun, the atmosphere was oppressive and at times terrifying, and I would love to have a similar game that runs for a couple of hours.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
All I Feel, Truth of Lies

Game EXP: The 18th Attic (PC)

[Disclaimer:  I received a review key for [HERROR] Gas Station Case through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators.  The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played, and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience.  Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.]

The 18th Attic
Systems: Windows
Release Date: January 23, 2026
Publisher: Steelkrill Studios
Developer: Steelkrill Studios
Time Spent: 2 Hours 45 Minutes
Playlist on YouTube

Before starting The 18th Attic, the visuals and description looked to me like a mix of the gameplay loop of P.T., the 'notice something wrong' of The Exit 8 and MADiSON, and some semblance of the camera mechanic often used in the Fatal Frame series.  We could even just start listing games that have similar elements to different aspects of this game, but then we'd be here all night, so let's get to the actual game.

The 18th Attic is a narrative walking sim with paranormal 'spot the difference' mechanics as you climb the stairs to the same attic space over and over again.  The first time you enter the attic, you pick up a Polaroid camera and continue climbing the stairs at the back of the attic to find yourself back on the floor of the attic that you originally entered.  You cannot climb back down the stairs because the door leading up to the attic space closes behind you.  Your only way out is to continue up the stairs at the back of the attic.  The function of the camera is to take pictures when there are differences in the setting, and the attic is full of objects to be out of place or just completely missing.  When there is a difference between the first (default) attic space, you have to take a successful picture (more on that one in a bit) of the anomaly and if the picture is taken correctly, you are awarded with a flashback voice over from the player character's past, and a notification that the anomaly was found and you can safely proceed to the next floor.

If you fail to find the anomaly and walk up the stairs, you are assaulted by a humanoid creature that drains you of 40 points of health; you start at 100 health.  Thankfully, scattered throughout the various attics are bottles of pills (health) that are stored in your inventory and when used can restore 40 points of health.  Your inventory is made up of five slots, although two of those slots are taken up by your camera and an optional lighter to use for illumination in darker areas of the attic.  In typical survival horror fashion, you cannot stack either extra film or pill bottles, so at any time, you can only have an additional three consumable items.  One nice mechanic that isn't explored narratively is that while the camera only holds five photos, those photos are only consumed when you take a picture of something that isn't an anomaly.  So hypothetically, if you only take pictures of anomalies, then you'll never use up any of your film, meaning that the pack of film you picked up never gets used, and I never found a way to drop unwanted items.

While not being able to drop unwanted items was an annoyance, I certainly wouldn't call it an issue.  One other thing that I became frustrated with during my playthrough in Chase Mode was that I was unsure why the picture of the anomaly I was taking was not registering with the game.  I had something similar happen when taking a picture of an anomaly, and I was sure that it wasn't accepted because the object wasn't centered, but it was accepted after another take.  This time, during the Chase Mode, I saw something that should have been in the attic, but it wasn't; it was missing.  So I took a picture at a slight angle because there were other objects in the way for me to be head-on and get a full picture.  I tried again, and the picture was again not accepted, which left me with 0 remaining pictures.  I ended up having to go through two attic spaces where I saw anomalies, but without film to take pictures, I ended up taking 80 points of damage and only found some extra film four floors higher. The thought of dying and ending my run because the game didn't recognize what I thought was a successful picture, and being forced to take damage didn't feel great.

My only other critique was that after the second time of not recognizing an anomaly and taking damage from the jump-scare, goopy-looking-creature in the stairwell, I wasn't so much scared about going up the stairwell as I was annoyed at myself.  The feeling of "please don't be there, please don't be there" out of fear was replaced by annoyance at myself for not recognizing that something was out of place.  That's not a great feeling to have with a horror game that uses jump-scares as one of its primary sources of terror, but I also felt the same way in the last third of Amnesia: The Dark Descent, so I think it's more that it's an issue within the nature of horror games rather than something specifically wrong with The 18th Attic.

I do applaud Steelkrill Studio, though, for the slight variance in anomalies between the two different game modes.  Because the gameplay loop is centered around looking around a room for differences and there might be a span of two attics where there haven't been any changes, followed by four alternating rooms where there is an anomaly, then there isn't, then there is, and then there isn't, means that you're frequently wondering if you're missing something.  In the Chase Mode, you're doing this while facing where the creature is coming from because it has a "only moves when you're not looking" mechanic, and while some of the anomalies are identical between the two modes, there are several that are unique to that particular mode.  In one mode, I had noticed that a drape/towel/blanket had been placed differently, so when I saw it the same way in the other mode, I knew what to take a picture of.  What I wasn't expecting and gave me a fright was when I turned around and saw the attic now filled with this same draped asset all around the attic, which I then had to navigate like a maze.

