Attending the Writer's Festival

On Sunday, I went to the Writer's Festival with some friends to attend the "New Shoots" event. It's an one hour event where five writers/poets present some of their works, and then host a discussion. Of the five writers, two are actually high-school students with outstanding works of writing. Coincidentally, their names are both Sarah. Maybe I should name my kids Sarah in hopes that they become talented writers.

The writing that was presented were all similar in one way: their use of imagery all create incredibly detailed scenarios in my head. For example, one of the Sarah's writing was about her grandpa as a child facing off against a bully. The way her story is presented, we can almost feel her grandfather's anger towards the bully, and the adrenaline rush when they clashed.

After the presentations, there was a discussion period. During this period, there were questions ranging from "what made you start writing" to "how was it like to get your work out there". This was handled very well be all the writers, as they never paused awkwardly, never interrupted each other and they all had something to say. I wish I can be more like them.

Overall, I enjoyed this event more than I initially expected. It was pleasant listening to different writers presenting their own style of work, and it inspired me to start writing personal journals to improve my writing.

FTL - a short game review

FTL (Faster Than Light) is a rogue-like/strategy/action space shooter game developed by a Subset Games, a small indie company. In this game, the player’s goal is to safely guide their spaceship through “sectors” of space filled with pirates, rebel forces, or even asteroid fields. In addition, the player controls every single aspect of the ship; from life support, energy consumption to crew management or battles.

I have to say that I found this game amazing, but it isn’t for everyone. I personally enjoyed running all of the billions of components on the ship, but some of my friends who have tried the game found it very tiring and stressful. This game is also very challenging at times. On average, it takes four tries to even beat the game on beginning difficulties; each attempt usually takes hours. As expected, the satisfaction of beating the game for the first time feels great.

Here are my scores for each aspect of the game:

Replayability

8/10

Playing the game every time with different ships, weapons, crew and a whole new world really mixes up the formula.

Music

9/10

The game ingeniously plays two versions of the track at the same time. There is one intense and one calm version for every track, which are switched depending on the situation the player is in.

Graphics

9/10

A lot of this comes down to personal preference, but I personally think the devs did a great job on keeping everything neat and visually appealing with their limited budget.

Controls

10/10

The controls are quite intuitive and easy to use. It almost makes you feel like you are the captain of the spaceship issuing commands to everything.

Depth

10/10

Even after beating the game at least ten times, I would still learn something new every time.

Final score

9/10

If the you can get into this game, then say goodbye to all your spare time for the next month. This game is one of the most frustrating yet satisfying games I've played in a long time.