Cool Stuff I Liked in July 2026
Friday, July 31st, 2026
Playing
Don’t Pick Up Strange Aliens – Very cute and cuddly and innocent. This was one of many intriguing participants in Otome Jam 2026; a couple of others from the jam that I also bookmarked to play are Love’s Young Dream and Abracademia, but I didn’t get around to playing them. 😭 And looking at the list again, now I also want to play Starfallen Strength, Our Light Affliction, Mysterious Thief Emerald, and Ember Sands… GAH! This is the whole reason that I’m supposed to have a “just play something, anything, just for like 20 mins a day, just do it do it do it the backlog is too long!!” habit, but I’ve clearly fallen off of it again. 😅
Watching the BF Play
Live A Live – (My representative image here is one of the countdown illustrations from Square-Enix’s twitter leading up to the HD-2D remake release – it’s cute!) Only Oersted’s route and Final Chapter were left to do after last month. I was very, very grateful that @wreckscalibur hadn’t been spoiled about key turning points of this game so the exciting moments came as a surprise for him. You know a game has a good ending when you’re cheering “YEEEAAAAHHHH!!!” during the climactic moments of the final battle.
Fairune 2 – Fairune dares to ask, “What if Hydlyde was good?” LOVE this developer; other good Skipmore games I can recommend in particular are the first Fairune (the series is bundled together on Steam), Kamiko (one of the first digital games we ever bought when we first got our Switch), and Synopsis Quest (very silly browser game). Love to have a quick and snappy little adventure with satisfying progression – though this is larger than you’d expect. When you first start, there’s an overworld map that you gradually fill out, as well as an ‘underground’ map where all of the caves are, and I remember assuming, “Ah, these two maps are probably the scale of the whole game.” NAY. There are MORE OVERWORLDS. And even more after that! Tons of very fun little secrets to find all around.
Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons – My childhood game was Ages and I’ve never seen Seasons in full. I like the Subrosians, they’re silly! Very interesting seeing the different versions of the items that upgrade in different ways between the two games (both games have a Roc’s Feather, but only Seasons gets the Roc’s Cape; and both games have Zora Flippers, but only Ages upgrades it to a mermaid tail, etc…). It made me wanna reread the Zelda manga that I have, too, so you’ll see that in the later section!
Casual Gaming
Anthropeum – As in “anthropology.” Try to guess where in the world an artifact (sourced from The Met Gallery’s collection) came from, and from when. I’m okay-ish at the where but terrible at the when. 🤔 I tend to just default to 1 BCE for everything unless I know otherwise.
Huekle – A bunch of color-based puzzles?? Sometimes I can’t tell what the controls or instructions are. But it’s so stylish to look at and there are SO MANY daily games here that one or two meh ones aren’t so bothersome.
Rebusly – A daily rebus puzzle (one of my favorite kinds of puzzles! and rare to find in daily/online format) based on a news headline of the day. Your hints are snippets from the article.
Spellsword – It’s hard to get a screenshot of this one because there are about three different word games wrapped up in an adventurous little story. You get a cute little intro, combine parts of words to identify the “enemy” you’ll be fighting, then you string letters together to do damage to its HP bar. Then the enemy fights back, but you can defend if you unscramble an anagram quickly enough. It’s not REALLY all that much like playing an RPG but just having a little bit of flavor or a theme of the day makes a basic word game more fun. The “story” actually continues a little bit further every day.
Threezy – Similar to the card game Set (which can also be played in your browser) but the cards get replaced instead of staying on the screen. If you don’t know of Set, it’s a little hard to explain, but you have to find sets of shapes that are all the same in some dimensions (shape, color, fill style, quantity, etc.) but different in at least one other dimension. It’s hard to explain in words but starts to make sense once you’re looking at it and giving it a try. I was excited to find a new online variation because sometimes a different choice of shapes or slightly different rules can be all it takes to make something new and refreshing lol.
Reading
Manga Classics: Jane Eyre – I never covered Jane Eyre during school, so this was a read purely for satisfying my curiosity. As with other Manga Classics I’ve written about in these summaries, I enjoyed reading Sparknotes study guides after finishing the comic for deeper understanding. I know that the Bronte sisters have a whole library of wonderful books – are there others that you’d recommend I should check out next? 🤗 (I thiiiiink I’ve already read Wuthering Heights in school, but I barely remember anything from it.)
Swordheart by T. Kingfisher – I have other T. Kingfisher books in my Want To Read list that I’m still willing to try, but I didn’t jive with the humor in this one. If the witty exchanges were more like just one (1) quirky observation from the heroine and one (1) clever response from the male lead as the action moves them along, it would be bearable, but it’s the fact that every conversation is 3-5x longer than it needs to be because each participant must make a witty remark about the witty remark that the other one just said. I don’t mind “quippy” protagonists; I like Murderbot, and I like Saturday morning cartoons from the 80s. If it were simply that the characters said their funny line and then the momentum moved forward, I’d love it, but nothing ruins a good joke like dragging it out. I certainly might be in the minority here because this book has tens of thousands of positive reviews that all praise its humor. Like I said, I’m going to go ahead and try other books from this author because overall I like the D&D campaign-like adventure.