Without getting into spoilers for the content of the story, I will say that I liked that there was a story here that felt relatable in some sense.  It wasn't a game where a mechanic existed just to have it, but the anomalies existed to help tell the story, which unraveled as you progressed through the 55 attic spaces.  I also appreciated that the game didn't overstay its welcome, even though at first 55 floors felt like an annoying amount of floors to trapse through looking for differences from the original floor.  About an hour to complete the Story Mode and just over 30 minutes to complete the Chase Mode felt like the perfect amount of time to dedicate to a single run without feeling that there was chuff added to pad out the game.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Instrumental

MIDI Week Singles: "Alley" - Chicken Little (NGC)

 

"Alley" from Chicken Little on the Xbox, GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Windows (2005)
Composer: Billy Martin
Album: No Official Album Released
Publisher: Buena Vista Games
Developer: Avalanche Software

One of the reasons I love listening to music across 30 years of consoles using an RNG is coming across songs like "Alley" from Chicken Little.  I probably wouldn't have listened to this soundtrack because this isn't the type of game I'd ever really play.  I wasn't the target audience for the movie when it came out, or this video game adaptation.  That being said, "Alley" actually never made it into the final game because it was cut at some point.  There's speculation as to why it was cut, but nothing definitive.

I find it really interesting, though, that after listening to the entire soundtrack, this one song stuck out to me as one of my favorites, and yet it's one of several unused tracks in the game still in the game files before it was shipped.  Over the years, I've come across several songs that were cut from games for various reasons, and I'm at least happy that these pieces have been able to see the light of day in some form, even if that form is not in the video game they were originally composed for.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
The Night Is Spreading

Game EXP: Mindway (MQ2)

[Disclaimer:  I received a review key for Mindway through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators.  The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played, and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience.  Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.]

Mindway
Systems: Meta Quest, Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest 3 & 3S, & Meta Quest Pro
Release Date: January 24, 2023
Publisher: Mindway Studios
Developer: Mindway Studios
Time Spent: 
Playthrough Series on YouTube

On some level, I don't think I'm the target audience for a mindfulness and meditation virtual reality app, but at the same time, that's probably why I'm the perfect audience for this.  I'm turned off a bit by the concept of a mindfulness app or actively meditating, as it's something that I've done in the past, so it's not entirely new for me.  When I lived alone after college, I had made a space in my living room where I would meditate after work, and I would sit and focus on my breathing.  I did this for a couple of months on my own, but found that I would get really sleepy and actually fall asleep a few times, so I was convinced I was doing something wrong and stopped.  On the Quest 2 headset, I had tried two meditation apps, but both ended up going under, and they're no longer supported on the Meta Quest store.  So I'm open to the idea of meditation and open to the prospect of using the Quest 2 VR headset as an avenue to practice meditation, but not overly excited about it.  I was also a little disappointed to find out that it requires a connection to Meta's servers to verify that you have a paid subscription (more on that down the line), which means that I can't use this app while at work (we have all Meta platforms blocked on our WiFi).

That being said, I don't find that the Quest 2 headset is overly comfortable for an extended period of time, and I would like to think that I would want to be as comfortable as possible when I meditate.  The Mindway VR app, though, offers a multitude of programs/avenues to practice mindfulness and meditation practices, some that are easily transferable outside of the VR space, while others are not.

I spent most of my time with Mindway doing their "30 Days of Mindfulness," which I also found to be the most approachable if you're able to accept several flaws up front.  First, the narration is a flat/neutral-sounding and emotionless AI-generated voice.  Maybe that's something that can help people relax, knowing that there's not a real person gently talking them through ways to practice mindfulness outside of the VR space.  The second thing is that every day has you in a different location, and the majority, if not all, of the vistas and 2D backgrounds consist of AI-generated artwork.  So if you're not keen on your game not being upfront about containing AI-generated content, then the developers have already lost you on two fronts.  I personally will not advocate for using AI-generated content over someone who could do a much better job creating art, but I will admit that most of the time, I was able to accept it.

What I liked about the "30 Days of Mindfulness" was the fact that it felt like you were learning these short 5-10 minute strategies for being mindful out in the real world.  There were breathing exercises where you would just focus on your breath, paying attention to how your body moved and reacted to taking purposeful deep breaths, not the usual shallow breaths our bodies automatically take without our noticing.  There was a walking "exercise" of sorts that had you focus on how your body felt while walking (or walking around in a circle around your living room), what your body felt like coming into contact with the ground, and how the rest of your body moved when you focused in on it.  There were several sessions dealing with self-affirmations and how to deal with thoughts that might intrude on your otherwise mind-quieting meditation.  I will definitely be pulling up some of these videos from the playlist while I'm at work from time-to-time, so there is some benefit.

