Tagged all
Put Into Perspective 1 - Stardew and Competitive Downtime
PIP1 - Stardew And Competitive Downtime
Welcome to the first entry of PIP, which stands for Put Into Perspective. I like talking about my approach to games on a deeper level, how I choose to engage with them. This is one of those kinda tangents. The point is that most of this is subjective, at the end of the day-- There is no right and wrong in your approach to enjoying a game, and I'm very aware that my (somewhat intricate, occasionally) way of enjoying them.. Doesn't apply to everyone.
Without further ado, let's start the topic of today-- Stardew Valley. For context, I've played most modern competitive shooters-- I tend to get angry with them and luckily that's changed for the better. Way better. It was a case of "I raise the bar too high and get toxic if I don't hit it"-- Maybe I'll reserve it for another time. In any case, what's always interested me is the remnants of that competitive mindset- People always told me I needed more relaxing games, maybe it'll do me some good, etc etc yadda yadda. What I've noticed is that being too far into the rabbit hole of competitive games kind of just changes your perspective of... Any game.
I don't remember playing Stardew Valley the first few times, but I remember getting bored at such a quick pace I couldn't get myself past day 3. It's to no fault of the game, either, because I knew it was an immaculate game. I couldn't get to connect with the characters and everything was paced so slowly I lost my sense of direction. Some people like that. I thought I would, too. Maybe a change of pace helps me ground myself more. Nah.
It took me a while to figure this out at all, but apparently my problem lies in how Stardew Valley utilizes the concept of downtime; To me, it feels like the entire game is "downtime". Now, that makes sense, because it's usually described as a cozy, laid-back game-- Let me actually explain what I mean with downtime here, then. I'll be using the term "Competitive Downtime" due to its roots.
Competitive Downtime
The thing I ended up noticing is that not only did Stardew get boring, but it felt similar to the moments of "Competitive Downtime" I got in, say, Apex Legends. Just that Stardew turns it up to 11 and doesn't really have activity. That's ultimately a good thing. Being ridden of stakes and risks all the time must be liberating to some-- What ended up happening to me, I think, is that this similar feeling in "Competitive Downtime" made me treat it the same way. When I had downtime in Apex, I'd recollect, plan ahead, and jump back into the action. The thing with Stardew is that one of those things truly apply to make the game "enjoyable" to most-- Recollecting. A lot of people play it as a cozy game-- Something to calm down on or depressurize with. But the need to plan ahead and the itch to jump back into action, especially when there is no action, is probably what ruins the game for me.
It's sad, because it effectively ruins my perception on a lot of games I probably could've enjoyed someway in a distant parallel universe where I never played compgames. But the difference in value makes for an interesting topic of debate, so I can't be too mad. I've theorized on how to approach Stardew as a game before, to no avail. I thought it'd be better with friends but I end up hitting the same roadblocks I do alone. It just makes me think the game isn't for me. That's okay, too. At the end of the day, I don't need to see every game. Similarly, I don't need to enjoy every game. And there's also plenty of games I do like.
If you have thoughts about this, you know where to find me due to last week's intropost-- I'm always open to hear or debate about these things (Although if you DM me anywhere, let me know what it's for because, well, bots :P)!
For now though, I'm glad I got to write all of this out, and I'll be seeing you next time!!!
Tagged 2026
Put Into Perspective 1 - Stardew and Competitive Downtime
PIP1 - Stardew And Competitive Downtime
Welcome to the first entry of PIP, which stands for Put Into Perspective. I like talking about my approach to games on a deeper level, how I choose to engage with them. This is one of those kinda tangents. The point is that most of this is subjective, at the end of the day-- There is no right and wrong in your approach to enjoying a game, and I'm very aware that my (somewhat intricate, occasionally) way of enjoying them.. Doesn't apply to everyone.
