Skate Story website

I stay fairly up to date with games that are coming out, though it’s pretty rarely that I actually play them brand new. So when I say I bought Skate Story on day one after playing the demo, that’s high praise because that never happens. And I’m glad I did since it turned into my favorite game of 2025.

Shortly put, Skate Story is one of the most stylish games I’ve played in a while. In every aspect. Visuals, music, gameplay. It nails everything while also managing to be really unique.

The skateboarding mechanics feel a bit reminiscent of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, though more grounded and with some extra elements like bonuses for well-timed tricks. It’s approachable and forgiving, but also tricky enough that it’s really rewarding when you get it just right.

Add the slick visuals and banger soundtrack into the mix and Skate Story is just one of the coolest feeling games I’ve ever played.

Speaking of the soundtrack, I’ve been listening to it all the time ever since I started the game. It’s a vibe, and a super memorable one.

There’s a few more 2025 releases I plan on getting to eventually (like Dispatch), but Skate Story has so much of what I love in a game that it has to be my game of the year.

By the way, if you’ve played Skate Story and are looking for something similar then you might want to take a look at Kitten Burst. I wrote about it in 2024 and certain things about Skate Story reminded me of it which doesn’t often happen. They’re pretty different games, but they’re both movement focused and have similar feels. I have a hunch that someone who enjoys one will enjoy the other.

— JP

So I was pretty excited when Spotify just added lossless audio quality as an option! I’m definitely no audiophile, but I’ve been having a great time going back and rediscovering music I’ve never heard in lossless quality before now.

A quick explainer

If you’re wondering what all this is even about, I’ll try my best to give a quick rundown. Most digital audio formats like mp3 are compressed using lossy compression methods, meaning that some information is discarded, most notably to save on file size. Lossless formats like flac don’t discard information, so you get a full quality file but with a sacrifice to file size.

What does that mean in practice?

In general, what I’ve noticed in my listening is that lossless music tends to feel much wider, with individual instruments having more definition and being easier to distinguish from one another. Different instruments can tend to disappear into each other in lossy formats when there’s a lot going on, and you don’t get that with lossless. Because of that, the stereo effect to me feels more pronounced with lossless as well.

Some instruments also have their own unique qualities which come across much better in lossless. I personally notice it the most in string instruments, but that could be because they’re the ones I have experience playing.

Is it worth it?

For me, 100%! I’ve already converted all my Spotify downloads to lossless quality. My phone today has way more storage than the one I was using ten years ago. I’m nowhere close to running out, so I may as well make use of it.

I really don’t think you need very high-end equipment to enjoy lossless music either. As long as you have something halfway decent to listen on, I suspect you’ll be able to tell a difference big enough to make the file size tradeoff worth it. I’m just using the Bluetooth earbuds I picked up a few months ago (Nothing Ears, I recommend them!) and it’s like I’m hearing them for the first time again.

What I’ve been listening to

This should come as no surprise if you know me, but I’ve been relistening to the Outer Wilds soundtrack again. It’s one of the albums I’ve noticed the biggest difference in. Could it be because I already know it like the back of my hand? Ok, maybe. But the point that it sounds incredible still stands.

I’ve also been listening to some electronic albums like the Cyberpunk 2077 soundtrack and the recently released Tron Ares soundtrack. Again, these sound great. Perfect work music too.

The recent Fleshwater and Thrice albums have really stuck with me since they came out. I’ve also been going back to some of Erra’s and Invent Animate’s stuff too.

As we head into colder weather here pretty soon I expect I’ll be going back to some other artists like Grivo and Holy Fawn again.

Thoughts?

If you’ve got any thoughts about lossless music I’d love to hear them. And you know I always appreciate a good artist recommendation.

— JP

Learning Typescript with a new project

I started a new web-based fediverse-related programming project recently. It’s nothing too serious right now and is mostly an excuse to have something to work on with my work being pretty unfulfilling these days. Still, I’m enjoying it and hoping I can get far enough along on it to eventually release it.

Very early on into the project I decided to migrate what I had to Typescript and I’m super glad I did. Learning something new is half the fun of a hobby project, and so far I’m really appreciating the ergonomics of working in Typescript. The most obvious improvement I’ve noticed is that my IDE is a lot smarter now and is able to give hints based on types like you’d expect from any typed language.

