I’ve really been slacking off on this blog, haven’t I.

I wanted to write something about Umamusume while I was in Italy, and at this point, that was last year. I wanted to write a review of Project Hail Mary (spoiler alert: It was good, probably one of the best modern-day space movies I’ve seen in a while, even if that’s not a very high bar), and it’s been so long that I don’t have any concrete thoughts on the matter anymore. I’ve been keeping up with my album reviews, at least, but I’ve been able to make that into an obligation; it ends up in me avoiding listening to new albums at times, as it means I’m going to have to do a review, but at the same time, it’s what keeps me attentively listening to new music at all.

…That might be a theme of this, actually: My executive dysfunction, and how a randomizer hijacked it in ways that a lot of games couldn’t on their own.

The idea of Archipelago is one that expands greatly on the idea of randomizers in a lot of retro games, even serving to bring it to a lot of modern ones: Take every “item” from the game, or multiple games, and shuffle them between all of the “locations” you could get them in. Archipelago was very much designed with games with many progress items in mind, catering pretty heavily towards metroidvanias like Hollow Knight, easily the most popular game in multiworlds, but the beauty of this implementation is that there is no set in stone way to define what a “location” or “item” is in these games: Celeste will lock mechanics behind unlockables in the world, requiring you to collect strawberries from your game and others in order to eventually unlock your goal level, while ULTRAKILL will restrict everything about your arsenal down to the secondary fire on all of your weapons, tasking you to find secrets and complete challenges and P-ranks in order to unlock new levels and eventually complete enough to unlock your goal, or rhythm games like osu!, Beat Saber, and YARG will put you up with a random subset of songs within your skill level, making you clear them all in order to sniff out collectable “Macguffins” from your item pool and eventually unlock your goal song with them. The internal system handles generation, taking whatever is marked as a progressive item and building “logic” out of it that determines what you’re expected to be able to do with the items you’ll probably get by a certain point, so all you really need to do is play your game(s) and see what comes of it.

When I’m not overexplaining it for the sake of correctness, it’s a very simple premise in practice: Toss together some game files, either that you’ll be playing alone or with a group, and open up everyone’s goal. Especially considering my first real Archipelago game was osu! of all things, I’m surprised it drew me in to the point where I’d eventually come back to it months later; I don’t normally love RNG-dependent things, but that’s mostly on a stance of balance. I think the reason it did at all is that people could play so many varied things, yet all be playing together, hunting for things for each other and interacting directly over a wide variety of games, and while the experience is ultimately closer to parallel play in practice, what looks cool about it is what is cool about it: Even over asyncs, you can see the people you’re playing with talking about vastly different games, and what you do ultimately has bearing on them as much as they have bearing on you. More important is the reason I was probably so scared of it initially, but have now come to frequent it, is that idea of accountability: Playing a game through Archipelago does wonders for keeping me focused, somehow.

It’s a thing I can’t really pin down, because this is something that’s somehow been more of a thing when it’s come to solo runs than anything with other players, especially because I’ve been running some decently big solos, but playing some of the games through Archipelago has genuinely been the first time I’ve actually played them to completion, likely because it’s one of few times I can actually sit down with some of them and play them through at a reasonable pace. It’s the first time I managed to complete Celeste’s A-sides in a single sitting, for one, when it would normally take me a session per chapter, and also how I put in the effort to find all of the strawberries (using Berry Camp, admittedly). I think that term of accountability encapsulates what seems to be the reason for Archipelago changing up my mindset: There’s checks locked behind pretty much everything that I want to build up before I move on, leading me to want to play the game, either out of earnest or just in an effort to push through, and ultimately, that’s taught me to stick through something and push the pace a bit, which is an issue I’ve had to great extent in a lot of singleplayer games that I ultimately didn’t have it in me to return to, despite still having interest. It’s also satisfying for my specific brand of mental disability, in that I’m not going to be tied down to the same game for a while: If something’s going wrong in one game and I’ve got multiple slots in the multiworld, I can just switch slots and push forward with the same level of progress I was getting before. In essence, it actually gets me to play the games I want to without feeling like I’m super burnt out on them in no time at all. It’s been a huge change, too: I’ve been playing games I wouldn’t have been able to sit through before over the course of a few days, returning to games that truly promptly deserved my attention, and having a ton of fun discovering the games that do have Archipelago integration; there’s been a lot to learn and a lot of fun to be had in doing it. It’s been liberating for me in an era where I’m still seeking where I really belong, and honestly, it’s hard to not feel like I belong in a place where pretty much everything has an integration.

Speaking of integrations, I should definitely speak on some of the games I’ve been playing in these, because I do think they’re worth shouting out, namely Neon White: I got into that game with Archipelago in mind, going in to shave some seconds on the earlier levels before I tossed it into a solo multiworld, and I’ve been hooked since. I’ve been enjoying the game a lot; after I finished that multiworld, I went back into the base game, grinded it to 100% in just a few days, and snagged a few dev medals through tons of grinding. I think Neon White’s APWorld is easily one of the most fun Archipelago integrations I’ve played so far; in many of these games, my attempts to break logic can be pretty fun, and this game’s got its fair share of that; plus, this game is heaven for checks without being too demanding itself. Celeste is also a game I’ve revisited with Archipelago in mind thanks to its fun and highly customizable APWorld; however, some checks, especially the strawberries in 5A, can be pretty annoying to get, even if I can manage that nowadays. Beyond that, I’ve obviously been playing osu! and a number of other rhythm games, for which the APWorld just serves as a fun random button that hands out a ton of checks. I’m definitely running out of steam writing this, which is telling of why I’ve been slacking off on this blog in the first place, but there’s too much to speak on here anyways.

This hyperfixation has come at a really interesting time, with me struggling to find my place on one hand and me just struggling to put in the effort on the other hand. It’d be silly to assume that anything here is the solution to any of my problems, but the realizations help me take a better look at myself, and for that, I am immensely thankful.