Without further ado, let's start the topic of today-- Stardew Valley. For context, I've played most modern competitive shooters-- I tend to get angry with them and luckily that's changed for the better. Way better. It was a case of "I raise the bar too high and get toxic if I don't hit it"-- Maybe I'll reserve it for another time. In any case, what's always interested me is the remnants of that competitive mindset- People always told me I needed more relaxing games, maybe it'll do me some good, etc etc yadda yadda. What I've noticed is that being too far into the rabbit hole of competitive games kind of just changes your perspective of... Any game.
I don't remember playing Stardew Valley the first few times, but I remember getting bored at such a quick pace I couldn't get myself past day 3. It's to no fault of the game, either, because I knew it was an immaculate game. I couldn't get to connect with the characters and everything was paced so slowly I lost my sense of direction. Some people like that. I thought I would, too. Maybe a change of pace helps me ground myself more. Nah.
It took me a while to figure this out at all, but apparently my problem lies in how Stardew Valley utilizes the concept of downtime; To me, it feels like the entire game is "downtime". Now, that makes sense, because it's usually described as a cozy, laid-back game-- Let me actually explain what I mean with downtime here, then. I'll be using the term "Competitive Downtime" due to its roots.
Competitive Downtime
The thing I ended up noticing is that not only did Stardew get boring, but it felt similar to the moments of "Competitive Downtime" I got in, say, Apex Legends. Just that Stardew turns it up to 11 and doesn't really have activity. That's ultimately a good thing. Being ridden of stakes and risks all the time must be liberating to some-- What ended up happening to me, I think, is that this similar feeling in "Competitive Downtime" made me treat it the same way. When I had downtime in Apex, I'd recollect, plan ahead, and jump back into the action. The thing with Stardew is that one of those things truly apply to make the game "enjoyable" to most-- Recollecting. A lot of people play it as a cozy game-- Something to calm down on or depressurize with. But the need to plan ahead and the itch to jump back into action, especially when there is no action, is probably what ruins the game for me.
It's sad, because it effectively ruins my perception on a lot of games I probably could've enjoyed someway in a distant parallel universe where I never played compgames. But the difference in value makes for an interesting topic of debate, so I can't be too mad. I've theorized on how to approach Stardew as a game before, to no avail. I thought it'd be better with friends but I end up hitting the same roadblocks I do alone. It just makes me think the game isn't for me. That's okay, too. At the end of the day, I don't need to see every game. Similarly, I don't need to enjoy every game. And there's also plenty of games I do like.
If you have thoughts about this, you know where to find me due to last week's intropost-- I'm always open to hear or debate about these things (Although if you DM me anywhere, let me know what it's for because, well, bots :P)!
For now though, I'm glad I got to write all of this out, and I'll be seeing you next time!!!
Aymeeblog 1, Intro
Aymeeblog 1: Introductory blogpost
Hey guys, Amy here. Yeah, I know.. It's called Aymeeblog but I'm Amy. It's kind of like a wordplay-onomatopoeia-whimsy thing I do where Aymee is like, how you say it, but it's actually Amy. Glad we got that out of the way now, though. So.. Where do we start?
As of writing, I'm 23. I started this blog to try and see if i can keep up some kind of posting habit about things I'm interested in and want to share. Whether that's gamedev quirks, psychology, semantic compositions on death and its meaning, uhh.. Philosophy, I guess we'll see.
The idea, as of right now, is to make two posts a month. Hopefully Bi-weekly, but who knows. I don't like tying some kind of set date to it just yet, Commitment Sucks, As They Say
In any case.. My socials are rather hard to find as is, I don't have a linktree setup so this serves as an additional layer of You Can Find Me Here.
This is my youtube, my Steam, and my Bluesky.
Hope to post soon!
Aymeeblog 1, Intro
Aymeeblog 1: Introductory blogpost
Hey guys, Amy here. Yeah, I know.. It's called Aymeeblog but I'm Amy. It's kind of like a wordplay-onomatopoeia-whimsy thing I do where Aymee is like, how you say it, but it's actually Amy. Glad we got that out of the way now, though. So.. Where do we start?