The guts of the project are pretty much there, so what I have ahead of me now is mostly front-end design and logic. Not my favorite stuff in the world, but I at least like to imagine I’m decent at it. I mean, have you seen what passes as production-ready from billion dollar companies these days? The bar’s not very high.

My new vinyl collection

I got a nice record player for my birthday a few weeks back and have since started a small vinyl collection.

My favorite part of the collection so far is the soundtrack for the Outer Wilds DLC Echoes of the Eye. It’s really neat how much care was put into the entire package, and there’s even a few Easter eggs between the artwork and the vinyl itself. Not to mention of course just how cool of a soundtrack Echoes of the Eye has.

Lord of the Rings is still incredible

I just finished yet another watch of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I’ve said it before, but I really do think these are movies that people will still be watching 50 years from now. They’ve barely aged a day since they were made and every re-watch is just as rewarding as the first.

Having fun in a not good game

I started playing a bit of the new game in the Skate series, obnoxiously stylized as “skate.”. And I have some thoughts.

Is it a good game? No. The whole thing reeks of bland corporate appropriation of skate culture, and it seeps into everything from the level design to the voice overs which are so painful that one of the first things you’ll do is turn them off.

But is it a fun game? Actually, yeah. The standout feature right now is the sandbox nature of the game since you’ll see everything the missions have to throw at you within the first couple hours. I’ve been enjoying finding my own crazy lines and stunts to try to perfect, and it’s really neat watching everyone else in the servers do the same and getting ideas from them. Grab a few friends and I think it’s a pretty guaranteed way of making a few hours fly by, and the game is free so there’s not a whole lot to lose.

The future of week notes

I’ve never really tried to stick to a set schedule in the past with week notes. I’ve always looked at it more as a way to record shorter thoughts together that probably don’t deserve their own individual posts, but which are still interesting enough to me that I want to write something about them.

And aside from that, it’s just a format that I really enjoy and want to see more of. Modern social media being what it is, it’s fun to slow down sometimes and take a little longer to catch up with people I follow and chat with.

More of this sort of thing coming soon.

— JP

Earlier this week I put together a color e-ink picture frame powered by a Raspberry Pi.

It was a pretty easy, fun little project. For the past few days I’ve been having it run a simple script I wrote that chooses a random photo of mine and overlays the current weather conditions every 30 minutes.

I’ll share more about it including photos in a future post. In the meantime, I plan on making a new frame for it. The screen I chose is just barely too small for a standard 5x7 inch frame, so to get it in the frame I used I had to get a little hacky and the end result is a bit sloppier than I would like.

Games

I’m still enjoying my time with Hogwarts Legacy. I’ll say though that I almost think the game suffers a tiny bit from trying to do too much. I mean, how is it that I was still getting introduced to new mechanics 15-20 hours into the game? I also hope some more enemy variety gets introduced soon as combat has been starting to feel a little easy. Overall though, still a great game.

I completed 1000xResist since my last post and really liked it. The gameplay is mostly walking around and talking to people, but it plays so much with different ways to tell a narrative that that’s what keeps you invested rather than the gameplay itself. This one’s definitely worth checking out if that sounds like your thing.

I started playing the 2024 remake of Riven recently and it’s been going great. It’s easy to see where other games I love like Outer Wilds have taken inspiration. It’s one of those puzzle games where the explorable world opens up to you fairly quickly, giving you a lot to uncover and think about at the same time.

Riven’s art style really stands out to me. It feels oddly dream-like in the way I feel games from the 90s often do, and it’s really unique to see that feeling captured so well with modern graphics.

Music

The new Spiritbox album I’ve been looking forward to, Tsunami Sea, came out this week. I’ve only had a chance to listen through it once so far but I can already tell I’m going to be listening to it a lot, just like their previous music. Speaking of their previous music, I think this album left a stronger first impression on me than usual. It’ll take me some more time to get a stronger feeling for which tracks stand out the most to me, but I’m hoping I don’t take too long with it because Sleep Token is rumored to be releasing new music very, very soon.

