Just a little hello and a secret project update!

Hey! I'm sorry it's been quiet on my end recently. I haven't had as much time as I'd like to engage with you guys on Discord, and I'm overdue for an Arlocast. Things have been rough, as they are with a lot of people right now. My living situation makes it difficult to record, and my personal responsibilities are hindering my work more than ever in this situation. Even when I do have time to work I have very little energy, so motivation has been an issue as well. Then of course the seasonal allergies are back and my allergy meds didn't seem to be helping, so I've switched to a new one and I'm keeping my fingers crossed it helps. Naturally swollen bronchial tubes aren't incredibly conducive to the act of recording. But I'm doing my best and trying to stay positive. I know we'll all get through this. It might be a long journey, but I know we can do it. I hope you're all doing alright and staying safe.

Also I must thank all of you more profusely than ever for your support. Youtube is normally very unpredictable, but right now it's in something of a downward spiral. There's very little ad revenue to go around and videos are making less and less and less. I'm hoping it will even out somewhat, but this whole thing isn't even close to resolving, so I don't know. But to everyone who's been with me for a while or anyone who's recently pledged or even upped their pledge, whatever the case--thank you so much. We're all in this, so absolutely don't feel any pressure to keep pledging if you can't afford it. Take care of yourself FIRST. But if you're still willing to help then I can't possibly thank you enough. If you're new, be sure to head to the Discord and introduce yourself!

Moving on to something a little more fun though! This quarantine situation unfortunately hasn't afforded me any extra free time as it has with many (and YES I'm jealous, haha), but I've been working hard to stay ahead on videos so I can work more on side projects that don't require any recording yet. You might be happy to know that I've been chipping away at my Big Fat Review of Pikmin for the last few months (shhhhh, still a secret). I've fallen in love with the voice-to-text feature on my phone, because I can be taking a walk or waiting for something or cooking and still writing. Yesterday I finally hooked up the ol' Gamecube and started running through the game and taking notes, so now it's really going to start coming together. I spent the first part of the review talking about the overall concept, and now I'm going through each area and talking about every part and every enemy and all the different mechanics. I just finished up talking about the Impact Site and that section is nearly twenty minutes long all by itself, and that's the teeny tiny tutorial level!!! I've still got to go through all the rest of the areas and the review is already approximately an hour and a half long. So I think two hours when it's all done is a conservative estimate, though I wouldn't be surprised if it pushed two and a half.

The Breath of the Wild BFR was nearly three and a half hours long, though there was still a lot of nitty gritty detail stuff I didn't go into. Pikmin is a much smaller game and I'm really running with this whole "let's talk about EVERYTHING" idea. It's something of an experiment, really. Will it be too long? Will it be boring? Should I not go into THAT much detail? We'll just have to wait and see. I certainly hope people like it though. These projects are so massive that the idea of getting it done any time soon is hard to believe, but I do know that once Kane and I really got rolling on BotW it moved fairly quick. If I stay ahead and manage my time well I would LOVE to do all three Pikmin games before the end of the year. So wish me luck on that. I do hope it's something people end up enjoying. Zelda did great but it's a newer game on the very exciting Switch. Will BFRs of older games do as well? No idea. But I guess we'll see.

Well that's it for now, just wanted to give you those crazy time estimates, ha. Hopefully soon I'll be feeling better and able to do an Arlocast for you. Thank you, you're wonderful, have a good day, and talk to ya later! <3