As of writing, I'm 23. I started this blog to try and see if i can keep up some kind of posting habit about things I'm interested in and want to share. Whether that's gamedev quirks, psychology, semantic compositions on death and its meaning, uhh.. Philosophy, I guess we'll see.
The idea, as of right now, is to make two posts a month. Hopefully Bi-weekly, but who knows. I don't like tying some kind of set date to it just yet, Commitment Sucks, As They Say
In any case.. My socials are rather hard to find as is, I don't have a linktree setup so this serves as an additional layer of You Can Find Me Here.
This is my youtube, my Steam, and my Bluesky.
Hope to post soon!
AymeeBlog Home
Made on the foundation of strawberry starter!
Welcome to my blog where I yap about several intricate topics I think I know a lot about and would like to share thoughts on. This page will likely be more lively as more happens.
If you wish to know more about Strawberry Starter, the about page is left untouched, and for what it's worth it took me ~10 minutes to set up, with little to no effort. Can definitely recommend as an easy gateway into blogging.
Strawbery Starter 1.1 release
A new update for Strawberry Starter! In fact, the first major update!
Here's a rundown of the new features:
Tags
You could already tag your posts, but now it's more useful! If you have at least one tag (that isn't post or infobar) a tag view will appear in your "All Posts" page. This lets you view every tagged post at once! All of the example posts that come with the template have tags now, to serve as little examples of this feature.
Navbar links & Footer comments
It's now easier than ever to add external links to your navbar, or add comments to your post pages. You'll see two new layouts in the _includes folder: navbar.html and comments.html. The former lets you easily add external links (or whatever else)! and the latter lets you easily copy paste a comment script from a service like Disqus or CommentBox.
Minifeeds
A new social-media-ish alternative for your blog! Add feeds to the minifeeds folder and give them a tag. This is a great way to keep an ongoing list of books you've read or stuff you're doing. Posts added to the minifeeds folder won't count as "posts", and so won't clog up the RSS Feed or the "All Posts" page. They'll only appear in the tag view, but you can also link to them directly. A new #Updates minifeed has been added to the template to show you how to do it!
Easy backups!
You can now type npm run backup in a command line to backup your blog. This will preserve your assets and posts in a format that's really convenient for backing up, OR for using to upgrade to a newer version of Strawberry Starter. Just download the new version, drop your backup in there, and voila!
There's a new guide on the site about how to use all these in more detail: Advanced Features.
Let me know what you think about this update! I've already seen some cool blogs out there, and am hoping to see more. Special thanks to Em Reed and their awesome blog, for helping me test out these new features.
Keep blogging, and believe in the net! 🍓
About
Strawberry Starter is an 11ty blog template that came about as I was thinking about the recent push towards personal websites. There's been growing sentiment in my corner of the internet that social media is bad; that that we should ditch it in favor of blogs and personal homepages, but... there's not many great options out there if you're a beginner to HTML/CSS/JS!
Lately I've been doing a lot of dev, and decided I could put some of my knowledge to work, adding to the pool of available resources.
My hope for this template is that someone with little experience can download and use it, and that it'll spur them towards a path of learning about HTML and CSS!
Special thanks
- Zonelets
- Zonelets is a huge inspiration to me! Part of my design goal for Strawberry Starter was basically "Zonelets but without needing to write HTML".
- 11ty
- Finally, static site generation that's good! This is the most intuitive SSG I've used and it has totally rekindled my love for webdev.
- Foto
- For being wonderful and helping out when I get frustrated. Thanks for contributing a theme, too ❤️
- Sean
- For always taking a look at my code, fixing bugs, and teaching me lots.
- Emma, IAN, Rumpel, and S.T.
- For being helpful
guinea pigstesters 😎 and contributing critical bug reports/pull requests.
- For being helpful
- My friends who blog
- For being excited about this project and cheering me on!
Strawbery Starter 1.0 release!
Wow! You can now blog with this cool new tool!
All Posts
- 28/03/2026 - Put Into Perspective 1 - Stardew and Competitive Downtime
- 26/03/2026 - Aymeeblog 1, Intro