Blog – Kit Campbell Books

Card Story Part 2 (And a Class Update)

April books: 1/4 (nothing new)

Well, squiders, I have finished recording and editing my videos for my SkillShare class. This proved more annoying than necessary as I’ve been using ClipChamp for editing, and apparently it decided to eat the last 20-30 seconds of each of my videos, meaning I had to re-record whole sections in some cases. So now I just need to get the class ready to go in SkillShare and make it live (and hope SkillShare doesn’t find something to be grumpy about) and then the class part is done, and I can focus on writing the stories and doing what I will. It will be nice to see the other end of the videos, which are always the worst part.

I also had a story accepted to an anthology, so that’s fun!

I’m also starting to think ahead. I’ve got my writing retreat at the end of May, and then I’ll have a few weeks all to myself in June as the rest of my family will be at various summer camps. So, in theory, I will have a large block of potential writing time to perhaps start (and get through) a new project. The gears, they are a-turning.

Did more of my card story. Do I know where it is going? I do not.

~*~*~*~*~*~

A note that says "It is a school, but not everyone is there during the day"

A note that says, "So, what, you're like the janitor? Going thru student's desks? EW"

A note that says "Your desk? What? It's just my stuff inside"

A note that says "Well, things don't always cross over"

See you next week, squiders!

Is This Anything? (Card Story, Part 1)

April Books: 1/4 (The Late Mrs. Willoughby)

As I mentioned…recently…at work I was donated a stack of weird yellow cards with a hole in the bottom. (I did ask various peoples, and the older woman who helps me on Tuesdays told me they were most likely rolodex dividers, as normal rolodex cards would have lines on them for the information.)

(I then realized that my kids probably had no idea what a rolodex even was, as even I have only seen like, two, in my whole life, and they were near the beginning. And I did ask, and yes, they had no idea.)

ANYWAY, I had this idea that maybe I would use said cards in some sort of story, and this week, I’ve started. Except I realized that it would be weird for everyone in the story to be using the same weird, archaic possibly-rolodex divider cards. In the same bag, I was also given purple index cards that are the size of normal index cards, were they cut in half.

So, without further adieu, whatever this is going to end up being:

A note that says "Do I know you?" with "I'm sorry" scratched out above

A note that says "I doubt it - you're here during the day, right?"

A note that says "Of course-everyone's here during the day. It's a school"

A note that says "Well, you're right about one of those things"

~*~*~*~*~

So I guess we’ll see where this goes.

Have a good weekend, squiders, and I’ll see you next week.

Foiled By My Laptop Again

Evening, squiders.

I had grand plans to get my videos for my class edited over the past two days. Part of the issue is still ongoing drama and mental burnout, but some of it is technology related.

When I was younger, most notably when I was in college, I carried my laptop everywhere with me, and I would break it out whenever I could to get some writing done. On the bus, in my fraternity’s offices between classes, at the local tea shop, sometimes even if I got to class early. A lot of authors–especially ones in busy times of life–swear by doing a little whenever you can, stealing ten minutes here, fifteen minutes here.

I don’t operate that way as much nowadays, but I would like to do it more. Twenty minutes between the end of work and when I need to pick up the first child from school, fifteen minutes while dinner is in the oven, ten minutes while I wait for my youngest to get dressed in the morning.

It’s a nice idea, but I run into complications, and it seems to be timed both to when I’m trying to steal a few minutes, or when I, in theory, have several hours in which to work.

And all these complications are technology based.

My laptop of twenty years ago at college was great. Open it, turn it on, off you go. But it feels like modern technology has somehow made things worse.

Here is a rundown of some of issues I have run into over the last few months when I’ve sat down to work:

Laptop has forgotten how to turn on and needs a complete refresh (which sometimes takes hours, and then you have to reinstall everything)
Laptop has forgotten the pin I use to log into it (today)
Laptop cannot figure out how to connect to a wifi network it has connected to hundreds of times
Laptop has decided that the menus will not load in Windows itself
Laptop has decided to drop network for no apparent reason (as evidenced by other devices continuing to have no problem)
Laptop was last connected to the dock and has forgotten how to operate independently
Laptop was last not connected to the dock and has forgotten how to connect to the keyboard/mouse and/or monitor
Laptop has decided it does not like this particular power supply

Of course, in the old days everything was on the laptop itself and now everything is in the Cloud, which is good in some ways but frustrating as heck if we’re playing “What Internet?”

