Melissa Avery-Weir 🎮 @melissa@irrsinn.life

I've been playing some truly awesome small indie games in the last few months. I archive my streams over at https://irrsinn.video/video-channels/melissa_channel/videos, and I work to get closed captioning on them within a week of uploading.

If you're looking for some game recs, I'd suggest checking them out. Just about all of them take between 10 min and 3 hours, so these are quite small games by conventional standards. You can subscribe to a Peertube channel w/ a Mastodon account, too.

#indiegame

An #introduction: I'm Melissa (they/them)! Some of my projects are in my bio, but in general I am and do:

#gamedev & #podcasting

#gardening #succulents #cacti

#asexual / #grayace / #queer

#polyamory #relationshipanarchy

I write. I #webdev. I play way too much Fallen London. I collect tattoos. I will not call posts "toots".

I like learning to be more imaginative in devising solutions to difficult problems. 🎊

I've had the strange desire to play my own game lately (other players' creations in it, not my own), and sometimes I'm just delighted at the puzzles folks have made in our system. My puzzle for turning my brain away from a work problem I'm solving this afternoon is https://ezd.link/2YzOyTy Took me two minutes to figure out where to even start. 😅 I have not beaten it yet.

I finished Gris tonight, and I'm not sure I've ever played a game that succeeded so well at being sad without really pulling stunts to do it.

I contrast that with a game like Edith Finch that pretty bluntly trains you on when it's time to be worried sick and when it's time to feel incredibly sad/horrified.

Gris--which tbf, has different design goals than Finch--is a fascinatingly gentle exploration of grief. I didn't stream my final hours with it, so I really got to sit with it patiently. 🥰

I'm live on twitch! Come hang out with me while I play Even the Ocean: https://www.twitch.tv/averymd #magic

I'm live on twitch! Come hang out with me while I play Orcs Must Die! 3: https://www.twitch.tv/averymd #magic

I'm live on twitch! Come hang out with me while I play Blackhaven: https://www.twitch.tv/averymd #magic

I'm still catching up on uploading--and transcoding, which is the looooong part--my backlog of stream archives, but I've been playing some kick-ass games recently. They'll all go live with CC from the get-go.

I'd try streaming on irrsinn.video directly instead of twitch.tv, but given how slowly transcoding runs, I don't think that would be a satisfactory experience for anybody.

I've just chewed up an entire month's Otter.ai quota (~90 hours), but I have basic closed captions on just about every video on https://irrsinn.video!

I've generally given the server a lot of love in the last week: updated to v3.3.0; fixed a whole bunch of broken videos caused by messing up my s3fs and nginx config (some videos are still re-transcoding), and made myself a helpful little Grafana dashboard to see peertube job data (based on work over at diode.zone https://twitter.com/DiodeZone/status/1425505870016774148).

I'm live on twitch! Come hang out with me while I play Loco Motive: https://www.twitch.tv/averymd #magic

I'd love some specific recs for bags to help me get stuff to and from a yoga class. Items are: a wide mat, blanket, small bolster, one block. I can carry the mat + a bag of the other items for a street block or so, but often have to park several blocks away, which is painful.

I've been looking for slender ~28 inch rolling duffels; nothing is standing out as good quality but not bulky. Folks in a similar sitch: would you just go for a regular travel-type rolling duffel?

Promising Friday nights and then spending my afternoon wrestling with myself to either keep the stream, reschedule it, or cancel it for that night does it does not bring me joy. I'll find another way, something more fluid.

I'm starting physical therapy next week, and while I'm not at all certain I'll be able to avoid additional surgery/surgeries, I'm eager to see if this round will bring fresh ideas and strategies that can help.

In light of my increasing shoulder issues and building chronic pain, I'm going to stop trying to hold fixed-schedule bi-weekly Twitch streams. On the few evenings that are options for something to be regularly scheduled, I'm wiped out and don't really want to be "on" for a stream.

I'll keep my monthly Future Proof Plays streams for sure, and will stream outside of those (Celeste must continue!), but not on a rigid schedule.

A wonderful Sunday afternoon making sourdough pancakes and watching @gregoryaveryweir stream Grapple Force Rena. 😍 I'm not very skilled at making pancakes, but these are coming out okay.

I'm live on twitch! Come hang out with me while I play Celeste: https://www.twitch.tv/averymd #magic

😩 Courtesy of some tedious errands that Must Be Done, this afternoon's steam is delayed by 30 min to 15:30 Eastern. I'll be starting with Celeste, but my mood many quickly take me to Paradise Killer, one of my favorite games ever. 😍

I'm live on twitch! Come hang out with me while I play Adios: https://www.twitch.tv/averymd #magic