Wednesday 19 February 2014

Day Fifty - Onwards Holmes, the game is afoot! Required 137500, Achieved 135072

Well, I feel better about today than I did about yesterday, got a lot of writing done and had a number of interesting conversations (that ate up another few hours of the day), so it's been a very productive day on a number of levels and I feel that I'm likely to catch up totally on the word count by tomorrow providing I don't get phone-mobbed again :)

Today though, is about the subject of games and computers, particularly having games on the computer when you're supposed to be writing...

We all know that you need to take a break once in a while or things just lose momentum, there are some days when you write like it's your last day on earth and the words just fly out there, there's other days when you write like you've eaten a dictionary and all the words are coming out of....well, you get the idea.  But in the meantime, what do you do when you want to take a break?  Playing a regular game (anything FPS, Skyrim and other such things) means you run the risk of losing half or more of the day to it because you've got caught up in it, so what to do?

I found something a while ago (damn you kickstarter, source of all my demons...) called Sunless sea http://sunlessseagame.com/ that had a fascinating premise and looked really really interesting, so I backed it and then looked a little further to find what inspired it, finding myself at the door of Fallen London http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/signup which is a browser based game that doesn't let you have too many actions at any given time (one every ten minutes to be precise) so you can't spend the whole day on it unless you want to throw loads of money at it, and I'm not going to do that.  It's an interesting game where you play an escaped prisoner who is looking to better themselves in a London both like and unlike ours.

As a result, I've got a perfectly good distraction every hour or so for five minutes and then back to the writing.

I should point out I'm not in the employ of Failbetter games and nor am I getting anything from them, but since taking on this challenge, I realise how much of a thing it is to provide something for free to people every day, and for that I thank them.

So

This is Rocket Heeled Jack in the Labyrinth of Tigers and Goodnight England, Wherever you are...