— JP

Outer Wilds is extremely sensitive to spoilers, and I will be fully spoiling the main game and the Echoes of the Eye DLC in this post (though I’ll give an extra warning before spoiling anything from Echoes of the Eye).

This is your last chance to leave if you don’t want to get spoiled. Now without further ado…

The moment I realized how brilliant Outer Wilds is

I was hooked on Outer Wilds pretty quickly, only a couple loops in. But there were a few key moments that made the difference between “this is a really good game” and “this is an incredible game”.

After a while it was hard not to notice the death of the sun at the end of every loop. Surely, I thought, I would be able to find a way to stop it and save everyone. I had unlimited time to figure it out after all, being stuck in a time loop.

So that became my mission for a while. Find out why the sun was exploding, then find some way to keep it from doing that. Simple enough.

Of course, I did eventually find out the reason the sun was exploding: the natural lifecycle of the universe and some crap luck. I slowly realized I wouldn’t be saving anyone after all. It was a bit of an existential crisis.

But I kept going and eventually found my way to the Eye of the Universe where I realized something else. Sure, I may not be able to save everyone, and all things have their natural end. But it wasn’t for nothing. Collapsing the Eye’s infinite possibilities meant that I, and by extension everyone else I’d met during the adventure, would be leaving a mark on the future of the next universe.

Sometimes you have to make the best out of what you’re dealt. Just because you don’t see the impact you’re making, doesn’t mean it’s not there.

The way Outer Wilds shares that message and the impact it has are, I think, unique to video games as a medium. That’s why I love it so much. It would not have had the same meaning if I had watched somebody else play it or if I had read about some character who went through everything that I did. It’s the kind of experience that I think video games have always been meant for.

My unique Echoes of the Eye experience

Before I talk about Echoes of the Eye, know that I strongly recommend it. It’s not just more Outer Wilds, it feels a bit like a spin-off game that ties a new story into the existing one. The way this new story’s themes are reinforced through gameplay mechanics is very well done and is a big part of what makes Echoes of the Eye easy to recommend in my eyes.

If you haven’t played the Echoes of the Eye DLC yet, you may want to skip to the next section. Now, for some spoilers.

I started out playing through Echoes of the Eye on my own. I watched as The Stranger’s shadow swallowed up the sun on that first approach. Experienced that stunning moment of dropping into the river for the first time and just looking up and seeing all of The Stranger at once.

Not long after I started, my younger brother completed the main game on his own after my recommendation and loved it. He quickly got Echoes of the Eye too and that’s when we joined up with the excellent Quantum Space Buddies multiplayer mod.

Now we were exploring The Stranger together. I took the back seat for some time to avoid spoiling anything I already knew. Pretty soon though, my brother and I were on the same level and making new discoveries together, all the while madly speculating about what everything could mean. I think one of the few things better than the feeling of a breakthrough is having someone to share it with after the buildup of anticipation that comes from crafting theories together.

It was bittersweet when we finally finished and watched the credits roll. We’d been hundreds of miles apart and been communicating over voice chat the entire time, but somehow it felt like the end of a real adventure we had been sharing, more so than any other game we’ve played together.

I love what Echoes of the Eye added to Outer Wilds. The themes of fear and hiding from the inevitable feel like natural extensions of the themes Outer Wilds explored.

The music of Outer Wilds

It’s hard for me to talk about Outer Wilds without bringing up the music at some point. It’s easily one of the best game soundtracks out there, but to be honest I stopped thinking of it as just a game soundtrack a while ago. It’s a pretty common go-to whenever I want something instrumental to listen to.

The Echoes of the Eye soundtrack has especially grown on me too, and some of my favorite songs are from it. I especially love the last several tracks called The Lost Reels which were created by the game’s composer, Andrew Prahlow, as a sort of tribute after Echoes of the Eye released.

How to keep playing Outer Wilds after you’ve completed it

One thing you’ll always hear from Outer Wilds fans is how they wish they could experience it for the first time again. That much might not be possible (trust me, I’ve looked into it), but I’ve found there’s two really great ways to still keep enjoying Outer Wilds even after you’ve completed it.

The first is mods. The modding scene for Outer Wilds is just awesome, and you can tell everyone involved has a real passion for the game. If you want to get started, grab the mod launcher from outerwildsmods.com and it’s easy going from there.

