If you want to keep up with what I’m playing, recording, or writing between blog posts,
the easiest way is to follow me on social media.
I share short clips, updates, and moments there —
sometimes things that never quite justify a full blog entry.
Recent Short
A brief moment from The Outlast Trials, shared as a short.
These clips usually capture instinctive reactions, close calls, or situations where stopping to think would have been a mistake.
You’ll find links to all my social platforms at the top and bottom of the site.
That’s intentional.
I’d rather keep everything visible and easy to find than rely on pop-ups or constant reminders.
No pressure.
No expectations.
Just another way to follow along if you want to.
Progress: Stars Increasing | Lives Intact (Somehow) Platform: Steam Deck Settings: Vanilla Mario & Music
“Sometimes progress is skill. Sometimes it’s guessing the right penguin and hoping for the best.”
With only four stars left in Cool, Cool Mountain, I decided to finish the job before the seed could get any funny ideas.
Cool, Cool Mountain: Cleanup Duty
First target: the Red Coin Star. I knew where six coins were. The last two? Found them easily enough. Getting them was another matter.
That’s when I remembered an old trick. The first attempt failed — badly — but that was fine. Sometimes a failed run resets the rhythm. The second attempt clicked. Clean movement. No panic. Star secured.
Next problem: the baby penguin.
A straight 50/50 guess. I picked one. It was the right one. No skill involved. I’ll take it.
Big Penguin Race and Snowman’s Lost His Head followed without drama. Just solid execution. One course fully cleared and crossed off the list.
YouTube – Log 9 Video
Red coins, penguin roulette, and a continued refusal by the Wing Cap to reveal itself.
Secret Slide Surprise: Not What I Expected
With CCM done, I checked what was hiding behind the Secret Slide entrance.
The answer: Bob-Omb Battlefield.
Still no Wing Cap switch. That’s becoming a theme.
I handled King Bob-omb first and grabbed his star. While scouting the rest of the level, it became clear that full completion here absolutely requires the Wing Cap.
Rather than force it, I settled for Koopa the Quick, grabbed the star, and called it. No point bleeding lives for stubborn pride.
Log 9 Summary
Course Cleared
Cool, Cool Mountain
Risk Taken
Red Coins via old-school trick
Luck Factor
Correct baby penguin (first try)
Wing Cap Status
Still missing
Bob-Omb Battlefield
Partially cleared
One full course done. One classic stage half-finished. The Wing Cap continues to dodge me.
I’m starting a new playthrough of Outlast, using what I’m calling the Apex Predator ruleset.
The idea is simple:
every death counts.
Three strikes, and the run ends.
Outlast isn’t a power fantasy.
You can’t fight back.
You can’t overpower anything.
Survival comes down to awareness, restraint, and not making the wrong decision at the wrong time.
The Apex Predator ruleset exists to give those moments weight.
It allows room to learn without encouraging recklessness.
But plans rarely survive contact with Great Bear Island.
In the new year, I’ll be returning to The Long Dark on Stalker difficulty.
Not to prove anything. Not to play perfectly.
Just to see how long I can last when the world decides it’s done being forgiving.
This run will use the Cheat Death mechanic.
Not as an escape hatch, but as a countdown.
Three chances. That’s it.
Each death pushes the run closer to its end.
Each mistake lingers longer.
Each lesson may or may not be learned in time.
This isn’t about winning.
It’s about surviving long enough to leave notes behind.
This also marks the start of a long-overdue update to The Long Dark map hub. Interloper and Misery are finally getting proper coverage, with maps split by difficulty to reflect real loot behaviour rather than false guarantees.
This was my second attempt at Eliminate the Past.
The first ended quickly, mostly because I forgot to hit record. So I had to stop the trial midway through.
This time, I remembered to hit record.
Viewer discretion advised.The Outlast Trials is intended for mature audiences and contains graphic violence, disturbing imagery, and psychological horror.
Setup
For this run, I took the X-ray ability.
Not to min-max anything, but because wandering blindly on a timer felt like a bad idea.
The aim wasn’t to clear everything.
It was to get out before the door shut.
Eliminate the Past
There were ten records available.
I destroyed four.
That sounds low, but the Trial makes it clear very quickly that stopping for too long is how things go wrong.
Between patrols and the clock, every decision boiled down to whether it was worth the risk.
Most of the time, it wasn’t.
The Escape
When it was time to head back to the gymnasium to begin my escape from the Trial, I promptly got lost.
By the time I found my way back, I had three minutes to get out.
I managed it with roughly three seconds left on the clock.
I didn’t even notice the cop waiting to say goodbye — I just sprinted straight past him.
It didn’t feel like a win.
It felt like just about scraping through.
