stuff I'm playing right now

Pokemon TCG Pocket
I've been playing since it launched, and while it's a gacha game at its core and thus is objectively horrible, I've been having fun anyway. lol The faster-paced battles and slightly simplified (for now anyway) rules have finally gotten me interested in actually playing the Pokemon TCG against other people. I've been doing OK so far too, surprisingly! I managed to get all the emblems thus far, but I'm worried that after the Space-Time Smackdown expansion I might not be able to keep up, because a lot of my decks seem to be kinda outclassed now. We'll see how things pan out...

Animal Crossing Pocket Camp Complete
Playing two mobile games concurrently is pretty rare for me! I lost interest in Pocket Camp pretty quickly after it first released because it just didn't really feel fun with all the time limitations. The "pay a flat fee and get all the gacha items" model of Pocket Camp Complete lured me back in, so I decided to buy it when it came out, and I'm glad I did! The items in this game are just so precious and well made, and at least for now it feels like there's so many spaces in the game to decorate with them despite being a mobile Animal Crossing. I really hope our next main series Animal Crossing installment includes some of the items from this game, because they're SO CUTE.

Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life
The remake of Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life, which I've been playing on my Switch. It still feels like this game just came out, but I realized that it's been two years already and I hadn't "finished" it yet. Most Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons games don't have a very linear narrative, so you're never really "finished," but A Wonderful Life is very unique in the franchise because time passes in your character's life and your child's life. I stopped playing after I had a kid because I was nervous about not raising them right (LOL) but I picked the game back up recently and have been having so much fun!

Even though it's a remake, this game feels almost identical to the original aside from running more smoothly. As a teenager, I had HM: A Wonderful Life Special Edition for the PS2, which was a port of the original Gamecube game with a couple changes. I never got past the marriage stage in that game because it ran like absolute steaming garbage. (The performance on Gamecube is fine, but the PS2 version chugs so much that I'm really surprised it got released like that at all. When I finally got the GC version of the game years later, I could not believe the difference.) Getting to enjoy all the quirks in this installment of the franchise like crop crossbreeding and stuff has been great. The vibe of this one is just really goofy and "quirky" and yet also somehow very sincere and heartwarming. I love it.

It's worth noting that this game continues the trend of new Story of Seasons games in having the option to date and marry any of the candidates you like, regardless of gender. It was a dream come true when they finally added this feature, and I'm very grateful to the localization team at XSeed for specifically making an effort to be inclusive.
I picked a male character (although I've been making them very gender nonconforming) for my first playthrough but I ended up marrying Molly anyway, because she's always been my favorite marriage candidate in the OG. I want to make a new file to get gay married to Gustafa eventually, though. He's iconic. (Still angry I can't get married to Gavin or Carter in this installment. GIVE ME MY OLD MEN)