Some of my favorite mods include…

• Quantum Space Buddies — This is the multiplayer mod I mentioned playing Echoes of the Eye with. I’m still surprised at how well it works.
• Nomai VR — An excellent mod that adds VR support to Outer Wilds. It’s definitely only for those with strong VR legs, but simply walking around and experiencing the true scale of Outer Wilds really is quite the experience.
• Astral Codec — An extremely well made story mod that adds more unique puzzles and locations to the original solar system. Parts of it will test your advanced knowledge of Outer Wilds but it’s a really easy one to recommend if you consider yourself a big fan.
• Dreambound — A fun short/medium length story mod that adds to Echoes of the Eye. This one is very impressive for a jam mod.
• Outer Wilds Flyover — This mod recreates the Island Flyover gamemode from Wii Sports Resort. It’s a fun mod to add if you’re planning on doing some exploring (though I was let down when I learned it’s not compatible with Nomai VR).

The other way I’ve found is to watch other people to play Outer Wilds. Because the game is so open, everyone really has their own unique experience with it, and getting to hear about or watch that unique experience is similar to experiencing it fresh for yourself. Just a few weeks ago my wife finished her playthrough of Outer Wilds and Echoes of the Eye, and we both had a blast.

Thanks for indulging me while I gush about why I love Outer Wilds. If there’s something about it you’d like to chat about, feel free to reach out!

— JP

New glasses

I got a new pair of glasses along with a new prescription this last week. It was definitely time since the old pair was about five years old and starting to show some wear.

The new frames have really grown on me, and I’m surprised at how much clearer the new prescription is since the old glasses never really felt blurry to me. They took a couple days to get used to though. I was fighting off headaches over the weekend which is part of why I was taking things easy. At this point though I feel well adjusted and out of the “oh no I hope they didn’t get this horribly wrong” phase.

Reading

I’m still reading through Caliban’s War but I’ve managed to fall slightly behind the rest of the group.

Something I’m beginning to appreciate with this book is that I’m starting to really root for one of the characters that I initially disliked. It’s really satisfying when that kind of 180 for a character is well executed.

Games

I’ve got a couple games that I’m pretty early on in, so I should be set for the next little while.

Hollow Knight

A couple friends are also playing through this right now so I decided to join in. I’m way behind where they are, but it’s still fun sharing progress with each other.

Metro: Last Light Redux

I’ve been playing through the Metro franchise and am on the second game right now. This one so far seems a bit more action-oriented, where the first had a slightly more survival horror feel. That’s not a complaint, just something interesting I’ve noticed.

Red Dead Redemption 2

I’ve had this one on my radar since I finished Cyberpunk 2077 towards the beginning of this year, but I held off until recently. Sometimes you need a little breather between massive open world games, you know?

I can already say this is easily the most visually detailed game I’ve played, and I’m enjoying the story so far.

Music

Spotify released their yearly Wrapped summary, so I’ve gotten some insight into my music listening over the past year. Here are my top artists for 2024.

1. Andrew Prahlow
2. Sleep Token
3. Jam2Go
4. Spiritbox
5. Rolo Tomassi

I’m a bit surprised, but also not. Andrew Prahlow is the composer for the amazing Outer Wilds soundtrack which I’ve had on consistently nearly the whole year, so no surprises there.

I would have expected Spiritbox to be higher up on the list, but I think that’s a matter of them not having as much music released as some of these other artists. So while I may have listened to them more often, I might not have spent as much time with them.

Programming

I’ve been taking part in this year’s Advent of Code and it’s been enjoyable. I still can’t bring myself to use something other than Python — it’s just extremely well suited for the types of problems Advent of Code gives you and I’m really efficient with it.

I’m a couple days behind now (are you noticing a theme yet?), but I’m still planning on making some progress. I feel like this year has been easier for me than past years, which is really reassuring. It’s great to have a sort of benchmark for the progress and growth that’s not very visible day to day.

— JP

I’ve been making my way through Caliban’s War, the second book in The Expanse. It’s still early on, but I’m really liking it! The scope feels bigger than the first book which is only fitting.