Afterwards
This Trial reinforced what the game has been pushing from the start:
you don’t need to do everything.
You just need to survive long enough to leave.
Four records destroyed.
Exit reached.
That was sufficient.
Series Notes
This was a single attempt, recorded as it happened.
There were no retries for recording purposes.
If I’d failed, that would have been the post.
I may return to this Trial again at the same difficulty.
For now, this is the record of how it went.
Bowser in the Fire Sea – Red Coins First, Regret Second
Two attempts to collect the red coins
Zero elegant jumps
One unavoidable lava tax
The star itself was worse than the coins. No safe angle.
A lost life was mandatory. I paid it and moved on.
Upstairs Confusion & Painting Roulette
Bob-Omb Battlefield → Bowser in the Dark World
Cool, Cool Mountain (allegedly)
Secret Slide (already done)
Whomp’s Fortress → actually Cool, Cool Mountain
Cool, Cool Mountain – Making It Work
Red coins were half-found and poorly remembered, so I pivoted to the 100 Coin Star. That meant slides, exits, re-entries,
and the game gently mocking me.
After exiting again, the first star appeared right in front of the big penguin,
as if it felt sorry for me.
I’ve added a new hub page to the site for The Outlast Trials.
As the Survivor’s Dread side of the blog continues to grow, it made sense to give Outlast its own space — somewhere that keeps everything organised, easy to navigate, and separate from the calmer survival runs.
The hub brings together all Outlast Trials–related posts in one place, including logs, reflections, and anything else that emerges as the series develops. No hunting through categories. No guessing what order things came in.
This doesn’t mark a change in tone — Outlast is still intense, uncomfortable, and deliberately unsettling — but it does give it a clearer structure on the site. A dedicated place for controlled panic, bad decisions, and learning the hard way.
As more entries are added, they’ll all live there. One page. One thread. No chaos in the navigation, at least.
If you’ve been following the Outlast content so far, that’s now the best place to keep track of it.
With Christmas just around the corner, it felt like the right moment to pause and say thank you.
Not a big announcement. Not a recap post. Just a simple acknowledgement of everyone who has clicked a link, read a post, or stuck around longer than they had to.
This blog didn’t start with a plan, a schedule, or any expectations. It started as a place to put words somewhere instead of keeping them in my head. The fact that anyone else found their way here at all is something I don’t take lightly.
Whether you’ve been here since the early posts, discovered the blog through a game guide, or stumbled across it by accident and stayed for a bit — thank you. Every view, comment, and subscription is a quiet signal that the work landed somewhere.
I also want to thank the people who read without interacting. The quiet readers matter just as much. Not everything needs a comment to count.
The image above feels fitting: a warm drink, a handheld console, a notebook, and a sense of pause. That’s what this space has become for me — and knowing it might be that for someone else too means more than numbers ever could.
I’ll keep writing. I’ll keep sharing what I make. And I’ll keep doing it in a way that feels honest, calm, and human.
Wherever you are, I hope you have a peaceful Christmas — or at least a quiet moment to yourself.
The biggest influences in my life haven’t always been specific people. More often, they’ve been patterns, ideas, and examples I’ve observed over time.
I’ve been shaped by watching how different people respond to pressure, responsibility, and change. Some examples showed me what to move toward. Others showed me what to avoid. Both mattered.
Consistency has been one of the strongest influences. People who show up, do what they say they’ll do, and don’t make a spectacle of it have always left a mark on me. Quiet reliability tends to stick longer than loud success.
I’ve also been influenced by creators, writers, and storytellers who focus on process rather than perfection. The idea that progress comes from small, repeated effort rather than big gestures is something I’ve carried with me.
Ultimately, the biggest influence has been learning to trust my own judgement over time. Taking lessons from the world around me, filtering them, and deciding what fits has mattered more than following any single voice.
Influence, for me, isn’t about imitation. It’s about alignment. Keeping what works, discarding what doesn’t, and building something that feels honest.
I know the year I was born sat in an interesting point of transition. It was a time when the world was shifting, but hadn’t fully realised it yet.
Technology was present, but it wasn’t everywhere. Things still felt physical. Media was something you interacted with deliberately, not something that followed you around all day. Entertainment, communication, and information all required a bit more effort than they do now.
From what I’ve learned since, it was also a period where optimism and uncertainty existed side by side. Big changes were underway, even if they weren’t obvious at the time. Looking back, it’s easy to see how much of what we now take for granted was just beginning to form.
I didn’t experience that year consciously, but its influence is there. It shaped the environment I grew up in, the pace of change I witnessed, and the way I tend to approach new ideas — cautiously curious, but grounded.
It wasn’t a defining year because of the date itself. It mattered because of the direction the world was moving in. And that context has always felt more important than the number.
Survivor Incognito 