Honeysuckle Cottage by P.G. Wodehouse – Listened to this as an audiobook (free on youtube because most P.G. Wodehouse books are in the public domain!) while doing crafts outdoors. Very silly and charming and only an hour of time investment. You may worry about the protagonist’s behavior and attitude toward women, but don’t worry, it has a good ending, which is that the woman doesn’t end up married to this miserable guy lol.
Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons – Gee, Oracle of Seasons, how come Mom lets you have two categories? Well, because both the game and the manga are really good, that’s why lol. Why not read along? 😄 Every time I reread one of the Zelda manga volumes, it just reminds me that one of these days I have GOT to check out the massive Twilight Princess series sometime. And because I own this physically, it’s another comic I could enjoy outdoors in the sunshine. ☀️ There are some fun new dynamics present in this adaptation that aren’t in the game, such as some familial background for Link, the fact that Link joins and travels with the dancing troupe for a while, and eventually you get a whole little adventuring party with Ricky and Maple on the quest alongside him.
The Sequel by Jean Hanff Korelitz – The protagonist of the first book (which I read last year) was a Miserable Man, now the POV has shifted to a Miserable Woman, and it’s remarkable how similar the two of them are considering how much she despised him. There’s some morbid satisfaction in watching a Massive Jerk build what they think is an impenetrable fortress around them, but the weak foundation crumbles and we get to watch all of the consequences of their actions come crashing down and bury them. I guess observing that sort of glorious train wreck again was what made me want to check out this second book, although interestingly things don’t turn out as terribly for the female protagonist as they did for the guy, somehow, other than all the murders I guess?? These aren’t protagonists to cheer for, so this is very much a “What if this happened, wouldn’t that be messed up” kind of story.
Watching
Pretty Boy Detective Club – I… thiiink I enjoyed this? What a strange story, with a strange mood. It’s a bit less of a detective mystery than you’d expect, more like just a bunch of weird things that happen involving their school… odd that most of the dialog of each episode is delivered through monologues (either the heroine’s inner thoughts, or very very long and roundabout deductions from the other Detective Club members that somehow always point toward government conspiracy). I liked the Artistic Genius guy (wearing the oversized lab coat) because the rare times when he spoke were always very impactful.
An Observation Log of My Fiancée Who Calls Herself a Villainess – This is SO STINKIN’ cute and funny, then, as most things do, makes a serious swerve in the last third. Emotions get a little high, but it’s a comedy so it keeps making gags to keep things light. I loved all the pretty clothes! And if you’ve read/watched any otome isekai villainess anything, you already know how this kind of story goes, but it was interesting for the main POV to be from the male lead this time around, and that the heroine was genre-savvy as well! (The heroine’s name is ‘Heronia’ btw, which made me laugh.)
Casablanca – I’ve seen this before (many years ago, and I didn’t remember much from it) but it was a new watch for Wreckscalibur. Watching Casablanca is one of the most constant ‘Ohhh, that’s where that reference comes from’ experiences you can have, haha. And afterward, it’s required viewing to check out some classic parodies, like Looney Tunes’s Carrotblanca, and who could ever forget all of the magnificently-adapted Casablanca scenes in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode, Overdrawn at the Memory Bank? (that’s a link to an entire movie btw. enjoy.)
The Great Mouse Detective – This is like the inverse of Casablanca in that it’s something Wreckscalibur watched as a kid, but this was my first viewing of it. It’s great, love it! Had no idea about Vincent Price as the villain, who naturally had some great songs as most Disney Villains do. The surprise guest appearance of Basil Rathbone’s (posthumous) voice as the human Sherlock Holmes speaking off-screen was also a great cameo.
King Arthur & The Knights of Justice – Ok so you know how I read the recent Princess Gwenevere & The Jewel Riders comics in the past months? The publisher of those ALSO did a similar comic series for THIS OTHER Saturday morning cartoon, and THERE’S A BONUS CROSSOVER CHAPTER BETWEEN THEM. So the two cartoons themselves, despite being about King Arthur and Gwenevere, aren’t actually related, but the modern comic adaptations are. So now I’ve got to watch this nonsense (affectionate), just to learn & understand a little of what the comic is going to be and so I can ultimately read the crossover. It’s good nonsense!! We only watched two episodes but that was all it took to download all of them and put it in our shuffled nostalgic cartoon playlist on our TV (btw I highly recommend this practice, it’s great when you don’t know what to watch, just hit shuffle on the folder). It’s about a football team that gets isekai’d into King Arthur times and they all get dumb (affectionate) superpowers. They hype themselves up with the chant “Knights! Knights! Knights!” in the same way you’d say “Lads! Lads! Lads!” and Merlin has the same voice actor as Doctor Light from the Ruby Spears Mega Man series. Everyone should watch this.