Games

Metro 2033 has grown on me a lot more since last week. It feels like the game really opened up and I’m understanding the mechanics a lot more now. This is definitely one of those games I wish I’d discovered sooner! I did end up grabbing the rest of the series while it was on sale, so I’ve got a bit of a backlog now that should keep me occupied for a while.

The big game news this week was Half-Life 2’s 20th anniversary, which you’ve already gotten an earful about if you’ve been paying attention to my posts on Mastodon. I’ve especially been looking forward to it since Half-Life 2 is one of the key games that really made me realize how much I enjoy PC gaming, second probably only to Portal. It served as my introduction to a lot of concepts that to me make a great game, like immersive storytelling and convincing physically simulated worlds.

They did a lot to celebrate this anniversary, even more than I expected! There’s a really awesome documentary that’s been released going over the entire story of the game’s development. The update they made for the game was huge too, with developer commentary, faithful visual improvements, bug fixes, and the bundling of Episode One and Episode Two. If it’s been a while since you’ve played Half-Life 2, or if you’ve never had the pleasure, now’s definitely the time to boot it up — especially since the game is currently 100% off until November 18.

Music

Linkin Park’s new album came out the same day as the Half-Life 2 anniversary update, so I got a double dose of nostalgia that day. I’ve already listened to it a couple times which wasn’t really difficult given the short runtime. I’ve got pretty positive thoughts about it, though I do wish it was longer. Two Faced currently is my favorite track, but that could definitely change as I keep listening.

Programming

I did some more programming this week, though admittedly not as much as I would have liked. Lately I’ve been toying around on a simple project to practice Rust with. I really like the ownership system and the borrow checker. I feel like it makes me a better programmer in general increasing my awareness of potential ownership issues, and it’s a fun change of pace from the bash and python I’m usually working with during the day.

— JP

Muse w/ Dead Sara — March 2013

Muse was one of my favorite bands during high school, and with the crazy shows they put on they made for a great first concert!

Two Door Cinema Club — October 2013

Dad pulled us out of school early so we could drive to San Diego and see Two Door Cinema Club on Halloween night. This ended up being one of my best concert experiences because of the memories made.

Weezer — October 2014

My friends and I were all pretty into Weezer at the time so we had a lot of fun here.

OK Go — October 2014

Probably still the loudest concert I’ve been to. It was a tiny venue and I’m still surprised it didn’t collapse on us. Very fun.

Thom Yorke — December 2018

I’d been really into Radiohead since my last year of high school so I was pretty excited for this one. I even got to hear a few unreleased songs!

Muse w/ Walk The Moon — February 2019

This was honestly a really big production with a lot of amazing visuals. One of the highlights of this show was catching the setlist that Walk The Moon threw out into the crowd at the end of their set!

Low — March 2019

Low was touring their album Double Negative. They had to slightly adapt a lot of their songs from it to play them live, but I think the live adaptations were really amazing and unique. This is still the most intimate show I’ve been to and I was lucky to be right up at the front.

There was a lot that made this show one of the most memorable I’ve been to, not the least of which being that it turned out to be the last chance I would have to see Low before Mimi sadly passed away a few years later.

Quinn XCII — March 2019

I’m still not very familiar with Quinn but my cousin had an extra ticket to this show. I remember it being a fun time and I’m glad we got to go together.

The National w/ Alvvays — September 2019

This was another one of my favorite shows. It was an outdoor venue with beautiful weather, I got introduced to Alvvays, and The National played a long and memorable set with every song I could’ve hoped for.

Explosions In The Sky — September 2019

This was the first show I went together to with my wife, my girlfriend at the time. I shouldn’t have been surprised but they rocked out a lot harder than you’d guess!

AJR — June 2022

Mostly my wife likes these guys but they’ve got some songs on Beat Saber that are pretty fun to play. It was a fun show.

The National w/ Bartee Strange — August 2022

This was pretty similar to the last time I had seen The National, but that’s definitely not a complaint. They played some unreleased songs which were neat to hear early, and Matt came down into the crowd during a few songs!

Ben Platt w/ Aly & AJ — September 2022

Another one that my wife likes. We had a good time but this has to have been the loudest crowd I’ve been in. Well either this or the Quinn XCII concert.

