This past weekend I seized the opportunity to do a trial run of the streaming subscription “Screambox” via Amazon Prime. The service, which prides itself on being “pure horror”, gained recognition last year when it boasted the exclusive streaming rights to Damien Leone’s Terrifier 2. A substantial portion of Screambox’s catalog seems to be derived of vintage foreign horror and direct-to-video b-movies, with a small smattering of some newer titles. Upon a brief browse through the service, I immediately likened the service to the early days of Shudder, the current heavyweight in the horror streaming market. One title that has […]Read more »
In 2022 I watched a total of 171 movies. 142 of them were first-time watches, of which 75 were new releases for the year. I only watched the same movie more than once on two occasions, and both of them are on the list below which reflects my 10 favorite movies of the year. I struggled a bit to put this list together because despite a handful of sure-fire hits in my opinion, there was not a wealth of movies I really, truly enjoyed. I’m sure as the years go on, I will nonetheless find the movies that slipped through […]Read more »
In 2022, I sought out to read 20 books by the end of the year. By the end of May I had realized that I had set an unrealistic goal for myself and instead upped the goal to 52, or averaging one book a week. The challenge I set for myself, as well as every book I read this year can be found on my goodreads profile, here. I consumed mostly audiobooks for the first half of the year until I received a Kindle Paperwhite for my birthday, when I started to balance audiobooks with actual eyeball reading fifty-fifty. The […]Read more »
ARK NOVA A sprawling simulator-type game in which you manage pretty much everything involved with running a zoo. So much of this game I’ve never seen implemented in another game before. The action selection mechanic has you assigning actions to power spaces increasing from 1 to 5, from left to right. As you use an action at a specific power level, it is shifted back to the start of the line, making room for every other choice to shift up, rewarding the player for diversifying the actions they take. Also, the game has two score tracks, one moving clockwise and […]Read more »
Sidereal Confluence is a negotiation and trading game designed by TauCeti Deichmann and first published by WizKids Games in 2017. Thematically, players each play as one of nine distinct races of aliens working together to achieve The Confluence, an idealized society where technological advancements are shared throughout the galaxy. Everyone is working towards the same goal, but this is no cooperative game; everyone is vying to do it “more better” than each of their opponents. The rule book describes it as a game of “aggressive cooperation.” A breakdown of the teach At its core, gameplay revolves around engine-building, which is […]Read more »