I dabbled a bit in some of the VR-centered sessions, such as an ASMR walk, an ASMR labyrinth board game (you know the kind), and even the sessions that focused on helping you fall to sleep.  For the latter, this was the one I was most skeptical about, mainly because I couldn't see myself falling asleep with the bulky Quest 2 VR headset strapped to my face.  Maybe the experience is different and more enjoyable with one of the newer Meta Quest headsets, but with the Quest 2 headset, it wasn't going to happen comfortably or naturally.  The walking ASMR really wasn't that comfortable either, since you weren't walking in a traditional video game sense, but it was more like you were stationary on a moving walkway with footfall sounds.  And the sound effects used sounded like there were only 2 different footfall effects per type of terrain, so the sounds got old and repetitive really fast.  The marble maze ASMR wasn't very pleasant, as I found trying to rotate the board pretty awkward for my hands, and the sound effects used didn't create a soothing atmosphere.  I guess that's pretty subjective, though.

You also have the option to create a customized mindfulness session, but you're severely limited in the locations where you can have your session.  I would think that you could pull from any one of the locations in the "30 Days of Mindfulness," but instead, you have fewer than 10 options, and none of them felt very inspiring to me.  Nothing like the rainy campsite from Day 23, or the sweeping forested vistas of Day 15, but locations more akin to the pink gummed hills of Day 19, or the empty villas of Day 28.  You are able to customize sessions by time, or limitless, as well as having guidance by a male or female (AI-generated) voice, or no voice at all, and just take in the ambiance and scenery.

For a lifetime membership/access to Mindway, $79 is more than I would pay for what this app has to offer, but maybe there's more to the Fireside chats with a Mindway mindfulness coach and a group of other people logging on at the same time that helps to bring up the value.  Maybe the experience is better visually and comfortably with the Meta Quest 3 headset, but with the Quest 2, I didn't notice any shortcuts that I hadn't already experienced with other games/apps/experiences in the last year.  I genuinely think that Mindway should offer one week free for people to test out the product before moving on to any paid models, but that's also coming from someone who didn't have to pay for the product at all.  And what I keep coming back to is how calm I often felt at the end of most of the mindfulness sessions, so there is some level of benefit.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
To Find Peace Among the Rotting Corpses

MIDI Week Singles: "Big Iron" - Fallout: New Vegas (PC)

 

"Big Iron" from Fallout: New Vegas on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Windows (2010)
Composer: Marty Robbins
Performed by: Marty Robbins
Albums: Big Iron and Saddletrap, Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs, and Songs from the Mojave Wasteland - Music as Heard in Fallout: New Vegas
Label: Columbia, and X5 Music Group
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Developer: Obsidian Entertainment

I don't know why it hadn't registered when "Big Iron" played during the first episode of season 2  of Fallout, when The Ghoul and Lucy had a shootout in Novac.  I really like this song for a couple of reasons, and despite The Ghoul shooting people in this shootout, it felt more improvised weaponry than him using his actual gun.  A little boot pistol here, a shotgun there, a grenade here, exploding rounds there.  But we're here for New Vegas.

"Big Iron," along with "Johnny Guitar," (and maybe "Jingle Jangle Jingle"), was one of the more frequently heard songs on several of the radio stations throughout the Mojave wasteland, and I love a song that tells a story, because it's easy to let your mind wander with music in the background.  "Big Iron" also reminded me a lot of "Red Right Hand" by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, not so much musically or thematically, but more in its telling of an unnamed focal point of the song with a red hand/big iron being the defining trait that's sung about frequently, although significantly less dark and forboding tone overall. 

It also sounded similar to something that would be played in a Tarantino film, circa Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction.  It's just got that vibe to it, I find.  Maybe if Tarantino directed an El Mariachi short.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

And the Only Price You Pay, Is a Heart Full of Tears

Monthly Update: February 2026

 

It was an interesting month, to say the least.

Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, both US citizens, were murdered by Trump/Miller/Noem/Bovino's Gestapo.  The Trump Administration immediately went into "they were domestic terrorists" mode, even as multiple videos were being released refuting all of their statements to the nth degree.  Trump's Gestapo then used five-year-old Liam Ramos as bait to have his mother open the door to her house so that they could "legally" enter and arrest her and her other child, all the while claiming that the father, Adrián Alexander Conejo Arias, had fled the car when approached by ICE to leave Liam in the car by himself.  We've known for a while that ICE/DHS will lie to save face, but to this extent has been something else.

It is incredibly fucked up how our neighbors have been forced to make daily patrols of the blocks surrounding the nearby elementary school out of fear that SUVs full of uneducated, out-of-shape high school peaking law enforcement dropouts will snatch up a parent as they're dropping their kid off at school.  On a beautiful January day when it's 55 degrees, the sun is out, neighbors from all over are playing at the nearby park, and there we are scanning for SUVs driving in groups.  Not that we have to worry about The Squire being taken, but our community and school have plenty of people who don't look anything like a current ICE employee, and we look out for our neighbors and fuck all if you support any of this; and by "this" I mean the whole of the Trump administration.  Your views aren't needed here.  Are your groceries cheap enough now?  Fucking hell.

And I played some video games last month, too.   

And after some corticosteroid injections in December to combat carpal tunnel symptoms, I feel like I'm just below my peak at bouldering from just before the pandemic.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Instrumental