I find myself recommending the same services and products and recipes and pop culture stuff all the time, so I decided it’d be more efficient to put all these recommendations in one place (except my accessibility recs – those are on my Work page). Updates made whenever I think of them.
Websites
- The Wirecutter – what would I do without the perfect product recommendation website? Never decide on which external drive to buy, or what type of vacuum suits my lifestyle best, that’s what.
- Mltshp – successor to Mlkshk, for sharing silly gifs and making terrible puns.
Books
- Doomsday Book, To Say Nothing of the Dog, actually pretty much anything by Connie Willis.
- Guards, Guards and Wyrd Sisters and everything Terry Pratchett ever wrote.
- Player of Games and Use of Weapons by Ian M Banks.
- Persuasion is my favourite Jane Austen novel, although they are all classics for a reason.
You can see more of what I read over on Goodreads, until I figure out how to log them all here.
Casual games
I love playing short puzzle games on my iPad or on the Nintendo Switch, preferably ones with pretty graphics and soundtracks. If it lasts longer than 15 hours I don’t have time for it! A lot of my favourites are designed for kids because I’m looking for entertainment and a gentle brain-stretch rather than a fiendishly difficult achievement-oriented experience. Many of these are available on other platforms as well.
- Monument Valley and it’s sequel – a beautiful and peaceful journey through MC Escher-like landscapes. One of the makers said it was like a reverse Lara Croft game because the heroine is braving dangers to return artefacts instead of ‘discover’ them.
- Oquonie – similar game play to Monument Valley, but in a black and white isometric tile landscape with monstery creatures and strange symbols.
- Hidden Folks – like Where’s Wally but with hand-drawn black and white line art and voice-generated sound effects. Always makes me laugh. New levels are released every now and again.
- I Love Hue – sort colours into smooth gradients. Remember to blink once in a while.
- Alphabear – beat levels of word puzzles to collect adorable bears who say strange things to you.
- Godus – I didn’t know about the Kickstarter shennanigans when I started playing this god game, I just loved shaping the land with my fingers and accidentally setting things on fire. I spent way more than 15 hours on it though.
- Projekt – make 3D shapes in a restricted playing area, then try to do it again with a minimum or maximum number of blocks.
- Her Story – a crime story you solve/reconstruct by sorting through snippets of full motion video of a suspect being interrogated.
- Gorogoa, Device 6 and Year Walk – puzzle stories. I don’t know if kids would enjoy the retro style of Device 6, and Year Walk is quite melancholy so it might not be suitable for some.
- Threes! and Two Dots – my exceptions to games that only last a few hours. Threes is an endless challenge to beat my own high score, and Two Dots is a pretty matching game that releases new levels faster than I complete them.
- Untitled Goose Game – played it by myself and loved it (honk!) and now that it’s got a co-op mode I’ve played it with my niece as well.
- Katamari Damacy Reroll – I missed whenever the original was out, but found this remake on the Switch. I cannot express how much joy it gives me to just roll up cats and dogs and giant kraken into my katamari.