Only an hour

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Ah, well. I only got an hour of free time for my writing today. No big. I’ll make up for it tomorrow.

But for you, dear Reader, I have a link: Morningstar.

What is that, you wonder? It’s a free online game of the point-and-click narrative variety. It’s also remarkably well done–the visuals are excellent, the voice acting (there’s a lot of voice acting) very strong (although you can mute the sound) and you can even save the game part way through.

The story is simple: You’re second-in-command on the space ship Morningstar, and the opening of the game is a fantastic little cut scene of you and your ship crash landing on the surface of an alien world. The captain is injured and unable to move (but full of advice) and your engineer is dead. Can you salvage enough of your ship to make lift off? Why did you crash in the first place, and what happened to the other ship lying wrecked across the sand. Finally, how can you prevent it happening again when you try to leave?

It’s a surprisingly long game, with a lot of detail, and the story takes you much further down the rabbit hole than you expect. And of course, it’s all about the puzzles. How do you get this control panel to work? Where are all the pieces of the hull-repairing glue dispenser? What are you going to do about the ruined CO2 filter?

You click on items to pick them up, combine them, and use them with objects in the environment. Best of all, the objects are used in ways that are thoroughly sensible–not always a given in this sort of game. The captain gives you hints about the next step in the mission, but there’s a walkthrough, too, just in case. And the visuals are excellent. Hell, even if you just watch the pre-title animation sequence, you’ll be impressed.

It’s great fun. One of the best c&p games I’ve played in a long, long time. Enjoy.

The end of the week

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Saturday morning (yesterday) I took a long walk over the hill to Starbucks so I could work on Everyone Loves Blue Dog. I really wanted to finish, but I couldn’t. In fact, there was so much polishing needed, I made notes to myself to go back and polish even more scenes.

We ran some errands on Saturday afternoon, including picking up a book we’d ordered through Indiebound.org. Annoyingly, the automated email told me my order was waiting at the store, but when I got there, half my order (Blood of Ambrose) hadn’t arrived. Annoying. Now I have to go back when it does.

We had our Mother’s Day dinner after that, at the Hi-Life. Salad Eater had the Pork Porterhouse, which she really enjoyed but thought they skimped on the marmalade. Her marscapone polenta was terrific. I had the empanada, and it was so incredible that I have to find a recipe for it. The boy at kid food, and was happy.

After we got home, my wife put my son to bed and we sat down to watch OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies. It’s a French spoof of 60’s spy movies, and it came very highly recommended, but there was a little too much social embarrassment humor for me to bear. The scene where the incredibly self-centered, utterly insensitive protagonist loses his cool at the muezzin for waking him at dawn (the French-speaking hero has no idea that it’s a Arabic call to prayer) was pretty funny… in fact, many scenes were very funny. I just have a low threshold for embarrassment.

Still, the chicken-chucking fight was hilarious.

Then there’s this morning. Today, Mother’s Day, is traditionally a day where I do no writing. I woke early, roused my son, and together we made a nice breakfast for his mom: oatmeal pancakes and sausage patties (both heart-shaped) along with some other treats. It was a happy morning.

After she left, my son’s buddy came over, and we had a super-soaker battle. They soaked me through and through, and I returned the favor.

Finally, they both decided to play at his house. They’re gone now, and I won’t be picking up my son for another two hours. Maybe I’ll get some writing done after all.