John August

John

Tuesday Reviewsday: Pillars of Eternity

Reviewsday, Videogames

Every week, I like to leave reviews for a few things I’ve enjoyed. This week, it’s just one review: Pillars of Eternity.
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I’ve nearly finished this single-player isometric-perspective RPG, which was born from a wildly successful Kickstarter. It’s been out for a year, but I only began playing it in January.

After a rocky start, I’ve found myself digging this surprisingly grim (and PG-13) story of soul harvesting and fallen gods. I like the characters in my party so much that I’m never tempted to swap them out for other classes. The quests are challenging enough to keep me engaged, but never googling the forums for help.

The game runs smoothly on my recent-era iMac, with fans rarely spinning up. In keeping with the fixed-camera POV, a lot of the UI is deliberately old-school, with slots and textures and a lot of clicking. But Pillars has made some smart updates for the times, with an intelligent combat system, flexible (and retrainable) skills, and essentially unlimited inventory. If you play on the easier settings, you can avoid entire aspects of the game like food and potions. If you want more of a challenge, go for the higher difficulty settings and keep your flasks handy.

In the end, I’d recommend Pillars to anyone looking for a classic D&D-style RPG.

I played the version on the Mac App Store, but it’s available through Steam for other platforms.

Bronson Watermarker gets a minor update

Apps, Bronson, Highland, Weekend Read

Bronson Watermarker, our app for quickly personalizing PDFs, has an update in the Mac App Store. Version 2.0.4 fixes a drawing bug.
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I don’t mention the app as much as Highland or Weekend Read, but Bronson has become the go-to app for a lot of productions in Hollywood. If you’ve received a watermarked script in the past few years, there’s a very good chance it was created with Bronson.

Bronson is available in the Mac App Store.

To Kill a Mockingbird

Author, Books, Words on the page

Harper Lee, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning To Kill a Mockingbird, died today at 89.

Everyone reads To Kill a Mockingbird in high school or college, right? For years, I recalled it being on a summer AP English reading list. I no doubt rushed through it to get to Heller or Dostoyevsky.

But last year, as the controversy over Go Set a Watchman started bubbling up, I began to wonder: did I actually ever read Mockingbird? Like a lot of great books, it had permeated American culture so thoroughly that I could fake my way through a conversation about Atticus Finch without first-hand knowledge the book he appears in.

Sadly, discussing things you haven’t read is an important skill in Hollywood.

I bought and read Mockingbird this year over the Christmas holiday. Spoiler: it’s terrific. Through cultural osmosis, I already had some sense of Atticus, Scout and Boo Radley, and the trial at the center of the book.

What I hadn’t anticipated was how smart and funny Lee’s writing would be. She manages the difficult feat of telling the story from the perspective of a willful six-year-old tomboy while vividly painting in the details of Maycomb, Alabama. As the reader, you understand the complicated lives of the adults even while the young protagonist is annoyed and baffled by them.

Lee’s scene work is terrific — a nighttime walk back from school is harrowing — but her transitions are remarkable. She can thoroughly document a moment down to each scowl and scrape, then zip through months in a sentence. This ability to stretch and compress time is so much harder than Lee makes it look.

To Kill a Mockingbird is usually studied for its themes and cultural issues, but I’d urge you to read it — or re-read it — just for the writing.

Tuesday Reviewsday, vol. 4

Reviewsday

Reviews let makers know how much you love their products, and encourage potential customers to give new things a shot. Every Tuesday I leave a few reviews on the applicable store, and encourage you to do the same.

Today’s picks are:

  • Bang! (4th Edition) (Amazon) The original Spaghetti Western shoot-em up card game. While you can play it with four players, I find it’s best with five or more so the Deputy gets involved.
  • Bang! The Walking Dead (Amazon) A very clever re-skin of Bang! using the characters from The Walking Dead series. In many ways, it’s easier to understand, both because the Italian is removed and some of the nomenclature is more straightforward (e.g. axes have a range of one, first aid kits heal one life, etc.). It’s not gruesome. I won’t let my 10-year-old watch the series, but I’d be fine with her playing this game.
  • Food52 Genius Recipes: 100 Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook (Amazon) A friend recommended this book — in particular, two unusual recipes for scrambled eggs. I found the whole thing great, with lively instructions and terrific photography. It’s the kind of cookbook you flip through on the couch, marking things you want to try.

If you’re looking for something to review, many readers are probably familiar with some of the things we make, including Highland, Weekend Read and Writer Emergency Pack.

Podcasts are especially review-dependent, because they signal to the powers at iTunes to feature certain shows. A review for Scriptnotes would be much-appreciated.