If I have fifteen minutes to work and I have to spend ten of them fighting with some dumb “our technology has gotten too smart for its own good” problem, then I cannot actually steal ten minutes here, fifteen minutes there.

(Also if the laptop has forgotten how to turn on and needs a reset, then we’re looking at hours of work before the laptop is useable again, so forget it.)

I mean, yes, storing things on the Cloud is nice! I haven’t lost anything to not being backed up in years! But I do wish I could just reliably turn the computer on and get going immediately without any shenanigans. And maybe it is specifically this laptop, and this is all a sign that perhaps I should save up to get a new one. (Please tell me if you are having these same problems.)

All this to say that I had time, and I did not get as far as I wanted.

How are you doing, squiders? Do you have a laptop you like and that works reliably?

Oops, I Waited Too Long

March books: 5/5 (The Deck of Omens)

Happy Wednesday, squiders. I have managed to drag myself away from BTS’s 2.0 music video to write you today’s blog post.

Like many avid readers, I have more books than I may ever be able to read. In addition to that, I maintain two digital TBR (to be read) lists: one on Goodreads, and one on my library system. Periodically I will go through these lists and pick out books, usually once a month or so, because I do try to not be in the middle of too many books, and also not to have more books out from the library than I can actually read in a time period.

(I picked up two books from the library about an hour ago, one from my library TBR and one by my SFWA mentor.)

(It is interesting how it’s easier for me to select a book from a digital TBR and request it from the library instead of looking at my book shelves and choosing books I own to read. I wonder why that is.)

Last month I picked out The Deck of Omens from my Goodreads TBR list. This is the sequel to The Devouring Gray (which I do actually own), which I would classify as YA dark fantasy or perhaps horror. According to Goodreads I read the first book in Sept of 2020 and shelved the sequel.

Squiders, I am not great with series. I read a lot of first books and decide not to move forward. I almost never move directly from one book to the next, even when I am interested in continuing on. (Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom earlier this year was an exception, as is Armageddon’s Children and The Elves of Cintra, which I have started.) Often with series I am interested in, I shelve the second book and come to it some time later, which is obviously what I did here.

Until last month, when I pulled The Deck of Omens out of my TBR, I’d forgotten that there was a sequel.

Now, obviously, reading series like I do is kind of dumb. But in my defense, I’m generally pretty good about remembering what was happening and being able to jump back into the world and the story.

But almost six years is apparently the limit. The Deck of Omens was well-written and the author left plenty of reminders, but even though I enjoyed the book and the story, I felt like I was missing something the whole way through. (Also I noticed after the fact that one character did not have a viewpoint in this book though I believe he did in the first book. Like, he was still there, but not as a viewpoint character, which was a very interesting choice and kudos for that.)

So don’t be me, squiders. Don’t leave sequels for years and years.

Will I learn a lesson from this?

I mean, probably not. But there’s always a chance.

Have a good week, squiders, and try not to fall for too many April Fools things. (Though I’ve seen, like, none this year?)

Shannara Readthrough: Armageddon’s Children

March Books: 4/5? (Armageddon’s Children, obviously)

Howdy, squiders. How’s life?

If you’re new around here, or even if you’re not, here’s a quick recap. The Wishsong of Shannara was the book that introduced me to epic fantasy back when I was a kid, and seeing how I’m still hanging out in the epic fantasy genre decades later, it was definitely a formative book for me. So at some point I decided that I’m going to read through the whole series in chronological order. Armageddon’s Children (2006) is the fourth novel, coming in after the Word and the Void trilogy, which was originally written as a separate universe and then retroactively added into the Shannara storyline.

I’ve been reading about a book a year, but I suspect that will have to change. We’ll talk about that in a minute.

Armageddon’s Children and the other two books of the Genesis of Shannara trilogy are the bridge between the urban fantasy Word and Void trilogy–where there are demons and faerie creatures, and the Lady of the Word (good) and the Void (evil) vying for control of humanity and the world–and the more traditional high fantasy books in the Shannara series, many of which date from the late 70s through the early 90s. You’re welcome to go back and read my thoughts on those three books (search “Shannara” in the sidebar), but the Word and Void books are quieter, darker books that, aside from demon attacks and whatnot, explore issues such as grief, addiction, homelessness, and others. They take place in more or less modern day, in the real world.

