Looking at the intro or whatever of Izayoi no Fortuna, you won’t spot any obvious highlight. But successful people always tell us that when there’s no highlight, you should go find one yourself… Case in point: in the game’s planning credits, we see a familiar name: Satoshi Yaginuma Who the hell is that? Right—the guy from fripSide who plays piano while shaking his ass, the one in MVs and lives who always looks like he’s desperately holding in a piss. Times really have changed. Even musicians are getting into Galgame planning now. According to a detailed expose of the Galgame production pipeline I read on Douban, the planner determines the basic plot and outline, while the scenario writer follows that outline to write the script. So the plot of this game was dreamed up by Satoshi Yaginuma… Out of sheer curiosity about what kind of story a musician would cook up, I played this game… Of course, I still don’t know if he was in the planning for those fripSide MVs…

The world says spring is when all things revive, and also the season for love. In this season of revival, I shook off the filth and mud I’d accumulated over winter, crawled out of my hole, rubbed my eyes that had spent years in darkness, steadied my mind, and hoped to see the outside world clearly again. At the very least, in this season of spring breezes, I ought to follow the trend and do the things I’m supposed to do. The sunlight above was blinding, the wind hitting my face carried the breath of life. Once my vision settled, I saw the source of the great light—besides the sun above, there was something gleaming gold on the ground. It was a book. On its clean cover were just two lines: a big title, SPPL, and below it a subtitle: alice the magical conductor. Nothing else.

SINCLIENT is a visual novel by BOOST5 — ah, actually it’s not really a galgame, more like an 18+ visual novel, since there isn’t a single choice or branch in it. You just plow straight through from start to finish. It’s not a long game, but it’s definitely not short either. It’s split into two parts: a prologue, and a main chapter called Babylon. After finishing it, I came away with one feeling… And that’s that the prologue and the Babylon chapter don’t connect at all. Two different games… two different stories… and even two different levels of rigor.

I don’t know when wearable tech first became a thing, but somehow it snuck up on us and suddenly everyone was paying attention. Plenty of people have huge expectations for these little gadgets strapped to their heads, wrists, and necks—as if wearing one would automatically log every meal, every trip, every wild maneuver, every river crossing, and with a single button press instantly display your HP, MP, strength, intelligence, agility, stamina, spirit, haste, crit rate, specialization, and tenacity. Reality is harsh. You’re dreaming. The first wave of bands that got people’s attention were led by Jawbone. Those things weren’t exactly cheap, the practicality wasn’t exactly a pleasant surprise, and durability wasn’t exactly great either (remember that product with the three-month death curse?). The result was that they became toys for a handful of geeks with money to burn, and most people just watched from a distance (myself included). As a prodigal son, it’s not that I didn’t want to buy, buy, buy—but you need a solid, necessary excuse to chop off your hand. You need an absolute reason like “I’m doing this for my health” to reduce the guilt of wasting money. Back then, the ones with good features were too expensive, and the cheap ones didn’t work well, so I held back. Then in July this year, I saw the pre-order news for the Bong II band. I’d actually been following their first-gen product—never used it, but it looked decent enough, at least by domestic standards. So out of curiosity I checked the pre-order price for the second gen: 99 yuan. What? 99 yuan? The first gen was over 600, right? I looked it up and sure enough, it was 99. I also saw what it looked like, and instantly understood why it was 99. Honestly, it’s ugly.

During Spring Festival JD had a coupon, 200-50, so I couldn’t help myself and chopped off the Logitech touchpad that normally sells for 199, the T650. It came to 149. I’ve been using it for a while now, so let me talk about how it feels. Since I mainly use Ubuntu, I’ll focus on that. For the summary crowd, look here: works, usable, serviceable, but not what you’d call nice. Fine as a backup. Actually, at first the shop owner said for ten extra yuan he’d throw in a knockoff copy of something like a black-and-white bear thing, and I refused……