Video Game Review: HUE

Hue lives in a world made of up black, white, and grey. His mother researched colours and one day disappeared. When he finds a light blue square, he learns she’s lost in the colours. To save her, he must finish the colour wheel and go to the university where she once worked.

This is a puzzle game, where you have to manipulate the colours on the wheel to get through and over coloured blocks. In some puzzles you have to move them onto pressure plates, others have jumping components, etc. Each level adds a new component. Every door you pass through is a save point, so while some of the puzzles are difficult, if you die you only lose progress from that room.

There are hidden potions to find, some of which are obvious and some of which a quite hard (one required replaying the full level three times before we found the hidden passageway).

The controls were easy, though there were times when I swore I was on one colour but when I left the colour wheel I was actually on a different colour (not sure if that was the controller, the game itself, or if we had our sensitivity too high). Also, some of the colours were so similar it was easy to mess up (like the pink and purple, and yellow was very close to the orange on one side and green on the other). This seemed deliberate, as it would have been easy to get hues that weren't confusing.

The story was interesting - talking about the mother’s time at the university and why she thought researching colours was so important. It’s fairly short, but it felt complete.

A few puzzles were frustrating, but on the whole the game was a lot of fun.

Shout-Out: Empire of Sand by Tasha Suri

The Amrithi are outcasts; nomads descended of desert spirits, they are coveted and persecuted throughout the Empire for the power in their blood. Mehr is the illegitimate daughter of an imperial governor and an exiled Amrithi mother she can barely remember, but whose face and magic she has inherited.

When Mehr's power comes to the attention of the Emperor's most feared mystics, she must use every ounce of will, subtlety, and power she possesses to resist their cruel agenda.
Should she fail, the gods themselves may awaken seeking vengeance...

Video: Hyperlight

A fantastic short film by Nguyen-Ahn Nguyen.

Two elite astronauts wake up in the abyss of space; they return to their stranded ship and discover the surprising reason behind their mission's catastrophic failure.

Hyperlight [4K] from Nguyen-Anh Nguyen on Vimeo.

Book Review: City of Broken Magic by Mirah Bolender

Pros: unique magic and monster system, interesting characters

Cons: pacing issues, slow opening

The city of Amicae is built as a 6 tiered structure with an outer wall. It citizens believe the wall keeps magical infestations at bay but that’s a lie. Infestations from broken or improperly cared for amulets happen all the time, and when they do the cops call in the experts: the Sinclair Sweepers.

Laura is Clae Sinclair’s only apprentice in the dangerous work. She wants to prove she has worth as a person in a society that sees her as more of a walking womb. When they acquire a second apprentice and infestations start to increase, she gets her chance.

It took me a while to get into this. First because the world started out feeling very medieval fantasy despite its bicycles and robots. The worldbuilding was alternately slow and full of info dumps in the opening chapters.

Clae is acerbic and rude and while I liked him, he takes some getting used to. For the most part I liked Larua, though I was surprised by her age when it was finally revealed, as I ended up picturing her younger given how she treats Okane.

As a master teaching a trade, Clae’s a mixed bag. On one hand he does teach weapons and technique, but I was astonished by how little Laura knew about kin and its creation. As the main weapon against infestations, I would have thought learning how to make kin would be vital to a sweeper’s job.

I loved the monsters and how the sweepers fight them. It’s very original. I also liked that another city is visited and there’s some information on how the various cities operate and that sweepers use different tactics and that they share ideas through meetings and letters.

The last half of the book was quite fun and the pacing was much better as the tension worked up to the climax.

While it’s a bit uneven, it’s a good debut and I’m curious to see what’s next.

Box Theatre Kit: Country Notes

I got the itch to do another model a few weeks ago and pulled out a kit I bought off the internet. It comes with all the stuff you need (though I did add a few things from my craft stash). Here's the box with all the bags of parts. I love these kits as they're not only fully set up for you, they also teach you some cool tricks for making things like trees out of paper rope, thatch out of twine, pots & pans out of metal pieces.

 Here I've papered the insides of the tin and wired lights along the ceiling and put in the floor and battery cover.

 The house mostly constructed with some of the furniture ready to go in it.

 And the finished piece + the two bunny inhabitants (the only things not glued down).

Shout-Out: Vita Nostra by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko

The definitive English language translation of the internationally acclaimed Russian novel—a brilliant dark fantasy combining psychological suspense, enchantment, and terror that makes us consider human existence in a fresh and provocative way.

Our life is brief . . .

Sasha Samokhina has been accepted to the Institute of Special Technologies.

Or, more precisely, she’s been chosen.

Situated in a tiny village, she finds the students are bizarre, and the curriculum even more so. The books are impossible to read, the lessons obscure to the point of maddening, and the work refuses memorization. Using terror and coercion to keep the students in line, the school does not punish them for their transgressions and failures; instead, it is their families that pay a terrible price. Yet despite her fear, Sasha undergoes changes that defy the dictates of matter and time; experiences which are nothing she has ever dreamed of . . . and suddenly all she could ever want.

[Translated by Julia Meitov Hersey]

David Attenborough’s Life That Glows Documentary

Attenborough examines different kinds of bio-luminescent life, from fireflies to deep sea creatures. My favourite creatures showed up at the 38:50 min mark: larvae of a kind of gnat that live on ceiling of caves. They lower strands of silk sticky with drops of saliva and light in their tails act as lures for other insects at night. The deep sea creatures were also fascinating to see.

It was interesting that there are a variety of reasons for why creatures developed bio-luminescence: defence, attraction, mating. In some cases (like a certain type of earth worm in France) scientists still don’t know why creatures employ it.

It’s a cool documentary, if you’re looking for some interesting glowing creatures to add to a story, or if you’re simply interested in some of the cool critters on planet Earth.