At the end of Angel Fire East, I found myself hard-pressed to see how we were going to make the transition, but I was optimistic. The early Shannara books were some of my favorites as a kid. How much of that is nostalgia? No idea! I guess we’re figure that out when we get there.

So, having read Armageddon’s Children, how am I feeling?

Squiders, I am ANNOYED.

Spoilers, potentially, but the book is 20 years old, so do with it what you will.

I have no idea why the decision to add the Word and the Void books into the Shannara timeline was made. Their magic systems are completely different, and there is not a logical way to go from Point A to Point B. I got the impression from the Shannara books that there wasn’t magic before the apocalypse that ended everything, and that all the different races that exist had originally come from humans.

I suspect it came down the marketing. Maybe the Word and the Void books didn’t sell very well on their own. I have no idea. It’s not like Terry Brooks didn’t also have other multi-book fantasy series.

First of all, the structure of the book is aggravating. You can barely go five pages without getting a massive backstory dump about someone. You can only get away with this sort of crap when you’re 20 books into a best-selling series. There’s head-hopping and POV issues that I’d never be able to get away with. And most people’s backstories are very similar–they had relatively good and safe childhoods until their parent or parental figure was killed by demons or what have you. Repetitive.

There are also a lot of viewpoint characters, but that aligns with earlier Shannara books so is to be expected. We’ve got two Knights of Word, Logan Tom and Angel Perez, several members of a street gang called the Ghosts, and demons occasionally (including our best friend from the last two Word and the Void books). We jump kind of willy nilly among all of them, and honestly I kept forgetting about the Knights because we don’t see them all that often. The world here is still very much that of the Word and the Void, just 80-100 years later. Humanity has fallen, demons are everywhere, things are sad, boo hoo.

And THEN about halfway though, THERE ARE ELVES.

The same elves! From later! With the Ellcrys and elfstones and everything! THEY’VE BEEN HERE THE WHOLE TIME.

The transition from gritty, dark urban fantasy to the normal Shannara elves was so badly done I had to put the book down for a minute.

So, what, we couldn‘t figure out how to transition from Point A to B? The elves have just always existed? Squiders, I am so let down. It’s like we didn’t even try to figure anything out.

On one hand, I can see the reasoning. The Word and Void series has established faerie creatures as being real, from the sylvans that guard the forest to tatterdemalions that are created out of the memories of dead children. There are literal demons. So why not elves? The modern fantasy elf from Shannara and LOTR has its roots in the Tuatha De Danann from Irish mythology and the elves that are said to live in Iceland and other nordic countries. So it’s not a huge stretch to be like, oh, hey, there’s other faerie creatures, so why not elves?

But on the other hand, one, the elves just…live in the forest. Not like a magic, through the veil, otherworld forest, just the literal forest of the Columbia river basin. And two, from a worldbuilding standpoint, you have the Ohmsfords from the original Shannara trilogy who are part elf, so if the elves are a separate species and always have been, how are you interbreeding a thousand years in the future or whatever it is?

(Kit, you might say, this is fantasy, why are you worrying about interbreeding? After I wrote the first draft of Book 1, I gave it to some friends to read. At that time my main fantasy race had green blood, because they were inspired by Star Trek’s Vulcans–who also have green blood–and because they had green skin and it was a motif, okay? But I also had humans in the story, good ol’ red-blooded humans. And one of my friends said, Kit, how do you have two sentient species on the same planet whose evolutionary paths are so different and distant that they don’t even have the same circulatory mechanism? That’s unrealistic.

And arguably I could have been like IT’S MAGIC, LISA but she was right. And now everyone has red blood, which has nice symbolic connotations.

Anyway, my point is that you can get away with a lot in fantasy but you have to be internally consistent, and especially now that we have rooted the beginning of the series in the real world, with real world mechanisms, you’ve got to stick with them, for goodness’s sake.)

(Also, is it just the one set of elves in the Columbia River basin? How? Why would there not be other elves in other forests? I have questions.)

Anyway, I’m frustrated that the best we could come up with to transition magic systems is that the elves have been there the whole time, and they just are what they are. Missed opportunity to do something really cool with evolution and magic.

Now, to get back to the once a year thing. Each of the Word and the Void books were self-contained. This ended on every cliffhanger it could. Nothing was resolved. Nothing was accomplished, arguably. If I leave the series and meander off for another year, I am going to forget everything that is happening.

