I was actually going through my blog stats when I encountered a link to check out your “2012 Annual Report” for the blog. The results compiled from WordPress is quite interesting. If you are a blogger, go check this out if you are curious how your blog did in 2012 according to WordPress. I’m posting what my results were for Simpleek. Thanks again to those who read or continue to read the blog!
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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 20,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 5 Film Festivals
With the crazy business of the world “ending” this year based on the Mayan calendar behind us, it’s time to focus on the approaching new year.
2012 has been a pretty good year on a personal level and for this blog as well. I garnered more followers and readers than I thought possible, and I’m still writing a post a week. I still wish I had the time to do two posts a week, but the important thing is pushing myself to be able to write one good post every week. I hope I am living up to that commitment, dear readers!
Looking back at some of the posts I have written this past year, I can count posts I am quite proud of writing and some I wish I had done better on. I also realized how difficult it is to balance writing one topic over the other. Being a blog that likes to write about manga, anime, video games, and a bit of fashion in between––it’s clear that some topics will get more attention than others.
As a 2013 resolution for the Simpleek blog, I hope to challenge myself to write more analysis based posts because I haven’t written enough of those. I also wish to write more anime based posts. My anime related ones are sorely lacking, but I blame it on not finding enough time to watch the animes I currently own at home or are sitting on my Netflix queue waiting to be watched. I hope to squeeze more time in for the anime perspective on the blog in the new year. Reviews will still be written for the blog, but I don’t want to become too much like a review blog either. What I enjoy writing the most are posts where I can discuss things and where I can make observations on things I have noticed or seen. Discussion has been my main motivation for keeping this blog, and I hope to spark more conversation in 2013 with my regular readers and future ones.
Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, but I wanted to do a special Sunday post as I won’t be able to do this then. I actually wanted to do a Christmas themed post, but I came up empty. Instead, I will be doing a manga review for Codename Sailor V – Volume 1. Hope you enjoy!
Indie games have proven to be serious business next to the big wig, mainstream games from well known developers like Valve, Bioware, or 2K Games to name a few. If the indie developers have passion for their project and a good idea, then it is possible to make a great game on little to no budget at all. The reward is the hope that a free-to-play indie game will catch on and become popular enough with players along the same vein as perhaps the Angry Birds franchise?
A few days ago, I received a pretty detailed message from Milisav Bankovic, lead designer and artist of Kobayaghi Industries. He asked if I can write a short post about a project their company is doing called Scarecrow Samurai.
The game is set in Japan where you play as a scarecrow samurai that needs to protect the very first wheat crop planted in Japan from being destroyed by an evil warlord known as Kobayaghi. It’s a game that is currently being developed as a free-to-play Android and online browser game. The game has plenty of different features. The following is what Mr. Bankovic has detailed in his message about the game:
Game Features:
– Play as a scarecrow-samurai demon in Android and free-to-play browser game. Point and click on enemies or in their vicinity to attack them.
– Each level brings new types of enemies and possibilities for upgrades.
– Different climate conditions follow the change of seasons.
– Night missions.
– Ability to summon your sidekick (NPC).
– Special skills/powers.
– Boss fights.
– Introduction to every level.
– Animated cinematics with narration.
– Original score.
– English and Japanese language option.
If you are interested in reading more about their game and to get a quick preview of Scarecrow Samurai, visit their Kickstarter page here. If you like what you see, you can help fund the game at the Kickstarter page by pledging at least $1. Their goal is to reach $6,000 by December 28.
The game has promise from what I have seen on their page. I’m also liking their concept of breaking up the levels into seasons, where your character gets to defeat different enemies during that season. Once the season ends, you will have to do a boss fight. It’s definitely an indie game to keep an eye on.
Recently, I have delved into The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins. I always tend to see a movie first before picking up the books. This usually happens by accident. Whenever a studio decides to make a film based on a book, I tend to not be aware of a book’s popularity until after a film has been released. After seeing the film starring Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, and Liam Hemsworth, I was vastly interested in picking up the book series.
I became a Hayao Miyazaki fan the moment I watched Spirited Away and then Howl’s Moving Castle. These films gave me a taste of his work and I naturally sought out more. When I saw the trailer for The Secret World of Arrietty, I knew it was a movie I needed to watch. I rented it from Netflix, and not surprisingly, I have loved the movie.
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