Best Games of 2019

2019 was the year that I truly indulged myself in playing video games and didn’t even have to feel guilty about it because I can *technically* count it as doing ‘research’ now (and I’m pretty sure playing more video games was one of my 2020 goals)! I’ve been able to play so many games that have completely captivated me and reminded me of why I love video games so much, some of which I have been sharing with you all throughout the year in the form of more video game oriented blog posts. At the beginning of last year, I posted up a ‘Games I want to play in 2019‘ list which I thought would be cool to briefly revisit to see how many, if any, of those games I played before moving on to my best games of 2019.

December 2019 | Last Haul of the Year

Hey friends! I am back just in time for the end of 2019 and the end of the decade after several very impromptu absences from blogging. I don’t normally post haul posts apart from on special occasions so as it’s just after Christmas and I need an easy-ish post to ease me back into blogging again I thought I’d share my Christmas gifts with you all.

Christmas is often a difficult time of the year for me for money reasons, primarily family and financial, and although I love Christmas it is also a pretty stressful time of the year. Thankfully, I am incredibly lucky to have a supportive partner and loving friends who help to make Christmas an enjoyable time of the year . I’m also super grateful for any and all of the presents I get, and I got some really nice ones this year ❤ A huge, huge thank you to anyone who sent a present, messaged me or who are just around in general being lovely friends.

Upcoming Video Game Releases 2019 that are here to take all my money

Throughout the year I’ve been keeping a close eye on 2019 video game releases because there have been a tonne of great releases so far this year. But, the year is not over yet and there are several games due for release in this month along that I am super hyped for. As November is the month when most of these games are being released and I’ve been giving a lot of thought about which ones I can attempt to justify buying, I thought it would be good to do a post sharing my gaming purchase dilemmas with you all. If you want to add me on Steam then you can find me here or drop me a message for my Switch friend code!

Review: A Mortician’s Tale | A Little Journey into Death Positivity

TITLE: A Mortician’s Tale
DEVELOPER: Laundry Bear Games
PUBLISHER: Laundry Bear Games
SERIES: N/A
RELEASED: October 2017
GENRE: Casual Indie
CONSOLE: PC (Steam)

KEY INFO: Casual games, single-player, narrative-driven, art aesthetics, short games, emotional, educational
CONTENT WARNINGS: Death, Dead Bodies, Grieving Families
Note: This review does not contain any images of dead bodies but does discuss the act of preparing dead bodies (though does not go into any detail about this)

Synopsis: A Mortician’s Tale is a narrative-driven death positive video game where you play as a mortician tasked with running a funeral home—preparing the bodies of the deceased (via embalming or cremation), attending their funerals and listening to their loved ones’ stories, and running the business.

A Mortician’s Tale was everything that I wanted it to be; an aesthetically pleasing little game that was empowering yet sensitive towards death yet also pleasantly surprising with its diverse characters. Possibly one of the only drawbacks of the game is that is disappointingly short, taking only 0.9 hours to completely even when going through the game slowly, and this is one of the only reasons I couldn’t quite give it 5 stars. Overall though, A Mortician’s Tale is a brilliant little game that I would highly recommend to anyone interested in the funeral industry, death practices, and narrative-driven games. 

 

E3 2019 | Highlights & Final Thoughts

I had been intending to do a write-up for each of the E3 conferences this year. However, in the end, I didn’t feel that there was enough content to do a write-up for each conference individually and also it was a lot of work for each post! This year’s E3 was incredibly disappointing and a lot of the games that were featured were ones that had already been premiered last year or even the year before. Whilst it was good to get updates on the games in development and some 2019/2020 release dates for those games, it meant that there was little to get excited about in terms of new games.

This year I watched the presentations/live-streams for EA Play, Microsoft, Bethesda, Ubisoft, the PC Gaming Show, and Nintendo. I did a presentation write-up for EA Play and Microsoft, but the other presentations (with the exception of Nintendo) didn’t leave me with much to talk about. So, instead, I’ll be sharing with you all my game highlights of E3 2019 in this post featuring the games that I’m most looking forward to playing in 2019/2020.