So, alas, I guess we’ll be on to The Elves of Cintra sooner rather than later.

Read the Genesis of Shannara books, squider? How do you feel about the elves? (Do the books get better?)

A Surprising Weekend

March Books: 3/5? (Drop Dead Sisters)

(I’m also most of the way through Armageddon’s Children, which is, as I was warned, pretty dang awful. I may need to decompress with something else before I read any more.)

Last week I was on a cruise for spring break, which was lovely. All the stress and anxiety I’ve been suffering from for the last month vanished, and I was able to live in the moment, which is actually pretty rare for me. My internal monologue runs pretty constantly, and often it cycles around whatever is bothering me. There were a number of times while we were on the trip that I realized my internal voice was silent.

Of course, it couldn’t last. I had a vague hope that I’d be able to take this as a learning moment and integrate some of this silence into my normal life, but the stress came knocking pretty much as quickly as my phone reconnected to the Internet.

(Probably the lesson is to hide the phone for hours at a time. Unfortunately, we live in a society that will not wait for you if you don’t get back in touch fast enough.)

Along with the bad, though, I had a couple of pleasant surprises waiting for me.

The first was that I was accepted into SFWA’s mentorship program. This is a 3-month program that pairs you with an experienced author and I have been trying to get in for years. (SFWA is the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Association.) My mentor has already reached out, and I’m hopeful that this will be a rewarding experience.

The second is that I got a 5-star review on Hallowed Hill from Readers’ Favorite, and it is actually one of the most thoughtful reviews I’ve ever received.

Reviewed by S. Mathur for Readers’ Favorite

Hallowed Hill by Kit Campbell is a suitably creepy, entertaining, gripping tale set in a remote prep school in Vermont. This book is a real treat for fans of the horror genre, with all the classic elements present: a sinister landscape with ominous trees, a haunted mansion, a neglected cemetery, a sad ghost, and a heroine who is quite alone in the world. Newly-orphaned Martina Torsney wins a scholarship to the elite Greyson Preparatory Academy, with all expenses covered. The thing is, she did not apply for it, nor did anyone else on her behalf. Once there, the mystery deepens, as it seems none of the other scholarship students before her graduated from the school.

There are other mysteries as well; someone trashes Martie’s room and classroom, making sure she gets the blame. There are flickering lights, doors that lock themselves, and cryptic messages left for Martie in notes and on mirrors. The tension builds slowly and surely. The characters are perfectly defined; the rich kids with varying attitudes toward a presumably poor scholarship student, the teachers, good, bad, and creepy, and Martie herself, who must find the courage she didn’t know she had to face inexplicable terrors. Kit Campbell tells the tale with style and conviction, and crafts a very satisfying, unexpected, and genre-defying ending. Hallowed Hill is one of those books that will send chills down your spine, keep you up way past your usual bedtime, and leave you approaching mirrors with caution. Highly recommended.

Interesting that I got two bits of good news after months of silence, but I’ll take it! Cautiously optimistic that this is a sign of good change in the near future.

Plan moving forward here is to finish up my class (hopefully before April) and work on writing the short stories associated with that.

Hope you’re doing well!

Is Secondary World Fantasy Dead?

Hey, squiders, hope March is treating you well!

As part of my SkillShare class on interconnected short stories, I did some market research in order to show my students what they might do with the stories after they’ve written them.

(This is for if they’re planning on publishing the stories separately; if they’re doing a composite novel or short story cycle it’s different, of course. But the idea is to help them think about what they might be doing with the stories when they’re done.)

The stories I’m working on as part of the class all take place in my sentient Forest from the Trilogy and World’s Edge. That makes them secondary world fantasy, which, if you’re new around here, is fantasy that takes place in a made-up world that is not Earth. Secondary world fantasy tends toward epic or high fantasy, but not exclusively. Many cozy fantasies or romantasies also take place in secondary worlds.

Now, cozy fantasy and romantasy aren’t dying, obviously. In fact, they may be the only secondary world fantasy being published these days. Oh, and LitRPG is often secondary world fantasy.

Actually, now that I’m writing out my thoughts, maybe it’s really just traditional high/epic secondary world fantasy that is dying.