Holy Fawn w/ Grivo and SOM — November 2022

This one was kind of funny. I had found Holy Fawn through a Spotify related artist about a year prior and had really gotten into them. I showed them to my brothers and I guess they must have introduced them to a few people who went on to tell their friends… By the time Holy Fawn was coming to town we had a group of nine or so people all interested in going together.

We weren’t trying to be but we ended up being the first people into the venue, so we were right up front. It was a really great show, and I’m glad Grivo was there too since I also really like them. After the show one of the band members gave some of us copies of the setlist which was funny since it was wildly different from the set they actually played that night.

Sungazer w/ Everything Yes — October 2023

This was a really fun show and these guys are impressive live. Their kind of music with all its grooves and advanced rhythms is so much different to experience live.

I was actually thinking about this show again a couple weeks ago. The bassist, Adam Neely, has an interesting Youtube channel where he usually talks about music theory and he used some of his footage from this show as an example during one of his recent videos. It’s a bit funny to see yourself in a Youtube video when you’re not expecting it!

Keane w/ Everything Everything — September 2024

I’ve been listening to Keane since their first album which I have a lot of nostalgia for. Seeing them live was a little surreal because of that and I’m really glad to have gone. They’re really good live!

Korn w/ Spiritbox and Gojira — October 2024

Spiritbox and Gojira were the ones I was really looking forward to at this show and neither of them disappointed. In fact I was pretty blown away in particular by how good Gojira was live! I only started listening to their recent material a couple months ago in preparation for this show but now I know I need to check out the older releases as well.

Spiritbox was also fantastic but I only wish they could have played a longer set. I guess that gives me a good excuse to see them again next chance I have though.

— JP

Kitten Burst is a flying cat racing game with musical bullet hell boss battles set in 2000s cyberspace. Yeah, I really did mean it when I said this game was unique. You could argue it’s worth playing for that reason alone, or even for the killer soundtrack… not that you would ever need to. At its core, Kitten Burst is just a solid, fun game.

The races in Kitten Burst are set up checkpoint style with you being allowed to hit the points in any order you choose, and often there are more checkpoints in the race than are required for completion. I think this is a great choice because it allows most of the races to have a lot of interesting routes depending on your build. Some routes might be more attractive if you’ve used your upgrade points to optimize for speed, while you may go for an entirely different route if you’ve chosen to focus on something like maneuverability instead. It’s also important to mention that you charge boost by flying closely to obstacles. It’s a fun risk and reward mechanic which makes it so the fastest path between two points might not necessarily be the most direct one.

Something else I love about the races is that you’re your own opponent. You’re racing yourself with no predefined goals. Rather than having a required time to beat, you’re simply given more points the faster you complete each race. Leveling up both your cat and your own skills at the game means you’ll always have a reason to go back to older races again and again.

The bullet hell boss battles are really fun too. Part of their appeal to me is how they’re all tightly synced to the music to the point where you sometimes feel like you’re playing a rhythm game. Every one of the boss battle songs is great and getting to hear the next one quickly became something I was always looking forward to.

I guess that brings me to the soundtrack. The OST release is something like three hours long which is insane for a solo dev indie game! And as I said, it’s good too, and very memorable. Each song takes musical inspiration from the area you find it in. Helped by the really diverse levels, the soundtrack takes you through a lot of different electronic subgenres.

So yeah, I just wanted to bring some more attention to a great game that most people probably haven’t heard of yet. By the way, that Steam sale I mentioned is still ongoing if you’re reading this in the next several days after posting. GLHF!

— JP

These guys are known for their huge catalog and really wide genre range, and this album showcases that perfectly. Each song is something completely new with even some thrash metal and hip hop moments that come at you from nowhere. I imagine that’s something that not everyone will love, but for me it makes for such a fun listen. The entire thing clocks in at 1 hour 20 minutes but manages to feel much shorter than that. I’ve listened to 40 minute albums that feel longer than this one.

Another album of theirs I enjoy is Nonagon Infinity, which is funny because it feels polar opposite to Omnium Gatherum. Each song on that album flows in such a way that the entire thing feels like one continuous song that loops endlessly. I’m definitely feeling the need to check out more of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. Looking at their discography I can tell I’ve got my work cut out for me!