The Story of a New Name

This is the second of the Neopolitan novels by Elena Ferrante.
I enjoyed the first one a couple of months ago, but just really couldn't get into this one.
It's very similar in style and content - so I think I just wasn't in the right frame of mind for it when I picked it up.
I've given up on it for now, but I may come back to the series at a future date.

Winter Burrow

I tried out some game demos from Steam last week and discovered Winter Burrow, a resource management and survival game about a young mouse travelling back to their childhood burrow in the woods, after losing their parents in the city.

The cutesy art style and adorable anthropomorphic animal characters are rather at odds with the constant threat of freezing to death and brutal attacks by giant insects...

However, the cold is manageable, once you get the hang of things (my biggest problem at the start was getting lost and not being able to find my way back to the burrow in time) and the combat wasn't too difficult to master.

The storyline was mostly really lovely (with a few rather traumatic incidents along the way) and I really enjoyed completing all the various quests, which were all to do with helping and building bonds with other creatures throughout the forest.

I also particular liked the cooking progression tree, working my way up to the more complicated recipes, so as to be able to better prepare myself for the longer journeys that were required later on in the game.

It took me 12 hours to complete the whole thing, which felt about right for both the story and the repetitive nature of the gameplay.

This game was just what I was looking for - some challenges, a good story, a clear to-do list and not too grindy. It was shorter than I would have preferred for the price, but I might have got bored with it if it had gone on much longer, so I think it's been well designed after all.