At least, the amount of publishers buying stories in these genres seems to be down. I’ve found that with my querying too, that agents that are listed as taking fantasy tend to be looking for “grounded” fantasy, which roughly translates as fantasy that is easy for non-fantasy readers to pick up, which tends to be real world-based with only some fantastical elements.

My market research pointed to much of the same. I use the Submission Grinder to look for open markets, and then of course you have to actually read the magazine/anthology descriptions to see what they actually want. A fair amount wanted dark fantasy on the horror side, for example, rather than straight “traditional” fantasy, and several of the more major fantasy magazines that I’m used to seeing seem to be closed for submissions.

Sad times for me, I guess. Horror is having a renaissance, but I’m not feeling it at the moment, of course.

What do you think, squider? Do you read fantasy, and if so, what books/movies have you been into lately? Is the “traditional” fantasy of magic and world-ending stakes dead? Does it deserve to be?

Looking Like a Writer

March Books: 2/5? I forgot what I set as a goal this month. (When All the Men Wore Hats)

I’m in a weird spot where I can’t make progress on any of my bigger goals because of other life responsibilities. I only have the outlining workshop portion of my class left to film, but I do need a decent chunk of uninterrupted (ish) time to do it, since it will be a longer section, and I need the kids to not be home, so I probably won’t be able to get to it until next week sometime. And I have a fairly major Scout thing to work on as well (unrelated to the drama) but that needs to be put off until the end of the month. I’m lucky enough that my work stays at work, so I’ve found myself trying to find ways to be productive/creative despite not having anywhere to really put that energy.

(Still no clue on the index cards with the holes. My new plan is to ask everyone who comes into the office but especially people older than me. I shall report back. Thus far people my age have proven to be no help.)

Occasionally I will go through a phase where I decide I am not dressing appropriately for my chosen vocation. I don’t know why I do this, but I do, despite most authors dressing like normal people. Some authors I know do wear more goth or alternative styles, but in general, authors are people and people are people, and everyone should do what makes them happy.

And, surely, I would be happier if I dressed like a forest witch.

Would I really? I mean, logically, no. Arguably I would have done so a while ago otherwise.

But I do cycle back to the idea periodically, and here we are again, because I can troll Pinterest and pretend it’s productive and that I am getting somewhere with something.

That being said, Pinterest is, like, so much worse than I remember it being. Every other “pin” is actually a product, so when you click on it you end up on some other site, and it feels like fully half, if not more, of the images that do exist are now AI generated.

Also, the intersection of stuff I like versus clothing that will look good on my body type is smaller than one would hope.

The idea remains, however. I bought a couple of dresses off of Amazon, and they were both see-through, so implementation is not going well.

(The solution, of course, is not to buy cheap crap off of Amazon. I have run into an issue, though, where the only sites that seem to sell the styles I like are scam sites (no doubt generating the images through AI) and sometimes Amazon has something that is remotely close and has non-terrible reviews.)

(If anyone knows of a legitimate site that sells fantasy-esque clothes that are not $400 a pop, let me know.)

Also, arguably, when I do buy something more fantasy-esque, I don’t wear it, except maybe to a writing conference or a convention, so I am trying to pick things that I won’t feel weird about wearing to the grocery store.

Is this all silly? Absolutely. Does it make me feel somewhat productive? I guess? It at least gives me something to do until I can focus more fully on stuff that actually matters.

Does anyone actually care what their favorite author looks like, or if they look appropriate to their genre? Doubtful. I wonder if some of it is not just a way to distract myself from other, more important things. Or a yearning for a simpler lifestyle, where I would live in a cottage with an overgrown garden and write with the window open while my tea grows cold beside me.

Who knows?

See you next week, squiders!

Marching Forward (Har Har)

March Books: 1/5 (The Murder at World’s End)

February is always such an interesting month. It’s short, but sometimes it feels long. Like, I got a lot done in February (and dealt with a lot of crap this year as well) this year. Most of my class (still working on that last section) got done, most of a book of writing exercises, enough books (February traditionally comes up short in that regard). I’d say that I was just as if not more productive than I typically am in a month.

Now we’re four days into March, and it feels like all my momentum got eaten. Funny how that works.

(Also I smashed my finger in a drawer this morning, which is unfortunate.)

Writing-wise, I do need to finish my class, and I also need to write the short stories I’m prepping for said class. I’ve started a new writing book, Consider This by Chuck Palahniuk. So far he offers writing advice but it doesn’t have the built in exercises Ursula Le Guin’s book did.

