11/28/2021

Had an O. Henry moment

Kindasorta

On Friday I asked Jaybird about Stardew Valley and he gave me a very nice descripton of the game. For ages Steam has been foisting Stardew Valley on me and I didn't want to bite the bullet.
Yet after years of playing Minecraft, exploring its vast but ultimately empty world, only populated by pillagers and illagers who have no personality, I find Minecraft to be interesting after the latest update but a few days later I could not give two shits. Plus redstone makes it really autistic.
Terraria is a fun game. Yet every time I reach hardmode, I lose direction then motivation. My latest game reached hardmode, I collected enough adamantite to create adamantite armor which is pretty darned good for the early part of hardmode. Tried to face off with Queen Slime by summoning her with the gelatinous crystal and got stomped. Hard. I think I tried another boss and got beat up hard despite the fact I had amazing armor, was lit up like a Christmas tree with various buffs, and a decent sword (beam sword, if you must know). Kinda became aimless and decided to put Terraria aside.
Gave Torchlight II a shot since the original Torchlight was an amusing and undemanding but fun game. I became bored.
Okay, so why not Stardew Valley? Which brings us back to asking Jay.

Friday night I bought Stardew Valley because it was $11.99 on Good Old Games. On Saturday morning I saw I had a notifcation from Steam. Probably shilling a Cyber Monday sale or something. Nope, Jaybird went ahead and bought me Stardew Valley.
My friend Hayley Stevens from forteana, anomalistics, and Twitter recently had surgery again for ongoing inner-ear issues. She was tweeting about playing Animal Crossing and I figured, "Hey, maybe Hayley would enjoy this?"
A hard lesson I learned is Stardew Valley is like an Oreo cookie laced with heroin. "Just one more day" is a mantra. It's one of the few games in recent (last ten years?) memory where I lost track of time in the real world. It's thrilling start playing when the sun's out then looking up after a subjective hour to discover night has fallen ages ago.
Sadly she declined, but okay. She's happy. Who wants a copy of Stardew Valley from Steam? Contact me by email or phone/text and I'll hook you up.

psychology of stardew valley

When I first started playing Stardew Valley, I was watching Conan The Barbarian for comfort and the fact I just listened to Weird Studies's episode about Conan The Barbarian. I played until 11 p.m. on Saturday. Today I went out to go food shopping and while browsing Aldi, I had weird associations with my little interactions online. A certain scene from Conan, a part of my conversation with Hayley, little shit that happened in Stardew Valley. These associations, these memories were particularly vivid and I thought to myself, "My serotonin must've been pumping overtime playing Stardew Valley." The near-overdose of serotonin combined with other pleasurable activities made an indelible mental furrow in my mind. I stopped and thought for a moment, "Serotonin helps memory and creates indelible ones."

I guess I'm not doing enough in life to consistently have this feeling, but I need to pursue this. Also email my acquaintance Eric Wargo on a topic running an oblique angle to my epiphany.