This blog post is entirely talking about gacha if that's upsetting for anyone

So last year for some reason I completely got sucked into gacha roguelikes, one of them aligned with my interests and I can say I enjoyed (that would be Uma), two of them I actively despised while playing for hours everyday and I also did not tell anyone how much I was playing/minimized the time when asked. Now, I still kept a normal scedule, and I ate, and I went outside, I just felt by the end of the year sort of horrified by how much I craved 'turning my brain off' why did I want my brain off for five hours of the day?

There were a few moments last year where gaming was a good distraction against persistent suicidal ideation (MySims) and those sort of games where there's nothing even remotely triggering and you sort of just play until you naturally get bored and realize the desire for escapism has faded and you can face the world again. Gacha does not end and the only relief it provides is a total numbing. There's no nostalgia or connecting to a peaceful feeling of 'play' in order to relax, its infinite brain numb. Its just an endless churn of my time. Did I have fun? Yes. Do I regret spending money on Gold City? No, her route was hot and yuri. Have I gone through this before with an inumerable amount of gacha games since I was like 14? Yes. Is this the end? Probably not.

I really don't give a fuck on moralizing about gacha, or gambling, or how people spend thier time or money and I unfollowed a bunch of people this year for reminding us all that Uma Musume is not marxist to which I thought 'why would I possibly give a fuck if the jiggle physics game is woke I'm here to jerk off to girl on girl', but sometimes the jerk off material takes up so much of my time I start to feel like the unemployment is eroding away my body. So since new years I've stopped playing gacha. But if you were one of those gacha isn't woke people I mean you're right and you will always have the winning take it is a complete spiritual wasteland out there, I'm just weak to cute anime girl dolls getting mashed together.

Anyway, a month ago there was a day on bsky where everyone was soliciting game recs, one to play each month in 2026, and I did the same for visual novel-ish games and got a lot of responses...so with the time I was spending on gacha I've decided to replace it with things I actually really want to experience.

Over ambitious for sure, since I'm still planning to read regular books, and I certainly won't be trying to do one assigned to each actual month of the year but idk if this is the medium I'm so interested in it deserves my time. And this is the other aspect that I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced but when I'm unemployed I feel guilt at spending my time doing things I actually care about. I can't really make heads or tails of this. I think I just feel guilt about lots of stuff but I feel like it's connected to the desire to completely turn the brain off, the constant craving to lay down and turn my brain off and do something guiltless--and it really is constant. I will report back if I break and put another 50 hours into CZN lol.

But shouldn't turning my brain off via scrolling or rogue like result in guilt? Rather than doing something that's challenging to the mind? For some reason it relieves me of guilt. Going to spend the year considering it, don't really need to find an answer but I do want to be released from the cycle of brain numb. I think this might also be connected to fatigue problems I've been having, that I sort of beget the fatigue by giving into it and throwing away my time.

The Itch game square is a list in my brain of all the OELVN's and game jam games I want to play, some of them recced to me in the bsky thread, some I've been wanting to play for awhile. I hope to use this blog to do write ups of the stuff I end up enjoying and experience all the work of my talented bsky oomfies whom I have much fun watching as they frolic in the artistic field!

Anyway rah rah rah lfg I'm on this Earth to experience art!!!!!