I think I mentioned this last week, but I’m also considering working on a kind of found footage sort of story using random paper people left at work. I’m an office administrator in my day job, and people feel like they can just donate notebooks or office supplies that they don’t want any more, often by just leaving them on my desk with a note.

(Generally I am pro-notebook, but sometimes they donate dozens at a time, or a lot of really strange supplies that no one is actually going to use.)

A few weeks ago I got a bag on my desk of small notebooks, index cards, and what I can only assume are cards meant to be used in a card catalog or rolodex. Functionally useless, from a work standpoint, but it feels wasteful to just recycle the lot of it, so since I don’t have book-based exercises anymore, I thought I might do a card a day for some sort of story.

The cards look like this:

A pile of index cards with a hole in the middle of the top.

and they’re about 3×5 inches. (This is maybe a third of them in the picture, so there is room for creativity.)

I’ve been watching some YouTube videos about found footage horror so I like the idea of doing something along those lines, like notes between people in some sort of circumstance of which I do not know as of yet. Or maybe I’ll just write bits of a story on it, a little bit each day, as a warm up.

And then I can tie them together, I don’t know.

(Seriously, what is the hole for? People who are more experienced with card catalogs/rolodexes, is this what you used for them? How old are these cards?)

That’s kind of on the backburner for now, until I figure out some other things, but I guess if a story idea comes to me we can get going on that.

That’s the plan, anyway. What are your plans for March?

Oh No, It’s Demo Time

February Books: 4/4 (The Murder of Mr. Wickham and Steering the Craft)

I don’t know if you remember last year, squider, but Steam apparently has a demo event at the end of February each year called Next Fest, where you can play demos of games coming out in the next twelve months.

Hundreds of demos, they claim! I picked out, uh, seven.

(Anything to avoid playing a real game, I guess.)

Of the demos I played last year (I downloaded six, but didn’t realize you had to play them during the week of the event, so only played five) I put three on my wishlist, and bought exactly none of them when they came out. So do with that what you will.

In order:

Cleaning Up!

A cleaning game, not unlike House Flipper, though more cartoon-y. The tutorial was so impossible I thought I’d have to chuck it for control issues, but the actual gameplay after the tutorial was fine. I played through the whole demo in about half an hour. I put it on my wishlist but I don’t know that I’d pay more than $10 for the full game.

Flock Around

Some sort of multiplayer bird watching game. I tried it on solo mode, as I didn’t feel up to dealing with random people, and to get a feel for the game itself without the distraction of other people. I don’t know if it’s a problem on my end or not, but whenever I went to look at the pictures of the birds it would say no bird had been found, and if I tried to get closer to the birds to get better pictures, they’d fly away. Mostly frustrating.

Nippets

A hidden object game. Cute graphics, but too out of the box for me, apparently. I could do about half the first level (maybe the only level in the demo) before I’d gotten well and truly stuck, and if there was a hint system, I couldn’t find it either. (ha.)

Thrifty Business

A cute little shop-owning game where you buy boxes of stuff from people and resell them in your thrift shop. Looks like there’s some re-occurring characters and stories based off of them, and the opportunity to build community around the store. Took me half an hour to get through the demo (I may have played a few extra days) and I put it on my wishlist.

Hozy

This, too, is a cleaning game ala House Flipper (closer to House Flipper, honestly) but the game ran so slow the controls were practically unusable. I tried for a bit then gave up. Don’t know why I picked out more cleaning games when I already have one.

Birdwatching Notebook

Apparently I was into birds when I picked the demos as well. This one was cute, and it doesn’t take up much of your screen, so I suppose it may be meant to be one of those idle-ish games that sits onscreen while you do other things. I enjoyed it while I was testing it out, but don’t see much appeal long term.

The Last Gas Station

You have bought or inherited a gas station in the middle of nowhere. Most of the game is store management–buying stock/gas, helping customers, cleaning up the store, but there’s definitely a horror element to it as well, and some sort of mystery about the gas station. Took me two and a half hours to get through the demo. I put it on my wishlist. Probably the one I’m most likely to buy. You know how much I like horror adjacent games, and it has a cute pixelated art style as well.

So that’s the demos sorted. I suppose I should play a real game with a storyline (and an end!) here soon.

Happy weekend, squiders!