Weeknotes 26-38: Utah fieldnotes
Hiiiii I’m in Moab, Utah right now!!!! Writing this in bed while I wait for Nick and Mariah to wake up. I had originally planned on not adjusting my sleep schedule so that we could do really early morning hikes but last night I didn’t fall asleep until like 1am so, lmao. I’ll write a detailed trip blog when I’m back and my film photos are done, but it’s Monday so I Must Blog.
Update: now finishing writing this outside the hotel after a very long hike
Just because I have no photos from Day One of the trip, I’ll just talk about that here instead of the real blog.
I woke up pretty early to get a 9:30 flight to Dallas, I was 100% packed and ready to go since Friday right after work. I sadly had to leave coworker (and friend!!!) Michelle’s game night after only like 90 minutes since I wanted to be able to actually sleep before the flight.
I watched three whole movies on the flights: Swing Girls (so good!!), F9 (one of the better ones!), and Ghost Killer (fun!). My first flight had a cat two rows away and someone in my row is allergic so he asked to move so my row had an empty middle seat in it and we could both spread about a bit which was so nice :’)
Second flight I wasn’t as lucky but it was much shorter at least! I got into SLC and figured out the train system, checked into my hotel which had a conference going on and was down the street from a Hyrox thing so there were tons of people milling about in the lobby. This mostly just meant every time I got into the elevator someone would be like “oh what floor?” and I’d have to awkwardly be like “oh uh haha no worries” and type in a code into the floor selection because for some reason the floor my room was on was “restricted” which created lots of funny conversations.
I went to Red Iguana for dinner which was SOOOO yommy!!!! TY Jeff and John for the rec! I went to sleep as early as I could since I didn’t want to adjust my sleep schedule so we could do early morning hikes, but as I’ll post about in my full trip post that uhhhh didn’t really matter lmao
We finished Big Walk this week!!!! Amazing game, easily the best game I’ve played this year and one of my favorite co-op games ever. The final section was so cool and the ending was honestly so emotional, especially playing with like 10 people!! We need to go back and finish every puzzle, but it’ll also be nice to take a bit of a break haha
I’m so glad a game like Big Walk exists, I know people love to make fun of “friendslop” games but I think games like this are sooooo amazing, non-competitive multiplayer games as a vehicle for both conversation, but also building a shared language and solving puzzles together. It so expertly balances the discussion of game mechanics with having natural pauses between them to have non-game related conversation, little moments where you can pause and just enjoy a sunset or train ride together.
The puzzle design itself was fantastic too, consistently utilizing collaborative solving and decision making, making people develop a unique vocabulary for the symbols, the sounds, whatever that gourd thing is. So many puzzles obfuscate information from each other or have information that’s not clearly communicable so you need to create systems to tell your puzzle partners what lit up or what symbols appeared. It’s so good!!!!!!! So many moments I keep thinking about. I know I know most of the puzzle solutions now, but I’d love to go back and replay it sometime (or I can join Mariah’s game :3 )
Things I’ve been into this week!!!
no art this week since i’m not home and not gonna look at twitter lol